STALKER7

An ongoing story about professional dungeon delvers and the dirty, dangerous jobs they do for their wealthy patrons.

Previous Chapters

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Chapter 6 – BUMPY ROADS

Fourth day of the journey and Mikal was ready to punch Lomer Jon in the teeth.

The transport Mikal had hired for the first leg of the trip was part of a trade caravan to the towns along the north highway. The wagons were made for cargo, not passengers, but it beat the hell out of walking, and the crew had been able to overnight at roadside inns at the end of each day. Warm hearths, decent food, real beds. One day remained before they reached the Ranger Station on the Fekete Ver River, and the Union thug was determined to warm his bunk before they were roughing it outdoors.

Now Lomer Jon had all the charm and self-awareness of a pile of fish guts, but knew better than to hit on Vera. He’d sidled up to the burglar Shen after supper the second night, but she had calmly informed him she’d rather fuck a rabid badger, then pulled out a slim volume of poetry from a pouch next to a brace of throwing knives. That left the apothecary, Orba, and right then Lomer Jon was leaning across the aisle, ladling out some horseshit about how he’d knocked four men out cold at Bottom Docks, collecting on a debt for the Union.

For her part, Orba was plainly exhausted at feigning politeness and was practically sitting in her brother’s lap trying to put distance between herself and the Union knife man. Next to her, the big farm boy, Davorin, was slumped upright and fast asleep, something he seemed to do automatically when he wasn’t eating or working.

Mikal was fed up with Lomer Jon’s ratty smile and the greasy need in his voice. He decided if he wasn’t going to hit him, the only other thing to do was fill everyone in on the truth of where they were really headed and why. It was overdue, and would be obvious soon enough anyway.

He had told Vera everything, of course, when they got back to their office after the recruitment meeting. She nearly punched him then, but held back long enough for him to lay out the paperwork and maps on the table, and recount the High Town meeting. Not that they made her any happier – in fact she seemed to get angry in a scary, deep down kind of way – but they did convince her.

“This is the king of bad ideas, Mik,” she had said. “Legal or not, you can’t trust these people. And keeping this from Edna is a new kind of stupid, even for you.”

Mikal agreed, but what choice did he have. He owed the Union. Besides, Stralla and Savoy tend to represent the kind of people you don’t refuse.  

In the carriage, Mikal contented himself with thumping Lomer Jon on the shoulder. “Wake him up,” he said, pointing to Davorin. “Crew meeting.”

Lomer Jon frowned. “There’s another two hours, at least, before – -.”

Vera cut him off.  “Your crew chief just called a meeting, mucker. Now.”

The Union man stopped short, then kicked Davorin’s boot hard and sat back with a scowl. Orba flashed Vera and Mikal a relieved look. Gellert just smiled.

A moment later, all eyes were on Mikal. Best to rip the bandage off quick. “About our job,” he began. “I was sparse on specifics before. There was good cause for that, but now is the time to spell it out.”

Davorin was rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Sounds dangerous all of a sudden.”

Shen didn’t look up from her book. “Hmmmmm.  Sounds like a confession.”

Mikal took a deep breath. “We’re headed-”

“Over the river,” Lomer Jon smirked. “Into old Ur’Gench lands.”

Vera glared at him. “Arsehole.”

Stralla and Savoy, and the Union, in bed together, Mikal fumed. Should have seen that coming.

“What?” Orba and Davorin exclaimed together. “That’s impossible.”

Shen put her book down and sat up. Gellert turned his attention to a flight of birds he spied through the carriage window.

“Impossible?” Lomer Jon scoffed. “The Throne and the Houses have been squeaking across the Black Line for years. How’d you think they got so rich? What do you think the Bluebacks do?”

“The Royal Salvors Guild investigates historical ruins to recover and preserve Calmes culture that was lost under the Subjugation,” Orba said.

“Sure they do.”  

“What about the Edict?” she demanded. “Trespassing is against the law.”

The Union thug grinned. “So?”

“So there are reasons why. Ur’Gench sorcery was vile. Dark. So dark, it soaked into the soil. The histories record it, and the temple priests say its curse can seep into your bones and curdle your soul just being there.”

Lomer Jon sighed tiredly. “Who writes the histories and the laws, darling? And priests? Pfah!” He gave a disgusted wave. “Anyone with a lick of sense knows this.”  

Davorin weighed in. “The histories are true. My Da was Guards for near thirty years and he did a stretch up north when he first joined. Fought alongside Rangers, he said, against a Blotgan warlord called Howling Korsh. My uncle and two cousins were killed pushing his warband back across the river. Buried in a Ranger graveyard, they are.”

Lomer Jon let out an exasperated sigh. “’Buried in a Ranger graveyard…’ Hate to break the news to you, boy, but if your cousins really died up north, they died from dysentery and fever, shitting themselves into a shallow grave.”

Davorin was on his feet, suddenly large in the low wagon. “My Da doesn’t lie.”

Lomer Jon pushed back his coat and flashed the bright yellow sheathes on his belt. “Sit your shit-kicking arse down, boy.”

“That’s enough,” Mikal snapped. “Simmer down, both of you.”

Davorin sat, shoulders tense, fists clenched. Lomer blew him a kiss and pulled his coat shut.

Silence reigned until Shen broke it. She nodded toward Lomer Jon. “Is he right?”

“Crossing the river?” Mikal asked.

She nodded.

“Yes.”

Shen slid her book back into its pouch. “How? That’s a capital offense. Even if we get across, the Rangers patrol both banks of the Fekete Ver. They’ll stretch our necks – if they don’t stick us with crossbow bolts first.”

Mikal pulled the oilcloth folio from his knapsack. “King Galleg and the Council revoked the Edict. I have a contract and travel papers stamped by the Throne. All legal.”

“Revoked the Edict? When?” Orba asked.

“Apparently, about a month ago,” Vera explained. “They haven’t announced it to commoners yet, though. No surprise there, I guess.”   

“But the Black Line…”

Lomer Jon was picking at a dirty fingernail. “The Black Line is just a mark on a map. Royals erased it same way they drew it. Now they’re giving themselves time to gobble the last of the good stuff before the peasants show up. Same old, same old.”

Shen raised an eyebrow and shrugged. She didn’t disagree but wasn’t about to say that aloud.

Orba was clearly unhappy. She took Gellert’s hand. “Crossing the Black Line… You should have told us.”

“I’m telling you now,” Mikal said. “The money is good. The paperwork is in order. Just let me do the talking when we get to the Ranger station.”

Lomer Jon leaned forward and patted the hilts of his cutlasses. “No need to worry,” he said to Orba. “Rangers aren’t what they used to be. Hard men and women a hundred years ago, maybe. But now? Now, it’s boot scrapings and misfits.” He winked. “Happy to watch your back anytime, darling.”

Orba frowned and nudged closer to her brother.

Shen’s brow wrinkled. She looked at Mikal and Vera. “Say we do cross the river, then what?”

“We head due north,” Mikal replied. “To the ruins of a place called ‘Yash Vyat.’”

All at once Gellert’s voice sang out, “Last to fall, the thorned temple, Yash Vyat, where the Tyrant’s Shadow fled after the Razing of Horiach Tien. For eight days, its bitter cruelty raged defiant, until the twin hammers of Olo and brave Domokos shattered its barbed walls and brought Faceless Ennika to bay.

Though she hurled curses from a terrible sky and wounded mighty Domokos, Olo’s Sacrifice impaled her upon the needle spires. Thus was the final price for our freedom paid, and the years of Subjugation brought to an end.”

He looked around the cabin with a smile. “Temple lessons. I remember them.”

Vera grinned. “Just that one in particular?”

“Nope. All of them,” he said, and went back to watching the birds.

“And here I thought he was useless as a bruised apple,” Lomer Jon snorted. “He can babble catechisms while we hike. Help pass the time. Real handy.”

“You ever think before you speak?” Vera asked.

The lanky knife man put a finger to his chin and made a show of pondering. “Not really. It cuts into my reaction time.”

For the next hour, everyone sat in an uneasy silence as the wagon jolted down the highway. Unspoken words and uneasy thoughts gathered like thunderheads on the horizon. It was close to breaking when suddenly the caravan pulled to one side of the road and halted. There was no way station or fort outside the windows, just endless trees stretching into tangled darkness. A heartbeat later, word passed down the line a Ranger patrol had stopped them to check cargo and passenger lists.  

“Probably looking for contraband or fugitives,” Vera explained.

“Probably shaking down the wagon master for a ‘toll’,” Lomer Jon muttered.

Vera stared hard at the Union man. “You got something helpful to add?”  

“Just the facts of life,” he snorted.

The sun was dipping west when the wagon rumbled forward again. The crew watched as the Ranger patrol passed alongside their wagon, back down the road the way the caravan had come: three green-cloaked men on horseback, one whitebeard and two youngsters barely old enough to shave.

Lomer Jon eyed them as they rode by. “Like I said,” he chortled. “Boot scrapings and misfits.”

It was nightfall when they finally halted. Mikal, Vera, and the others clambered out of the back of the wagon and found themselves outside the front gate of a massive wooden fortress. Its thick walls were a few hundred yards from the bank of a wide, fast-moving river whose far side was lost in the gathering dark.

Davorin, Orba, Gellert, and Shen went to fetch everyone’s packs from another wagon while Mikal hauled out the bundles that held their weapons and delve gear. The caravan master grunted as Vera paid the balance of their passage. Lomer Jon stood beside her, hands tucked in his belt, staring up at the fort’s walls.   

“Impressive – for a century of dry-rot timber,” he mused.

Vera was ready to snap at him when a middle-age man in a hooded, green cloak approached. He was clean-shaven and whip thin, and had a hand on the pommel of the sword strapped at his side. “Who’s in charge?”

They both pointed at Mikal.

The man walked over to him and cast a suspicious glace over the growing pile of weapons and equipment. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

Mikal straightened and held out a hand. “Mikal Shiver of Shiver and Funk Surveyors. I’m here because I’ve got a delve contract on a property in this region. And you are?”

The man ignored Mikal’s question. “A delve? In this region? Where?”  

Mikal nodded across the wide river. “Over there.”

“No, you don’t.”

Mikal fished the oilcloth folio out of his pouch and handed the man his contract and travel pass. “Yes, I do.”

The guard leafed through the paperwork, growing more agitated with each page.  All at once, he tucked the bundle inside his vest.  “I need you to come with me,” he said at last. “Now.”  

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

Mikal hefted a weapon bag onto his back. “Look, whoever you are. I have a legal contract and signed and stamped travel papers. That means –”

“That means shit. You’re at the Black Line. This is Ranger territory.” At that, the man whistled like trilling nightbird. Four more green cloaked figures stepped out of the shadows, their hands at their swords.

 Vera looked up on the wooden rampart over the gate and spied two men with crossbows outlined against the deep blue of approaching night. She raised her hands with a sigh. “Good going, Mik. Not here five minutes and you got us arrested. That must be some kind of record.”

“Not for me,” Lomer Jon said, as he opened his jacket to let one of the green cloaks take his cutlasses.

When the guards had gathered Orba, Gellert, Shen, and Davorin, the first guard called out to the crossbow men. “Open up. We’re going to see Commander Elestren.”