A moment later, Duncan and Tom appeared, wraithlike in the gloom. “Just two of them?” asked Duncan.
“If there’s another, he’s halfway to Krondor,” said Tom. He had obviously fallen hard, as he was dirty from boot to the top of his head on his left side, and he had a bruise on his left cheek. He held his right arm across his chest, holding tight to his left biceps, and flexed the fingers of his left hand.
“What’s the matter?” asked Roo.
“Fell damn hard on this arm, I guess,” answered his father. “It’s all tingly and numb.” He seemed short of breath as he spoke. Blowing out a long note, he added, “Some time of it, that was. Not ashamed to admit I was scared for a bit.”
Duncan knelt and rolled over the bandit. “This one looks like a ragpicker,” he said.
“Few honest traders and only a few more dishonest ones brave this route,” said Tom. “Never been a rich outlaw I heard of, and certainly not around here.” He shook his hand as if trying to wake up a sleeping limb.
Duncan came away with a purse. “He might not have been rich, but he wasn’t coinless, either.” He opened the purse and found a few copper coins and a single stone. Walking back into the light of the campfire, he knelt to inspect the gem. “Nothing fancy, but it’ll fetch a coin or two.”
Roo said, “Better see if the other one is dead.”
He found the first man he had encountered lying facedown in the mud, and when he rolled him over, discovered a boy’s face on the corpse. Shaking his head in disgust, Roo quickly found the boy without even the rude leather pouch the other bandit had possessed.
He returned to the wagons as Duncan put down the bow he had taken from the first bandit. “Pretty poor,” he said, tossing it aside. “Ran out of arrows.” Roo sat down with an audible sigh.
“What do you think they’d be doing with all this wine?” asked Duncan.
“Probably drink a bit,” said Tom. “But it was the horses and whatever coin we carry, and the swords you have and anything else they could sell.”
Duncan said, “We bury them?”
Roo shook his head. “They’d not have done the same for us. Besides, we’ve no shovel. And I’m not about to dig their graves with my hands.” He sighed. “If they’d been proper bandits, we’d have been feeding the crows tomorrow instead of them. Better keep alert.”
Duncan said, “Well then, I’m turning in.”
Tom and Roo sat before the fire. Because of his age, Roo and Duncan allowed Tom the first watch. The man with the second had it roughest, having to awake for a few hours in the dark, then turn in again. Roo also knew that dawn was the most dangerous time for attack, as guards were the sleepiest and least alert and anyone contemplating a serious assault would wait for just before sunrise. Chances were near-certain if Tom had morning watch, should trouble come he’d be sound asleep when he died.
Tom said, “Had a stone like that one Duncan’s got, once.” Roo said nothing. His father rarely talked to him, a habit that had developed in childhood. Rupert had traveled with his father many times as a boy, learning the teamster’s trade, but on the longest of those journeys, from Ravensburg to Salador and back, he’d rarely had more than ten words for the boy. When at home, Tom drank to excess, and when working, remained sober but stoic.
“I got it for your mother,” said Tom quietly.
Roo was riveted. If Tom was a quiet man when sober, he was always silent about Roo’s mother, sober or drunk. Roo knew what he did about his mother from others in the village, for she had died in childbirth.
“She was a tiny thing,” said Tom. Roo knew his diminutive status was a legacy from his mother. Erik’s mother had mentioned that more than once. “But strong,” said Tom.
Roo found that surprising. “She had a tough grit to her,” continued Tom, his eyes shining in the firelight. “You look like her, you know.” He held his right arm across his chest, clutching his left arm, which he massaged absently. He peered into the fire as if seeking something in the dancing flame.
Roo nodded, afraid to speak. Since he had struck his father, knocking him to the ground, the old man had treated him with a deference Roo had never experienced before. Tom sighed. “She wanted you, boy. The healing priest told her it would be chancy, with her being so tiny.” He wiped his right hand over his face, then looked at his own hands, large, oft scarred, and calloused. “I was afraid to touch her, you know, with her being so small and me having no gentleness in me. I was afraid I’d break her. But she was tougher than she looked.”