by Dragon Lance
“Hear, hear!” came the customary response. Those who had wine drank deeply
Those who had wine were mostly Scipio’s men, who jammed the tables of the hall. Only a third of his company was present, but they filled the benches. Like ravenous bears, they huddled over their dinners and grumbled into the food.
Vinas glanced back at his company. They lined the walls of the dining hall, their mantles dripping snow and their boots frozen in great blocks on their feet. They were a tired lot, and deservedly so, after the twenty-mile forced march through the blizzard. Still, Scipio had made no provisions for their arrival. The cloak pegs were full, the tables were full, the beds were full....
“Once my third watch has finished its meal,” Scipio had said to Solamnus when they had first arrived, “your men may have what’s left.”
“That is unacceptable,” Vinas had replied. “These men are exhausted. I was told you would provide them food and beds.”
“You were told wrong,” had been the sneered reply.
Vinas lifted his goblet toward his men and quietly said, “To our health.”
After draining the goblet, he pushed one of Scipio’s men from the bench, kicked his food from the tabletop, and addressed his own company in a commanding voice that silenced the room. “Soldiers of Solamnus, you have acquitted yourselves well today. Hang your coats on whatever peg is nearest. Drink from whatever cup you wish. Eat from whatever plate looks good. Claim as your own whatever bunk you desire.”
Scipio and his men looked no more shocked than Solamnus’s company.
Vinas added, “Let us show the men of Solanthus what good hosts provide.”
In the stunned silence, Scipio scrambled toward his peer. “We had discussed other arrangements —”
“My soldiers do not eat leftovers,” Vinas interrupted. “Nor do they march all day through a blizzard and sleep on the floor. I do not know how you rule your company, Scipio, but my soldiers are not rats, and they will not scrounge.”
“My warriors have hunted and salted and prepared this game. They should have the first fruits of their labors,” whined Scipio.
Vinas turned to his troops. “Soldiers, teach them generosity.”
Vinas’s troops knew when they had been commanded. They also knew when they were hungry. Doffing their snow-laden cloaks, Vinas’s one hundred converged on the tables and on the thirty of Scipio’s men who greedily leaned over their dinners.
Some of the Solanthian soldiers held hands back in surrender, letting the hungry soldiers pillage their plates. Others resisted at first, but found their hands quickly pried away and wrenched up behind their backs. That was Scipio’s own fate, his arm twisted back by Vinas, himself, when the little man tried to intervene.
“What are you doing? This is not the way the army is run,” objected Scipio.
“I thought just the same thing when I saw how unwelcome you made us,” answered Vinas.
A fight broke out. A Solanthian soldier lashed out with his elbows. Those elbows were grabbed, and the man was flung backward from his bench. An icy boot pinned his chest.
“Whenever two dogs meet,” Vinas said philosophically, “there is always a brief scuffle to establish domain.”
“All right. I’ll have more salted boar brought in, and beds prepared,” Scipio said. “Just let me go.”
Vinas did.
Scipio straightened, brushing off his scale mail. He strode rapidly to the kitchens and gave the orders.
“Stand down, men!” called Vinas. “We have been promised hospitality. Only give our host a moment to make good on what he owes us.”
*
After that, the company’s reception was at least adequate, if not cordial. Part of that painful adequacy was a private drink and discussion in Scipio’s own chambers. The ultimate in luxury, the man’s rooms had been plastered and tiled. These appointments were palatial compared with the rough-sawn wood and dry rushes of the rest of Solanthus. Scipio’s fire blazed brightly in a small hearth on one end of the quarters, as he flitted into and out of its savage light.
Vinas sat in an embroidered chair beside the fire. He still enjoyed the sting of his cold legs being warmed. A more pleasant sting awaited him – brandy from a crystal decanter. Vinas watched patiently as the crooked little man poured shallow amber puddles into snifters on a tray. With a nervous bow, Scipio lowered the tray and offered the glasses. Vinas took the snifter closer to Scipio and sat back, warming the drink with his hand.
“I am sorry we were so poorly prepared for your arrival,” Scipio said. It was his fourth such apology, no more sincere than the first. “We’ve been so beset by villagers and plainsmen.”
Vinas sipped the brandy, curling his nose. He had not developed a taste for intoxicants, and this brandy seemed especially pungent. “Why would villagers want to destroy the bridge that brings all their trade? And why would plainsmen care about a bridge one hundred and twenty miles from their homelands?”
“Oh,” replied Scipio silkily, “it’s not the bridge they’re after. It’s our food store. The villagers say it was a bad crop this year – something about a plague of moths. They’re clamoring to get hold of our stores. As for the plainsmen – they don’t store up for winter. They count on coming to Ergoth for a handout. Come to Ergoth? We’d just as soon let them starve and take over their lands. Who knows what’s in their savage minds?”
Probably much more than is in yours, thought Vinas. “Your men seem well enough fed,” he observed.
“Oh, we have more than enough food. The ration caravans from Daltigoth come regularly, and I send my men hunting, too. We could feed ourselves twice over just off the bison massacre we had this past autumn.”
Vinas set his snifter down on the small table. “What, then, is the problem?”
“That’s just it,” said Scipio, “there is no problem. Word got back to Daltigoth that the villagers were organizing for an attack, but that is nonsense.”
“If they really are starving,” Vinas ventured, “they would have plenty of motivation to attack.”
“But they aren’t starving,” Scipio replied. “We trade them our excess whenever they bring anything of value.” He leaned in conspiratorially, his ruddy face made devilishly crimson in the light of the fire. “A loaf of mealy bread is up to five gold. A half-rancid haunch of bison goes for eighty.”
Vinas congratulated himself on his calm. “You are extorting such prices out of starving peasants? And toward what does this money go? Soldier salaries? Recruitment? Fortifications?”
Scipio sat back in his seat, a snide look on his ugly features. “You haven’t been a colonel for very long, have you, Solamnus?”
“Two seasons now,” Vinas said evenly. “This is my second campaign.”
“If you haven’t noticed it yet, the greatness of the empire has been won on the backs of fighters – men like you and me. But who gets rich off it all? Senators and emperors, priests and mages. It’s time for us to get ours. Colonels all over the empire are getting in on it. The senate expects as much. The emperor, too. They’re still raking in plenty.”
It is not who is getting rich, Vinas thought, but who is starving to pay for it all. He stood, lifted the brandy snifter, and tossed the liquor into the fire. A blue flame burst up for a moment among the logs. “My company is not needed here, then?”
Scipio’s nostrils flared. “No, you are not needed. Of course, if you wish, you could stay and share in the profits —”
“My men are fighters, Scipio,” Vinas said, “not leeches. If we draw blood, it will be that of Ergoth’s foes, not her citizens.”
“Perhaps you’ll continue up the road to Vingaard,” Scipio suggested. “If you are lucky, conditions will be more... dire there.”
Vinas could not imagine that.
“But remember, Solamnus, I have been a colonel for ten years. I have friends in many places. If you decide to inform anyone of my entrepreneurial endeavors, you will find your head separated from your neck.” The cold gle
am of Scipio’s eyes told Vinas that he was perfectly capable of realizing his threat.
*
Two Days Hence, 15 Rannmont, 1186 Age of Light
“Cold night,” said the dark figure approaching along the palisaded wall.
Guardsman Markas shivered awake. He spun, fumbling for his sword. The damn thing was frozen in its sheath. He stumbled, and then steadied himself on the sharpened stakes atop the wall.
“Easy there, soldier,” the man said. “I’m not the specter of a cold death on the wall. I’m the new colonel – Vinas Solamnus. In fact, I’ve brought you a bit of cheer, to keep you warm tonight.” He produced one of the bottles of brandy he had robbed from Scipio’s private store. The man guarding it had been predictably eager to be bribed.
Markas received the bottle with silent alacrity, sliding it into a much-used inner pocket of his cloak. “Thank you, sir.”
“Make sure to share that with your comrades,” Vinas said.
“Off duty, of course,” Markas replied.
Vinas leaned back on his heels and glanced up into the intense blizzard. “Oh, I don’t imagine even plainsmen would be out in this.”
The soldier only nodded as Vinas strolled farther along the wall, giving a similar present to each of the men guarding the smokehouses and pantries.
*
“Do I look like a plainsman, Gaias?” Vinas asked the sleeping man.
The colonel had doffed his armor and improvised a loincloth and body wrap from a rough-woven sheet. Across his head, his hair was spiked in a savage cockscomb. He’d smeared his face with beet juice and painted it with daubs of boot black.
The old soldier woke with a jolt. “You look like a complete idiot, sir.”
For a moment, Vinas’s young eyebrows dipped in disappointment. His lips pursed. “What if you were a drunken, half-asleep guardsman trying not to fall off a palisade in the middle of a midnight blizzard?”
“Maybe, if I was half daft to begin with,” grumbled Gaias. He rolled to his side, dragging his blankets like a shield. “Sir, I’m not sure what you are up to, but I wouldn’t mind sleeping a few more weeks.”
Vinas shook his head. “Sorry, Gaias. Up with you. Pick five good souls, ones you’d trust with your wedding ring, and get yourselves up like this. I’ve already got the gate guard bribed and some of Scipio’s horses ready. We’ll just need to load up a few thousand pounds of food and drink.”
Letting out a miserable sigh, Gaias said, “Your plan for these poor devils?”
“Just pull your men together. I’ll tell you when I get back.”
*
Guardsman Markas tottered unsteadily around the corner of the stockade, looking for a vacant patch of ground where he could write his name. Something moved, in the shadowed lee of the second smokehouse. He blinked down into the dark yard of the fortress. Someone was there. Someone and something – a big rectangular something. He heard the impatient stamp of a hoof on frozen earth, and saw two plumes of white rise from the darkness. Horses? Why would there be horses there, beside the smokehouse and the open cellar door? Open cellar door?
There, in a wedge of glowing light from one of the fire-filled chimneys, he saw a spiked rill of hair, and a shoulder naked to the blizzard.
Plainsmen? How had plainsmen sneaked over the wall? Probably one of the other guards had drunk himself to sleep. Glass stomachs. Markas had finished half his own bottle and was still standing, wasn’t he?
How many of them were there? He squinted, taking the opportunity to finish his original business before he gave the alert. There was no sense rousing the foe while he had a full bladder. In the next trickling moments, he counted six forms, two wagons and four horses, in the darkness. Only six? He could stroll on down there and kill them all, single-handed. Perhaps he wouldn’t call out until he’d finished them off.
On the other hand, plainsmen were like fleas. You find one on the dog, and you know there’s a hundred more.
“Alaart! Alaart!” shouted Markas as he buttoned up. His warning, unfortunately, sounded more like an off-key yodel than a battle cry. “Plaimsmem imma fart!”
Even he had to laugh at that. Plaimsmem imma fart. Maybe his stomach wasn’t the cast-iron kettle he’d thought it to be.
Silly or not, the call alerted the other guard – and the plainsmen. The savages poured out of the smokehouse and cellar, carrying the last of the food they’d come to steal. With an agility that only a naked wild man could have had in such a storm, one of the thieves flung a side of bison from his back onto the already full wagon, then leapt to the buckboard. The warrior released an ululating cry and whipped the horse to a gallop. The second wagon tore out after the first, and the last of the feral devils lit out behind, atop four saddled Ergothian horses.
They’d not get far, Markas realized as he rounded the corner of the stockade. Ahead of him on the palisade, Manias was drawing an arrow back. Manias was a dead-eye shot. Somebody would die when he released that shaft. Manias’s aim followed the horsemen across the fortress, and then he calmly slipped off the wall and released the arrow as he fell.
Guardsman Aurulas was the unfortunate recipient of the missile, which buried itself in his heart with a sound like shattering glass. Yelping, Aurulas danced out of his cloak, and the arrow fell away with shards of brandy bottle.
Meanwhile, the plainsmen fled out an open fortress gate. Open fortress gate?
No matter, thought Markas. Once he got to the stables, he’d chase down those grass rats! He’d almost reached the ladder when he stepped off the wall and plunged to the ground. Numbness had its benefits. Markas got up and staggered toward the stables. He was halfway to the horse track when he wondered if that clicking sound was broken ribs. Worse. It turned out to be another broken brandy bottle.
“To the abyth with this cloag,” cursed Markas, shucking off the glass-laced garment just as he entered the stalls.
Griff, the black charger that Scipio preferred to ride, stood saddled and ready in the first berth. What an opportunity! Markas had often wished he could ride that spirited steed. This was an emergency! Scipio would thank him for taking the mount.
“It’th going to be awlright, good boy,” slurred Markas, patting the beast. He half expected to get his hand bit for his efforts – he’d seen the charger maim a man once – but the horse was unusually docile tonight. “Good boy. Good. Boy.”
Before he knew it, he was beside the creature, with one foot slung in a stirrup. He mounted up easily enough, though he’d forgotten to loop the reins up on the horn. Slumping forward, Markas struggled to grab the reins. He snatched up one and yanked backward, causing the mount to rear up slowly, awkwardly. It barged backward out the stall gate, smashing it down. In those chaotic moments of flailing, Markas caught the other rein and pulled hard. The horse came down onto its forelegs and kicked backward like an ass.
“Good boy,” soothed Markas in an overloud voice. “Gooooo!” His assurances to the horse ended as it pranced out of the stables and into the cold. Its hooves seemed blocky and clumsy on the icy ground. It fought for footing, reeled drunkenly, and snorted a brandysmelling fog into the air.
“What is it?” shouted Colonel Scipio, emerging half-naked into the whirling storm. “What is happening? Wha —?”
The horse seemed to recognize its master’s voice. It broke into a wobbly gallop toward him. Griff barreled down brutally upon the gasping man and bowled into him, its equine shoulder smacking Scipio down and rolling him under.
Markas followed, down on his side, and the mount rolled over him, too. It was, indeed, good to be numb.
*
The blizzard had reached its peak when, abruptly, the “plainsman raiders” reached the first settlement. It could not be called a village, this black, slumbering huddle of stone, mud, and stick. The buildings were dug into the ground, like entrenchments, their roofs little more than light-leaking mounds of gray-black snow.
If not for those loose-thatched roofs, the wagoners might have driven their
horses directly onto the barrows. Instead, Vinas veered to one side and stood up on the buckboard, hauling hard on the reins. The horses wanted to rear, but he settled them to ground with even pressure and shouted commands.
In the other wagon, Gaias stood braced like a charioteer. He brought his team to a stomping halt on the far side of the clearing. Into the open space between the wagons, four horsemen rushed. The hooves made whuffing noises in the snow.
Vinas let out an exhilarated whoop as he tied off the reins and leapt down from the saddle. He waved Gaias into place beside him. The grizzled soldier wore, once again, his mask of snow crystals and ice, but even they could not hide the uncustomary joy in his eyes.
“What is it, then, Gaias?” asked Vinas, slapping the soldier on a pelt-piled back. “What makes you smile? The storm? The wintry ride? The thought of bringing food to starving peasants?”
In his laconic way, Gaias shrugged. As they approached the nearest barrow, he said, “I guess I never before saw a soldier work so hard to do the right thing.”
A serious look came over Vinas’s face. “If I were emperor, every soldier would work hard always to do the right thing.”
A moment of pensive quiet passed between them. The brooding looks on their faces were banished by a voice.
“Tell Scipio we’ve no more food to give him.” It was the voice of an old man, tired and resigned beneath the snow that blanketed his family’s hovel.
Vinas growled to Gaias, “Those buggers of Scipio supposedly hunted their own game. But no. They take food from these people as tribute, then sell it back to them when it goes bad.”
“Wolves guarding the sheep.”
Turning toward the snow-choked door, Vinas happily cried, “We’re not Scipio’s men. We’ve not come to take your food.”
There was a barely perceptible movement behind the ragged wooden door. “Plainsmen? Since when have plainsmen driven wagons?”
Vinas laughed. “We aren’t plainsmen, either. We are the true soldiers of Ergoth, doing the work Scipio has forsaken. Are you hungry, old man?”
“Of course,” the man said bitterly. Something of his true feelings began to emerge. “I live in the shadow of Solanthus, don’t I?”
