Chapter 19

“Let’s just go up that next rise before we head back,” Corec said to Josip. “It’ll give us a better view.”

“Do you really think anything’s going to change?” the guide asked. The scouting party had been in the barrens for two hours and had seen little other than scraggly bushes, weeds, and flat, dry land.

“No, but we’re close enough that we might as well take a look.”

They nudged their horses forward, Leena and Nedley following behind them. The Sanvari woman had accompanied the scouting group just in case her skills were needed, but Corec had brought Nedley along to get the boy more accustomed to taking on new responsibilities. Nedley was sixteen, the same age Corec had been when he was expelled from the Knights of Pallisur, but while Corec had had four years of training by then and had been comfortable taking care of himself on the road, Nedley didn’t seem confident enough to do anything without someone else telling him to do it. He was eager to please and attentive to his duties as the group’s groom, but the only time he’d shown much of a personality had been back with the refugees from Jol’s Brook, when he’d been able to spend time with other children near his own age. Treya had privately mentioned her fear that the demonic magic had affected him in ways she couldn’t heal.

At the top of the small hill, Corec stopped his horse and gazed out over the desolate landscape. “Is the whole place like this?” he said to Josip.

“The mapmaker said it was,” the other man replied.

Corec had borrowed Sarette’s collapsible spyglass for the trip. He pulled it out of its leather case and spun the cylinders to open the device to its full width, then peered through, adjusting the focusing lens until the view was clear. To the north, as far as he could see, it looked just the same as the miles they’d already traveled, but when he scanned to the east, he noticed a faint smudge of green.

“There’s something over there,” he said.

Josip had his own spyglass out. He aimed it in the same direction. “We’ve got time to check it out, I think.”

It took the four of them half an hour to reach the spot. The green growth turned out to be short, wispy grass at the edge of a small creek flowing south. Corec’s horse started grazing.

“Hildra was right, there’s water here,” Corec said. He turned to Leena. “Do you think you can find more? This place may not be a desert, but it makes me nervous to have no towns or trees.” He felt guilty asking her to use her magic, even though she didn’t appear to mind. He’d only cast the warden binding spell on her because she thought it was the best way to protect her people. He’d told her he wouldn’t ask for anything in return, but she insisted she needed the practice.

Her eyes unfocused for a moment. “The creek comes from the northwest,” she said. “There’s more water to the east, maybe seven miles? I’m not used to measuring distances this way. In the past, I only had just a general sense of where something was.”

Corec nodded. “We don’t need to know exactly where it is right now, as long as we know we can find it. Food will still be a problem, though, both for us and the horses. This grass isn’t going to be enough, and it’s the first we’ve seen since we got here.” He and Boktar had discussed options for traversing the barrens, but now that he’d seen the place for himself, there was only one possibility. They’d have to take wagons with feed for the animals, and that would cause its own problems. “Nedley, could you go cut some of the smaller, greener branches from those bushes? Get ones with plenty of leaves. Try to collect some of each type, and some of the weeds as well. When we get back, we’ll see if the mules will eat any of it.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied.

“I told you, you don’t have to keep calling me sir.”

“I’m sorry.”

Corec laughed. “You don’t have to apologize, either.”

Nedley stared at him, apparently unsure what to say in response. After a moment, the boy nodded, then dismounted and headed to the nearest shrub, drawing his belt knife.

“Wagons?” Josip guessed.

“I don’t see any other choice,” Corec said. “But even with wagons, I’m worried about how much weight we’ll be able to carry with us. I’m not sure if it’ll be enough.”

“I have an idea,” Leena said.

Ellerie glanced at her list. “Did you pay out this week’s wages?” she asked Marco.

“This morning,” he said, looking at his own notes. “Were there any other expenses for the week? How much was the new horse?”

Boktar said, “Forty-five silver, but I only got twenty-five selling the old one.”

Katrin’s horse had thrown a shoe and injured its hoof the day before they’d arrived in the small village of Perga, a two-hour ride from the barrens.

“We lost twenty on the deal?” Marco asked. “It was a four-year-old horse in good shape! We should have gotten more than that.”

“The farrier’s the only person I could find who was willing to buy an injured horse, and that’s as high as he would go.”

“Then you should have let me do the selling.”

“Let it go, Marco,” Razai said with an annoyed sigh. The demonborn woman was a reluctant participant in the accounting meetings, only attending because, as Renny’s representative, she had to agree to the expenditures. It was useful to have her around, though—Marco seemed slightly afraid of her, and was unwilling to push too hard when she disagreed with him.

Marco grunted. “Fine. I suppose we’ve saved some money by camping out so often. If we subtract the horse, Corec’s armor, and how long it took us to get through that damned swamp, then we’re just about even with my initial estimates.”

“Corec’s armor?” Ellerie asked. “You mean that cheap brigandine you paid for? We still owe him for his real armor.”

“The contract doesn’t call for anything like that!”

“The damage happened while he was fighting to save the lives of everyone here,” she pointed out. “A fight he wouldn’t have been in if he hadn’t accompanied us.”

“Let it go, Ellerie,” Razai said in that same annoyed tone. “We all take care of our own gear. Corec’s the one who agreed to sign on for no pay. A new breastplate and mail would have cost way too much, and we’d have been stuck in Aencyr for another week to have them fitted.”

Sometimes it was useful to have her around. This time, though, her disagreement played into Ellerie’s hand.

“How about this?” she said. “I’ll stop bringing up the armor, but we need to make a change in the wages we’re paying out.” The armor issue had been settled a month earlier, but it was easier to get Marco to agree to one proposal if he’d already turned down another.

“We’re not paying your friends,” he said. “The charter members have all agreed to the share distribution.”

“Not them. Leena. She needs to be paid the same as Razai. Four silver a day and one-eighth of a share.”

Razai raised her eyebrows, then sat back in her chair with her arms crossed, an amused smirk on her face as she waited for Marco’s response.

“What?” he exclaimed. “Why?”

“She’s a mage, Razai’s a mage. It’s a fair deal. We’ve been depending on Leena more than anyone else. Without her, we’d have had to stable the horses back in Aencyr and buy new ones on this side of the swamp.”

“Razai’s also a guard!” Marco protested. “And she’s serving as Mistress Renny’s representative!”

Razai snorted. “If that’s what you call listening to you two argue, then signing my name on the ledger.”

“You’re right, Marco,” Ellerie said, unperturbed. “Razai’s a guard, but Leena’s still our cook. We’ve only been in one fight in Cordaea, but we eat every single day. If we want her to keep helping, we need to pay the going rate for a mage. She’s not a charter member, but she’s doing the work of one.”

The man sighed. “All right, fine, maybe the wages, but you can’t just add a share!”

“Yes, I can. Article twenty-two of the contract. Charter members may vote to add up to four non-voting shares to individuals who provide worthwhile contributions to the expedition, as long as the recipients have not already been allocated shares.”

“We still have to vote!”

Ellerie shrugged. “Sure. We will. What do you think the result will be?” She’d already talked to her friends, and they’d all agreed to it. Marco only controlled four votes, two each for Varsin’s and Burton’s shares. He wouldn’t have enough even if Razai added Renny’s votes to his, and that seemed unlikely. The quiet cook and the acerbic demonborn woman had struck up an odd sort of friendship.

Marco glared. “If she’s so good at finding things, why can’t she just find Tir Yadar?”

“Yelena says the Tirs are warded against scrying,” Ellerie replied. Marco didn’t know about wardens, but he accepted Yelena as an expert on all things magical. It seemed that the Senshall Trading Company consulted with her regularly.

Before he could reply, the inn’s front door opened and Corec came inside, stopping to brush dust off his clothing. The rest of his scouting party followed him—Leena, Josip, and Nedley.

“How were the barrens?” Ellerie asked them.

“Barren,” Corec said.

She rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s good to know.” Sometimes she thought he was taking lessons from Boktar on how to tease her.

“It’s just like Hildra described it. The land is flat and easy for traveling, but there’s no firewood and there’s nothing for the animals to graze on. There’s water, at least, but anything else we need we’ll have to bring with us.”

“It’s got to be wagons, then,” Boktar said. “Nothing for the animals at all?”

“The mules will eat some of it. There’s not much for the horses.”

Boktar sighed. “Thirteen horses and twelve mules. That’s a lot of feed to carry around with us. How long will we be there?”

“I’m not sure,” Ellerie said. “We don’t know where we’re going, and if it’s as—” she smirked “—barren as Corec says, it’ll be harder to find our way.”

“We’re not going to find any freight wagons around here, or anyone who knows how to make one. We’ll have to make do with farm wagons, but they’re too small.” Boktar scribbled down some figures on the sheet of notes he’d brought to the meeting. “Hay bales here are a hundred pounds, and four feet long—I already checked. We need to find the biggest farm wagons in town and extend them to twelve feet long, then build railings up along the side like a hay wagon.”

“How much will that carry?” she asked.

“We need about twenty pounds of feed per day per horse, a bit less for the mules. Let’s say eighty percent hay and twenty percent oats. Stack the hay bales four levels high, and then put bags of oats on top. Twenty-five animals ... with large enough wagons, we’ll have about six days of feed per wagon. We’ll probably need three wagons if we’re going to make any progress. That would be twenty, twenty-one days depending on how much grazing the mules can do. We’ll leave the pack saddles here, but the wagons will have to be large enough to hold all the gear the mules have been carrying. Either four feet wide, or we can extend them longer than twelve feet.”

Corec frowned. “That’s only four mules per wagon. That’s not enough—the load will be too heavy.”

“It’d be slow for the first few days, but we’ll be emptying them out fast. If everyone walks, we can add two horses per wagon, and move the saddlebags over to the other horses. If the land’s as flat as you say, we should be able to make it work.”

“It’s still heavy. That’s three thousand pounds of feed, not counting the wagon itself or the rest of our gear. What if we take twenty-five hundred pounds of feed per wagon instead? With the mules grazing, we’d probably still get about eighteen days, but we’d be moving faster.”

Ellerie waited for Boktar’s response. She trusted his planning, but Corec had years of experience working with trading caravans.

Boktar considered the suggestion, looking down at his notes. “It’ll mean fewer days, but I suppose it would be safer. We might get up to twenty miles each day doing it that way. A bit less at the beginning. Is that enough?”

Ellerie did the math in her head. Three hundred sixty miles, and according to the map, the barrens were only two hundred fifty miles across at their widest point.

She said, “That would get us across, but it wouldn’t leave us much time to explore. We only have a general idea of where we’re going.”

“We can make more than one trip,” Corec said. “When we run low on supplies, we’ll just head out of the barrens to the nearest town.”