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  “Barter?” Block repeated, with a wry note that made Dugan frown.

  “These saddlebags I’m lugging are Exlandic leather, stitched with gold, and the buckles are real silver. If you can’t get a set of peasant garb for them you’re not much of a Miilarkian, merchant or no.”

  Block snorted. “Of course dealing a nobleman’s baggage won’t attract any attention. Why don’t you just offer your Legion sword for a wheel of cheese?”

  The renegade tapped a sandaled foot. “You have a better idea?”

  The dwarf tapped the pipe stem against his teeth. “One mitigation of the heavy burdens of command is the ability to delegate the small matters. Matilda.”

  Tilda blew a strand of hair out of her face and looked over warily.

  “When we next pass a peasant holding, you will handle this.”

  Chapter Five

  The Empire of the Code was not perfect, and the Codians were in main wise enough to recognize that it was not. This was not the only difference between the Empire and many of the other realms located on the continent which the Elves had long ago named Noroth.

  In Ayzantium and Daul, two countries that had been locked in combat for three decades, in the Danorian lands on the ancient War River, or of course in any of the tumultuous Riven Kingdoms where warfare was endemic, the rapid approach of hooves to a country home brought one response. Doors were bolted, shutters were pulled in, and wary eyes would peek around humble curtains, if there were any. But in the Lands Under the Code, things were different.

  Noon of the Twelfth Day of Eighth Month found the Chestinsibranik family of Orstaf where such an hour always did, seated around the luncheon table which today was set in the kitchen owing to the stern breeze outside. The patriarch, familiarly called Oti – “Father” – by everyone present sat at the head of the table in a sturdy wooden chair which his own father had made from poplar wood for Oti’s mother when she was first great with child, a long time ago now. Oti’s fur cap and cloth coat hung over the chair back, and his soiled sleeves were rolled up to the elbows of hard-muscled arms. His wife sat on his right with the baby in her lap, their eldest son and his fuzz of beard on her right. To Oti’s left the elder daughter sat between the younglings, a twinned boy and girl. The pair had to be kept apart to prevent any jostling or poking under the table during the prayers to Kantaf and Shanatar, with a kind word thrown in for the young Emperor in far-off Laketon.

  After the prayer, as Mother was occupied with the baby, the hired man rose from the end of the table to serve. He spooned heaps of tuber mash and turkey gravy onto wedges of dark bread baked in the yard oven, already laid in the bottom of wooden bowls. Oti looked around at his flock, at the few but good pieces of metal cookware hanging from pegs on the white-washed daub walls, and out through the open doorway at the square of gray sky above his tidy, well-swept yard and the hillside field of even rows stretching beyond. He smiled within the brushed mass of his dark Orstavian beard.

  Here in the Lands Under the Code the rapid tattoo of approaching hooves did not sour a father’s mood of contentment. That was the difference between this place, and too many others.

  When the children heard it all looked to Oti, who let them dangle for a few long moments pretending to hear nothing himself. His wife rolled her eyes at him. He finally gave a nod. Chair legs scraped on the thrush-covered stone floor and the subsequent shoving and flailing ended in a tie as the twins reached the doorway at the same time.

  “It’s a lady!” the daughter cried in delight, and the boy grumbled for he had been hoping for a Legion scout, or maybe even a knight. Oti and his wife exchanged shrugs, and the husband rose and set about replacing his coat and cap. His wife stood and cradled the baby in one arm while her free hand flitted about his shoulders and beard, flicking away a blade of grass, dabbing an old spot of gravy, smoothing his collar. She stood on her toes and gave him a peck on the nose, as the cheek had not been seen for decades.

  All four children had gone out a few steps into the yard, and Oti stepped out among them in time to see a gaily attired rider swerve narrowly around the edge of his fresh-churned field with long black hair bouncing behind her, beaming a wide smile. The young woman wore outlandish dress; black cloth breeks for she did not ride sidesaddle, with an emerald green half-cloak buttoned from waist to throat. Her mass of raven hair was only as much as escaped from beneath a bushka, the traditional turban-like headdress of Orstaf. This lady’s was of a light blue cloth more suitable for a festival than for a windy day on the steppe.

  As she neared, waving a gloved hand, Oti saw that she was quite pretty although heavily done-up with her face powdered pale and ruby-red lips that seemed glaring against her white teeth. She rode right into the yard through the open gate of the mud-brick wall and pulled up her prancing, speckled horse just before Oti felt a need to pull his children back toward the house. Still beaming, the woman swung easily out of the saddle but landed with a not quite ladylike grunt. She performed an adequate curtsey, and Oti hurried has cap back off of his head to return a bow.

  “Good day, Goodman,” she bubbled, all flashing teeth and batting brown eyes. “Lovely day for riding, is it not?”

  She spoke the plain and serviceable Codian tongue with the chirpy cadence of the wellborn, and as it was Oti’s second language after Orstavian he squinted as he tried to keep up with the rapid stream rippling with fluttery hand gestures.

  “I am the Lady Haversmythe of Lothdowne, en route to visit relations out past the Ortel Spur, although presently guesting with your most gracious Lord Baron who this morn was good enough to arrange for horse-borne tour of his demesnes for my traveling party. Well, at the conclusion of said tour and after a delightful mid-day sup, we sought further amusement via a most spirited game of chase, during the course of which – would you believe it? – I proved perhaps only too proficient at the contest and so find myself not only having lost my pseudo pursuers, but myself as well, rather altogether!”

  She beamed even wider, eyes twinkling. She seemed to be expecting something in return, though Oti was at a loss as to what it could be.

  “You need to know the way back to the baron’s village, Milady?” Oti’s wife spoke from the doorway after realizing her husband was stuck.

  “Quite.”

  Oti cleared his throat and explained. Past two ridges to the west, the wide dug-out road leading due north, only an hour or so on horseback. The lady bobbed her head.

  “Oh, many thanks. That sounds simple enough, even for silly old me!”

  She bent from the waist so her face was nearly level with that of Oti’s young daughter, still staring wide-eyed at the stranger. The woman held up a coin, a shiny silver swan, and offered it to the girl.

  “My lady, there is no need!” Oti began, but the woman shushed him.

  “No, no, I quite insist. There is no telling how much consternation you have spared me, not to say embarrassment should the baron’s men have to ride all over hill and dale searching for their wayward guest! Can you imagine? Here you are, my pretty little Miss. Would you be so good as to take this for your father?”

  Oti’s daughter had no trouble doing so. In fact, the coin immediately disappeared into her own pocket.

  The woman blinked and grinned at the girl before straightening to leave, but paused and gave a wistful sigh as she looked at the fur cap in Oti’s hands. She made a clucking sound.

  “My lady?”

  “Oh, I do so wish I had brought a bit more coin, for I should so love to have a bit of your rustic garb to take back with me to the Beoshore!”

  *

  Tilda knelt on the damp bank of a stream, not the same one where she had done wash yesterday but for all other purposes identical. She scrubbed her face free of the powder and rouge more typical of the distant Tullish side of Lake Beo, spat into the water, then sat back on her haunches and went about the deft and automatic motions of returning her hair to its long, intricate braid. The Captain was just up the stream, mounted and idly hold
ing the reins of both horses as they drank. Soon enough the man Dugan emerged from behind an elderberry bush. He was outfitted now in baggy woolen trousers with his sandals and knee-high leggings poking out from underneath frayed cuffs, and a long Orstavian jerkin of strong brown cloth with cord laces from mid chest to throat. Finally, a threadbare and almost shapeless hat of unidentifiable gray-and-white fur, with flaps hanging over the ears, perched on his head. He had his old clothes and the blanket he’d been wearing bundled in his hands, and as Tilda could not see his sword she assumed he had shifted it to his back, The blade was now concealed beneath the thigh-length jerkin.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Do I pass for an Orstavian herdsman?”

  “About as much as Matilda does for a noblewoman,” Block grumbled. “Now let us away. We have burned enough daylight doing your shopping.”

  We? Tilda thought, but of course did not say out loud. She patted her face dry and hurriedly went about replacing the mare’s baggage which she had removed for their sprightly ride. Expecting no help, much less thanks, she was surprised as Dugan knelt to take up and tie the hanging laces across the horse’s belly, while Tilda arranged the bags behind the saddle. As Block began to canter back toward the west, Dugan stood up across the mare from Tilda and gave her a nod.

  “My thanks for your trouble, Miss.”

  Tilda blinked at him. His face was set seriously, no jibing at the moment, and even with the homely fur cap on his head it was the first time in a while that he had looked quite so handsome.

  “No trouble…and my name is Tilda.”

  Dugan’s eyes narrowed. “Your Cap’n called you Matilda.”

  “Yes, but…”

  A small smirk had begun to play at one side of Dugan’s mouth and Tilda sighed inwardly, marking her misstep.

  “…but my friends call me Tilda.”

  He nodded, still with his half a grin, and offered Tilda a hand for a pull up into her saddle. She did not accept it but swung up herself despite the fact that it still made her ribs hurt.

  *

  Over the next few days Dugan took paths veering more southerly than west. As the Girding Mountains drew nearer on the horizon the land rose and the grass of the steppe grew shorter, hardly reaching the man’s knees as he set a brisk pace afoot that the horses followed comfortably. After six days of traveling with the renegade, a full week after the battle from which he had escaped, Tilda realized that this was now the Fifteenth and middle day of Eight Month, and it gave her a start. When she had left the Islands three months ago, “next year” had seemed an awful long time away. But now there were only three and a half months remaining in 1395, and the Miilarkians were still very far from home. If they did not return to the Islands before the New Year’s Assembly of House Lords, the Captain’s mission would have failed. That suddenly did not seem like so long a time distant.

  The Fifteenth was also the day that the three travelers reached the river, or rather it was the day that the river came out onto the steppe to reach them. Though it is several hundred miles from where the Winding rises in the marshes around La Trabon until its waters join those of the Runne to the west and south, the course of the river is easily thrice its length. It snakes wildly among the foothills of the Girdings, and in some places stretches great bowing bends out for many miles onto the steppe. The travelers met one such curve at its elbow, for there the Winding flowed almost like a moat enclosing a rocky spur of high ground. A long series of ridges, hills, and plateaus together pointed like a finger due north onto the steppe, perpendicular to the main line of the mountains.

  They followed the jag of the river upstream for another day and a half, staying on the east bank though it would not have been much trouble to cross. The channel of the river was scoured-out very wide and it surely would have run booming in the spring with snowmelt pouring down from the mountains. In autumn however there was only a sluggish stream in the middle of the channel, sky-gray water where honking ducks circled and sleek beavers eyed the passersby from their wooden forts. Across the river the lower ground among the hills and ridges was heavily wooded, and more than once small clusters of rooftops and puffing chimneys were sighted. The buildings were all of stone, with tall, peaked roofs and long eaves.

  The trio could have crossed at a hundred paces but Dugan said it was a bad idea. He said all the high ground and the villages enclosed by the long bend of the Winding were the domains of the Codian Baron Mediwether de Trellane. The Trellane family had ruled here since long before the Code came to Orstaf. They were the descendants of nobles from Daul, the kingdom beyond the mountains, which had held sway over much of southern Orstaf and the course of the Winding until a century ago. The Trellanes had accepted the Code and thus become Codian nobles, but Dugan said they still ran their barony as they saw fit, and it was widely known that they did not take kindly to “strangers” from the rest of the Empire wandering their lands.

  Indeed, the trio more than once saw watch towers on the hills across the river, or had their passage marked by parties of armored horsemen on the west bank.

  The party camped one night beside the river, and there was little talking among them as Tilda and Dugan had wordlessly divided the regular evening chores several nights back. The renegade saw to the horses while Tilda started a fire to warm the thinning rations for dinner, and Captain Block did little if anything. The dwarf had become more scowling and taciturn than ever since Dugan had joined them, and he shut down any conversation over the fire with an icy glare.

  Tilda’s aches and bruises had receded to the point where she felt up to doing her regular Guild calisthenics upon arising at dawn, which Dugan watched while pretending to do other things. Tilda ignored him and finished her exercises, assuring herself that she performed them only because they warmed her up on the increasingly cold mornings.

  After another half-day of travel the Girding Mountains were all the more imposing, forming a gray-and-green wall of jagged peaks across the southern horizon, topped by a permanent white snowline. The true slopes of the mountains were still at least a day away, but a jumble of piney foothills spread out before them. The three travelers reached the spot where the Winding emerged from the hills and began its long northern jag around the Trellanes’ narrow barony, and the Miilarkians stopped their horses to survey the scene. Tilda was surprised to find that while the ocean remained hundreds and hundreds of miles away, the place reminded her a bit of home.

  Her parents’ shop on Chrysanthemum Quay sat just above working docks, and most every morning of Tilda’s first twenty years of life had begun with the sounds of stevedores floating up to her second-story window. Men laughing and joking, mocking old friends or singing a dockside ditty. Tilda had learned a number of words from those songs which it had not, strictly speaking, been proper for a young girl to know. They were words she would never repeat with her mother in earshot, but they always made her father giggle.

  Here on the bend of the Winding was a different kind of port, but one that was still familiar. There were no deep ocean cutters nor many-masted tall ships of the kind to be seen in Miilark of course, for on the Winding cargoes were carried on shallow-draft barges. Long docks extended from a stone quay on the Trellanes’ side of the bend, just short of a wide, wooden bridge with stout arches built on stone piles in the stream. Two guards stood on the near end of the bridge, while across at the docks several river craft were moored. Brawny men crawled about the boats as they shifted bulk goods with the aid of rope-and-tackle cranes that looked vaguely like gallows. Various cargoes were moved both from the barges to waiting wagons, and back the other way. A good stone road stretched west from the quay past a few stone and timber buildings, one a barracks with an orange and yellow flag hanging limp on a tall pole in the front yard. Only a few miles further down the road Tilda could see the gray shape of what looked to be a sizable town.

  The Miilarkians looked over the scene from their horses, while Dugan stood between them.

  “That is Trellanevi
lle,” he said, pointing at the town. “The portage road hits the river again just a couple miles further on, cutting across the whole long bend. Saves days moving upstream or down, even while the river is high enough to float the whole way.”

  “I am guessing the Trellanes charge to use the portage?” Tilda asked. Dugan smirked.

  “Of course. It’s a turnpike. The baron sees coin on everything moving through, either upstream to La Trabon or down to the Runne, Lake Beo, and the rest of the Empire. He kicks some money up to his Earl, thence to the Duke, thence to the Emperor, and so nobody bothers the Trellanes on their own land.”

  “Is this where the Lepokahan has come?” Captain Block growled, and Dugan shrugged.

  “I doubt it.”

  Tilda and the dwarf both looked down at the renegade, who met their glances without concern.

  “I said I know where the boys are going, but not exactly what route they are taking there. They left when they did for a reason. With Duke Gratchik calling all his men and the two closest Legions together to put a beating on Nyham, the countryside emptied out. There are a few different mountain passes they could have used to get to Daul.”

  “They are going to Daul?” Tilda asked, and the Captain looked over at her from his pony as if she were hopelessly dense.

  “You thought renegade legionnaires would stay in the Empire?”

  “I did not really think about it,” she said.

  “You may want to start thinking at some point, girl.”

  Tilda lowered her eyes from Block’s cold glare, and saw Dugan give her a brief look of sympathy before he made it go away.

  “Look, the point is, it is too late for us to try and use a regular pass. By now the Legions stationed there will know there were renegades from the 34 ^ with Baron Nyham. They will be on the lookout, specifically, for men exactly like me, trying to get out from Under the Code. Get the picture?”

  “We are not both stupid,” Block said, and Tilda pressed her teeth together so hard that it made her jaw hurt.