Chapter 67 — Griffin City

Chapter 67: Chapter 67 — Griffin City

Chapter 67 — Griffin City

Martin’s empty saddle drew more attention than Godfrey’s armor when the party rode through the capital’s gate. People looked at the saddle, then at the men walking beside it, then found something else to study. The wounded went to a physician first. Godfrey carried Christopher’s letter and a brief casualty report to the Drake office himself, naming Martin, Robin’s betrayal and the road attack.

The physician cut Simon’s sleeve away from the spear wound and cleaned it while the apprentice stared at the opposite wall, the basin beside him clouding pink with each rinse. Bram needed only washing and fresh cloth. Thomas’s cut, a shallow line across his cheekbone, barely slowed him down. Adam’s leg would ache for days yet, but it would carry him.

Godfrey paid for two rooms above a guarded stable and put the apprentices together. Ivo took the first watch anyway, though he had slept little since the ambush, while Bram sat on the floor beside Martin’s wrapped spear, straightening it an inch at a time, until Godfrey ordered him to eat.

The Drake agent received the casualty report in a private office. He read Martin’s name twice and stopped at Robin’s execution.

"Will Viscount Osbert question the judgment?"

"He may question anything he wishes."

The agent folded the report. "And the purpose of your capital journey?"

"Purchases for Dragonwatch."

Godfrey gave him Christopher’s sealed letter and left before the man found another way to ask.

The following morning, Godfrey and Ivo visited a discreet bullion house. Godfrey laid out two old gold bars, a handful of foreign coins and three ordinary gems from the Knight-castle treasury — nothing that carried Mana, and nothing stamped with a living noble’s crest.

The appraiser hefted each bar, then set it on the scale without comment. A few of the coins might fetch more from a collector, but a collector asked questions, and Godfrey had none he wanted answered. He changed only enough to fund what Dragonwatch needed and let the rest of the treasury’s weight go back into the ring.

The appraiser scraped shavings from one bar, weighed them, and touched them with two drops from separate bottles. The metal darkened, then cleared again.

"Very pure," he said. "Old refining."

Godfrey waited.

"I can pay the ordinary rate today. A collector may pay more for the coins."

"Today."

The man looked disappointed but let it go. Clerks brought out current royal bars and sealed bags of coin; Godfrey broke two seals at random, checked what was inside each, and only then fed the payment into the storage ring.

They took three crowded streets back to the inn instead of the straight one. Ivo changed direction twice and lingered at a saddler’s window on the second — no face in the crowd matched either turn.

"Enough?" Ivo asked outside.

"If we buy what Dragonwatch needs."

They began with medicine, seed, iron and tools — the easy purchases. The search for skilled people went worse from the first conversation. Two herbalists refused outright at the word north. A third stumbled over Godfrey’s questions about frostbite and infected wounds. An unattached Mage wanted a laboratory, servants and more crystals than Dragonwatch could supply without drawing notice.

Mabel’s list carried them through three apothecary streets. Godfrey bought fever remedies, wound wash, pain draughts and clean bandages, and walked past the bright bottles promising strength and long life without slowing.

Seed merchants tried to sell southern grain first; Godfrey refused it and asked only for crops already proven near the northern border. Rye, barley, turnip, onion and bean seed went into sacks marked by hand, kept apart from the food grain so nobody would open the wrong one on the road.

The first herbalist listened until Godfrey said Dragonwatch. The second asked for triple wages and a heated carriage. The third confidently named a dried leaf as feverfew; it was bitter nettle.

The Mage met them in a wine shop wearing a clean blue robe. He wanted three servants, a private stone house and a monthly supply of Mana crystals. When Godfrey explained that the work involved an isolated northern holding, the Mage added danger pay before asking what Dragonwatch intended him to research.

Godfrey ended the meeting and left without either.

The beastmaster took four days to find.

Aldous Beckett was a collared man who had served a ruined eastern lord. The dealer praised his work with warhorses, but Godfrey asked instead how he would handle a young Magical Beast refusing food after capture.

Aldous asked its species, age, affinity and whether its mother remained nearby. He explained how territorial herds reacted when young were separated, and how large mounts were slowly introduced to armor and the noise of a battlefield.

"Can every Magical Beast be trained?" Godfrey asked.

"No. Some accept handlers. Some accept food. Some remember the cage until they grow strong enough to kill whoever built it."

Godfrey bought him. Aldous asked nothing about the price. His only questions were practical — where he would sleep, and whether the animals belonged to Godfrey or another lord.

"You will serve Baron Christopher Drake at Dragonwatch," Godfrey said.

The beastmaster touched the collar at his throat. "What animals?"

"Horses and hounds first. Magical Beasts after you arrive."

Aldous read Godfrey’s face for a long moment, then let the question drop, satisfied the answer was not going to grow any longer.

Aldous helped pick six sturdy northern horses, two young stallions and four mares. None were trained warhorses, but their legs were sound and their coats thick enough for cold work. Four young estate hounds joined them after Aldous checked eyes, teeth and paws on each.

Godfrey left the dealer with a written order: young workers, six farming families, former soldiers, to be gathered from several yards, along with wagons, warm clothing and enough road food to carry them north.

That evening Bram asked whether they had found a beastmaster. Godfrey told him the man would care for Dragonwatch’s animals, and Bram nodded and went back to cleaning his warhammer.

Godfrey checked the warehouse door before sleeping. The medicine and seed took up almost no room at all. Food would not be so forgiving.

The grain market opened before sunrise, and Godfrey and Ivo reached it while porters were still rolling the shutters aside. They bought rye, barley, oats, beans and peas from three warehouses instead of trusting one merchant. Flour followed in sealed barrels. Salted meat, hard cheese and cooking oil cost more than grain, but they would keep through the northern journey.

The first merchant tried to raise his price after hearing the quantity.

"That was not the figure written on your board," Godfrey said.

"The board is for household purchases, Sir Knight. You are taking enough for a garrison."

Godfrey turned toward the door.

The merchant called him back before he reached it, and they settled at the marked price with delivery to the guarded warehouse included.

The warehouse belonged to the same stable where Godfrey had rented rooms. Its owner charged heavily for a locked door and two night guards, but Godfrey paid anyway — sacks scattered across three merchants’ yards would cost more the day something went missing.

Ivo supervised the first deliveries himself. He cut open one sack from each cart, pushed his hand into the grain and smelled it before letting the porters unload. Two sacks from the second warehouse were damp near the bottom.

"Take those back," he told the driver.

The driver turned to Godfrey. "The grain above is dry, Sir Knight."

"Sir Ivo told you to take it back."

The cart left with both sacks.

Ivo kept the count while Godfrey moved through the market, since every purchase had to feed the convoy first and Dragonwatch after that. He rejected grain that smelled damp and barrels whose hoops had begun to loosen; a cheap sack that spoiled on the road was no bargain at all.

They found cold-hardy chickens near the eastern animal yard. Godfrey bought hens from two different flocks and a handful of young roosters. Ducks came from a river farmer whose birds kept right on eating while buyers argued over their heads. Their cages would eat up wagon space, but Dragonwatch needed stock that could multiply without waiting years for it.

A seller offered geese as well.

Ivo watched one bite clean through a handler’s glove. "The ducks are enough."

Godfrey agreed.

They spent the afternoon on iron nails, saws, axes, files, spare wheel rims and heavy needles. Owen’s written list named sizes and quantities, and Godfrey stuck to it rather than let each merchant decide for himself what a northern fortress required.

One tool seller laid a polished saw across the counter. "Best steel in the district."

Ivo bent close to the teeth. Three had already been filed unevenly.

"Keep it," Godfrey said.

They bought plain tools from the next shop instead.

Warm clothing took another morning. The people Godfrey intended to purchase would arrive in market tunics and worn shoes, so he ordered wool coats, blankets, boots and thick socks by size, with extra cloth set aside for repairs. The tailor protested that he could not fit garments for people he had never seen.

"They need to survive the road," Godfrey replied. "They do not need court coats."

The tailor stopped arguing fashion and started counting bolts of wool.

Medicine, then seed, then the small tools — all of it vanished into Godfrey’s storage ring, weight that no longer had to ride in a wagon. Grain barrels, livestock and people could not follow it in.

At the inn, Simon slept through most of the second day. The physician changed the dressing on his arm and told him, again, to keep it still. Thomas carried meals up the stairs three times before Simon woke hungry enough to eat them. Adam and Nicholas split the stable-yard watch with Ivo between them.

Bram refused the bed they offered him and slept on the floor instead, beside Martin’s wrapped spear. Godfrey let it go for one night. On the second, he ordered Bram to put the spear under the bed and sleep in it properly.

"Martin needs it," Bram said.

"Martin is dead. His family needs it returned without rust. Put it somewhere dry."

Bram stared at the wrapped shaft a long moment before obeying, and wiped the iron head down with oil first.

Godfrey wrote Martin’s family name on the outside of the cloth. Robin’s possessions stayed in a separate bundle. The traitor’s weapons belonged to Dragonwatch after his execution, but his clothing was worth little to anyone, and Godfrey put off deciding what to do with it until he was back north.

House Drake answered Christopher’s letter after four days. Viscount Osbert sent medicine and two sacks of seed from the estate stores — no Knight, no soldier, no family. The reply was brief, and written in the household clerk’s hand rather than his own.

Godfrey read it once and passed it to Ivo.

"What did you expect?" Ivo asked.

"I expected this answer."

They added the seed to the warehouse count and went back to the market.

Before leaving the Drake office, Godfrey arranged for Martin’s family to receive his unpaid allowance and personal effects. The clerk asked whether Robin’s family should receive the same notice.

"Tell them he died on the northern road," Godfrey said. "His weapons remain with Dragonwatch."

The clerk dipped his pen. "Do I record the reason?"

"Record it in the household file. His mother does not need the account read at her door."

Godfrey ordered the clerk to notify Robin’s family as well.

He left the office with Martin’s spear still wrapped beneath his arm. Bram was waiting beside the stable entrance and took it from him without being asked.

"We bring it home?" Bram asked.

"We bring it to Dragonwatch first."

Martin had served Christopher when he died, and his name would be set among Dragonwatch’s dead before the spear ever travelled south to his family.

By evening the orders filled three pages, and none of it had left Griffin City yet. Grain still needed loading. Livestock still needed cages. The slave dealer had produced less than half the people on Christopher’s list.

Godfrey returned to the inn after dark. Bram was asleep against the wall with his warhammer within reach, the surviving apprentices filling the other beds, and Martin’s wrapped spear leaning alone near the window, out past the reach of any of them.

Godfrey stood there a moment before he closed the shutters.

Tomorrow he would begin choosing the people who would travel north. Food, animals and tools could be counted on a page. People would take longer than that.