The Redemption of Althalus

He peeled the man’s knitted smock off the limp body, removed his own splendid tunic, and regretfully dropped it on his would-be assassin’s face. Then he put on the shabby tunic, stole the man’s purse and spear, and left the vicinity.

Althalus didn’t have a very high opinion of the man he’d just robbed, so he was fairly certain that the idiot would actually wear that tunic, and that might help to muddy the waters. The description the fellow had been spreading around had mentioned a black beard, so when the sun rose the following morning, Althalus stopped by a forest pool where he could see his reflection in the surface of the water and painfully shaved with his bronze dagger.

Once that had been taken care of, he decided that it might be prudent to continue his northward journey along the ridge-lines rather than in the canyons. His shave and his change of clothing had probably disguised him enough to conceal his identity from people who were searching for somebody with a black beard and a wolf-eared tunic, but a fair number of men had stopped by Gosti’s hall during the preceding winter, and if some of those guests were among the searchers, they’d probably recognize him. And if they didn’t, Gosti’s cousin Galbak certainly would. Althalus knew the Arums well enough to be certain that they’d stay down in the canyons to conduct their search, since climbing the ridges would be terribly inconvenient, and there weren’t many taverns up on top where they could rest and refresh themselves. Althalus was positive that no real Arum could ever be found more than a mile away from the nearest tavern.

He climbed the ridge with a sense of bitterness dogging his heels. He’d make good his escape, of course. He was too clever to be caught. What really cankered at his soul was the fact that his escape would just reinforce Gosti’s boasts. Gosti’s reputation as the richest man in Arum would be confirmed by the fact that the greatest thief in the world had made a special trip to Arum just to rob him. Althalus mournfully concluded that his bad luck was still dogging his heels.

Up on the ridge-line, the sodden remains of last winter’s snowdrifts made for slow going, but Althalus doggedly slogged his way north. There wasn’t much game up here on the ridges, so he frequently went for days without eating.

As he sourly struggled north, he once again heard that peculiar wailing sound he’d first noticed back in the mountains on his way to Gosti’s fort the previous autumn. Evidently it was still out there, and he began to wonder if maybe it was following him for some reason. Whatever it was, it was noisy, and its wailing cries echoing back from the mountainsides began to make Althalus distinctly edgy.

It wasn’t a wolf; Althalus was sure of that. Wolves travel in packs, and this was a solitary creature. There was an almost despairing quality about its wailing. He eventually concluded that it was most probably the mating season for that particular creature, and that its mournful, hollow cries were nothing more than an announcement to others of its species that it would really like to have some company along about now. Whatever it was, Althalus began to fervently wish that it’d go look for companionship elsewhere, since those unearthly cries of absolute despair were beginning to get on his nerves.

CHAPTER THREE

Althalus was in a somber mood as he slogged north. along the ridge-lines of Arum. He’d had set-backs before, of course. Nobody wins every time, but always in the past his luck had returned in short order. This time had been somehow different. Everything he’d touched had gone sour. His luck had not just deserted him, she seemed to be going out of her way to ruin everything he attempted. Had he done something that’d turned her love to hate? That gloomy thought hounded him as he came down out of the mountains of Arum into the deep-forested land of Hule.

Hule is the refuge of choice for men who are the unfortunate victims of various misunderstandings in the surrounding lands. Helpful men who ‘just wanted to give your horse some exercise’ or were ‘just taking your silver coins out into the light so that I could polish them for you,’ found sanctuary in Hule, since there’s nothing resembling a government or laws of any kind in Hule, and in a land where there aren’t any laws, there’s no such thing as a law-breaker.

Althalus was in a foul humor when he reached Hule, and he felt a great need for the companionship of people of his own kind with whom he could be completely open, so he made his way directly through the forest to the more or less permanent encampment of a Hulish man named Nabjor who brewed good mead and sold it at a fair price. Nabjor also had several plump young ladies available for the convenience of customers who might be feeling lonely for conversation or consolation.

There’s a hushed quality about the vast forests of Hule. The trees of that land of the far north are giants, and a traveler can wander under the endless canopy of their outspread limbs for days on end without ever seeing the sun. The trees are evergreens for the most part, and their fallen needles blanket the ground in a deep, damp carpet that muffles the sound of a traveler’s footsteps. There are no trails in the land of Hule, since the trees continually shed their dead needles in a gentle sprinkle to cover all signs of the passage of man or beast.

Nabjor’s congenial camp lay in a small clearing on the banks of a cheerful little stream that giggled its way over brown rocks, and Althalus approached it with some caution, since a man reputed to be carrying two heavy bags of gold tends to be very careful before he enters any public establishment. After he’d lain behind a fallen tree watching the camp for a while, Althalus concluded that there were no Arums around, so he rose to his feet. ‘Ho, Nabjor,’ he called. ‘It’s me, Althalus. Don’t get excited; I’m coming in.’ Nabjor always kept a heavy-bladed bronze axe close at hand to maintain order and to deal with interlopers who might have some questions about his own indiscretions, so it was prudent not to surprise him.

‘Ho! Althalus!’ Nabjor bellowed. ‘Welcome! I was beginning to think that maybe the Equeros or the Treboreans had caught you and hung you up on a tree down there.’

‘No,’ Althalus replied with a rueful laugh. ‘I’ve managed to keep my feet on the ground so far, but only barely. Is your mead ripe yet? That batch you had the last time I passed through was just a trifle green.’

‘Come and try some,’ Nabjor invited. ‘This new batch came out rather well.’

Althalus walked into the clearing and looked at his old friend. Nabjor was a burly man with dun-colored hair and beard. He had a large, bulbous nose, shrewd eyes, and he was dressed in a shaggy bearskin tunic. Nabjor was a businessman who sold good mead and rented out ladies. He also bought things with no questions asked from men who stole for a living.

The two of them clasped hands warmly. ‘Sit you down, my friend,’ Nabjor said. ‘I’ll bring us some mead, and you can tell me all about the splendors of civilization.’

Althalus sank down on a log by the fire where a spitted haunch of forest bison sizzled and smoked while Nabjor filled two large earthenware cups with foaming mead. ‘How did things go down there?’ he asked, returning to the fire and handing Althalus one of the cups.

‘Awful,’ Althalus said glumly.

‘That bad?’ Nabjor asked, seating himself on the log on the other side of the fire.

‘Even worse, Nabjor. I don’t think anybody’s come up with a word yet that really describes how bad it was.’ Althalus took a long drink of his mead. ‘You got a good run on this batch, my friend.’

‘I thought you might like it.’

‘Are you still charging the same price?’

‘Don’t worry about the price today, Althalus. Today’s mead is out of friendship.’

Althalus lifted his cup. ‘Here’s to friendship then,’ he said and took another drink. ‘They don’t even make mead down in civilization. The only thing you can buy in the taverns is sour wine.’

‘They call that civilized?’ Nabjor shook his head in disbelief.

‘How’s business been?’ Althalus asked.

‘Not bad at all,’ Nabjor replied expansively. ‘Word’s getting around about my place. Just about everybody in Hule knows by now that if he wants a good cup of mead at a reasonable price, Nabjor’s camp is the place to go. If he wants the companionship of a pretty lady, this is the place. If he’s stumbled across something valuable that he wants to sell with no embarrassing questions about how he came by it, he knows that if he comes here, I’ll be glad to discuss it with him.’

‘You’re going to fool around and die rich, Nabjor.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather live rich. All right, since that’s out of the way, tell me what happened down in the low-country. I haven’t seen you for more than a year, so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

‘You’d better brace yourself, Nabjor,’ Althalus warned. ‘This isn’t going to be one of those happy stories.’ Then he went on to describe his misadventures in Equero, Treborea, and Perquaine at some length.

‘That’s awful!’ Nabjor said. ‘Didn’t anything turn out well?’

‘Not really. Things were so bad that I had to waylay men coming out of taverns to get enough money to pay for my next meal. My luck’s gone sour on me, Nabjor. Everything I’ve touched for the past year and a half’s turned to ashes on me. I thought for a while that it was because my luck hadn’t followed me when I went down into the low-country, but things didn’t get any better when I got to Arum.’ Then he told his friend about his misadventures in the hall of Gosti Big Belly.

‘You really do have a problem, don’t you, Althalus?’ Nabjor observed. ‘It’s your luck that’s always made you famous. You’d better see what you can do to get back on the good side of her.’

‘I’d be more than happy to, Nabjor, but I don’t know how. She’s always been so fond of me that I didn’t have to take any special pains to keep her in my pocket. If she had a temple someplace, I’d steal somebody’s goat and sacrifice it on her altar. But the way things have been going here lately, the goat would probably kick my brains out before I could cut his throat.’

‘Oh, cheer up, Althalus. Things have got to get better for you.’

‘I certainly hope so. I don’t see how they could get any worse.’

Just then Althalus heard that almost despairing wail again, far back in the trees. ‘Do you have any idea of what sort of animal makes that kind of noise?’ he asked.

Nabjor cocked his head to listen. ‘Can’t quite place it,’ he admitted. ‘It wouldn’t be a bear, would it?’

‘I don’t think so. Bears don’t go around singing in the woods that way. I heard that beast howling for days on end while I was up in Arum.’

‘Maybe it’s heard about Gosti’s lies and it’s following you to rob you of all your gold.’

‘Very funny, Nabjor,’ Althalus said sarcastically.

Nabjor smirked at him. Then he took their cups back to the crock to refill them. ‘Here,’ he said, coming back to the fire and holding one of the cups out to Althalus, ‘smother your laughter with this and quit worrying about animals. They’re afraid of fire, so whatever it is out there howling among the trees isn’t likely to come in here and sit down with us.’

Althalus and Nabjor had a few more cups of mead, and then the thief noticed that his friend had a new wench in his camp. The wench had wicked eyes and a provocative way of walking. He decided that it might be sort of nice if he and the wench got to know each other a little better. He was very much in need of friendship just now.

And so Althalus remained in Nabjor’s establishment for quite some time to enjoy the entertainments available there. Nabjor’s mead was plentiful, there was usually a haunch of forest bison on a spit near the fire in case anyone grew hungry, and the wench with wicked eyes was talented. Not only that, other thieves, almost all of them old friends and acquaintances, stopped by from time to time, and they could all spend happy hours together, bragging, talking shop, and engaging in friendly dice games. After this past year, Althalus really needed some relaxation to unwind his nerves and restore his good humor. His stock in trade was witty stories and jokes, and a grumpy man can’t tell jokes very well.

His meager supply of brass coins was not inexhaustible, however, and after a time his purse grew very slender, so he regretfully concluded that he’d probably better start thinking about going back to work.

And then along toward the end of summer on a blustery day when the racing clouds overhead were blotting out the sun, a man with deep-sunk eyes and lank, greasy black hair rode into Nabjor’s camp on a shaggy grey horse. He slid down from the back of his weary mount and came to the fire to warm his hands. ‘Mead!’ he called to Nabjor in a harsh voice.

‘I don’t know you, friend,’ Nabjor said suspiciously, fingering his heavy bronze axe. ‘I’ll have to see your money first.’

The stranger’s eyes hardened and then he wordlessly shook a heavy leather purse.

Althalus squinted speculatively at the stranger. The fellow was wearing a kind of bronze helmet on his head that reached down the back of his neck to his shoulders, and there were thick bronze plates sewn onto his black leather jerkin. He also wore a long, hooded black cloak which looked rather fine and which Althalus was sure would fit him, if the stranger happened to drink too much of Nabjor’s mead and drift off to sleep. The man also had a heavy-bladed sword tucked under his belt and a narrow bronze dagger as well.

There was an oddly archaic look about the stranger’s features that made his face appear to have been only half-finished. Althalus didn’t really pay too much attention to the stranger’s face, though. What he was really looking for were the characteristic clan-tattoos of the Arums. At this particular time Althalus thought it might be prudent to avoid Arums. The stranger, however, had unmarked hands and forearms, so our thief relaxed.

The black-haired stranger seated himself on a log across the fire-pit from where Althalus lounged and looked penetratingly at the thief. It might have been some trick of the light, but the dancing flames of the fire were reflected in the stranger’s eyes, and that made Althalus just a bit edgy. It’s not every day that a man comes across somebody whose eyes are on fire. ‘I see that I’ve finally found you,’ the stranger said in a peculiarly accented voice. It appeared that this man was not one to beat about the bush.

‘You’ve been looking for me?’ Althalus said as calmly as possible. The fellow was heavily armed, and as far as Althalus knew, there was still a price on his head back in Arum. He carefully shifted his own sword around on his belt so that the hilt was closer to his hand.

‘For quite some time now,’ the stranger replied. ‘I picked up your trail in Deika. Men down there are still talking about how fast you can run when dogs are chasing you. Then I tracked you to Kanthon in Treborea and on to Maghu in Perquaine. Druigor’s still trying to figure out why you just dumped all his money on the floor and didn’t steal any of it.’

Althalus winced.

‘You didn’t know that it was money, did you?’ the stranger said shrewdly. ‘Anyway, I followed you from Maghu up into Arum, and there’s a fat man up there who’s looking for you even harder than I am.’

‘I sort of doubt that,’ Althalus said. ‘Gosti wants people to think he’s rich, and I’m probably the only man around who knows that there was nothing in his strongroom but copper pennies.’

The stranger laughed. ‘I thought there was something that didn’t quite ring true about the way he kept going on about how you’d robbed him.’

‘And just why have you spent all this time looking for me?’ Althalus asked, getting to the point. ‘Your clothing says Nekweros, and I haven’t been there in years, so I’m sure I haven’t stolen anything from you recently.’

‘Set your mind at rest, Althalus, and slide your sword back around your belt so the hilt doesn’t keep poking you in the ribs. I haven’t come here to take your head back to Gosti. Would you be at all interested in a business proposition?’

‘That depends.’

‘My name’s Ghend, and I need a good thief who knows his way around. Are you at all familiar with the land of the Kagwhers?’

‘I’ve been there a few times,’ Althalus replied cautiously. ‘I don’t care very much for the Kagwhers. They have this habit of assuming that everyone who comes along is there to sneak into their gold mines and just help himself. What is it that you want me to steal for you? You look like the kind of man who can take care of things like that for himself. Why would you want to pay somebody else to do it for you?’

‘You’re not the only one with a price on his head, Althalus,’ Ghend replied with a pained expression. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t care much for the reception I’d get if I happened to venture into Kagwher just now. Anyway, there’s someone in Nekweros who’s holding some obligations over my head, and he’s not the sort I’d want to disappoint. There’s something he really wants over in Kagwher, and he’s told me to go there and get it for him. That puts me in a very tight spot, you understand. You’d be in the same sort of situation if someone told you to go get something for him and it just happened to be in Arum, wouldn’t you?’

‘I can see your problem, yes. I should warn you that I don’t work cheap, though.’

‘I didn’t expect you to, Althalus. This thing my friend in Nekweros wants is quite large and very heavy, and I’m prepared to pay you its weight in gold if you’ll steal it for me.’

‘You just managed to get my undivided attention, Ghend.’

‘Are you really as good a thief as everyone says you are?’ Ghend’s glowing eyes seemed to burn more brightly.

‘I’m the best,’ Althalus said with a deprecating shrug.

‘He’s right about that, stranger,’ Nabjor said, bringing Althalus a fresh cup of mead. ‘Althalus here can steal anything with two ends or with a top and a bottom.’

‘That might be a slight exaggeration,’ Althalus said. ‘A river has two ends, and I’ve never stolen one of those; and a lake has a top and a bottom, but I’ve never stolen one of those either. What exactly is it that this man in Nekweros wants badly enough to offer gold for it – some jewel or something like that?’

‘No, it’s not a jewel,’ Ghend replied with a hungry look. ‘What he wants – and will pay gold for – is a Book.’

‘You just said the magic word “gold” again, Ghend. I could sit here all day and listen to you talk about it, but now we come to the hard part. What in blazes is a book?’

Ghend looked sharply at him, and the flickering firelight touched his eyes again, making them glow a burning red. ‘So that’s why you threw all of Druigor’s money on the floor. You didn’t know that it was money because you can’t read.’

‘Reading’s for the priests, Ghend, and I don’t have any dealings with priests if I can avoid it. Every priest I’ve ever come across promises me a seat at the table of his god – if I’ll just hand over everything I’ve got in my purse. I’m sure the dining halls of the gods are very nice, but you have to die to get an invitation to have dinner with God, and I’m not really that hungry.’

Ghend frowned. ‘This might complicate things just a bit,’ he said. ‘A book is a collection of pages that people read.’

‘I don’t have to be able to read it, Ghend. To be able to steal it, all I have to know is what it looks like and where it is.’

Ghend gave him a speculative look, his deep sunk eyes glowing. ‘You may be right,’ he said, almost as if to himself. ‘I just happen to have a Book with me. If I show it to you, you’ll know what you’re looking for.’

‘Exactly,’ Althalus said. ‘Why don’t you trot your book out, and I’ll have a look. I don’t have to know what it says to be able to steal it, do I?’

‘No,’ Ghend agreed, ‘I guess you don’t at that.’ He rose to his feet, went over to his horse, reached inside the leather bag tied to his saddle, and took something square and fairly large out of the bag. Then he brought it back to the fire.

‘It’s bigger than I thought,’ Althalus noted. ‘It’s just a box, then, isn’t it?’

‘It’s what’s inside that’s important’, Ghend said, opening the lid. He took out a crackling sheet of something that looked like dried leather and handed it to Althalus. ‘That’s what writing looks like’, he said. ‘When you find a box like this one, you’d better open it to make sure it has sheets like that one inside instead of buttons or tools.’

Althalus held up the sheet and looked at it. ‘What kind of animal has a hide this thin?’ he asked.

‘They take a piece of cowhide and split it with a knife to get thin sheets,’ Ghend explained. ‘Then they press them flat with weights and dry them so that they’re stiff. Then they write on them so that other people can read what they’ve put down.’

‘Trust a priest to complicate things,’ Althalus said. He looked carefully at the neatly spaced lines of writing on the sheet. ‘It looks sort of like pictures, doesn’t it?’ he suggested.

‘That’s what writing is,’ Ghend explained. He took a stick and drew a curved line in the dirt beside the fire. ‘This is the picture that means “cow”,’ he said, ‘since it’s supposed to look like a cow’s horns.’

‘I thought learning to read was supposed to be difficult,’ Althalus said. ‘We’ve only been talking about it for a few minutes, and I already know how to read.’

‘As long as all you want to read about is cows,’ Ghend amended, half under his breath.

‘I don’t see anything about cows on this page,’ Althalus said.

‘You’ve got it upside down,’ Ghend told him.

‘Oh.’ Althalus turned the page and studied it for a little while. Some of the symbols carefully drawn on the parchment chilled him for some reason. ‘I can’t make any sense of this,’ he admitted, ‘but that’s not important. All I really need to know is that I’m looking for a black box with leather sheets inside.’

‘The box we want is white,’ Ghend corrected, ‘and it’s quite a bit bigger than this one.’ He held up his Book. The cover of the Book had red symbols on it, ones that chilled Althalus.

‘How much bigger than yours is the book we want?’ he asked.

‘It’s about as long and as wide as the length of your forearm,’ Ghend replied, ‘and about as thick as the length of your foot. It’s fairly heavy.’ He took the sheet of parched leather from Althalus and almost reverently put it back inside the box. ‘Well?’ he said then, ‘are you interested in the proposition?’

‘I’ll need a few more details,’ Althalus replied. ‘Just exactly where is this book, and how well is it guarded?’

‘It’s in the house at the end of the world over in Kagwher.’

‘I know where Kagwher is’, Althalus said, ‘but I didn’t know that the world ended there. Exactly where in Kagwher is this place? What direction?’

‘North. It’s up in that part of Kagwher that doesn’t see the sun in the winter and where there isn’t any night in summer.’

‘That’s a peculiar place for somebody to live.’

‘Truly. The owner of the Book doesn’t live there any more, though, so there won’t be anybody there to interfere with you when you go inside the house to steal the Book.’

‘That’s convenient. Can you give me any kind of landmarks? I can move faster if I know where I’m going.’

‘Just follow the edge of the world. When you see a house, you’ll know it’s the right place. It’s the only house up there.’

Althalus drank off his mead. ‘That sounds simple enough,’ he said. ‘Now, then, after I’ve stolen the book, how do I find you to get my pay?’

‘I’ll find you, Althalus.’ Ghend’s deep-sunk eyes burned even hotter. ‘Believe me, I’ll find you.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘You’ll do it then?’

‘I said I’ll think about it. Now, why don’t we have some more of Nabjor’s mead – since you’re the one who’s paying.’

Althalus didn’t feel very well the next morning, but a few cups of Nabjor’s mead quieted the shaking in his hands and put out the fire in his belly. ‘I’ll be gone for a while, Nabjor’, he told his friend. ‘Tell the wench with the naughty eyes that I said goodbye and that I’ll see her again someday.’