Steven Argent stood in the middle of the barracks for a long minute, looking from one face to another.
There was no sound at all, save for the wind howling outside.
‘You–and you, and you, you and you,’ he said, pointing out men who had been fighting, and then at two of the sergeants who had stood by and watched. ‘I’ve got a little job for you. We need another cask of beer hauled up from the Broken Tooth–good dwarvish beer, if you please–and I’m sending the lot of you out in the storm to get it.’
He stood silently, his hands still on his hips, a look of utter contempt written across his face; then he turned and swept out of the room.
Kethol shrugged, and spread his cloak over his bed. He unbuckled his sword and hung it on the hook nearby and lay down to get some sleep which, as usual, quickly overtook him.
The last things he heard before the warm darkness closed about him were the comfortable, familiar rattling of dice and the clinking of coins on stone.
Durine dumped another armload of wood into the bin next to the hearth, and brushed himself off before throwing another log on the fire. The servants weren’t quite ignoring this particular hearth, but they seemed to be giving higher priority to the one across the Great Hall, and it was easier to just go out into the cold and retrieve some wood from the woodpile than to annoy some servant about it.
That was the thing about cold–as long as there was warmth nearby, a few moments of it really weren’t all that bad.
The log hissed quietly at him, and then slowly began to burn around the edges.
Close to a score of the nobles had gathered themselves at the larger hearth at the far end of the Great Hall, with a few hangers-on. Pirojil was at Morray’s elbow, standing just outside the small circle of barons and noble ladies who were engaged in some intense conversation.
The soldiers–mostly captains, except for a few odds and ends like himself–had understandably gravitated to the opposite side of the hall, so that the table down the middle of the hall acted as a social buffer. Durine didn’t know if gathering in the Great Hall was standard practice for visiting captains or just some sort of special dispensation given out under the circumstances. Either way, the captains appeared at ease, and none of the nobles spared them a glance.
Visiting captains were usually housed in one of the barracks buildings, at the far side of the inner bailey, and if Durine had been in their boots he would have found a quiet corner there and kept out of the way of his betters in the keep. But that was probably one of the many reasons that he wasn’t an officer.
Besides, over in the barracks, there were certainly games of dice and bones, and drinking, and doubtless other things going on that were probably considered to be prejudicial to good order and discipline. It was a wise captain who neither tolerated too much of such distractions, nor made too much of an effort to quash them. Too much order and discipline was bad for order and discipline, after all. You needed a balance to maintain morale, and with the storm locking up a load of soldiers, things were going to be getting more tense each day without additional irritations.
It had been bad enough in LaMut before, in that dimly-remembered time, just a few days ago, when winter was just making things cold and muddy, instead of clawing at everything like some ravening beast.
Tom Garnett was just finishing the story about the Night of the Bugs. Pirojil hadn’t paid enough attention to know if the Captain had got the details right, and probably wouldn’t have, even if he had listened closely since he and the other two had been too busy with their little piece of the battle to pay much attention to what others were doing.
Another captain–maybe one of Verheyen’s–plopped himself down in a well-upholstered chair and leaned back, stretching his legs out. ‘The one good thing I can think of about all this,’ he said, closing his eyes and folding his hands over his flat stomach, ‘is that we don’t have to worry, at least for the moment, about a Tsurani attack.’
‘Which,’ Tom Garnett said, ‘would make this a perfect time for such an attack.’
‘Time?’ The captain let his hands drop to his sides, and sat up, visibly irritated. ‘Certainly. Opportunity?’ He shrugged. ‘I think not. If there are any out there stupid enough to venture out in the storm, the blizzard would do our work for us. If we haven’t driven every one of the bastards out of LaMut–’
‘Which we haven’t, or my men killed a whole group of nonexistent Tsurani the other day,’ Tom Garnett said.
The Captain nodded, conceding the point with good grace. ‘Yes, and you did yourself proud, from what I hear, but that was less than a company in strength, wasn’t it?’
Garnett nodded. ‘True enough.’
‘And if there’ve been sightings of more anywhere near LaMut, I surely hope they’d have been reported to me. Far as I can tell, the nearest Tsurani are somewhere east of the Free Cities borders, and not much east at that. Few if any left in Yabon Province, I’m glad to say.’
‘Yes,’ Tom Garnett said with a quick nod. ‘I’m just as happy that it wasn’t more. Wish it had been less. But they were real enough, I can tell you that.’
‘Well, yes.’ The Captain sipped at his coffee. ‘But, apart from a few stragglers trying for their own lines, I think it’s over–for now. Later? Elsewhere? I doubt it–I’ve heard rumours about things heating up around Crydee, and even rumours about the Tsurani departing back to wherever they came from.’ His mouth twitched. ‘Which, even if it’s true, I’d still want to know if and how they can come back, and where.’
‘Yes, there are a lots of rumours,’ another captain said, nodding. He was a man of around fifty, with a bristle of moustache under his sharp nose, and a way of biting off the end of each word. He sipped at his wine as he stared at the fire, and huddled more deeply into his jacket. ‘I don’t much care for the ones I hear regarding what’s going on in Krondor.’
Tom Garnett glanced over at the nobles across the room, then looked back at the Captain, frowning. ‘And if spreading these rumours more widely is liable to serve us all well, then let’s all get to it, and do it thoroughly, and not waste any more of this lovely day, Captain Karris, shall we?’
Karris bristled, but settled himself back down, and raised a spread hand in surrender and apology. ‘A good point, Tom, a good point indeed–and it’s one I flatter myself I would have made if another had been fool enough to speak as I just did. A man can’t help wondering, no, but it’s another matter entirely to fail to keep your tongue in check, eh?’
Garnett nodded. ‘I’ve always thought so.’ His mouth twitched. ‘You can’t fight the whole war yourself; I always reckoned watching out for my own little piece of it was more than enough for me and my company, and that I’m best off leaving the bigger pieces to the men with the titles and responsibilities.’
‘Well, then you do better than I,’ another captain said. ‘I can’t help thinking about a lot of things. Worrisome time; I don’t know about the rest of you lads, but I haven’t slept through the night in longer than I care to think about.’
‘Sleep through the night?’ Karris laughed bitterly. ‘That’s an ancient myth, or so it feels. I’ve spent so long worrying about what’s over the next hill that my mind tends to spin out of control when I’m in four walls. I feel like a horse that can’t help galloping despite his lead being tied to a post; all I’m doing is going in circles.’
He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. ‘And since I’ve nothing better to do right now, I think I’ll make sure that my little boys and your little boys are playing nicely. I don’t need the Swordmaster to break things up again just because the lot of them feel as head-tied as I do. Most of them don’t have the sense the gods gave turnips, so they’re unlikely to listen to gentle words of wisdom like yours. They might need sterner words, though. Like, say, “take an extra watch”?’ He brightened. ‘Come to think of it, standing just a single extra watch on the walls, right now, would do just fine for some serious punishment, wouldn’t it?’
&nb
sp; Outside, the wind howled, as though in agreement with Karris.
Tom Garnett chuckled. ‘That it would.’
He watched Karris stalk away towards the mud-room, then got up from his chair to fumble a small briar pipe out of a pocket. He patted at his trouser pockets for a moment, and was reaching for the leather bag that lay on the floor next to him when another captain tossed him a small pouch.
‘I thank you, Willem,’ he said. He filled the pipe with tabac, lit it with a long taper, and puffed furiously on it until he was satisfied with the smoke. ‘Might as well enjoy what you can, while you can, eh?’ He gestured toward the mud-room with the pipe’s stem. ‘That’s what I missed out there, the most. I got the feeling that the Tsurani could smell the smoke for miles and miles, and I never did see any need to let them know where we were when I didn’t have to.’ He puffed away strongly. ‘Missed my pipe, I did.’
Another of the captains chuckled. ‘I missed…softer things than a good pipe,’ he said. ‘And I suspect I will, again, come spring. I’m just glad to be out of the storm–and off the line for the moment.’
At that, a sudden gust of wind came down the chimney, sending a rush of sparks and ashes flying from the hearth. The Captain slapped at where one bit of burning ash was threatening to set his trousers on fire.
‘Though spring seems far away. You think that we’ll be moved west, to Crydee? Or north? Or kept here, lest the Tsurani move towards Krondor?’
Tom Garnett puffed at his pipe. ‘Probably all of that, and more. That’s what our betters are working out in Yabon right now. But for here and now, as I was saying, if there are any Tsurani stragglers out there, they’re too busy freezing to worry about attacking anything. I expect we’ll find a few corpses scattered about come spring.’
The other captain nodded. ‘Father Winter, as I’m told that they say on the steppes of Thunderhell, can be a powerful ally–and we can use all the allies we can get.’ He looked over at Durine with distaste. ‘Even if we have to pay some of them for the privilege of their alliance.’ He had been silent until Karris had left, and had watched him walk away with barely-concealed hostility.
Tom Garnett looked up at Durine, who just stared blankly back. ‘Durine,’ he said, ‘have you had the pleasure of meeting Captain Ben Kelly of Barony Folson?’
‘No.’ Durine shook his head. ‘No, I haven’t.’
Kelly nodded coldly. ‘No, we haven’t been introduced, and I’ve not sought out an introduction, either. I’ve little use for freebooters, myself, by and large, but I suppose we must make allowances in these times.’
Durine didn’t say anything, and Kelly apparently took that as a sign of weakness, rather than restraint. ‘Nothing to say, eh? You’ve a fair collection of scars–but your tongue seems to work, and–’
‘Please, Captain,’ Tom Garnett said. ‘If you’ve got some grievance against the man, bring it up with me, not with him–he’s in my company, and he’s my responsibility.’
‘Excuse me, Captain,’ Durine shook his head. ‘No, sir–meaning no disrespect. At the moment, I’m not under your orders…Captain.’
Kethol would probably have gone along just for the sake of getting along, and Pirojil would have found some way of changing the subject or of giving the Captain the same message in some indirect way, but that wasn’t Durine’s nature.
‘Right now, I’m not in any company,’ he said. ‘The three of us have been given a task, on orders of the Earl, and we’re not under the command of anybody save the Swordmaster,’ he said slowly and carefully. He drew himself up parade-ground straight, and stared straight ahead, not meeting Tom Garnett’s eyes. ‘Meaning no disrespect to your rank or to your person, Captain.’
Kelly didn’t like that. ‘Which is why you feel so free to join a gathering of officers, eh? And what’s all this about a special task? I’ve been hearing rumours–’
‘I thought we’d agreed not to involve ourselves in rumour-mongering,’ Tom Garnett said quietly.
‘Well, it’s one thing not to talk about matters at court and nobody here knows the truth. But it’s another matter when we’ve got a man right here–and a freebooter, at that–who claims some sort of special status. What is that all about?’
Durine didn’t answer, and after a moment Tom Garnett leaned forward. ‘There was some concern about the safety of Baron Morray, and the Earl thought it best that he should have his own bodyguard, for the time being. It’s not as though he’s the only baron to be brought into council with extra security, and I don’t think–’
‘Concern?’ Kelly’s brow furrowed. ‘You think that Tsurani attack in Mondegreen was aimed at Baron Morray personally?’
‘No, not really.’ Tom Garnett shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t make much sense. I can’t see how any Tsurani would know that Baron Morray would be with that patrol.’ He got a distant look for a moment. ‘We don’t know how they think, or if they understand what a calamitous turn it would be for us if we lost the Military Bursar for the army. Or how they’d know, if they did.’ Realizing he was digressing, he said, ‘But even if they did understand, for one thing, his going along on this was a last-moment decision by the Earl, just before he left for Yabon. And for another, it didn’t look that way to me. My guess is that if Morray was the target, they’d have killed him first, rather than spring the ambush as early as they did. I trusted Durine and his two friends to see to the Baron while I chased off the Tsurani. As they did, as they certainly did,’ he said. He looked up at Durine. ‘Did it seem to you that they were specifically hunting the Baron?’
Durine shook his head slowly. ‘No, although the bastards did make for him first–but I reckoned that was just because they assumed that he was an officer, rather than anything…personal. To be honest, Captain, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, not then.’
Or later, for that matter–it had seemed to him to be an ordinary, even clumsy, sort of ambush. But trying to work out the purpose of an attack during a war always seemed to Durine to be like trying to work out which part of the body was getting wet when you plunged into a river.
Besides, how could the Tsurani have come by the information? Who would they ask?
The Tsurani captain, or Force Leader, or whatever the bastards called him–Durine just thought of him as the Tsurani captain–had been killed during the battle. Durine was sure that the captured Tsurani had been thoroughly questioned, and even more sure that they hadn’t been told anything. From what they had learned about the Tsurani since the invasion began, the common soldiers didn’t ask questions and their officers didn’t volunteer information. Besides, you could slowly feed most of them into a fire feet first and they’d just keep staring at you with hatred in their eyes until they died, without saying a word. Say what you would about the Tsurani, but they were tough bastards, Durine grudgingly was forced to admit. And those slaves of theirs had even less useful things to say, regardless of how docile or co-operative they were.
Being told nothing beyond the immediate job at hand was a familiar feeling for Durine, until fairly lately, come to think of it. Not that he minded, not really; Durine liked to keep things simple. He wasn’t a strategist, and logistics and such just made his head spin. He preferred to leave such things to others, and do the one thing that he was good at: killing people.
‘But no,’ he said at last, shaking his head, ‘it didn’t seem that way.’
Kelly wasn’t satisfied. ‘Then why all these rumours? And why the extra guards for Baron Morray?’
Tom Garnett dismissed it with a wave of his hand. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about, not really. But with the Earl gone to Yabon, and the Hereditary Bursar ill, I can think of a few thousand small, golden reasons why it’s best to take extra precautions with the health of the Military Bursar, eh?’ He gestured toward the mud-room. ‘LaMut is already filled with baronial soldiers who don’t, at the moment, have the Tsurani around to remind them that we’re all on the same side, and forget about rivalries between the
ir liege lords. And when you add the mercenaries, just about the worst thing I can think could happen would be the inability of the Earl of LaMut to actually pay his debts, even temporarily.’ He shook his head. ‘Damn lousy day when you’d want an attack by the Bugs and Tsurani to distract the men of Morray and Verheyen from the fact that one group of them are likely to be soldiers of the Earl within a few years, living the high life in LaMut, while others are going to go back to their baronies, sooner rather than later.’
‘The Earl?’ The words were out of Durine’s mouth before he had a chance to stop them.
Tom Garnett nodded. ‘I don’t think it’s any secret that Earl Vandros is likely to marry Felina and end up as the Duke, do you? Any of you?’ He grinned as he looked from face to face, from nod to nod. ‘And no matter how energetic their wedding night might be, I doubt that they’d be able to produce an heir quickly enough.’ He shook his head. ‘If you ask me, the next Earl of LaMut is likely in this castle right now–probably in conversation just across the room–and I’d not care to wager who it might be, although if I had to guess, I’d guess either Morray or Verheyen.’
Kelly shook his head. ‘I would have guessed that Mondegreen was the obvious choice myself, particularly as he’s childless–he could hold the office until Vandros has sons–although he wouldn’t be my favourite candidate.’
Most of the other captains frowned at that, but Tom Garnett just smiled. ‘You’d prefer, say, Baron Erik Folson as the Earl, I take it?’
Kelly spread his hands. ‘Well, of course I would, given my own position, but I can honestly swear that there would be far worse choices.’ He stared at the fire and sipped at his coffee. ‘But, alas, I think it unlikely, given that the Baron has two adult sons–and both battle-proven, I’m proud to say, having trained them myself. Either of them would do as Baron, or, eventually, as Earl.’
‘And you think that would disqualify Baron Folson?’ Tom Garnett’s brow furrowed.
‘I think it might. When he’s Duke, Vandros might like to have a few years to produce a ducal heir, and then perhaps a younger brother to take the earldom, and might choose to put in Mondegreen as Earl, as sort of a place-holder. He couldn’t do that so easily with my baron, more’s the pity.’
Murder in LaMut: Legends of the Riftwar: Book II Page 14
