One thing seemed certain—unless the Knights could repel the invaders quickly, the defenders of Fort Faith would see action before long.
Most of the Knights were eager for an opportunity to prove themselves against the foreign warriors. Not only were the goblins a threat to Capricon, but also there was a score to be settled. T’slect, the goblin shaman who had posed as Prince Eliot Borrom, had duped them all. The Renegade War was, by and large, the result of the goblins’ political machinations.
Knights and Renegades alike thirsted for revenge.
Klye could only hope he would recover quickly so that he could fight alongside the fort’s defenders when the time came.
As though to mock him, Klye’s leg chose that moment to buckle. He shifted his weight and grabbed for the wall. The movement was awkward and uncoordinated, but he managed to catch himself. Colt came forward, but Klye warded him off with a sharp look. Accepting help from others was still something new for him.
“Come,” Colt said, offering his arm. “I’ll escort you back to the infirmary. I’ll be sure to come by more often. Perhaps we can take another walk soon. I like being able to talk to you without so many ears nearby.”
Taking a deep breath, Klye allowed the commander to take his arm. Recently, he had come to terms with his own limitations. Without the support of his Renegades, he would have perished long ago. And so he ignored his bruised pride as Colt helped him back to the infirmary.
Commander and Renegade Leader walked in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Somewhere between that random hallway and the infirmary, it occurred to Klye that Colt had never mentioned why he had been walking the corridors in the middle of the night.
Colt hadn’t seemed to be in any great hurry. It was as if the man’s path had been as aimless as Klye’s.
The two men parted ways at the infirmary’s door. Klye made his way back to bed, already replaying the encounter with Colt over in his mind. In the end, he was forced to conclude that he wasn’t the only man in Fort Faith with many things on his mind.
Passage IV
True to his word, Stannel was up before sunrise, and Colt was there to see him off. He again insisted that Fort Valor’s commander take a small entourage with him, but the older man would hear none of it.
Colt hardly knew what else to say to Stannel. He was loath to see the other commander leave, for even though they had just met, Stannel Bismarc struck him as a good man and a capable ally. He had no real reason to detain him, however.
I’ll see him again, Colt told himself. We’re neighbors, after all.
Colt might have tried further to persuade Stannel into accepting help, but Stannel’s voice brooked no argument. The serenity, the absolute fearlessness in Stannel’s expression bespoke of incredible confidence—and maybe something more. The man seemed not at all concerned about the hoard of goblins prowling the countryside. For all the anxiety he exhibited that morning, Stannel might have been on his way to visit an old friend.
But Stannel wasn’t dressed the part of a lay traveler. He was bedecked in his full suit of armor and wore a great sword strapped to his back. Although Colt had not seen the blade drawn, he recognized the weapon by its crosspiece, which was ringed on each end. It was a claymore, a combination longsword and broadsword traditionally associated with Glenning.
The claymore in itself was not such an unusual sight. Though claymores had originated in Glenning, many Knights preferred it to the lighter blades forged in Superius. In addition to the sword, Stannel kept a sheathed dagger at his belt. On the other hip, however, rested an object that Colt had not noticed before. It was this final weapon—a tool designed not for cutting, but for bashing—that held Colt’s attention.
The mace’s length was about the span of man’s elbow to fingertips with the approximate girth of his forearm. Fashioned completely out of what appeared to be bronze, the mace looked solid and heavy. The head of the weapon was covered with rounded studs but lacked the spikes of deadlier versions. Colt thought he saw engraved sigils running along the shaft, but he never got a close enough look.
It wasn’t uncommon for a Knight to carry more than one means of offense. In the heat of battle, weapons tended to break. But there was something about the mace that seemed out of place to Colt. He might have asked Stannel about it, but by the time he had noticed it, Stannel was already walking his mount out of the stable.
“Even though your path is fraught with peril, somehow I know you will succeed,” Colt told Stannel as they made their way to the road. “Your confidence inspires me.”
Stannel glanced down from the horse and smiled cryptically. “My confidence is borne of faith. My safety lies in the hands of Pintor, the Great Protector, and what better insurance is there?”
Stannel saluted and gave the palfrey a sudden kick, which sent the animal launching into a gallop. Colt watched the commander’s retreating form for several minutes, considering his words. Pintor was the patron god of the Knights of Superius, though most Knights referred to Pintor as “the Warriorlord.”
Colt thought he shouldn’t be surprised Stannel Bismarc honored Pintor with a different appellation. He was beginning to think Stannel was very different from other Knights. Many Knights claimed to serve the Warriorlord, but when Stannel mentioned his faith in the Great Protector, Colt couldn’t dismiss it as cliché.
When the veteran commander was little more than a speck on the horizon, Colt headed back for the stable. He was not at all surprised to find Opal there. Predictably, the woman was inside the farthest stall, tending to her horse.
She didn’t seem to notice him, so Colt tiptoed past the rows of war horses and came to a stop outside the stall where Opal worked. With her back to him, she tenderly swept a brush across the coat of a white mare. All the while she spoke to the animal in a gentle voice.
Colt felt his affection for Opal swell as he watched her interact with Nisson. Opal had no memory of her childhood, had no memory of her life prior to a handful of years ago. Consequently, she had few friends. Nisson was one of Opal’s oldest and dearest friends.
Colt was pleased to count himself among her friends too, even if he wished their relationship could evolve further.
While Opal was almost as tight-lipped about her inner-thoughts as she was about her past, Colt suspected she told Nisson quite a bit more about her feelings than she did any man or woman. Suddenly, he felt guilty, as though he were intruding upon an intimate moment.
“It’s rather brisk this morning, wouldn’t you say?” he asked her, hoping it sounded like something one would say upon just arriving.
Opal jumped to her feet and was already reaching for her crossbow when she recognized Colt.
“If you ever sneak up on me like that again, you might just find a bolt lodged in your chest, Saerylton Crystalus!”
Although the woman was glowering at him—and despite the fact that she had employed the use of his full name—Colt knew Opal was more startled than angry. A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her lips.
If only he could tell her that she already had pierced his heart…
“You have my sincerest apologies.”
“Anyway, what are you doing down here at this time of the morning?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be sloughing off behind a desk or something?”
Colt rolled his eyes. “Very funny. I came to see Commander Bismarc off. He left for Fort Valor a few minutes ago.”
“That was a short visit. Did he go alone?”
“He did.”
She had been stroking behind Nisson’s ears but stopped suddenly. “Really? Maybe he should have taken Mitto…that merchant…along with him. I got the impression yesterday he was in a hurry to get back to Rydah. He’s worried about what the goblins are planning.”
“Aren’t we all?” Colt muttered sourly. “Wait, you aren’t planning on going for a ride this morning, are you?”
Opal shrugged. “What if I am?”
He sighed. Despite how much he had come to care for Opa
l, he could have done with a little less stubbornness. “You saw how bold those goblins were yesterday. They were practically in our backyard when they accosted Stannel and his companions.”
“And you saw how their audacity was rewarded,” Opal countered. She flashed a mischievous grin and patted the butt of her crossbow.
Colt sighed again. He had eighty men under his command at Fort Faith, and every one of them would obey his order—any order—without question. But Opal was a civilian. He couldn’t make her stay inside the fort, even if he knew it was in her best interest.
Well, technically he could, but he didn’t want to think about what would happen if he tried.
“I know you can take care of yourself,” he began, choosing his words carefully, “but sometimes it’s your enemy’s lucky day. You understand my meaning? Take your run-in with the Renegades, for instance—”
Opal’s glare stopped Colt short. “Klye Tristan caught me unawares because I was careless. I didn’t expect to find a bunch of Renegades in the middle of nowhere. But I know the goblins are out there. Let them come after me if they dare!”
Colt decided not to press the point. He should have known better than to bring up the incident. During one of her many rides across the plains, Opal had happened upon the Renegade Leader and some of his men—or, rather, they had happened upon her. When one of them recognized her as a resident of Fort Faith, they took her captive in hopes of using her as a bargaining chip against the Knights. In the end, Colt and a handful of his men had had to rescue her.
That she had needed rescuing was still a sore spot with Opal, and she despised Klye for having put her in that position.
“But for your information, I’ll not be riding this morning.” Opal didn’t look at him as she spoke, busy, as she was, with grooming the mare. “Like you said, it’s a bit chilly out there. I only came to the stables so Nisson won’t think I’ve forgotten about her.”
“When you do decide to ride”—he would not use the word “if”—“please let me know.”
“Why, so you can send a Knight or two to babysit me?”
When Colt didn’t answer, she set the brush down, gave Nisson a loving pat on the rump, and approached the wooden door of the stall. “I don’t mean to snap at you, Colt. I just hate feeling trapped here. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great fort and everything…you can’t beat the rent…but I’m used to being able to come and go as I please. If we let the goblins dictate the events of our daily lives…well…it’s like they’ve already won.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do, but you have to be reasonable. You can’t ignore a danger just because it’s inconvenient.”
“I know that. And I’ll begrudgingly accept company on my morning rides if I must…at least until you send the goblins back to T’Ruel.”
“It’s for your protection. I care about you.” He hastily added, “You’re my friend…one of the few people at Fort Faith who don’t call me ‘sir.’”
Opal chuckled as she closed the stall door behind her. “The day I call you ‘sir’ is the day I marry a midge.”
“Best not to get Noel’s hopes up. Speaking of our resident spell-caster, I promised him I’d have breakfast with him. He says he has a list of suggestions on how magic can improve our lives at the fort. Care to join us?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to get in the way,” Opal declared in mock-seriousness.
“You’d be doing me a personal favor,” Colt said. “You know how Noel can get. It’s hard to keep him focused for long. I swear, sometimes I understand only one sentence in ten. Anyway, he’ll be more likely to behave himself if you’re there.”
Opal smiled. “Maybe it’s because I’m one of the few people around here who isn’t afraid to tell him what’s what. Midge or not, Noel needs to understand there are rules everyone must follow. Gods, don’t I sound like a mother? Still, I have to admit the little guy’s growing on me.”
“Does that mean you’ll have breakfast with us?”
Opal made a grandiose bow. “It would be my honor.”
She put out her arm, and Colt took it with all the airs of a proper nobleman—never mind that Colt was a nobleman. The smile he wore as they made their way to the dining room was genuine. The mantle of command sometimes made him feel decades older, but Opal always treated him like a peer.
Traversing the corridors of Fort Faith, heading unerringly toward the spacious dining hall, Colt basked in the moment. With Opal beside him—though, sadly, they were no longer arm-in-arm—Colt willed himself to forget about the Renegades inside his fort, the goblins lurking without, and a certain midge who never tired of getting into trouble.
In that moment, he also shut out the voice of reason and dared to hope that someday Opal might return his feelings. Perhaps one day, she would hold his hand and mean it.
* * *
Despite an exhaustion borne of fighting for his life, Mitto did not sleep well the first night at Fort Faith. After having a nightmare—wherein his dear friend Baxter Lawler was being tormented by pitchfork-wielding goblins—he was afraid to fall back asleep, lest he have to witness the horrible scene all over again.
He told himself it was foolish to worry about Baxter. After all, the Knight was surely dead, and Mitto had always believed once you were dead, you were free from the pain and suffering of life.
But the nightmare had seemed so real that he now found himself fretting about Baxter’s immortal soul. For the first time in many, many years, Mitto O’erlander uttered a serious prayer to the Gods of Good, imploring them to watch over his deceased friend.
Baxter was not the only person he worried about that night. His thoughts drifted back to Rydah, to Someplace Else. No matter how many times he told himself the inn and its namesake were safe, he couldn’t shake the feeling Else was in danger. He regretted having left her, hated himself for following Toemis Blisnes on his fool’s errand.
Nothing but trouble had found him since Toemis came into his life, and Mitto cursed the old man and his gold.
There were things about Fort Faith that Mitto found troubling too—the midge, for instance. In all his life, he had never slept under the same roof as a midge. Noel seemed harmless enough, but could one ever really trust someone so unpredictable and dangerous? And yet Noel wasn’t even Mitto’s biggest concern when it came to Fort Faith’s inhabitants.
According to Opal, there was an entire band of Renegades currently residing at the fort, including a Renegade Leader. During their dinner together, Opal had told him how Klye Tristan and his Renegades had boldly stormed Fort Faith when they thought it housed the Crown Prince of Superius. Mitto nearly choked on his venison when he learned that a goblin spell-caster had been parading as Prince Eliot for gods only knew how long.
He had sat with his fork poised halfway between mouth and plate as the woman recounted the catastrophic battle that ended with the goblin trickster using its magic to escape.
Instead of throwing all of the Renegades into the dungeon, Fort Faith’s commander—whose name, strangely enough, was Colt—took the wounded rebels to the fort’s infirmary. Those who were not gravely injured were allowed to remain under house arrest if they promised not cause trouble. Only two of the Renegades, former pirates, were taken to the dungeon.
From the way Opal relayed the information, Mitto got the distinct impression she didn’t agree with how Colt dealt with the Renegades.
In spite of the midge and rebels, he somehow managed to fall back asleep. He might have slept well into the afternoon but for a knock on the door. More than a little confused by his unfamiliar surroundings, Mitto dragged himself out of bed. He expected to find a Knight—perhaps Commander Colt himself—or maybe Opal on the other side. Instead, he found a different red-haired woman standing there.
Sister Aric wore the same white gown with its cerulean cord of a belt. She looked well-rested.
“What time is it?” he asked, scratching his head through a mop of hair that was probably sticking up in every possible
direction.
Standing there, shirtless and shoeless and with only trousers interrupting his nakedness, Mitto felt a wave of self-consciousness wash over him. Averting his eyes from hers, he mumbled an incoherent apology and walked over to where his shirt was draped over the back of a chair.
“It’s nearly noon,” the healer said as he pulled the tunic over his head.
“Damn, I hadn’t meant to sleep this late.” Mitto plopped down on the chair and reached for a sock. He didn’t know what else to say to the woman, who had been a perfect stranger up until a few days ago. Chance—or misfortune—had thrown them together, but now that things had quieted down some, he realized he knew virtually nothing about her.
And now didn’t really seem like the appropriate time to ask for her story.
“How are the…uh…patients?” he asked, glancing up at her.
Aric hadn’t been smiling before, but now her face truly fell. “Toemis still has not awoken. I have done what I can for his body, but I fear he suffers from an ailment of the mind. He has fallen into a coma. All we can do now is pray.”
Mitto nodded understandingly, as though prayer were part of his everyday routine.
“Ruben, on the other hand, is well on his way to recovery,” she added, her countenance brightening.
Mitto paused in lacing his boot. “Who?”
“Ruben,” she repeated. “Ruben Zeetan.”
“Oh, the wizard,” Mitto sneered. “I’m sure he’ll fit in splendidly at this fort. Did you know there’s a band of Renegades living here?”
Aric smiled thoughtfully. “Yes, I did. Several of the rebels are staying in the infirmary.”
“And doesn’t that bother you?” The merchant was now down on his hands and knees, searching for his boot’s missing mate.
“It did at first,” she admitted. “But they seem like nice enough people. The Renegade Leader is a bit too sarcastic for my liking, and Plake has a vulgar tongue, but for rebels, they are decent enough. And Othello has been doing a fine job as a healer, considering he has had no formal training.”
Williams, D M - Renegade Chronicles [Collection 1-3] Page 63