Arash-Felloren

Chapter 5-1

Chapter 5Barran’s interest quickened as soon as the strangers appeared. Their arrival was apparently unexpected but they were obviously known to the women, who suddenly became subservient and ingratiating. One of them ran, almost girlishly, to the hut, ‘To get the men.’

Barran eyed the men surreptitiously while he continued his work. One was carrying a small case and was conspicuously better dressed than the others. He was also slightly ill at ease.

A client and two bodyguards, Barran decided. The latter were quite unmistakable. One of them was a tall hulking individual who rolled from side to side when he walked and whose arms arced away from his sides. He stood close to his charge, face set. The other was of more average build and had settled himself against a rock, apparently uninterested in the proceedings. The dangerous one, Barran concluded, as he watched the man looking indifferently about the camp. The first would be some moronic ale-house bruiser whose physical presence was intended to deter would-be attackers. Barran thought it unlikely that he would be able to use the sword that hung from his belt. The second, however, would be the one who anticipated and thought. He would go to some lengths to avoid trouble but would move in quickly with deadly force if real need arose. He would be able to use a sword — and the knives he would have secreted about him. Barran was grateful for the fact that he was sitting at a menial task and covered in dust. Just as he had read the man, so he knew that he himself would be the object of an intense inspection. He must do nothing to give away his own calling.

He turned his attention to the bodyguards’ client.

The man was an incongruous sight against the bleak rocky surroundings. He was anxiously — and fruitlessly — brushing dust from an ornately embroidered shirt and periodically mopping his flushed face. Barran knew two things about him already; he was important and he was a fool — or most probably so. The women’s actions marked his importance and the two bodyguards gave some measure of his folly — men bought for protection could always be bought by others. And the man did not even carry a knife!

But who was he?

Aigren and the other two miners emerged from the hut. They were carrying a table and two chairs which they set down in front of the stranger. Awkwardly, Aigren swept a kerchief over one of the chairs and motioned him to sit. When he had done so, the man nodded, and Aigren sat opposite him. The other miners stood a respectful distance away.

The women having stopped working, Barran did the same. He leaned forward, rested his chin on the hammer and prepared to watch. The stranger glanced at him and there was a brief conversation which Barran deduced involved an explanation by Aigren of who this new worker was. The man looked at the smaller bodyguard who made a slight hand movement. Seemingly this indicated approval and the man turned back to Aigren again.

Not really expecting serious trouble, are you then? Barran thought. This must be a regular meeting — a routine affair. Had it been otherwise, a conscientious bodyguard would have been holding a knife at his throat while such a judgement was made. Much would be given away here if he had the wit to see it.

Aigren gestured to Ellyn, who, almost like a serving girl, brought the two pots containing the crystals to the table. A merchant, Barran decided. This would be interesting.

The man delicately lifted the lid of one pot, inserted a finger and stirred it around gently as he studied the contents. He seemed satisfied. Ellyn said something to him and pushed the other pot forward expectantly. This received a more thorough examination, with individual crystals being taken out and inspected closely. At one stage he opened his case and took out a large eye-glass to facilitate this. In the end, however, he shook his head slowly, and with an apologetic shrug towards Ellyn, carefully tipped the contents of the second pot into the first. Though she gave little outward sign, Barran could feel her disappointment. One of the other women actually gave a subdued cry.

Then, bargaining proper began. Aigren pulled out a bag from his tunic and slowly emptied the contents on to the table. Despite his control, Barran could not restrain a start as the crystals caught the dusty sunlight and transmuted it into a disproportionate brightness. The glint that he had seen between the child’s fingers the previous day was multiplied manyfold. It seemed to reach out and pinion him, and something stirred deep within him. As did hard-learned warning signals. When he finally managed to pull his eyes from the crystals and back to the two men, he realized that he was holding his breath and craning forward with his hands clenched tightly about the top of the hammer handle. He cast a quick glance at the bodyguard by the rocks to reassure himself that his momentary lapse had gone unnoticed. Lucky, he reproached himself with some relief. But that had been a shock. He had no name for what he had just felt, but it was a long time since anything had moved him so. He had to force himself to keep his gaze away from the crystals.

Fortunately, the bargaining was now underway. The merchant’s high-pitched and whining voice weaving around Aigren’s slow grumble gave Barran something to concentrate on. He had not been impressed by the ability of the miners to drive a bargain at their first meeting, and he had a strong suspicion that something similar was going to happen here. And, for some reason, even though it was not he who had sweated beneath the Thlosgaral to wrest these crystals free, he now felt a powerful resentment that they might be parted with at too low a price.

But so it proved to be. He had acquired some knowledge of the local currency on his way through the Wilde Ports and though he could not hear what was happening, he could see that the coins the merchant was stacking on the table were the wrong colour for the value that he had just placed on the crystals.

What kind of a dolt was Aigren? Couldn’t he see the clothes this man was wearing — and the kind of men he was employing to accompany him? Items worth only what was being put on the table did not need to be protected by one bodyguard, still less two!

And there was something else about the merchant. Something wrong about this meeting other than Aigren’s incompetence. Barran could not help himself but lean forward intently as he reached out to snatch this elusive impression.

And it was there. Clear for anyone to see who had any vision worth speaking of! The man was desperate for the crystals — it was in his every gesture, in every inflection of his voice. He would have paid ten times what he finally conceded with a little moue of reluctance. Barran glanced round at the two other miners and the sullen faces of their wives and children, but they were oblivious to the reality of what was happening. Sheep for shearing. For an instant he actually considered intervening, but the notion quickly transformed itself into a heightened determination to find out more about this place, about the crystals and what made them so precious. And too, about the merchants and who they in their turn sold the crystals to. He must do this even if it meant delaying his escape. Somehow, there was a great deal of money to be made here.

Yet, even as this resolve formed, a sense of foreboding suddenly swept over him — a nameless fear which awakened his every battle instinct. But unlike the previous shock, this one he recognized as an old friend, awful though it was. More than once in the past it had saved him — made him turn to find an attacker at his back, made him seek out an ambush ahead. He ignored it at his peril. But what possible danger could there be here? The miners had offered him none — and they needed him for work. Besides, injury or no, they were so slow that he could probably deal with all three of them at once if he had to. The mines themselves were dangerous, of course, and he had no great love of confined spaces, but he had no intention of going underground. And the bodyguards would do nothing unless their charge was attacked. Then, as suddenly as the fear had come to him, came the answer. The hint of something unnatural about the slowness of the miners and their women, the anxiety of the merchant. It is this place that makes them like this. Something about the Thlosgaral drains the life out of people.

It was a vivid realization. Even though no reasoning came with it, Barran knew that this conclusion was true. He must not stay here too long or he too would degenerate into one of these dull-witted creatures. It added an urgency to the resolution he had just made.

Yet how was he going to learn anything from these people? Such conversation as he had heard so far had been confined to simple instructions and requests — and even these had been few in number. Perhaps tonight, with a bargain struck, there might be a small celebration of some kind that he could use to ease his way into their confidence? He dismissed the conjectures — they were beginning to cloud his mind. He wasn’t going to fall asleep so easily tonight and, at the very least, he could ask outright what the crystals were used for and who bought them. Showing himself stupider than his employers might perhaps make them more talkative.

Aigren and the merchant were concluding their business, the merchant having produced a balance from his case and some kind of a measuring device. Aigren’s face was immobile, but his posture was full of self-satisfaction. Barran wanted to strangle him.

After the merchant and his escort had left, there was a brief debate amongst the miners and their women, before the men disappeared back into the hut and the women returned to their pestles.

Barran found it difficult to concentrate. The light from the crystals seemed to have lodged within him so that when he closed his eyes they were there again, making all about them seem distant and gloomy — no longer real. He wanted to handle them, hold them up and scatter their light about him, peer into their hearts. He wanted to...

He wanted.

Wanted.

And mingling with this desire, two other contradictory needs pulled at him: the need for knowledge about the crystals, and the strange realization that the Thlosgaral was in some way a dangerous place to linger in. It did not occur to him that all thoughts of simply escaping this place, of his lost horse and possessions, of employment in the war in the north, were gone. As the Thlosgaral itself did every day, Barran had subtly changed.

However, the relentless rhythm of the group soon reasserted itself and Barran could not have said how much time had passed before he looked up and saw five men approaching the camp. Just as he had made an immediate assessment of the merchant and his bodyguards, so now he made one of these new arrivals, though this time it was easier. Their dress and demeanour were unmistakable: they were scoundrels of some kind. Barran noted however, that though they all wore swords, they were carrying staffs obviously fashioned from the hammer handles such as the one he had chosen for support. Robbers then, but perhaps not casual murderers, he concluded. He stopped hammering and discreetly reached for his own staff leaning on the rocks by his side.

In the few seconds which it took Barran to reach this conclusion, the new arrivals were seen, first by the children, and then the women. The children jumped up and ran to their mothers who ushered them back to the hut. Barran could see that the women were alarmed but not terrified. That was good.

A further look at the newcomers told him that they were little more than street ruffians. Nasty and brutal, but no match for a professional soldier. Still, he had no desire to defend himself against five opponents, particularly in his present condition.