by Tim Stead
“Why is it that they make war on you, Deus?”
“Not on me,” Gods these people were stupid. “On all who are not as they are.”
“Deus, forgive me for observing this, but we have found that there is common ground between all men. There has been no war in the west for a thousand years, and the wisdom that has prevailed so greatly is the seeking of that common ground.” The king sat back as though he had delivered a telling argument.
And so it was. It was the best argument in the world. All men do have common ground. They want to be left in peace, to wed their wives and raise their children and do their work, whatever it may be. Yet it was also not true. There are men who will not take the world as it is, who seek to change things, to make an advantage for themselves. Narak had long believed that Pelion had chosen the men and women who were to become the Benetheon with this in mind, and for this reason alone none of them had risen to kingship, to empire, to conquest. It was why Pelion’s law forbad the immortality of kings and princes, for they were all ambitious and death itself was the surest limit to their greed.
Even as he thought this, Narak realised that he had not been this wise four hundred years ago. He had watched Seth Yarra, he had listened, but he had not spoken with them. It would have been a simple thing in those early days when the green and black banners had flown politely above peaceful camps to seek an audience, to seek common ground, but he had not done so.
For all that, he was certain that war had been inevitable. The philosophy of Seth Yarra was an unbending rule by its very foundation – the idea that one thing is right and another is wrong. Men will always believe such things, but to impose one idea upon all men, one way of eating, one way of loving, one way of fighting, one way of dressing; it was a monstrous tyranny.
“You are wise indeed,” he said to Terresh. “In the same way all dogs will respond to kindness, but when a dog bites you it is the dog that you must fend off, not the master who beats it.”
“You have come to us for soldiers?” The king’s question was an abrupt change of direction.
“Yes, that is the essence of it.”
The king shook his head. “We are not a warlike people. The levy may be raised to defend the kingdom, but to fight in another land, well, it is most difficult, and quite unlikely that any we sent would be able to reach the battle before it was decided. Besides, our good relations with Durandar are to some extent dependent on the presence of the small number of troops that we have along the border.”
“Lord king, if we fail to stop them they will come through the green road like locusts, and all the levies you could wish for will not make a difference. All I ask for is a token, a thousand men. It will show that Telas, too, is part of our cause.”
The king glanced at Hestia, who had yet to speak a word in Narak’s hearing, but now she broke her silence.
“What Wolf Narak asks is reasonable, my king. A thousand men is but a quarter of the force that we have in arms, and if the Lord of Durandar agrees to a similar figure I see no reason why it should not be so.”
The king nodded. There was reluctance in his expression, but he agreed.
“That is our position, Deus,” he said. “If Durandar will send a thousand men, then we shall do the same.”
It was something, at least. Durandar was his next call, and he could use this as a bargaining chip in the occult court of Hammerdan. But so much work for two thousand men, and men that would never see battle, most likely. It was worth it, though, just for the boost to morale it would give the others, the assurance that their rear was protected.
“I go to Durandar next, lord king. I am sure that Hammerdan will appreciate the balance of your position.”
“He’ll probably try to kill you first,” Terresh said. “They’re little better than barbarians in Durandar.”
Narak smiled, but he did not think that Terresh was close to the truth. He had no ears and eyes in Durandar, but he knew that they were different from the other kingdoms and kept themselves apart. He also knew, however, that he was respected in Durandar. They did not come into the forest as the Telans had done, they did not need watching. It had all stopped in Telas when Filamon’s kin had been given control of the northern marches, but until that time their infiltration had been a constant source of friction. The Duranders were more circumspect, more afraid.
“I am sure that they will hear what I say, lord king,” Narak replied.
The usual offers were made, a banquet, the possibility of gifts and honours. It was all part of the protocol, but he had no time for it today, and the impending war gave him an immediate and genuine excuse. He left the king and queen of Telas together in their tent and as he stepped across the impossibly neat lawn he heard laughter from the tent, and felt a moment of unease. It was the king laughing, no doubt, at something his queen had said. It did not matter, though. A thousand men mattered. He returned the way he had come, towing an anxious equerry to the gates of the royal estate and then through the city to the wild country to the north where wolves waited.
20. Bas Erinor
Arbak looked around him at the empty space. All the old tables and chairs had been carried out and given away to anyone who would have them, the bar had been ripped out and broken up, and he had a number of men fitting a new one on the opposite wall. It was the remains of a huge tree, a single plank of wood nine inches thick and two feet wide, and it ran the full length of the wall. The space behind it was large enough for several men to work, and he planned to move a wall to allow for a staircase down to the cellars.
Bargil had saved one of the old chairs and now sat by the door with the chair tipped back against the wall, swinging his good leg, the bad one hooked around one of the chair legs. He looked half asleep, but Arbak knew that he was not.
Arbak watched the carpenters work. They had insisted on going down to the cellar before placing the new bar. It was heavy, and the master carpenter had refused to fit it without looking at the support below. As it turned out, all was well. The place had been built like a fortress, he’d said, over strengthened, and the huge black beams were free of worm and rot. They would last another two hundred years.
“Slowly,” the carpenter said. He squatted on the floor as his journeymen managed the sling that supported the heavy wood. They eased the rope through steel eyes above the bar and the section settled into place. He moved around the side of the bar and eyed up the fit. He slapped one of the younger men on the back. “Good job,” he said. Then to Arbak: “Do you want to see before we fix it?”
Arbak inspected the bar. He put a round stone on the surface and rolled it too and fro. It ran true in each direction that he tried.
“A fine job, master Stebbar” he said. “You certainly know your work.”
Stebbar beamed. He was not a young man, but he was energetic enough. “It’s a pleasure to do such work, sir,” he said. “I can’t tell you how glad we were to win the job, and so close to the workshop.”
“You’re a patron of this inn, are you not?”
The old man nodded. “Twenty years and more,” he said. “It being so close. I wanted to talk to you about the stairs, sir. It’s the rail, and how you want it to turn at the foot. You’ll be carrying barrels up it?”
“Roping them, I expect,” Arbak said. He’d seen a roping system in another tavern. A small man could rope a tun up from the cellar with no help. He’d seen it done.
“So you’d want a pulley at the top, or two perhaps, and a rail extending out, so you can roll the barrels to the end and wedge them for the ropes?”
“That sounds right, but the pulley needs to be mounted on something strong. It must carry the weight of twelve men and more.”
“It’s no problem, sir. There’s one of those old black beams in just the right place.”
“Well, draw up a sketch and we’ll look at it this afternoon,” Arbak said. The more he worked with master Stebbar the more he appreciated the man’s attention to detail. He was always drawing sketches and pla
ns, and they were clear and simple to grasp.
“Captain Arbak?”
Cherat had drifted into the room. He hadn’t sacked the barman yet, probably because he was the only one who knew everything about the inn.
“Cherat, what is it?”
“It’s the brewer, sir. He wants to speak with you.”
“He’s back?” Arbak had wanted to speak with the brewer since he’d come through the door as the new owner two days ago, but he’s been told the man was out every time he asked. He’d accepted it at first, but quickly came to realise that Cherat’s face couldn’t hold a lie with still eyes. He’d pressed, but Cherat had become even more evasive.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“In the brewery, sir.”
Arbak left the bar and entered the labyrinth of the inn’s private areas. He had managed to get lost a couple of times already; not seriously, but it was a big building, and not laid out according to any sensible plan. Corridors ended without doors, staircases were hidden behind other doors. There were angles, turns and empty rooms with no apparent purpose. It was as though the place had been built to confuse.
The brewer, who’s most pleasing creations he continued to drink at every sensible opportunity, lived above the brewery, a great room filled with vats and sacks of various ingredients.
He found the brewery by its scent, and climbed the stairs to the door of the brewer’s lair, where he knocked and waited. It was a while before the door opened. He heard sounds from within the room as of someone moving to and fro. When the door eventually opened it opened just wide enough to reveal an eye, peering out at him.
“What?”
“I am Arbak,” he said. “I now own this inn, and I wanted to speak with you.”
The eye vanished, but the door neither opened nor closed. Arbak pushed at it gently with a toe and it creaked open to reveal a scene of utter chaos. It took him a while to identify the usual elements of a one room habitation; a bed, a chair, a window. Clothes were draped everywhere, and papers were piled on top of the clothes wherever they presented a roughly level surface. He stooped and picked up a sheaf, running an eye across the words. He saw mention of barley, hops; a recipe perhaps?
The sheets he had picked up were roughly slapped out of his hand and scattered themselves about the floor. He found himself face to face with the brewer.
“Private!” the man said. He was of middle years, but he was one of those whose ample frame made it difficult to judge his age. He could have been thirty. He could have been fifty. It was not that he was fat, just that his bulk stretched his skin just enough to eliminate wrinkles. He had no hair, and his eyes wandered from place to place in the devastated room. He was dressed in trousers and a stained singlet. His feet were bare. “Don’t rush me,” he said. “I’ll be ready soon.”
Gods, I’ve bought a mad house.
“Ready for what?””
“To leave, to go away.”
“Where are you going? Why?” He was worried. The ale this man made was first class, and insane as he appeared Arbak did not want to lose him. The brewer stopped in the middle of his storm of papers and clothes, put his hands on his hips and stared at Arbak.
“Well, I can’t stay here,” he said.
“Why not? I want you to stay.”
“You want me to stay? Who are you?”
“I’m the new owner. I bought the Inn.”
“Not possible. The new owner wants me to leave.”
“No I don’t.”
The brewer stopped moving, gazing at a point somewhere between Arbak and the door, a puzzled frown on his face. He looked like he was trying to remember something.
“You are the new owner?” he asked eventually.
“Yes.”
“And you want me to stay?”
“Yes. You make very good beer. I want you to stay.”
A crafty look came over the man’s face. He took two of steps closer to where Arbak stood and spoke in a softer voice.
“I can keep my room?”
“Yes.” Not a concession, really.
“And you’ll pay me,” he paused, searching for a figure. “A florin a week?”
“Two,” Arbak said. “Two florins a week, and full board.”
“Two?”
“Yes, two.”
The brewer grinned and turned away, diving into a pile of paper behind him, quickly scanning sheet after sheet and throwing them over his shoulder to join the confusion once again. He found something he was looking for and tucked it into his shirt, threw more paper, found something else. It went on for a while, and Arbak wondered if he should just back out and close the door softly behind him, but before he could make the decision the brewer sprang towards him with a handful of papers.
“I can make other beers,” he said. “Look, this one,” he waved a paper. “It’s a porter, and this is a stout, and a summer ale, and a dark ale. There are dozens. Look, here’s a wheat beer!”
The brewer talked on, and apart from the man’s obvious poverty of reason he became certain of one other thing. This man was a master brewer, a scholar of beer in all its many forms. He had never heard of many of the brews that he was hearing praised, but it was clear that the brewer knew them intimately.
“What is your name?” He interrupted the flow of ale talk, and the brewer looked at him silently for a moment, as if trying to adjust to this new and less interesting line of conversation.
“My name?”
“Yes. What is your name?”
“Felix. Randell Felix.”
“May I call you Randell?”
“Felix. Everybody calls me Felix, or brewer. Most people call me brewer.” Felix looked poised to continue his monologue on ales and beers, like a runner at the start of a race. He was tense, waiting for a signal to release him again.
“Felix, then.” Arbak fixed the brewer with a stern eye. He meant Felix to understand his instructions quite clearly and without error. “Pick four beers or ales which you are confident people will enjoy. Prepare one barrel of each. Can you have them ready in four weeks?”
“I can, but they won’t be at their best.”
“Six weeks?”
The brewer hesitated, then nodded. “Six weeks. My choice? The stronger brews take longer, so it will be mostly light beers, if you want…”
“Your choice.” He cut short the flow again.
“I need Cherat to look after the cellar,” Felix said.
“Why?”
“It’s complicated. The beer needs to breathe, needs to be looked after, fined before it’s ready to drink. Without a good cellarman you might as well buy the same stale piss they sell in most inns around here. It would be cheaper.”
Cheaper? “How much does your beer cost to make?”
Felix shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask Cherat. He orders all the stuff I need.”
This was an eye opener. He’d thought of Cherat as just a barman, a hand that poured beer and was rude to customers; something dispensable. Now he was the cellarman, the supply clerk, and who knew what else. He was going to have to rethink this.
“Just keep making the usual ale as well,” he told Felix. “But make twice as much. If you need an extra hand, ask Cherat. He’s going to have a little more time to spare.”
He left the brewer looking happier than he’d found him, but his own mind was leaking certainty. Things were not as simple as he’d assumed.
21. Music
Days passed, and the work on the Inn continued. It was going to take more than the six weeks that Felix had asked for to effect the transformation that Arbak wanted, and he was continually troubled by the thought that he was indulging in trivia while the rest of the world was girding itself for war.
Money was no problem, and he was doing his best to fulfil the task he had been set by the Wolf, but it didn’t seem to amount to much. He felt a growing resentment within him. If he still had his right hand he would be more use. He could enlist in the levy and be ready to d
efend the kingdom, all the kingdoms, against Seth Yarra. It was hard for a professional soldier to see the greatest conflict of the age passing just beyond his good years. He was nothing now.
He had persuaded Bargil to practice with him, so that he could at least learn to wield a sword with his left hand, but it felt so much weaker than the hand he had been parted from, and he had so much else to get done.
