Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1)

by George Hatt

  “I do, however, accuse you all—governors and knights, peasants and prisoners—of faithlessness and idolatry. For if you privileged men and women of our warrior estate do not have Mahurin’s fire in your hearts and do His will in this world, then you genuflect before an idol, this golden solar disc on a pole, and nothing more. Go find a rock or a tree, pray to those, and be like the heathen in our hinterlands that your governors cannot bring to heel. Be apostate, but at least be honest about your faithlessness.”

  The stern cleric paused and let the uncomfortable words settle on the kneeling warriors. “I accuse you of idolatry, but not all of you. Your ancestors rid this Empire of sorcerers and the fell creatures they had congress with, just as Blessed Mahurin battled the demons of Ya’Grith and cast them out of the Heavenly Realms. He now maintains order in the Realms and banishes the darkness with His light. Who among you burns to do the same? Who among you will smite injustice and protect the weak? Who among you will preserve order and strive for unity; who will bring forth the Light of Mahurin when you draw your blades? These are the Sons and Daughters of Mahurin, who continue the Chief God’s work and thus richly deserve His blessings. As above, so below.”

  The clerics went down the line of warriors, stopping before each one to bless them individually. When they stopped in front Alcuin, the cleric with the censer swung it three times before him. “I seek the blessing of Mahurin,” Alcuin said.

  The grim-faced cleric touched Alcuin’s head. “Let the Fire of Mahurin be the Flame in your soul. And may the dogs of war one day become the faithful guardians of justice.”

  Alcuin turned the words over in his mind as clerics moved down the line.

  The clerics left the arena, and trumpets sounded the beginning of the contest. Alcuin, the Morgane and Grantham marched their troops abreast in three ranks toward the waiting defenders. Alcuin’s Black Swans formed the center of the formation. Grantham took the left flank, and the Battle Hags the right. Marek and Darien followed, holding their troops in reserve. If all went according to plan, they would take the wooden castle once the front line smashed the defenders outside the gate.

  The crowd erupted in cheers when the two “armies” clashed. Alcuin set aside a knight’s blunt steel with his shield and rapped an armored thigh with a swift counter stroke, sending the opponent staggering. Alcuin knocked him to the ground with a decisive shield bash and stepped over him to deliver a cut to a young nobleman in the second rank. The blow knocked a hastily raised shield aside and landed with a clang on the side of the man’s helm. The hapless knight followed his predecessor to the ground, rolled clumsily and grasped for his visor to no avail. He vomited in his helm before he could swing the protective metal aside.

  The Morgane and her Battle Hags attacked with such ferocity that more of their opponents fled than were knocked to the ground. The remaining defenders broke and ran for the wooden fortress.

  “Give chase!” Grantham yelled as the two mercenary forces raced each other to the fleeing knights. The battle devolved into a brawl at the base of the wall. Some of the defenders manning the walls and little towers dropped bags of sand on friend and foe alike, while others rushed off the ramparts to form a defensive line inside the keep. After two minutes of frantic combat Alcuin, Grantham and the Morgane pushed the heavy doors open as their remaining warriors covered them from the falling missiles with their shields.

  When the doors swung open, Marek and Darien rushed their troops into the fort and finished the job with wild cries and the clash of steel. Before the defenders had a chance to yield, the trumpets sounded a halt to the battle, and the tournament marshal declared the attackers victorious. The audience cheered wildly as the remaining combatants helped their fallen comrades and foes off the ground with hearty slaps on their dented armor and friendly cursing.

  Alcuin found the young knight he had savaged and put an arm around his shoulders. He signaled one of his mercenaries to take the knight’s soiled helm and help him clean the vomit and blood off.

  “What are you doing?” the defeated knight asked. “You have bested me.”

  “No,” Alcuin said, “You simply mistimed your shield work and I landed a lucky blow. You could have done the same to me if the timing were just a little different. Is this your first tournament?”

  “Yes,” the young knight said.

  “Any combat experience?”

  “No.”

  Alcuin took two of the flagons of ale making their way among the contestants and offered one to the knight.

  “Then you’ll learn that chivalry only exists here on the tournament grounds. There is no room for it on the battlefield. And besides,” Alcuin paused to take a pull of the spicy brown ale, “you could very well be a future client of ours.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mithrandrates

  Emperor Mithrandrates had heard enough and waved his hand for silence. “The judgement stands. One silver crown for the death of the goat and the resulting loss of production, and two silver crowns to compensate the family for the embarrassment of this whole affair. So let it be. Next!”

  The Emperor and Council were seated in the great throne room and had been hearing similar cases all morning. The hall was teeming with plaintiffs, defendants and clerks of law. One imperial clerk stood at a small wooden podium reading the cases, and another sat at a hard little desk transcribing the proceedings.

  The dukes and duchesses flanked the Emperor in wooden chairs, concealing their boredom and restlessness with varying degrees of success. It was a tedious ritual, the dispensation of civil appeals and justice, but a vital one. Each shepherd and fishmonger who made the arduous journey to the capital, beheld its fearsome majesty, and heard the voice of the Emperor addressing his stolen wheel of cheese or undelivered shipment would go back home and tell the enthralling tale to everyone in his village. In such ways is true power projected, the Emperor told his most trusted advisors. Mithrandrates sat erect and alert, partly because of his abiding military bearing and partly as a subtle demonstration of power over the representatives. How can one demonstrate authority while squirming like a child at table? the Emperor thought contemptuously.

  Garon rapped the butt of his black staff of office on the floor twice, and the clerk announced the next case. “Before the Mighty Emperor and Noble Council come Ardaxam, a Knight of Relfast; and Delton Miller, a peasant of the same. Both do plead for justice from the Emperor and His Council regarding matters between them.”

  “We shall hear their case. Let them approach the dais and kneel,” Mithrandrates said.

  Two imperial guards escorted the finely garbed knight and the rough commoner to the dais. As they knelt, Garon took an ancient and once enchanted sword from an attendant and held the tip down between them. “On the Sword of Trojac the Dragon Slayer, first Paladin of Mahurin, do you swear to tell truth before the Emperor and Council - truth and only truth?”

  They touched the blade reverently. “I do,” they said in unison.

  The clerk read the report to the council. Delton had abused the person of Ardaxam both physically and verbally to wit: By shoving the knight and shouting an obscenity at the same knight. Due process had been followed before the local sheriff, who ruled in favor of Ardaxam and sentenced Delton to be separated bodily from the hand he raised against his superior and to have his “rascally and obscene tongue removed with pincers that it not further disturb the Emperor’s peace.” The ruling was overturned on appeal to the Emperor’s circuit court on the grounds that witnesses had been produced testifying that Ardaxam was drunk during the incident, which occurred during the tenth hour of the day and therefore too early for a man of his station to be with strong drink besotten, and furthermore heaped abuses on Delton before the offense he was alleged to have committed did occur.

  “We shall hear the incident told by the man of lower station first, in the manner set forth by common tradition and Imperial law,” Mithrandrates said.

  Delton swallowed. “Mighty and just Emperor, my hu
mble self was,” he stammered and collected himself. “Myself, who is before you, was walking to market in Disman Village with my goat…”

  “More justice involving goats, I see,” Duke Philo said. “We are becoming doctors of caprine jurisprudence.”

  Mithrandrates silenced him with a look. “Go on.”

  “Yes, your greatness. I was going to market, as I said, and passed Lord Ardaxam coming out of the Black Rock Tavern. Stumbling is more like it—he looked to me he was stumbling drunk. He tripped and knocked both of us into the mud. So I beg my superior his pardon for my clumsiness, as we are told to do in church, and try to help his lordship up. He bats my hand away and spits on the ground. He told me that I was a clubfooted simpleton begotten on a dirty whore by a stolen donkey. Then he orders his men—there were three of them with him—to grab my goat, and he kills her with his dagger. It’s to remind me to never touch a nobleman, he says, with my ‘slimy, shit-crusted claws.’ That’s what he said, my Emperor.”

  Mithrandrates looked to the knight. “What say you?”

  “Our system of justice allows the churls to perjure themselves before the Emperor and Council,” Ardaxam said.

  “Are his claims untrue?”

  “No, Emperor. But I am a knight, and he is a churl. Our laws state that a churl is not to touch the person of a noble. I adjudicated and passed sentence.”

  “Against his goat,” the Emperor said.

  “Yes, Emperor. Against his goat.”

  “What of the claims that you were drunk in the middle of the day? To be so is a misdemeanor against the peace and a grave dishonor to your title and station,” the Emperor frowned.

  “None but the churl say I was.”

  Duke Philo snorted. “Why is this even before us? The word of the nobleman is worth more intrinsically than the word of the commoner. We should uphold the original judgement and…”

  “And adjourn for the midday meal?” the Emperor asked. His cool demeanor hid the scorn in his question. Duke Philo smoothed his clothes over his plump stomach and looked away.

  “So justice is denied because the defendant is not a nobleman?” Duke Grantham asked. He motioned for the Sword of the Dragon Slayer and stood. “I am a duke. I can make knights. Delton Miller! Kneel before me.”

  Delton scuttled in front of the duke, not rising from his bow. Grantham took the sword from the startled attendant and tapped Delton’s shoulders lightly with the blade. “By this sign, made before Emperor Mithrandrates and the Imperial Council, you are made a knight. Serve Lord Torune, the governor of your province. Obey the edicts of your Emperor and serve the God Mahurin, who bears the sun’s light on His brow. Defend the weak. Meet injustice with justice, evil with good. Rise a Knight of the Mergovan Empire.”

  “You cannot do this!” Duchess Betina said. “The churl is not of your province!”

  “The knight, Duchess Betina, is of our empire, and was made by a member of our Imperial Council,” Mithrandrates said. “And now the appeals process is changed.”

  “Indeed, Emperor,” Betina said. She allowed a cruelly faint smile to cross her full lips. “Then it is appropriate for these two knights to resolve their dispute in a manner befitting their rank. I propose a trial by combat. Let Mahurin choose the innocent party through deeds of arms.”

  Delton swallowed. “W-when, my lady?”

  “Why not here? Right now,” Betina said. She looked at Grantham. “Justice should not wait on formalities. Should it, Duke Grantham?”

  Mithrandrates noted the fear the newly made knight—but Ardaxam looked ill at ease himself. The Emperor smiled. “It is good for two noblemen to settle their dispute before Mahurin Almighty and before this Council. The first to bleed shall be deemed the guilty party. Who will lend Sir Delton a blade for the trial?”

  “He may use mine,” Grantham said. An attendant retrieved his blade from the anteroom where the council left their weapons, hats and cloaks.

  “A generous offer of friendship between the provinces of Brynn and Relfast,” the Emperor said. “So let it be.”

  The imperial guards placed themselves between the dais and the combatants. The spectators circled around and jockeyed for a good view at what they hoped was a safe distance.

  “We trust that today’s justice will hold the Council’s attention,” Mithrandrates said quietly to the dukes and duchesses seated on his flanks.

  Delton jumped back and skittered around the ad-hoc arena as the knight took two careless swipes at the untrained man. Ardaxam laughed and sent more feints at Delton with the flashing steel—quick thrusts and little weak cuts generated from his elbow and wrist.

  “My accusation stands, Sir Delton,” Ardaxam said as he circled out of range. “You are indeed clumsy. And your ascension to knighthood does not cleanse your stain of bastardy perpetrated by your mother and that donkey.”

  Mithrandrates saw Delton’s clenched jaw, the tightening muscles, the flaring eyes—the danger—heartbeats before anyone else did. And then Delton erupted.

  “Pigfucker!” Delton cocked the duke’s blade over his right shoulder and hurled the fine weapon end over end at his antagonist. The pommel struck Ardaxam in the sternum, and Delton plowed his shoulder in the knight’s gut, knocking him to the cold marble floor. Delton snatched Ardaxam’s dagger out of his belt and buried it to the hilt in his thigh as the stricken knight rolled away from what was meant to be a killing strike to his belly.

  “Enough!” the Emperor said. “First blood is drawn, and the guilty party is known.”

  “All thirteen hells take your fucking leg, the cock you fuck your mother with and your filthy, lying black soul,” Delton snarled at his foe. The words were drowned out by Ardaxam’s screams and curses. He picked up the duke’s sword, knelt before Grantham and offered it to him on open palms.

  “Many thanks, m-my lord. I’ve brought you your sword back.”

  “Keep it. Let it signify your new rank.” Grantham looked at Betina and smiled. “And a token of continued friendship between Brynn and Relfast.”

  Mithrandrates noted the barely audible sniff that Betina made. What was ostensibly an act of justice on Grantham’s part was in fact a masterful insult that Betina could not answer. “I think that is enough adjudication for this morning,” the Emperor said. “Court is adjourned. Let us have some refreshment.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Grantham

  A warm, fragrant breeze swept through the trees and gardens in the great plaza between the Imperial Citadel and the Five-Sided Temple. The two great fortresses, one the seat of the Mergovan Empire’s secular power, the other the abode of its spiritual might, rivaled each other in ostentation. Spires thrust themselves toward the heavens, and those of the Temple were covered in writhing stone processions of heroes and saints and held aloft by flying buttresses and topped with the golden solar disc of Mahurin.

  The towers of the Citadel were less ornate and were flat-topped. Great stone wyverns complete with barding, tack and bronze riders now topped the structures where more than 500 years ago, the living creatures and their masters stood guard. Great alcoves cut midway up the towers that once allowed war mages to hurl powerful magic at invaders now served as balconies for the Emperor and his dignitaries.

  The Citadel and Temple were no mere defensive works, but testaments to the might of the Empire and the Church of Mahurin. The actual defenses for the two great structures surrounded them and the idyllic plaza. Three concentric defensive walls festooned with towers and battlements ringed the hill on which the fortresses sat. The fortified hill was surrounded by the rest of the capital, which itself possessed the most formidable city walls known to survive the last Cataclysm.

  It had been nearly a century since the capital had last been under serious threat, but the defenses were still scrupulously maintained. The walls of the three concentric Star Fortresses surrounding the Citadel and the Temple were kept especially tidy, for the areas between the walls were now heavily trafficked public areas with open air marke
ts, vegetable gardens for the city’s poor and reserved areas for throngs of pilgrims to erect orderly tent cities during religious holidays.

  Duke Grantham and Duchess Betina walked in one of the small public gardens and paused to look between a break in the trees at the great spires of the Temple.

  “It is magnificent, is it not?” Grantham asked.

  “It is indeed,” Betina said. “You especially should appreciate the splendor around us. Your people, Grantham of Brynn, were among the first to accept Imperial rule so long ago. And the first to banish all gods but Mahurin.”

  “We value order and prosperity,” he said, “both in the corporeal and spiritual realms.”

  “And prosper you have.”

  “Brynn has been a good steward of the Imperial peace for many years,” Grantham said.

  “Peace? Ha!” Betina scoffed. “Brynn wars with its neighbors, just like the rest of the provinces. Our two dominions seem to be especially fond of antagonizing one another.”

  “My sweet duchess, you do us injustice,” Grantham said. “Rogue counts execute vendettas across provincial borders all the time. That is, I would suggest, a far cry from war.”

  “And yet Brynn’s ‘rogue counts’ dutifully pledge their spoils to Lady Drucilla and increase the power and holdings of their home dominion.”

  “As do your rogue counts in Relfast—and the ones in Hastrus and Aternis, for that matter,” Grantham said. “As did the petty lords in Draugmere and Balgroth before those provinces sold themselves to Mergova.”

  “Don’t you mean, ‘began upholding the Empire’s Peace?’”

  “Duchess Betina, let us be honest with each other,” Grantham said. “It makes communication so much easier when we can dispense with the euphemisms and wordplay that pollute the language of court.”