Limits of Power (51 page)

“N-no,” the man said.

Nothing happened while the team was being turned, convincing Arvid that the enemy didn't have the manpower to attack, just enough to scare the villagers. Someone's wife or child was probably a hostage.

“Get in, but stay low,” he said to Regar. “Down in front of the seat. It's going to be rough.” Instead of mounting the wagon, he took the reins, as if inspecting the harness, then stepped on the trace and threw himself on the wheeler's back, yelling and laying a whip on the lead pair. They squealed and bolted, as did the wheelers.

Nobody followed, somewhat to his surprise, but back at the Fox Company camp, he found four arrows in the tailboard and the back of the driver's seat. He had slowed the team once he was sure they weren't being followed but continued to ride the wheeler until they were in sight of the camp. Then he dismounted, climbed up onto the driving seat with Regar, and proceeded at a walk. Arcolin wasn't going to like what he had to say.

“We could have died,” Regar said when the team had moved on.

“Yes. It was close,” Arvid said.

“You knew what to do.”

“I knew some things to try. I didn't know they'd work. We were lucky.” He sighed. “Regar, I'm sorry you got dragged into this. You have family—”

“You said you had a son—”

“I do. But he's in Valdaire—well, actually not in Valdaire but near it—being cared for by a grange. Your family's here, vulnerable, and there are more of them.”

Regar scowled at him. “You're worried about
me
?”

“It's not an insult, dammit,” Arvid said. “It's just a fact. Marshal Porfur didn't know working with me on something as simple as hauling supplies to Fox Company could put you in such danger, nor did I.”

“I'm not dead,” Regar said. “Or injured. And I did grab that man—”

“So you did, and I'm grateful. Let's not quarrel now. We're supposed to be learning not to quarrel, aren't we?”

Regar snorted, half annoyance and half amusement. “Marshal's been at me about that for years. It's my nature.”

Arvid raised his brows. “If Gird's making me quit being a thief, don't you think Gird might make you quit being quarrelsome?”

Silence from Regar. Arvid sneaked a look at him. Regar actually looked thoughtful. At the camp entrance, Arvid reined in. “Where's Count Arcolin?” he asked the sentry.

“Off with a cohort checking a report of bandits,” the man said. “Where's our pigs?”

“Trouble,” Arvid said. “It was an ambush. Headman claimed he'd sold for a better price, refused to give the advance back, and then someone started shooting at us.” He showed the arrow that had been stuck in the seat back. “There are more of these on the tailgate and back of the seat.” The sentry craned to look, then nodded. “If you want my guess, this is some of the same sort you had in Vonja last year. Can I send someone to let the Count know?”

“Captain Garralt is in camp. Tell him.”

“Thank you,” Arvid said. He drove into the camp, turned the team over to the supply sergeant, and went looking for Captain Garralt, taking with him the arrows yanked from the wagon.

“Damn,” the captain said when Arvid told what happened. “Cooks were asking when you'd get back with the critters. They have the poles up and ready. Market open today?”

“Not for live meat,” Regar said. “Day after tomorrow.”

“Should I bring back a carcass?” Arvid asked.

“Probably best,” the captain said. “Any idea of the price?”

Arvid didn't know, but Regar did; the captain whistled, but handed Arvid the money. The team hadn't been unharnessed yet, so they took the same wagon into the city. The only large carcasses left were not worth the price; Arvid managed to haggle them down but not, he thought, enough. Arcolin was not going to be happy, and neither were the troops.

“How many is this for?” Regar asked as they started for the camp again, three rather scrawny beef halves in the back of the wagon.

“Over three hundred,” Arvid said. “Safer to figure three hundred fifty.”

“That's … a town.”

“Yes. And they eat a lot.”

At the camp, the cooks scowled at the quality of the meat—and no wonder, Arvid thought—but Garralt had told them what had happened, and they did not complain to him. When they'd pulled the halves out of the wagon, he and Regar drove down to the stream and spent a half-glass cleaning the wagon bed.

“I don't see why,” Regar said.

“Because the Count insists on it,” Arvid said. “For a man engaged in the business of killing and wounding, he has a surprising dislike of bad smells.”

A
s Regar had insisted he did not want Arvid in his house, Arvid expected they would spend the night in the camp, and so it proved. Before full dawn, they walked back to the city and Regar's home and stoneyard. Regar banged on his house door, and his wife passed him a leather bag of tools, then shut the door again. By daylight, they were hard at work. Four other men showed up and began work under Regar's direction.

Arvid had never worked with building stone or brick in his life. Regar handed him a chisel and hammer and showed him a rough block. “This needs to be square. I've made a chalk line for you. Knock off anything outside the line; don't knock off anything inside it.”

“What if it breaks?”

Regar snorted. “It won't, not with that chisel.”

Arvid put the chisel to the stone and hit it with the hammer.
Ting.
He couldn't see that any stone had gone. Again.
Ting.
And again.
Ting. Ting. Ting.
He lifted the chisel and saw a pale line in the rock, no more.

“Slant the chisel more. Like this.” Regar had come up beside him; he put his own chisel on the mark Arvid's had made, slanted it toward the bulge, and hit it four times quickly.
Ting-ting-ting-tonk.
Three little chips and a larger one flew up. “Like that,” Regar said. “A little bit at a time.” He moved off to the other men, more than an armslength away, but Arvid didn't remind him of the Marshal's words.

Arvid tried again. At a slant, the chisel hopped when hit, and he banged his knuckles on the stone. He kept going. His hands cramped, and his shoulders hurt.

“Good day to you,” someone said at the yard entrance. Arvid glanced aside. Invarr stood waiting, and Regar walked toward him, brushing the stone dust off his hands. The other men did not stop their work. “How is your apprentice, Regar?”

“Making a start,” Regar said. “Never used a chisel in his life, but he's learning. I've had worse.”

“Good, good.”

Arvid went back to work. Now and again he had to stop and flex his hands, but the next time Regar came to see, he had a row of grooves, a total of a handspan wide, and the bulge was noticeably less. “That's it,” Regar said. “Keep at it. After lunch we'll take some stones to the building site and do the finish shaping there.”

By midday, Arvid had bruises and scrapes and an ache in his back to go with the ache in his shoulders, arms, and hands. Regar's wife appeared with a large pot of beans. She went back to the house and returned with a platter piled with flat round loaves of bread. One of Regar's workmen brought back a large pitcher of ale from the nearest inn.

They broke the loaves open and scooped up beans and shreds of goat meat. To Arvid's surprise, the beans were tasty. A half-glass later, a wagon and team showed up—Regar must have ordered them, he realized—and Arvid helped load stone onto the wagon. The stones were just as uncooperative that way, unrelenting in their weight and bulk. Then it was off to the building site, walking alongside the wagon.

Invarr's new warehouse was on the east side of the city, within sight of the Fox Company camp, and Arvid wondered that he had never noticed it. “The important thing is that the stones are all laid level and set square—no leaning or it'll fall,” Regar said.

Arvid had never paid attention to building construction. Now he asked what “square” meant, and for the rest of the afternoon, as he worked until he thought he would fall over, Regar explained far more than he really wanted to know. Arvid didn't hear all of it, as out of breath as he often was, but Regar seemed tireless … and very happy to have a new ear to bend.

Arvid hoped tomorrow's assignments from Arcolin would be something easy, but he suspected he'd have to make another trip out to get meat or livestock. At least tonight wasn't a drill night.

Arcolin called him in when he got to the camp, and Regar came along. “Garralt told me about yesterday. I think you're right that this is related to what happened in Vonja. I've reported it to the Foss Council judicary, and they're taking it up. You'll be needed as a witness. In the meantime, I'm sending a patrol with you to pick up livestock west of town tomorrow. It's a vill called Sweetcreek.”

“I know them,” Regar said. “I have an uncle there.”

“Good,” Arcolin said. “Then maybe we won't have any more problems.” He looked more closely at Arvid. “Are you all right? You look—”

“Tired,” Arvid said. “I'm just tired. I'm finding out how heavy stone is.”

Dattur, who had been sitting silent across the tent, head bent over some sewing, looked up with a grin. “Good stone?”

Regar turned and stared. “It's a … a dwarf boy?”

Dattur scowled. “Not dwarf. Kapristi. What you call gnome.”

“But—”

“Dattur is helping me,” Arcolin said. “He is of the same tribe as those who live near me in the north.”

“Is that why he's wearing … colors?”

“Yes,” Arcolin said before Dattur could answer. And to Dattur he said, “Regar is a mason here, building a warehouse for a merchant in town.”

“Arvid helps him?” Dattur said, brow furrowed.

“The Marshal commanded it,” Arvid said. “Every other day.”

“You displeased Marshal?”

“Er … yes,” Arvid said.

“If you'll take my advice,” Arcolin said, “ask our surgeon to clean out those gashes for you.”

All Arvid wanted was to fall into bed, but he made his way to the surgeon's tent, empty but for one pallet at the end where someone, the surgeon muttered, had been stupid enough to drink water from a ditch instead of a running stream and now suffered the consequences. He looked at Arvid's hands, prodded his back muscles, and by the time he was finished, Arvid felt slightly better, though the interim had been unpleasant.

Next morning, he was stiff but able to move around, and he chose to walk beside the wagon to loosen up while Regar drove. Two tensquads went with them, back through the city and out the west road, which soon turned to a rutted lane between hedges. The trip went smoothly. The village had the required animals neatly penned, and Arvid felt better for the walk.

The rest of the ten days passed without incident. Regar went with Arvid to market in the city and out in various villages; Arvid chipped stone and hefted rocks in and out of the wagon and onto the wall. He learned to use string and chalk, bob and level, and made no complaint about the scrapes and bruises and broken nails he got from the unforgiving stones. He heard a lot about Regar's wife, her family, the children, the problems Regar had running his own business.

At the end of ten days, Marshal Porfur called them into the grange and looked from one to the other. “I hear from the other yeomen in town that you have indeed stayed close to one another as I bade you, day and night, for this ten days. I hope you've both learned something.”

“I have,” Arvid said. Regar nodded.

“And what is that?” the Marshal asked.

“Regar is a hard worker, a good man, and a good father,” Arvid said. “I respect him.”

“Regar?”

“Arvid's not a thief anymore,” Regar said. “I know that now. He works hard.”

“Very well. And do you think, yeomen of Gird, that you could stand shoulder to shoulder to defend the people against evil?”

“Yes.” They both spoke.

“I am glad to hear it. I release you from this task but expect that you will remain in fellowship with one another—and with others. Let me see a
proper
exchange of blows before you go.”

This time it was wooden practice blades the Marshal handed them. Each made a touch—Arvid could have made four to Regar's one, but he finally understood this was ritual, not a reason to show off. They walked back through the city.

“Stand you a mug at the inn,” Arvid said.

“If you'll let me stand you one,” Regar said.

They drank their mugs in silence and parted with an arm grip.