Swordmage

EIGHT

14 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One

Sometime in the cold hours before dawn, snow began to fall around Hulburg. When Geran awoke and looked out his window, the higher hilltops were covered with a dusting of white, and fat, wet flakes were sticking along the castle’s turrets and rooftops. He performed his morning exercises in a fitful flurry that stopped and started several times as he practiced his forms. Spring snow was not at all unusual for the northern shores of the Moonsea, but it rarely lasted long.

The cold air spurred him fully awake and chased the last dregs of sleepiness from his mind. It had been a long ride back to Hulburg from the barrow the previous evening and a longer night of explanations, as Kara insisted on setting down their recollections of the discovery inside the mound before allowing Geran and Hamil to retire for the evening. She’d also been careful to set down their descriptions of the sinister sorcerer they’d encountered too. Geran had no idea if anything would come of either account. He sincerely doubted that anyone at House Veruna would admit that the dead man was in the barrow on company business, and as for the sorcerer, he doubted whether the Shieldsworn could arrest and hold such a creature against his will. It seemed unlikely that he had anything to do with Jarad’s murder or the deaths of the Veruna armsman and the townswoman, simply because Geran couldn’t imagine why the fellow would return to the scene or ask them whether they’d found a book. He finally gave up with a shrug. Strange folk roamed the Highfells at times; either they’d see him again, or they wouldn’t, and there was little point looking for him.

Geran bathed quickly, dressed himself, and headed down to find himself some breakfast in the family great room, turning events over in his mind. By the time he’d finished his breakfast-and games of dragon’s-teeth with the younger Hulmasters-Geran had decided on his next course of action. He clapped Hamil on the shoulder and said, “I think I’d like to seek gainful employment for the day. If you’re done with allowing Kirr to instruct you in grand strategy, why don’t you come with me?”

“Gainful employment?” Hamil raised an eyebrow. “Very well, then.”

“But I was winning, Geran!” Kirr groaned.

“Nonsense!” Hamil replied. “You were but one tile away from falling into my insidious trap. You’ll see when we resume this contest.”

The halfling bowed to his diminutive opponent and followed Geran down through a servant’s stair into the depths of the castle kitchens. In a few moments the two travelers came to the laundry room, where a couple of servant girls worked at a big tub of warm water, washing the castle’s linens.

“Oh, so it’s the wash, then,” the halfling said glumly. “All right, I suppose I have to earn my room and board somehow.”

“Some honest work would do you good,” Geran answered him. He spoke briefly to the young women working at the tubs, and they directed him to a large storeroom nearby. Battered old trunks packed with old clothing filled the room. Geran removed his sword belt and began to rummage through the trunks. The swordmage found a threadbare old tunic and a nondescript cloak of plain gray and held them up for a look.

“Ah, this should do,” he said.

“For mucking out the stables?” asked the halfling.

“Not a bad idea, but that’s not what I had in mind. I was thinking that we might look for some work as teamsters, and House Veruna might be a good place to look. I’d rather not be recognized. Here, try these.”

Geran and Hamil soon enough patched together mismatched working garb to reasonably disguise themselves as common laborers. They stopped by the Shieldsworn armory, and Geran replaced his elven blade with a plain short sword of the sort that a poor driver might carry for defense against bandits; Hamil found a well-worn crossbow. Then they visited the stables and harnessed a simple buckboard wagon and a pair of mules and drove down from Griffonwatch into town, joining the stream of cart traffic and wagons rumbling along the Vale Road in the wet snow.

They stayed east of the river down to the Lower Bridge, crossed over to Bay Street, and drove along the wharves past the tradeyards of various merchant costers-the Double Moon, House Sokol, House Marstel. Then they came to the Veruna compound and drove through its gates into the bustling yards beyond. Like most other trading companies in Hulburg, Veruna owned several storehouses that were enclosed together by a sturdy wall. Barracks, offices, stables, a smithy, and the stone-and-timber houses of Veruna officials clustered together within the Veruna holding, a town within the town.

It seems ordinary enough, Hamil said silently. This could be the Red Sail yard in Tantras. What are we looking for?

The mercenaries, Geran answered. He looked around, sizing up the place. A handful of armsmen in the green-and-white tabards of the House watched over the business in the yard; they seemed bored and disinterested. I expect that most of the Veruna operations here are perfectly legitimate, so I’m not worried about what’s in the storehouses or where it’s going. I’m more interested in the sellswords. Mark them well-I want to find this man Urdinger, and I want to see if any of them are riding off into the Highfells to go poke around in barrows when they don’t think anyone is watching.

The halfling nodded. “That might take days,” he warned. And it’ll look a little suspicious if we just sit here all day eavesdropping on the guards.

“I know,” Geran replied. He spied the big Veruna armsman Bann, the fellow he’d confronted in Mirya Erstenwold’s store, and he carefully shifted to lower his hood over his face and keep his eyes away from the man. The mercenary led half a dozen more Veruna men past the wagon without giving Geran so much as a second glance and headed out into Bay Street intent on his own business.

You recognize those men? Hamil asked.

I saw one of them at Mirya’s. Come on, we might as well ask about work. It’ll give us a good chance to spy out the place, and we should fit right in.

Fortunately, a fair number of the wagon drivers in the town were halflings; it was a little unusual for a human and halfling to work together, but not strange enough to be conspicuous, or so Geran hoped. Besides, he’d observed in the last few days that most of the wagons heading out of town carried at least two men. It always helped to have an extra hand along to carry a crossbow and keep an eye out for trouble.

He swung himself down from the wagon and headed toward the nearest Veruna clerk he saw. The fellow was a tall, stoop-shouldered man with thinning hair and a heavy green cloak to ward off the wet snow.

“Well met,” Geran said gruffly. “I’ve got a wagon and team for hire. Got any work for me?”

“Just a moment.” The Veruna clerk carried a small ledger and consulted it with a frown of annoyance. “I’ll need a load of stores taken up to a camp in the foothills soon. It pays five silvers, and you’ll get fodder and stabling for your team and a hot meal for yourself.”

“Good enough. Where am I going?”

“You’ll be with some other wagons. The other drivers know the way. Stay with them, and you’ll be fine.” The clerk looked up at Geran. “I haven’t seen you before. New in town?”

Geran shrugged. “I heard there’s work and good coin here.”

“We need all the drivers we can get.” The clerk pointed at a storehouse across the compound. “Take your wagon over there, and tell Koger-he’s the short fellow in the brown hood-that you’ve been hired for the Troll Hill train. You’re expected to lend a hand with the loading and unloading.”

Geran gave him a resigned nod and returned to the wagon. “We’re hired,” he told Hamil. “Keep your eyes and ears open, and we’ll see what we can learn.”

The halfling grimaced. “I hope they’re paying us well, at least.”

The two comrades spent most of the next five days hiring their wagon to House Veruna and driving provisions of all sorts out to the House’s mining camps and lumber yards in the hills east of town. Geran and Hamil turned in a more or less honest day’s work for their wages and made a point of trying to haggle a little more coin from the clerks, since Geran didn’t want to attract attention for working too little or too much for the pay. As he’d hoped, the work gave him an excellent opportunity to examine for himself the extent of Veruna’s holdings and watch their sellswords at close range. The mercenaries paid little attention to the teamsters who were constantly coming and going from the tradeyard, and Geran and Hamil found plenty of opportunities to ask questions of their fellow drivers and listen in on the hired swords without raising too much suspicion.

Geran soon learned much more about the merchant coster and their mercenaries. A noble family from Mulmaster owned the house; the Hulburg holdings were in the hands of Lady Darsi Veruna, who resided in a small manor on the slopes of the town’s eastern headland, rarely visiting the merchant yards. Geran and Hamil could think of no legitimate reason to drive a wagonload up to her residence and did not actually lay eyes on her, but they did learn that she was constantly attended by several ladies-in-waiting, manservants, and guards. A cadre of master merchants who answered to Lady Darsi oversaw the Veruna business in Hulburg’s lands; the head of the Hulburg yard was a stout, black-bearded man named Tharman Kurz, whose demanding nature and foul temper created no small amount of misery for the clerks. Master Tharman was nominally in charge, but the large contingent of sellswords who guarded the Veruna holdings did not answer to the Veruna master merchants. Small groups and bands of mercenaries in green and white came and went from the Hulburg yards and the other Veruna holdings constantly, sometimes escorting wagonloads of provisions bound for the camps, or timber, fur, and precious metals bound back to the merchant yards, but sometimes heading off on patrols or errands of their own.

On the evening of the last day, just as they finished manhandling a load of hardwood planks into the Hulburg storehouse, half a dozen Veruna mercenaries rode into the merchant yard. At their head rode a lean, hawk-faced man who wore his red hair shaved down to angry orange stubble over his scalp. He wore enameled black half-plate armor under his Veruna surcoat, and he had a gold crest atop his helmet, which hung from the saddlehorn. The red-haired man rode up to the master merchant’s residence, swung down from the saddle, and handed the reins to a valet, while the rest of his men dismounted. Geran watched the sellsword over his mule team, idly patting the neck of the nearer animal. The mercenary stretched briefly and rolled his head from side to side, working out the kinks of a long trip in the saddle.

“Who is that?” Hamil asked quietly from the wagon’s bench. The halfling was careful not to look directly at the mercenaries.

“I don’t know,” Geran answered. He glanced to his left, where one of the Veruna teamsters they’d driven with was unhitching his own team, and called over. “Say, Barthold-who’s the captain over there?”

The other driver looked over. “Him? That’s Urdinger. He’s in charge of the armsmen. You’ll want to be careful around him, he’s got a short temper. I heard that he beat another driver senseless when the fellow spilled a load into a ravine out near Troll Hill. Why d’you want to know?”

Geran was too far away to see whether the Veruna captain was wearing an elven dagger at his belt. He peered closer, trying to get a better look, and realized that he was staring at the Veruna captain with far too much interest. He quickly looked back to the other driver and forced a lopsided grimace onto his face. “I think I heard the same story out by Sterritt Lake. I was just wondering if that was the man.”

Urdinger went inside the master merchant’s house, and the rest of the guards dispersed. Geran and Hamil finished their work, collected their silvers from the paymaster, and drove slowly out of the Veruna yard. The swordmage scowled, caught up in thought. He’d marked Urdinger well enough to recognize the man when he saw him again, but that begged the question of what to do next. None of the Veruna men seemed to have noticed his spying so far, but if he confronted the captain of their mercenaries it would be difficult to conceal his identity, to say the least. He could try to figure out where Urdinger preferred to drink and eavesdrop on the fellow or perhaps try to confront him away from the rest of the armsmen… but if the Veruna captain simply denied any involvement in the tomb-breakings or the murder of Jarad Erstenwold, it would be difficult to compel him to speak the truth.

Assume that Urdinger is involved in both, Geran decided. What did the Verunas want with the barrows, anyway? Was it simply a matter of mercenaries looking for some easy riches that could be had from plundering the tombs of the forgotten dead, ignoring the danger that might attend? Or was it something that Urdinger had ordered his men to do for some reason of his own?

“Well, what now?” Hamil asked, interrupting Geran’s musings. “A good night’s sleep so that we can get an early start on tomorrow’s provisioning? If we get to the tradeyard at sunrise, I believe we could get in two round-trips before dark and double our daily pittance.”

“I think we’re done playing at mule drivers.”

“I thought I’d never hear you say that. Well, good. What do you propose next? Lie in wait for this fellow Urdinger and ambush him? Trail the Veruna blades and see where they go when they leave the camps?”

“Some of them are likely patrolling the wildlands near the camps, watching for monsters or marauders,” Geran answered. He clicked his tongue at the mules and lightly flicked the reins to urge them onto the Lower Bridge. “There’s little point in following them. And even if we were confident that we were following the right group of armsmen at the right time to catch them in some mischief, well, it’s damned difficult to trail mounted men out on the Highfells without being spotted yourself. No, I think we’re going to have to lay a trap for them.”

“We could start a rumor that someone else opened a barrow and found something,” Hamil said, thinking aloud. “With sufficient riches in the tale, they’d have to investigate. We could set watch over the barrow in our story and wait for them.”

“Not a bad idea, but half of Hulburg might show up on our doorstep.” Geran smiled grimly at the notion. Few native Hulburgans would open a tomb in defiance of the harmach’s law, but the town was full of poor and desperate outlanders these days. And no laws pertained to looting burial mounds that were already standing open. “We might waylay dozens of men before the ones we’re looking for show up. We’d have to stack them up like cordwood behind the mound so that we didn’t scare away the rest.”

Hamil laughed and shook his head. “I see your point. Never mind.”

“We’ll talk with my uncle tomorrow,” Geran decided. “He’ll know which barrows have been broken into. Maybe we can discern some pattern to it all if we see more of the burial mounds the Veruna men have visited.”

To finish out their ruse, Geran and Hamil picked up a few barrels of salted meat and sacks of flour and drove back to the castle. Drivers delivered provisions to the garrison often enough that one more wagon wouldn’t seem unusual. No one seemed to pay any special attention to them, so they left the the wagon with the Shieldsworn stables and returned to their rooms for much-needed baths, changes of clothing, and a good night’s sleep in warm beds.

In the morning, Geran rose, exercised, and dressed, then met Hamil in the great room. After breakfast, they made their way across the small court in front of Harmach’s Tower to the library. A steady, cold drizzle was falling, a mix of rain and sleet. As before, they found a pair of Shieldsworn standing watch by the harmach’s door. A small handful of clerks and chamberlains hurried in and out, carrying out the business of the castle. Geran and Hamil waited only a moment before they were shown in to see his uncle.

Grigor Hulmaster sat at his writing desk, studying a stack of parchment as they entered. “Ah, Geran! Master Hamil!” the old lord said warmly. “You have certainly made yourselves scarce lately. I understand that you had quite an adventure with Kara a few days ago, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to ask you about it.”

“I doubt I can add much to what Kara must have told you already,” Geran observed. He took the seat his uncle indicated. “I wanted to see for myself the place where Jarad was killed, so we rode up to the Highfells to have a look.”

He went on to describe their exploration of the barrow to the best of his ability, including the discovery of the two bodies and the encounter with the strange sorcerer. Grigor listened attentively without interrupting; the harmach might not have been a young man, but he had a keen memory and never forgot the details of a story. Geran knew that his uncle would get around to his own questions eventually, after he’d had ample time to weigh all the accounts.

When Geran finished, Grigor leaned back in his leather chair. “Weren’t you worried about breaking into the barrow? You know that’s dangerous.”

Geran met his uncle’s gaze evenly. “Someone had moved those stones recently, and I wanted to know why. Kara didn’t want to disturb the burial mound, but I thought there wasn’t much risk.”

“As it turned out, you were right. It’s not in Kara’s nature to trust her intuition, but I’m glad that you trusted yours.” Grigor sighed heavily. “I knew that Darsi Veruna and the rest of the Merchant Council had reasons to want Jarad Erstenwold out of the way, but I had no reason to think that Veruna mercenaries might be involved with the tomb-plundering that Jarad was investigating.”

“Speaking of which, I’d like to know exactly which barrows have been broken into, and when,” Geran said. “Jarad must have discerned some pattern to it. He had a reason for choosing that barrow to keep watch over.”

“You believe the Verunas aren’t finished plundering the barrows?” the harmach asked.

“We’ve spent the last few days watching the Veruna sellswords,” Hamil said. “Small bands of Darsi Veruna’s armsmen are constantly coming and going from the camps and yards. By our rough count, we’d guess that as many as a third of the Veruna men-thirty to forty mercenaries, all told, mostly in bands of five or six at a time-are engaged in some activity that takes them away from Veruna mines, sawmills, and wagon trains.” The halfling glanced at Geran and back to the harmach. “We doubt they’re all out patrolling the wilds at the same time.”

The harmach sat in silence for a long moment, gazing out the leaded glass windows of the library. Finally he said, “Assuming your suspicions are well founded, Master Hamil, what business is it of yours? You are not sworn to my service-nor is Geran. There is no reason to make Hulburg’s troubles your troubles too.”

“As I told you before, my lord Harmach, I’m here to look after my partner.” Hamil nodded at Geran. “A few years back, when Geran and I were both members of the Company of the Dragon Shield, Geran saved my life at terrible risk to his own. I’m obligated to him for that, if nothing else. But beyond that, Geran is my friend, and his fights are my fights too.” The halfling paused. “Besides, it seems that many of the foreigners in this town know your men all too well. We might be able to get answers your Shieldsworn couldn’t.”

“In that, you may be correct, Master Hamil.” Grigor shifted his watery gaze to Geran. “But, Geran, it doesn’t explain why you’ve chosen to make this your fight. I’ve never blamed you for your decision to seek your fortune elsewhere. You have no debt to repay me or Hulburg.”

“I’ve nothing in Tantras that I need to hurry back to, and I think I’ll be staying a little while.” Geran kept his eyes locked on the harmach’s. “I find that I’m not satisfied with the questions that are left unanswered, Uncle. And I don’t like what I’ve seen so far of this Mulman merchant coaster that Sergen has apparently sold Hulburg to. This whole business doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Nor with me,” the harmach answered, with surprising firmness in his voice. “Very well, then-I have the reports of tomb-breaking close at hand.” He pulled open a drawer in the desk, then checked another. “Ah, here they are.”

The old lord glanced through the papers and handed them to Geran. Most were in Jarad’s handwriting, simple and terse summaries of each break-in he’d discovered.

“There were five instances that we know about before Jarad’s encounter,” Grigor said. “Of course, there may be more we haven’t discovered yet. There are literally hundreds of barrows scattered from Thentia to the ruins of Sulasspryn, and most are so far from traveled paths and grazing land that no one would ever know if they’d been broken into.”

Geran looked at them quickly and handed them to Hamil. He’d read them more thoroughly later. But first, he wanted to see where the robbery attempts had taken place. He glanced at the crowded bookshelves in the harmach’s study. “Do you still have Wolther’s map, Uncle?”

“Of course,” Grigor answered. He pushed himself to his feet with a slight wheeze and shuffled over to a rack where dozens of large leather cases lay gathering dust. He ran his frail fingers over each, muttering quietly to himself, then he settled on one case and tapped it once before removing it and bringing it back to the desk. “This is the one.”

Geran waited while Grigor carefully opened the case and pulled out the large, yellowed parchment map. He spread it out over the top of his desk; Geran and Hamil stood and gathered around to see it better. The map showed the hills and valleys around Hulburg in exquisite detail, dotted with lakes and bogs and crisscrossed by small streams and old footpaths. Small triangular marks speckled the lands surrounding the Winterspear Vale. “My father hired the mapmaker Wolther to make a survey of the Hulmaster lands,” Grigor explained to Hamil. “It would be more than fifty years ago now, but no one’s ever taken a better measure of the lands around Hulburg.”

“What are the triangles?” the halfling asked.

“Marker cairns,” Geran answered. “You’ve seen a few already-the whitewashed stones out on the Highfells. You’ll see that Jarad’s letters begin by mentioning the cairn nearest to each of the broken barrows. Read them off to me, Hamil.”

The halfling looked back down at Jarad’s letters. “The first is, let me see, ‘Twelve north-northeast, eight hundred yards southeast, right of small rise.’ You can make sense of that?”

“The marker cairn is twelve miles north-northeast of Griffonwatch. From the marker, the barrow is eight hundred yards to the southeast.” Geran found the marker symbol on the old map and carefully marked it with a pin. Hamil read off the rest, and Geran marked each. When he finished, no immediate pattern seemed obvious. Some of the barrows were east of the Winterspear Vale, some were west, and none were particularly close to each other.

“That doesn’t help very much,” Geran said.

“What did you expect to see?” the harmach asked.

Geran sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was hoping that something might seem obvious once we’d looked at all of the locations together.” He looked at Hamil. “How do you feel about sleeping under the stars tonight?”

The halfling grimaced. “It seems likely to rain all day, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“If we leave soon, I imagine we could visit all these sites by midday tomorrow, so it’s only one night out in the Highfells. And there are plenty of herdsmen’s shelters and huts up there, so we’ll probably have a roof over our heads.”

“I think we’d be better off watching the Verunas,” Hamil said sourly. “I propose that we spy out the taverns their armsmen frequent and eavesdrop on them for a few evenings. We’ll have to make ourselves comfortable, eat well, spend coin generously, and feign revelry, but I am willing to make those sacrifices. That seems to offer better prospects than riding around to look at abandoned barrows.”

“We’ll try your suggestion next if the barrows have nothing to say to us.” Geran glanced at his uncle. “Can we borrow paper and ink? I’d like to copy down the locations.”

“Of course.” Grigor found Geran a small journal, and the swordmage carefully copied Jarad’s notes about the barrows that had been found open. He thought he knew at least two of the mounds already, just from Jarad’s descriptions, but distance and direction could be deceptive on the Highfells. Geran did not want to spend hours riding around in circles looking for a marker or a barrow because he hadn’t bothered to write anything down.

When he finished, he tucked the small book into his vest pocket. “Thank you, Uncle,” he said. “We’ll be on our way. I expect we’ll return tomorrow.”

The harmach took his hand. “Be on your guard, Geran. I will see you soon.”