A Scoundrel's Song

4

Niico didn't hate the countryside. Again. As the wagon wended its way through the hills of Larissa, sand dunes kissing the more rugged, arid and rocky western edge of the country, he lay in the back, head poking out as tried, still, to compose his masterpiece. Villages nestled in the passing hills looked mystical, filled with the promise of boring villagers with not a coin to their name. They looked pretty, though, with their red slate roofs and white walled houses that peeked out to the wider world as though afraid to make their presences known.

There were a lot of goats. A lot of them and, if not for his distaste for goat meat and the inevitability that the goatherd lounged only feet away, he would have practiced his knife-throwing skills and caught them fresh meat for their meals. They had enough provisions, for the moment, and he would have no need to soil himself with the stringy, gamey meat any time soon.

At the front of the wagon, Pel and Akafa took turns to drive the wagon, the great war horse tugging the heavy wood-walled cart as though it weighed nothing. It could have been far worse. Pel had wanted to use an ox, but oxen were dirty, foul-smelling beasts that simply didn't have the majesty of a good, solid horse. Their excrement didn't befoul the air as badly, either, as he noticed as they passed over the top of a fresh pile of manure dropped by the horse.

It didn't spoil his day, though. What spoiled his day was the way the words for his new composition utterly failed to come clear in his mind. The notes for the mandolin were unimportant. Any old strum of a couple of chords would suffice for that, but the words were the magical part. The words remained in people's minds. The words were the vehicle for Niico's ascendence to bardic legend. If only he could think of some.

The wagon tipped and jerked as a wheel tried to roll over a rock in the road, only to slip, sending the wagon tilting at a dangerous angle. The boy, Herit, only swayed at the sudden movement and laughed at the incident. Niico had almost forgotten the boy rode with them, but then the boy would only prove useful at the end of their journey. He had no skills to speak of. Nothing that could earn them coin along the way, and that was important.

"Niico. Jump down and check the wheel." Pelenia drew the horse to a halt and looked over her shoulder. "We're still a few miles from Siverra and we don't want the thing breaking on us before night falls."

She did that. Ordered him around as though he were some slave, just because she had the misguided idea that he was doing nothing. She couldn't possibly understand the burden of creative genius. Still, before she threw something at him, again, he made a play of struggling to clamber from the rear of the wagon, dropping to the hard, dry, stone-covered road.

They had travelled, rather slowly, he thought, from the old farmhouse along this road for days now, and Niico had revised his last estimate for how long it would take to reach Baccirese from around six weeks to 'sometime after the next Upheaval'. They would have been better travelling by sea, chancing that the Maelstrom was not as deadly at this time of year, and that pirates wouldn't attack them. Except Niico despised water.

Not drinking it, of course, or of bathing in it, or having the occasional paddle or the less occasional swim. Floating on it, far from land on something made of, basically, sticks, was not Niico's idea of a safe way to travel. If they were ever intended to spend life at sea, the Patrons wouldn't have made the land so appealing. Or dry. Or solid. You couldn't drown as easy on ground.

The wheel looked fine, as far as he knew. He kicked it as a form of test, but he didn't know what he was testing for. For good measure, he kicked it again. The stick things between the edges of the wheel all looked fine. No cracks that he could see. About to give his expert opinion, he noticed movement on top of the wagon's roof.

"Herit! Do not play the fool!" Akafa had stood up, his head appearing over the roof, and scowled at the boy. "Be dignified!"

"What's so good about dignity!" Niico stepped back, shielding his eyes from the light as the Sun began to dip toward the north. He waved a finger at the boy. "Do that again."