Chapter Two: On the Cot With the Queen's Shilling

She awoke to the taste of death in her mouth and the feel of it in her head and stomach. She rinsed her mouth with water to take away the sensation of having chewed sticky dough, and looked around for her horse. She paused in disbelief and rubbed her eyes for a moment. She looked for her horse again. She stepped over and inspected where it had been tied the evening before, but not even the ground peg was left. She sat back down.

After a moment to compose herself she threw out a long string of curses and kicked a stump. She cursed some more in various languages and limped around the campsite, shoving her belongings impatiently into her backpack. With a baleful eye towards the horizon she trudged after the horse. The trail was easy to find, after all anything that large moving through tall grass left signs. She walked for hours in a slow wavering curve. When she realized the trail was heading back to the town where she bought it, she slowed her pace to a more casual stroll and managed to laugh at her situation. She envisioned the comic surprise on the horse trader's face when the horse he'd just sold came trotting back into his barn, ready for its morning oats.

She didn't notice the trail sloping downward, or the increase in insects, but when her foot came down in a soggy pool of stagnant mud, she did notice that she'd never waterproofed her new boots. She felt the wet chill ooze between her toes, and a murderous gleam came into her eye. She counted slowly and quietly to ten in Madrezarian, then in Khaldeshian. When she felt she was sufficiently calmed, she turned one accusing eye to the sky.

"You know," she said, addressing the gods in general, "I'm sure this is pretty amusing and all for someone up there, but can't a girl get a break every now and again?"

Her foot made a squelching sound as she pulled it from the mud, and with each step she took after that. She looked back up at the sky with an ironic smile, but even as she drew a breath to berate the gods again, she was startled by a shout that sounded no more than twenty feet to her left.

"Who goes there?"

She froze and ducked down behind a handy bush, wondering if she'd been caught trespassing, or worse. At any rate, any contact with officials did not bode well. She listened for a moment with a pounding heart, but heard only the fast approach of a horse from the South. The hoofbeats sounded as if they would pass near where the voice shouted from, but as they reached that point she heard the horse skitter to a stop as if it had been pulled up hard.

"Seargent," said the first voice in recognition, "I take it you bring new orders from Madame bin'Ferroch."

Amber started at hearing Ihan's last name, and realized she had stumbled across his wife's guards. She almost missed the next exchange as she concentrated on crawling silently closer to the conversation. A second voice answered with a strong accent of Eastern Thardunn.

"I do Captain. We know now the girl's from Lansovar and will most likely be heading there. She goes by the name of Amber Osho. She's also a bartender, so your search should concentrate on the Inns and Taverns. As this road leads eventually to Lansovar it is under suspicion and you must be diligent."

"How diligent, if we come across someone who knows her?"

"Madame has ordered us to stay clean. If someone gets in our way we are to take care of it. But otherwise we are to avoid as much collateral death as possible so as to not strain diplomatic ties with Lansovar."

"Very well."

"Anything new to report?"

"No. We came across a loose horse a few hours ago, and are hoping to track it down to an owner in case she purchased it on the road. So far no luck but we're proceeding North."

"Sounds like a long-shot. Stick to the original orders. Is that all?"

"That is all, Sir."

"Very good. I bid you good day."

Amber heard the horse gallop away in the direction it came from and risked a quick peek through the underbrush. She made out a road, but a narrower one than she'd been traveling. She counted a visible half-dozen neat, efficient soldiers in crisp tabards receiving orders from a mounted giant of a man, a hulking brute she recognized from Ihan's room at the Inn. This monster seemed to be the leader, and she recognized the voice as the one reporting to the Sergeant. Her horse, still wearing its halter and lead rope, nibbled grass contentedly by one of the soldiers' mounts. Amber suppressed the urge to swear out loud, but repeated several inappropriate phrases in her mind, going through every language she could remember. She even dredged up the distant memories of Orcish insults Grander had once taught her while she waited for the group of soldiers to move on to a safe distance.

They were efficient; she had to grant them that. Within moments the leader had finished relaying their new orders to the rest, and they wheeled their horses smartly to continue down the path. When they were no longer in earshot she quietly crept back from her vantage point and down her back trail.

"They know who I am," began her train of thought, "And where I'm from, and what I do."

The information could only have come from Ihan, and she felt a moment of sympathy for the poor man before she remembered to be angry.

"Then they know everything Ihan knows. Where I've been, who I know... the May Leaf!"

She stopped abruptly with the realization that she was not the only one in danger. She had been heading to Lansovar with a vague idea of seeking help from Tish, Grander, and her friends in the city guard, but if she tried to contact anyone she knew they would be in danger, perhaps even killed.

"Or worse. Do you want that to happen to Tish?"

She couldn't go home. Not yet. But a sudden irreverent thought occurred to her.

"If I hadn't found out the jewels were fake, I wouldn't have gotten drunk and I wouldn't have lost my horse. If I hadn't tracked it here I'd have never known about the danger back in Lansovar."

She looked ruefully up at the sky and spoke out loud.

"And if I hadn't stepped in the damn bog I would have stumbled right into their surprised, but oh so efficient arms, is that good enough?"

She put both hands on her hips and tapped one foot, suppressing a laugh at the squelching noise it was still making.

"Ok, I get it, but wasn't there a more direct means of getting it across? Maybe without ruining a good pair of boots?"

The first strains of an old song drifted through her head, but she couldn't quite remember the words beyond the first verse. A pretty maid from Madrezar, there was a long while by... She hummed it as she walked, searching her mind for ideas on how to proceed next. She knew she needed a place to hide out for some time, until the search died down. But she also knew she'd have to take care of the situation eventually, and would need help. At any rate, she needed to stay out of sight. And stretch her funds as far as possible.

She stayed off the roads for the next month, traveling overland away from Madrezar and home. She risked stopping in small, out of the way towns to replenish supplies. She purchased new boots as the old ones wore thin, and resigned herself to cheap whiskey for the road. She relaxed somewhat as she encountered fewer posters, but the search had not been abandoned entirely, as she found one in the window of a general store she had been about to enter. Whistling casually, she pretended to read it, then turned away as if uninterested in either the store or the poster. She hadn't gone more than a step when she ran into a man wearing plate mail and a blue tabard, carrying a sheaf of posters.

"Excuse me," she mumbled, and leaned over to help him collect his fallen papers. She looked them over nervously, but they did not have her face on them.

"Yes, excuse you," the man said begrudgingly, then caught a glimpse of her face.

"I mean excuse me," he said in a much more amenable tone, "I wasn't looking where I was going of course."

She smiled non-committedly and handed him his flyers. He thanked her a bit too warmly but she only nodded politely in returned and tried to move past him. To her annoyance, he took a step sideways to block her path.

"Are you here to join the company? We're over at the Inn."

She looked at him suspiciously, suspecting a trick of some kind despite the fact that the tabards were entirely different from the guards hunting her.

"What company? A theater guild?"

Her interest was somewhat sparked, she could do theater, and the masks she wore would grant her some anonymity. But he dashed that plan before it could fully form.

"No, a Mercenary Company. We're on a recruitment drive before we push on."

"Oh. No thanks, a bit too high-profile for my taste. But thanks anyhow."

She slipped past him and looked over the flyer she'd kept. Her eyes kept roaming back to the mention of pay and sign-on bonuses, but it also mentioned anonymity and protection in exchange for duties in the company. She leaned nonchalantly against a post to consider it.

In the end it was the prospect of human company that decided her, above and beyond the need for more that the half-dozen coppers she had left. She'd been gregarious her whole life and traveling alone had depressed her to the point where she was tempted to take the risk and stop off at an Inn for a night, just for some conversation. She decided to at least take a look.

There was a man at a table outside the Inn. A nervous looking boy was answering questions for the man, trying desperately to look older than his slim fourteen years. The man shook his head and the boy ran off with a dejected slump in his shoulders. Amber drew a breath for confidence and approached the table.

"Are you above the age of sixteen and of sound mind and body?" The man asked without even glancing up.

"Last I checked, but stranger things have happened."

He lifted eyes completely devoid of humor to her's and she tried to control her urge to laugh. He kept his expression blank as he continued.

"Sign here. What name will you be using with the company?"

She glanced up, hoping she heard him correctly.

"What do you mean, I don't have to go by my real name?"

He shook his head. Her own mind seized on something finally going right for her and she tossed a jaunty salute to the sky. He raised one eyebrow but otherwise kept his face devoid of expression. She did laugh then, and told him the first name that came to mind.

"Whiskey."

He looked disapproving and wrote it down.

"Here's your tabard and your signing bonus with your first month's pay. Please proceed to the Inn. You're assigned to the seventh, you'll recognize them by the dwarf sitting with them."

He pursed his lips and gave her a stern glare.

"A meal and drinks will be provided for you at the Inn...within reason. Anything more expensive than beer, you'll have to buy yourself. Also understand that the Baron will be by in two hours time to address the company and assign orders. You are to be functional at that time."

"Not a problem old boy. I have no plans to get shlockered amongst strangers."

"See that you do not."

He had given her a blue tabard and a reassuringly full coin purse which curbed her tongue from poking fun at the dour soldier. She draped the former over one arm, tucked the latter inside her clothing, and marched into the Inn. The room was a sea of blue turned grey from smoke. She waded around several tables of mostly human men before she found the aforementioned dwarf. She spied an empty chair at the same table and flipped it around to sit with her chin resting on the back.

"Hello gentlemen, I understand this is the seventh, although the seventh what I'm not quite sure of yet."