The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [68]
"Oh no, we couldn't," the wizard Phalagh interrupted grimly, the lantern light gleaming on his high forehead. "We'll have visitors long before then, with murder in their eyes, spells in plenty up their sleeves, and a hunger to juggle enchanted stones in their hearts. We aren't the only seekers after Dwaerindim, you know-the tale let fall by Yezund's loose tongue has reached the ears of half the mages in Darsar by now! Watch out behind you, or something you dismiss as a tree is going to split your skull with an ax, or put a long sword right through you!"
"I've had both of those things happen to me," Huldaerus, the Master of Bats, agreed, stepping out of the darkness to join them. He sat himself on a rock beside their lantern, and pulled out a snuffbox. "'Twasn't pleasant."
The other two mages favored him with looks of open disbelief. Huldaerus met their gazes, shrugged, and added, "I was tutored in shape shifting by old Weslyn of Baerra. He believed in lessons underscored with pain-barbaric, but effective."
Outside, in the night, a wolf howled in the distance. As the mages glanced outside, seeing only dark trees silhouetted against the stars, it was answered by another, from very near at hand. They stiffened, traded wry looks, and sighed.
"It's time to start standing watches," Phalagh said wearily, reaching for the lantern shutters. "I'll take the first…"
"Yes, four eccentric travelers," Craer purred. "Downriver, to Sirlptar-forthwith, under cover of darkness, yes, this late at night."
"Out of the question," the boatmaster snapped, eyes glaring out over dark pouches and heavily stubbled jowls. "I'm only up and awake, meself, on account of a deckload being delivered late. My crew have worked hard all day, an' it'd take the Sleeping King himself, risen with a bag of gold in either hand, walking up to me now to get me to…"
The man's eyes bulged as his voice died away, and his incredulous gaze locked on the heaping handful of gold coins the procurer was holding under his hooked red nose. He even stopped scratching at the undercurve of his ample belly, where tangled hair met the lacings of his patched and wrinkled sea breeches.
"Perhaps I'm one of the Sleeping King's courtiers, with a little from one of those bags, sent by the king to arrange a discreet little trip made for four of his special friends-a quiet, immediate sailing, helmed by the best boatmaster on all the river," Craer whispered.
The boatmaster licked his lips. There must be more coins there than he'd made in the last two summers, and…
The procurer's other arm moved forward to display another handful, just as heaping as the first. "And this much more to keep quiet for the rest of this season about ever having made such a trip," he added.
The boatmaster's hasty smile almost outshone Craer's own. "When did you say you wanted to leave, master?"
The clop and clotter of hooves, and a heavy rumbling, announced the arrival of a wagon. Craer glanced at it and tucked both handfuls of coins back into his girdle apron.
"The moment you're loaded, they've gone again, and I've put every last one of these good, solid gold coins in your hands," he whispered, and melted back into the shadows the pilings cast in the light of the boatmaster's pole lamp.
One of the men sprang down from the wagon and ran off into the night; the other climbed down more slowly, spat thoughtfully over the edge of the dock into the water, and said to the boatmaster, "The dungskulls back at the sheds went and hitched up the wrong wagon; Baerlus is gone to get the right one, and I've told him to bring you back four falcons extra for keeping you up later."
The boatmaster grunted. "Not the first time that's happened." He squinted up at the high load of lashed-down kegs on the wagon. "What's wrong with these, then?"
"There's nothing wrong with them," the wagon-driver said, settling bags over the noses of his beasts and clipping their reins to the dock rings, "but that they're kegs of beer and not long jugs of scented bathing oil."
"Bathing oil?" The boatmaster was incredulous.