But of course…
"Are you sure?"
Haubrezer kept his head inclined, though it seemed that he stared at his eyebrows rather than the grim-talking shadows beyond the smoke.
"Ho. No mean Scalpoi, those. They the Veteran's Men. The Skin Eaters."
"The Skin Eaters?"
A sour grin, as though the man had been starved of the facial musculature needed to pull his lips from his teeth. "Geraus was right. You hermit, to be sure. Ask anyone here around"-he gestured wide with a scapular hand-"they will tell you, ya, step aside for the Skin Eaters. Famed. The whole River know. They bring down more bales than rutta-anyone. Ho. Step aside for the Skin Eaters, or they strike you down. Hauza kup. Down but good."
Achamian leaned back to appraise what suddenly seemed more a hostile tribe than another alehouse trestle. Though all the other long-tables were packed, the three men Haubrezer referred to sat alone, neither rigid nor at their ease, yet with a posture that suggested an intense inward focus, a violent disregard for matters not their own. The image of them wavered in the sparked air above the hearth: the first-the bearer of the Chorae-with the squared-and-plaited beard of an Ainoni or a Conriyan; the second with long white hair, a goatee, and a weather-pruned face; and the broad-shouldered third-the sorcerer-cowled in black-beaten leather.
Achamian glanced back up at Haubrezer. "Do I require an introduction?"
"Not from the likes of me."
An acute sensitivity to his surroundings beset Achamian while crossing the common room, which for him amounted to a kind of bodily awareness of some imminent undertaking-some reckless leap. He winced at the odour of sweat festering in leather. The outer thunder of the Long-Braid Falls shivered through air and timber alike, so that the room seemed a motionless bubble in a torrent. And the guttural patois everyone spoke-a kind of mongrel marriage of Gallish and Sheyic-struck him with an ancient and impossible taste: the First Holy War, twenty long years gone by.
He thought of Kellhus and found his resolution rekindled.
The pulse of a fool…
Achamian had no illusions about the men he was about to meet. The New Empire had signalled the end of the once lucrative mercenary trade, but it did not signal the end of those willing to kill for compensation. He had spent the greater part of his life in the proximity of such men-in the company of those who would think him weak. He had long ago learned how to mime the proper postures, how to redress the defects of the heart with the advantages of intellect. He knew how to treat with such men-or so he thought.
His first heartbeat in their presence told him otherwise.
The cowled man, the sorcerer, turned to him, but only far enough to reveal a temple and jawline as white and as smooth as boiled bone. Obdurate black shrouded his eyes. The small, silver-haired man graced him with a nimble, shining look and a smile that seemed to welcome the derision to come. But the square-bearded one, the man Haubrezer had identified as the Captain, continued staring into his wine-bowl as before. Achamian understood instantly he was the kind of man who begrudged others everything.
"Are you the Ainoni they call Kosoter?" he asked. "Ironsoul. The Captain of the Skin Eaters?"
A moment of silence, far too thick to connote shock or surprise.
The Captain took a deliberate drink, then fixed him with his narrow brown eyes. It was a look Achamian recognized from the massacres and privations of the First Holy War. A look that saw only dead things.
"I know you," was all he said in a voice with a hint of a papyrus rasp.
"You will address the Captain as 'Veteran,'" the silver-haired man exclaimed. He was diminutive but with wrists thick enough to promise an iron grip. And he was old, at least as old as Achamian, but it seemed the years had stripped only the fat of weakness from him, leaving spry fire in the leather that remained. He was a man who had been shrivelled strong. "After all," he continued with a slit-eyed laugh, "it's the Law."
Achamian ignored him.
"You know me?" he said to the Captain, who had resumed his study of his inscrutable drink. "From the First Hol-"
"Sir," the small man interrupted. "Please. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sarl-"
"I need to contract your company," Achamian continued, staring intently at the Captain. Definitely Ainoni. He looked archaic, like something risen from a burial mound.
"Sir," Sarl pressed, this time with a cut-throat gleam in his eye. "Please…"
Achamian turned to him, frowning but attentive.
His grin hooked the ruts of his face into innumerable lines. "I have, shall we say, a certain facility for sums and figures, as well as the finer details of argument. My illustrious Captain, well, let us just say, he has little patience for the perversities of speech."
"So you make the decisions?"
The man burst into a beet-faced cackle, revealing the arc of his gums. "No," he gasped, as though astounded that anyone could ask a question so uproariously thick. "No-no-no! I do the singing. But I assure you, it is the Captain who inks the verse." Sarl bowed to the Ainoni in embellished deference-who now watched Achamian with something poised between curiosity and malice. When Sarl turned back to Achamian, his lips were pursed into a see-I-told-you-so line.
Achamian snorted dismissively. This was one thing he didn't miss about the civilized world: the addiction to all things indirect.
"I need to contract your Captain's company."
"Such a strange request!" Sarl exclaimed, as though waiting to say as much all along. "And daring, very daring. There are no more wars, my friend, save the two that are holy. The one that our Aspect-Emperor wages against wicked Golgotterath, and the more tawdry one we wage against the Sranc. There are no more mercenaries, friend."
Achamian found himself glancing back and forth between the two men. The effect was unnerving, as though the division of attention amounted to a kind of partial blindness.
For all he knew, this was the whole point of this ludicrous exercise.
"It isn't mercenaries I need, it's scalpers. And it isn't war that I intend, it's a journey."
"Ahhh, very interesting," Sarl drawled. His eyes collapsed into fluttering slits every time he smiled, as if blinking at some kind of comical grit. "A journey requiring scalpers is a journey into the wastes, no?"
Achamian paused, disconcerted by the ease of the man's penetration. This Sarl was every bit as nimble as he looked.
"Yes."
"As I thought! Very, very interesting! So tell me, just where in the North do you need to go?"
Achamian had feared this question, as inevitable as it was. Who was he fooling?
"Far…" He swallowed. "To the ruins of Sauglish."
Another spittle-flecked spasm of laughter, this one carving every vein, every web of wrinkles in succinct shades of purple and red. He even yanked his wrists together as though bound, shook up and down, fingers flicking. He looked to the cowled man as though seeking confirmation. "Sauglish!" he howled, rolling his face back. "Oh ho, my friend, my poor, poor lunatic friend!" He reclined back in his chair, sucking air. "May the Gods"-he shook his head in a kind of astonished dismissal-"keep your bowls warm and full and whatever."
Something in his look and tone said, Leave while you still can…
Achamian's fists balled of their own volition. It was all he could do to keep from burning the pissant to cinders. Arrogant monkey-of-a-man! Only the Captain's Chorae and the indigo Mark of his cowled companion stayed his tongue.
A hard moment of fading smiles.
Sarl scratched the pad of his thumb with the nail of his index finger.
Then the Captain said, "What lies in Sauglish?"
The words fairly knocked the blood out of Sarl's ruddy face. Perhaps there were consequences for misreading the Captain's interest. Perhaps the man had simply wandered too far out on a drunken limb. For some reason, Achamian had the impression that Lord Kosoter's voice always had this effect.