“How do you know?” Levin asked, and he also wore a deep woolen cowl, for he did not want his all-too-memorable poxy face and eyepatch to be noted. “There aren’t any street signs, and I can’t tell a mintner’s shop from a blacksmith’s forge.”
“The name of the street is written on the houses, Levin. It’s above the lintels on the doors.”
Levin looked and saw that it was so. He looked up and down Mintner Street, and he saw the sign of a tavern, a golden dragon hanging on a triangular shield. “Two houses left of the tavern.” He said to Kuljin, and the man nodded.
“Scout the back of the place and I’ll survey the front.” The halfman said. Two minutes later and they met at the front again, two doors down so as not to draw notice to themselves. They needn’t have bothered, however, for they looked no different than any of the other Arkermen walking up and down this busy avenue.
“No guards at the back.” Levin reported, and Kuljin sounded surprised when he replied.
“There are none at the front either. Nor did I see any in the windows. There is no smoke coming from the chimney and the place looks empty. Are you sure you have the right place?”
“Aye. I’m sure. Hobrin wouldn’t lie to me and he knows the town well.”
Kuljin nodded. “Well, it’s the back door then. It’s off of a narrow alley and I doubt anyone will notice us.”
“Not until we’re right in there.” Levin replied. Together they walked down the alleyway, looking for all of the world like they belonged there, and no one appeared to notice them. While Levin kept a lookout Kuljin went to pick the lock, an elaborate and expensive thing of Arker steel, the only clue that the little cottage was anything other than the simple home it appeared to be.
“It’s not locked.” Kuljin said wonderingly.
“A trap?”
“How would they know we were coming?” The halfman replied. Still he drew his sword, and he thrust open the door and walked inside as if expecting a battle. Levin was right behind him. The rooms were cold, although splendidly furnished, for this cottage was the property of Baron Emric D’Cadmouth, and until very recently had housed an important prisoner. The fires were out and the rooms were dark. Still they searched, but the only clue they found was a silver handled hairbrush that apparently went with the place, and a clump of blond hair was tangled up in it.
“She’s gone.” Levin said, and Kuljin agreed.
“Aye, they’ve taken her elsewhere. I’m sorry Levin.”
Levin shrugged and shook his head. “Too bad. We’ll have seven devils’ time finding her again.”
“Why would you say she’s dead?” Lanae demanded loudly, and the King of the Green Hills regarded her patiently. The news of King Maldiver’s death and the news that the Baron of Arker was holding Limme had reached the court of the forgotten kingdom on the very same day, although hours apart and by different couriers. From his place on the walls the dead devil boar looked more menacing than usual in the dim light.
“This is the same in every country, Lanae.” He patiently explained. “The king has died, leaving no clear successors, and his house is in disarray. The leading chieftains from other clans will be vying to take his lands and his gold. Limme is Maldiver’s daughter, so she stands to make a claim. While the king was alive she was a valuable hostage, but now that the king is dead she is a threat. Baron Emric is my friend, but he must kill her or marry her, and he already has a wife. This land is not like honest Thimenia where a man might take many wives. He must put her to death.”
“But she is my friend.” Lanae said, and her voice was heavy with grief.
“Well, the baron is my friend and yours, too, Lanae. But this is between clans and the prize is rich. He will do what he must do.”
Jahaksi was there, on one of his occasional visits, and he looked up sadly at Lanae. “I am sorry, Lanae, but even in the Empire things are the same. She is without allies and far from her family’s source of power. The baron will kill her.”
The Lighthill Cathedral’s bells were ringing again, and this made twice since the terrible day when the news had come of the poisoning of King Maldiver and his queen. Today the news was almost equally sad, for the godsknight Tarl, the handsome and reverent prince who had refused to leave the godsknights when his father ascended the throne, had been found dead in the horse’s paddock. It was surprising, for he was an excellent horseman, and the gray gelding called Easy Wind was not known to be troublesome. Still, it was plain enough that he’d fallen from the horse, and the thin coat of snow on the split rail fence showed marks where he’d fallen against it. The priors who were sent to investigate found no indications that it was other than an accident, and the High Prelate, who had been born a D’Tarman, received and approved their findings.
The plague of bad luck that had befallen the Elderest branch of the D’Cadmouths continued throughout Jember, and Bennum, the youngest son of Maldiver D’Cadmouth, was found by a fisherman, floating in an eddy of the Dunwater, half a league downstream from the docks where he kept his flotilla of trading boats. There were no marks on him, but the docks were slick with ice this time of year, and the footing could be treacherous. He was the last living male heir to the body of king Maldiver, and when the news reached the various upper families throughout the Dunwater River Valley, they began assembling petitions and courtiers to press their cases at the Lighthill Cathedral, for the High Prelate would need to select a successor to the crown. It would be a busy Aldis, and the people, gentry and commoner alike, celebrated the five King’s Days holidays in a muted and fearful apprehension, anticipating the struggles to come. A great house had fallen, and even the dimmest Mortentian knew that there would be seven hells to pay in deciding who would take their place.
Galrith D’Uta was summoned. His hands were in chains, for once the pox was finished with him he had tried to escape the Tarl of Tarls, and they had been forced to ride him down. That had been months ago, and it was only his proficiency in languages that had saved him from the death that had claimed so many of his fellow soldiers. They dragged him by the chains like a leashed dog, and when he came before the gilded pony he fell to his face and awaited the Tarl of Tarl’s pleasure.
Boy on a Goat looked down from the gilded pony at the naked man before him. The slave had been a Mortentian soldier of some sort, but now he was simply property, if somewhat useful property. “Slave. I have a task for you.”
The naked man bowed even more deeply. “I obey.” The man said in passable Kirluni, using the Sparli inflections as was proper.
“You are to come with me to speak to your friend and my enemy.” Galrith was dragged away from the presence of Boy on a Goat, and he did not lift his eyes. The first time he had been brought before Boy on a Goat he had dared to do so, and he had been whipped nearly to death for his temerity by the vitya who was his trainer.
They wrapped Galrith in furs, but they did not give him shoes, so by the time the small cavalcade of ponies had crossed the open plain that surrounded the bracken in which the remains of the Zoric muster lay starving, his feet were bloody and half frozen. To Galrith’s surprise his vitya, a man called Steals From Khumenov, rode forward with a white flag suspended on a long pole.
After a long time of waiting a white flag rose among the blackness of the bracken, and a man walked forth. It was the commander of the muster itself, Shelderim. He looked thin and wasted, and the mark of the pox was on his cheeks.
Shelderim D’Cadmouth strode from the thicket carrying the white flag of parley. He did this fearlessly, for the two hundred odd men with him were dead men if this fight continued, and he had determined to surrender as soon as it could be done with some assurance of their survival. He saw Galrith D’Uta in chains, standing in a patch of bloody snow, and behind him was one of the damned Sparli knights that had been slaughtering the men of the Zoric muster for months in little battles here and there.
Of the five thousand men who had come north of the Whitewood with him and onto the Emerald Peninsula,
his little band of two hundred odd were all that were left, and most of them were half starved or just getting over the plague that had killed most of the ones that the Sparli had not. He had taken over fifteen hundred men into the bracken, a dense thicket where the Sparli and their ponies dared not go, for there were no paths and the men within were good bowmen.
Instead the Sparli had surrounded the place with camps, and they treated it much as they would have treated any besieged fortress, patiently waiting for starvation and illness to do what force of arms could not. None of the men who had attempted to escape the bracken had survived.
Behind the knight a man sat on one of their ponies, although the saddle of this pony and all of the gear was plated or made of gold. It was a fine little horse, as these Sparli beasts went, but what caught Shelderim’s attention was the man himself.
He’d heard rumors of the Sparli leader, their Tarl of Tarls, but he had not seen him until now. The pox must have had him during childhood, for his legs seemed too small for his body, and were curled around the trunk of his pony in such a way as to make it plain that he was extremely bowlegged. From the waist up the man was a giant, however, and his arms were thick as tree trunks and his neck was a column of pure muscle holding a thick squarish head from which deep set black eyes regarded Shelderim with the cunning of a snake. His hair hung in elaborate braids nearly to his waist.
“I am Boy on a Goat, the Tarl of Tarls, leader of the Sparli people.” Galrith translated the words carefully.
“Ask him what he wants.” Shelderim told Galrith.
The Tarl of Tarls spoke, and Galrith could not conceal the amazement in his own voice as he translated the words. Many of the vitya nearby seemed surprised as well. “Most esteemed enemy of mine, the great Ghaill of Ghaills has fallen in battle and the Cthochi are no more. My war with you is ended, but I have no ships to take my warriors home. The God of Sky has killed the ships of the Sparli.”
“What does he want of us?” Shelderim asked Galrith. “I have no ships.”
“I have heard from others we captured that you are commanded by a nobleman of this land. I ask that you fetch him and permit me to speak to him.”
“I am the nobleman. I am the son of Duke Maldiver D’Cadmouth of Elderest.” Shelderim replied, once Galrith had completed the translation.
“You are brave to treat with me personally, nobleman.” The Tarl of Tarls nodded respectfully. “I would have peace with you until the Sparli ships can come again and take my people home. If you would have it so, I shall take all of your men into my tents and feed them well. Also I will share with you the plunder we have taken, and pay a wergild against those we have slain. In exchange you must speak the words to your people that grant us peace until the summer comes and our ships can come again. If you do not accept these terms, then we shall return to the path of war between us. What say you?”
Shelderim noticed that the vityas and other officers of the Tarl of Tarls were looking at him askance, as if he were giving up too much. Then he thought of his men starving in the bracken behind him. He nodded at last, for if the man honored the terms, they would live. If he did not, and this was a trick, the end result would be no different than continuing the fight. “I accept the terms. Tell him to bring horses, Galrith. Not all of the men can walk.”
In the end they decided that calling Aelfric a king was too much, and they settled on naming him the Baron of Northcraven. Proclamations were duly issued and messengers sent forth, and the pronouncement bore the signed approval of Bishop Weymort, acting Prelate of the Northcraven Cathedral. They were sealed in white wax with a black griffin pressed into it. When Yender O’root heard the news he was riding through Maslit on his way to find the man, and he turned to Abinar and grinned. “We’re back, Abinar. The family is back.”
“And more’s the pity if it brings you in, ya dog faced little poisoner. More’s the pity.”
End of Book One
Gutcrusher is coming.
The King of All Ogres rises in the north, with Azha the Fury at his side and the immortal witch Khama Holle behind him, bloodying his rivals and threatening to crush the realms of men.
In the deeps of the Cthochi Forest, the shaman kills the bull, summoning all of his savage Aulig kindred to war against Mortentia. The blademaster Tuchek, his Mortentian son, must decide whether to betray his Aulig blood or betray the army he fights for.
Aelfric D’root, heir to the murdered Lord Hambar, must overcome the curse in his blood and restore the family’s honor, if the kingdom of Mortentia is to be saved. From battlefield to bloody battlefield, he carries the griffin standard of the Black Duke’s get, and if it falls, the kingdom falls.
From the back of the great eagle Sentinel, king’s eye Lanae Brookhouse carries the messages that hold Mortentia together, but when she is captured, she learns that the world is a larger and more deadly place than ever she knew. The life of the queen depends on her escape.
War of the Misread Augury is the first novel in the trilogy, Rise of the Black Griffin. It chronicles a long and bloody year in Mortentia, a year of war, plague and regicide, the dawn of an era of turmoil that will ultimately sweep the entire Known World into its bloody, churning orbit.
The cast includes bloody-handed Thimenian reavers, Mortentian blademasters and eagle-riders, and the untamed Aulig tribesmen, as well as ogres, witches, goblins and dark gods. Giant eagles dominate the heavens, while kraken and leviathans rule the seas. A rich and varied history lies behind this tale, and glimpses of it shine through, so that the world itself is revealed in depth and character.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 145
