They stepped into the mud-room, Pirojil closing the door behind him while Kethol and Durine took the opportunity to sheath their knives discreetly, and the other door swung instantly open.
Morray stepped through, beckoning them to follow. The mud-room opened directly onto what was probably called the Great Hall, although it wasn’t a tenth the size of the one at LaMut Castle.
The hall was filled with close to two dozen men and women, ranging in age from an ancient greybeard in a worker’s rough-spun tunic and trousers who was sitting in the big chair in front of the fire half-wrapped in a blanket, to the two sleeping babies he held as he sat, one in the crook of each arm. A vast roast turned on a spit in the main fireplace next to a huge cast-iron pot, attended to by two women in their thirties and a boy of about ten.
‘Well, get those thick cloaks off and come on inside. You can take your overboots off after you warm up,’ Morray said.
The three of them were soon seated in front of the fire. Pirojil and Durine hung their swordbelts on the backs of their chairs, while Kethol just stretched out his long legs onto a hassock - and steaming cups of Keshian coffee were brought to them without any asking.
Pirojil preferred tea himself, but hot liquid was hot liquid, and the cup warmed his numb hands and didn’t quite scorch his throat. Besides, Keshian coffee was rare this far north, and that made the drink more savoury.
Morray was halfway across the room, muttering in a low voice to a pair of thickset men, and only came back to where they were sitting when Pirojil started to rise.
‘Sit, man, sit - it’s wicked out there, and you look colder than I felt.’ Morray frowned down at him. ‘What brings you out of the warmth of the castle on a day like this?’
‘I was about to ask you the same thing, my lord.’
Morray snorted. ‘As if it’s any of your concern where I go and what I do.’
‘Meaning no offence, my lord,’ Pirojil said, ‘it is precisely our concern, by order of Earl Vandros, himself. We’re supposed to be guarding you -’
‘On a day like today, I hardly think that the streets of LaMut are crowded with Tsurani assassins,’ Morray said. ‘If any such exist, which I very much doubt. Yes, I’m not the only baron who was guided into LaMut by auxiliary troops. You should hear Verheyen complain - and he does complain, to any who will listen - how his own soldiers being put into the Earl’s service has meant that he is left with barely a corporal’s guard. But I don’t see any of the others’ guards lounging about their rooms, or . . . interrupting their sleep.’ He gave Kethol a quick glare. ‘But that discussion is for another time, I suppose - the reason I’m out here is that word was sent to the castle.’ He gestured towards the far wall. ‘When the storm hit, a bolt of lightning apparently hit the roof of the servants’ quarters. Probably would have burned the whole building down if the storm hadn’t put the fire out, but as it was, an attic beam fell and broke through into the second storey, and right now the whole building is probably frozen solid.’
Pirojil nodded. ‘So your man was asking your permission to move the servants into your - into the main house, because of the storm?’
‘Hardly.’ The chilly expression was back on Morray’s face. ‘If he’d been idiot enough to let good servants freeze to death while waiting for permission to bring them out of the cold, I’d have done worse than release him from my service, I can tell you that. No,’ he went on, his expression softening as his gaze left Kethol and returned to the two babies sleeping in the old man’s arms, ‘he was just reporting to me that he had moved them all in here. I felt that it was my duty to at least see that things were well here. As well as can be expected under the circumstances.’ He shook his head. ‘Which isn’t very good - I doubt that we’ll be able to move the servants back into their quarters until spring, and we’ll probably have to rebuild the whole house before they do. With Enna and her babies installed in my own bedroom here, I’ll more than likely have to spend the next months living in the castle and not have a moment of privacy under my own roof until summer, if then.’ He shook his head. ‘And is that enough information for you? Or should I tell you that I was tempted to curse my own father for pinching the coppers and having the outbuildings built of wattle and daub, instead of good stone, as well?’
There wasn’t really any answer for that, and the Baron waited only a moment before grunting his irritation.
‘If you three had not rushed out into the worst storm I’ve ever seen, in another hour or so you would have found me back in the castle, at my account books, where I belong.’ He glared. ‘And you’ve done a fine, fine job of delaying my return. I’ve just sent servants to procure some dry clothes for the three of you, and I’ll have to wait until you’ve warmed yourself and changed before I head back, or you’ll come chasing after me and freeze to death, won’t you?’
‘Well, in truth, when you leave, we will come with you, my lord,’ Pirojil said, nodding. ‘It’s our job, after all, though I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble.’
Morray snorted. ‘Oh, just drink your coffee.’
He turned and walked away. Catching the eye of the cook, he gestured towards the three of them, and to the food cooking in the hearth. The cook nodded, and the Baron left the room, his manner as officious as always.
Pirojil just shut up and drank his coffee, and looked from Kethol to Durine, and back to Kethol.
Durine shrugged, and Kethol smiled.
It was just as well, Pirojil decided, that they had been paid to protect Baron Morray’s life, rather than, say, killing him.
He would have done it, of course, but he would have been unhappy about it.
Pirojil found, much to his surprise, that he was actually getting to like this baron.
The trip back up the road to the castle was even worse than the trip out had been.
If anything, the storm had intensified. It was impossible to tell how much of the snow was new, and how much was simply being picked up by the wind and thrown at them, although during the few moments that Pirojil stopped to try to catch his breath, he could see the snow banks almost melt and then instantly reform and grow in the wind.
It was dangerous to stop, even for a moment; his toes had long since stopped hurting, and were almost feeling warm now, and that meant that frostbite was only minutes away.
Kethol took the lead, and constantly turned to be sure that the others hadn’t got lost. Even when the wind didn’t pound directly against the eyes, it was only possible to see a few feet in the storm, and any tracks that they had made on their way to the Baron’s residence had long since been shattered and broken in the storm. Durine was next, with Pirojil insisting that Morray follow close behind the big man. For once, the Baron didn’t complain, at least not aloud. And with Morray following Durine, the big man’s bulk sheltered the Baron from the worst of the storm.
Pirojil brought up the rear, using both hands in the constantly futile battle to hold his cloak close together and keep the storm out. Heating the cloak by the fire had been a mistake; within a few steps of the front door, it had been sodden with melted snow, and had easily tripled its weight with the accumulation of snow and ice.
At least coming out to Morray’s residence, they had been mainly moving east, with the storm, no matter how hard it bit and snarled, at their backs. But now they were going into the wind, and it struck them directly in the face, as though it was attempting to stun Pirojil, then peel his cloak away, and freeze him where he stood.
The climb up the hill to the castle was the worst of it, but it didn’t feel that way, for although the castle road was totally exposed to the wind, and snowdrifts twisted across it like giant buried snakes, Pirojil could turn his face away from the wind for several steps in a row, and let the cowl of his cloak catch the worst of it.
The best thing about it was the thought of what lay inside: warmth, currently a vague concept as the wind drove ice into every pore it could reach. Each step seemed to take longer, as though Pirojil was trapped in some so
rt of evil spell that let him get ever closer to the shelter of the gate without quite reaching it. He trudged on.
But, after an eternity of moving first the right foot, then the left, then pausing for a moment to draw a breath, an open door appeared ahead. At last he was running, like the other three, across the courtyard with legs so numb that he would have sworn but moments ago they were barely fit for walking, much less running, revelling. Then they were inside. In the frozen-but-warmer-than-outside mud-room, the four of them sagged down onto the benches, panting like dogs.
‘Would you consider doing me a great favour, my lord?’ Pirojil finally asked, when he was able to choke out the words between gasps.
‘That would depend, I suppose, on the favour you ask of me,’ Morray said, gasping almost as much as Pirojil.
He reached down for a moment, as though to unlace his over-boots, then sat back, bracing himself against the wall, looking like a man in his sixties, at least. The wind had sapped all the colour from his face, and left his moustache and beard and even his eyebrows encrusted with ice. He had pulled off his gloves and started to pick at the ice with his fingers, then covered his ears with his hands, and for a moment Pirojil thought that Morray was trying to say that he wouldn’t listen, but then realized that the Baron was just trying to warm his frozen ears.
‘Well, out with it, man.’
‘If there’s any further word from your residence - or if anybody suggests that you go outside in this storm - would you be so kind as to say something to the effect of “please deal with it, and I’ll come out and see when you’ve finished with it after the storm has passed”?’
Morray nodded, and almost smiled. ‘There’s some wisdom in that,’ he said, as he finally bent forward to unlace his overboots. His numb fingers gave him trouble with the knots. ‘There’s some wisdom in that, indeed.’
Lady Mondegreen beckoned Kethol over to where she was standing next to Langahan and Folson, and some other noble that Kethol didn’t recognize.
He should have taken another route across the Great Hall, probably. The Great Hall was bisected down the middle by the long table, which had been extended by several smaller tables brought down from the attic.
‘Kethol, I hear you had quite an adventure this morning,’ she said.
‘Well, my lady, I’ve had better times, and that’s a fact.’
The tip of his right ear was still numb - it would be interesting to see if it healed itself, or rotted off - but his full complement of fingers and toes were working, although it was still very painful to walk.
At Morray’s insistence, Father Riley, the Astalon priest, had taken a look at the three of them and finally pronounced them fit - but only after insisting that they all spend at least a few minutes with their bare feet in an oaken tub filled with aromatic water that the priest kept hot by repeatedly inserting a red-hot iron poker from the brazier, muttering something as he sprinkled more herbs from a leather pouch.
Whether it was whatever secret preparations that the priest had added to the water, or just the blessedly hot water itself, colour, which was good, and feeling, a mixed blessing, had quickly returned to Kethol’s feet, which were now encased in an absurd-looking pair of rabbit-fur slippers that had been supplied by the housecarl while his boots dried.
The priest was doing a brisk business in cold-related injuries, although Kethol hadn’t been able to stop himself from laughing at the way that Father Riley had had to be summoned to the tower when one fool of a servitor had taken another’s dare to try to lick the ice off a stone on the east wall, and had got his tongue stuck in place.
The noble whose name Kethol didn’t know gave a derisive sniff. ‘The lot of you,’ he said, ‘deserve far worse than you seem to have got. Why would anybody go outside in this if he didn’t have to?’
He was a short, slim man, with a carefully trimmed fringe of black beard that suggested that he didn’t have much of a chin and had had to carve it out of hair, and a seemingly permanent sneer that suggested it would be unwise to comment upon that - not that Kethol would have.
Lady Mondegreen arched an eyebrow. ‘Sergeant Kethol, have you met Baron Edwin of Viztria?’
Once again, Kethol didn’t correct her on the nonexistent promotion; he just shook his head. ‘No, I haven’t had the honour,’ he said.
‘You were one of the freebooters who went out in the storm after Baron Morray, I take it?’ Edwin Viztria said, shaking his head. ‘Well, there’s a fool born every minute, I’ve always said to my manservant - the laziest son of a turnip in all of Triagia - and now I can add, truthfully, that there are three other fools born the next minute, who will follow that fool out into a storm that can freeze the bollocks off a bastard!’
Langahan shook his head and gestured toward Lady Mondegreen. ‘Please.’
‘Ah, I’m sorry.’ Viztria quickly ducked his head toward the lady ‘Begging your pardon, my lady, for my . . . colourful turn of phrase.’
She laughed. She had a nice laugh, one that reminded Kethol of distant bells. ‘Oh, I’ve always found your . . . ah . . . colourful turns of phrase quite charming, Edwin,’ she said. ‘And I do hope you’ll not restrain yourself on my account.’
Baron Viztria turned back toward Kethol. ‘I assume that the three of you have had a few words among yourselves about that Morray’s folly,’ he said, his permanent scowl intensifying for a moment.
‘We’re not the sort of men to criticize our betters, my lord.’
‘Hah! Not while there’s noble ears around, I’ll warrant, but I don’t doubt for a misbegotten moment that you speak more frankly when you’re by yourselves, even though you’d be even more of a fool to admit it in polite company than you proved yourself by following Morray out into that,’ he said, gesturing toward the outside. He shoved his hands into the pockets of the knee-length jacket, and glared at Kethol, as though daring him to disagree.
Kethol didn’t say anything.
‘You look as if you have something to say, man, so out with it,’ Langahan said.
Folson nodded. ‘I’m curious myself - you don’t seem to be joining in the general condemnation of Ernest Morray’s folly of this morning, and I’m curious as to why. Besides not wanting to criticize a nobleman.’
Well, there was a time for speaking your mind, even in front of nobility, and if this wasn’t it, Kethol didn’t know what could be.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the Baron was alerted early this morning that a roof had caved in on one of the outbuildings at his residence -’
‘The stables?’ Folson nodded. ‘I told him, the last time I guested there, that I thought they needed a new roof. Not that anybody ever listens to me.’
‘No, my lord, it was the servants’ quarters. He felt obliged to go out and see the situation for himself, despite the discomfort of travelling in the -’
‘Discomfort?’ Viztria raised an eyebrow. ‘That seems to me to be a rather weak word for having pounded your way through a blizzard.’
Kethol shrugged. ‘It was uncomfortable, and if complaining about it would have warmed me even a little, I promise that I would have cursed my way up Black Swan Road and then sworn my way back down. But my point was that Baron Morray wasn’t just haring off out into the cold for no reason. He felt, he said, that he must see to his servants.’ It felt strange to be defending Morray.
‘And were they well?’ Lady Mondegreen asked.
‘Everybody was fine, as far as I can tell.’ Kethol nodded. ‘Some were a bit shaken, I think -’
‘Having a roof fall in on me would probably disturb me more than a trifle,’ Viztria put in, ‘and I’m renowned for my unflappability.’
Langahan snorted derisively. Viztria threw him a black look. Kethol wondered if that was just to convince the locals the two court barons were there to keep an eye on each other or if they honestly disliked each other. Either way, it didn’t look like the Viceroy had sent them along to spy on the LaMutian barons. Or did it? Kethol had long been trying to learn to thin
k like Pirojil, even though the effort usually only made his head hurt. His head was starting to hurt.
‘Go on, please, Kethol,’ Lady Mondegreen said.
‘Well, there was probably some frostbite, but when we left the Baron’s residence, the servants were well settled in his hall, probably until after the thaw. In fact, I think that it might even be a little warmer in the Baron’s hall than it is here.’
‘Yes, this LaMutian thaw we keep hearing about but never seem to see,’ Viztria said, shivering theatrically. ‘I’d rather be back in Krondor, myself, where a man can take a leak in a garderobe without having to worry about a urine icicle spearing some poor sod trying to clean out the dung heap below - again begging your pardon, my lady.’
‘Carla, please,’ she said. ‘I think that I may have asked you as many as a dozen times, just today, to call me by my first name, Edward.’
‘Edwin.’
‘Well, if you’re not going to use my given name, you can hardly expect me to correctly remember yours.’ Her smile was playful.
Folson was eyeing Kethol closely. ‘So, Baron Morray braves the storm just to be sure that his servants weren’t injured? Interesting.’
‘Interesting, yes, but what does it tell you?’ Viztria said, his sneer still firmly in place. ‘If you asked Luke Verheyen, I’ll bet my six silver reals to your one bent copper he’d tell you that the only reason that Baron Morray went out into the storm was so that all assembled would hear that he was the sort of man who would go out into the storm to see to the welfare of his servants.’
Langahan cocked his bald head over to one side. ‘You believe it’s all just an act?’ he said, his voice almost dripping with scorn.
Viztria snorted. ‘I don’t believe one thing or the other, and I’ll not be drawn into that feud, as I’ve enough problems of my own without looking for new ones. But I don’t take a story told by a hireling as being graven in stone, either.’ He looked over at Kethol. ‘You’re still here?’ he asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be standing guard, or running some poor sod through, or some other soldierly thing?’
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