The chatter stopped, and every head turned to Mogrus Un’Akuhl. Captain Mallock squinted and pushed himself roughly between Bandrell and Borden to approach the maven.
“If you can guide us, then why did I throw silver at the Vagrants. Why do I now have to report back to them that their Wayfinder is dead?” His tone was dire.
“Because I am no Wayfinder, Mallock. I am not saying that I can blaze a trail through this shiftland as a Vagrant would. Few are the mavens who could, and I not among them,” Mogrus sneered, “Alas… I’ll do what I can, which is more than what all of you together can’t, so smother yourself, Mallock.”
The Captain stared at Mogrus in stunned silence. His glare began to waver and then collapsed into resignation. Mogrus looked to Vhaasa standing back from the circle of seasoned venturers and their argument.
“The map, rook.” Mogrus said.
Vhaasa took it from his shirt and tossed it to the maven who snatched the leather case from the air and prised off the cap with his crooked teeth. Unfurling the map before him on the ground, he growled at Mallock, “Hold that side down…” then, just audible, “Miserable sellsword.”
Grimacing, Mallock did as he was told, the others stepping back as Vhaasa stepped forward to peer at the map that up to now had been the sole property of Nith. There were two major points marked, one that he recognized as the squat dome sigil of Uhl’iir, and the other marked with a circumpunct. The path between was a series of crosshatched markings, dots circled on some of their intersections, crossed out at others, describing a route far more erratic than the march Vhaasa recalled. Notations were scribbled all across the margins, next to the intersections of the hatchmark grid, all in an unrecognizable script.
Mogrus took out a string of counting beads and set to some arcane calculation, marking the dirt next to him occasionally like a tactician. The others stood watching, transfixed, some with prayers on their cracked lips, still sweating and nursing their wounds. The maven snapped at Mallock whenever the captain let the map roll or shift, and the thugs exchanged looks. Bandrell glared at Mogrus with obvious distaste, and gradually that regard came to include the captain as well. The blue-green nightmare of dusk began descending across the Barrens. Stars danced into view behind the growing darkness.
Vhaasa and Ghetti collected the porous yellow stones that, when piled just so, would burn about as well as coal and the two of them set a fire near where Mogrus sat. The old teamster set to cooking a meal from his packs and the carcass of a dead iryx, and gradually the cohort settled in around the fire, casting nervous glances at the captain and the maven. Bandrell and Russk whispered to one side of the fire, while Oodo and Borden stared sullenly. Ghetti and Vhaasa watched Mogrus figuring in his head, scratching at the dry earth.
Toward midnight, Mogrus rolled up the map and came to sit at the fire.
“I think we’ll be coming up on Neph’s Chasm sometime tomorrow or the next day. It’s no safer to go back than it is to keep going. I don’t want to hear a single one of you ever even suggest that I told you I was sure this would work. I’m no Wayfinder. The Vagrant notations are very difficult to read, so when I say that I think we’ll come to the chasm tomorrow, it’s an educated guess, you ken?”
Several around the fire nodded. Vhaasa gathered up his courage to speak,
“Are we still on the track, Mogrus?”
“I can’t be sure…“ the old maven glanced down at the mapcase in his hand, “Nith’s notations got pretty tilted after the shiftstorm. I think he was still trying to figure out where we were while we were on the march today.”
Russk started to speak, “So, we’re –“
“On the rotting march again tomorrow,” Mogrus said.
Bandrell grimaced and spat into the sulfurous fire, lifted his head to watch the stars whirling above, radiating disgust and frustration. Off to the side, Mallock was repacking his kit, oiling and honing his longsword in the edge of the firelight.
“Think they’ll bulk up our shares after we lost so many?” Bandrell asked.
Vhaasa looked up at him, wondering how the man could be so callous. He tossed a few more of the yellowed stones into the fire, eliciting a dull clacking noise. There was silence around the fire for a time.
“Wha’sis name, the eunuch. He’ll prob’ly take it all hisself,” Borden said.
“Neliphus. Ain’t no eunuch, either. Jus’ acts like one. Dresses up like, and all that food,” Oodo said.
“Aye, him. How you know he ain’t no eunuch, Oodo? You check under his silk dresses?”
“Sure, Borden. I checked. Found your da’s chin under there, he had –“
Captain Mallock’s boot connected behind Oodo’s jaw, knocking the seated thug sideways almost into the fire. Borden started to laugh but choked it back as he found the point of the captain’s longsword pressed behind his ear.
“You boys are done with your lover’s spat, right?” Mallock asked flatly.
Oodo was righting himself, shaking sand out of his hardened leather cuirass, while Borden’s eyes swiveled up to watch the Captain’s sword hand, keeping the rest of his body perfectly still.
“I asked you two a perfectly simple question,” Mallock said.
“Aye, Mallock. I’m done,” Oodo said.
Borden swallowed carefully, “Aye,” he said.
Captain Mallock swiftly sheathed his sword, hunkered on the earth between the two men. He looked over to Vhaasa.
“You got tagged pretty good, boy,” he said.
Vhaasa looked around, confused. Patted his chest and sides as if looking for his tinderbox. Mallock feigned wiping the side of his face. Vhaasa rubbed at his own, a brownish crust sloughing from his right cheek. The pain rolled in all at once, and Mogrus was handing him a signal mirror of polished bronze. As Vhaasa checked his reflection to survey the damage to his face, Mallock was speaking,
“Don’t fret yourself stupid, rook. Face wounds bleed bad, but you look to have pulled through.”
Bandrell chuckled, earning himself a glare from his captain. Vhaasa was still trying to put together how he’d been wounded. The laceration crossed under his right eye, bit into the cartilage of his nostril, tearing a vent on that side of his nose. Dried blood masked his face. It must have been from that jackal that’d launched itself past his face, but he’d never felt it connect. Ghetti approached with a makeshift bandage kit, his eyes gentle, hands held out in a placatory gesture. Vhaasa nodded and the old man set to cleaning the wound, packing it with gauze that smelled of leather and iryx wool.
Russk had been watching the dressing of Vhaasa’s wound. Now he looked around the group again, particularly to Bandrell.
“Neliphus, right. I ‘member him. What about what Bandrell asked? Are we gettin’ more of a share now or ain’t we? Was seventeen of us. Now eight, so we get about twice so much as we would’a, right?”
“Russk?” Bandrell asked.
“Yea?”
“Where’d you learn to figure?”
“Gaol,” Russk answered.
There was silence for a moment, followed by a low murmur of laughter around the fire.
“So, what about it, Mallock?” Bandrell asked.
“Neliphus and Iiatro were not especially clear on the division of shares,” Mallock said, “Mogrus?”
The maven looked up from the fire, his gaze flicking about the cohort for a moment before he seemed to grasp the question.
“I suppose the shares are likely to be larger. The Potentates did not seem to care much for the treasure in general. There was but a small class of objects in which they took interest, that they believed would be found in the cache we seek,” Mogrus said.
“So it ain’t jus’ big shares for them Potentates and littler ones for us? They got, like, a special treasure?” Oodo asked.
“That’s about the measure of it, Oodo,” Mogrus looked distant, “Assuming the treasure they’re looking for is there,”
“Long as we can split up the rest o’ the loot pretty-as-we-please, I can live w
ith it. Got me a retirement to plan for,” Bandrell said.
“You all don’t plan on docking a poor man for three dead iryx in that jackal-scrap back there, do you?” Ghetti’s voice was a low rumble.
Captain Mallock met the teamster’s eyes for a long moment before answering, “No, Ghetti. I don’t think we will.”
“Right then. Time to get my bad dreams over with for the night, I should think,” Ghetti said, and went off to unroll his blankets on the ground beyond the firelight.
“Neliphus I remember, but who’s Iiatro?” Vhaasa asked.
“Our second patron,” Mallock answered.
“Oh.”
“Wha’sis deal, then? Iiatro?” Borden asked.
Mallock shrugged, began to roll up a mixture of garam tea and blightleaf in a reed-gum paper. He lit the smoke on one of the yellow stones that had tumbled out of the fire and took a long, slow pull.
Mogrus spoke, “He’s some sort of broker in cultic influence. A priest, I suppose. Not sure what god or godling he’s pledged to, but my guess would be coin.”
The maven snapped his fingers, made an impatient gesture toward Mallock, and the Captain handed him the burning twist-up. Mogrus pulled smoke into his mouth, inhaled through his nose. More silence. No one other than Ghetti seemed willing to venture sleep just yet. The halting conversation continued.
Finally, Vhaasa asked, “What kind of treasure was it they were wanting?”
“Some cultic baubles. The gold of some god or other from one of the Uhl’iiri temples. Said a priesthood or two had been out here a couple centuries ago and they didn’t make it back home,” Mogrus said.
“So, anything didn’t come from a temple is ours?”
“Nice and neat, rook. Sounds a fair enough deal. Most of the high-and-mighties don’t tend to offer much of a square deal to venturers. Assume we’ll pinch what we want, anyway, so they pay on the low end and let us figure it out,” Mogrus answered.
“Guess so,” Vhaasa said.
Mogrus was suddenly frustrated, tossed the smoke to land at Mallock’s feet. He started brushing irritably at his belled right sleeve, “This jackal blood smells like rot and piss. Had nothing but gravel in my sleeves since we got out on the Barrens. Temperature never even fucking changes…”
He tore at the sleeve, stopped to pull his kit knife and then cut into the coal black sackcloth at the shoulder. Sticking the knife in the ground, he ripped the sleeve clean off his arm, tossed it on the ground beside him. Vhaasa recalled the fragmented scene from the fight with the jackals then; Mogrus slowly walking toward one of the wights, his left hand held out in a strange gesture, moving sinuously. Vhaasa had been distracted by the melee then, and when he had turned his gaze back on the maven, he was walking away from the jackal’s corpse, it’s head a pulped mess.
“What kind of Art did you use to kill that jackal anyway, Mogrus?” Vhaasa asked, squinting in curiosity.
Mogrus grumbled and scoured jackal blood from his bare right arm with a handful of gritty soil, too agitated to acknowledge the question. Oodo answered for the maven,
“Mogrus hit him wit’ a rock-hammer.”
Ghetti cackled from his bedroll out in the dark, began coughing. Borden and Russk laughed too. Vhaasa tried to picture it again. Had he seen a hammer in Mogrus’ hand? Could the maven have had it concealed behind him? Probably.
“A rock-hammer,” Vhaasa breathed, “huh.”
“Thing feels damned odd with one sleeve,” Mogrus said, picking up the knife and going to work on the cassock’s left sleeve. He dropped it on top of the other when he’d finished.
“But Mogrus… How’re folk gonna know you for a sorceror with no sleeves?” Oodo asked, genuine concern on his face.
Mogrus, open-jawed, faced the hireling. The maven looked around in the dark behind him theatrically, as if searching for the “folk” Oodo referred to. He turned back to Oodo and shrugged elaborately, at a loss for words. Mallock doubled over in laughter, unable to stop. It was contagious, out in the dark on the edge of the world, and soon the whole cohort was swept up in gales of raucous mirth.
“…no sleeves!” Mallock wheezed between gasps for breath.
* * * * *