by Jon Kiln
“Look lively,” Berengar said to him. “We’re on the move.”
Nisero nodded, but did not answer aloud. He hoisted his bundle up onto one shoulder as Berengar continued to carry his under his arm, with the pike pointed out ahead of him. Nisero used his long, dark pike like a walking stick.
Ahead, the bulk of the carriage made the curve on the main trail. The driver’s head turned in their direction and the reins went taut on the double lines of four horses. The wagon appeared as large and ornate as a fine villa. It almost seemed too large to be supported by two axles. The wagon rolled to a halt. The driver remained cowled inside the robes and under the tall, black guardsmen’s hat.
Berengar and Nisero rounded the back and opened the door to the carriage. They tossed in their bundles and climbed inside, closing the door behind them. The reins snapped outside and the horses strained for a few seconds before they brought the great weight of the grand wagon into motion again.
The inside was more impressive than the outside. There was room to stand up straight. It sported decorative columns, tables, shelves, benches as large and plush as lounging couches, tapestries, and gold trim everywhere. It was a theater and a home unto itself.
Two thumps drew their attention to the man tied and gagged on the floor near one of the benches. His bonds still held around his hands and feet, but he had worked about half of the material of the gag down out of his mouth. They did not need him to begin yelling.
Berengar walked over and grabbed the man’s legs, dragging him away from the bench where he was bumping. The captain stuffed the gag back into the man’s teeth and tightened it. The captive man sighed and went slack inside his bonds in the corner of the rocking wagon.
Berengar spoke to him. “Keeping you alive is a great inconvenience and risk for us. It is a favor we do for you. You have nothing to offer us that we need in exchange other than your cooperation and silence. Those are small payments in our situation for something you must value very highly—your life. So don’t convince me that taking your life is the better or necessary choice.”
The man stayed silent and Berengar rejoined Nisero where they unrolled their bundles. The men shed their cloaks and pulled on the colorful uniforms. They bound the scalloped, white collars around their necks. Then, they pulled on the dyed, leather helmets, opting to fold the flaps down on the sides to better conceal their faces. They kept their swords on their hips, but slid them around slightly behind to hide that they were not standard fare for this particular uniform.
“Do we look like carriage guardsmen?” Berengar smoothed the creases on his new attire.
Nisero raised one eyebrow. He reached up and adjusted one of the leather flaps by the captain’s face to better conceal his scar. “You should have shaved, sir.”
“Perhaps. I doubt we will be discovered for want of shaving.” He rubbed at his chin. “It's warmer anyhow.” Berengar lifted up his pike and stood by the door to the carriage.
“These uniforms are foolish,” Nisero complained. “The bright colors might as well be a target for archers, and these collars are not fit for lap dogs.”
“They definitely represent a different path of service. If we had followed this line of work, we might be far better off.”
“I can’t imagine a more useless life than being a show piece for nobles as they ride around the countryside in wheeled palaces.”
Berengar tried to get comfortable. His new clothes were beginning to itch, which he stoically ignored. “Maybe the uniforms are so brightly colored so that any archers will pin the guards from a distance instead of the nobles.”
“In that regard,” Nisero said, “we are very much the same.”
“How so?”
“Using us as a target for death has served the noble class for some reason, and this situation is due to that.”
Berengar turned and peered back out the window beside the door as they rolled along the trail. “To be fair, I am only here because I chose to help you. The nobles would have been happy to allow me to live out my life in quiet obscurity, if I had chosen to remain uninvolved.”
Outside, the bright, triangular banners of the King waved and flapped atop poles. They marked the rally points of the various regiments and preparation camps within the spread of the expanded army. Nisero watched them pass. He lost count as they rolled deeper through the heart of an army set against them and the wronged king of the east.
“Get ready,” Berengar instructed. “Play it straight. He is not even likely to address us. Arianne may be the most vulnerable, but we just have to get him inside and the door closed.”
“You make abduction sound quite easy,” Nisero quipped.
Berengar shook his head and smiled slightly, glancing back at the man bound on the floor near the corner. “You think it would be with all our recent practice.”
Captain Berengar opened the door and stepped out. Nisero started to follow, but then realized that he did not have his pike. He looked around the floor, not seeing it at first. They should have done a better job of storing their bundles, he thought. The man would notice as soon as he came in.
Nisero spotted the dark, narrow pike on the floor. The lieutenant broke his paralysis and grabbed up the largely ceremonial version of the weapon.
He scrambled out and took to the opposite side of the fold down steps from Berengar. The captain said, “I thought you had backed out on me.”
“And let you have all the fun? Never,” Nisero replied, staring forward at attention.
***
The Duke smoothed down the front of his fine, dark garments on both sides of the gold encrusted buttons. His black beard was sculpted down into a tight, severe point like a cone.
He was surrounded by other nobles of lesser rank that Nisero did not recognize. Nisero supposed that Caffrey was technically of lesser rank than the Duke, but the lieutenant had a sense that Lord Caffrey carried far more power, influence, and threat than many men above him. They did not seem to carry themselves with the same air of danger that Caffrey had about him.
As Nisero’s eyes traced over the Duke, he thought about the fact that this entire plan was built off of the fact that Caffrey had made an offhanded comment about a Duke profiting from the betrayal. It was a shaky reasoning at best for what they were about to attempt.
The other soldiers surrounding the men and walking with them concerned Nisero more. They had not planned on dealing with personal guards. These men wore light armor marked from use. They were not regular army and there was nothing ceremonial about them. These were men hired or assigned to protect. The Duke was the highest rank present, so they might all enter the carriage with him. There was certainly room enough and Nisero counted ten. They would not be able to take all of them and as soon as the actual driver was discovered tied on the floor, their plan would be foiled.
There was not much chance of them running through the camp and escaping in one piece, even in the back sections occupied mostly by farmers. They would also have Arianne in tow.
He fought to keep his composure. The Duke and other men paid little attention to Berengar or Nisero in their ceremonial décor. However, the Duke did eye Arianne on the bench above for a long stretch but then looked away. Nisero thought he read suspicion, but it could have been the perpetual face of disgust that many nobles seemed to carry when their faces were at rest.
The Duke approached and stepped up onto the first step leading into the carriage. He stared inside for a moment between Nisero and Berengar before turning back around to face the lower nobility now gathered up closer. Nisero thought about the bundles in the floor. He heard a thump that vibrated through the carriage’s body behind him. He thought that might be the driver putting up a fight again, but it might have been one of the horses kicking against the harnesses.
Nisero became aware of the eyes of the fighting men drifting across his face. If they were worth a fraction of what they were paid, they’d be eyeing the guards on the carriage more closely than they were. Nisero did n
ot know or recognize any of them, but that did not mean they would not recognize him from previous campaigns or from the posters that covered the kingdom.
The Duke spoke in a deep voice. “This army will need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. That goes for regular fighters as well as conscripted men. I do not need the divisions under my charge to draw any negative attention for falling out of ranks. They can all fall bloody on the field of battle, if it comes to that, but I will not be made embarrassed by a misstep or stumble on the march. Hear me?”
The others mumbled their agreements. The fighting men turned their attention out beyond the road. That was good form in practice and for Nisero personally, but they should have been searching the carriage as well.
“I am away then,” the Duke said as he turned and entered. “I may be back from the capital in time for the march, but I expect perfection whether I am here or not. Failure is the business of the lords of lesser dukes and not for men that answer to me.”
The men babbled their farewells.
Nisero and Berengar exchanged a quick look, waiting a beat. They fed their pikes back through the opening and nearly scrambled up inside together. Nisero pulled up the stairs and Berengar closed and latched the door. The lieutenant tried not to make eye contact with the men outside as the door latched.
Berengar walked up behind the Duke as Nisero thumped the forward wall with his pike. He heard the reins snap and the leather around the horses strained as they struggled to bring the weight behind them into motion. The carriage began to roll, but not nearly quick enough for Nisero’s tastes.
The lieutenant glanced out the window seeing the lower nobility and their guards wandering back toward the banners over the staging areas. They were leaving, but not fast enough for Nisero’s liking. If the next bit got loud, they would surely hear.
“What is this?” the Duke questioned.
Nisero dropped his pike and turned.
“Duke Aedwrath?” Berengar walked up beside the noble.
Aedwrath looked from the bundles and discarded cloaks on the floor to the man tied and gagged on his side in the corner. The Duke was processing the scene slowly. He was not moving to flee or struggle yet. “What is going on here?”
Berengar drew his sword and lifted the blade up under Duke Aedwrath’s chin. The Duke took a step away, but the captain seized the man’s bicep and turned the sword to rest the point under the Duke’s chin, lifting his head at an awkward angle.
Aedwrath opened his mouth and sucked in air. Nisero glanced out through the window at the soldiers walking wide around the wagon rolling past them on the road. They were mere steps from the door were the Duke to begin screaming.
Berengar moved his hand up and gripped Duke Aedwrath’s shoulder. He pulled on the joint as he added pressure on the point against the soft flesh of the noble’s throat. Aedwrath let out a choked sound that ended in a groan, but no scream.
“We are traveling with you to the capital,” Berengar said harshly. “We can enter using just your carriage, if taking your life proves to be a necessity. Are you going to make it necessary, Duke Aedwrath?”
The Duke glared. He swallowed, making the sword bob slightly in Berengar’s grasp. “I will not venture to make you believe so, but I do not know how scoundrels think.”
Berengar smiled. “Back up and sit on the bench. Do not shout out or act as if you are about to do so or you will leave me no recourse.”
Aedwrath shuffled his feet backward and sat down on the bench by Berengar’s guiding. “Who sent you?”
“First things first,” Berengar said. “Put your wrists together behind your back.”
As Aedwrath complied, Nisero approached with a section of rope. He tied the Duke’s hands behind his back as Captain Berengar held the sword to the noble’s throat.
“What is it you two want?”
Berengar leaned him back against the back of the plush bench. “Cross your ankles over one another.”
Aedwrath complied as he stared at the driver tied and gagged on the floor. Nisero used another section of rope to bind the Duke’s feet. Berengar affixed a strap across the Duke’s chest and bound him to a pole along the wall behind the back cushion of the bench.
Duke Aedwrath struggled slightly as Berengar tightened the strap and then sheathed his sword. “How do you two invade the King’s army and waylay my driver? Who is out there on the bench and where are you taking me?”
Berengar took a step back and leaned against a column near the center of the massive quarters inside the rocking wagon. “You can remain ungagged while we speak and answer each other’s questions, but if you become uncooperative, you can be silenced like your driver in the floor over there, or worse.”
“If you wanted me dead, I’d already be dead,” Aedwrath said, unfazed. “Now tell me who you are.”
Berengar scratched between the scalloped collar and his neck, but did not remove it. “Do not be so sure that I do not want you dead for what you have done.”
Aedwrath shifted inside his bonds, but could not seem to get comfortable and stopped trying. “What is it you want? Ransom?”
Berengar shook his head. “We want to prove our innocence.”
Aedwrath snorted. “I think that particular wagon may have rolled home when you seized mine in this manner. Where are you taking me?”
“I told you,” Berengar repeated. “We are going with you to the capital.”
“Are you spies from the eastern empire?”
“No. Do you really have no idea who we are or why we are here?”
“I have great wealth,” Aedwrath boasted. “Whatever you are being paid, I can increase the fee considerably to merely walk away.”
“Caffrey sent us to you.”
Aedwrath narrowed his eyes and looked back and forth between the two men. “Lord Caffrey sent you?”
“We questioned him and he indicated that you were a dark man that planned dark things.”
“That makes no sense,” Aedwrath disputed.
“He was informed of the ambush on the Elite Guard and the assassination of the prince outside his manor from advisors to the King themselves.”
Aedwrath scoffed. “The King has many advisors.”
“So you do not deny that’s where the order came. You just contend that there are many dark men that could have sent it.”
“What is that to you, and how does taking me to the capital bound in my own carriage change anything?”
“I watched my men cut down for the betrayal. I have been accused of orchestrating it myself,” Nisero said. “It means a great deal to me to uncover the truth.”
Aedwrath’s eyes widened. “So, that is why you need to enter the capital in my wagon. I am a bit baffled at what you think you will do after arriving that will matter at all. You can step outside and surrender to get the same result you will earn for entering in this manner.”
“We want to expose the men that are truly behind the deaths of our brothers in the Guard,” Berengar said.
“But not all were killed, were they? And not all then were truly your brothers in the end.”
“What are you saying?” Nisero asked.
“I am saying that if you intended to put your hands on the betrayers to expose them, you passed them over with your own compatriots in the Elite Guard to put your hands on me.”
“Did you pay Forseth and the others to turn on the rest of the Guard and to lead the prince into the ambush? Was it blackmail?” Berengar pushed for answers.
“What does that matter?” Aedwrath sneered. “If I told you we held their families hostage, would that somehow make the deaths more palatable to you?”
Nisero was becoming frustrated as this was going nowhere. “You admit to being a part of it, Duke Aedwrath?”
Aedwrath spat on the floor of the carriage between himself and his captors. “I do not bother myself with even knowing the names of men like you nor your corrupt betrayers. I would not dirty my hands with the exchange. I merely set other me
n to lead the war that is sparked and I position myself to advance when others fall. Men like you will never be able to understand men like me. You crawling insects ask me who, and how, and why, and I just roll my eyes and tell you to rebuild your meaningless hill or just die. Either choice is far easier than trying to make you understand things that go on so far above your station. And I am an Arch Duke, if you care to begin by showing me the respect of getting my title correct.”
Nisero looked to Berengar who turned away from the Duke.
Berengar lifted a rag from the remains of his bundle. Duke Aedwrath shook his head. “No. Don’t. That’s not necessary. I’ll tell you more. I can help you in your cause.”
Berengar wrapped his fists in the corners of the rag and forced the middle between the noble’s teeth. He tied it off behind the man’s head and stepped away. The Duke whimpered as the captain sat down on one of the benches next to where the driver lay.
“I am weary of sifting through the double speak of nobles,” Berengar said, resting his eyes. “This will be a long trip. I need a break before you lie to me further.”
Chapter 12: Prey and Snares
The people gathered in the square near the fountain. The roar of conversation rolled through the growing crowd. Their cacophony of voices echoed back off the stone and marble edifices constructed generations ago. Others gathered along balconies and flat rooftops on wooden structures.
The grand wagon sat askew near the fountain with the carriage door hanging open. A few men ventured close enough to look inside. They were as amazed by the décor as they were the driver, tied on the floor around discarded guardsmen uniforms, stinking of his own filth. They were tempted to help themselves to the unprotected treasures within but were restrained by fear that this might be some elaborate trap.
A few children came close enough to pet the eight horses still harnessed to the front of the wagon, waiting patiently to be unhooked and stabled.
