“Terleman is involved?” Thinradel asked. “I hadn’t heard. I feel safer already.”
“Who is Terleman?” Bryte asked, confused.
“Likely the best all-around warmage of our generation,” Mavone explained. “He ran most of the defense of northern Gilmora, after the Gilmoran barons cocked it up. He knows warfare like Minalan knows bullshit,” he assured.
“Just build an army and a city from scratch in the middle of the forest,” Sandy said, attempting to make it sound reasonable. “With just a little magic and imagination, I’m sure it will happen before we know it!”
“You just argued for the vital necessity of doing just that thing,” Brother Bryte observed, his confusion growing. “Didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, but that was before I was put in charge of the project and realized how bloody impossible it is!” Sandy snorted.
“I look forward to the challenge,” Thinradel agreed, cheerfully. “I have a long reputation for attaching myself to doomed regimes and hopeless causes. This one promises to be exceptional.”
“It really won’t be that hard,” Mavone shrugged. “If we can get a little help.”
The gathering broke up after a little more chatter, as Mavone and the other magi adjourned to Gareth’s to consider their resources, and I returned to Spellmonger’s Hall with Ruderal and Brother Bryte. The monk took the moment of semi-privacy to quiz me about my approach to the obviously hopeless task ahead.
“I couldn’t help but note that your staff address you most casually, even in public,” he began, diplomatically. “Most men who have been appointed to such high office usually prefer to be reminded of it. Constantly,” he reported.
“I try to keep the ass-kissing to a minimum, generally,” I reflected. “In a situation like this it gets in the way of getting real work done. Most of those men were friends and comrades. Sandy and I served in Farise together. Mavone was at Boval Vale. Thinradel risked his career as a court wizard over me. We’ve been through too much for flattery and title to mean anything. If we fail, we’ll all likely be killed, so formality seems a low priority.”
“Am I to guess that based on your long acquaintance that you trust them not to betray you?” Bryte inquired, curious. “For history demonstrates many tales where such plans went awry due to treachery amongst close friends.”
“None of them would ever betray Master Minalan!” Ruderal assured the monk, speaking for the first time as he lugged my bag behind us. “Not a single one. They would rather die, first.”
“You sound confident of that, young man,” the monk answered. “I think you’ll find, when you are older, that it is all too easy for a man to use his words to fool you.”
“Perhaps others. Not Ruderal,” I countered. “His special Talent allows him to see everyone’s living enneagram. It is as if he has a window into the nature of your self-awareness. He can literally see a lie, a rationalization, or a hint of guilt in a man as he speaks . . . and when he is silent.”
The monk gave my young apprentice a startled look and renewed respect. “Young man, do you have any idea how much coin you could make as a practicing lawbrother?” he asked.
“I’m a wizard,” Ruderal said, resolutely. “I’d rather do wizard stuff.”
“Smart man,” the monk chuckled. “Although it appears that ‘wizard stuff’ entails a great deal more than potions and spells, I’m learning.”
“When one takes the mental discipline and vision required to work magic and apply it to the rest of the world,” I reasoned, “then you can find an answer to a good many things, once you thence apply your will. But I do admit,” I said, halting briefly, and looking up at the ever-present Anvil looming overhead, “this will be the largest use of ‘wizard stuff’ on Callidore since the founding of Perwyn, itself.”
Bryte and Ruderal paused with me, and considered the magnitude of what we were attempting, before the lawbrother broke the silence.
“Well, we all know how well that turned out,” the learned monk said with a snort, and continued walking.
“While Minalan oft gets the credit for the robust nature of Vanador’s founding, even the Spellmonger would agree that is misplaced. No wizard had a greater influence on how Vanador grew and prospered than Magelord Gareth, Minalan’s protégé from Sevendor. Gareth was the genius behind many of the innovations and advancements involved in the founding city and implicit of its function. Only Lady Carmella had a similar influence. But if Carmella built the bones of Vanador, it was Gareth’s management which gave it flesh.”
From the Scrolls of Lawbrother Bryte
Chapter Three
The Steward of Vanador
The reigning baroness of Vanador and most of the lands of the plateau was Lady Pentandra anna Benurvial, Court Wizard to Duke Anguin of Alshar. Right after receiving that appointment, she had relocated from Vorone, the Summer Capital, to Falas, the Winter Capital, of the restored duchy. While she was busy assisting Anguin and Rardine in tracking down hidden rebels and putting the fabric of the well-populated south to right, she had not entirely abandoned the Wilderlands, or her holdings there. The Baroness had wisely appointed Lord Gareth of Sevendor her Lord Steward to rule the lands in her stead.
It helped that he was already on-site, having coordinated the Great Emancipation the year before. Indeed, he had been stomping around the Wilderlands in self-imposed exile from Sevendor for months. While I had always figured he would pout for a few weeks and eventually return, he showed no signs of any desire to go back. Apparently, the rift between him and my former apprentice, Lady Lenodara the Hawkmaiden, was more than a tiff. Gareth had escaped to the Wilderlands and useful work to soothe his wounded ego and broken heart, gossip said. He didn’t mention the matter to me. Indeed, I did not hear Dara’s name cross his lips. Ever.
Now that he was in charge of his own domain, in Pentandra’s name, he had prospered and matured in ways I never would have imagined. The young wizard had undertaken a difficult, costly undertaking in accepting responsibility for Vanador’s governance, and was thriving. He’d overseen the magical shipments of grain Anguin and I were providing to feed the remnants of the great refugee camp nearby, while simultaneously managing the migrations of the Tudrymen, the construction and civil administration of the town and its emerging economy. It was a task that would have broken many men older and presumably wiser than he.
But Banamor and Sire Cei had taught him well, and the young wizard had attacked his responsibilities without complaint . . . or much restraint. Without anyone much senior to him, he had used magic and innovation liberally to solve the problems that came to his desk every day. The results were impressive, and clearly evident.
I was afraid, at first, that he would see my presence as such an authority, and feel compelled to restrict his efforts accordingly. But when young Gareth appeared at my door the next morning, clearly nothing could be further from the truth. Mavone had been correct. Gareth wanted to show off.
He looked like a young Wilderlord, almost, when he arrived. He wore a thick surcoat under his woolen mantle, over tunic and trousers and a sturdy pair of boots, bulky enough to disguise his lanky frame. He wore a simple traditional mage’s hat with barely-contrasting points sewn on to a dark purple cone, an embossed leather band around the wide-brimmed crown. The hat looked weather-beaten and used, more suitable for a footwizard than a Lord Steward, but Gareth wore it well. And the rod he carried glowed with magic. That, alone, told him out as a wizard.
Gareth was not a lord by birth, he was a wizard – a thaumaturge, and a damn good one. He also had a talent for organization that had been honed during his service in Sevendor for both Banamor and myself. He’d knocked around the Wilderlands for a few months, bouncing from Tudry to Megelin to the Mage Towers to Vorone, before he’d been hired by Pentandra to oversee the establishment of the three great freedmen’s camps after the Great Emancipation.
As he had overseen the provisioning and victualling of the Great March through the Wilderlands the year
before, Gareth was considered by nearly all who worked with him as a great fellow, well suited to the difficult work.
“Welcome, my lord Count!” he proclaimed jovially. I was nearly ready to accompany him on a walk over to his office, to discus the town’s development. Later I would confer with my military advisors, but I needed to know the landscape before I could determine how to defend it. Gareth was the best means to learn that.
“Well met, Lord Steward,” I said with a bow, before I gave him an embrace. I liked Gareth. “Thank you for the welcome, and for your stewardship. Your colleagues hinted you had much to show me.”
“Oh, I do, I do,” he agreed, as he helped me with my cloak. “But I thought it might be more useful to find out what you wanted to know, rather than bore you with a presentation.”
“A fair point,” I conceded, realizing why Gareth was so successful. “Let’s begin with the beginning: our population?”
“Three thousand two hundred and twenty live within the town walls, not counting travelers in inns and camps. Nearly a hundred thousand on the plateau, now. Most are still in the camp, but some have already settled, locally.”
“Commerce?”
“Two markets up and running here, twice a week, and weekly local markets in Tolindir, Anstryg and Korwyn. The Tolindir market doubles as the dole,” he added. A hundred thousand people eat a lot.
“How much of that a week?” I asked. We’d been purchasing cheap grain on the bloated Remeran markets and magically transporting it to Vanador’s refugee camp for over six months, now. I was curious just how much of my coin was being devoted to mere subsistence. I didn’t mind the expense, but knowing was important.
“The miller delivers a ration of a ton of flour and a ton of barley a week,” Gareth reported. “That’s in addition to two tons of peas or beans, occasionally some potatoes and corn, and every now and then we bring in a little salt pork or beef. Enough to feed everyone enough bread and peas to keep them going. We moved the big communal kettles up from Timberwatch and had a couple of Huinites set up big kitchens near the Tolindir market. The freedmen forage and hunt enough to supplement. No one is satisfied, but no one is hungry.” That summed up the situation, nicely.
“How does order stand?”
“Surprisingly few riots, and not very many fights, even,” he informed me. “Once everyone settled down and realized they’d have to work together to make it through the winter, most of the disputes got buried. The winter was hard enough, this year. Over two thousand died,” he said, darkly. “Even with food and heatstones.”
“It was bound to happen, lad,” I said, consolingly, as I summoned Insight, my thaumaturgical baculus, and used it as a walking stick as we went outside. “Wilderlands winters are hard enough when you’re properly prepared for them. It was inevitable that we’d loose some people to the frost and disease, despite our best efforts.”
I was genuinely sorry to hear that so many had perished. Unlike some lords, I didn’t see the common folk as necessary pests, I saw them as a valuable resource. Vanador was poor in actual wealth. What it had was land and people, neither of which were of the best quality. But that made the people we had that much more valuable.
While it provided an incredibly beautiful landscape, the hilly, rocky terrain of the Wilderlands is generally difficult to traverse, and finding truly fertile land is problematic. It exists – there are pockets of rich, vibrant soil, hectares of it, scattered across the land. But they weren’t terribly large, outside of the river valleys, and they were often hard to get to. In between the hardscrabble lands were either deeply forested or richly meadowed, better for sheep, cows, llamas and pigs than growing wheat or barley.
The people of Vanador were as hardscrabble as the lands around them. Around thirty thousand had been led to the plateau site of the most northernly of the great camps we’d established after the Great Emancipation. Around a third of them were Gilmorans who’d been led north in chains, after the aborted invasion two years ago. Two-thirds were native Wilderfolk, who’d survived in gurvani captivity thrice as long. Once they’d come under guard to the broad meadow on the Vanadori Plateau outside of a tiny hamlet called Tolindir, in the shadow of the Anvil, they were safe from the gurvani, at last. Unfortunately, they were not safe from winter. They had nothing but the tattered rags on their backs when winter rolled in.
Gareth did a miraculous job handling the matter, I realized, as he told me about the harshness of the season. The wizard had learned his lessons well in Sevendor and as manciple of the Great March. With the assistance of Pentandra, hoxter pockets and the vast markets of Enultramar, Duke Anguin sent hundreds of tons of supplies to see the former slaves through the winter. Blankets, clothes, sailcloth tarpaulins, shoes, and a smattering of tools were quietly brought to Tolindir Camp. Gareth had them evenly distributed according to need, and organized everyone to ensure their best chances of survival.
As generous and expedient as the donations were, however, the two thousand who’d died weighed on Gareth’s soul. Nor were those the only deaths he felt responsible for. Against his better judgement, he’d approved thousands more to begin the journey south during the last clear days of autumn, knowing the journey would be harsh. But his heart moved him to grant the boon.
Those Gilmorans were desperate to return home, he explained, or were seeking repatriation or missing family in the other camps, and they insisted they depart. Gareth had reluctantly agreed on the basis that they were less likely to fall prey to goblins in the winter. While some of them perished, too, it reduced the pressure on supplies. That made him feel guilty, too.
“It’s been a hard winter out at the camp, but their spirits are high,” he related, as our feet crunched through the frost in the street. “They are free. They aren’t being awakened by the whip every morning. They have real food in their bellies, if not as much as anyone would like. They can earn coin with their labor in town, and increasingly on the local farms. Enough old sailcloth has been sent through the supply wands that hundreds have at least basic tarpaulins sheltering them, and there was plenty of fuel in the surrounding forests.”
“And the Tudrymen?” I asked, almost fearing the answer. They were the best hope of establishing Vanador as a real municipality, not a glorified refugee camp. But they could be a surly lot, even for Wilderfolk.
“When the Tudrymen began arriving in great wains and carts full of tools at the beginning of winter, everyone rejoiced but me,” he confessed. “I had to figure out where to put them all. I guess that’s when I realized I really was in charge. Because no one else would make that sort of decision.” He launched into a long discussion on what had happened, since.
I found Gareth’s approach to governance interesting. When Pentandra had been invested with the nonexistent barony of Vanador as a reward for her work in securing the Orphan Duke’s throne, she hadn’t done much as a local lord, save visit the villages within her barony and introduce herself to the few hundred Wilderlands peasants she now ruled.
Then a dragon had attacked the palace at Vorone, I’d arranged a dramatic raid to free the enslaved folk in the Penumbra as cover for an even more dramatic raid on Olum Seheri, and a precocious teenager quite unexpectedly arranged for a sudden counter-rebellion that had restored the Orphan Duke to his realm in its entirety . . . which, in turn, forced Penandra to travel to Enultramar with the rest of the ducal court. That forced her to abandon governance of Vanador to devote her time and energy to Anguin’s restoration. All the while she was pregnant. With triplets.
So she turned the entire mess over to Gareth.
Gareth saw Vanador as a project, not a possession. He felt charged to build a mighty city out of a refugee camp and a lopsided mountain in the middle of the Wilderness, and he never shirked from the challenge. Nor did he hide behind titles or custom or formality, or resorted to petty tyranny the way most nobles would have in a stressful situation. He had a job to do. You were either helping him or you were in his way, and he treated you accordingly.<
br />
He wasn’t without assistance, he reported as we strolled through town. When the refugees from Tudry began arriving, Gareth had issued a plea for help.
Carmella had obligingly set up a construction camp under the protection of the Anvil with her Hesian Order banner overhead, and began scores of basic construction projects. The other magelords of the nearby pele towers provided shelter and care for the sick and elderly during the winter. A contingent of clergy was sent up from Vorone to help, many returning to the north they’d fled in the invasion. And Kasari hunters brought regular caravans of deer, fish and other game to market.
Gareth quickly recruited an energetic staff for the resettlement effort, many of whom were former reeves or even lords before the invasion. His people were a mix of the magical and mundane, common and noble. He even employed nonhumans, from a pair of Tal Alon pages to a Malkas Alon assistant. Some of them didn’t even have titles or firm jobs, leading to a kind of productive confusion around his offices. But when Gareth wanted something accomplished, he usually knew exactly who to put in charge of it and be confident that it would get done.
Then he, Carmella and the others sat down and figured out how best to contend with the freemen and the artisans and townsmen from Tudry. So, he explained, he’d begun a plan of artificially creating a feudal society from scratch. As quickly as possible.
They couldn’t keep the refugees in Tolindir, that was certain. The sanitation issues alone were staggering. And the Tudrymen could not prosper without labor and services that were just unavailable in in tiny Vanador. There was no real industry, little coin, and the markets were dismal. Nothing could be done that late in the year, of course, but that gave them time to plan for the coming spring.
With Pentandra’s blessing, he and Carmella sketched out a series of designs to get the freemen farming the surrounding fields as fast as possible. That was the first step, to spread out in the lands available. Tolindir Camp was just too crowded, and the threat of disease was too great to keep everyone concentrated there indefinitely.
Thaumaturge Page 5
