Tales of the Far Wanderers

by David Welch

  He laughed and spurred Thief forwards. They rode south, into the forest.

  Siege on the Mother River

  The great doors slammed shut before Gunnar knew what was going on. There had been a shout, followed by panicked screams, followed by the gate slamming shut.

  He stood in the small bailey, surrounded by a wooden wall built atop an encircling earthworks. Behind him, a stone keep rose eighty feet into the air. To his left, a wooden barracks sat low beneath the wall. To his right, a stable.

  He’d walked in not ten minutes earlier, looking to trade. He had on his chain-mail and sword, but he had left his shield and brigandine hauberk with Kamith, outside the wall. Now, shouts arose around him, and armored men rushed to the walls.

  What the hell did I just walk into?

  Gunnar ran for the nearest ramp, which led up onto the wall surrounding the keep and its small bailey. The wall rose thirty feet above the surrounding fields, ten feet of that belonging to the earthen berm that supported it. At the top, he rushed to the nearest crenel, looking south onto the open meadow surrounding the keep.

  Dozens of horsemen rode across the open ground. Each wore mail and helmet, and they carried short lances. Black, linen surcoats covered most of their armor, bearing on them a white circle with a sword through it.

  They charged the people milling about outside the keep; others looking to trade, like him. The place was a de facto gathering point for nearby tribes and traders from the Kingdom of Starth, just across the Mother River, not a mile west of them. Now, those same traders and merchants fell, impaled and skewered as the lancers charged again and again.

  His glare danced from person to person, searching. He spotted Kamith near the edge of the field, a hundred yards from a nearby wood. She was on Dash, riding quickly away from the carnage. His horse, Thief, and their packhorse, Burden, followed without being led, used to traveling together. A quartet of lancers broke from the group and galloped full charge after his lover.

  Gunnar’s hands gripped the wood of the wall hard as she fled. Their horses were weighed down by their goods, and the lancers moved quickly. He could see Kamith readying her bow.

  She spun in the saddle and fired over the horse’s back, the arrow flying straight for the chest of a pursuer. It struck, and the man flew from his mount, crashing into the grass. In a moment, he was up again, the arrow sticking harmlessly from his armor. He leapt back to his horse and joined his fellows as they closed.

  Images of Kamith captured flashed through his mind; terrible images of her naked and bruised and screaming under their abuse. She was still twenty yards from the forest, and the lancers closed quickly.

  She isn’t going to make it!

  Another roar went up. A dozen mounted men charged out of the woods, not far from Kamith. They wore the blue surcoats of the men guarding the keep, with the same circle and sword emblem. They charged towards the four lancers, swords high and ready to slash. The lancers turned to face them, and the two groups clashed. Steel-tipped lances broke through chain-mail as the black lancers pushed forwards, while hard sword chops shattered limbs and hacked deep into bodies as the blue coats swirled and fought.

  The main force of lancers saw the skirmish and charged to help their outnumbered brethren. Gunnar breathed a sigh of relief. In the chaos, Kamith had slipped away into the woods. Safe. Alive.

  Somebody shouted something, and Gunnar turned to see a soldier with a bow. He shouted again, this time in Trade Tongue.

  “Get out of the way!”

  He stepped back, and the warrior dashed to the crenel and waited. The horsemen fought in the distance, their lances spearing through the blue-coats one by one. The keep’s horsemen fell to the earth, dead amongst as many black-coated figures.

  The horsemen moved towards the keep, slowing as they neared, keeping out of bowshot. The man in the center rode a horse that was a hand taller than the rest. He wore the black surcoat, but he also wore a wolfskin cloak around his shoulders, and a horsehair plume ran down his helmet. Clearly, this was the leader. Looking closer, Gunnar saw a small scepter emblem on his surcoat, golden and bright against the black.

  “Who are you?” somebody yelled in Trade Tongue.

  Gunnar looked into the eyes of an approaching man-at-arms, a fellow in his thirties with brown eyes and a hawk-like face.

  “Who are you?” the man repeated.

  “I’m Gunnar,” he replied. “I came in to trade.”

  The man scowled and pointed at his sword.

  “You know how to use this?” he demanded.

  “Of course I do,” Gunnar replied.

  “Good,” the man snapped, “because you’re fighting for the king now.”

  Gunnar sighed.

  By the Gods Above…

  ***

  Kamith watched from the trees. The horses milled about on the steep slope below. The keep sat on the edge of a high bluff, wooded slopes falling away to the west, east, and north; down to the valley of the Mother River. The southern approach had been marked by rolling plains, the sort that stretched westwards into the Great Grasslands. The lancers had come from the south, charging across the field and to the keep. The keep her man was now trapped inside.

  Just a few minutes earlier, she’d been staring up in awe at the first stone building she’d ever seen, wondering how anything so tall could be built. Then there’d been shouts and warriors racing towards her. She cursed herself for letting her guard down. Had not the blue horsemen charged onto the field, they would have had her, dead or worse.

  Crouching near the edge of the forest, she watched more soldiers file in. The lancers had been the vanguard, rushing in fast to surround the keep and prevent escape. Now came foot soldiers, marching in by the hundred. They spread out across the meadow, pitching tents and placing stakes around their lines, making a camp. About half of them wore chain-mail and helmets, and many of those carried swords and shields. Others wore simple leather, carrying spear and shield. A hundred or so had bows, with daggers at their waists.

  She watched for an hour, spotting a knot of soldiers straggling behind the host. They pushed something large and on wheels: a ram. Slowly, it made its way across the meadow and into the growing camp.

  She retreated back into the woods and tied a long rein to Thief’s bridle, grabbed a similar rein on Burden, then mounted Dash. Slowly, she led them away from the field, into the forest. She went west, putting distance between herself and the attacking army. She followed the ridge of the plateau that the keep and meadow sat atop. It ran several miles then curved south, a half-mile of woods surrounding her on all sides.

  Good enough, she thought. She brought the animals to a copse of towering oak trees, their trunks as wide as she was tall. The hillside rose into a knoll just above the copse, obscuring the view from above. She tied the horses to the tree then collapsed on the ground. Tears threatened to flow, and she did nothing to stop the first one as it traced down her face.

  Gunnar, the man she loved, the man who’d rescued her and who she’d rescued numerous times, was surrounded by hundreds of angry soldiers. He was alone amongst an unfamiliar people, against an overwhelming enemy.

  Alone. She was alone.

  The thought crippled her, and she cried for a while, keeping the noise soft enough to avoid being heard by any wandering warrior. All she could see was images of fire and slaughter, and her lover lying dead in the middle of it. She had to get him out of there; to get him back. But as she remembered the hundreds of men surrounding the keep, she realized she had no idea how.

  ***

  Gunnar had suspected the keep belonged to Starth. The kingdom was said to have its western border at the Mother River, a mile to the east across marshes that spilled down the river valley’s floodplain. Why they had built a keep here, where the forest began to thin into the Great Grasslands, was beyond him. He hadn’t suspected that the king of Starth himself was in this far-flung fortress.

  He crouched on the wall, sitting with his back against a wo
oden merlon. At the crenel next to him, a soldier stood with a bow, but he made no motion to fire. Similarly, their foes made no attempt to attack; they simply kept people from escaping as nearly a thousand soldiers moved into position.

  That was more than enough to do the job. The keep itself was a stone square, seventy feet wide on a side, rising eighty feet above the meadow. A wooden staircase ran to a small door on the third floor, the only entrance. The stairs were suspended from above by ropes which could be easily cut, sending the stairs plummeting to the ground and sealing off the keep. A bretèche jutted out above the door, with arrowslits facing out and looking down so the defenders inside could riddle any attackers with arrows, stones, or whatever else they had. The great stone tower lay in the north-east corner of the fortress, on the edge of a steep, wooded hill that plunged two hundred feet to the marshes below.

  It was a formidable-looking building. Each level except the bottom floor had four arrowslits cut into the walls. Wooden hoarding jutted out from the roof high above, extending over the edge so defenders could drop rocks or shoot arrows on anybody stupid enough to come up to the walls. Bartizans – small, tower-like projections – sat at each corner, eight stories up. He could see men up there with bows, milling about and waiting.

  The wall he sat on was a true wall, not a mere palisade. Though it appeared wooden, its strength lay in earth. The allure atop the wall was earth. From the look of it, they had thrown up two parallel circuits of logs, each circuit two logs deep. Between that, they had thrown earth, packing it down into a dense wall fronted by wood. It formed a six-foot-thick circle of defense. The walls formed a square yard, one hundred and fifty feet on a side and with rounded edges, inside which sat the barracks and stables he had seen earlier. The ramparts continued on up until the walls of the keep and then stopped, the great stone tower forming the northeast section. Wooden towers loomed over the wall’s only gateway, which opened to the southwest. The heavy oak gate had been shut and then barred with large logs. More logs had been wedged against it to reinforce it.

  It was a respectable fortress for its size and more than enough to deal with grassland tribes, but it faced a massive foe. Against the thousand or so troops outside, there were about seventy men in the wall and the bailey. He didn’t know how many were in the keep, but he didn’t think another nine hundred waited there.

  Old words from his days as a soldier came to mind; things his lord had shouted during their training. No fortress is impenetrable! That’s not the purpose of a fort! A fort doesn’t keep the enemy from winning, it just makes the price of winning so gods-damned high that they don’t want to pay it!

  Only, this time, the enemy outside looked like they could afford to pay it.

  “You, on your feet,” a voice ordered.

  He looked up, seeing the soldier who, earlier, had so bluntly informed him that he now fought for the king.

  “What do you want?” Gunnar asked, staying seated.

  “We’re going to see the king,” he said. “So get the hell up!”

  Gunnar slowly got to his feet, keeping his eyes on the hawk-faced soldier. The man seethed, clearly not used to being challenged.

  “Lead on,” Gunnar remarked.

  The man grumbled and descended the nearest ramp, off the wall. They made their way across the courtyard. A dozen others, caught inside when the horsemen had arrived, stood about in a near-panic. Gunnar ignored them and followed the soldier up the suspended staircase. It swayed and creaked, the ropes stretching and straining under the weight of the armored men. At the top, they walked through a narrow door onto a cramped landing. Spiraling stone staircases ran up and down from it, but they ignored them. Instead, they made for a small but stoutly built door that sat flush with the far wall. The soldier opened it, ducking to enter the chamber behind.

  It opened onto the keep’s great hall. Gunnar strode in, surprised by the size of the room. It dominated an entire floor, almost as wide as the keep itself. Only the thick stone walls surrounding the keep’s two spiral staircases pressed in on the vast space. Arrowslits let in jail-bars of light, and a fire burned on a small hearth built into one of the walls.

  “Yestin,” a woman’s voice said.

  Gunnar located the speaker. A woman sat on a throne across the room. She was a petite woman, bronze-skinned, beautiful, and lithe. Sandy hair framed light-brown eyes, and tiny lines around her eyes and mouth were the only thing that gave away her age. Gunnar figured she was in her early thirties. The soldier strode up to the woman and bowed his head formally. Gunnar followed at his own pace, taking in the room around him.

  Another throne sat next to the woman, but it was empty. The thrones rested on a raised dais, looking down over the great room. Long, dark-blue tapestries hung from the walls, adding some color to the grey stone. A half-dozen soldiers milled about, their light-blue surcoats different from the rest. Probably personal guards to the king, Gunnar figured.

  Large cushions surrounded the dais, most of them empty. On one sat a young woman, a teenager from the looks of her, playing with a tiny dog. She had the woman’s face and sandy hair. Her skin was a shade of bronze lighter than her mother’s, but not by much. She was practically her mother’s twin.

  “Who is this?” the woman asked in Trade Tongue, pointing at Gunnar.

  “He was caught inside when the traitors came. He pulled a sword and ran to the wall,” the soldier replied. They murmured in their own tongue for a few seconds, no doubt about him.

  “He’s got the eyes of a warrior,” the woman said, examining Gunnar. “What is your name?”

  “Gunnar,” he said.

  “‘Gunnar’?” she asked. “Where’s a name like that come from?”

  “The kingdoms beneath the Mountains of Ice, west of the Great Grass,” he informed her. “And who might you be?”

  Yestin stiffened next to him.

  “I am Kerensa, Queen of the Starthi,” she replied, smiling at his forwardness. The words rolled off her tongue casually, not at all like Gunnar would have expected from a queen.

  “Well, could you tell me what’s going on here? Both the people in black and your guys in blue wear the same symbol,” Gunnar remarked.

  “Civil war, I’m afraid,” she said, sadness darkening her face. “My husband’s son, Ythell, was unwilling to wait for his father to die. He has decided to take Starth for his own.” She sighed heavily. “And he has succeeded.”

  “Not your son?” Gunnar asked.

  “His first wife’s child. She died years ago,” said Kerensa.

  “And Wind took long enough to do it, the frigid bitch!” the teenager declared. Gunnar noticed the young woman looking him over with hungry eyes.

  “Turee, enough. Go see to your father,” Kerensa ordered.

  The girl grumbled, picked up her dog, and disappeared up into one of the spiral stairwells.

  “Anyway, my husband is ill. He was sick before we were forced from the capital, and the retreat hasn’t helped. He has weeks left, at best,” she said, a tear forming in her eye. “All that remain loyal to him are here. As you can guess, we aren’t many.”

  “Ninety-four,” Yestin clarified.

  “So you can understand why I’m asking you to fight with us,” Kerensa said, a note of pleading in her voice. “It might not make a difference, but every sword is appreciated.”

  “You really think you can hold them off?” Gunnar asked.

  “Ythell has declared no quarter for his enemies. There is no chance of negotiation or surrender,” she explained, “especially not for us. He hates me and my daughter with a passion, and he hates his father for marrying me. Whether we can win or not, we have to fight. What little chance exists is our only chance.”

  The honest pain in her face struck him, but so did cold logic. There was no way out of this, not with the keep surrounded. If what she said was true, the army outside would kill him, whether he agreed to fight or not. There really wasn’t much choice.

  “Well, I’d rather die with a
sword in my hand than sitting around helpless,” he said.

  A faint smile crossed Kerensa’s lips.

  “Get him a shield, Yestin,” she ordered.

  “And a bow,” Gunnar added.

  “And a bow,” the queen repeated.

  ***

  Kamith crept low, making her way across the slope. The spring woods obscured her shadow as she moved through the falling darkness. Not fifty yards away, a line of soldiers waited in the woods, just out of bowshot of the keep. They were on the slope descending to the Mother River valley, making sure nobody tried to escape to the thick forest that covered the slopes.

  The same forest covered Kamith as the light faded. Her eyes scanned, looking for some gap, some weakness in the lines, but none emerged. The attackers had ringed the fortress and now waited, armed and ready.

  A twig snapped under her foot. In response, a soldier’s head shot up. The man shouted something in his own language and walked a dozen steps towards her, torch held high. Kamith ducked behind the trunk of a large maple, hand on her sword. A fight now wouldn’t be good. She’d left her chain-mail at her hidden camp, knowing the rattling of the metal links would’ve made stealth impossible. Her only protection now was the thin leather of her traveling clothes.

  The man stomped back to his fellows, grumbling. She released a heavy breath and moved back into the woods, crossing a section of steep slope onto a short ridge that extended east, away from the keep. The fires of the besieging army faded as she made her way through the forest. She wouldn’t be getting Gunnar out this way.

  ***

  Shouting awoke Gunnar. He didn’t understand the words, but it came again and again, insistent. He sat up in the stable, empty since the prior day’s cavalry fight. The straw had made a decent bed, but it smelled awful. Hopefully, the rain pounding down on the wooden roof and leaking into the stall would do away with the stench.

  “On your feet, man of the west!” he heard Yestin shout as he sprinted across the bailey.