The Heron Kings

by Eric Lewis

  “Alondo’s right,” Reynal said. “This ain’t the first time we been hit. Highwaymen are a cost of doing business, but they never been so out for blood before.”

  “People are desperate,” said Emony, still a little pale. “The normal rules are dead and gone. I suppose that explains us too.”

  “And you say there’re more of you just over that ridge? Gods, if I were younger I might like to join you!”

  “Bad idea,” said Ulnoth. “We barely know what we’re doing. We look for easy targets, wait for our chance, fight dirty then hightail it outta there. Which is all just dandy for me, but not really anything to admire.”

  “Ah, but there’s where you’re wrong,” Reynal said excitedly. “It’s exactly that! Why, imagine a whole army of sneak-thieves turnin’ their knives against the lords and their slaves that fight their wars. The forest is their castle, the dark is their kingdom, they bend knee to no one on this earth! Ha, now there’s a tale that’d put asses in every theater seat from here to Porontus.”

  Alessia laughed despite her dour mood. “I think you’ve confused us for a company of troubadours. But for our chosen targets we’re no different from those we just fought off.”

  “Lady, to me that’s all the difference in the world.”

  Alessia sent Dannek back to tell Corren and the others what’d happened, and decided to spend the night among the smugglers, if only to keep an eye on the child. There were about fifty of them in all, and a few of those were whole families. The next day they scouted to the outlet of the canyon and found a spot to bury their dead. Alessia led a few words of prayer over them for the repose of their souls, though technically she had no authority to do so. Just a little heresy, she imagined Livielle saying. The gods won’t mind.

  The bandits’ corpses by contrast were tossed aside and forgotten. “Leave ’em,” spat Alondo. “Dinner for wolves is all the use they are.”

  “What will you do now?” Alessia asked. “Certainly not keep on with your journey?”

  “Of course,” Reynal answered, surprised that she would ask. “What else would we do? It ain’t greed, you understand. This cargo’s a life’s savings for some of us. We owe it to the children of those we lost to see it through. Uh.” He fidgeted uncomfortably, looked away. “There’s one more thing I’d ask of you. I know I’ve no right considerin’ all you already done, but…will you be moving on from here in a hurry?”

  “We’re headed southward, but in no great hurry. Why, what is it?”

  “You saved that boy’s life, and others besides. Now we’ve folk alive but in no shape to travel at the pace we intend just quite yet, and they have family from which they’d not be parted, so….”

  “You want to leave them with us,” Alessia concluded.

  Reynal nodded. “I feel like cack asking it, but they’re safer with you than with us. We’d come back again and pick them up eventually.” There was silence between them for a long time, Alessia looking off into the distance and Reynal mostly staring at his shoes. When she didn’t say anything he ventured, “Well?”

  “I don’t know, the others would have to agree. The more we are the slower, and easier to track. It’s not like your theater tale, you know. It’s hard, and mean. Every day almost I feel my heart turning a little more stony.”

  “But you can’t cut stone quite as easy,” said Reynal.

  “Everyone would have to contribute, understand. No freeloaders.”

  “Of course. They’re all good, hardworking folk once they’re healed up, you’ll see. The children too. Some can even fight in a pinch.”

  “The rest will have to learn. Even the children, as you say.”

  Reynal nodded. “All right. Alessia, thank you again. Whatever else befalls us in this wretched war, you’ve a friend among the smugglers.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she replied. “I haven’t done you any favors.”

  After hearing the tale of the bandit attack a vote was held, and the others decidedly did agree. Overnight the Heron Kings almost doubled their numbers and in the process acquired a good supply of food, clothing and other sundries from the smugglers’ cargo.

  Ulnoth led the dozen wounded into camp, along with a couple that had to be carried, and several children. “Just a look-see, eh?” Corren said as they filed past.

  “Shut up.”

  Alessia brought up the rear, and when they’d all been seen to she said to Corren, “Better make space for those kids at the arrow butts. Everyone needs practice.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Civilization

  “Funny. I half expected it not to be here, after everything.”

  “Expected, or hoped?”

  Ulnoth turned to Nandine. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve been moodier than usual since we got close to Plisten. Don’t tell me it’s ’cause of all the new faces.”

  “Nah,” Ulnoth grunted. “Maybe ’cause of all the old ones. All bad memories, or good ones of what’s gone. Maybe it was a mistake coming back here.” They stood on a low cliff overlooking the village. Ulnoth had come to the spot often as a boy, and was always amazed at how small Plisten looked from here. Now it seemed even smaller. “Or maybe I been living like a heathen Marchman so long civilization scares me.” They clambered down using the tall, ungrazed grass as cover more out of habit than actual need.

  “Where do we go first?” asked Nan.

  “There was a general store, sold mostly farm supplies. Not sure if it’s still around….” He purposely avoided the taphouse barn; he wasn’t sure he wanted to revisit the scene of his…what? Crime? He’d committed many since; why should that one matter?

  He banged on the door to the storehouse built on the edge of the green. No answer. “Humph. No surprise there.” He took his knife and slid it between the door and the frame right where the latch would be. Sure enough, at just the right spot the mechanism jiggled and the door creaked open.

  The building was empty. Clean, as though it were still in use in some way, but the shelves all along the rectangular structure stood bare. “Well, there we have it. I guess—”

  “Hold it! Don’t. Fucking. Move.” An angry woman’s voice. They froze. “Turn around.” They heard the swish of something slice the air.

  With a knowing grin Ulnoth said, “Well, which is it? Don’t fucking move or turn around?” Even as he said this he began turning, but with hands raised.

  “I don’t know who you rogues think you are just strollin’ into town and – gods!”

  “Hello, Sal.”

  “You…you’re here!” Sally dropped the adz she’d been wielding. “And alive!”

  “That one’s debatable, but yeah. I’m here. Nan, you can unfreeze now.”

  “You look like shit,” said Sally, half in shock. She reached out to touch Ulnoth, haltingly as though he were a specter that might disappear. “You’re so thin! And brown as me, almost.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. Listen, where’s Glaston? More to the point, where’s his stuff?”

  “He left. Lot of folk did after the queen’s men started taking everything. You’re the first to come back.”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t plan to stay. What happened? Did…did the greens punish the village? For what I did?”

  “For what – oh. Oh, no! No, they didn’t even miss him as far as I know. We, uh, fed the body to goats. The ones we still had. Burned the clothes. Nothing left to point to us.”

  Ulnoth snorted. “And here I was all fretting about…I mean, you told me about Murento.”

  “What happened to you? Where’ve you been?”

  “That’s a little bit of a story. Is Bed around?”

  “Bed? Well, he’s….” She looked away.

  “Don’t tell me he’s dead!”

  “No. But he’s not well. It’s his lungs again, made
worse by the smoke. On bad days he can barely walk.”

  “Doesn’t he take medicine for that?”

  “If we could get hold of any. Usually comes up from ’Nocca, from the temple gardens. But not much of anything gets through these days.”

  “Oh. You know, I think maybe that’s something we could help with.”

  “We?”

  * * *

  Even in his weakened state it took a fair amount of arguing to convince Bedegar to rise from his pallet. At first he would not even believe his own eyes, thinking his illness made him hallucinate Ulnoth’s return. But the promises of medicine, Sally’s harangues and, to be honest, the curve of Nandine’s thighs won him over and he struggled, coughing and wheezing, to his feet.

  “Hate to do this to you, Bed,” said Ulnoth as he took one of the old man’s arms about his neck to support him, “but I ain’t sure it’s safe to bring anyone else into Plisten.”

  “Still…don’t understand,” Bedegar mumbled. “How in…seventeen hells you find a physic? Where you been all this time, and why…not safe—”

  “One thing at a time, Bed. Let’s just get you there first, eh?”

  “Fine, fine.” He turned to Nan, who supported his other side, and managed a thin smile. “Say…you’re a…pretty young thing—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Nan sharply. Bed shut up.

  * * *

  The camp was about half a mile away amid thick growth along Cadwall’s Run, not far from where Ulnoth had slipped Pharamund’s recruiters. The trees were turning and the forest blazed orange in mockery of the fire-ravaged farmland. While escorting Bed at a snail’s pace, Ulnoth tried to explain what’d happened. It was only when telling the tale straight out that he realized how unlikely it all sounded. When he finished Sally didn’t say anything, just kind of stared at him as they walked. At last she said, “So…you’re bullshitting me, right? This is all some kind of stupid joke?”

  “Erm, no. I know it seems fanciful but stranger things’ve—”

  “Stop it,” said Sally with a frown. “Just stop. Don’t you dare pretend you haven’t heard, and this isn’t some—”

  “Heard what? We’ve been a bit outta earshot, if you ain’t been paying attention.”

  They emerged into a clearing, and suddenly two men with bows strung and arrows nocked jumped out of nowhere. Sally let out a shrill yelp. “Halt!” one said firmly but without shouting.

  “Calm down, Banwick, it’s just us.”

  The man’s mouth twitched. “Well, I know, but Corren said if anyone came upon—”

  Ulnoth nodded. “Yes, yes, good work. One of you go scout behind us, will you?”

  “Right. Verrell?” He signaled to the other man, who took off into the forest and disappeared. Ulnoth and Nan pressed on with Bedegar strung between them.

  “Who was that?” asked Sally, her heart pounding from the shock as she trailed after.

  “Just a couple friends. Come on, we’re almost there.”

  It was Sally’s turn not to believe her eyes. A wide network of trees had branches and planks tied and woven between them to make a rough wall. It ringed a central area sheltering about three dozen people along with tents, horses, cookfires, and even a rack of mail hauberks and weapons of both Argovani and Bergovan manufacture. In the middle a wagon was loaded high with sacks and boxes while a few people dozed beneath lean-tos slung from the sides of it. Along one end of the enclosure a row of children practiced shooting arrows at a crude effigy of a soldier complete with red foxhead badge, padded armor and helmet atop a rotten squash for a head. At the other end an older fellow hammered at something metal while a woman tended to a sniffling little girl with a skinned knee. Just outside the camp two teenagers canoodled shamelessly. And all around at regular intervals grim-faced guards stood watch. It seemed a veritable village all its own, some weird hybrid of a traveling circus camp and military expedition. “Oh gods,” Sally breathed. “You’re…you weren’t making it up. It’s you. It really is you.”

  “What’s really us?”

  “Ulnoth, the things you’ve done – they’ve made you famous.”

  “Wha— Famous? How’d that happen? We don’t exactly advertise.” Even as he said it he knew that wasn’t true. A little eye surgery, some human graffiti, those things added up.

  “When soldiers aren’t killing things they drink and gossip,” said Sally. “So do the free folk they rope into service. Stories of men gone missing, some turning up in pieces, shipments of goods stolen without a trace. Reds and greens both. Every one of ’em from here to Vin Gannoni’s terrified they’ll be next. And it was you all along.”

  Nan lost a little color in her cheeks. “We never figured…we just wanted a little payback, some food and fire, a place to ride out the war.”

  “Half those idiots think there’s some kind of shape-shifting monster out there, mimicking their officers.”

  “It’s just some stolen clothes,” Ulnoth said, nodding to the racks of armor.

  “Whatever it is, you’ve made a name for yourselves. And you’re their leader?”

  “Well it’s…more of a cooperative thing. Speaking of which, let’s get Bed over there, let Lessi have a look at ’im.”

  They hauled Bedegar toward the woman who was just finishing up with the little girl. “There, that’s better, isn’t it? Go on now, Lalaith, and be more careful.” She looked up at the new faces with worry. “What’s this?”

  “This,” said Ulnoth, “is a patient. You know, the reason you came out here in the first place? This fella’s the closest I’ve had to a father for a long time. I owe him.” He glanced at Sally. “Both of them. They took care of me…afterward.”

  “All right. Lay him down.”

  Alessia listened to a brief description of Bed’s illness, then took some herbs from a clay pot. “You’re lucky I was able to find this stuff – it doesn’t grow much around here. Here, crush these up.”

  She made a soupy boiling mixture and had Bed inhale the steam. It stank, but eventually he seemed to breathe easier. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Don’t mention it,” said Alessia before turning to Sally and Ulnoth, who both sat hovering over Bed like mother hens. “I mean that – don’t tell anyone else where we are. No offense, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea bringing outsiders around here.”

  “Oh, believe me, it’s not. You can trust us, but there are some desperate enough to sell you for a cup of beans. The queen’s men have taken over most of the county, use Plisten as their own personal granary and steal whatever we don’t hide. If they find out you lot are right under their noses there’ll be blood aplenty. These ones are the worst. In fact they’re the—” She suddenly broke off and looked away.

  “What?”

  “Uh….”

  “What, Sal?” Ulnoth pressed. “What are they?”

  Sally sighed. “They’re the same crew that came through the first time, when…when they burned your farm and killed your wife and daughter.” She winced in anticipation of a rage. It didn’t come, and that was somehow more frightening. He just sat there.

  “Where,” he said softly, “are they exactly?”

  “Ulnoth, don’t—”

  “Where. Are. They?”

  “Most of them I don’t know, but some are squatting in the baron’s house—”

  Ulnoth stood up, pointed at Bed. “Take care of him. Do whatever you have to.” He began walking toward the weapon rack. “Nan! Bring me Corren and Dannek.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Dannek when he was finally found. “I thought we were laying low for the winter.”

  “You thought wrong,” Ulnoth growled. “One more dance around the green, then we’ll be done. This one’s personal. I won’t force anyone, but these cocksuckers here in Plisten are getting cleaned out one way or another, even if I have to d
o it all by my lonesome.”

  Dannek fumbled with his chausses, having been rudely interrupted in his closing negotiations with Alixe, one of the smuggler girls. Beside him and trying hard to erase that image from her memory, Nan strapped on a short sword. “Just us? I’m flattered at your confidence.”

  “Any and all who want, but I need you two at least, and Corren if we can track him down.”

  “And us!” Two men Ulnoth didn’t yet know approached the trio. One said, “I’m Staphenil, and this here’s Gant. You folks saved our hides from those highwaymen, and—”

  The other broke in excitedly. “And we figure we’re healed up enough to return the favor. We been practicing!”

  “All right, your funeral, though you won’t really get one. Go check out a bow and quiver each. And bring knives too, as many as you can fi—”

  “Ulnoth!” Corren stamped in amid the growing circle. “What in the seventeen hells do you think you’re doing? We didn’t agree to any new attacks!”

  “This ain’t a new attack, soldier boy, it’s an old one I’m ending. And there’s nothing among gods nor men gonna stop me. You come help if you want, or don’t. But you try to interfere and I swear one of us’ll end up in the dirt.”

  “Dammit, we’re too many now for you to just go off on every ill-conceived adventure that comes along. We’ve young ones to care after – you want to put them in danger?”

  “Wasn’t my idea to bring ’em on, and no one forced ’em.” Ulnoth looked across the whole of the bothersome campsite, then sighed. “I’ll give you this much: we don’t come back here until every one of them – however many – is crow feed. There’ll be no one left to tell the tale. Happy?”

  Corren snorted. “Happy? What’s that? Suppose I should come along, keep you out of trouble. And you two….” He stabbed a finger at Staphenil and Gant. “You stay down and do exactly as you’re told, or you will end this day in the dirt.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bad and Worse

  Baron Curlew’s house could only generously be called a manor. Yes, it had three rooms instead of the peasants’ one, two hearths, a separate barn and a few outbuildings. But otherwise the estate differed little from the dwellings it supposedly lorded over. Curlew had worked the fields just as his serfs did, though with some indentured help and more animals. But not even minor lords were excused their annual term of service, so when Curlew rode a tired old draught horse off to war the previous spring at the count’s summons, he left his household in the care of his one nominal retainer, a neighbor. And as he was far, far past his obliged term and yet to return, the worst was assumed and folk expected things to stay just about that way. They likely would have had Engwara’s marauders not swept through, taken up residence there and lived off the winter larder and whatever else they could steal. Service to Her Majesty could be decidedly profitable, it seemed.