been down in the low country.
He moved right along, since he wanted to be in the lands of the next clan to the north before the previous owner of his fine new tunic awakened. By midmorning of the following day, he was fairly certain that he was beyond the reach of last night’s victim, so he stopped in the tavern of a small village to celebrate his apparent change of luck. The wolf-eared tunic wasn’t equal to all that unrecognizable wealth in Druigor’s counting-house, but it was a start.
It was in that tavern that he once again heard someone speak of Gosti Big Belly. “I’ve heard about him,” he told the assembled tavern loafers. “I can’t imagine why a Clan Chief would let his people call him by a name like that, though.”
“You’d almost have to know him to understand,” one of the other tavern patrons replied. “You’re right about how a name like that would offend most Clan Chiefs, but Gosti’s very proud of that belly of his. He even laughs out loud when he brags that he hasn’t seen his feet in years.”
“I’ve heard tell that he’s rich,” Althalus said, nudging the conversation around to the topic that most interested him.
“Oh, he’s rich, all right,” another confirmed the fact.
“Did his clan happen to come across a pocket of gold?”
“Almost the same thing. After his father was killed in the last clan war, Gosti became Clan Chief, even though most of the men in his clan didn’t think none too highly of him on accounta how fat he was. Gosti’s got this here cousin, though—Galbak his name is—and Galbak’s about seven feet tall, and he’s meaner than a snake. Anyway, Gosti decided that a bridge across the river that runs through their valley might make things easier for him when he had to go meet with the other Clan Chiefs, so he ordered his men to build him one. That bridge isn’t none too well made, and it’s so rickety that it’s as much as a man’s life is worth to try to cross it. But let me tell you, that’s not a river that a man with good sense would want to wade across. The current’s so swift that it carries your shadow a good half mile downstream. That rickety bridge is as good as any gold mine, since it’s the only way to cross that river for five days’ hard travel in either direction, and Gosti’s cousin’s in charge of it. Nobody who’s got his head on straight crosses Galbak. He charges an arm and a leg to cross, and that’s how it is that Gosti’s got a sizable chunk of the loose money in Arum salted away in that fort of his.”
“Well now,” Althalus said, “how very interesting.”
Different lands required different approaches, and up here in the highlands of Arum our thief’s standard plan of attack had always been to ingratiate himself into the halls of men of wealth and power with humorous stories and outrageous jokes. That kind of approach obviously would not have worked in the stuffier cities of the plain where jokes were against the law and laughter was held to be in extremely bad taste.
Althalus knew that tavern stories are almost always exaggerations, but the tales of Gosti Big Belly’s wealth went far enough to suggest that there was probably at least sufficient money in the fat man’s fort to make a journey there worth the time and effort, so he journeyed to the lands of Big Belly’s clan to investigate further.
As he moved north into the mountains of Arum, he occasionally heard a kind of wailing sound far back in the hills. He couldn’t immediately identify exactly what kind of animal it was that was making so much noise, but it was far enough away that it posed no immediate threat, so he tried to ignore it. Sometimes at night, though, it seemed very close, and that made Althalus a bit edgy.
He reached the shaky wooden bridge he’d been told about, and he was stopped by a burly, roughly dressed toll taker whose hands and forearms were decorated with the tattoos that identified him as a member of Gosti’s clan.