White Road

Rieser went back to his food, hoping the fellow would go away.
    “What clan?” the man persisted, appearing genuinely pleased to encounter so many of them at once. “You’re the first I’ve ever seen not wearing any sen’gai.”
    “We’re from a small clan in the south. How do you come to speak our language so well?” Rieser asked, hoping to steer him clear of where they were from, in case he’d been there himself.
    “My wife,” the man said proudly. “She’s what you people call a ya’shel, from Skala. Pretty as the morning sky and as good a woman as ever trod the earth.”
    “Is that so?” Rieser suppressed an inward shudder at the thought of this malodorous Tír—or any Tír, for that matter—rutting with a ’faie woman, even if she was only a Tír-begat half-breed.
    “Where you headed? Up to Wolde?”
    “No, we’re going south.”
    The man laughed. “South’s a big place.”
    “We are going home,” Rieser told him.
    “By land or river?”
    “River?”
    Their inquisitor seemed surprised by his ignorance—not a good thing. “The Folcwine. Part of what we call the Gold Road up here, though a good stretch of it is the river. It’s been a mild winter, and last I heard there was still open water all the way to Nanta. By the last reports, the Skalanswere garrisoned there, keeping the peace.” He gave Rieser another curious look. “The river’s your fastest way south.”
    “We took a different way.” This was something he didn’t know before, though he’d seen a river marked on his map. A boat would mean close contact with these people, but he could probably stand it if it meant getting to their destination faster. River travel would save them weeks, if not months this time of year. It might be worth the risk and discomfort.
    The man directed him to a town where they could find a boat south, then said, “If you came up from the south overland, you must have seen something of the armies, eh?”
    Armies?
Was there no end to this man’s curiosity? “Only from a distance,” Rieser replied.
    “Which side? Skala’s or Plenimar’s?”
    “I don’t know. We were too far away.” Rieser clenched his left fist under the table, resisting the urge to shout at the man. He was standing too close, making Rieser tilt his head back to look him in the eye.
    “Well, it will be better if it’s Skala, friend. You don’t want to run afoul of any Plenimaran marines. They’re a rough lot.”
    The man talked on, but Rieser’s increasingly brief answers finally got the message across and he left them alone, as did the others, though there was much staring. Perhaps it was because of Turmay, who was dipping his stew up into his mouth with his fingers, or of Nowen and the other three women of his company. They were comely, he supposed, and Sona and Allia looked young enough to be of interest. He was glad of the weight of his sword against his thigh under the table, in case things turned ugly.
    But the night passed without bloodshed and they pressed on for the river.
    The river town turned out to be a fair-sized place, no doubt because of the trade that went through it. The waterfront was a warren of warehouses and long wooden platforms that extended out from the shore. He saw stacks of wool bales everywhere, and tufts of the stuff blew about on the ground.
    There were also soldiers. There was an encampment justoutside the walls, and there were many uniformed men—and women, too—in the streets. They wore chain mail under tabards emblazoned with the shape of a red bird in flight, and many were armed with long swords.
    Rieser paused at a stall where a man was selling roasted chestnuts. “Who are these soldiers?” he asked.
    The man gave him much the same look as the Tír back at that tavern had. “Why, the Skalan Red Hawk regiment, of course.”
    According to the man back at the tavern, this was a good thing. Encouraged, Rieser led his company down to the waterfront.
    Boats were tied up beside the long wooden platforms, many of them little more than huge rafts, like the ones children played with on the lakes back home.
    After some confusion he was directed to someone called the dock master. This turned out to be a friendly man with dishonest eyes whose palm had to be crossed with silver before he would take them to something called a “flat boat” that could carry their horses. Rieser paid the captain in gold for passage on one of the larger ones, what the master called a “barge.”
    For the