[Ergoth 01] - A Warrior's Journey

by Paul B. Thompson

  Egrin did not try to wake him. Tenderly, the elder warrior draped one of Urakan’s heavy capes around Tol’s shoulders, then went out to begin the reorganization of the scattered imperial army.

  * * * * *

  Within ten days of Tylocost’s defeat, all opposition to Ergoth was overcome. Tol marched through eastern Hylo, driving out the Tarsan garrisons posted in Free Point and other towns. Tarsan mercenaries not captured at Three Rose Creek fled the country, taking ship or escaping over the mountains. Although they expected vengeful Ergothian hordes to pursue them, the imperial army had little strength left to chase anyone.

  Tol halted his tired hordes at Old Port and requisitioned all available ships. Then he turned all the captured Tarsan soldiers loose. Stripped of arms and armor, with only enough food to get them home by the most direct sailing route, nine and a half thousand men were sent on their way. They were all that was left of the force of fifty thousand who’d come to Hylo to wrest the kender kingdom from the empire’s sway.

  Veteran warlords under Tol’s command, including Egrin, argued against such clemency, saying the freed men would only take up arms against Ergoth in the future.

  “They’re defeated,” Tol said. “Let them go back and show their masters in Tarsis their humiliation. Let the wealthy syndics of the city feed and house them, not us.”

  Tol defied accepted custom in another way: He did not send Tylocost’s head to the emperor. The elf remained his prisoner. To disguise him from vengeance-minded Ergothians, Tylocost’s hair was cut to chin length, and he was dressed in nondescript yeoman’s clothes. He was hidden in plain sight among the enlarged retinue of warriors and servants now attached to Lord Tolandruth. Tylocost took captivity in good stead, but proved to have a melancholy nature to match his eccentric looks. His life depended on Tol’s good will, so he readily played the biddable captive.

  One evening, during supper in the vast tent Tol had inherited from Lord Urakan, Miya blurted, “I thought all Silvanesti were finely made. What happened to you?”

  Tol nearly choked on his roast, but Tylocost took the rude query calmly.

  “It’s said my mother, while burdened with child, beheld a human woman in the forest, and the image of the wretched creature was impressed on my features before birth.” After a brief pause, he added, “It was a Dom-shu woman she saw.”

  Miya flushed, and Tol smothered a laugh.

  “No Dom-shu is as ugly as you!” Miya said hotly.

  And so the evening’s wrangles would begin. It seemed more than passing strange to Tol to have the former terror of the empire at his side, shabbily dressed, matching jibes with his boisterous wives. Even so, Tol held no illusions about Tylocost. The acute mind that had defeated Lord Urakan and three other Ergothian generals in the past twenty years had not been thrown out with his gaudy helmet. Tylocost was biding his time.

  Knowing he needed a sharp pair of eyes on the elf, Tol designated Kiya to act as the elf s guardian. He had no specific suspicions but realized Tylocost might try to escape or foment a plot from within Tol’s camp.

  Hylo was firmly in imperial hands, but the war continued. Tarsan fleets raided the west coast of Ergoth. Far to the south, Tarsan gold raised the pirate fleets of Kharland into open war against the empire. Elaborate and flattering treaties were proposed to convince the Silvanesti to enter the war as Tarsis’s ally. Thus far, the elves had resisted Tarsan blandishments, but the pirates quickly choked off all trade in the Gulf of Ergoth. Something would have to be done about them.

  Victory had not ended the war, only changed its venue.

  * * * * *

  Before the winds of autumn set in, Tol organized the return of the sick and wounded to their homes. More than one thousand Ergothians were seriously injured, and another two thousand were needed on their farms to finish the harvest. Tol gave Egrin the task of leading the sizable column south, calling first at Caergoth, then Daltigoth. He prepared lengthy documents describing the death of XimXim and his subsequent victory over Tylocost. With Egrin busy rounding up wagons and carts to transport the sick, Tol decided to entrust his dispatches to another—Mandes the wizard.

  Mandes had weathered his personal catastrophe well. The loss of his left arm was a hard blow—a wizard needed two hands to perform most incantations—but Mandes proved surprisingly adaptable. By the time the imperial hordes returned from clearing out the last Tarsan garrisons, Mandes was up and walking. He spent most of his time in Old Port, drinking in noisy kender taverns or prowling the seedy shops lining the waterfront. Such shops were treasure troves of odd merchandise, brought in by wandering sailors or “found” by kender on their wide-ranging travels.

  One afternoon, with the chill of early autumn in the air, Tol found the wizard in the Wave Chaser Inn, the same place they’d captured the Tarsan soldiers. The wizard was seated in a snug corner by the hearth, at a table heaped with moldering manuscripts. A wooden tankard of mulled wine steamed by his right hand.

  Tol greeted him. Unlike nearly every other soul in Hylo, Mandes did not rise and salute the now famous warlord, but he did bid Tol join him in a pot of warmed wine.

  Tol dragged up a three-legged stool and accepted the offer of a drink. When the wine arrived, it proved to be heavily spiced. Though not to Tol’s taste, he sipped it politely.

  “You’ve heard I’m sending men home to be discharged for wounds or work?” he said. Mandes grunted assent. “Would you like to go along?”

  That brought the wizard upright on his bench. The wool blanket draped around his shoulder fell away, exposing the empty sleeve of his velvet robe. The cuff was pinned to his chest.

  “I, go to Daltigoth?” he said, and Tol nodded. “That is a handsome offer!”

  Tol smiled. “There’s a price to be paid. Some letters and dispatches I’ve written must be delivered. Will you see to it?”

  Mandes leaned forward, knocking old scrolls from the table top. “Gladly, my lord! To whom will I give them?”

  “Crown Prince Amaltar gets the reports bearing Lord Urakan’s seal.” Tol had inherited the old warlord’s signet with command of his army. “The remainder—only one—goes to his wife, Princess Consort Valaran.”

  He expected some comment, but Mandes showed no sign of recognizing the unusual nature of the second recipient.

  “I’ve long dreamed of going to Daltigoth,” the sorcerer said, sinking back in his bench. “Tarsis was too tight-fisted, too mercantile for me. In Daltigoth, a man can be recognized for his talent and rewarded for his deeds. When do I leave, my lord?”

  “Tomorrow morning, first light. I’ve secured a conveyance for you. Not a wagon or a kender’s cart, but a real coach-and-four. You’ll have company on the ride, but it’s still better than a ox-drawn wagon, eh?”

  Tol called to a pair of soldiers waiting by the inn door. They brought a strong box, strapped with iron, and set it on the floor at Mandes’s feet. Tol opened it. Nestled inside were eight short, thickly wound scrolls. Seven bore the seal of the warlord, pressed into the red wax enclosing the parchment. The eighth scroll was tied with white ribbon and sealed with ordinary white wax.

  Tol looked over the brief legends inked on the outside of the rolls. Finding the one he wanted, he tapped it with a finger.

  “I haven’t forgotten you,” he said. “This dispatch mentions the bakali, your role in helping to stop the Red Wrack, and our battle with XimXim. I would be very surprised if His Highness Prince Amaltar didn’t reward you for your deeds.”

  He closed the box and clamped a soft lead seal around the hasp. Rising, he said, “I thank you, Mandes—for everything. And I know you’ll see my words safely into the proper hands.”

  After Tol departed, Mandes rose from his chair, swaying slightly from too much wine. He summoned two kender from the kitchen to carry the box to his room on the second floor. Gathering up his old manuscripts, he followed them upstairs.

  Alone in his room, he sagged heavily on the straw-stuffed mattress. His features lost their carefully n
eutral expression and twisted with omnipresent pain. Agony lanced through his shoulder, throbbed down his left arm, and ended as it always did, in the tips of the fingers of his left hand—arm, hand, and fingers he no longer possessed.

  Mandes held up his right hand, palm down, and felt his crippled shoulder flex as though lifting his left as well. He could see his left arm and hand alongside the right; the phantom limb glowed faintly in the gloom. His searches through the scrap shops of Old Port were not merely a cure for idleness. Mandes was looking for magical tomes that might contain secret recipes to restore his arm, or at least give flesh to the phantom limb he was certain he possessed. He’d found nothing so far and had begun to despair. But now—

  Now he was to go to Daltigoth!

  The empire’s capital contained perhaps the greatest concentration of wizards and sorcerous literature in the world. Only the libraries of Silvanost could rival it, and they were beyond the reach of a mere human.

  Mandes shivered, more in anticipation than from the autumnal chill. Lord Tolandruth’s offer was a gift from the gods. Yet it was a gift he felt he had more than earned with his suffering.

  Pain was replaced by the equally familiar rage. Mandes stood and flung the useless manuscripts across the room.

  Tolandruth! It was that fool’s fault he’d lost his arm! True, he had consented to help in the fight against XimXim, but he’d never imagined he’d have to battle the monster himself in that hellish cavern!

  Now, Gilean’s book of fate had turned a new page. He was getting that which he most desired: access to the great and powerful. In Daltigoth he would place his magical skills at the disposal of whomever offered him the highest rewards. It was only right and proper. Wealth and power belonged to those who could do, whether they were warriors, woodcutters, or sorcerers. One day, he vowed, he would be the most powerful wizard in Ergoth. When that happened, his persecutors in Tarsis would have cause to regret their past injustices to him.

  Giving the bakali the Balm of Sirrion had been a mistake, he now realized. Embedding the Red Wrack in the mist had been an even greater folly. The lizard-men hadn’t asked for a plague. That had been his own idea. Since the Tarsans and kender were not sufficiently admiring of his talents, he’d decided to repay them with pestilence. But the dead bakali had taken the blame, and no one living knew the truth but him. Even so, he wondered if Tolandruth still suspected.

  The sealed box sat by the door, black and bulky. Within were Tolandruth’s thoughts on the events of the past sixty days. His decisions, his opinions, his praise, his condemnation—all were locked inside that box. Mandes needed to know what had been written. It would be to his advantage to embellish adulation of himself and expunge any criticism.

  The lead seal was weighty in his hand. He knew no spells to remove seals intact, but he did know how to re-forge broken ones.

  Mandes was awake till dawn. He read and wrote all night, scraping off Tol’s carefully penned letters and inking in his own. The former farm boy had little skill as a writer; his simple handwriting was easy to alter.

  The last scroll, addressed to Princess Valaran Mandes found most interesting, but it mentioned him not at all. He did not bother changing any of it. Instead he made a copy.

  * * * * *

  The caravan rolled out at sunrise. Tol saw it off. Egrin led the homeward-bound column on horseback. He saluted his former shield-bearer proudly, and Tol returned the gesture with enthusiasm. Egrin bared his dagger and raised it high, holding it there long after he’d passed Tol.

  Behind Egrin came those riders going home to their families and farms. Most were from the Caergoth region. They raised four cheers for their valiant commander as they rode.

  In their wake came the walking wounded. Weakened, they did not shout so lustily, but there was pride in their stride and gratitude in their eyes.

  Lastly, a long, irregular parade of carts and wagons rolled by, filled with warriors too hurt to walk. Leading the line of wagons was a black coach drawn by four matched bay horses, once the property of a rich Tarsan merchant who spent some months each year in Old Port. Tol’s men had found the coach hidden away in a barn and liberated it for their commander’s use.

  Mandes sat in the coach’s rear seat. The other places were taken by riders who’d lost limbs or sustained other grave injuries. The wizard did not wave as he passed, but did incline his head to the author of his new opportunity. - Tol called out, “Farewell, Mandes! When I return to Daltigoth, we’ll feast at Juramona House!”

  He remained until the last cart in the long caravan was gone, then turned Cloud about and rode back to camp.

  It was the middle day of autumn. Tol expected that once his letters were received, he would be recalled to the capital to confer with the crown prince and the highest warlords of the empire. Fresh hordes would be needed if Tarsan territory was to be invaded. Tol had fewer than seven thousand men, enough to defend Hylo but not enough to conquer the powerful city-state.

  He knew no attack could be mounted until spring. Winter’s snow would close the roads and make troop movements laborious and expensive. Tarsis might launch coastal raids in the meantime, but the loss of a huge army and their best general had to give them pause. Time would tell how much.

  Riding back into camp over ground crunchy with frost, Tol was stricken anew with longing for Valaran. She’d been much on his mind during the journey north, but once they encountered real danger, his mind had been fixed on the peril in front of him. His pent-up desire surfaced with a vengeance now. How long would it be until he saw her again? The letter he’d entrusted to Mandes begged her to write to him. Before, when he’d been on the move, there was no way for her letters to find him, but he would be in camp for some time now and regular correspondence was possible. He was lord of the northern hordes. The thought made him smile with pride.

  A few flakes of snow drifted down, melting on Cloud’s gray hide and Tol’s bare hands.

  It will not be long, Val, Tol vowed. Not long.

  * * * * *

  Snow was falling in Daltigoth. The sun shone warmly over the Inner City, as it always did thanks to the college of sorcerers, but the outer city lay muffled under a fresh mantle of white.

  Treading carefully through the drifts came a man swathed in furs from head to heels. He made directly for the gate of a darkened villa sited in a cramped corner of the Old City. Stucco was peeling off the villa’s wall in wide patches, exposing red bricks underneath. Snow padded the spikes atop the wall.

  Few people dared approach the crumbling mansion. It was inhabited by a gang of disreputable nobles, former members of the city Horse Guards, drunkards, wastrels, and thugs. They were called—though not to their faces—Nazramin’s Wolves, in honor of the prince who was their patron.

  The gate was shut, so the fur-clad man tugged on the chain hanging nearby. A bronze bell tolled dully. The wicket opened.

  “Who is it?” demanded a deep voice from within.

  “A visitor to see your master.”

  “Go away before I set the dogs on you.” The deep baying of hounds within proved the threat was not an idle one.

  The wicket started to close. Quickly, the stranger held up his hand, palm out, and muttered a short cantrip. A brightly glowing ball of fire, no bigger than a hen’s egg, shot from his hand through the wicket.

  Exclamations and curses from the other side told the visitor his credentials had been noted. The wicket widened, and a fiercely scowling face appeared.

  “Why didn’t you just say who you were?”

  The man’s clean-shaven face, lined by recent suffering, twitched into the faintest of smiles. “I just did.”

  The old gate swung inward, scraping back a wedge of newly fallen snow. Seven hard-looking men, cloaked and hooded, stood on the other side. One jerked his head to indicate the visitor should proceed straight ahead to a columned porch and a great brass door much dulled with tarnish. The visitor strode on, only to be stopped by the point of a sword against his breastbone.<
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  “Open your furs. I have to search you for arms.”

  Wordlessly, the stranger allowed the guards to probe him for weapons. One of them noticed his left sleeve was pinned to the breast of his robe.

  “What’s this?” he said, snatching the cylinder of cloth free. It swung limply by the man’s side.

  “As you can see, I have no arms to hide,” said the stranger. The guards grunted, and sent him on his way.

  The villa’s interior was almost as cold as the evening outside. Only every third wall sconce held a burning torch, giving the hall a dim and forbidding air. Suits of armor hung on stands along the walls, and racks of spears and swords were everywhere. The villa had more the air of a barracks than a fine old house.

  A stooping servant, bearing a tray with a tall beaker on it, scurried down the stairs and entered the door at the far end of the hall. When the door opened, a blaze of heat and light washed out. The visitor followed the servant and stood, unannounced, in the open doorway.

  The room beyond proved his host was not averse to comfort after all. It was well illuminated and heated by crackling fires in two large fireplaces. Between them was an enormous chair padded with leather. A table to one side was laden with food and drink, heavy plates and goblets wrought in bright gold. On the chair’s right was an identical table, covered with partially unrolled scrolls. Two wolfhounds lolled by the fire. They growled at the visitor.

  “Come forward, Master Mandes,” beckoned Prince Nazramin. He set aside the document he was reading and leaned back in the leather chair.

  Mandes pulled off his cape and let his robe hang open. Although he’d been cold before, the heat here was stifling.

  The prince waved to the pile of parchment. “You bring amusing gifts. The peasant boy has been busy, hasn’t he?”