Fortress of Mist

by Sigmund Brouwer

  He had never expected, of course, that all of Magnus would be surrounded by an army, that he would have to find a way outside of the village walls and off the island to reach the books.

  Thomas pinched another ant that had made it past his boot, hardly aware he was doing it.

  The book in his lap gave no satisfaction, no suggestions on how to defeat the earl.

  He’d have to slowly go back to the pile of rocks, wrap this book, unwrap another, then sneak back to this hiding spot and hope to learn something from that book to help him keep Magnus.

  And, if somehow he found a solution, he’d need to survive the trip back to Magnus.

  With his hand on a large, flat piece of floating lumber, Thomas stood waist-deep in water and reeds beneath a moonless sky, knowing he had failed. He was returning to Magnus without any plan for how to stop the Earl of York’s siege or how to defeat the Druids. Either opponent alone at this point appeared on the verge of victory; to face both of them and expect to keep Magnus was impossible.

  As the small waves of the lake lapped up against his legs, it struck Thomas that if he were strictly a rational being, he would step back out of the water and flee the valley.

  He had no family ties to keep him in Magnus, and certainly the property that was his was about to be taken away. Far away, at the abbey, he’d stored gold coin that would make his life easy for years.

  If he walked out of the lake at this moment and returned to the abbey, he’d have his library of knowledge, a small fortune, and the freedom to go anywhere in Britain and start a life of his own. He could lie about his past and begin as a young merchant. Or he could become a soldier.

  That was the decision a rational being would make.

  It was utterly irrational that he would attempt to return to Magnus, hoping Robert had not used the authority bestowed upon him to open the gates to the Earl of York and negotiate a treaty that would leave Robert as lord of Magnus.

  It was utterly irrational that Thomas would swallow his fear of the deep waters ahead and paddle in the dark, clinging to a plank for flotation.

  It was utterly irrational to choose to accept his role as a lord of a small kingdom of people who were openly speaking against him, believers of dark superstitions who chose to accept that Thomas had been cursed.

  So why was he pushing forward, the water now at his chest?

  Ahead, he’d have to kick his legs for an hour to propel the plank forward, trusting that in the dark of night on the dark of the water, he would not be seen by any sentries of the earl’s army, trusting that Robert would be waiting on the island at the appointed hour, not with a sword to end Thomas’s life, but with an extended hand to pull Thomas onto land, with the keys to a door that would let them back into the safety of the walls.

  The land fell away from his feet, and Thomas slowly kicked forward, trying not to think about the depths of the water ahead of him.

  Really, he should turn back and leave Magnus to its fate. Both the Druids and the earl had promised him a horrible death.

  Still, he kicked forward, with his body weight from the waist forward on the plank.

  He did not know how to win back his kingdom, nor did he even expect it would happen.

  But he could not quit.

  Because a life as a coward was, to him, a far worse fate than whatever was ahead.

  Katherine, her face hidden in bandages, joined Thomas along the top of the walls.

  “It is impressive in a horrible way,” she observed. “Why is it in man’s nature to be so cruel to other men?”

  Even with distance across the water that provided a buffer from the opposing soldiers, Thomas could see they were well armed. Battle-axes, longbows, war hammers, maces, crossbows, lances, and pikes were all in plain sight.

  Larger war machines were in already in place; Thomas counted three trebuchets at the beginning stages of construction. These massive levers with attached slings were far too big to transport and had to be built at the siege site. Each would be able to hurl a stone of up to two hundred pounds toward the castle from a distance of three hundred yards.

  “I presume you didn’t expect an answer to your question,” Thomas said. “As for the horrible impressiveness, I have to agree.”

  “Does it frighten you?”

  “Not the army. Or the weapons. Magnus could be safe even if the earl doubles the army and weapons. It has survived similar sieges in the past.”

  Thomas was not presenting a brave face to encourage her. He knew the earl’s weapons posed little danger. The entire village, with its thick perimeter walls, was on the island. The castle itself towered above all. The lake, however, was its best defense. Because the trebuchets could not get close enough to hurl stones heavy enough to batter the stone walls of the castle, the defenders would be facing lighter stones that would simply be a nuisance and distraction.

  “He’s doing this for appearance, isn’t he,” Katherine said.

  “That is what I fear. The whispers among the people are increasing. They still speak of the bats that fell from the sky in daylight. If the dissent spreads to my soldiers, I am lost. It’s sloppy to leave all those weapons lying about, and his soldiers are anything but sloppy. My guess is they have orders to leave them in plain sight so the villagers get a good look. He’s hoping that if he frightens them enough, I’ll face a revolt inside the walls. That’s the only way to conquer Magnus, as we have food and water enough to last ten years.”

  Katherine ached to tell Thomas more, to tell him he was not alone in his struggle against the Druids. But she could not. Hawkwood’s remembered warning echoed stronger than the inner voice that begged her to remove the bandages from her face.

  She needed again to speak to Hawkwood.

  “Did your absence help?” she asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “I don’t know where to turn.”

  “Whom do you trust?” Katherine asked several minutes later. “Robert of Uleran?”

  “His dismay at the escape of the prisoner in my absence seemed real,” Thomas said. “Upon my return, he offered his resignation. Now … now I have no other choice but to trust him. After the unnatural happenings, his open loyalty is a bedrock that keeps many of the superstitious soldiers faithful to our cause.”

  She had nothing more to say, and she wanted only to place her hand on his arm.

  Thomas stared with rigid anger at the encircling army. He was remembering his conversation with the mysterious woman who had bound him with rope and spoken to him on the hillside while he was blindfolded and completely powerless.

  “All I want for myself is to remain lord of Magnus,” he’d told her. “I have no interest in choosing sides in some battle you pretend is so important. I need no help and will remain lord of Magnus by my own wits and willpower.”

  “Katherine,” he said. “I finally realize that if I rely only upon myself, I have no hope. I need help, and I would be prepared to take it if somehow I knew where to go to ask for it.”

  Katherine found Hawkwood with a bowl of porridge in his hands, sitting at an inn table.

  As the herbalist from the other valley, he’d been trapped, as all around him knew, by the suddenness of the siege. Nobody questioned his presence in Magnus.

  And because Katherine was long known among the people as the girl whose face had been scarred by fire, nobody gave notice as she sat at the table with her own bowl of porridge.

  “I have a toothache,” she said loudly for the benefit of anyone overly interested in their conversation.

  “John’s wort, then,” he answered. “Follow me.”

  She did.

  Outside, in the sunshine, they had privacy.

  “Do you have news of Thomas?” Hawkwood asked.

  “He was gone all day yesterday. In the castle, servants were wondering if he had somehow fled Magnus, not to return. But this morning, he is back.”

  “I fear Thomas is in grave danger,” Hawkwood said. “As you can imagine, I hear every rumor and whisper. Th
e talk is that Thomas is cursed, and that to remove the curse upon Magnus, Thomas must be removed. Has he spoken to you of any plans to defeat the Earl of York?”

  “None,” she answered. “But we can take comfort in knowing that he has defied the Druids, can we not?”

  Hawkwood shook his head. “This is a cat-and-mouse game, Katherine. It would serve them well to have him pretend defiance in an effort to draw us out. After all, the earl has merely surrounded the castle, but has yet to openly attack. Our greatest protection is that we are as invisible to them as they are invisible to us. We will know Thomas’s true allegiance when he gives up his greatest secret.”

  “As you know, he told me he was prepared to accept help.”

  “That, as I told you before, makes me wonder if it is part of a game. For by telling you, does that mean he suspects the bandages across your face are a disguise?”

  “Perhaps we should go one step further. Perhaps I should reveal myself.”

  “Is that your heart speaking?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Remember, Katherine, we cannot assume he will join us.”

  “But if he loses Magnus,” Katherine said, “it will matter little where he becomes an Immortal. We need both: his books and the castle.”

  Hawkwood nodded, gray hair falling across his face.

  “I don’t see that we have any choice,” Hawkwood said. “It is time for you to help him defeat the earl. But you must remain hidden beneath your bandages. He is not to know you are my messenger.”

  Katherine hoped she was able to hide disappointment. Someday, she wanted to be able to speak to Thomas not as a hideous freak, but as the woman who wanted his love and wanted to return it.

  Thomas found what he was looking for in an alley behind the small stone church: a dog, barely more than a puppy. It had short dark hair, with ribs that gleamed behind fur that looked like a worn piece of clothing.

  On his knees, Thomas coaxed it forward by holding out a piece of raw beef. It shivered with delight and shyness at his attention, wagging its tail frantically and whining as it slowly moved toward Thomas’s hand.

  “There’s a good boy,” Thomas said. “Come on. Come on.”

  The dog moved close enough to make a quick snap for the piece of meat. Thomas didn’t let go.

  Briefly, there was a tug of war, and as the dog strained to pull the meat loose, Thomas reached with his other hand and wrapped his arm under the dog’s chest, behind its front legs.

  With a secure grip on the dog, Thomas released the meat. The dog gobbled it as Thomas lifted the dog off the ground. The dog kicked and squirmed but did not try to bite him.

  He scratched the dog’s head and made comforting sounds to it as he carried it through the village, aware of puzzled looks from people as he passed them on the streets.

  He ignored the puzzled looks, which, at least, were better than seeing people furtively make the sign of the cross as they saw him, trying to ward off the curse that they feared might touch them too.

  It only took minutes to return to the castle. He made no explanations to the guards as he marched through the corridors.

  Gradually, as he’d been walking, the dog had squirmed less and less, until, as Thomas reached his bedchamber on the upper floor of the castle, the dog was relaxed and motionless, as if asleep.

  Thomas knew better.

  He’d added a poison to the meat. For all the risk he’d taken to swim across the lake at night to spend a day with his books and swim back again the following night, he’d learned nothing to help him in a battle against the siege of the Earl of York.

  However, there’d been a long section of one of the books that dealt with medicinal herbs and roots, and he’d learned something that interested him so greatly that he’d spent a couple of hours preparing the potion that served as a poison.

  Thomas had already set a blanket on the stone floor, near the fireplace. He placed the dog on the blanket.

  He stared closely at the dog’s ribs and watched the rhythm of movement. Unconscious, not asleep, the dog’s breaths came slower and further apart, until finally, the ribs stopped all movement.

  Thomas leaned down and placed his head on the dog’s chest. The heartbeat, barely audible, disappeared altogether.

  Thomas lifted the dog’s lower lip away from its jaws, and pinched the tender, moist skin, applying so much pressure that he broke the skin.

  The dog didn’t react. He’d succeeded.

  There was no denying all the symptoms of death. He waited until the dog recovered, something that would have seemed like a miracle had he not known about the potion. And finally, he was certain.

  That left him his second task, one that would not be near as simple or easy to accomplish. Facing the Earl of York.

  Thomas and Robert of Uleran stood and waited at the end of the drawbridge.

  At the other end of the narrow strip of land that reached the shore of the lake, the Earl of York and three soldiers began to move toward them.

  “Are you sure they’ll not run us through with those great swords?” Robert asked.

  “The earl will not risk losing honor by dealing treachery,” Thomas said.

  Thomas and Robert of Uleran stared straight ahead. Each wore a long cloak of the finest material in Magnus—it was not a time to appear humble or afraid.

  The Earl of York’s march across the land bridge seemed to take forever. When he was close enough, Thomas observed the anger set in the clenched muscles of his face.

  He heard that anger moments later.

  “What is it you want, you craven cur of yellow cowardice?” the earl snarled.

  “An explanation perhaps, of this sudden hatred,” Thomas said shortly. “I understand—if you truly believe me guilty of those murders—that duty forces you to lay siege. But you once called me brother. Surely that—”

  “Treacherous vulture. Waste no charm on me,” the earl said in thunderous tones. “Were it not for honor, I would cleave you in two where you stand. You called me here for discussion. Do it quickly, so that I may refuse your request and return to the important matter of bringing destruction to Magnus. After that, I shall serve you for dinner the ear you sent back to me.”

  “Ear?” Thomas stiffened visibly, though he kept his voice level and polite.

  “The one you cut off the head of my son. Don’t pretend innocence with me.”

  “I promise,” Thomas said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  The earl threw down a piece of paper.

  Robert picked it up and handed it to Thomas, who glanced at it and saw enough to begin to understand why the earl was outraged.

  … I will only agree to a pact of allegiance once I receive a payment of gold for my services during the march against the Scots. Ensure that it completely fills the chest I have sent back with your son. If it does not arrive within a fortnight, I will consider your inaction to be a declaration of war. As proof of the seriousness of my intent to wage battle against you if you do not send the gold, look no further than the ear I have taken from your son.

  “That is not my handwriting,” Thomas said. “I would be happy to show you other correspondence from my quill.”

  “It had your royal seal.”

  “Fraud does happen. If someone wanted to set us against each other, it would be easy to arrange.”

  “And my son would partake in this fraud?”

  “I cannot speak for him.”

  “And lose his ear?” the earl asked.

  “I cannot speak for him,” Thomas repeated. “I can only tell you the truth that I know. I did not cut off his ear. He had escaped from Magnus shortly before I returned from war.”

  Thomas gazed levelly at the earl. “Those of the symbol asked me to join them. I refused. Perhaps this is a result of that.”

  The earl took a deep breath, as if seriously considering Thomas’s innocence for the first time.

  “I cannot turn back,” the earl said. Almost regretfully. “In fr
ont of the world, I have committed to battle against you.”

  “I ask, then, for a chance to prove my innocence.”

  “Surrender the castle then. Submit to a trial. You have my word I will do my best to prove the message delivered to me did not come from your hand.”

  Thomas shook his head. “I ask for trial by ordeal.”

  The Earl of York gaped at him. “Ordeal!”

  That, too, had been Thomas’s reaction to instructions placed beneath his pillow, ensuring that only he would discover them the evening before as he prepared for sleep in his bedchamber.

  “Ordeal!” the Earl of York repeated, showing for the first time an emotion other than anger. “The church outlawed such trials more than a hundred years ago.”

  “Nonetheless,” Thomas said, “I wish to prove to you, and to the people of Magnus, that I am innocent.”

  The earl rubbed his chin in thought. “Tell me, shall we bind you and throw you into the lake?”

  That had been, as Thomas knew, one of the most common ways of establishing guilt. Bound, and often weighted with stones, a person was thrown into deep water. If he or she floated, it proved witchcraft. If the accused drowned, it proved innocence.

  “Not by water,” Thomas said. “Nor by fire.”

  Some chose the hot iron. The defendant was forced to pick up an iron weight, still glowing from the forge. If, after three days in bandages, the burns had healed, it was taken as a sign of innocence.

  “What then?” the Earl of York demanded. “How are we to believe you are innocent? You are going to propose your own trial by ordeal? This isn’t done.”

  “If you allow it, then it is done.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Tomorrow, I will stand alone on this narrow strip of land,” Thomas said. “Stampede toward me twenty of the strongest and largest bulls you can find. If I turn and run, or if I am crushed and trampled, then you may have Magnus.”