“What about your children?” said Obbree.
“I just said we'll be back,” said Olloo. “So what do you say, Fuzz?”
Fuzz looked at Rose. “Certainly!” he said. “We'd be right honored, but you don't need our permission.”
“Of course I do if I'm to have more honor than nether eye to that goose,” he said, suddenly leaning forward to spit into the peony bush beyond the goose. “Now did Baase get it right Obbree? Are you sailing to the new land with us?”
“Yes sir. He did, and I am for a fact.”
“Then I want you to ride with me to the coast to see if we can talk to Captains Binion, Nevitt or if we're really scraping the barrel, Captain Voiles.”
“I'll go with you when you give the word, but Voiles is a sukee addict. I'm too afraid of the water to feel good about him.”
Olloo gave a nod to Obbree, spit his chaw into his hand and gave it a fling. “Now Rose, 'fore I forget, what do you think of this 'n'?” he said, handing her the bow he had been working on.
Rose ran her hands over the bow, admiring everything about it, particularly the Elven runes carved into it. She glanced up suddenly to find Olloo watching her intently. “It's magnificent,” she said. “You'll no doubt get a lifetime of good use from it.”
“Nope,” he said, folding his arms. “That's your bow. It ought to be better for you than the one I lent ye. But since I could be wrong, I'm a-giving both of them to you. I'll fix a string here directly and you can try that one.”
“Oh thank you! I've always admired Elven bows and I've coveted my sister-in- law's ever since I saw it. I'll treasure this bow always.”
“And use it too, my princess,” said Olloo.
“Certainly. And what do the runes say?”
“They say, 'Elf Heart.' For, my dear princess, you were meant to be an Elf the way you shoot a bow and the way you love your strike falcon.”
Tears welled up in Rose's eyes and all she could manage was a grand smile and a nod.
Chapter 166
When Demonica and Spitemorta brought down Castle Niarg, they also destroyed the great Argent Abbey which stood against the castle's outer curtain, sparing only its renowned bell tower, Argentowre. Beyond Argentowre from the castle ruins, there still stood Pilar Paleys, the strange residence of Niarg's secretary of the exchequer who died at Jut Ford. Pilar Paleys was a large and neatly thatched wattle and daub house which towered above the street on four great timber pillars, its second storey overhanging its first by a good six feet, all the way around. The second storey was even more unusual by its having an uninterrupted succession of clear leaded glass windows, hinge to latch, all the way around the house. General Coel found it a splendid place to take up residence and keep watch over the vanquished town.
Spitemorta already knew where to find Coel and swooped down from the grey sky to land on the cobblestones in front of a pair of wide-eyed guards at the foot of the stairs which climbed around the outside of the four pillars to the door of the first storey. Sparrows cheeped in the echoes of the wet street as she threw her leg off the Staff and started for the stairs. “Good job you recognize me,” she said with a cordial nod for each of them as she breezed by. “It spared someone having to go after your ashes with a dust pan.”
At the first landing, she tried the door instead of bothering to knock. “Idiot!” she hissed. “Only a coward locks his door.” She raised the Staff and blew the door flat onto the floor inside.
At once there was a hurried sound of boots tramping down the steps outside. “Ah! Good morning Your Majesty,” said Coel with a bow as he appeared in the doorway. “I've never once been through this door. I think it's been barred and nailed for years. I was upstairs looking at different drawings we've come up with for the new castle. I don't even have a bar for the door up there. It's good that you're here. It will certainly help us out for you to have a look at them, but you'll have to come back outside with me to go up. We need all the help we can get. I'm told that we must have slain Niarg's architect at Jut Ford.”
Spitemorta glowered and stepped outside.
“Tea?” he said, pulling back a chair for her from the great table spread with drawings. “Here. I'll start another pot. And I'll bet that you had more important reasons for calling than just these drawings.”
She jerked away from his gaze at once to avoid finding him attractive. “Your manners could stand some serious improvement, General,” she said, keeping her back to him as she looked out over the rooves of Niarg.
“Why I beg your pardon Your Majesty,” he said, stopping short and waiting for her to continue.
“I want you to send soldiers out into the countryside to find my dear daughter,” she said, turning about and raising her chin. “And they are to do nothing else until they find her. She's been promised to your prince Artamus, if you don't already know, and that makes her part of my agreement with King Vortigern. And I can't imagine he'll be at all pleased to find that she vanished on your watch.”
Coel studied her face for a moment before giving a thoughtful nod.
“You have nothing to say, General?”
“What am I to say?”
“Well here you are, representing him on the Northern Continent, and you and General Cunedda look out for his interests by leaving Castle Goll unguarded which allowed Niarg to destroy it and make off with my poor daughter.”
Coel, cool strategist that he was, was in far better control of himself than to let her see that she had gotten to him, but she not only had managed to do so, she was quite right. Vortigern would indeed see the castle's destruction and Nasteuh's kidnapping as his and Cunedda's failure. It did not matter in the least that it was Spitemorta who had ordered them to take every soldier to Niarg, leaving the castle unguarded. He knew Vortigern well enough to know that he would expect them to have convinced her that Castle Goll had to be utterly secure before they ever attacked Niarg. And furthermore, he knew from the very moment that he heard her orders that they were rash and ill-conceived. “So did they have us under some kind of spell?” he thought. “No matter, Vortigern will never buy it.” Nasteuh simply had to be found. “I'll send out my best men, Your Majesty,” he said.
“Good!” she said, pecking the floor with the Staff as she finally took the seat he had offered. “The other matter we need to talk about is the great reduction of your forces. You and General Cunedda probably don't have the men to actually wage the war that is yet to come. We have to take the rest of the continent, and I doubt if you're up to it.”
“Well. Now here I had the idea from your maps and our discussions that the remaining countries were mostly just piddly little things. Tea kettle's boiling. Just a minute. “
“Yea?” she said, going right on without pausing for his chore. “Well they may be piddly, as you so quaintly put it, but the minute they realize our threat and join forces, they just might defeat us. And that would certainly make a mockery of our bringing you here from Gwael, now wouldn't it? And land. If we lose, you couldn't possibly expect land, now could you? No deal, right?”
“Of course not Your Majesty, but...”
“Of course not. Now how many men will you need here to keep the prisoners working full time on my castle?”
“Oh...a couple hundred, maybe.”
“Really? Then why did you send twenty-five hundred of your mercenaries with General Cunedda, when his own two hundred soldiers would have sufficed?”
“Well scarcely, Your Majesty,” he said, setting the kettle back upon the hearth un- poured. “But it didn't matter when you told us to divide my men in half, so that is exactly what we did. And I don't recall being asked for our opinions at the time either, so it really wasn't our place to question your orders, particularly with you reminding us not to ever dare to, every two shakes.”
A look of fury came and went on her face.
Coel calmly took a seat astride a stool and folded his arms.
“You are wrong!” she barked. “And your manners are contemptible for a
military man.”
“Once again I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but perhaps it needs to be borne in mind that I am a mere mercenary...”
“And a military expert good enough to be sent here by King Vortigern,” she said, as she looked him up and down, “which simply made it your duty to advise me in any and all strategic decisions. And you and Cunedda both failed to do so, time and time again. So it seems to me that you must have some other plan than winning this war for Niarg- Loxmere-Goll. Now you'd better convince me of my error so that I don't have to execute you for treason.”
“You know, Your Majesty, I'd swear we've had this discussion before,” said Coel with a serious face to go with his patient nod, “and I do believe that I pointed out that executing me would cause you to lose your army at once from mutiny. I've been talking to my men. And they're staying here only because they're willing to follow me into battle. Now I need another cup 'o tea. Are you right sure you won't have one?”
“No!”
“Well now you certainly led me to believe that withholding military advice should be grounds for my very execution, so my emphatical military advice is that if you're to conquer anyone, avoid mutiny at all cost.”
For a fleeting moment, Spitemorta appeared to be straining at something.
“Now I'm confused, Your Majesty. When you said no, did you mean: no, you aren't sure you'll have a cup, or did you mean: no, you'll not have one?”
“How many men do you plan on sending after my daughter?” she snapped.
“Oh maybe a hundred from here. And Cunedda could also send out a hundred. We could double it if you want, but that would cut into your fighting force...”
“Going below four thousand and five hundred fighting men would be idiotic, General,” she said in a tone fit for a school boy refusing to study his multiplication tables.
“If we start out with Five thousand and two hundred, I can't imagine that there'd be much risk,” he said as he stood up suddenly. “I'm having some tea. I'm putting a clean cup here on the table, if you decide you want some.”
Spitemorta was not listening. “I'm moving to Castle Loxmere until my castles are built,” she said as she laid the Staff on the table and began pacing. “And I want to begin our campaign within a week after I get moved. We don't want to give our 'piddly' places time to form alliances. We'll first work our way north, taking every one of the little kingdoms lying in that direction. And we'll conscript each one of the armies of these lands for our forces. When we get to the Northern Reaches, we'll march back south, conquering everything clean to the Kingdom of Marr. Any questions?”
“Well it's ambitious enough, Your Majesty,” he said, heaving a sigh. “I think it actually might work, but we can't just run off and do this without first really studying the maps and talking to people who are right familiar with the terrain each way we want to go. And the Kingdom of Marr. That's Beaks. They have quite a reputation. Good job that you have them last.”
“Painted savages.”
“They had you in their dungeon once, didn't they?”
“And we got out.”
“Yea. But they've raided their neighbors for years and no one has been able to stop them, right?”
“No one but my mother with this very staff right here,” she said, nodding at it on the table. “She turned the whole kingdom of them into a sticky humiliation of pot-bellied runts.”
“You know how to do that?”
Spitemorta quickly peered out one of the windows as if something had caught her eye.
Coel squinted at her for a moment. “That sounds like it'll be a workable plan if we take the needed time with our maps,” he said. “Do you intend to fly to Goll and explain all of this to General Cunedda, then? It'll delay us quite a bit if we have to send a letter by ship and unicorn.”
“My word!” said Demonica, in words that only Spitemorta could hear. “You didn't give him a skinweler?”
“Get off my chair!” shouted Spitemorta.
Coel went wide eyed and sprang back from his stool as if it were rabid.
“As if you knew anything, Grandmother!” she cried. “The skinweleriou were all in my room when it burnt, so just how would I ever give one to Cunedda?”
“Oh, by having the foresight to at least issue one to him and one to your blue eyed general here before sending them off on their first mission, I would think,” she said, shifting the skirt of her kirtle across her knee as she looked up. “But even so, the skinweleriou are just glorified stones, Rouanez Bras, and I can't imagine more than one or two of them cracking open or discoloring from the heat. By now you can be certain that your loyal subjects have swarmed in and taken every last one. Speaking of which, dear, did you even think to check the remains of your strongroom? You may have just returned a fair amount of your wealth to the citizens who let you take it in the first place.”
“Sans Dewsys!” thought Coel as he quietly got back onto his stool. “Either Spitemorta is raving mad or Demonica is right in front of me, hiding from my very eyes and ears. Who knows what they can do with the Staff and Heart? I wonder about the promise of land. If I stay, I'll become Spitemorta's subject...”
“As if you weren't right there with me when we set out for Niarg, Grandmother.”
“Yes I was. Showing restraint. And you could have controlled yourself instead of blasting me to oblivion, dear. Though I reckon that meant more restraint and maturity on your part than you really have. And it makes me doubt that you'll ever manage to rule anything beyond your own limited piece of this continent.”
“What oblivion? Here you are, tormenting me every chance you get.”
“Oh not at all. It was you who killed me, remember? And your childish urge to get me out of your life has me at your side forever.”
Spitemorta blanched and steadied herself with a chair.
“Are you not well, Your Majesty?” said Coel.
“Would you mind terribly opening a few windows for me, General?”
“Not at all,” he said, on his feet at once. “My but she's polite!” he thought.
“Grandmother,” she said as she sank into the chair she had been leaning against,” I despise how you spell out the mistakes I make, but can you please help me regain some of my losses? I need to know how to move decisively if I'm to win this war.”
“The first thing you need to do is stop wasting so much time flying about on your stick, Rouanez Bras,” she said without the slightest hesitation. “I've told you before, you need to master traveling spells and you need to do it now. You no longer have the luxury of spending hours and days, flying all over the countryside while you neglect your soldiers. Had you been with them at Jut Ford, you'd have more men now. Maybe even enough. Honestly! How childish is it to be flying about, far away from your army's engagements, getting even with people you merely resent who've nothing to do with your objectives? You should be taking out the enemy who are the most dangerous to your forces, the moment they need your help. And you need to make certain that all your officers have skinweleriou so that they're always at hand.”
“Right. I've completely given up vomiting, Grandmother. That's one thing I'll never do again...”
“My word!” said Coel, leaning forward. “I wish I could get away with that.”
“You know very well that every time I use a traveling spell, I arrive heaving my insides out. No more. Forget it.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Demonica as she folded a speculative pleat across her knee. “All you need is that herb tea for klenved-mor which I once gave you aboard ship. Drink a cup before you use your spell. It lasts quite a while, depending on how strong you make it.”
“Klenved-mor? Seasickness herbs? Spell traveling is hardly the same as being on rough seas.”
“Poop dear. You merely need ginger, black horehound and raspberry leaf at the very least, and...”
“Do you have any?”
“I didn't imagine that you needed any at the time of my death. You need a supply of...”
&n
bsp; “Wait. If this list gets longer, I'll need to write it down. General Coel, have you a bottle of ink and a quill?”
“Ink?” he said, snapping to with a confused look to stand up and search about amongst his papers. “Here.”
“Can you start over Grandmother?”
“Ginger, dear,” she said with a sigh, “and black horehound. If you don't have those, it won't do. But if you want a better concoction, add raspberry leaf, peppermint and chamomile. Now bye.”
“Wait!” cried Spitemorta. “Damn her. General Coel, could you have these herbs brought to me immediately?”
“Certainly,” he said, stepping to the door to holler at one of the guards downstairs.
Coel offered her tea again, right away after the guard was sent after the herbs, but she merely gave an impatient sigh and ignored him. She had utterly no interest in picking out the best drawings of the new castle, either. He thought about asking her if her vomiting aboard ship had anything to do with her wanting herbs, but since this might be a dangerous thing to do, he thought better of it and said nothing. She was certainly keeping her back to him as she peered out the windows. There was nothing he could do but sit on a stool and look out over the houses of Niarg from the opposite side of the great room. “Well,” he said at long last. “There he is, 'way down there, hurrying this way. He's got a package of some sort. So what happens when he gets up here?”
“I shall brew up a good stout tea of some sort,” she said, still keeping her back to him. “Then I'll travel by spell to Castlegoll and give General Cunedda his new orders. When I return later today, we'll begin the journey to Loxmere Castle. Cunedda and the rest of the Gwaelean soldiers will join us there as soon as they can. Once our army is assembled, we shall move north and begin taking the countries there one at a time. Quite simple, really.”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 176
