The halfling nodded. “That might take days,” he warned. And it’ll look a little suspicious if we just sit here all day eavesdropping on the guards.
“I know,” Geran replied. He spied the big Veruna armsman Bann, the fellow he’d confronted in Mirya Erstenwold’s store, and he carefully shifted to lower his hood over his face and keep his eyes away from the man. The mercenary led half a dozen more Veruna men past the wagon without giving Geran so much as a second glance and headed out into Bay Street intent on his own business.
You recognize those men? Hamil asked.
I saw one of them at Mirya’s. Come on, we might as well ask about work. It’ll give us a good chance to spy out the place, and we should fit right in.
Fortunately, a fair number of the wagon drivers in the town were halflings; it was a little unusual for a human and halfling to work together, but not strange enough to be conspicuous, or so Geran hoped. Besides, he’d observed in the last few days that most of the wagons heading out of town carried at least two men. It always helped to have an extra hand along to carry a crossbow and keep an eye out for trouble.
He swung himself down from the wagon and headed toward the nearest Veruna clerk he saw. The fellow was a tall, stoop-shouldered man with thinning hair and a heavy green cloak to ward off the wet snow.
“Well met,” Geran said gruffly. “I’ve got a wagon and team for hire. Got any work for me?”
“Just a moment.” The Veruna clerk carried a small ledger and consulted it with a frown of annoyance. “I’ll need a load of stores taken up to a camp in the foothills soon. It pays five silvers, and you’ll get fodder and stabling for your team and a hot meal for yourself.”
“Good enough. Where am I going?”
“You’ll be with some other wagons. The other drivers know the way. Stay with them, and you’ll be fine.” The clerk looked up at Geran. “I haven’t seen you before. New in town?”
Geran shrugged. “I heard there’s work and good coin here.”
“We need all the drivers we can get.” The clerk pointed at a storehouse across the compound. “Take your wagon over there, and tell Koger-he’s the short fellow in the brown hood-that you’ve been hired for the Troll Hill train. You’re expected to lend a hand with the loading and unloading.”
Geran gave him a resigned nod and returned to the wagon. “We’re hired,” he told Hamil. “Keep your eyes and ears open, and we’ll see what we can learn.”
The halfling grimaced. “I hope they’re paying us well, at least.”
The two comrades spent most of the next five days hiring their wagon to House Veruna and driving provisions of all sorts out to the House’s mining camps and lumber yards in the hills east of town. Geran and Hamil turned in a more or less honest day’s work for their wages and made a point of trying to haggle a little more coin from the clerks, since Geran didn’t want to attract attention for working too little or too much for the pay. As he’d hoped, the work gave him an excellent opportunity to examine for himself the extent of Veruna’s holdings and watch their sellswords at close range. The mercenaries paid little attention to the teamsters who were constantly coming and going from the tradeyard, and Geran and Hamil found plenty of opportunities to ask questions of their fellow drivers and listen in on the hired swords without raising too much suspicion.
Geran soon learned much more about the merchant coster and their mercenaries. A noble family from Mulmaster owned the house; the Hulburg holdings were in the hands of Lady Darsi Veruna, who resided in a small manor on the slopes of the town’s eastern headland, rarely visiting the merchant yards. Geran and Hamil could think of no legitimate reason to drive a wagonload up to her residence and did not actually lay eyes on her, but they did learn that she was constantly attended by several ladies-in-waiting, manservants, and guards. A cadre of master merchants who answered to Lady Darsi oversaw the Veruna business in Hulburg’s lands; the head of the Hulburg yard was a stout, black-bearded man named Tharman Kurz, whose demanding nature and foul temper created no small amount of misery for the clerks. Master Tharman was nominally in charge, but the large contingent of sellswords who guarded the Veruna holdings did not answer to the Veruna master merchants. Small groups and bands of mercenaries in green and white came and went from the Hulburg yards and the other Veruna holdings constantly, sometimes escorting wagonloads of provisions bound for the camps, or timber, fur, and precious metals bound back to the merchant yards, but sometimes heading off on patrols or errands of their own.
On the evening of the last day, just as they finished manhandling a load of hardwood planks into the Hulburg storehouse, half a dozen Veruna mercenaries rode into the merchant yard. At their head rode a lean, hawk-faced man who wore his red hair shaved down to angry orange stubble over his scalp. He wore enameled black half-plate armor under his Veruna surcoat, and he had a gold crest atop his helmet, which hung from the saddlehorn. The red-haired man rode up to the master merchant’s residence, swung down from the saddle, and handed the reins to a valet, while the rest of his men dismounted. Geran watched the sellsword over his mule team, idly patting the neck of the nearer animal. The mercenary stretched briefly and rolled his head from side to side, working out the kinks of a long trip in the saddle.
“Who is that?” Hamil asked quietly from the wagon’s bench. The halfling was careful not to look directly at the mercenaries.
“I don’t know,” Geran answered. He glanced to his left, where one of the Veruna teamsters they’d driven with was unhitching his own team, and called over. “Say, Barthold-who’s the captain over there?”
The other driver looked over. “Him? That’s Urdinger. He’s in charge of the armsmen. You’ll want to be careful around him, he’s got a short temper. I heard that he beat another driver senseless when the fellow spilled a load into a ravine out near Troll Hill. Why d’you want to know?”
Geran was too far away to see whether the Veruna captain was wearing an elven dagger at his belt. He peered closer, trying to get a better look, and realized that he was staring at the Veruna captain with far too much interest. He quickly looked back to the other driver and forced a lopsided grimace onto his face. “I think I heard the same story out by Sterritt Lake. I was just wondering if that was the man.”
Urdinger went inside the master merchant’s house, and the rest of the guards dispersed. Geran and Hamil finished their work, collected their silvers from the paymaster, and drove slowly out of the Veruna yard. The swordmage scowled, caught up in thought. He’d marked Urdinger well enough to recognize the man when he saw him again, but that begged the question of what to do next. None of the Veruna men seemed to have noticed his spying so far, but if he confronted the captain of their mercenaries it would be difficult to conceal his identity, to say the least. He could try to figure out where Urdinger preferred to drink and eavesdrop on the fellow or perhaps try to confront him away from the rest of the armsmen… but if the Veruna captain simply denied any involvement in the tomb-breakings or the murder of Jarad Erstenwold, it would be difficult to compel him to speak the truth.
Assume that Urdinger is involved in both, Geran decided. What did the Verunas want with the barrows, anyway? Was it simply a matter of mercenaries looking for some easy riches that could be had from plundering the tombs of the forgotten dead, ignoring the danger that might attend? Or was it something that Urdinger had ordered his men to do for some reason of his own?
“Well, what now?” Hamil asked, interrupting Geran’s musings. “A good night’s sleep so that we can get an early start on tomorrow’s provisioning? If we get to the tradeyard at sunrise, I believe we could get in two round-trips before dark and double our daily pittance.”