Chap. 352 Roll Out The Barrel
“We can’t slow down,” said the bowman.
They’d dumped the leader’s body in a gully after removing his wallet.
“Should we leave the horse?”
“No. Horses are valuable.”
The boloman took the reins of the chestnut horse. The bowman, in front, was leading the grey mare. Between them, the bay packhorse carried their wounded comrade.
We’d make better time without all these horses, the boloman thought. In a way I’m glad the dumbarse got stabbed. I didn’t trust him, I still don’t trust him, to not have been in some sort of cahoots with the leader.
The bowman urged his horse into a trot, inspiring the rest to keep pace. He glanced over his shoulder to see how the wounded man was managing.
He looks bad, he thought, but I’m not willing to wait.
“Hey, mate,” the boloman called, “Yon lout, he’s slipping. Think we should stop?”
“And do what? I’m no healer.”
“Might have to, mate. I think our boss here is ’bout empty.”
The bowman cursed and reined up. The grey mare tossed her head and turned sideways, nickering. The bay sidled up to her. She smelled the blood on his flanks and pinned her ears.
The bowman turned his horse to examine the wounded man.
“Hey, there, boss, how you doing?”
The man was white as a fish belly. He opened his eyes, but the bowman thought, there’s nobody in there.
“We there yet?” he mumbled.
“Where?”
“Home.”
He’s delirious, the bowman thought. Sheesh, look at the blood. How is it he’s still alive?
“Aye, I guess this is as much your home as anywhere, mate.”
“I’m so tired, Papa. Need some sleep.”
His feet dangled alongside the bay’s sides. His right handed grip on the packsaddle released as his eyes rolled back into his head. His entire body relaxed and slowly slid off the horse.
“Dumbarse,” the boloman said, “wasn’t necessary for him to attack that trader. “
“Like my father used to say, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I think he’s dead.”
“Aye.”
“Check him for a pouch, eh? Should be some minting stamps in it.”
The boloman bridled at the bowman’s assumption of command, then thought better of it. He dismounted and touched the fallen man’s face.
“He’s dead.” He closed the man’s eyes. “Shite, there’s blood everywhere. Even a blind man could follow the blood trail.”
Like the troopers behind us, he thought.
He patted the dead man’s chest but found nothing.
“Nothing, mate. No pouch.”
“Wallet?”
“I don’t like messing with the dead, you know.”
“If you don’t hurry up, you might just join him,” the bowman said. He touched his bow.
It took the boloman a moment to process the double threat. He bristled. “I don’t like that tone, mate, and you’re out of arrows.” For one long moment, the two raiders stared each other in the eye. The boloman let up first.
“And you’re out a bolo. So we’re even, and let’s not argue. If he’s got nothing on him, let’s leave him here for the wherries. Drag him over to that bit of scrub, out of sight. We have the cargo. We can make better time now.”
Yes, I’m out a bolo, the man thought, and those rocks were worth a fortune. Perfectly matched, they were my grandfathers and maybe before him. I’ll have to go back and find them.
“We’re on Southern Hold?”
“Not yet. I have no intention on crossing into Southern Hold anyways. We have to bushwhack south from here, over some fairly rough going. It’s good that lout chose here to die, I doubt he’d have been able to hang on much longer. There’s a stone road about three kilometers from here, it starts in nowhere and ends nowhere, and has good solid footing, even in rain.”
He shut his eyes to conjure up the memories of the last time he’d taken this route. This road goes for a good day’s ride, he thought. We won’t make it today to the end, the horses are already tired. But there’s a good cave we can hide in for the rest of the day, we’ll get some rest. Tonight after sunset we can continue on. At least I will, I don’t want to be with this man any longer than absolutely necessary.
“A ‘stone road”?”
“The only thing that explains it, to me, is the ancients, the colonists built it out of these flat rocks. It goes for a long, long ways. How they made it so level, I don’t know that either. It’s like they had a great big blade and pushed it in front of them, then laid the stones. You’ll see it. Why, they built it, I dunno. It’s all grown over with grass but underneath it’s solid rock. It goes for about fifty kilometers and it’s got trees overhanging it, so we’ll be covered for much of the way from dragons. Toric’s men won’t catch us. ‘Specially now that we’ve lost two dead weights.” He laughed at his own joke.
“Aye,” the boloman said, wondering how the bowman knew this. He rolled the dead man over, feeling him gingerly for a wallet. “He’s got one,” he said, and pulled it out. He began to open it.
“Don’t mess with it now. Mount up and let’s ride. We’ve got to get a lot further before we open the cargo.”
As soon as they hit the stone road, they put the horses into a canter.
Within a few minutes, the grey went lame.
“Shaff!” the bowman said.
“Let her go. The packhorse is still okay,” said the boloman
“He won’t go without her, you know that. Herd bound idiot.”
He reined up his horse. He’s breathing hard, too, he thought.
“Are you beasts in league with Toric?” he swore at the horses. They looked at him with what could only be uncaring. They dropped their heads to graze.
“Let’s shift the packsaddle to the chestnut,” he said. “We can’t be held up by the bloody fool bay, and then we can ditch him and the grey.”
“But you said we should keep the grey and the bay because they’re probably not Toric’s.”
The bowman lost his temper. “That was before the grey went lame, dolt! Don’t you understand? Now we have to shift the pack. Even though we’re on dragon lands, if we’re caught, they’ll probably kill us right here for horse theft. Stop jawin’ and get that pack off the bay. I’ll unsaddle the chestnut.”
I can’t wait to be shed of you, the boloman thought, resentment boiling in his mind. The same thoughts went through the bowman’s.
The packsaddle’s leather girths were slippery with blood. The boloman let the entire saddle slide off the bay to land with a thud. The bay immediately moved away from him, shaking his body in relief from his burden. He moved away from them just far enough to lay down and roll. The mare came to him and snorted. He regained his feet, shook a cloud of dust from his hide, then joined the mare in gazing west.
The bowman unsaddled the chestnut. This is a GOOD saddle, he thought, but I have to leave it. If they find the dead man, they’ll know what we’ve done. Even more reason to move on as fast as possible. He dragged it aside and together, the two men put the pack saddle on the chestnut.
“Shaff, but this thing’s heavy,” the bowman said. The chestnut tossed his head in resentment, sidling sideways as the he tightened the girth.
“Knock it off, wher bait,” the bowman said, slapping the chestnut’s chest. The chestnut submitted. The boloman giggled at the epithet.
“Shite, I hope there’s no whers around here.”
“There are. Lots. But they’d eat yon lout, first.” He looked skyward. A pair of scavengers were circling far overhead. How do they know? How do they know so FAST?
The boloman followed his gaze. “The wherries’ll clean him up in no time.”
“Unless they’re full from the one we left behind.”
They mounted their horses. The bowman felt relieved to be free of two extra horses. As he rode away, he turned to see if the dead man was visible. Instead, he saw the grey mare flick her tail and break into a trot, headed west. The now unencumbered bay followed her.
“Look at that! That grey bitch, I swear, she was lying,” he growled, watching the two horses move away, “I don’t see her limping now.”
“Females, you can’t trust ’em,” the boloman said, laughing. He felt a huge relief that the dead man was no longer slowing them down. The more distance I can put between me and Toric’s men, the happier I’ll be.
“Well, oh leader, now what?” the boloman said, holding the lead to the chestnut.
The bowman dismissed the sarcasm.
“We move. Keep an eye out for dragons, they patrol sometimes.”
“If we see them?”
“Well, hopefully, we see them before they see us. Keep under the trees, and in a while we start seeing caves. There’s a good one, nice and deep, a ways from here, if we can get to it without being seen, we’ll open the cargo barrel and split the loot. Did you bring a sack?”
“A sack?”
“Aye, a sack! You don’t have room in your pockets for five hundred marks, do you?”
“Five hundred? I was told two hundred fifty.”
“Do the math, dolt! That was when it was four men. Now it’s you and me. Two into a thousand is five hundred each. We’re rich!”
“Five hundred! Just sayin’ it makes chills run up me back. Don’t you worry, I’ll find room in my pack, even if I have to empty it out of everything else.”
Five hundred marks, he thought, that’s enough to buy that little bit of land just across the border, the boloman thought. All this has been worth it-the thumping I got from those seamen, losing my bolo. I can buy a hundred rocks like that with five hundred marks! Five hundred! That’s more money than I’ve ever seen, never mind have. Ah, those two dead un’s did us a favor.
——————————————————————————————————–
The cave was deep enough for their horses to be completely out of sight.
They unsaddled the chestnut bearing the pack saddle, and unlashed the canvas covered barrel. “Woof, this barrel is heavier than it looks,” the boloman said, rolling it across the cave floor.
“I know. I pulled it off the bay,” the boloman said. He looked around the cave. Despite it’s depth, it seemed airy, with shafts of sunlight through breaks in the rock dispelling what would have been stygian gloom.
“Someone lived in this cave,” he said. “Look, there’s a fire ring over there, this looks like a bowl carved out of rock, there’s even stone benches for bedrolls.”
“Aye,” the bowman said, reaching for his knife to open the barrel, “Maybe it was the people who built the road. It was planned to go somewhere. If we go far enough south we hit Honshu WeyrHold, but we lose the road a long ways before that. This was a dandy place to hide out from Thread.” And troopers, he thought.
“I thought they all left for Northern right after Thread began falling?”
“Not right away, and I would have stayed here, Thread or no Thread. This is all wilderness, it’s thick with game and graze. You could live here forever if you had water. Maybe that’s why it was abandoned. No water.”
No water. Just thinking of it makes me thirsty, he thought.
He looked at the top of the barrel. Odd, he thought, I thought I remember hearing these things were sealed. This just looks your typical barrel of beer. But maybe they did this to disguise it. That would makes sense. It would have been stupid to mark it “One Thousand Marks”. He chuckled.
He cut into the obvious plug.
The barrel erupted with a geyser of beer, drenching them both.
Despite the men shouting curses, the horses stepped forward, sniffed at the beer, and began licking it off the stone floor of the cave.
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