Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [30]
BANT
This is a good place to camp, sir,” said the page.
Gwafa Hazid scratched his chin. “No. We keep going. This isn’t Valeron yet. We’ve made an awful pace, and I want to see olive trees before we stop.”
“We’re still a day’s journey out from the Valeron border, and we’ve pushed the steeds. They’re exhausted. They need to rest. And so do you, sir.”
“I’m fine,” snapped Hazid. Why must this messytressed boy keep telling him that? It was irritating, not to mention above his caste. Had society crumbled so far already?
But he pulled his leotau over to the side of the road anyway. The beast sighed, and its flanks heaved, at which Hazid rolled his eyes.
“It’s not enough that we feed these things half our meat,” he said. “They’ve got to complain about being ridden, too. Doesn’t anything know its place anymore?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Hazid. “It’s rhetoric—something you wouldn’t understand.”
“No, sir.”
“Correct. Unpack the wineskins.”
“Sir, about the Giltspire—”
“What did I tell you about—?” He stopped himself from cuffing the boy, but only just. “Enough about … that place. It’s behind us now. It’s in the past. We went there, we did our business, and we made a lot of money and … and we gained, in other ways. Transaction over. It was a good deal for us. We’re headed east now, for new ventures.”
“New ventures, sir?”
“Yes! Shut up. You’ll see when we get there. Where are those wineskins?”
The boy set up camp, and Hazid drank. The memories of seeing a castle topple lost their crispness. A fuzzy halo surrounded the day’s events, bringing a slow grin to Hazid’s face. His mind melted into a fluid, and flowed around the sharp edges of those unpleasant thoughts. He rambled as the page did his work.
“We did nothing wrong, when it comes down to it,” said Hazid. “We destroyed nothing. The thing was old. It was probably ready to crumble anyway. I think I remember that—yes, weren’t stonemasons looking into that old thing for decades? There were plenty of warnings about the old deathtrap, so why didn’t they heed them? It was an architectural disaster waiting to happen. And those people”—Hazid winced slightly—“they should have just been out of there. They could have known if they’d only paid attention. So really, it was their own fault.” Hazid nodded and drank. “Am I everyone’s personal wet-nurse? Am I in charge of everybody else’s personal safety? Of course not. A man can’t be expected to engineer his life around the ignorance of others. A man can only be expected to look after his own affairs. Praise Asha.”
He raised his glass to clink it with someone’s, but the boy hadn’t filled his cup yet. “Come here, boy.”
The boy was nowhere to be found. The camp was only half-made.
“Boy? Where’ve you run off to now? My tent’s not even up yet!”
“Sir, someone’s coming.”
The boy was over by the road, looking back to the west. There were hoof beats in the distance, at a gallop. Hazid jumped up to his feet.
“Who is it? Who would follow us? We’ve done nothing wrong!”
The boy squinted into the gloam of the waning day. “Sir, I think we should abandon the camp. Come on.”
“Abandon the camp? Where would we—”
The boy was already running into the woods. “Infuriating mop-headed whelp,” Hazid muttered.
Before Hazid could commit his legs to running, the riders were upon him, their lanterns glowing like fireflies. One was a tall, olive-skinned human man in plate armor. Draped from his armor were dozens, maybe a hundred sigils, each one catching the lamplight like a star in the gloam. The other was a broad-faced rhox.
The rhox spoke. “Gwafa Hazid?”
“I … no. I’m his … handservant. My master just ran off into the woods.”
The human and rhox looked at him, and exchanged glances.
“I’m telling you the truth! It was just before you came. He ran off that way!”
“I am Rafiq, knight of the Order of the Reliquary,” said the human, dismounting from his leotau.
“What—? You—you are? You are not.”
Hazid glanced over the man