Fool's Errand

by David G. Johnson

  “Priest Duncan, the council is preparing to meet with you and the leaders of the expedition. You have one hour to rise, prepare yourselves, and eat a quick breakfast before you are presented before the council. Would you like me to escort you?”

  “No, lad, I have not been away from Stonehold so long as to have forgotten the way. I used to visit my da’ when he served on the council before Farris Stonebender took over as minister of mining. Farris is my da’s cousin, you know. Our family is quite well known in the ministry of mining.”

  “As you say, Priest Duncan.”

  “By the way, Geblig, did the council say who the leaders are that they are expecting? Our little group is more like an autonomous collective than any formal hierarchy.”

  Duncan thought over how true that was. Goldain was the nominal leader, but everyone looked to Gideon and Tropham as the military commanders. Of course, in the Durgak Council’s eyes, he himself was the official ambassador of Stonehold in the foray. Xyer Garan seemed to believe he was in charge, even if he was the only one who thought so. Duncan doubted the council realized how truly convoluted this simple question was.

  “No, sir,” answered Geblig, flashing Duncan a sympathetic smile. “I suppose they figured you would know who to bring, which is why they asked me to wake you and let you take it from there. If that will be all, sir, I will take my leave.”

  Duncan nodded and Geblig withdrew. The priest decided he would wake Gideon and Goldain and let them decide who all needed to be present before the council. He sincerely hoped that list wouldn’t include Xyer Garan.

  The last thing Duncan wanted was to be embarrassed by Garan’s behavior in front of his da’s cousin. His da’ was already displeased at Duncan’s pursuit of lifelong service in the priesthood rather than military service followed by joining the family mining business. An embarrassing debacle before the council would no doubt fuel this dissention and be the center of Silvermane family discussions as long as they were here and for a considerable time thereafter.

  With their late arrival, Duncan had slept with the company last night, but Donovan informed him that the family expected him for dinner this evening. He knew this was not merely a request. It was not a meal Duncan looked forward to.

  “We will take myself, Goldain and Thatcher for certain,” Gideon advised when Duncan conferred with him. “And will leave it up you, Melizar, if you wish to accompany us. I would caution you against any use of kashaph while with the council. Durgak are notoriously intolerant of the arcane arts. We should bring Captain Tropham as commander of the Adami troops with us. Doubtless Tropham also has the most experience in diplomacy before dignitaries and councils.”

  “And I assume you were saving the best for last,” Xyer Garan quipped from his place standing in the doorway of their quarters. “No doubt you had no intentions of leaving me out of this little fireside chat. Of course, I am honored to accept your invitation to come along and represent Cyria’s interests. Thanks for asking.”

  Xyer’s charm had not improved much after an evening of Durgak ale.

  “Of course, Sir Garan,” Gideon continued. “We would not dream of excluding you from the council. I know, however, that Cyria rarely has formal interaction with other races, so I would urge that we all defer to Goldain and Tropham in matters of representation in front of the council.”

  Duncan knew that Captain Gideon, as a Parynland paladin with a grandfather sitting on the Paladin Council, had just as much experience dealing with nobility as Goldain or Tropham. Duncan also knew that the mere suggestion that Gideon speak while Garan was expected to remain silent would have been a perceived insult that Garan would never let go unanswered. Unfortunately, the fact that Thatcher was coming along was not lost on the Cyrian.

  “So is it proper decorum to parade street rats before the nobility of other nations?” he said, nodding toward Thatcher. “I was not aware of this custom, or I should have brought a Cyrian urchin or two along to make a good impression before the dwarves.”

  His use of the pejorative reference to the Durgak was without doubt intended on further sowing strife in the group. Duncan counted silently to three in his head and took a deep, cleansing breath to settle his bristling temper threating to break forth upon the rude Cyrian.

  “Brother Garan,” Duncan began in a voice far calmer than he felt. “I realize that this term may be widely used of our people in your land, but as a matter of protocol, we generally find it offensive and prefer you use the proper name of our race instead. That would be Durgak.”

  He added this last bit with particular emphasis and no small amount of condescension. He knew the One Lord called them to be patient and loving toward those who oppose, but his flesh still battled with what his heart knew was right.

  “I shall try to keep that in mind, but you know how forgetful we Adami are.”

  Garan’s tone was dripping with sarcasm and his grin poorly hid his disappointment at once again failing to goad one of the company into an altercation. Hopefully fear of creating an international incident would keep him from using the term dwarf in front of the council, but Duncan was not filled with confidence at that prospect of Xyer Garan exercising restraint.

  “Well,” said Goldain, “if we are done with racial slurs, national insults, and general antagonism, I’d say it’s time for breakfast.”

  Goldain could always be counted on to focus on the important things of life. To Duncan’s surprise, Thatcher exercised a great deal of self-control. He didn’t seem bothered in the least by Xyer’s “street-rat” comments. As they walked toward the dining hall in the rooming house to breakfast, Duncan’s curiosity got the better of him.

  “You did a great job holding onto your emotions there lad,” Duncan said quietly to Thatcher.

  “Pardon?”

  “Just saying, Garan calling you a street-rat back there. That might have raised the dander of lesser men.”

  “Oh, that,” Thatcher laughed. “That is nothing. I have been called a street rat nearly my whole life. I grew up with the term almost since the time I could speak. Nowadays I kind of wear it as a badge of honor.”

  “Not a very flattering badge,” the Durgak priest replied, his brow furrowing as he puzzled through how to turn an insult into a matter of pride.

  “It’s like this, Duncan,” Thatcher continued. “I tend to take things that others mean for derision and embrace them. First off, doing so seems to give the person insulting me considerably more consternation than they expect the insults to cause. That pleases me immensely.”

  “And you intuited this, lad?” Duncan laughed out loud, drawing stares from his companions.

  “Yes, and why is that amusing?”

  “Just that the Great Book of Writings holds a similar wisdom. In the Book of Wisdom, it is written: ‘If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For you will heap burning coals on his head, And the One Lord will reward you.’

  “Sounds about right,” answered Thatcher.

  “The One Lord has given you wisdom beyond your years, lad.”

  “Well, I don’t know about all that, but surviving on the street teaches you a lot of things. I’ve learned there are many kinds of wounds that can be caused by various weapons, but words are harmless if one dons the right mental armor against them.”

  As they drew closer to the dining area, Thatcher slowed his pace to let Priest Duncan slip further ahead leading the way. He liked the unusually loquacious Durgak, but there were some times when Thatcher found his probing questions a little uncomfortable. He was glad Duncan appreciated his philosophy about conflict, but it was best to let the conversation end there before the questions cut too deeply.

  Another area where Thatcher let an insult become a badge of honor was one that he wasn’t yet ready to discuss with the group. His very name was such a case. His real father had been a poor thatcher in Aton-Ri, barely making enough money for the family to survive.

  His mother left them before
Thatcher was old enough to remember her or to miss her absence. He had vague flashes of dark hair and dark eyes that sometimes came to him in his dreams, but he could not even be sure that was she. Just a ghost of a memory remained. Even the memory of his father was all but faded. Thatcher could not even remember his father’s name any better than he could recall his own. Perhaps there was some trick of his mind that kept him from remembering. To remember the names would mean remembering the sadness, and perhaps that was just too much.

  When Thatcher was still just a small boy, his father a well-dressed merchant arrived and called his father to fix the roof of a rich merchant during a terrible rainstorm. Thatcher’s father tried to reason with the merchant that it would be best to wait until the storm had passed. The merchant was insistent, and Thatcher remembered a loud argument and threats from the man that if his father did not come to fix the roof immediately, he would see to it that Thatcher’s dad never worked again.

  His father never returned home that night. In the morning, some officials from the city watch came to his home and told him that his father had fallen from the roof of the merchant’s house and broken his neck. Unfortunately for the family, the father’s fall had damaged some expensive pottery the merchant had in his front garden, so the family’s home was being taken by the merchant to cover the damages. Thatcher would have to leave. A six-year-old boy was now out in the streets with no home, no family, and no name.

  Another youth, a Hobgoblin chats-enash named Ebon, had taken Thatcher under his wing. He and his brother Garrack, another Hobbler boy slightly older and larger than Ebon, had shown Thatcher how to survive in the streets. In the end, however, the Rogues Guild heard about the boy. Since they lived in The Barrows, the guild figured any orphans from that neighborhood belonged to them. Ebon told him he would be fine with the guild, but that if he ever needed help to get word to him.

  Ebon was a few years older than Thatcher and was planning to join up with the Black Blades, an organization of sell-swords who operated out of the warrior’s district of Aton-Ri. Some called them mercenaries, some called them assassins. The result was the same. If you needed hired muscle with no questions asked in Aton-Ri, the Black Blades were who you hired.

  No one knew Thatcher’s real name any more than he did. His father had always called him “boy” as far back as he could remember. Everyone from the officials who had taken his home to the rogues of the guild just kept calling him thatcher’s boy. They meant it as derision, but soon he embraced it.

  “My name is Thatcher,” was his response.

  At first, the thieves could not figure out why the boy would take unto himself such a moniker. Thatcher knew the name was intended as someone more fit for roofing than roguery, but he was bright and determined. He learned the skills more quickly than most and began to outpace the rest of the young rogue apprentices. The other rogues envied and respected his skills and accepted the name he had taken as his nick name.

  To “nick” something was to steal it, and most rogues adopted “thief” names or “nick” names to express something about their character, prowess, or sometimes to show through irony that their skill was beyond description. Most rogues had nicknames they went by, and taking the name Thatcher was in the tradition of ironic names taken by the best rogues of the guild. It was a way of understating his skills. False humility was a skill in and of itself in the guild, so most of his cohorts took it as that and accepted him as Thatcher. It pleased him greatly to know that those who aspired to be great thieves were bested by a mere “Thatcher”.

  After retrieving Tropham from the quarters he had chosen to share with his troopers and gulping down a hasty breakfast, the seven leaders of the caravan headed toward the council chamber. As they approached, Duncan saw Geblig standing outside the chamber doors ready to announce them.

  “Good morning, Priest Duncan, gentlemen,” he said, bowing politely. “I shall announce you at once. If you would kindly wait just a moment.” The young Durgak quickly returned. “The council will see you now,” he said as he opened the doors and ushered them into the council chambers.

  The Great Hall, which housed the high council, was a magnificent display of Durgak stonecraft that never ceased to fill Duncan with awe. It was dug into one of the northern mountains with windows facing south and providing ample lighting. The chamber opened into a huge domed room adorned with intricate dioramas of Durgak history carved in bas-relief along the ceilings. There were stone tables and chairs, both Durgak sized and Adami sized, about the main section as if to house a great meeting of many races and nations. At the far end of the chamber stood a raised dais, and five seats were elevated behind a curving high table. In the circle in front of the dais, there were no chairs but rather an open space where petitioners could stand before the council and be heard. It was to this open circle they were directed.

  Sitting behind the raised table were five distinguished-looking Durgak—the high council of Stonehold. The one in the center chair was advanced in years. He sported a long, flowing white beard, which had he been standing likely would have nearly reached his knees. He had piercing blue eyes and clad in shimmering silver silk robes. Duncan, who was whispering introductions to the company as they approached the central area, informed them this distinguished Durgak was Kenrick Longfather, current chancellor and head of the Stonehold High Council.

  To Kenrick’s right was a Durgak with a full, gray beard and dark brown eyes. He was adorned in the priestly robes of blue and white, and his head was covered with the talith, the prayer shawl used by the priestly followers of the One Lord. Generally, such coverings were only used during times of prayer, but this Durgak, who Duncan introduced to them as Dalwyn Othblest, current high priest of Stonehold, wore it in this council meeting.

  “Duncan,” Gideon whispered, “why is he wearing a talith in a meeting?”

  “It is the custom that the high priest consider their service to the council as something to be approached as a servant of the One Lord, and any counsel they give should be done only after prayer and careful consideration. For this reason, the high priest always wears the talith prayer shawl in the council sessions.”

  Duncan continued his introductions as they approached the council.

  “The Durgak to Kenrick’s left is Field Marshal Guntur Bonecrusher, head of the Stonehold defense force.”

  Guntur had a flaming red beard, already showing some salting of gray intermixed. He had deep green eyes, and wore his beard in a single braid.

  “A single braid marks a Durgak as being in the regular army,” Duncan instructed. “Stonehold regular army troops wear their beards in a single braid while those in the Berserker corps, like my brother Donovon you met yesterday, wear their beards forked in a double braid. Scouts keep their beards trimmed short and generally unbraided.”

  “Wow,” remarked Thatcher, “you can tell all that about a Durgak by their beards?”

  “And a great deal more, laddie,” answered Duncan without further explanation.

  Guntur was wearing sparkling silver plate mail armor of a metal-like few had ever seen. It was a Durium alloy, blended from a rare element highly prized by the Durgak. The Durgak were known for their unmatched armor-crafting skills, taught to them by their patron Malakim, Hadaram. Hadaram was purported to have been the armorer of heaven at one time, and the skills and knowledge passed to the Durgak by their patron were unmatched anywhere in all of Ya-Erets.

  The Durgak to the far right of the chancellor had a medium-length, graying-blond, unbraided beard and brown eyes. He wore a simple black tunic, but around his neck was a heavy metal chain from which hung a large, round medallion with the symbol of two crossed digging picks.

  “That fellow there,” Duncan told them, “is my da’s cousin, Minister Farris Stonebender, the current minister of mining. Mining is the center of Durgak life, so the ministry is in charge of regulating and governing everything having to do with mining for all of Stonehold.”

  The last Durgak to be introduced
to them, sitting to the far left of the chancellor, wore a thin, pointed black chin beard, sported sparkling green eyes, and had a nose that was more pointed and extended than any Durgak the others had seen.

  “That shiny-looking scoundrel there is the minister of commerce, Odon Longnose. He’s the richest merchant in the city.”

  His lavishly multicolored tunic and bundle of golden chains beset with various-colored jewels seemed to confirm this assertion.

  “The Longnose family,” Duncan continued, “have been wealthy merchants as far as the earliest records of Stonehold. There are very few times in the history of the city where a member of the Longnose family has not occupied the seat of the minister of commerce. In fact, it is a Durgak saying of someone who has become wealthy that their ’nose has grown long.’”

  The whispered introductions concluded as they entered the circle before the council. Chancellor Longfather addressed the company.

  “Welcome, Priest Duncan Silvermane. Welcome also to our visitors from the nations to the east and the nations to the west of our city. Your presence honors us.”

  To Duncan’s surprise, even Xyer Garan bowed low with the rest of the company in acknowledgement of the greeting. Perhaps this might not end in a debacle after all.

  “We were informed of your mission a few days ago by mounted courier from Aton-Ri” the chancellor continued. “We have kept the details within the members of the high council and necessary members of the military and diplomatic corps. I assume you have come to discuss the particulars of what assistance we may offer?”

  “I have ordered,” said Field Marshal Bonecrusher, “that Donovan Silvermane of the Third Berserker Company join us as well.” At this moment, Duncan’s brother, Donovan, hurried into the chamber and quickly joined them before the council.

  “My apologies for being late, Your Excellence, but we had a returning company of scouts from the western patrols, and I needed to hear their reports before the meeting. Their discovery will have some bearing, no doubt, on this morning’s proceedings.” The chancellor smiled and acknowledged Donovan’s reason for delay as valid and understandable. He urged Donovan to share his report before they proceeded.