The Legacy of the Ten: Book 01 - Eyes of the Keep

by Scott D. Muller

  “You don’t have to come with us, but I could use your help from the battlement to point out where the fields are,” Dra’kor suggested.

  Brag walked back to his stool and sat down feeling a little embarrassed. Here was a stranger who was willing to go outside the gate and face the wolves to help the town and he wasn’t. He wasn’t willing at all.

  The truth of the matter was, the wolves scared the heck out of him. He’d seen one of his best friends get mauled to death by one of these beasts not more than a month ago.

  He vividly recalled beating the wolf with an ax until he crushed its skull and it was dead. Unfortunately, it never let go of his friend’s throat and he had died of blood loss anyways. It wasn’t as if he was the only one beating the animal either! He had the help of two others and between them; it still took them better than five minutes to kill the animal. Minutes they couldn’t afford. What he couldn’t understand was how it never stopped trying to kill his friend even though it was mortally injured.

  Brag shivered. He had never seen an animal so intent on killing before that it ignored its own wellbeing just to finish the kill. After they finished killing the beast, they had examined it. Brag unconsciously shook his head. The animal had more than a dozen injuries that should have been fatal and yet, it never gave up. What the hell kind of animal does that?

  Brag hung his head and sighed, “No, I can take you out.”

  “Good!” Dra’kor exclaimed. “I can’t wait to get started.”

  “We’ll take a couple of the others with us just to be safe and we won’t wander far from the gate. I’ll have John and Poppy here up on the wall on the watch,” Brag said, pointing to his friends as he forcefully took charge in a show of bravado. “They’re the best shots with the crossbows in the realm, I swear!”

  “Sounds fine to me,” said Dra’kor, feeling like he was making progress. “When do you want to go out?”

  Brag scratched his head, “Well, it’ll take me a bit to get a few folks together, but we’d probably be ready in half an hour.”

  “I guess I’ll meet you at the front gate in a few,” Dra’kor said, as he tapped his fist on the table, pushed his stool back and stood up. “We’ll bring our weapons just in case.”

  “See you soon,” said Brag, as Dra’kor walked out of the saloon with Men’ak.

  “I’ m going to go take a look at the smithy and the stables,” Men’ak said, as soon as they were clear of the tavern.

  “That sounds like a good idea. I’ll catch up with you later— keep your eyes open!”

  Men’ak nodded and waved goodbye to his friend as he headed toward the front gate.

  The locals got up, walked to the door, and stared after the two strangers. Brag watched his friends gawking and closed his eyes. He shook his head, flipped over his briar pipe and knocked out the dottle, opened a small leather bag and pulled out a pinch of strip-cut moist leaf and stuffed it into the bowl with his thumb, packing it firmly. He put the pipe in his mouth and checked the draw. Unsatisfied, he stuffed his thumb into the bowl a second time with good results.

  He lit up using the candle sitting on the table and satisfied with the burn, took another long deep pull on the bowl and felt the characteristic tingle and numbing effect of the leaf.

  It was gonna be that kind of day. He could feel it in his bones!

  Hagra

  Dra’kor walked down the main street thinking about his impending task. He didn’t really see any problem with his approach. He had planned on making the townsfolk seed the fields with treated seeds. That should take care of his dilemma with watering twenty bovate by his estimation, although it wasn’t an accurate measure seeing as all ox teams could plow different amounts in a year, depending. He looked up just in time to avoid running into an old woman walking down the street smiling at him. He smiled back. When she got next to him, she greeted him.

  “You must be one of those strangers I’ve heard talk about in town!” she said with a toothy grin, as she looked up into his face. She was carrying a small basket filled with herbs and flowers.

  The woman looked to be late fifties, short, and a little rotund. Her grin was missing a few teeth, but her eyes were clear, focused and instantly drew Dra’kor in. Her face reflected years of living, and although her skin wasn’t as smooth or taunt as years ago, she still glowed, making Dra’kor imagine that at one time, she must have been a looker.

  She stood there intent on looking him over. It seemed to Dra’kor that although her hair was white and peppered with a tint of red, it seemed to defy age matching the fire in her eyes. Her clothes were simple, maybe a little frumpy and she wore tall laced-up boots with pointy toes.

  “My name is Hagra,” she said as if it should have meaning.

  “I’m Dra’kor,” he said bowing. “Pleased to meet you!”

  “You think?” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Ye might not be so eager to meet me if ye knew me better,” she laughed.

  “All the same,” said Dra’kor, as he stood up tall.

  “I knew yer father — nice man, good king if I remember right,” she said, startling Dra’kor beyond words. Her pronouncement was so unexpected that his mouth hung open. “Ye look just like him!”

  “My father? I d-d-don’t think that’s … possible. He’s been dead a very long time,” Dra’kor said, recovering.

  “Well, that may be but I still knew him back in the day,” she said smiling. “Knew your mother too, Kaa’ra if I recall, but she and I didn’t git along even though we were in the same coven. She was a little too uppity for my liking.”

  “Coven? What? How the —” Dra’kor stammered. “My mother wasn’t a witc —?” He cut himself off before he could finish the word.

  “So, how is Ja’tar these days, still holed up in that moldy old Keep? Bet he’s still the same cantankerous, grumpy old fart he was when I last seen him after Ror. Bit older though — I heard he was in charge of the Keep! Pppffft! Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “How the — wait a doggone minute …,” he said, unable to find the words.

  She looked up into his eyes, “We should talk, mage. After ye finish charming the fields, come by and see me. I’m at the end of the street, ye can’t miss it. Big sign says ‘Apothecary’ on the door,” she said as she patted him on the back, turned around and before Dra’kor could respond, she walked off.

  “Nice meeting ye too, Dra’kor,” she shouted over her left shoulder and broke into a cackle as she wandered off.

  Dra’kor felt a little light-headed as he stared after the old woman as she wandered down the street. Not only was he dumbstruck, but he was also confused beyond words.

  His mother was part of a coven? He scratched his head and stared blankly. That meant … she was a witch! Actually, that explained a lot of things that went on around the house when he was young. All along, he thought that he was causing all the strangeness. He wondered what she knew of his mother. His father, Thomas, had been the Earl of Embleton, and had left to serve the king before he could barely remember. All he had were vague memories, blurred thoughts.

  Moreover, he wondered how his father had ended up married to his mother, if she was a … witch. He had lots of questions. His mother had died when he was just a babe. His father never talked about it.

  He stood in the center of the street with his mouth hanging open when Men’ak walked up.

  “Are you okay? You look like you just met the Ten,” said Men’ak, as he eyed Dra’kor up and down. “You really should close your mouth before something flies in.”

  “I … I …,” was all Dra’kor could manage to utter.

  Men’ak laughed at his friend. “You’ll what?

  His head whipped around to face Men’ak, staring blankly, before he finally spit out the sentence, “I — uh, I — she knows we’re wizards,” he pointed and stuttered.

  Dra’kor turned to look at Men’ak and blinked as Men’ak stared back. Dra’kor put his hand to his face and covered it slowly, sliding his hand
down to yank on his beard. “She knows —!”

  “What?” Men’ak blurted out as he grabbed Dra’kor’s shoulders.

  Dra’kor pushed his hands down, “You heard me — she knows we are wizards. And not only that, she knows of the Keep and said to say hello to Ja’tar, called him cantankerous.”

  Dra’kor recognized the irony of the whole situation. At first he had wished everyone knew about the Keep and wizards, now he had second thoughts. Lately, he had no trouble imagining that few would even remember that the Keep existed and then here, in the middle of nowhere, he runs into someone who not only knows of the Keep, but also knew his father and Ja’tar. Dra’kor wondered why shit like this always happened to him. He rubbed his eyes as if he could just wake from this bad dream.

  “By the Ten, are you serious,” Men’ak said, as his jaw dropped and his eyes widened.

  “Exactly! She knows! I think she’s as old as we are …,” Dra’kor babbled as he turned to look up the street.

  “That’s impossible,” Men’ak replied in a loud voice. “She can’t be. We’re protected by strong magic and she can’t be, can she?”

  “Well, she said she hasn’t seen Ja’tar since Ror,” Dra’kor turned red-faced to Men’ak and shouted back getting irritated. “She obviously knows who he is and enough history of those days to pull our leg.”

  Men’ak’s face turned pale.“Ror? The battle?”

  “Of course the battle … that’s the only reference to Ror there is, it isn’t exactly a place.” Dra’kor spat back.

  “D-d-did she have magic?” Men’ak stammered.

  “I — didn’t check,” Dra’kor confessed. “I forgot —”

  “This is terrible! What’ll we do? A crisis, that’s what this is, a crisis of monumental proportions. How in the blazes did she know we were magi? Men’ak complained, scratching his head. He snapped his fingers. “Maybe she felt you weaving the spells on the soil.”

  “Then that would make her out to be a mage too,” said Dra’kor.

  Ja’tar said there weren’t any travelers in Three Rivers because it was so close,” Men’ak said. “Where do you suppose she hails from?”

  “Crack my knuckles if I can figure it out,” Dra’kor swore. “I don’t recall any Hagra on the list of travelers.”

  Men’ak’s eyes got wide, “A bloody rogue?”

  Dra’kor shrugged, “Seemed pleasant enough. I wouldn’t have expected a rogue to be so forthright.”

  “Damn, I don’t know either! You think she’ll tell anybody?” Men’ak wondered.

  Men’ak fidgeted. He was nervous. Well, no doubt about it, they had been found out. He babbled to himself and paced in front of Dra’kor.

  “I don’t think so — she doesn’t seem to be all that worked up about it,” Dra’kor said, replaying the conversation in his head. “Matter of fact, she acted like she’s been expecting us for tea and cakes.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Dra’kor shrugged, looking up the street at the short old woman shuffling from building to building.

  “I don’t think we do anything, but I think we should take her up on her invitation to visit after we see the fields,” Dra’kor said, nodding as he scratched his head.

  “She invited us over? Where? When? Men’ak sputtered feeling as if he missed out on the conversation of the century.

  “She said to stop by over at the Apothecary shop when we had time, ” Dra’kor said, as he pointed in the direction of the shop.

  “Well I’ll be damned!” Men’ak mumbled, placing his hands on his hips. “I’ll be damned, I’ll be damned, I’ll be damned!”

  The two magi stood in the middle of the street watching the old woman waddle from side-to-side as she randomly stopped to talk to people. She eventually entered a building and the two magi looked at each other, and continued their walk toward the main gate.

  “I can’t believe — I can’t — there’s no way she could …,” Men’ak mumbled as they continued down the street.

  “I think you should shut up about it,” said Dra’kor forcefully, as he gave him a look. “Your going on about it ain’t going to change it, and we’ll get to the bottom of it later. But now is not the time.”

  “It’s just …,” Men’ak started to say, and clamped his mouth shut.

  “Let’s go. We’ll talk about this later,” Dra’kor said, taking off for the front gate, his long leather jacket flapped in the light breeze. He wondered where the woman got the basket of herbs and flowers. He hadn’t seen anything growing in the compound that remotely looked like anything but weeds, and even they weren’t doing too well.

  Men’ak and Dra’kor saw John and Poppy waiting by the gate. They had armed themselves with pitchforks and had their crossbows hanging by their belts. Dra’kor noticed that both men had rags wrapped around their arms and legs in case one of the wolves bit down through their jackets, or pants. It would provide at least some protection from the razor sharp eyeteeth. Smart, Dra’kor thought to himself.

  Brag was talking to a couple men by the ladders that led to the top of the towers built in the corners of the town’s enclosure. He had a hefty double-sided axe gripped tightly in his left hand that he swung back and forth as he talked.

  Both men were nodding as Brag explained something, but they were too far away to be able to hear the details of the conversation, just a word here and there. The two spotters had crossbows and iron-tipped quarrels in their quivers. Dra’kor hoped they were good shots.

  Men’ak had his spear and Dra’kor had the sword they had taken off of Haagen, but neither man was well armed. Brag looked up from his conversation as they approached.

  The two men he had been talking to nodded before jogging over and climbing the ladders to the top of the towers. It really wasn’t a tall tower, but it was well above the top of the ten-foot wall. Dra’kor figured it was twice the height of the men, so twelve feet or better. The towers weren’t large, maybe six feet square. They had sides made of long logs, about the thickness of a man’s wrist and were lashed with jute tightly to the frame. A makeshift roof covered the top, made of thatch, but it looked to be poorly made in Dra’kor’s estimation and probably leaked like a sieve when it rained.

  “I’ve sent men up in the towers, two on each. They’ll keep an eye out while we are out in the fields and they’ll ring the bell if they see any wolves approaching. We should have a minute or two to get back inside the walls,” Brag explained as he pointed out the towers and the men.

  Of course, Brag didn’t believe it. If the beasts came, they were in trouble, no doubt about it. By the time they rang the bell, it would be too late. He grumbled to himself and spit at the ground. It was turning out to be pisser of a day. That much was certain. He looked up at the clear sky. Why couldn’t it just rain so they could go in?

  Dra’kor smiled. “That sounds good. We shouldn’t need much time outside, but those may be even more useful once I fix the issue and you need to replant the fields,” Dra’kor said, as he thought out loud.

  Brag got a confused look on his face. He hadn’t expected to have to replant the fields, but he supposed that if Dra’kor thought that was best, that is what they would have to do. He scowled. Planting the fields meant lots of folks out milling about. Wolf treats! That’s what they were, skin covered wolf treat, he growled to himself. Yup! No doubt about it. He was in a damn sour mood.

  He had stopped by the gardens on his way to the gate and noticed that the crops seemed to be growing, but it could have been wishful thinking. Well, it seemed so. He figured that given the fact that Dra’kor had appeared to solve their problem, he should give him a little leeway. Fresh greens would be a welcome treat to the rather plain meals they had been having as of late.

  “I’d feel a little better if I had a sword to go along with this spear. Spear doesn’t help much in up close fighting,” a troubled Men’ak mumbled to Dra’kor under his breath.

  Dra’kor looked up at his friend and nodded his understanding, although he c
ouldn’t figure out why he hadn’t asked Brag himself.

  Dra’kor turned to Brag and requested, “Do you have an extra pike or small sword for Men’ak? Might be useful if the fighting ends up being close range …”

  Brag put his hand in his mouth and gave out a loud whistle. A few seconds later, the blacksmith appeared outside his shed and Brag waved at him with his sword and gave a shout out for another weapon. “Well, what you waiting for? He’s not gonna walk it over. You can go get one from the smitty,” he told Men’ak.

  The smitty ducked into his shed and quickly reappeared with a small sword and a belt. Meanwhile, Men’ak had broken into a loping run towards the man. After having grabbed the sword, he shook the smithy’s hand and quickly returned to the group.

  “Thanks!” he muttered to Brag as he passed him returning to Dra’kor’s side.

  Men’ak was impressed with the sword as he examined it closely, turning it over in his hands. The grip was tight and well wrapped; the blade was straight and very sharp. He nodded in the direction of the smithy with a big grin on his face as he strapped on the belt and put the sword back into its scabbard. It made him feel better knowing he had a good blade if he needed one.

  Now that everyone had gathered, Brag explained his ideas of what should and should not be done.

  “So, we’ll look at the closest fields just outside the gate first,” he pointed. “But I’m warning ye, I don’t want anyone wandering off. If they ring the bell, we won’t have much time to git! I expects that everyone will hightail it for the gate. Everyone got that?”

  Brag nodded as he looked at every man in the group. There were nods all around.

  “If ye don’t make it back, don’t be expecting no heroics from me or my men. We plan on living for another day, even if it means the wolves get to fight over which of ye is gonna be dinner.”

  Brag nodded hard, making his point; his friends also nodded their agreement.

  “Good, now let’s get this over with,” Brag said in resignation. “I’m already thirsty and mean to get back to the bar before noon, so I can drink me a few rounds before lunch.”