But he was also in charge of compiling a folio of information on Anghysbel and determining a path there. And cataloging the different enneagrams taken from the Grain of Pors and other bits of Ghost Rock. He was charged with describing and explaining the arcane mechanisms behind the powerful magical weapons being forged in Yltedene. He studied the exotic samples of plant and minerals Rael the Enchantress had gathered from the region and produced orderly notes on especially potent or interesting specimens.
I granted him a witchstone to aid his endeavors, and, as I predicted, he was both gracious and grateful in his acceptance after he took the oath. Once he had access to the power and abilities being a High Mage conferred, and he’d been trained in using the Ways and other matters, he immersed himself in his work with single-minded purpose.
He had been provided a hall in which to begin his work, but the sheer volume of books and scrolls he had to maintain made the space inadequate in days. I appealed to Carmella after he appealed to me, and I managed to get him better accommodations for his work built in short order. The new hall was three stories high and octagonal in shape, though I was unsure why. Heeth named it the Arcanium, and it quickly filled with the results of his many projects.
After I set him to task, I largely left him alone. I had plenty of other things that demanded my attention, and I wanted to give Heeth a chance to establish himself with each project before I inquired about progress. It was too much to hope for to think Heeth would root around in our books and reports and emerge a few days later with the concise answer to a particular problem . . . and he didn’t. But he quickly showed not just an ability to grasp the details of very disparate subjects, but to set his obsession aside at need to focus on a more pressing issue. In this way he didn’t arrive at any stunning insights, right away, but he managed to make important progress from the start.
My immediate attention was drawn to the south, however. We were still preparing for a brutal war, and while the distractions of Heeth’s work were alluring, I knew they would also keep me from important work. I had an arcanist so that I wouldn’t have to do all my research between wars. That gave me time to fight the wars. Sandoval had spent his time since the Council of the Magelaw tirelessly inspecting and strengthening the castles in Shakathet’s way.
The first place that required our work was Forgemont, the castle Cormoran had taken for his own and renamed. It had once been one of the early Northern Watch fortresses, originally called Farenrose. It had been expanded and improved for three generations of local Wilderlords, and it had risen and fallen in political and military importance over the years. Then its gallant Wilderlords had ridden away to the west and fallen at the fords. Its people fled to the safety of Tudry, Megelin or anywhere else they could when the dire news came.
It had fallen early in the invasion, sacked and briefly garrisoned, but had been abandoned by the gurvani after Timberwatch. It was the abode for deserters, refugees and robbers for a few years while I was setting up shop in Sevendor, and eventually Cormoran picked it out of a pile of deeds from Vorone as his reward for service to the Duchy. It was near to the mines of Iron Hill, and far enough away from the Penumbra to escape the threat of regular attack. The lands around it were only partially peopled, but peaceful.
He’d spent a summer leading a team to clean it out and begin repairs a few years ago and then used it as a base of operations and laboratory, until I lured him to the Anvil with the promise of the Iron Folk’s secrets.
Now Forgemont was once more in danger. Cormoran had done a decent job of restoring the castle’s basic defenses, including repairing the great gate, the big square keep and the towers along the wall. But it was not prepared for siege, nor was it adequately garrisoned. The courtyard looked like an ironmonger’s dream, but the stables were ill-provisioned and there was a lack of sundry supplies in the storehouses. The halls had been used as a dormitory for his apprentices and laborers, not the families of castellans and men-at arms. The score of men who guarded it in his absence spent as much time pumping the bellows as they did walking a patrol.
Cormoran was a warmage, but he was a swordsmith, first and foremost. He was a magelord by title, but not vocation. To the eye of my constable, Forgemont was a mess. Sandoval respected the man as a craftsman, but he was bitter about his abilities as a lord. At his insistence I toured the place with him, one morning, seeing for myself what a challenge he had ahead of him. Sandy waited for us to be in private before he spoke his mind, but when he did, he was explicit.
“This is the reason why it’s a terrible idea to just go handing out castles to anyone who performs well in the field,” he complained. “The man is a genius smith, I grant you, but he does not know how to be a proper lord. When I first toured the place a week ago, there wasn’t even a proper castellan. The head guard, the avener, the butler and the junior apprentice each run their areas, but there was no one overseeing the entire castle. Which means there’s no one to take responsibility for how miserable the conditions are. I appointed the head guard to act as castellan, but I—”
“Can it be fixed?” I asked, cutting him off before he got started. Once Sandy starts complaining about something, he tends to get colorful, the longer he’s allowed to go on.
“With magic and gold, you can fix anything,” he admitted with a grumble. “Can it be fixed in time to meet Shakathet? That’s the question, isn’t it? Not the way it’s run now. He needs a real castellan and a proper garrison. Then supplies, a few carpenters, maybe a mason. A barber surgeon or monk to run the infirmary. But you can’t run a castle without a castellan. I swear to Duin, Min, I—”
“Do you know a man who could do the job?” I asked, again cutting him off.
“I think I have a few who could,” he agreed. “Even if the place is going to be attacked. And I can get the place provisioned. But it will be expensive. And it seems foolish to invest so much in a place that seems doomed to get sacked.”
“It’s better than losing it without a fight,” I countered. “Goblins slain here won’t be invading Vorone. Unless they’re undead,” I conceded, realizing my error. “We need to hold this place as long as possible. Spend what you need, charge it to the county. There’s precious little else between Shakathet and Vanador. We need to fortify every place. What about Iron Hill?” I asked.
“That place?” he snorted. “They survived the first invasion because they were too tough to take. Iron Peg and her boys aren’t bloody likely to let anyone take it away from them. Since Cormoran has bought so much premium ore from them, they’ve invested in more men, more walls and more stubbornness.”
I had little idea about the intricacies of Wilderlands culture; indeed, when I became Count of the Magelaw I’d figured that there were Wilderlords (of which there are damnably few, after the invasion) and Wilderfolk, the independent-minded freeholders who managed to cling to life in isolated settlements throughout my new demesne.
While that was essentially true, when I arrived at Vanador there were a number of problematic aberrations from that simple formula that stymied Gareth and caused a great deal of consternation to the nascent government of the plateau. It was all very confusing, until Jannik the Rysh explained it to me one evening. He was intimately aware of the intricacies of contemporary Wilderlands politics, such as they were. The fact was, as gory as the gurvani’s invasion had been, there were those houses that persevered or even flourished after the Battle of Timberwatch.
Among the several clans and families with whom I became familiar over time was House Aulistar. Originally Gilmorans with plenty of documentation to prove it, the Aulistar family charged into the Wilderlands during the earliest period of Settlement and had stubbornly maintained their holdings regardless of political fortune or the late invasion. Aulistars were survivors. Their three remote compounds to the east of Lendine had escaped the worst of the gurvani depredations and persisted, absorbing refugees and increasing their cultivated holdings at the expense of neighbor lords who were true to their duty and die
d on the field.
House Aulistar was particular self-serving; while they’d dutifully sent more than thirty bowmen to the banner call, their knights and best men-at-arms had lingered at home on one pretense or another. When the goblins swept through their part of the Wilderlands, just north of the Escarpment, the warriors of House Auslistar manned their thick stone walls as the armies of darkness rolled by their unimportant keeps and sacked Lendine. Afterwards, they sold their surplus to Rard and Lenguin’s armies while they looted the battlefield and retreated back to their holds.
Since then they’d been expanding the lands that they held, adding a fourth small keep and three or four freeholds and manors. Their lord, the pretentious Sire Axlan, was opportunistic and arrogant, and he had four sons and six daughters who shared their sire’s demeanor as a matter of family legacy. Sir Rustallo was a neighbor of his, and in the six years he’d held his lands he found the men of House Aulistar overstepping their rights on his manors several times. Each time they came to an understanding without drawing steel, but Rustallo assured me that each time that was a calculated move on Axlan’s part.
He was devious, Rustallo quietly informed me, and reluctant to risk his expanded holding, but he was ambitious. That wasn’t a problem, necessarily, but Rusty also let me know he had a low opinion of magelords and wasn’t at all happy about being included in the Magelaw. Nor had he made arrangements to swear fealty to me, as yet. I would have to deal with that.
House Manser was more straightforward. Sire Linstal the Bold had courageously defended his holding through three waves of goblins, then rallied at Vorone and rode to war with Lenguin. Indeed, he escorted His Grace out of battle when he was wounded, thus securing the official favor of the Ducal Court. And he never let anyone forget it.
Technically, Linstal should have become one of Azar’s vassals, after we destroyed Tudry. His expanded domain of Manser was southwest of the burnt ruin, close to the Penumbra but behind the protective shield of nearby Fort Destiny in the Iron Ring. Linstal did brisk business selling his meager surplus to the Iron Band, but stiffly maintained his independence, after Astyral left Tudry.
Not just his independence – Linstal began shaking down nearby freeholders for protection, challenging the traditional rights of the peasantry to farm or fish in the absence of authority, and had dispossessed a small hamlet when he found squatters there. Like Axlan, Linstal was quietly expanding his holdings. He played strongly on the ignorance of the peasantry and the absence of anyone to tell them different. He was holding about three times the territory he started the war with and wanted more. He wasn’t willing to risk alienating his allies, but he was also willing to see how much he could get away with while no one was looking . . . then hide behind his reputation and his honor while he tried to work a deal.
Axlan and his scheming brood and Linstal’s tyrannical ways were not the most challenging of my new vassals. That prize went to House Faradine of Iron Hill.
Iron Hill was a settlement just north of Megelin, but Azar and Bendonal would not claim it. Nor would Cormoran, though he got along with them better. The Lady of Iron Hill, Pegala, was a Wilderlord with a strong independent streak and a face like an ash heap.
Iron Hill had one of the more productive iron mines near Castle Megelin, and its crews had continued working right through the war. They held a fortress at the summit of the eponymous Hill, built directly above the mine entrance. For decades they had back-filled the crude but massive walls of Iron Hill Keep with rubble from their excavations; they were over twenty feet thick, in places.
Iron Hill was not a particularly big mine, nor was its ore the best in the Wilderlands, but it was still functioning. The village only contained three hundred folk, half of whom farmed the mediocre croplands on the hill or tended sheep, while the others mined. When the goblins came, they sent the men they were required by law to send, and the rest barricaded themselves in their miserable little castle and held out. Every few months they’d send a shipment of ore to Megelin, or sometimes actual pig iron, to trade for a few things, but mostly they kept to themselves. The few visitors to the remote keep reported a miserable place, the sort of castle that made one think fondly of the fleshpots of Tudry.
But it was all that House Faradine had, and they protected it fiercely.
Indeed, Lady Pegala – or Iron Peg, as she was known to her extended family – was a figure of some esteem among the Wilderfolk who still clung to the lands around her. She was tough and had resisted the invasion and the hordes of bandits with equal determination. She’d resisted Bendonal’s early attempts to secure her allegiance and vassaldom. She’d resisted the second wave of goblins when they thundered out of the Penumbra toward the distant Poros. She’d resisted the attempts of the Lord of Lorvay to enter into a mutual-protection alliance. She’d resisted the entreaties of renegade Wilderlords in the Penumbra, who promised riches and power if she would swear to their gurvani masters.
Iron Peg was good at resisting. Everything.
She was one of the few women I’d ever met who was an open devotee of Duin; apparently her father had been an underpriest in the cult, before he’d ended his vows and took a wife. But he’d raised his eldest daughter to be a warrior more than a lady. Considering the unfortunate state of her face and figure, it had proven a wise course of action.
Now Iron Peg ruled Iron Hill as her own little kingdom, with three younger brothers and six sons of her own to defend it. Peg was an uncomplicated woman and utterly simple in her approach to just about everything. She was also willing to don her father’s coat of plates, heft his shield, and draw his greatsword in defense of her domain. Her boys were all good warriors, but she was unwilling to deploy them under anyone’s command but her own.
And she didn’t have a particularly high regard for wizards. Quite the contrary.
But she didn’t want to be touted as a rebel, either, so when the summons to court to swear fealty to her new overlord – me – at Yule she grudgingly came . . . with the most taciturn entourage I think I’ve ever seen.
All three houses eventually swore to me, but none of them were happy about it. Part of it was the usual antipathy toward wizards among the Wilderlords; part of it was their anxiety that I would screw around with regulations that might harm their ambitions. There were plenty of obstinate freeholders in the region who shared their views and their reluctance to swear fealty to me, but they tended to look to one of those three old Wilderlord houses for leadership. And if they wanted to keep their trading privileges, they all had to swear.
Cormoran had perhaps the most cordial relationship with Iron Peg, due to his flattery of her mining operations and his desire for her fare, but even he barely got her to speak to him.
“I think I finally convinced her to take on a stronger garrison, considering the invasion, but she agreed only if it was comprised of local folk, not foreigners. Which means anyone from further than Vorone. And she flat-out refuses to entertain a warmage to help her defenses,” he said, exasperated. “She swears that Iron Hill will hold through Korbal, himself, come beating on her iron gates!”
“He just might, if she’s not careful,” I pointed out.
“He will find her just as infuriating as I did, then,” he grumbled. “The other lords are following her lead, so I’ve had to all but bribe them to get them to see to their duty. And they are all giving me guff about relocating their folk to the safety of the Towers. They don’t see the need. Which is stupid, because what they’re really afraid of is getting entangled with wizards, because they’re all a bunch of superstitious, illiterate morons. Not that the Keepers of the Towers are any happier with the arrangement,” he added.
The magelords were on the other side of the political spectrum. Not just the knot of knights magi and warmagi from Tudry who hung around Vanador, but also the six great magi of the Hesian Order who had taken residence in each of the Pele Towers we’d built.
Their actual domains only encompassed an estate or two apiece, enough to supply
the Towers with food and sundries. Each of them had at least one village nearby, and Lotanz Tower was in the middle of a growing small town.
But the magelords in residence had influence beyond the frontiers of their domains, and they did not hesitate to exercise it. That sometimes put them at odds with their Wilderlord neighbors. Since establishing their tiny realms, once they were able to function independently, they reached out to local villages, offering support and assistance without the usual feudal demand for compensation. That wounded the honor of the Wilderlords and made both sides reluctant to assist each other. When the magelords of the land give the peasants a better life on more generous terms, it created competition for loyalty and friction between the Towers and the houses.
For example, Sir Asaleth had not only fortified his Pele Tower within the bounds of Otter’s Point, he’d gone on to improve harvests and construct additional cottages (in the Kasari style) for the influx of new settlers to the region. Lotanz had a real market, now, where local freeholders could shop and trade with the steady stream of Kasari craftsmen from the north. With three hundred Kasari rangers garrisoned there, Lotanz was now outgrowing the protected point on which the castle was built and was spreading onto the banks of both rivers. Asaleth was seen as vital to the development by no less than the Baron of Lotanz, Arborn of Kasar, himself. More importantly, he was a figure of respect and authority across the sparsely-settled region.
Aori, the Keeper of Traveler’s Tower had taken a more academic approach. His strategic location had not only permitted him to aid hundreds of escaped slaves who followed his beacon across the Penumbra, but he had taken great care to resettle them in an orderly fashion in the abandoned manors nearby . . . and trained them to arms.
When I arrived in Vanador, Aori had nearly fifty decently trained and equipped men-at-arms patrolling his lands from the Wildwater to the Maier River. They had repeatedly intercepted bands of gurvani raiding from the Penumbra and kept the locals secure. More, Aori had personally cast military-grade wardings, free of charge, in the region around Traveler’s Tower, and included the young men in his militia training. He’d also established three small shrines and a hospital, and he had recruited clergy to staff them. Even fiercely independent freeholders were beginning to speak fondly of Master Aori.
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