“Perhaps,” said Calliande.
“It didn’t help,” said Ridmark, “that the monks were unused to beautiful women. You made them so nervous that they didn’t know what to say.”
Calliande frowned, blinked several times, and then burst out laughing. “Truly? Well, that was years ago. It would be less of a problem now, I expect.”
Ridmark caught her free hand and tugged her close.
“You think so?” he murmured.
She stared up at him, eyes wide.
“People get it wrong about history,” said Ridmark, “but maybe you’ve gotten it wrong about yourself.”
Calliande blinked, her lips parted, and a hint of color came into her face. “Ridmark…I…I…”
He started to lean down to kiss her, and then a voice cut into his ears.
“Father?”
That was Gareth.
Ridmark looked up as Calliande stepped back, one hand smoothing the front of her red tunic. Gareth walked towards them, his expression somber as usual.
“Good morning, Gareth,” said Calliande. “Did you sleep well?”
“I did,” said Gareth. “For once Joachim did not spend half the night complaining that he needed to make water.” He looked at them. “Sir Parmenio wants to talk to you, Father. He came back and said it looks like large numbers of men have passed on the road recently.”
“Did he?” said Ridmark. He looked at his wife. “Best we talk to him, then.”
###
Calliande listened as Parmenio made his report.
“Two bands of men,” said Parmenio. “One about a hundred strong, the second a hundred and fifty or so, maybe more. It looks as if both parties were heading towards Aenesium.” He frowned. “It is my belief that one party was chasing the other.”
“Sir Parmenio is correct,” said Kyralion, standing stiffly a short distance away.
“Raiders, then?” said Ridmark.
“Maybe,” said Tamlin. “In another few miles, the hill country ends, and the forest starts. If one of the warbands is chasing the other, they are likely making for the forest.”
“Why would they do that?” said Kalussa.
Tamlin started to make a glib answer but stopped himself. “Because the forest would be more defensible. Harder to surround soldiers there. More cover from archers, as well. Lady Calliande, could your magic find them?”
She shook her head. “Not unless they’re using magic, and as far as I can tell, they are not.”
“Very well,” said Ridmark. “We’ll continue on, then. Sir Parmenio, keep your scouts out, and have them return to us at the first sign of trouble.” Parmenio nodded. “Lord Kyralion, if you could accompany them, I would be grateful.” Kyralion offered his stiff, mechanical bow. “Keep your weapons ready. If there’s trouble, let’s be ready for it.”
###
Trouble found them before noon.
Ridmark and Kyralion went scouting, checking the road as it headed southwest. The hills were becoming lower, and Ridmark saw more grasses and some trees.
The signs of passage were obvious.
Parmenio had been right. Two large bodies of armed men had passed this way within the hour. Ridmark frowned as he found several bronze-tipped arrows lying in the dust. The two parties had been close enough to exchange arrow fire.
And then there were the tracks.
There were numerous tracks of a kind Ridmark had never seen before. They looked a bit like the tracks that the scutians left, round with the imprint of stubby toes. Yet these tracks were far larger, so large that Ridmark could have fit both his feet comfortably into them. They were also much deeper, which suggested that the creature which had left them had been quite heavy.
“Kyralion,” said Ridmark. “Do you recognize these tracks?”
Kyralion looked at the ground and nodded. “They are trisalian tracks, Lord Ridmark.”
“What is a trisalian?” said Ridmark. He recalled hearing some of the hoplites mention the term, but he had never gotten around to asking what it meant.
“They are beasts,” said Kyralion, looking around the low hills. “Lizards akin to the scutians, but far larger.”
“How much larger?” said Ridmark, looking at the distance between the tracks. To judge from the length of the stride, the trisalians were much larger than their scutian cousins.
“Thirty feet long from beak to tail,” said Kyralion, “and about ten feet high. Like the scutians, they have a bony shield to protect their heads and necks. Unlike the scutians, the trisalians have three horns, one rising from the top of their beaks, and two longer horns above their eyes. They are quite formidable when roused to violence.”
“Why would a trisalian be with armed men?” said Ridmark. “Would they be fleeing the fighting?”
“Unlikely,” said Kyralion. His golden eyes regarded Ridmark without blinking. “Most probably an Arcanius Knight has enspelled the animal and is using it as a war beast.”
“Aye,” said Ridmark, thinking of Morigna again. “I used to know a woman who could do that. Though she never controlled anything larger than a dog or a rat.”
“Rats would be of less utility in battle than trisalians,” said Kyralion.
“You might be surprised,” said Ridmark. “Let’s follow these tracks a little while longer. I…”
He fell silent as he heard the rasp of boots against stone.
“Someone comes,” said Kyralion. All his awkwardness fell away as he raised his bow and drew an arrow from his quiver.
Ridmark shifted his grip on his bamboo staff, and five figures came into sight around the base of a nearby hill.
They were orcish men, though Ridmark had never seen orcish men dressed in quite this fashion. Like many of the other soldiers he had seen in Owyllain, the orcish warriors wore cuirasses of leather beneath shirts of bronze ring mail, leaf-bladed bronze swords in their right hands and shields of hide and leather on their left arms. The warriors wore short red cloaks that hung to their hips, and to judge from the golden thread, Ridmark suspected the cloaks were a sign of rank rather than a practical garment. Each orc had a strange tattoo or a pattern of war paint upon their faces, a swirling symbol of red that encircled their left eyes and spread onto their temples and jaws. Their green heads had been shaved bald, and the warriors had grown long black mustaches that drooped past their tusks, the mustaches’ ends bound with gleaming brass rings.
“Do you recognize them?” said Ridmark.
“I do not,” said Kyralion, “but their garb is that of the orcs of Vhalorast, an orcish city northeast of here.”
Ridmark nodded. Sir Tramond had mentioned that the orcs of Vhalorast had allied themselves with King Justin Cyros.
“Greetings, travelers!” boomed the orcish leader. “What a strange pair you are. A gray elf, and a human in the cloak of a gray elf and the armor of a dark elven lord. Why don’t you come with us? Our captain would like to have a talk with you.”
“Thank you for the kind invitation,” said Ridmark, “but I’m afraid I must decline.”
“Pity,” said the orcish leader, raising his bronze sword. “Well, your armor and cloaks shall make fine trophies. Take them!”
The orcish warriors bellowed, their black eyes glimmering with crimson battle rage, and charged forward.
“Kyralion!” shouted Ridmark, but the gray elf was already moving. His hands blurred, and his bow sang, and a burning arrow slammed into the throat of the orcish leader. The orcish warrior fell to his knees, gagging, and Ridmark charged. The bamboo staff was light but strong, and Ridmark swung it with all his strength. The length of ridged wood struck an orcish warrior’s throat with enough force to crush his windpipe, and the orc fell, desperately trying to draw a breath that would not come.
The other three warriors attacked with furious bellows. Ridmark retreated, working his staff back and forth to deflect the stabs and thrusts that the warriors aimed his way. Kyralion dropped his bow and drew his longsword. Like most of the swords of Owyllain, i
t had been fashioned of bronze. Unlike most of the swords, a soulstone glowed with silver light in its pommel. The soulstone wasn’t as powerful as the twin soulstones worked into Oathshield, but it had more than enough magic to sheathe the bronze blade in lightning as Kyralion called upon its power.
Kyralion struck a glancing blow on the nearest orcish warrior, and the lightning leaped from the sword and coiled around the bronze rings of the orc’s armor. The orc staggered with a cry, and Kyralion opened his throat with a quick flick on his blade.
Ridmark recovered his balance and attacked, using his staff’s longer reach to keep the remaining two orcish warriors at bay. The orcs retreated, trying spread out, and Kyralion attacked, killing one of the warriors. The final warrior took a step back, and Ridmark struck. The warrior blocked with his sword, but Ridmark reversed his staff and drove the end into the orc’s gut. The orcish warrior stumbled with a grunt of pain, and Ridmark brought his staff down onto the back of the orc’s head three times in rapid succession.
On the third blow, the orcish warrior collapsed dead to the ground, green blood leaking from his ears and nose and mouth. Ridmark took a deep breath and stepped back, looking around, but there were no enemies left.
“Good shooting,” said Ridmark.
“My shooting was adequate,” said Kyralion. He wrenched his arrow free from the dead orc, considered the charred bronze tip, nodded to himself, and returned the shaft to his quiver. “Had I been a little faster, I would have been satisfied with my performance. Why did you not employ Oathshield? The soulblade would have given us a decisive advantage.”
“Because,” said Ridmark, “if we failed to kill them all, I didn’t want them carrying word to the rest of the Vhalorastians…”
“Vhalorasti,” said Kyralion. “I believe that is the proper term.”
Ridmark nodded. “I didn’t want any survivors carrying word about Oathshield back to the rest of the Vhalorasti.”
“That is sound thinking,” said Kyralion. “I…”
He fell silent, and Ridmark listened. Kyralion’s ears were sharper, but Ridmark heard the noise as well.
The sound of men shouting threats.
It was a common sound before a battle.
“It seems the two parties are about to come to battle,” said Kyralion.
“This way,” said Ridmark, pointing at the hill. “Let’s get to the top of the hill and have a look around.”
Kyralion nodded, retrieving his bow and setting a new arrow to the string, and together they jogged to the crest of the hill. Before they reached the top, Ridmark dropped to a crouch, Kyralion following suit, and they crawled to the crown of the hill.
This hadn’t been nearly so hard on Ridmark’s knees ten years ago.
But he forgot the ache in his knees as he saw the scene unfolding below.
A group of a hundred bronze-armored hoplite soldiers had drawn together in a defensive formation. They flew a pair of crimson banners adorned with the sigil of a bronze helmet, the banners of Aenesium and King Hektor. Behind the soldiers waited a long wagon train pulled by scutian lizards, and on their right stood six enormous lizard-like creatures of a sort that Ridmark had never seen before. They looked like larger and leaner versions of the scutians. They had the same bony shields and beaks, but these creatures each had three horns, one rising from their beaks, and two more jutting from the bony ridge over their eyes. Those horns were longer and thicker than a knight’s lance, and just one of those creatures could cause terrible harm if it rampaged through a formation of footmen.
Those had to be the trisalians that Kyralion had mentioned.
There were also four creatures that Ridmark did not recognize. They were human-shaped, but with far thicker heads and necks, and they each stood nine or ten feet tall. Their skin was an odd shade of grayish-green, and the creatures wore armor of leather and bronze ring mail and carried enormous wooden clubs. With their height and strength, getting hit with one of those clubs would be like getting struck by a falling tree, and Ridmark suspected the giant creatures could have crushed a steel cuirass like an egg.
“Those giants,” he murmured. “What are they?”
“Jotunmiri,” whispered Kyralion back. “They live in the Cloak Mountains north of the realm of the Nine Cities, and sometimes serve as mercenaries.”
Nearly two hundred Vhalorasti orcs faced the men (and jotunmiri) of Owyllain, shouting and jeering, banging their bronze swords against their shields. One of the orcs carried a lance with a green banner billowing from it, the banner adorned with the sigil of a golden crown. Unless Ridmark missed his guess, that was the sigil of King Justin Cyros, the employer of the Vhalorasti mercenaries.
“It seems I miscalculated the numbers,” murmured Kyralion.
“Maybe,” said Ridmark, his mind racing. “But it doesn’t matter if we hurry. Come on.”
###
Kalussa had nothing to do at the moment, so she watched Tamlin Thunderbolt spar with Gareth Arban.
The column had stopped until Ridmark and the rest of the scouts returned, and Gareth and Joachim had begun bickering. Kalussa liked the children, but she wondered how Calliande dealt with their fighting. The Keeper had to have the patience of a saint. Still, given that Calliande had to take the pain of a wound into herself to use healing magic, perhaps the bickering of small children was a small matter by comparison. Kalussa decided that when she had children, she hoped they would all be daughters. Surely daughters would get along with each other.
Then she thought of her father’s concubines, how they schemed and backstabbed and fought for position in the royal court, and decided that maybe sons would be better.
Anyway, Calliande had suggested that Tamlin show Gareth some the swordplay techniques that the men of Owyllain used, picking up Joachim as she did so. Tamlin, for his part, agreed without arguing. He always seemed to do what Calliande told him to do, and sometimes he looked almost guilty around her. Knowing Tamlin Thunderbolt, likely he had tried to seduce Calliande, and she had put a stop it. That was an amusing thought.
“The footwork,” said Tamlin, “is the most important part of swordplay.”
“What do you mean, sir?” said Gareth.
Kalussa leaned against a wagon, watching the lesson. Calliande stood a short distance away, her staff propped against another wagon as she held Joachim in her arms. The boy looked hot and tired and cranky, and likely Calliande would put him down for a nap in one of the wagons with a blanket improvised to serve as an awning. Joachim was too young for the rigors of a journey like this.
So was Gareth, but Gareth was eight years old. In Andomhaim, Calliande said, Gareth would take service as a page in a noble household, and in Owyllain he would have done the same. At the age of twelve, he would become a squire, and then sometime between sixteen and twenty he would be knighted.
A pang of sympathy went through Kalussa as she looked at Calliande. The Keeper of Andomhaim was watching her son train for war, knowing that one day he might never return from battle.
“What I mean,” said Tamlin, “is that how you stand is the most important part of an attack. The feet support the body, and it doesn’t matter how strong your arms are if you put your feet wrong. You’ll lose your balance and fall.”
Gareth bobbed his head. “Father says the same thing.”
“Well, you should listen to him,” said Tamlin. “And you should always watch your opponent’s feet. Look at this.” He took an odd stance, his blue sword drawn back to thrust, but his footing was wrong for that. “What does it look like I’m about to do?”
“Thrust,” said Gareth, uncertainty in his voice. “But…”
“Go on,” said Tamlin.
“But your feet are wrong for it,” said Gareth, comprehension coming over his face. He looked a lot like his father at that moment.
“That’s right,” said Tamlin. “This is what I would do. Watch closely.”
He started to thrust, but at the last moment his attack changed, and he moved his
sword in a slow swing towards Gareth’s legs.
“Do you see?” said Tamlin.
“It’s a faint,” said Joachim, and then yawned.
“Feint,” corrected Calliande.
“A swordsman might trick you with his hands and his blade and even his eyes,” said Tamlin, “but it’s much harder to lie with your feet.”
“Poetry if I have ever heard it, Sir Tamlin,” said Kalussa.
Tamlin gave her a look of mild reproof.
“He’s right, Lady Kalussa,” said Calliande. “I’ve heard my husband say the same thing half a hundred times.”
Calliande was looking at Gareth, not her, but Kalussa thought she heard the faintest emphasis on the words “my husband.”
Fortunately, that went right over Gareth’s head.
“Can you show me how to do that?” said Gareth.
“Yes,” said Tamlin, “but don’t try it in a real fight until you’ve mastered the basics. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the basics will serve you better than anything fancy or flashy…”
Calliande’s head turned, her blue eyes unfocused. She blinked several times, and her eyes came back into focus. “Ridmark’s coming back. In a hurry, I think.” She turned and placed Joachim in the wagon. “Gareth, stay here with your brother until your father or I come back.”
“Yes, Mother,” said Gareth. Ridmark seemed better at compelling obedience from the boys, but when the Keeper used that tone, Gareth and Joachim obeyed. Kalussa was amused to realize that Calliande’s voice sounded a great deal like Ridmark when she became authoritative.
Her amusement faded as she saw Ridmark and Kyralion jogging towards the wagons.
Both men looked grim, and Kalussa realized that another battle was coming.
###
Tamlin joined Aegeus and Parmenio as they came to the head of the column. Calliande and Kalussa were already there, as was Sir Tramond, and Ridmark sketched out what he and Kyralion had found.
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