“All right, Puke. What the devil’s going on? I know darn good and well that none of us bought Master Senej a new saddle. Did you buy it for him, Puke?”
“No, sir,” said Scrounger quietly. “I did not buy it, sir.”
Sergeant Nemiss motioned. “One of you men, bring me a rope. I said what I’d do if I caught you stealing, kender. Now, march!”
Scrounger, his face set, marched over to the apple tree. Caramon stood stock still in line, controlling his face with difficulty. He only hoped that Scrounger didn’t carry the joke too far.
One of the soldiers returned with a stout rope, which he handed to the sergeant. Scrounger positioned himself beneath the apple tree. The soldiers continued to stand at attention.
Swinging the rope in her hand, Sergeant Nemiss looked up into the tree, seeking a suitable branch. She stopped, stared. “What the—”
Scrounger smiled, looked down modestly at his feet.
Reaching up into the apple tree, Sergeant Nemiss grabbed hold of something, lowered it carefully. The men did not dare break formation, but all tried desperately to see what it was she held in her hands. One of the veterans forgot himself and gave a low whistle. Sergeant Nemiss was so stunned that she never noticed this breach of discipline.
In her hands, she held an elven longbow. Gazing up into the tree, she counted seven more.
Sergeant Nemiss smoothed her hand over the fine wood. “These are the best bows in all of Ansalon. They’re said to be magical! The elves won’t sell them to humans—at any price. Do you have any idea what these are worth?”
“Yes, sir,” said Scrounger. “One hundred pounds of beef, some dented Solamnic armor, and a crate of hops.”
“Huh?” Sergeant Nemiss blinked.
Caramon took a step forward. “It’s true, Sergeant. Scrounger didn’t steal them. There’s some humans and some dwarves camped out in town who’ll vouch for that. He traded for everything, fair and square.”
The last was a bit of a stretch, but what the Sergeant didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Sergeant Nemiss’s face went soft, gentle, lovely. She rubbed her cheek with deep affection against the smooth, supple wood of the elven bow.
“Welcome to C Company, Scrounger,” she said with tears in her eyes. “Three cheers for Scrounger!”
The men gave the cheers with a will.
“And,” added Sergeant Nemiss, “three cheers for the thirteen new members of C Company.”
It seemed that the cheering, once started, would never stop.
20
ARIAKAS’S TROOPS WERE ON THE MARCH. NOT HIS OWN PERSONAL guard. Those men were too highly trained, too valuable to expend on this expedition. His troops had seen battle. His soldiers had captured Sanction and Neraka, plus all the surrounding lands. The men he was sending south to Blödehelm were the best of his new forces, men who had performed well during training. This was their blooding.
The mission was secret, so secret that not even the highest-ranking commanders knew the name of the objective. They received their orders for the next day’s march the night before, orders delivered to them by wyverns. The troops marched at night, under the cover of darkness. They marched in silence, their boots muffled in cloth, the rings of their chain mail padded so that no one would hear the jingle. The wheels of the supply wagons were greased, the horses’ harness covered with rags. Anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across the army’s path was killed swiftly and without mercy. No one must be left alive to report that he had seen an army of darkness marching from the north.
Kitiara and Immolatus did not ride with the army. The two of them could travel faster than the monstrous military monster crawling across the land. Ariakas wanted them in Hope’s End prior to the army’s arrival, intending that they should discover the location of the eggs before the start of the battle. Their orders were to reach the city prior to the battle, enter the city in disguise, conduct their search, and leave before things got too hot.
Kitiara was glad they were on their own, away from the troops. Immolatus aroused too much curiosity, occasioned too much comment. In vain, Kit had endeavored to persuade the dragon that the garb of a red-robed wizard was not a suitable disguise for traveling in company with Her Dark Majesty’s forces. Black, Kitiara hinted, was a far more attractive color.
Immolatus would not be persuaded. Red he was and red he would remain. Eventually, finding all her arguments useless, Kitiara gave up. She foresaw fights with the arrogant dragon and decided that this was a minor fray of no great consequence. She would save her strength for the battles that counted.
Kitiara wondered at the choice of the dragon—with his scathing disdain for all people regardless of race, creed, or color—for such a mission. It was not her place to question her orders, however. Particularly her last order, which had been delivered to her in secret prior to their departure from Sanction. At least she assumed the missive was an order. She supposed it could be a love letter, but Ariakas did not seem the type.
She kept that order—a hastily scrawled note from Ariakas—rolled into a small tight scroll, tucked in a pouch stowed in her saddlebag. She had not yet had a chance to read it. Immolatus demanded her constant attention. He had spent the day of their swift ride regaling her with stories of his various raids and slaughters, ransackings and lootings. When he wasn’t reliving his days of glory, he was complaining bitterly about the food he was forced to eat while in his human form and how humiliating he found it to plod along on horseback when he could be soaring among the clouds.
They stopped to rest at night, and despite the fact that he was not sleeping on a bed of gold, Immolatus finally fell asleep. Fortunately, the dragon slept deeply. Much like a dog, he twitched and jerked in his dreams, snapped his teeth and ground his jaws. After watching his restless slumbers closely for long moments, Kit went so far as to shake Immolatus by the shoulder and call out his name.
He mumbled and growled but did not waken.
Satisfied that she could read her letter in private, Kitiara retrieved the scroll, read the missive by the firelight.
Commander Kitiara uth Matar
Should any circumstance arise in which it is the considered opinion of Commander uth Matar that Her Majesty’s plans for the eventual conquest of Ansalon would be endangered, Commander uth Matar is hereby expressly commanded to handle the situation in any manner the commander deems suitable.
The order was signed Ariakas, General of the Dragonarmies of Queen Takhisis.
“Cunning bastard,” Kitiara muttered with a grudging half-smile. After reading over the deliberately vague and unspecific order twice more, she shook her head, shrugged, and tucked it into her boot.
So this was the lash of the whip. She had been expecting some sort of punishment for her refusal. One did not say no to General Ariakas with impunity. But she had not expected anything so diabolically creative. Her opinion of the man rose a notch.
Ariakas had just placed responsibility for the success—or failure—of the mission on her. Should she succeed, she would be given a hero’s welcome. Promotion. His lordship’s favors—both in bed and out. Should she fail …
Ariakas was intrigued by her, fascinated by her. But he was not a man to remain intrigued or fascinated by anything long. Ruthless, power-hungry, he would sacrifice her to his ambition without a backward glance to see if her body still twitched.
Kitiara sat down near the fire, stared into the dancing flames. Slumbering near her, Immolatus snarled and snorted. The smell of sulfur was strong in the air. He must be setting fire to a city about now. She envisioned the flames devouring houses, shops. People enveloped in fire, living torches. Charred corpses, blackened ruins. The horrid smell of burning hair, seared flesh. Armies marching victorious, the ashes of the dead coating their boots.
The cleansing fire would sweep throughout Ansalon, clearing out the elven deadwood that lay rotting in the forests, burning away the tangled undergrowth of inferior races that impeded human progress, setting the spark
to old-fashioned ideas such as those held by the decaying, tinder-dry knighthood. A new order would arise, phoenixlike, from the charred remains of the old.
“I will sit astride that new order,” Kitiara said to the flames. “The leveling fire will burn bright in my blade. I will return to you victorious, General Ariakas.
“Or I will not return at all.”
Resting her chin on her knees, Kitiara wrapped her arms around her legs and watched the flames consume the wood until all that was left were the cinders, winking at her in the darkness like the dragon’s red eyes.
BOOK 2
“Nothing ever happens by chance. Everything happens for a reason. Your brain may not know the reason. Your brain may never figure it out. But your heart knows. Your heart always knows.”
—Horkin, Master-at-Wizardry
1
THE CITIZENS OF HOPE’S END NEVER MEANT TO GO TO WAR. WHAT had started as a peaceful protest over an unfair tax had escalated into full-scale rebellion, and none of the people of Hope’s End quite knew how it had all gone so terribly wrong.
Rolling a pebble down a hill, they had inadvertently started a rockslide. Tossing a stick into a pond, they had created a tidal wave, a wall of water that might well drown them all. The cart of their lives, which had once been rolling so smoothly along the main road, had suddenly lost a wheel, toppled sideways, and was now careening down the cliff face.
The unfair tax was a gate tax, and it was having a ruinous effect on the businesses of Hope’s End. The edict had come down from King Wilhelm (formerly known as Good King Wilhelm, now known as something not nearly as flattering). The edict required that all goods entering the city of Hope’s End should be subject to a twenty-five percent tax and, in addition, all goods leaving Hope’s End should be subject to the same tax. This meant that any raw materials entering the city, everything from iron ore for armor to cotton for lace petticoats, were taxed. The same armor and petticoats that left the city were also taxed.
In consequence, the price of goods from the city of Hope’s End shot up higher than the latest gnome invention (a steam-powered butter churn). If the merchants did have money enough to pay for the raw materials, they had to charge so much for the finished goods that people could not afford to buy them. This meant that merchants could no longer afford to pay their workers, who no longer had money to pay for bread for their children, let alone lace petticoats.
Good King Wilhelm sent his tax collectors—hulking thuggish brutes—to see to it that the tax was levied. Those merchants who rebelled against paying the gate tax were intimidated, threatened, harassed, and sometimes physically assaulted. One enterprising entrepreneur had the idea of moving his business outside the city walls, in order to avoid the tax altogether. The thugs summarily shut down his operations, broke up his booth, set fire to his stock, and socked the enterprising citizen on the jaw.
Soon the entire economy of Hope’s End was teetering on the verge of collapse.
To add insult to injury, the citizens of Hope’s End discovered that their city was the only city in the realm to be so mistreated. The loathsome gate tax was levied on them alone. No other city had to pay it. The citizens sent a delegation to Good King Wilhelm requesting to know why they were being punished with this unfair tax. His Majesty refused to see the delegation, sent one of his ministers to relay his answer.
“It is the king’s will.”
In vain, the lord mayor sent envoys bearing letters to King Wilhelm pleading to lift the unfair tax. The envoys were turned away without ever being given audience with His Majesty. The envoys took no comfort in the rumor running through the royal city of Vantal that King Wilhelm was mad. A mad king is still king, and this one was apparently sane enough to see to it that his mad decrees were obeyed.
The situation grew steadily worse. Shops closed. The marketplace remained open, but the goods sold there were meager and few. Guild meetings—once little more than an excuse for the merchants to come together in good fellowship, share good food and drink—were now shouting matches, with each merchant demanding that something be done. Since each merchant had his own views on what that something was, each merchant was ready to heave an ale mug—now sadly filled with water—at the head of anyone who opposed him.
The Merchants Guild of Hope’s End was the most powerful organization in the city. The guild held a virtual monopoly over all industry and commerce of the city. The guild supervised the smaller guilds, setting standards for crafts and seeing to it that these standards were upheld. The merchants felt, and rightly so, that shoddy workmanship reflected badly on the entire community. Any merchant caught cheating his customers was cast out of the guild and thereby lost his ability to make a living.
The Merchants Guild of Hope’s End sought to improve the lot of all working men and women in the town, from seamstress and weaver to silversmith and brewer. The guild set fair wages, established the terms under which young men and women were apprenticed to trades, and arbitrated disputes between merchants. Guild members were not rabble-rousers. Their demands for better conditions for their people were not unreasonable. The guild had a cordial relationship with the lord mayor and with the high sheriff. The guild was respected throughout the city, its reputation for fairness and honesty so good that the work of craftsmen in other cities was judged by the accolade, “Good enough to be sold in Hope’s End.” Thus, when the edict concerning the reprehensible new tax was heralded throughout the city, the people confidently turned to the Merchants Guild to handle the situation.
In response, the guild leader, after much agonized deliberation, called a secret meeting of the guild members, a meeting held in a partially torn-down temple to a forgotten god located on the outskirts of the city.
Here, in the darkness lit by flaring torches, surrounded by his pale, determined, and resolute neighbors, associates, and friends, the guild leader made the suggestion that Hope’s End secede from the realm of Blödehelm, become an independent city-state, a city-state with the ability to govern itself, pass its own laws, throw out the thugs, and end the ruinous tax.
In short—revolution.
The vote to secede had been unanimous.
The first order of business was to remove the lord mayor, replace him with a revolutionary council, which immediately elected the lord mayor as their leader. The next order of business was to drive out the thugs. Fortunately, the thugs made this simple by gathering together of an evening in their favorite tavern and drinking themselves into swinish insensibility. Most were hauled off in a drunken stupor, deposited outside the walls. Those who were sober enough to fight were subdued with ease by the city militia.
Once the thugs were gone, the gates of Hope’s End were locked and barred. Messengers were sent to Good King Wilhelm informing him that the city of Hope’s End had no wish to take the action it had taken but that its people had been driven to rebel. The Revolutionary Council of Hope’s End offered the king one last chance to lift the heinous and unfair tax. If he did so, they would put down their arms, unlock the gates, and swear allegiance to Blödehelm and Good King Wilhelm for the rest of their days.
Figuring it would take the messenger four days of hard riding to reach the royal city of Vantal, a day to gain audience with the king, and another four days of hard riding to return, the Revolutionary Council didn’t start to worry until the tenth day arrived with no sign of their messenger. Eleven days passed; worry became anxiety. On the twelfth day, anxiety flared into anger. On the thirteenth day, anger gave way to horror.
A kender arrived in the rebellious town (which only goes to show that locked and barred gates guarded by an army really can’t keep them out!) telling the tale of a most interesting execution she’d recently witnessed in the royal city of Vantal.
“Honestly, I never saw anyone impaled in the public square before! Such a quantity of blood! I never heard such heartrending screams. I never knew a man could take so long to die. I never before saw a victim’s head tossed in a cart, a cart being driven in this
direction, now that I come to think of it. I never saw the sort of sign that was thrust into the victim’s gaping mouth, a sign written in the victim’s own blood. A sign that read … just give me a moment … I’m not all that good at reading myself, someone told me what it said … if only I could remember … oh, yes! The sign said: ‘The fate of all rebels.’ ”
But they’d have a chance to see it for themselves, the kender added brightly. The cart was on its way to Hope’s End.
Anger gave way to despair. Despair caved in to panic when scouts posted atop the city walls reported the sight of an enormous cloud of dust obscuring the northeastern horizon. Scouts, riding from Hope’s End, returned with devastating news. An army, a large army, was within a day’s march of their city.
The time for secrecy had passed. Ariakas’s troops marched in the daylight now.
The people of Hope’s End ran from house to house or stood on street corners or lined up in front of the home of the lord mayor or blocked the entrances to the Guild Hall. The people found it impossible to believe that this was happening to them and so they found it impossible to know what to do. Neighbor asked neighbor, apprentice asked master, mistress asked servant, soldier asked commander, commander asked his superiors, the lord mayor asked the guild members, who were busy asking each other: What do we do? Do we stay? Do we go? If we go, where do we go? What becomes of our homes, our jobs, our friends, our relatives?
The dust cloud grew and grew until the entire eastern sky was red at noontime, as if day were breaking with a new and bloody dawn. Some of the people decided to flee, particularly those who were new to the city, those whose roots were shallow and easily transplanted. They packed up what belongings they could carry onto carts or wrapped them in bundles and, bidding their friends farewell, trudged out the city gates and headed down the road in a direction opposite that of what everyone knew now was an approaching army. But most of the citizens of Hope’s End stayed.
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