The Redemption of Althalus by David Eddings Read Free Book Online

one corner. Althalus took up one of the bags, carried it to the table, and sat down to count his new wealth.
    The bag was about the size of a man’s head, and it was loosely tied shut. Althalus eagerly opened the bag, reached his hand inside, and drew out a fistful of coins.
    He stared at the coins with a sinking feeling. They were all copper. He dug out another fistful. There were a few yellow coins this time, but they were brass, not gold. Then he emptied the bag out onto the table.
    Still no gold.
    Althalus raised the torch he’d brought with him to survey the room—maybe Gosti kept his gold in a different pile. There was only the one pile, however. Althalus picked up two more bags and poured their contents onto the table as well. More copper sprinkled with a little brass lay on the now-littered table.
    He quickly emptied out all the bags, and there wasn’t a single gold coin in any of them. Gosti had hoodwinked him, and he’d evidently hoodwinked just about everybody in Arum as well.
    Althalus began to swear. He’d just wasted an entire winter watching a fat man eat. Worse yet, he’d believed all the lies that slobbering fat man had told him. He resisted the strong temptation to return to the hall and to rip Gosti up the middle with his dagger. Instead he sat down to pick the brass coins out of the heaps of copper. He knew that he wouldn’t get enough to even begin to pay him for his time, but it’d be better than nothing at all.
    After he’d leached all the brass out of the heaps of copper, he stood up and disdainfully tipped the table over to dump all the nearly worthless copper coins onto the floor, and left in disgust.
    He went out of the hall, crossed the muddy courtyard, and walked on through the shabby village, cursing his own gullibility and brooding darkly about his failure to take a look into the strong room to verify the fat man’s boasting.
    Fortune, that most fickle Goddess, had tricked him again. His luck hadn’t changed after all.
    Despite his bitter disappointment, he stepped right along. He hadn’t left Gosti’s strong room in a very tidy condition, and it wouldn’t be long until the fat man realized that he’d been robbed. The theft hadn’t been very large, but it still might not be a bad idea to cross a few clan boundaries—just to be on the safe side. Galbak had the look of a man who wouldn’t shrug things off, and Althalus definitely wanted a long head start on Gosti’s hard-faced cousin.
    After a few days of hard travel, Althalus felt that it was safe enough to stop by a tavern to get a decent meal. Like just about everyone else on the frontiers, Althalus carried a sling, and he was quite skilled with it. He could get by on an occasional rabbit or squirrel, but he was definitely in the mood for a full meal.
    He approached a shabby village tavern, but stopped just outside the doorway when he hear someone saying, “—a wolf-skin tunic with the ears still on.” He stepped back from the door to listen.
    “Gosti Big Belly’s fit to be tied,” the man who’d just mentioned the tunic went on. “It seems that this Althalus fellow’d just spent the whole winter eating Gosti’s food and drinking his mead, and he showed his gratitude by sneaking into Gosti’s strong room and stealing two full bags of gold coins.”
    “Shocking!” somebody else murmured. “What did you say this thief looked like?”
    “Well, as I understand it, he’s about medium sized and he’s got a black beard, but that description fits about half the men in Arum. It’s that wolf-eared tunic that gives him away. Gosti’s cousin Galbak is offering a huge reward for the fellow’s head, but for all of me, he can keep his reward. It’s those two bags of gold this Althalus fellow’s carrying that interest me. I’m going to track him down, believe me. I’d like to introduce him to the busy end of my spear, and I won’t even bother to cut off his head to sell to Galbak.” The man gave a cynical laugh.