by Jon Kiln
Nisero held up his hands in a calming manner. “What are you talking about? Forseth is still alive?”
Berengar stared for a moment and narrowed his eyes in the darkness. “That is the report that has come north. Him and a few others… not many.”
Nisero staggered back and bent over clutching his knees. Arianne tried to steady him herself.
“I thought they had all died,” Nisero said, shocked. “We were separated before the ambush and everyone around me was cut down. I barely escaped from the attackers by the slightest of chances and the cover of darkness. The Eastern prince was cut down along with his men. I fled. I should have remained and tried to help Forseth. I did not think about it until later and by then, the attackers were searching for me.”
“Where was Forseth?”
“He went to the manor house where we were supposed to stay,” Nisero replied. “Forseth and some others went to announce our arrival. We stayed on the road awaiting his return.”
“With the prince?” Berengar asked.
“Yes.”
“In the dark?”
“Yes.”
Berengar furrowed his brow. “On the exact spot where the attackers ambushed you once Forseth and the others left.”
Nisero stood up straight again. “What are you getting at, sir?”
“Your orders were to stay on the road.”
Nisero licked his lips. “Yes.”
“Why did Forseth leave you all to go to the manor house where you were expected?”
Nisero rubbed at his face as he tried to pull up the exact memory from the haze of that night. “He said it was late and he did not want the lord’s men to fire on the prince by accident, if we surprised him.”
“But then you were fired upon on purpose.” Berengar scratched at a gristle of whiskers over his chin and then rubbed his fingers at the deep pits of the scars along his cheek. “Every man that was with you died? You are sure?”
Nisero stared at the ground for a few beats. “I am certain. I thought Forseth and the others were waylaid upon their return.”
“So, all the survivors, including Captain Forseth,” Berengar concluded, “had to be among those that left you on the road, where you were told to stay.” Berengar crossed his arms across his broad chest. “He knew that exact manor and that exact spot where he insisted on stopping for the night. There and no where else.”
Nisero nodded slowly. “He did.”
“So you suspect him, father?” Arianne injected. “You think Captain Forseth conspired with the attackers against his own Guard?”
“I can’t imagine it,” Nisero whispered.
“I’m surprised it didn’t cross your mind sooner.”
Nisero turned away. “I had no reason to think there had been any other survivors before now. I had considered that there had to be powerful men behind the assassination and the framing, but I never considered such a betrayal.”
“I don’t know how we go about refuting the kingdom wide call for your capture or death,” Berengar said in concern. “Those that want you dead, and thought you guilty, only want it more with every passing moment. Fear of war is spreading through the land. On my way here, I heard talk that handing you over to the grieving king in the east might buy forgiveness and avoid bloody conflict.”
“The people clearly have no understanding about how King’s operate or think,” Nisero remarked.
“They never have and never will.”
“How did you know to come down this way looking for us at all?” Arianne asked. “We took the spur and we are still some distance from the message drop.”
Berengar rubbed at his chin. “It is a wonder you two did not get yourselves captured or killed.”
“We came close with one bounty hunter,” Arianne confessed, “but Nisero choked him out and we escaped.”
Berengar stared at his daughter for a moment and then affixed Nisero in his glare. Nisero found himself wishing that Arianne had not mentioned the close call to her father.
Berengar took a deep breath and then said, “At any rate, word of the two of you traveled up the trail and reached the towns north. The fact that they continued to search farther north and you had not reached the message drop, led me to believe that you had been captured and was on your way back to the capital. Or, you had broken off on a side route that they had not searched. I came down this way first and then was going to track you back along the main roads until I found who had claimed your bounty.”
“By the gods,” Nisero uttered, “we avoided disaster again by mere chance.”
“You give yourself so little credit.” Arianne huffed in annoyance. “But more importantly, you give me so little credit.”
Berengar exhaled slowly, looking up into the trees. “I think he gives himself plenty enough credit, for the circumstances.”
“Father,” Arianne said, “we need to get off the trail. Can we reach your hidden cabin in the foothills?”
“There are already men searching and guarding there.”
“How did they even find it?” Arianne asked in surprise.
“You greatly underestimate the depth of trouble you two have waded out into.”
Nisero looked around him. “Were you possibly followed out this far?”
“No, I know how to avoid detection.”
“Then, I’m again reassured that coming to you was the right choice.”
Berengar huffed. “There is a place nearby that we can rest for one night at least. We’ll need to move on after that though. Where from there, I don’t yet know. We will be getting Arianne back to her husband and clear of this business as soon as possible too. Trying to swim against the tides of two kingdoms that want you dead is impossible enough without a pregnant woman in tow.”
“Easy, father, I got us this far well enough, did I not?”
Berengar smiled patiently at her. “My horse is off the trail ahead of us here. I’ll retrieve it and then we are traveling through the woods. It will be a difficult ride in the dark. We will be going slow. No one gets hurt even if it takes us all night to arrive.”
Berengar marched ahead of them. Arianne mounted her horse and Nisero walked along between, holding the reins of both horses from the ground.
“I have greatly angered and disappointed him,” Nisero said quietly.
Arianne sniffed. “I’ve done so plenty of times myself. Believe me. He will get past it.”
“You are his daughter.” Nisero stared at Captain Berengar’s back. “He would forgive you from necessity, if no other reason.”
“You underestimate what you mean to him, Nisero. He thinks of you much like a son. He will be angered and forgiving toward you in equal measure.”
Chapter 7: No New Position
“I’ll need to make contact with a few people still within the military before we can proceed,” Berengar explained.
Nisero sat up on his pallet in the back of the inn. Light filtered gray through the dusty windows and empty corridors. “Contact them to what end?”
“We need information. We need a path that at least has some potential to move us forward. At the moment we have no such thing.”
A chicken walked past the doorway to the storage room where they had slept. The bird was lean with a crimson crown and grand emerald feathers cascading out behind it. Nisero smelled eggs and meat cooking from around the corner. The bird seemed unimpressed and undisturbed by the implications of those smells and the sounds of sizzling oil.
“What is this place?” he asked.
Berengar looked toward the door, but the chicken was gone by then. “It was a very fancy tavern for very fancy people. Now it is part of a farm and no one has gotten around to knocking it down. Is it not up to your standards?”
“You and I have stayed in worse.”
Berengar pursed his lips and nodded. “This is not new to us, to be sure.”
“You trust the people who possess this land then?”
“I trust the ones that know. No one attacked us outs
ide while I was bringing us in, so it is already better than your previous safe places.”
Nisero let out a long breath and bowed his head. “I can’t believe that Forseth would betray me. We fought in defense of the kingdom together in numerous battles. You know what that means. You find out about the nature of a man in those moments. You and I both served with him for many years before he was promoted. He pulled us out of the fire in the mountains in a near hopeless war with the bandits. Did you ever see a possible traitor in any of those moments?”
Berengar seemed to look through the wall, thinking of times long past. The sizzling sound around the corner died off and the sounds of plates and pans clinking followed.
Captain Berengar finally said, “Man is capable of anything under the right circumstances.”
Nisero stared at the captain. “Did you ever entertain the idea that I might have done what they accused me of?”
“Not for a moment,” Berengar said without a pause. “Perhaps Captain Forseth had no part in orchestrating the destruction of the Elite Guard and the assassination of a foreign prince. Someone benefits though. I need to put us on a course to finding out what happened, why, and how their plans are to be undone.”
“Seems to be an easy three step plan.”
Berengar smiled, one said of his mouth twisting up the scar on his cheek.
An old lady with white hair sticking out in every direction leaned into the doorway. She clutched a robe around in front of her. “Breakfast is prepared, gentlemen. You want me to set you up a knee table here from some old pallets or will you come out like proper guests?”
“We’ll come out. Thank you, Gorma,” Berengar said to her.
“As you wish, master.”
Nisero tilted his head. “Master?”
“I may own this farm,” Berengar disclosed. “I may have bought it in Gorma and her husband’s name so that they would not lose it and no one would know that I owned it.”
“Not even Arianne,” Nisero said. “Impressive.”
Arianne spoke from under her covers on her pallet in the corner. “I can hear you both. Keeping secrets from your family is none too impressive. Every man does it.”
Berengar shook his head. “Every man, huh? Where does your husband think you are right now, daughter?”
“Don’t start with me,” she said. “Help me up. I need to go relieve myself before I wet this pallet.”
He crossed the room and helped Arianne to her feet. Nisero looked around thinking that it would be hard to tell the room had been further fouled even if she did urinate in the corner.
A pig hobbled by the doorway on three legs, missing one of its front feet.
Arianne held her back gingerly as she exited the room. From the hallway, she called out to them. “Don’t go on any grand quests without me.”
Her shadow broke the light coming from the foyer of the old inn, and then the light of morning returned once she was outside.
“Will she be okay out there?” Nisero said, worried.
“You can go ask her, but I don’t think she’d appreciate it,” Berengar responded. “You brought her in riding on horseback. I’m sure she can handle this. We are isolated enough on this property.”
Captain Berengar stood and Nisero followed him out into a banquet hall on one side of the building. Large holes opened through the wood paneling and stone. Some of the openings ran nearly from floor to ceiling. Nisero saw weeds lining the property and scant corn fields beyond that. The stalks and leaves were drawing yellow and crisp, indicating time for harvest.
A cow lifted its head from the weeds and peered through at the old woman plating out fried eggs, boiled chicken and ham hock.
She looked up as Berengar approached. “I hope this is sufficient, master. I did not know how many were coming when you sent word.”
“This is a king’s breakfast, Gorma. I would not ask for any more.”
As Nisero took his seat and Gorma poured him wine from a pitcher, an older man in drab leather walked up and lifted a few pinches of meat from the table, before continuing on.
“Are you not joining, husband?” Gorma asked.
He spoke as he walked toward the front of the ruined inn. “No, excuse me, master. The corn requires my full attention this day.”
“Of course,” Berengar said.
Nisero looked out at the cow bowing its head to chew up the weeds again. He wasn’t sure why everyone still insisted on using the door when so much of the wall was missing.
“Who are you going to contact?” he asked Berengar.
“I’d rather keep that close to breast until I have some answers,” Berengar said between bites. “It will be better if you don’t know them. I’m going to travel out to meet with a few contacts and then return with whatever I find.”
“When you say you will go, sir,” Nisero looked up from his plate, “it sounds as if you intend to go alone.”
“Traveling with you and getting spotted before we have a destination might end our efforts before they begin. Arianne will stay here with you until I return. Then we need to deal with reality of her situation too.”
“What do you intend to do with me, father?” Arianne rounded the corner near the collapsing stairs and approached the table in a waddle. Nisero thought she looked to be moving slower. Perhaps the ride had been harder on her than he had realized. He started to feel more guilt on not convincing her to stay home. He understood Berengar’s anger at his failure to do so.
“What situation of mine do you speak of?” she asked pertly.
Berengar snorted as Arianne lowered herself into a chair next to him. He waved his hand over and around her belly as he spoke. “This condition here, with the baby growing inside you while we are out playing bandits. That is the situation of which I speak.”
Arianne filled her plate. “Oh, that situation. I had completely forgotten. Thank you for the reminder.”
“As usual, still more clever than wise.”
“Hmm.” She shrugged. “You don’t think they make armor in my particular size for the battles ahead?”
“Even if they did,” Berengar said, “I wouldn’t be able to get it for you being outside the army. Plate mail is the privilege of those that fight for the King and the wealthiest lords. Like your husband for instance.”
“Is that what he does? I am learning all sorts of things about my life by being around you, father. We should spend more time together.”
Berengar smiled wryly. “I will be gone shortly. In the mean time I ask that you remain secluded inside. Wait for me to bring you out once I return.”
“I’m getting used to that instruction,” Nisero grumbled.
“Why wait inside?” Arianne complained to her father.
“Well, the lieutenant is a wanted man and people witnessed you with him. I also want to make certain I wasn’t followed before you reveal yourself. Does that work for you, daughter?”
Arianne smiled sweetly at him. “As you wish.”
Berengar looked at her suspiciously, but eventually left the table, mounted his horse and rode southward.
She rose from the table. “You and my father fought for the King. Why did you never get your plate mail armor?”
“We did a different sort of fighting for the King,” Nisero told her.
After she left, he found a pitcher of water and washed the dried blood away from the small cuts on his throat from the night before.
Nisero remained in the back room most of the day. Gorma returned to offer bread and boiled corn for the mid day meal, but Nisero did not see her husband the rest of the day.
Arianne entered the storage room later in the afternoon.
Nisero sat up. “Is there something you need?”
“No, husband, just bored out of my mind.”
He laid back down on his pallet and closed his eyes. “Why are you still calling me that?”
“We are bandits maintaining a disguise,” she said.
“That did not seem to hold up very well.�
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She laughed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. We just executed poorly.”
“That is the definition of all bad ideas,” Nisero lamented. “What seems like a good idea which is then executed poorly.”
“You and my father have the same sense of humor. You both jest with an air of sadness. Biting and depressing.”
“Your humor does a fine job of biting at him,” Nisero commented.
“You noticed that, did you?” She moved back to the doorway and stretched up holding onto the frame for support. “He needs a little ribbing to keep him honest.”
“Does that come from resentment?”
Arianne turned and leaned inside the doorframe. “Is this about my mother and brother? Is that what you mean?”
“I meant nothing.” Nisero let his eyes slide open and he stared up at the uneven boards of the ceiling. “Your humor seems to have an edge, like his… and mine, I suppose, but yours seems to direct that edge at him.”
“That’s what you see then?”
He shrugged, lying on his pallet still staring upward. “You had mentioned feeling distant from him in the midst of our escape from bandits all those years ago. I wouldn’t think him isolating himself in the hills to the north would have helped to heal that feeling much.”
“I’ve grown up a little since then,” Arianne said. “I’m about to be a mother for goodness sake. I better be grown up by now. Being married to a soldier has expanded my understanding of what my mother did and sacrificed for that life. I understand my father a little better for it too. Maybe I understand you more as well, for that matter.”
“That’s good, I suppose.” Nisero’s voice sounded tight and drawn in his own ears.
“Dreth is like all other soldiers in many ways,” she continued. “He does not have the same humor or observations of life that you and my father seem to have. He is no warrior-philosopher. He just does his work and returns home.”
“Is that the difference then?” Nisero turned his head toward the wall away from her.
“Maybe it is something different in being a member of the Elite Guard. You boys are warriors first and everything else later… sometimes much later.”