The Swordsman's Oath (Einarinn 2) Read Free Page B

about trying to stop. My own purse had lightened by a good measure on the road, common coin gone to those who would take it or else spent on as much bread as I could reasonably carry, so I had something I could casually offer those still clinging to the shreds of their dignity.
    I rode to the head of the queue, not about to risk hanging about and getting drawn into the quarrels erupting here and there along the line.
    “Rein it in.” A burly man-at-arms leveled his pike to bar my way and the rest of his troop stopped lounging on the parapet of the bridge.
    “Good day to you.” I dismounted and nodded a precisely calculated half-salute. “Is there a fee for crossing the bridge?”
    He eyed me a little uncertainly. “That depends on who you are.”
    I bet it did; on whether one was a desperate peasant willing to give up a share of any hoarded coin worth having, or a fleeing mercenary who could end up costing a lax border guard a flogging if he slipped past and was caught looting or worse. Caladhrian lords know full well the bloody chaos of Lescar would soon spill over to choke their lands if it were not for the depth and swirling current of the Rel, and they take guarding the few bridges suitably seriously.
    “I am a Formalin prince’s sworn man.” I pulled my amulet from the neck of my shirt and held it out.
    “What’s your business in Caladhria?” the man asked, open-mouthed.
    “My Patron’s,” I replied crisply but politely.
    He didn’t know what to say to that but he didn’t lower his pike either.
    “Here.” I held out my hand and he closed his stained fingers on a couple of good Formalin Marks, not the flimsy leaded coin of Lescar. “Give some woman on her own with children a free passage, why don’t you?”
    He cracked a gap-toothed smile at that. “I reckon I could.”
    He planted his pike on its butt and my horse’s hooves rang on the planks of the broad bridge. Formalin-built Old Empire foundations were still solidly defying the murky flow of the mighty Rel, as you would expect, and the intermittently renewed woodwork above was dark from a fresh coat of pitch. More men with pikes lined the sides, ready for any threat of trouble. I stopped by one who looked barely old enough to use a blade for shaving, let alone for defending his Lord’s domains.
    I noted the colors and badge on his overlarge livery. “Are you Lord Adrin’s men?”
    He nodded cautious agreement. “That’s right.”
    “I’m heading for a place called Cote. Which road do I take?”
    He frowned at me. “Which Cote would that be, then, mester?”
    I frowned in turn, perplexed. “How do you mean?”
    “Well, for Upper Cote, Spring Cote, Cote in the Clay and Small Cote you go upstream, Cotinwood and Hill Cote are downstream, and you’d want the west high road for Nether Cote and Cote Fane.” This being Caladhria, the lad was genuinely trying to be helpful, not just tweaking my nose.
    “Where’s Lord Adrin’s main residence?”
    “He’m visiting Duryea, his wife’s people, been there since the Equinox.”
    “And where does he live when he’s not visiting?”
    “All over.”
    The lad’s painstaking Formalin, doubtless learned from some local scholar, was oddly accented and I wasn’t at all sure he was understanding me fully. The Caladhrian I know best is the coastal dialect and this far up country could well confuse things further.
    “Thank you,” I said, belatedly recalling why Caladhrian was a byword for lackwit back home. This lad couldn’t poke a dead dog with a sharp stick.
    Once off the bridge, I spurred the horse clear of the peasants milling about. A knot of lime-washed, timber-framed houses with wood-shingled roofs clustered around the meeting of the roads; it could have been any small hamlet between the ocean coast and western Ensaimin, the most distant province, where the Empire’s grip had never really taken hold and slipped loose first. I looked vainly for way-stones that might give me some heading