Third shrugged. “The coincidence happened, so clearly it was not improbable at all.”
“Regardless,” said Aegeus, “it has been a very strange day.”
“For God’s sake! Don’t say that, Sir Aegeus,” said Ridmark. “The day isn’t over yet.”
Chapter 3: The Kings of Owyllain
At sunset, the army made its camp beneath the eaves of the redwood forest, and King Hektor Pendragon and his allied kings held court.
Ridmark walked through the assembling camp with Calliande, Third, Tamlin, Aegeus, Kyralion, and Kalussa. Calem walked with them, his face impassive, and at Ridmark’s suggestion, Third kept close to him, keeping an eye on the former gladiator. He trusted in Calliande’s abilities, but he didn’t trust in Calem’s oath, and he didn’t know if Calliande’s magic would hold or if Calem would go berserk and try to kill them.
If he tried, Third would make certain the Sword of Air would not clear its scabbard before Calem died.
But for now, Calem seemed under control, and Ridmark found his attention turning to the army’s assembling camp.
The men of Owyllain marched differently than the men of Andomhaim.
For one, entire tribes of saurtyri followed the army. During Owyllain’s long wars with the Sovereign, the High Kings of Aenesium had freed tribes of saurtyri from the dark elven tyrant and his vassals. In gratitude, the saurtyri had sworn loyalty to the Kings of Aenesium and his various nobles. The saurtyri had no instinct for violence and apparently would refuse to fight under nearly any circumstances, becoming violent only when trapped in a corner with no chance of escape.
A dozen saurtyri hurried past. They reminded Ridmark a little of kobolds, but kobolds had long, narrow skulls filled with fangs, and saurtyri had blocky heads with large yellow eyes and broad mouths filled with flat teeth for grinding the raw plants that were their preferred diet. The saurtyri stood about four feet tall, their arms and legs thick with muscle, their tails short and stubby and strong.
Ridmark had feared that the saurtyri were held as slaves, but evidently, a tribe of saurtyri would abandon their masters if mistreated and seek out another. The men of Owyllain, he noted, had even come to regard the presence of the saurtyri as a good omen and their withdrawal as a sign of impending misfortune. Ridmark supposed that was a superstition, but if it kept the nobles from mistreating the saurtyri, it was a harmless superstition.
Another difference was the large number of women who accompanied the army.
In Andomhaim, some women often followed a large army, but they were usually prostitutes, enterprising merchants, or tavern keepers (or some combination of all three). In Owyllain, because of all the wars, the realm had twice as many women as men, and Calliande thought in some towns there were three times as many women as men. Because of that, Owyllain had developed a custom of concubinage. A man had but one wife, but he could have as many concubines as he could support. Any children born from a concubine were considered legitimate, and concubines had their own rights and privileges, though not as many as a wife.
Kalussa had wanted to become Ridmark’s first concubine. Ridmark hadn’t liked that idea.
Calliande had liked it even less.
Fortunately, Kalussa seemed to have abandoned the idea. Her brush with death at the banquet and the grim burden of carrying the Staff of Blades had dampened her spirits. Ridmark was also reasonably sure that Calliande had warned Kalussa of dire consequences if she ever tried to seduce him again, but he thought it unwise to ask. Mostly, he was just relieved that Kalussa was not talking to him any longer and he didn’t have to deflect her attention. She was a beautiful woman, and it had been hard to refuse her, but Ridmark had taken an oath to remain faithful to Calliande, and he intended to keep it.
It also helped that Calliande was now healthy enough to share his bed, and she had done so with enthusiasm. A man with a feast at home hardly needed to seek food elsewhere.
But because so many of the soldiers and knights and Arcanii had concubines, their concubines accompanied them on the march, tending to their equipment and supplies, while the wives remained at home to manage the households. Ridmark had worried that the presence of women would cause problems with the soldiers, but that fear had proven unfounded. For one, there were so many women. For another, it was a long-established custom that concubines accompanied soldiers on the march. On a more practical level, harassing another man’s concubine was an excellent way to provoke a fight to the death.
Between the scutian-pulled carts, the saurtyri, and the concubines, it was different than any army of Andomhaim.
It was also much slower than any army of Andomhaim, especially due to the absence of horses. Yet the plodding pace had its advantages. The army was very-well supplied, and the saurtyri and concubines handled many tasks that would otherwise have gone undone. Certainly, there were no problems with sanitation.
King Justin Cyros’s army would have the same weaknesses, but also the same strengths.
Hektor Pendragon, his advisors, and his allied kings and their retinues marched at the head of the column. They had set up their pavilions at the base of a massive redwood, its branches stretching against the twilight sky like the domed roof of the Great Cathedral in Aenesium.
A mob of human and orcish men in bronze armor stood near the pavilions of the kings. Behind them waited a half-dozen jotunmiri around their leader Earl Vimroghast. As ever, Ridmark was struck by the contrast between the grim appearance of the jotunmiri and their melodious voices. They sounded more pleasant than the babble of voices coming from the Companions and nobles of the various kings.
Ridmark did not know half of the men who now surrounded Hektor Pendragon, and that made him uneasy. At least, it would have made him uneasy, save for the fact that Calliande already knew them, the names of their advisors, and how they felt about each other.
“How did you learn all their names so quickly?” he had asked her the day the army had crossed the River Morwynial and started the march north. Calliande was much better at politics than he was, but learning an intricate web of relationships in such haste was a stretch even for her.
“Oh, I talked to Kalussa for an hour,” said Calliande. She had frowned a little at the mention of her new apprentice. The use of magic, Ridmark knew, required harsh lessons, and he suspected his wife would not hold back in teaching those harsh lessons to Kalussa. “She knows every noble in Owyllain. I think we both know she would have been much happier as a married woman of the court, raising her sons and pulling strings from behind the scenes.”
Ridmark nodded.
“Also,” said Calliande. “I talked to Aegeus.”
“Aegeus?”
“Yes,” said Calliande. “I was surprised, but with a little prompting, he gossips like an old woman. Poor Tamlin looked mortified.”
But the press of voices fell silent as Ridmark and the others approached.
“My lords and knights!” called a man’s voice, deep and hoarse from years of shouting commands over the roar of battle.
All turned to look at Hektor Pendragon, King of Aenesium, bearer of the Sword of Fire, and the rightful High King of Owyllain.
At least, most men believed him to be the rightful High King of Owyllain. Hektor had told his secret to Ridmark and Calliande and Tamlin. Hektor’s elder brother Kothlaric Pendragon, the man who had defeated the Sovereign and taken the Seven Swords to Cathair Animus to be destroyed, had not been murdered. He had been betrayed by Rhodruthain and Talitha and the others, but he had not been slain, instead imprisoned within magical crystal. Once the Seven Swords were reunited and destroyed, Kothlaric would be freed, and the true High King would reign over Owyllain once more.
That was what Hektor had been working toward for twenty-five years.
Ridmark looked at the man who had lost so much in pursuit of his goal.
He had been surprised by how much Hektor Pendragon looked like his distant cousin Arandar in Tarlion. The Pendragon blood bred true over the centuries. The King
of Aenesium had the same dark eyes, the proud beak of a nose, and dark hair, though Hektor’s hair had turned the color of iron. His skin was leathery and scored with deep lines, his forearms knotted with muscle. Hektor wore the bronze armor of a Companion knight, his helmet resting beneath his arm, a diadem of red gold set upon his gray hair. Behind him waited his two closest advisors – Master Nicion of the Order of the Arcanii, and Sir Tramond Azertus, who now served as Constable of Aenesium since Rypheus Pendragon had been slain.
The Sword of Fire hung in its scabbard at Hektor’s belt. It looked identical to the Sword of Life that Rhodruthain bore and the Sword of Air that Calem carried, save that it was the color of blood.
King Hektor looked the same as he had on the day that Ridmark had met him, save for his eyes. The black eyes were colder and harder than they had been, and the lines seemed to have sunk deeper into his face, as if grief could carve channels into his flesh.
He had lost his eldest son and heir. What was worse, Rypheus Pendragon had not died well. He had died after murdering his stepmother and several of his half-siblings and had been ripped apart by the creatures of dark magic that he had commanded. Ridmark knew the pain of losing a child all too well. But Joanna had been only three days old. To lose a child in the fullness of his strength, a young man who ought to have been a great lord and knight…Ridmark knew the grief would be far worse.
To say nothing of King Hektor’s grief over Queen Adrastea and the other children that Rypheus had murdered.
But none of the pain leaked through the king’s unyielding expression.
“My lords and knights,” repeated Hektor into the stillness, “it seems strange events have befallen our host in the last day. A new ally has come to join us…and we have overcome an enemy who might yet become an ally.”
“A most curious development,” said another voice, deep and strong and confident.
Ridmark repressed a sigh. Somehow, he had just known that King Aristotle Tempus of Echion would be the first to speak.
Or, as he called himself, King Aristotle the Magnificent, the Lion of Echion.
King Aristotle was about thirty and stood over seven feet tall, his black hair and beard close-cropped. He wore an elaborate cuirass of bronze armor adorned with reliefs of lions hunting down antelopes, and his greaves and bracers had been adorned with gold. Over his shoulder rose the hilt of a massive greatsword of dark elven steel. Aristotle and the current Warlord of Mholorast had gone adventuring in their younger days, and Aristotle had slain one of the Confessor’s captains and claimed his sword. A cloak of red silk streamed from his shoulders, and his helmet rested under his arm, wrought in the shape of a roaring lion’s head.
Three women of stunning beauty waited behind Aristotle. They were his concubines, or as he called them, his Lionesses. That wasn’t merely a nickname, either – the official title for a concubine of the King of Echion was a Lioness of Echion. A monk stood behind the concubines, not for spiritual guidance, but for chronicling, so that future generations would learn a suitable appreciation the bold deeds of Aristotle the Magnificent of Echion.
Ridmark would have found him insufferable, but at least the man was no coward. Sword scars marked his forearms, and he was missing the lobe of his left ear, the scar from the blow that had taken it visible upon his left jaw.
“A most curious development indeed,” said Aristotle. He strode forward a few paces, gazing at Third. “You have the look of a dark elf to you.”
“That is correct,” said Third. “My father was the dark elven lord called the Traveler, who once ruled in Nightmane Forest before my sister Queen Mara slew him.”
“It is well-known,” said Aristotle, “that any child born of a dark elven father and a human mother will inevitably become a monster, usually an urdhracos or an urshane. The Confessor fathered many such hybrids and used them against us during the Sovereign’s wars upon Owyllain.”
“That is also correct,” said Third.
“Then will you transform and kill us all?” said Aristotle.
“I did transform,” said Third. “Nearly a thousand years ago.”
Aristotle blinked. “I must say, you look remarkably fair for a woman of such advanced years.”
Third shrugged. “I was an urdhracos for longer than your realm of Owyllain has stood, my lord…”
“King,” said Aristotle. “King Aristotle Tempus the Magnificent, Lion of the city of Echion.”
“Indeed,” said Third, showing no reaction to the recitation of titles, and she offered him a bow. “I was an urdhracos for nearly a thousand years. But once the Traveler fell, Queen Mara and the Shield Knight showed me a path to liberation. I took that path, and I have been as you see me now ever since.”
“Then…what are you, my lady?” said another of the three kings allied with Hektor. King Kyrian the Pious was the king of the city of Callistum, and he was closer to seventy than to sixty years. There was not a trace of fat on his gaunt frame, but it was asceticism, not illness, that made him look so emaciated. Kyrian would have preferred to become a monk, but his older brother and his sons had been killed in battle against the Confessor, and so Kyrian had become the new King of Callistum. Rumor had it that his nobles had forced him, for the good of the city and to produce an heir, to lie with his far younger wife at least three times a week. “Are you a servant of dark magic? A creature of the dark elves?”
“She is neither, King Kyrian,” said Calliande. She had donned the calm mien of the Keeper, her voice cool and precise. “Rather, she is something new, one of the first of the liberated urdhracosi. Her sister Queen Mara met both the Warden of Urd Morlemoch and the archmage Ardrhythain of the high elves, and neither one of those great wizards had encountered anyone like her before.”
“We can ill-afford to turn away any help, my lords,” said the third of the kings allied with Hektor. Lycureon the Young was the king of Megarium, and he was barely sixteen years old. His voice still cracked regularly. The real power in his city was the Constable of Megarium, a grim old knight named Sir Kamilius. The Constable of Megarium seemed like a steady man, and Hektor often relied on his opinion.
“I agree, lords of Owyllain,” rasped the towering Warlord of Mholorast. There were several city-states of orcs northeast of Owyllain’s boundaries, and they warred against each other constantly. The Warlord of Vhalorast had allied with King Justin. The orcs of Mholorast were baptized, and so they had allied with King Hektor against their bitter enemies of Vhalorast. Warlord Obhalzak of Mholorast was even taller than his friend King Aristotle, his green-skinned face a perpetual scowl behind his tusks. As was common for the orcish men of the city-states, he had shaved his head, save for a massive mustache bound with bronze rings. Just as Aristotle carried a great sword of dark elven steel, Obhalzak carried a double-bladed axe of the same metal, won fighting alongside Aristotle against the servants of the Confessor. The orcs of Vhalorast bore swirling red tattoos on the left side of their faces, but the warriors of Mholorast instead had black swirling tattoos upon the right side of their faces. “King Justin’s strength is a match for our own, and that scabrous dog Khazamek of Vhalorast marches with him. Let us turn away no willing hands.”
Third shrugged again. “If you will not have my aid, then I will depart, but that is not the point. Queen Mara and the High King of Andomhaim sent me to discover what had happened to the Shield Knight and the Keeper. If they wish to stay and fight, I shall do the same. If they wish to depart, I shall follow them.”
“Let it not be said that the women of Andomhaim quail from plain speaking,” said Hektor in a dry voice. His dark eyes turned towards Ridmark. “Well, Shield Knight? What say you? A messenger from your homeland has arrived. Will you turn back and return to Andomhaim with Lady Third?”
“If I was here alone, I might risk taking the journey back to Andomhaim with Third,” said Ridmark. “We have traversed the Deeps together before.” Though he had never traveled such a vast distance across the Deeps. “If I were here with just the
Keeper, together the three of us might chance it.” Ridmark shook his head. “But our sons are in Aenesium, and there is no way a boy of eight and a boy of three could survive a journey like that. Truth be told, even if the Keeper and I accompanied Third alone, the three of us might not survive. No, King Hektor, we gave our word. We shall help you against King Justin and the Confessor, and then you will help us reach Cathair Animus and Rhodruthain.”
“I am glad of it, Lord Ridmark,” said Hektor. “I am very glad of it. Twice before you have saved the realm of Owyllain from utter disaster. Perhaps you shall have another opportunity to do so.”
“For all our sakes, lord King, I hope not,” said Ridmark, thinking of all the men who had died at Castra Chaeldon, of all the men and women and children who had been killed by Rypheus’s abscondamni at the Palace of the High Kings.
“Though I remain curious, Lady Third,” said Aristotle. “Just how did you traverse the Deeps? Obhalzak and I ventured into the Deeps during our younger days, and I do not hesitate to say that I am among the chief warriors of Owyllain.” From the corner of his eye, Ridmark saw Tamlin start to roll his eyes, but the young knight stopped himself before anyone else noticed. “Nevertheless, we barely escaped with our lives. If you survived a journey of three and a half thousand miles through the Deeps, I am curious how you managed it.”
“Very well,” said Third, and she told her tale.
Her flat, unemotional delivery made it even more impressive. Third did not boast or shade the truth, which did nothing to conceal the boldness of her feat. Ridmark blinked several times as she told of how she had bullied the dvargir of Khaldurmar into helping her find the way to Owyllain, how she had beaten them at their own game and forced them to allow her to use their canals to cover the remaining distance of the journey. Third was so quiet and so loyal that it was easy to forget just how dangerous she really was. Ridmark had seen countless battles, but all that was a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of wars that Third had seen with her ancient black eyes.
Sevenfold Sword_Warlord Page 6
