If he accepted, he would be a sellsword in earnest.
Oliver had no particular wish to earn his living by killing. Smithing suited him better. With everything he could now remember, he could find any number of ways to make money, enough to keep a family comfortable for generations.
But the message that had brought him here had promised war. Money would be little use if he had no means of keeping it, or protecting himself. And by his own reckoning, five lives already lay on his conscience. It was rather late to behave as though violence was a profession he had yet to consider.
“What are you offering?”
Roderic turned the ring on his finger. “My caravan guards are joining us. I could pay you at their rate. Fifteen silver deer a day.”
“For guarding a caravan?” Oliver shook his head. “A caravan guard isn't fighting every day. You've already found the pirates, and you mean to go after them again. I'd be joining a battle. Killing or getting killed ought to cost rather more.”
“What would you ask?”
“If the rest of your men are like Erran, five men's pay.”
Erran slapped his shoulder. “I wasn't trying to kill you, lad.”
“Nothing personal. Neither was I.”
Roderic considered them both.
“If the others heard you were getting ten silver moons a day, they'd want to know why. Beating five men in a yard isn't the same as doing five men's work in battle.”
A silver moon was worth seven deer. Oliver found the proposed scale fair enough, but he understood the difficulty. Men would compare what they received. Roderic had to keep them willing to fight together, not merely find enough silver to pay them.
“Then pay for results. I've read of armies that counted heads. A man brought back an enemy's head and received a reward for it. You'd know what you'd bought.”
“A cruel custom.” Roderic paused. “But a precise one. Ten silver deer for each pirate's head. You must have killed the man yourself, and we must win the battle.”
“Fair.”
Roderic spat into his hand and offered it. Oliver hesitated, copied him, and shook.
They talked more easily once the bargain was settled. Oliver supplied stories of his adventures in Azeroth, leaving out the parts where the strength of the things he had fought would have made the account absurd. Reduced to travel, danger, and being paid to deal with troublesome creatures, a player's career sounded remarkably like a mercenary's. Given sufficient loot, adventurers would cheerfully kill a Titan. A few pirates hardly lay outside the professional spirit.
He also learned more about the man employing him.
Roderic was a cousin of Dornel Colbert, head of the house, which in turn served the Hornwoods. As a member of a lesser branch, he would not ordinarily have been permitted the family name. But he and Dornel had grown up together, and Roderic's ability had earned him distinction in several of the family's battles. He had been granted Grayfold and four neighboring villages, a holding comparable in size to that of a substantial southern knight.
Harrick, the young man at the table, was his eldest son. All five villages had contributed to the force pursuing the raiders. A little over a hundred and fifty men represented almost everything Roderic could muster.
Another landed retainer might have been content to drive the pirates off his own ground. Roderic couldn't afford that. His people farmed, but they also trapped animals for furs and caught valuable seafood. He bought their produce together and sent it in organized caravans south to White Harbor or north to Winterfell. That trade profited both him and House Colbert. It had helped justify giving so large a holding to a man from a junior branch.
Pirates endangered more than a few outlying houses. They threatened the whole business. Oliver could see why Roderic had been willing to bargain for another capable fighter.
* * *
At dawn, men emerged from their lodgings and gathered in the village square. Oliver and Kellan joined them, one in bright plate, the other in new leather, both hung about with weapons and carrying long spears. Against the furs, ordinary clothes, and farm tools around them, they were hard to miss.
Roderic rode up with Harrick and four armored household guards. Once he was satisfied that every village's contingent was present, he raised his whip.
“Move out!”
The mounted men took the lead. More than a hundred and forty others stretched along the road behind them, walking in knots of three or four. To Oliver, the column had something of a school outing about it. Yet nobody seemed to fall behind. The veterans gathered the less experienced men around them and kept the whole thing moving.
Besides the horsemen, he counted roughly a dozen mail-clad sword-and-shield men, about twenty with spears, and seven or eight archers carrying bows and sidearms. Eighty or ninety farmers clustered around them with a much less uniform assortment of weapons. Even the seasoned men wore armor dulled with rust and dirt.
Oliver and Kellan looked particularly conspicuous on foot.
Horses. He ought to have bought horses. Why hadn't that occurred to him while they were sitting in a village?
“Master.” Kellan nudged him and nodded toward a roadside tree. “Is that our prisoner?”
Oliver looked up.
The face was difficult to recognize, but the cropped hair and clothes were familiar. The man had been hanging for some time. His hands and feet had been cut off, and the condition of the body drew insects to the ground beneath him.
“So his information didn't buy his life.” Oliver looked at Kellan. “Do you pity him?”
“He deserved to die. But if you'd killed him, I think he'd have been luckier.”
“Perhaps.”
Oliver was strong enough to hurt a man. He knew that didn't make him a skilled interrogator. If he'd kept the prisoner, he doubted he would have learned much more. He had handed him over to Warrin's people precisely because they might.
“Is that the pirate you caught?”
A boy in patched, badly fitting clothes had come alongside them. Sixteen or seventeen, Oliver guessed, and brimming with curiosity.
“How did you know?”
“Alric told me. You killed the others and brought that one back.”
“You're from Grayfold? Haven't seen you about.”
“Forkmead. I heard Lord Roderic was taking men to fight, so I came.”
An older man carrying a rake drew nearer.
“Daft Edrin? What are you doing here? Did Joryn say you could come?”
The boy looked nervously toward a broad-backed man among those following Roderic. Satisfied that he wasn't looking around, Edrin lowered his voice.
“I came by myself. Stayed outside the village all night.” He turned quickly back to Oliver. “Are pirates very good at fighting? If you beat a lot of them, can't they be that strong?”
“I could beat a few of you as well.” Oliver smiled. “You've never seen one, and you've come all this way?”
“They feed the men for nothing. And if we win, there's a feast. Meat and drink.” Edrin wet his lips. “Last time I had smoked meat was at Marden's wedding. Year before last.”
The thought seemed to take him away from the conversation.
The old man sighed. “His parents died of sickness a few years ago. He does jobs for people. Gets by as he can.” He tapped his own head. “Not quite right, poor lad.”
Then he addressed Edrin more sharply. “If there's a fight, stay at the back. Don't rush into it and lose your life before you've earned anything.”
“What? Who's lost what?”
“Just don't lose yourself.”
Kellan laughed a little. Oliver didn't. He had been eating smoked meat every day since they arrived. Back in Sheffield, he'd sometimes had to stop himself eating things because he wanted to lose weight.
He put a hand on Edrin's shoulder.
“Stay near me. When we get back, I'll buy you some smoked meat.”
“Really?” The boy almost bounced. “The fatty bit. The bit you can see through.”
He and Kellan soon fell into conversation. They were close enough in age to find things to talk about, and their voices followed Oliver along the road while he kept his own words and movements to a minimum. He wanted his strength available when he needed it.
Ahead, lean men came out of the woods at intervals to speak with Roderic. Scouts, he guessed. The reports were growing more frequent.
After one of them, Roderic turned in the saddle.
“Make haste! Beambridge!”
They were three leagues from the village, roughly fourteen kilometers by Oliver's reckoning. Veterans moved along the column, urging the others forward. The scattered groups lengthened their stride and covered the distance in a little over an hour.
A swift river separated Beambridge from much of its farmland. The villagers had bound logs together to cross it, giving the place its name.
When Roderic's men reached the bank, the bridge lay dismantled in the water.
Across the river, the pirates were inside the village. They could hear people crying out a hundred meters away: men, women, children. The militia shouted in fury, but they could not get to them. Weapons and supplies weighed them down, and the current was too strong to risk wading.
Roderic ordered them upstream.
About a kilometer farther on, the river broadened into calmer, shallower water. Getting the loose mass of men across and back down to the village took another half hour.
The pirates were gone by the time they arrived. They found wounded people among the bodies.