by David Guymer
“It’ll be all right, just… just do as you’re told and stay there.”
He went to the front door.
He slid his shield over his forearm so that it was secured by the straps leaving his hand free, and with it he lifted the latch.
For a moment he was sure he had fallen asleep at the table and was dreaming.
He was at watch, on the high tower of Bastion Tarn, overlooking the southern Dunwarr and the Borderlands. Same sword. Same shield. An oft-recurring nightmare of a monster he had briefly glimpsed on the Plains of Ru came scrabbling down the loose-bound soil of Old Gray and into the yard. At the foot of the hill it sniffed and snorted. Its eyes burned like coals in the night. Its body was huge and blood red, emitting a deep growl the way a man would breathe. The pigs in their sty squealed in terror. From the back of the house, Boxer was barking. It was all Kurt could do not to slam the door.
It was not a dream.
This was not the Ru.
He was not in a castle.
With shaking arms he inched the door carefully shut, not daring to breathe even as the sounds of savaged wood and pig screams rang out from the other side of the yard. He closed his eyes and leant back against the door.
His breath came in a shudder.
Not a dream.
“Father?”
Elben ran to him, the hobby bow in his hand with a clutch of arrows.
Kurt caught him by the hand, terror making his grip so strong that he pulled the boy down. He pressed a trembling finger to his lips. “Stay down. Not a sound.”
“What is that thing?”
“A flesh ripper,” Kurt answered in a low voice.
Demon hybrids of the most distant east, so the campfire tales went, monsters born not from the union of beasts but from blood magic and Ynfernael sacrifices.
Elben’s face went white. “Uthuk magic. Like in Yorin’s stories…”
“Go,” Kurt gestured him back to the front room. Yorin drank too much and he talked too much. “Put out the light. Then meet me at the back door.”
“What about the pigs?”
“Pox on the damned pigs.”
“They cost us everything.”
“Only what I’m willing to pay. Now go.”
They scrambled together into the front room, close to all fours, keeping under the line of the little window. Elben licked his fingers and pinched out the candle flame and the room fell dark. Kurt nudged open the door to the pantry. A dozen wheels of white sheep’s cheese sat on the side. Too big to take with them. Elben joined him, snatched a knife off a chopping board and nodded.
The pigs had stopped screaming.
Kurt turned the handle and pushed open the back door.
Boxer and Whisper ran up with their tails between their legs. Boxer gave a loud bark that made Kurt’s heart leap for the moon.
“Quiet,” he hissed.
Elben threw a frightened glance over his shoulder.
The big dog sat on the ground and whined.
Kurt half-ran to the stall at the back where his horse was waiting anxiously, pawing at the straw and throwing his mane. He unbolted the stall door and led him out. There was no time to saddle him.
“We’ll have to ride elf style,” he said, turning quickly to Elben.
“We’re… we’re leaving the house?”
“A flesh ripper isn’t an animal, Elben. It’s a demon in animal shape. And worse. They’re the heralds of the Uthuk Y’llan. Where the flesh rippers hunt, the Locust Swarm isn’t far behind.”
“But… our house.”
Kurt physically lifted his son and sat him on the horse’s back. “It’s just a house,” he said, burying his own pain for Elben’s sake. “Nordgard Castle must have fallen. If the castle has been taken then our house isn’t going to last to morning.” He climbed up hurriedly and set himself behind his son. “If the Greyfox wants to call herself baroness of what’s left when the Uthuk are done, then she’s welcome to it.” He kicked his heels in. The horse snorted in fright.
Boxer gave a frenzied bark.
Kurt turned his head back, towards the house, Katrin’s house, and an arrow whistled across his ear, thudding into the back wall. The horse reared. Kurt threw his arm instinctively around Elben, covering the boy with his shield. Two Uthuk careened into the back yard. Their chests were bare, their purple-gray skin like stone under the white light of the moon. They shouted something in the broken language of the Charg’r and more arrows flicked towards the house. One slashed Elben’s arm. He hissed as blood welled up.
“You’ll live,” Kurt yelled, and kicked the horse harder. “Yah!”
This time, the charger leapt into a gallop, flying over the picket fence. Its turn of speed confounded the Uthuk who had been slowing down as they approached the house. Holding tight to Elben, who was in turn holding tight about the horse’s neck, Kurt looked back over his shoulder. The Uthuk were not even bothering to give chase.
Boxer’s wild barks ended with a piteous whine. Whisper, as always, was quiet. Kurt hoped he had been bright and run away.
The first flicker of fire appeared against the dark hills.
The scent of smoke came to him on the wind.
“Where are we going?” asked Elben.
“I don’t know.”
Chapter Twenty
Fredric
Castle Kellar, North Kell
Princess Litiana Renata, or “Anna” to most in court, stared icily over a bowl of mallard broth and several platters of crusty bread. Her skin was a pale brown, her hair a long black that tended naturally towards curls. Her expression was one of deep and ongoing disappointment, as though whatever she presently beheld was something she had seen better of in her home country. Detesting Kell’s courtly garb, she was wearing baggy pantaloons tucked into a pair of sturdy wayfarer’s boots, and a leather corselet rendered in bright colors that the tailors of Terrinoth simply could not reproduce outside the cosmopolitan quarters of Tamalir, Dawnsmoor and Jendra’s Harbor.
Fredric tried to smile at her.
Her frown deepened.
He coughed, slurping at his broth, well accustomed by now to handling spoon and bowl in steel gauntlets, and looked away.
Seated further down the table, the gaggle of master craftsmen, reeves, and merchant guilders he had invited to discuss the barony’s troubles picked silently at their breakfasts. The clink of spoon on bowl echoed through the empty spaces of Fredric’s great hall. The long table could feast two hundred knights. The hall could host a thousand dancers. Its walls were cut from glittering gray stone, a type of granite hewn only from the Howling Giant Hills, and paneled with dark oak imported at vast expense from less haunted forests in Forthyn. Thick mullions barred the windows and sturdy crossbeams bowed low under the ceiling. It was a grand space, but a cold one when empty, and intimidating to those who were ill-accustomed to it.
Fredric wondered if a minstrel might have set his guests more at ease. He shook his head. An entire circus troupe would have struggled to cheer this hall.
From behind his chair there came the harsh note of steel being delicately ground across steel as Grandmarshal Trevin Highgarde, fully armored and tall, shifted position.
“Say something to them, husband,” said Anna, in a bored tone. “If they do not stop looking at me like that then I am going to kill one of them.”
Fredric smiled through his teeth. “We don’t do that over here, beloved.”
“We do not do it in Alben either. We have not the need.”
“Dig in, friends,” Fredric called down the table, his voice sounding out like a drum over the empty quiet. “You should see this hall when my knights come in from the provinces to tourney. Or when Magrit, Harriet, or Adelynn bring their courts to feast. If you had, then you would know that there is little ceremony at this table. And none at all at breakfast!
” His laughter fell flat. He coughed again, affecting seriousness. “It is plain fare, I know, but plentiful enough for it. No one in Kellar will go hungry while I sit as baron.” A handful of burghers rapped their knuckles on the table in support of that. “Banditry and blight plagues much of this great realm, it is true,” he continued, warming to his speech. “But not here. Here, by the strength of our arms, the roads remain open to trade. We have sympathetic friends and good neighbors. And we have strong allies abroad.” His wife scoffed. Subtly, if loudly. “But I did not invite you here solely to feed you, or to give you a lengthy speech and impress you with my chivalry. No.”
He set down his spoon and his bowl as though with intent.
Fredric looked down one side of the table, and then back along the other, firmly wishing to look every man and woman present, however lowly, in the eye. Few, however, were prepared to meet his.
“The lords of Kellar live here in this castle, but you, my friends, are the lords and ladies of the guildhalls and the marketplaces, of the courthouses and the workshops and the coaching inns. I would hear from you as I would from any of my own advisors. So speak! Tell me! What troubles afflict your regions of my land and my city, and what might your baron do to allay them?”
For a long while there was quiet.
Men and women glanced nervously at one another, as if affirming some compact of silence. One man, an artisan from one of the Free Cities dressed in golden doublet, cherry red hose and a folded cap, was even drinking determinedly from his soup as though intent on pretending that he was not being spoken to at all.
The urge to bang his fist on the table and have Trevin haul the artisan from his chair and throw him at Fredric’s feet to explain himself became almost too great to manage.
He set his palms flat on the table and took a deep breath.
“Speak, I said. You have been invited to share your baron’s table. In what other land of Terrinoth, at what other time in our history, would that have been possible for folk of your birth?” He rose to his feet in a snarl of heavy plate. The burghers shrank into their chairs. The artisan of Pollux dropped his bowl suddenly and looked fearfully up. In the seat beside Fredric, Anna smiled. “I ask you for your counsel and instead you sit there like lambs. I hear from my counsellors about shortages of fuel and salt, of iron ore and of cloth. I hear about the rising cost of imported bread and the hardship that has brought to many. If I can hear all of this from the safety of my keep then why can I not hear it from you?”
Anna gave a loud sigh. “They do not want to sit here in the great hall of their lord and trouble him with the price of grain,” she said, her Alben accent decorating her simple words with barbs. “They do not want breakfast and a pat on the hand.”
“I would hear their concerns and have them know they will be acted upon.”
“The ancestor of yours, the Dragonslayer whose portrait hangs in every great hall from Jendra’s Harbor to here, he who slew Margath the Unkind in single combat and saved Terrinoth. Do you think bread was cheap that year?”
“Please! Gods! Give me a dragon to fight!”
“Do you think my mother, the queen of the Torue Albes, would suffer this Greyfox or her like? She would not. She would have hounded her down, burnt her out, slain every third woman and man if that was what it took to make an example of any who harbored them.”
“You speak of slaughter as though it is a casual act.”
“Of course it is not. If it were, then all would do it. Everyone would be a baron or a queen, and no one would be content to be ruled. So maybe people will go hungry.” She shrugged. “If they cannot feed themselves maybe they deserve to go hungry. Or maybe hungry people will fight harder if their baron can point them at those to blame for their empty bellies.”
Fredric pinched the bridge of his nose, but he had no words of argument left. He slumped back down onto his seat as though exhausted by his family harness’s weight.
“Since I arrived here I have heard nothing but how strong the armies of Kell are, how hard its folk are, and so stubborn against the evils of north and east,” Anna continued. “The cruelest man can be good when times are easy and there is no evil.” She reached across, and with unexpected tenderness laid her fingertips on his pauldron piece. “You are a good man, husband. Everyone knows it. It does not need to be proven. But it is less easy, I think, for a good man to be cruel when the times need it.”
Fredric glanced down the table.
The guests looked uncomfortably at their nibbled breakfasts. If they had been ill-disposed towards an audience then they fancied being party to his marital disputes even less.
“Would you care for me to step in, my lord?” asked Trevin, deadpan, no steel visor of Terrinothi make adequate to concealing that wry grin.
“Do not tempt me.”
There came a knock on the oaken doors at the far end of the hall.
Fredric did not care enough to conceal his relief.
“Enter!” he shouted.
The guards opened the doors, and Chamberlain Salter swept in, trailing a brocaded overgown and close to three dozen pages and scribes. Without a word to anyone, the old woman strode the length of the hall to where Fredric sat at the long table’s head.
“Well?” said Fredric.
“News, lord. May we speak of it privately outside?”
Fredric considered. “No. We can speak of it here.” He threw a dismissive wave down the table. “Get rid of this lot. Trevin.”
“Yes, my lord?”
The warden of Kellar lurched forwards. The burghers hastened at once from their seats, like rabbits startled by sudden movement, and streamed out through the open doors followed by the guards until it was only Fredric, Litiana, Beren Salter and her servants, and the grandmarshal himself left in the hall.
The princess put her boots on the table.
Fredric gave her a despairing look.
“I am sorry, husband. But I do not like these small people.” She waggled her finger at him. “They will respect you more for having the stones to throw them out than they will for your kindness. You will see. Maybe next time you call them here for counsel they will speak up.”
Fredric shook his head.
He loved his wife.
Almost all of the time.
“What is so urgent, chamberlain?” he said. “Before my wife and I come to blows and my champion at arms is forced to intercede on my behalf.” Anna snorted. Fredric smiled weakly. “I would hate to deprive the Sacred Order of the Yeron of their grandmarshal in these dark times.”
“The times are darker than you think, my lord,” said Salter, without humor. Even the servants that tended on her with parchment and quills looked grave
The smile drained from Fredric’s face. “Well spit it out then, Beren. For pity’s sake.”
“It is Hernfar, my lord. Nordgard Castle has fallen.”
Anna pulled her boots off the table.
Fredric sat forward. “How? There has been no word of a siege from my cousin.”
“Which tells me that it must have fallen swiftly indeed, and to a great host. But riders fly this way on every northbound road with word of Uthuk Y’llan. Brant was right, my lord, and I beg forgiveness for what might have been done to prepare ourselves had I not doubted. The Greyfox, if she still lives, is no longer a concern to us. If the Uthuk Y’llan have indeed come in force enough to sweep the defenses at Nordgard Castle aside, then they have come as a force to threaten all of Terrinoth. And beyond. I would strongly recommend you find local people who can carry word to the bandit lords still at large in the north of the country. I would entreat upon their humanity to stand with us against this evil.”
Fredric’s mouth worked dumbly. His entire body tingled as though to fight or run, and his thoughts could find no way through to his mouth. His right hand patted for his sword, and did so for several seconds before i
t occurred to him that he was not yet in the habit of sitting armed to breakfast.
“Yes,” said Anna.
“Agreed,” Trevin added. “The time for grievances is past us.”
“I have already spoken with General Brant,” said Salter. “And after he had reminded me several times that he had been right and I wrong he concurred as well. He forwards his apologies by the way for his absence. He thought it wisest to look at once to the defenses of castle and town.”
“Quite right,” Fredric murmured.
“The forest will slow them,” said Trevin.
“Undoubtedly,” said Salter. “It will buy us some days to prepare, though it may simply turn one great horde into many. Elements of the swarm may split west and pass into Dhernas, Pelgate, and Frest. But history tells us that the full might of the Uthuk Y’llan will head here, and precedent tells us that our futures are grim.”
For a long time Fredric remained too stunned to speak further. He had thought himself bowed by the weight of his family pressure. It was as nothing to this news.
He found himself picking up his spoon and his bowl and staring down the length of the empty table.
“Fredric!” Anna snapped. He turned to her. “Now is the time for good men to be cruel.”
“You are right,” he said slowly. “Take Grace. Go west. Magrit will give you shelter.”
“No.”
“This is me being cruel! If we were in Alben and this your court then I would obey without question. But this is Kellar. I told you to take our daughter and flee.”
“Respectfully, my lord,” said Salter. “I fear it is already too late. If the Locust Swarm does fragment and send a portion of its strength south of the forest then Dhernas Keep may itself come under siege before we do. The westbound roads will almost certainly become impassable.”
“I would not have gone anyway,” Anna smiled.
Fredric could not help but return it. He offered his hand.
The princess took and squeezed it.
“Then send out riders on every road while they are still open,” he ordered. “Our neighbors might not have troubled themselves with our banditry, but the Uthuk Y’llan is another matter entirely. Have others ride to every town, village, and large farm in the north. Everyone of an age to fight is summoned to Kellar to be armed.”