A Wizard in Chaos

CHAPTER 5

You did not tell me your man spoke my language,” the translator said slowly, “but he is mistaken. Why would I lie?”

Gar started to answer, Because you enjoy making trouble, but Ralke forestalled him. “You would lie because the boss will leave it to you to draw the money from the treasury and bring it to me. You’ll give me what I think the boss agreed upon and keep the rest for yourself.”

The look the translator gave him was pure hatred.

The boss said something, and the translator turned to answer.

“The boss wants to know what you’re talking about,” Gar murmured, “and the translator is telling him he can’t repeat it, because what you’re saying is so insulting.”

“None of that!” Ralke said sharply. He turned and bowed to the boss and his wife again. “Tell them I have only the highest respect for them, and was only discussing how many marks there are to a silver pound.”

The translator flashed him a glare that should have shriveled him, but turned back to interpret. “He told the boss what you really said this time,” Gar said.

“Fortune favored me when you joined our caravan, Gar Pike!” Ralke forced a smile for the translator. “It seems you and I shall do business of our own, interpreter. I’m Ralke; who are you?”

“My name is only for my friends,” the interpreter snapped, but the boss cleared his throat with impatience, and the translator gave him a guilty glance as he added, “and for my business associates. I am Torgi.” He turned to the boss and gave a brief explanation.

“He’s just telling them that you’re trying to be friendly by exchanging names with him,” Gar muttered. “He’s giving them your name, too.”

“As though they didn’t have it already,” Ralke returned.

Torgi turned back to them. “What do you suggest?”

“That you interpret my prices accurately,” Ralke told him, “but I’ll raise them by one part in five. Then after the sale, you and I will split that one part, half each.”

“One part in ten is better than nothing,” Torgi grumbled.

“Much better than your boss learning how you were garbling his words,” Gar reminded.

Torgi’s glare would have seen him convicted for poisoning on a civilized world, but he could only say, “I agree to your terms. Now, how much do you want for the dye?”

“I had hoped for three silver marks and a copper mark,” Ralke sighed, “but the boss’s offer will give me some profit, at least.”

Torgi turned and translated faithfully. The boss smiled and glanced at his wife, who beamed up at him and nodded. He turned back to speak in a lofty but kindly tone.

“He will give you the copper mark for each pound,” Torgi translated, “but trusts you will be as moderate as you may in your other prices.”

“The boss is very gracious,” Ralke said, with a smile and a little bow at the couple.

The bargaining proceeded smoothly from that point, and when they were done, Ralke was looking quite satisfied, because the boss and his wife had bought half his stock and had paid him a fair price. The boss said something with a smile, and Torgi told Ralke, “His Honor has enjoyed dealing with you, and trusts you will visit his castle on your next journey.”

“I will be honored by his hospitality,” Ralke said, with yet another bow.

Torgi translated; the boss smiled benignly, satisfied, but told Torgi one more thing as he turned away. Torgi said a few words and bowed.

“He told Torgi to get the money and pay us,” Gar muttered.

“I will fetch the money,” Torgi told them. “Then you will be on your way quickly, yes?”

“We’ll pack while you’re gone,” Ralke assured him.

“You will go, too.” Torgi gave Gar a look that promised revenge. “We shall meet again, be sure.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Gar said, in a tone of great politeness.

“Brandy,” Cort told the serving wench. “The whole bottle.”

She smiled knowingly and turned away. “Rough day, huh?” Dirk said, with a sympathetic look.

“Oh, the day was fine,” Cort told him. “It’s the night that’s been an ordeal.”

“Girl trouble, eh?”

Cort looked up, amazed.

“It couldn’t have been that little dust-up back in the alley,” Dirk explained. “Compared to battle, that was a piece of cake. So if you’re on leave, it had to be a woman.”

“You’re shrewd, stranger,” Cort said slowly, “and you know the ways of soldiers. How long have you been a mercenary?”

“All totaled? Maybe a year.” Dirk smiled at Cort’s skeptical look and explained, “I’m a free lance. I sign up for bodyguard jobs as often as army, and the captains usually hire me for just one battle.”

“Can’t be signing on as an officer, then,” Cort said, frowning. “A captain wouldn’t want a stranger in his cadre.”

“Right on the mark. I’m a sergeant.”

“Only if you sign up with a mercenary company,” Cort said with a smile. “Sign up with a boss around here and you’re a brute.”

“That your term for a noncom?”

“Their term,” Cort corrected. “Mercenaries use the old words—old enough that we don’t know where they came from. But we have to know the others. After all, any of us might want to join a boss someday.” He saddened suddenly, thinking of Squire Ellsworth—and, therefore, of Violet.

“So a sergeant is a brute,” Dirk said briskly. “Might be apt, at that. What’s a lieutenant?”

“A bruiser,” Cort explained, “and with the bosses, he rides a horse and wears heavy armor. Mercenaries have whole companies of cavalry, lightly armed, and they can dance circles around the bruisers while they cut them to shreds.”

“I take it a bully is a captain?”

“Yes, and the boss is a general. Sometimes the boss will appoint one bully to command the others, but that’s the only case where there’s a rank in between.”

“Other countries, other ways.” Dirk sighed. “At least it’s no worse than trying to understand navy ranks and insignia.”

The bottle landed on the table, then two mugs. It was a measure of Cort’s state of mind that he didn’t even glance at the wench, only pushed some coppers over as he told Dirk, “I’ve heard of navies—fighting sailors, aren’t they?”

“Yes, and I only served with them once. Never again! I don’t like having the ground move under me when I’m trying to thrust and parry. As soon as the ship docked, I signed off, and that’s how I came to your country.”

“The seacoast is far away,” Cort commented. “You must have been quite a time, coming this far inland.”

Dirk shrugged. “One job led to another, each farther away from salt water, which was just fine with me. I was captured in the last battle, and being a stranger just hired for the duration, the captain didn’t think I was worth ransoming. So I went to work for the boss who had caught me.”

Cort grinned slowly. “Why not? If the captain wasn’t loyal enough to ransom you, then you had no loyalty to worry you. But didn’t the boss realize you wouldn’t be any more faithful to him?”

“I don’t think bosses really worry about loyalty,” Dirk said slowly, “just about belting you if they think you’ve betrayed them. Still, the issue didn’t come up. I fought in one more of your little wars, somehow survived, and that was it. Didn’t even stay long enough to figure out that boss, bully, bruiser, brute, and boot were like rank names.”

“He paid you off?”

“Yeah, with my freedom. That’s how I ransomed myself.”

“Ah! Yes, that would make sense.” Cort nodded, enjoying the talk—it kept his mind off Violet. “Especially since, once you were free, he would have had to pay you.”

“Exactly. He didn’t have another war brewing at the moment, so he dismissed me rather than give me silver. I signed on as a merchant’s guard, took a short stint as a tax collector and hated it, and started riding the roads looking for work.”

“You’ve been at liberty ever since, then?”

“Yes. Nice way of saying ‘out of work,’ isn’t it? But I’m a long way from home, and much though I’d like to go back, I don’t know if I’m willing to sign on as a sailor again.”

“Make enough money to buy passage on a merchant ship, then,” Cort suggested.

“I’m working on it.”

“You’ll never make it one job at a time,” Cort said, with certainty. “Sign on full-time with a mercenary company, stay with them a year or so and save your money behind your belt instead of spending it on easy women and watered brandy, and you’ll have enough.”

“I suppose I’ll have to,” Dirk sighed. “I don’t like being tied down to one place that long, though.”

“No other way,” Cort pointed out, “and you’re more likely to be killed hiring out battle by battle, than by joining with a company of men who depend on you as you depend on them. A free lance gets put in the front line every time.”

“Don’t I know it,” Dirk said wryly.

“I could use another sergeant,” Cort said slowly. “My master sergeant has been talking retirement for some time, and the captain’s been telling me he has too many recruits—he needs to set up another platoon. Why not try some steady work for, a change?”

“Why, thanks.” Dirk straightened, looking surprised. “I really don’t know enough about you to accept, though.” He grinned suddenly. “But to tell you the truth, I’m inclined to accept.”

“I hope you do.” Cort smiled. “Learn more about me, then. Ask.”

“Well, for starters, what’s the name of your company, and who’s your captain?”

“Yes, that might be handy to know, mightn’t it?” Cort said with a laugh. “Well, we’re Captain Devers’s Blue Company, my lad, and proud of it. We’ve taken our share of losses, it’s true, but we’ve had far more victories.”

“That’s a track record I can live with. What about you yourself, though, lieutenant? How did you get into this line of work? Not exactly the most secure future in the world.”

“A grave is very secure.” Cort sobered suddenly. He didn’t like the feeling, so he took another drink. “As to the chances of staying out of that grave, well, they’re better as a peasant hoeing crops, but it’s a lousy life, with never enough to eat and a house that might blow down around your ears.”

“I didn’t think you had the look of a peasant,” Dirk observed.

“Of course not,” Cort said impatiently, “but I grew up playing with their children, then learning to rule them. I’m the third son of a bully. Do you have the Third Son rule where you come from?”

“First son to stay with the estate, second for the army, third for the navy?”

“You must have grown up near the sea. Close, but here the first son becomes his father’s chief bruiser, then a bully when his father dies. The second joins the mercenaries, which gives the bully an ‘in’ if he needs a troop. The third goes out into the hills to find a sage, so he can sit at a teacher’s feet and learn how to save the souls of his whole family.”

“At least you believe in souls,” Dirk said. “I take it you didn’t want to become a sage?”

Cort shook his head, mouth a grim line. “I still have hopes of marrying. Oh, I know the stories about the village girls visiting the male sages to learn the arts of love, just as the village boys go to the female sages, but I wanted a wife, home, children…” His gaze drifted away, Violet’s sweet face coming into his mind’s eye again, bringing with it a melancholy so sudden and powerful that he feared that he might weep.

“That the only reason you didn’t go into philosophy?” Dirk asked. “Not the best reason for becoming a soldier, I’d say.”

Suddenly, and rather oddly, Cort was very much aware that he was on trial here. He shrugged off the mood and turned back to Dirk, wondering why on earth he should care what the man thought—but he did. “My spirit was too active and restless, so I took service as a mercenary. Being a bully’s son, I started as a sergeant and moved up to lieutenant two months later.”

“And the life suits you?”

Cort shrugged. “Every life ends in death, but at least a soldier has a chance to fight. The risks are greater, but the pay is better, too. The work suits me—life becomes very vivid, very intense, in battle. Yes, the sight of a sword slicing at me sets fear burning through me, but it. sets me afire with the lust for life, too, and there’s no feeling like victory, when the battle’s done and many lie dead but you’re still alive. It even makes the panic and horror of defeat worthwhile; just knowing that there will be another victory some day—and the camaraderie of men who have lived through a battle together, and know they can depend on one another no matter how much they hate one another’s guts, is closer than anything else I’ve experienced. That’s why my men obey me—not because I’m a bully’s son, and not because I can beat any of them into the ground, but because I’ve done my best to keep them alive, and the battle’s come and gone, but we’re all still here.”

He drew breath, amazed that he had talked for so long, but Dirk only nodded, looking very serious. “Yes. I think I’d like serving with an officer who feels that way about his men.”

“Stout man!” Cort grinned as he clasped Dirk’s hand. Then he fished a silver mark from his beltpurse and set it in Dirk’s palm. “There’s the coin of enlistment. Welcome to the Blue Company, Sergeant Dulaine.”

“Thank you, lieutenant,” Dirk said, grinning. “What’s my first duty?”

“On liberty? To get drunk and make the whores rich. For an officer, though, it’s a bit different. On leave, I spend most of my time watching out for my men, breaking up fights before they start and calming outraged burghers. I even patrol the streets.” Cort set his hands on the edge of the table and shoved himself to his feet—but the table shoved back, and he half fell into his chair again, looking about him in stunned amazement.

“No patrolling tonight, I think.” Dirk stood slowly and helped Cort to his feet. “Drank more than you knew, and faster, didn’t you? Well, keeping the troops in line is sergeant’s work, really; lieutenants just keep the sergeants honest. Introduce me to your men, lieutenant, and let me take the watch.”

“But I always…”

“Not tonight.” Dirk didn’t mention that Cort was obviously in the mood to get drunk, dead drunk. “Let me earn that mark you just gave me.”

“All right.” Cort decided that it did sound like a good idea—and wondered why it was so hard to think, so hard to keep shoving Violet out of his mind. He took a badge from behind his belt, one with three chevrons on it, and waved it in the general direction of Dirk’s chest. “Here’s your rank, until we can get you livery.”

Dirk intercepted the badge before sticking could turn into stabbing and pinned it on his tunic. “Handsome piece of jewelry, that. Okay, lieutenant, take me to meet the boys.”

They rode out through the gates of Loutre with Master Ralke in high spirits. “A very profitable stop, Gar Pike, and a pleasant one, thanks to your knowledge of the language. Really, I’ll have to give you a bonus when this is done!”

“I won’t refuse it,” Gar said with a grin.

“Worth it ten times over! We sold the whole cargo, and bought another worth half again what we paid for it! Off to Zangaret Town, now, where they value the kind of gauds these Loutre folk make!”

“Good dealing almost makes the hazards worth it, eh? But if you have to deal with translators like that all the time, it’s a wonder you ever make a profit at all!”

Ralke’s smile turned to a frown on the instant. “A wonder indeed, and most men who go trading come home in beggary, if they come home at all! No, friend, I did well indeed when I hired you.”

“Thank you,” Gar said, trying to sound flattered. “So there aren’t very many merchants, then?”

“So few that we all know each other, even those we’ve never met. Oscar of Drellan deals far to the west, selling the silks made along that coast; he wishes to, buy the sort of plates and cups these Loutrens make, and Holger of Alberg buys them from me to trade with Oscar for his silks, then brings the silks to sell to me. Lotar of Silace carries cloves and pomegranates up from the south with many more spices as well; he trades them to Albert of Rehem, who barters them to me for the ivory I buy from Krenel of Grelholm with the stout woolen cloth woven in Wurm. Krenel brings the walrus tusks and narwhal horns down from Marl of Rohr, whom I’ve never seen but who trades his ivories for the cloth I buy from the Wurmers. I could go on for half an hour, but not much more; we are all known to one another, and have each built up a band of drivers who are as strong a set of fighters as any mercenary squadron. We are the ones who’ve survived.”

Gar shuddered. “A risky trade indeed!”

“But a profitable one. If I live to retire, I’ll have as much wealth as any boss, though I’ll be careful to hide it well and be sure few people know about it. My house is already a virtual fortress, and I’ll make it even more so as I grow older. There are peasants aplenty who are glad to move their families into my compound, train with weapons, and do an honest day’s labor in the warehouses. They’ll have new tunics of stout cloth every year for their pains, real cottages that keep the drafts out instead of the tumbledown huts most live in, and three pounds of bread and one of vegetables every day for each family, with meat once a week and fish twice. That’s fat living indeed, for most poor folk.”

“So even in your retirement, you’ll be working hard managing all those people and warehousing goods for other merchants,” Gar deduced.

“Yes, but I won’t have to go out on the road again. Five more years of good trading, and I’ll manage it! What say you to five years of steady employment, friend Gar?”

Gar noticed how quickly he’d been promoted from stranger to friend. “It’s an attractive offer, Master Ralke, and I’ll think very seriously about it. Before I can settle into one job that way, though, I’ve some personal affairs I must set straight.”

“Ah!” Ralke nodded. “A woman, an inheritance, or a revenge—no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know! But when your score is settled, friend, remember where you’ll find a safe berth, with Ralke of the town of Firith, and glad I’ll be of your company!” He frowned suddenly. “You won’t bring another war down on us, will you?”

“Just the opposite, if I can manage it,” Gar told him. “I hope to prevent a war, not fight one.” Ralke raised a palm, turning his face away. “I won’t ask how. But I’m glad to hear it.” He turned back to Gar. “The bosses let a few of us trade, for without us, they’d never have the luxuries they want so badly. After all, what’s the point in being a boss if you can’t live better than a peasant?” Gar could have said that for some men, power was enough in itself, but he had the good sense to hold his tongue.

“In war, though, all such unspoken agreements go by the board,” Ralke continued. “When bosses send their bullies before them to fight one another, any luckless merchant who gets caught between is ground into the dirt and his goods destroyed. We survive by learning ahead of time who’s fighting whom and where, then going far away from their battleground. But there’s always the fear that someone will start a war too fast for us to learn of it, and we’ll have to leave our goods and flee for our lives.” He nodded. “Done that more than once myself, I have. No, war’s bad for business. It boosts our losses and reduces our markets.” He grinned suddenly. “If I were a smith or an armorer, I own I’d welcome war, for all the business it would bring me.” He frowned again. “But I’m not a smith, I’m a merchant, and I’ll support any man who works for peace!”

“I’ll remember that,” Gar assured him. Then he stiffened, as though hearing something.

“What is it?” Ralke demanded.

“Boots, a score of them to our dozen by the sound, heavily armed and running down a hidden trail ahead and to our right!”

“You’ve keen ears, friend,” Ralke said, “but I don’t doubt you.” He turned away to bawl battle orders to his drivers.