"I'll put that money towards repairing the shingles on the manor house roof, Magnificent One. It leaks like a sieve."
"You said it kept the rain off."
"Only on fine days."
Of the nine fiefdoms Yordl was the poorest. Its geographical isolation lent the barony a marginal economy at best, based largely upon exports of mahogany logged from Jungular Forest. Piled on top of that was the financial mess Parin Olc inherited from his dead and buried master, namely a defaulted loan from the Mercantile Federation through the Free Trade Bank that financed a disastrous trading venture in blighted potatoes. Despite Olc's meteoric rise to power being down to the luck of the draw, he showed grit and toughed it out, managing to pull Yordl out of the red and into the black at the end of five years of scraping, borrowing, and juggling monies. This is not to say the barony was back on an even keel. Far from it. Money remained desperately tight and what little was spare went to improving the squalid lives of Parin's peasant labor force. The noble commoner had not forgotten his roots.
"Are you related to Wynsorr's puppet?” the wizard casually asked.
"Dorin Ulc, the Treasurer? Not that I know of. Why?"
"Similar sounding surnames."
That ended their chinwag until around mid-afternoon when they encountered the tail end Charlie of a supply convoy bound for the Third Foot encamped on the outskirts of Yordl. From thereon their cracking pace slowed to a crawl.
Poking his hawkish nose out the window of the coach door, Maldoch groaned. “I could get out and walk faster than this."
"But your feet wouldn't thank you for it."
Pulling his head back in, the disgruntled spellcaster griped, “Toombe's supposed to be relocating this new army of his to Serepar. What are we doing dragging our heels behind a wagon train rolling the wrong way?"
Parin smiled indulgently. “An army can't move on orders alone. Those wagons are hauling new issue boots, ponchos and the like, ensuring our boys are well kitted out for the long march ahead. You can't go on a camping trip without being fully provisioned"’ He glanced curiously at the wizard's meager carryall sitting beside him on the torn seat.
Maldoch grunted peevishly. “I always travel light."
The baron clicked his tongue in admonishment. “Like my pappy always says, Preparation makes the meal."
This is why Baron Olc was to run the wartime resupply. Logistics stood out as his forte and Marshall Enoh Toombe's glowing reports to the prince over Parin's crisp efficiency at maintaining the Third Foot half a thousand leagues from home base won him respect and that position.
"What does your father do now?” asked Maldoch, certain that the butler's son must have advanced his sire to coincide with his own promotion.
"He's butlering still."
Few things astonished Maldoch in life now, but this was one of them. “Your own father serves you as butler!"
Parin shrugged off the denunciation. “He likes what he does and, to be frank, I doubt I could find a more loyal manservant anywhere."
"What's your relationship to the Marquise of Stranth?” the nosy wizard enquired, switching topics without skipping a beat.
"We're just good friends, although I do find older women a turn on."
"Not in that way, Olc. Just how close is Yordl to Stranth Tor?"
"Four hundred and ninety eight leagues, give or take a pace."
"Baron!"
Parin Olc got serious and came clean. “Without support from the Stranth, my barony would be struggling. Indebted as I am to the Holbyants for giving me a shot at stardom, Yordl would've turned belly up a week after I took over the reins if it weren't for Marquise Coramm. She settled the baronial debt with the FTB and put herself up as guarantor for subsequent loans."
"That was mighty generous of Ittoria. What's she getting out of this?"
"My gratitude."
"Get real. She's after more than that."
"Twenty five per cent of lumber profits, coupled with exclusive rights to supply the horse teams for the new fleet of freight wagons I'm building. We've gone into limited partnership."
"At favorable terms for her I bet.” The wizard was puzzled. “What does the Horse Lady want with a freight concern?"
"To take business away from Karavere's coastal freighters."
Maldoch shook his head in despair. “I should have guessed. Aren't the Coramms and Widhams supposed to play nicely in accordance with the terms of the Impasse Junction?"
Parin seemed amused by the observation. “Rules are made to be bent. I should know."
"That horse-head cane must be a gift from Ittoria. You couldn't afford an accessory like that on what a country lord makes."
"I think the Ice Princess likes me,” replied the noble. “She may even be thawing."
"Every Coramm I've ever known, and there's been quite a few, has liked only one thing: power. Watch your step, Parin Olc. Or your foot just might get stamped on by a Stranth hoof."
That friendly warning ended the conversation between wizard and baron. For the next week the only sound to be heard on the road was the groaning springs of the ramshackle coach as it methodically rolled its way south. Each night they pulled off the roadway on to the verge of the boundless grassland, making camp with the rough and surly teamsters of the supply convoy they had hitched themselves to, resuming their tedious journey at first light. On the eighth day out of Bridgewater—it seemed like a month to Maldoch, who normally was not bothered counting time—Stranth Tor hove into view on their right.
Like a boil begging to be lanced so thought Maldoch, closing the threadbare curtain on the monolith of red sandstone blotting the plain.
Half a week onwards found the convoy a day out from the provincial village of Havenstock, the last touch of civilization and final chance to purchase feed and travel supplies before the long haul southwards out of the Stranth prairie into the bushy scrubland of the Lower Wade and eventually on to Yordl. Preoccupied, Maldoch was staring listlessly out the window westwards at the distant breach Gortal's Cleft made in the Unchained Mountains. A blusterous southerly breathed life into the verdant grasses, heaving in spurts with an ocean-like rhythm.
The restless pampas echoed the wizard's troubled spirit. Against all odds, matters were progressing fairly smoothly. The Eastern Realms were sadly primed for war, their secret western champion safely tucked away ready to join the fray when coached by Maldoch to do so. Sure, there was the odd hiccup. The daring theft of the Horn of Dunderoth had, to put it in Parndolc's phraseology, “thrown a spanner in the works". That presented a problem, not a major setback. Maldoch was confident that the combined might of Men and Dwarfs was sufficient to blunt that specific threat, moreso once the Elves officially came on side. He lamented over the recent military alliances he helped negotiate between the monarchies failing to act as the deterrent to surging Goblin aggression he envisaged. But he was not yet done battling to nullify the prospect of wide scale war.
Doubt niggled at the ancient spellcaster like a woodpecker worrying a tree trunk. Things were going too well, and that usually meant disaster lurking around the corner. The eternal optimist, Maldoch was subject to a smattering of his brother's cynicism from time to time.
His glum instinct was bang on the nose.
Parin Olc's creaky coach bumped along the shabby highway, juddering over gaping rifts where the flagstones had split entirely to expose the mortared pebbles beneath. Those lounging in the rocking cab endured the discomfort in stoic silence. Sundown was an afternoon away and come nightfall the passengers looked forward to enjoying the creature comforts of Havenstock's only inn, the Nag's Head. A bed, even a bug-riddled pallet of straw, made a welcome change from sleeping underneath the coach in the midst of snoring wagoners.
Maldoch abruptly came off the bench seat he was lying on, pillowed by his satchel. The hairs of his beard stood on end, startlingly electrified, while his normally piercing eyes were unblinking and glazy.
"Magnificent One, is anything the matter?"
"What?"
"Stop the coach, Olc. Do it now!"
Parin signaled his driver with a sharp rap of his cane. The slow moving coach duly stopped and Maldoch, his staff and travel bag gripped in one hand, flung the door wide open to leap from the cab a scant second after the wheels stopped rolling. Hanging out of the doorway, the stunned baron called after the bounding wizard cutting a swathe westward through the emerald luxuriance pressed down by a squally sky, “What's wrong?"
Maldoch's reply filtered back across the wind gusts before he raced out of earshot. “There's a bad smell in the air!"
Craning his neck upwards, Parin sniffed his baffled coachman. “Jefras, is it time for your monthly bath already?"
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Twenty
"Look out below!"
Flattening against the cliff face, his back pressed up to the firming rock, Ahnorr was subjected to a bird's eye view of the trailbreaker's plunge from somewhere above. Transfixed by the plummeting Goblin, the screeching man's arms flapping as uselessly as the wings of an unfledged nestling, flakes of disturbed stone his wingmen, the potentate leaned out over the ledge as far as commonsense permitted after the faller hurtled past. The hapless warrior thudded sickeningly downslope and bounced off the unforgiving rocks out of sight, his screams and life ending concurrently.
"What's happening up there?” Ahnorr barked skywards, his query that cut the alpine air betraying irritation, not concern.
A familiar voice hollered back down from directly above the Grizzly leader's head. “The ledge you're on peters out fifty paces up from where you stand, boss."
Impatient, Ahnorr rebuked his lead scout. “Gragow, I want an explanation, not a road map."
"That's what I'm getting to, boss. There's another ledge going our way about forty feet overhead, but the start of it cuts back toward you. I'm on it now. We were climbing the overhang to get up here when the fool who just fell lost his grip."
"One of ours?"
"Nah, boss, just a mangy Wolf."
"No loss then,’ said Ahnorr, uncaring that other warriors drafted from the Onayl clan were within earshot around him.
"Do I need to carry on to where this ledge ends, or can you rope us up from there?"
Gragow doubted it. “Ice has fractured the rock, making the overhang crumbly. I'll need to move further along until I find solider stone, where I can safely secure lines and throw them down to you."
"Then stop gasbagging and do it. I'm on a schedule here."
Resuming his ascent, Ahnorr exercised greater care edging along the goat trail snaking crosswise up the windy mountainside. One incautious slip or misstep on the treacherous iced stone and he would be sharing the fallen warrior's frozen entombment.
The early morning sun tinged the whitened rockscape higher up with pink and gold highlights. Soon the warming day would dangerously soften the snow, increasing the risk of avalanche and making climbing extremely hazardous for the mountaineering Westies.
Reaching the end of the line, unable to barge through the milling Goblins ahead of him, Ahnorr unhappily settled for joining the queue. The narrowness of the ledge dictated that the paused climbers hang around in single file. Unused to waiting his turn, his furry wrap ruffled by the frigid wind eddies, the haughty chieftain stamped his feet for more than warmth.
2,000 feet below, the pines carpeting the valley leading up to the cleft in the ridgeline the hiking Goblins were making for remained jealously green and unsullied by winter's frosting. Ahnorr wished himself in that friendlier forest. There has to be an easier shortcuts east! Recalling an obscure vale bisecting Tarndeth Ward southwest of the headwaters of Surrid Rush, he resolved to have the passage properly scouted sometime soon. Creeping into Carallord via Anarica's backdoor was chancier, but quicker. A fast dash along the foothills of Westknoll, then around the corner into Northwood between Orvanthe and Jarde would be the trick...
Hammering distracted him, refocusing his interest topside. The telltale ping of metal spikes driving into rock preceded a handful of climbing ropes uncoiling from overhead. The foremost Goblins tied on then scaled the rock face, warriors on the upper ledge, braced above the pitons to which the ropes were knotted, acting as belayers to safeguard the climbers against a disastrous slip and fall.
Anxious to get going but still prevented from doing so by those loitering in front, Ahnorr scanned the backlog of armed men bringing up the rear. Nearly three hundred fighters comprised his motley commando force, a third of them clan members partnered by an equal number of Lynx warriors loyal to the Grizzlies they served with and assisting them keeping the hundred swordsmen sympathetic to Maratornuk drafted from Onayl in line. Just because the Carnach tribes were loosely allied was no insurance that they played nicely together.
Shuffling along as the line shortened, when Ahnorr came to rope up an additional coil unrolled to dangle in front of his puzzled face. Scorning the extra safety precaution to carry his larger weight, he flicked aside both cords and undertook the near vertical climb unroped and scowling.
Halfway up, Ahnorr silently wished his pride was not as big as his portly waist. The poundage gained from three decades of soft living increased the difficulty of his ascension. Making use of all available depressions in the rock face as handholds, fingers aching from the constant effort of clinging to cracks, Ahnorr's scrabbling boots searched out footholds to assist his arduous climb. But his straining forearms swelled as overworked muscles protested at supporting his bulk. The corresponding loss of strength became telling, made audible by his heinous wheezing. Feeling the pinch, but indisposed to losing face in front of his own boys, let alone rival clan rabble, Ahnorr gritted his filed teeth and pushed upwards, grunting from the exertion. Feeling dangerously light-headed in the thinning air, his questing fingertips finally clawing the lip of the ledge as he struggled to surmount the firmer section of overhang, Ahnorr did not protest when Gragow's willing hands grabbed him by the leather back straps of his sword harness to haul him over onto the shelf.
Grihaloecke's out-of-shape chieftain lay on his back panting like an overheated dog, his breath steaming the frigid air before his flushed face. Like all leaders everywhere, public perception compelled Ahnorr to constantly project an aura of unflagging authority. So he forced his fatigued body upright, the sweat beading his brow freeze-drying in the cold breeze. Looks often counted for more than substance. Casually resting on his elbows, he missed the anxious glances frowning the faces of those warriors nearest him.
"Time you lost your winter fat, bear-man."
Whirling around, Ahnorr nearly jumped out of his bearskin. Clutching hands saved him rolling off the ledge from the shock at seeing Omelchor's badder half standing over him, exuding hostility.
Norelda showcased a dancer's physique, lissome and subtly muscled, richly robed in a figure-hugging belted overgown of glossy grey silk, her slender waist cinched by an ivory buckle carved in the unsettling semblance of a grinning human skull. Blue-black hair, iridescent with flickers of cold magical light, fanned down her back like star spangled night from an elaborate horned headdress decorated with strips of obscure runic symbols. The skin of her pinched, falsely youthful false was bone white, contrasted by pinkish lips thinly contorted into a mocking grimace. Blood-red eyes fixated on the startled Goblin chief, conveying the witch's irritation while she stroked the skunk bizarrely cradled in the crook of her sleeved arm.
Sidetracked by the stripy and smelly animal, Ahnorr did not question how she had journeyed to find them at this elevation, or why she was not suffering from the cold clad inadequately in her skimpy attire. Witchery covered those bases. Letting his helper drag him to his feet, the chieftain shunned further assistance and irritably shoved Gragow away, then merely critiqued, “Odd choice for a pet, Norelda."
The enchantress scratched the skunk's head, which responded by waggling its bushy tail like a
dog's. “Finer company than you,” she said acidly. “And it smells better."
"If I'm so distasteful, why bother checking up on me all the way out here?” Ahnorr did well to cover his nervousness with attitude. Norelda dropping by in person spelt trouble of the greatest magnitude.
"The world does not revolve around you, bruin. Omelchor is the star that Terrath orbits, and he is grossly displeased with you."
"He has no cause to be. I'm doing your, whoops his, bidding."
"A fact which spares your otherwise devalued life. The same can't be said for Carlaw's performance.” Stalking away from the cramped belay ledge, the crowding Goblins scrambling to get out of her way without toppling off, Norelda turned and paused when seeing Ahnorr not following. “Heel, fur ball,” she commanded.
"Wolves might do that. Grizzlies are prouder beasts."
"My mistake ... bears dance. Boogie for me, Ahnorr. Or do I cut you out of this bop altogether?"
Pressured into complying, the vain chieftain shuffled after the belittling witch, daring with a growl any warrior to comment. “I'll gut and skin the first one to snigger.” All had sense enough not to even crack a smile.
Finding an alcove further along, the roomier indentation in the rock wall providing a measure of privacy, Norelda resumed her chat. “Your whelp's antics idiotically stirred up a hornet's nest in Dalcorne High."
"Pinching their national treasure would do that."
"Only they didn't. Carlaw's cronies shot it."
"Why shoot an axe?"
"Wrong treasure. They targeted the axeman instead."
"The Dwarf King is dead then?"
Suspiciousness narrowed her eyes. “You don't appear surprised. Did he operate on your orders?"
"My boy is impetuous. He acted independently."
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