The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord

by Terry Mancour

  Mavone came up with the spell that destroyed it. He enclosed the entire keep in a bubble, and then kept pouring energy into it until the temperature inside was high enough to melt the metal and set anything flammable ablaze. When we rode away the old keep was a smoldering pile of rocks that bore no resemblance to a military fortification.

  And so it went. For five days we systematically conquered each and every one of the domains sworn to Gimbal and West Fleria. Sometimes we just marched in, raised our banner over a manor while the confused peasants looked on, and left an occupying force while we went on to the next one. We lost less than twenty men, slew less than a hundred, and destroyed three small castles in total before my apprentices and I decided it was time to speak to the Warbird under a flag of truce.

  That was pretty easy to arrange, since Landbrother Mison was angrily skulking just beyond the rear of Gimbal’s lines, fuming about the man’s betrayal of his treaty. Monks take such things seriously. He was only too happy to call a truce, after speaking to the landbrother we had rescued, and less than a week after I’d arrived at Sendaria Port, in a pasture three miles south of the Diketower my retinue and I met with Gimbal and his honor guard.

  “So, the Magelord has finally come home to witness the destruction of his domain,” the Warbird mocked, unaware of his situation. I had taken great pains to ensure that he had as yet no word from our surprise invasion. “Or are you here to beg me to spare it? Or just your wife and brat? What do you say to me now, mageling?” he taunted. “I have magical allies of my own now, and your tricks won’t work on me. Are you ready to beg me to spare your new-found riches?”

  “Well, I could challenge you to single combat,” I suggested, “which would settle the matter. But you would invoke a champion, and that would keep me from killing you, so I find that solution unsatisfactory.”

  “You kill me in a duel? That’s unlikely,” the man sneered proudly.

  “Or I could just depose you,” I said, as if considering between a pudding and a pie. “That would be simpler, although slightly less gratifying.”

  “Depose me?” he scoffed. “With your own land under siege and no lances to fight for you?”

  “Actually, you have a point,” I admitted. “With Sevendor under siege . . . with every knight in West Fleria at her gates . . . I couldn’t very well just depose you with my own troops.”

  “And they let you run an entire battle? An entire campaign?” Gimbal snorted contemptuously. “Was the Duke mad?”

  “I won an entire battle,” I reminded him. “And I made a lot of friends in the process. Friends eager to lend assistance . . . when I asked them to help me out. For instance, when I descended with five hundred mercenaries on a completely unprotected West Fleria,” I said, casually.

  I admit, I selfishly savored the moment, enjoying the change in expression I got to witness on Gimbal’s face as he realized, to his horror, what a tragic mistake he had made. “Don’t bother calling for help,” I said, as he reached for a horn in alarm, his mouth moving, but no coherent words coming out. “This little war you started is over. Castle Fleria flies Sevendor’s banner now, Baron Arathanial has retaken most of his family’s ancestral lands from you, and Sire Sigalan is even now rebuilding the village of Ferrendor you razed . . . and taxing the three other domains he just took in conquest from you.”

  Gimbal was speechless, and several of the knights in his honor guard angrily challenged the truce to Landbrother Mison.

  “You lie!” one of them – Sir Bromul, if I recalled correctly – shouted at us. “You’re bluffing to persuade us to let down our guard!”

  But Landbrother Mison was firm.

  “I’ll bear witness to the conquest,” he said, even managing to sound sorrowful while he did it. “My fellow priest is trustworthy, on that account. Your castles have fallen to Magelord Minalan and his allies, and there can be no question of legality. You, yourself declared an end to the truce, and declared a war, Warbird.”

  “And if you do not trust the veracity of a landbrother,” I added, signaling to our watcher, “then perhaps this will convince you.”

  Half a bowshot away some of the tough-looking mercenaries of the Black Boot Brigade led the wives and children of the knights fighting for Gimbal out, close enough for them to see their faces. The innocents they had left behind were now our hostages. Bromul’s aged wife was among them, apparently, for he immediately laid his sword at my feet and surrendered as a condition to keep her safe.

  Gimbal wasn’t as charitable.

  “You want my wife? Keep her!” he bellowed at me angrily. “Slit her throat right here, I’ll have another one by midwinter. My brats? Parasites all, kill them as well. But you will not extort a victory from me thus!” he shouted.

  “The victory is already at hand,” I insisted. “You are a landless knight, as of this moment. I confirmed by magical message this morning that my properly-executed Writ of Conquest has been duly filed with the Royal Office of Lands and Estates in Wilderhall. You may no longer command, lead, sell, or borrow on your former territories, and all of your revenues therefrom are now mine by law. My lawful rule now includes five of your former domains. The others I’ve given to my good friends Baron Arathanial and Sire Sigalan to divide between them as they see fit.”

  Gimbal’s men retreated into a huddle to discuss the matter, and I noticed a lot more of his men filling in behind them as news spread. I didn’t need the Long Ears spell to know what they were planning.

  They’re planning on breaking the truce, I told Pentandra, mind-to-mind. Tell Sarakeem to wound the first one to draw a blade. I’d had the sniper mage take up a position with his great horn bow in a tree where he had excellent oversight of our meeting. Pentandra, Planus, and Mavone waited at its base, ready to intercede if they actually did start a fight.

  “I challenge you to a duel of honor for the estates!” Gimbal finally said, when his counselors agreed that if what I said was true – and their shrieking wives and daughters suggested it was – then there was little other recourse for the lord. A duel of honor was one of the last, and most desperate, moves he had left in the game.

  “I refuse the duel on the grounds that you have no estates left for which to duel ,” I dismissed. “I hold them now, which makes you a landless knight. And by law, I need not entertain a challenge from a landless knight. Or a penniless one. Tell me, just what were you planning on paying your men with? The ample treasury I found at Castle Fleria? That is now mine by right, as well,” I observed.

  Gimbal went pale. If he didn’t pay his mercenaries, they had a reputation for taking their pay in other ways. If a knight lost his lands and his funds . . . well, he might be able to borrow to spare his life, but I wouldn’t be lending it to him. He was a bad risk. Maybe his brother would help him out of his debt . . . but I doubted it.

  “You godsdamned sorcerer!” he spat. “You won’t get away with this!”

  I watched a man who had ridden in feeling in the stronger position in a small war suddenly discover that he had a very weak position in a much larger war than he’d wanted. And now he’d lost everything – while he may have retained some estate somewhere in his brother’s territory I’d missed, as far as I knew he owned the armor he wore and horse he rode, and that was about it. The Warbird was plucked.

  Baron Arathanial and Sire Sigalan arrived around then leading a large column of their men . . . supplemented with volunteers from West Fleria who had gladly laid their swords at my feet because of their hatred of Gimbal. He had been a harsh master, and had played steady favorites among his liegemen, and those policies were now working against him. Few of his folk were loyal in even the tepid way Riverlands folk usually meant the word.

  “Those men are here to take your surrender,” I informed him, as I saw even more of Gimbal’s soldiers arrive behind him as the news spread back to his camp. “Once it becomes known that you cannot pay your men, they will not fight for you anymore unless they are your sworn men. And as you have no land or p
osition at present to swear fealty to, I’d say you have few enough warriors left in your service.”

  “I will ensure the men are paid,” said one newly-arrived knight, breaking from the rest and stepping forward. Damn. I was afraid of this. “I am Censor Commander Arlof,” he continued. “The Royal Censorate of Magic will see this war through to its conclusion. We will pay the mercenaries, as long as they are needed.” He would be paying twice, then, as the gold we’d uncovered in Fleria had doubtlessly come from the Censorate’s coffers.

  “The Censorate of Magic no longer exists in the Kingdom of Castalshar,” I informed him, delighting in saying the words. “It has been dissolved by writ of the King.”

  “I recognize . . . no . . . king,” the man said, realizing the irony of what he – one of the few to be able to claim to be “king’s men” – was saying. The Censorate did everything in the name of the King. That was easy when there didn’t happen to be one around to argue with.

  “But King Rard recognizes a threat to his realm,” I continued, “and has ordered all former Censors unwilling to swear to him to depart the realm at once, or risk his sanction. As an Officer of the Court, and a Marshal of the Duchy of Castal, I hereby order you and your men to either doff your cloaks and surrender, or leave the Kingdom at once. In the name of the King.”

  Since I had a steady stream of mercenaries and eager volunteers filling the space in behind me, just as quickly as Gimbal’s men were arriving, my words held some force. Censor Commander Arlof was a zealot, but he wasn’t stupid. I could see him making the mental decision to retreat and withdraw just as Baron Arathanial and Sire Sigalan arrived. With their men.

  “So what is it to be, Sire – sorry, Sir Gimbal?” I asked, patiently. “Lay down your sword and sue for peace, or defy the will of the King by consorting with Censors against his will?”

  He looked back and forth from his foes’ faces to his former allies’, and the desperation seemed to well up in him. I was fully prepared for him to do something stupid, when somebody else spared him.

  His bastard son, Sir Ganulan, had heard what had happened, had heard we held his mother a captive, and heard that his father was about to surrender. The boy could not take the ignominy of it. He grabbed a battle axe from somewhere and ran toward me screaming obscenities, breaking the truce and ensuring his own demise. Sarakeem’s blue-feathered arrow sprouted from his left kneecap before he was within two paces of me.

  Gimbal didn’t seem to notice – he was still in shock. But Arathanial quickly took control of the situation, and through the auspices of Landbrother Mison arranged an orderly surrender of the Warbird’s former liegemen.

  “I curse you, Magelord,” he said, defiantly before accompanying Mison and Arathanial as his son wailed in the background. “I shall get my lands back, and I shall see you dead,” he promised. “Law or no, I will not be treated thus! My honor demands it!”

  “Oh, shut up you stupid son-of-a-bitch,” I said, rolling my eyes. “If you’d behaved honorably from the beginning, none of this would have happened.” He glared daggers at me, but went to negotiate with Arathanial without speaking to me again.

  The rest of the day went smoothly. The mercenaries Gimbal hired agreed to remove themselves from the field upon payment, which I pledged from Gimbal’s own former coffers. More than half were just as happy fighting for me, so I hired them and paid them in advance for four weeks to help keep order in my suddenly-expanded realm.

  The Warbird’s former sworn men were confused, at first, as to what exactly had happened. Only after Brother Mison addressed them and bore witness did they admit that they were defeated.

  They were an interesting lot. They divided roughly into two groups, a small retinue of devoted followers who were personally loyal to the man, and a much larger group who had borne him as their liege because they had no other choice. Thankfully, four of the five new estates I had added to my demesne belonged to men who had no particular love for Gimbal, one of them being Sir Festarlan of Hosly, whose son, Sir Festaran, was once a prisoner and was now a loyal retainer of mine.

  To the loyalist I gave a chance to swear fealty to their new liege, and if they balked at all I had them removed from their office – I had plenty of people I wanted to reward, and the last thing I needed were surly vassals. Most were willing to serve a magelord as much as they were a Warbird, and pledged their fealty to me in person in return for their wives, daughters, and estates. I asked them to tarry with me a few days at Sevendor before they returned to their lands, so that I could give them some idea how life under a Magelord would be different than a Warbird. And so I could get to know them – I wanted to know exactly what I was getting in return for that oath.

  The Censors, nine of them in all, took to horse and abandoned their erstwhile ally in the field that hour. None were willing to change sides, and while they were generally in disbelief about King Rard’s coronation, they also knew how things looked at the moment – retreating was just a good idea, under the circumstances.

  I gave Sir Ganulan to the landbrothers for treatment of his shattered knee, after I silenced his screams with a spell. Afterwards Brother Mison informed me that Sir Gimbal and a small company of his loyal retainers would quit the field with their wives and kin and seek solace in the court of his hated brother, Baron Vulric.

  As he was Gimbal’s nominal liege, losing his entire demesne would be a harsh humiliation to endure while he depended upon his brother’s charity. I didn’t care. Gimbal and his brood were no longer a threat to Sevendor, and that was the important thing.

  Just before twilight, when all the players in the field had figured out their next moves, I rode to within sight of the Diketower, and the moment I saw the it I cast a bright green magelight at its apex. I extended my awareness, and stretched just a little . . . and a moment later a much brighter one floated over the tallest spire of Sevendor Castle, miles across the valley from me. I could hear the cheering from where I sat in the saddle, the message unmistakable.

  The Magelord was home, and Sevendor was relieved.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  My New Neighbors

  The aftermath of my sudden invasion and partition of West Fleria had far-ranging political consequences, but it was the short term consequences that truly bothered me.

  First there were the dead. Twenty-two Sevendori, most of them Bovali, had fallen in defense of the Diketower. Among them were some I would miss.

  Caolan’s pass had fallen without a single Sevendori death . . . because Railan the Steady, the Yeoman sent with a troop of militia to hold it in support of Yeoman Kamen, had surrendered the pass to Gimbal’s men without a fight the second day of the siege. He had been certain of Gimbal’s swift victory, and when faced with actual battle he proved more Cowardly than Steady. We found him among the prisoners we’d culled from the forces camped around the Diketower.

  There were a lot more prisoners to deal with than I liked. The mercenaries were no problem, and many I took into service in one way or another. The conscripted commoners were largely pardoned and sent home, just in time to finish out the harvest. A few were held out for especial consideration, upon Sir Cei’s advice, and they would have to be dealt with severely. That meant court, and for four days after we overthrew the Warbird, we sat under a pavilion on the Sevendor village commons and plucked his army bare.

  The men who had taken up arms against me while wearing Mage’s marks were spared the noose, but sentenced to indenture in Sevendor’s service for two years, as part of the new Iron Ring force in the Penumbra. One or two Sir Cei singled out for yet harsher punishment, and insisted that they do six months of hard labor as villeins and bondsmen first.

  Sire Gimbal had promised the men the Censors would remove their marks after victory in battle, and I could not fault them for that. Still, as oath-breakers I had the right to sentence them, and I might as well get some labor out of them.

  I allowed the yeomanry, country knights and itinerate sell-swords to leave without
marks, but only if they were able to pay token ransoms to back up their pledges. As most of them were now vassals to myself, Baron Arathanial, or Sire Sigalan, I doubted they would try to renege on their pledges, especially when we had demonstrated how we treated oath-breakers. A few were genuinely happy to accept new lieges, as Gimbal had angered many of his vassals over the years.

  One was particularly happy: Sire Festarlan of Hosly. He had gone to war against Sevendor only upon threat of execution, as he did not wish to fight a man who held his son hostage.

  For his part, young Sir Festaran had valiantly defended Sevendor, and had led two unsuccessful sorties against the mercenaries in Caolan’s Pass. He had hurt his wrist in the last encounter, but even in the face of fighting his father’s liege, the brave young knight had continued to act more as a loyal vassal than a hostage. Sir Cei, who masterminded the defense, had not balked at using the lad’s enthusiasm just because of a legal technicality. The Siege of Boval Castle had taught him how useless such things were in a time of emergency.

  But Hosly was one of the five domains I’d claimed in conquest, one of five closest to Sevendor. Sire Festarlan was pleased to be able to lay his sword at my feet and be the first among my new vassals to swear fealty.