Eragos Feareborne (proscribed) wrote in adusta, @ 2010-02-23 18:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | eragos feareborne, lucille mercen |
one thousand strands of light (lucille)
The morning air was friend to no one, least of all those who slept in tents and built fires to warm themselves. By the time sleep kissed their cheeks only the embers remained. Overnight, heat would build below the surface of the tent, and they would wake warm. But most did not secure their furs, or their coats, or whatever means they'd brought on the journey to stay warm. That meant some of the teamsters whose sole job was to drive the wagons were drinking from flasks at first light. To keep warm, they said. Eragos had seen better ways to keep warm in his many years on this world. They were better because they were less expensive, and because they did not render you useless on account of your intoxication. That was one of his lesser troubles, which was both commentary on the journey as a whole and on the severity of his opinion. There was no shortage of opinions - but his was one of the few that mattered, because his was the only one that was not being paid by the merchant. He could leave whenever he wanted. Agrippa's orders made that clear.
It was not his first choice.
They were fur traders and trappers, with the occasional 'relic hunter' as they liked to describe themselves. None of them were honest men who made honest coin. Some hunted on privately owned land, some hunted in caves that held deeper terrors, and some were reckless with their own lives and the lives of others. This led to a trouble the merchant had called 'both damaging to the financial gains of my business and damaging to the reputation of legitimate business in the area'. There were no words between Agrippa and Feareborne regarding this assignment. Merely a folded page of instructions and orders, which concealed the merchant's original letter. A fine cause the fellow had for worry - this caravan ran from the end of the world, in orc country, to Ceranarad in Astarii. The frozen bay at the top of every map a fellow could produce was forbidding enough. Some claimed they'd gone out onto the ice and glimpsed flags from distant lands which lay across a frozen sea.
He was distracting himself.
Focus.
Harva Wills was the trader's name, and he'd been operating this particular caravan for fourteen years. Anyone was allowed to pay for passage in a wagon as long as a wagon was available. Or, they could do what the trappers and 'relic hunters' - thieves, Eragos decided to call them rightly - did. Pay for the freight you wanted to carry with you and ride your own horse. Pitch your own tent, make your own meals. There were advantages to either, but as long as you were riding with the caravan you had the protection of the merchant soldiers. They were brawny fellows with necks as thick as his waist, clad all in armor, answering to Harva alone. In theory. In practice they would sell themselves, as they had to earn their post in the first place, and hide illegal goods. Possibly kill competition, he'd heard. All of that shadowy business came to a head when a lord from the Free Cities found himself buying passage on the caravan as part of a birthing day celebration.
They would travel, this lord and his hunting party, to the extreme ends of the world. They would trap and hunt the most exotic beasts they could find. And then they would spend the entire journey back becoming more and more intoxicated under the guard of these soldiers. Only the lord and his entire party had been killed, their merchandise had been stolen, one of the merchant soldiers had died, and two innocent bystanders - he wondered if that term truly applied - also wound up below the dirt. A fine body count for anyone. But the soldiers claimed innocence, as did the hunters and thieves who traveled with the caravan. Harva was in danger of having any licenses in the Free Cities revoked. But his troubles did not end there. The lord, whose land was near to Eragos' own, had been a close friend of High Lord Gavrie of Beit-Orane. Now the High Lord was bombarding Harva, Agrippa and High Lord Arand of Beit-Arnil with letters almost daily demanding satisfaction.
Satisfaction, these letters suggested, would come in the form of an armed force - the Free Army, Eragos had no doubt - attacking the caravan the next time it passed within a hundred miles of the Free Cities and killing anyone who lifted a finger to stop them. Part of the reason Eragos had drawn this duty was simple. Determine who had comitted the crime before Gavrie killed a citizen of a foreign land, in cold blood, using the armed force of the Free Cities to do it. Agrippa's orders were curt and to the point, as per usual, but the lack of a face to face meeting was for a purpose. The previous year had seen the return of Vargis and Eragos from Kenyon, heroes from afar of a bloody war, and the last thing Vargis had been interested in doing was riding another tour. The old Rider had finally retired at Eragos' urging, and was now managing a very profitable estate near Oisea. Agrippa seemed to think that Vargis should have stayed in service. He also seemed to blame Eragos for the loss.
All Vargis would do was shrug his shoulders, when it was mentioned. A fine place to be.
The Free Army could sack the entire caravan at any moment, and Eragos did not think the white would keep him alive long enough to beg off.
He was on the trail of a killer with too many suspects to be named, and he was currently the least favored White Rider in all of the Free Cities.
Eragos was not a believer in luck - but if it did not visit him soon, he would begin to believe only so that he could seek it out and destroy it utterly.
Right now the wagons were rolling along at a fine enough pace. Wheels turned snow into slush, brown and pliable, but part of that was due to the condition of the roads. This far north - about four hundred miles north of Astarii he thought, and well into the unclaimed territories - roads were extremely important, and Harva had paid well to have them laid in the first place. Which meant he also took excellent care of his investment. If he took good care of his clients, Eragos would not even be here. An uncharitable thought. Wild pine surrounded the road on every side, with snow falling in massive white flakes that clung to everything - your face, your lashes, and even your white hood. Frost cold enough to steal the mobility of limbs, of swords, of axles, was bitter as it sank into one's skin. With abandon the snow had fallen for the last day and a half. It reminded him of home. And he of course, was not cold in the least. No one else could say the same. His problems went beyond temperature. He had not managed to convince any of the soldiers to talk with him, and the trappers were all too willing - he rarely believed anything they told him.
The Captain of this company, a fellow by the name of Xias, glared over his shoulder at Eragos as though simply praying for an excuse. His men were more disciplined - but Eragos could not understand why. Xias, a fellow from the deserts to the east who made his fortune by selling his sword, wore the two curved blades that were common of his tribe. One over either shoulder. What Eragos had managed to piece together regarding his past remained a sketchy affair at best. Stories told by guards who had spoken with him on it once, or Harvas' recollection of his interview with Xias prior to hiring the large man to run this company of guards. No one wanted the truth more than Harvas - and if the entirety of the Free Army were pointed at him like an arrow Eragos thought he would agree - but the truth was elusive. And Eragos was running out of time. The orders suggested that he could take his leave if he thought his life was in danger. That was not likely.
It was also a poor way to conduct yourself, leaving a man and his innocent passengers to their fates - without even knowing that Gavrie's sword and shield were descending up them like the wrath of gods.
A subtle twist of the reins let Rand know to speed up - no digging of heels with this horse. Some of the men they traveled with had eyed Rand appreciatively, and when asked if they were horse thieves, only laughed and laughed. He'd taken to telling every man who looked at his horse the same story, while honing the edge of the falchion on a whetstone. A story of a horse thieve who died with Eragos' blade in his neck because he thought he was quiet enough for the task. So without even locking eyes he managed to scare off most of them - and those who came back were wondering if he'd managed to do this, do that, find the killer. Another annoying factor. Some of them seemed to know why he was here. Certainly this was the most uneven call he'd ever been sent out on. Wagons rolled along meanwhile, with canvas and sometimes flimsy wooden tops. Those with beds inside were square. Those without were rounded. He did not pay much attention to the relatively new construction of the wagons, nor to those traveling with it for now.
His eyes moved to someone else.
One of the wagons, which had a smoke stack - for an oven, no doubt - was besieged by three of the soldiers on horseback. They were not knocking on the wagon's door in a friendly manner, but rather banging loudly and calling through. Based on what they were saying - Eragos heard more than one angry swear - it was obvious they were trying to gain access to the wagon, which was rolling along at the same pace as everyone else's. Did not take long for Eragos reach them, and when he did, the crunching of snow beneath Rand's aggressive shoes was enough to wake them all from their momentary lapse of reason. As one the soldiers turned, each with a hand resting on some manner of steel.
"You got business?" one asked dangerous.
"With him," and his eyes moved to the wagon for a half-second before shifting back.
Strange to think a boy so young would have been traveling with the caravan this entire time - but then, the world they lived in made hard demands of those who survived the Breaking. Most would do what they could to survive. Eragos knew the feeling, and the horrors it could cause, well enough. There was nothing that horrible about a boy singing for his dinner.
"Listen here, you gods-damned-"
"Leave it," Xias called from behind Eragos. "Back to your posts, you men."
The door to the wagon - once he obtained a clear look at it - stated quite plainly the word "ENTERTAINMENT" in bold script. Not that sort of entertainment, however. He'd heard the musician playing and had taken to leaving his flute in his saddlebags. Being asked to play would be marginally less awful than being asked about the flute. And either one was a thing he wanted to avoid if possible. Instead of hammering on the rickety wooden door as they had, Eragos reached up with one hand and pulled on the fabric rope outside the door - this in turn was attached to a lever, which set off a bell inside of the wagon. Clever contraption. The world was full of them. And then he waited, to see if the door would open or not. All with the sound of Xias' muffled shouting behind him.
He truly was running out of time.