Loose Lips and Greedy Ears
"A knight like that — I'd be glad if he lingered in our village a while," said the headman of Lutzbeck.
"And why would that be?"
"You know well enough. The rumors drifting about the countryside of late are ugly ones."
The lord of Lutzbeck was Count Zarfen. The House of Zarfen had lost several battles in a row, and news like that could hardly fail to trickle down to the fiefs beneath it.
Bandits were multiplying, and the Count had his hands too full to send help, so the villagers had been forced to raise a vigilante band and hold the walls themselves. The village's young men swaggered about as though a spear in hand made them soldiers, but the headman knew better — these boys would never stop a serious attack.
Why else did nobles pay good money for mercenaries, after all? Men who had never fought a day in their lives did not become warriors the moment someone pressed a spear into them. Their courage ran hot while their own village held the advantage, but the moment a real assault came, they would break at once.
A village this large had stayed safe until now largely because even bands of deserting mercenaries thought twice about raiding it, but the future was anyone's guess. If the number of hired blades kept growing — or if even one company decided to make camp nearby — matters would turn thorny indeed. A vigilante band could never hunt them down.
"Haha. Lord Atanka. Nothing would please me more, of course, but wouldn't His Lordship the knight find life here terribly dreary?"
"Dreary? Put down roots anywhere and it becomes home. And we've no lack of young women in this village, you know."
This old man is nursing a shameless appetite.
The insolent peddler has some nerve...
Both wore smiles, and behind those smiles each was cursing the other.
Still, the disadvantage was Atanka's. He, too, had assumed the knight would be unlikely to stay — there was little here to hold him. But if the knight did remain, he would be an enormous boon.
If only one could trust the mercenary bastards.
Guarding the village would mean hiring swords, and whether hired swords could be trusted was the whole problem. It was common enough for mercenaries brought into a village to betray their hosts and turn bandit themselves.
He needed men he could rely on, but reliable men were scarce — and expensive besides.
A knight such as the one Eldans described, though, was another story entirely. A noble born of a knightly house, a man who understood honor, would at the very least not betray them — and neither would he fixate on coin so nakedly as a common sellsword.
Stay? In his dreams.
Eldans was dumbfounded. He had only offered his explanations out of concern that the knight, being a stranger here, might be saddled with needless misunderstandings — and now the old man was angling to turn a profit on the back of it.
The Kettana Merchant Guild always had need of fighting men it could trust. The Catalia Peninsula saw as much bloodshed as the empires and kingdoms north of the Dwarf Mountains: the independent city-states warred with one another, and with the nobles of the Holy Empire besides...
A small guild might steer well clear of such fights, but a large one plunged in with gusto — for nothing paid quite like a war.
And what such times demanded above all was armed strength.
It was an age of chaos, and the only thing you could count on was force. Even little villages were raising militias and hiring swords — all the more so the guilds of the cities.
Eldans meant to introduce Johan to the Kettana Guild. Building a friendship with a young knight like that would surely prove its worth someday.
"Well, that talk can keep for later... I hear you've brought wheat and barley. How does one and a half silver for the wheat, and one for the barley, sound?"
"Aigoo, Lord Atanka. Do you have any idea what I suffered to bring it here... Two and a half for the wheat, two for the barley. I absolutely must have that much."
"Two and a half?! Do you mean for every soul in my village to starve to death?"
"What are you saying? Look at the quality of this barley — I know full well that Lutzbeck's brewers will turn it into beer and sell it for several times what you're paying me."
Lutzbeck's beer was famous in the region. Famous enough that monasteries sent men all this way to buy it up.
Ordinarily, a barrel packed tight with wheat went for a silver and a half. But no merchant hauled his goods this far merely to be paid their fair price.
"Suppose I paid in silver other than Imperial coin — then I could see my way to two and a half."
"What sort of talk is that... Please, Lord Atanka, don't say such absurd things. You know better than anyone how little the coinage can be trusted these days."
What was exceptional was the Imperial Bank, which ran under iron rules laid down by the dwarven nobles. Every other currency saw its silver and gold content changed at a lord's whim — there was a reason merchants favored Imperial silver and gold.
"Two silver, Lord Atanka. And one and a half for the barley. I can't go a step lower — I'd sooner eat the grain myself and die."
"Enough bellyaching. Fine, fine — so be it."
Sensing that Eldans had no intention of shaving the price any further, Atanka relented. The merchant's greed galled him, but he could let this much pass. It wasn't as though this would be their only deal.
"My sincere thanks once more, Lord Atanka."
Eldans smiled and held out a pouch. What lay inside was well known to them both. Atanka smiled in return and clasped his hand. The villagers would never in their wildest dreams imagine the conversation that had passed between them.
This was a world where travel was rare. Most people lived out their whole lives and died in the village or city of their birth, and so an outsider who wandered in drew stares that mingled curiosity with suspicion.
Suspicious sorts, no doubt — but news from beyond? That they'd take gladly!
In that respect, Gowan's mercenaries were rather convenient. Eldans had vouched for them, which made them reasonably trustworthy types. The villagers would come up, drop a word or two — "Where do you hail from?" "How do the roads look these days?" — and amble on by.
"You remember to mind your conduct out there, yes?"
"You think I've been a merc for a day or two? Obviously. Quit your worrying."
Needless to say, Gowan's men kept themselves in check. A tiny hamlet might forgive a slip, but acting carelessly in a village this size invited headaches.
Suppose they got friendly with the locals, shared a few drinks, and a brawl broke out? Smoothed over, perhaps — but if it wasn't, their lives were on the line. In a small village they could punch their way free; a large one had its own vigilante band, and a pride to match. Getting caught or hunted down would be a catastrophe.
And so veteran mercenaries watched their step everywhere except villages they had visited often enough to be on familiar terms with. When trouble flared, nine times in ten it would be laid at their door.
Of course, the world held far more thoughtless mercenaries than careful ones. And Gamson was one of that majority.
"Anyone seen where Gamson slunk off to?"
"Said he was going for a drink, boss."
"Unbelievable... Forget it. You're not his father; nobody can stand over him every waking hour."
"You the new merc?"
"Yeah. What, you got a fucking problem with that?"
"Whoa, whoa. Easy there. Word was a new sellsword had turned up, and I wondered what manner of man you were. That's all."
A village youth dropped onto the bench beside Gamson with a thud, who took his measure at a glance. Young, hot-blooded, seething with grievances, hungry for more. The sort the village called a fool who hadn't grown up. Hadn't Gamson himself fled his own village to become a mercenary for precisely those reasons?
There was only one thing a boy like this was curious about. The same thing Gamson had once been curious about.
"What, wondering about mercenary work?"
"Seems like it'd pass the time nicely."
"Then you're buying the beer. Buy it, and I'll talk."
Gamson handed back, word for word, what a mercenary he had once met had told him. The boy feigned nonchalance, but his blood was already up. Had Gamson proposed they take up mercenary work together on the spot, he would have said yes.
The beer arrived, and the two of them drank deep. Two soon became three, and three became four. Lutzbeck was a fairly large village, and it had no shortage of hot-blooded young men.
"So there I am, having just finished off a troll, and the village hicks are so grateful they about die of it. Saying they'll report the deed to the noble and everything... Knights even came by to gawk in amazement before they left. 'How does a mere sellsword take down a troll?' they kept asking..."
Face flushed, Gamson spun his tall tales. Inside the mercenary band he was nobody — watched, chewed out, ordered about at every turn — but here it was different. Each time he opened his mouth, the young men gazed back at him in open awe.
Granted, they didn't believe half of it. But what did that matter?
"And then? What did you tell them?"
"I took my pay, is what. Why go getting tangled up with a noble? Once you're entangled with nobles, life's a royal bloody nuisance. Do this, fetch that... Mercenary life is the best! With silver in your purse, there's not a noble alive worth envying."
Gamson — who would fling himself flat against the floor the instant a chance to meet a noble appeared — was posturing. The others didn't look convinced. Catching a noble's eye and rising in the world was a dream they all cherished.
"But you could win a title, couldn't you? A knighthood."
"What the hell would I do with a trinket like that? Take the silver instead, you idiots."
The young men bristled at that, but swallowed it down. They were the ones who wanted to keep listening, after all.
"Oh, that reminds me — didn't somebody say your bunch had a knight along? Heard the man fought like a fucking demon."
"I heard that too. Butchered the whole lot single-handedly, supposedly? So that's what a real knight can do? That wandering knight who came through a while back was worthless."
"That one was a wandering knight too!"
"Pfft. Wandering knights aren't all cut from the same cloth. Even their gear was a world apart."
"Hey. You know why that bastard's so strong?"
?
"You've seen his kit, haven't you? It's the longsword he carries. An absolutely monstrous famous blade — that's why."
Like a blind sow rooting out a truffle, Gamson — midway through running Johan down — had stumbled onto the truth. Not that he could have known it: even had the longsword been a mere tree branch, it would have posed little obstacle to Johan cutting down his ambushers.
"With a sword like that, even a sod like you could put down two or three mercenaries without breaking stride."
"Th-that much?"
"That's unbelievable..."
"Hey, use your head. How would you beat a dozen enemies? You think a weapon that does that would be ordinary?"
"Isn't it just that knights train from childhood?"
One of them looked doubtful, but the rest seemed to be swallowing Gamson's story whole.
"Man, that sounds like one hell of a blade..."
"...Should we steal it?"
?
Beer halfway down his throat, Gamson nearly choked. What the hell were these idiots saying?
Fortunately, the other village boys hurried to rein in the one who'd said it.
"Are you out of your mind? How do you plan to deal with what comes after?"
"We grab it and run, obviously. Weren't you planning to head for the city anyway? You keep whining that you won't rot your life away farming in a backwater like this. A blade that famous? Sell it, split the take — there's your stake, right there. What do you want to bet it's one of the famed swords of the Ancient Empire?"
"You're right...!"
Between the beer and their green, sheltered ignorance, the young fools caught fire in an instant. Gamson was at a loss. He couldn't tell whether he ought to be talking them down — or not.
"Gamson, you should come with us too!"
"Wh... what? Me?"
"You're the one who knows the mercenary trade. To sell it in the city, we can't do it without you."
"But I'm already with a mercenary band..."
"What do those scrubs matter? Useless lot anyway — you said so yourself. Ditch them and come with us! We're nothing like those gutless bastards."