by Dave Duncan
glittered with gems, weapons far too showy ever
to be used in combat. When Aeled took the steering
oar for the landing, he was dressed as befitted a
triumphant warrior prince, with golden
embroidery on his smock, a fortune in jewels
on his belt and baldric, gold trim on his
helmet.
Groeggos rounded yet another bend and entered
a land-locked bay a league across, silver water
so smooth that it mirrored Cwicnoll's towering
complex of glaciers and black rock in the
background. Trailing ripples, the four ships
headed for long beaches where land and water met and a
settlement spread over gentle meadowed slopes
--not the squalid pirates' lair Gerard had
expected but a shining city.
"The trouble with homecomings," Aeled said as
Groeggos neared the strand, "is that the men all
want to rush home and tell the kids to go play
outside for a while. I will be busy. You wait
on the beach and if anyone asks tell them you are
my prisoner. Say, Ic eom Aeldes
hoeftniedling. I'll send someone to take you
to the elementary." His eyes twinkled green as he
saw Gerard's alarm. "For a healing."
So Gerard found himself standing on the shore in
bandages and borrowed clothes, trying to adjust to the
idea of being a slave. He had no
possessions, no rights. His own garments had been
thrown overboard; his rapier and document case
confiscated; and his body belonged to Aeled, who could
still steal his soul with conjury if he wished.
One battered-looking prisoner was of no
interest to the multitude that had come rushing down to the
sea to welcome the returning heroes--wives,
children, parents. Their joy and excitement when they
heard the details of Aeled's foering showed
how great a triumph it was. Despite his
jest, the sailors did not hurry off home. The
captives were herded ashore, the cargo unloaded,
and then the gratings were raised to reveal even more
booty down among the ballast--bags of coins and
bars of gold that must be ransom paid by the
Isilondian towns for the privilege of not being
burned and looted, plus whatever the hijacked
Gevilian ships and their cargo had
fetched when traded off in one of the little coastal
states. Spirits alone knew what the waiting
slaves were worth, but the material wealth heaped
on the black sand would have bought an earldom in
Chivial. And this was a little more than a month's work
for two hundred men and an admittedly talented
leader! Piracy paid well for those who survived.
"Gerard?" The speaker was a shortish, plump,
and--what else?--red-haired man clad in
outstanding finery, a smock of green lawn reaching
to his knees and gathered at the waist by a jeweled
belt, a fur-trimmed cloak of velvet. A
gold-hilted sword hung at his side, his
leggings were cross-gartered with golden ribbons,
golden buckles shone on his boots. The soft
pinkness of his face was very different from the weathered
roughness of the sailors'. Four lesser Baels
stood at his back, one of them leading a horse and
another a shaggy pony on which sat a boy of
five or six. The boy stared curiously at
Gerard's battered face.
Gerard bowed. "Ealdor?"
"Atheling Cynewulf. The tanist did a good
job on you, didn't he?" Cynewulf was
probably ten years older than his brother and where
Aeled was blocky, brawny, and pugnacious,
he was fleshy, florid, and supercilious.
How was Gerard expected to respond--as a
slave or a captive gentleman? Better
to aim high and be struck down than to surrender
without a fight. "His arguments convinced me
eventually, ealdor."
At that moment a great outburst of cheering
distracted both of them. The applause was coming
mostly from the werod, but also partly from the landlubber
spectators, and the object of their approval
seemed to be Aeled.
"May I inquire ...?"
Cynewulf scowled. "My spendthrift
brother has just waived his right to a third of a
third. Unnecessary extravagance! He has no
need to buy their loyalty, for he already has it."
But others would hear of the gesture and choose
to support a generous leader. Even a Chivian
could see that. Gerard remembered Brimbearn
praising Aeled as a giver of treasure, and also
his odd and unexplained dismissal of his older
brother. "May I ask what they are doing now,
ealdor?"
Obviously Aeled was supervising the
division of the booty into three roughly equal parts
--three heaps of bullion and three groups of
prisoners--but the loot had also attracted men
who seemed to be important, in that they sported
helmets and mail shirts as well as swords.
They were busily peering into sacks, looking over the
captives, and generally inspecting the take.
Cynewulf had a lip quick to sneer. "I am
a thegn, not a trainer of slaves, loet."
"Pardon my presumption, noble atheling. Your
brother hoped to gain some profit from me and I cannot
advise him without knowing the customs of the country."
The pudgy little man considered the prisoner with
calculated distaste. "Yes, he mentioned that.
He sometimes has strange fancies, not always
to be taken seriously. What you are seeing is
tax collection. Aeled divides the take
into what he considers three equal shares. The
King's shire reeve gets first choice. Then the
house thegns pick one for Earl Ceolmund."
"And me?" Gerard asked nervously.
"You and all your heriot are excluded. You are
wergild for our brother."
Curiously, it was a relief to know that he still
belonged to Aeled, who at least considered him
valuable. "So the men who risked their lives
to collect that booty share only the last third?"
Obviously, and it would normally be two ninths
without the ship lord's cut. "But I believe I
now comprehend, ealdor, why your King finds it
so difficult to suppress piracy."
Aeled's smiles were shared mirth, but his
brother's were private amusement. "Do the
tanist's ambitions make more sense to you now,
Chivian?"
"And those men?" Gerard asked in horror. A
gang of porters had come shuffling forward to load the
booty on their shoulders. They wore only rags
and their hair was not red. Even at a distance he could
see the strangeness of their gait and the inhuman
blankness of their faces.
"Thralls, of course. Don't worry about
them, loet. The men are long dead. Their
bodies have been preserved as biddable tools,
nothing more. You will see when we arrive at the
elementary." Cynewulf beckoned for his horse
to be brought. He
frowned at the boy on the
pony. "Sit up straight, Wulfwer."
The shore was a long, buzzing market of ships
being loaded and unloaded, others being built,
slave stockades and warehouses, fish-drying
racks and heaps of lobster pots; but the atheling led
the way inland. Hobbling along behind his horse,
Gerard trod roads paved with hexagonal stone
tiles and thronged with pedestrians, horse
wagons, and thrall-drawn carts. Chivian
cities were stinking, verminous firetraps because they
were cramped inside high walls. Only Grandon
itself had spread out beyond its ancient fortifications;
and even Grandon's streets were dark tracks
carpeted with refuse, winding between houses many
stories high. Waro`edburh spurned walls,
sprawling like a thistle patch in the sunlight with
all its buildings safely separated by wide
streets and even by herb or vegetable gardens and
tree-filled parks. He saw numerous water
troughs and women filling their jugs. He also saw
inexplicable clouds of steam, but the atheling's route
did not go close to any of them.
The buildings were the greatest wonder of all, for
every surface was carved with fantastic monster
images and brightly colored; even the shingles on
the roofs sparkled with rainbow tints like dew on a
sunny morning. Although none stood more than one
story high, the larger edifices were as extensive
as minor palaces; and yet they were obviously
family residences, with children and washing in view.
Some included workshops or displayed wares for
sale. In Chivial only very prosperous
families occupied more than two rooms, no
matter how great their burden of children, but this was
clearly not the case in Waro`edburh. Aeled's
protestations that Baelmark was a poor land were about
as reliable as one should expect from a pirate.
Gerard would have liked to linger and look. Even more,
he would have liked to have walked slowly, for
Cynewulf was setting much too brisk a pace
for him. His crotch felt ready to burst
into flames.
"Loet!" Cynewulf waved him forward
to walk alongside his stirrup, then peered down
at him suspiciously. "Assuming my madcap
young brother does not miscalculate and land himself
in an impossible duel to the death, and assuming also
that he then persists with his insane ambitions to win the
throne, just how do you imagine you can assist him?"
Gerard had no intention of revealing that, not
to Aeled nor this disdainful brother. "I
don't know, ealdor. I fear he is making
too much of my family connections, although I have
assured him I am not of royal birth."
Green eyes stared down distrustfully. "You
killed Waerferh`ed. I would have made an
example of you. If Aeled dies I still may."
He rode on for a while without speaking and then,
surprisingly, laughed. "Do you know what his name
means--Aeled? It means "firebrand"!"
"Appropriate, ealdor."
"Q. No wonder he is headstrong. A few
months ago he gambled by challenging the tanist,
who had grown too cautious for the younger thegns. The
fyrd sided narrowly with Aeled, and the tanist
yielded without even a token fight. In other
words, my brother was very lucky. He now
assumes that this same brashness will carry him to the
earldom itself, and that is another matter altogether. You
understand how it works? Any thegn may challenge the
tanist, but only the tanist may challenge the
earl. Ceolmund is well regarded, a wise
and cautious ruler. I am afraid that Aeled
is in for a very nasty and possibly fatal
surprise." His lip settled into its customary
sneer.
Curious! Atheling Cynewulf would have been
head of the family until his younger brother won
promotion. Now he must be outranked. Was he
merely jealous of Aeled's success, or did
he have legitimate worries about reprisals
if Aeled's insurrection failed?
"Instruct me, I pray you, ealdor. If
the thegn moot sides with your brother, then the earl
must accept the challenge and fight, yes? What
happens if the thegns vote the other way?"
Cynewulf laughed contemptuously. "Then
Ceolmund remains earl and names a champion,
which means he hires the best fighter in the fyrd
to render justice. Aeled is good, but far from
invincible. Even if by some miracle he
survived, he would have incurred blood debt and
gained nothing. The odds are staked in favor of the
incumbent, naturally."
"Naturally. The rules for challenging the king
are similar?"
"More or less. Only an earl may
challenge, and the witenagemot decides whether the
king must fight in person."
"Witenagemot? The witan are the king's
chosen counselors?"
Again the sneer. "Yes, but they just talk. The
only ones who vote are the earls, rulers of the
twenty-one shires."
Which was much as Gerard had expected. "I do not
know how your brother expects me to aid him,
ealdor, but the Catterings have always given
Baelmark its strongest kings. As a loyal
subject of King Taisson, I can do nothing
to restore that state of affairs. It is in
Chivial's interests that the present ineffective
rule continue."
The Prince gave Gerard another long stare and
then smiled narrowly. "That assurance might be
worth a ticket home, loet."
"You are most gracious, ealdor."
If Cynewulf would betray his own brother so
readily, then any ticket he provided Gerard
would buy only a one-way trip to the lobster
beds. Forced to trust one of the two sons of
Fyrlaf, Gerard would choose the raider every time.
At that point they were overtaken by a line of
trotting children and adolescents, at least forty of
them, all wearing metal collars attached to a
long rusty chain. Guards on ponies rode
alongside, urging them on with sticks. The youngest
captives were gasping from the effort of keeping up,
being helped along by larger neighbors. Gerard
recognized some of his former shipmates and knew that
this was part of the human loot from Ambleport. He
assumed that their drivers were professional
slavers. The gruesome procession went past and
disappeared into a cluster of buildings just ahead.
Moments later he drew close enough to make out
faint sounds of chanting, and his gut knotted as he
realized that he had arrived at the elementary. There
were at least half a dozen buildings in the
complex, most of them circular and low for their
width, all extravagantly inlaid with
mother-of-pearl and brightly colored stones. The
central dome was enormous, and the last of the
captives were
being driven in through its wide doors
like cattle to the slaughter. Flunkies came
hurrying over to greet the new arrivals.
Cynewulf dismounted gracelessly. Tossing his
reins to one of his own men, he went to the boy on the
pony. "Wast @thu hwoet @this hus is,
Wulfwer? Woere @thu her beforan nu?"
He spoke in the plodding tones used to the very young
or very stupid, so Gerard could understand:
"Know you what this building is, Wulfwer? Have you
been here before?"
The youngster gave him a surly look. "Na,
ealdor."
Cynewulf backhanded him across the face, almost
knocking him out of the saddle. "Hwoet
geclipast @thu me?"--"What do you call
me?"
"Foeder." The boy blinked back tears.
The tip of his tongue crept out to lick his bleeding
lip.
"When you behave like a slave you are whipped like
a slave. Now listen. This is the Haligdom.
Here spirits are conjured. What is it called?"
"The Haligdom, where spirits are conjured ...
Father."
"Again?"
"The Haligdom, where spirits are conjured."
"Correct. Come inside and watch. And try
to learn." He turned away, making no effort
to help his son dismount.
Gerard limped along behind. The Haligdom was
larger than any elementary he had ever heard of,
echoing with the doglike howls of the prisoners. Its
domed roof was supported by an elaborate
system of trusses, a further example of the
magnificent Baelish woodworking skills.
Most of the floor was occupied by the largest
octogram he had ever seen, tiled in many
colors and obviously intended for mass
processing slaves, for it contained a ring of eight
head-high posts, to which the Ambleport captives were
now being secured.
A tubby, bald man in flowing black garments
reacted with exaggeratedly amazed delight upon
seeing the newcomer. He waddled forward, bowed
repeatedly, and gabbled greetings. Although his
exact words escaped Gerard, the meaning was clear
enough: profuse welcomes to the noble atheling and how
might he be served? Cynewulf obviously was
demanding an enchantment for the prisoner his thumb was
pointing at. The conjurer then tried to lead the
honored lord off to one of the smaller elementaries and
Cynewulf refused, wanting to witness the
enthrallment ritual they were about to perform on the
prisoners. Bowing and fawning again, the bald man
