‘But –’
‘Please.’
‘If you insist, my lord.’ Pirojil shrugged. ‘I’ll choose the right-hand rack, second shelf from the bottom, the sack behind the second one from the right.’
‘Very well.’ Morray nodded. He retrieved the sack that Pirojil had indicated, untied the slipknot that held the sack closed, and spread it open.
Buttery gold coins gleamed in the lantern light; Morray dipped his hand in, and let them run through his fingers and back into the bag, before closing it and putting it back in its place.
‘I don’t often show anybody the inside of the strongroom, but when I do, I always make a point to show them some of the gold.’ He grinned. ‘I would not want anybody to get the idea that it had become filled with bags of rocks under my stewardship of the Earl’s Purse, eh?’ He closed the door, and turned the handle. ‘Would you care to try it again?’ he asked.
‘Only if you insist.’
There was obviously some trick to opening the door, and Pirojil didn’t really want to know what that trick was – or, at least, he didn’t want anybody to know that he knew what the trick was.
If there turned out to be some gold missing, ignorance was a good defence.
‘Oh, there’s no harm,’ Morray said. ‘There’s a spell on the lock – it will only turn for those who know the words to unlock the spell, and you can imagine that those words are not widely distributed, and there’s some magical … penalty involved if someone were to come close to but not quite saying the right words.’
Pirojil shuddered. He could imagine what those magical penalties might be, and the truth was probably much worse than he was imagining. One thing the years had taught him: if it involves magic, it was better to be far away than near by.
Besides, if Pirojil were to try to break into the vault, he probably wouldn’t go through the front door. He considered, then discarded, half a dozen foolish plans involving tunnels, holes-in-the-wall, odd mining devices he had once seen outside Dorgin, and the possibility of the gods granting him a wish out of boredom; then decided to return to the bleak reality he knew: it was not terribly comfortable, but it was familiar.
Morray frowned down at the ink on his fingers.
‘Well, now that that’s done, I’d best wash these clerk-stains from my hands, change into something more festive, and get back up to the Great Hall. The first official meeting of the Baronial Council is tonight, but things have already well started, I’d guess.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you coming along, or would you prefer to stay here and try the door some more?’ He smiled. ‘If you listened very closely, you might even have heard the lock’s key spell almost well enough.’
Almost. Pirojil shuddered at the implications of that ‘almost’.
‘I’m at your service, of course, my lord.’
The fight was just starting when Kethol walked into the barracks, shivering and shaking his cloak, intending to get some much-needed sleep.
Six or seven Verheyen men had squared off against Morray’s men over by the door to the stables, and pushing and shoving had already turned to blows and kicks, although no weapons were drawn, as far as Kethol could see. At least he assumed the men were all Verheyen and Morray’s men; the barracks had only two small hearths, one at each end of the room, so most of the soldiers were bundled up in their cloaks; for all Kethol knew, a couple of rockheads from another baron’s company might have joined in just for the hell of it. Once again he found himself dwelling on the idiocy of fighting when no one was paying you to do so.
It looked more like a tavern fight than real combat, so far, which was just as well. If someone drew a blade it could turn ugly faster than a mountebank could part a farm boy from his coppers on market day.
One thickset Mut went down, and another one leapt on him, thick fists pummelling his chest more than his face, and then another joined in. A sergeant in a Verheyen tabard tried to hold one of his comrades back, but that just gave one of the Morrays a chance to whack him over the back of the head. The sergeant instantly forgot his role as peacemaker, turned and delivered a thunderous wallop that sent the Morray man sliding backwards across the stone floor. He was impressed; the sergeant wasn’t all that big, but he’d served up a blow that Kethol would have been proud to call his own.
Soldiers from other baronies, quite a few of those from both Morray and Verheyen, were staying out of the way, and all of the mercenaries were either lying on their bunks or sitting at the tables, watching with interest but not even raising a voice, much less a hand. It wasn’t their fight, any more than it was Kethol’s.
The only exception was the mad dwarf Mackin. Mackin was counted mad for three reasons, his first being his preference to fight for pay, which made him rare among his kind, and the second being his proclivity for bedding human women, which marked him as unique among his kind, and last his tendency to speak to the thin air, as if someone was standing there holding a conversation with him, which hardly made him unusual among mercenaries in Kethol’s judgment. The crazed dwarf leapt from his bunk and landed on his improbably large bare feet on the hard stone floor, cheering at each punch and kick as though he was watching some sort of sporting match.
Kethol was, of course, moving backwards out of the door. It hardly looked a good time to try to join the dice players in the corner, who had barely paused in their game. By now the fight – and he had seen enough of them to count himself an expert – was only moments away from becoming a full-on brawl, complete with broken heads, swollen jaws and missing teeth. He had almost made good his exit when he backed into the Swordmaster, who had just come in from the outside, shaking his cloak to clear the snow off it.
Steven Argent unceremoniously shoved him aside and stalked into the barracks.
‘Stop!’ he shouted, punctuating the word by snatching up a bottle and smashing it on the floor.
There must have been something to this voice of command thing, Kethol judged, because to his surprise, the fighting stopped immediately. The men who had moments ago been beating each other slowly began to pull themselves apart and rise to their feet.
Steven Argent stood in the middle of the barracks for a long minute, looking from one face to another.
There was no sound at all, save for the wind howling outside.
‘You – and you, and you, you and you,’ he said, pointing out men who had been fighting, and then at two of the sergeants who had stood by and watched. ‘I’ve got a little job for you. We need another cask of beer hauled up from the Broken Tooth – good dwarvish beer, if you please – and I’m sending the lot of you out in the storm to get it.’
He stood silently, his hands still on his hips, a look of utter contempt written across his face; then he turned and swept out of the room.
Kethol shrugged, and spread his cloak over his bed. He unbuckled his sword and hung it on the hook nearby and lay down to get some sleep which, as usual, quickly overtook him.
The last things he heard before the warm darkness closed about him were the comfortable, familiar rattling of dice and the clinking of coins on stone.
Durine dumped another armload of wood into the bin next to the hearth, and brushed himself off before throwing another log on the fire. The servants weren’t quite ignoring this particular hearth, but they seemed to be giving higher priority to the one across the Great Hall, and it was easier to just go out into the cold and retrieve some wood from the woodpile than to annoy some servant about it.
That was the thing about cold – as long as there was warmth nearby, a few moments of it really weren’t all that bad.
The log hissed quietly at him, and then slowly began to burn around the edges.
Close to a score of the nobles had gathered themselves at the larger hearth at the far end of the Great Hall, with a few hangers-on. Pirojil was at Morray’s elbow, standing just outside the small circle of barons and noble ladies who were engaged in some intense conversation.
The soldiers – mostly captains, except for a few
odds and ends like himself – had understandably gravitated to the opposite side of the hall, so that the table down the middle of the hall acted as a social buffer. Durine didn’t know if gathering in the Great Hall was standard practice for visiting captains or just some sort of special dispensation given out under the circumstances. Either way, the captains appeared at ease, and none of the nobles spared them a glance.
Visiting captains were usually housed in one of the barracks buildings, at the far side of the inner bailey, and if Durine had been in their boots he would have found a quiet corner there and kept out of the way of his betters in the keep. But that was probably one of the many reasons that he wasn’t an officer.
Besides, over in the barracks, there were certainly games of dice and bones, and drinking, and doubtless other things going on that were probably considered to be prejudicial to good order and discipline. It was a wise captain who neither tolerated too much of such distractions, nor made too much of an effort to quash them. Too much order and discipline was bad for order and discipline, after all. You needed a balance to maintain morale, and with the storm locking up a load of soldiers, things were going to be getting more tense each day without additional irritations.
It had been bad enough in LaMut before, in that dimly-remembered time, just a few days ago, when winter was just making things cold and muddy, instead of clawing at everything like some ravening beast.
Tom Garnett was just finishing the story about the Night of the Bugs. Pirojil hadn’t paid enough attention to know if the Captain had got the details right, and probably wouldn’t have, even if he had listened closely since he and the other two had been too busy with their little piece of the battle to pay much attention to what others were doing.
Another captain – maybe one of Verheyen’s – plopped himself down in a well-upholstered chair and leaned back, stretching his legs out. ‘The one good thing I can think of about all this,’ he said, closing his eyes and folding his hands over his flat stomach, ‘is that we don’t have to worry, at least for the moment, about a Tsurani attack.’
‘Which,’ Tom Garnett said, ‘would make this a perfect time for such an attack.’
‘Time?’ The captain let his hands drop to his sides, and sat up, visibly irritated. ‘Certainly. Opportunity?’ He shrugged. ‘I think not. If there are any out there stupid enough to venture out in the storm, the blizzard would do our work for us. If we haven’t driven every one of the bastards out of LaMut –’
‘Which we haven’t, or my men killed a whole group of nonexistent Tsurani the other day,’ Tom Garnett said.
The Captain nodded, conceding the point with good grace. ‘Yes, and you did yourself proud, from what I hear, but that was less than a company in strength, wasn’t it?’
Garnett nodded. ‘True enough.’
‘And if there’ve been sightings of more anywhere near LaMut, I surely hope they’d have been reported to me. Far as I can tell, the nearest Tsurani are somewhere east of the Free Cities borders, and not much east at that. Few if any left in Yabon Province, I’m glad to say.’
‘Yes,’ Tom Garnett said with a quick nod. ‘I’m just as happy that it wasn’t more. Wish it had been less. But they were real enough, I can tell you that.’
‘Well, yes.’ The Captain sipped at his coffee. ‘But, apart from a few stragglers trying for their own lines, I think it’s over – for now. Later? Elsewhere? I doubt it – I’ve heard rumours about things heating up around Crydee, and even rumours about the Tsurani departing back to wherever they came from.’ His mouth twitched. ‘Which, even if it’s true, I’d still want to know if and how they can come back, and where.’
‘Yes, there are a lots of rumours,’ another captain said, nodding. He was a man of around fifty, with a bristle of moustache under his sharp nose, and a way of biting off the end of each word. He sipped at his wine as he stared at the fire, and huddled more deeply into his jacket. ‘I don’t much care for the ones I hear regarding what’s going on in Krondor.’
Tom Garnett glanced over at the nobles across the room, then looked back at the Captain, frowning. ‘And if spreading these rumours more widely is liable to serve us all well, then let’s all get to it, and do it thoroughly, and not waste any more of this lovely day, Captain Karris, shall we?’
Karris bristled, but settled himself back down, and raised a spread hand in surrender and apology. ‘A good point, Tom, a good point indeed – and it’s one I flatter myself I would have made if another had been fool enough to speak as I just did. A man can’t help wondering, no, but it’s another matter entirely to fail to keep your tongue in check, eh?’
Garnett nodded. ‘I’ve always thought so.’ His mouth twitched. ‘You can’t fight the whole war yourself; I always reckoned watching out for my own little piece of it was more than enough for me and my company, and that I’m best off leaving the bigger pieces to the men with the titles and responsibilities.’
‘Well, then you do better than I,’ another captain said. ‘I can’t help thinking about a lot of things. Worrisome time; I don’t know about the rest of you lads, but I haven’t slept through the night in longer than I care to think about.’
‘Sleep through the night?’ Karris laughed bitterly. ‘That’s an ancient myth, or so it feels. I’ve spent so long worrying about what’s over the next hill that my mind tends to spin out of control when I’m in four walls. I feel like a horse that can’t help galloping despite his lead being tied to a post; all I’m doing is going in circles.’
He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. ‘And since I’ve nothing better to do right now, I think I’ll make sure that my little boys and your little boys are playing nicely. I don’t need the Swordmaster to break things up again just because the lot of them feel as head-tied as I do. Most of them don’t have the sense the gods gave turnips, so they’re unlikely to listen to gentle words of wisdom like yours. They might need sterner words, though. Like, say, “take an extra watch”?’ He brightened. ‘Come to think of it, standing just a single extra watch on the walls, right now, would do just fine for some serious punishment, wouldn’t it?’
Outside, the wind howled, as though in agreement with Karris.
Tom Garnett chuckled. ‘That it would.’
He watched Karris stalk away towards the mud-room, then got up from his chair to fumble a small briar pipe out of a pocket. He patted at his trouser pockets for a moment, and was reaching for the leather bag that lay on the floor next to him when another captain tossed him a small pouch.
‘I thank you, Willem,’ he said. He filled the pipe with tabac, lit it with a long taper, and puffed furiously on it until he was satisfied with the smoke. ‘Might as well enjoy what you can, while you can, eh?’ He gestured toward the mud-room with the pipe’s stem. ‘That’s what I missed out there, the most. I got the feeling that the Tsurani could smell the smoke for miles and miles, and I never did see any need to let them know where we were when I didn’t have to.’ He puffed away strongly. ‘Missed my pipe, I did.’
Another of the captains chuckled. ‘I missed … softer things than a good pipe,’ he said. ‘And I suspect I will, again, come spring. I’m just glad to be out of the storm – and off the line for the moment.’
At that, a sudden gust of wind came down the chimney, sending a rush of sparks and ashes flying from the hearth. The Captain slapped at where one bit of burning ash was threatening to set his trousers on fire.
‘Though spring seems far away. You think that we’ll be moved west, to Crydee? Or north? Or kept here, lest the Tsurani move towards Krondor?’
Tom Garnett puffed at his pipe. ‘Probably all of that, and more. That’s what our betters are working out in Yabon right now. But for here and now, as I was saying, if there are any Tsurani stragglers out there, they’re too busy freezing to worry about attacking anything. I expect we’ll find a few corpses scattered about come spring.’
The other captain nodded. ‘Father Winter, as I’m told that they say on the steppes of Thunderh
ell, can be a powerful ally – and we can use all the allies we can get.’ He looked over at Durine with distaste. ‘Even if we have to pay some of them for the privilege of their alliance.’ He had been silent until Karris had left, and had watched him walk away with barely-concealed hostility.
Tom Garnett looked up at Durine, who just stared blankly back. ‘Durine,’ he said, ‘have you had the pleasure of meeting Captain Ben Kelly of Barony Folson?’
‘No.’ Durine shook his head. ‘No, I haven’t.’
Kelly nodded coldly. ‘No, we haven’t been introduced, and I’ve not sought out an introduction, either. I’ve little use for freebooters, myself, by and large, but I suppose we must make allowances in these times.’
Durine didn’t say anything, and Kelly apparently took that as a sign of weakness, rather than restraint. ‘Nothing to say, eh? You’ve a fair collection of scars – but your tongue seems to work, and –’
‘Please, Captain,’ Tom Garnett said. ‘If you’ve got some grievance against the man, bring it up with me, not with him – he’s in my company, and he’s my responsibility.’
‘Excuse me, Captain,’ Durine shook his head. ‘No, sir – meaning no disrespect. At the moment, I’m not under your orders … Captain.’
Kethol would probably have gone along just for the sake of getting along, and Pirojil would have found some way of changing the subject or of giving the Captain the same message in some indirect way, but that wasn’t Durine’s nature.
‘Right now, I’m not in any company,’ he said. ‘The three of us have been given a task, on orders of the Earl, and we’re not under the command of anybody save the Swordmaster,’ he said slowly and carefully. He drew himself up parade-ground straight, and stared straight ahead, not meeting Tom Garnett’s eyes. ‘Meaning no disrespect to your rank or to your person, Captain.’
Kelly didn’t like that. ‘Which is why you feel so free to join a gathering of officers, eh? And what’s all this about a special task? I’ve been hearing rumours –’
The Complete Legends of the Riftwar Trilogy Page 49