by Victor Milán
“Good for her. Now, let her go. And if she’s harmed, someone I might name will spend the rest of his days wriggling on his belly in river muck and catching water striders with his tongue.”
Osbard turned to the village troops. “Are you deaf? Release the girl at once!”
“And while you’re at it,” Zaranda said, “best let the rest of us free. Me in particular, the way you folk wave torches around.”
The villagers hustled to release the captives. Looking entirely abashed, Ernico clambered up on the pile of firewood to cut free Zaranda’s hands.
“We never meant to hurt you,” he muttered.
“I’m sure that would have been a great comfort had you got the bonfire lit.”
She stepped down the pile of wood as regally as a queen descending from her throne. Chenowyn came hurtling out of the darkness, red hair streaming, and caught Zaranda in a fearful embrace.
“Oh, Zaranda!” she sobbed. “I was so scared. You wouldn’t really have let them burn you, would you?”
Zaranda hugged her and kissed her head. Then she turned and gestured with one hand.
The torch, which Moofar had somehow managed to hang on to through thick and thin, went out. A beat, and then the bonfire blazed up, untenanted, flames reaching high as the old oak’s top.
“No,” she said.
“What have we here?” Farlorn Half-Elven asked with a sardonic lift of his eyebrows. “A proclamation?”
“So it would appear,” said Zaranda, sitting cross-legged in the oak tree’s shade. She held up the papyrus the little village girl had found nailed to a sweet-chestnut tree on the Sulduskoon’s bank, four furlongs up the broad, slow river. It was a benchmark of the burgeoning Star Protective Company’s success in the region that a child so young could venture so far from the village. Although in truth, had the girl not made so momentous a discovery, she likely would have faced a spanking for straying such a distance without the escort of a brother or sister old enough to wield a spear—which would have been purchased with wealth gained from the revived trade among villages in the limited area under Star’s sway.
It was a sleepy-warm noonday in the midst of the month Eleasias, commonly called Highsun. In fact, most of the two-score trainees under instruction at the moment would already be bedded down under shade for their midday naps had the little girl not run into the village shouting and waving her discovery.
Siestas were not a luxury Zaranda Star could indulge in. Midday break was time for her, between bites of lunch, to continue instructing Chenowyn. And likewise Shield of Innocence, who had become her apprentice in matters military.
She finished chewing a mouthful of apple and read aloud: “ ‘Be It Known By These Presents—’ This is really spelled abominably, but I’ll spare you the details. ‘Known by These Presents that in the interests of maintaining the Safety and Welfare of the Nation of Tethyr, acting under the authority of the city council of Zazesspur, Baron Lutwill, Ruler of These Lands, Decrees that the Taxes owed by the Inhabitants of these same Lands, and due one Week hence, shall herewith be Doubled.’ ”
The villagers growled. Farlorn’s look was a superior smirk, Stillhawk’s stern, and Shield sat beside Zaranda like a stone statue—which was approximately how the three would’ve greeted news that Zaranda had been made Queen of Faerûn, or that a rogue planet was about to smack into Toril. Chen lurked on the outskirts, sitting in the shade of an eave and drawing magic symbols in the dust with a twig, waiting for all this boring military talk to be done so her time could begin.
Zaranda lowered the parchment. “It goes on in that vein, if anybody need hear more.”
“What authority has the Zazesspurian city council?” burst out Janafar, a young woman trainee from the village of Dunod two leagues inland from Tweyar. Seated near Zaranda, she was small of stature and trim, but broad shouldered and muscular withal, rather like a compressed version of Zaranda herself. Her honey-colored hair was restrained by a red bandanna. She was quickly becoming adept with spear and short sword, and displayed a positive genius for small-unit tactics.
“The same as anyone,” Zaranda said. “All ‘authority’ consists in the expectation that, if they order you to bend your necks, you’ll bend them.”
“ ‘The Nation of Tethyr,’ ” quoted Byador, shaking his dark, shaggy head. He hailed from Masamont, biggest and most prosperous settlement in the vicinity. His long frame was already rangily powerful, though still gawky with adolescence. He had grown up shooting a short bow, and under Stillhawk’s tutelage was learning to handle—and hit targets with—a powerful longbow brought from the forest of Tethir by a Star-escorted caravan. “It’s a long time since we heard that.”
“I think we’re getting a glimpse at the pretensions of Baron Hardisty,” Zaranda said, “not to mention his intentions. Now, what can you tell me of this Baron Lutwill?”
Byador snarled and spat. “Loot-well, we call him. He’s a bandit and nothing more. But a powerful one, with a hundred men-at-arms to serve him, secure behind stone walls in a castle whose keep throws its foul shadow across Masamont.”
Zaranda looked around at her audience, which now included most of her trainees, as well as no few villagers drawn from their naps by the commotion. Her current class, which included Ernico, Fiora, Rudigar, and Bord from Tweyar, comprised not recruits but cadre, the likeliest youths from the villages that had made compact with Star, who would serve as nuclei for other self-defense forces as the protective company began to expand across Tethyr. While it was not part of their regular curriculum, more and more of them had begun to forgo their own siestas to sit in on the lessons Zaranda gave Shield.
The orog was frankly stupid. Yet Zaranda found him a near-ideal student because he persisted doggedly until he had each and every bit of learning cemented firmly in his mind, and he had no scruples about asking questions when he did not understand—and continuing to question until he understood. Routinely, he showed up Zaranda’s young human pupils, much more mentally agile though they were, by dint of ironclad study habits and an innate sense that enabled him to grasp the core wisdom of Zaranda’s teaching. He set such a magnificent example that Zaranda suspected the siesta sessions had become the most effective part of the whole training program.
“What will you do about this, then?” she asked, waving the parchment.
Trainees and villagers passed a glance around. Zaranda saw shoulders slump, as if her audience were deflating en masse.
“Pay, I guess,” Ernico said. “We always have before.”
“Why?” Fiora asked, cheeks flushing with anger. “What are we training for, if not to stand up to thieves?”
“Not to get ourselves massacred by trained soldiers with shields, helmets, and mail hauberks,” said Byador. “Not to mention men with crossbows shooting us down from the castle walls.”
Standing on the sidelines, Balmeric emitted a gravel-in-a-pail chuckle. “Wise lad,” he said. “You’d shatter like a glass jug thrown against a wall, pitting yourselves against regulars.”
Zaranda cast him a dangerous look. Janafar leapt to her feet. “You can bend your necks to councils, keeps, and crossbows if you like!” she declared. “I at least want to see this castle before I give up all I’ve worked for.”
“Now you’re thinking,” Zaranda said, nodding serenely. “When in doubt, reconnoiter. When you don’t think there’s doubt, reconnoiter anyway—you save a lot of unpleasant surprises that way.”
She stood up, dusting off the seat of her trousers, and looked to the youth from Masamont. “Now, did I hear you say … crossbows?”
“There it is,” whispered Byador—unnecessarily, since the castle of Baron Lutwill was rather hard to miss.
Lying on her belly in the midst of a thicket of aromatic scrub that did little to keep the afternoon sun from prickling her back through her linen tunic, Zaranda surveyed the scene. Masamont was a collection of a hundred buildings or more, the largest and most central of which were built of stone, with peaked red ti
le roofs like the coastal towns. Like most of inland Tethyr, the surrounding countryside was flat. Fields green with the long summer’s second crops, beginning to fill out, broke up the landscape, interspersed with lines of shade from windbreak trees planted along irrigation ditches and neat orchards of half-ripened fruit.
However, flat did not mean entirely lacking relief, like a gaming table in the parlor of a Cormyrean lord; the thicket in which Zaranda and her small band lay hidden topped a slight rise backed by a creek. The prominence from which the castle rose, three furlongs away, was too symmetrical to be nature’s work. Zaranda guessed it was an artificial mound, a motte, built at some unguessable remove in Tethyr’s lengthy past to provide better outlook and tactical advantage for whatever fortification was first raised upon it.
The manor itself was a bailey, pitched rooftops peeking over a twelve-foot dressed-stone wall, and a stone keep perhaps four stories tall sticking up from the center of it. “You’re right,” Janafar breathed to Byador. “It’s a fortress.”
Zaranda withheld a smile. The castle was a step or at most two above her own manor. It lacked flanking towers or crenelations and even at this range she could see that the dry ditch surrounding it was half-filled with trash. A fixed wooden bridge led to the gate, hinting that the baron’s mechanics were not up to the task of keeping a drawbridge in repair. By her standards it was pretty weak beer. Yet she understood how invincible and intimidating it appeared to her untempered village warriors.
“I’ve seen enough,” she announced quietly, and slithered back down to the stream. The rest of the party—Stillhawk, Shield, Balmeric, and the three trainees—followed.
Chenowyn awaited on the far side, on the edge of a brushy and neglected woodlot. Zaranda had let her come because Chen refused to be parted from her. The shrubs on the low ridge made her sneeze uncontrollably, so she had consented to watch the horses. She amused herself by making ripples and tiny splashes appear in the water by force of will.
Jumping across the creek, Zaranda gave her a quick frown. She disapproved of Chen’s playing unsupervised with her wild talents.
“So what do you make of it?” Zaranda asked her trainees.
They looked at one another and then back at her with anxious eyes. No one spoke.
After a moment, Balmeric said, “We’ll never cast it down with our ragtag army, lacking siege engines.”
Zaranda pulled a long face. “I mislike ‘never.’ It’s too big for my mind to hold.”
“Zaranda will find something magical to do,” Chenowyn pronounced proudly.
Zaranda grinned and ruffled her hair. “Magic isn’t the solution to all problems. At least, not my magic. But there is a solution.” She put hands on hips and looked challenge at the others. “Well?”
“Attack the flank,” said Shield.
Balmeric uttered a bark of laughter. “A castle’s flank? Ho, that’s rich. Even so great a moon-calf as you can plainly see the castle’s round.”
“Zaranda says there’s always a flank,” the orog maintained stolidly.
“So she does,” Byador said. “But Master Balmeric’s right—how can a castle have a flank?”
“Not all flanks are physical,” Zaranda said. “Attend me. Even you, Balmeric; you’ve not seen so much of siegecraft as I have. The thing about sieges is, they seldom end with a successful storming. Ladders and engines and mines aren’t what win them.”
“What does win them?” Janafar demanded, bursting with impatience.
Zaranda only grinned.
The man rode into the sunset down the indifferently kept-up road, which ran past the castle and on into Masamont. He sported a flamboyant plumed hat, ringleted dark hair that bobbed about his shoulders, grandiose mustachios, and a coat with a riot of colored ribbons pinned down the front. He wore a rapier through his sash and a yarting slung across his back. He cantered his mount, a striking palomino mare with a long and lustrous white mane and tail, up to the two spearmen who stood guard before the castle gate, and halted on the bridge.
“Greetings, gentles,” he said, sweeping off his hat and bowing long from the saddle. “I hight Fyadros, the Incomparably Wonderful Bard, and this is Zizzy, the Wonder Horse.”
As if in greeting, the mare bobbed her head three times, making her forelock bounce, and thrice smote the wooden bridge with a dainty hoof. The guards gaped.
“What brings you this way, good bard?” asked one, too overawed by the splendor of this apparition to remember his obligation, as a member of a rural robber baron’s entourage, to be rude and overbearing at all times.
“We seldom see the likes of you hereabouts,” echoed his companion, similarly stricken.
“Indeed, that’s evident by the quaint way your jaws hang down to your hauberks,” the bard said. “What brings me is my whim, which rules with a hand of iron; I come from here, and there, and everywhere. Just now I feel the winds of adventure blowing me to Zazesspur, whence I shall take ship for the wondrous realm of Maztica.”
The guards looked at each other. “Do you think,” asked the one on the right, “that you could stay a night or two? We don’t get much by way of entertainment out here.”
“The village women hate us, the trollops,” the other said. “They give us nothing we don’t take at poniard-point.”
“Indeed? Such strapping stalwarts as yourselves?” The bard stroked his long chin and looked thoughtful. “It could be that I might be induced to bide the night here, if nicely asked.”
The guard on the right turned and bellowed for an errand boy to go and fetch the chamberlain. While they waited, Fyadros entertained the guards with improbable tales of a halfling who attempted intimacies with a firbolg maid.
At length the great oaken gates groaned open behind them. A slight middle-aged man in a black robe stood there. He had receding dark hair, white-touched at the temples, and a wisp of mustache. A dirty, skinny boy peeked past a gate valve behind him.
“I am Whimberton,” the man said in a thin voice, “chamberlain to Castle Lutwill and the ever-glorious, to say nothing of -victorious, Baron Lutwill. Who might you be?”
“He’s a bard,” the guard on the right said.
“He has a Wonder Horse,” added the one on the left.
“I am of course Fyadros, the Incomparably Wonderful Bard, and being of generous disposition only mildly miffed at not being recognized at once, seeing what a backwater this is.”
“Of course I recognize you, good Fyadros,” the chamberlain said smoothly. “It was only that poor light momentarily dulled my sight. What might I do for you?”
“Your guards hinted you might care to beseech me to pass the night within and brighten your dull and meaningless lives with my stories and songs, which are, it goes without saying, incomparably wonderful.”
“Without saying,” agreed Whimberton with a nod.
“He told us this great story,” said the guard on the left. “See, this halfling fancied a firbolg wench, so he took a bucket—”
The guard on the right poked him in the ribs with the butt of his spear. “Enough! His Excellency the chamberlain don’t want to hear that story! Least, not from the likes of you. You always get the punch lines wrong.”
“Do not!”
“Do so.”
“Be silent,” Whimberton said conversationally, “or I’ll have your backs scourged raw, roll you in rock salt, and heave you into the pigsty for the night.”
“I could, of course, abide in night’s jeweled pavilion, shaming the crickets with my songs,” Fyadros said. The mare raised her head and whinnied as if in agreement.
“Be not hasty, fair Fyadros,” said Whimberton hastily. For all his languid manner he liked a ribald ditty as well as the next man, and entertainment lay pretty thin on the ground, out here in the sticks of strife-torn Tethyr. “In the name of my lord and master, the ever-glorious and -victorious Baron Lutwill, I bid and beseech thee to enter these precincts, and stay and amuse us so long as your heart desires.”
The
bard looked thoughtful, then nodded. “I suppose I shall. Though ‘amuse’ is a paltry word for what I shall do to you.”
“You’re half-elf, aren’t you?” the chamberlain asked, studying him through twilight. “We don’t see many of them with such impressive mustachios.”
“I have many attributes,” Fyadros declared airily, “and every one is unique and wonderful. Shall we proceed within?”
“To a certainty. Follow the lout; he’ll lead you to the stables.”
“Ooh, I’m going to get you for this,” Goldie promised sotto voce as they passed through the torchlit gate in the ragged boy’s wake. “Zizzy, the Wonder Horse?”
“A spur-of-the-moment improvisation,” Farlorn the Handsome replied in a murmur audible only to the mare’s great rearward-swiveled ears. He gave a quick surreptitious scratch of his thumb tip to his upper lip, where the glue that held his false mustachios in place made him itch. “Now hush, lest you spoil our little game.”
In her fragrant covert atop the little rise, Zaranda felt a pang as she watched the gates shut. Whom for? she wondered. Farlorn or Goldie?
“They’re in,” she said, sliding down the back slope on her rump.
Stillhawk rose from where he squatted, watching star reflections at play in the creek. He gave Zaranda a look, which she steadily returned. Then he jumped onto his horse and vanished into the dark.
I know you don’t like it, my friend, Zaranda thought. But you’re likeliest to get through to summon the others. They mustn’t go astray, with Farlorn and Goldie inside the beast’s belly.
She glanced back to the top of the rise, where Byador lay alone keeping watch on the castle. She fought the impulse to climb up and rejoin him. He would not gain self-confidence until he bore responsibility alone.
So she was left with her thoughts, and Shield and Chen, who would not be parted from her. She was glad for the great orc’s presence. His eyes saw farther at night than any human’s, and if trouble found them she could ask for no better blade, or pair of blades, at her back. Willy-nilly, she had come to trust him as she trusted Stillhawk, though the ranger still hated the orog.
