Western Watch (3rd Draft)

Chapter 19

Merreth's mount stamps its foot and snorts. She leans forward and rubs its neck. A bead of sweat rolls down her cheek, drips onto the saddle horn, and evaporates. It's well past mid-afternoon and the air is stone still and hearth hot. She's loosened the stitching on her breeches and shaken out her hair several times. The water skin hanging from the saddle begs her to take a drink.

Seven hundred, maybe more, rough, ragged, flint-eyed convicts spill off either side of the road in front of her. Tanned, dust-covered faces streaked with sweat, calloused hands gripping spears, swords, and crossbows, slide over half-sheathed steel. These are Totlenn's hard men. Brinnt and Totlenn stand in front, their faces wearing expressions cut from rock.

Behind the mob, wagons packed with women and children creak and sway.

"Hello, Totlenn," says Merreth. "How's your back?"

"Well enough." Totlenn scratches his beard, and flicks something out of his fingers. "Got yerself a horse now, eh?"

"Borrowed it from a courier. He'll probably want it back, when he comes to."

"Still making friends, sounds like."

"Do I have any friends here?"

"Don't have any enemies. Could change, depending on why you're here."

Merreth swings down off her horse. "Eenidd says you're supposed to be in the fields all day."

Brinnt and the men near him tense. One spits into the dust. Totlenn's face clouds. "Taken' in with him have you?"

"No." She gestures back towards Charadell's encampment. "People are frightened."

"You mean the Little Westhold cottagers and them that's left of the farmers around here."

"And you too, by the looks of it."

"They should be scared. The Domina marches out with her skins and constables. Her best scout comes back wounded, her horse run damn near to death. She's dead, be my guess, and those clan bastards are on their way. Me 'n the lads don't fancy being cut down like wheat."

"Still doesn't tell me why you and all these wagons are on this road right now."

"Clanners don't like fightin' around buildings," says Brinnt. "Learned that when they ran us out of Teron a week or so back. Lots of homes and shops and such around here. More than around the south ferry pier. Lot of them built from good, solid stone too."

"The owners won't like being pushed out of their homes by a group of ..." Merreth hesitates.

"Thugs like us? Killers ... like you?"

"I'm not you."

A harsh chuckle rumbles through the front ranks. Totlenn smiles. "Sure you are. Heard about this morning. I said it before: lose those skins, take away the whip and you're one of us. Whip's gone, a man's dead by your hand, so you're almost there."

Plainly stated, thinks Merreth. Wrong, but the longer I'm here, the thinner the difference between us. I've blood on my hands and, at the end, I enjoyed soaking them in it. She forces the thought away. "You should fight with the constables."

Iron silence is the response.

"Well, why not?" she demands, cursing herself for sounding so plaintive. "You're on the same side!"

"No!" snaps Brinnt. "They're on our backside, soon as Eenid and his weasels whistle them up. The Domina uses them to keep us in line and puts them behind us when she goes out to fight the clan. Supposed to keep us from running. Damned skin thinks we'd be stupid enough to try to out run horses and arrows."