A Scoundrel's Song

20

Pel took some persuading, and the others had little say in the matter, but Niico got his way. The terrain changed as often as the Sun rose and fell and he felt happy to finally reach the road to Ancomo, which provided a much more pleasant experience than travelling along rutted tracks through farmlands and low hills. Of course, the road was all rutted, too, but in a far more civilised fashion. The wagon bounced and jigged far less often.

He had heard that in some countries, that he still refused to believe in until he saw them with his own eyes, they had roads made from stone. Flat surfaces where wagons and carts could pass along as though drifting upon a calm sea, but he doubted that. That would mean getting people to spend months, years even, laying them and he knew no-one with that much patience.

They passed a couple of villages along the way, too small to perform in and too poor to steal from. Not that Niico stole things, of course. He only happened to find things. Objects that happened to lie around, unwanted, in people's homes. Or pockets. Or coin purses. If those people truly wanted those things, they should take better care of them, as far as he felt concerned.

Along the way, he continued to work upon his song, discarding melodies that didn't quite work, or sounded horrendous, or he forgot before he could commit to memory. The lyrics evaded him, as they had from the very beginning, but he would soon work out the words to a song that would bring fame and fortune. He knew it. It was only a matter of time and, on this journey, time was not exactly at a premium. Their lazy path had already carried them half-way to their destination of Baccirese and had taken far longer than he had expected.

Weeks had passed. He couldn't believe it if he tried. At any other time, even with stops to perform, they should have reached the coastal port, but then, at any other time they would not have had to suffer the indignities of staying in the Driadin city, or had to deal with a mad old fool that couldn't even let go of money while a monster ate him. Not to mention the war thing.

Luck had held in regards to that last point. They had not encountered any more signs of the war that threatened to disrupt all of Niico's plans. People fighting over scraps of land. He could never understand that. What difference did it make if the Orususkans held this place, or the Larissans? Whoever controlled the land never did anything worthwhile with it, only sitting there in their fortresses awaiting the next war for the land. And on and on it would go, changing nothing for the better for the people that called the land home.

Antioni had started to refuse Niico's advances, which annoyed him, but he understood it. He had treated the man more like a thing than a person and, as a wise person once said, treating people like things was ... something. He couldn't remember it exactly, but it was very, very wise. Either way, if he ever wanted to bed Antioni again, he would need to salve the man's bruised ego. Perhaps a few complements, or the occasional sage nod of the head when Antioni said something he deemed important.

It wasn't, of course. Important. It was the usual banal, yawn-inducing aphorisms and platitudes. He wasn't stupid, but he did drone on. While Akafa took on the other side of that coin. Silent, for all intents and purposes, save to growl about how he did not wish to sit near Niico, or talk with Niico, or breathe the same air as Niico. Come to think of it, he wasn't all that silent after all, because he did an awful lot of growling. Most often, those growls accompanied the boy, Herit, paying Niico attention.

Niico didn't mind the boy, but he obviously wasn't quite engaged with the real world. Often spouting nonsense about what he was, whether that was a king, or a prince, depending on the time of day, or a mage, or a pirate, or, and this was the strangest one, a priest in the making. Niico supposed that fell into Akafa's insistence that the boy remain 'pure'. Priests did that. Or, at least, they pretended to for the blindly faithful masses. Only, blind faith meant they couldn't see the hypocrisy of their priests, no matter which Patron they worshipped.