“Bring me the map,” he ordered, his voice a low rumble. Another man rushed up and unrolled a scroll of vellum across the haunches of the first man’s horse. The first man traced a finger along the map, muttering to himself.
“Where now, my lord?” said the second man.
“Give me a moment, blast you.” He tapped a finger on the map. “What am I looking at here? Is this that burning watchtower we passed about fifteen minutes ago?”
“Yes, my liege.”
With a shock, Andras realized he was looking at Lord Zoltan himself. That explained the crows, which were carrying on a ruckus overhead, seemingly anxious to get to the dead bodies still lying in the road, but unable to do so because of all the riders.
“The crows are reporting enemies here and here.” Zoltan tapped his finger again. “So we’ll cut up this valley, reach the road behind Damanja’s men. Find our quarry, then come back the same way. We’ll be back in camp by nightfall. By morning, we’ll have the temple weapons ready to put to the test.” He raised his voice. “Mount your horses. We ride!”
Zoltan’s men were on the move even before the crowlord himself had regained the saddle. There were even more than Andras had thought, a long stream of riders hurrying down the narrow dirt road. Not merely dozens, but two hundred or more hard-faced men. There was no question where they were going; they meant to attack Narina and her companions on the post road and plunder the wagon of its weapons cache. With the captured arms, Zoltan hoped to turn the battle against Damanja. After that, he would no doubt use them against Lord Balint.
Andras waited until the last rider had pounded down the dirt road, told Ruven to stay put, then hurried back to the road to find his missing dogs. By the demigods, let them be alive.
Chapter Fourteen
“I have a question,” Gyorgy said. “Why are we delivering weapons to this Lord Balint fellow in the first place?”
“Because we took his coin and agreed to make delivery,” Narina said.
She’d led them from the road a few minutes earlier and was looking for a dry place to meditate and take their lunch. The rain had diminished to a drizzle, and finally to a light mist, but the countryside was wet, and she also hoped to change her socks and boots, and probably her leggings as well. A bath, sadly, was out of the question.
In addition, Brutus needed to eat, and she hoped to get him some regular fodder, rather than letting him munch down the rice paddies that had lined their path for the last hour. These poor farmers of the plains had enough trouble without turning loose the goat and his massive appetite to tear up their crops. She didn’t think it was the most nutritious food for the animal, either.
They’d passed a number of farmhouses, and she meant to stop at the next one they spotted. If the owners hadn’t fled because of the fighting, they might allow the bladedancers to take shelter in their barn for an hour or so. No farmer would be delighted to see strangers on their land in these troubled times, but with a few soothing words and a brassie or two, they might acquiesce.
“Yes, but why?” Gyorgy pressed. “I know we craft weapons and armor, sell them to the plains people, but never this much at once. A sword, a few spear points. A breastplate or two. That sort of thing.”
“Sometimes it’s more,” she said. “Last year, we delivered three battle-axes, two warhammers, and eleven spearheads to a crowlord through the northern passes.”
“I know,” the boy said, “and everyone worried that it was too much for one warlord. This is far more than that. So why?”
Narina shrugged. “You’d have to ask my father the answer to that question.”
“But the master is dead.”
“And he didn’t share his reasoning before he died. Not with me, anyway.” It wasn’t a bad question, and she didn’t mean to be dismissive. She turned to Kozmer. “Did he tell you anything?”
“No. Nor any of the other elders, so far as I know.” Kozmer rolled his walking stick from one hand to the other. “What about your sister? Or Abelard?”
“We never discussed it. I don’t think so.”
The elder looked thoughtful. “He had his reasons. You can be sure of that.”
“We’ve been working on those weapons for months,” Gyorgy said. “Why didn’t anyone ask the master?”
“Why didn’t you ask?” she said.
“Me? I’m only a student. And not a very advanced one, either.”
“We were all Joskasef’s students,” Kozmer said.
And yet the boy had a point, Narina thought. Why hadn’t anyone questioned her father? Curiosity wasn’t discouraged in the bladedancer temple—they weren’t warbrands, after all, where students were required to complete certain lessons in silence and without question.
Maybe it was because her father had seemed so closemouthed about the whole enterprise. He’d taken coin, accepting a project that involved the forging of thirty swords, seventy-two spear points, fourteen halberds, and eleven spiked maces. But he hadn’t shared those details at first, only set the sohns to their tasks, with fraters and students assigned to assist. It had taken Narina several months before she realized the scope of the order her father had taken. By then, there was a certain mystery surrounding the whole project.
“We don’t know the answer,” Kozmer said, “but I imagine it lies somewhere in the balance of power, as it usually does with the larger weapon orders.”
Gyorgy looked confused by this, so Narina explained. “The only thing keeping a crowlord in check is another crowlord. We can’t intervene directly—that would destroy our moral standing and wreck our auras. But we can make subtle pushes from afar.”
“I still don’t understand,” the boy said.
“When a crowlord grows too powerful, we shift the balance. I would assume my father sold the weapons to Balint because his neighbors were too strong. This Zoltan, for example, who keeps taking land from his neighbors. And maybe the crowlord to Balint’s north was growing stronger, as well.”
“So we needed to maintain Balint against his rivals?” Gyorgy said.
“Maybe,” she said.
“There are brigands in the hill country taking advantage of the wars,” Kozmer said. “I was speaking with that boy—the ratter’s son—and Ruven mentioned raids that had burned hundreds of people out of their homes.”
“So Balint may be under attack from three directions at once,” Narina said. “One way or another, he must be strengthened. If he falls, there’s a void that creates more misery, another cascade of violence.”
“And if we make him too strong?” Gyorgy asked. “Then what?”
“I don’t think that’s possible. My father wouldn’t have sold him too many weapons.” She glanced at Kozmer, who shrugged and continued ahead with the end of his staff leaving indentations in the muddy path.
She couldn’t see her father upsetting the order. Balance was supreme in the land. The dragon demigods in the mountains against the demons of lava and fire. The crowlords and their petty kingdoms. Even the three sword temples had their subtle balance to be maintained.
“Let me explain something to you, Gyorgy,” Kozmer said. “With your permission, sohn. He is your student, after all.”
Narina nodded for the old man to go on.
“The warbrands, with their temple high in the mountains, honor the dragons. Practically worship them as true gods. The firewalkers think much the same way, but they meditate on the demons. They believe that someday they will be called to a great battle to cast the creatures back into the fiery hells.”
“Could have used a few of them on the road above Hooffent,” Narina said. “Chased the monsters back across the river.”
She was still scouring the countryside for a place to stop. Their rest couldn’t come soon enough—she was footsore, cold, wet, and dirty, and imagined the others must feel the same.
“But the bladedancers are different,” Kozmer said. “We recognize the balance in all things.”
“Right,” Gyorgy said, in that impatient to
ne that young students sometimes got when they felt their elders were explaining lessons already learned. “If the demons rise, we beat them down.”
“Then why do you have two swords?” the old man asked.
“What do you mean?”
Kozmer glanced over his shoulder at Narina, who explained. “When the great serpent god created our world, she left behind two of her eggs. The first one drifted gently into the mountains and hatched into the three great feathered dragons. The other, harder than granite and hotter than a piece of steel pulled from the forge, buried itself into the earth. From it came the demons in all their numbers.”
“The eternal war,” Gyorgy said.
“It’s not only demons we’ve got to be wary of,” she told him. “The dragons, too, present a risk. They are wild and dangerous—even their dreams bring blizzards every winter. Should the demons win, the world will become a lake of fire, but should the dragons emerge victorious, they will cover the land with ice. The oceans will freeze, and no living thing will creep across or fly above the surface of the earth.”
“But neither side can win, right?” Gyorgy asked. “The serpent god left them in perfect balance.”
“That doesn’t stop them from trying.” Narina shrugged. “They’re not so different from the crowlords in that regard. The point is, we are to warlords of the plains what the serpent god is to her offspring. We must balance and occasionally chasten them.”
“Look, there’s a barn,” Kozmer said. “And farm buildings, as well.”
Like many of the farms they’d passed, it was built as a small compound, with the barn, farmhouse, and other buildings joined together by a whitewashed wall with an overhanging tile roof that left no easy entry into the enclosed courtyard. There were no external shutters or windows on the buildings or the wall. Heavy wooden doors marked a single entry point into a courtyard of sorts. These had been reinforced with iron, and had a heavy inset lock. Outside the walls, rice paddies stretched away to the east and southeast, with the opposite side being largely pasture.
With its wall and gate, the farm compound carried an air of prosperity and security. These lands in the upper plains would be more well-watered than further east, yet have a much longer growing season than in the mountains. Fertile land and desirable. . .when times were good.
But because they were close to the borderlands between Damanja and Zoltan’s fiefdoms, as well as in proximity to the brigands who infested the hills, walls were prudent. What’s more, the post road ran past this land, only a few miles distant. It was the path used by invading armies, who were notorious for their lack of respect for the people whose lands they traversed.
Kozmer approached the gatehouse doors and gave them a good thumping with the butt of his staff. He shouted loud enough to be heard over the wall. “Hello inside! We’re travelers seeking clean water, a good meal, and fodder for our animal. We have coin to pay.”
There was no answer. He waited a few moments and tried again. Still nothing.
“Do you suppose they’ve locked up and fled?” Narina asked.
“If they’re smart, yes,” the elder said. “A place like this, sturdy enough against bandits, is a little too tempting in times like this.”
“You mean as a place of refuge for soldiers?”
“They need something, and this looks as good a place as any. The watchtowers along the post road are wrecked—they won’t give much shelter. I’d imagine an army coming through would see this farm and want to fortify it. Or burn it to the ground so the other side doesn’t do the same.” Kozmer nodded. “I’ve seen it before. Saw too many farms and villages burned to the ground for a slight advantage in battle.”
Narina eyed him. “You’ve been in wars before. My father told me that, but I don’t know the details.”
“Aye, and now isn’t the time to explain them to you. Let’s get inside, first. My old bones are cold, and it looks like it’s going to rain again.”
“How are we going to do that? They’re not opening the door.”
Kozmer smiled. “Then we might have to force our way in. And by we, I mean you. I’m too tired, and the boy might not be diplomatic enough. I think you can figure out the how.”
“I suppose they’ve left us little choice.”
Narina adjusted her swords and swept her cloak over her shoulders to give her greater motion. She gestured to Gyorgy, who made a step for her with his hands. She stepped onto his hands, used his assist to hoist herself up, and caught hold of the roof of the compound wall. The tiles were slick with rain, so she kept a good grip with both hands and swung herself onto the roof.
There she crouched, looking across the farm yard from her vantage point above. A milk cow sat on its haunches in front of an open barn, and a cat stretched on the porch of the house opposite, where it could be sheltered from the rain. A few chickens wandered the yard. But there was no sign of people, and no smoke rising from the chimney, either.
Any farm she’d ever seen had bustled with activity during the day, and she imagined that even hunkered behind their walls for safety, the farmers would have kept busy: milking, weaving, patching mud walls, repairing farm tools, washing clothes, and any of a hundred other tasks that needed doing. That she spotted none of this suggested the farmers and their hands had fled, but she circled the walls from above to be sure, scaling the barn and farmhouse as well. On the far side was a ladder, propped against the wall from the inside, which suggested that the owners had barred the gate, then scaled the wall from the inside before lowering themselves to the ground outside. They’d worry about how to get back inside when the time came.
When she came back around to the gate, she gave an all-clear sign to her companions, then jumped down from the wall and landed just inside the gate. Once she’d unbarred it, Kozmer and Gyorgy led Brutus, still pulling his tarp-covered cart, inside. Kozmer went to rap on the door of the farmhouse to be sure, while the other two unhitched the goat from his load. Brutus groaned and snorted and carried on in the most aggrieved way.
“Shut up, you,” Gyorgy said. “You’ll be eating good hay in a minute.”
Kozmer came back, shrugging. “No lock on the door, and it pushed open easily enough. Took a quick look around—nobody in there. May as well take the good lodging. No one else is.”
“I don’t know,” Narina said. “Entering their barn is one thing, but breaking into someone’s home is another.”
“We’ll leave a few coins if it makes you feel better. Anyway, the place is bound to be burned to the foundation by the time they return. If they ever do. The lot of them might be dead already, in fact, depending on who they stumbled into.”
She hoped not. She hoped they’d made it to Belingus—Zoltan’s river town to the southeast—and that the crowlords would settle their issues before any more people suffered any more deprivations. The family and its farmhands might be back within a few days if they were fortunate, and she didn’t intend to contribute to their hardships by ransacking their home and possessions.
“Look to Brutus,” she told Gyorgy. “Make sure he doesn’t harass the cow or any other animals in the barn. I’ll find the well so we can get washed up.”
Her student moved to obey. Kozmer took Narina’s arm before she could set off on her own.
“Listen, you’ve got a choice to make. It’s either turn back or fight our way through. The longer we linger, the more likely it is to be the second of the two.”
She wasn’t ready to concede that. “We’ve made it this far. Another day or two and we’ll be in Balint’s lands. I’ll find someone who looks important, hint at what we’re carrying, and let him guide us to Riverrun. We leave the weapons with Balint, we go home. No trouble.”
“Narina.” His voice was serious. “We’ve run into trouble already. The countryside is practically deserted. The sky is full of crows—that means at least one crowlord is nearby. Could be three of them, for all we know. What’s more, there’s a major battle brewing, and every step of the way is going to tak
e us closer to the war.”
“Then we wait here. We have food, there’s water. Shelter of a sort. We let them fight it out, then continue north when matters have calmed down.”
“We’ll be spotted. The crows aren’t just circling, looking for carrion. They’re crowlord spies. They’ll report our location.”
“I’m sure they are spies,” she conceded. “Doesn’t mean they’re spying on us. Nobody knows we’re on the plains. They won’t be sending crows to look for three chance travelers. Anyway, we’ll stay inside as much as we can.”
“Three travelers with a goat. Who already fought their way past a roadblock. Damanja will want to know where we are, even if she lets us pass. That will set off Zoltan. He’ll send his crows—assuming he hasn’t already—and come down to find us. We’re in his fiefdom, after all. He has a right, or thinks he does.” Kozmer met her gaze. “We either go back or we shed blood. This time for real.”
She clenched her fists. “This is what you wanted in the first place. A demonstration. Wasn’t the fight on the road enough for you, that you have to push me to kill? Didn’t my father’s death show you the folly of that?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
Narina took a deep breath and fought down the rising storm. “We’ll talk later. I need to wash up so I can see to Gyorgy’s training.”
“And I need to see to yours.”
She laughed. “I’m the master sohn, Kozmer. Nobody is training me, haven’t you noticed?”
“Are you claiming you’ve learned everything there is to know? That you have nothing to learn from the elders of the temple?”
“Of course not. But if you’re trying to teach me, this is a strange time and place. And a strange technique. Since when do bladedancers seek out violence, anyway?”
“Every single day. Why else were you training with Abelard and Katalinka after your father died? You were preparing for violence. To kill, and probably in great numbers.”
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