Free The Ravens’ Banquet by Clifford Beal Page A

cart.
    “I thought about our harsh words last night,” I replied as we stood face to face. “We are both a long ways from home and it benefits us nothing to be at odds.”
    Samuel ignored my words but called over to a fat fellow who was shifting bags of grain from a wagon.
    “Look here, Mathias, it is my master come to see us!” Mathias turned for a moment and grunted before resuming his labours.
    “I get on well enough here, as you can see,” Samuel said, turning back to me. I heard the trumpet sound in the square, calling us to mount up.
    I put the question to him. “I cannot find the banker’s letter of credit that Herr Hoffmann gave me in Hamburg. Have you seen it?”
    “Are you saying that I took it?” he asked, puffing himself up for a fight. “I ask if you have seen it. Without it, there is no money for me or you.” Samuel fixed me with a hard stare. His words came out slowly and measured. “I have not, sirrah.”
    The trumpet sounded again, and I could tarry no longer for fear of getting a basting from Krebs, the troop’s Cornet. Even worse, I spied several fellows gathering about us as we argued: drovers, stable boys, and others, all curious to learn what was going on. These were Samuel’s comrades, not mine. He smiled at me. “You’d better get moving.” And so, our very brief alliance crumbled right there, and I knew now that I was truly on my own in this land, surrounded by dubious and dark company.
    A week later we returned to Nienburg, in worse spirits than when we left. As for Samuel, it would do no good to leave things as they stood. He was not to be trusted and held ill for me, though I could not guess why. I would have to seek him out again, pay him off, and send him home. If he would go.
    This time, it took me two days to find him. Two days’ time trudging about the baggage train, within and without the town walls, until my feet ached. When at last I set eyes upon my long-absent companion, I stood for a moment confounded and slack jawed.
    Here before me stood a hog in armour: Samuel arrayed like some Colonel of Horse and set for parade. To his fine breeches and boots he had now added a russet doublet of no less than three-pile velvet, a black wool cloak, and new brimmer with a golden band. He swaggered about the other baggage boys like some Hector and handing out favours to those beneath him.
    I glanced downwards at my own clothing, now ragged and hole-shot after weeks of fighting, riding, and tasting Nature’s elements more often than wished for. I looked no better than an armed beggar. It was all too clear now that he had cozened me well and truly.
    He had stolen the banker’s note from my clothes and had paid the banker a call, posing as Richard Treadwell, the English volunteer.
    I slipped my baldric lower to hang my sword and scabbard across my backside and strode towards him. I was at the south wall of the town, near the great gate, this being the place that the regimental baggage train had claimed for its own.
    He didn’t even take notice of me until I grasped his shoulder and pushed him forward. He spun around in an instant, his right hand flying to the handle of the little pigsticker that yet marked him as a rustic.
    “What, ho, the country clown has done well indeed!” I taunted. Others turned to hear the foreign tongue that caught their ears and when Samuel yelled back at me we had in but a few moments an audience eager for blood.
    “Country clown no more, sirrah! I’m in good keep and now my own master besides,” said Samuel, stepping back and fingering his short sword.
    “Jackanape!” I spat. “In good keep at my expense. How long did you think you’d profit before I discovered you? You have done me dishonour, Samuel Stone, and my father as well.”
    Samuel stepped back a pace again and began to slowly skirt me like a mongrel looking for an unguarded place to bite. His grey eyes had again taken on that harsh glistening I had seen before. He did not deny my