The Unwilling Warlord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Lura burst into giggles. Nissitha stared down at her youngest sister in clear disgust. The queen’s expression shifted to polite dismay.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Sterren asked, hoping he hadn’t just condemned himself to a dungeon or worse.

  “Oh, no,” Queen Ashassa reassured him. “Or at least, not really. It’s Lura’s doing. And of course, Shirrin’s being foolish, too. She’s thirteen, you know, a very sensitive age, and Lura’s doing her best to embarrass her. Don’t let it worry you.” She turned to Lura and said sternly, “Lura, you go apologize to your sister!”

  Lura’s giggling suddenly stopped. “For what?” she demanded. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Do as I say!” the queen thundered, pointing.

  Lura knew better than to argue any further; she marched off after Shirrin.

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” the queen said when Lura had closed the door behind her. “Those girls love to tease each other. You see, Shirrin’s all full of romantic stories about Ethshar and warlords and lost heirs ever since our theurgist, Agor, first told us about you, and Lura’s been making fun of her for it.”

  “Silly things,” Nissitha remarked, “getting worked up over nothing!”

  Sterren was at a loss for a reply. “Ah,” he said.

  “Well, then, my lord,” Queen Ashassa said, “as long as you’re here, Lura was quite right, we’ve all been eager to meet you and talk with you. You must understand, none of us have ever been more than a few leagues from this castle; my ancestral home in Thanoria is only six leagues or so, and that’s the furthest any of us have traveled. Ethshar seems unspeakably exotic. Do sit down, and tell us something about it!”

  Sterren glanced at his guards, but Dogal and Alder were being steadfastly silent. Seeing no polite way to refuse, he reluctantly and delicately seated himself on one of the velvet couches, while Queen Ashassa and Princess Nissitha settled onto others, and asked, “What can I tell you?”

  Princess Nissitha’s expression plainly said that he couldn’t tell her anything at all, but Queen Ashassa asked, her tone sincerely interested, “Is it true that the city of Ethshar is so large that you can’t see from one end to the other?”

  “Well,” Sterren said, considering the question, “it would depend where you were standing. I suppose from atop the ... the lord’s castle you could see the city walls on both sides. But mostly, it’s true.”

  The overlord’s palace was not really a castle, but his limited Semman vocabulary did not include a more suitable term.

  The queen asked more questions, and Sterren did his best to answer; gradually, as the topics ranged from the city’s size to the recently-begun overlordship of Azrad VII to wizards and other magicians, Sterren found himself relaxing and enjoying the conversation. Queen Ashassa, despite her royal title, was a pleasant enough person.

  Princess Nissitha never said a word, and eventually rose and glided haughtily away.

  After a time, a servant entered quietly and announced that dinner was ready. Queen Ashassa rose, and for a moment Sterren thought she was going to offer her arm, to be escorted in to the meal, as he had seen ladies do in Ethshar.

  Either Semman etiquette was different, or the difference in their stations as queen and warlord was too great; Ashassa marched off on her own, leaving Sterren to follow in her wake.

  The dining hall, Sterren discovered, was the throne room where the king had first received him. Trestle tables had been set up and covered with white linen, and chairs brought from somewhere to line either side. A smaller table stood upon the dias, crossing the T, with a dozen chairs behind it.

  As yet, almost all the chairs were still unoccupied.

  Queen Ashassa took a seat at the high table, near the center; Sterren, recognizing that the high table was a position of special honor, guessed that it was reserved for the royal family and headed for a seat at one of the long tables.

  A servant caught his elbow.

  “My lord,” the servant whispered, “you sit on the king’s right.” He pointed to the high table, indicating a chair two spaces over from the queen’s.

  Sterren froze, suddenly overcome with fright at the idea of sitting up there and eating in full view of dozens, maybe hundreds of people, in his ill-fitting clothes, with his simple Ethsharitic manners that were surely foreign to these barbarians with their noble trappings. The servant pushed gently at his elbow, and reluctantly, he allowed himself to be prodded forward, up the steps onto the dias.

  He seized control of his dignity once he reached the top step, and marched on to his place unaided.

  The princesses, he saw, were taking their seats on the queen’s side of the table, to his left. To his right, a young man of roughly his own age and with a resemblance to the royal family took a seat two places over. Another, perhaps a year younger, took the seat just beyond that. A mutter of conversation filled the room, but Sterren, with his still-poor grasp of Semmat, could not catch any of it.

  Then the king entered, followed by an entourage of soldiers and courtiers. Silence fell. Everyone who had been seated rose; Sterren followed suit a bit tardily. The courtiers gradually peeled away from the group and found seats at the long table as the party progressed up the length of the hall, but they remained standing by their chairs.

  King Phenvel reached his place and sat, and his guards took up unobtrusive positions along the back wall. He nodded politely, and the rest of the company sat as well.

  That was the sign for the meal to begin, and the low mutter of conversation resumed. It quickly built up to considerably more than a mutter, and was punctuated by the occasional clash of cutlery as diners sorted out their tableware.

  The knives and forks appeared to be silver, and Sterren wondered what they were worth.

  As yet, he had nothing to eat with them, so he let his own implements lie undisturbed on the tablecloth.

  The noise level was roughly that of a busy but well-behaved tavern, and Sterren found that somewhat startling. He had somehow expected a roomful of aristocrats to eat in dignified silence.

  That, he realized, was foolish. People were people, regardless of titles.

  Other people continued to drift in and take seats, as the king exchanged a few pleasantries with the queen. Sterren looked about the room, feeling a little lost.

  A middle-aged man sat down to Sterren’s right and smiled at him.

  “Hello,” he said, “I’m Algarven, Eighth Kai’takhe.”

  “Eighth what?” Sterren asked before he could catch himself.

  “Kai’takhe. .. Oh, you don’t know the word, do you? Let me think.” The fellow blinked twice, frowning, then smiled again, and said, in Ethsharitic, “Steward!”

  “You speak Ethsharitic?” Sterren asked eagerly, in Ethsharitic.

  Algarven smiled. “No, no,” he said in Semmat. “Just a few words.”

  “Oh,” Sterren said, disappointed.

  He suddenly remembered his manners, and introduced himself.

  “Oh, we all know who you are,” Algarven assured him.

  Somehow, Sterren did not find that reassuring.

  “Here, let me tell you who everybody is,” Algarven said. He began pointing. “You know the king and queen, of course. There to the queen’s left is the treasurer, Adréan.”

  Adréan was a plump man of perhaps fifty, making him a decade or so older than Algarven; he wore a heavy gold chain around his neck, and his tunic was an unusually ugly shade of purple.

  “Beyond him, that’s old Inria, our Trader. If she were a little younger, she’d have been the one to go and fetch you.”

  Inria was an ancient, toothless hag, wearing black velvet and grinning out at the inhabitants of the hall.

  “And then there are the three princesses, Nissitha, Shirrin, and Lura...”

  “I met them this afternoon,” Sterren remarked.

  “Ah! And did you meet the princes?” Algarven turned to the other side and gestured at the four youths there, ranging in age from a young man
of perhaps eighteen to a boy of ten or eleven.

  “No,” Sterren admitted.

  “We have here Phenvel the Younger, heir to the throne, and his brothers Tendel, Rayel, and Dereth.”

  “A fine family,” Sterren said.

  “The king certainly hasn’t shirked his duty in providing heirs, has he?” Algarven agreed. “And his father didn’t, either; down there at the first table, those three on the end here, that’s the elder Prince Rayel, and Prince Alder, the king’s brothers, and his sister, Princess Sanda. Another brother, the elder Tendel, got himself killed seven years ago in a duel.”

  “Ah.” Sterren could not think of anything further to say, and was saved from the necessity of inventing something by the sudden arrival of servants bearing trays of food—breads, fruits, meats, and cheeses.

  From then on, the meal was simply another meal; Sterren forgot his exposed position on the dais, forgot his improvised garb, and set about filling his belly.

  Between bites he continued to make polite conversation with both the steward Algarven and King Phenvel himself, but this largely consisted of simple questions and required little thought. Any time he found himself at a loss for words he simply reached for another orange or buttered a roll.

  By the end of the meal he felt fairly comfortable with the royal family and his fellow lords. They were, after all, just people, despite the titles, and he was one of them.

  When he reflected on this, he was amazed at himself for accepting his situation so readily.

  Chapter Eight

  The barracks adjoining the castle gate was reasonably tidy, but Sterren would not have applied the word “clean” to it. The cracks between the stones of the floor were filled with accumulated black gunk, and cobwebs dangled unmolested in the less-accessible corners of the ceiling. Various stains were visible on the whitewashed walls; some of them, particularly those near the floor, were very unappetizing.

  He had certainly seen worse, though; his own room, back on Bargain Street, had been only marginally better.

  His belly was pleasantly full, and his head very slightly aswim with wine, and he decided not to pick nits. He had come directly from the dining hall out to the walls to make this inspection of his troops and their lodging, so as to get it over with. His main purpose, he reminded himself, was to see what sort of men he was supposed to command, not to criticize anybody’s housekeeping.

  But still, it seemed to him that a really first-rate group of soldiers would keep their quarters in better shape.

  He did not bother to look in the cabinets or kit-bags at each station, nor under the narrow beds. He would not have known what to look for, and besides, it seemed like an invasion of the soldiers’ privacy. He glanced at the bunks, each with one blanket pulled taut and another rolled up to serve as a pillow, and could see nothing to comment on.

  He walked on through to the armory, where a fine assortment of weapons adorned the walls and various racks. He reached out at random and picked up a sword.

  It came away from the rack only reluctantly, and left a little wad of rust behind. The area of blade that had been hidden by the wooden brackets was nothing but a few flakes of dull brown rust, and the leather wrapping on the hilt cracked in his grasp. Grey dust swirled up, and he sneezed.

  Behind him, he heard some of his men shuffling their feet in embarrassment. He carefully placed the sword back on the rack.

  He should, he knew, reprimand somebody for the incredibly poor condition of the sword, but he was unsure who, specifically, to address. Furthermore, even if he was the warlord, he was also a foreigner and a mere youth and not even particularly large. The soldiers were all considerably older and larger than himself. He knew that his title should give him sufficient authority to berate them all despite being so thoroughly outweighed and outnumbered, but he could not find the courage to test that theory.

  Maybe later, he told himself, when he had settled in a bit more, he could do something about it.

  Even as he thought it, he was slightly ashamed of his cowardice.

  “My lord,” someone said, “these are the weapons we use for practice.” A hand indicated a rack near the door.

  Sterren picked up another sword. This one was in far better shape, without a spot of rust, the grip soft and supple—but the blade, he saw, was dull.

  Well, it was only a practice blade. You wouldn’t want to kill anyone in mere practice, would you?, he asked himself. He nodded and returned the weapon to its place.

  He wished he knew more about swords and other weapons. He had no idea what to check for.

  The rust, however, was obviously a very bad sign.

  He turned back to face his men.

  All of them, as he had noticed before, were larger than himself, but not all were mountains of muscle like his personal escorts, Alder and Dogal. In fact, the majority seemed to be pot-bellied or otherwise running to fat. He mentally compared them to the city guards he had seen back in Ethshar, strolling the streets to keep the peace, or rousting the beggars from Wall Street, or carousing in the taverns.

  The Royal Army of Semma did not fare well in the comparison. Ethshar’s guardsmen came in all sizes, but they all had a certain toughness that this oversized bunch did not display. Guardsmen might be fat, but they were never soft.

  Much of Semma’s soldiery looked soft.

  Sterren suppressed a shrug. Things were different here. Whatever duties these men had, they obviously didn’t require the sort of ruggedness that was needed to maintain order in the world’s largest, richest, and rowdiest city.

  Alder had told him that Semma had been at peace for fifty years; Sterren hoped that that was not about to change.

  If it did, though, and all he had to fight with was this pitiful handful of men, well, Semma wasn’t his homeland. He could always surrender.

  Couldn’t he? It occurred to him that he had no idea what the customs were in the Small Kingdoms regarding prisoners of war.

  He walked from the armory back into the barracks, and noticed something he had missed before. One of the bunks had been moved. It had been shoved up against a wall, so that the space between that bunk and the next was twice the space between any other two. As further confirmation, half the floor in the widened space was cleaner and lighter than the rest of the barracks floor.

  His curiosity was piqued. “You,” he said to the nearest soldier, “slide that bunk out from the wall, would you?”

  The soldier glanced at his mates, who all somehow managed to be looking in other directions.

  “Come on,” Sterren said, using the phrase Lady Kalira had used when urging her horse onward.

  The soldier stepped forward, moving slowly as if hoping for some miraculous reprieve, and pulled the bunk out, back to its original position.

  In doing so, he uncovered several lines of chalk drawn onto the dirty planks.

  Sterren recognized the lines immediately, and grinned. He suddenly saw that he had something in common with these oversized barbarians.

  “Three-bone?” he asked, in Ethsharitic.

  The soldiers looked blank, and he puzzled out a Semman equivalent and tried that.

  One soldier shook his head and replied, “No, double flash.”

  His companions glared at him, too late to hush him. Sterren waved their displeasure aside. “What stakes?” he asked. “And do you pass on the first loss or the second?” He had picked the word for gambling stakes up from Dogal during the journey from Ethshar. Double flash was not his favorite dice game, by any means—he would greatly have preferred three-bone—but it was certainly better than nothing.

  A friendly game was just what he needed to help him feel at home.

  It would also serve nicely to get to know some of his men, and perhaps to build up a little money that the other nobles would know nothing about. That could be very useful if he ever decided to leave.

  He still had his purse, and the winnings from his last night in Ethshar. He pulled out a silver bit. “Will this buy me a thro
w?”

  Feet shuffled, and someone coughed.

  “Well, actually, my lord...”

  “For now, just call me Sterren, all right?”

  “Yes, my lord. Ah ... Sterren. We usually play for copper.”

  “Good enough; can someone make change? And who’s got the dice?”

  Coins and dice emerged from pockets and purses, and a moment later Sterren and three soldiers were crouched around the chalked diagram, tossing copper bits into the various betting slots. Any further inspection was forgotten.

  When the dice were passed, Sterren felt the familiar thrill of competition—but the sense of calm oneness with the dice that he usually felt was absent.

  He dismissed it as an effect of the unfamiliar surroundings, and proceeded to throw a deuce, losing his turn.

  It was well after midnight when Sterren wearily climbed back up to his room in the tower. His purse was lighter by several silver bits—the equivalent of over a hundred coppers. His luck had been consistently bad.

  Whatever talent or charm had kept him alive and solvent in the taverns of Ethshar obviously had not worked in this alien place.

  He wondered, as he hauled himself up the dimly-lit stairs, if it would ever work again. If it didn’t, he would have to give up dice for good.

  Now, that was a really terrible thought!

  He thrust it aside as he reached the top, and saw Alder standing by the door of his room. As he walked down the short stretch of corridor and into his room he ran over the rest of the day in his mind.

  It had certainly been an eventful one.

  He hoped he never had another like it.

  Alder opened the door and followed him into the room. As Sterren stood yawning the big soldier lit a candle on the desk, and stood awaiting orders.

  Chapter Nine

  Sterren stretched, thought for a moment, and then shooed Alder out. When the door had closed behind Alder’s back he took a moment to make sure all his belongings were stashed where he could find them. That done, he lay down on the great canopied bed and tried to sleep.

  His blood was still pumping hard from the excitement of the game, the shock of losing so badly, and the long climb up the stairs from the barracks, all coming at the end of an extraordinarily long and bewildering day; sleep was slow in coming. He was still lying awake when he heard a quiet knock on his door.