Journal Entry 192
12th of Ashes, 1798 S.C.
Kar Krathaun borderlands, south of the Thelkrag Kar
There are clouds approaching from the west, and if they bring rain, it could be several days before I have a chance to open this journal without courting disaster. More than a few old entries have already been lost to unexpected ocean spray or sudden rain. Yet if I delay recording this strange observation, I might forget to.
We made good progress away from where we “murdered” the boat, as Ahearn put it. His regret at destroying it was a strange contrast to his normal bluster, particularly since what he recounted of his youth aboard a riverboat seemed an unlikely wellspring for melancholy reverie. But he had a greater surprise in store for me, this day.
When dusk ended our ride away from the Serpent River, Ahearn took it upon himself to count out the gains we had realized as a result of the ambush. Having started out as the sole leader of our fellowship, it continued as his prerogative and his duty to apportion the coins into equal shares. I never thought much about it, and it seemed a task to which he was eminently suited. After all, he has never been less than forthright about his interest in money, and the more of it, the better. But prior to this evening, I had always been otherwise occupied or distracted when he set about dividing the gains and then packing his own portion of them.
To say that it is a singular ritual is a profound understatement. First, he scrupulously sorted all the coins by metal, then into approximate categories of size. Each of those divisions he then split into five equal parts. Somewhat surprisingly, where a category of coin was not divisible by five, he took the lesser portion for himself.
Once he had finished sorting all the coins into our five shares, he bagged the other four piles and then turned to his own. He methodically counted out two coins into a pile that was just beyond his lap, and then put one into a second pile barely within reach. When that process had been repeated for all his coins, he neatly stacked those coins in the larger pile, and arranged them until each stack was roughly uniform in width, but also equal in height to the others.
He then transferred them to the center of a square of old tarpaulin, wrapped them together, and bound them tightly until they resembled an irregular brick. He put that block of coins carefully, almost delicately, into his most secure saddlebag, whereas the smaller pile of coins he swept carelessly into an inferior bag. A few scant outliers are the only ones that wound up in his purse.
I am the first to admit that Ahearn is much more than what he at first seems: a simple swordsman full of grand gestures and bravado. And I am quite sure that I have yet to discern all that he cunningly conceals behind that soldier-of-fortune facade. But simply realizing that there is more to him than meets the eye still does not explain his fastidiousness in dividing our gains and the peculiar way he stores his own share of them.
I have seen greed, and initially, I thought his constant focus on profit might be a symptom of it. But if he had been infected with that soul-rotting malady, he would have stinted others when determining the shares, not himself. And while the meticulous packing of his own coins reminds me of a miser’s fetish, Ahearn neither hides his money nor hoards it. Indeed, he is the first to put forth coin when it is advisable and is not only open-handed with his friends, but infirm beggars as well.
However, after the prior night’s interrupted sleep, I am deficient in both desire and mental energy to do more than take note of his peculiar habits when handling money. But it requires no special effort or insight to suspect that there is an untold story behind it. Perhaps talking about the hardships of his early years rekindled old habits of how he had to count and store his money on a boat filled with river pirates. However, that is but a guess and what I actually know of Ahearn’s history would not even fill one page of this journal. Besides, he has a marked tendency to make light of and lampoon the very topics that might naturally lead to a discussion of one’s past.
Which leads me to believe it is a rich repository of singular, if not necessarily flattering, stories.