by Joseph Malik
Jarrod let out a long, slow breath. “That’s where we need to be.”
A week’s ride south, four large Uloraki soldiers in heavy armor pushed Adielle in front of Ulo, King of Ulorak.
Ulo sat on his great black throne in his silver and black clothes, smiling for the first time in a long time. She was still in her evening dress, rumpled, dirty, shackled hand to foot.
Beautiful, even in her filth; statuesque in her defiance.
“This is the part where I beg you for mercy?” she assumed, shaking off one of the soldiers’ hands.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Ulo.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I am King Sabbaghian of Ulorak. Until recently, Lord High Sorcerer of Gavria.”
“You can’t keep me here,” Adielle’s voice was stern. “And if you lay so much as a hand on me, they’ll kill you a thousand times over,” she warned.
“Albar is dead,” said Ulo. Adielle fell over, wailing.
“Javal with him,” Ulo continued, “and Gristavius. And a few others. That giant Chancellor your king no doubt sent to kill me.” Ulo motioned, and a dark-skinned woman in jewelry and little else brought him a goblet formed from an upturned human skull set with a golden inset bowl and stem, bowing as she presented it. He sent her away and watched until Adielle finally straightened, threw her hair back, and wiped her nose with her hand.
“What happens now?” she asked.
Ulo sipped at his drink. “For starters,” he said with a smile, “You can refer to me as King Ulo.”
“You’re not my king,” she said.
One of the soldiers shoved her to her knees, and she stood right up again.
Ulo raised a hand to wave the soldier off. “I have no plans to harm you,” said Ulo. “In fact, it’s in my interest to keep you well. But make no mistake. Your life is mine to do with as I choose. You’d be wise to remember that.”
“Is that so,” she muttered.
“Yes. You idiots put everyone who had any chance of countering me in the same place at the same time. They are all dead, and you are my shield,” he continued. “I’d imagine that Gavria will take Falconsrealm at this point, and fairly quickly. I give good odds they’re going to hand it over to the Hillwhites. Once they do, I’ll send you back to Gateskeep, and you can fight a war with Gavria if you like. Win your throne back.” He sipped at the skull goblet again. “I did it once. I recommend it.
“But I am done fighting,” Ulo said. “Ulorak stands sovereign.”
By the second day riding northeast, Jarrod was throwing up from the pain. He was now riding in the back of the cart, but still stopping every couple of hours to rest. His tailbone and knees were so bruised that every rock and bump felt like a new broken bone.
The team had discussed not going on, but food was running low and they needed to get to some sort of homestead, or an area where they could safely rest and either hunt, gather, or fish until Jarrod had recovered.
By evening of the second day they crossed the crest of a foothill leading to the Falconsrealm Mountains and saw smoke spires. Nestled in the valley below, lights gleamed in the windows of five neat houses around a gabled firepit. Not quite a village; a small farming cooperative.
They couldn’t get there fast enough.
Saril swung down from his horse to greet the young men who came out to meet them. One had a bow, another had an axe. It didn’t take but a moment to explain that they had an injured knight and needed to put him up for a few days. The young men met them with smiles and claps on the back and arranged Jarrod in a bed in one of the men’s houses.
He slept for three days.
Jarrod awoke to the smell of pot roast and woodsmoke. He was hungrier than he’d ever been in his life.
He was on what amounted to a covered straw bale, in a small room with a low ceiling. A candle burned next to him.
He rolled to a sit and let out a groan. He was still sore. Not as sore as he had been, though, and even by the candlelight he could see that his bruises had faded.
A red-haired girl not much younger than Daelle, boyish, unformed, and adorable in a simple night dress, appeared at the door. “Sire?” she asked. “Are you well?”
“No,” Jarrod said. “But I will be. Thank you for your hospitality. I assume this is your house.”
“Your men are staying in other houses,” she said, coming inside. “We don’t have a water closet, so you’ll have to go use the stream.”
Jarrod nodded. “I need food. I can pay you.”
“You don’t pay us, milord,” she said. “You’ve never stayed at a farm before?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” Jarrod said.
She giggled. “When you arrived, Uncle Arvald went out and killed a doe for you. He’s an excellent hunter. You should meet him . . .”
It occurred to Jarrod, from the way that she began to ramble, that these people didn’t get many visitors. The girl was obviously eager just to talk to anyone.
“. . . tough but Mother cooks it in pork fat with vegetables for a full day until it falls apart. You’ll like it,” she said.
“I can smell it from here. I will eat as much as you can carry,” said Jarrod.
The girl disappeared, and the curtain to the room opened to allow a strongly-built man with a long braid and beard, in simple clothing straight out of Migration-Era Northern Europe, to enter. “Uncle Arvald,” Jarrod assumed.
“I’m Arvald’s brother,” the man said. “I’m Brac.”
“Greetings, Brac. I’m Sir Jarrod, The Merciful, Knight Lieutenant in the King’s Order of the Stallion.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sire. We weren’t sure if you were going to make it. How do you feel?”
“I had my ass kicked,” Jarrod admitted. “We may be here a few days yet. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Brac waved a hand. “No. We’re glad to help. Your horse master says you killed a hundred men in a fight. Is that true?”
“He’s a boy,” said Jarrod. “He loves me and he tells stories.”
“May I ask how many men you did kill?”
The girl arrived with a tray bearing several pears, a thick candle, a mug of something alcoholic, and a large wooden bowl of sliced pot roast and vegetables. Jarrod felt like crying. The food looked marvelous.
“Seventeen,” said Jarrod, as she set it before him. “But they had it coming.”
“Traitors?” the man asked.
“In so many ways,” said Jarrod. He found that he could work a fork with his previously-broken hand. Crius hadn’t been fucking around. The magic was working.
The mug was beer.
Really good, malty, thick beer.
“How do I repay you for this?” asked Jarrod.
“Your men are helping us with some of the upkeep around here. That’s plenty. It’s good to have you here. That Bevio is like having an extra ox.”
“He’s a good man.”
“Your man Peric is letting me breed your dog to one of mine. I’ve got a red-nosed bitch in heat right now. She’s not a war dog, of course, but she’s given us some good watchers for our livestock. That dog will strengthen the line and the pups will be worth some good trades.”
“Good to hear.”
“In the morning, can you give us the news from the capital?”
“Absolutely,” said Jarrod. He’d already eaten everything from the bowl, and started on the pears. “I’m going to eat all this and then pass out. Please be so kind as to wake me for breakfast.”
Jarrod was able to stand and walk to breakfast, and better still, he was able to walk to the stream out back and bathe himself first. His clothes had been scrubbed and dried, and during his bath he caught up with Saril, who was on the shore giving him the latest.
Bevio and Saril had been helping with the chores, Jack had been great with the horses—both theirs and those of the farm—and Peric had spent most of his time hunting wit
h Uncle Arvald. They were the two oldest men on the farm, and enjoyed a special place among the family.
It shocked Jarrod that he had been asleep for three days.
Saril helped him into his clothes and boots, and handed him his swordbelt. Jarrod flossed, rinsed his mouth with a handful of water and a couple of drops of mint oil, tied his ponytail back, and shrugged into a cashmere turtleneck and a cable-knit sweater. The wind from the mountains was cold and powerful, and lent a sense of purpose to the day.
Breakfast was served outside. The central gazebo had a firepit and a smoke-hole in the center. Inside the gazebo were five long tables, and the sense of community was overwhelming as everyone filed out of their houses, hugged hellos, and began making breakfast: sliced apples, boiled eggs, seared slabs of pork, root-vegetable nests fried in the pork fat and dunked in powerful homemade wine, and gallons of roasted dandelion-root coffee with honey.
“If we didn’t have other business,” said Jarrod as his plate was filled for the second time, and this time someone had placed a smoked trout crusted in rock salt on it beside the vegetable nests, “I would never leave.”
“On that, when are we leaving, sir?” asked Saril.
“I want you gentlemen to help these men for one more day. Whatever they need. We will do a full equipment layout today before it gets dark. Then I want an inspection of the animals and the cart. Peric, you still got that damned dog, I hear.”
“He’s got the best job, here,” said Peric.
“I’m loving that dog,” said Brac, shaking Peric’s hand with a deferential nod to Jarrod. “Good morning, milord.”
“Please tell me you do this every morning?” said Jarrod to Brac. “That this,” he gestured around him with his fork, “is a typical day, here. Tell me, truthfully, your life is this good.”
“We don’t always have as much luck hunting,” said Brac. “Your man Lord Peric is quite a tracker. But generally, milord, yes. This is what we do. We eat. We work. We sing. We hunt. We fuck. We do it all again the next day.”
“Men?” said Jarrod. “I quit. I’m staying with these good people. You can go fight the war yourselves.”
As the laughter subsided, Jarrod asked Brac to walk with him.
“You’d asked me for news from the capital,” said Jarrod.
“Yes,” said Brac.
“The King of Ulorak, near the Eastern Freehold, kidnapped the princess four nights ago.”
“You’re jesting.”
“No. He killed the heir presumptive, and a delegation from Gateskeep.”
“How?” asked Brac.
“We don’t know,” said Jarrod. “He’s a wizard, but he can use his powers for bad things.”
“You’d said something about traitors, last night,” said Brac.
“I did,” said Jarrod. “That’s something else. There may be men looking for us.”
“Are you in danger?”
“No,” said Jarrod. “And neither are you. You never saw us. We were never here. I don’t know you.”
Brac toed the dirt and looked south to the mountains. “I fought in the last big one,” he said. “We pushed back the Eastern Freehold at the Border River ten years ago. I’m no knight,” he admitted quickly, “I volunteered.”
“Thank you,” said Jarrod. “We can’t do it without you.”
Brac chuckled to himself. “Marched for fifteen days to get to the fight, killed two dozen men, turned around and walked back. I was glad to do it. Walking through that door after that,” he nodded to his house, “Proudest day of my life.”
“Princess Adielle was my daughter’s age,” he looked back at the girl who’d brought Jarrod his food the night before. “She rode down there, to the front. She stayed in our camp, helped the wounded, comforted the frightened. She was a girl, and still twice the man of some men I’ve met.”
Jarrod sighed. “She knighted me,” he said. “She’s the one who dubbed me ‘The Merciful.’ I gave my vows to her.”
“I’d die for her,” said Brac. “Say the word.”
“You may get your chance,” he said. “If we march on Ulorak, word will come.”
“She deserves better,” said Brac. “Some things are too perfect for the world they live in.”
“That, they are,” agreed Jarrod.
“Tell the family. We’ll send men when you need them.”
Jarrod looked over the equipment layout.
They were well-armed. Their mail was heavy and strong, their packs were full of sturdy and warm clothes. Everyone had a sword, a shield—or two—and an axe, except Jack. Jarrod had his great sword in addition to his hammer, arming sword, and a tomahawk.
He wished there was a place to buy another horse. What he was planning would require one more horse to really pull off with style.
He stopped by a suit of what he swore was miniature horse barding at Peric’s layout. “Is that. . .?”
“For the dog,” said Peric. “Mail, backplates, helmet.”
The plates were black cuir bouilli, but holy shit, Jarrod thought. The dog weighed a hundred and twenty pounds and had a head like a bowling ball with two-inch teeth. “Has he been trained to fight in that?” asked Jarrod.
“Oh, he loves it, sir,” said Peric. “Put this on him, he’s all business.”
“Okay,” Jarrod said. “Score one for the dog. Worst case, Jack can ride him into battle.”
He gifted his plastic training armor to Jack, along with the bull-rider’s vest and arming jack that he usually wore under it, and also gave him his great sugarloaf helm and a tomahawk.
The guys had been working with Jack daily, going over basic knife and wrestling drills. He still sucked, and showed little promise—he was young and small and not terribly confident—but the way most people fought around here, adrenaline and ignorance could carry a well-armored guy a long way.
Jack gave him the report on the horses. One of Perseus’s front feet had begun to founder but Jack said it was probably a combination of too much grain and his habit of pawing when he wasn’t exercised enough. It wasn’t nearly severe enough to restrict travel and in fact, Jack theorized, he should improve once they hit the road again.
The dog, of course, had never been better in his life. He sat beside Bevio in moronic contentment, sporting a massive erection with tendrils of drool from each side of his mouth.
The cart was strong and all the joints were tight.
“Aches? Pains? Blisters?” Jarrod asked the team. “Anybody have anything wrong at all? A weird rash, hemorrhoids, a broken boot heel? We’re going to war, guys. Let’s get your shit fixed, now.”
Everyone looked at each other.
“I’m scared,” Jack admitted quietly.
“That don’t count,” Peric growled.
Jarrod took them to the gazebo, where he unrolled a map from its case on one of the tables and set a rock on each corner.
“Okay,” he said. “You’ve been asking. I’ve been thinking. Here’s how we win this thing.”
X
BRUSCAMENTE
“He who draws his sword against the prince must throw the scabbard away.”
— 17th-Century proverb
Five days later, Jarrod and his small circus rolled into Horlech and stopped at the tavern where he and Javal had eaten, before. The beer was still magnificent and served in massive steins, the food the same as it had been. The owner even remembered Jarrod, and upon hearing of Javal’s demise, had fed the team free of charge.
They used the space outside to armor up. Jack helped Jarrod with Perseus’s armor, which took the better part of half an hour, two hundred pounds of mail and plates dyed Gateskeep green and black.
Jack had been practicing putting on his armor, and looked more or less professional donning it and absolutely fearsome once he seated his helmet.
Bevio cinched down the straps on Dog’s armor and smacked him around a little. Muscles rippled under brindle fur everywhere the armor w
asn’t.
Okay, yeah, thought Jarrod. I wouldn’t screw with that thing.
Jack would head to the stables with the cart and secure an extra horse and ten days’ feed for the lot. Dog, who had bonded with Jack, would ensure Jack got his way.
Jarrod swung up onto Perseus, towering above the others on the big blue horse. He was in every bit of armor he could manage, same as he’d shown up before: coat of plates, grand pauldrons, Barbute, gran espée de guerre at his hip.
They passed through the barbican without a word, and rode up to the front doors, which were open. Jarrod had to duck his head as he kicked Perseus into the main antechamber with the others on his tail.
Horlech had two functional knights left including Orvyn, relying instead on a handful of local rented mooks. Jarrod could tell that they had absolutely no idea what to do when four knights in full dress rode through the front doors into the grand hall and stood there, horses stamping and snorting.
One tried to approach Perseus, who stepped forward at him and let out a noise that was a cross between a mule, a bear, and fingernails on slate.
“He doesn’t like you,” Jarrod said. “I’d stay back.”
Orvyn came down the stairs. He saw Jarrod atop Perseus and sagged. “They made you an officer?”
“Go get him,” Jarrod ordered. “Or I will.”
“He’ll never come down for you,” said Orvyn. “You know how this is going to go, sir.”
“Do I ever,” said Jarrod. “Peric, with me. Saril? Bevio?”
All four swung down from their mounts. Swords rang from scabbards and spears pointed. Orvyn begged his men to put their weapons down, explaining that this was Sir Jarrod, the knight who’d killed all those men in that fight at the palace.
His men laid down their spears.
Jarrod had shown Saril and Bevio how to take prisoners: in moments the guards and knights were lying face down, legs spread, hands on heads, as Saril and Bevio kicked the weapons away.