Read Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service for Free Online

his riding boots, kicking up dust. Carter had never seen a coat like the one worn by the tramp, carefully etched with hundreds of intricate pictures as though they were tattoos in leather. In his hand he thumped a sturdy walker’s staff into the dirt, using it as a maypole to lift his legs off the ground. Hanging off the man’s jutting chin, a long straggly white beard swished through the air that surely would have benefited from the attentions of a bath and comb.
    Carter was half-tempted to leave him outside, cavorting for the travellers, and tell the Master of the Codex he had dealt with the vagrant. But the traditions of courtesy to strangers were too strong in Carter’s blood to allow him to lie, even if it meant having to talk to this odd-looking lunatic. Unlocking the sally port, Carter stepped outside in the sunshine and felt the brief joy of being in the open, not stuck in that badger warren of desiccated learning behind him.
    ‘Old man!’ Carter called to the tramp. ‘Over here.’
    Glancing up, a look of surprise creased his features. He halted his dance around the caravan, lurching forward towards the entrance. ‘Am I old?’ The tramp’s voice creaked like his words were being dragged over gravel, too many nights spent out under the stars with mossy woodland clearings for his mattress.
    ‘I’d say you are. Maybe sixty, seventy years?’
    ‘Oh, I shouldn’t count that as old. Are you the baron?’
    ‘Baron of what?’
    The tramp jabbed his walking staff towards the metal gate buried in the hillside. ‘Of yonder castle…’
    ‘Isn’t much of a castle. That’s a guild hold, old man. The Guild of Librarians. You know… archives, knowledge?’
    ‘Ah, reading!’ smiled the tramp. His teeth gleamed white and perfect. He’d clearly never wheedled enough coins for tobacco or whisky to stain them properly. There were dentists in Northhaven with poorer sets of dentures than his. ‘I do so love reading. And food, of course. A good meal. Nothing fortifies the soul more than reading a good book having first been served with a hearty stew.’
    Carter took the hint. ‘If you’re claiming visitor’s poverty, I can enter you in the Ledger of Salt and Roof and give you a drink and a feed.’
    ‘Poverty? Why, young man, I am insulted! Yes, I am. I shall pay, naturally.’
    ‘You can pay?’
    ‘Of course, through the telling of fine tales.’ He ran a finger along the images on the leather coat. ‘All of these are stories. I have recounted them to kings and presidents and sultans and princes and emperors the length of Pellas – all have been entertained and none have been left disappointed.’
    Well, the hobo hasn’t met the Master Codex; there’s a man who’d surely slid out of his mother’s womb with a disappointed look on his face. Pellas. The hobo had used the archaic, formal name for the world. Not a word you often heard. A bard then, with a sideline in panhandling.
    Carter reluctantly led him through the entrance. ‘Let’s just enter you in our Ledger of Salt and Roof , and call it quits. One meal, mind, and you can’t sleep inside. Only the guild’s members are allowed to sleep underground. There are a couple of log shelters down a path behind that caravan there. They belong to us. You’re welcome to bunk in one of them for a while.’
    ‘If I do that, I won’t be able to see the stars, and I do so enjoy the stars’ company.’
    ‘I’ll need your name for the ledger, Mister…’
    ‘Sariel, that’s what the stars call me.’
    ‘They do?’
    ‘Oh yes. They often whisper to me during the long nights, recounting new stories to illustrate on my coat. It was the Duchess of Krinard, a courteous lady and a great scholar, who taught me how to communicate with the stars. She owned a telescope cut from a single great diamond and she kept two hundred ravens to drag it into position every night. Perhaps I could teach you the trick of communicating with the heavens, Mister…?’
    ‘Carter