Bounder Ch. 05

Try as I might, I couldn't see any direct motive involved for most, if any of the parties involved. The brothers might be rapists... or not. Maybe they sported with Rochelle... or not. Maybe she tried to escape and they killed her... or not. Maybe Danelle went to them with threats and accusations... or not. Maybe the Blackguards were somehow actively involved in these initial crimes... but probably not.

The Blackguards were an elite prestigious unit with above average pay for a soldier and they undoubtedly had their pick of the innumerable street slatterns that were attracted to strong men in a sharp uniform. They also tended to have more sense than to force their sport on local women, particularly ones with some measure of local protection. Besides, running women down with a carriage wasn't the usual way that the Blackguard dealt with their problems. They were laughingly predictable and direct, invariably relying upon either gold or steel (or both, like tonight) to settle their problems.

Little of this made any sort of sense at all, and with the city gates both east and west closed for the night, we couldn't start our journey to visit the hills until tomorrow morning. There were secret, or at least less public ways in and out of the city at night, but many of these methods involved members or associates of the thieves' guild, and at this moment I couldn't trust any of them with my life. One hundred gold royals were just too rich of a prize for my head for even the guild leaders to resist! Assuming I survived the next couple of days, it was likely that the guild master and I were going to hash about a few of these 'misunderstandings'. My gift could be marvelously persuasive and if I needed to make thralls of the entire guild leadership to keep my head still attached to my shoulders after my back was turned, then so be it!

Flerrie immediately demonstrated her usefulness once more by remarking that the widowed mother of a patroller from her station kept a small rooming house nearby, close to the west gate. By claiming vigiles business, she was certain to keep quiet about our presence there. Since we needed to spend the night somewhere in town and I was loath to reveal the existence of any of my own safe house refuges to the young watchwoman, I agreed to try her rooming house out.

The grey haired widow was indeed happy to be of assistance to us, once Flerrie displayed her writ-card, but I added an extra handful of silver into her hands just to be certain. A quick scan of her surface thoughts displayed nothing but gratitude and an eagerness to assist her son's companions and she asked no significant questions of us, save to enquire for how many nights our room should be held for us and at what time would be like breakfast. At present there were no other tenants, and I leased the largest downstairs guest room for a full week and paid the landlady a bit more to guarantee that we'd have no further company. This would give us a handy bolt hole to hide out at, if needed, and a place to briefly stash clothes and equipment that we wouldn't need for the short trip to the Westron Hills and back.

The room was large but had no fixed beds, just a collection of thinly stuffed mattresses lying upon a large woven reed mat covering the otherwise bare wooden floor. There were blankets enough for the three of us, but Flerrie and Koch decided to alternate keeping a watch during the night.

None of us were quite ready for sleep yet, our nerves all still a bit on edge and heightened by the recent battle, so we sat in the gloom of the room lit only by a single candle and we shared a wineskin without much in the way of conversation. Without Koch being present, I admit that I might have indulged in this opportunity to use my gift upon the young armswoman. She was young and pretty, notably so as I watched her loosen and remove her clothing with some modesty for the night's rest, save for a long cotton shift she had borrowed from the landlady to sleep in. In the dim candlelight the thin garment hinted seductively at the charms of the woman's body that it was softly but firmly molded against from the humid night air. While the shift concealed enough of her charms to maintain propriety, it also overtly revealed nearly every detail of her figure like the shape of her hips and bottom, the precise curve of her small breasts and also the firmness of her nipples. I could even see a shadowy hint of her thick dark pubic hair under the nearly translucent garment. It was a wondrous sight.

Koch and I had removed our codpieces and jackets for sleeping comfort as well, leaving our hose on for similar modesty, but little of our masculine features would be a mystery to her under that tight fitting knit. Aroused once more by the notions of making Flerrie someday my pet, my loins filled with excitement, and fearing to embarrass the young woman by my obvious lust for her, I decided to have a seat at the small table in the corner of the room. With the light of another pair of candles I brought forth my pistols onto the table for another careful round of cleaning and reloading.

Gunpowder is like acid upon metal and when fired it etches deeply into iron barrels, and quickly so. This would decrease the accuracy of the weapons and could even lead to misfires, a common problem with relatively cheaply made military grade matchlock muskets. The vigiles rarely carried firearms but kept a few obsolete older matchlocks or blunderbusses at their regional watch stations for use in an emergency. As a rule, most vigiles patrolled without bearing firearms, carrying only truncheons, broad swords and belt knives on their rounds.

At length, I feigned a desire for sleep and took the furthest mattress towards the corner and faced away from my guardians to both rest and think. One hundred gold royals for the delivery of my head, attached or not, is a lot of money for most people. A semi-skilled laborer or a young craftsman does good to earn a copper sixpence a day or at most two silver marks a week. This was more than enough ready pocket cash to entice an entire army disgruntled thieves into some poor life decisions. Their guild master might cut off their hands and send them to the beggars guild, maybe... if caught and I made a big enough fuss about the issue, but there are no shortage of idiots that think that he or she could just snag the cash fast and make it out of town before retribution could strike. They might even just get away with it too!

I still couldn't put much of the puzzle together, even after turning around all of the pieces in my head over and over. I could visualize the big picture, what the result probably looked like, but I felt blocked, unable to find a clear pathway to get to a suitable conclusion.

Still, I'd have another piece of the puzzle in my hands tomorrow, the guardsman Auguste and whatever information he'd withheld from his narrated written report. He'd obviously withheld something that might be helpful, perhaps major, perhaps not, but I felt sure that I could make him talk... no matter how afraid he might have been of the Weirs, or their Blackguards allies.

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I was just getting my mind to quiet down and was beginning to drift off to sleep when I felt a warm soft body lie down next to mine. While she did not snuggle up tightly or press her small soft breasts against my back, I could feel her presence very close nearby and her breath gently blowing against the back of my neck. For a moment I could feel the sexual tension rising, but just about the time that I felt I was losing control over my urges I could now hear her breathing change into that of restful sleep. Eventually, my desires somehow mastered or at least deterred, I fell into sleep myself.

About an hour or so later, I awoke sudden to find that she had wrapped her arms around my waist in her sleep, with her nose and chin nestled up against my right shoulder. I was sure that I could now feel her breasts gently pressed against my back, and my member became aroused once more with desire, which I somehow managed to once again repress... although continued slumber eluded me for several hours. In time, with expectant patience, I was rewarded by the closer pressing of her breasts and even soon her hips up against me, as I lay there next to her quietly. I was careful not to move a muscle or disturb her, else that her warm flesh might turn and roll away to her other side, denying me this one simple delightful pleasure of her proximity.

I yearned to make her my pet, to own and completely possess her. Her innocent and sexual purity was like a flame that I found irresistible, and I wanted... needed to exert my power over her, to defile and debauch her... to make her mine in every meaningful way. But I didn't dare.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Koch gave the sleeping woman a gentle awakening to rouse her for her turn at watch, and moments later her comforting warmth was gone. I did eventually secure a final few hours of rather restless sleep, but I gained little actual respite from my continued worries and concerns.

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The landlady knocked upon our door and woke us just at the hint of the first light of dawn, a few minutes before the sounds of the morning gate horns sounded across the city. The city gates would be opening soon, but we did not intend to be amongst the first to leave. The Blackguards would have watchers stationed at every gate and any especially eager early morning travelers would be carefully noted. Ideally, the hour after opening would be the least noticeable time to leave the city, and this would also give us time to enjoy the hasty but hearty breakfast prepared by our hostess and then also have the time to obtain a few necessary items at a public market near the west gate. We needed to look like travelers, preferably itinerant merchants, and thus we'd require some suitable worn looking used travel cloaks and some large backpacks for porting our apparent, but non-existent trade goods.

For late spring, the weather remained too hot and there were hints of a possible rain shower for later in the day. There is no 'pleasant' season in Ormsford, or so I've been told. It had been a fairly dry spring so far, but with little actual warm sunlight either. Summers here are bone dry and scorching hot enough to resemble the vast deserts surrounding the Cities of Dust, which lie within the Sea of Sand to the south of the my old family lands in the Southern Marches. Autumn weather can be unpredictable, alternating between fierce windstorms from the western hills and steppes to the remains of tropical cyclones from the Great Ocean off to the east. Heat can turn to frigid cold in a matter of hours, a dry cold that tends to make your nose bleed and swell to twice its original size and causes every inch of your skin to dry, flake off and peel off, like a dog with mange. Winters are long and unspeakably bitter with enough snow to bury a man overnight, or freeze him to his death if you're without proper shelter for more than an hour. Even the dire wolves usually have enough sense to stay under cover during a winter storm, but there are accounts of them raiding nearby farms out of hunger, able to cross the frozen river with impunity, slaying everything and everyone in their path.

The late springtime weather this year had been warm and damply humid without being actually wet, and blustery with a steady utterly miserable wind that offered nothing but the sight of pallid grey skies on most days. It had drizzled for a month without letup, with little or any actual rain showers, thus keeping everyone damp and sticky. The wind also keeps you clammy enough that even a fire does little to either dry you out adequately or loosen up your creaking bones. This spring had been relatively drier than most, but that usually meant that the early summer would be even nastier and even more miserably hot and humid instead.

If you don't like the weather here, just wait... in an hour or two it will turn into something worse!

In the nine months I'd been here, I would be hard pressed to remember one solid week of good pleasant picnic weather, or a day suitable for enjoying oneself in a public park, and today was no exception. It was breezy today, with a strong dry and relatively cool wind that came from due west, directly into our faces, blowing sand and pollen directly into our faces as we trudged. When the warm wet clouds that we could see in the far distance from the east arrived later today to meet this dry cool air, undoubtedly right over our heads, the sky would explode with a fury. I just hoped that we'd be safely back in the city by then.

I could have hired a carriage or horse to make this relatively short trip, but I didn't want to attract that sort of attention. Koch and I looked the part of petty merchants, with full appearing, but mostly empty packs upon our backs. Flerrie looked much the role of a young trader too or perhaps one of our sisters. I was pretty good at the disguise business myself, having been trained by Mumford, who in his misspent youth had tried his hand for many years as a stage actor, and with much success, until the night work of burglary proved much more profitable. Koch was always, well... Koch. You can always tell a trained armsman by their looks or the way they walk or carry themselves. Fortunately he only needed to appear to be my strong back for porting things and he could double as a merchant or even a ladies' guard easily enough. Any travelling merchant with an ounce of sense and the extra coins would indeed have a hired guard, if not two.

Up here in the frontier, banditry is a very promising career profession for the poor, dispossessed and all the usual ornery greedy misanthropes capable of aiming a bow or pistol and bellowing 'Stand and deliver!' in a reasonably clear voice without stuttering. Being a highwayman is probably a safer and more profitable profession these days than being a sell-sword or mercenary. The hours, working conditions and the rewards of a plundered merchant's treasure chest are certainly better, and being a 'rogue of the road' does have certain romantic attractions. There is an entire genre of passionately dreamy female literature, not to mention endless insipid folk songs, where the heroine is robbed of her possessions (and then her virtue) by a dashingly handsome rascal wielding a pistol, and a deft confident hand at unfastening her corset! Without my gift, such a profession might have had its attractions for me, but I have little interest in meeting any highwaymen during the performance of their trade.

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We looked and felt miserable nearly right from the very start, making our disguises as honest travelers extremely convincing. We timed our exit to merge ourselves in with the ranks of a larger merchant caravan that had several wagons and a host of other fellow traders and guardsmen on foot. No one lurking near the west gate looked twice at us or showed us any sort of interest and we were not followed out of the city. Once well out of sight of the gate, we quickened our pace a bit to allow our group a bit of separation from the wagon caravan, and soon we were quite on our own.

The Westron Hills, purely from the standpoint of geography, were a disappointing lot, even from a distance. Except for the great Ormscraig hill with its fortress on the great hill at the southern edge of the city, there isn't much high ground anywhere except north of the river for many leagues. To the east of us are mostly great forests with something of a minor mountain range between us and the Eastern Sea, but even that is at least week's travel away. To the north, there are plenty of soft rolling hills on the other side of the riber, and then yet more hills and even some mountains of significance further north once you start to near the forbidden borders of ancient Celantha. The Black Hills there are enough trouble for even the boldest adventurer and for my own part, I wouldn't even take an army up there! There might well be vast riches in the ruins of that old long dead empire, but there are undoubtedly monsters there now too, and no shortage of Hob tribes either, and they're best avoided under any circumstance.

The Westron Hills, such as they are at least here west of the city, are moderate and the reasonably decent road here was laid out sensibly and quite straight. The vigiles watchtowers here are upon the half dozen tallest of the hills, making a tolerable sort of guard post for watching the approaches towards the steppes further to the west. There is a small army detachment here as well, a company of foot and a squadron of cavalry that patrol the area as well, but the vigiles have the assigned duty to man the guard towers. The local army units are not highly regarded and are considered to be undersized, underequipped, under motivated and with notoriously poor quality officers.

The Ormscraig commands a regiment of imperial troops, in theory two full legions of foot with cavalry and musketeer auxiliaries, but it is common knowledge that this force has been kept considerably under its assigned allowable manpower. It is believed that the colonel commanding the regiment has been collecting the full payroll and sharing the excess monies with the governor. I believe it. That's just the sort of dodge that our greedy governor enjoys, skimming off from expenses anywhere he can, and pocketing the savings himself! Sir Adrian's imperial authority, limited to the command of the local vigiles was narrowly restricted, but I had to imagine that the honest and most order-loving retired general would certainly have a long range plan for correcting these larcenous injustices as well.

Here at the watch camp, the military road ended and from here on westwards, these lands are nominally under the control of the nomadic Westron tribesmen. We tend to leave each other alone and trade with each other in relative security, but they're an excitable people and take their love of divination and omens perhaps far too seriously. Birds flying in the wrong direction in the wrong season can cause an entire horde to suddenly pack up from their grazing grounds and go on something of a religious crusade to appease their peculiar barbaric gods. Fortunately, they save most of their actual belligerence for other tribes, rather than our isolated and somewhat vulnerable city, but that's why we have the Ormscraig, not to mention good city walls. We're not enough of a thorn in their side for the tribesmen to care much about us and even our greedy governor has had the sense to leave them well enough alone, keeping our own border patrols well out of their grazing lands.

Oh, and just to the south, of course, is that enormous god damned swamp! But I've mentioned that scenic tourist delight earlier. That is why nearly all of the trade in the entire region comes to us, so that we can buy and sell, shipping cargos up and down the great Orm River towards (eventually) the capitol. Without the river, Ormsford would never have been built here in the first place about three hundred years ago.

It's still the northwestern armpit and border of the empire and despite the flow of gold and silver from trade, not a single additional legion would march to our defense should some foreign army of conquest show up for drinks and fingers sandwiches at our front door unexpectedly. The city is on its own; always has been and always will, but fortunately no one else really wants it either, or at least none of the neighboring petty kingdoms or baronies possesses the means to take it.

These final watchtowers, protected by a single squadron of light cavalry and the company of light foot, are the last outpost of law and order to be found for a hundred leagues, at least. Once your fat merchant ass steps off that last bit of stone roadwork, it's on its own. Good luck and happy trading, because the cavalry will not be coming to save you when you fuck up! Pretty much its sole purpose for even existing is to warn of imminent danger and to deliver messages to and from the city. Fair enough. That's why I demand a 50% stake of the gross profits to invest in any trade caravans out heading this way. At least.