“War, Sire?” Sir Cei asked, surprised but interested. “So early in your tenure?”
“War if necessary,” I conceded. “And if so, then on my terms. But it’s also possible we can convince West Fleria to just give us back the valley.”
“And how does my lord propose to do that?” he asked, as close to amused as I’d ever seen him.
“Magic,” I shrugged. “Or bullshit. Probably a healthy combination of both. But if I have to hire an army to take it back, I will. That’s my land, by Briga’s sweaty brow, and I will have it back.”
“Spoken like a true knight,” Sir Cei said approvingly. I shot him a look. He looked even more amused. “It occurs to me that acquiring property, title and position can change a man, Sire.”
“I’m not going to be one of those warmonger nobles whose neighbors always live in fear of, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I’m paying tribute on the whole fief, I’d prefer to actually have possession of the whole fief.”
“I would never suggest otherwise,” Cei said, surprised. “It would be an insult to your honor to let such a thing stand.”
Honor. Great. I had to worry about honor now.
I let it pass. “As soon as we get settled here, we’re going to tend to that. And if we have to get creative about it, then I’ll just add it to my list of unlikely things I’ve been forced to do.”
“It will take a lot of effort and coin before this place is ready to withstand even a modest war,” he said, nodding to the hulking gray stones of the keep. “And a lot more men at your command.”
“Then let’s discuss what we’re going to need first, and put together a shopping list. You’re going back to Sendaria Port. I want you to head out before nightfall. If you hurry, you can be back here with the first big caravan of Bovali settlers when they arrive. As a matter of fact, you’d better be, or I don’t know what we’ll feed them.”
We spent the next few hours carefully writing out a list of things we desperately needed, another list of things we needed as soon as we could get them, and a third list of things it would be nice to have. Then I gave Sir Cei a big bag of money from my steadily-dwindling supply and sent him on his way with five or six Bovali lads to go buy it. Then he was to lead the rest of our people back here when they arrived, quietly, across our belligerent neighbor’s lands before he could realize that Sevendor was under new management.
I included plenty of second-hand clothes on my list – the people of the vale were dressed in rags – and I instructed Rollo to go with them to look around for a young smith or carpenter who might be persuaded to come to Sevendor. And masons. Without even studying the matter I knew I wanted to redesign some major parts of the keep, including the construction of a new outer bailey wall and a larger donjon.
But that was in the future. For now I just wanted a clean, dry place to sleep.
It took three days to haul all of the litter, debris, and battered old furnishings out into the sun. Most of the better stuff I gave away to the villagers, who were delighted to get it, as deplorable as it was. Some I had burned or junked. I kept very few pieces.
This was my new home, and I wanted the place to be new, inside and out. So I sent a messenger over the high pass to Sashtalia, the fief to the northwest, to hire a woodwright from Jessep village. He came to see me in person a few days later, not believing what my messenger told him I needed.
He was reluctant, at first, but when I paid him in advance he assured me he would have something suitable for a lord, and soon. I commissioned a few good pieces of furniture and some specialized pieces I would need for my laboratory as well. But a proper bed was at the top of the list. I didn’t want my son born in a tent or my wife to sleep on an uncomfortable travel bed. I paid him lavishly to deliver one as soon as possible. The woodwright assured me he could procure a suitable tick – a big, soft, feather bed – with little trouble and would deliver them both as quickly as he could. It might seem a luxury, considering everything else we desperately needed, but if I was going to be a noble, I was damn well going to sleep like one.
The three long, exhausting days we spent scrubbing and cleaning and repairing allowed me to get to know some of my new Sevendori subjects. They actually warmed up to me significantly, after spending some time working with me and learning that, like they, my lady and I had been born commoners.
Most important in those early days was Railan the Steady, the Reeve of Sevendor Village. He was a dour man in his late forties, and was vocally anxious about the change in administration, as if he was waiting for me to laugh and tell him it was all a joke at any moment. He and Sir Erantal had butted heads repeatedly, apparently, as much as a reve and a lord can without loss of position. In fact, after I got to know the man a little I found out that the conquest of Brestal Vale was in part in retaliation for a tiff the reeve had with the caretaker.
It seems Sir Erantal was too free with the wrong man’s wife, and Railan had to keep him from trying to murder the knight, four years back. The knight lost face and began imposing harsh penalties on everyone in the vales.
Sir Erantal continued to covet her, until Railan was forced to officially petition the noble and humbly ask that he respect the laws of the gods and men about the sanctity of marriage. Sir Erantal took offense, and ordered the man, his wife, and his entire family relocated to Brestal Farms, a hamlet once located by Hyer’s Tower, as far away from the castle as possible.
When the attack from West Fleria came, the hamlet the family had relocated to was wiped out to the last child. Further, Flerian raiders had burned half of Sevendor village, and pillaged enough to force the peasants to flee to Sir Erantal for protection . . . only to find the gatehouse locked against them. A hundred and forty people died, and Brestal was gone.
Since then the two had enjoyed a strong animosity. After a couple of days of working with him, I found Railan to be a wise enough man, if utterly unimaginative, conservative, and ignorant.
He wasn’t terribly thrilled about a bunch of strange-talking Bovali settling in Sevendor, but he had a peasant’s resignation to the whims of his lord down pat. And even he had to admit that things were looking a lot better for his folk since we arrived. They’d eaten better the last three days than they had at the harvest festival. The children were even starting to laugh again.
By the third day the Great Hall, at least, was clean enough to eat in, and the men billeted there at night. We didn’t separate ourselves from them, as some nobles do – we ate communally every morning, and Lady Alya and I gave out work assignments and listened to people bitch over breakfast.
I made a point of making breakfast, at least, an informal family affair where people could complain without offending me or anyone else. If there was something amiss with my people, I wanted to know about it. And if I felt like grousing myself, that’s where I could do it. Or at least that was the theory. Mostly those first days, people just bitched about the hard work.
It quickly became obvious that I would have to have the kitchen completely rebuilt, and soon. The castle’s population had more than doubled overnight, and the sodden shed with the smoky chimney just wasn’t up to the demand. We had been cooking over open fires in the bailey, but that wouldn’t do all winter.
Nor would Old Peg do as a kitchen boss. By the third day the old hag had taken to shrieking whenever we tried to move anything, and I had to send her to her room. The Bovali goodwife, Nanily was a portly matron with an earthy laugh and a no-nonsense attitude. She did well enough in the role, but even she was complaining that we had to have a proper kitchen after a week. Added to the List.
The kennels were leaking and falling apart. Added to the List. The privies were disgusting and needed to be repaired. Added to the List. The roofs of just about every part of the castle needed to be sealed against rain and wind. Added to the List. The well house was falling over. Added to the List.
Just at dusk on our eighth day the sentry I’d posted at the boundary stone blew three strong blasts on the summons-h
orn, letting us know our people were returning. By moonrise a long line of over fifty wagons wound its way across the vale, full of tired Bovali and freshly purchased supplies.
Almost five hundred of the refugees came, mostly on foot and mostly in good order, marshaled by a few stout men on horses. They were all grateful to be at their new home, and a party broke out in the inner bailey as soon as they were all accounted for. And since Sir Cei and Rollo returned from Sendaria with them, there was actually something drinkable with which to celebrate.
Sir Cei had done plenty of shopping, securing five hogsheads of good Riverlands red wine, and twice as much hard cider and beer.
He’d also hired drovers to herd fifty head of cattle behind the main column.
And fifty goats.
And twenty sheep.
Thirty live chickens.
A dozen turkeys.
Four donkeys
Ten pigs.
Four hundred pounds of salt pork.
Fifty pounds of salt.
Two wagons of flour. (Sevendor had no mill and had to pay the miller in the next fiefdom over a hefty fee to grind their grist. I put it on my List.)
Another wagon of seed wheat, rye, maize oats and barley.
A hundredweight of honey. (No bee hives in Sevendor. On the List.)
A wagon of assorted winter roots.
A wagon of clothes and blankets.
A wagonload of lumber and a journeyman carpenter.
A wagon packed with tools, from shovels and axes to picks and plows.
A wagon of sundries, such as sugar, oil, wax, tar, and dried fruit.
And wagons of stuff I had no idea about.
Sir Cei had spent almost a thousand ounces of gold, but Rollo told me later (with a hint of pride, I thought) how the knight had haggled over every purchase like a widowed goodwife selling eggs in the market. We got our money’s worth. Our biggest problem would be where to put it all – there just wasn’t enough room to store it in the castle, so we had to erect more tents and sheds.
That went for people, too. There wasn’t room in the castle for the second wave of Bovali. Not even if I encamped them in the bailey, not if we were going to be able to work on the castle. After seeing no alternative, I had them pitch a temporary camp on the village commons, near the stream, as they arrived. The goats could forage further afield for a few days. The cows were herded into a long-abandoned field for the moment.
The carpenter was fresh from his dour master’s employ and was eager to make a name for himself, bringing a young wife and a younger brother as sawyer and assistant. He began work on the kitchen immediately.
Sir Cei brought other good news: a blacksmith was coming. A young journeyman, also new to his trade, but he knew how to forge and weld and he could build the eight thousand other things you needed to keep a castle going. Sir Cei would return to Sendaria in a fortnight to finalize the details, but he assured me we’d have a working forge by midsummer, if not long before.
The day after the big caravan arrived, the Bovali got their first good look at their new home.
It was a mixed reaction – it was not as fair a land as the Minden vale they’d been born in, but it was far more like home than the unfamiliar flatlands they’d traveled through to get here. The ruinous condition of the land was a cause for much head-shaking, but the wide, vacant floor of the valley seemed to invite a hopeful disposition. After what they’d been through, Sevendor would have had to be a real wasteland not to appeal to them.
There was a great bustle that morning as we got the families organized, assigning some to manage the herds, some to unload the wagons, and some to prepare the half-deserted village for new houses and sheds.
Almost immediately there were problems with the Sevendor natives, but Sir Cei adeptly intervened, ensuring that Railan the Steady would remain reeve, for the time being, with all of his traditional privileges and rights . . . as well as two of the new cows. That kind of simple graft seemed almost refreshing after the nastiness I’d witnessed at court.
We spent the rest of the week figuring out who should do what, making sure everyone got fed, and everyone stayed warm. The arrival of the new settlers meant we could finally guard the realm properly, too. Captain Forondo now had enough militia to man the walls, the gatehouse, the donjon, and the border post. He also had daily horse-mounted patrols of the de facto frontier – we’d deal with the issue of Brestal Vale in good time, but we weren’t ready yet.
The carpenter began building his own shop, after putting a kitchen together. He and his brother took a party of Bovali timbermen into the forest to choose the right trees for lumber and they got to work. Like all Wilderlands folk, the Bovali knew how to fell a tree. Lumber was once the Alshari Wilderlands biggest export. In the meantime, the carpenter was using lumber purchased from the woodwright in Sashtalia.
Makeshift houses little more than tents quickly went up in the village, and Alya and I donated our pavilion to the poor folks camped out on the commons when we finally moved into the round tower. At the end of the week I felt settled-in enough to command a proper celebration.
The great hall of the donjon was now clean from top to bottom, and new sweet-smelling rushes were laid down for the . . . well, call it a feast, but it felt more like a picnic, as the Bovali saw their new lord’s home for the first time in an official capacity. The hall, at least, was cheery against the night’s wind. The chimney to the great fireplace had been repaired and cleaned now, bathing the hall in warmth and an insulation spell kept it that way.
Every night after our labors we repaired there for a morsel, a song, and a cup before bed. I had already started formulating plans for re-shaping the room into something more comfortable. The lighting was dreary. And the chimney still stunk. But some magelights, some wine, and a roasted pig added to the festive feel.
It was still three weeks to Yule, but it really began to feel a bit like home. Alya even complained that she was too fat to dance, which kept me from revealing that I didn’t really know how. We retired to the tower and our travel bed at the end of the evening almost feeling like real nobility.
The next day the List was back with a vengeance. Even as we struck a few items off, more were added.
The outbuildings would have to be repaired, torn down, or re-thatched, depending upon the need. The cisterns were cleansed and re-filled from the streamlet that sometimes filled the moat, but they were woefully inadequate for the population. It had been a generation since any serious maintenance had been done on any stonework. Weak spots in the walls were reinforced. I added stars by a real stone mason on the List. This was to be a proper castle, after all.
As far as my personal rooms went, I eschewed Sir Erantal’s quarters, which was one of the better ones on the third floor (after Old Peg and her crew had gotten through with it), leaving it to Sir Cei. Captain Forondo got the other nice room in the square tower with his men.
Me, I had a lusty wife and a baby on the way – I wanted someplace safe and quiet. We moved into the rearmost tower, the round tower, after I ensured it was relatively vermin-free. Once our bed was delivered it was warmer than sleeping outdoors, particularly once I did a spell to keep it toasty. And it gave us significantly more privacy.
The lower room of my tower served as a sitting room, connected to the rear of the Great Hall by a small covered walk, while our bedchamber was above it, reached by a stone staircase. Above that was my lab and workroom. The parapet above the lab was a good place to watch the stars, smoke, and contemplate the mysteries of the universe.
And once I decided on that, my work really began.
I had grown used to the ball of green magical amber I constantly wore around my neck. I’d borne a pebble-sized stone for most of a year, and wrought great magics with it.
Now it was huge, grown to over thrice its original size by Alkan magic. I won’t lie – I was nervous about the new, super-powerful sphere I now possessed. It set me apart from my peers by giving me powers several orders of magnitud
e over even those High Magi armed with irionite. Within the sphere swam a pattern the origin and purpose of which I had only the vaguest idea. The old Alkan who had re-crafted it had made certain . . . augmentations, but had warned that the effects could prove dangerous, if I was not careful.
I endeavored to be careful.
It helped that this kind of support spells were my specialty – I had chosen the career of spellmonger, and charms of this nature had been my bread and butter for my glorious six-month career. I liked charms and wardings. You get a lot of personal satisfaction from them, like painting a wall.
More importantly, since I was acting as my own court mage, I was cautiously eager to see what the full power of my stone could really do. My quarters seemed a good place to experiment. When I was reasonably certain Sir Cei and Alya had the castle and lands well in-hand, I retired to the bare room that would become my personal lab and seated myself.
It was time to make some magic happen.
I started with the foundation of the tower, where I was gratified that the pilings, at least, were dug right to the basalt bedrock under the hill, and they were solidly made. Still, I reinforced them, making the stones of the tower meld with the bedrock.
Then I began my journey toward the surface. I sent my consciousness into each block of stone, feeling for stability, how it fitted together with the stones around it. And then I melded the blocks together so well that it would have taken a mason’s hammer to scratch it.
One by one, I worked my way upward until every stone in the tower had been done. It would have taken a real court wizard months of meditation to do even the foundations – with irionite I improved the structural strength of the rickety pile of rocks to the point where it would withstand all but the harshest of forces . . . in an afternoon
That’s why real court wizards (without witchstones) get paid lots of gold for the same service. It takes forever. I wanted this place, where my wife and child would sleep, to be the safest possible. I had enemies, and not all of them had black fur and hated sunlight.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Page 5