by Robert Beers
“You wanted me killed?”
Bilardi sighed and sat on the edge of his desk. “As I said, I've grown somewhat since we first met, a lot, actually. Back then I was a spoiled scion of an old house. The first and only son of the reigning Duke, and already secure in the knowledge that I was better than any other man out there. Then you came into the picture.”
“Shattered some preconceptions, eh?” Ethan said, with a smile.
Bilardi smiled back. “Just a few, but it was my father being struck by an assassin that broke the dam. That drove into reality the knowledge that I was no different that anyone else when it came down to basics. Prince or pauper, we all breathe in order to live.” He directed an intent look at Adam, “That was you also, wasn't it?”
Adam frowned, “Was what?”
“You did something, something that kept my father from dying. The physics couldn't have done anything, they told me as much. There was poison on the bolt they drew out of him. It has no antidote that anyone knows of. If you weren't there...” his voice thickened, “My father owes you his life, as do I.”
“I can't believe you wanted to have me killed.”
“Oh, get over it, Adam,” Ethan growled. “He's apologized, twice now. There are a couple of other things you should probably devote your time to instead. One of them concerns the intentions of the sitting Duke, he hasn't apologized.”
“True,” Bilardi said, “And there is that rumor I mentioned.”
“That's right,” Ethan added, “how is it the pub crawlers of Grisham seem to know the heir of Labad is out and about, and the gentry do not?”
“Who said the gentry were unaware?” Bilardi looked at Ethan out the corner of an eye.
Adam ran a hand through his hair and began pacing the floor in front of Bilardi's desk. “Then that settles it. I've got to get out of here. I should have left months ago, and now it could be too late.”
“You can't run from your destiny lad,” Ethan placed a hand on Adam's shoulder as the pacing stopped. “All you'll do is delay it a bit. Eventually it will catch up to you, believe me, I know.”
“Besides,” Bilardi added, “if you had gone earlier, there's a good chance we'd all be dead. I think, now, that all of this,” he waved a hand, “is part of that destiny Ethan mentioned, and the rest of it awaits you ... out there.”
“Uh, yes, about that,” Adam murmured.
“Yes?” Bilardi raised his eyebrows.
“Thaylli's already gone. I sent her out one of the tunnels yesterday with that wolf that came back with us,” Adam smiled, adding a shrug as an apology.
“You ... after I ... after your promise that...” Bilardi sputtered, and then he threw up both of his hands. “Why do I even bother?” He asked the ceiling. “I am surprised, Adam. I never thought you would go back on your word.”
“I didn't”
“What? I heard your promise. You most assuredly did!”
“He's right,” Ethan said, quietly, “he didn't. He merely said he'd do what was right. He didn't say whose opinion of right he'd follow.”
Bilardi opened his mouth a couple of times, and then sat back heavily onto the edge of his desk. “I give up. You two have led me around like a bullock with a ring in his nose since you got together. I'm really not sure whether or not Grisham won't be safer with you gone.”
“What about your father?” Adam asked.
Bilardi shrugged, “He'll be ok. I'm the one who oversees the city guard, not him, besides, what can one paranoid old man do?”
* * * *
It had taken Charity and her companions two days to reach the outskirts of the Ortian army, and another day of explanations to reach Jarl-Tysyn's tent. At least two of the officers blocking their progress wanted to intern them as possible spies. Fortunately, Sergeant Travers recognized them and vouched for their good character. He took them to an officer who'd witnessed Neely's fight with Murt, and that officer used his senior status to muzzle the complaints of the two lower rankings.
“There's the General's tent. I don't know what you hope to accomplish by trying to see him. He's short-tempered at best, and that's when he's home and in bed.” The officer indicated the tent with a nod of his head.
“Thank you Colonel, but as Neely said earlier, it will be a lot safer all the way around if we have his permission for what we're going to do.” Charity hugged herself as a cold breeze swept in from the sea bringing with its chill the smell of salt and seaweed.
“Yeah,” Neely said, through a bite of hard biscuit, “we'd druther have our backs looked after than full ‘o holes, iffn you follow.”
“Sergeant Travers mentioned something about a covert mission...” The Colonel began.
“Oh, it ain't nothing like that,” Flynn interjected, “We's just gonna sneak into the city, that's all.”
The Colonel smiled, and nodded, “I see. Well, Jarl-Tysyn will have to authorize any incursion beyond the skirmish line. I don't see how you're going to advance past that chasm, though.”
Jarl-Tysyn's tent was set up on a rise in the land just east of the highway. The entrance to the tent faced north, towards Grisham's gates. The city walls rose above the horizon line as a brooding affront to the General's sense of duty. Labad's highway had been kept clear, the wide strip of stone being much more useful for the movement of wagons and personnel than a tent's foundation.
On either side of the tent stood two open-sided pavilions, each one of them held a long table, slightly higher than normal. The General could be seen in the one on the left, pouring over several large parchments spread out before him. A group of officers occupied various positions around the table. Two of them seemed to be older than the rest.
One of the guards standing just outside the pavilion noticed their approach and moved to block their way.
“Let ‘em pass.” Jarl-Tysyn remained focused on the parchments before him, and spoke without turning his head, “Ginette-Pries, take your men and see if they can figure some way of getting across that skrudding great gulch.”
One of the officers, a tall, thin man with a fringe of white hair and ascetic features, slapped his fist against his chest in salute and left the cover of the canopy. Two of the others left with him.
The General turned and glared down at Charity and her party as they reached the steps leading to the canopy. “Hmmph,” He grunted, “So this is the group of warriors and wild women they told me about.”
He closed with Flynn and stared up at the big man. “From what I heard, you must be the giant. You don't look twelve feet tall.”
“I ain't m'lord. Leastways, I don't think I am,” Flynn said, easily.
Jarl-Tysyn grunted again, and moved on to stand in front of Charity, “And you're the witch, eh?”
Neely turned and started forward with his hand on the haft of his knife, but the General held up both hands and backed off a step, “Hold up there, lad. I mean no insult to the lady. I'm just saying what I've been told.”
“Then you been told a pile of crap. I want a chance to show this teller th’ error of his ways.” Neely's eyes stayed even with the General's.
“Back down, Neely, you'll do no such thing. We don't have time for this.” Charity rebuked the rangy tracker.
“Ah, it's no problem, Charity. I'll explain my position real clear, like.” Neely paused on each of the last three words.
“Kin I help, Neely?” Flynn rumbled, cracking his knuckles.
“Flynn!” Charity rounded on the big redhead.
“You see, General, we take our lady's honor rather seriously. It don't pay fer a man to run contrary to it.” Neely chewed on a nail, spat, and examined the result.
Flynn grunted in assent.
Jarl-Tysyn scowled, and then relaxed his expression as he nodded, “Hmm, I'll keep that in mind. Now, why the skrud are you three here, and what in the flick is that child doing with you?” He pointed at Circumstance.
To Charity's surprise, the usually unflappable Circumstance took shelter behind Flynn. She smile
d at him and then turned back to Jarl-Tysyn, “I don't know about what you've heard, General, and I really don't care. We've been through some adventures, this is true, and my companions have proven themselves the equal of anyone else you'd care to mention. This is really just a courtesy call.We're here because we plan to get into that city,” she nodded in the direction of Grisham.
The General looked over his shoulder, “So do I, but there was this skrudding earthquake, and it put a flicking great bloody ditch between us and it. I lost over a hundred thousand good men by the time the shaking stopped. So tell me missy, how in Bardoc's bloody balls do you plan to get across it?”
“We could just go in by way of th’ harbor,” Neely said. “Ain't no bloody ditch blockin’ you there.”
“Tried it,” Jarl-Tysyn said, in a flat tone, “seems the folks in Grisham aren't too trusting. They've sunk every ship that tried that. Some of them actually were merchantmen, too,” he mused, wryly.
“Then we'll just have cross the chasm,” Charity stated. The finality in her voice raised Jarl-Tysyn's eyebrows.
He swept his gaze across each of them once more in turn and then walked back up to the table. “Come up here, I want to show you something. Deric-Hess! Drag over that last perimeter map.”
A young looking officer near the end of the table jumped, and then hastily pulled out an extremely large parchment scroll and opened it as Charity and her companions reached the tables edge.
Jarl-Tysyn slapped some weights down onto each corner and indicated the contents with a sweep of his hand. “There! Look at that thing! I've had draftsmen following its perimeter for the past two weeks. It cuts into the sea right here,” he stabbed a thumb at a point on the lower right of the map, “and exits into that bloody great bay to the north, here,” he planted a forefinger onto a spot on the upper left corner. “You tell me how to cross something you can't throw a stone across, and there's water, no telling how deep, in its bottom.”
All four of them looked at the map. Circumstance ran a finger along the blue line that indicated the water within the chasms depths. “How far down does it go to the water?”
Deric-Hess frowned. “It varies. Over here, along the western wall, there are sheer cliffs over a thousand feet above the water. Just in front of us here,” he stabbed a section of the map, “the cliff walls are only half that high.”
“Five hundred feet, and that's the shortest drop.” Jarl-Tysyn growled. “What are you going to do, grow wings?”
Charity ignored the General's acerbity, and turned to the young officer. “We were told the chasm is too wide to throw a stone across, do you know where the narrowest point is?”
“Yes, milady, over here,” Deric-Hess pointed at a spot a couple of inches inward from where the chasm met the sea. “It narrows here to a mere one hundred or so feet across.”
Neely snorted, “A mere hundred feet, may as well be a thousand. Ain't no way a man can jump that, but,” he looked at Jarl-Tysyn, “I knows I could toss a spear across that, much less a rock.”
“The General most likely did not include that site in his estimation because a man would have to live long enough to complete the throw,” Deric-Hess explained. “Where the cliff face juts out there is little cover, save for the odd bush or two. They may hide a rabbit or a fox, but not a man. The few soldiers who have tried have been met with a hail of arrows. None of them survived.”
“So that's why you haven't built a bridge,” Circumstance looked up from the map.
“That, and the fact that the quake turned every one of my siege engines into kindling,” Jarl-Tysyn grimaced. “I wasn't left with a single timber long enough to be usefull for anything except kindling.”
He slapped both hands together behind his back and turned towards Grisham, “All of this, just to get one skrudding blackard. We'd leave the whole bloody city alone if we could get their Duke handed over to us, but, that's a weed-dream in itself,” He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to them.
“This skrudding war is going to kill hundreds of thousands, maybe ten hundreds of thousands, you know, all because a madman had to take out his grudge on an innocent girl. If you four can get in there...” He turned back to face them, “And for some reason ... I don't know why, I've got a feeling you can.”
He smiled, “That's surely not from the look of you, I must say, you're a pretty scruffy bunch.”
Flynn looked down and brushed at the dust clinging to his jerkin, “We ain't had a chance to clean up, General. You should see Miss Charity after a bath, she'd turn a head or two.”
Jarl-Tysyn chuckled at Charity's blush, “Yes, yes, I suppose she would, but I can't say that for you two,” he stabbed Flynn and Neely with his eyes. “No matter, it's not your looks that won the field at Cloudhook.”
“You heard about that?” Neely said, surprised.
“Yes, I did,” Jarl-Tysyn murmured. “A little bird by the name of Lemmic-Pries told me.”
Charity's eyes widened. “The chief Engineer?”
“You've heard of him, have you?” Jarl-Tysyn said. Lightly. “It seems you impressed him ... considerably, and his Lordship isn't easily impressed. If I had a few thousand more fighters like you...” He trailed off and turned back toward Grisham, shaking his head. “If I give you cover to get in there, will you do something for me?”
Charity looked at Flynn and Neely. They shrugged their shoulders. Circumstance returned her look with a level stare.
She cleared her throat with a cough, “Um, I'd need to know a bit about what I'm being asked to do, General, if you can tell me.”
He turned back to face her, scowling. “You would, eh?” He held that pose for several long seconds, and then shook his head again. “Well, then, gather round this table. Deric-Hess! Get me that schematic of the palace and its grounds.”
The young officer ran into the tent next to the pavilion and reappeared a few moments later with a thick sheaf of parchments under one arm. Jarl-Tysyn snatched them and spread them across the table. Each sheet appeared to have a bird's eye representation of Grisham's Ducal palace drawn on it in dark brown ink, but there were differences.
The General rummaged through the sheets and picked one out, sliding it to a position so Charity and her companions could see it as well as he. “This is the palace's first floor.”
“These is all the palace?” Flynn picked up a sheet and peered at it closely.
“Yes, they are,” Jarl-Tysyn said, dryly, as he took the sheet from Flynn's hand. They are also quite old. They were copied from the originals a couple of centuries ago, just in case. Seems the Emperor back then had a head on his shoulders,” he murmured.
Neely slid another one of the sheets over to where it lay next to the first. “Then, if I'm readin’ this right, this one's th’ second floor.”
“So, you're an architect?” The general looked at Neely in surprise.
“Naw, I ain't no lord,” Neely replied. “Trackin's th’ same iffn it's in th’ brush, or th’ city. A man learns what to look for after a while. Why're you showin’ us this?” He looked up at the General.
“That would be my question as well, General,” Charity said, quietly, but with an edge of steel in her tone.
Jarl-Tysyn blew out his cheeks with a gusty sigh, “Lemmic-Pries gave me the impression there was little you four could not accomplish. I asked around. Sergeant Travers, he was the one who attempted to conscript you, wasn't he?”
Charity nodded.
“Yes, well, my questions led me to the Sergeant, a good man there. He had enough steel in him to answer truthfully. Not too many men will admit to being cowed by a slip of a girl, even if she is flanked by a giant and a man on crutches.”
Neely snickered, and Flynn's chortle threatened to explode into laughter. Jarl-Tysyn ignored them. “He said you were an amazing archer. Did you really split your own arrow at a range of over one thousand yards?”
“She sure did, an, I bet she coulda done it at twice that far,” Flynn broke in, beaming with
pride.
The General nodded, “He suggested as much. Travers didn't have much to say about your shooting ability,” He centered his gaze on Flynn and Neely, “But he said he believed the reports from the Engineers. They also included some fascinating speculation on this lad here. Circumstance, is it?”
“Yes, Sire General.”
Jarl-Tysyn smiled. Charity thought the expression looked lost on the man's face. “General by itself will do just fine, lad. Tell me, boy, what's so special about you? Other than having a bit of elf in your background, that is.”
Circumstance's right hand reached up to where his hair covered his ear, and then, tentively, he returned the General's smile. “You notice things more than the others do, don't you, General?”
Jarl-Tysyn grunted, “Habit of the job, lad, a habit of the job. That's why I also notice you're avoiding my question, even if you're doing it politely.”
Circumstance looked up at Charity. She dipped her head in a single nod.
“Ok,” he said, “I can do some things normal people can't do. I don't know what it all is. Usually I just do it when I need to.”
Jarl-Tysyn chewed his lip as he looked down at the boy, “What sort of things?”
Charity stepped over and put and arm around Circumstance's shoulders, “I don't think we need to go into that just now, General. It's enough to say that without his help I doubt any of us would be here talking to you.”
“Ain't that th’ truth,” Neely snorted, nodding his head.
Jarl-Tysyn continued to look at Circumstance and chew his lip. After a while he nodded to himself and turned away. “All right, here it is. I need something done. This war is the result of one man's actions against the niece of our Emperor.”
“We heard about that,” Flynn said.
“Filthy bastard needs a lesson in manners,” Neely said, fingering the haft of his knife.
“My thoughts exactly,” the General replied. “The Imperial Council wants to burn the city to the ground. The Emperor is going along with them, but I feel, reluctantly. If there was a way to remove the Duke, alive if possible, and deliver him to trial in Ort...”