“That was a hearty blow you landed, Captain,” Meldus said. “I thank you and your friends for the help.”
“You were doing quite well on your own,” Damicos replied. “Just needed a hand with one or two of them.”
They walked quickly out of the tavern and scanned the darkened street for their companions. Pelekarr and the others were returning along the cobbled way, empty-handed. It seemed the cutthroats had opted to outrun the soldiers rather than face them again.
“About that job,” Meldus said. “If you and your men are willing to accompany me back to Dura, we can prepare to leave in the morning. Otherwise I should be out of here before the marshals round everyone up for questioning. There’s little enough time to get back and organize the assault without all that.”
Damicos nodded. “I think we find ourselves in close to the same situation now, with but a few days to leave Belsoria. And now Pelekarr’s heard his nemesis is hiding with the outlaws, I’m willing to bet he’s amenable.” They shook hands on it. “You’ve hired yourself a small army, Meldus.”
“Glad to hear it. Very glad indeed. Your company won’t regret this enterprise, and judging by the fighting spirit I witnessed tonight—”
A shape loomed out of the tavern’s doorway behind them, and Meldus flinched. Damicos saw that it was the hulking man who’d helped dispatch one of the bandits, bald head shining in the dim lamplight.
“I’m called The Yak,” the big man said, extending a massive hand to the captain.
“It fits,” said Damicos. “Quite a display in there.”
“You captains, I heard you talking of a free company that’s forming.”
“We were.”
“Still hiring men on?”
“We are.”
“I’m desiring to be one, then.”
“You are.”
CHAPTER 11: A PLACE WORTH GUARDING
It was a beautiful morning for marching. A few early travelers watched with interest as the mercenary column filed along the highway from Ostora’s biggest port city. The infantry, as usual, marched behind the bulk of the cavalry, but a light rain just before dawn had dampened the road dust for them.
Pelekarr, in keeping with Kerathi military doctrine, assigned a small cavalry detachment to bring up the rear of the column. Keltos and Makos were used to rearguard duty, but after their help in the fight at the tavern the night before, they’d been promoted to banner duty and now rode directly behind the captains. With no actual banner for the newly formed company, however, they carried the old colors of the Cold Spears and Storm Furies with equal placement.
Meldus rode between the captains, on a solid little dun.
“Tell me more of this place we’re going,” Pelekarr said, as they rode.
“Dura? It’s a quiet town, a pleasant place like I told before.” Meldus replied. “What else would you know of it?”
Damicos, riding on their guide’s other side, answered. “An old soldier should know the value of understanding the terrain. Especially terrain we might be asked to defend before long.”
Meldus nodded. “I love to recount the virtues of my home, just stop me if I bore you, sirs.”
“We will,” Pelekarr curtly assured the man.
“Dura’s old,” Meldus explained, “as old as any in Ostora, though none live to remember its founding. A mere five years after the first Kerathi landfall, they say it was, in the Year of the Gazelle. Some of those first Ostoran explorer-settlers wandered into the hill country where the Southwhite River swings north out of the forest to join the main river and curve east to the sea. Among those ancient folds they found a fertile valley tucked away in silence among the listening hills.
“Rich black soil, there. The climate’s mild, being not so far removed from the coast, and the game is still plentiful to this day. Dense timber of conifers on the slopes and crests, with old-growth beeches and tilia on the flats. And over all, there’s a quietness, a feeling of ancient waiting.”
He paused, eyes resting on some distant point where the ragged clouds disappeared into a swirl of greenery on the horizon. Then he looked over at the captains. “Not brooding and dark, just a patience, you might say. Wove a spell on the early settlers, and they didn’t care to see more of Ostora after that.”
Keltos, listening, figured the man was weaving in bits of local legend and poetry to make vivid his description. He could have been a teller of tales in the old country.
“The hills wove a spell…” Pelekarr echoed. “Sorcery, you think?” He was blandly skeptical.
“Not what you or I would call sorcery, Captain,” Meldus answered with a twist of his lip. “But there’s something to the land there, I tell you. A good thing. There’s a strength and a power in those quiet glens that goes deep. Some think it flows with the lively river that splashes down out of the high country, giving vitality to the region. No one’s ever followed it all the way to its source, though; few folk care to leave the hills once they take up there. And sometimes I think…”
Meldus trailed off into silence again, a strange look in his eyes. Then he shook his head. “Only the gods can know. But it’s home, the only imaginable home for we who dwell there. Worth fighting for, worth defending.”
Keltos tried to get a better look at the man’s face. Was he selling this place to the captains for a purpose, or did he really feel a half-mystical connection to the landscape they were about to enter? It was hard to tell.
Then the column came to a full stop, and the conversation was forgotten for the moment. Ahead was something none of them had seen before, none except perhaps Meldus and one or two of the veterans among them.
There was a small hill up ahead, and it was moving. Had it lain still, Keltos would have taken its mottled surface for a rocky butte the size of a few houses stacked together, and none would have blamed him for being unobservant: there were indeed grasses and small brush growing on the top of the thing. But it had eyes, baleful brown globes that rested on the glinting speartips and bronze shields of the troops on the road. And now Keltos could make out a massive rounded head with a dull beak below it, tucked well back amid large boulders which he now realized were shoulders or bulky legs.
“What in the name of all the gods?” murmured Pelekarr along with many of the men, his neck craning to see the extent of the creature’s ponderous body. It moved slowly, taking many seconds to place one huge foot down on the earth and then to raise the next and slide it onerously across the terrain.
A smile spread wide across Meldus’ face.
“That,” he told the captains, voice tinged with awe, “is a giant craton. I’ve seen but one other like it in my life.”
“Is it dangerous?” Damicos asked, though Keltos couldn’t see why—the thing was clearly capable of crushing anything it came across. And he doubted their lances would do anything to the huge beast. It would be like sticking a pin into a tree and hoping it would fall down.
“She won’t turn on us suddenly,” Meldus said. “She can’t do anything suddenly. But keep your men back. We wouldn’t want to anger her.”
“What… where does it come from?” Pelekarr asked. “And where is it going?”
Meldus shrugged, content to sit and watch the epic body lumber slowly across the land. “Usually they keep to the mountains. Once in a while one wanders this far east, can’t say why. Maybe looking for a mate. Who know?”
Keltos and Mak grinned in astonishment, trying to picture the thing mating. It would cause an earthquake.
“Is it a kind of turtle?” Damicos asked.
“Well, hardly that,” Meldus replied. “But similar, as you can see by its back. It might be more crab than turtle. There’s many a tale in the frontier towns of hunters camping on a solitary hilltop for the night, only to get a rude upsetting when their campfire disturbs the thing. Remember that: in Ostora, a hill isn’t always a hill.”
It took the craton a full ten minutes to pass the road. Both men and horses stayed quiet while it went by.
> At length Meldus gestured the way onward.
“We can be going now. Still many miles yet, to Dura.”
The captains shook their heads in wonder as they snicked the reins to get their mounts moving again.
“Has anyone ever killed one before?” Damicos asked.
“No. We try to leave them alone,” the Duran said. “Nothing useful to harvest from one, and it would simply be bad luck. They’re rare enough, killing one would probably mean it was the last you ever saw in this country. Unless you meant to venture far into the distant mountains, which no man I know has ever done.”
They rode on, leading the column past footprints in the dust of the road that were as large as a whole wagon. After they’d been riding for several minutes, Damicos returned to their earlier line of discussion with a new question.
“Surely the barbarians disputed the settlement of that rich heartland you were singing the praises of,” he posited. “If it’s such a haven for your people, was it not a coveted home for their ancestors?”
“Funny thing,” Meldus answered, “Even after living there and digging out foundations for the town’s buildings, they found no sign of the raff ever having used the area. That’s another reason they chose to settle there, and a reason we’ve prospered so well in the interim.”
“The raff, they say, are as mercurial as they are savage,” Pelekarr observed. “Who could speculate on why they do anything?”
Meldus eyed the captain with a smile hovering on his lips. “And have you come to grips with them in your time here, Captain?”
Pelekarr cleared his throat. “Well, no, not directly. This is hearsay, I suppose. But everyone I’ve spoken with agrees on the matter. The barbarian tribes are impossible to treat with, fickle in their ways and truculent beyond measure.”
Damicos tilted his head to one side. “And yet the governor seemed to think it was a situation that could be managed. What say you, Meldus?”
“Oh, they’re fearsome strange,” the Duran replied. “And hard to read. But they’re men like you or I at heart, and respond to the same things. Push them, they’ll push back. Pay them off, they’ll find a way to extract more pay from you. Anger them, and they’ll become enemies.”
“Has it been tried, paying them to keep out of the way?” Pelekarr asked, surprised.
“Yes, many times in the early days. Unfortunately more than one of the offered bribes went unfulfilled, and now most of the clans consider us worse than devils, never to be trusted. Like I said, the same kind of response you or I would have to a man that pulled out on a deal.”
Damicos chuckled at the veiled hint. “Don’t worry about us, Meldus. We’ll come through in this fight for your people, no fear.”
“Oh, I wasn’t referring to our arrangement at all, sirs,” the man quickly replied. “Not at all. I trust in our partnership. How could I not, after seeing you stand up with me against the cutthroats in the tavern last night?”
Damicos nodded. “So why do you think the barbarians stayed clear of Dura? Plenty of game, as you said, and mild winters. Why would they keep to the trees when there was such a prize to be held?”
“Me, I think they stay out of those hills on account of the ruins. The place I suggested for your encampment outside Dura. You see, during their initial scout of the hills those early settlers discovered that they were not the first inhabitants of the area. On a bench overlooking the valley, they found the ruined foundations of something big that once stood there.”
“But you said the raff—”
“This wasn’t built by the raff. Not as we know ‘em today, at least; maybe their ancestors had something to do with it. This place was big. Take you half a day to walk the borders of it and discover all the overgrown foundation lines.”
“What was it? A prior settlement, a city?”
“Who knows? There’s not enough of it left now, and whether fortress or a palace, none can say. Built from great blocks of dark gray stone, speckled with lichen now and so weathered by time that no chisel marks can be seen, let alone carven statues or murals like I’ve heard Kerath has on every corner.
“No idea where the stone came from, for it’s far different stuff than what we get among the hills for our own buildings. Durans took some of it to use in their buildings at first, but soon stopped for it’s difficult stuff to work with. And the long-dead builders, whoever they were, they left no other trace of ownership on the land. Just crumbled masonry with long grass and tangled briars growing over it now, with here and there a tree or a tumbled-in well.”
Sergeant Bivar, riding nearby, scowled and chimed in. “Everything you’ve told of these ruins speaks of ill luck, to me. The ancient builders died out, the raff keep away, and nor any of your folk have taken up there either. Are the well’s poisoned, is that why Dura was sited elsewhere?”
Meldus shook his head, eager to dispel the beginning of a dark rumor. “They built Dura where it stands to be nearer the river, that’s all. But we pasture sheep among the ruins every year, and no harm’s come to them. It’s possible the barbarians avoid the place for its sacredness, or because of some old legend. Nothing I’ve heard of, but it wouldn’t surprise me. They have any number of special sites marked out all over Ostora. Half of them are plowed under by farmers now, and nothing comes of it. It’s a peaceful place, aside from these wretched bandits that now afflict us.”
“Do you mean to tell us that the barbarians have never attacked Dura?” Pelekarr asked.
“Mishtan’s golden beard! Bless you, Captain, they’ve attacked us many a time. Time or two, came within a whisker of wiping us out. No, they don’t mind raiding into the hills when it suits their wild purposes. All I’m saying is that the settlers found no sign they’d ever lived there, or even camped among the ruins. But they have all Ostora to roam in, so perhaps it’s not so strange as I make it sound. It’ll make a good camp, one way or the other.”
Meldus chattered on as the column wound through the countryside. The traffic on the road had thinned and they went miles without seeing anyone but a farmer or two, which had to pull their carts aside until the company had passed.
After a time, the once-distant wrinkles of hazy green loomed around them and Keltos realized they had entered the hill country at last. Enfolded by grassy ridges and verdant domes, marching grew less onerous. The men stepped smarter, eager to see what lay beyond the next bend in the winding road. They reached the end of the first valley and passed through a narrow place only to see another valley open before them, and another after that.
Here and there among the lush slopes fields of rich grain were glimpsed, the result of years of careful husbandry and honest toil. And now and then a roof or cluster of roofs spoke of a hamlet or farmhouse, solid places with defensive stockades driven into the surrounding earth. Where there was no grain, fat cattle and sheep grazed up to their bellies in native grasses.
Finally, as the sun lowered toward the hills rising in the west before them, the soldiers came to a high point in the road that looked down upon the town they’d heard so much about.
“There she is,” Meldus proudly announced to the captains. “As pretty as I told you, isn’t she?”
“It’s a town, not a woman, as far as I can tell,” Pelekarr drily observed. He wasn’t as appreciative of the effusive Ostoran’s endless talk as Damicos. “But it looks orderly enough.”
Gazing down from the road, the men all eyed the collection of neat homes and public buildings. It did indeed look healthier, more solid than other villages they’d passed through before. The settlers had evidently built deep and solid here, built to last the ages. River stone was used in the ground floor of most homes, and the settlers had also taken from slate deposits in the hills for roof material that was much tighter and longer-lasting than thatch. And with stone roofs, the frames of the buildings had to be made of large, solid timbers, much sturdier than the standard structures on the coast.
The streets were fully paved, and the central lane straddled a rive
r that gushed foaming through a small gorge of speckled granite boulders. Two bridges of stone crossed the river in parallel spans from east to west.
“You’ve had a skilled stone mason at work here in years past,” Damicos observed.
“Yes, Captain. An early settler in the area was the son of a royal stoneworker, and it was he that built those bridges and a few other pieces you’ll see in town. Best of all, though,” Meldus added, “is the Tooth and Blade.”
“The inn?”
“Aye, but calling the Tooth and Blade an inn is like calling the Goddess of Love a ‘pretty girl’. Stepping foot in there is like coming home after a lifetime at war, and Haila’s coppernut ale will take every bit of road dust off your tongue at the first sip.”
Damicos hid a smile. He was fairly certain that Pelekarr’s family estate in Kerath was grand enough to dwarf a hundred colonial inns, no matter how rich the ale. He waited for his aristocratic fellow-captain to deliver a sharp set-down, but Pelekarr rode in silence, seemingly content to let their guide blissfully sing the praises of his rustic sanctorum.
“Is that it, there in the middle by the second bridge?” Damicos asked.
“Aye, the big one in the center. Granite boulders to form the lower levels, and great timbers like ships’ masts for the upper walls and roof. The grandest lodge you ever saw,” Meldus answered.
The building was indeed impressive, even to Kerathi eyes that had seen vaulted ceilings and pillared ways across the sea. Four stories high with balconies and huge logs running along roof and corner, the inn took up half a block next to one of the more picturesque plazas in Dura’s heart.
It was even bigger than the jaw-dropping creature they’d seen on the road earlier, which still made Keltos shake his head in amazement when he thought of it. His mother and sister would never believe him if he could tell them of such things. Ostora was truly a land of wonders.
“Why build such a grandiose structure for a gathering-place of farmers?” Pelekarr wanted to know.
“It’s how they were, Captain, and how we still are. It’s a place to come to, a place that lasts down the long years, with grandfathers drinking alongside their grandsons at the same oaken bar from their youth. The Tooth and Blade is big enough to fit most of Dura inside for feast days and harvest dances. The food is legendary, the drink is legendary, the rooms are comfortable as you could ask…”
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