A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  Piers ‘Bronwyn read) had been subjected to the ignominious execution traditionally reserved for traitors, but not carried out in fact for nearly a century: he had been broken on the wheel. Each of his limbs, arms and legs, had been broken by a man wielding an iron pipe. Broken systematically and thoroughly. So pulverized were the bones that Piers’s arms and legs could be threaded in and out through the spokes of a giant wagon wheel like ribbons. He was left this way until he was on the verge of death from exposure, since the broken limbs are not intrinsically mortal, this took many days; he was then beheaded and quartered. The remains were burnt and the ashes scattered on unhallowed ground. Piers’s family was put to death as well. ‘Bronwyn began to have difficulty comprehending a disaster on such a personal scale: Aunt Sooky? Her cousins? Little Truro? Wigan’s new baby? Mercifully, her brain began shutting some doors.) So were the household staff and servants. The family of Monzon, like Piers’s army, effectively no longer existed.

  And still Payne was not yet satisfied. Though this act of terrorism caused the barons’ opposition to collapse, to assure himself of this, Payne ordered the executions of any whom he had suspected of opposing him, or even of supporting or sympathizing with the opposition. It is the beginning of a reign of terror as both entire families and their servants are included in the holocaust. It is a reign of terror that is as yet ongoing as she reads, though the newspaper has very carefully avoided that label. It is clear that Ferenc has unoppossed control of Tamlaght and that Payne has unoppossed control of Ferenc. Yet...for some reason the coronation, to her great surprise, has not yet taken place. Probably Payne considers it a mere formality, with the princess gone and most likely dead. The ceremony is scheduled for a month from now ‘she glances at the top of the paper for the date: it is only yesterday’s!). It doesn’t really mean anything: Payne is right if he thinks it an insignificant formality. Bronwyn’s ravenous mind now has something to chew on during the remainder of her journey back to Blavek.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  YET MORE REUNIONS

  Bronwyn finds Blavek to be greyer and bleaker than she has remembered. Of course, the city is always grey and bleak and certainly at its greyest and bleakest in the winter, when the colorless sun jealously drains any remaining fugitive hues from stone and pavement, until Blavek is as stark and cold as a linoleum-block print. But she has already experienced eighteen Blavekian winters, so the city’s greyness and bleakness ought not to be anything for her to remark upon. Perhaps she is now seeing it through a dense new filter of experience and expectation; seeing it through an overlay of prejudicial knowledge in much the same way she might look at an old acquaintance whom she knows has a fatal disease. If she has learned anything in the past weeks, it might be the lesson of caution. The last thing she ought to do, she realizes, is to march up to the front gate of the palace and loudly announce, “This is the Princess Bronwyn and I want Payne Roelt’s head immediately and no nonsense, thank you very much!” No, that would probably be the unwise thing to do. She needs to maintain a degree of anonymity. If she has any one advantage, it is that not a living soul in the city is aware that she is alive. And there is probably no one outside Palace Island who would recognize her on sight. It is not much of an advantage, admittedly, but it is all that she has so it won’t do to use it incautiously.

  She decides that what she needs to do is to assume a kind of protective coloration. Blending into the background, as it are, she can then learn what she can learn, and then act upon that knowledge. She would have to keep her inborn impatience under tight rein. Haste would not just make waste, haste would make a dead princess.

  With her newfound employment experience, she now has a trade, she reminds herself with no little feeling of pride, she has no difficulty in procuring a job. She becomes night dishwasher in the kitchen of a small hotel not far from the palace. It is an ideal situation for her: satisfactory meals and a small, but clean, cubbyhole for sleeping are provided in addition to a meager wage. Working nights leaves the bulk of the daylight hours available for espionage. Little effort is needed for that; most of what she learns during the first week she picks up from the newspaper, or from keeping her ears open on the street corners. In actuality, the latter are by far the more accurate and unbiased source of news since it is clear that the Intelligencer is going out of its way to avoid outright criticism of the new regime. Yet neither can it flatly contradict what people can see with their own eyes. It takes some effort for her to refine a nugget of genuine information from a dozen pages of closely set sycophantic raw ore, but knowing what to look for she can read it as clearly as a telegrapher reading code. What cannot be hidden is that Tamlaght is on the verge of collapse. The market has fallen catastrophically in the past month, plummeting since the initiation of Payne’s pogrom against the barons. A crown is worth only a fraction of the value it held when she left Blavek. When she began her job she was pleased at the seemingly large wage she was offered...until she tried to buy something. She was given five times what Mimsey had paid, but then prices are now ten times higher. Her money is worth only a fraction of what it had been. And prices are increasing almost daily. She is fortunate to have had room and board included with her job. In another week, her pay would not have purchased a stale cracker. There had been major crop failures and though it might not be entirely rational or fair, the blame for these is laid at the feet of the regime. To the simpler people of Tamlaght, to whom the royal family are next to Musrum Himself, and probably far more real, a successful harvest is as much due to clement weather and skillful farming as to the benevolent graces of the king. If he wants the autumn markets to be overflowing with agricultural bounties, then they will be. It is obvious to the Tamlaghtan farmer that so far as the present king ‘the fact that Ferenc is not yet legally possessor of that title doesn’t matter) is concerned, the farms of Tamlaght can just dry up and blow away. The poor harvest is naturally reflected in the increased prices in the city, inflating the crown even further. The weather has been terrible, even for this time of the year. Paradoxically, the temperatures have been slightly above normal which, one would think, would be welcome. Anything that would delay the onslaught of the bitter Tamlaghtan winter would be ordinarily embraced enthusiastically; however, the above-freezing temperatures transformed the expects heavy snows to heavy rains. It has been a constant deluge since the day Bronwyn has returned. There has been disastrous flooding all through the south plains and landslips all through the north. This wouldn’t have happened under the regime of the old king, either, people tell themselves. The rains contaminated water supplies and in a nation with primitive, if not actually nonexistent, sciences of medicine, hygiene and sanitation, plagues began to spread in the city and towns. There is terror, famine, sickness and poverty and it is all the fault of a new king who has made Musrum turn His great back on Tamlaght and its people.

  To make matters worse, Crotoy decided to ignore the rigors of mounting a campaign in the winter and invades the northern border country in force. This is the most recent development among the catastrophes piling upon unfortunate Tamlaght, and Bronwyn follows its course as closely as the newspaper allow. Much is made of Ferenc’s immediate and vigorous defense...it is clear that her brother is trying to make the most of this chance to gain at least a little public esteem. An army is mounted and sent north with immense fanfare. For a time it seems as though the people are finally being roused from their sullen stupor, given a common, popular cause and an effective leader to rally round. Bronwyn finds the change in temperament reflected in her work. For a week there had been very little for her to do, since people no longer have either the money or inclination to eat in a restaurant or to stay in a hotel, in fact, she has begun to fear for the future of her employment. Now, ever since the Crotoyan hostility and the departure of the Grand Army of Tamlaghtan Defense, she is washing as many or more dishes than ever.

  But the euphoria doesn’t last. The ragged remnant of the army staggers back to the capital with a tale of ignomin
ious and total defeat. Ferenc had wildly underestimated the number of the enemy, in spite of accurate intelligence to the contrary, and had sent to the border scarcely half the force that would have been necessary to repel Crotoy’s invasion. If the truth be known, Ferenc had been more afraid of being without the immediate presence of his army than he had been of any remote threat offered by Tamlaght’s neighbor to the north. A truth Bronwyn knew and few others suspected.

  The people react to this final disaster with typically Tamlaghtan fatalism, retreating into a sullen gloom like children whose parents have inexplicably and unfairly punished them. This past fortnight has not by any means been the brightest in Tamlaght’s history. Bronwyn decides that she must finally do something active before her country literally collapses around her, pinning her beneath its helplessness and inertia like a wounded elephant fallen upon some hapless pygmy.

  But do what? She has neither friend nor ally in the city...at least not that she knows of. She begins a systematic elimination of the barons: where are they? None remain in the city, none, in fact, are within a hundred miles of Blavek. All have retreated to enclaves as far as possible from Payne Roelt’s Guards. Any barons who remain in the city are there permanently in the grimmest sense of the word. Or so she thinks. It is only a casual comment in the Intelligencer ‘“...perhaps sharing a cell in the Iron Tower with the infamous Baron Milnikov...”) that made her aware of the possible proximity of Baron Sluys Milnikov of Graustark.

  A search through the back numbers of the newspaper kept stacked in the hotel lobby enables her to piece together the baron’s recent history. like half a dozen of his peers, Milnikov had been arrested and summarily imprisoned. Unlike his fellows, however, Milnikov has so far escaped execution. The reasons for this are unclear and Bronwyn can only speculate, basing her conclusions on the vaguenesses and innuendoes the Intelligencer permits itself and what little factual knowledge she can remember concerning the baron. Unlike the other barons, who are, or were, fairly solid landowners, as well rooted to their respective landscapes as any oak or ancient castle keep, Milnikov is an adventurer. Although he has many fine homes, including one with his large stables on the outskirts of the city, he is content to leave the running of his estates to the more capable hands of his caretakers and tenants, in fact, more than one of his people had been born on the Milnikov land and had grown to adulthood without once having seen his landlord. Milnikov is, in a word, a rogue. He has seen the wide world; he has dabbled in every romantic and adventurous profession, from mercenary to merchant, from slaver to pirate ‘so it is said). When Bronwyn had been much younger, there had even been a series of poenig one-sheets, which could be folded twice by the purchaser and trimmed to make an eight-page booklet, detailing in lurid prose the baron’s incredible and improbable adventures. She had eventually, with some regret, come to realize that these were almost wholly fictitious ‘with a cynical part of her brain even hinting that the baron himself had most likely reaped a healthy percentage from their sale, which was, in fact, the case).

  While he certainly is not the best of the barons, considered as either a landlord or a member of the House, by any imaginable means, he is probably the best known. ‘Piers Monzon, it must be pointed out, for all the popularity and respect he had commanded, was not particularly familiar to the general public.) He is virtually a folk hero, on a par with such historical and semi-mythical characters as the Iron Duck, the Headless Knight of Grand Fenwick, Blue Rupert and the Sponge-cat or Sommerby the Pirate Queen. Which all went toward explaining why he had not yet suffered the same fate as many of the other barons. Even Payne Roelt hesitated before ordering the execution of a man so dear to the hearts of several million simple peasants. While the common citizen might be horrified by the fact of the murders of many of the barons and their families ‘after all, there were women and children involved), it is also true that those murders were of a class figuratively, literally and legally above their own, a class that in fact and for all practical purposes owned the lower one. Baron Milnikov, however, in spite of his title, represented exactly that supralegal freedom that was the canvas upon which the dreams of the lower and middle classes are painted. It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that Payne might be hoping to seduce the baron to his side. There are indeed certain qualities of temperament and philosophy they appear to share, even if the applications of those qualities differed. But perhaps those differences are too subtle for Payne to appreciate: that it is the application that is important, not the similarity of material. Anyone can possess oil paints and brushes, but mere possession alone does not make a Ludek Lach-Szyrma.

  Bronwyn is convinced that if anyone can help her, it would be the infamous Baron Milnikov. But would he? An even larger and more pertinent question is: can he? Even if he is willing to help her how can he do it from the Iron Tower? She is quite familiar with that landmark though perhaps not so intimately as its more luckless tenants have been. It is highly, and rightfully, regarded as escape-proof and its three hundred and fifty years of unviolated existence scrupulously bear out that reputation. A few months earlier she would have dismissed the idea of the baron’s escape, but the second thing her recent experiences have taught her is that not much is actually impossible, improbable or implausible, certainly; but for an event to possess odds of infinity to one against, well, that is impossible. She would have to see.

  The first order of business is to try to get a message to the baron. She wrings her brain like a sponge for even a drop of useful information about the arrangements of the Tower. The only things she can remember concern the details of the intense security, which kicks a brace or two from beneath her shakily propped-up spirits.

  One afternoon, when the rain has abated to a mere freezing drizzle, she strolls to the infamous prison. It is located upstream from Pordka Park, above the falls of the Moltus River. Bronwyn has to cross the little footbridge spanning the canal that cuts the isthmus connecting the city with the mainland, then make a long uphill hike along a path full of treacherously muddy switchbacks. She sees no one else once she reaches the deserted park above the falls. The weather really isn’t the reason for the desertion: that is more or less its normal condition. Nor is it the fault of the falls, they are certainly spectacular enough. The Tamlaghtan personality simply isn’t predispossessed to admiring scenery, especially scenery that requires some physical effort to appreciate. They can’t see any point to it. The only other reason for visiting the park is a rather bizarre statue of Shahalzin Pordka that also fails to tempt curiosity.

  A path leads from the long-untended garden that surrounds the Pordka statue to the Iron Tower, the square top of which she can see looming above the treetops, blurred by the drifting mists.

  The Fortress of Kaposvar, to give the Iron Tower ‘which isn’t even truly a tower, let alone made of iron) its proper name, is one of the most curious specimens of those formidable masses that arose in Tamlaght’s violent past. It has a fine feudal aspect, lacking only knights in its vaulted hall and ladies in long brocaded dresses at its arched windows, and archers and crossbowmen at its machicolations, its battlemented galleries, at the embrasures, mangonels, portcullis and drawbridge. Its massive stonework is still intact, but the warden in his modern uniform, the soldiers with their up-to-date weapons, the warders and turnkeys who no longer wear the parti-colored costume, half green, half orange, of the old days, strike a false note in the midst of all the ancient magnificence. It is in this donjon that the Baron Sluys Milnikov is being held.

  To consider a rescue is unreasonable, no doubt, for the princess does not even know in what part of the building the prisoner lay, nor has she given any thought at all as to how she and the Baron could safely escape the country. Perhaps it is fortunate that her ignorance is complete in this matter. Has she known more, she might have recoiled before the difficulties, to say nothing of the impossibilities, of the enterprise.

  Any escape from the Tower has up to then been considered impossible, and with good reas
on. The Iron Tower occupies one side of a rocky terrace. When leaning over the parapet of this terrace, one’s eye plunges into a large, deep gulf, whose rugged sides, covered with thick entanglements of creepers, are absolutely perpendicular. At the bottom roars the rushing waters of the Moltus River. Nothing overhangs the wall; there is not a step to enable anyone to ascend or descend, not a prominence to seize hold upon in any part of it; nothing but the vertical lines, smooth, eroded and irregular, which mark the oblique cleavage of the rocks. In a word, it is an abyss that attracts, fascinates and has never returned anything dropped into it. Above the abyss rises one of the side walls of the Tower, pierced with a few windows giving light to the cells on the different floors. Were a prisoner to lean out of one of these openings ‘if he was not prevented from doing so by heavy iron bars), he would recoil with terror, seized with a vertigo that threatened to drag him into the void below. And if he fell? His body would be dashed to pieces on the rocks at the bottom, then swept away by the irresistible torrent of the Moltus.

  The front of the Tower, the side opposite that which overlooks the gorge, possesses the single entrance, or exit, to the donjon: a massive iron door that is perpetually and heavily guarded. To leave the Tower by that door would, assuming one has gotten past whatever obstacles lay on its further side, entail avoiding the several Guards posted outside, at either end of the drawbridge, and passing through another locked and guarded gate, this one in the spike-topped wall surrounding both Tower and moat.