Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (6 page)

Barryn jumped to his feet and turned to flee, but his strength gave out and he fell a yard away from the man.
 

“No need to run, unless you’re afraid of a tinker and his ponies,” the man said, offering Barryn a hand up. “My name is Dub. What brings you out here with nothing but a fine barbarian short bow and tattered cloak?”

Barryn accepted the man’s hand and stood on quivering legs. He was too weak and hungry to think of a lie, or even a reason to. “My name is Barryn. I have been exiled from my clan.”

Dub raised his eyebrows when he heard the boy’s deep Caeldrynn accent. “Well, Barryn, you are safe from the pursuing barbarian hordes. We are less than a day’s hard ride from Greystone Keep, and we will soon be in heavily patrolled territory. It’s good that I found you, in fact, before the patrols caught you. They’d have you in irons before you knew what happened, wandering alone with no good explanation for yourself.”
 

Dub rummaged around in his wagon. It looked like a little house on wheels with a curved roof and pots, tools, and buckets hanging off the sides at crazy angles. At one time it had been painted in bold, festive colors, but the elements had bitten hard into the wagon and made it as shabby as an old barn. Dub pulled out iron cooking ware and two small wooden crates. “This is as good a place as any for an early supper,” he said.
 

Soon, the tinker had a tiny cooking fire raging under an iron tripod suspending a kettle of water. Barryn and Dub drank tea while the fire died down to ruddy coals. Just the smell of the smoke made the starving boy’s mouth water. As the fire died down to coals, Dub placed a cutting board on the tail gate of the wagon and minced a several links of dry sausage and drew a flagon of ale from a small barrel. He tossed the minced sausage into a three-legged iron cooking pan, poured in a measure of the ale, and stirred half a dozen eggs into the hash before setting it in the coals. When the meal was through cooking, Dub had to dole it out in small portions so Barryn would not make himself sick wolfing it down.
 

After a few days of traveling and eating with Dub, Barryn’s strength returned. He helped the tinker as best he could in return for the food and second-hand shirt and breeches—castle dweller clothes!—that Dub insisted he wear as they traveled through the strange lands. He watered and grazed the ponies every evening when they made camp and fetched tools and wares when the tinker stopped at farms and villages to ply his trade.
 

Barryn also roved the meadows and heaths hunting rabbits with his throwing stick. Thus, Dub cooked rabbit every day or two and traded the hides as they went.
 

The tinker asked Barryn few questions about his home or the circumstances leading to his flight from the Caeldrynn, but answered the multitude of questions Barryn asked. They were, Dub explained, nearing the heart of Brynn Province, ruled by Lady Drucilla of the Waters. It was one of six provinces of the Mergovan Empire.
 

“And I use the term ‘empire’ loosely,” Dub explained one day as he let Barryn try his hand at steering the wagon. “Emperor Mithrandrates controls only the province of Mergova and the growing highway network between the provincial capitals. The provinces—‘dominions,’ they call themselves with straight faces, if you can believe it—run absolutely amok, waging incessant wars between and among each other. It’s bad for business, unless you’re a sutler following an army.”

Barryn was all too familiar with Brynn, but Clan Riverstar had no dealings with the other provinces. The Sea Clans sailed widely along the coasts and rivers of the Empire, but they seldom crossed the mountains to share their goods and stories with Barryn’s former clan. He did not know the names of the other provinces and had no idea that they warred with each other. In his mind, the Castle Dwellers were a great, monolithic whole menacing the Caeldrynn’s borders.
 

“Is that why the tax collectors seldom come to steal our money? Because they’re busy fighting each other?” Barryn asked. That question would have been close to sacrilege where he came from. The answer, according to his former brethren, was the Caeldrynn were too mighty to be defeated by fat, lazy Castle Dwellers who usually knew better than to challenge the mighty clans.

“That is exactly right. But if just two of the provinces could join forces for longer than a year, they could push your heathen tribes into the sea,” Dub said. “Three of them could take Mergova and overthrow the Emperor.”
 

Dub fell silent as six men-at-arms in half-plate armor rounded the bend ahead and trotted past the wagon. Barryn looked at them with a twinge of fear and admiration. The riders’ sallets swept back gracefully, and the cuirasses and armor plates strapped over their maille hauberks and leggings made them look like iron-scaled dragon men from the Sagas. Longswords hung from their saddles, and they held lances that seemed to reach to the sky like steel-tipped trees. The thought of facing them was terrifying. But, for the first time in Barryn’s life, he suddenly imagined riding with them, not hiding in ambush to slaughter them. The thought gave him a thrill he could not explain.
 

In a farmer’s barn a three days’ ride from the provincial capital, Dub unfolded a wooden field desk and chair and drew up a writ of indenture committing Barryn to one year of service to the tinker.
 
It was the only way that a “barbarian” boy could show himself in the Empire without danger of immediate arrest, and the term was the shortest that existed in Imperial law. Without evidence that somebody vouched for him, Barryn was old enough to be charged with espionage, brigandry, and any number of other crimes that surly barbarians were wont to inflict on peaceable citizens, Dub told him.
 

“What then?” Barryn asked.

“Then I sell your indenture to someone I know in Brynn,” Dub said. “She’s open-minded and a shrewd businesswoman. She runs one of the most renowned public houses in the province. You will never sleep on the ground while you work for her. And she owes me a favor.”
 

Barryn thought for a moment. “Do I get any of the money? You’re selling me like a farmer sells a cow. I should get a share.”

“Ha!” Dub laughed. Barryn did not. Dub cleared his throat. “Very well. You drive a hard bargain. I’ll give you five percent of the net sale price.”

“Ten percent,” Barryn said, knowing what neither a “percent” nor a “net sale price” were. “And write it down on that parchment.”

Dub squinted at Barryn. “I thought you heathens were illiterate. And unsophisticated negotiators.” The tinker put quill to parchment and added the provision.

“We have runes and tree glyphs, but they do far more than your letters,” Barryn said, watching Dub scribble at the lengthening document. “I can carve this same agreement into a stone with fifteen runes at most.”
 

“This is the easy part,” Dub said, corking the ink bottle. “We will need to find a cleric to place his seal on it for it to be legally binding. And he won’t do that until he is satisfied you have disavowed your heathen gods and now worship Mahurin as the sole God of the Heavens and Earth.”
 

Barryn’s heart raced in fear at the blasphemous thought. Renouncing any of the gods and exalting one over the rest! The idea flew in the face of all he had been taught. The gods, ancestors and spirits collaborate and compete, and in so doing keep the powers of destruction and creation in balance. True, he had been cast out of his clan and was presumably unclean before them. But none of that was his choice. He licked his lips.
 

“Can I still pray to the ancestors and the Mighty Ones? The spirits of the land? The elements?” Barryn asked.
 

“No, no and no. At least not openly,” Dub said. “No strange rituals, animal sacrifices, heathen offerings, or whatever it is you barbarians do.”
 

“Oh,” Barryn said and fell into a dejected silence.
 

Dub gave him a kindly look. “You are a devout one, aren’t you? Yes, you can close your eyes and commune with whatever gods or spirits you want to. Just call it ‘silent prayer to Mahurin,’ and don’t tell anyone who or what you’re meditating on.”

Barryn thought for a moment. “But won’t Mahurin be angry that I’m still praying to the rest of the gods?”

“Mahurin is like any other god—the old gods we in the Empire abandoned long ago, the beings that the monstrous people across the sea worship, your spirits in the trees. They are all the same,” Dub said. “He has as much power as his worshippers give him. But never let on that you know this simple truth. People take their religion seriously, especially the people who rule us. Just keep your heresies to yourself and you’ll be fine. And, for Mahurin’s sake, don’t ever be caught dabbling in sorcery. That will earn you a place under the headsman’s axe just as quickly as inciting rebellion.”

Barryn nodded. The Caeldrynn also had strict prohibitions against sorcery. The Sagas were rife with the horrors and cataclysms unleashed in ancient times by feuding sorcerers and rampaging demons.
But what do the Castle Dwellers consider sorcery?
Barryn wondered as he found a cozy place in the barn to make his pallet for the night.
   

The walls of Brynn stretched to the opposite edges of the world, it seemed to Barryn. He had never seen a manmade structure as large as the city’s defensive works. The wall was 30 feet tall, crenelated, with round, 50-foot towers spaced along it and even larger ones flanking the great gates into the city. Imposing fortresses built directly into the wall flanked the Mother River’s doorway as it meandered into one end of the city and out the other.

They waited in a line of carts, wagons and a long crowd of gossiping and grumbling pedestrians, all waiting to pay the gate toll and enter the provincial capital. Armored men and well-dressed ladies bypassed the line entirely and entered through a smaller gate. They were too important to wait around in line while guards and actuaries searched each wagon and assessed the entry duty, Dub explained.
 

When it was their turn at the gate, Barryn and Dub stopped the wagon and stepped down. The guard glanced at Barryn’s writ of indenture, freshly endorsed by a traveling friar they had met on the road, while the customs official rummaged in the back of the wagon. Barryn’s bow and arrows were stowed away and labeled for sale along with some other small merchandise. Barryn hated to part with the fine weapon, but no one save the guards on the walls were allowed to carry ranged weapons in the city.
 

The customs officer returned to the front of the wagon. “Guild?” he asked Dub.
 

“The Worshipful Company of Sutlers and Tinkers,” Dub answered.
 

The officer leaned in closer. “Then are you here for the faire?”

“I come as a humble traveler to sell what I may,” Dub said quietly. The guard stepped away to the other side of the wagon for a moment as if to check something one more time.
 

“Come as a servant of Mahurin and be welcomed,” the officer said.
 

“My actions bear witness to my words,” Dub answered. The tinker took a folded, sealed paper out of his satchel and handed it to the official. “This is a full accounting of my goods and a pledge for the Emperor’s taxes,” he said, handing the paper to the officer, who made it disappear into his clothes. He waved the travelers through the gate without taking or counting money.

Barryn knew better than to ask Dub what was written on the paper, but forgot the encounter completely when he and Dub rode through the city gate. The young heathen saw more people as they pressed into the heart of the city than he had previously met in his life—hawkers, criers, guards, drudges, splendid figures in exotic garb. The frantic scene engulfing Barryn fascinated him and yet filled him with anxiety. There were no trees, only buildings stacked on top of each other up to four stories high and crammed along both sides of the streets. Barryn could not imagine where he could go to be alone with his thoughts in a place like this.
 

Dub steered the wagon deep into the city and across an immense stone bridge with spired towers flanking each end. When they were halfway across, the tinker pointed out two great fortresses on either side of the river a quarter of a mile away. They were the Grand Temple of Mahurin and the Governor’s Palace, Dub explained.
 

“I see treetops over the walls!” Barryn said, pointing to the temple.

“Those are in the prayer gardens,” Dub said. “The priests of Mahurin razed the defeated gods’ temples centuries ago after Mahurin conquered the heavens, according to scripture. But the priests kept the old groves that were dedicated to the gods of the land. They were renamed prayer gardens and opened to the faithful.”

“Why did the priests of Mahurin keep the groves?” Barryn asked.

“It’s a simple business decision,” Dub said. “Some people worship inside, chanting along with the priest, smelling the incense, and all that. Others like to worship outside under the trees that Mahurin created. The old gods made you choose whom and how you worshipped, thereby cutting out half of their potential customers. It was as silly as if a merchant chose between selling eggs or only bread. The priests of Mahurin sell both, as it were. To appeal to a wider range of customers, you see.”

They rode the cart through slums, plazas and market districts until they reached a great walled villa. A pair of guards approached the cart and asked Dub his name and business. They were armed with staffs, rather than spears or halberds like the city guards, and clubs hung from their belts instead of swords. Leather cuirasses reinforced their padded, richly trimmed gambesons. The only steel they had were open-faced helmets on their clean-shaven heads and daggers on their belts. Where the guards were lacking in arms and armor, they surpassed even some nobles with their rich dress and adornments. Even their clubs and staffs were finely carved and polished.