War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  The back of the wagon was cold, and the men were weary of it when they stumbled into an inn off of the Maslit market square. The proprietor forced some of his customers to double up to clear a room for the officers, and the fifth spears slept on the floor of the common room while O’Hiam and Haim shared quarters. Haim noted with annoyance that the commander snored loudly.

  The next day went much as the first, except that at evening time they slept in a sleeping fort at a place where the Redwater turned west and their journey took them now east. This was an area that had known little in the way of Aulig depredations, and the farms were numerous and appeared to be doing well. The smell of woodsmoke reached the column of men beneath a thick cover of cloud. The wind had turned much colder, and the road was coated with an ankle high blanket of snow. From time to time they had to stop and pull the wagon out of the snow, and the waggoner nearly tipped it twice, veering off of the road, now difficult to see under the uniform whiteness of the snow-covered ground. Haim huddled beneath a thick blanket, and he was miserable.

  At nightfall on the third day they reached Walcox to find a city transformed. The industrious people here had rebuilt much of the town that had been burned, and Haim was surprised to see the the town’s outer wall had been cased in stone. Additionally there was now a small keep close by the town, a squat and rectangular affair, with a decent drawbridge and moat. It was situated in such a way as to control the Whitewood Forest road with siege engines. The armsmen here wore green tabards with a gold griffin rampant, which Haim knew to be one of the symbols of Aelfric’s house, although not his colors. They rode to the Dashing Snake, or rather its rebuilt doppleganger, standing half as tall but just as wide, and O’Hiam went in to inquire about peaches.

  “It’s Jannae Brookhouse you need speak to.” Said the innkeeper. “Out to the Brookhouse farm. You’ll be needing to speak to her two warders first, I reckon.” Several of the patrons in the common room laughed at this remark, although Busker did not know why. After getting clear directions he returned to the waiting men.

  “It’s about a league east of town on the other side of the mill.” He explained. “Close to the Appleman Orchard, whatever that is. The innkeeper says we’ll be needing more wagons.”

  When they crested the hill that the mill sat on, several large farms stood before them, and several of them had orchards. It was easy to tell which of the farms belonged to the Brookhouses, however, for alone of all of the orchards they could see, the Brookhouse peach trees still retained their leaves, even though now they were coated with snow. A strange apparition in the shape of a horseman appeared before them on the road as they drew closer.

  It was a manlike shape, but heavily bundled in farmer’s woolens, with a face hidden behind a scarf tightly tucked beneath a broad farmer’s hat. The horseman bore a sword in a scabbard at his waist, but the horse itself was unmistakeable. It was Windbrother, Sir Celdemer’s distinctive white stallion, and so the odd man in the farmer’s woolens was identified.

  “Sir Celdemer?” Busker’s voice was surprised and quizzical.

  “Busker O’Hiam.” The man’s voice was unmistakeable, but when he removed the scarf Haim saw that he’d grown a beard. “Well, I won’t say this is a pleasant surprise. I’m a simple peach picker, Busker, you need not call me sir.”

  “You were never a simple anything Celdemer. Why are you in the road? Have you taken to highway robbery?” Busker sounded amused at the thought.

  “I have not.” Sir Celdemer’s denial sounded like he thought Busker was serious. “I am a peach picker and a gentleman in waiting.” Another rider, garbed in similar fashion to Celdemer appeared in the road behind him, coming between two lanes of evergreens that bordered the entrance to the Brookhouse farm.

  “Allow me to introduce a fellow gentleman in waiting and my fast friend, Effander O’Manavolle. It’s not O’Mangavolle, just to be clear. That’s a different town.” Haim saw another bearded man, this one with a young-looking face but with serious eyes.

  “What are the two of you in waiting for?” O’Hiam asked, bemused and curious.

  “I am waiting for my true love to return to her family home. He is, too.” Effander’s head snapped up at this, and he stared at Celdemer for a moment.

  “No I’m not. Unless you think my true love is duty.”

  Celdemer laughed lightly and rolled his eyes. This was the Celdemer that Haim had seen before. “Oh, pooh, Effander. You might as well admit you are in love with the woman. Duty, hah!”

  Effander’s face, what Haim could see of it, turned crimson, and without another word he turned his horse and rode back toward the Brookhouse farm. Celdemer was smiling as he approached Busker, and for a moment their horses stood facing each other, the white stallion looking down his nose at the much inferior plain brown gelding O’Hiam was riding.

  “I’m not coming back.” He declared flatly. “You can tell Lord Privy that.”

  “Beg pardon?” Busker replied, shaking his head in bewilderment.

  “I’m a gentleman farmer now, Busker. I’m a simple peach picker, and I’m not going back to the war.”

  Busker shrugged. “I don’t care. Hells, Celdemer, the war’s over. We’ve invested Northcraven and we’re working on the peace. I’m not here for you.”

  Haim would have sworn the former knight looked slightly injured. He paused a moment, then spoke in a quiet voice. “Then why are you here?”

  “We’re here for peaches. I need you to get out of the road so we can talk to the peach lady, if that’s all right with you, sir gentleman farmer.”

  They pulled the wagon into the farm yard, and Celdemer told them where to put it. While Busker went into the house to talk to the peach lady the fifth spear fyrde clambered down, stretching their backs and groaning, for this was their third day riding in the cold in a cramped and open box on wheels. Haim was rubbing the ache out of his lower back, feeling a twinge whenever he put weight on his left leg. He rolled his neck to get the stiffness out of it, then looked up into a pair of the most beautiful hundred kingdom brown eyes he’d ever seen. “Who are you?” He gulped.

  “I’m Ambarae Brookhouse.” The girl replied, and she was stunning. She was not tall, but her hair was long and the color of honey. She was bundled up tightly against the cold, but there was no concealing the shape of the woman beneath her heavy coat. Haim felt his mouth go dry. Her lips were full and generous, and strangely she made him think of a quiet country cottage. “I’m to help you gather peaches.”

  A stolid but still beautiful woman of perhaps forty-five came out of the house with Busker in tow, and she took one look at Haim and at the rest of the Hedgehog fyrde and shook her head. “You boys get in the house. Get them filthy rags off’n you and I’ll see them washed. The pickers is off for the day and I’ve coats enough for you. Take off that ironmongery, too. You won’t need chainmail in the orchard.”

  Haim, feeling slightly naked and strangely light without the chainmail, tabard and gambeson that had been his daily wardrobe for months now, dressed in the main room of the cottage. It was a warm and cheerful room, lightened by the beechwood walls and many beeswax candles. Many small decorative pictures and homemade paintings decorated the wall, and the space had a cluttered but homey feel. He looked around at the rest of the fyrde and laughed. Without their armor and gear they looked like pale and skinny boys, and he wondered at their strange transformation.

  “What’s funny, fyrdman?” Asked Morin O’Bandin, but his tone wasn’t angry, just curious. All of the animosities between his men had been washed away in the Whitewood and at Ugly Woman Hill. Morin wore an angry and puckered scar where they’d pulled an Aulig arrow out of the meat around his chest, and another in his thigh. Brelic O’Dustin and Andar Tackmaker had tucked up under their shields and braved a storm of arrows to pull him out of the Shallow Pass.

  “You lot.” Haim said. “All of us, really. To go through the Whitewood, Redwater Plain and Ugly Woman Hill, all to wind up becoming peach pickers bossed
about by a goodwife. For this kind of fun we might have missed the war entirely.” Several of the men began to chuckle, then general hilarity ensued. Haim was in tears by the time Jannae Brookhouse stormed into the room to see what the boys were up to.

  “If you jolly boys can quit cracking jokes long enough to wash up, I’d be thankful.” Jannae Brookhouse told them. “I’m putting your clothes in the washtub, but the room still stinks. When was the last time you all had a bath?” She didn’t understand why her sensible instructions set them all to laughing again, so she shook her head, rolled her eyes and left them a basin of hot and soapy water and some towels.

  When the soldier boys were dressed and clean, Ambarae took them to the orchard. She showed them how to tell which peaches were ready to be picked, and gave them each a bushel to fill. “It’s lucky you all came.” She said, and Haim thought her voice was as sweet and gentle as honey, like her hair. “We’ve had winter peaches like I never seen before. Usually it’s a bushel between Arianis and Vindus, sometimes a bushel and a half. This has been a strange year.”

  Haim saw that each one of the forty-odd trees was heavily laden with ripe purple peaches, even though many had a sheen of ice over them, and snow was still falling on the upper branches. Each member of his fyrde selected two or three trees, and their baskets were full in less than an hour. The trees were still thick with peaches and they had to get more baskets. His hands got cold from reaching up under snowy branches and pulling out the purple fruit hanging there.

  After he got his second basket he found that Ambarae was pulling peaches from the same tree. “In a little bit we’ll fetch a ladder so’s we can pull fruit from the upper branches.”

  “I never seen such a thing.” Haim replied. “Peaches in Arianis. Or maybe it’s Jember already. We haven’t been marking the days. Anyways, it’s uncanny.” He was no farmer, but he knew that peaches couldn’t grow in snow, but these plainly did.

  “We had a prior once said the peaches were the devil’s work.” Ambarae’s voice was quiet. “Walcox folk knows about the winter peaches, but they keep quiet about it. It’s an old thing, from hundred kingdom days.” She looked at him shyly then. “I know it’s a fool’s thing, but sometimes I fancy they talk, the trees.”

  “They talk to you?”

  “Not with voices. Not to me.” She held a peach in her palm, still on the stem, that was not quite purple. Her fingers were long and gentle-looking. She looked it over with a critical eye, then decided to leave it on the tree. “Sometimes I like to set in the orchard with my paints and make pictures. I feel the skin on the trees, and they’re like little old ladies whispering to each other.” Then she looked up again. “You think I’m silly.”

  When he shook his head she smiled. “It’s all right. I reckon there’s lots about that think I’m a silly person.”

  He dared not look at her then, for she was plainly beautiful, and he was thinking about the war and what he’d seen. That the bloody Whitewood Forest could exist less than a league from this girl and this orchard seemed impossible. He held a peach in his hand and felt the cold in it. “Well, sodjer boy, you’d best stop staring at them and start filling your basket if you ever want to get this job done today. Like as not we’ll have to throw a bunch of these away. We’ve barrels of them in the barn, and they’ll turn, even in this cold.”

  He looked up and shook his head. Being in the army had never in his imagining included picking peaches in the snow with a beautiful girl. “I think we’re taking them all.” He replied.

  She laughed. “You think so, sodjer boy? You haven’t seen the barn, nor the cupboards, nor the empty stalls where we used to keep horses. We been picking them all season, ever since Merryis, and we’ve had to hire pickers. We’ve only just run out of money paying pickers, mama says, and nobody in town buying them no more. We’ve too many. We’ve been paying refugees to pick them and paying them in bread. I feel sorry for them. Farmers from up Northcraven way who’ve lost everything. I guess we’ll have some money now for a bit, though.”

  She was pretty and solid and smelled of peaches. Her skin was very clear and pale. Haim noticed the way her hair insisted on slipping out from beneath her woolen bonnet. “I don’t think you’re silly.” He whispered, and he didn’t know if she heard.

  In the house Busker O’Hiam was being shown about by Jannae Brookhouse, and he was smiling with wonder. There were peaches in every cupboard, and on the shelf stood loaf after loaf of peach bread, peach muffins, peach biscuits and jars of peach jam. A fifty weight flour barrel stood under the single frosted window, more than half empty from making peach bread. “We’ve no place left to put the peaches.” Jannae said wearily. “’Tis lucky you came along. Another day and we would have had to start throwing them out.”

  “We’ll take them all.” Busker replied happily. “And the bread and the muffins and the biscuits and jam, too. Every bit of it. I’ll go into town and requisition some wagons and hire some teamsters. Maybe we’ll need sleighs, I don’t know.” He looked at the heavy snow now falling all around them. “How much do you want for them?”

  “Well. All of them?” Jannae’s face looked stunned. “Usually I charges a silver mark a bushel for wintertime peaches, but we’ve never had so many. Lately I’ve marked it down, and …”

  “Done.” Busker said, interrupting her. “A silver a bushel and a silver a loaf. Does that sound fair?” At her silent nodding he continued. “You reckon two jars of jam for a silver?” She could only gasp and nod again. From his place in a rocker by the fire her husband Karl barked out a strangled little sound.

  “It’s too much.” Jannae finally stammered, sitting down on the barrel of flour and getting some on her dress. Busker thought he heard a cracking sound, and saw that she’d tipped a small bowl of eggs, and they were hitting the floor.

  Busker O’Hiam smiled widely. “Madam, these peaches are going to end the war for us. The Privy Lord said get all you can and pay asking. Edwell about had a fit.” He chuckled and pulled a belt of coins from his waist and began counting out gold on the countertop. The peach lady looked like she would faint. “I haven’t that much silver on me, but I’ve gold enough if you’ll take it.”

  “We’re taking all of them.” Busker told Haim minutes later, and the big soldier stepped away suddenly from the girl in the orchard, even though they were several paces apart as it was. Busker caught a look of surprise in her eyes, then she smiled to herself secretly. “Have your men load up the wagons whilst I go and fetch more men and horses. We’ll buy their farm wagon, too.”

  “Yes, sir.” Haim replied, and Busker saw the flush on the big man’s cheeks. He saw that the girl saw it, too. As he swung into his saddle and headed into town, the two gentlemen-in-waiting rode up beside him.

  “I’m leaving the fifth spears here.” He told Sir Celdemer. “They’re to protect the farmhouse. It’s become of strategic value. You two are a couple of fools.”

  “Love makes a fool of many a man.” The knight replied, even as Effander began to protest.

  “Not that kind of fool.” Busker answered. “The Privy Lord’s taken Northcraven. Where do you think the queen and an eagle rider are more likely to show up? There, where there’s titles and land up for grabs and politics and great events happening or here, on mama’s peach farm? Think about who they are.”

  Celdemer seemed to consider this, and Effander’s face was a study in perplexity. “You think we should wait for them in Northcraven?” The former queen’s guard had a thoughtful look on his face as the knight spoke. “Why Busker, you are a brilliant man.”

  “I am.” Busker agreed with a nod. “And I could use to have a couple of blademasters along on this trip since I’m leaving the spearmen here. Truth be told, we didn’t expect to need so many wagons.”

  In the kitchen Jannae and Karl looked at the stack of gold coin on the table between them, and her mouth was wide open. Then Ambarae came into the house, and her steps were light and she had that look on her face. “What does a
fyrdman do, mama?” The girl asked breathlessly. Jannae’s brow wrinkled and she looked to Karl, but the fool man was counting the gold and moving the little stacks from one side of the table to the other, grinning like an idiot. He hadn’t heard Ambarae, and he wouldn’t have understood if he did.

  “We’re as rich as princes, mama!” He cackled with glee.

  Fool man. What did he know about princes?

  Chapter 102: Cthochi Territories, Early Jember

  Marein Stonespear of the Gold Creek Cthochi band lay deep and warm in his furs, and the small stone stove in the corner of his small tent was glowing brightly, and he was in the middle of a fine dream of a sweet woman he had met a month earlier by the Bristling Wood. The wind was small, and screaming in his dream, and it was the strangeness of this that woke him. For a moment he did not remember where he was, for he had been awake long into the night practicing the common drum with his mallet on a bit of wood.

  The scream came again, and he was awake, and he remembered that he was in his tent at the eastern edge of the Gold Creek Cthochi camp. Several more voices joined in the screaming, and he heard warriors yelling and footsteps pounding past his tent in the snow. He leaped from the bed clad in only his small clothes and pulled aside the flap to see what was happening.

  The sky was nearly black, although it was just afternoon, and snow was falling heavily. It was very cold.

  This was the winter camp of the Gold Creek Cthochi, and it had been laid out in the usual fashion, with a large central fire around which the elaborately decorated tents of the elders and the senior warriors circled. Then the tents of the families of lesser renown, and finally, in the outer circle, the tents of the single men, like Marein. He was not a blooded warrior, only a young apprentice drumspeaker, and unmarried, so his small tent lay on the eastern edge of the camp.