Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [53]
“Risky,” Burek said. “But we hurt them today.”
“We’ve hurt them before,” Arcolin said. “Ordinary brigand bands would have retreated by now. There’s something keeping them in this area, and they’re being reinforced.”
The best climbers in the cohort went up the trees and tested out the rigging. Nothing happened through the early and midnight hours of darkness, and Arcolin finally woke Burek and lay down at the foot of one of the rigged trees. So far none of his climbers had fallen.
He woke to a blow in his back, the scrape of a blade on his mail. He rolled away, yelling, grabbing for his dagger. More yells from his sentries … someone landed on him again, this time with a heavy cloth that missed his head but caught his arms for an instant. He stabbed through the cloth, felt the dagger go home into flesh, yanked and stabbed again—and then his people were there, the weight on him gone, and his assailant lay dead on the ground.
In the torchlight Arcolin saw a small, wiry man in short trousers and a sleeveless jerkin, barefoot—his soles horny as goats’ hooves—his hair in a stiff braid. He had elaborate tattoos on both arms—sea monsters, Arcolin thought—he remembered the sailors of the south being heavily tattooed. On a thong around his neck was a medallion with a design Arcolin did not recognize. The blade he’d attacked Arcolin with, broad and curved, was much like those they had captured before.
“Was there only one?” Arcolin asked. “And how did he get past the sentries?”
“Sneaks,” Devlin said, nose wrinkled. “They’re good at that, if nothing else.”
“Didn’t see or hear another one,” Jenits said. “Maybe because he’s barefoot?”
“Could be,” Arcolin said. “He’s a sailor … but why would he come here alone and then attack openly? Why me, and not a sentry? Killing a sentry would open the way for others to attack. He could have avoided us easily enough.”
“Something here he wants,” Burek said. “And perhaps he didn’t realize you were there. If he wanted to climb the tree and stumbled into you, he’d have to attack.”
“Maybe,” Arcolin said. “Come morning we’ll see what we find.”
The rest of the night passed quietly. In the morning, they found another barrel of meal and an empty cask that smelled of the wine it had once held.
“That barrel’s heavy,” Devlin remarked, when they’d pulled the lid off. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“Grain,” Tam said.
“Poke it with a sword,” Devlin said. “Let’s just see.”
Far down in the barrel Tam’s sword met resistance. “We could just eat the grain,” he said with a sly grin.
“Pack it up,” Arcolin said, shaking his head.
In minutes, men were shifting the grain to the extra sacks. They found a heavy leather-wrapped bundle at the bottom of the barrel: a small anvil and a hammer.
“They have a farrier with them,” Burek said. “We know they have horses, and most of the horses are shod. But this anvil looks small to fashion horseshoes. And there’s no sign of a forge—none at all.”
“They could have the forge somewhere else and keep the anvil here—though I wonder why,” Arcolin said. He looked closely at the anvil; something about it tickled his memory. The street of the smiths in Cortes Vonja—the different sounds of the hammers, the anvils ringing to the blows in different smiths’ halls, different sizes of anvils … “What would this anvil be good for?” he asked Burek. Devlin answered.
“Captain, I’ve seen an anvil like that in a medaller’s—where they make badges and medals and things. This hole here—that would hold the anvil die—”
“Dies!” Arcolin said. “Of course! He came back for the dies.”
“Sir?”
“Coins, Dev—they’re striking coins. Changing the marks, at least, and maybe the composition, making counterfeits. That’s what was worth one man sneaking back in the night, and if he came to the foot of that tree, it’s because he wanted to climb it. They sent a sailor—the dies are hidden up the tree somewhere.”
Those who’d spent the night in trees climbed back up