Eventually the sun sank toward the horizon as they rode away from it, into the east. The sky turned yellow, then pink, and it was getting hard to see when Croy called ahead to Mörget to say they should stop for the night.
Thank the Bloodgod, Malden thought. His legs were near as bruised as his face after eight hours on the wagon, and every stone and rut in the road brought new pain. He had never imagined he could get so tired from sitting all day.
Up ahead a milehouse stood in a patch of weeds by the side of the road. Before long Malden made out its sign, a crudely painted sway-backed cow. The king’s law, Croy told him, required that houses of lodging like this be placed every ten miles on the road from Ness to Helstrow, for the comfort of travelers like themselves. Once Malden saw the place he wondered what the legal definition of comfort might be. It was a ramshackle affair of only a single story, with a row of stalls to one side where horses could be stabled for the night. Its walls had been whitewashed with lime at some point in the past, but time and dust had robbed it of any cleanliness or cheer. Its thatched roof crawled with rats but at least a little yellow light beamed out from its windows.
There was no stable boy to take the horses, so Mörget agreed to see to them—and sleep with them for the night. “I’m used to sleeping out of doors,” he explained, “and would feel ill at ease in such a place.”
Malden was more than glad to jump down from the wagon and head inside with the others. The common room of the milehouse proved as shabby as its exterior: a long room with a low, sagging ceiling, lit only by the guttering fire in its hearth. A cowhide had been nailed to one wall, its fur rubbed off in places by years of customers brushing against it. The room was empty save for themselves and the alekeep, who looked more tired than Malden felt. The man ushered them to a table by the fire and brought them what he had to eat. This proved to be coarse bread and pottage—a thin stew of vegetables, tasteless and fit only for the peasants who patronized the Cow. There was ale, though, which was more than welcome.
None of them spoke much while they ate, and by common agreement they retired immediately after their meal to the small rooms provided for them at the back of the house. Cythera and Croy each got their own room, while Malden and Slag had to share.
“What is this?” the dwarf asked, when he saw their accommodations. The room was barely big enough for a pair of mattresses, which proved to be sacks of straw with musty blankets piled on top. When Slag pulled the blankets off of one mattress dark things with many legs scuttled away from the light. “This is unacceptable.”
“Call down to the master of the house, and bid him bring you a proper bed, then,” Malden said. “I, for one, could sleep on a pile of leaves just now, with a rock for my pillow.”
“Ha! Laugh now, jester. That’s exactly what’s in your future,” Slag told him. “Once we cross the river Strow, this will seem like luxury. I fucking hate traveling. Nothing for it, I suppose. That damned wagon bounced and rattled so bad I couldn’t get a wink of sleep today.” The dwarf threw himself down on the bed with a deep sigh, and in a few minutes began to snore. That was the sign Malden had been waiting for. Tired as he was, he had to answer a question or he knew it would plague his dreams. Making no noise at all, he slipped out of the door of the room and down the hallway.
Cythera had taken the room nearest the front of the house because it was likely to be the warmest. Malden tapped lightly at her door—if she were already asleep, he had no desire to wake her. He waited a long while, thinking himself a fool, before the door cracked open and he saw one of her blue eyes peer out at him. The eye went wide when she who was there.
“Malden, what are you thinking, coming to me like this?” she whispered.
“I was thinking I might be welcome,” he said.
“If Croy came in here right now—”
“—he would slaughter me where I stand,” Malden said. “I deem the risk worth the prize.”
“I was going to say it would destroy him. His best friend, taking liberties with his betrothed! I ask again, whatever gave you the idea to come here like this?”
“The words you said today on the road put a notion in my mind. I could not rest until I found out exactly how you felt. You said I was a temptation.”
“One I wished to leave behind.” She reached for his hands. “Malden, I will not deny I bear a certain … affection for you. And I do owe you a debt. Without your help, both my mother and myself would still be enslaved.”
“I didn’t come here seeking payment for services rendered.”
He could barely make out her face in the darkness, but he was certain the look in her eye then was one of utter relief. Had he insisted on a reward, would she have given herself? But of course, then she could never truly love him after. Malden knew enough about women to understand that.
“No,” she said. “I know you don’t see it that way. You’re a kindly man, Malden, under all that arrogance. So—be kind. Let me repay my debt by never speaking of this to Croy. And in turn, do me another service, and forget this fancy.”
A wiser man would not have tried to kiss her, then. She did not try to stop him, but merely turned her cheek so he ended up kissing the line of her jaw instead of her lips. He sighed and lifted his lips to her ear.
“I see,” he told her. “You’ve truly made up your mind.”
“I’ve never suggested otherwise,” she sighed. Was there regret in her voice, a certain heaviness, a longing? Or did he simply wish there was?
Malden nearly choked on the lump in his throat. He had hoped … well, he had hoped. And hope was worth exactly what it cost. “Very well,” he said. “I will trouble you no more.”
He slipped away from the door without a backwards glance, and leaned up against the wall outside him own room, and waited for his heart to stop racing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the morning Malden woke late, and came out to the common room to find that he could not break his fast—the kitchen was already closed. Remembering there was food stored in the wagon, he headed out toward the stables and found his companions there waiting for him. Cythera and Croy were already on horseback, looking impatiently toward the east, while Mörget and Slag had the wagon up on blocks. The dwarf was underneath its wheels, grunting and swearing as he worked on the wagon’s undercarriage with a hammer and a wrench. The barbarian stood placidly by, ready to lift the vehicle by one end as Slag requested.
Eventually Slag emerged from beneath the wagon and told Mörget to remove the blocks. The barbarian kicked them out of the way and the wagon dropped heavily onto its wheels—and bounced up and down for a while before coming to a stop. As Mörget strapped the two hackneys into their harness, the dwarf explained.
“I spent all yesterday trying to sleep in this thing and failed miserably. Every time we drove over a pebble in the road I got thrown against this berk’s pile of iron weapons,” he said, nodding his head in Mörget’s direction. “So I fixed it.”
Malden looked underneath the wagon and saw a cunning arrangement of leaf springs mounted to the axles. “So now it will bounce and rattle even more?” he asked.
“I fixed it,” Slag repeated, one eye squinting nearly shut. “I’m a dwarf. Trust me. You’ll be happier this way, too.”
They got underway quickly enough then. Mörget proved to have an easy hand for the reins, and while the wagon did sway more than it had before, Malden soon realized the dwarf had done something right. When the wagon wheels passed over deep ruts in the road, the wheels went up but the body of the wagon did not, and when the wheels dropped into ruts, the springs kept Malden from flying off his seat. It was almost like the wagon was suspended above the road, held up by invisible hands.
The only disadvantage of the rebuilt wagon was that it made it even harder to stay awake. After a mostly sleepless night, and unable to stretch his legs, Malden found himself dozing constantly, only to be awakened with a fright as he realized he was about to slump over to the side and fall from the wagon—or worse, to lean over and rest his head on Mörget’s shoulder. He was uncertain what the barbarian would do if Malden inadvertently touched him, but he was sure it would be painful.
Watching the fields of wheat go by on either side only made things worse. The mile markers were too far between to hold his attention. Cythera rode far ahead of the wagon, so he could not talk to her, and Croy was singing again. There was nothing for it but to talk to the barbarian.
Fortunately Mörget seemed to love the sound of his own voice. He told Malden many tales of his native land, few of which Malden could understand. Apparently there was no feudal system at all on the eastern steppes. No villeinage, no manorial obligations. No kings or knights or lords, either. That sounded fine—wonderful, in fact, to someone with Malden’s political sympathies—until you learned what the barbarians had in place of those institutions. “The strongest man rules, as chieftain,” Mörget said. “This is the basis of all our laws. If you disagree with his policies, you challenge him to a fight. If you win, you get to be chieftan and make your own rules.”
Malden frowned. “But surely some young fool with muscles but no brains could become king of you all, then.”
“Aye,” Mörget said. “And often does. But such rarely last long. No matter how strong a man’s arm may be, there’s always someone stronger out there, waiting.”
Malden frowned. “But what of justice? What recourse do the meek have, if the strong decide what is right?”
Mörget laughed, loud enough to make Slag shout for peace. The barbarian shrugged and told Malden, “In Skrae, I’ve met many such as you. Philosophers and priests, two things we have none of on the steppes. They’ve tried to explain this justice to me, and other abstract concepts, and yet all I hear is the voices of children saying, ‘it’s not fair, it’s not fair.’ Where they got this idea that life was meant to be fair remains a mystery to me.”
Malden tried to imagine how he would survive under barbarian law and the prospect made him queasy. “If every chieftain makes his own laws, what is to stop him from saying that murder is no crime, or that a man may lie with his sister if he chooses?”
Mörget shrugged. “In principle, I suppose, it is possible. Yet I’ve never heard of a chieftain that would ignore such basic laws. If a man kills in cold blood, we run him through with a sword, that’s always been the way. If a man rapes another man’s daughter or wife or mother, we strangle him.”
“What if … just hypothetically, here—a man were to steal another man’s property? Say, his horse blanket. Or something trivial like that.”
“What’s the penalty for such in your Free City?”
Malden shrugged. “Hanging.”
“Ah! You see, there’s where your civilization breaks down. You put a man to death for stealing? Regardless of why he did it? What if he only takes a loaf of bread, to feed his hungry family? That is senseless cruelty!”
“I always did think the penalty too harsh,” Malden agreed.
“Yes, in the east we are far more humane. We do not kill our thieves. We simply cut off their feet and leave them crawling in the dirt like the dogs they are.”
“Oh,” Malden said. “But then—how would such a thief feed his family after that? He would be reduced to begging.”
“We have no beggars in my country,” Mörget said.
“No?”
