Steel And Flame (Book 1) (15 page)

Maddock and Chatham nodded once in unison, which
seemed funny to Marik, but Harlan studied him strangely, which did not seem
funny at all.  He knew that look now, familiar from nights in taverns or the
few inns they had stayed at.  It always appeared in a situation where Harlan
felt they were being overcharged, or when the innkeeper took one look at them
and claimed all the rooms were full though the common room stood nearly empty. 
After a minute Harlan stopped giving him the fish eye, as Marik thought of it,
and returned his attention to what his feet were doing.

Morning passed.  They walked on.  Maddock spoke to him
about the far north where he had been once.  He explained how to survive alone
in the snow if Marik ever landed in such a situation, and Marik strove to
remember every word he could.  That was the problem in his talks with Maddock;
everything they spoke of lay elsewhere rather than before them where the
younger man could see it.  Marik constantly hoped he would remember the sound
advice of his mentor/friend if such a time arose when his life depended upon
it.

Chatham spent his time annoying Harlan yet again. 
This time he tossed pebbles by resting them on his thumbnail and flicking them
through the air, attempting to land them inside Harlan’s tunic collar.  As
always, Harlan bore this torment fatalistically, long past the point where
Marik would have turned on the fool.

In the distance atop a hill, a blur Marik had taken
for a small wood suddenly resolved itself as a tall wall.  Given the wall’s
length, it must be a defensive measure surrounding a town.  He pointed it out
to Maddock who nodded and confirmed, “That is it, aright.  Kingshome.”

They found Kingshome to be not so much a town as a
military base.  Rather than settling into an existing town, the mercenary band
had dug into a defendable position atop a low hill.  The settlement gradually
grew around them over the years.  Over many years.

Their hill sat north of the road, comprising the
tallest lookout in the area.  A stream curved around its base with the road
bordering its southern bank.  From the Southern Road, a short bridge crossed
the water, becoming a narrower road leading uphill to Kingshome’s gates.

The walls appeared to be thirty feet tall, built from
whole tree trunks with sharpened points.  No plant life intruded on the land a
hundred yards out from the walls.  Marik suspected the band had cleared the
land encircled their town to prevent anyone from sneaking close under cover of
foliage.

He judged the walls at nearly a half mile long on the
southern side, representing a staggering labor effort.  From what he’d heard of
the Crimson Kings, Marik believed the mercenaries were the town’s sole
occupants, so they must have built it themselves.  It struck him as curious
that the mercenaries had felt the need to fortify their town so heavily this
far from the borders.

He liked the look, though.  The walls in Spirratta
were formidable, true enough, but he felt the people within had forgotten why
the barriers existed in the first place.  These walls suggested the men who
built and manned them were well aware of their purpose.  No one in Kingshome
would allow the city folk’s complacency to rule their actions.

What caught him off guard lay outside the town. 
Beyond the cleared area, an entirely separate city of tents and campsites
sprouted in mushroom-like clusters.  Too many to count, there must be over a
hundred various sized tents pitched outside the walls, and twice that number of
solitary bedrolls beside stone fire rings.  Kingshome appeared to be under
siege by a marauding ragtag army.  He watched men in a stunning array of armor
from shining breastplates to rusty mail sit at private fires while mending
travel gear.

Maddock addressed Marik.  “We are going to find the
organizers and register ourselves.  Come and find us after you’ve begun your
foray.”

Blinking, feeling two steps behind the others, Marik
asked, “Register?  You mean all these,” he gestured at the tents surrounding
them, “are applicants for the band?”

“Right-o in one-o,
lad-o
!  What did you think
they were?”

Marik clamped his mouth shut.  Chatham always found a
way to turn any response back on him.

“We will set our camp in this madness.  As I said,
feel free to find us later.  Until then, my young friend.”  Like mist in a
fresh breeze, they vanished into the surrounding encampment.

He suddenly stood alone for the first time since
leaving Tattersfield.  Its abruptness, the lack of a strong farewell between
friends, left his emotions swaying.  Then again, they expected him to rejoin
them later, so a farewell would be premature.  Maddock most likely believed
Marik should take these first real steps on his journey alone without anyone
holding his hand, taking the brunt of the real experience.  That felt like the
axeman’s style.

So that only left actually doing what he had come to
do.  Easy, right?  The long journey of nearly a month had finally brought him to
the first marker on his search’s path.  He doubted very much that his father
would still be here, but there must be information that could help him follow
the years-old trail.  Of that, he felt a burning certainty.  Why he felt that
so strongly, he did not know, except that there must be at least one person who
could point him toward his next destination.  There
must
be!

He resolutely walked uphill to meet the gate guards.

*        *        *        *        *

The guards, who eschewed dressing in a specific
uniform like their counterparts in Spirratta, hardly seemed to be guarding
anything.  Their stances were easy where they leaned against the wooden gates. 
Except Marik could see how they kept a constant eye on the gathering outside
their walls.  And how their hands, no matter what else they might be doing,
never strayed far from their weapons.  They struck him not so much as
thoughtless at their duties as confident they could handle any trouble that
arose; a confidence springing from experience rather than their equipment’s weight. 
Also unlike the guards in Spirratta.

These were real fighters.  Marik liked the air of
competent confidence about them, though he mentally prepared to deal with a
tougher opponent.  He reflected that, his own predilections toward making the
most of his skills aside, everywhere in the world he would find men who were
strong and confident and those who, while not exactly weak, were less so than
others.  From this observation struck a thought.  Wasn’t such a line of
thinking unbearably arrogant considering his own blade skills were still paltry
next to Chatham’s?  Probably they were less than most of the men here as well.

He forced these distractions away when he drew nearer
the men.  They had watched him closely for the last hundred feet.  While he
cleared his mind he realized he had not the faintest idea what to say.  It was
unlikely the guards would possess knowledge concerning his father’s fate and
would probably order him away.  Still, suddenly fleeing for no apparent reason
would look suspicious.  He plowed forward until he stood before the nearest
guard, a rather ordinary looking man.  Instead of wearing a sword or holding a
halberd, he sported a bow nearly as tall as himself with a quiver strapped to
his back.  In his peripheral vision, Marik could see a guard wearing a blade
sidle unobtrusively closer.  If Marik started trouble, the guards clearly
wanted a man equipped for close-in work nearby.

Marik fumbled to craft his first question when the
bowman took the initiative.  “If you’re looking to join up, there’s a company
of clerks down in that field tent who’ll fill you in on the score.”

“Uh, no.  Actually I came here looking for a man.”  He
did his best to look like an honest person with important business that needed
tending to.

“Someone joining up?  The clerks down there can help
you with all that.”  The bowman repeated his gesture toward the tents.

“No, not one of them,” Marik said, already feeling
that the conversation had been lost before it had fairly begun.  These men
wanted to redirect any hassles and were about to send him packing.  He may as
well spit it all out.  “He was a member of the Crimson Kings a few years ago. 
I was hoping someone here might give me information about what happened while
he was with the band and when he left it.”

The man with the bow frowned.  He studied Marik anew,
his thoughts hidden behind a furled brow.  “You don’t look like any debt
collector
I’ve
ever run across.”

“No, not at al—”

“
And
you don’t look like a magistrate either.”

“I’m trying to find my father!”  If he had been hoping
the man’s features would soften, the archer’s response quickly dissuaded him of
the notion.

“Your daddy, huh?  Run out and left your mamma with a
pile of debts and a brat in the belly did he?”

Having to talk his way around stubborn guards doing
their job was one thing but that comment quickly made Marik lose his temper. 
“Not every mercenary is a deadbeat, but I guess knowing who my father is puts
me a step ahead of most around here!”

That obviously rankled the guards.  Their shift in
body language said it clearly.  He had been unable to control his tongue,
having spent too much time around Chatham.

Surprisingly, the man he had directed the comment at
kept his cool.  Only a slight upturn in the mouth altered his expression.  This
was a man anticipating a scene he knows will be amusing.  “You’re either
stronger than you look…or even younger than you seem.  If I was in your place
right now, I’d be a-turning and walking away before these
deadbeats
around you start beating.”

Marik would not argue that point, yet felt less
inclined to turn tail and scamper.  He surely had screwed up and blown it in
record time.  And yet, the need to find a justifiable reason for his departure,
other than weakness, was strong.  “How long have those clerks down there been
with the band?”

The bowman’s amused smirk twitched further upward. 
Marik could tell he knew what the younger man was about.  “Old Janus in
charge’s been around since the twelfth god still had a name.”

“Then I think I will inquire down there after all.” 
He left the guards, shoulders set, fighting hard to walk at a normal pace.

*        *        *        *        *

From the elevated view near the gates, Marik thought
he could easily find the large command tent currently housing the Crimson
Kings’ clerical staff.  Once down within the tent city, he discovered
otherwise.  The camps for the men hoping to enter the band were as varied as
the men themselves.  Walking among them was akin to visiting the traveling
acrobat caravans that had stopped over in Tattersfield at times.

He marveled at what he saw while he wandered through
their midst.  Could this many people truly want to join the band?  Would the
band take all these men?  If not, then how would they go about selecting who
they wanted from this lot?  Many of these fighters looked as though they would
take rejection rather badly.

And where was that blasted command tent?  Being so
much larger than the others it should be easy to locate, yet it evaded his
search.  Marik switched objectives and sought the road on the assumption it
would be nearby so the applicants could find it as they arrived.

Instead, he found a clerk returning from the town
after completing a task or perhaps coming to replace one of the others.  Marik
followed him down the hill to find the clerk’s command center close to the
road, as he had figured.  He also saw why he’d had trouble finding it.

From the hill’s crown, the tent’s size obviously
dwarfed its neighbors.  Marik had started his search intending to find the
largest tent in the field, except larger was not the same as taller.  Looking
for the tallest tent had availed him nothing.  Presumably this design hindered
any enemies seeking to destroy the commanding officers during battle.

The command tent stretched broader than any three
others combined while barely being taller than his own head.  With the entrance
flaps tied back it looked like a portable cave.  Inside he saw desks crammed
together and several large, rectangular metal boxes, similar to the travel
lockers many merchants used to store their documents.  Outside, a large awning
mounted on poles formed a pavilion under which sat more desks staffed by five
busy clerks, each either writing on paper or chasing scrolls rolling from the
slanting surfaces.  They wore matching garb, consisting of gray tunics over
equally gray coarse breeches.  A tie-button vest completed the picture, leaving
no doubt as to their profession.

Only one clerk had his vest tied shut, a nearly bald
man who wandered from clerk to clerk in the manner of an overbearing craft
master supervising his apprentices.  This could only be Janus, the clerk he had
come searching for.  He kept moving, which left Marik no opening to ask his
questions.  Besides, there were several other men ahead in line who were being
registered for whatever selection processes would separate the hopefuls from
those worthy to enter the mercenary band.

The old man who was probably the head clerk kept
moving.  Marik watched him, thinking as he did so.  He had approached the
guards without any forethought or planning with only the vague notion of
adapting to circumstances while they played out.  This time he wanted to have a
better notion of where he would place his feet before he took the first step. 
But as whenever he had contemplated his meetings with these mercenaries before,
his mind remained blank.  Without knowing how the conversation would start, his
mind stubbornly refused to entertain possibilities.  What did it matter anyway,
if he could not get near enough to Janus to speak with him?

Then luck, it seemed, chose to shine on him after the
gate fiasco.  During his continued mental debate, the old man circled the
command tent’s corner away from the crowd.  There, a table held water canteens
along with several scratched and dented metal cups.  Marik followed.  He spoke
firmly as the balding man poured a cupful.

“Are you Clerk Janus?”

The aged man turned, the cup in his hands.  “That’s
Head
Clerk Janus, thank you, and who are you, boy?”

He hated being called boy, but wanted to foster a
positive relationship with the old man.  Marik held his tongue on the matter,
ready to bite it in two if it threatened to run thoughtlessly away again.  “The
guards at the gate told me to find you.” 
Well, that’s close to the truth.

“See the others at the desk to register for the entrance
trials.  They’re perfectly capable.”

He started back for the desks.  Marik rushed ahead. 
“No, I was told you could tell me about a man who used to be part of the band. 
I need to find him.”