Free A Time of Exile by Katharine Kerr Page B

they’ll catch us. You offered to die to save your friends. How about helping me with a little scheme instead?”
    At dawn on the morrow, while Wargal rounded up the villagers and got them moving north, Aderyn and Ibretin headed south. Although Aderyn rode, he had Ibretin walk, leading his pack mule as if they’d been traveling together for some time as servant and master. About an hour’s ride brought them to the inevitable warband. They were just breaking their night’s camp, the horses saddled and ready to ride, the men standing idly around waiting for their lord’s orders. The lord himself, a tall young man in blue-and-gray-plaid brigga, with oak leaves embroidered as a blazon on his shirt, was kicking dirt over a dying campfire. When Aderyn and Ibretin came up, the men shouted, running to gather round them. Aderyn could see Ibretin shaking in terror.
    “Oh, here,” a man called out. “This peddler’s found our flown chicken! Lord Degedd will reward you for this, my friend.”
    “Indeed?” Aderyn said. “Well, I’m not sure I want a reward.”
    With a signal to Ibretin to stay well back, Aderyn swung down from his horse just as Degedd came pushing his way through his men. Aderyn made a bow to him, which the lord acknowledged with a brief nod.
    “I’ve indeed found your runaway bondsman, but I want to buy him from you, my lord. He’s a useful man with a mule, and I need a servant.”
    Caught utterly off guard, Degedd stared for a moment, then blinked and rubbed his chin with his hand.
    “I’m not sure I want to sell. I’d rather have the fun of taking the skin off his cursed back.”
    “That would be a most unwise pleasure.”
    “And who are you to tell me what to do?”
    Since Aderyn was not very tall, the lord towered over him with six feet of solid muscle. Aderyn set his hands on his hips and looked up at him.
    “Your men called me a peddler, but I’m nothing of the sort. I’m a herbman, traveling in your country, and one who knows the laws of the gods. Do you care to question me further?”
    “I do. I don’t give a pig’s fart whether you’re a learned man or not, and anyway, for all I know, you lie.”
    “Then let me give you a sample of my learning. Enslaving free men to work your land is an impious thing. The gods have decreed that only criminals and debtors shall be bondsmen. That law held for a thousand years, back in the Homeland, and it held for hundreds here, until greedy men like you chose to break it.”
    When his men began muttering, shamefaced among themselves at the truth of the herbman’s words, the lord’s face turned purple with rage. He drew his sword, the steel glittering in the sun.
    “Hold your ugly lying tongue and give me back that bondsman! Be on your way or die right here, you scholarly swine!”
    With a gentle smile, Aderyn raised his hand and called upon the spirits of fire. They came, bursting into manifestation with a roar and crackle of bright flame on the sword blade. Howling, Degedd struggled to hold on to the hilt, then cursed and flung the flesh-branding metal to the ground. Aderyn turned the flames to illusions and swung around, scattering bright but harmless blue fire into the warband. Yelling, shoving each other, they fell back and ran away to let their lord face Aderyn alone.
    “Now then, I’ll give you two copper pieces for him. That’s a generous price, my lord.”
    His face dead white, Degedd tried to speak, failed, then simply nodded his agreement. Aderyn untied his coin pouch and counted the coppers into the lord’s broad but shaking left hand, as the right seemed to pain him.
    “Your chamberlain will doubtless think you’ve made a fine bargain. And, of course, if you and your men return straight to your lands, there’s no need for anyone to ever hear this tale.”
    Degedd forced out a tight sour smile. Doubtless he didn’t care to be mocked in every tavern in Eldidd by the story of how one herbman had bested him on the road, especially