Deed of Empire, page 21
It’s a near certainty I’ve killed a relative or two of theirs.
So The Black Duke kept himself apart from the others and focused his attention on the gate and the walls. He found he was planning how to assault them if Fridale didn’t emerge.
Though with only six of us, I don’t see how an assault is possible. Maybe we won’t have to assault them. Maybe we could just walk in as Baron Horven’s men and demand they turn Renatta and Fridale over to us.
He liked the straightforwardness of that plan, but didn’t think it plausible.
If Renatta and the boy have been taken, it’s likely because the town has already gone over to Kesset. He pondered that for a moment. It’ll have to be stealth then. He looked around at the men. Jacou looks like a climber. Perhaps he can get over the wall and open the gate for the rest of us. He wondered if he should send him to scout for a likely section now, but decided against it. Better to wait to see if trouble develops than tempt it by exposing someone in a daylight expedition.
He held to that and went back to staring at the gate. As time dragged on, the other men stopped their chatter and joined The Black Duke in silent staring. They were all beginning to sense that something had gone wrong, that their new lord was in danger, and that they would soon be sent to fetch him back. Stigerd loosened his giant axe in its straps. Javon strung his bow. Omnic and Jacou checked the draw of their numerous blades. Alvo stared at the town gate with a look The Black Duke recognized from many young warriors before him. He’d probably worn it himself, though he’d been much, much younger.
He’s not seen battle yet and desires it, he thought. But he fears it as well. That balance was a natural way to anticipate your first action. Too much of one and not enough of the other could spell trouble, though of different kinds. Even so, The Black Duke knew the more important look would be the one he wore before the next battle after his first. If he still fears to fight then it could be a problem.
Everyone was beside him now, as the sun was beginning to set and they knew that whatever The Black Duke planned, it would be dark when it began. But before the sun dipped below the horizon, the gates opened and a single horse-drawn cart drove slowly through, Renatta at the reins with Fridale sitting beside her.
The Black Duke suppressed a cheer and could tell he wasn’t the only one. It felt like a great obstacle overcome, despite it truly being only a shopping trip. But he smiled and nodded to the men. Recently besieged and resigned to the death of their lord, they needed a victory, no matter how small.
“Grab your gear,” he said, though he knew only Stigerd understood him. He wanted to get them ready to move as soon as the wagon got there and they got changed.
Let us take this victorious feeling onto the road with us, he thought, for travel is lighter after victory and the miles stretch long after defeat.
Fridale, his family, and all who served them had garnered a lot of losses recently. The Black Duke could sense it in the set of their shoulders, the hang of their heads, the sad tone of their voices.
But that is in the past, he thought, before The Black Duke was among you. You may be Rhagwan of birth, but I will make you Waldish of deed! Cresni will carry us to glory as yon cart carries your lord back to you. Walls will crumble and widows will wail and the boots of our children’s children will crush the dried bones of all who opposed us.
It was a good speech, and could only have been improved by it being spoken aloud. But as Stigerd had already moved off to grab his sack of belongings, it would have fallen entirely on uncomprehending Rhagwan ears.
Better they not know such inspirational words have been said, The Black Duke thought, than suffer the tragedy of hearing them and not understanding.
So with his inspiring words ringing only in his own ears, The Black Duke walked to meet the cart at the treeline and become a farmer once more.
Everyone walked a little easier now the chest was in the cart rather than carried. It wasn’t even the weight, The Black Duke thought, but having it hidden that eased the burden of travel. Carrying visible wealth was not a good way to stay alive in Sorwald. The men’s disguises fit well, though The Black Duke had to show them how to walk like farmers, not like the warriors they were. He still didn’t know how well disguised they were. Even head down and slouching it was hard to hide what he and Stigerd were, and Jacou’s scars would stand out anywhere. But so far, there’d been no trouble.
But here’s some now.
They’d cut east toward the coast as soon as they found a trail heading that way, angling away from the Wald. But not far enough, apparently, because as they came around a bend in the trail, they saw a tree blocking further passage, a handful of men with bows standing before it.
Waldish.
He didn’t hesitate, yanking Fridale off the front seat and tossing him toward the back of the wagon. Renatta—who seemed to have appointed herself mother hen to the boy—tumbled out of the seat right behind him. He heard the clatter of men grabbing weapons from hiding places and the thin hiss of steel clearing leather and knew all were armed and ready. A short leap forward and he slapped the horse hard on the ass. It jumped forward and everyone fell in behind the charging wagon. A few arrows whistled wildly past before the horse pulled up and The Black Duke and Fridale’s guard were among the bowmen.
It was slaughter. The bowmen were lightly armed and thought they’d be fighting farmers, if there were to be a fight at all. Instead, seconds after spotting their prey, they were faced with a group of seasoned warriors led by a giant who roared insults at them in their own tongue. The Black Duke took the man in the center with a straight thrust through the throat and looked around for another enemy. There were none left. Renatta’s opponent was bleeding out from a severed hand. Jacou was pulling his sword out of the liver of one of the two men he’d killed.
Fast, The Black Duke thought.
Stigerd’s big axe had cut a man nearly in half—from the top down—a feat of such strength even The Black Duke wasn’t sure he could accomplish. Omnic and Alvo each stood over a corpse, the former looking bored, the latter looking sad and triumphant at the same time, which made The Black Duke think he’d be fine the next time battle approached.
Best it happened this way for him. Too fast to think about.
Javon, assessing the situation swiftly and correctly, hadn’t attacked and had strung his bow instead. He now fired into the woods at the rest of the troop of bandits who had been set to spring the ambush. When they saw their men on the road go down so quickly, they changed their mind and fled, but not before two fell to Javon’s deadly accuracy.
Well, The Black Duke thought, at least I have no need to doubt their bravery or ability in battle.
Renatta rattled off a few words that seemed aimed at him, and the rest of the men laughed. Fridale was still walking up to them after dusting himself off and hadn’t heard her, so The Black Duke turned to Stigerd to translate.
“She says, ‘I thought Waldish were supposed to be warriors? This was like fighting children.’”
“Bah!” The Black Duke scoffed. “They were barely Waldish. Ambushing travelers with a dozen men.” He slapped himself on the chest. “I led a band of two hundred and attacked armies.” He wiped his sword clean on a dead man’s tunic. “If any want to fight a true warrior of the Wald, they have only to point their blade in my direction and I am happy to oblige them.” He stared hard at Renatta who grinned her twelve teeth at him and chattered again without waiting for Stigerd to translate what he’d said.
Stigerd chuckled as he translated. “‘The big man speaks,’ she says. She thought you struck dumb by her beauty days ago.”
The Black Duke smiled then, realizing she was teasing him as soldiers do, especially after a fight, when a man speaks of his own deeds as heroic and his battlemate’s as easy tasks hardly worth the doing.
I am unused to it from a woman.
“She also says not to feel too poorly about it, as you are not the first.”
The Black Duke laughed then, as well, and Stigerd joined him.
“We are blooded,” the Frozen Lander said, and The Black Duke nodded. “And now we are brothers.”
Stigerd took his hand and shook it and The Black Duke knew it to be true.
“Gather the others,” he said to Fridale, who was here now. He turned to Stigerd. “Tell them.”
Stigerd told them as one, and then repeated the words as each grasped The Black Duke by the hand or forearm as was their custom. It was a good moment and made even better as moments later when Fridale, who was wisely checking the corpses for anything useful on their journey, said, “Hey! There’s spirits in these waterskins.”
Better than spirits, it was Waldish mead, honey sweet and mule strong, and made the arduous task of removing the tree from the trail seem light work. By the time they were able to calm the horse—Alvo insisted that giving it some mead would help but was shouted down—and get the wagon moving, The Black Duke had taught them a Waldish walking song and they happily mispronounced the words at the top of their drunken lungs for the rest of the day. Even Fridale, who had tasted neither the mead nor the elation of facing an enemy down the length of a sword and emerging alive, eventually stopped shooting them looks of vague disapproval and joined in, his sweet tenor soaring over the rest, the only voice both in tune, on beat, and anywhere close to singing the right words.
18.
Egil — Vedland
* * *
Egil and Idoyu kept traveling west, making good time, though to Egil it seemed as if every mile took an eternity to cross. He wished for spare mounts to hurry their progress, but Baruso hadn’t given them nearly enough coin for that. And Idoyu pointed out that stealing horses would only result in even more people chasing them.
“Getting hung for stealing a horse won’t help your family,” he said.
Egil saw the wisdom in that, though he still thought they should try.
Arriving on Forfils after my family is dead doesn’t do them any good, either.
But traveling exclusively at night, they hadn’t had even an opportunity for thievery. No one else was on the roads and as they were in the Wester Hills now and nearly out of Vedland, towns were once again walled and locked up tight at night.
“When we reach Eidan,” Idoyu said as dawn approached and they bedded down beneath an outcropping that promised a small piece of cover from a threatening sky, “I think it safe to travel during the day again.”
“And we should turn north,” Egil said. “Head right for the coast. We may not have to go all the way to Three Bridges to find passage to Forfils.” It was unlikely. But they were certain to pass through a few small ports if they followed the coast. One never knew.
“Agreed.”
That day Egil dreamed of Redfish warriors attacking his family. He was approaching their homestead, a long hall perched on a seaside cliff. He heard his mother scream and his father shout and then he was through the door and facing the five Redfish soldiers he’d killed in the Farseer. Only they weren’t the Redfish soldiers anymore. They were wolves, large and gray yet standing on their hind legs. He lifted his sword to slay them but it fell from his fingers. He looked down at his hands and saw the reason. His hands were the paws of a wolf. The Redfish wolves howled and he howled with them as together they fell upon his family.
Egil woke sweating, his cloak stretched so tightly between his hands that the cloth was tearing, his head buzzing like a thousand bees had made their home in his skull. Grabbing a waterskin from beside him, he nearly drained it.
“Ugh,” he said, but quietly so as not to wake Idoyu.
He had no interest in going back to sleep and returning to that dream, so he creaked to his feet, sore from travel, barely healed wounds, and of course, the persistent ache in his head that rose and fell with the buzzing.
Besides, he thought, now my waterskin needs refilling.
He didn’t recall them passing any streams during the night, so he decided to press on uphill and see if he ran into any water.
I can scout around a little at least. Perhaps find some berries.
Some fruit would break up the monotony of their road rations.
The slope was slight and the going easy. As his body warmed to the task, the aches and pains faded—all but the persistent noise in his ears. But he had grown almost used to it by now.
Is that how I defeat the wolf? By accepting it?
He frowned at the trees around him. The Wester Hills were covered in forest and aside from the occasional coppices, were mostly untouched. The lowlands yet held plenty of arable land left unsettled. No one was forced to farm the hills, yet.
Or if I grow used to it, let my guard down, will it one day overcome me? Will I become what I was in my dream?
These were dark thoughts and he felt the buzzing rise, as if he were calling the wolf to him.
“Bah!” he grunted, shaking his head to rattle things loose. It only made the pain worse. He knew he should return to camp and lie down, let the pain, the noise, and especially his thoughts subside. But he saw a steeper slope up ahead that appeared clear of trees, and he stubbornly made for it.
Might get a look at the surrounding country.
Traveling at night, they had not gotten a good look at their surroundings in too long. They’d been traveling blind, which makes any soldier nervous.
But an army of two can’t exactly send out scouts.
He decided it would be foolish to waste this opportunity to get the lay of the land and pressed on to the sleeper hillside.
A few trees had been knocked down by rocks fallen from above, forming the small clearing. Saplings had already taken root and would restore the forest soon. It didn’t afford him a great view of the surroundings, but he spotted the scree slope the rocks had probably come from even further up the hill. And beyond that was a short crag that looked climbable and led, Egil surmised, to a clear view in all directions.
The day warmed and when he reached the scree slope he was sweating. Slow going there, down on all fours in spots, small stones skittering down behind him. The occasional large one, too, forcing him to change grip quickly, lift a foot so it didn’t get crushed or bruised. But the slope was not long, and he reached the crag uninjured and still fresh enough for a climb.
A childhood in Forfils hadn’t given him much climbing experience, but he was youthful and strong and there were holds aplenty in the jagged rock. And though he’d embarked on this excursion to find water, he was glad there was none here; the rock was dry and his grip firm. A few minutes of sweat and effort and he pulled himself over the top.
After a moment of rest, he stood and examined the area. The ground was slatey rock that sloped up to the true peak of the hill thirty yards to his left. No trees grew here though a few hardy grasses poked their way through the stone. Near the peak were the weathered remains of a structure that Egil thought must predate the Hysans by a thousand years, given how worn the stones were. All that remained was the foundation, a circle of stone with a gap facing downslope, perhaps where a door had once stood.
A fort? A home? A holy place? He had no idea, but suspected the scree slope was formed by the destruction of this place, whatever it had been. Is there nothing a man might build that another won’t knock down?
He had no answer to that and suspected no one else did, either. He also thought it an odd question for a professional soldier to ask, given it was often his job to destroy what another had built.
But is that even what I am anymore?
He had no answer to that, either.
There is no end to questions I can’t answer, he thought, so he set his mind to something he could answer: what the surrounding territory looked like.
After scree slope and crag, the walk to the peak was easy. He looked due west toward Eidan first, and noted a trail that would make their descent from the hills easier.
Aim a little north rather than straight west and we’ll meet it.
From there the trail met a road heading west into the flat plains of Eidan. The road would be populated by caravans and travelers, most heading west toward the great trade city of Sarakon on the southern border of Eidan that stood as the northernmost tip of the Far Flung Road. He thought he could see a few from here. On the horizon, he saw smoke in three different locations as from something big burning.
Forests afire? Villages aflame? Castles under siege and burning? There was no way of knowing. Add it to my list of things I don’t know, he thought.
North then, which looked clearer than west. Understandable, as trade inspired travel and the ports on Vedland’s north coast were very weak sisters compared to Three Bridges in Eidan. Still, there was some smoke on that horizon as well.
The east was clear, both of smoke and, more importantly, of mounted men that might be hunting them. The first good news in quite some time. To the south, more smoke, much of it concentrated over where he believed Duke Mondeger’s home castle was located. Does Bardetorre besiege him there? It made sense. If Mondeger lost his levy and Bardetorre struck quickly, before he could gather more lords to his banner…
It is none of my concern, Egil thought. But he stored the knowledge away, thinking that if he got his family safe out of Forfils and had the opportunity for vengeance, it would be good to know where to find his enemies.
With the sun now risen high and no water in sight, Egil picked his way back down to camp.
“Tell me again what you saw from the heights?” Idoyu asked.
They rode carefully around the hillside, making for where Egil had seen the trail. They’d decided to head out while it was still light and find the trail where night travel would be easier.
“Smoke on most of the horizons. At least six fires of some size.”
