Antiagon Fire

22

By fourth glass on Lundi evening, Southern Army reached Geusyn, the largest town they’d seen since leaving Daaraen. While there were actually nine inns in the town of various sizes, all with stables, in the end Skarpa, Quaeryt, and the senior officers had to work hard to get all the troopers and mounts in what passed for quarters, with Kharllon gently pressing for his regiment to use the northernmost inn.

Skarpa had arranged for the senior officers to be quartered in the River Inn, and Quaeryt couldn’t help but wonder how many inns there might be of that name all across Lydar. The one in which he and Vaelora were staying was an oblong two-story structure, solidly built, clean, and with little else in terms of architecture or design to distinguish itself-except that it had three plaques rooms, suggesting to Quaeryt that more than a few traders engaged in plaques.

While Vaelora dealt with the widowed woman, and tried to help her … and learn what she could, Quaeryt sought out the inn’s stablemaster. Ostler, really, he reflected as he sized up Haern, a wiry man a good ten years older than himself.

“What’d you be wanting, sir, besides the grain and fodder for your mounts?”

“Information.”

“Don’t know as I’d be the best for that.”

“I’m sure you would be for what I’d like to know. You’ve seen people come and go for years here, I’d imagine.”

“More ’n ten years, sir.”

“Do most traders stay here in Geusyn as long as they can … or do they go to Ephra as soon as possible?”

Haern laughed. “No one’d go to Ephra sooner than they had to … or stay long there, not given a choice. Place is filled with red flies, green skeeters, and flux. A night at an inn not so good as here costs twice as much, and the food’s worse. Only reason traders go there is to get their goods on an outbound trader or buy and off-load from a spice ship from the south. Otelyrn and the like, you know. Wouldn’t say that there might not also be curamyn and a few other things, either. Course the traders’d go to Kephria if they could, but with the walls and the guns and the imagers…”

“Do the Antiagons fire at everything coming down the river?”

“Aye … well … sometimes, mostly at vessels not showing an Antiagon trade flag … that’s why fewer and fewer trade ships call at Ephra, and why most leave on the early morning or early night tides. Been that way ever since Rex Kharst sneaked imagers near the piers at Kephria and they fired warehouses there. Say that none of the imagers and boats escaped, not that their deaths stopped half the port quarter from burnin’. Could see the flames all the way up here that night…”

“What about the ferries? How do they avoid the Antiagon guns?”

“The current and the tides. They use the current to cross the river heading downstream, then wait for the tide coming up the Gulf so that they can cross the river to the towpath below Geusyn, and mules tow them back up to the piers here.”

After another quint’s worth of questions, Quaeryt thanked the ostler and headed back into the inn. There, he met with Zhelan, Alazyn, and Khaern. He still waited a quint longer for Skarpa to finish meeting with his senior quartermasters before he could draw the submarshal away and relay what he’d learned so far.

When Quaeryt finished, Skarpa looked at him. “The more I learn about Bovaria, the more I wonder how Kharst governed it at all.”

“He didn’t. He tariffed it and used the tariffs to build an army to plunder elsewhere and to terrify High Holders into paying the tariffs to support him and the army.” Quaeryt knew he was oversimplifying, but he wasn’t sure that he was that far off.

“Do we even want to go to Ephra?” asked Skarpa.

“I don’t think you should,” replied Quaeryt. “You’d just have your army trapped there, and all the real problems you face are on this side of the river. I don’t have much of a choice.”

“Are your ships there?”

“I don’t know. There was no one at the ferry piers when we got here, and no one else seems to know. I can only check tomorrow.”

Skarpa nodded. “I’ve arranged a senior officers’ mess-that includes Lady Vaelora-in the large plaques room at sixth glass. We need to go over what you and I and the other commanders have found out, and what everyone thinks.”

“We’ll be there.”

After leaving Skarpa, Quaeryt turned and headed up the narrow stairs, stairs that creaked with every step, to find Vaelora. She unbolted the door when she heard his voice.

He smiled, seeing her in a camisole.

“Dearest … not now. I’ve been washing up.” She stepped aside and rebolted the door behind him.

In order to take his mind off what he’d just seen, he looked around the corner room, large enough for an inn, but without curtains, only inside shutters, and a wide bed that sagged slightly in the middle. “What do you think of the quarters?”

“They’re more spacious and less gracious than the canal boat. What are you going to do with it now?”

“Leave it at the piers with the supply flatboats. They’re all guarded. I suppose I should see if it can be towed upriver, although I don’t see how, given the lack of towpaths and the state of the roads.” He shook his head.

“That’s a pity. It’s a beautiful boat, and I’d hate to see it rot away.”

Quaeryt agreed, but he didn’t have a ready solution. “What happened to the woman?” he finally asked as Vaelora walked back to the table that held a washbasin and pitcher. He removed his visor cap and set it on the plain square table at the side of the bed.

“She left. I couldn’t persuade her to stay. She said she had an aunt. I doubt she does, but I don’t think she trusts anyone, especially troopers and officers from Telaryn, and she would have felt like a captive if I’d insisted.”

“We rescued her. You know-she knew-what those troopers-raiders-would have done.”

“She did, and she was grateful. She was also afraid our kindness wouldn’t last.”

“Mine, you mean?”

“Most likely,” Vaelora admitted. “I gave her some coppers and silvers. She didn’t refuse.”

“What’s her name?”

“Willina,” replied Vaelora. “She’s younger than I am.”

That surprised Quaeryt, given that Vaelora was not quite twenty-two, and Willina looked ten years older than his wife. Just how hard has the woman’s life been? Quaeryt was all too afraid he knew. “How long has she been married?”

“I don’t think they were married. She lost a child to the flux in Agostas. Her man grew elveweed in the swamps on the other side of the river and rowed it across on dark nights.”

Quaeryt almost asked why, before recalling that there were no towns-except Ephra-on the west side of the River Laar anywhere near. “Dangerous business to grow it in the swamps, row across the river, try to avoid the High Holders’ patrols, and sell it to Antiagon traders.” He nodded as he recalled the wagon-light, high-wheeled, able to cover rough ground, and built more for speed than for capacity-a smuggler’s wagon. “Why were they on the road, then?”

“She said something about having to make up time to meet the traders. They’d had to travel around Ghaern because another High Holder had set up road blocks to see if anyone was carrying contraband.”

Quaeryt wanted to shake his head. In Laaryn, the factors controlled trade, but near Ephra, it sounded like the High Holders-or some of them-did so. But Bhayar told that they might be a problem for Skarpa. “I’m beginning to wonder if Kharst really even governed down here.”

“His wanting to take Ferravyl makes more sense now,” offered Vaelora.

“In a way, it does,” mused Quaeryt, “but he’d still have had to take the whole river and occupy Solis. That would have cost him dearly, even if Solis is a better port. Here, all he’d have to have done is take Kephria and some territory to the south to get a decent port, not an entire chunk of another land. He already controlled the river-except for this part.”

“You don’t know how strong the Antiagon defenses are … or how much the local High Holders were paying him in tariffs. You’ve told me how much in golds elveweed brings. What if all the High Holders along the Lohan Hills, from here to the Sud Swamp, have interests in elveweed … and their own armies?”

“There can’t be that many.”

“There could be enough.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Quaeryt asserted. “Kharst raised a huge army against us. Less than ten years ago, he did the same and took over Khel. Surely, he could have lopped off a chunk of Antiago, the part with Kephria in it, and fortified it.”

“Kharst didn’t have many imagers, and Aliaro does. At least, he’s supposed to. The Autarch also has Antiagon Fire. You’ve told me what damage that could have done if it hadn’t have been for you and the imagers. When Kharst attacked Ferravyl, he had no idea that you and the imagers even existed. Have you forgotten that?”

Quaeryt had. He laughed. “I’ve been thinking about what Kharst and his commanders knew after the war started, not before. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“And if the High Holders here were paying higher tariffs…” added Vaelora.

“And other High Holders and marshals wanted lands in Telaryn…” Quaeryt nodded. “I suppose it makes sense in a strange way.”

“Dearest … things are never as direct as one might think.”

Quaeryt smiled. Vaelora might not know all he did about life beyond a capital city or a palace, but she’d seen and heard far more than he had about what went on around a ruler. “I forgot to tell you. We’re going to eat with Skarpa and the regiment commanders and subcommanders in one of the plaques rooms.”

“I thought we might. He hasn’t had much of a chance to sit and talk to any of you.”

“And you,” Quaeryt added.

“If I know you, you’ve been making inquiries. What did you find out?”

“Nothing that pleases me,” he admitted.

“Why don’t you tell me while you wash up?”

Recognizing the gentle double command, he grinned. “As you wish, my lady.”

“I do, indeed…” She smiled. “Later … dearest.”

He began to explain what he had learned.

Before that long, he finished washing up, and they walked down the creaky narrow stairs to the large plaques room, where Skarpa was waiting outside.

“The others are already inside, even Commander Kharllon.”

“Of course,” replied Quaeryt lightly. He wouldn’t want to slight Vaelora.

“If you would lead the way, Quaeryt, and if you would accompany me, Lady?”

Quaeryt understood. He was junior, but Skarpa could afford neither to place himself above Bhayar’s sister, nor himself below her.

All the regimental commanders stood as Quaeryt entered, followed by Skarpa and Vaelora.

The large circular table was set for eleven, with the three vacant places facing the door. Vaelora sat on Skarpa’s left, with Quaeryt on his right. Kharllon was located beside Vaelora, and Paedn beside Quaeryt.

Once everyone was seated, and the two trooper servers had filled all the goblets, Skarpa raised his and offered the toast. “To our safe arrival in Geusyn and to the effective accomplishment of the tasks ahead.”

“To arrival and accomplishment,” replied Quaeryt, leading the response, then taking but the smallest sip of the wine, a pungent red.

Kharllon turned toward Vaelora, asking, “How have you found the journey so far, Lady?”

“Far easier than riding across Telaryn,” replied Vaelora.

Quaeryt refrained from smiling and turned to Paedn, the older subcommander to his right, as the two troopers began to serve, beginning with Vaelora and Skarpa. “What strikes you about southern Bovaria?”

“It’s poor.”

“What else?”

“It shouldn’t be. Good rivers, good land.” The balding subcommander absently brushed back a wispy lock of blond hair, his fingers not quite twiddling with the stem of a goblet still nearly as full as when it had been poured for the first toast.

“Why do you think that is? That it’s so poor?”

“No one cares. Not the High Holders. Not the rex.”

“Things should get better under Bhayar, then.”

“It takes time. People don’t change. Their children sometimes do.”

While Quaeryt could overhear some of the conversation between Vaelora and Kharllon, who was being politely most solicitous of Lord Bhayar’s sister, he quickly gave up trying to make sense of those phrases, since it was a strain to converse with the clearly laconic Paedn.

“What did you think about a holder’s men attacking that cart?”

“What cart?”

Quaeryt went on to explain.

Paedn nodded when Quaeryt finished, then said, “Elveweed’s more profitable than anything else. The High Holder will only hear your men attacked them. That will make getting allegiance harder.”

“We were supposed to let them get away with it?”

Paedn laughed, just a short soft bark. “No. It just works that way.”

“It’s always that way,” interjected Skarpa from Quaeryt’s left. “Sometimes, the more you try to help people, the more they blame you.”

Paedn nodded.

“The whole matter is disturbing,” Skarpa added. “Either the High Holders don’t have control of their armsmen, or they don’t care about the people around Geusyn. Either way…”

“It’s not good,” said Paedn.

The fowl casserole provided by the River Inn was adequate and filling. The rest of the dinner conversation was pleasant and polite, and Quaeryt learned little more than he’d already learned from previous meetings of the regimental commanders. He was more than ready to go upstairs with Vaelora when the meal was over, but neither spoke until they were alone in their chamber and he had imaged the lamp on the narrow writing table into light.

“What did Kharllon have to say?” asked Quaeryt.

“He was most charming,” replied Vaelora. “He’s intelligent and knowledgeable. I did ask him what he thought of Rholan. He said that Rholan was likely a scoundrel who lacked golds and talent with anything other than words. So he turned to selling faith as a way to make his living.”

“Did you ask him what he thought of scholars, then?”

“I did.” Vaelora grinned. “He said the best were useful, the worst only misguided. I didn’t press him on that. I think he actually believes what he said.”

“Anything else? Of import?”

“He doesn’t much care for Skarpa, but respects his skills. He didn’t say it that way. It was more like, ‘Lord Bhayar needs the best commanders he can find in times like these.’”

“And the implication is that it’s unfortunate, but necessary.”

“Something like that … all unsaid.”

“Did he mention Deucalon or Myskyl?”

“No. He did say your forces would have had a more difficult time fighting your way up the Aluse if the Bovarians had had better marshals. For that, he was most grateful. He also conceded the same was true of the Bovarian leaders the Northern Army faced as well.”

“An interesting way of putting it,” mused Quaeryt.

“He did mention how strange it was that the Bovarians didn’t use cannon against you until you were close to Variana.”

“It only seems strange. Cannon are heavy. They’re hard to transport, and you’ve seen how bad the Bovarian roads are. Kharst doesn’t have much of a fleet, either, so the Bovarians haven’t that many cannoneers with experience. Kharst was saving those to defend Variana.” Quaeryt yawned.

“You’re tired.”

“Not that tired.”

“You…” Vaelora shook her head.

“A man who has a beautiful and loving wife likes to appreciate her.”

“You’ve made that quite clear … dearest.” But she did smile … warmly.