“The Spellmonger,” she answered, dryly. “The one who organized this mummer’s play?”
“Oh. Well, consider it approved,” I said, wiping my hands on my tunic. They were sweaty, for some reason. Probably because I’d just set in motion a new war against the gurvani and their undead masters. People were going to die, now, because of my words. I might be one of them. That sort of thing can lead to sweaty palms.
“Very well,” she nodded, firmly. She closed her eyes and then opened them, again. “It is done. We attack in four days,” she pronounced.
“To be honest, the waiting is starting to get boring,” I grumbled. That earned me a sour look, as she pushed her belly at me.
“Do you really want to have a conversation about patience with a gestating woman?” she demanded.
No, no I did not. I made my apologies and my escape.
I had had enough of femininity for the day. Alas, it was not done with me.
When I returned home to Sevendor Castle, thinking I was safe, I found Sister Bemia, of all people, waiting for me in my tower. Drinking wine. She wasn’t drunk, but she was headed down that river, from the level on the bottle.
“Is there something I can help you with, Sister?”
“I just needed a place to retreat and reflect, someplace private,” she admitted, taking another sip. “You weren’t using the place, so . . . well, I do that, occasionally,” she said, sheepishly. “If I linger in my quarters or the chapel, people can find me. And sometimes a priestess doesn’t want to be found.”
“I understand,” I nodded, hanging up my cloak on a peg by the door. I grabbed a goblet from the shelf and poured a glass for myself. I started to relax – she didn’t seem to need anything from me. I flopped down on the cushioned chair next to the bookcase. I recalled when this was once my bedroom. Mine and Alya’s bedroom. Where Minalyan was born.
“You know that selling that bloody mountain has caused a stir, don’t you?” she asked, casually. “And Their Highnesses visit? And that bloody divine visitation?” the middle-aged nun asked, her voice rising in pitch every time she added a trial. “Trygg herself was standing on our commons. The very real, very divine goddess of motherhood, her bloody self,” she groaned.
I sipped a generous amount before I answered. “I would think that the clergy would welcome such a blessing,” I ventured.
“You’d think the nobility would have learned a thing or two, after having one divine manifestation in his domain,” she frowned. “Now we’ve had . . . seven. And the Everfire.”
“Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to be flooded with pilgrims of Sisu,” I chuckled.
“Trygg is enough!” she snarled. “Now I’ve got to write up the entire thing and submit it to the abbey at Holy Hill, where they’ll send it to the Mother Temple in Sendaria Town. And likely thence to Castabriel,” she said, disgusted.
“If that’s a problem, I can hire—”
“Oh, I’ve already completed it,” she dismissed. “Temple doctrine is to record such a visitation before the next sunrise, to ensure an accurate account. Took me two bottles of wine, but I’ve completed the bloody scroll. It’s what comes next that’s a bother! The Mother Temple sends an investigator to interview everyone on Callidore about what they saw – that’s to keep every villein from claiming Huin took a dump in their privy,” she added, sourly. “Then they have to verify it with the clergywoman who wrote the account, to ensure she’s not lying – death penalty, for that – and confirm with the local lord. That’s you. And you don’t exactly have a sterling reputation for clarity.”
“I think you could get the Princess to give her testament,” I suggested. “She outranks me, and her integrity is beyond fault.”
“That’s a thought,” Bemia sighed, considering it. “She’s the one who’s funding the new shrine. But the Mother Temple won’t authorize me to admit that it’s a true divine visitation, worthy of special consideration, until all the bloody parchment is filled out!”
“You have my sympathies,” I said, raising my glass in salute to her. “I just authorized a bloody war of liberation in the Wilderlands. And a secret raid on the lair of the Necromancer. Probably tipped the kingdom over into an age of bloody chaos.”
She made a sour face. “I’d hate to see the paperwork on that!”
“Let’s hope I’m around afterward to do it,” I replied, gloomily. “I’m doing all of this out of a sense of hope . . . but I can’t help thinking I’m responsible for a lot of needless bloodshed.”
The priestess chuckled, not the reaction I expected. When Alya had first proposed Sister Bemia as the castle chaplain, I’d agreed mostly because I didn’t find her objectionable and Alya wanted it.
But I could see how shrewd my wife had been in her inclusion into our household. Bemia understood the human condition as well as any clergy I’d spoken to, and better than a couple of gods I could name.
“Minalan, you aren’t that important,” she laughed. “Oh, you are – probably the most important man alive right now – but in terms of the tapestry of life you’re but one thread. You intertwine with so many others along the course of your life. What you do or don’t do is affected by what they do and don’t do, true; but as many had an effect on you as you affect others.
“Bloodshed? Who is to blame for that? You . . . or the men who made you who you are? Does not the king, the duke, and the bloody goblins? Aye, and the women, too! Does not your mother bear the responsibility for bringing you into the world? Does not your wife own some portion of blame for every death? Will your daughter understand the sacrifices you’ve made for her?
“Just as you shouldn’t shirk from your responsibilities, neither should you unfairly shoulder those which aren’t yours to bear,” she said, taking a deep sip of her wine.
There was a moment of silence between us as I contemplated her words.
“Sorry,” she said, a moment later. “I didn’t mean to give you a sermon,” she sighed.
“Perhaps I needed to hear one,” I admitted. “And perhaps you are correct. I’m doubting my actions because I’m taking responsibility for them, but I’ve also been forced into this position by others. Even the gods have compelled me, or at least guided me – do they not bear some of the guilt?”
“You’re asking me?” she snorted, rudely. “I don’t know. My mandate is for the spiritual health of the castle folk, not the state of the entire universe. Especially not the gods. Ask them, not me,” she insisted. “Just don’t invite them here, not out in public,” she begged. “That’s just too much drama for an old woman to stand. And far too much paperwork.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Fethkala
The squat, ugly-looking building we were surveying was impressive, in its way.
Considering the people who built it were living in caves a decade ago, it was a decent stab at human-style engineering. A long keep, two stories tall, was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall made of undressed stone. The roof was thatched, not shingled or tiled, making it far easier to catch on fire.
There was a wooden gatehouse, a ditch in front of the wall, and guards who walked its length day and night . . . but there were no crenulations on the wall. There were no fighting decks. There were only two crude wooden towers, one at each end of the long bailey, but they overtopped the wall by no more than twenty feet. The gatehouse had a portcullis, but no postern door – it was the only way into or out of Castle Fethkala.
It was an adequate basic defensive structure, more advanced than a basic pele tower, but that was about it. Its biggest advantage was its size. It could hold a fairly large garrison in its long, low hall, and it did. But it wasn’t designed to protect the ten thousand people in the sprawling camp around it. It was designed to protect the goblins from them.
Encircling the rough fortress was a sprawling series of pathetic huts and tarpaulins under which the humani slaves huddled at night, when their masters were most active. It spread out for half a mile on each side of the ugly cast
le, a vast encampment of institutionalized human misery.
The smell of rotting offal and unwashed humanity mingled with the odor of decomposing corpses left around the camp as a morale booster. Adding to the aroma was Beyond that was the rude rail fence and ditch, with a thorny hedge of some foul nativista shrub that bristled with poisoned thorns. Beyond that were freshly-plowed fields that far exceeded the land the original three freeholds had cultivated. The planting was about to begin, it seemed.
Sandoval, Mavone and I watched the hobgoblin guards with magesight from horseback on a hillock about a half mile away, between the fields and the fence, as the sleepy morning shift came on and the tired night-shift went off guard duty. They all bore a humani-style tabard bearing the vile device of the “lord” of Fethkala, a yellow whip on a dark burgundy field.
As soon as the retiring gurvani sentries departed, Kasari snipers began to get into position, crawling into hastily-built blinds or climbing stealthily into the treetops around the fields. At the proper time, they would ply their great Wilderlands bows and cunningly-built crossbows, their bowstrings silenced, to clear the walls of sentries.
As the sky in the east lightened with the approaching dawn a thick column of smoke began to rise from the eastern horizon, just as planned. The gurvani had a storage depot there, where all of the seed corn was put up away from the starving slaves. The Kasari had managed to set it afire with an alchemical device. Not that they couldn’t have done it with a couple of dry sticks.
Meanwhile, one of our squadrons of Rangers, made up to look like escaped slaves, captured a solitary patrolling gurvan, interrogated him and then allowed him to escape . . . but not before putting the notion in his furry head that the humani scum were raiding the supplies stored there. He ran four miles to report the apparent attack to the nearest large settlement: Fethkala.
I watched the anxious gurvan stumble past the sentries just as the smoke began to really billow in the east.
“At last!” Sandoval muttered. “I was starting to think he’d deserted.”
“It would have been the wiser choice, if the less dutiful,” agreed Mavone.
Fifteen minutes later a squadron of eight human horseman and a dozen gurvani fell hound riders deployed to investigate.
“Their response time is good,” Mavone noted.
“When your seed corn is in danger, it pays to be vigilant,” Sandy agreed.
Those unfortunates galloped off to certain doom. There were a hundred crossbowmen installed in an ambush two miles down the road, just before they would arrive at the burning barn. The warmage detailed to them built a cunning series of glyphfields that slowed them just enough in their charge to allow the iron bolts of the 3rd Commando-led arbalests to shred the sortie to the last living thing.
Less than ten more minutes passed, the sky growing ever lighter, when another sentry ran into the crude castle to report the slaughter. A few moments later another squadron of horse cavalry departed.
“I just love it when they’re cooperative with our plans like that.”
“I think they’ll send more,” Mavone predicted. “If it’s a slave uprising, they need to stomp on it quick. They’ll send in heavy forces.”
Mavone was prescient. Moments later three hundred hobgoblin heavy infantry exited the gate, blowing their short bronze horns belligerently, marching resolutely toward the distant fire. We waited until they were out of sight down the road before we acted.
“I’ve informed the other squads,” Sandy reported to me – since I was nominally in command. “They’re ready.”
“I took their wards down,” Mavone said, helpfully, as he dismounted. He was always very skillful at that sort of work. “And there are no shamans here, that I can see.”
“They’re all up at the Goblin King’s palace in Ganz for a conference,” Sandy reported, as he drew his blackened mageblade and got down on his hands and knees. “Some inspirational speech, or ecclesiastic conference, or something like that. That was purposefully in the planning,” he added.
“Then let’s get to work,” I said, resolutely. “We have a long day ahead of us.”
First, we engaged warspells of stealthiness, got as close to the gatehouse as possible, and then thickly peppered the entryway with berserker glyphs. Those cause a fundamental shift to your perceptions and judgement, and encourage you to attack pretty much anything your mind perceives as a threat. Including the goblin you just had breakfast with.
Just beyond that, we filled a section with spells that would encourage severe doubt and anxiety, encouraging whomever stumbled into the glyphs to flee from danger. That was to keep slaves from being easily cowed into helping with the emergency, and convince any gurvani that running out into the thousands of human slaves was a poor idea, and to run back through the berserker field in case they missed any glyphs.
The plan was to get the next wave of gurvani to slay as many of themselves as they could, saving us the trouble. We were just finishing up when they helped us test that theory. Not infantry, this time. Slave drivers preparing to order their charges to work.
A company of sixty goblin overseers bearing Fethkala’s repugnant device exited the castle to head for the fields and stumbled sleepily into the berserker zone. Within moments a riot had broken out.
The hobgoblins who had just retired from night duty were roused to put them into order . . . and then they stumbled into it, as well. Enough of the smaller goblins got pushed into the fright zone to make it seem like a rout. Screams, warcries, and shouts of terror filled the morning air and roused hundreds of nearby humans from their squalid tents. A crowd began to gather, in front of the gatehouse, as they watched their masters feud. The entire thing was funny as hell, in a bloody sort of way.
By the time the sun was scaling the eastern peaks, the roadway was stained with blood and littered with bodies, while terrified goblins whimpered and fought on the landing in front of the gatehouse. I made a silent count against our intelligence reports. There were maybe a hundred defenders left in the castle who weren’t injured or imprisoned for rioting.
“I think now would be a good time for us to go ahead and ruin the place,” Mavone offered, as two enraged hobgoblins charged against five cowering gurvani.
“Let me,” Sandoval said, drawing his new warwand. It was a multi-purpose tool he’d spent a few days in Sevendor crafting, and he was eager to test it.
The hedge at the edge of the camp withered under his magic, and the rail fence crumbed into sawdust as he strode over the narrow ditch toward the gate. Mavone and I followed him, and we were quickly joined by a half a squad of light cavalry troopers from the Third Commando, when we motioned them forward. They helpfully silenced the two sentry goblins guarding the gate and pushed it open. The Kasari snipers began to fire their silent bows against any defenders in their range, adding further chaos to the situation.
Sandy looked around at the squalid camp in disgust and got visibly angrier as he quietly strode up the main path betwixt the castle and the camp.
There was a flash, and the gatehouse behind the warring gurvani was suddenly on fire, from its wooden frame to its thinly-thatched rooftop. The compound went into another panic as a deep bronze bell was struck to alert the defenders of the crisis. That seemed to amuse the growing crowd of slaves onlooking. With the overseers late for getting their human slaves out to the fields, there was nothing for them to do but stand around.
“How shall we approach them?” Mavone asked, thumbing toward the crowd of slaves.
“I think we should introduce ourselves,” I suggested, nudging my way forward toward the knot of chained human slaves watching the gurvani try to fight the fire.
“Excuse me,” I said, loudly, from behind a crowd of a hundred or so filthy, scrawny humans in rough hempen tunics who were watching the gatehouse burn with a mixture of anxiety and amusement. “I’m Baron Minalan, the Spellmonger of Sevendor. These noble wizards and myself, and a number of our friends, are here to escort you to freedom. I sugges
t we go soon, however, unless you want to be put to work on a bucket line. Personally,” I said, peering at the fire, “I think those fellows can handle it without you.”
It took a few moments for the meaning of my words to sink in to the prisoners – they had just been beaten and starved and tortured for so long that they didn’t understand, at first. Then Mavone got impatient.
“This is a rescue!” he finally bellowed. “Everyone start marching east! We’ll handle the goblins! MOVE!”
The slaves responded better to a direct command than they did persuasive language, at this point, I realized. They had become used to being told what to do, and it took a command to motivate them. The group started shambling toward the east where Sandoval was encouraging them to go. A few desperate souls took to their heels at once, despite their chains, and began heading for the promise of freedom the sunrise offered. Several others ran back to the camps to spread the unbelievable news.
While it took a while to convince them that they weren’t dreaming, and that a party of wizards and knights had come to rescue them, as soon as they made that realization they began to move with more alacrity.
Not everyone was in favor of them leaving, however. Apparently, the night watchmen in charge of keeping an eye on the sleeping slaves were still on duty, headed back to the castle to get a day’s sleep. When they saw a bunch of their charges lurching away as a group, they came running to head them off. They stopped as soon as they saw the horses of the 3rd Commando raiders who were herding the slaves out of the camp. It was clear that they weren’t the castle’s human cavalry. I led my warmagi toward them – four human trustees, with the foul brand of the Soulless on their arms, and three gurvani, armed with clubs, whips, short swords and bitterly angry expressions.
“What is the meaning of this?” screamed the leader of the guards, a smallish gurvan who spoke Narasi fluently.
“Prisoner transfer,” Sandoval quipped, facing the officious little twerp.
“Why wasn’t I informed?” the goblin screamed in passable Narasi, squinting in the morning sunshine. His fellows stared at the long line of prisoners walking eastward, looking confused. “I am the senior officer on duty! Why wasn’t I informed? This could have happened after my shift was over! Who authorized this? Where are they being transferred to?” he demanded.
Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series Page 39
