Read Online Shards of a Broken Crown by Raymond Feist - Free Book Online

she could barely catch
enough breath to walk after Dash. He pulled her reins and she
reluctantly set out at a fast walk behind him.
    Shadows deepened
as the sun lowered in the west, and Dash moved deeper into the woods.
If Jimmy and Malar had stayed clear of pursuit, they would be
approaching the city several miles to the south. Dash wondered if he
should attempt to cut back behind his pursuers and try to find his
brother and the stranger from the Vale of Dreams.
    Dash considered
the best that would bring him would be to get him haplessly lost.
There couldn’t be so many people in Krondor that if both
brothers reached there safely, they couldn’t find one another.
At least Dash hoped that was true. Hearing the riders coming closer
to the point where he had left the trail below, Dash hurried deeper
into the woods.

    Jimmy gripped
Malar’s arm and said, “We join there.” He indicated
a point in the road where a fairly steady stream of travelers had
been coming past the woodlands, at the edge of what had once been the
foulbourgh outside the walls of Krondor. “I’m a mercenary
from Landreth and you’re my servant.”
    “Dog
robber,” said Malar.
    “What?”
    “The term
is ‘dog robber.’ To feed his master, a mercenary’s
servant will steal scraps from a dog if necessary.” The slender
man smiled. “I have served as such. You, though, will be
obviously false to any Valeman who might happen to be here.”
    “You think
that likely?”
    “It would
be better should you be a young man from the East of the Kingdom, who
lately served in the Vale. Claim no company. Say you worked for my
departed master. I do not know what you expected to find in Krondor,
young sir, but in the backwashes of war many things happen. We are
seeing that ahead.”
    Jimmy was forced
to admit that was true. Where he had seen nothing but frost-covered
stones and a few fires just weeks before, now he saw dozens of huts
and tents, a veritable community springing up almost overnight. As
they walked down the road, Malar leading Jimmy’s horse, Jimmy
drank in the sights and sounds.
    Evening was upon
them and fires dotted the landscape. Hawkers shouted from ahead,
offering food, drink, the company of a woman. Hard-looking men
lounged near fires, watching guardedly as Jimmy and Malar moved past.
    A man hurried
over holding a steaming pot, and said, “Hot food! Fresh rabbit
stew! I have carrots and turnips mixed in!”
    From the
expressions on the faces of those nearby, Jimmy surmised two things:
the “rabbit” was probably a less wholesome dinner item
than advertised, and most of the people nearby were hungry.
    But some sort of
order had been imposed, and armed men who seemed near to the point of
killing for food merely watched with fixed expressions as the man
passed holding out the meal. “How much?” asked Jimmy, not
pausing.
    “What have
you?” asked the peddler.
    Malar elbowed
Jimmy to one side. “Begone, O stewer of cats! My master has no
use for such foul-smelling garbage,” he shouted.
    Instantly the
two men were almost nose to nose, screaming insults at one another,
and almost equally abruptly a deal had been struck. Malar gave the
man a copper coin, a ball of yarn he had been carrying in his pocket,
and a very old rusty dagger.
    The man gave
over the pot and hurried back to his camp-fire where a woman offered
him another crock of the hot stew. He set out to find another
customer. Malar motioned for Jimmy to move to the side of the road
and squatted, holding the crockery. He held it out and spoke softly,
“Eat first and give me what’s left.”
    Jimmy squatted,
not wishing to sit in the mud, and ate the stew. If it was rabbit, it
had been a rabbit of diminutive stature, and even the carrots and
turnips had a strange taste. Jimmy decided it best not to consider
how long they had sat in some abandoned root cellar before that
enterprising peddler had found them.
    He ate half the
contents of the bowl and gave the rest over to Malar.