"We'll board ships in the morning. They'll ferry us to Dunno Scuttari. We'll transfer to river boats there. We'll off-load somewhere in eastern Altea and play hit-and-run.
"Gentlemen, we're the best warriors in the world. But this time I think somebody is a little too sure of us. Break it to your men gently."
Sanguinet entertained only a few questions. He did not have any answers.
Reskird had ended his sulk in the taverns and whorehouses of the city. He was his old self. "You look like death on a stick," he told Bragi. "What's up?"
"They're shipping us to the Lesser Kingdoms."
"Huh?"
"Altea, specifically. On our own. You'd better hope that Sanguinet is as good a captain as he was a sergeant."
Haaken had no comment. He just shook his head gloomily.
Chapter Six:
THE WANDERER
The fat youth's arms and legs pistoned wildly. He had done it again. The boys behind him had never heard of the concept mercy.
His donkey, for once, was cooperative. She trotted beside him, eyes rolling forlornly, as if to ask if he would ever learn his lesson. He was headed for an early bout with cut-throat-itis, an often fatal disease.
He was on a downhill slide, this Mocker. The town he was leaving was called Lieneke. It was hardly more than a village. A chance aggregation of bumpkins. And even they had caught on to his cheating.
A fragment of the message had begun to penetrate his brain. He was going to have to do things differently from now on. Assuming he got away this time.
The boys of Lieneke were a determined, persistent lot, but they did not have enough at stake. Fat and lazy though he was, Mocker had stamina. He kept windmilling till they gave up the chase.
He did not go on any farther than it took to get out of sight. Then he collapsed by the roadside and did not move for two days.
He did some hard thinking during that time, and finally convinced himself that he did not have what it took to cheat his way through life.
But what else could he do? His only skills were those he had learned from Sajac and his ilk.
He ought to find a patron, he thought. Somebody stupid but buried in inherited wealth. He smiled wryly, then steeled himself for a serious effort to avoid games of chance and outright thefts.
His visible profession was socially acceptable. Sure, he obtained money under false pretenses, but his customers were fooling themselves. The popular attitude was a tolerantcaveat emptor. People gullible enough to buy his crazy advice and noxious beauty aids deserved whatever they got.
He finally moved on when a combination of hunger and fear caught up with him. The passage of a party of knights caused the fear.
He had encountered a similar band near Vorgreberg several weeks earlier. The men-at-arms had beaten him simply because he was a foreigner. He had not accepted his beating graciously, and that had not helped. He was a wicked little fighter when cornered. He had hurt several of them badly. They might have killed him had a knight not interceded.
Kavelin was a state typical of the Lesser Kingdoms. Those minor principalities were a crazy hodge-podge where social chaos was the norm. They were lands of weak kings, strong barons, and byzantine politics. National boundaries seldom defined or confined loyalties, alliances, or conspiracies. Wars between nobles were everyday occurrences. Uncontrolled sub-infeudation had reached illogical extremes. The robber baron was an endemic social disease. The blank-shield highwayman-knight was a neighborhood character.
It was the sort of region for which a Mocker was made.
Western Kavelin was in confusion at the moment. The barons there were at one another's throats. Their little armies were plundering the innocent far more often than battling one another. A lot of loot was floating around.
Mocker decided that Damhorst, which appeared to be an islet of peace amidst all the excitement, was the perfect place to launch his abbreviated career.
Damhorst was a town of ten thousand, prosperous, quiet, and pleasant. The grim old castle perched on a crag above the town was intimidating enough to compel good behavior. Baron Breitbarth had a cruel reputation with wrongdoers.
Damhorst's prosperity was in part due to the fact that bands of soldiers from the fighting came there to dispose of their plunder, receiving ridiculously low prices.
A representative cross-section of Mocker's peers had located themselves around the town square. The fat youth moved in and fit in. Even his coloring and accent were unremarkable.
The fates immediately tried his resolve. His traditional pitch was not geared to milking soldiers looking for escape from yesterday and tomorrow. His forte was conning vain women. But the ladies he encountered there were mostly world-wise women of doubtful repute. They did not need his wares to help sell what his usual customers had trouble giving away.
But the fates occasionally relent. And sometimes they try to make amends for dealing out a lifetime of dirty tricks by yielding one golden opportunity.
It was a pleasant day. Mocker had to admit that Kavelin was pleasant most of the time. Politics were the true foul climate plaguing the little kingdom.
The leaves had begun to turn. He found them a great amazement. There were few trees in the lands from which he hailed. The swirls and bursts of color in Kavelin's forests made him wish he were a painter, so that he could capture their fleeting beauty for all time.
It was a warm and listless day. He sat on his mat, amidst his props, and regarded his world with no more than half an eye. Not even the fact that he hadn't a copper daunted him. He was at peace with, and one with, his universe. He was caught in one of those all too rare moments of perfectly harmonious rightness.
Then he saw her.
She was beautiful. Young and pretty and filled with sorrow. And lost. She meandered around the square dazedly, as if she had nowhere to go and had forgotten how to get there. She seemed frail and completely vulnerable.
Mocker felt the touch of a strange emotion. It might have been compassion. He could not have named it himself. The concept was alien.
Nevertheless, the emotion was there and he responded. When her random wandering brought her near he queried softly, "Lady?"
She glanced his way and saw a pair of hand puppets flanking a round brown face. The right hand puppet bowed graciously.
The other whistled.
The first barked, "Manners, Polo, you churl!" and zipped over to wallop the whistler. "Behave before lady of quality."
Mocker winked over his forearm. He wore a thin little smile.
She was younger than he had guessed at first. Not more than eighteen.
The first puppet bowed again and said, "Self, beg thousand pardons, noble lady. Peasant Polo was born in barn and raised by tomcat of more than usual lack of couth or morals." He took a few more whacks at the other puppet. "Barbarian."
When the first puppet returned to Mocker's right, Polo whistled again. The first moaned, "Hai! What can be done with savage like that? Want to slap manners into same?"
She smiled. "I think he's kind of cute."
Polo did a shy routine while the first puppet cried in bewilderment, "Woe! Will never civilize same when beautiful lady rewards crudeness with heart-stopping smile."
"You're new here, aren't you?" The girl directed the question to Mocker.
"Came to town three days passing, lately from east, beyond Mountains of M'Hand."
"So far! I've never even been to Vorgreberg. I thought when I married Wulf.... But it's silly to worry about might-have-beens, isn't it?"
"Assuredly. Tomorrow too full of just-could-be to chase might-have-been lost in yesterday."
First Puppet hid behind his little arms. "You hear that, Polo? Big guy is spouting philosophical nonsense again."
"Will make first class fertilizer when spread on cabbage patch, Tubal," Polo replied. "We ignore him, eh? Hey, lady, you hear joke about priest and magic staff?"
Tubal sputtered. "Polo, peasant like you would disgust devil himself. Behave. Or I a
sk big guy to feed you to skull."
"Skull ain't biting," said a third voice as Mocker cast his into the prop's mouth. "On diet. Have to lose weight."
Mocker himself said, "Being mere street mummer, have no right to pry. But self sense great despair in lady and am saddened. Day is too fair for grief."
"Oh. My husband... Sir Wulf Heerboth. He died last night. I didn't sleep at all."
Tubal and Polo exchanged glances. They turned to peer at Mocker. He shrugged. He was at a loss. "Is great pity one so fair should be widowed so young."
"We had such precious little time... What am I saying? I'm almost glad. He was a beast. My father arranged the marriage. It was two years of torment, that's what it was. Now I'm free of that."
Mocker began to see the parameters. In part she was grieving because she was supposed to, in part feeling guilty for feeling released, and in part feeling insecure in the face of a future without a protector.
"Beautiful lady like you, knight's lady... Noblemen will come swarming when mourning period elapses. Self, guarantee it. Certain as self is magus primus of Occlidian Circle. Be not afraid, lady. And be not ashamed for glad feelings for freedom from slavery to wicked husband. Never, never make self into what family and friends expect. Is road to misery absolute. Self, speak from certain knowledge."
"Oh-oh," said Polo. "Here we go. Tall tale time."
"That seems like awfully deep thinking for someone your age."
Mocker doubted that she was more than a year older than he, but he did not protest.
Tubal replied, "Big guy was born in hole in ground. Deep hole."
The girl smiled. "Well... "
"Is deep subject, too. Of varying depth. In Shoustal-Wotka... "
"What's your name, mummer?"
He could not generate one on the spur of the moment, so confessed, "Self, am ashamed. Don't know. Call self Mocker in own mind."
"What about your parents?"
"Never knew same."
"You were an orphan?"
He shrugged. He did not think so. He liked to believe that Sajac had carried him off out of spite for his parents, that even now they were looking for him. He might be a missing prince, or the lost son of a great mercantile house. "Maybeso."
"That's awful. Don't you have anybody?"
"Old man, once. Travelled with same for while. He died."
A tiny fraction of his mind kept telling him that he was getting himself into trouble. There were two kinds of people in his world: marks, and people he left alone because they could stir more trouble than he could handle. This woman fit neither category neatly. That made her doubly dangerous. He did not know which way to jump.
"That's sad," she said. "My father is still alive, and that's kind of sad too. I just know he's going to try to get his hands on everything Wulf left me."
Ping!went a little something in the back of Mocker's mind. "This father... Same is superstitious? Self, being most skilled of tricksters... "
"I couldn't do anything to my own father! Even if he did marry me off hoping Wulf would get himself killed. It wouldn't be right... "
Tubal interrupted. "Was remark made, not too long passing, to effect don't allow friends and family to run life. Big guy was close to truth."
"You don't know my father."
"Truth told," Mocker replied. "And same does not know portly purveyor of punditries. So. Things equal to same thing are equal. Something like that. Hai! Lady. Self, being easily embarrassed, cannot forever call conversant `beautiful lady.' Same must have name."
"Oh. Yes. Kirsten. Kirsten Heerboth."
"Kirsten. Has beautiful ring. Like carillon. Appropriate. Kirsten, we make deal, maybeso? For small emolument, self, being mighty engineer, will undertake to prevent predations of pestilential parent. Also rapacities of others of same ilk. Am easily satisfied, being wanderer mainly interested in visiting foreign lands, needing only bed and board. Would be willing to begin with latter."
"I don't know... It doesn't seem... Are you really hungry?"
"Hungry?" Polo said. "Big guy is putting eye on horse across square, same being prizest mount of Chief Justiciar of Damhorst."
"Well, come along then. I don't guess it'll hurt to give you dinner. But you'll have to promise me something."
Mocker sighed, "Same being?"
"Let Polo tell me about the priest and the magic staff."
"Disgusting!" Tubal growled as Mocker stuffed him into his travelling kit. "Absolutely shocking," the puppet muttered from inside.
Mocker grinned.
Kirsten maintained a small townhouse on the edge of Damhorst, in the shadow of Baron Breitbarth's grim old castle. An elderly maid-cook constituted her staff. Sir Wulf had been one of those highwayman-knights, and only marginally successful. He had left Kirsten the house, one gold trade noble, and a small leather bag of jewels she had found inside his shirt after he died in her arms. The gold would carry her a month or two, and the jewels several years more, but she was hardly fixed for life.
Mocker reiterated his remark to the effect that her beauty was her fortune.
The visit for a meal turned into a month-long stay. Daily, Mocker would spread his mat in the square-he insisted that he had his pride-and would pursue his routines. Sometimes he was successful. People enjoyed the entertainment portions of his spiel. More often than not, Kirsten would come and watch. He seemed to have an infinite store of blarney.
Evenings he amused her with tales from the east. She was particularly fond of Tubal and Polo, who were famous puppet-show characters east of the Mountains of M'Hand. The contest of city-slicker with simple farm boy seemed to have a universal appeal. The traditional plays were all adaptable to rural or urban audiences.
Time, proximity, and loneliness worked their devious magics. Mocker and Kirsten became more than accomplices, then more than friends.
Handling Kirsten's father took little imagination. Mocker used earnings from the square to pay a couple of thugs to escort the man out of town. He had no trouble understanding the message in his lumps and bruises. He kept travelling.
Kirsten never learned about that, of course. She remained amazed that the old man had paid but the one friendly visit.
Mocker began to feel vaguely lost. He had had plans. Nebulous things, to be sure, but they had been plans. They were going by the board because of a chance-met woman.
He had become involved with a human being on more than an adversary or use level. He did not know how to handle it. Nothing like it had ever happened before.
The deeper he got, the more uncomfortable he became.
He almost panicked the day Kirsten mentioned that she had been to see a priest, and that the priest wanted to see him too. He barely restrained himself from flight.
A few days afterward Kirsten swore, "Damn! Do you have any money on you? Mine's gone."
He lied, shaking his head. "Has been abominable week. Autumn rains. Getting too cold, too muddy."
"I guess it means selling the jewels. I talked to Tolvar last week. The goldsmith on the High Street. He said he'd make me a good price. Why don't you run them over and see what he'll offer?"
"Self? By night? In town thick with rogues and thieves?" His heart hammered. He could not picture himself lasting five minutes with a fortune like that on him.
His world-view crippled him. He saw in everyone the thief he was himself.
"You can handle yourself, darling. I've seen you. Besides, who would know that you're carrying them?"
"Everybodys. Self, being nervous, would worry out loud... "
"Don't be silly." She shoved the leather bag into his pudgy hands. "Go on. Or we won't have anything to eat tomorrow."
He went. His intentions were honorable. Kirsten was his first love. Temptation did not bite him till he entered the High Street itself.
He froze.
He thought about everything jewels could buy. About Kirsten and an imminent visit to a priest. About opportunities in games of chance opened by unlimited betting
funds. About that damned priest...
He panicked. This time he did run.
He did not realize that he had left his donkey and props till he was over the border into the kingdom of Altea.
By then it was too late. He could not go back. He had damned himself with Kirsten forever.
It hurt. A lot. For weeks the pain kept him contained within himself, and out of trouble.
But the ache just would not go away. He began drinking to deaden it. And in Alperin, a small town in southern Altea, while drunk, he wandered into a dice game.
His luck was terrible. His mental state contributed nothing to intelligent betting. Before they let him go he was broke again, having retained just enough common sense to have earlier re-equipped himself with the tools of his dubious trade.
The exigencies of surviving an Altean winter banished Kirsten from his thoughts. He had no time for her. She fled him forever.
With her went his proud resolutions about gambling and thieving.
He ceased giving a damn about tomorrow. His future looked too bleak. He could no longer scrutinize it. And the less he cared, the bleaker it became.
He had fallen into a paradoxical trap. Though filled with a lust for life and learning, he was systematically eradicating tomorrows with wine and stupid crimes.
Tamerice lay south of Altea, a long snake of a kingdom squished between the Kapenrung Mountains and the Altean frontier. Mocker drifted into Tamerice with spring. His successes had been just frequent enough to keep body and soul together. His weight had declined. He had developed a shakiness which occasionally betrayed him when he tried one of his more complicated tricks.
He drew his best response when he stooped to entertaining. Tamericians enjoyed the Tubal and Polo plays. But a false pride or unconscious death wish drove him. He performed only when gnawing hunger compelled it.
He reached the town of Raemdouck the day after a carnival had arrived, and spread his mat beside the road the Raemdouckers followed to the field where the carnival had raised its tents. A pre-selected traffic helped him marginally.