by Doug Niles
Some of his old captains, too, had returned to the ranks. The grizzled ogre chieftain Bloodgutter had come at the head of a company of nearly a thousand axe-wielding bulls and proclaimed he, himself, would batter down the walls of any fortress standing in the army’s path. Impressed by his loyalty, and tusk-foaming ferocity, Ankhar had promoted him to General Bloodgutter on the spot.
The fierce warg rider Rib Chewer had also returned to serve the half-giant again. Rib Chewer brought with him hundreds of his clan, each mounted on a snarling, fanged wolf the size of a pony. Those warriors, riding fast across the plains and seemingly tireless, would be the fleet advance guard of his army, Ankhar decided. The flying sivaks would be his scouts and his eyes.
The ogres would be his fists.
“You have done well, son of the mountains,” declared the Nightmaster, appearing—as ever—only after the last glow of the sunset had faded from the western sky. He materialized near the great fire where Ankhar sat with his captains, and his arrival provoked a great stirring and growling among the restive ogres. One, the captain called Heart Eater, leaped to his feet and took a step toward the small, masked human, only to halt in shock when the visitor raised a black-gloved hand.
“What witchery is this?” demanded Heart Eater, struggling and flailing as he tried to free his feet, which seemed to have become suddenly planted in the ground.
“Merely a precaution, to see you do not try and harm one of your master’s greatest allies,” replied the Nightmaster with a shrug. He gestured and Heart Eater twisted free. Off balance, the ogre smashed to the ground and bounced, growling, back to his feet. The others muttered warily but did not intervene.
“Or, perhaps, to see that your master’s greatest ally is not forced to do harm to one of his loyal captains,” continued the black priest, his tone casual. Still, there was power and menace in those words, and the bristling, growling Heart Eater saw the wisdom of returning sullenly to his seat by the fire. Pond-Lily, seated beside her lord and master, watched the exchange wide-eyed, while Laka—on Ankhar’s other side—cackled in wry amusement.
“I have done as you … requested,” Ankhar said, choosing his words carefully. His stepmother sat rigidly, her bright eyes shifting from him to the visitor. The emerald gems in the eye sockets of her skull talisman glowed, and she lifted the ghastly rattle above her head and shook it wildly. “I have an army, and my warriors are ready to march against the knights.”
“Very good,” said the Nightmaster. “Know that you do not march alone, that even as you move to attack, other armies—as well as smaller, more secretive factions—will move against the emperor and Solamnia. His fall is all but assured.”
“Other armies? Will they claim his treasures before I reach them?” demanded the half-giant suspiciously.
The Nightmaster waved a hand, and Ankhar’s worries seemed to evaporate. Even as the man was explaining that all the booty in the southern plains would be the property of the half-giant and his men, the horde’s commander was no longer concerned with such questions.
Instead, he felt impatient. He wanted to go to war.
Jaymes asked Sir Donald to take his horse back to the palace, announcing that he intended to walk. Before the knight rode off on the silver-saddled steed, the emperor lashed his cloak and helmet to the saddlebags. Instead he made do with a plain black cape. Pulling the hood up over his head, he walked down from Nobles’ Hill with his head low, though his eyes and ears stayed alert. His mood was black; his anger felt like a burning coal in his chest. Two women had thwarted him, and he could strike at neither of them directly. Sooner or later they would regret their actions.
But that afternoon he would find an easier target.
Unrecognized, he passed through the gate into the Old City. No strong urge propelled him home—he had no stomach to deal with his wife right then—so he took a roundabout path, determined to see for himself what the mood in Palanthas was like. His footsteps soon carried him near the bustling waterfront, where a number of wide plazas served as day markets, with vendors offering everything from fish to sharp steel knives for sale. About the only commercial item prohibited from sale was slaves—that foul trade had been banned since the restoration of Solamnic rule under Lord Regent du Chagne—but Jaymes suspected that if he looked closely at some of the brothels or mercenary companies in the city even humans could be purchased.
However, he was not concerned with such matters of morality. Instead, his mind was on practical problems, and Coryn’s words had warned him that there might exist dangers in the very city about which the emperor suspected little. Was the population rebellious? Was Vingaard Keep just the tip of a dangerous iceberg?
If so, Jaymes Markham would not remain in the dark for long.
The first place he stopped was a fish market right at the docks. He ignored the busy scenes of commerce, the nets full of glistening salmon being hoisted from holds, the icemen hauling their wagons of frozen water to the stalls, the merchants trying to sell their goods to the teeming throngs. Instead, Jaymes listened to the people who were not there to sell or buy, but merely to gab.
He heard one of the official heralds, proclaiming the relatively old news of Vingaard’s capitulation. Jaymes had written the announcement himself, and—hearing it—regretted his choice of words.
“The recalcitrant Kerrigan clan has rejoined the law-abiding ranks of the Solamnic peoples!” cried the herald. “The daughter of the lord, Lady Kerrigan, has been appointed mistress of the keep. Her brother is declared an outlaw, and a reward of a thousand steel pieces is offered for his capture, alive. Alternately, if proof of his death can be produced, the reward is five hundred steel.”
Jaymes heard people muttering about the announcement, some hearing the news for the first time, others reacting as though the herald’s report was familiar. The emperor had intentionally left out any mention of the damage to the keep’s legendary towers, as well as the fate of Lord Kerrigan. But the sad truth was spreading.
“Did you hear that Old Sandy—that’s Lord Kerrigan the elder—was killed by the emperor when he came to his camp under a flag of truce?” whispered an old man, speaking to several young ruffians. He was a vendor of wine, who leaned on the counter of his tiny stall as he held the attention of a small group of onlookers. A hand-scratched sign hung crookedly on a post, announcing it as “Norgaard Eric’s Prime Wine Shop.” Though the fellow was speaking softly, his words carried to Jaymes’s ears as the emperor, still cloaked, mingled with the crowd.
“Not only that, but his guns knocked the whole keep down!” a woman hissed, looking up to make sure the herald wasn’t listening. She didn’t show any concern about the strangers clustered around her and kept speaking. “Next thing you know, he’ll be blasting down our own houses if he don’t like the way we looks at ’im!”
“They say his own troops was on the point o’ mutiny!” the old man interjected, trying to recapture his audience. “That he held a sword to his captain’s own throat, ere the men would follow orders.”
“How’d it come to this?” heatedly asked one of the young men. He was a furtive, swarthy type that Jaymes immediately pegged for a thief. There was the shape of a short blade under the hip of his tunic, though for the moment he seemed more interested in gossiping than in working his trade.
“We let ’im do it!” the woman replied tartly. “Just gave ’im the keys to the city, we did.”
“Eh, it’s the lord regent’s fault. Givin’ up his daughter like that to a hick warrior from the backcountry! Why, there’s them say that he really did kill old Lord Lorimar, and ’e threatened to do the same to the regent, less he gave up his daughter.”
“And the poor princess,” said the woman, shaking her head and clucking her tongue. “Locked up in that castle like a prisoner, she is.”
“Huh! Really? How d’you know that?” demanded the old man, obviously jealous of that fresh tidbit of information.
“Why, my son’s a sergeant in the palace guard, ’e is
,” the woman insisted in a low voice. “Was him that looked in on her every day while the emperor was off makin’ war.”
Jaymes had been determined to listen in silence, but that remark upset him. Muffling his voice, he spoke from the edge of the group. “A sergeant, you say? Sure he ain’t just a reg’lar ranker?”
“Sergeant Withers!” she shot back, offended. “Maxim Withers. You can see his name on the roster, you don’t believe me!”
She suddenly squinted, trying to get a clean look at Jaymes, but he shifted slightly, using the shoulder of a burly dock worker so she couldn’t see him. “Yes,” she repeated firmly. “Our beloved princess wept and she wailed, I’m told! They were barely allowed to feed her—on the emperor’s orders it was!”
“No!” gasped one of the listeners.
“That tain’t the worst of it,” the old woman said, her voice dropping low again.
“What? Tell us!” demanded the listeners.
“She’s with child!” she proclaimed triumphantly. “The Princess of Palanthas is going to be giving the emperor an heir!”
“Ah, I ain’t heard that!” said Norgaard Eric skeptically, trying to take charge of the gossiping again. He switched the subject, grousing about the city patrols that had apparently required him to close his wine-vending stall at sundown. The new rule had been one of Jaymes’s innovations, and the emperor knew it had considerably reduced the drunkenness on the streets in the waterfront district.
Disgusted, the emperor moved on, though not without making a few mental notes.
He spent the rest of the day making his way through the city. In some neighborhoods the official heralds were actually jeered by people in the crowds, and everywhere the mood was touchy. The people were foolish cattle, he realized, who were distracted by any kind of gossip or provocation. By the time he approached the gates of his palace, throwing back his hood so he was immediately recognized, the emperor had made several decisions. Many of them would take a little more thought, but at least two of them he could act on at once.
“Find Sergeant Maxim Withers of the palace guard,” he ordered the captain on duty. “Have him report to me at once. Oh, and send a detail to the waterfront district. There’s a wine merchant there, calls himself Norgaard Eric.”
“Yes, my lord,” the captain replied, his eyebrows raised in mute question.
“I want his stock destroyed, and I think it would do him good to spend a few nights in the city gaol. See that it’s done.”
Knowing he would be obeyed—it was a good feeling, that knowledge—Jaymes stalked through the door of his palace. He was hungry but would have a meal delivered to his office.
He had a lot of work to do.
Dram couldn’t sleep. He didn’t want to disturb Sally with his tossing and turning, so he got out of bed, threw a fur robe over his stocky, muscular body, and went out to the front porch of the great house. The valley’s crystalline lake shimmered before him, bright with the reflected light of a million stars and the setting of the silver crescent moon in the west.
He settled himself into his favorite chair and only then realized he wasn’t alone. There was a man leaning against the railing at the end of the porch. He had been staring at the waters but turned silently to regard the dwarf. Dram’s eyes were naturally keen in the dark, and he recognized the fellow immediately.
“Captain Franz,” he greeted the son of General Dayr. “You’re keeping late hours.”
The young knight sighed and came over to take a seat next to the dwarf. “Well, I’ve had a lot of trouble sleeping lately. Ever since …”
“Since Vingaard Keep?” asked Dram shrewdly.
“Yes. I’m loyal to the knighthood, sir. I really am. But it felt like, what we were doing, marching on, firing on a keep of our own people, was a great injustice.”
The dwarf fell silent for a moment. “Sounds like the Vingaard knights made a pretty good attack on Jaymes’s army, if they burned up two of his bombards.”
“What choice did they have?” shot back the young captain.
Dram merely shrugged. “I’m not saying they had choices, not good ones, anyway. But I can’t think of anything more likely to arouse the emperor’s ire. He couldn’t let an affront like that go unpunished.”
“Is he willing to punish the whole of this nation?” demanded Franz.
The dwarf shook his head. “I don’t know what he’s willing to do. I never did. But I have to admit I don’t like the sound of his plans, if his letter to me is any indication.”
“Is that why you’re down here in the middle of the night?” asked the knight. “Because you can’t sleep either?”
“Something like that,” Dram replied. “It helps me to think, out here with the stars and the lake and the mountains. I come down here more nights than I’d care to admit to Sally.”
“So you admit that you, too, are troubled by the emperor.”
Dram didn’t answer, and after a while Franz rose to his feet. Stretching, he looked at the vista in the valley then turned back to the dwarf. “I appreciate your hospitality, putting us up in your own house. And I appreciate you listening to me. I try talking to my father, but he doesn’t want to listen. I think he’s afraid to listen, sometimes.”
“Well, your father is a very wise man. And a courageous one, as well. I wouldn’t expect to hear that he’s afraid of anything. But he might have the wisdom to be cautious.”
“Yes, I know. And I’m sure you’re right. Good night,” Franz said, going back into the house.
Dram sat out there until dawn started to color the sky. He went back in and snuggled next to his wife as the day grew brighter, and still he couldn’t sleep. When Mikey, in the next room, started to stir, he got up to get the boy so his wife could have another hour of rest.
And when he met General Dayr and his son for breakfast, as they had planned, he had finally decided what to say.
“Tell Jaymes I got his orders. I read his letter. I understand all his needs and wants,” the dwarf said gruffly.
“And?” prodded the commander, sensing there was more.
“Tell him if he wants more bombards, he’ll have to make them himself.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ARTICLES OF LAW
Garrison Sergeant Maxim Withers, much to his surprise, received a curt note from his captain: the emperor wanted to see him, personally. Withers carefully polished his boots, shined his armor, and made sure his flowing mustache was thoroughly combed before he reported for the audience. He marched in to the emperor’s office, saluted smartly, and waited for Jaymes Markham to finish reviewing some of the important-looking papers that were scattered across his desk. Finally, the great man looked up.
“Sergeant Withers,” the emperor said coldly, stirring the soldier’s anxiety. “I have decided to reassign you. Sometimes duty in the palace, or in the city, softens a man, and I would hate to see that happen with an estimable fellow of your quality.”
“Excellency, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you will.” The emperor was smiling, though his tone was most unpleasant. “I’m assigning you to the garrison command of the Northpoint Lighthouse, effective immediately. There is a supply ship departing the docks with the evening tide. I expect you to be aboard.”
Withers swayed, feeling a little sick to his stomach. He knew the Northpoint Lighthouse was a huge tower on a rocky islet just beyond the northern terminus of the Bay of Branchala. A perennial flame burned at the summit of the tall spire. It was fueled by oil pumped by the garrison. The light of that fire was reflected and amplified by great mirrors that were visible for dozens of miles out to sea. The installation was beloved by mariners as a sign of safe harbor ahead.
Yet the place was not viewed so favorably by the men assigned to keep the fire burning. The lighthouse was staffed by a garrison of twelve men-at-arms and a single sergeant. Since it was miles from the mainland, and scores of miles from the city, the troops were stuck there for a term of three months, du
ring which time they lived on the remote, otherwise uninhabited, islet. Stormy waters often surrounded them, so supply and replacements ships were unpredictable, often delayed for weeks or months. And the smell of the perpetually burning oil was notorious to passing ships and often sickened the guard contingent.
“I have decided that there is too much instability in the operation of the lighthouse,” the emperor continued. “Staff, especially the command sergeant, replaced every three months leads to inefficiency. Therefore, your term will last for a full year!”
Withers, aghast, dared to ask Jaymes the reasoning behind the posting.
“Ask your mother,” the emperor retorted. “It seems you converse with her about all manner of things that are within the purview of this palace and not the subjects for marketplace gossip.”
Chagrined, the veteran guard slunk out of Jaymes’s office, grateful he still had his life and some semblance of his rank.
A short time later, the captain of the gate guard came in and reported that the wine merchant known as Norgaard Eric had been put out of business, his stock dumped into the gutters of the marketplace. No doubt a few bottles of the higher-quality product had been salvaged by the city guards for their own enjoyment, but the emperor expected as much and didn’t care to inquire.
“Let him languish in the gaol for a fortnight. And tell him to watch his words when he’s released, or the next time it will cost him his tongue.”
“Aye, my lord,” said the captain, bowing quietly to his stern, forbidding lord and, with a wary eye on the emperor, withdrawing from the office.
Jaymes spent the whole night at his desk, drafting and redrafting orders, calling for scribes when one parchment was done, turning to the next even as those servants began making copies. He worked by the light of several bright lanterns, and threw away a quill every so often as they became overworked, cracked, and useless. “More ink!” he demanded several times through that long night. When his hand cramped up, he flexed his fingers and picked up another pen. When his back became sore, he rose from his chair, stretched for a moment, paced a few times around his office, and sat back down to continue writing orders.
