Free Krunzle the Quick by Unknown Page A

himself forced to agree. He proposed a toast, and when the guards hoisted their wooden mugs, he insisted that they let him top up their ale with good arrack from the big black bottle he had been sharing with his assistants.
    The caravan guards gladly accepted, and offered a toast of their own. It was soon decided that more of the strong-flavored arrack was needed, and the narrow-browed fellow raised an imperious finger to summon the serving maid. Events then settled into a repetitive pattern: more healths were drunk, songs were sung, anecdotes and spicy stories told, and lasting friendships boozily sworn. Somewhere early on in this process, the reader irritably snapped his book shut and left the tavern.
    He also left, barely touched, a spiced apple dipped in plum sauce. The alleged pearlmonger scooped the desert toward him and devoured it with two quick bites. Soon after, he and his companions declared themselves spent. They retired to their rooms, while the archers continued to fill and empty their cups from the bottles of arrack the Merabite had kindly left behind.
    As the first gray light of day glimmered over the mountains that separated Isger from Druma, the three guards rose, albeit unsteadily, to return to the caravanserai. They knew themselves to be well under the spell of strong drink, but that was nothing new. They could spend the morning sleeping off the effects of the carousal, while their employers chaffered with the merchants of Elidir. By the time the caravan set off again, the archers would be able to sit a saddle. And their ability to put a gray-fletched arrow into a hand-sized target at a hundred paces would be unimpaired.
    “Never trust a knifeman.”
    Halfway between the gate and the caravanserai, the first of the guards experienced a sudden shifting of his innards, as if a large and liquid weight had decided to fling itself from one side of him to the other. He stopped abruptly, and his face assumed an unusual aspect that paradoxically combined deep uncertainty with a dread conviction. He then walked with a rapid, spraddle-legged gait to a stand of low bushes beside the road, his fingers fumbling at the ties and points of his breeches.
    The other two archers stopped to make rude noises and offer tactless comments at their companion’s expense. But after a moment, their smiles collapsed as their own faces assumed the same haunted expression they had been mocking. Now each of them hurried to find his own bush.
    Some time later, three pale and groaning figures presented themselves at the caravanserai’s gates. Idrix, the captain of the archers, was called. He examined the men and declared them unfit for service.
    “A belly flux,” he said, and ordered them to report to the caravanserai’s hospice, to be collected when the caravan returned on its way out of Druma. Their pay would be docked.
    “I will go into the city,” he told his second in command, “and see what I can find in the way of replacements. I don’t want to go up into the mountains under strength.”
    He was not happy about having to choose from what Elidir had to offer. It was common knowledge among fighting men of many nations that the Goblinblood Wars had robbed Isger of every warrior who knew which end of a sword to hold, and those who were left were either untested youths or haunted-eyed old veterans long since lost to drink. As he rode toward the city gate, the captain was thinking that he might be best advised to visit the slave market and see if there were any well set-up foreigners with military experience for sale.
    Just outside the gate, he reined in as three men in leather and buckram came out. They paused to adjust their packs and touch the tips of their staffs together, as travelers often did for luck at the beginning of a journey. They were none of them large, but each had a hard and wiry look to him, and Idrix could see, even at a casual glance, at least eight daggers and throwing knives distributed about their