by Victor Milán
“Mis compañeros,” Gonzalo said grandly, “allow me to present his Grace, the inestimable Duke Falk von Hornberg.”
Pulling back his hood with relief, Falk nodded acknowledgment.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “what can we do for each other?”
* * *
“—and so this slight, thin boy, injured and covered with blood,” Rob told rapt listeners at his table near the front of the Garden Hall, “his own, and that of his dead duckbill, and the still-hot gore of the monster he had just slain, was the first thing the hatchling matador saw when she opened her bloodred eyes and screamed, ‘Shiraa!’ She thought he was her very mother, and in that instant bonded to him for life.”
He punctuated the story’s end with a gulp of the local ale. His pipes were dry again, though not for want of prior lubrication.
A masterful telling, if I do say so myself, and I do, thought Rob, gazing around at the young Gardeners. A few mouths, he saw, were tightened against skeptical titters.
I could see why a body might doubt such a wild story, if it wasn’t Karyl’s own, and known throughout the land.
Then again, these people were scarcely the sort to spend much time in taverns. All my best material’s fresh as a newborn babe here, he thought smugly. I’m going to mint coin.
“I’ve heard that’s the only way to get one of the great meat-eating dinosaurs as a mount,” a girl with a yellow smock and flowers twined in her brown hair said. Jeannette was missing tonight. Given what Rob had learned that afternoon, it suited him just fine.
Rob drained his flagon and set it on the table with a thump, more loudly than he meant to. Faces at other tables turned briefly his way, then pointedly away.
“And the best ones, lass,” he said, “are wild-caught. Those hatched in captivity have never the same fire.”
From the head table on its dais, a bell rang for order. Tall, lank-haired Telesphore rose to call in a faint monotone for the business at hand. Rob found him a limp and pale fish for a follower of a beauty cult. Perhaps he hides his enthusiasm well, so.
In any event he seemed one of the better-disposed on the Council toward Karyl and Rob. Or at least, less actively hostile.
Heads turned as Karyl entered the hall. He wore his usual hooded robe and sandals, and carried his deceptive walking stick. His hair was tied back from his ascetic’s face, which despite the time he spent outdoors always remained pale. His expression was calm and his manner dignified as he walked up to stand before the head table.
The contrast between his garments’ rough simplicity and the Councilors’ expensive, faux-rustic clothes was like a voice crying fraud.
Bogardus rose. “Voyvod,” he said in his honey-rich baritone. “Welcome. I know you’re busy. We won’t keep you long. In the wake of today’s atrocity, the Council directs me to order you and your militia to take the field immediately against the enemies of the Garden of Beauty and Truth.”
A blond girl who had taken a special fancy to Rob put her hand on his arm and leaned in as if to whisper something intimate in his ear. He shrugged her off like a suck fly. He leaned forward, straining to hear, although the room had fallen silent.
“I shall, Eldest Brother,” Karyl said calmly. He bowed to the Council. If not very deeply.
“Are the soldiers ready?” asked Longeau, Violette’s best ally, in a voice that managed to mingle skepticism and contempt with a hearty helping of alarm, if Rob was any judge.
And drunk or sober, he was. Maybe the more so drunk. What a good thing I’m that, he thought.
“No army’s ever ready,” Karyl said. “We can take the field.”
That brought some dark looks and some confused. People commenced to mutter, not just behind the high table. Bogardus frowned ever so slightly around the hall. The burbling ceased.
“How will you fight knights?” asked Sister Violette.
“A fair question,” said Karyl, as if the silver witch wasn’t his greatest enemy in the vicinity not sporting Crève Coeur green, blue, and gold. “We’ll catch them on the way home from their raids. They’ll be jubilant, off their guard, likely drunk, and loaded down with loot and captives. Which makes them ripe for ambush.”
The women at Rob’s table inhaled in horrified unison. Violette reared back as if the part-eaten bunch of grapes resting on the plate before her had turned into an adder poised to strike.
Longeau found his voice first. “That’s unacceptable!” he gobbled. “Totally unacceptable.”
“Let me see if I have this right,” said Violette, who seemed more pleased than taken aback. “You’re talking about allowing these marauders to rob, murder, and rape at will before you attack them? How is that defending us?”
“And this striking from ambush,” Longeau declared. “It’s barbaric! What happened to chivalry?”
“You might ask that of knights who trample children and spear distraught mothers for sport,” Karyl said. “For ourselves, we can’t afford it. We’re outnumbered, out-armed, and out-mounted. And as for skill, we might as well be eight-year-olds matching finger-daubs in mud against young Lucas’s murals all around us here. Our only hope is to use stealth and cunning. And what they can win us: surprise.”
“But how does that defend us,” Violette said again, “letting the marauders do their worst and ride away?”
“In the best way we have available. To hurt them, to teach them this lesson: that their sport shall cost them pain.”
The hall erupted in furious gabble. “He can’t be serious,” the blonde who’d been trying to drape herself on Rob kept saying, red-faced and not nearly so appealing as a moment before. He wasn’t sure which outraged her more: that Karyl suggested letting the raiders raid, or that he spoke of inflicting pain on them.
It’s a good job they’re pacifists, this lot, Rob thought, his wits no longer as dull as they had been. Otherwise they’d be pelting him with fruit at best. And at worst, we’d be racing for the exit this very instant.
Which was a tactic, he reflected with a certain grim satisfaction, he’d almost certainly had more experience using than the noted war captain Karyl.
Karyl simply stood and let the furor blow past him. Behind the table, Bogardus had his arms crossed and chin sunk into the square-cut neck of his yellow-trimmed green gown, looking every centimeter the ex-priest of Maia rumor made him out to be.
At last the Eldest Brother spread his arms out to his sides. It was as if he smoothed a rumpled sheet. In a moment the hall was still.
“Please, my friends,” he said. “It’s as good as no one having their say, if everyone speaks at once. This is a grave matter, which concerns us all. If I may presume to speak for the Council—”
He looked to Telesphore, who pressed palms together before his wishbone and bowed. And what would Bogardus have done had that dead trout said no? Rob thought. But he couldn’t see it happening. No more than could Bogardus, I do not doubt.
“—those who have contributions to make may make them. Each in turn, if you please, and briefly, so that all who wish to be heard may be. And then the Council shall deliberate.”
He looked to Karyl. “This may take some time, Voyvod. If you’d care to take a seat?”
Rob thought he actually might prefer to stand. But he misjudged an old campaigner.
“I thank the Council,” Karyl said with another bow. He turned and walked into the thicket of hostile eyes.
Rob half stood. “Ho, Karyl,” he called, making motions with his left arm as if reeling in cloth. “I saved a space for you beside me.”
Actually there was none but standing room around him. But he reckoned that once he made his invitation, space would rapidly become available. Nor was he disappointed: by the time Karyl reached the table, Rob sat alone.
Karyl took a seat beside him. He propped his stick against his chest, folded his arms across it, closed his eyes, and to all appearances went instantly to sleep. Unlike at night, this slumber seemed untroubled by demons.
The speeches be
gan. Mostly they were sheer vexer-screeches, shrill effusions of resentment and fear. Rob took to drinking with a single mind, and that mind was to tune it all out.
* * *
“Karyl, please draw near.”
Bogardus’s sonorous words gave Rob a jolt. He lifted chin from clavicle to see his friend rising to his feet. He shook his head, spattering droplets of mingled ale and wine from beard, eyebrows, and the tips of his hair.
“I’m not asleep!” he declared, glaring fiercely around, daring one of these mooncalf fatties to challenge him. “Just composing … sonnets. The right word’s key—”
He let the sentence run down because no one was listening to him. Every face was fixed on Karyl as he walked up to stand serenely before the dais.
“The Council has decided that we must direct you to change your proposed methods,” Bogardus said. “You must engage the foe forthrightly, not bring dishonor on the Garden by skulking in ambush. And under no circumstances can we go along with your deliberately allowing the enemy to ravage at will before striking at him. It is imperative that you do your best to prevent raids before they happen, not just avenge murdered children and burned homes.”
Karyl nodded sharply.
“I resign,” he said.
He turned his back on the Council and walked away.
Chapter 39
Jinete, light rider—Skirmishers and scouts, often women, who ride horses and striders. They wear no armor, or at most a light nosehorn-leather jerkin, with sometimes a leather or metal cap. They use javelins or feathered twist-darts, and a sword. Some also carry a light lance and a buckler. A few shoot shortbows or light crossbows, but mounted archery is very difficult, and not much practiced in Nuevaropa.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“What’s this?” Longeau exclaimed. “Impertinence!”
Sitting two places down, Sister Violette smiled like the proverbial horror who’d eaten a vexer.
“Peace,” Bogardus said. “Explain yourself if you please, Lord Karyl.”
Halting among the tables of shocked-pale faces, Karyl turned. His own expression was one of complete surprise.
The stage lost a brilliant actor when that magnificent bastard chose to walk the warrior’s road, thought Rob with honest admiration.
“Why, Eldest Brother,” Karyl said, “I thought I had. Very well: if the Council wants its army led out to be butchered futilely, you’ve got to do it yourselves.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
Rob smiled to himself. Unused to the role as he probably is, Bogardus plays the shill well. But then you’d expect acting skills from a fallen-away priest, no? He tried to refill his wineglass, found the bottle empty, and signaled the diligent ex-Count Étienne for another.
“All our volunteers together could scarcely stand up against just the three dinosaur knights who visited you today. Give them a handful of house-soldiers and they’d flatten us as easily as they did that poor mother and her child.”
“Absurd,” Longeau said. “You’ve got town lords.”
Karyl just looked at him. Longeau flushed and looked down at the table. His fellow Councilors passed an uncomfortable glance around. Not even the fondest peace-lover, so Rob took it, could seriously imagine that Yannic, on his buffoonish great strider that weighed no more than a palfrey, stood any chance against four war-trained tonnes of monster and armored rider.
“Even with the sound arms and armor we’ve got from the town armory,” Karyl said, “we can’t hope to stop a single raiding party in open combat. Now consider what Guillaume and his friends might think to do to you if you try to thwart him and fail.”
That quieted the Council right down. A sort of sickroom whisper rippled through the hall. Bogardus’s handsome face was ashen. Rob judged that likely wasn’t acting.
“Have we any chance, then, whatever you do?” the Eldest Brother asked.
“A chance, and more than a chance. If we use the land and our wits to our advantage, and take our foe in small bites. I’d be staking my life on it.
“You need to choose which is the greater honor: to protect your homes, your loved ones, and yourselves? Or fight with your hands tied by some half-mythical code your enemies don’t apply to you anyway? There seems little place for honor in a philosophy that preaches peace and resorts to war.”
Sister Violette shot to her feet, her eyes like furnace vents. “I for one will not sit here and listen to this—this vagabond insult our Garden!”
“I will, Sister,” Bogardus said calmly. “Or stand and listen. I’ll always hear the truth, and that’s what he speaks. Doesn’t the divine Jaume of the Flowers himself teach that Truth and Beauty are one thing, inseparable?”
Karyl’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly. Ah, that’s twisting the knife, now, Rob thought. But Bogardus can’t know it.
The Eldest Brother fastened a steady gaze on Violette. It seemed slowly to force her back down in her chair.
“What is to be, Sisters, Brothers?” Bogardus asked. “We have brought this man—these men—here precisely because they are highly skilled artisans. And we appreciate the craftsman as well as the artist, in this our Garden.
“Karyl has told us the only way we can fight with a chance of winning. And after all, we’re not knights, are we, hot for glory and thirsting for blood? We fight to free our people from the terror the invaders bring. We agreed to hold our principles in abeyance—largely at my urging, as I freely acknowledge—and fight, or allow others to fight in our names, to prevent a greater evil.
“Will we let this acknowledged master ply his craft as best he knows? Or shall we take the field and lead the battle ourselves?”
That got them to lower their eyes and look everywhere but at him. Bogardus fixed each Councilor in turn with dark, steady eyes and spoke his or her name, until each assented to amending their earlier decision and permitting Karyl to fight his battles his way.
“But we won’t relent on his stopping the raids before they begin,” Longeau said. “We can’t, for our people’s sake.”
“It’s too cynical, Bogardus,” Telesphore said dolefully. “If we ambush the raiders on their way home we can recover stolen goods. But what of the lives destroyed or damaged?”
Bogardus turned to Karyl. “So the Council decides, and I concur: you may employ ambush or whatever means you see fit to defeat our tormentors. But by the Lady of the Mirror and all seven other Creators, you cannot let the reavers reave, however good a tactic that may appear to those of us who aren’t being burned out of our homes.”
Karyl met him eye to eye for a long breath. Then he bowed.
“I shall fight on your terms, Eldest Brother,” he said.
“Wait!” Rob shouted, shooting to his feet. He knocked the whole bench over with a bang, and upset his most recent wine-bottle, now empty. Faces turned to gape at him with eyes and mouths like Os.
“Lord Karyl!” he roared, swaying with booze and outrage. “Why are you giving in to these mewlers, who aren’t fit to eat the road mud off your boots? They don’t have half your birth or worth. Stand up, man! Spit in their eyes! Defy them to the end!”
Strong arms locked his. He was hoisted bodily to his feet. He managed to wrench an arm free and land a knuckle in someone’s eye with a mad swing of his fist. Then he was secured again, lifted so his boot soles swung futilely above the tile floor, and carried out of the hall still raving.
Who knew these soft-hand Gardeners possessed such strength? Ah, but it took a round half dozen to handle him. One at least would be nursing a black eye in the morning, and there’d be more than one sore shin, or his name wasn’t Rob Korrigan.
They threw him in the ditch. He sat up among the wet weeds, still sputtering in fury as cold water seeped up his ass crack. Little Nell, grazing nearby, saw her master’s distress. She broke her tether effortlessly, waddled to Rob, and licked his face with her great slobbery tongue.
“At least it’s lavender you’ve dined on, girl,�
�� he said, pushing the beaked snout away, “and not anything worse-smelling. And didn’t my mother always tell me to look at the bread’s clean side, when I picked it up off the floor?”
* * *
“Captain! Wake up!”
Men shouted outside Jaume’s tent. As an adolescent campaigning against the miquelets, Jaume had learned the knack of coming instantly and fully awake. His dream vision of Melodía, naked with her hair unbound, spun away as he reached for her, just shy of his outstretched fingers, and vanished.
As she would have had the dream continued. As she did most every night. He grabbed his scabbarded sword from a rack near his cot and went out naked.
The stars and just-risen Eris, the Moon Visible, shone brightly in a cloudless sky. Meseta nights were cooler than on the coast, and drier. The air didn’t hit him in the face like a wet blanket. Nor did it stink of mass decomposition, since he’d ordered the army to camp up the prevailing wind from the day’s battlefield.
And there’s my final blessing for the night, he realized as he saw flames gouting from the top of the distant red crag as if the ancient volcano that had extruded it had roared back to life. A yellow glow behind the horizon suggested fire walked the streets of the town as well.
Companions in states of dress ranging from full plate to as naked as their captain surrounded his tent, all talking at once.
“What is this?” Jaume asked, of no one in particular.
“Treachery,” rumbled Ayaks.
“But whose?” asked Wouter de Jong, trying to rub the sleep from his blue eyes.
A voice called the friend-word from up the road that led toward the blaze. A moment later an Ordinary rode up escorting a leather-armored mercenary aboard a wheezing strider.
The jinete, a young man with wild hair and a scrub of beard, hopped to the ground. Bartomeu twitched a feather cloak around Jaume’s shoulders. Another squire brought a bucket of water for the winded dinosaur, which stuck its beak inside and slurped noisily.
“The bucketheads are inside the castle,” the jinete announced. “They raped and plundered to their hearts’ content, and fired the place for spite. While they were plucking the ripest cherry, they let their house-soldiers harvest from the village below.”