Chapter 1 - Bandits or Bust
“Terra's teeth, Silas! Are you trying to hit every bump in the road or were you just born lucky?”
Silas turned to glare at his brother – and cursed as the wagon jounced over yet another pothole. “Oh, I think you already know the answer to that, Clyde,” Silas muttered, as he guided the team toward a smoother part of the path, “Richforts and luck go together like fish and carpentry.”
Clyde snorted, “Oh, woe is you, little brother. Here we are, out in the open air, about to bring in more money than either of us have seen in months, and you're complaining?”
Silas grunted, musing to himself that his brother had a point. The wagon was rolling along a meandering logging trail through the Weald, a massive oak forest which ran for leagues and leagues along the western side of Val’Vadim county. Aside from traffic near the occasional lumber camp, the brothers had the road more or less to themselves. Breaks in the tree cover gave glimpses of rolling hills leading down to the plains below, where the fence lines of farms and sheepfolds crisscrossed the land. It certainly beat being stuck indoors all day, or out breaking your back tending crops and chasing sheep.
He glanced into the back of the wagon. Several barrels and crates were tied down snugly, each bearing a seal depicting a pair of scales and an upraised hand – the seal of Chernsburg's most successful merchant and moneylender, Glen Frekkeson. There wasn't much business in the County that Frekkeson didn't have at least a finger or two in, and the man was positively rolling in the profits. Bringing in this shipment would yield the Richfort brothers a very small slice of those riches, but also a steady source of future work. That was the hope, anyway.
“I'll believe in the money when I see it, Clyde. That miser didn't get to where he is today by being free with his coin. And I'd still like to know what's in this shipment that's so damned valuable.”
Clyde shrugged and took a slug from his flask. The fumes smelled like they could strip paint; Silas knew his brother favored strength over taste in his rotgut. “Who bloody cares?” Clyde smacked his lips and returned the flask to his vest pocket, “You worry too damned much. Pickup went fine, roads are clear, and the weather couldn't be better. You'll be back in Marna's arms by tonight,” he added with a wink, “and I'll be back in the Queen's Arms.”
Silas rolled his eyes. The Queen's Arms was a local tavern that tended to cater to boozers and brawlers in equal portions. In either case, Clyde fit the bill. Marna, though . . . Thinking of his wife put a grin on Silas' face. They'd been married for just 4 years, but it felt like the wedding had been only yesterday. They were two sides of the same coin – where Silas was a reserved and cautious sort, Marna was outgoing and daring. Between the two brothers and Marna, Richfort Traders had kept plodding along in the years since Silas and Clyde's father had passed away. Silas was the driver and managed the accounts, Marna dealt with clients and handled negotiations, and Clyde handled the more . . . physical aspects of the business. Although Count Inkcharm did his best to keep the roads safe, bandits weren't unheard of, and Clyde did love a good brawl.
“I'll be damned if you can't always find the silver lining, Clyde. It will be good to see home again.”
Clyde crossed his arms and looked quite pleased with himself. “Ayup, that's what I do, little brother. Just hope nobody else has come down with the Quetches since we left.”
And you can always find a way to drag me down again, you bastard, thought Silas with a sigh. “I'm not too worried. Most of the ones who had the Quetches when we left were out in the slums. Count won't let that sort spread disease into Chernsburg proper, will he now?”
Clyde shrugged. “Nah, yer prob'ly right about that. All the odd buggers tend to stay outside of town. Like that one,” pointing off to the wagon's left.
Silas turned to look. “What the hell is that bastard up to?” A man dressed in little better than rags appeared to have a small melon crop growing outside his ramshackle hut. The 'farmer' was on his knees, bowing down toward the melons and muttering something over and over. The brothers lost sight of the madman as the road turned behind a stand of trees.
Clyde pulled out his flask again with a frown. “Dunno Silas . . . but I want to know where he gets his grog.”
Several hours later, the Richfort brothers were well on their way across the fertile plains toward Chernsburg. They had stopped briefly at a roadside public house for dinner and some ale to wash away a bit of the road dust. The sun was beginning to dip beneath the horizon as the brothers passed through the last stretch of scrub woodland before the city walls would be visible.
“...and the dragon burned the whole village, remember that?” Clyde chuckled, with a wistful look in his eye. “Our dad was one hell of a storyteller. It's been what... 15 years since we lost him? And I can still hear him spinning those stories as though he was sitting here right now, bringing us the little folk, magic, and dragons.”
“Aye, we both loved those stories. Do you remember the story he told us about the two dragon brothers?”
Clyde snorted, “Of course, how could I forget? I think we asked for that one every night. And we always used to pretend that we were those brothers when we went out to play, eh? You were . . . oh, what was the bloody name . . .?”
“Cobalt,” said Silas in a quiet voice. “The younger of the two.”
“Right, that was it. And I was Crimson. The old belligerent wyrm that kept getting into fights,” Clyde grinned. “That just goes to show you, never believe anything you hear in a story. Why, I'm the most peaceful bastard I know!”
“Oh, come on!” exclaimed Silas, throwing an elbow into Clyde's ribs. “Even our old man never spun a yarn half as bald-faced as that! Peaceful, my ass.”
“Oh, that really hurts, little brother!” Clyde put on an expression of mock dismay as he reached under his seat and pulled out a long ashwood cudgel. “You keep heaping on abuse like that and I'll be obliged to defend my poor, scruffy honor.”
“Hah, you'd have to find it first!”
“Why you little...”
The conversation went rapidly downhill from there. The two workhorses, Charcoal and Nell, studiously ignored the commotion breaking out on the driver's bench behind them and continued to plod on gamely. Unfortunately, their quiet dreams of a warm stable and hay came to a crashing halt, courtesy of a good-sized tree which toppled over into the road as the cart rounded a bend. The horses reared up in their traces, and the sudden stop caused both Clyde and Silas to fall from the bench into the turf alongside the road. A series of shouts, yelps and gibbering noises rose up from all sides. It sounded like a legion of damned souls come to claim their due.
Clyde was the first to his feet – cudgel still gripped in his hand, eyes scanning the trees and brush to either side of the road as he helped a woozy Silas stand. “No time to be lazing about, Sy! Get up and get your bow, you slacker. I dunno what is making all the bloody racket, but I don't like it.”
Silas staggered over to the cart, wiping blood from a cut on his brow. He pulled a shortbow and a quiver from behind the driver's bench then turned to put his back up against Clyde's. He nocked an arrow and tried in vain to find a target. The failing light made shadows dance between the trees and brush, and the sounds of snapping branches echoed from all sides. “Not highwaymen, that's for damned sure. Sounds like feeding time at the asylum!” There! Silas saw a tattered figure burst from the woods off to his left side, behind the wagon. He drew, sighted along the upper limb of his bow... and hesitated.
It was human... barely. Filthy rags draped over little more than skin and bones, with cuts and sores oozing everywhere. But for an emaciated near-skeleton, the thing could move like the wind. In the split second it took Silas to observe the poor wretch, it had crossed from the woods to the rear of the wagon in a scurrying, spastic rush.
“Hoy, you!” Silas shouted as the man began to grapple with the top of one of the crates, seemingly trying to tear it open with his bare hands. “Stop or I shoot!” The would-be thief paid no mind, and continued to tear at the crate; his hands torn and bloody. Slaver poured from the thing's mouth, and pattered to the ground in a disgusting shower. A roar of challenge came from Clyde, and Silas knew he had to make a decision before the rest of the bandits arrived. Muttering a prayer to the gods, he loosed.
The arrow took the man dead center in his chest, going in almost to the fletchings. But to Silas' shock, the son of a whore didn't even seem to notice. With a low growl of victory, the bandit managed to pry a board loose from the crate, and began to drag out what appeared to be reddish colored roots. With shaking hands, Silas nocked and drew a second arrow – what the hell WAS this creature? Before he could loose again, the man finally seemed to notice his mortal wound. Without a sound, he collapsed the ground, his mouth and hands both filled with the roots. With no other foes on his side of the wagon, Silas turned to see how Clyde was faring.
His brother's opponents were either less feral or just more cunning than their dead comrade. Two of them held Clyde at bay with what looked like kitchen knives, lunging in toward his back whenever Clyde would commit to one or the other. A third was shoving barrels and crates off of the back of the wagon, where at least one container had already split open, revealing paper-wrapped packages of some sort. A fourth bandit lay unmoving on the ground not far from the two engaged with Clyde, his skull split open and oozing grey sludge out onto the ground.
“A little help, brother, if you aren't too busy!” Clyde shouted with a laugh, as he spun and forced one of his opponents back with a whistling cudgel stroke. The crazy bastard was enjoying himself!
“I can't take a shot on either one, Clyde! You're in too close!”
“Figure it out, you're supposed to be the clever one!”
The 'clever one' pondered for a moment, nodded, and clubbed the closest thug's head as hard as he could with his bow. The bow broke, but the bastard's skull did not; much to his dismay. The brute spun around, quick as a thought, and lunged for Silas with his butcher knife. Silas tried to draw his own knife from his belt and back away, but quickly ran up against the wooden side of the wagon – he was out of options. The bandit raised the knife as he charged, keening like a banshee.
Thunk! The rogue pitched into a boneless heap at Silas' feet.
“Appreciate the distraction, little brother!”
Silas drew in a shaky breath – he'd never look at his wife's cutlery the same way again, “My pleasure.” The other knife-wielding attacker was curled into a bubbling heap on the ground; at a glance Silas reckoned that most of the man's ribcage had been staved in on one side. Nasty way to go.
The Richfort brothers took stock of their situation as they caught their breath. The last bandit was nowhere to be seen, and they guessed that he had fled during the end of the brawl. Several crates and barrels were broken open, each one was stuffed with either roots, packets or amphorae of some sort. A scattering of packets led off to the east, toward Chernsburg.
“Local boys, you reckon?”
Clyde shrugged and took a swig from his flask. “Prob'ly. No other towns that way, just farmland until you hit the slums.”
“What the hell was wrong with them? They looked like death warmed over, but by the gods . . . they were so damned fast, Clyde.”
“You're not wrong there, brother mine. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they had the Quetches something fierce.”
“You think? Gods . . . What sort of disease does that to a person?”
“Not just that, but what makes a man want to tear his hands apart just to get to some roots and papers?” Clyde spat on one of the dead bandits in disgust. “Be happy to talk about it back safe inside city walls, Sy. I'd rather not be out here after dark if it's all the same to you.”
Silas couldn't have agreed more. The brothers set about picking up what they could of the cargo and getting back under way.
“Let me see if I've got this straight. A gang of starving vagrants attacked you on the road. You and your brother, both strong and healthy young men, almost died. And to top it all off, these poxy beggars managed to smash, steal, or otherwise ruin half of my bloody cargo?!”
Silas looked up into the beefy red face of Glen Frekkeson, moneylender, tradesman, one of the richest men in Chernsburg, and most importantly, the sole employer of Richfort Traders. Glen was a big man, standing just over six feet tall, and built like a bear gone to fat. They were meeting in one of Frekkeson's many warehouses, where a crew of rough looking workers were unloading the cargo from the Richfort's wagon.
Silas scowled and stepped aside to one of the broken crates. “Yeah, Glen, that's right. And you're lucky we managed to save what we did – those weren't beggars, they were berserkers!”
Frekkeson rolled his eyes. “Berserkers, eh? I notice you didn't bring back any bodies of these fierce warrior poets for us to look at. For all I know, you and your drunken brother here rolled the lot down a hillside and are trying to get me to pay for your stupidity!”
Clyde rolled his hands into fists and stepped forward. “I'll give you stupidity you fat fu–“
Silas grabbed Clyde by the arm and glared. “Clyde, maybe you'd better step outside. Get some air.”
Clyde glared back, then took a deep breath and unclenched his fists. He jerked his arm from Silas' grip and wordlessly stalked out of the building.
“Glen, you and I both know that our word is gold. Let's stop fucking around.”
Glen raised an eyebrow. “Oh, let's. This should be good.”
“How about you tell me what this is that we were hauling? We went out on a limb taking on your cargo in the blind, and those men seemed real interested in it.”
“I don't owe you a daemon-damned thing, kid. And you don't get to poke your nose into my business. That – “ Frekkson pointed a thick finger at the broken wares stacked up in a pile, “is lost profits. And I'm taking it out of our contract.”
Silas gritted his teeth – he knew Frekkson wasn't likely to pay in full for damaged goods, but he was not happy about getting left in the dark on the contents of those crates. Still... losing out on the maybe 15% of the goods that had been damaged would still be a decent payout, and the company desperately needed the money.
“Fine, have it your way. How much?”
“All of it.”
Silas stood stock still, not sure he'd heard it right. “You... ALL of it?” Now it was his turn to step forward, fists clenched. Who said his brother had all the rage in the family? “You've got to be fucking kidding me, Frekkeson! That's bloody robbery!”
Glen sneered and shoved Silas in the chest, knocking him to the floor. Silas started to scramble to his feet, and froze as Frekkeson's workers closed in a circle around him, all armed with crowbars, knives and other sundry tools of the trade.
“Robbery? Nah kid, this is a message. A friendly one.” Frekkeson bent down to stare Silas in the eye, and the veins pulsing in his forehead belied the smile on his face. “Nobody in this town damages my shipments. Nobody talks back to me. And nobody gets a free ride. I'll be taking your wagon, your horses, and keeping what little profits I have left from this ballsed-up trade. And you and your brother will walk away, happy that I didn't take more.”
“But without our wagon we can't work, be reas –“
Glen drove a hobnailed boot into Silas' stomach, and the young man curled up on the floor, retching.
“I believe I said something about talking back, but maybe you missed it. Get the little shit out of here lads, I don't want to see his face.”
Silas felt rough hands grabbing his arms and legs, and he was hustled out toward a side door. Before he slid into darkness, he heard Frekkeson's last bellow:
“Get a new job, Richfort! Your trading days are done in this town!”
