Moonstone, Magic That Binds (Book 1)

by Guy Antibes

  The door opened. “Only the king’s man,” Opee said.

  Lotto grabbed Morio by his collar and dragged him in. “She will see both of us,” Lotto said. “I am the hero of Prola, no one refuses my entrance.” Lotto pushed past an astonished Opee. He leaned over to Morio and whispered. “Where do we go from here?”

  Morio tried to keep a straight face. “To the left.”

  Lotto saw the ornate doors. Carvings of sheep decorated the black wood. “Do we walk in?” He still had Morio’s collar in his hand.

  “Go ahead.” Morio said.

  Opee still looked at them sideways as he closed the courtyard gate and kept his distance.

  Lotto knocked on the door and then entered.

  “Morio, how dare…”

  A tall thin woman with hair the same color brown as Morio glared at both of them.

  “Who did you drag in, or should I say who dragged you in? Did I hear you call yourself the hero of Prola?”

  The next minute the three of them sat in a cozy receiving room with Lotto telling his story in front of a fascinated Panny and an increasingly bored Morio.

  “So why are you here?” Panny looked from Lotto to Morio.

  “We are going to set up an intelligence network. I’d like the information to flow to someone trustworthy,” Lotto said.

  “And Morio doesn’t trust Eberlo?”

  “Right, sister,” Morio said. “I don’t trust Eberlo anymore than you do. He has an independent agenda and I’d like the information that comes to father to be unfiltered.”

  Panny threw her head back and laughed. “I’ll do it! My husband might not like it, but I’m moldering in this drafty house and need a diversion, apart from my two lovely children, who attend school during the day.”

  “So you forgive me?” Morio said.

  “No! Leaving Jenna in the lurch like that, embarrassed and thinking she’d be marrying one of noble birth.”

  “There are two sides of every story, my sister. Please don’t let my indiscretion get in the way of Lotto’s mission.”

  “I suppose there are two sides.” She gave her brother a sideways glance and looked at Lotto. “Tell me what I need to do.”

  They talked for another hour and then Morio and Lotto faced the long, uphill climb back to the castle in the same downpour.

  “Two sides to every story? What’s your side?” Lotto said.

  Morio shrugged. “Perhaps in Jenna’s case there is only one side.” He smiled, shrugged, and then laughed all the way up the hill.

  The Duke Jellas met them as they reached the castle. “Come with me I have news from Beckondale.” He turned and crisply walked away, Lotto jerked forward to catch up while Morio meandered behind.

  ~~~

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ~

  CAPTAIN-GENERAL RESTELLA BEECHER. She lay back in her bed. Tomorrow she would lead her army, a large army this time, to the borders of Oringia with the intention of taking the fight to them. Too many common Valetans had been killed in the raids that had gone on for the past two years.

  She had gone over strategies with Mander Hart and General Piroff and knew what her father would let her do and not do. She couldn’t conduct a full-scale invasion, but she could engage the enemy just on the other side of the Oringian border. She wouldn’t let them down, but the thought of possible defeat gnawed at her. Captain Silver would no longer always be at her side and that bothered her. She had relied on him in each of his campaigns and he’d be available but not as an advisor. Could she do it? Where had these doubts come from? And now she found out that General Piroff ordered Silver to stay and train more scouts, so he’d be leaving three weeks after her.

  Her mind didn’t let her rest, so she sat up in bed and sought out the Moonstone. Lotto had gone far to the south on a mission for Mander Hart a few months ago. Somehow that seemed to fit Lotto better at this time. She knew he could lead, but the rise in fortune didn’t seem to sit well with him and a solitary mission in Gensler might just be the seasoning that he needed. It certainly didn’t work that way for her. She loved to command. Yet she faced more distractions than she ever had and, as she grasped the hilt of the sword, her greatest challenge laid far to the east. With another thought, she wondered if her greatest challenge hadn’t actually gone south into Gensler.

  ~

  It took weeks to move an army and by the time she reached the border, her forces had to face an Oringian militia standing in serried ranks, six deep, across the plain, still littered with patches of snow.

  Restella did nothing. The Oringians moved back towards their camp and didn’t reassemble.

  Captain Silver finally reached her own camp. He seemed somewhat subdued. Perhaps he had caught some kind of illness on the march from Beckondale. An illness running through her troops was the last thing Restella wanted.

  The Oringians reassembled on the plain. To Restella’s eye from a hill above the battlefield, it looked like a rake had moved across the grass leaving parallel marks. They were in the exact same order of battle as they had assumed when she first arrived at the border. Perhaps they were training when she first arrived.

  The movement of the enemy occasionally glittered in the morning sun. She fidgeted on her horse, not comfortable with the fact that she wouldn’t be down fighting with the men she commanded. It didn’t seem right, but the situation seemed to demand it.

  She had arrayed her troops in staggered squares with cavalry in the vacant spaces. When the formation moved, they would wheel into packed triangles, with the pointed-side facing the enemy. Silver had suggested it as soon as he arrived and insisted that the men could do it, if the officers gave the right orders. But now that she looked down on the field, she could see that, for once, her mentor had given her bad advice. The pointed side needed to face away from the enemy, to maximize the breadth of her lines.

  Horns blew and she groaned since she couldn’t quickly reorder the field. The Valetan forces began to move forward changing their formation. The Oringians ran forward as one and before Restella’s army had completed their move, the Oringians fell on them. The planned orderly battle disintegrated into a melee, just as Restella thought, but not in time to reorder her troops. Every man fought and clawed and struck out with his weapon to live. The carnage and disorder shocked Restella.

  Valetan forces began to resolve into units and began to force the Oringians back and the officers including Captain Shortwell, who had ridden down off of the hill, to lead the reserves forward. She commanded Silver to follow.

  ~

  Restella sat in her tent, alone with a glass of wine, feeling defeated. Resigning one’s commission after a defeat was not an uncommon act in the Valetan army. Her forces hadn’t been defeated, but she had lost so many soldiers that she couldn’t claim a victory. It had happened often enough. She remembered that a Captain Hessa had been the last to do so. He still had the regard of his soldiers. Restella had a quill in her hand, hovering over the small slip of parchment that would go to Beckondale. Her eyes burrowed into the paper.

  Restella sat for an hour struggling. The awful bite of defeat gnawed at her stomach, but every time she tried to phrase the message of resignation to her father, her heart kept her hand still. Over and over, she reviewed her actions.

  The ordering of battle was her fault, but she had been given bad advice from a trusted officer, a friend. What would Mander Hart think? He wouldn’t castigate her like she was doing to herself. She just couldn’t put pen to parchment. Resigning just wasn’t in her. Another solution would come. It had to.

  Silver came in, his arm and leg bandaged. She tried to lift her chin up and congratulate her captain. “Captain Shortwell and you were marvelous and saved the day.” She didn’t really feel up to the compliment, but she had to say it as commander. The debacle gnawed at her insides. Such a failure! Restella knew better, but relied on Silver and, for once, he had let her down. The disappointment burned deep within her.

  He looked at her and for the first
time since she had known him, he looked at her with an unfriendly face.

  “We lost one thousand men today when it should have been half of that or less,” Restella said. “Men who will never return back to their families, all because of imposing a strategy that the army had never practiced.”

  “You made the wrong decision,” Silver said, an unexpected flatness to his voice. The attack must have affected him as much as it did her, but she bristled at his comment.

  Restella blinked. Hundreds of lives lost that she caused? She felt anger at the man for having the nerve to dress her down, but Silver quickly doused it. “I’ve taught you many things and I thought that you knew better than to listen to me. You should have changed my recommendation. You’re a good fighter, but a Captain-General you are not. I’m sorry I have to say that, Princess, but…” Silver just shook his head, saluted, and left her alone in the tent. He left Restella speechless at his attack.

  He had called her ‘Princess’. That struck her more than a sword in her side. She had lost his respect and, she shuddered, her army had lost too many men, but he had made the tactical recommendation. She won a hollow victory simply because she had superior manpower and officers who took a debacle and did all of the work to keep it from being a rout of her forces. Yet, she was the one who wanted a different strategy and he rejected it.

  No other officers visited her that night and Restella couldn’t bring herself to walk through camp. She heard the wails of injured men easily enough through the canvas of her tent. Again she went to her desk and picked up the pen, staring at its point for what seemed like hours.

  The next morning, she called her officers in. “I feel like I should resign and take the train of wounded back to Beckondale, but I won’t.”

  Silver gave her an appraising look. “Not giving up? I thought honor demanded it.”

  She fingered the Moonstone and felt Lotto far to the southwest. Would he feel betrayed by her decision making like Silver, if he knew? Restella couldn’t bear that to happen.

  A messenger rushed in. “A bird flew in with a message.”

  “Read it, Silver,” Restella said.

  “Captain Piroff commands you to send a detachment to the Happly border, Captain-General. Happly is hiring mercenaries.”

  Restella took the message and read it for herself. It bore General Piroff’s initials. She knew an opportunity to escape when she saw one. “I’ll head that unit myself. Silver, I want you to take command of the army and pursue the Oringians as far as you wish. You know we want to hurt them badly, so they will retreat far from our borders.”

  Silver stood at attention. “And you? Perhaps you should lead the wagons back to Beckondale?”

  She actually felt like smiling. “I will take a few thousand men and guard our southern border. We can assign a lieutenant to command the wounded.” Perhaps she could find redemption in Happly.

  “Yes, ma’am, however, I suggest that you assign your Oringian command to Captain Shortwell. He is more suited to commanding a larger contingent of men and harassing the Oringians. I would like to accompany you to Happly.”

  Restella wiped a tear-filled eye. “But I am disgraced. Surely you would rather have a command on your own.”

  “A battle without a clear-cut victory does not constitute disgrace, ma’am. Happly is more of the kind of territory that rangers operate in. Hilly forests. I ask you to consider my request, ma’am.”

  No ‘Princess’ this time. She could use his experience and she did want to be closer to the troops. Silver had been the one to castigate her for bad judgment and now he wanted to accompany her? She felt like she no longer understood him, but she didn’t want to give up on Silver just yet. She owed him too much, and perhaps they’d both have a chance at redemption. “We leave as soon as we can. Call the officers in again.

  ~

  Restella led a unit of fifteen hundred men and that included the two hundred rangers. Captain Silver would command the rangers and her seven lieutenants would take care of the rest. She left most of the supply trains with Shortwell, so they used the captured horses and those of fallen men as pack horses and traveled quickly. They had split up the birds and the spelled coops that drew birds from Beckondale to wherever the charms were located.

  The train of injured soldiers carried Restella’s full and honest report of the battle. She clamped her lips at the thought of having her father read that, but she would shoulder the responsibility for losing so many soldiers. She didn’t know if her report would damage Silver’s reputation, but at this point she didn’t care. The truth was the truth and they’d both have to deal with it.

  She didn’t want to lose a field command, but if she deserved a demotion, then she’d take it like a professional. She fingered the Moonstone and knew that she had done the right thing by taking the command to guard the Happly border, but the cost of her recent defeat still burdened her every waking moment.

  After ten days, they viewed the short border with Learsea on the other side of the river and rode past the great forest that the dukes of Happly had planted centuries ago to keep the petty barons on the plains of Valetan from invading their country. Her army set up camp by a lake that was fed by a tributary of the Fargo in the mountains two days march into Happly.

  Silver announced himself at the door to the tent she had traded with Shortwell. No more large planning tent for her.

  “We’ve gone three leagues into Happly and haven’t run across any signs of an army.”

  Could Mander have gotten the wrong intelligence? She could still sense Lotto in Gensler, further south. He wouldn’t know. “Let’s go over the Happly map and see what kind of tactics we’ll have to use.”

  Silver went to the trunk of maps and selected the tube with a map of Happly. She looked over the terrain. Mountains and small valleys covered the landscape. If it weren’t for the mines, Happly would be a poor domain, indeed, maybe as poor as Histo. They had little farming and mostly citizen soldiers. But if they were to become a belligerent, the duke would need to hire mercenaries, as reported. Perhaps they trained in pockets further in. Where did Duke Happly get the money for an army?

  Sleep had eluded her for days. Could she ever rid herself of the guilt of losing those lives? This command hadn’t distracted her sufficiently to forget Oringia. She forced her eyes on the map and found her focus coming in and out. She began to sway on her feet and then fell to the thin carpet floor of her tent.

  ~~~

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ~

  LOTTO FURROWED HIS BROW. Something had happened. He followed the thread linking him to the Moonstone and Restella and had a horrible feeling. Something had changed. Restella didn’t feel the same. Could she be hurt? She still soldiered in Oringia. He stopped Morio and closed his eyes. No injury that he could tell, but the link had changed. Perhaps something mental or emotional? He didn’t have any frame of reference other than something had changed the feeling of the link since the last time he had sought her out when he first arrived in Crackledown.

  Morio and he rode to within a week from the border with the Red Kingdom. They had worked for weeks going from village to village, using the road to the Red Kingdom as the central spine. He felt that the new network would be a valuable resource for the duke.

  They stopped at an inn and took off their saddlebags before a boy led their horses to a stable. It felt good that winter had released its grip on Gensler. Traveling in the middle of winter wasn’t enjoyable or fast.

  A robust woman hailed them as they walked into the common room of the inn. She plunked a thick book on the bar counter. “New to our lovely little town?”

  Morio nodded. “A room, if you have one with two beds.”

  The woman squinted at them. “You two look like you’ve lived rough lives.”

  Morio shrugged and then beamed a grin at her and placed a hand on his chest. “We look rough, but we are as innocent as babes inside.”

  The woman couldn’t repress a smile, responding to Morio’
s flirting and waved him back. “Maybe babes who need a change of soiled nappies. I’ll put the both of you down for a room and a couple of baths. It’s that or you can ride half through the night to the next inn in either direction.” She gave Mario the kind of confident smile that a woman in control gives.

  Perhaps she’d be another candidate for the duke’s intelligence circle. Lotto would find out soon enough. Much cleaner, the pair descended the stairs to the inn. Only a few tables were taken in the common room as Lotto and Morio took one at the back.

  “Tough men,” the innkeeper said with a pout on her face. She sat down with them. “And yet, both of you look cut from a different cloth than mere ruffians.”

  “I would say so, but not having really seen mere ruffian cloth, I’m not familiar with its weave or texture,” Morio said. Lotto had noticed how the man would flirt with a hitching post, if given the opportunity.

  She laughed. “You can call me Polla.” She leaned over and cupped her chin in her hand with her elbow on the table. “What is your story? It looks like we’ll have a slow night and I don’t think I’ll be bored around you two.”

  Lotto looked at her and felt she could be trusted. “We are scouts for the duke, looking around for eyes and ears.”

  Polla batted her eyelashes. “I have eyes and I’m all ears,” she said.

  Lotto couldn’t help but laugh at the woman throwing back Morio’s flirtation with some of her own and noticed Morio’s mocking expression. “We live in perilous times and would like the duke to have some less official conduits of information. Innkeepers, such as yourself, talk to people all day long and might catch information that you may or not may find interesting, but, added up with other sources, it might provide insight into what’s going in Gensler and also some idea of what’s happening in the other domains. Would you be interested in sending your observations to a person in Crackledown?”

  She looked over at Morio, “I’d like to send my observations to you.”