A Hero's justice d-3

by Paul B. Thompson

  “That must have been quite a fight at Juramona,” Kiya said.

  Zala’s memory echoed with screams, and the remembered scent of blood caused her to shudder. To her surprise, the stoical Dom-shu woman gave her back a consoling pat.

  “Things happen around Husband. They always have.” Rubbing her hands together, Kiya added, “I’m starving! How about you, wizard?”

  The three of them joined the others at the cookfire, where the Ergothians were dishing up boiled bacon and bean porridge left behind by the defeated nomads.

  After breakfast, the balance of the day was spent repairing the stockade and sorting through the arms they’d discovered. Once the presence of treasure was discovered by Gasberry and her troops, the number of kender in camp began to decline rapidly. The treasure piles also underwent a reduction. Despite Tylocost’s alert guards, the gemstones and trinkets weren’t safe, and entire kegs vanished. By sundown, the Royal Loyal Militia was down to half its original strength.

  Gathered again at the cookfire for supper, Kiya demanded that Casberry stop her people from stealing.

  “Kender don’t steal,” Casberry said quite seriously. “That’s a great lie spread about my people wherever they go.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” Tylocost said dryly.

  In addition to a purple silk gown and a short leather vest dyed brilliant scarlet, the queen now wore a golden circlet. It was the first badge of office Kiya had seen her wear, and she wondered which pile of Ergothian loot had yielded the delicate crown.

  While the others debated the reputation of kender, Zala slipped away. She wandered through the covered piles of booty, with no particular goal in mind, and came upon Helbin. Kiya had picketed him, very like a horse, away from the campfire, so the mysterious wizard couldn’t overhear their plans for the coming days. Two spearmen had been left to guard him, but they stood at a wary distance. The wizard sat on an overturned keg, his hands bound, seemingly lost in gloomy thoughts.

  Noticing her, Helbin rose. Zala mumbled an apology for disturbing him and backed away.

  “Please, don’t go. You’re not unknown to me. You’re called Zala, yes?” She kept going, and he called desperately, “We have something in common. Release me and I’ll tell you what it is.”

  She laughed. “That ruse is older than both of us!”

  Zala was about to vanish around a pile of loot when Helbin blurted, “You and I owe allegiance to the same master! Or, I should say, the same mistress? The Lady of the Books.”

  She hesitated. Pressing his advantage, the wizard said, “I know you are Zala Half-Elven. It was I who searched the hunting fraternity for a skilled female tracker and found your name. I recommended you to her in the first place.”

  “What was my charge?”

  “To find Lord Tolandruth and bring him back to Daltigoth.”

  That was not good enough, and Zala told him so. That information was common knowledge now, among the Juramona Militia.

  “I also know your human father is held hostage to your success. He’s a prisoner in Caergoth.”

  The mention of her father sent anger flooding through Zala. She drew her sword. The wizard recoiled as she put the sword tip under his chin and demanded to know what he was up to.

  “We’re on the same side!” Helbin insisted. “Set me free! I cannot work bound up like this. Dire things may happen if I am not free!”

  “If you’re such a high sorcerer, why don’t you hex the cords from your hands?”

  Helbin grimaced. “I am not a sorcerer. I am a wizard of the Red Robes.” Such distinctions obviously mattered little to her, so he added, “I need to move my hands in order to perform conjurations-”

  She dropped the point of her sword to his chest. “Is my father safe?” she asked, voice husky with fear.

  “He lives. He’s held by the governor of Caergoth, Lord Wornoth.”

  “What is your purpose here? Speak true, or I’ll cut your throat!”

  “Our lady has sworn me to silence. I may speak only to Lord Tolandruth!”

  He seemed genuinely distressed, but that meant nothing. City folk were like that, Zala knew. They lied as easily as they breathed.

  “If you kill me, all we have fought for will be lost!” Helbin announced.

  “And what exactly are ‘we’ fighting for?”

  Zala flinched hard at the unexpected voice behind her. Her sword point pierced Helbin’s silk robe, and he yelped.

  Tol had just emerged from behind a pile of treasure. Arrayed behind him were Kiya, Tylocost, Queen Casberry, and a sextet of warriors.

  “So, Master Helbin,” Tol said. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  Chapter 14

  Debts Repaid

  An eerie silence had enveloped Daltigoth. Born of terror, it was a palpable presence, like an evil spirit unknowingly summoned from the Abyss. Streets were empty, market squares abandoned, and wind tumbled rubbish over the cobbles where commerce once reigned. Ground level windows were either boarded up or broken out, empty black holes hinting at tragedies within.

  Ackal’s Wolves had run rampant through the city for four days. The rioting, which had plagued the capital off and on since the beginning of the bakali invasion, ceased completely. So had all trade. From the Quarry District to the canal quay, Daltigoth was quiet-as a corpse is quiet.

  Backed by imperial authority, Captain Tathman had proclaimed a curfew. Anyone found outdoors between sundown and sunrise faced swift, certain death. No one was immune-neither lords nor ladies, wizards, priests, artisans, or laborers. Ackal V’s thugs moved in a body from district to district, sounding their terrifying wolf calls. These strange instruments, made from cow horn and brass, gave a perfect lupine imitation, the last sound many ears in Daltigoth heard.

  Thieves, malcontents, spies, and petty intriguers who continued to ply their trades were slain. So, too, were innocents slaughtered. Workers caught unawares, and folk whose only crime was to be drunk enough to think they could negotiate the back alleys with impunity, paid for their folly. The curfew also gave the Wolves a legal excuse to dispose of their personal enemies. Most were dragged out of their homes, declared in violation of the curfew once on the street, and summarily executed.

  The number of deaths was so large a wagon service had to be hastily organized to remove the bodies, to prevent the outbreak of disease. Prisoners from the city jail were conscripted to dig a mass grave. Each morning the wagons rolled to the green fields outside Daltigoth’s vast walls and deposited their cargo in the hard earth.

  The City Guards, the usual keepers of the peace, had achieved nothing more than a stalemate after a half a year battling the rioters. When the Wolves began their pacification of the unruly streets, some Guards joined them. The rest returned to their barracks and closed their shutters.

  With the city growing more tomb-like each day, the emperor became increasingly buoyant. He’d ordered Tathman to keep detailed lists of the “criminals” executed, and he pored over these lists at breakfast and dinner. When he spotted the name of some old enemy, the emperor drank a toast to the victim’s demise, then added a gold coin to the cup as reward for Tathman.

  One evening, Ackal V held a macabre banquet in the great plaza. He was the only guest. He sat at the head of the great banquet table dining on venison and squab, while facing him was rank upon rank of empty chairs, arranged in lines as precise as a military parade. Each chair represented a resident of Daltigoth slain by the Wolves. The emperor ate and drank well into the night, served by silent, expressionless lackeys. Now and then one would bring a new chair to the rear of the formation.

  Empress Valaran lost contact with her chief agent in the city on the second day of the curfew. She sent him another message written in Yetai’s secret ink. The courier also disappeared.

  In the late afternoon, a few days after her husband’s bizarre banquet, Valaran ascended to a high palace corridor to look out on the city’s now-quiescent streets. She avoided her old sanctuary. The palace roof re
minded her too strongly of Winath’s death. She contented herself with the view of the city’s southwest quarter offered by this high, long corridor, which connected the imperial suite to the Consorts’ Chambers. From here she could see much of the New City and the Canal District.

  Six days had passed since her last communication with Helbin. During that time she’d brought the magic mirror to her own bedchamber, hiding it in plain sight on the high table that held her toiletries. There it seemed nothing more than an exotic Silvanesti trinket, and she could make multiple attempts during the day to contact the wizard, without arousing suspicion by too frequent trips to the library. She had no success; the mirror showed nothing but her own face.

  Columns of smoke no longer obscured the city rooftops. The swell of angry voices, once as regular as the ocean tide, likewise was stilled.

  Couriers brought war news. The bakali had crossed the Dalti River without boats by resorting to a remarkable tactic. Working night and day, they created a low, short wall of stones about twenty paces out from the eastern shore. They filled this backwater with all manner of rubbish-whole trees, rubble from human homesteads. The result was a huge floating weir of debris. It dammed the Dalti sufficiently to lower the water level behind the obstruction enough for the lizard-men to cross to the far shore. Once loose on the west bank, they swarmed through the rich farmlands northeast of Daltigoth, driving out everyone in their path. They tore down houses and barns, dragging the broken timbers and masonry along with them.

  Halfway between the Dalti and North Thorn rivers the bakali host halted and began building an enormous fortified camp. The flat alluvial plain seemed an odd choice for a stronghold; it offered no heights on which to build. Undaunted, the lizard-men erected a huge earthen mound, bolstered by stolen timber and brick, and commenced digging a deep ditch around it. Other parties of bakali carved channels in the black soil back to the Dalti River. When they completed the channels, they could flood the low-lying land around the earthen mound, and create a wide, deep moat.

  Faced with these developments, Ackal V scrapped his earlier plans and ordered all the empire’s remaining hordes to muster for battle. The Great Horde came together at the village of Verryne, on the east bank of the Thorn River, fifteen leagues from the capital. Only a few cavalry bands remained between Daltigoth and the bakali host, scouting and watching the enemy. This left the city open to attack, but the emperor wasn’t worried. The walls of Daltigoth were formidable, the city could be supplied indefinitely via the imperial canal.

  Although the bakali seemed the greater danger, strange reports from the east disturbed Ackal V more. They gave Valaran a secret thrill of hope. Rumor had it new Ergothian forces were gathering on the plains north of Caergoth. The nomads had been smashed, and someone was driving the plainsmen back to their home range beyond the Thel Mountains. In her heart, Valaran knew who must be leading these Ergothians. So did Ackal V.

  From her vantage point, Valaran watched as the disk of the sun touched the hills west of Daltigoth. Sunset had once been the signal for public houses and wine shops in the Canal District to spring to life. No more. Not with the Wolves’ and their brutal curfew.

  Valaran visited a public house in the Canal District once, many years ago. For the first and only time in her life, she had ventured into the city of her birth and mixed with common folk in The Bargeman’s Rest. Tol had escorted her there. A fight had broken out, and the public house had burned, and Tol had kissed her for the first time. She could still remember that kiss: The awkward press of lips, the stubble of beard on his chin, the taste of…

  Feminine laughter broke the spell of Valaran’s memories. The Consorts’ Circle was coming. The fashionably pale, uniformly foolish faces of Ackal’s other wives and the women of the court regarded the empress without interest. As custom demanded, each dropped a quick curtsey as she passed in a hiss of silk. None addressed Valaran, and soon she was alone again in the high corridor.

  Word of Tylocost’s coup reached Tol, causing excitement among the landed hordes. A cache of treasure would be a welcome addition to their war chest, which, as Egrin wryly pointed out, previously had comprised whatever coins they happened to have on them.

  Tol left Egrin and the bulk of the army to continue harrying the nomads from the country and rode swiftly to meet up with Tylocost. With him, he took Riders from Lord Trudo’s Oaken Shield Horde and Argonnel’s Iron Scythe Horde, some one thousand men on the swiftest horses. Trudo and Argonnel came as well.

  Arriving at Tylocost’s camp, Tol was cheered even more to discover Kiya there.

  Kiya took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Husband! Are you getting enough sleep?”

  “Only in the saddle,” he joked.

  After this characteristically brief reunion, Kiya led him to Tylocost.

  The elf’s rough tally of the treasure cache-even with all the kender “borrowings”-was impressive. Unwilling to burden their ponies with too much heavy loot, the nomads had made the airless ravine the repository for nearly all the wealth stolen from the eastern provinces.

  Tol went to pay his respects to the queen of Hylo. Casberry’s first words brought a smile to his face.

  “Don’t forget your loyal allies, my lord, when it comes time to divide up all that lovely gold!”

  They grinned at each other. The queen’s face was partially. obscured by a jewel-encrusted tiara made to sit upon a brow much larger than hers.

  Kiya took Tol aside and told him how they had found Helbin. It was her considered opinion the Red Robe was spying for the emperor. Tol acknowledged this was possible. Unlike his high-minded, White Robe colleagues, Yoralyn and Oropash, Helbin had always struck Tol as an opportunist.

  Kiya, Tol, and an escort of warriors then went to where Kiya had left the wizard. They arrived just in time to discover Zala standing before the wizard with her sword at his throat. She told them the Red Robe claimed to be on their side, to be working for the same patron as she.

  “That remains to be seen,” Tol replied. “Master Helbin, you’ll be judged by how you behave, so no tricks.”

  With great dignity, Helbin nodded once. Tol cut his tether and bade the wizard follow him. They returned to the campfire. Casberry was sitting in her sedan chair, which rested on the ground. Front and Back lay nearby, snoring softly.

  In spite of Helbin’s tacit cooperation, Tol left the wizard’s wrists bound. Two guards stood behind him. Folding his beringed hands in his lap, Helbin settled himself on the ground across the campfire from Tol.

  “Speak, wizard,” Tol said at last. “Why are you so far from your tower?”

  Helbin met Tol’s eyes squarely. “I cannot talk freely before so many, my lord. There’s no telling to whom all these ears belong.”

  “Hang him and be done with it,” Tylocost commented.

  Judging by the expressions around the fire, most agreed with this suggestion. Either offended or frightened, Helbin remained silent.

  “So you claim to work for Zala’s patron…” Tol said. Like the half-elf, he avoided using Valaran’s name openly. In truth, there were too many ears listening. “Can you prove this?”

  The Red Robe thrust out his bearded chin. “My word is beyond question!”

  “Not with me.”

  Tol drew his steel saber and held it up, studying the striations of the forged edge, marked with age and faint traces of rust. It was a brilliantly crafted blade. In a conversational tone, he remarked, “The last wizard I had dealings with ending by losing his head. You knew him, I believe?”

  Helbin blanched. Mandes the Mist-Maker, Tol’s mortal enemy, had been a Red Robe wizard, before the lure of darker magic turned him into a rogue. “My baggage contains documents from the person in question,” Helbin said tersely.

  The wizard’s belongings were brought to Tol. As he opened the appropriate satchel, Helbin’s anxiety was plain.

  Tol held up the empress’s charge, read it silently, and passed it around.

  Be it known, the parchment
stated, The bearer is acting for the good of the Empire. By My Command, (signed) VALARAN, Empress.

  Valaran’s seal, an owl clutching a scroll in either claw, was genuine, but Tylocost, for one, was not impressed.

  “He could be an imperial rat-catcher. Or he might have stolen the document,” the elf said, drawing a look of outrage from the Red Robe.

  The remainder of the wizard’s books and papers yielded nothing of particular interest. He’d kept a log of his travels and had copious notes regarding magical processes, such as warding off scryers, confounding pursuers, and cloaking a location from sight-all perfectly reasonable since Helbin’s specialty was seeing far and not being seen. Then the searchers came upon a small brass-bound box just over two handspans long, one wide, and one deep. Its seamless sides betrayed no lid.

  “Don’t touch that!” Helbin snapped at the warriors handling the box. He refused to say what it was, so Tol ordered his men to break it open.

  The wizard tried to stand, but the soldiers behind him pressed him down again. “My lord, please!” he begged.

  “I will have this open, Helbin,” Tol said flatly, lifting Number Six.

  Brass and wood, however cunningly joined, could not withstand a stroke of steel, and Helbin gave in rather than see the box broken. “As you wish, my lord, but I should like to reveal its contents only to you!”

  Though Kiya protested, Tol agreed. He and the wizard left the others by the campfire. Kiya tried to follow, but Tol ordered her to remain.

  Wizard and warrior went to the center of the nomad camp. Shielded by piles of stolen goods higher than their own heads, they stopped.

  As Helbin complained about his treatment and the general lack of respect shown to him, Tol examined the box. It was weighty for its size. There was no obvious clasp or latch. If the box was sealed by magical means, the millstone Tol wore in a concealed pocket should have dispersed the spell by now. He shook it hard, but heard nothing rattle inside.