A Hero's justice d-3

by Paul B. Thompson

  Tol shifted position, easing himself onto his side without ever waking. Zala watched him, a frown on her face. What she’d been through today would trouble her own sleep for many nights to come.

  Ackal V let the empty cup fall to the flagstone floor. It was solid gold, cast in the reign of Ackal Dermount, but without wine in it, it was just so much cold metal. He reached for a full cup, this one of translucent crystal etched with the Ackal arms.

  His private chambers were alive with revelry. Smoke from the roaring fire mixed with the smells of incense, sweat, and spilled wine. The emperor had decided to forget his troubles with a little celebration. Breyhard had failed, and his army was lost. Crumont had managed to return across the Dalti River and fall back to the Ackal Path, ready to defend the capital from a bakali assault. It had never come. The lizard-men disappeared once more into the rich farm country northwest of the city. The Great Horde was searching for them.

  The only ones invited to this party were the Emperor’s Wolves and a few special guests, including Breyhard’s kin. His two wives were chained to pillars, with his three children cowering at their feet. Breyhard’s brother had been arrested as well, but the Wolves had been careless and allowed him to fall on a concealed knife, cheating the emperor’s vengeance.

  Filthy, unkempt Wolves lurched around the captives, bellowing insults and drenching them with wine or cider. In the shadows beyond the firelight, Ackal’s hounds were savaging something: a beef joint from the cooking spit, or one of the servants-the emperor couldn’t tell which.

  Ackal V got up from his couch, brushing aside a sodden courtesan. With the exaggerated dignity of the intoxicated, he smoothed his wrinkled crimson robe and tightened its sash. Without being called, Tathman appeared silently at his master’s elbow.

  “I’ve neglected my guests,” the emperor said. “Come.”

  Two Wolves had passed out while berating the dead warlord’s wives. Ackal roused them with kicks. Once they crawled away, he addressed the chained women.

  “You know why you are here, don’t you?”

  The elder wife, a plump, dark-eyed brunette, nodded curtly. The younger, red haired and half Breyhard’s age, only sobbed and hung slack against her bonds.

  “I have decided to be merciful and spare your lives,” he said, weaving slightly as he tried to stand straight. “You will be consigned to slavery in Windgard.” This was the capital of the Last Hundred, the province at the extreme western end of Ergoth, south of the Seascapes and west of Thorngoth. “The marshal there will be your master, and will do with you as he sees fit.”

  The elder wife pleaded, “Majesty, send me away, but please don’t punish the children. They can serve the empire well when they grow up, but as slaves, their lives will mean nothing!”

  “The law is clear. A general who loses his army loses his life and family.”

  The younger wife, red-eyed behind her ginger hair, cried, “Not me! Don’t send me away, sire! I married Breyhard only half a year ago-I thought he was to be a great warlord!”

  He lifted her chin. “You married him for his position? Not love?”

  “Yes!”

  He let go her chin and glanced back at Tathman. “Have her head put on the wall.”

  The woman screamed, but Ackal roared at her, “I’ll not have my warriors wedded to greedy, ambitious wenches!”

  Tathman signaled to two reasonably sober Wolves. They took the younger wife away. As she shrieked and begged for her life, Ackal V calmly returned to the pillar holding the elder wife.

  “Lady, I’m going to set you free,” he said. “You asked for your children’s freedom, not your own. You’re the kind of woman the empire’s warriors need. Take your children home and raise them to be better Riders than their father.”

  Moving carefully but quickly, the elder wife gathered up her children. They disappeared into the darkness between the double line of columns.

  Tathman was gnawing his long lip, staring after the departed group. “Speak,” Ackal told him.

  “You’re too generous, Majesty,” the chief Wolf said in his vast, deep voice.

  “Maybe. I’ve had a great deal to drink.”

  He cast about for another full cup. Tathman took a goblet from a tray borne by a jumpy servant and handed it to the emperor. Ackal drained it.

  “Still,” he said, “by sparing one, I’ll make loyal subjects of the rest.”

  Tathman bowed his head. “The emperor is wise.”

  What Ackal V did not know-or forgot in his drunken state-was that Breyhard’s elder wife was Kannya Zan, cousin of the late Pakin Pretender, and no friend of the Ackal line. Delaying in the capital only long enough to pack a few essentials, she and her children made for the port of Thorngoth. On the way south, Kannya told the story of her humiliation to every Pakin relative she encountered, and there were many.

  Chapter 9

  Cast a Giant Shadow

  The day after the repulse of the nomads, Tol awoke wooden and groggy. He’d grown too accustomed to the relative comfort of his Dom-shu hut. His bedroll seemed to grow harder with every night. He was getting too old to be sleeping on the ground.

  After stretching the stiffness from his limbs, he left the lean-to. A grim sight greeted his bleary eyes. Tylocost’s gallows had been filled overnight. The Seventh Company deserters hung there, dark against the brightening sky.

  Strong emotions filled Tol: anger, that men should have to die like this, but forgiving cowardice in war only bred more cowards. Then came sadness, at this reminder of the frailty of life.

  His melancholy musings suddenly were replaced by puzzlement. The Seventh Company comprised one hundred men; he’d told Tylocost to punish only one in ten, so there should be ten men on the gallows. Yet, more than twice that number of bodies dangled from the improvised gibbets. Those at the far end wore buckskins.

  Furious, Tol shouted for Tylocost and Wilfik. The first person to respond was Zala. In response to his demand for an explanation, she said, “Your Silvanesti did as you ordered. Then they hanged the nomad prisoners.”

  She could not tell him who had ordered the execution of the prisoners. So, Tol strapped on Number Six and strode into the awakening camp. He shouted again for his lieutenants. Tylocost appeared.

  “You bellowed, my lord?” the elf said politely.

  “Who gave the order to execute the nomads?”

  “ Wilfik. It was a popular decision.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  Tylocost pushed back his floppy gardener’s hat. “I am Silvanesti, and still your captive. I have no authority over these people, save what you grant me.”

  Tol could barely speak, he was so angry. “They were prisoners of war under my protection! And they could have told us much about the nomad armies!” Lives and opportunity both had been wasted, lost at the end of a knotted rope.

  Wilfik arrived at last. His explanation was simple. “The savages weren’t going to tell us anything else, my lord,” he said flatly. “After what they did to Juramona, hanging was too good for them.”

  Tol’s fist connected with Wilfik’s broad jaw, and the warrior went down. All around them, heads turned. Even more turned when their warlord’s powerful voice reverberated over the camp.

  “Get out of this camp, Wilfik! Get out of my sight! If I see you again after midday, I’ll string you up beside those men!”

  Wilfik looked up at his commander in stunned confusion. He opened his mouth to protest, but the fury in Tol’s posture left no doubt he was utterly serious. With as much dignity as he could muster, Wilfik stood, straightened his brigandine, and walked away.

  Tol began to berate Tylocost again, saying the elf should have awakened him before letting the prisoners be hanged.

  The Silvanesti shrugged one shoulder gracefully. “As a rule, my lord, I try not to interfere when humans are killing each other, but if you wish it, I shall hereafter.”

  This bland indifference to the injustice swaying in the wind only infuriated Tol
anew. He considered banishing Tylocost, too, but a sliver of reason intruded itself. That might be exactly what the elf was hoping for. Perhaps he was regretting his decision to fight alongside his captor, but his oath of surrender bound him until Tol freed him. And Tol wasn’t yet ready to lose the former general’s expertise.

  Instead, Tol ordered Tylocost to have the dead cut down and decently buried. The elf departed, and Tol was alone with Zala.

  “In war horror begets horror,” he said.

  Tol’s loathing of executing helpless prisoners had been learned at a tender age, when he was forced to watch the Pakin rebel Vakka Zan beheaded in the town square of Juramona. Egrin had been required to do the deed, honor-bound to obey the marshal of Juramona, Lord Odovar.

  There was nothing more he could do for the dead, so Tol turned his attention to the soldiers who’d guarded the captives. Once they were brought to him, he asked whether the prisoners had said anything useful to them.

  One fellow scratched his head with a meaty hand. “Some of ’em talked bold,” he allowed. “Said as how their chief, Tokasin, would come back an’ kill us all.”

  The captives had mentioned two other chiefs-Mattohoc and Ulur-but it was on Tokasin they pinned their hopes. He was chief of the Firepath tribe, which they called the boldest and hardest-riding folk on the plains.

  Tol, like most Ergothians, saw the nomads as a faceless mass of mounted foes, cruel, with quicksilver tempers. Learning the names of their chiefs was worthwhile information.

  The guards contributed one other piece of information gleaned from the nomad captives. The prisoners claimed to be scouting for a much larger band. Their comrades who had survived yesterday’s battle would return to the main force and that, they boasted, would be the end of Juramona’s pitiful defenders.

  Tol drilled the militia all day. He didn’t share what he learned from the guards, but word got around. There was no more trouble with shirkers. The twin specters of nomad blades and the deserter’s noose had resolved all qualms. It was fight or die.

  The trick, as Tylocost dryly noted, was to make certain the militia fought, and the nomads died.

  Two nights later, Tol went to inspect Tylocost’s work west of camp. The wind was up, sweeping across the long grass. Zala, his omnipresent escort, carried a torch that flared wildly with every gust.

  Tylocost had erected a large number of obstacles to screen the vulnerable western approaches. What appeared as random piles of loose masonry and fire-blackened timbers hid a grim purpose. Riders would have to slow their mounts to navigate the narrow passages. When they did, they would be perfect targets for archers and pikemen concealed behind the mounds.

  As he drew nearer and details of Tylocost’s defenses became clear, Tol’s brisk pace slowed.

  The elf had left an open lane through the center of the field. The enemy would be funneled into this lane. The thigh-high plains grass gave way to loose dirt. A length of rope was buried just under the surface. Some distance further along, Tol could see another patch of disturbed soil. The seemingly clear lane was filled with traps.

  “That elf is tricky as a kender,” Tol muttered. Trained Ergothian warriors would never fall for such an obvious ploy, but the reckless, unsophisticated plainsmen just might.

  Zala interrupted his admiration of Tylocost’s deadly ingenuity. “My lord, do you hear that?”

  Tol started to shake his head-all he could hear was wind moaning around the piles of debris-then came a lull, the gusty breeze died, and he heard it. Zala’s keen ears had discerned a faint rumbling. Not like thunder, rolling through heavy clouds, this was more like the steady, distant roar of a waterfall. Tol knew that sound.

  “Run!” he shouted, and they legged it for camp.

  Zala’s torch expired, snuffed by the wind of their passage, and she threw it aside without pausing. She covered the ground rapidly, with Tol only a few steps behind.

  As soon as the camp came into view, he raised the alarm. Sentries took up the warning, beating an improvised gong-a battered brass tray from a Juramona tavern. Men and women came stumbling out of their shelters, grappling with helmets, bits of armor, and weapons. Tylocost, moving with all the speed and agility ascribed to his race, dodged the clumsy humans and hurried to Tol.

  “Horsemen,” Tol panted. “Massed horsemen coming from the west!”

  Tylocost rounded up his makeshift troops and led them out to his crazy-quilt fortifications. The able-bodied men had joined Tol’s foot companies, so following the elf was a motley band of boys, women, and old men. It was a lot to ask, that these folk should bear the brunt of the nomads’ first assault, but the survival of every soul at Juramona depended on their steadfastness.

  It was two marks before midnight, and the night sky was streaked with clouds. Moving fast across the field of stars, the clouds were stained pink by the light of Luin, no more than a crescent of scarlet and hanging low on the horizon. Solin, the white moon, had already set. Tol hated night battles. Facing horsemen with green militia was difficult enough, but the dark gave an even greater advantage to veteran fighters.

  He arranged his militia outside the dark, frightened camp in an arrowhead formation. Foremost was the reconstituted Seventh Company, led by Tol himself, with two of his steadiest companies behind them, and the rest echeloned behind. At Tol’s order, any who fled the coming battle were to be cut down in their tracks. The soldiers clutched their pikes, looking sleepy and frightened at the same time.

  To the west, Tylocost doffed his gardener’s hat and tied a strip of white cloth around his forehead, to make it easier for his people to pick him out in the dark. He climbed atop the highest of the brick mounds to search the deep darkness for signs of the enemy. He could certainly hear them. Even the dull-eared humans couldn’t miss the low, constant thud of so many hooves.

  In the open lane, he had arrayed a few troops as bait. Should the nomads prove reluctant to charge into his trap, the presence of those pitifully equipped foot soldiers should entice them.

  Shards of brick skittered down the side of the mound on which Tylocost stood, shaken loose by the growing vibration of the enemy’s approach. The Silvanesti’s vision, far keener than a human’s, detected movement upon the plain. Bits of brass horse tack glimmered, as did hundreds of bare iron blades. It was only the advance guard. From the sound of it, thousands more nomads were behind the outriders.

  Tylocost had done his best with the defenses, but inwardly he doubted that few if any of his people would survive the night. For the first time in his long life, he admitted the possibility of his own death, acknowledged he might never again look on the crystal spires of Silvanost, never walk among his own graceful, civilized people. Ugly, despised Janissiron Tylocostathan would die before his time, alone, surrounded by crass, bloodthirsty humans. Astarin and all the gods would weep!

  The first wave of nomads cantered toward him. None seemed to take particular notice of Tylocost’s defenses, which looked very like the rest of the ruined town. The riders now were only paces from the stakes the elf had driven into the turf to mark maximum effective arrow range.

  He removed the white cloth from his head and raised it high. “When I give the signal, loose all!” he called down to his troops. “Mark your targets well, but don’t dawdle! There are plenty for all!”

  The first line of horsemen rode over the wooden stakes. Tylocost brought the white cloth down sharply. His archers let fly.

  A rain of arrows in the dark is an unnerving thing. The nomads couldn’t hear the snap of bowstrings, or the thrum of the approaching missiles, over the noise of their horses. They glimpsed the hardwood shafts falling through the air only an instant before the arrows struck.

  Riders toppled from their horses. The vanguard hesitated, then spied the bait troops huddled in the open lane between the obstacles. With much shouting, the enraged nomads charged.

  Tylocost descended from his perch and stood beside his tiny band. Most were visibly trembling, but all remained where they were, ga
zes shifting between their unlikely leader and the oncoming horsemen.

  “Remember what I taught you,” he called over the swelling noise. “At my command, fallback!”

  Archers in the front ranks continued to sting the nomads, and marksmen atop the mounds also took their toll. A few plainsmen shot back, concentrating on the bowmen they could see silhouetted against the stars. One by one the Ergothians were picked off.

  “Steady,” Tylocost said. “At my order, not before.”

  When the nomads were just twenty paces away-close enough to see the flaring nostrils and gnashing teeth of their hard-charging ponies-Tylocost gave the command, and the small block of townsfolk broke apart. They streamed back down the dirt path, still clutching their weapons.

  Ten paces along, the elf general halted and gestured with his bared sword. Eight Juramonans dropped to their knees and took hold of the buried ropes. Tylocost raised his sword, and the Ergothians hauled on the lines. Sixteen sharpened stakes rose up, hinged at the base, which was buried in the dirt.

  There was no time for the leading edge of nomads to avoid the trap. They piled up on the stakes, and the press of horsemen behind them added to the carnage. Men and horses screamed.

  “Withdraw!” Tylocost ordered. The Ergothians let go the ropes and followed as he backed slowly away.

  Their charge disrupted, the nomads milled about in confusion. Finally, twenty riders worked their way around the first obstacle, and came on. Tylocost’s people uncovered a second set of ropes. The nomads reined up.

  After raising the second hedge of stakes and tying the ropes to anchors already driven into the ground, the Ergothians withdrew further, and raised a third line of sharp pilings. Their part of the battle done, Tylocost’s troops filtered back through the waiting militia and returned to camp.

  Donning his floppy hat once more, Tylocost joined the militia.

  “Not much of a helmet,” Tol remarked.

  “So far I’m having good luck with this hat. I’ll keep it.”