скачать книгу бесплатно
Kaspar had been at the farm for eight days now. What had started off as a fearful experience for the boy and his mother had begun to settle into a relatively calm situation. He still slept by the door, but he no longer gathered up potential weapons. He had chosen that spot to give Jojanna as much privacy as was possible in a one-room hut, and also for security reasons. Anyone attempting to come through the door would have to physically move Kaspar first.
Kaspar was still vague about the geography surrounding the farm, but he had no doubt that they were constantly plagued by dangers. Bandits and marauding bands of mercenaries were not uncommon in the area, but the farm was far enough removed from the old high road – the one Kaspar had stumbled along – that few travellers ever chanced across it.
Kaspar stretched again and relished the strength in his muscles. He knew he had lost weight during the three days without food and water, and now the constant exercise of farm-work was further reducing his bulk. A broad-shouldered man, the former Duke of Olasko had always carried his weight effortlessly, and he had indulged in food and wine of the highest quality. Now Kaspar had to wear the missing Bandamin’s clothing because his own trousers were starting to fit too loosely around the waist. He had let his neatly-trimmed beard grow, lacking a razor, mirror, or scissors. Every morning, before washing his face in the water-bucket, he caught a glimpse of his reflection and barely recognized himself – sunburned, his dark beard now filling in, and his face thinner. He had been here less than two weeks – what would he look like after a month? Kaspar didn’t want to think about it; he intended to learn as much as he could from these people and then leave, for his future was not farming, no matter what else fate might hold in store for him. Still, he wondered how Jojanna would fare once he left them.
Jorgen had tried to help Kaspar, but as he was only eight years old, he was often drawn away by boyish interests. His regular chores involved milking the cow who had lost her calf, feeding the chickens, inspecting fences, and other small tasks a small boy was competent enough to perform.
Jojanna had taken up as much of her husband’s work as she was capable of, but a lot of it was just not possible. While she was as hard a worker as Kaspar had ever met, even she couldn’t manage to be in two places at the same time. Still, he marvelled at how industrious she was; rising before dawn and retiring hours after the sun set, to ensure that the farm would be maintained just as her husband had left it.
Kaspar had hundreds of tenant-farmers on his estates, and had never once given thought to their toils, always taking their efforts for granted. Now he appreciated their lives to a significant degree. Jojanna and Jorgen lived very well in comparison to most Olaskon farmers, for they owned their land, a small herd and produced saleable crops; but when Kaspar compared their situation to his old way of life, he realized they lived in near-poverty. How much poorer were the farmers of his own nation?
His nation, he thought bitterly. His birthright had been taken from him and he would have it back or die in the attempt.
Jorgen returned with the axe and Kaspar set to chopping the tree into smaller sections.
After a while the boy said, ‘Why don’t you split it?’
‘What?’
Jorgen grinned. ‘I’ll show you.’ He ran back to the shed and returned with a wedge of metal. He stuck the narrow end of the wedge into a notch and held it. ‘Hit it with the back of the axe,’ he told Kaspar.
Kaspar glanced at the axe and saw that the heel was heavy and flat, almost a hammer. He reversed his hold on the handle and swung down, driving the wedge into the wood. Jorgen pulled his hand away with a laugh and shook his hand. ‘It always makes my fingers sting!’
Kaspar gave the wedge three powerful blows and then, with a satisfying cracking sound, the bole split down the middle. Muttering, he observed, ‘You learn something new every day, if you just stop to pay attention.’
The boy looked at him with a confused expression and said, ‘What?’
Kaspar realized he had spoken his native Olaskon, so he repeated it, as best he could, in the local language and the boy nodded.
Next, Kaspar set to breaking up the rest of the bole and then chopping the remaining split rails into firewood. He found the repetitive effort strangely relaxing.
Lately, he had been troubled by dreams, odd vignettes and strange feelings. Small glimpses of things barely remembered, but disturbing. The oddest aspect of these dreams were the details which had escaped his notice in real life. It was as if he was watching himself, seeing himself for the first time in various settings. The images would jump from a court dinner, with his sister sitting at his side, to a conversation with a prisoner in one of the dungeons under his citadel and then to a memory of something that happened when he was alone. What was most disturbing was how he felt when he awoke, it felt as if he had just relived those moments, but this time the emotions were not consistent with how he remembered them before the dream.
The third night he had one particularly vivid dream-memory; a conversation with Leso Varen in the magician’s private chambers. The room reeked of blood and human excrement, and of alien odours from things the magician insisted on mixing and burning in his work area. Kaspar remembered the conversation well, for it had been the first time Varen had suggested to him that he should consider removing those who stood between himself and the crown of Roldem. Kaspar also remembered how appealing he had found the idea.
But he had awoken from the dream retching from the memory of the stench in the room; at the time he had visited Varen, he had hardly been aware of it, the smell had not bothered him in the slightest. Yet this morning he had sat bolt-upright before the door of the hut, gasping for breath, and had almost disturbed Jorgen.
Kaspar encouraged Jorgen to speak about whatever was on his mind, as his constant prattle sensitized Kaspar to the local language. He was becoming quite conversant, but was also frustrated. For all their good qualities, Jorgen and Jojanna were simple farm people who knew almost nothing of the world in which they lived beyond their farm and the village a few days’ walk to the northwest. It was there they sold their cattle and grain, and from what Kaspar could discern, Bandamin had been considered well-to-do by local standards.
He had been told about the great desert to the northeast, commanded by a race called the Jeshandi, who were not like the nomads who tried to capture him. They were the Bentu, a people who had migrated from the south in Jojanna’s father’s time. Kaspar calculated that it must have been during the war which had ended with the defeat of the Emerald Queen’s army at Nightmare Ridge in the Western Realm of the Kingdom of the Isles. Olaskon intelligence had gathered as much information as they could when Kaspar’s father had been Duke, and some titbits had been gleaned from agents working in both the Kingdom and Kesh, but what Kaspar had read left him certain that a large part of the story was never reported.
What he did know was that a woman known as the Emerald Queen had emerged somewhere to the far west of this continent of Novindus and had waged a war of conquest among the various city states, forging a vast army – which included, according to some reports, giant-sized serpent men – and had gathered a fleet for the sole purpose of invading the Kingdom of the Isles.
While no reason was forthcoming as to why this had happened, and while it defied all conventional military logic, it had still happened. Krondor had been reduced to mostly rubble and the rebuilding of the Western Realm was still underway nearly thirty years later.
Perhaps, thought Kaspar as he finished chopping wood, I’ll learn something more about it while I make my way across this land. He looked at the boy and said, ‘Don’t just stand there. Pick up some wood. I’m not going to carry it all.’
The boy grumbled good naturedly as he carried as much as he could: a decent amount of kindling, and Kaspar carried as much as he was able. ‘I’d give a lot for a horse and wagon,’ he said.
‘Father took the horse when he … went away,’ said Jorgen, huffing with exertion.
Kaspar had grasped the various terms for time and now realized that the boy’s father had left three weeks prior to his appearance at their farm. Bandamin had been taking a steer to the village, called Heslagnam, to sell to an innkeeper there. He was then going to purchase some supplies needed for the farm.
Jojanna and Jorgen had walked to the village when he was three days overdue, only to be told that no one had seen Bandamin. Somewhere between the farm and Heslagnam, the man, his wagon, and the steer had simply vanished.
Jojanna was reticent to speak on the subject, still hoping after almost two months that her husband might return. Kaspar judged it unlikely. This area had little that passed for law. In theory, there was a covenant among those who lived in the region, enforced at times by the nomads to the north, the Jeshandi, that no one troubled travellers or those who cared for them. The origin of this covenant was lost to history, but like so many other things even that had vanished like smoke in a wind when the Emerald Queen’s army had ravaged this land.
Kaspar deduced that this farm’s relative wealth, in cattle as well as crops, was the result of Bandamin’s father being one of the few able-bodied men who had evaded being enlisted into the Emerald Queen’s army at sword-point. Kaspar felt frustrated by the gaps in his knowledge, but he pieced together a picture of what had probably happened from things Jojanna had said.
Her father-in-law had managed to hide while many others were pressed into service for a battle on the other side of the mountains to the southwest – the Sumanu she called them. He had benefited by finding strays from abandoned farms, as well as seed grain and vegetables. He had found a wagon and horses, and over a few months had come to this little dell and established his farm, which Bandamin had inherited.
Kaspar put the wood in the wood box behind the hut and started back across the meadow to fetch more. Looking at the tired boy, he said, ‘Why don’t you see if your mother needs your help?’
Jorgen nodded and ran off.
Kaspar stopped for a moment and watched the child vanish around the corner of the hut. He realized that he had given no thought to being a father. He had assumed the day would come when he would have to wed and breed an heir, but had never considered what actually being a father would mean. Until this moment. The boy missed his father terribly; Kaspar could see that. He wondered if Bandamin’s disappearance would ever be explained.
He set off to fetch more wood, admitting to himself that farm life was a great deal more arduous than he had ever imagined. Still, that was where the gods had placed them on the Wheel of Life, he considered; and even if he was back on the throne of Olasko, he couldn’t very well beggar the treasury buying horses and wagons for every farmer, could he? He chuckled at the absurdity of it all, and flexed his aching shoulders.
Kaspar looked up from his meal. ‘I must leave,’ he said.
Jojanna nodded. ‘I expected that would happen soon.’
He was silent for a long moment, while Jorgen’s eyes went back and forth between them. Kaspar had been a fixture in their house for more than three months, and while at times the boy mocked him for his ignorance over the basics of farming, Kaspar had come to fill the void left by his father.
But Kaspar had more concerns than one boy from a distant land, despite having grown used to his company. He had learned all he could from them. He spoke the local language passingly well now, and he had come to understand as much about the customs and beliefs as Jojanna knew. There was no reason for him to stay and many reasons for him to leave. He had spent months moving only a few miles from where he had been deposited by the white-haired magician, and he still had half a world to travel across.
Jorgen said at last, ‘Where are you going?’
‘Home.’
Jorgen seemed about to say something, then he fell quiet. Finally he asked, ‘What will we do?’
Jojanna replied, ‘What we always do.’
‘You need a horse,’ Kaspar said. ‘The summer wheat will be ready to harvest soon, and the corn is ready now. You need a horse to pull your wagon to market.’
She nodded.
‘You will need to sell some cattle. How many?’
‘Two should bring me a serviceable horse.’
Kaspar smiled. ‘One thing I do know is horses.’ He neglected to mention that his expertise lay in the area of warhorses, hunters and his sister’s sleek palfreys, not draft animals. Still, he could spot lameness, smell thrush in hooves, and gauge the temper of the animal, he supposed.
‘We shall have to go to Mastaba.’
‘Where is that?’
‘Two, three days’ walk beyond Heslagnam. We can sell the cattle to a broker there; he may have a horse to trade,’ she said flatly.
Kaspar was silent through the rest of the meal. He knew that Jojanna was fearful of being alone again. She had made no overtures towards Kaspar, and he was content to leave things as they were. He hadn’t been with a woman in months, and she was attractive enough in her raw-boned fashion, but the confined quarters coupled with his concern for Jorgen had kept them apart.
Jojanna alternately hoped against hope to see her husband again, then mourned him as if he were dead. Kaspar knew that in a few more months she would accept him in Bandamin’s place permanently. That was another reason why he felt it was time to leave.
‘Perhaps you can find a workman who might come here to help you?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said in a noncommittal tone.
Kaspar picked up his wooden plate and carried it to the wash bucket. From then until they went to their respective sleeping mats, there was silence.
• CHAPTER FOUR • (#ulink_bb9f6469-3460-5b23-8335-ca9ffc8d7928)
Village (#ulink_bb9f6469-3460-5b23-8335-ca9ffc8d7928)
KASPAR, JOJANNA, AND JORGEN TRUDGED ALONG THE OLD HIGHWAY.
They walked at a steady pace, as they had for the previous two days. Kaspar had never realized how tedious it was to walk everywhere. He had lived his entire life using the horses, carriages and fast ships at his disposal; in fact, the only time he had ever travelled by foot was during a hunt or when taking a stroll through a palace garden. Going more than a few miles by shanks’s mare was not only fatiguing, it was boring.
He glanced back to see how Jorgen was doing. The boy walked behind the two plodding steers. He held a long stick and flicked the animals with it when they attempted to veer off to the side of the road to crop the plants – not that there was an abundance of fodder, but the contrary animals seemed intent on investigating every possible source unless they were constantly prodded.
Kaspar felt anxious to move along, yet resigned to the reality of his situation. He was on foot and alone, save for the company of Jojanna and her son, and without protection, sustenance or experience of this hostile land. What little Jojanna had told him revealed that the area was still reeling from the ravages of the Emerald Queen’s army, even though it had been almost a generation since those terrible events.
The farms and villages had returned quickly, despite the absence of most of the men. Old men and women had eked out their livings until the young had matured enough to work, wed and have more children.
The lack of civil order had lingered; an entire generation of sons had grown up without fathers, and many were orphans. Where once a string of city states had controlled the outlying lands, now chaos ruled. Traditional conventions had been supplanted by the law of warlords and robber barons. Whoever ran the biggest gang became the local sheriff.
Jojanna’s family had survived because of their relative isolation. The local villagers knew the whereabouts of their farm, but few travellers had ever chanced upon it. It had only been through the lucky happenstance of Jorgen’s search for the lost birds that Kaspar’s life had been saved. He could easily have starved to death within a few hours’ walk of a bounty of food otherwise.
As they walked, Kaspar could see a mountain range rising to the west, while the land to the east fell away and turned brown in the distance, where it bordered a desert. Had he stayed a captive with the Bentu he would have become a slave; or if he had planned his escape badly, he’d most likely have died in the arid lands between those distant mountains and the range of hills along whose spine this old road ran.
He caught sight of a shimmering in the distance. ‘Is that a river?’
‘Yes, it’s the Serpent River,’ Jojanna said. ‘Beyond it lies the Hotlands.’
Kaspar asked, ‘Do you know where the City of the Serpent River lies?’
‘Far to the south, on the Blue Sea.’
‘So I need to go downriver,’ Kaspar concluded.
‘If that is where you wish to be, yes.’
‘Where I wish to be is home,’ said Kaspar with an edge of bitterness in his voice.
‘Tell me about your home,’ asked Jorgen.
Kaspar glanced over his shoulder and saw the boy grinning, but his irritation died quickly. To his surprise, he found himself fond of the boy. As ruler of Olasko, Kaspar knew he would eventually have to marry to produce a legitimate heir, but it had never occurred to him that he might actually like his children. For an idle moment he wondered if his father had liked him.
‘Olasko is a sea-faring nation,’ said Kaspar. ‘Our capital city, Opardum, rests against great cliffs, with a defensible yet busy harbour.’ As he plodded along, he continued, ‘It’s on the eastern coast of a large –’ he realized he didn’t know the word for continent in the local language, ‘– a large place called Triagia. So, from the citadel –’ he glanced at them and saw that neither Jojanna or Jorgen looked puzzled by the Keshian word ‘– from the citadel, you can see spectacular sunrises over the sea.
‘To the east are table lands and along the river are many farms, quite a few like your own …’
He passed the time telling them of his homeland, and at one point Jorgen asked, ‘What did you do? I mean, you’re not a farmer.’
Kaspar said, ‘I was a hunter,’ a fact he had already shared with the boy, when he dressed out a slaughtered steer to hang in the summer house – as he thought of the underground cave with a door they used to store perishables. ‘And I was a soldier. I travelled.’
Jorgen asked, ‘What’s it like?’
‘What’s what like?’
‘Travelling.’
‘Like this,’ he said, ‘A lot of walking, or sailing on a ship, or riding a horse.’
‘No,’ said Jorgen, laughing. ‘I mean what were the places like?’
‘Some like these Hotlands,’ answered Kaspar, ‘but other places are cool and rainy all the time …’ He told them of the nations around the Sea of Kingdoms, and talked of the more entertaining and colourful things he had seen. He kept them amused and distracted until they crested a rise and saw the village of Heslagnam.
Kaspar realized that he had expected something a bit more prosperous, and felt disappointed. The largest building in sight was obviously the inn, a two-storey, somewhat ramshackle wooden building with an improbable lime-coloured roof. A single chimney belched smoke and the establishment boasted a stable in the rear and a large stabling yard. There were two other buildings that appeared to be shops, but without signs to herald their merchandise. Kaspar was at a loss to know what one could or could not buy in the village of Heslagnam.
Jojanna instructed Jorgen to herd the two steers into the stable yard while she and Kaspar went inside.
Once through the door, Kaspar was even less impressed. The chimney and hearth had been fashioned from badly mortared stones and the ventilation was poor; as a result, the establishment was reeking with the odours of cooking, sweaty men, spilled ale and other liquids, mouldy straw, and other less identifiable smells.
The inn was presently unoccupied, save for a large man carrying in a keg from somewhere at the rear of the building. He put it down and said, ‘Jojanna! I didn’t expect to see you for another week.’
‘I’m selling two steers.’
‘Two?’ said the man, wiping his hands on a greasy apron. He was a thick-necked, broad-shouldered man with an enormous belly, and he walked with a rolling gait. He bore a handful of scars on his forearms, exposed by rolled-up sleeves, and Kaspar recognized him as a former soldier or mercenary. He could see that under the fat lay enough muscle to cause trouble.
He looked at Kaspar as he spoke to the woman. ‘I don’t even need one. I’ve got a quarter still hanging in the cold room and it’s aged pretty nice. I could maybe take one off your hands, stake it out in the back, then slaughter it next week, but not two.’
Jojanna said, ‘Sagrin, this is Kaspar. He’s been working at the farm for his keep, filling in for Bandamin.’
With an evil grin, the man said, ‘I expect he has.’
Kaspar let the insult slide. The innkeeper looked like a brawler and while Kaspar had no fear of any man, he also didn’t go out of his way to court trouble. He’d seen too many of his friends die needlessly in duels as a youngster to believe that there was any profit in borrowing trouble. Kaspar said, ‘If you can’t use the beef, we’ll try the next village …’ He looked at Jojanna.
‘That would be Mastaba.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Sagrin. He rubbed his hand over his bearded chin. ‘I don’t have much by way of coin or trade goods. What do you have in mind?’
‘Horses,’ answered Kaspar. ‘Two.’
‘Horses!’ echoed Sagrin with a barking laugh. ‘Might as well be their weight in gold. Some Bentu slavers came through here a couple of months back and bought two of mine, then came back the next night and stole the other three.’
‘Who else has horses to sell around here?’ asked Kaspar.
