Other legends say some of the earliest fishermen to inhabit the islands were blown there from the Kondive Islands by storms, and that the first wars were fought between Kondive Island fishermen and far-ranging Nunimar coastal fishermen. Those legends too have the ring of truth about them; only in recent times have the Kondivers become purveyors of luxurious trade goods. Before then, the people of the Kondive Islands were known and feared as pirates. Still, the appearance of the Jokapcul people is unlike the appearance of the Kondive Islanders, and there is no common root to their languages. In fact, nobody knows where the original Jokapcul came from.
Even though they constantly warred among themselves, as their population grew wildly and their culture matured the Jokapcul agreed on one thing: foreigners must be kept out. Life in the islands was too rich and too easy—when the islanders weren’t warring among themselves—to share with anyone from the mainland or from other archipelagos. The fisher-boats all went out armed, and none hesitated to attack any alien craft, Jokapcul or foreign, that entered their waters.
Thus, over the centuries a culture grew. Each island had its own clan that warred against neighboring islands’ clans, and the winners always stole young women from the losers. Sometimes the clans of two or more nearby islands would make truce with each other and combine forces to conquer another, larger and more powerful, island clan, but such alliances almost never lasted longer than it took to achieve the immediate goal. Most often they didn’t even last that long. Some islands were too small to support a clan large enough to defend them against their neighbors, so they became dependent fiefdoms, though to whom they were in thrall changed from time to time as the island clans warred with one another. More than one clan grew on a few of the larger islands, so unremitting war took place on them.
At the top of each clan is an individual who calls himself the “shoton,” a term that may be fairly accurately translated as “baron,” or “count,” though most who claim the title would give it a more grandiose translation, such as duke, earl, or prince. A few, usually those who have conquered their neighbors, claim that the proper translation is “king.” Some three centuries ago there was even one who, having conquered all the other islands within two days’ sail, announced that the proper translation was “emperor.”
Directly beneath the shotons are the kamazai. In the military forces of Jokapcul, kamazai hold positions similar to those held by the highest ranking generals in the armies of the two continents, albeit with some significant differences. The kamazai are not men who enter an army and, through diligence, skill, and increasing knowledge of warfare, advance through the officer ranks until they achieve generalship. Instead, they are men who, through force of arms, power of personality, and—most frequently—treachery, are able to assemble an army of their own, which they then offer in service to the local shoton. Kamazai are ranked as higher advisers to the shoton than any other advisers. They are always to be seen at the right shoulder of their shoton, and they are always in deep consultation with their shoton for the purposes of planning wars, invasions, and conquests. No kamazai worthy of the name ever overtly plans a defense; defensive planning is seen as a sign of weakness, to be done only by those who can’t attack. Any kamazai who is thought unable to attack is promptly attacked himself.
The Jokapcul word for “knight” is a garble of barks and growls totally impossible for any nonspeaker of the language to pronounce, so knight is the only word ever used to name the third rank of the Jokapcul hierarchy.
The knights correspond, roughly, to the officers of civilized armies. Like the kamazai, however, they do not lead through skill, force of personality, and learning. They lead by the simple expedients of brutality and intimidation. Their subordinates are beneath them in all ways and are treated as less than fully human. Higher ranking knights treat subordinate knights in the same manner. A proper knight is nearly as happy fighting his peers and superiors as he is fighting the army of an opposing clan. After all, once he has won enough battles and acquired a great enough reputation as a fighter, he may have the opportunity and means to raise an army of his own and become a kamazai himself.
Everybody else is below the knights and have as their sole reason for existence the support of the shoton, the kamazai, and the knights. The “people” may be fishermen, herders, farmers, craftsmen, merchants, priests, or anything else. They are subordinate and subject; subject not only to having all their belongings and other worldly goods taken by shoton, kamazai, or knight, but to be called upon to serve in the army as common soldiers.
One might think that an island nation such as the Jokapcul would have a strongly developed naval tradition, but it doesn’t. Perhaps this is because their progenitors were coastal, not deep-water, fishermen.
For more centuries than anyone knows, Jokapcul armies fought each other, Jokapcul stole each other’s women, Jokapcul developed newer weapons and fighting tactics, and Jokapcul kept foreigners away from their shores. Until twenty or so years ago.
Then a new man became shoton of one of the more obscure island clans. Nobody outside of Jokapcul is quite sure which island he started out on. Even his birth name is unknown to the outside world. The dominant legend of his early rise says that one day he simply walked into the courtyard of the local shoton, dressed in rough leather armor of homemade manufacture and carrying a sword that had long since seen its best days, and unceremoniously slew the shoton’s kamazai while that worthy was reviewing the palace guard. This audacious act so shocked the palace guard that before any of them could react, the stranger wrenched the helmet from the dead kamazai and placed it on his own head. He then announced to the palace guard that he was the new kamazai, and dared anyone who disagreed to face him in single combat. None did, and he instantly became the shoton’s first councilor. Then, before even a season passed, the new kamazai, in full sight of the army and populace during a festive ceremony, drew his sword, lopped off the head of the shoton, and elevated himself to that position.
At that point there could have been a rebellion, for the deposed shoton was, as shotons go, kindly and therefore popular with the army and the people. But the new shoton allowed no time for a rebellion to foment. Within days he led his army in an invasion of a neighboring island. His army won that war. In living memory, it was the first successful invasion conducted by the obscure island clan. That invasion cemented him in the hearts of the knights, and the knights didn’t care what the people thought. That invasion was followed by another and another and another until every island within a day’s sail was conquered. Each conquest was followed by a brief consolidation, a simple two-step process: (1) the conquered shoton was publicly beheaded; (2) the kamazai were offered a choice of joining the old shoton in death or of joining the new shoton in conquest of the world. Personal loyalty not being a notable strength of the Jokapcul, nearly every kamazai pledged his loyalty to the new shoton.
In order to successfully carry out the conquest of all the islands, the new shoton took a step never taken before by any shoton. He promoted his best kamazai to the new rank of subshoton and promised them regency over large sections of the rest of the islands—provided they conquered and held those islands. The newly appointed subshotons set to work with a diligence that would have been admirable had it been applied to a pursuit other than invasion and conquest.
Ten years after the unknown man in homemade armor slew his first kamazai, all the Jokapcul Islands were held under his rule. He styled himself the High Shoton of Jokapcul and established his capital on Kokudo, the largest and richest island of the archipelago. The next several years were spent in consolidating his rule. As one of the steps in the consolidation, he took to wife the most beautiful daughter or sister of each clan chief—except for his victorious kamazai, there were no other shotons. Soon, because the warlike Jokapcul were no longer allowed to war among themselves, it was necessary to find a new way of making war. And so it came about that what had once been occasional raids on the mainland increased both in frequency and fe
rocity.
But the Jokapcul had no true deep-sea craft or deep-sea skills, and many of the raiding fisher boats were lost in the rough seas between the islands and the mainland. Moreover, because the Jokapcul had early stripped their islands of forests to clear them for settlements and farmland, they no longer had the resources to construct ships. Further, since the isolated Jokapcul had little more knowledge of the mainland than the mainlanders have of the Jokapcul—and there is a great deal more of the mainland to be ignorant of—the raids were not very successful. And that lack of success bred a measure of discontent.
To further complicate matters for the High Shoton, there are enough islands and clans that he had not even a passing acquaintance with many of his wives. The clan leaders and kamazai whose daughters and sisters were taken to wife by the High Shoton had expected some measure of influence with him. Such influence could not come through wives who were unacquainted with their husband. That bred more discontent.
The High Shoton was facing rebellion. He had too many wives to become acquainted with all of them, so he could not forestall rebellion by granting influence through them. The only other distraction he had was raids on the mainland, which weren’t very successful, and he had no way of immediately gaining deep-sea capability or knowledge of the geography of the mainland.
That was when, fortuitously for him, Lord Lackland, half bastard fourth son of Good King Honritu of Matilda, self-styled the Dark Prince, requested parlay.
III
THE INN
CHAPTER
NINE
The road topped a ridge and a valley opened before them. Spinner stopped, and Haft, peering into the trees, would have ridden his horse into the back of the gelding if the mare hadn’t stopped on her own. The road they were on ran almost straight across the valley. The slopes of the ridges flanking the valley were wooded, and the forest came down the valley from the north as far as the road. From the road south, the valley had been cleared for several hundred paces. Directly ahead of them, alongside the road and a hundred paces beyond the end of the trees, a wooden fence formed a corral next to a stable. Several horses stood quietly in the corral while a stableman saw that the food and water troughs were properly filled. Thirty paces beyond the stable stood the largest building they’d seen since leaving New Bally. Farther away, set back from the road, was another building, bigger than the stable but smaller than the main building. That outbuilding had no windows they could see and its door was strongly barred. It looked more like a fortress than a barn to Spinner, except that he couldn’t see any embrasures to fight from in its sides, or crenellations on its top.
Three or four workmen were engaged in chores around the main building. A painted wood sign hung from an iron arm above the door, indicating that it was an inn.
“What are we waiting for?” Haft demanded when he saw the sign, and gave his mare a kick in the ribs.
The inn should have been an inviting sight to Spinner as well, but it wasn’t. He grabbed the mare’s bridle as she started to go past and stopped Haft.
“Look at the sign,” Spinner said slowly.
“What about it? It’s the name of the place.”
“What’s the name?”
Haft peered at it. It had a painting of a man who looked like he was running: one leg and one arm slightly bent at hip and knee, shoulder and elbow; the other arm and leg were more sharply bent; the head was tucked down. He couldn’t tell how the figure was clothed—it was painted a solid black. He couldn’t make out the three words written under the figure.
“The Racer?” he guessed. “The Running Man? I don’t know. Can you read it from here? Your eyes are sharper than mine. Anyway, what does it matter what the name is? I never heard any warnings about Skragish inns. Let’s go. I’m hungry and thirsty and I want a bath with soap.” He flicked the reins to start his mare toward the inn.
Spinner didn’t let go of the bridle. The mare rolled her eyes as though to say, Make up your minds.
“I can read the sign,” Spinner said quietly. “It says, ‘The Burnt Man.’ ”
Haft’s brow furrowed. “What an odd name for an inn.” He looked at the sign again. Yes, the figure on the sign could have been the corpse of a man who had burned to death. “Well, I’ve heard the Skragish are an odd people. But this just looks like an inn. The Rose and Thistle back home looks just like it.” When he flicked the reins, Spinner let him go. The mare eagerly cantered into the trees, headed for the stable and corral.
Spinner sat on top of the ridge a moment longer. The Burnt Man, he thought, so odd a name. He wondered what significance it had. And the size of the inn bothered him. It was as big as any he’d seen in New Bally. He looked all around the glade, but the only road he could see entering the valley was the one they were on. The road was wider here than it was closer to the border, and looked as if it bore more traffic—even though they’d seen no one else traveling it—but it was still just a little side road. It didn’t seem likely that enough people would pass that way, at least not on the road, to support so large an inn. And he was curious about a low rumble he heard somewhere in the background. Wondering all those things, he tapped the stallion’s flanks with his heels and slowly followed Haft.
The stableman was as helpful and friendly as any Spinner had ever met, and once they found a language they could all speak—Frangerian, as it turned out—he was more talkative than most. He assigned stalls to the three horses, unsaddled the mare and the gelding, and had their tackle hung before Spinner finished unsaddling his stallion.
“Now you don’t worry about a thing, sirs,” the stableman said. “I’ll take right good care of your horses. Me and horses, we get along fine.” The horses seemed to agree; they closed around him and nuzzled at his face and shoulders. They nickered when he gave them sugar cubes. “And don’t you worry none about cost neither,” the stableman continued, while briskly rubbing at the horses’ necks and ruffling their manes. “The price of a stall for your horse is included in the price of a room for yourself. If you’re only stopping for a meal, the price of oats for your horse is included in the price of your dinner.” He leaned away from the horses to look at Spinner and Haft. “I know what you’re probably thinking when you hear that, and you’re wrong. When you go inside and pay for your meal and your room, I think you’ll find that the price you pay is about the same as you’d pay for a meal and a room at an inn that charged extra for bedding and feeding your horse.” His chest puffed and he looked smug and proud. “The Burnt Man doesn’t gouge its customers, no sir. And we’re mighty proud of that. And there is entertainment, the finest entertainment to be found within a week’s ride. That makes The Burnt Man a very profitable inn. We get lots of happy visitors coming back. Now you go inside and see Master Yoel. He’ll take right good care of you.” Stepping away from the horses, he shooed the two men toward the inn.
“See? Nothing to worry about,” Haft said. “A name is just a name. I think I’m going to enjoy being here tonight.” He strutted toward the inn. “I wonder what the entertainment is.”
“What’s that noise?” Spinner said. The low rumble he’d heard on the ridge top now resolved itself to a drone that came from the far side of the inn. He’d wonder about the entertainment later.
“We’ll find out about that noise soon enough,” Haft said. He reached the inn door, flung it open and strode through.
Spinner followed, less grandly. He knew that something was wrong. The inn was too big for where it stood; he’d never heard of a stableman in an out-of-the-way inn like this who spoke as many languages as this one seemed to; and there was that name. Well, he’d watch for whatever it was, he decided, and hope he was ready for the trouble when and if he discovered it. He only hoped he wouldn’t discover it too late to do anything about it.
Spinner was surprised when he stepped over the threshold. Even though few of the windows were unshuttered and open, the interior of the inn’s main room was as bright as the day outside, lit by a light with an odd, bluish t
inge to it. Before he could locate the source of the strange light, or even get any more of an impression beyond the fact that there were several customers sitting about, the innkeeper bustled over to them—if a thin man can accurately be said to bustle.
Master Yoel was shorter than Haft, and a stoop made him look even shorter. His eyes were widely spaced and his nose beaked. His scalp was exposed by an almost perfect disk of baldness; a few strands of hair combed across the front of his scalp completed the circle of hair.
“Good young gentlemen, welcome to The Burnt Man,” he said in Frangerian. He alternated briskly rubbing his hands with briskly drying them on his snowy white apron. “Come in, come in.” He let his hands and apron go and waved his new guests into the room, put a palm on Haft’s arm and aimed him at an empty table. “Would you like a flagon of beer? How about a crock of wine? If you can read, the slate over the kitchen door has today’s menu. Not that I think such fine-looking young gentlemen as yourselves can’t read.” He got them seated and made sure their chairs were stable and they were comfortable. Then he started to recite the day’s menu.
“Don’t bother,” Spinner interrupted, somewhat sourly. “We can read the menu for ourselves.” The innkeeper talked so fast about so much that Spinner didn’t even wonder how it was he knew to talk to them in Frangerian instead of starting with Skragish and then having to work his way through other languages until they found a common tongue.
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