The Merchant Adventurer Page 7

  A woman, clamoring, shrieking for her handmaiden or a guard to bring the chest of rich silks onto the boats. But, of course, there is no room for such things. Someone knocking the chest to the docks. Throwing the woman into a boat. Jumping in after her and pushing the craft out into the current.

  The water would have taken them south quickly. If they survived the uncomfortable ride through the rapids, they would already be out of the grey, mist-covered mountains of Robrecht and enjoying a leisurely ride to Shatnapur, the northernmost city in the Southron Kingdoms. Odds were they were all free and clear, floating down a river with the sun in their faces.

  The guards would know how close they came, but the nobles–the soft and careless ones who claimed privilege to rule–would be thinking only of what Southron delicacies they might feast upon in a few days’ time. Rare tropical fruits. The brains of monkeys. Anything delectable and procured at great suffering to the peasantry. What they weren’t thinking about, Boltac knew, was the body of a young girl, dead in a gutter.

  Boltac spit in the river, then climbed back up the stairs.

  Back in the throne room, he tried to wrap his head around it. There was no one. They had all gone. At the first sign of danger, the Duke had fled. Boltac walked to the throne and sat down. For a second, he almost took it seriously. Then he laughed at himself.

  This wasn’t the chair for him. He was a Merchant. Everyone knew you couldn’t buy a throne. Of course, such a thing could be inherited. But at some point a throne had to be won, with a sword. A sword drenched in blood. An illiterate barbarian could sooner be a King than a fat Merchant. And it had been so long since Robrecht had had a real King. Or anything other than a figurehead installed by a larger, more powerful Kingdom seeking to control the trade routes.

  The health of Kingdoms, thought Boltac, depended not on war but on commerce. The opportunity for everyone to conduct their little businesses in peace was what kept people happy and productive. But, for some reason, the only people deemed fit to rule were warriors and their inbred descendants. Something was wrong with this logic. But it was not for him to fix.

  Boltac heaved himself off the fancy chair and left the room. Over the wall of the castle, he saw heavy columns of smoke rising from the north end of town. In twos and threes, people fled from the north gate. To the south, the damage was less but there was a larger stream of traffic. People were leaving. Was this the way it was to be? Was this how his town died?

  13

  By the time Boltac returned to the store, Relan was gone. Boltac’s shopkeeper’s eye quickly saw what the boy had taken. All the wrong things. The idiot was probably even walking. Walking to his Heroic death.

  Boltac thought about opening for business. He thought about barricading the store against looters. Then he looked across the street to the still-smoldering remnants of The Bent Eelpout. He stared for a long time. He stared until a light rain began to fall. He watched the drops turn to steam as soon as they hit the smoldering coals of what used to be an inn. Each drop was infinitesimal. Wasted. A single drop could not put out a fire. But enough water could wash an entire city away. He savored his melancholy and rolled this thought around for a while. Then he turned his back on the window.

  Boltac looked around his store. Not only had the kid had taken all the wrong things, he had taken all the wrong things to carry them in. Boltac shook his head. Why travel if you don’t have the luggage you need to enjoy the journey? He had sold a lot of luggage with that line, but that didn’t stop it from being good advice.

  He went into the back and opened the chest on the left. He took out all of the small leather bags filled with coin and set them aside. He would need money, of course. After all, it was the most multipurpose substance known to man. But, for Boltac’s purposes, there was something in here more valuable than money.

  “Ah HA!” he said as he held up a burlap sack. The sack looked like its only purpose in life was to hold twenty pounds of potatoes. “There you are,” Boltac said to the sack as if to a precious child he had found in a game of hide and seek. Of course, this was a ridiculous analogy–Boltac hated children–but this burlap sack? He couldn’t have been more proud of the sack.

  He walked through his well-stocked store finding items he might need for a journey to the depths of some foul, unknowable place. Into the sack’s modest opening he placed five goatskins of water, two of wine, ten stout torches, a few flagons of the finest oil, three daggers, an axe, an ornate and well-jeweled silver mace in a wooden case, a roll of rare tools used for the picking of locks and dismantling of doors and chests, several hundred feet of good rope, an extra pair of boots, two hats, several wool blankets, a lambswool sweater (the depths could be cold) a side of pork cured in salt, five pounds of hard biscuit, and a pound of chocolate.

  But that wasn’t all. He flitted here and there among the shelves, adding this, that, and the other–oddments and ointments–anything Boltac thought he might need. Because if Boltac knew one thing about Adventure, it was that you never knew.

  The second-to-last thing to go in was the Magic Lantern of Lamptopolis. And very last of all, his thick wool Gauntlets of Magic Negation. Didn’t want to be reaching around in a bag like that with bare hands, that’s for sure.

  Through all of this, the bag never bulged or grew heavier than the 17 or 20 pounds that a sack that size, filled with potatoes, could be expected to weigh. The more Boltac stuffed into the sack, the wider he smiled. For a moment, he considered trying to fit EVERYTHING into the sack, just to see if he could. But then he thought better of it. Even a Magic sack had to have its limits. And if it didn’t? That wasn’t the kind of thing Boltac wanted to know.

  Boltac hated Magic, but he loved this bag. It was Themistres’ Bag of Holding. One of only a very few known to exist. It was said that it would contain anything the owner could place into it. It never got heavier or bigger. It was, in effect, a bottomless bag.

  Themistres, as the story went, made the bag for his wife. She was a large woman who liked to travel heavy. The Wizard had not made many of them, and no Wizard seemed to have been able to duplicate his feat. Wizards seldom married, and the ones who did, generally wound up turning their wives into something that wouldn’t bother them. The Bag of Holding was generally believed to be a myth, a pleasant fiction of overloaded husbands and servants everywhere. But Boltac had found one. And what a wondrous thing it was. Priceless, really.

  With this thought of pricing, he remembered the coins he left out in the back. He took out his mittens and put them on. He removed the Magic Lantern from the sack. It did not light as he touched it. Then, he added some gold to the sack. As he did, Boltac wondered: what was the point of holding any in reserve? It wasn’t like he expected to be coming back. And that’s when Boltac realized–told the truth of it to himself–he probably wasn’t going to make it out of this Adventure alive.

  He stopped and stood up in the back room of his store. He had worked so hard to build this store into a thriving business. Now, standing among the money he had worked so hard to accumulate, all of it seemed worthless. The heavy weight of the Gauntlets of Magic Negation dragged his hands towards the floor, and his shoulders stooped. For a moment, tears ran down his round, weathered face. He let out one sob. Then sniffed and bent back to the task at hand.

  He piled all the gold into the sack. Who knew, perhaps he could buy his way out of this trouble? That was what a shrewd Merchant would do.

  When he picked up the lamp this time, even though he was still wearing the mittens, a faint light shone out from its depths. Boltac didn’t notice.

  Boltac left his store and headed north, for points unknown and unknowable. Yes, it was stupid. But there was nothing else to do. In the end, he had no more choice than a single raindrop falling onto the smoldering remains of a burned building. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have any choices. It had been a mistake to try to fight like a Hero. Boltac could see that now. He wasn’t a Hero. He wasn’t a King either. But he wasn’t powerless. Rather
than go off half-cocked, he could use the skills and tools he had. He could do a better job of outfitting himself. And he would be damned if he would be walking to his death.

  14

  Relan was wearing a new pair of boots. In fact, this was his first ever pair of boots of any kind. Up until this point he had worn only sandals or wooden shoes. And those had been hand-me-downs. In one way or another, it seemed that everything in Relan’s life had been a hand-me-down. That’s the way it was when you were the youngest of seven on a cold-water farm hidden away in the fog-shrouded mountains of Robrecht. There was plenty of work and nothing else.

  But if they could see him now?

  Over a linen tunic, he wore a shirt of shining chain mail. It wasn’t the best mail that Boltac had, but it was the best-looking. Around his neck, a cloak made of hammered felt was clasped with a chain of silver. On his hip, the sword Boltac had given him swung from a wide leather sword belt. On his opposite hip was a dirk with its handle worked into the shape of a screaming eagle. Pants of the finest, softest deer skin he had ever encountered were tucked into the black boots, which had high cuffs and silver buckles. This is how a Hero should look, he thought.

  Oh, they had laughed at him on the farm–well, his older brothers and sisters had, Ma and Pa had been too tired. They took the news of his departure as they took all news, good or bad, with the tired stare of someone who has seen the worst that the seasons and the ways of man have had to offer. From long habit, they tried not to get excited one way or the other.

  “You’ll be back,” his eldest brother had said, in imitation of the hard, bitter speech of his father. But then his stern face softened, and he added, “And you’ll be welcome. If you conquer the world, littlest brother, be sure to save us a piece.” A last smile and a wink and Relan had been on his way. He knew that none of his family expected ever to see him again. One way or another, when someone left the high valley, they never seemed to come back.

  But if they could see him now! Mail glinting in the sunlight, hair blowing in the wind and the heels of these magnificent boots ringing off the cobbles. Announcing to all the world that he who walked in these boots was not a man to be trifled with.

  Yes, he would go back. Just as soon as he was finished, he would go back home and show them. All of them. His sullen family, the joyless villagers. He would go back like something out of the sagas the strange wandering minstrels sang in a vain attempt to cheer the flat, simple people of the land. But he would wait until he had something more than a new suit of clothes to show for his Adventures.

  The farther Relan walked through the city, the more troubled his mood became. Everywhere he looked, he saw the signs of the last night’s carnage. Blood spilled on the cobblestones, bodies lying in the streets. Loved ones gathering corpses. Families fleeing for the gates with possessions hastily piled in wagons. And fear on every face.

  The music of his strides against the stones took on a sour note. He wondered if he should have done more last night. But the memory of what he had done, the creature and the killing of it, sent a shiver of fear up his spine. He hadn’t had time to think. Hadn’t had time to be afraid. But now that he had time, he was afraid, and worse. He was honest enough with himself to remember shaking afterwards. And the thought of going out into the night to face more of those snarling, tusked creatures on wolves–it turned his blood to water once again.

  He should have done more to help. A real Hero would have fought all night. Would have fought until the enemy was driven from the city. But Relan had not. Why?

  Perhaps because it wasn’t his city? At least not yet. He had only been in Robrecht a week. And it hadn’t been a pleasant week. Sleeping in a makeshift tent in a muddy ditch in the shadow of the south wall had been rugged enough. But the people were worse. Unfriendly, mean, shrewd, hard dealers one and all. None had the time to make a penniless Farm Boy feel welcome. For all the wonderful things he had heard about the cities, he couldn’t understand why everyone was so excited about them.

  He had almost given up. Then he had met Sabriella. She had appeared to him in the muck and the mire of Robrecht’s agricultural market. Relan was on the verge of giving up. He had come to the farmers’ stalls to look for work. He was a strong lad and knew how to work hard. But as he stood there, hungry, exhausted, covered in filth, somehow he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words.

  It would mean defeat. It would mean giving up and eventually going back to the farm in the tiny valley. It would mean that his brothers and sisters were right to laugh. And, worst of all, it would mean that the best he could hope to get from life would be that hard, beaten look that was the battered inheritance his parents had saved up for him.

  “You seem troubled,” a voice said.

  Relan turned, and gasped. “What are you?” He was taken aback by a vision of perfumed breasts, full, lovely, and contoured under sacred robes.

  “I am a Priestess, a loyal handmaiden of the Temple of Dar, but how could you not know that?”

  “I, uh, am… uh…”

  “You are a traveler!” she exclaimed, saving him from his awkward stammering. “A wanderer, a seeker of Adventure!”

  “Yes,” he said, because he would have said yes to anything this perfect, breathless woman said. She smiled, and Relan felt himself go weak in the knees. There was a gap between her front teeth that her tongue darted into and away from. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  “Dar commands us to serve all travelers and seekers,” she said. “Tell me your name.”

  “Uh, Relan…?” he said, still bewildered.

  “Well is it or isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  She laughed brightly, in a way that was as far from mocking as the bright sunshine is from the rain. “Very well, Relan. I am Sabriella. I am pleased to meet you,” she said with a curtsey. Then she slipped her hands around his arm and guided him from the marketplace.

  “My, you are very strong,” she exclaimed, accidentally telling the truth.

  She guided him along Robrecht’s streets until they were walking beside the nicest part of the river. The great keep loomed off to their right and almost managed, in the afternoon light, to look regal. Sabriella talked with him gently and gave him the gift of listening well and laughing often at his awkward stories. In no time at all, Relan was completely at ease with the radiant creature on his arm.

  “Oh, but you must be famished!” she said, and dragged him into a small cookshop. The owner greeted her warmly, and they were soon seated. To her great delight, Relan had three bowls of stew. Best of all, the owner wouldn’t take payment. Which was good, because Relan was completely broke.

  They went back out in the street and walked for a time that felt to Relan like both an instant and an eternity. The sun cast longer and longer shadows through the narrow streets and alleys until finally they heard the tolling of the temple bell.

  “But I must return,” Sabrellia exclaimed, “I had not noticed the hours passing so quickly in your company. I have only been granted parole for the day, and the streets are not safe for such as I after dark.”

  “I will walk you to the temple and keep you safe,” Relan said with all the sincerity there was in the world.

  “You must not! I cannot be seen with you. And you cannot be seen with me. I know that to one so experienced in Adventure, the hardship of a dungeon and the Temple’s Questioner mean nothing, but I am a much frailer creature.”

  “But, I don’t think–”

  She placed a finger on his lips. “You are so strong, so handsome, so brave. I know that if I were in trouble–in danger, I mean–you would come for me. That you would save me. Just like a Hero. My Hero.”

  He nodded like the idiot he was. And was going to follow her anyway, but then she paralyzed him with a kiss.

  Of course, he had been kissed before. But the simple, sullen, load-bearing creatures of his village hardly seemed the same species as the delightful girl that pressed her painted lips to his. Such
a kiss! He felt his feet break into a sweat. He closed his eyes and saw colors that he never imagined existed. It was the kind of kiss that would make a more experienced man ask some pretty hard questions about the purity of the Virgin Priestesses of Dar.

  “Promise me you will meet me here tomorrow. Dar has inflamed me with love for you, and you cannot deny the Goddess her divine purpose. Say it! Say you will meet me.”

  He swallowed hard and said, “I will.”

  And then she ran off around the corner. As her sandaled feet slapped the cobblestones, Relan caught flashes of her milk white thighs beneath her flapping robe.

  When she was out of sight, he rubbed his lips and smiled to himself. This was the start of it then. The grand Adventure of his life that he left the village to find.

  Then the screaming started.

  15

  Relan rounded the corner so fast that he lost his footing and slipped on the cobbles. With the strength that came from long days of hard work on the farm, he caught himself on his palm and shoved the upper half of his body back into balance.

  He saw two men in black running away with Sabriella, one holding her over his shoulder, the other glaring back at him and brandishing a wickedly curved knife. He was pretty sure they weren’t priests of the infinitely kind and forgiving Dar, Goddess of Mercy.

  On the street in front of him, a third man lay on the cobbles. He lifted a hand weakly and called after the kidnappers. “Please! Don’t hurt her,” he sobbed. Sobbed, thought Relan? What weak, unmanly, un-Heroic behavior was this? Had this man not heard the sagas? The full-throated minstrels singing of Heroes rescuing beautiful Ladies in Distress through Selfless Acts of Valor? This was not how it was done.