Sir Lanulan was in his forties and was missing two fingers on his left hand, thanks to a bad dog bite in his past. He stayed drunk most of the time and ran Brestal like it was his own. He had a tiny garrison of ten men who were usually as drunk as he was, and they oversaw a single village (actually, closer to a hamlet) and a few dozen isolated subsistence farmsteads.
The peasants of Brestal were singularly worse off than their Sevendori kin, with higher taxes and greater fees than even Sir Erantal had levied. Sir Lanulan apparently prided himself on his ability to squeeze every iron penny he could out of the land, and if that meant slowly starving his workers to death, he didn’t mind.
That meant that the few people left in Brestal likely wouldn’t protest a change in management. In fact, Jurlor was kin to one family there, and indicated that they would welcome a reconquest. I found that encouraging.
Something else interesting came to me during that time: a wandering footwizard named Banamor found his way to my gates, having heard the rumor of magelord . . . and irionite.
Banamor was a common sort of unregistered footwizard, more rogue than mage, but he did have more than a lick of Talent and a truly entertaining patter – enough to impress peasants and artisans, and more than a few nobles. He had tarried at Gimbal’s seat in West Fleria for a few days, and during that time he had learned that Gimbal, too, was planning a big Yule celebration for his vassals. Banamor was more than willing to tell us all he knew, in exchange for dinner in the great hall and a few cups of wine.
As it turned out all of Sire Gimbal’s vassals and Yeomen were all bidden to ride to their lord’s fortress with their castellans, as Gimbal desired to receive their oaths personally, and not by proxy this year for some reason.
It occurred to Sir Cei that the main reason to do so would be to evaluate how many men Gimbal could rally for a spring campaign against Sevendor. Banamor (who wasn’t nearly as magically Talented as he was observant) agreed, and added that the prevailing rumor in West Fleria was that a depraved mage had enchanted the Duke into giving me Sevendor, and how I was sure to unleash magical hell on the folk of the Riverlands the way I had destroyed the Alshari Wilderlands.
The fact that I was also reputed to be rich and buying up grain so fast that the price was rising in the region beyond reason wasn’t helping.
That wasn’t quite true, but four times so far I had to order oats and corn from Sashtalia and elsewhere, not to mention a few wagonloads of silage. Enough, apparently, to affect local supply and drive up prices in some districts. The West Flerian cottagers who had returned after working in Sevendor had been telling tales of wonder far beyond the modest spells I’d been able to cast, and as such things do, the tales had grown in the retelling.
That could be a good thing or a bad thing.
But the general tenor of the people of those lands – as opposed to their lords – was cautious, not antagonistic. While they were scared of magic, they were more worried about higher flour prices and the prospect of a new tax to pay for a war against me. Gimbal’s “popular” support for a war was limited to his vassals and Yeomen, most of whom he was related to. His subjects in his conquered territories weren’t very happy with the idea at all.
About a week before Yule, Sir Cei and Captain Forondo came to me with a plan – a simple, elegant, and highly effective plan. I loved it, and gave it my most heartfelt support. It turned our weaknesses into advantages, and simplified our security situation admirably. Just the kind of magic – and military action – I like.
First, we posted a permanent watch on Brestal Tower, which was easy enough. You could see nearly everything that happened in the eastern vale from the ridge top overlooking Sagal’s new holding, and for days we had a lad or two concealed in the underbrush, just observing. They watched messengers on foot and horse come and go, mostly, and just a hint of activity with an eye toward celebrating the winter solstice.
Then we sent three small parties of Bovali bowmen into strategic locations overlooking the split in the road at the entrance of the valley. It didn’t take long (with the help of some magic) to build two small redoubts in the highlands overlooking the stream and road. With their big Alshari Wilderland longbows, Bovali could hit anything that came through from either side. They stayed concealed for the most part, and I didn’t mind throwing a couple of spells to discourage anyone from actually seeing them.
The third party was stationed in the ruined old border tower, using the burned-out husk and the fallen rubble around it as cover. That tower was well-placed, commanding a view of the entire entrance to the vales. They were instructed to lay low and observe until they were signaled.
So when Sir Lanulan and six of his men rode out of Brestal Tower three days before Yule, dressed in what passes for finery among drunken men-at-arms, there were only five soldiers guarding Brestal tower. The five who hadn’t been able to talk their way into the party.
I could have taken the damn thing myself. In fact, I nearly did.
Instead, we waited until Sir Lanulan and his men had passed beyond our sight into Fleria, and then we attacked the next morning, an hour before dawn.
Taking an escort of five men, I crossed over into Brestal Vale just as the Morning Star was rising. One of the bowmen killed the lone sentry (who was apparently sleeping at the gate and was unloved by his fellows). I kept the others from waking with another spell over the top floor of the squat tower, where the barracks was located. I used a cantrip to part the rusty chain that raised the portcullis, and we had effectively re-taken Brestal Vale.
Hardly a battle for the ages.
I had the four surviving soldiers stripped and taken to the dungeons of Sevendor Castle, to await my judgment. Then five wagons from Sevendor arrived with fresh supplies culled from our own. By midmorning the makeshift banner I was using as a device (the stars-and-wands figure I had sketched to Sir Cei a few weeks earlier that neither of us was satisfied with) flew from the sole battlement of the tower. Sevendor Domain was whole again.
I detailed Sir Cei and Captain Forondo to interview the peasants from the village, as well as distribute gifts of blankets, furs, bread and meat (the first they’d had in months). I personally gave them a keg of decent cider, a couple of hams and a slaughtered goat and passed out a few dozen copper pennies. They were far more wretched than their peers in the western vale, with even more threadbare clothes, less sturdy dwellings, and an abysmal amount of firewood laid in for winter. Almost all of them were villeins. Less than a quarter were free men.
The folk of Brestal were confused, until Sir Cei informed them that Sevendor had re-taken Brestal, and then they were ecstatic. When they saw the new banner and a few dozen armed soldiers wandering around, as well as some freely-distributed food and clothes, you would have thought we were the gods themselves the way the Brestali treated us.
If the village was worse off than Sevendor, Brestal Tower, at least, was better than Sevendor Castle had been when we’d arrived.
It was a single square tower four stories tall, including the wooden tower that rose from the top and the storage room under the keep. Following the fashion of the time at which it was built, instead of the more modern square merlons, the crenellations were triangular and much larger than necessary. Brestal Tower kind of looked like it had cat ears.
The keep was surrounded by an uncrenellated curtain wall of dry mortared stone, within which were several outbuildings, a half-dozen cottages built against the wall, the kitchen and the stable. The bailey in turn was surrounded by a wooden palisade that supported the mound. Finally, a ditch acted as a dry moat, without a drawbridge but with the wooden bridge over the expanse well-covered by emplacements where, according to our prisoners, invaders such as we would have been stopped with crossbows.
Sir Lanulan might have been as much of a sot as Sir Erantal, but he also had a master close at hand to oversee him. We found the tower moderately well-provisioned, and two rooms on the second story were almost homey. The actual defenses were laughable,
and the soldiers only suitable for bullying peasants. But the interior and the few outbuildings were sufficient to house ten families comfortably, twice that in a pinch. And with the Bovali due to arrive in two days (they were about to make port at Sendaria) we were in a pinch.
While Sir Cei and the others straightened things out at the tower, I took my escort (augmented by a dozen ecstatic Brestali) north along the road to the low pass. By lunch time I had moved Sevendor’s misplaced boundary stone back into its proper position in the pass to the cheers and applause of my new subjects. Okay, maybe a few hundred feet past its original position.
I needed to make a statement, a very powerful visible statement, that demonstrated that things in Sevendor were different, now. The gap between the ridges was too wide to defend adequately, I decided, even if the tower was rebuilt. I decided a protective dike would be a wise idea, to at least limit the entry to something we could control. Digging ditches isn’t too hard, magically speaking, even in this rocky territory.
I summoned an earth elemental and spent another hour re-arranging the many boulders in the pass in a line at its narrowest point on each side, making it a bit more defensible. The gap between the two ridges was over three hundred yards wide, but that just made it a challenge to my new abilities. Seeing just how much I could accomplish with the Witchsphere, I directed the elementals to scratch a deep trench on either side of the river and road, piling the fill behind it.
It was the crudest of defenses, two big, long piles of dirt and rock that narrowed the neck of the pass to fifty feet, enough to permit the stream egress and to let a man walk from one side of the pass to the other and always have cover from the Flerian side. The Brestali peasants were awe-struck. The Bovali men-at-arms were impressed. When I was done, I posted a half-dozen stalwart Bovali with longbows and swords at the dike, and ever after it was so guarded, day and night.
My men’s mission was simple: no one got into or out of Sevendor without my leave.
As such, news of the re-conquest didn’t reach Fleria until three days after Yule. And by then it was far too late for them to do anything about it.
* * *
The night before Yule, just as the full moon rose, the first of the new Bovali settlers’ wagons came through the narrowed pass and passed through the new dike fortification to see their new land for the first time. Compared to how we had found it, six weeks of hard work, a small fortune in gold, and a powerful amount of magic had transformed my domain into something they could – someday – be proud of.
Sir Cei and a score of native Sevendori greeted them at the watchtower and offered mulled wine and sweet biscuits against the chill as a welcome. Luckily the nights had been dry of late, with little snow, allowing them to make good time over the hard frozen road through West Fleria – enemy territory, now. As they came through Sir Cei and his assistants directed them to various points for the night. Some went to the shelters put up in the Commons, some were to encamp on Gurisham’s tiny common, some went to Brestal Tower for the night, and many went directly to Sevendor Castle, where Alya and I greeted them before settling them in the outer bailey.
It was a happy reunion. I saw many good people I’d made friends with, and who I hadn’t seen since that fateful day my ex-girlfriend and I used sex magic to open a magical portal and rescue them from the Dead God. I saw people I’d helped find wandering cows for, or driven the rats from their barn. They were footsore and tired, but happy to be in their new home.
Farmers and herders, artisans, their wives and families. And children, lots of children. Most of the children were in this caravan, and their laughter and squeals of joy abounded, a sound which was pleasant to hear in the castle.
At first it was pleasant. And then people started to thank me. And thank me. And thank me. For saving their lives, for running the siege, for standing up to Sire Koucey . . . and for giving them a home when they were lost and dispossessed. It didn’t take long before it was overwhelming. I sat in the chair at the head of the hall, a small canopy overhead letting everyone know I was the lord, and I got aggressively thanked all evening.
One grown man after another broke down in tears and bowed like I was a Duke. Proud men, strong men, crumbled in front of me and wept like children in gratitude. Women wailed tearfully, begging for my blessing on their children. Entire families fell to their knees and sang praises to the gods in my name. It was overwhelming.
Thankfully, Lady Alya intervened. She looked radiant, wearing a white gown and a light blue mantle as big as a tent. She wore the big green emerald I’d given her for our wedding day on a golden chain, augmented with a spell to make it sparkle and glow when she wore it. She looked as regal as a queen, and her gentle smile, familiar face, and beautiful laughter helped soothe and cheer the exhausted and overwrought Bovali.
Lady Alya excused us both at one point, claiming she needed my magical assistance to make her more comfortable with the baby. She did have to pee – she always had to pee – but that’s not what she needed help with.
“Min, you’ve got to stop getting so worked up, you’re making people uncomfortable,” she said, when she came out of the privy.
“Making them uncomfortable?” I gasped. “Weren’t you paying attention? They’re nearly deifying me out there!”
“They’re just grateful, is all,” she soothed, rubbing her hand across my chest. “You – and you alone – saved them from the goblins. That would have been enough. But then you invite them to come to Sevendor to live as free men, keeping them all together, and you paid for them to come, fed them, clothed them, and greeted them with a warm hall and a friendly face of a kind lord.” She shook her head. “Min, if it wasn’t for you . . .”
“I just did what I had to, Alya!” I said, desperately. “I wasn’t looking for adoring followers! Sweet Briga, they’re acting like a cult!”
Her attitude changed. Quickly. That was happening a lot lately. “So . . . you’re basically complaining that your new subjects, upon whom you and your family’s security and welfare will ultimately depend, are too loyal and devoted?”
“Well, they don’t need to treat me like a demigod! That’s a hell of a lot to live up to!”
“They’re grateful,” she repeated. “Worse, they are grateful, they’re beholden, and they have nothing but the clothes on their back. They feel miserable for being away from home and terrified of being in a strange land. They are here by your grace alone, and that is a terrible burden on them. They have nothing left to offer you but their lives. So that is what they are offering you. You must give them the opportunity to express that gratitude, and by your grace accept it.”
“It makes me feel naked,” I said, shaking my head. “Not in the pleasant way. The naked-in-the-middle-of-temple-services way. They want to name babies after me!”
“Let them,” she insisted. “Believe me, Min, this is all very frightening to me . . . leaving home, the siege, getting pregnant, fleeing for our lives, living with your parents, getting married, getting ennobled, coming here, trying to put this place into shape . . . and to be honest, tonight is the first time I’ve felt like this might be home. I feel just as they do. I feel frightened.
“But you make it go away, Min. You’ve got that idiot boyish smile, that confident bearing, and you treat everyone, villein or lord, with respect and thoughtfulness. And so I’m grateful, because you didn’t have to do that and you did, as grateful as they are and eight thousand times more, but the only thing I have to offer you is myself. And if you don’t let me do that . . . well, then that just leaves me frightened.”
“Offer yourself?” I asked, surprised. “Do you think we have time?”
She slapped me playfully. “No, we really don’t. Unless you command it, Magelord,” she added, saucily. “But I understand how you feel, too. They’re treating me almost as much like some divine heroine as you. I’ve had two hundred hands on my belly tonight, and old ladies cry on me and give me advice. I’m a gods-damned living symbol of hope, and my biggest cl
aim to it is the fact that I’m sleeping with the lord of the domain!
“But I’ve got to smile serenely and let them paw me . . . because we’re all they’ve got. We’re the only ones in all of Callidore who give a damn about them, and they know it.
“So shut up, conjure up a smile on your face, and let these people weep in gratitude for an evening. We have to be the lord and lady they need, or they’re going to go mad.”
“How did you get so wise?” I asked, shaking my head and kissing her forehead.
“I don’t have to be wise. I’m pregnant.”
The rest of the evening I did just that. I wandered the hall and shook hands and laughed and drank with my new subjects. I did my best to play the lord for them, and even consented to do a few colorful cantrips in the air for their amusement. It also got their attention. So I decided to address them. I blame the wine.
For the newcomers, I brought them up to date. I told them about my raising an army in Alshar and convincing Castal to bring another to face the hordes, and how we had triumphed and kept the heart of the Five Duchies from the clutches of the Dead God.
I told them how I had met Sire Koucey in his dark visage on the field of battle. That produced some terrified looks.
I told them about how poor the state of Sevendor had been when we arrived, and all the work we had done and all the work yet to be done.
I told them of the fractured state of the domain and of our recent recapture of Brestal.
And I told them that it was possible that some other lord would try to wrest those lands from me, if I did not defend them.
Before I was done speaking, three dozen swords had flashed out of their scabbards and were laid at my feet. So did a pile of daggers and bows from those who hadn’t thought to arm themselves better. The growl from the Bovali was intimidating, and between that and the sudden display of naked steel, the few native Sevendori in the hall blanched. I hadn’t really expected the spontaneous show of support, and it took me aback.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Page 13