“He was a rebel.” Bolder opined, speaking mushy through his busted mouth. “Prolly run off to get some of his rebel friends.”
“We’ll post a watch. Bolder, I want you to keep an eye on the prisoner.” Urgin sneered and turned a mean eye toward Jannae. “If they come back, you tell them it’s your husband that will take their whipping, woman.”
“You’d be better off leaving.” Jannae told Urgin Charth defiantly. “That was Sir Celdemer the godsknight, and if he finds you’ve touched Karl, he’ll put the lot of you on a gibbet.”
“Sir Celdemer?” Bolder nearly shouted, holding his hand to his mouth. “Lio’s bleeding hand, Charth! She’s right! We need to get out of here.”
“We’re staying.” Charth replied. “He’s just one man. There ain’t no other godsknights in Walcox, and I don’t care who he is.” But Jannae could see the sudden nervousness in the man. She secretly hoped the godsknight would come back and do for the lot of them, but Charth was right. What could one man do against the twelve who were left?
The west wind was cold and the distant sky was cloudy and black when the two men rode into Walcox. They wore the black armor with the star-eyed skull of Dunwater, but it wasn’t properly respected here, nor had it been ever since the Privy Lord had held his kangaroo court and shamed them all. Marrin’s head hurt bad, and the pretty man had nearly cut his nose off, and he was going to be scarred for life. He held a bloody rag over his face, only occasionally lowering it so that he could see the road ahead. Jerl was riding in front, and with his face torn up as it was and his eyes half-covered, Marrin thought he might have had trouble even staying on the road without Jerl in front.
Everything looked blue to Marrin, blue or gray in the gathering storm with evening coming on, and even the green of the grass seemed washed out and faded. The cold wind in his face seemed to ease the pain of it. He wanted nothing so much as a stiff bit of applejack and a proper bed to lay his aching head down on.
Sir Charth had taken the main bed in the farmhouse, leaving the woman to sleep in the cellar by the prisoner, and leaving his men to sleep in the barn. All except that Bolder, his pet, to whom Charth had given the missing girl’s bed. Marrin knew the Brookhouses had cleaned the barn up, but it still smelled like bird shit to him from the eagles. He had half a dozen silver pennies in his pocket, his share of the Brookhouse loot, and he meant to sleep on clean sheets in town tonight once he’d seen to his face.
The guard at the town’s gate didn’t challenge the two Dunwater men, for Sir Charth had put an end to that a month ago in an argument with the lord mayor. These Walcox folk might not like the black armored men, but the lord mayor had been forced to admit that Sir Charth was of the gentry, and his men were given free run of the town, even if they didn’t get the deference that was their due. Ordinarily Marrin found the free-going ways of the townfolk offensive, but right now he just needed a doctor and a drink and a bed.
They drew up in front of the large wooden infirmary, dismounted and tied their horses to the rail. A large wagon with an apple painted on the side stood next to the rail, full of empty wooden barrels. The infirmary had been one of the first buildings erected in the ruins of the town, and the physic here knew all about sword wounds and arrow wounds and other battle injuries. He’d been on hand after the battle for Walcox, and Marrin knew the man would take good care of him, even if he didn’t like the Dunwater men.
When the two Dunwater men opened the door and stepped into the room, half a dozen men dressed in farm clothing and heavy coats stood there, less than a pace away, and in the middle of them stood a woman, a girl really, and she was quite beautiful in a wholesome sort of way, with a full bosom, honey brown hair and full lips and eyes.
“I’m Ambarae Brookhouse.” She said, and the men grabbed the two soldiers by their arms and threw them to the floor on their stomachs. Marrin watched in horror as one of the men put a pruning hook into the space between Jerl’s helmet and his back armor and leaned all of his weight on it. The flat and sharpened tip of the hook sheared through Jerl’s spine and silenced his scream before it really got started. A pool of blood formed around his head almost instantly, his body gave a quick and boneless twitch and his eyes went blank and staring. Marrin felt another hook pressing against his neck, and the men had their boots on his arms and in his back, pinning him helpless to the rough-cut planks of the new wooden floor. “You tell me what you done with my mama and dad, or they’ll cut your head off too.”
“This is a disaster.” Uldrid D’Marek said, a fat and balding man, touching his fingers to his beard pensively like he almost always did, whether thinking or not. “An unmitigated disaster.”
“Aye, milord.” Captain Colth said with the kind of weary patience that came with twenty years worth of waiting on an indecisive man to make decisions. Tall, spare and with a perpetual world-weary expression, Colth was forty three, and had taken service with the lord mayor of Walcox at his investiture, twenty years ago this summer. He had worked his way up from spearman to warder, and then to chief warder and finally captain, a rank he’d held for five years now.
Where the lord mayor was a glad-hander, always friendly to everyone and always smiling, Colth was the opposite, rarely showing any emotions at all. His wife was pretty and thin and quiet, but in the church choir her voice was like an angel’s. If she had ever spoken a cross word to anyone, Colth had never heard of it, and even with his boys, all three of them grown now and all looking exactly like their father had at their ages, she had never raised her voice. Still, she somehow always got her way. She was a treasure beyond price. The Privy Lord had saved them both, as well as the three boys, and he knew exactly what decision the lord mayor should and probably would make. He just had to push him to do it.
“Maldiver is king, and orders the arrest of Lord Aelfric, and also the arrest of Lanae Brookhouse. On top of that, Sir Urgin Charth takes it upon himself to arrest Jannae and Karl and quarter his men in their home, and now I learn the Applemans are in town? All nine of them? There will be blood over this.”
“Aye, milord. Charth never should have molested the Brookhouses. The Applemans and the Brookhouses go back a hundred years, and the Flourhands and Wimplesmiths, too. It’s been five days, and Ambarae’s been down to the orchards and the mill both. There’ll be a mob at the Brookhouse farm if you don’t put an end to it.”
“But if I arrest Sir Charth, I’ll earn the enmity of Dunwater.” The mayor continued to stroke his beard while the sheen of sweat gathered on his balding head. “We need Lord Aelfric to come back.”
“Lord Aelfric is off handling his war.” Colth said patiently. “And you met the man. Do you honestly think he’ll stand to be arrested? Even if he agreed to stand trial, do you think O’Hiam and Faithborn and that lot would let him? I can tell you that there’s not a family in Walcox who won’t stand behind him, milord. That includes mine own. You’ve got to stand for him, and that means against this new king. Word from down the Whitewood road is that Diminios has already risen up against him, and you know the prince an’t dead, nor the queen.”
“But if I join in rebellion, what happens to Walcox?”
“I think you might be asking the question backwards, milord. If you don’t stand with Lord Aelfric and the Brookhouses, what happens to you?” The Lord Mayor put his head between his hands and his elbows on his knees. He looked like he might cry.
Celdemer and Effander decided that a joint attack on Charth’s men at the Brookhouse farm would have the best chance at the beginning of the quarter of night before dawn, in the early morning hours when the Dunwater men would be sleeping. They waited in the shelter of the mill, a massive building with a stone foundation that might once have been a keep, and they stretched and paced to stay limber and fight the cold wind.
“May I see your blade?” Celdemer asked Effander, and the queen’s guard handed him the weapon by the hilt, with the blade pointing downward. Celdemer took it in his hand and tried a few simple longsword passes.
“The weight is all wrong.” He complained. “It’s all in the front of the blade. It almost pulls you forward.”
“Yes.” Effander explained. “That’s the idea. It’s all point work. The front six inches of the blade is your killing instrument, the rest of it is just to parry and extend the reach.”
“But this puts you right in your enemy’s face. How do you defend yourself?”
“Speed. Speed and footwork.” Effander replied. “If I may?”
He took back the blade and ran a few passes with it, in a style unlike anything Celdemer had ever seen. From guard to thrust the four foot blade covered nearly six paces. “Amazing.” The godsknight said. “It’s like a spear in your hand. But how do you guard yourself? With just the blade?”
“Some use a small target shield and some use nothing but the blade.” Effander said. “I use a poniard.” He patted the long dagger at his hip. “The blade takes concentration, but it’s very quick and with practice a very accurate weapon. Some of the masters in the King’s Town fight with neither armor nor shield nor poniard, just the blade.”
“I should like to learn it.” Celdemer said, but then he noticed activity down the hill and across the field, lights in the middle of the night, glinting here and there among the trees. “Is that the Brookhouse farm?”
Effander moved quickly to his side and looked with him. “Yes.” He said. “To horse. Something is happening!”
Together the two riders raced down the hill, and in just a few moments they rode almost into the Brookhouse farmyard, but a host of bodies stopped them. Over two hundred people had gathered there to watch the lord mayor and his warders arrest Urgin Charth, and they were carrying torches. By the time the two swordsmen arrived it was already over, and Charth and his men were being herded out under guard.
“If you’ve touched them you will surely hang.” Captain Colth was telling the knight, who was glowering as he was led away.
“The lot of you will hang.” Charth said. “Ever last one of you.”
“Long live king Kaelen!” Someone shouted, and it became general. Walcox had risen in rebellion against king Maldiver. The Appleman wagon headed back to the orchards, but two of the barrels were no longer empty.
Chapter 82: Northern Muharl Ogre Country, latter Leath
All of the land was sheathed in white, and the snow was falling full in their faces as the ogres marched westward, and the wind that drove the heavy snow piled it in great drifts, building walls through which they moved, their heavy bodies creating a wide avenue. Behind them their tracks filled with slushy mud, but the snow persisted. When the ogre host had been gone from the City of the Damned for merely half an hour, very little trace of their passage was left in the broad sea of drifting white. They left little behind them, but they carried away a treasury of weapons, gold and armor such as had not been seen in that part of the world for ten thousand winters.
The ogres of the Winter Mountains traveled at the head of the great column, for the snow did not bother them, and their thick coats and cloaks of wool kept them relatively warm and dry, even armored as they were. Behind them came the more numerous hosts of other bands, although now they were a single band, united under their bold and fearless king.
Nearly ten thousand of them now wore armor that no man could have worn, thick scales of steel woven into hauberks of great weight, and over their heads they carried their shields to keep the snow off, great rectangular shields the size of heavy doors, and each one limned with a single red rune whose meaning they neither knew nor cared to know. In the warbags on their wide chainmail belts they carried many talents of gold and silver, as well as precious stones and jewels, and in their hands were spears, and many had great swords in scabbards, or axes or maces on hangers as well. Twenty ogres carried still more plunder in ten large wooden chests, and they cursed the snow and the wet and the cold, like they cursed everything, but their hearts were full of joy.
Never had they imagined such treasure, for it was an abundance of loot such as even the dreams of men could scarce encompass, all taken from the deeps of Khal Palace, a ruin in the City of Ghathos by the sea, equipment that had mouldered beneath the earth for millennia, miraculously untouched by time or ruin, and never plundered until now. All reward for the killing of a god.
The crone had shown them where the treasure lay before returning to her Black Mountain with their blessing.
Gutcrusher led the host, and he leaned into the blowing snow, feeling its weight gather on his armor and his elk-hide cloak. His booted feet sometimes slipped, for the way was sometimes steep and the snow was wet and slick. The wind bit into his face, but he was an ogre, and no stranger to snow. It was barely the beginning of winter and his belly was full and his heart was light. Beside him walked Mansmasher, a broad-shouldered ogre from the Iron Bridge Band. He could barely hear him over the tortured and screaming wind.
“This is the kind of weather they hunt us in.” Mansmasher was saying. “They follow our footsteps in the snow.”
“Is there a place you fear?” Gutcrusher asked. “A place where they hunt you often?”
“Any place close to the Iron Bridge.” Mansmasher had a long braid in his hair, an affectation, and he tugged on it frequently when he spoke. “The bastards sometimes watch us from there, and if we are many, they will raid us. Especially on Bloody Hill.”
For three weeks they had been marching westward from the City of the Damned, following the southern bank of the Bone River for the first ten days, then fording it where its course met the Blue River, the northern boundary of the Muharl Ogre Country, close by Winter Mountain. They ate game they caught along the way, for the caribous traveled in dense herds here, and there were many aurochs and other large animals to be taken. They followed the border now, and across the river a dark forest of tall conifers marched over hills in endless columns toward distant mountains, and all of that vast land of forests and streams was the territory of the elk-men.
Sometimes they saw great wooden statues on the far bank, carved into the shapes of elk-men and elk-women, with their lower bodies like heavily muscled elk, but coming up where the neck would be were the upper bodies of great men or women, but with ears like elk and wide racks of antlers. They had not seen any of the creatures themselves, for they were said to be solitary and few in number, but Gutcrusher did not doubt that the ogre band had been seen.
Still, the Iron Bridge Band had run when the elk-men hunted them, and many still whispered in fear as they traveled, for the creatures were larger than ogres and they used lances and powerful bows to hunt them. Gutcrusher had determined that this hunting of his people would cease. He summoned his captains and laid out his plans with many a spare and colorful obscenity, and they thought both plans and profanity suitable to the task at hand.
Happy Moon Dancing was a mighty captain among his people, the elk-men of the Blue River, and his lance had killed many of the misbegotten and evil ogres during his winter forays across that river. In the far distant past the river had been a firm boundary, and neither elk-men nor ogres ever dared cross the great bridge that spanned it, a colossal structure of old over a hundred paces long that looked like iron but rang beneath his hooves like blown glass. Not a scratch marred the glittering surface or structures of that bridge, but time had blown leaves upon it, the leaves had decayed to dirt, and in some places grass and small bushes grew where space and sun permitted.
In the not so distant past the mighty hunters among the elk-peoples determined that warriors could grow mighty in skill and reputation by hunting ogres. It was a dangerous sport sometimes, but it had become a favored pastime, and Happy Moon Dancing had brought home many trophies to impress the maidens. The elk-peoples did not eat meat, of course, but they did hunt, taking furs and scalps for trophies and bone for making bows and spearpoints. If the great bears of the Hereli Mountains were not killed they would sometimes slay calves, and if the ogres were not culled they might think it permissible to cross the bridge, something that was forbid
den.
In truth the slaying of calves was the thing to be most feared, for the elk-people were not numerous, although they were strong and deadly, and few calves came each summer. Many bucks died in the autumn mating duels, and sometimes disease, misfortune or the snow took them, for life was hard and bitterly won in the dark spaces under the trees between the Blue River and the Green. Happy Moon Dancing’s herd numbered less than five hundred, and of these only a hundred were hunters. His herd was one of the larger ones, and there were perhaps thirty herds all told.
Yesterday word had reached him of a host of ogres marching westward along the Blue River, and although none of the scouts of the Winterhaven herd had seen all of them, he was assured that they were many, and armed. It was likely some war between their bands, for the ogres were always raiding each other and making war. He had come forth with fifty of his hunters, fully half of his strength, to scout them and see that they did not dare to cross the Glass Bridge, as the elk-men named it.
Unfortunately he only caught a glimpse of the ogres before the blizzard struck, the first great snow of winter, and in the blowing snow he could see no more than half way across the river. He knew as much of the ogres as any hunter knew of his prey, and he knew they would camp at night, rise late and lazy in the morning, spend much of the day arguing about whether it was a good idea to march in the snow, and finally they would decide to either turn back or go ahead, and in any event the hunters of the Blue River Herd could be assembled and ready to ride against them should they dare to approach the Glass Bridge. He blew his wooden horn and called the hunters to him. Tall and deadly shapes, armed with long spears and bows, began to assemble near him, trotting like ghosts out of the shadows beneath the trees. Their hooves gouged the snow in neat lines. “I have a big raid in the works.” He said, and they clutched their long spears and grinned, their long rectangular teeth standing white beneath their golden eyes.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 108
