“Enough to plot against her?”
“Nearly,” he admitted. “Though it would never come to treason or rebellion, I think, they would go to great lengths to counter her machinations. They feel she is too loyal to Remere and Alshar. And that Rard entrusts her overmuch with matters of importance to the realm, from the selection of envoys to the disposition of cases at law. And, of course, some suspect her naturally because of her sex.” That was normal suspicion-of-the-consort court politics, I reasoned, the same charge laid at the feet of every woman on a throne interested in anything but looking pretty and having babies.
But it wasn’t the kind of thing you say about the ruthless leader of a cadre of spies and assassins. So Mother was suspected by this chorus of aristocrats, but her true strength and power was un-guessed. That was a credit to her skills as a spymaster, I supposed. And I had no doubt that she’d already heard every word that was spoken that night before I made it back to my quarters.
I shrugged. “As I said, I am new to court. And quite out of my element. On the morrow I have to face down the Censor General, and the mind of the Duke will be known – one way or another. In which case what I said here tonight probably won’t have mattered for much.”
“Don’t be so certain,” Sire Roald murmured. “There were many who were impressed by you and your demonstration, even if they are against your proposal. If nothing else, you were novel – magic has rarely been an issue for Ducal politics in the past. Much more intriguing than when Count Volmar was caught with Baron Farlan’s wife in the boathouse at Lastalia.”
“Well, I aim to be entertaining,” I sighed. “Thank you, Sire Roald. You’ve eased my mind on the matter. Here I thought it had been an utter disaster . . . and now I know it’s but a minor disaster.”
It was his turn to shrug. “This is the Ducal court. There are no clear lines or easy victories. Every day is a minor disaster . . . but the Duchy abides, despite it.”
I know he meant it to sound reassuring, but suddenly I had a lot less faith in the ability of my leaders.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Penumbralands
Late Summer
Jannik, it turned out, made an excellent traveling companion.
Of course a minstrel would be full of tales of wonder and songs of infinite varieties . . . but his main utility as a comrade proved to be his knowledge of the local country. After we had “rescued” him by the simple expedient of him leaving with us on our way out of Terrihall – or “Terrorhall”, as Teran now called it – Jannik told us the tale of how he came to be there.
It took most of the afternoon, thanks to his sense of the dramatic, but it was actually a fairly clear-cut tale. He was a Vorean, originally, but found his take went up the further west he went. Since the people of Alshar are usually left to make whatever entertainments they want to enjoy, a minstrel of any capacity was seen as a novelty, and a trained tenor voice like Jannik’s was in high demand. For the last several years he had been working a circuit throughout northern Alshar and Castal, from Wenshar to the feet of the Minden Range. He played harp, flute, drum, cymbal, gitar, pipe, and other instruments, but his strength was definitely his voice . . . and his keen wit.
When the first rumbles of trouble came out of Boval (about the time I had been leading a make-shift mercenary army from Tudry), he had been playing at the castle of the Baron of Denal, to the north of here.
The initial raids had riled the local lords, and for a few weeks Jannik was making good coin singing praises of their puissance as they gathered forces to answer the attacks. They came sporadically, in the beginning, until the first great band of thousands erupted past Mor Tower into Ganz and Presan and swept away the defenders taken by surprise. By the time they reached Denal, two days later, all was chaos.
Twice he had been impressed as a soldier by desperate lords, and twice he had deserted at the first opportunity – which saved his life both times. He was adept at hiding in haystacks, lofts, or holes in the ground, as needed, and he had slept in trees many times. He had taken refuge at Balirnam Castle for a week at midsummer, and then escaped again before it was betrayed and taken, its inhabitants led away in chains – those who still lived.
He had wandered quietly for days, after that, avoiding goblin patrols and human refugees alike, until he had finally come to Terrihall and seen the relative peace and stability. That was when he had spotted freed humans returning in long lines, each one with downcast eyes and bearing the brand of the dark skull.
“That’s the really nauseating part,” he said at last, as we prepared to camp in the shell of a peasant’s hut. “All those people in Terrihall, they might seem normal . . . but anyone who survives the judgment of the Dead God . . .”
“Yes, they were quite proud, if that’s the word, at having survived his judgment. Just how are they judged?” asked Cormaran, as he prepared to set the wards. I was letting him do a lot of the mundane stuff like that, as he was still becoming attuned to his stone and he needed the practice.
“I asked myself the same question, right after I affected that cursed brand with some burnt cork, red clay, and a bloody bandage – no shortage of those around. But I heard the tale from several of the survivors, my lords, and what a ghastly fate befell their misbegotten souls,” he said, his big eyes looking professionally sorrowful. While it was entertaining, I was looking for a military report, not a stirring ballad.
“Get to the point, Jannik,” I requested, firmly.
He sighed – also dramatically – rolled his eyes in frustration, and continued. “The performing arts are dead. The essence of the story is they were all taken to that sorcerous vale and brought before His Roundness, where a shaman put a knife in their hand and led them to an altar, where another human was bound. They were commanded to disembowel the poor victim. If they were unwilling, then the victim was given the opportunity to change places with the sacrificer.”
“That’s . . . that’s unspeakable!” choked out Taren. I shook my head. I felt a little sick.
Jannik nodded gravely. “It’s enough to take the song from your throat,” he agreed, sadly. “What’s worse, if you did plunge your knife in the guts of your fellows, you were rewarded by being forced to do it four more times before you were considered ‘worthy’ of bearing the brand. So everyone you saw at Terrihall, except for myself and one or two others, personally slaughtered at least five people like piglets at the equinox in order to preserve their own lives.”
“That’s horrific,” Master Cormaran said, simply. I realized I could ‘feel’ the effects of the gurvani despair spell through the wards, it meshed so well with the images in my head. “They had to murder five in order to be spared. What kind of—”
“Oh, it was worse than that, my lords, and Herus spare me for speaking of it. Worse than that, if you did slay that first stranger, then your kin were moved to the head of the line. Mothers were forced to slay their own children, husbands had to kill beloved wives, old women hacked babes-in-arms to death to spare themselves the same.”
“Why?” asked Terleman, outraged. “What possible motivation—?”
“Would you willingly break bread with a man who had murdered five to save his own life?” Jannik asked, pointedly.
“No,” sighed Terleman. “Not willingly. Not murdered.”
“Exactly,” the minstrel agreed. “Those who traded their souls for life and bear the brand have made themselves abominations among civilized men with their crimes. They will never be trusted by their fellows again. Their loyalty to the Dead God is sealed in the blood of innocents – but they had a choice, to die or to live a murderer. The stories I heard,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes filled with horror at the memory.
I passed him a wineskin, which he gratefully accepted. “Every tale was a night terror, my lords, I swear on my mother’s virtue. And all enough to make a stone weep for grief. A man whose wife, after disemboweling her own mother and father, balked at slaying her beloved daughter . . . and so he had t
o slay them both, and two sons besides, before sacrificing his father to that evil bastard to preserve himself. I asked him, man to man, how he had managed to kill both his own father and his own son . . . he told me that after he slew his wife and daughter, the man he had been was so dead that he felt little of anything when he plunged the dagger into his boys. And his sire.” He took another swallow of wine before passing it. “And that is by far the least of the tales of the Soulless. I’ll spare you more, unless you insist. But just knowing that there is that kind of evil in the world disturbs my soul.”
There weren’t any songs or stories around the tiny fire that night. We had seen too much, and we were still far too close to the Umbra for comfort. Our sojourn in Terrihall had convinced us not only of the evil of our foe, but had shown us the potential for depravity among our fellow men, and that weighed on us powerfully.
But there was more news from Jannik. While he had affected a brand and the dismal demeanor of the other slaves of Terrorhall, he had also listened most carefully to Garkesku’s ravings, and had heard messages from his dark masters to him. Surprisingly, our victory at Tudry was the subject of much of the discourse.
“Were they surprised, at least, at our victory?” I asked.
Jannik shook his shaggy red head. “Nay, Captain. Not really. Those goblins sent forward into the east and the south were supposed to engage you – engage all the military forces of Alshar. But they were not expected to prevail.”
“Why send out his spearfodder?” asked Terleman, confused. “We’ve slaughtered them, wherever we’ve found them in force. We preserved Tudry, we even made some inroads to capture lost territory.”
“It’s all a ruse,” Jannik told us, unhappily. “The horde near Tudry, the other one in the south, menacing Grindonal now, both were designed to draw the Duchy’s forces in, toward the center. Toward Vorone.”
“Why Vorone?” I asked. “It isn’t even the real capital, just the summer palace?”
“Because . . . well, if you wanted to split off half of the Duchy, the north from the south, where would you do it?”
“Well, Vorone does sit between the foothills in the east and the Mindens,” I conceded. “If you were to put a large enough force there, you could screen the north from the south fairly effectively.”
“Exactly,” nodded Jannik. “And if you were to make it a large enough force, you could preclude anyone from coming at you.”
“But why take Vorone?” insisted Rustallo. “Surely Tudry would be a better stronghold?”
“The goal isn’t to take Vorone,” pointed out Terleman, “the goal is to entrap the north. The army at Vorone isn’t the force the Dead God seeks to counter. It’s a rescue force from the south or east that he fears – if he fears anything.”
“But that’s crazy,” Delman said, shaking his head. “Neither the horde we scattered at Tudry, or the army in the south is big enough to take Tudry in its weakened state, much less prevent the southern armies from riding against them.”
“That’s just it,” Jannik explained patiently. “It took me awhile to figure out myself, milord. Those southern and eastern hordes are bait. They want you to go after them, that much I do know. They’re counting on it. They want you to bring as many men as you can to Vorone. And they have another force you may not know about,” he said, uneasily. “A horde far to the north, beyond the Northwatch.”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s right! We scried them, early on, but didn’t think they were much of a threat. I thought they were considering invading Vore from the west, or attacking the Valley People. Or worse, trying to recover some ancient gurvani artifact from some ancient stronghold.”
“They aren’t,” Jannik answered, glumly. “They came out past the Mor Tower in the very first days of the invasion and just headed north. I heard a lot about that horde, milord, let me assure you. They avoided trouble the whole way, too, barely burning the villages they went through. They by-passed the western Northwatch castles, moving east along the frontier with the northern tribes without inciting them. And they moved quickly, relentlessly, from what I was able to discover. The last dispatch I heard a few days ago puts them far to the northeast, now. Probably the furthest east of any goblin band.”
“So aren’t they safely out of the way?” Rustallo asked.
“No, they are encamped just north of Nandine. Thousands of them.”
“How many thousands?” Cormaran asked, alarmed.
“At least sixty,” answered the minstrel. “Sixty thousands, milord. Sixty of his best. They’ve been training all summer for this. They bear better weapons and armor and fight like humans, supposedly. But they are also to be supported by wild gurvani tribes from the western Kuline mountains.”
“I didn’t realize there were any gurvani up there!” Rustallo admitted.
“A few tribes, pushed back into the highest hills, remotest vales and deepest caves,” Delman said, off-handedly. He was Wenshari, he would probably know. “They’ve been peaceful for hundreds of years, though. They mine iron and silver in the Kulines and trade it.”
“Well, now they’re going to war for vengeance,” Jannik informed him. “No telling just how many, but Garky figured it would be at least a few more thousand. But even without them . . . sixty thousand and a better grade of troops as well. Many are using iron weapons of human design. And their plan, so far as I have been able to tell, is to gather their strength and then ride south, cutting off Vorone, Tudry, and all of northern Alshar from Castal and southern Alshar. Then, when the cream of the Alshari military has risen to one place at one time, the northern horde is instructed to move around their flank . . .and screen them off. Not engage them.”
“Why not?” demanded Taren.
“Because the Dead God wants more sacrifices,” explained the minstrel. “And more steel armor and weapons. And more food for his armies. That much was true, from the dispatches I overheard. But there was more. He has human messengers as well as goblins, my lords, blood traitors and branded murderers, from all parts of this damnable region who would take his gold and betray their own kind. Some are disguised in castles now, or as refugees. They are helping prepare the way so that he may destroy the Wilderlands baronies. And he’s set this trap to be sprung, sometime around the autumnal equinox.”
“What manner of trap?” I asked, quietly. I didn’t know this man, and perhaps he was sent as a spy to us, but his desperation and obvious relief at being escorted out of this hellish place was compelling.
“They want as many humans as possible, within the interior of northern Alshar. When the damn goblins think there’s enough, the big horde will march south skirting the edges of the Pearwoods, until it can bypass Vorone and Tudry from near to the frontier. Wilderhall, the Riverlands fiefs, or any other land which might aid them would be interdicted.”
“Huin give us strength!” swore Delman, making a sign against evil. Yes, there are far more effective and useful types of spells, but in times of stress and crisis we revert back to the basics – like invoking the war god’s aid against a foe, instead of just going out and fighting. “That would capture . . . tens of thousands!”
“Perhaps hundreds of thousands,” added Cormaran with a depressed sigh. “Depending on where they descend, and just where they try to close the noose. If they managed their attacks just right, they could capture nearly all the northlands. Everything north of, say, Pyler and Renaline.” Those were two prosperous baronies in central Alshar, in the northern reaches of the Riverlands.
“There’s more,” he continued, mournfully. I wasn’t sure I could bear much more. “I overheard one of those damned white ones – the priests, I suppose – arguing with that mad twit a few nights ago. They ignored me like I was an animal. But from what he said, the goblin, I mean, and he spoke the common tongue as fair as you or I, milord, after they cut off Vorone and entrap northern Alshar, the plan is to then to attack Castal, while he keeps the southern lords from taking his flank with his reserves.”
We
all sat in silence as we visualized the maneuver of which Jannik spoke. It made sense, I could see, from a military perspective, given the Dead God’s ambitions. The Alshari in the north were sparsely settled, and the fighting men, while valiant, were comparatively few in number. Instead of trying to take every little village along the way, the old bastard had used his troops to rattle them, get them on the road and into the larger cities where they thought of security and shelter and food would be available. Then, once the human cattle were congregated, our forces congratulating ourselves on the ‘victories’ we’d won over his lesser servants, deploy a truly massive force to pen them in until they could be ‘harvested’ at leisure. Once the roads and easy ways were closed off it would be a simple thing to starve the survivors into submission . . . or terrify them with magic until they acted more like sheep or scathads than men . . . or, most disturbing of all, betray them with collaborators among them.
“Gods, what have we done?” Terleman asked. “We’ve done everything that he wanted . . . the relief of Tudry, the consolidation of refugees at Vorone, our forces are scattered chasing small bands, he couldn’t have asked for an easier time if he’d given us his orders himself! And meanwhile he has an entire army in the north, ready to bear down on us like a hailstorm!”
“So how do we counter him?” asked Cormaran, thoughtfully. “Evacuate Vorone? How? Unless Castal is willing to come to our aid . . .”
I cleared my throat. “It’s not as if they are unwilling . . . they just don’t want to absorb a bunch of people they’ll have to feed and clothe and house and order, while fighting the gurvani at the same time. Not when the problem could be solved in Alshar . . . or so that’s what the Court believes. Hells, that’s why they sent me here.”
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 44
