Thornhold

by Elaine Cunningham

  He sat upright. Why hadn’t he realized that earlier? Tarlamera was the sibling closest to him in age and temperament. They’d fought their way through a happy childhood, and hers was the face he always sought first in a crowd of his kin. Why hadn’t he looked for her and noted that she was not to be found?

  Ebenezer had heard tell of people who got through rough spots by blocking out important things, not thinking about them until they were armed and ready, so to speak. Maybe that was what he was doing. Funny, but until now he would have called that sort of thing soft-headed.

  But the time for protective denial was over. Ebenezer began to sort through the grim facts, and a pattern became clear. Most of the clan’s best fighters had been slain, as well as those who spent their days tending to the practical needs of the clan: hearth mothers, brewers, coopers, cobblers. All of the elderly dwarves were dead, and the few that had had the odd infirmity. The missing members were those who had special skills—skills that no one could master quite as well as could a dwarf. Their best miners were gone, including Tarlamera, whose instincts for the stone were so keen Ebenezer suspected she could smell deposits of ore and gemstones from fifty paces. The best gem workers were missing, and the finest smiths. A few of the females of breeding age. The children.

  In short, everyone who had value in some distant slave market.

  Rage, cold and fierce and all-consuming, rose like bile in the dwarf’s throat. There was yet another thing he’d conveniently blotted out: his own capture by a passel of Zhents. Suddenly he realized the true and devastating nature of his fear.

  Slavery.

  Ebenezer hauled himself to his feet, grabbed some weapons, and left behind the graveyard that had been his home. He struck out for a secret tunnel—a steep, curving passage that led up to the stronghold some humans had built on the mountain above a few decades past.

  Knights, they called themselves. They were a bunch of smug-faced meddlers who kept themselves busy tidying up the area of trolls and bugbears and so forth, reminding Ebenezer of dwarf grannies fussing about the clanhold, forever straightening up the furniture and dusting off the what-nots.

  If there were answers to be found, Ebenezer was certain that the nest of those troll-hunting, minding-the-world’s-business, pain-in-the-back-of-the-lap humans was a reasonable place to start looking.

  * * * * *

  Bronwyn followed her father down the tower stairs back into the bailey. The first signs of real animation crept into Hronulf’s voice as he described the fortress to her, its history, its defenses, and the good work that the paladins did for travelers who passed by. He stopped here and there to chat with the servants and exchanged bluff greetings with the other knights. To each knight, he introduced her pointedly and proudly as his lost daughter. Oddly enough, that did little to warm Bronwyn’s heart or make her feel wanted. It was almost as if he felt a need to justify her presence here. But Bronwyn noticed the deep affection and respect that all the fortress inhabitants showed their commander. Those who knew Hronulf, clearly held him in highest regard. This reminded her of the knight who had sent her here.

  “I met Sir Gareth Cormaeril in Waterdeep,” she said. “He sends his regards.”

  Hronulf’s face lit up. “You have seen him? And he knows who you are? This news must have brought him great joy!”

  “I told him my name, but he did not seem to connect me with you in any way, not even when I told him I was seeking you out in hope that you might have information about my lost family” Bronwyn said. “He commented that you had lost family, too, and would most likely be willing to give me whatever aid you could, but he did not put the pieces together.”

  “Sir Gareth was a great knight and a good friend,” Hronulf stated. His eyes suddenly went bleak. “It was he who found you, or so he thought—a child slain when goblins overran a southbound caravan. Perhaps his affection blinded him, then and now. He was afraid for me, so great was my grief. Although beholding your dead child is a terrible thing, not knowing what has become of her is much worse. Having settled my mind and his that you were dead, he was not looking for Bronwyn Caradoon when he beheld your face.”

  “That’s possible,” she admitted, though she was disturbed at the possibility that she might have been found, had not Sir Gareth been so quick to pronounce her dead. Something else occurred to her. “Did Gareth know my mother?”

  “Oh, yes. Gwenidale was a woman of good family, and her brother was a paladin, Gareth’s comrade and mine. He fell before his twenty-third year, but he was a great knight. But it has been many years since any living man has gazed upon fair Gwenidale’s face. Do not fault Gareth in this matter.” Hronulf smiled faintly. “He and I are aged men. The eyes fail, and even the fondest memories do not always come to our command.”

  As they talked, they continued their tour of the fortress. Hronulf led her through the chapel, and pointed to the stairs that led up on either side of the back wall. They climbed the stairs on the right and emerged on the walkway that encircled the wall. Her father’s pride in his domain, his obvious concern for all those under his care, made one thing perfectly clear to Bronwyn. Thornhold was truly his home, not the village she could barely remember. This place, these men, had always been first with him.

  That made her curious and angrier than she liked to admit. She decided to prod a bit. “There are no women here,” she observed.

  “A traveler, from time to time,” Hronulf said. “I believe that there is a female hire-sword with the caravan currently under hospitality.”

  “So the knights don’t bring their families here.” That bothered her deeply, especially in light of her own history.

  “Few knights have families,” the paladin said, then hesitated. “It is a hard life, and full of danger. There are often matters of fealty—sworn service to god or king—that must be discharged. Some men who live to their thirtieth year and beyond marry. Most do not.”

  “You did,” she pressed. “You had a family and left us in a small forest village.” The words came out like a challenge. Bronwyn wished she could have been more diplomatic, but her need was too great. She needed to hear some word of explanation, some reason for the horror that had destroyed her family and shaped her life.

  Hronulf did not answer right away. He paused before the door of a long stone building that spanned the distance between the two towers, the roof rising up steeply to meet in the center in a soaring arch. Through the open door, Bronwyn could see the raised altar with the scales of justice above. Light filtered in through windows set high on the stone walls, falling in thin, golden slants on the knights who knelt or prostrated themselves in prayer.

  “It was my duty to marry,” Hronulf said simply. “The bloodline of Samular must be carried on. Which reminds me, there are family matters of which we must speak. Come.”

  That was no answer at all. Hoping that he would offer better, Bronwyn followed him back up to the tower. He closed the door and bolted it. This struck Bronwyn as a strange precaution, given their secure surroundings. She was even more puzzled when he took an ancient sheet of parchment from a small, locked wooden chest. “Can you read?” he asked.

  “In several languages, both modern and ancient.”

  The response seemed natural enough to her, but it seemed to displease her father. “Such pride is not seemly.”

  “Not pride,” she said with complete honesty. “Necessity. I’m a merchant. And, I suppose, a scholar of sorts. I find lost artifacts, which means I have to study a wide variety of materials and speak to many sorts of people to find what I’m looking for.”

  “A merchant.”

  He spoke the words in a tone that could have served just as well if he’d said, “a hobgoblin.” Bronwyn suddenly knew how a cat felt when its back went up. She swallowed the tart response that came quickly to her tongue and reached for the parchment.

  The style of the script was old, the ink faded and blurred, but Bronwyn got the gist of it well enough. The fortress of Thornhold, and most of th
e mountain upon which it stood, did not belong to the Holy Order of the Knights of Samular. It was the property of the Caradoon family.

  “There is a copy of this writ of succession in the Herald’s Holdfast,” Hronulf said. “Upon my death, you must make provision for the fortress and see that it is used as it has been for these many centuries.” He looked keenly at her. “Are you wed?”

  “Not even close,” she said dryly.

  “Chaste?”

  Under any other circumstances, she would have answered that question with derisive laughter. Now she merely felt puzzlement, edged with the beginnings of anger. “I don’t see what that has to do with this discussion,” she said stiffly.

  Hronulf apparently heard in this his answer, and not the one he’d been hoping for. An expression of grave disappointment crossed his face. He sighed, then his jaw firmed with apparent resolve. He rose and went to his writing table. Seating himself, he took up a quill. “I will write you a letter of introduction,” he said, dipping the quill into an inkwell. “Take it to Summit Hall and give it to Laharin Goldbeard of Tyr. He commands this place and will find a suitable match for you.”

  Bronwyn’s jaw dropped. She dug one hand into her hair and shook her head as if to clear it. “I don’t believe this.”

  “The line of Samular must continue,” Hronulf said earnestly. He blew on the writing to dry it, then set the parchment aside. “You are the last of my five children, so the responsibility falls to you. You seem well suited to it. You are young, comely, and in apparent health.”

  This was more than Bronwyn could take. “Next I suppose you’ll be telling me that children are my duty and destiny.”

  “And so they are.”

  Bronwyn had a sudden, sharp feeling of empathy for a brood mare. She rose abruptly. “I am tired, father. Are there guest quarters in this fortress that will not be too sullied by a woman’s presence?”

  He rose with her, and his visage softened somewhat as he studied her. “You are overwrought. Forgive me. I gave you too much to think about too soon.”

  “I’m adaptable,” she assured him, wondering even as she spoke if perhaps she had finally come up against the edges of her flexibility.

  “We will talk more in the morning. There are secrets known only to the descendants of Samular that you must hear. You must understand your family responsibilities.”

  This time, Bronwyn could not hold back a small, grim smile. Until this moment, she had always been fond of irony. To Hronulf of Tyr, family responsibility apparently meant the continuation of the bloodline of Samular. Yet in doing his duty, he had left his family vulnerable.

  She was not even the slightest bit tempted to point this out to her father. So vast was the gulf between them that Hronulf was unlikely to ever see this matter as she did. If she married well and produced sons to follow Tyr, he would be content. Nothing else she could do, nothing else she was, could possibly matter. In any way that truly counted, she was as alone now as she had been before she’d entered Thornhold.

  Bronwyn reminded herself that she had never really expected to have a family. She had merely sought to learn about her past. If she could think of this meeting with her father as a means to that end, then maybe the ache in her chest would subside.

  So she took the scroll Hronulf handed her and the small leather book that he bid her read in order to learn more of the family’s creed and purpose. Bronwyn still had a thousand questions, but the answers seemed finally within her grasp. The answers, that is, to all questions but one:

  Why was the knowledge of her past, this fulfillment of her dreams, not nearly enough?

  * * * * *

  Elsewhere in Thornhold the dinner hour was ending and the Knights of Samular scattered, each to his preferred rest and ease. One aging paladin, once known throughout eastern Faerûn as Randolar the Bear, made his way up a narrow stair to his chamber. He retrieved a book from his modest bedchamber, a fine tome brimming with exciting tales told with admirable brevity, and betook himself to an even smaller room—a tidy latrine set into the thick wall of the keep. There he ascended the throne of the common man and happily settled down to read.

  So engrossed did he become in the tale that, at first, the muted curses seemed nothing but echoes of the vanquished villain’s ire. It came to him, slowly, that the voices were real, and that they were coming from the midden shoot below him. After a puzzled moment, Randolar realized that someone was climbing up the interior of the keep wall, an invader determined enough to risk the sort of unpleasant reception he had just received. It also occurred to him that since this was not the only privy in the keep, there might be other, similarly determined invaders.

  The old paladin leaped to his feet and dragged in air to fuel a shout of alarm. Before he could utter a sound, the privy’s wooden seat flew up and slammed against the wall with furious force. Randolar spun just as the head and shoulders of a black-bearded man, grim-faced and covered with the leavings that coated the midden, emerged from the shoot.

  Propping himself on one elbow, the invader lifted a small, loaded crossbow. His grimy finger jerked at the trigger. The bolt tore into Randolar’s chest, and he slid slowly down the wall onto the cold, stone floor. His last thought was deep mortification that a knight of Tyr should die so, his last alarm unsounded and his breeches tangled about his ankles.

  * * * * *

  On a hilltop not far away, Dag Zoreth stood on the watch-tower of a conquered outpost, his eyes fixed on the fortress. All was in readiness. His minions had done well. Even Sir Gareth had delivered above expectations. According to Dag’s scouts, a young woman had entered the fortress several hours ago. His reunion with his lost family promised to be more complex and fulfilling than he’d dared to hope.

  And it would happen soon. By now, his advance soldiers should have made their way up the unprotected midden chutes. They were handpicked men, among them some of the most skilled and silent assassins known to the Zhentarim, and the best archers. It was their task to quietly slip into the fortress. Three assassins would work their way up to the winch room, a small upper-floor chamber where the machinery that lifted the portcullis was housed. The others would take out the men who walked the walls and watched from the high turrets, and work their way to the gate.

  Dag was suddenly distracted by the sensation of cold fire that stabbed at his left side—painful, yet not entirely unpleasant. He slipped his hand into the leather bag that hung at his belt and removed from it the source of his discomfort, a small globe like the one he had given Sir Gareth.

  The face in it was dusky gray, vaguely elven in appearance, and seamed with scars earned over long decades of service to evil. The half-drow assassin gave a single, curt nod.

  Dag smiled and slipped the globe back into his bag.

  “They have secured the winch room and are ready to raise the portcullis,” he said to his captain, a bald, black-bearded man who was more than a head taller than Dag and nearly twice his breadth. What Captain Yemid lacked in strategic innovation, he made up in sheer brute force and the corresponding ability to pass along orders and make them stick. “Sound the charge,” Dag commanded.

  Yemid thrust a ham-sized fist into the air. Instantly one of the men lifted a curved horn to his lips and winded the signal for attack. A score of heavy cavalry thundered toward the fortress, huge war-horses, barded with plate armor and bearing fully armored warriors. Behind them came the next wave, another twenty mounted soldiers who would chase down and slay any who managed to escape. Finally came the infantry, fifty men, well armed and well trained, fortified with the battle frenzy that came in the wake of Dag Zoreth’s Cyric-granted spells.

  It was not a large force, but it would more than suffice. Thirteen men were already in the fortress, killers as silent and deadly as ferrets hunting aging roosters and nesting doves. Dag only hoped there would be enough killing for his men to sate their bloodlust; if not, some of them were likely to turn on each other, seizing the opportunities of battle confusion to settle som
e old insult or petty rivalry. It was not an uncommon occurrence among the Zhentarim.

  A senseless waste, Dag mused as he kicked his horse into a run. It was better to hoard anger like treasure, building and nurturing it until it became a weapon, one that could be unleashed to good effect.

  Nearby, one of the soldiers fell from his horse, an arrow protruding from his chest. Good. There was still some fight in the paladins. To minimize his own risk, Dag leaned low over his horse’s neck as the steed galloped past the infantry. He kept his eyes fixed on the great wooden door in the fortress wall.

  The portcullis rose in a series of quick, sharps jerks as the assassins winched it up. The knights of Darkhold swept toward the wooden door, long spears leveled before them.

  Four of them struck the gate at nearly the same instant. The two halves of the wooden door burst inward, a gratifying testament to the invaders’ success in throwing the bars. Zhentarim fighters poured into the breached wall. Dag spurred his horse on viciously, determined to enter the fortress before the fighting was done.

  * * * * *

  In Hronulf’s tower chamber, Bronwyn was the first to hear the alarm. She poised, her hand on the door, and then spun back to face her father. “That horn. I know that signal,” she said grimly.

  Hronulf nodded and strode for the door. “Zhentarim. You stay here—I must go to the walls.”

  Bronwyn seized his arm, all thoughts of anger forgotten. “It’s too late for that. Listen.”

  The faint sound of battle seeped through the thick stone and stout oak. Hronulf’s eyes widened. “They are inside the fortress!”

  She nodded. Her mind raced as she tried and discarded possible plans. “Is there a back way out of here?”

  The paladin smiled grimly and drew his sword. “Not for me. Thornhold is my command. I will defend it or die.”

  Before Bronwyn could respond, the first crashing assault struck the chamber door. The oak panels buckled, and even the iron bands that bound them bulged inward.