“Some, perhaps,” Gideon said. “It would not be hard to be driven mad by the whisper that would never resolve into words, or to suspect that another world lies within your reach, only to find your hand moving through empty air every time you attempt to grasp it.”
“Will they be like you, then?” Allystaire crossed his arms over his chest, tilted his head slightly to look at the boy.
“I do not think my particular gift will occur again, no,” Gideon said. “But in the wake of what I have done, who can say? The men and women who come after me could work wonders one day.”
“Or horrors,” Idgen Marte said. “You don’t give a child a knife and hope he teaches himself to use it.”
“It is my plan to guide them,” Gideon said. “Those that I can find, at least.”
“How? When? We’ve got a peace congress starting to our east, an army to our north, and who Freezing knows what to our south or our west,” Idgen Marte said.
“In point of fact, I do know what lies in those directions,” Gideon said. “Or I can find out quickly enough. Last I saw, Baron Telmawr was moving north to Standing Guard Pass with his retinue. Landen is doing the same to our west. She is, in fact, not far from here.”
“Why aren’t you lookin’ at Braech’s army, then?” Idgen Marte said.
“Because it would give him away,” Allystaire put in. “Surely Symod would sense it. We will only have that surprise once, so we had best make it count.” He turned back to Gideon then, and said, “What is it you mean about guiding them, though?”
“When the war, or whatever it is that we must do here is done,” the boy said calmly, “I have to leave. If I want anyone to follow after me, I cannot wait for them to find me.”
“The Order of the Will?” Allystaire knew it was only half a question even as he said it.
Gideon nodded slowly. “I will coerce no one, conscript no one. Those that wish to learn from me shall. If I raise monsters, I believe I can also bring them down.”
“Cold, you’ve a lot of confidence in you, lad,” Idgen Marte said. “I suppose that’s better than not,” she admitted. “But the risk you’ve taken is immense.”
“Something had to change, Idgen Marte,” Gideon said. “Someone had to try and set right the balances of power in this world. It is not enough for men like the Dragon Scales that a poor man should always remain poor; he should be hungry and frightened, too. I can’t change that there are poor. I can’t change that there are hungry. But mayhap I can take away the fear, or I can change who fears whom, and that can lead to the rest,” he added.
“What’ll we do with them, anyway? They killed—” She caught sight of Allystaire’s widened eyes and tried to swallow the words before they tumbled out.
“I know,” Gideon said quietly. “They killed Chals. They terrorized his wife and son. They killed one of Keegan’s men. One paid with his life. They paid with the strength their oaths had bought.”
“If you only took their gifts, what has become of them?” The two thin, pale, sagging-fleshed men had sat up by then, regarding the three of them with open fear and suspicion.
“They had become dependent upon them. Braech gives richly; no longer did their strength need to be of their own doing,” Gideon said. “With that gone, they are as you see them.”
“I know precisely what we will do with them,” Allystaire said. He squatted slowly, till he placed one knee upon the ground, looking at the former berzerkers eye to eye. “I will not hang them. Not yet. If it is death they wish, they will have to earn it.”
CHAPTER 37
The Congress
Baron Hamadrian Innadan could barely sit upright. Cerisia knew that, could see it written in the lines of his face. His body was racked with pain from the coughing. Each breath was a searing effort that seemed to take as much life out of him as it brought.
And yet at the head of the table he sat, accorded that honor by the three Barons and two Baronesses who sat with him. Ruprecht Machoryn and Loaisa Damarind sat to his left, dressed in finery with their colors: blue and grey for him, black and red for her. Behind them, bannermen held the Mailed Fist and the Manticore banners, with their swords held fast to their scabbards with curls of brass wire. The eastern Baron and Baroness projected airs of mild disinterest as they studied their western counterparts. Jugs of wine and water were spaced along the table; before every place sat two goblets. Plates of cheese and fruit sat untouched at either end of the long wooden trestle.
“We ought to be on with it, cousin Innadan. The sun is well overhead already, and the day’ll be away from us” The deep voice on the far side of the table put the Archioness in mind of old gnarled tree roots, so chewed-upon did the words sound. “Your man’ll not show. And what does it matter? He’s no Baron, holds no lands and no voice at this congress.”
Never did a Baron’s banner match the man himself so well, Cerisia thought as her eyes cut towards Unseldt Harlach. When people spoke of the White Bear, no one was ever sure if they meant the Baron or his standard. His beard and hair, long since gone white, were still thick and full, with the former hanging in silver-banded plaits down his broad, scale-armored chest. Eyes dark like temple doors in winter hung beneath a helmet-like shelf of brow. Cerisia hadn’t met Unseldt Harlach often. Though her demesne extended within his lands, their remoteness and his hostility to anyone likely to cost him any weight had conspired to keep her and most of her fellow clergy away.
How much of the bear is posturing, and how much is truly himself? It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered in the two days she’d spent so far among the camps at Standing Guard Pass. He was all bluff forthrightness, growling out his answers and challenging everyone around him to meet his gaze. A man absolutely determined to be taken account of.
Landen Delondeur sat to Harlach’s left. If anything, she was more reserved than the eastern Barons that she, Harlach, Innadan, and Telmawr barely knew.
As the youngest and newest to her seat, Cerisia thought. She is uncertain. Doubly so without Allystaire here. Indeed, the young fair-haired Baroness’s eyes kept trailing to the distant tower that marked the path of the pass that cut from her own lands into the far western reaches of Innadan where they now gathered.
“He’ll show,” Hamadrian wheezed in reply. “He’ll show.”
“What makes you so certain?” Byron Telmawr sat at Innadan’s immediate right hand. He was a compact, intense man, his face and head both clean-shaven. He fairly vibrated with energy, despite his middle years. He seemed to Cerisia like the kind of man who resented every moment spent idle, or even seated. His fox banner mimicked his restlessness, flapping excitedly in the breeze that whipped around them.
“Because he’s Allystaire. Stillbright.” Landen, finally, spoke up. “And when that man says he will do a thing, he does it.”
Unseldt let out a low, rumbling harrumph. Landen reddened, betrayed by her fair skin and a winter spent indoors.
“I still know him as Allystaire Coldbourne,” Harlach growled. “And—”
“And even then,” Hamadrian cut him off, his voice rising from its wheeze with a supreme effort as the Baron Innadan leaned forward against the table, “he was a man of his word, Unseldt. You may not have liked his words, but he meant them.”
Baron Harlach’s upper lip curled beneath its heavy white whiskers, though he finally nodded reluctantly.
“Why such reverence for a rival’s warlord, Hamadrian?” Though all the Barons sat in simple chairs, unadorned with heraldry or symbol of rank, something about the way Loaisa Damarind sat made hers seem more elegant than the others. More like a throne, Cerisia thought. The Baroness brought a grace that the others utterly lacked, her long limbs seemingly always moving at the exact and precise speed she wished: never slow, never hurrying.
“Oyrwyn was not a rival exactly,” Hamadrian muttered, his voice dropping to a rasp that the other Barons strained forward t
o hear. Except for Loaisa, who focused her attention on Innadan’s wizened face, concentrating on the words as he formed them. “The Old Baron was a friend at best, an ally at least, and for the last half-score years of his life, Allystaire was his right hand.”
“Then why was he Exiled and Divested?” Ruprecht tilted his balding head slightly, reached for a goblet, and swirled the wine within it lazily. “Why would he abandon his liege lord’s heir?”
“As much as the Old Baron—and his running dog Coldbourne—cost me, even I can say that Gilrayan Oyrwyn is no fit heir to his father.” That was Harlach again, hunched shoulders and folded arms seeming to eclipse the scenery behind the table. His scale armor vest clinked as he spoke; it left his arms bare, and despite his age and the hash of scars that marred them, the bunching of muscles still promised a strength that men in the mountains of Harlach spoke of with reverence. “The Old Baron was my enemy, yes. But here was a foe a man could be proud to have. He never took the fight to my folk, never burnt or razed for the sake of the destruction itself, never hanged a man didn’t want hanging so far as I know. He was a man, but his son?” Unseldt turned his head and spat on the nearest patch of grass. “Sneaky, thieving bastard. Starts fires at the base of watchtowers and won’t accept an honorable surrender. Tries to turn my knights and lords with bribery, the promise of double their lands if they’ll stand down to him. The first one who did it, he declared he couldn’t trust, and had the man tossed from a cliff.”
“If you admired Gerard Oyrwyn so very much, why did you fight him?” Landen raised her eyes from the smooth, polished oak of the table to Unseldt’s face. “Many of the things you say about him could be echoes of my father’s words to me down the years. Why fight a man you admire? Why not make peace with him? Why not see what you could achieve together, instead of at odds?”
Beneath her mask, Cerisia found herself smiling. Allystaire got to you, my young Baroness Delondeur.
“Pfaugh.” Unseldt waved a giant hand, sitting back in his chair hard enough to shake the cups upon the table. “What would you know of it, lowlander? These feuds go back before your time. The mountains must be Harlach or Oyrwyn. There’s not room for two banners.”
Cerisia watched for Landen’s reaction; she only just seemed to avoid rolling her eyes, but her fair cheeks did color. She opened her mouth to reply, but then their attention was suddenly drawn by the rapid approach of hooves. As one, the Barons and their advisors and bannermen turned to see two mounts pull up by the ring of knights that guarded the table at a distance of ten paces. Unlike everyone else in sight, these guards didn’t have their swords peace-tied to sheaths, but most wore only lighter mail and no helms. They wore a riot of colors mixing the heraldry of their own lines with that of the Barons they served.
The ring of guarding knights parted for the two riders—Arontis, in red surcoat over gleaming mail, and Lurezia Damarind, a younger mirror of her mother—who slid from their mounts, but not before they surrendered their weapons.
“There’s a party approaching from the west,” Arontis called out, as he came within shouting distance. He was a bit winded, his boots and the lower edges of his surcoat spattered with mud, as were Lurezia’s. “I think it may be the paladin.”
The Barons all stood up. Cerisia glided to Hamadrian’s side and discreetly helped him stand. In his pride, he refused a walking stick or a sedan chair to move about the camp, so for the past few days, the Archioness had been his prop when Arontis hadn’t been available, which had been often.
Lurezia Damarind was rarely unescorted around the campsite, and Cerisia had found herself having to temper her own disappointment at the emptiness of her bed with her satisfaction at seeing Arontis coming gracefully into his own.
“Well, let us go have a look at him.” Unseldt Harlach’s voice was either a growl or a roll of thunder, and this proclamation was the latter; it drowned out the reactions of those around him. “Not that Coldbourne was ever much to look at.”
The guarding ring of knights didn’t dissipate so much as it expanded as the Barons made their way—slowly, out of deference for Hamadrian—from their central, formal table to the western edge of the camp. The small retinues of soldiers had made neat camps, arranged in a ring around that central hub, with one large flat space of meadow left untouched.
Mountains hemmed the wide plains of this far western corner of Innadan to its north and its west. Standing Guard Pass had gotten its name from the proximity of so many Baronies, and passes through the nearly intersecting ranges that led to this green valley. The spires of watchtowers could be seen by keen eyes on all sides. Delondeur, Oyrwyn, Harlach, and Innadan had, through decades of shifting alliances and nonstop war, been watching each other carefully from this place.
Cerisia was able to slip away from Hamadrian when Arontis glided in to take his father’s arm. She let the knot of Barons pass her, trying to observe any pattern of who walked with whom. That Machoryn and Damarind stuck by one another was no surprise to her; they had long since settled any bad blood between their Baronies on the other side of the empty Vale of Kings. Landen Delondeur walked by herself, but eagerly; she was clearly most anticipating Allystaire’s arrival. Byron Telmawr stayed as close to the Old Baron Innadan and his son as he could without seeming weak. And then there was Unseldt Harlach, his tree-trunk legs rolling along beneath the great bulk of his chest, all fur and scale armor, muscle and bluster, the proudest to be here on his own and unsupported, the one who seemed like he’d most welcome a fight.
Bored soldiers guarded the outer edge of the camp, and as the party walked up a slight rise she saw a few of them, in Innadan red, peering into the middle distance, spears casually held against one shoulder. She followed the line of their gaze and saw a knot of riders approaching.
Even from afar, Cerisia knew the size and the stride of the great grey destrier at their head, and with the sun straight overhead, there was no mistaking the brightness thrown back by the armor its rider wore.
Watching Allystaire Stillbright ride Ardent at full tilt across the grassy plains of Innadan was a sight Cerisia knew would remain with her for the rest of her days. The brightness of his armor was nearly blinding when the sun caught it right, but if the eye lingered, the sight resolved into something she wasn’t sure was natural. A cloud of light haloed around him under the noonday sun, and notes of silvery music seemed to hang in the air. The day grew warmer, brighter, as his party drew nearer, as if the paladin’s presence brought the sun itself closer to them. Cerisia spared a glance for the Barons; she found Hamadrian squinting and Landen standing confidently, her back straighter than it had been in the two days since the Congress had started. For the first time since he’d arrived, doubt crept into Unseldt Harlach’s face, his easy confidence melting away into wariness, as the lines of age seemed to thicken and deepen on his cheeks and brow. Loaisa Damarind smiled cooly, her eyes narrowing lightly. Byron Telmawr watched Hamadrian’s face.
Ruprecht Machoryn took an involuntary half-step backwards, and Cerisia suppressed a laugh.
“Don’t challenge them,” Hamadrian called out to the soldiers who were stepping forward diffidently, though it didn’t seem any had actually intended to. The destrier had pulled ahead of the rest of the party. There seemed to be a half dozen of them all told, but the great grey horse had simply left the rest behind and the paladin was upon them before it even seemed possible.
His armor was dazzling. She heard several breaths drawn and held as the mirrored, silver-bright plate spun rays of sunlight over the eyes of the gathered knights and Barons.
Allystaire slid from his horse and walked forward, passing by the ring of soldiers and never sparing a glance for the knights; his eyes were for the Barons behind them. As he came within a few paces, the dazzling light around him receded, and his hammerblow of a face resolved itself. That was the only word that struck her as appropriate for the violence coded in his features: the oft broken and way
ward nose, the scarred brow, the cold and hard eyes beneath them, the battered cheeks and lump of a chin.
If his face was a weapon, though, his voice was a drum and a trumpet together, sounding a charge.
“I am Allystaire Stillbright,” he said. “And I bring you word of an army massing in the north. Islandmen, Braechsworn, giantkin, and likely sorcery. They are not out for land, or rights, or succession. They want blood, gold, and glory. If my word will not do, I bring prisoners who will speak to the truth of it. So I have come not only to ask you for peace, but to lay the question before you: are you man and woman enough—are you noble enough—to go to war when the stakes are the lives of your people and not the lines on a map?”
Cerisia felt her breath catch at the boldness of his gambit. Unseldt Harlach bulled his way past Landen and Telmawr to close on the paladin. Allystaire was a big man, with unmistakable presence, but Harlach dwarfed him.
“Watch where your words fall, Coldbourne. The White Bear’s taste for battle is second to no man’s, but it only goes to war when and where I deem it will.” His voice was a throated growl on the breeze.
“I would never insult your taste for war, Unseldt. Your skill at guiding it, mayhap,” Allystaire replied coolly.
Harlach’s hand fell to an empty loop at the wide, gem-studded belt around his capacious waist, grasping for an axe that wasn’t there, but Allystaire simply went on.
“That brings me quick upon my real business here. I will waste no time with subtleties or politics. This threat is real, the army is real, and an army must meet it. In my past life, some of you knew me as an enemy, some as an ally, but I believe that all of you would agree that when it comes to the leading of an army, how to fight in this country, I have some claim of renown. So here, in short, is my offer to you. Put the terms of a peace upon paper. It begins instantly. Raise such men as you can, starting with those you have brought here, and those you all left at your nearest borders. I will put myself at your disposal to direct them in battle, if you will have me.” He turned his hard eyes back on Unseldt. “I would never doubt your bravery, my Lord Baron Harlach. Yet every time we met, I won the day. No one standing here can say they ever had the better of me in the field as often as I had it of them. I will put everything I know at the disposal of saving your lands and people from Braech’s army.”
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