by David Guymer
“Ready, captain,” said the Companion holding the wheel.
Trenloe let a long breath out.
Took another long breath in.
With a sudden roar he threw himself against the wagon’s side and lifted. The muscles of his upper body swelled taut. The hinges of his half-plate squealed. The crowd of onlookers fell suddenly silent as he raised himself up off his haunches, transferring the enormous weight of the wagon from his arms to his thighs.
“Wheel!” he growled through clenched teeth. “Now!”
The woman and the two men ran in, slotting the wheel over the exposed axle and fixing it into place. Then they hurried back, and with a final grunt and a tremor of effort Trenloe lowered the wagon gently to the ground. The people erupted with cheers as the wagon sat neatly across its four wheels, the Companions soon leading them in chants of “Tren-loe, Tren-loe.”
Trenloe beat his fist against his breastplate and whooped, basking in their adoration.
Maeve gawped.
“You never knew your mother, did you?” said Dremmin.
“She left my father when I was small,” Trenloe panted. It was a deep hurt, that one, but through time and familiarity it had become an ache that he could almost ignore. “Why?”
Dremmin shrugged. “Just wondering if there might be a bit of giant blood in you.”
Trenloe laughed and waved the caravan onward. As they started to roll past, he turned another look towards the surrounding hills. He thought he saw something there. A wink of iron. Before a cloud smothered the sun and whatever it had been disappeared back into the heath.
He raised a hand and threw whatever it might have been a wave.
He hoped the Greyfox had been watching that.
Chapter Four
Fredric
Castle Kellar, North Kell
From the keep it was possible to imagine that there was nothing amiss.
The tangle of workshops, houses and inns that made up the sprawling garrison town was still bustling, the stink of cooking fat and manure as ripe as it ever was. The birds still sang from about the turrets and spires. The cold wind off the Dunwarr still roared, frightening the purple and gold banners into flapping dances. It was that east wind, or so the proverb went, that kept the land hard and its people cold.
To the south, the Whispering Forest was an ocean of sibilant greenery that stretched from horizon to horizon, to the borders of Dhernas, Pelgate, and Frest. Away to the east, no more than a twinkling thread from Kellar’s highest towers, the Lothan River sparkled. The Dunwarr Mountains, beyond it, were a hazy wall capped with snow, the dividing barrier between barbarism and civility.
To the north and west were the Howling Giant Hills, frigid barrens where isolated villages worshipped Nordros, God of Cold and Death and King of Winter, and did not yet know that the First Darkness had receded. Kellar’s mighty foundations had been hacked out of the range’s southern foothills in millennia long past. The last confederation of northern chiefs to defy Arcus Penacor and the unification of the west had done so from its sculpted earthworks and palisade walls.
There was more of the Charg’r than Talindon blood in the men of the far north and east. According to the great history, the Legendum Magicaria, the nomads of the Charg’r were the first of peoples and had settled widely across Kell, crossing the ford at Hernfar, before the coming of more civilized folk from the west.
At this, however, true Kellar would scoff and took no offense.
They had been the first to feel the Locust Swarm, the Dragon Horde, and the march of the Undying One. And they had weathered them all.
The barony was too unpopulous and its inhabitants too poor to have chartered a Free City of its own, and so Kellar suffered no rival for its wealth or talent. Its walls had been extended many times. They had been thickened. They had been raised. The strength had been stiffened with massively castellated towers.
From there, it was possible to imagine that there was nothing amiss at all.
“Could we please take this council indoors.” Beren Salter, the lady-chamberlain, hugged herself and shivered. “We are not all such hot-blooded young men.”
The other two members of Fredric’s council, neither one of them exactly a younger man, chuckled wryly. Grandmarshal Trevin Highgarde, Captain of the Knights of the Yeron and Warden of Kellar, was a big man with a proud moustache, glitteringly clad in golden armor and a snapping cloak. General Urban Brant, Lord-Commander of the Armies of Kell, was bent a little lower and wore his hair a little grayer. Being common born, he had no right to heraldry of his own or the title that Fredric felt his talents warranted, and was garbed considerably more appropriately in a thickly quilted coat with golden epaulets sewn into the sleeves.
“It is important for me to be seen,” said Fredric, but not without sympathy for his oldest counsellor. He was wearing an enameled breastplate with floral patterns etched in gold and silver. Beneath it was an arming doublet of purple quilt and gold stitching that offered excellent padding and protection from an attack, but not so much from the cold. Prominent at his throat was a golden buckle bearing the heraldic Owl of Kell, pinning in place a long red cloak that bit and snapped at the fell wind from the east. He looked out across the battlements, onto the town. “The people need to see that I see them, that I understand what is happening in my barony and that I suffer it with them.”
It had become his custom to take counsel on the walls so dressed. Of late, his servants would become alarmed if he attended breakfast in anything less than full plate and helm.
He was not sure if seeing their baron in such raiment, as though war were not merely on their horizon but actually on their doorstep, was a source of encouragement or woe for his people. But the armor, and the weapons he bore with it, had belonged to his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and Fredric felt more alike to those great men simply by wearing them.
He wished that there was more of Reginal or Roland Dragonslayer in him. Then, perhaps, the famine that had blighted Kell might have been prevented, or at least a solution found. And the Greyfox, the so-called Bandit Queen, and those others like her in the north, would never have been allowed to gain such sway. His forefathers would have done something. If only he knew what, then Frederic would have gladly done the same. Even if it meant emulating his most cherished ancestor and hero, Roland, and taking the family harness to his grave. All his interventions seemed to have accomplished so far was to make things worse.
“And what is happening in your barony?” asked Urban. “Because if his lordship does know, then he is better informed than I. I hear precious little any more from anywhere further than a day’s ride from the gates of Kellar. Even the High Road to Dhernas brings little news. Banditry, I am told, though that is far from my greatest fear while the watchtowers sit empty to the east.”
“This is an old argument, Urban.” The decision to reduce the size of the army and abandon a number of the smaller border forts had been a hard one. Fredric wished he could say he was certain it was the right one, but he found it difficult to be certain of much these days. The threat of mass starvation had moved him to release as many soldiers as he could to their fields, only for the diminished army to embolden the likes of the Greyfox. What unintended consequence could he expect next? “What would you have me do?”
“Rebuild your army. Let me ride from here tonight with four captains, a hundred men apiece, and an order to conscript every man and woman between the ages of twelve and fifty. We’ll take it to the four corners of your barony and raise an army that will clear the roads and hound the outlaws from their holes and drive every last one of them into the Whispering Forest.” His rough-shaven face took on a sneer. “Let the dragon-kin and the fae deal with them as they always have.”
Trevin peered over the high rim of his shining gorget. His lips were hidden, but his eyes smirked.
“Something funn
y, Highgarde?” asked Urban.
“Yes,” said the grandmarshal.
Urban scowled.
“Enough,” Frederic sighed.
It was enough that his people were burning and pillaging one another’s homesteads without the lord-commander of his armies and oathsworn protector sniping at one another. Both men were frustrated, Fredric knew, but more than that they simply did not like one another. There was no reason for it as far as Fredric was aware. Sometimes men just didn’t. It probably did not help that that Trevin could irritate a placid mule with a one-word witticism or a raised eyebrow.
Urban turned to Fredric. “Do you smell that, my lord?”
Fredric shook his head. “Smell what?”
“You can’t see it from here, but…” The soldier sniffed. “Smoke. It lingers in the air, even here.”
“You’re imagining things,” said Salter.
“Am I?” said Urban, and turned back to Fredric. “Am I? It’s more than just mountain ice on the wind from the east, these days. When did either of you last take a horse east of Orrush Khatak? Or take the Forest Road to the Crimson Downs and the ford at Hernfar? Your barony burns.” He gestured angrily over the walls. “Do you think it is enough for them to know that you stand here watching it?”
“You have said enough.” Trevin stepped forward. His gargantuan suit of full plate was bedecked in the chivalric wings and enameled feathers of his order. The two pages that shadowed him always with the wing-hilted greatsword, Unkindness, dropped to their knees and presented the blade in readiness should its master be called on to duel. “You push too far.”
Fredric raised his hand and turned away from them both.
It did not help to be reminded that Urban wanted only to best serve Kell, as Fredric did, or even that he was almost certainly right on every count and Fredric wrong. Fredric was not a child. He could bow to good counsel where it was offered and admit where he had strayed. But the lord-commander was the master of Kell’s armies. That was his sole concern. Fredric had to balance so many and it was exhausting to body, spirit, and mind. There were no easy answers to be had. If there were, then all would have been able to agree to them, and they would not still be arguing about it.
“It is all right, Trevin. I can handle the harsh words of my general. Let us say I were to raise this grand army you ask me for, general, and it were to achieve everything you claim it would, what then? When the crops continue to fail and the livestock to perish, what then? Will my soldiers starve quietly in their garrisons with the weapons and training we have given them? No. They would turn brigand themselves and be right to, because I would have failed them, and you will find that you have vanquished one foe in order to create and arm a greater one. And what will we do then, general? This is not Greyhaven or Nerekhall. We cannot just make new armies until we run out of foes.”
Urban made a low growl-sound. “Forgive me, Baron, if I was too bold. I speak only as I see it. I meant no offence.”
“Credit me at least with thicker skin than that.”
Fredric drew away from the battlement, wincing at a sudden spasm in his lower back. He arched and crunched his spine.
“My lord is getting old,” said Trevin.
Fredric shot him a look. It bounced off the knight’s smile like arrows off rocks.
“You don’t know what old is,” Salter muttered.
Fredric laughed, surprised by how good it felt. He promised himself that he would find the time to do it more often. “Too many hours spent over faded maps and penning letters to erstwhile allies that are destined to be ignored. That is all.” He glanced over his shoulder, staring at a distant horizon from high walls. “Walk with me a while. The stroll will do me good. My father always preached the virtues of a long walk when it came to solving life’s problems.”
Salter sighed, complaining loudly of older bones and stiffer joints, but dutifully fell into line and followed as Fredric and the others filed along the battlements and down a long flight of granite steps. Urban walked ahead of her. Trevin Highgarde and his pages followed directly in Fredric’s footsteps, never more than a long stride from Unkindness or his baron in accordance with his oaths. At the bottom of the steps was a courtyard.
There, upwards of a hundred soldiers brightly liveried in purples and golds practiced maneuvers. Each was armed with an infantry spear and a round shield emblazoned with the Owl of Kell, and identically armored in breastplate, kettle helm, vambrace for the spear arm and light greaves for the shins. It was as little protection as was necessary for them to be effective, but more than the line troops of most baronies could expect. Somewhere within the endless turning, marching and wheeling blocks of infantry a trumpeter was sounding out complicated tattoos that had the formations flowering into schiltrons, compacting into squares, or bristling with spears. Fredric thought it beautiful. Like watching a court masterpiece from the time of the Elder Kings come alive for his eyes and move.
The maneuvers went on uninterrupted even as Fredric and his entourage crossed the drill yard and found another set of steps winding upwards.
They passed several more soldiers moving back and forth between posts lugging heavy flatbows, or carting shield and spear. They bowed to Fredric and Trevin, apparently too wary of General Brant who would occasionally grunt something disparaging about the angle of their spear or the polish of their helm, before continuing on.
At the top, the party came to a battlement, built wide as it was very high and in little danger of conventional assault, projecting from the side wall of one of the keep’s middle towers. From there a group of twenty or so could, in some comfort, look down on the easternmost of the walled baileys that encircled Kellar Keep, between it and the first and largest curtain wall. The view was the same as it had been in the courtyard beforehand, only on an increased scale. Several hundred soldiers drilled and engaged one another in mock battles. Knights of three different chivalric orders sworn to the Barony of Kell exercised their horses while rune golems, brutal-looking constructs of rock armor and engraved magicks, slumbered in open sheds, awaiting the arcane phrases that would rouse them to battle. Other baronies stored their golems away, concealed them in remote strongholds as an insurance against dire need. But for the Kellar the Uthuk Y’llan were no distant threat.
The armies of Kell had been diminished, but to Fredric’s eyes they were the martial pride of Terrinoth still.
Fredric started towards the rampart edge, thinking to lean over and watch his soldiers, only for the flicker of warning in his belly to make him think better of it and step back. He wrapped his arms around his chest and rested his shoulders against the tower’s wall. To his left was a Loriman ballista mounted on a wooden turntable. It could have been one of the very machines that had cut dragons from the cold skies of the east eight hundred years before. Revered relics of a time still recent in the folk memory of Kell, when the barony had last stood firm against Terrinoth’s enemies. Each of the siege engine’s limbs was longer than Fredric could stand with his arms fully spread. The inclined track into which a crew of three would load bolts was longer than he was tall. The woodwork was so thoroughly oiled that it gleamed, loosely covered in a weatherproof sheet that flapped in the cold mountain wind. His council huddled around him. The pages bearing Unkindness shivered on the stairs.
“Kellar is well garrisoned,” said Urban, unnecessarily given the evidence of their eyes and ears. “We have provisions enough to feed it for a long time. There is little enough incoming from the countryside these days, but that is not the great loss to the granaries that it might have. Kell’s principal produce has always been hard men.”
“And harder mutton,” said Trevin.
Salter grunted her agreement.
Urban went on. “Traders from Dhernas, and even from Frostage on occasion, do still come to replenish our stores, albeit under heavy protection from soldiers I can ill-afford to spare when the eastern watc
hes stand empty.” He walked to the door in the tower’s side and opened it, checked inside to be sure that it was empty, then closed it and turned back. “I have heard rumors – from Outland Scouts and Citadel Knights on errantry here in Kell, and from those mercenaries still abroad in the south and east – of Uthuk Y’llan moving in great number along the Ru side of the Lothan. I have even heard tell of a battle, though I know not who fought it nor its outcome.”
At that, the wind blowing through Fredric’s coat seemed to turn chill.
The Uthuk were the great menace from the east, although more of a legend than a reality for all that they occasionally still crossed the Lothan to raid the outlying farms and even conducted trade of a sort through the lawless bandit state of Last Haven. They had not pushed as far even as Kellar in fourteen hundred years and there had been other threats to the baronies that had arisen and been pushed back since. But the Uthuk had been the first, and the greatest, people who appeased the demons of the Ynfernael planes with blood rituals and human sacrifice. They put the fear of damnation into children and old men alike, and the merest rumor of an incursion made Fredric’s hand itch for his shield and his sword.
To his surprise, Trevin was nodding. “I have had similar reports.” The grandmarshal gave his baron a remorseful look. “Not all knights wear armor, and I cannot shield you with all my swords here in Kellar.”
“You’re forgiven,” said Fredric. “But it is my understanding that an army cannot cross the Lothan except at the fords of Hernfar. Not unless it chooses to cross over the Dunwarr and come at us through Forthyn Barony.”
“It’s the only good crossing for an army. But that’s not to say small bands or agents couldn’t get across while the forts are unmanned and the mountains unwatched.”
“I find myself unexpectedly in agreement,” said Trevin. “You have been fair to this barony and your father was well loved. The people here are straightforward. They expect no comfort and ask for little from you. They are not soft like the folk of Allerfeldt or Cailn, that a little hardship would bring them to rebellion, or give a handful of glorified cutpurse gangs control over so much land so quickly. No, I suspect the hand of the Uthuk in this, direct or otherwise.”
