The door to the townhouse opened and Rosheen groaned audibly when the dwarf stepped out. She had spent enough unwanted hours with him and the pipe he was now filling. She hovered off the training post and then realized she had nowhere to go. Damn all cities!
Fafnir gave her a polite nod, which she ignored, then turned his eyes on Flyn who had given up trying to thwack away with his staff and now stood inspecting the blade of the massive sword that received the second half of his daily hours.
“Still a fine blade,” Fafnir said as he approached. The strange lilting of his accent made Rosheen’s fingernails grow.
“Still?” Flyn asked.
“Well cared for,” Fafnir gestured appreciatively at the sword with his pipe. “Given how old it is.”
“You will not find any notches in the blade on my account,” Flyn said bitterly.
Fafnir seemed to find that very funny and let loose a smoke filled chuckle. “No, no. I very much doubt it.”
Flyn’s comb rose off his head and visibly darkened. He turned towards the dwarf, feathers almost quivering and looked ready to strike him. Rosheen was suddenly very glad she stayed. Never seen a dwarf beheaded.
“Meaning?” Flyn asked.
“Meaning,” Fafnir said nonchalantly, “that steel is as strong now as the day it was forged. Very difficult to put a nick in it. I had forgotten how sound it was.”
“You have seen this sword before?”
“Not since the day I gave it to Coalspur,” Fafnir tucked the pipe into his teeth and looked wistfully at the blade.
“You?”
“Oh yes. He bade me craft it when he became Grand Master. Near two years before I was done. May I?” The dwarf held out his hands.
“Oh,” Flyn relaxed and handed the sword over. “Of course.”
Rosheen’s shoulders fell. Looks like you are going to survive this day after all, you smelly dwarf.
Fafnir inspected the blade with his hands and his eyes, his expression joyful and a little awed. Meeting a long lost friend.
“It is truly a marvel, Master Fafnir,” Flyn said, clearly trying to make amends for his hasty temper. The dwarf stared a moment longer then handed the blade back.
“I thank you,” he said with a small bow. His thanks is not for the praise, but for the chance to hold the weapon again. Rosheen forgot her hatred for a moment.
“Well,” Fafnir said with a deep sigh. “I must be on my way. Ingot and I have many miles to travel before we may go home again.”
He is leaving?! “You are leaving?!”
“My goods are needed.”
“But,” Rosheen could not control her stammer, “but what about Padric?”
A glimmer of regret crossed the dwarf’s eyes. “The boy is capable. If he is alive, then he will no doubt keep himself safe.”
Oh no, I still hate you.
Rosheen cast daggers at his back long after he was out of sight. She could not seem to take her eyes off the gate, afraid to look away. She had never liked the dwarf, and those ill feelings had soured to outright disdain when he took her captive. But now that he was gone, she was frozen. Her world shrank to the courtyard and the wall and the gate leading out into the terrible clamor of Black Pool. Only there was no Black Pool, there was only the stone arch and the vines crawling across it and the swollen wood of the door beneath. There was only the space that Fafnir had just vacated, and he was her last connection. If she looked away, if she dared blink than what thin tether remained might break, and her last link to Padric would be lost.
“I am sorry, my lady.” Flyn’s voice.
She turned sharply, looking away from the gate as quickly as she could, snapping the foolish hope she invented and breaking her heart. “You are sorry? Do you even know why you apologize…because I do not! For which of these grievous lack of deeds do you feel remorse? I asked! I asked for help! I never need help…and I need help! He is out there. He is out there because of me and I swore to take care of him and the last time I saw him…the last time…why will none of you help me?!” She flew right into Flyn’s face, the tears she held back threatening to engulf her. “You train out here with your stick and your sword, when you should be practicing with a quill and parchment! You are not knights! You are councilors and speechmakers! You are useless and you sit idly by when earnestly asked for aid! There is a savage threat out there, running free, killing and burning without restraint or challenge. The dwarf told you I spoke true and still you do not stand. You are cowards!”
Flyn said nothing. His face was full of anger, but it was not directed at her. She followed his gaze over her shoulder and found Sir Corc staring at them.
“Bantam Flyn,” he said evenly. “Where is Pocket?” And when he did not get an immediate answer, “Flyn!”
“At the stables,” the squire replied, his expression unchanged. “With Old Lochlann.”
“Get him,” the knight said. “And then the two of you go to the chandler’s under Ten Ferries Bridge. There will be a message for me. Bring it back here.”
Rosheen felt the squire linger and look at her, as if waiting for absolution, but she had eyes only for the older coburn. When they were alone, she spoke.
“You heard?”
Sir Corc nodded.
“Good. Then you know what I think of you.”
He regarded her for a long moment, his face impassive. “Come with me,” he said at last and was out the gate without looking to see if she followed.
She did.
It was late morning, and the streets heaved with all manner of dusty traffic. The poor and bedraggled mixed with the perfumed and powerful, every one of them a prisoner in the unnatural patterns they believed were necessary to survive in this hive of cramped filth. Rosheen had been in Black Pool barely a week and already she wanted nothing but to flee its walls, its roofs, its gutters, its canals, leave it all behind before she was smothered under a mountain of shingles, cobblestones and masonry. She would find a grove, an orchard, even just a field and she would breathe deeply. Invite the clean air, the flowing water, the living world back into her body and hold it inside until she shuddered with exquisite relief. But all of that would have to wait until she discovered where this coburn was taking her.
She wanted to laugh at her own desperation as she followed Sir Corc through damp, fish-reeking alleys and over pitted bridges spanning noxious waterways. The multitudes in the streets made way for the knight’s broad shouldered advance, jostling one another to get out of his purposeful path. Soon, they came to a decrepit square surrounded by leaning buildings, the crumbling bricks seemingly held together by the vines that covered them. At the center of the square stood a small, chipped fountain covered in wet, dark mold. The water still flowed freely from a nearly headless statue carved in the likeness of a peeing clurichaun. Lying on the rim of the fountain, his mouth open to the statute’s stream and gargling loudly, was the fattest goblin Rosheen had ever seen.
“Muckle,” Sir Corc said as they approached. “Is it arranged?”
The gargling ceased and the goblin rolled his bulk out from under the flowing water. He reached up and patted the statue’s protruding bare belly. “A fine vintage,” he said with satisfaction and hopped down, retrieving a huge club of knotted wood that was propped against the fountain.
Rosheen looked him over and wondered if she were drunk. He has a fish in his pants. He returned her stare, but incredulity did not fall upon his face as it must have on hers. His thick cheeks parted in an amiable smile.
“Nothing quite like the physical perfection of the piskie to make a body realize just how copious it has become.” He sighed deeply, pouted his lower lip and hung his head, looking down at his enormous paunch.
“We should be off,” Sir Corc told him without sympathy.
“I cannot now,” the goblin whined. “I am not comely enough for such company.”
“Enough of these games, Jester! Can we be off?”
“No!” a hand came up towards the knight, pudgy fingers sp
layed wide. “Do not try and compliment me further. Nothing you say about the strength of my character, my stolid resolve or the great feats of diplomacy, guile and charm I must have undergone to get you this meeting…none of these shall sway me. I am too wounded, too overcome, too--”
This is getting nowhere. “Handsome,” Rosheen broke in.
The hand remained in the air, but the fingers turned and made a slight coaxing gesture.
“And stalwart,” Rosheen continued, keeping her voice genuine while throwing her most bitter look up at the coburn. “And quite clever. Full of natural grace…”
“More about my handsomeness.”
Why me? “Such a fine, regal forehead. A firm…husky strength and an enchanting smile.”
The goblin’s head came up, wearing the only feature Rosheen had not invented.
“I would be most honored,” Muckle said, “if you would accompany me this way.” He motioned down a narrow lane leading away from the square and offered Rosheen his little finger. She smiled at him and hooked her arm around the offered digit. “You could learn from this one,” Muckle said to Sir Corc as they left the square.
“What made him agree?” the knight asked from behind them.
“Other than my ceaseless badgering?” Muckle replied.
“Who?” Rosheen was tired of this mystery.
Muckle’s voice took on the ringing shout of some pompous herald. “Only the most elusive and well-guarded figurehead in the history of Black Pool! Only the most influential individual in the city today! The singular body who might reasonably be said to govern the teeming masses that live betwixt these not so fair walls! None other than…” Muckle put the end of his club to his lips and threw forth a terrible imitation of a trumpet, “the Lord of the Pile!”
Rosheen turned and looked back at Sir Corc, demanding answers with her face, but the knight’s face remained a wall. She had agreed to follow in the hope that the knight would lead her to some means of aid, but instead he was serving up a dish of riddles and this preposterous goblin was the cook. Muckle led them through the city, keeping up a steady stream of stories and anecdotes about every structure they passed, but Rosheen had no ears for him.
She had heard of this Lord of the Pile. A goblin leader who had risen to prominence within the last hundred years, and guided the dealings of Black Pool with a long reaching, yet invisible hand. Her mind went back to that harrowing night in the wilds near Hog’s Wallow, and she remembered the leader of the Red Caps and his minions cursing the Lord of the Pile as vehemently as the gnome king. That level of enmity could not have been lightly earned and Rosheen could not help but wonder what manner of ruler they were walking so swiftly to meet.
They came to the outskirts of the city where large livestock yards sprawled in the shadow of the walls. Muckle made for a long building with low walls of stacked stone nestled under great wooden posts supporting a thatched roof. The building was open to the air between the stone wall and the eaves of the roof, and the wind coming through the structure carried the sounds and smells of swine. There was no door, only a wide gap in the wall beneath the apex of the roof, guarded by no less than ten warriors of Middangearder stock, their already large frames swollen by fur cloaks and coats of mail. They glowered darkly from behind their flaxen beards as Muckle approached. He leaned forward and growled low in his throat at each of them in turn.
“It’s how they greet each other in their own land,” he told Rosheen with a wink. The burly warriors did not appear amused.
“We are here to meet with the Lord,” Sir Corc told them.
“Surrender your weapons,” one of the men commanded, his sing-song inflection similar to Fafnir’s.
“I bear no arms,” Sir Corc replied and Rosheen fought the urge to look down at the foot long spurs sprouting from the back of the knight’s feet. A coburn is always armed. Another of the men stepped forward and reached brusquely for Muckle’s ribbon-festooned cudgel. The goblin snatched it away from his reach, launching his voice and pointing finger at the man.
“Seventy years bad luck to whosoever touches me club,
A strange hand reaches out and pulls back merely a stub!
Your teeth will loosen, your hair will grow sparse
And blood will flow freely from nose, gums and arse!
Be ye warned, whether man, girl or vicious mob,
Such is the fate of all that touches my Pompous Knob!”
Muckle had grown louder and more incensed with every line and by the time he was finished, he was stretched up on his toes as close to the tall warrior’s face as he could get, one finger poked firmly into the man’s chest. The Middangearder stared back at him in shock and confusion, trying to lean as far away as he could without looking a craven to his fellows.
Muckle burst out laughing in the man’s face. “I am only jesting! Here,” he held the cudgel forth. “You can have it.”
The man opted not to take the offered item and they were ushered inside. Four of the warriors escorted them down the central lane, while on either side countless pigs snuffled and squealed from behind the wooden fences of their pens. Muckle greeted several by name as they made their way to the end of the lane where a small group of figures looked into a wide enclosure that lay across the back of the building. Inside this pen, the largest hogs had been kept separated, and the shortest of the figures was pointing to individual animals.
“That one. Yes…and that one there. And there, no…the one with the black face, yes.”
The speaker was a goblin, dressed in a simple black robe trimmed with grey fox fur. As he spoke, the human swineherds jumped to his bidding, wrangling the pigs he indicated and leading them out of the pen into a side enclosure where a dozen other monstrous hogs were already being kept. The goblin finished his selection and turned towards them. Other than a braided beard of white hair dangling from his chin, this was a most unremarkable goblin. Rosheen had passed at least a hundred just like him in the streets getting there.
“My Lord,” Muckle said with a grand bow. “May I present Sir Corc, called the Constant. Knight Errant of the Order of the Vibrant Spurt.”
“Intriguing,” the Lord of the Pile said, looking directly at Sir Corc, his tone neither mocking nor apologetic. “I thought coburn to be prickly creatures. Easily slighted even if they lack a knight’s vows. But this one,” his voice pointed at Muckle. “He insults your order and yet I hear no reproach. I see no anger.”
“I have known Muckle a long time,” was all Corc offered for explanation.
“I feel as if I have, too,” the Lord said wearily. “He has come to me with tedious regularity of late. Have I grown so esteemed that I warrant a visit from emissaries of both your Order and Toad Holm?”
“Your Lordship is much loved,” Muckle said.
“Much scrutinized,” the other goblin replied, his eyes still on Sir Corc. “Tell me Sir, what do you seek from me that you would send so persistent an envoy to plead an audience?”
“Many audiences have been requested of you,” Sir Corc said evenly. “And refused. Only you can say why you granted this one.”
The Lord of the Pile smiled thinly. “Perhaps I seek some recognition of legitimacy.”
“That would not be for my Order to decide. The Seelie Court--”
The Lord held up a hand calmly. “The Seelie Court no longer has such power. If Irial Elven-King had anything to say regarding my governance he would have done so by now. I take his silence for acceptance, and any disapproval, if it exists, is lacking in sufficient strength to enforce it. Now, please. Tell me why you have come.”
He is so calm.
“As you say,” Sir Corc replied. “I represent the Knights of the Valiant Spur. Our Grandmaster and the oath we take ensure we keep a vested interest in the powers of this isle. I have standing instructions to speak with you and take your measure. You have refused us for years. There was no reason to suspect you would not again. Personally, I do not care if you choose to speak to me or not, but I do follow
the orders that have been given to me.”
More than six words. Impressive.
The Lord of the Pile must have thought so also, for his thin smile deepened. “And yet your actions betray your words. If you possessed such lingering apathy you would not have allied yourself with our fat go-between here.”
Muckle’s face jerked in overly acted shock and he looked from the Lord up to Rosheen and back again. “My Lord, manners! It is not polite to call her fat. I find her to be quite svelte…shapely certainly, but in all the right places and…”
“Please, enough” the Lord said as if someone were filling his goblet. He took a deep breath and looked up, fixing Muckle with a hard stare. “I ask you, do not bandy witless words at me. For all your foolery I know what you truly are Muckle Gutbuster. And I fear it not. Now,” he turned back to Sir Corc. “You said that you were instructed to…take my measure, was it? And since I would not presume to imagine what that would entail from a group of chivalrous coburn, I wonder if you will tell me what these standing instructions require so we can bring this meeting to a desired end.”
“The Grand Master wants to know if your designs extend beyond the walls of Black Pool,” Sir Corc said bluntly. “If the agreements you have made with the Raider Kings of Middangeard are about more than trade. He also wants me to determine if--”
“I am a Red Cap?” The Lord offered.
Sir Corc did not blink. “Are you?”
The goblin folded his hands into the sleeves of his robe and looked at the ground. His eyes tracked slightly as if reading something written in the rushes. When he looked up again, he spoke in measured tones as if he expected his audience to memorize his words.
“I have ruled this city peaceably for over a century. The Raider Kings with whom I originally treated are long dead, their grandsons now stand on the decks of the ships which guard our port and protect the merchant vessels that transport all manner of goods to the markets for the good of the populace. Any designs of conquest would have to be refreshed with each passing generation of man and would spell the end of all I have struggled to accomplish here.
The Exiled Heir (Autumn's Fall Saga) Page 28
