At the Bank of Rhidauna, Ghyll exchanged the bag of coins for letters of credit every honest merchant would accept.
After that, they went shopping. The boys had fled to Gromarthen with nothing more than the clothes they wore, so they had a whole list of things they needed. Saddle bags and water flasks; sleeping blankets, tinder boxes, a small pot for roadside dinners. An ax, a small spade; spare clothing, including fine garments and flamboyant hats, for they were young, and wanted to look well. In their spending spree, they did not forget Damion, though they were uncertain about his size and had no idea of his taste.
They went through Gromarthen's entire commercial district, visiting shop after shop, until they came to a crossroads with a tavern on the corner. A dented kettle full of scarlet begonias on a hook above the door betrayed the name of the establishment, The Copper Pot. Once past the crossing, the character of the displays changed. No fine goods here, but mundane things like clogs or not-quite-fresh greenery. The houses did not look so self-satisfied, either. Faded signs creaked in the wind; windowpanes were opaque with dirt, with the paint peeling from their frames. The smell of boiled cabbage mingled with the stench of rotting offal from the nearby harbor. The streets were busy, but the people looked different. Folks seemed not only poor, but rough in a way that Ghyll hadn't seen before. Children cried, women wrangled and two dogs fought growling for something indefinable. Bustle and noise, and nowhere a guard in sight.
Olle leaned toward his foster brother and said softly, 'Don't look, but there's a fellow in a brown cloak following us for a while now.'
'Eh?' Ghyll's thoughts were with a blonde trollop across the street, whose prancing breasts threatened to leap out of her dress. Red-faced, he turned to his foster brother.
'I don't like it,' Olle said. 'Every time we stop somewhere, he does the same.'
Ghyll's pleasant thoughts evaporated. 'A pickpocket?' Feigning interest, he gazed at the merchandise in a dusty shop window. With a little effort, he found that he could see the reflection of their pursuer in the glass. It was a small man in a faded brown cloak, with the hood pulled far down over his head, hiding his face.
'So that's him. Come on.' Resolutely Ghyll entered the shop. 'Let's see what he does.'
Two heartbeats later, they saw the silhouette of a small man in a long cape appear on the other side of the window.
'He's watching us,' Ghyll whispered.
'Can I help you?' a voice said, and Ghyll started. Only then he realized they were in a shop for magical contrivances. The proprietor, a heavyset man with a gloomy face, looked them over pensively.
'Excuse me, master merchant,' Ghyll said. 'Neither of us have any knowledge of magic. We just stepped inside to get off the street for a moment.' Then he got an idea. 'Do you have anything against unwanted pursuers?'
The man's sad eyes studied the two young men a moment longer before he nodded. 'Of course, dominus. You are in a neighborhood where pursuers are countless and generally undesired. Right across the street is the temple of Klinkilla, Mother of Thieves. The underclass hangs around her doors like flies to the fimus equus, what the layman calls horseshit. You will find more pickpockets, black marketers, thieves, and illegal soothsayers in the streets between De Copper Pot and the harbor, than anywhere else in the city. Servo vestri promptus mucro, I always say, keep your sword ready.' He rummaged in a drawer of the counter and pulled out a paper bag. 'Here you are,' he said. 'Nachtalene. If you blow this in the face of the pursuer, he will be blind for days. It will cost you two crowns, dominus, and that,' he concluded with a vague nod to the shop window, 'is only as cheap as that because your pursuer doesn't belong in this area; sit extraneus, a stranger.'
Ghyll nodded. Sit extraneus? They're the worst quacks that use the tongue of mages most, he thought as he counted down small coins.
When they stepped outside, the man in the cloak had crossed the street and stood bowed over a glover's wares. Ghyll laughed as if his foster brother had said something funny and went left, toward the harbor. Olle murmured shortly, 'He's following us again.'
Ghyll looked around. 'Still no sign of a guard.'
'No,' Olle said. 'And if this really is a thieves' quarter, I don't expect much help from the locals, either.'
'We'll take the next bystreet,' Ghyll decided. 'Should that guy follow us in, we'll have a little talk with him.'
A little further, they entered a blind alley, strewn with foul wastes the city sweepers ignored. 'He's following,' Olle said softly.
'Now!' Ghyll turned around. He saw how the man in the brown robe had stretched his arms out to them. 'Look out,' he cried, startled. 'He's a mage!'
The man's fingers moved in some incantation. With a muffled cry, Olle dropped his weapon and stared at his hands. Ghyll grabbed the little envelope of nachtalene from his pocket. Praying that the merchant was an honest man, he ran to the mage in the brown robe and threw the powder full in his face. The wind caught a small part of the nachtalene. Ghyll felt it tickle in his nostrils and turned his head away. The man broke off his spell, sneezed twice, and began to scream. As if possessed, he rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. Shrieking, he sank to his knees in the smelly refuse and clawed with his hands at his face.
'The stuff works!' Ghyll snatched Olle's sword from the ground. He banged the blade's pommel into the side of their attacker's head and the man slumped down in the dirt.
'Nicely done,' Olle growled, while his foster brother went through the mage's clothes.
'He isn't carrying anything but this letter,' Ghyll said at last. 'The beggar. Now, let's go!'
Olle stared at his hands. 'I can't feel them,' he said with a trace of fear in his voice. He looked at the unconscious attacker. 'What do we do with him?'
'Let him lie,' Ghyll cried. His experience with mages was small and his awe of their powers correspondingly large. 'We must be away before he wakes up.'
Olle followed him with some reluctance out of the alley towards The Copper Pot. The locals barely looked at them as they made their way through the crowd. Dark things happened here often enough and nobody would interfere with two armed young men. They crossed the intersection, slipped between two passing carts and stopped only when they were back in the upper class neighborhood.
'How are you?' Ghyll said.
Olle cursed from the bottom of his soul. 'I couldn't hold that damned sword,' he growled. 'Else I'd have cleft his ugly head!' He opened and closed his hands a few times and snapped his fingers. 'They seem to work again.'
Ghyll returned him his weapon and Olle replaced it in the sheath on his back.
'Good trick, that nachtalene,' he said. 'But I think it was plain pepper.'
Ghyll nodded. 'You can buy that at any herbary for five half-pennies per ounce,' he said with a crooked smile. 'Still, at that moment it was worth the money.'
His foster brother looked at him. 'I'm not sure it was wise to let him live. What's in that letter that you found?'
'Should I have killed that pickpocket? I'm not a murderer!' Ghyll said indignantly. He pulled the paper from his pocket. 'Hmm, it's been sealed. With black wax, to be sure.' Then all the color withdrew from his face. 'Olle, I think it is about us.'
Vasthul,
Central complains that you never answer his calls. Now I'm to pass on your orders. Next time, answer the undead chap, will you.
Listen, Illgram has blundered with that old castle in the river; the assignment is still unfinished. You must complete it. Orders from the Master himself. Ask Central for the latest information.
I leave this letter behind in the provisional portal. I hope you find it; otherwise, you have a major problem.
Pardoc, Routewatcher
Ghyll watched his foster brother. 'No pickpocket, then. An assassin. Vasthul – was that the man I knocked out?'
Olle stared darkly at the letter. 'I'd say so. He was carrying that opened letter, after all.' He slammed his fist into his hand. 'What assignment?'
'It doesn't say.'
'Is it us?' Olle inspected his fingers, as if he wasn't sure he could trust them.
Ghyll looked at his foster brother. 'What do you mean?'
Olle stopped in the middle of the street and turned to Ghyll.
'Tinnurad's been destroyed,' he said. 'Erased. Only you, me and Damion survived. Now you find a letter addressed to one Vasthul, that the assignment about Tinnurad hasn't been completed and that he must finish it. Someone with the note in his pocket follows us and attacks us in an alley.' He shook his foster brother's shoulders. 'You're the thinker of us two, Ghyll. Do you think that was a coincidence?'
'No,' Ghyll said reluctantly. 'No, it wasn't. Let's go back; I want walls around me.'
'Tinnurad had walls, too,' Olle said.
When they returned to the castle, Ghyll wanted to report the attack to Davall, but the lieutenant had gone out on a patrol and he was expected back late. Instead, they visited the smithy.
The castle's blacksmith was a gaunt old man, of short stature and bent by his work. With his bare arms and sooty appearance, he seemed to have stepped out of the Legends of the Ring, just as his forge with its fire would not have looked out of place in a mountain cave.
He greeted them in a barely intelligible dialect. Yes, he had some weapons and things for sale, Ghyll understood.
The man shuffled away and returned moments later with a broadsword. At the sight of the huge blade, Ghyll had to suppress a laugh. It was far too heavy for him. He could imagine himself falling from his horse at his first attempt to draw the thing.
'Let's swap,' he said to Olle. 'You take that big one and I'll use the butter knife that you're wearing now.'
His foster brother picked up the weapon with two hands and a fleeting smile crossed his face. 'Done!'
Ghyll cast a doubtful look at the other pieces of equipment the blacksmith brought. A chainmail shirt much too large for him could serve Olle as well. The only useful thing the man showed them was a standard shield of the Guard.
'Ya want ya lordly arms on it?' he said. 'Be finished as the cocks crow, soon as th'enamel dries'
'How much should it all cost?' Ghyll asked.
The smith grinned, baring toothless gums. 'Fefteen gold pieces.'
Ghyll opened his mouth to say yes, but Olle interfered.
'Far too much,' he said sternly. 'You can buy a harness for less. We offer seven crowns.'
The blacksmith pulled a face as if Olle had made him an indecent proposal. 'Twellef.'
'Nine!' Olle looked at Ghyll. 'I saw another armorer in the city.'
'That bungler!' The smith made a rude gesture. 'Shoddy worker; ya break ya steel at the first fight, my lord. Nine pieces then. Have ta work all night, tonight.' The blacksmith looked Olle's imposing figure and nodded appreciatively. 'That shirt wants two hands of rings added, lord.'
The next morning Ghyll and Olle had their horses saddled. Ghyll wanted to see Haspen, the village the enemy had attacked. He wanted to be sure that Davall's men hadn't overlooked any clues about the black-clad men. Half an hour later, they walked their horses past the Western Gate out of town. Many eyes followed their progress, indifferent, admiring or envious, and in one case full of deadly hatred.
Vasthul retied the dripping towels over his eyes. The pain was awful and it distracted him so much that he couldn't muster even the smallest magic. He was filled with hurt and anger over his humiliation in that filthy alley. He had not expected those striplings to fight back. Pepper in his eyes! That trice damned pepper always made him sick. He sneezed again and wiped with his sleeve the mucus from his face. Oh, the pain. My turn will come, he vowed for the umpteenth time. You get all suffering back a thousand-fold, Hardingraud!
He shivered with anger. Thinking of the alley and of the brat with his pepper brought bile in his throat. The pain, the humiliation cried for revenge. No longer would he hunt Hardingraud for the Master. It was now for his honor. Hardingraud must die, the more horrible a death the better.
As he wetted the cloth in the fountain, he saw his enemy driving by. Bravely on horseback, so close... and he couldn't do anything without his magic. He sneezed again and with burning eyes he looked after his prey. For a moment, the vindictiveness overwhelmed his composure. The boy who served him as his eyes cried out when the hard fingers of his temporary master bruised his shoulder.
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