Salemon stared at the departing coach. He kept looking at it as it became smaller in the distance, gripping in his hand a large semitranslucent bottle of a strange design.
It looked like a tall wine bottle but had handles at its sides. It didn’t have any markings, but the closure at its mouth was neither cork nor clay. He thought it strange, but the material appeared to be some sort of silvery metal, with a design on top, and secured to the bottle’s neck by several strings of the same material.
When the carriage disappeared from sight, Salemon turned his attention to the bottle. He got six gold quarters from the gentleman for safekeeping the heirloom for a month.
Six gold quarters, or one whole gold coin and half of another, was an incredible fortune for Salemon. He now counted himself lucky when he chanced upon the carriage with a broken wheel on the road. The ornately decorated conveyance carried an extra one, but with only the coachman, there was no chance of replacing it.
***
The lone passenger was a bearded old man. A noble, Salemon assumed from the clothes he could glimpse. And Salemon didn’t expect his excellency or whatever the title was, to extend any help. Instead, he talked to the coachman, a haughty fellow at that, about the problem. Extending a helping hand to people along the King’s Highway came second nature to him. He didn’t know why, but any action otherwise didn’t seem right to Salemon. It made him feel extremely uncomfortable.
With Salemon’s help, which meant doing most of the work, the pair finally changed the wheel. The old man didn’t get down from the conveyance, staying inside the entire time. After that, Salemon went back to the pile of firewood he was carrying, leaving the snobbish driver to report to the passenger. It was hard work, and required most of his woodcutter’s strength and endurance, and a working knowledge of wood and levers, but the job was done, and the carriage was ready to depart.
Salemon looked at the road ahead, he was already late for his firewood drop-off, and a mile of walking still awaited him. Typically, he would have emerged right where the buyer would be waiting with his wagon, but a fiercely territorial bear barred him from using the usual path. But he had a cache of firewood already waiting there, and if Salemon was late, then he’ll just have to collect his payment five days from now when the merchant returns.
There was the possibility of Fat Ferry running away with the firewood and never coming back, but he doubted it. Salemon tried not to assume the worst of any person, and more importantly, Fat Ferry won’t be able to find a better supplier of firewood. What the woodcutter gathered and prepared up in the hills was the driest and finest cordwood available. He had a little secret to that, but he wasn’t telling anybody. So here he was, late and with still some distance to travel.
He glanced at the carriage. The coachman didn’t even give thanks for his help, but Salemon didn’t mind. To him, some people were like that, and like farts, can’t be avoided. He did notice the old man was now staring at him. Based on the now clearer features he could see, Salemon concluded the man was indeed a noble. He couldn’t observe a single day’s honest work on the imperious face.
He quickly bowed. There was no telling if the noble would start asking awkward questions. Queries which could lead directly to the town jail or indirectly to the headsman’s block, by way of the village chief.
Salemon didn’t even know who the current chief of the town was. He didn’t care and didn’t want to know. Being inquisitive led to being noticed, remembered, and charged for taxes. He doubted if the town census for the past six years included him. A thankful oversight in his opinion. Aside from the bane of taxes, there was also the possibility of being selected for war duty in one of the numerous and endless little conflicts between domains for glory, gold, and live chess. Salemon deemed such life expectancy impairment exercises as extremely unhealthy; hence he avoided going to town for any reason at all.
All he needed to do for his modest needs was wait at midday on the sixth day of the twelve-day week, and the regular merchant caravan would pass by, stop, and buy wood from him. Needless to say, the contents of the three-wagon convoy were enough for whatever he needed. A simple arrangement, just the way Salemon liked it.
And now, a noble was looking at him. Salemon began to feel uncomfortable even as he kept his bowed position. The woodcutter wondered if he was going to regret helping out.
“You, boy! Come here!” came the command.
Rat shit. What now? Salemon thought as he hurried to the carriage. Worry gnawed at his gut, but part of him protested at being called a boy. By all the gods, he was already twenty-six years of age!
“Yes, Your Excellency, sire, milord, Your Nobleness?” said Salemon as he reached the edge of the mandatory distance of five feet, by royal command, from any noble demanding the attention of people lower in social standing.
It was an ancient rule, enacted when an empire held sway over the lands, but it was still obeyed and stringently enforced especially by nobles with sensitive olfactory senses – which meant almost all of them.
The edict was part of a voluminous code of ancient imperial laws which also declared that woodlands on the plains shall not be cut for timber or firewood unless by command of the local ruler. Though there is also much to be said about the fact that unus, only local lords had copies of the said tome, and secundus, it was written in an old form of the local language. A style which is only taught in exclusive academies… for nobles.
Salemon agreed with the wisdom of that rule on wood cutting, though for an entirely personal reason. The law intended to keep such forests as game preserves for royal hunts, while Salemon wanted the woods on the plains preserved so he can continue having a livelihood.
But now, his knees were shaking. Salemon could imagine the heavy gaze of the old man beating down on his vulnerable, precious neck.
“You take baths, boy?” came a question.
“Yes, Your Excellency, sire, milord, Your Nobleness,” he answered in the meekest tone he could manage.
Salemon tried to cover all the bases, but those were the only formal addresses he knew. Nobles could be picky and irritable about titles and the forms of proper honorifics. But still, he considered the question quite rude.
“Good. But you don’t look like you shave! You know your letters?” The voice of the old man was loud, to the point of being boisterous. Salemon couldn’t believe such a booming sound could come from an aged throat.
“I am sorry, milord, sire, Your Excellency, but I do trim my beard and hair. I do know how to read a little.” In his nervousness, he forgot the Your Nobleness part.
“Good! Good! Now here’s a job for you! Your name! You didn’t give me your name!” the old man exclaimed.
“Salemon…”
He never got to add the honorifics, as the old man immediately cut in. Though Salemon again resented the fact that his name was never asked in the first place.
“What in the name of the seven hells was that name? Your father named you after a fish?”
“It’s Salemon, sire, milord…”
The old man didn’t give him a chance to finish his salutations again.
“Ah, Salemon! Better! You look like an honest man! A true subject of the realm! Helping people in distress! Here’s a job for you. I have an heirloom with me, one dear to my heart! I fear robbers and other dangers ahead on my trip to the capital! I’ll give you six, count that! Six gold quarters to safeguard it for me! It has no value whatsoever except sentimental of course! I’ll pick it up on this spot, at midday, forty days from tomorrow!”
Salemon was starting to be deafened by the old man’s voice. It had a strange quality to it, one which makes a person dizzy the more it is heard. But the woodcutter knew he couldn’t refuse. The fortune was actually a godsend. If the old man ordered him to do the job without remuneration, he’d be stuck with it.
“Here! Take care of it! Look up and come closer, young man! How could you get it if you’re looking at the ground and staging that far away?”
The dizzy and greatly intimidated woodcutter rushed forward and just in time, caught the bottle as the old man let go of it. Then a hand extended one and a half gold coins.
“Take care of it, Salemon! Or I’ll have your head and nail it to your feet! And my name is Baron Galben! Remember that!”
A Baron? thought the shocked Salemon as his knees started to shake again. He was now vividly imagining the glinting edge of the headsman’s axe.
The old man in the carriage laughed softly as the coach drove away. It was not an evil laugh which was usually marked by loudness, melodramatic changes in pitch, and stared with the syllable mwa. No, this laugh was more like an amused chuckle, something which a friendly innkeeper would give at your drunken recitation of how bad your day was.
“I think you’ll do, Salemon. Yes, I believe you’ll do,” said the being to himself as his appearance changed to that of a clean-shaven younger man with white hair.
The passenger waved his right hand in the air, and a large circular display appeared, showing Salemon walking along the road, firewood carried on his back. The bottle was strapped with ropes on top of the pile.
The entity gave an expectant grin at the sight and after a few moments, snapped his fingers.
The large, ornate glass broke into pieces.
