Chapter twenty-four

Ortia to Amansk

Lieutenant Gaius was able to get a lift to Amansk in Lucian Petroff’s coach. He was dressed in civvies, but there was no way that he could be disguised as a human. He only needed to open his mouth and the truth would be revealed.

Lucian had never met Gaius before and so it was relatively easy to persuade him to accept the idea that the elf was a merchant, particularly when he saw the sum of money that the proconsul was willing to pay. Of course, he was well aware that this was an odd idea, as commercial traffic had been entirely one-way for the last nine-hundred years. Successive praefectuses had kept the pass section of the north-south road clear, to allow access to the iron and coal deposits in the southern part of his section of the Transbarbaria mountains.  Beyond the mountains the road dwindled into a track, but the plains were much easy to traverse, track or no track. Not that many merchants cared to travel the extra days to Ortia, however: there was only a market there for kippers and smoked bacon. The land around Ortia was fertile and enthusiasm for human goods was extremely limited. Lucian, however, was a shrewd businessman and he knew that he could offload a cartload of kippers to a small group of elven enthusiasts at a huge profit, particularly as the Ortians paid in Imperial sovereigns, which were made of pure gold. Ethian sovereigns had been debased over time to about fifty per cent gold, and so he could honestly claim to be selling his goods at Amansk prices and still make twice the profit.   None of this commercial acumen was needed by Lucian at present, however, as he was being paid to carry messages and messengers backwards and forwards from Castle Uberwald to Ortia, via Amansk. 

Lucian had a very pleasant coach, with excellent suspension, and Gaius and he sat inside on its red upholstered seats. He also had a coach driver and a postilion, who doubled up as a general servant. The whole journey would take two and half days by coach, but that relied on getting to Karpika, a mining town on the southernmost border of Amansk, in a day. To achieve this they had started out from Ortia at five am and the coach had rattled along as fast as it could. Gaius had never travelled in a vehicle before and very rapidly began to feel sick. He needed something to distract him, and he also needed to practise his Ethian.

‘So, thou art from Amansk in the first place, art thou?’

Lucian was startled that the rather shy-seeming elf had spoken to him. He’d never had a non-professional conversation with an elf who wasn’t an inn keeper before. His accent was going to take some getting used to. 

‘No, I’m from Gorodnikov’ he explained, speaking very slowly, ‘and that’s where my main house is’

‘Gorodnikov’ responded Gaius, ‘I thought was that an elven city’

Lucian looked surprised.

‘It was an elven city, originally, but we’ve had humans living there for hundreds of years’ he said

Gaius nodded. This didn’t seem all that long to him of course, but he didn’t think he’d mention this.

‘Of course’ he said, ‘I should have known about that’

There was a long pause, and the only reason that Gaius took up the conversation again was because he had started to worry that he would be ill all over the plush upholstery unless he distracted himself somehow.

‘So, do elves and humans get along, when they are living in Gorodnikov?’ he asked, and then wondered if this was a sensitive topic for a human Gorodnivian.

Lucian laughed, plumping his seat with the palm of his hand in appreciation.

‘It depends who you ask’ he said

‘What art thou meaning, merchant man?’ asked Gaius

‘We rub along, but there’s not a lot of love lost between us, to be honest’

Gaius was totally lost with this sentence. They rubbed against each other? That sounded friendly. And that used to be in love but now that was lost. He feared showing his ignorance completely. His Ethian wasn’t as good as the proconsul had hoped, but there was nothing to do about it now.

Lucian grinned at him and waited patiently for him to say something else. The minutes dragged on and both of them started to feel uncomfortable and bored. Lucian sat back on the seat and shut his eyes.

‘It’ll be lunchtime soon – we can eat as we travel’ he said in perfect Visneorian, which just depressed Gaius even more.

Gaius closed his eyes and tried to doze, but he was too worried to sleep. Slowly, however, he began to feel a little better. After a few minutes he opened his eyes and stared out of the window at the endless wilderness of the East Visneorian plain.  

***

After lunch they sped on across the landscape and made good progress. The plain began slowly to fill up with trees, then the path became an approximate road, and there were a few scattered human settlements. These were technically in Visneoria, but completely unpoliced. Eventually, about an hour after sunset they got to Karpika, just inside the Amansk border.

Gaius was inwardly very excited. He was in the barbarian north! It was the first time he had ever been more than about twenty miles outside Ortia. He had heard so many tales of the uncultured, uncivilised but vigorous tribes of the north and imagined the hay-strewn inns, brawls in the street and the energy of their primitive music. He was a little scared, but eager with anticipation.

They rolled into the mining village through piles of spoil and abandoned metal. It wasn’t a very attractive sight. In the middle of the town they stopped at their inn. It was a white structure, newly built, but in an approximation to an imperial town house. Gaius was mildly disappointed, but was happy to be able to stop and rest.

‘Keep a low profile’ said Lucian, in Visneorian, as they clambered out of the coach ‘they probably won’t have seen an elf before’

Gaius wrapped himself in his hooded cloak so that only his face was visible. In the dark perhaps no-one would notice that his face was five or six shades duskier than anyone’s in the village. They walked into the inn and up to reception. The woman behind the counter looked up at them, lazily. Then her mouth dropped.

‘How can I help you…umm…gentlemen?’ she asked, staring at Gaius for the whole time.

‘We’ll have two rooms, Veronika’ said Lucian, quite calmly, ‘and breakfast at six in the morning’

‘Very well’ she said  

She sorted out the keys and got them to sign the guest book. She still couldn’t keep her eyes off the elf. 

As they made their way to their rooms, Gaius felt very uncomfortable, but he was determined to experience the barbarian way of life

‘Can we go to a tavern for a birra?’ he asked Lucian in Visneorian.

Lucian frowned and shook his head. Gaius looked disappointed. Lucian felt a little sorry for him, imagining him later, alone in his room in an inn in a foreign country. 

 ‘Alright then’ he said, ‘but on two conditions’

‘Yes, of course’ said Gaius eagerly, ‘what are they?’

‘You keep your mouth shut’ said Lucian, grinning, ‘and you buy the beers’ 

 

***

Half an hour later the unlikely drinking companions were walking through the cold November air to the nearest, and most salubrious, pub.

‘If they ask you’ ordered Lucian, ‘say you’re my cousin from Gorodnikov’

Gaius stopped and considered this.

‘How could I be?’ he asked, dumfounded.

Lucian put a finger to his lips and beckoned him on.

‘Just let me do the talking’ 

The pub was a low beamed narrow hall, with no upper storey, but with a sprawling set of outbuildings, which disappeared into a scrubby pine woodland in the darkness. The glow of fires from inside the pub did look inviting to Gaius, however, in a slightly scary way. He wrapped himself up even more completely in his grey cloak.

Lucian examined him, smiling.

‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ he asked, in Ethian.

Gaius nodded and Lucian led them in through the thick wooden door.

The shift in noise levels was extraordinary. Outside the night was so quiet that they could hear twigs snapping under their feet. Inside, a twig would have to explode and set fire to a barrel to get itself noticed. This was much more like what Gaius had expected, but much louder. The floor had no obvious hay on it but it was just floorboards and there were two scrawny dogs yapping around the tables where people were eating. There was also singing, but of an even more coarse kind than Gaius could ever have imagined. For once he was pleased that his Ethian vocabulary was so limited.

They sat at a table in the corner of the room so that Gaius could have his back to the wall.  Lucian extracted some Amanskian coins from Gaius’s carefully stocked purse and bought two pints of ale.

The pub was full of rough looking men and a handful of even rougher looking women. It was the women who were singing, and no-one was going near them. They seemed unusually short and slim, but very muscular.

 ‘Female miners’ explained Lucian, ‘in the absence of dwarves, they’re the next best thing’

Gaius was astonished – they looked like wrestlers. He was about to ask some pressing questions about mining and human women when his thoughts were interrupted by shouting from a distant table.

Several voices were raised and called out ‘Lucian!’ very loudly. Lucian stood up, peered and then, without thinking, gestured for the wavers to come over to their table.

‘Oh’ he said to Gaius, ‘is it alright for my friends to come over? They’re totally harmless’

Gaius looked very uncertain, but he forced himself to nod agreement. He just hoped that Lucian was right.

‘More miners?’ he murmured.

Lucian laughed.

‘No – they’re foresters. Here it’s either one or the other’

The three men approached and roared their greetings. Everyone slapped everyone else on the back and then they saw Gaius.

‘Who’s this Lou?’ asked the largest of the men.

Lucian introduced the elf as his cousin from Gorodnikov and they seemed to accept this happily. They were already very drunk and wanted to drink more. They were also all too willing to buy Lucian and Gaius a pint or two of beer. More importantly, from Gaius’s perspective, they also seemed very happy to let him sit in the corner, sipping his beer very slowly, and trying to understand the conversation. He could make out that it was something about Oketian politics, but that was about it. He had hoped that formal diplomacy would be easier than this.

Everything was fine, and he had even tried to enter the conversation a little bit, with a few very basic phrases, when some new humans came into the pub. They were strikingly different from the other humans in the bar, who generally had dark brown hair and olive skin. There were five of them and they had very blonde long hair and paler skin.  These looked even more barbaric.

The room went quiet when they entered, the silence then shifting into a shared murmuring. The hairs on the back of Gaius’s neck prickled. Without thinking, he spoke to Lucian, quite loudly, in Visneorian.

‘Who are these people?’

The strange sound of the alien tongue floated across the room. Lucian glared at him.

‘Formish’ he whispered, ‘and we’d best go as soon as possible. What are they doing here, I wonder?’

It was too late though. Gaius’s voice had attracted the Formishmen like the stench of a wounded hare attracts a pack of dogs. They walked over with big stomping steps and everyone got out of their way – they had obviously been in this pub before. Lucian got up to greet them. He smiled and stood in front of Gaius; blocking him enough to make him hard to see.

‘Can I help you gentlemen?’ Lucian asked

‘What was that language?’ the man at the front of the group asked insistently.

‘Visneorian’ explained Lucian, ‘we’re from Gorodnikov’

The Formishmen were now crowded round the corner table. Lucian noticed that his Amanskian friends had somehow managed to escape into the night. Gaius pulled his cloak around him and wondered if he’d have to fight; he would if there was no other option but he fervently hoped that there would be one.

‘What are you doing here, then?’ asked the same man, who was evidently their leader. He nodded for two of his men to lift up Gaius and pull off his cloak. Gaius cried out in shock, but Lucian didn’t look round.
‘We’re merchants, delivering fish’ said Lucian, still smiling, ‘and now it’s my turn – what are you doing here? We’re both some way from home’

 ‘We’re the new owners’ said the leader.

The group laughed loud and long – the sort of laugh that suggests an in-joke quite painful to those who don’t get it. 

‘Oh’ said Lucian, his brow wrinkling, ‘you’ve been sent by Baron von Eisen, I assume’

The laughter stopped quite suddenly to be replaced by some murmurs of uncertainty.

‘How did he know that?’ asked a thug at the back of the group. The leader looked round angrily and the murmuring stopped.

‘That’s none of your business’ he said, ‘all you need to know is that we’re in charge here now, and that we don’t like strangers’

Lucian was a man of absolutely no physical courage and he was fairly certain that both these hoodlums and the Visneorian soldier had lashings of it. He had to defuse this quickly or he’d get hit by someone.

‘We’re not strangers here’ he said, patiently, ‘I’ve been coming here for years’

He looked round for some friendly faces, but everyone else had gone. Even the bar staff had disappeared. 

‘Really, it’s true…’ he said, his voice trailing off.

‘Even if it’s true’ said the leader, pointing at Gaius, ‘he’s a stranger’

Lucian shook his head and pointed at the elf.

‘He’s my apprentice’ he said, dismissively.
‘But he’s an elf’ said the leader, ‘we don’t trust elves’

‘Well, who does?’ said Lucian, forcing himself to laugh, ‘sneaky devils’

The thugs laughed again, still glaring at Gaius, but now letting go of him. Gaius looked affronted, but then realised what was happening. He had already decided to say and do nothing unless he had to.

‘They’re just all waiting for us to die’ continued Lucian, ‘it must be a bit of a dull life! You know what they say – the one thing slower than a slug: an elf! And the only thing more cold hearted and slimy’

The laughter continued, but Lucian no longer felt the need to pretend to join in.

Lucian had managed to make his way round to where Gaius was standing. He looked up at him and mouthed ‘I’m really sorry’ in Visneorian. He grabbed his arm and pulled him out from the group.

‘Let’s see if we can speed him off to my cart and pick you up some boxes of pickled herring. How does that sound?’

The laughter turned into a chorus of approval. Lucian had no idea why elves liked kippers and Formishmen loved pickled herrings – it appeared to be some law of nature. On any case it was a useful fact. 

Lucian pushed Gaius out into the night and returned to the happy thugs. Outside in the cold and dark, Gaius, who was rather disorientated, wondered briefly if there really were pickled herrings in the coach, but then shook himself back into reality. He hid behind a hazel bush just opposite the pub and waited.

About ten minutes later the pub door opened and Lucian appeared, roaring with laughter. Gaius was impressed by his acting ability. He heard him say ‘where is that bloody elf? I’ll go and see what he’s up to…. you are very patient – let’s see if we can get you all two boxes’.

The merchant walked unsteadily out into the road, waving back to his new friends and telling them to wait just a little while – he’d be back.

Gaius scouted round in the scrub until he was close to Lucian but well out of the sight of the pub. Lucian saw him with some relief. He grasped the elf’s hand and bowed his head.

‘Time to run, lieutenant’ he whispered in Visneorian, ‘things have gone much further than I realised…’
They sprinted back to the inn, woke Lucian’s servants, had the horses made ready and were away within twenty minutes. They slipped out of the town as quietly as they could and then followed the upwards spiralling road into the mountains, with only the light of the postilion’s blinkered lantern to guide them.