The Barrow

by Mark Smylie

“You decline an invitation from a Prince of the First World?” snarled the Fae Prince. It seemed to Gilgwyr as though the creature drew itself up to its full height, and became like a giant, towering over them, but somehow he knew it was but some glamour or projection, for he could also plainly see the Fae Prince still standing before Stjepan unchanged.

  “On this day, yes, I must with deepest regrets, my prince,” said Stjepan, slowly and clearly, and he bowed quite low at the waist, his left knee slightly bent, his left hand to his heart and his right hand coming up straight behind him, the sheathed falchion held firmly in his upraised grip. The pose was courteous and proper, but also invited an attack, placing his head and the back of his neck forward as if on a chopping block; and yet at the same time, the upraised weapon behind him made it clear that he was already prepared for a fight.

  The Fae Prince contemplated Stjepan’s pose for a moment, tempted; and then it stepped back, and its two companions did so as well, coming upright. “Then I bind you to return to take up my invitation, a year from now on the night of the Festival of the Spring Moon, upon penalty of a great Hex should you refuse or fail,” the Fae Prince said with great satisfaction.

  “Your binding is accepted, my prince,” said Stjepan, drawing himself upright.

  “Go in the grace of the Queens of Heaven and of Earth, then, Black-Heart, until the year has passed and I come to claim you for the Brazen Court,” the Fae Prince said, and then he and his companions slowly walked backwards in the same odd, graceful way in which they had entered the camp. Stjepan didn’t move, but just stood there, watching through narrowed eyes as they backed away into the night.

  Once the fae were well out of sight, Leigh let go of Gilgwyr’s shoulder and scrambled out of the tent. Gilgwyr gasped out loud, sucking in a huge breath of air as he grabbed up his rapier and then he was out of the tent and coming to his feet. He reeled for a moment, his eyes still opened by the Second Sight, his ears still in tune to the sounds beneath the surface of the world. He joined Leigh and Stjepan in standing in front of the women’s tent, their gazes off on the distant tree line of the Neris Wold silhouetted against the night sky.

  “You see!” cackled Leigh. “I told you, but you didn’t believe me! They saw her, and would have taken her, and who knows when they would have given her back! Tomorrow? The next New Moon? In a year and a day? And fucked inside out and then back again!” He turned to Stjepan. “Well done! The sword, is it enchanted against the fae, then, some hidden rune to mark it as a bane to their kith and kin?”

  “No, it’s good ordinary steel,” said Stjepan with a shrug. “Would’ve been useless against them.” They gaped at him for a moment.

  “You bluffed a Prince of the Brazen Wood?” Leigh asked with a laugh. “A student after mine own heart!”

  “The names of my line have some small use in this world, even if they mean nothing in the High King’s Court. But it’s only a temporary victory, Magister,” said Stjepan ruefully. “After all, assuming I am still alive next year, here I will stand, awaiting my summons.” He grinned. “Though there are worse fates I can think of.”

  Stjepan stepped over to the doused campfire, stirring the embers with the toe of his boot, and glanced about the camp with a frown. “Looks like the Urwed brothers are asleep, enspelled by the fae,” he said. “Magister, can you rouse them from the enchantment, while we make sure that nothing ill has befallen the rest of our camp and all are present and accounted for?”

  “I will see what I can do,” said Leigh, rubbing his hands together gleefully as he walked over to the sleeping knights.

  “Oh, but best not to tell them that we were visited by the fae,” said Stjepan. “Let’s not give Arduin yet another reason to second-guess the wisdom of this trip.”

  “Two mildly embarrassed knights coming right up,” said Leigh, waving at them over his shoulder.

  Gilgwyr shook his head, staring up at the stars in the night sky, at the little firefly lights that seemed to now be floating around Stjepan’s head, at the flickering silver-white glow that played over the surface of all things. He listened to the distant roar of a celestial choir, intoxicated by the music of the Heavens playing out in the wind above him.

  By the gods, it’s almost as beautiful as in my dreams, he thought with a smile.

  The next day, Erim and Sir Theodore caught up with them about halfway down to Erid More, with a pack mule fully loaded with sacks of supplies bought in Stonham.

  “There didn’t seem to be any word of what happened in Therapoli yet,” she told Stjepan, walking her horse well behind the coach with Stjepan and Gilgwyr also afoot. The country road they were on was lined by high stone walls, and the eyes of a stone tower house watched them as their small column passed through. “People were talking about the mild spring weather, about the Rebel Earl up in the hills and whether the Erid King is going to go get him, about bandit knights visiting outlying farms to bring gifts, about the engagement of the Erid Princess Fiona to the King of Angowrie . . . oh, and a baby was born in town yesterday, which they thought propitious since it was the Festival of the Spring Moon. But jack shit about the murder of a High Priest of the Divine King in Therapoli and the flight of his murderer and a suspected witch out of the city.”

  “The heralds would’ve likely been in Westmark two days ago, so the question just becomes whether King Eolred would have felt it important enough to send out riders immediately,” mused Stjepan.

  “And I’m going to guess no,” said Gilgwyr. “Everyone probably thinks we have absconded into the Manon Mole, to hide amongst the bandit knights or perhaps even join up with the Rebel Earl. That’s what almost every outlaw within spitting distance of the Manon Mole is doing, so they’re not expecting us to be trying to cross the Danias . . .”

  “Then we might be reasonably safe anywhere off the West King’s Road and the primary path of the heralds,” Stjepan said. “They should be reaching Aprenna today, to apprise the Dain King’s Court.”

  “So we still cross the Eridbrae at Erid More, then?” asked Erim.

  “Aye, then back roads to the north to cut across the West King’s Road, and then across the North Road and the Plain of Flowers toward Hartford, I think,” said Stjepan. “Mount up. Let’s see if we can get across the Eridbrae before nightfall,” he said, then glanced skyward at darkening clouds. “Or before the rain gets to us.”

  The rain started before they reached Erid More, spring showers that seemed to come and go in waves and cycles, the clouds alternating dark and light, with the occasional distant spot of sun breaking through to light the green flanks of the valley. A few of them were fortunate enough to have tabards or cloaks coated with linseed oil, but the rest made do with blankets wrapped around them or over their heads to protect against the rain and the damp.

  Erim shivered as she and Stjepan eyed the small town of Erid More. Stjepan wore his usual hat, the brim curled up on the sides, the rain drizzling off it onto his dark brown tabard. Erim had drawn the hood of her cloak up over her head, and she felt like she could barely see anything.

  The keep and town of Erid More sat at the corner of two rivers, the Reinbrae, whose broad valley they had followed to reach the town, and the Eridbrae, the shorter of the two great rivers of the western Middle Kingdoms, the other being the much longer Volbrae still further west. The Eridbrae was also shorter than the Abenbrae in the east, being only about two hundred miles in length, but like the Abenbrae it started in the Daradjan Highlands and wended its way through the Djar Éduins and down into the Middle Kingdoms, crossing the Erid Wold and An-Athair until it wound its way down to the Bay of Tears and the Mera Argenta. There were two bridges in and out of Erid More; they would have to cross from the south bank of the Reinbrae across one bridge into the walled town, and then turn west to cross the bridge over the Eridbrae. Erim was reasonably impressed with the size and quality of the pair of fortified bridges, and perhaps the great stone keep that towered between them, but the town itself looked, at least from a distance,
to be small and compact.

  “Is that really the seat of the Earls of Erid More?” she asked. “I mean, the keep looks fairly strong, but I would have thought the town would be larger.”

  “The strength of Erid More, like Orliac, is in its vineyards and its soil. So the land between here and Reinvale and then all the way down to Nop in Blackstone country is dotted with strong manors and villas and vineyards like the ones we’ve seen today. Fewer people in the town holds, more people in the villas,” Stjepan said.

  Erim had definitely noticed the prevalence of strong stone walls even in the vineyards they had passed, and as she thought about it the manors she had seen had definitely been built strong and high, with a utilitarian nature unlike the more comfortable country houses of the Aurian east. They reminded her of the stone houses and keeps along the Watchtower Coast, and she said so.

  “Aye,” said Stjepan. “I suppose it’s like the old Maelite tower tradition, which is sparked by fear of the raider from the sea; though around here the enemy has always been the hill people of the Manon Mole. The country manors and villas in this area tend to be built as full keeps and strong watchtowers, and Reinvale has a castle that’s actually bigger than the one we’re looking at. The Athairi and Danian tradition was wood, back when the trees were plentiful—the wooden palisade, and wooden great hall. The Düréans left behind their great palace culture and their cities of concrete brick and stone. The Maelites and Daradjans always preferred the stone citadel. And the Aurians brought their long hall traditions as well. And now the Middle Kingdoms are pretty well blended at this point.”

  Erim glanced up the valley, tracing through the veil of rain and fog the routes of walls and keeps up into the distance. She could see patches of bright green high up the valley where the sun had cast its light. “The sun’s come out again over there,” she said. “Is the weather always like this over here in the Danias?”

  “Oh, that’s right, you’ve never been this far west,” Stjepan said. “Well, pretty much so. My mother would have said it’s because the old gods and goddesses of the earth and the sky are still welcome here. It rains a lot in the spring and early summer, but not necessarily huge downpours, so yeah, this is typical: some rain, some sun, some wind, sometimes even a little snow, repeat the next day. That’s why it’s so much greener over here than in Atallica and Auria, we just get a lot more rain over here.”

  He turned as Arduin rode up at the head of his household troop, the coach bringing up the rear. “Ah, this is Erid More, then?” asked Arduin, peering out from beneath his hood. His cloak was fringed with gold embroidery but was waterproofed against the rain, an expensive travel accessory. Stjepan noted with a wince that the embroidery included the heraldry of Arduin’s family, the shield and auroch horns that marked him as of the line of Wain Far-Strider, shield-thane of King Orfewain. He was tempted to ask Arduin to exchange the cloak for another, but he suspected the knight’s pride would overrule his good sense; an hour of argument had been required to get Arduin’s knights to remove their sigils back on the docks of Vesslos. The clothes make the man, and without their badges of honor they feel like they are nothing, he thought. At least the heraldic emblems were only one small part of the design, and could easily escape notice except perhaps from a sharp-eyed herald trained to know a sigil at a glance.

  “Yes, my Lord,” said Stjepan. “There will be two tolls, one for each bridge. Erim and I will handle the payments, and if anyone asks we’ll say that we are the servants of Master Owen Urwed of the merchant house of the Three Rings of Therapoli, newly ensconced in Orliac to do business with its new Earl, escorting his daughter to Westmark with armed guard.” They’d been stopped and questioned by knights or yeoman archers at several points along the valley road, but Stjepan had always been quick enough with ready answers to allow them passage, the details changing a bit as they went along, first claiming Nop and points further south as their origin point when they were higher up the valley, and then finally saying Orliac as they reached far enough west for that to make sense.

  “And if they’ve actually met Master Urwed or his daughter?” asked Arduin.

  “No such persons, my Lord, so that won’t be possible,” said Stjepan. “And the Three Rings is large enough that there could be someone named Master Owen Urwed amongst its many traders and merchants, but it’s unlikely that the gate guards at Erid More will know definitively. Just let our coins and calm demeanor do the rest.”

  Arduin grimaced. He wondered at men for whom lying and deceit came so easily; Stjepan and his brother Harvald were so very similar, almost like stage actors or entertainers for whom artifice and illusion were their stock-in-trade. Arduin thought of himself as a man of action, and as a man of action, you are what you do. If you run from a battle or shirk from a fight, then you’re a coward. If you stand upright and true, then you are a man of honor. But Stjepan and Harvald were, or had been in the case of his brother, men of words, and like actors and diplomats, poets and bards, they could conjure things that sounded like truths out of thin air. Having spent so long at Court he had grown up surrounded by men of words; but at the Court there was, he thought, an expectation of truth and honor amongst its clerks and courtiers, a sense of propriety and an understanding of their place in the grand order of things that he found sorely missing in Stjepan, or Master Erim, or Master Gilgwyr and the disgraced enchanter. This was the first time he’d had to place his own safety in the hands of a man of words, and it was giving him a close-up view of how men with the right gift could work their illusions upon the world when they wished to.

  And he definitely didn’t like it.

  “Certainly,” said Arduin with a tight-lipped smile. “Let us hope we can pass through without incident.”

  “Business with the new Earl, then, for your Master?” the guard said to Stjepan, as he eyed the armed and armored men escorting the coach off the Reinbrae bridge and in through the barbican. A clerk was casually counting horses and wheels to total their entry costs into the walled town. Arduin’s knights and squires were looking decidedly grungy after several days of hard travel on the road, and the rain didn’t help matters any. Almost all of them sported grizzled growth on chin and cheek, with dirt and mud splattered on horses and boots, their armor tarnished where it was visible at all under cloaks and tabards. Dark circles under their eyes and a slight look of hunger and wariness completed their appearance, leaving them looking to all the world as proper mercenary knights would look. Except perhaps Arduin, who comported himself with a back so straight and a spine so rigid that he could pass for a statue; luckily the arched ceiling of the barbican entryway was quite high, else Stjepan might have feared for Arduin’s safety. But given the hard times even a noble-born knight might find himself a free lance, jousting and fighting for coin.

  “Aye,” said Stjepan. “With Porloss now in the hills and Sir Kyrick elevated to the seat of Orliac, the commerce houses and merchants in Therapoli are all eager at the prospect of new business arrangements.” The guard raised his eyebrow at the use of the honorific Sir for Kyrick, rather than Earl; technically accurate, as Kyrick Ross had been a knight sworn to the Lord of Nop before being chosen as the new Earl of Orliac, but it could be read several ways. What Stjepan said was indeed true on the face of it; with Porloss and his household and many of his chief retainers (including the aforementioned Lord of Nop) now fled into the hills, merchant princes from far and wide had been sending representatives to Orliac in the hopes of persuading the new Earl and his new men to grant new contracts on trade and transport, while those who did business with the old Earl were busy trying to convince him to keep the old contracts in place.

  Stjepan gambled and gave a shrug, as if to say, what’re you gonna do? The guard chuckled. “Yeah, with a Ross now the Earl of Orliac, and a Ross now the Lord of Nop, I guess that makes for a family on the rise,” the guard said drily. “We seen a lot of new faces coming through here, and up at Reinvale, all eager to meet the new chief.”

  “Aye, w
e came down through Reinvale,” Stjepan said with a nod. “Master Owen hired us on in Westmark to act as guides and scouts.”

  “You lot up there got your own problems with the Erid King, eh?” the guard asked.

  Stjepan shrugged. “Him and the City Council don’t see eye-to-eye on all things, particularly in regard to how much tax is owed him,” said Stjepan. “Not too different, really, than the complaints of Earl Porloss. It’s been ten years since the last time the Erid King laid siege to the city to get it to pay a tax, so we’re probably overdue for another any time soon.”

  “Yeah, well, best of luck with that,” the guard said as he noticed the clerk signaling that he had a total ready. “So how much?”

  “Sixteen people, eighteen horses, and four wheels,” said the clerk. “So twenty-nine shillings and eight pennies for the men of the Three Rings commerce house.”

  “Let’s just call that thirty shillings, to make the additions easy for you,” the guard said with a grin.

  “Ain’t my money,” Stjepan said with a shrug; the bureaucrat in him was a bit annoyed at the casual extortion of a handful of pennies, but such small bits of corruption ultimately made his life easier and were simply part of the cost of doing business. The guard was meant to think that he meant the money belonged to the fictitious Master Owen Urwed, but of course technically it was Gilgwyr’s money he was spending, as Gilgwyr was acting as the underwriter for their expedition at the moment. He counted over a gold crown and ten shillings and tapped his hat to the guard and clerk before heading over to where Erim waited with their horses.

  “Close to thirty shillings, so it should be the same at the Eridbrae Bridge,” he said. Erim grunted and shook her head as they led their horses through the barbican and out into the neck, a walled road that meandered around the main keep and town wall, essentially a shooting gallery where attackers trying to force the road could be fired down upon by defenders on both the outer and inner walls. The neck followed the tight curve of the western wall of the town directly to the barbican for the Eridbrae Bridge. Stjepan had never been in Erid More before; ignoring the light rain, he ran a practiced eye up the walls to the keep and towers that hulked high above them and was suitably impressed by the sheer bulk of the castle. Midway between the two barbicans there was a large gatehouse built into the inner town wall that would take them into Erid More proper, and there the group ahead of them had stopped. Stjepan frowned.