Realms of Infamy - James Lowder [129]
The distinguished young soldier occupying the adjoining, overstuffed armchair sounded his agreement. "Just so," said Captain Gareth Truesilver, the words balanced expertly between enthusiasm and cultured restraint. "They're no more likely to discover something new than they are to catch a weasel asleep."
"Yes," Sir Hamnet muttered. "Wretched little beggars."
The epithet was meant to rain shame upon both Bookwarts and weasels alike. Sir Hamnet had despised the latter ever since his expedition to the Hill of Lost Souls. The weasel that had brought about this undying hatred was a particularly huge and mean-spirited example of its kind. According to Sir Hamnet's twenty-third journal, the beast devoured the camp's rations and the exquisitely detailed maps the nobleman had made of the hill and its environs. And in trying to skewer the monster, Hawklin's companions created enough of a racket to alert the local goblin tribe to their presence. Only Sir Hamnet survived the battle that followed. It was neither the first, nor the last time he would report how his expert swordsmanship had preserved his life.
Captain Truesilver knew this tale, being quite familiar with all his mentor's writings. His mention of the most-hated of animals had been intentional, a kind-hearted ploy to fire the nobleman's spirits. A funk had settled over Sir Hamnet in the past tenday. More and more frequently, the accounts written by younger adventurers eclipsed his works. Sometimes, as with Artus Cimber's recent collected writings on Chult, the upstart tomes even usurped his books as primary reference.
"Even if the whole pack of them ran out of the library this instant, their explorations would still depend upon your maps, Sir Hamnet," Captain Truesilver offered generously. He struck a noble pose-an easy thing with his athletic good looks-and gazed with open admiration upon the aged nobleman.
Hawklin gulped the remainder of his wine. "The real romance lies in mapping lands untrodden by civilized men," he said, cheeks flushed from both the topic and the port. "Only rabble follow maps."
"Or tourists," the soldier added. The word was a curse on his lips.
"Exploration brings glory, not cataloguing street names in Calimshan or counting the number of words the Bedine have to describe sand." The nobleman paused and held his empty glass out at his side. "Uther!"
The butler appeared at Sir Hamnet's side before his name was free of the explorer's tongue. Befitting his service in this unusual adventurers' club, Uther himself was arrestingly exotic. A misfired spell during the Time of Troubles had cursed him with a remarkable resemblance to a denizen of Hades-tall and brutishly muscled, with skin a sooty, corrupt shade of crimson seen only in a burning church. The magnificent set of twisted horns atop his head rivaled any trophy hung upon the library's walls.
"Yes, Sir Hamnet?" Uther said smoothly. He raised the cut crystal decanter with gnarled, black-clawed fingers. "Would you care for another glass of port?"
"No, I'm holding my glass this way to catch the drool when a doddering peer shuffles by," Sir Hamnet said coldly.
Uther bowed his horned head. "My question was needless," he noted, his fiendish face impassive. "I had forgotten how Your Lordship prefers not to waste words upon the staff." Deferentially he filled the nobleman's glass.
"Where was I?" Sir Hamnet drummed his fingers on the chair's padded arm. "Ah, yes. The Bedine. The sun makes them wild, unreliable. Not surprising, the way they wander for days on end across the Anauroch."
Sir Hamnet paused to sip his port, as if uttering the name of the great desert had parched his throat. But a pained look twisted his features before he'd even lowered the glass. With a groan of disgust, Hawklin spat out the wine. "Uther, you subhuman! What is this swill?"
All heads turned at Sir Hamnet's outburst, and a susurrus of murmured