Exhaustion was curbing her desire to call to the stallion, as she could barely catch enough breath to walk after Dash. He pulled her reins and she reluctantly set out at a fast walk behind him.
Shadows deepened as the sun lowered in the west, and Dash moved deeper into the woods. If Jimmy and Malar had stayed clear of pursuit, they would be approaching the city several miles to the south. Dash wondered if he should attempt to cut back behind his pursuers and try to find his brother and the stranger from the Vale of Dreams.
Dash considered the best that would bring him would be to get him haplessly lost. There couldn’t be so many people in Krondor that if both brothers reached there safely, they couldn’t find one another. At least Dash hoped that was true. Hearing the riders coming closer to the point where he had left the trail below, Dash hurried deeper into the woods.
Jimmy gripped Malar’s arm and said, “We join there.” He indicated a point in the road where a fairly steady stream of travelers had been coming past the woodlands, at the edge of what had once been the foulbourgh outside the walls of Krondor. “I’m a mercenary from Landreth and you’re my servant.”
“Dog robber,” said Malar.
“What?”
“The term is ‘dog robber.’ To feed his master, a mercenary’s servant will steal scraps from a dog if necessary.” The slender man smiled. “I have served as such. You, though, will be obviously false to any Valeman who might happen to be here.”
“You think that likely?”
“It would be better should you be a young man from the East of the Kingdom, who lately served in the Vale. Claim no company. Say you worked for my departed master. I do not know what you expected to find in Krondor, young sir, but in the backwashes of war many things happen. We are seeing that ahead.”
Jimmy was forced to admit that was true. Where he had seen nothing but frost-covered stones and a few fires just weeks before, now he saw dozens of huts and tents, a veritable community springing up almost overnight. As they walked down the road, Malar leading Jimmy’s horse, Jimmy drank in the sights and sounds.
Evening was upon them and fires dotted the landscape. Hawkers shouted from ahead, offering food, drink, the company of a woman. Hard-looking men lounged near fires, watching guardedly as Jimmy and Malar moved past.
A man hurried over holding a steaming pot, and said, “Hot food! Fresh rabbit stew! I have carrots and turnips mixed in!”
From the expressions on the faces of those nearby, Jimmy surmised two things: the “rabbit” was probably a less wholesome dinner item than advertised, and most of the people nearby were hungry.
But some sort of order had been imposed, and armed men who seemed near to the point of killing for food merely watched with fixed expressions as the man passed holding out the meal. “How much?” asked Jimmy, not pausing.
“What have you?” asked the peddler.
Malar elbowed Jimmy to one side. “Begone, O stewer of cats! My master has no use for such foul-smelling garbage,” he shouted.
Instantly the two men were almost nose to nose, screaming insults at one another, and almost equally abruptly a deal had been struck. Malar gave the man a copper coin, a ball of yarn he had been carrying in his pocket, and a very old rusty dagger.
The man gave over the pot and hurried back to his camp-fire where a woman offered him another crock of the hot stew. He set out to find another customer. Malar motioned for Jimmy to move to the side of the road and squatted, holding the crockery. He held it out and spoke softly, “Eat first and give me what’s left.”
Jimmy squatted, not wishing to sit in the mud, and ate the stew. If it was rabbit, it had been a rabbit of diminutive stature, and even the carrots and turnips had a strange taste. Jimmy decided it best not to consider how long they had sat in some abandoned root cellar before that enterprising peddler had found them.
He ate half the contents of the bowl and gave the rest over to Malar. While his newfound servant ate, Jimmy looked around. He had seen enough military camps to recognize he had blundered into one. Warriors, camp followers, peddlers and thieves, all resting until they had a reason to move on.
Jimmy wondered about the reason for the gathering, and the reason that would make them move on. Many of the warriors were from the invading army that had ravaged the Western Realm the year before, but he saw enough Keshians and a few Quegans mixed in to decide that these were deserters, opportunists, weapons runners, and the dregs washed up in any backwater of a war.
Putting aside the bowl, Malar looked at Jimmy. “Young sir?”
“Let’s head into the city,” said Jimmy.
“And do what?” inquired the Valeman.
“Look for my brother.”
“I thought he was to go back east,” said Malar.
“That’s what he should do, but he won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s . . . Dash.”
They moved through the tent village and headed toward the city gate.
Three - Confrontations
Pug frowned.