A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  DUST JACKET BLURB

  In the hinterlands of a Dark Age kingdom, a monster sacks a castle and takes away a magic sword, and with it begins an unlikely rebellion. On the opposite edge of the same land in the street of a frontier town, an east-west trader fights a deadly duel to save his friend. A princess is then kidnapped by one of them, and taken away to an ancient, cursed land of goblin armies, ghoul kings and witchcraft. Journey with Kulith and Sunnil to the Dimm: the fantastic island nations of the buggers and the thrings. The simple words and cunning of a troll begin to turn the broken, the selfish and the cruel into an army, and with it he starts a war of Stones. Will he have enough strength and cunning to prevail in the end against his mighty and timeless enemy?

  Visit the country of Gece: a land full of rotten but brave knights, of contentious, selfish, grasping nobles, with the mighty church of the Son, the Daughter, and the Holy Father arbitrating right from wrong. Read the story of the Traveler Knight, once put to song by a bard at a castle feast. See it through the eyes of the great swordsman himself: Wayland of Rezes, as he tries to save the princess and return her to a realm that does not seem to want her back.

  Adventure is made of both momentous events, and the most common of occurrences, joined together by those who chase after and experience them. The monster, the swordsman and the princess become bound together, in a ballad, in a battle of wits and arms, and in a struggle between the rulers of two lands. They save and destroy each other, then come to an uneasy truce as they try to survive, and do what they believe is right.

  A WAR OF STONES

  Book One of the Traveler Knight

  Howard Norfolk

  Rabbit Drum Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  Text and art copywright © 2017 Howard Norfolk

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form of by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Rabbit Drum Press, Sacramento Ca.

  E-Book ISBN: 978-1-64136-025-8

  Cover design and artwork by Yuriko Matsuoka

  Additional artwork by Howard Norfolk

  Dedicated to the C.A. Army, may they be ever victorious

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Notes

  A WAR OF STONES

  PROLOGUE

  The father and wife with their trail of children paused on the far side of the moat, to stare up at the front of Castle Clews. Toothy stone crenellations grew from the tops of the towers, and a white painted hoarding sat just above the main gate, leaning out to control all the space in front of it. Arles was the high point in the little line of offspring, with sandy hair and an impetuously turned up nose. He knew everyone thought of the Stocking a little differently. To him, churches had gargoyles and castles had battlements, and they were both made that way to put fear into you.

  Castle Clews had been the old bishop’s seat before he had run afoul of the Lakeland King. Seen from either the south road above the drooping swamp trees of the causeway, or from the north where it sat surrounded by gardens and houses, it was said to most resemble a fat black chess king hunched behind his pawns. Arles knew it to be cold inside, the dark stone forming deep shadowed courts and tall smoky halls that always smelled a little rotten. Only the fires in its hearths, the wood paneled rooms above, and the comforts brought inside made it more than just a series walls and traps fashioned to stop and kill its violators.

  On feast days though, the gates were thrown wide open as they were now to welcome in the inhabitants of the Foot and the nearby county. These were making a bright stream of color past the family, who they noticed had oddly stopped there, right at the tip of the drawbridge.

  “I wanted you all to take a good look at it, because we may not see it like this again,” his father told them. “Or at least not again like this for a long time.”

  “Go on,” his mother said to his father now, and they walked up to the lip of the ditch and on across the drawbridge, to pass with the others now under the hoarding, without a challenge from above. For days before the feast all the boys had been prohibited from rough play so there would be no new scabs or scrapes to show. They had been put instead to religious study and to cleaning, and had even been forced to bathe. But Arles figured it had all been worth it for the three-day feast that followed, it so rich that the sugar and salt could be seen glistening atop the dishes of food as they were served.

  The family found way and moved on over the moat with the rest, but Arles held himself back a little and now watched as the women passed by, carrying in their best table sets, and the men, perhaps holding onto a gift for the lord. The children trailed along behind and tried to behave, some bribed by sticks of mint candy in their hands. It was the first feast day of Fall Tide on the Pale. So had it been for hundreds of years, and so was it still.

  Arles took one last, harder look up at the stronghold walls. He and the other boys of the Foot had many times together considered it with the notion that they were bandits or knight trying to get inside, to steal away a princess and ransom her, or to make off with a strongbox of jewels. Arles had never given this notion much weight, as the other boys had perhaps been imagining themselves scaling the battlements or pounding across the slate and lead roofs with arrows whistling by. He looked at the castle as the reason that robber knights and bands of outlaws had stayed away from this land for more than ten years. When the Lakeland King had thrown out the bishop and they had rebuilt the castle, it had created security and peace for all.

  The castle had been matched to its stone base with dark gray blocks in principle, but it had also been decorated with white and red stones set in large diamond patterns up the walls and the sides of the towers. From this design was the magnate of Castle Clews always informally known as the lord of the Stocking: those long leg hose that the Ballatch wore as often as not. And the town of Clewsgate around it was usually just called the Foot. So was the powerful resident baron, a holder of village rents, owner of ships and great flocks resigned to abide by this whimsy of his burghers and country serfs.

  The present castle was a strong point where defense could be rallied against raiders coming in from the sea, and where the marshaling of the Pale was done in times of war. It also now sat as the toll point for the raised road that had been built on across the
swamp, with a great barrel tower on the south end of it overlooking that road, its outer wall riddled with arrow slits. The great tower hosted companies of soldiers and officials sent about on the king’s business, and had a reputation for hospitality and good company. There was always other business going on in the courts, great conversations at the dinners, and fights out in the yards that were always discussed in the rougher talk about town. The buildings of the lord were of a lighter shade of stone, with carved doorways and windows. They occupied the north end of the castle grounds, these being in order of magnificence a great hall and solar, winged by two irregular chamber blocks, a buttery, a pantry, and a long kitchen.

  Arles broke off his review to now wind through the crowd and get back into step with his family. They walked on through another gate in a wall and turned into the north yard, going past the stables, the barns and an additional guard house. There was a low wall skirting the rise on which the hall was built, and they climbed up the road and went through it, past a herb and flower garden, across the flagstone court, and finally arrived at the lord’s long, brightly lit residence.

  There was a great smell of food and glow of golden light coming from it tonight that he never forgot. Along the rough paneled walls had been placed out baskets of fresh bread, some of it already cut to serve. Crocks of peas and bows of steaming potatoes were there beside. At all four of the hall’s hearths now turned spits loaded with poultry, venison, lamb and beef, each tended over by one of the lord’s knights or squires. Beer was being brought out and served down the long tables in great wooden buckets, to the delight of the men and some frowns from the mothers. Platters loaded with cuts of meat and other dishes were set in position to the salt, and now vied for room with the eating plates and cups as they were set out.

  Arles was distracted from all this for a moment by the only thing that could do so. His head followed the turn of Maris Barton’s dress and the cut of her skirt as she moved through the benches and stools back to where the rest of the Barton clan had set out down the table. His father had warned him about the honey haired girl.

  “If you spend too much time around the Barton house, you’ll learn things there that you wish you had not,” his father had told him.

  So he turned back and sat down on the bench with his brothers and sisters, and when the bright hall was mostly filled and the wives had all put out their wares, one of the knights went back into the solar and brought out Baron Clews and his family.

  Two silver candle sconces stood on the head table, and these were lit right as Lord Wrun entered. He wore a lightly embroidered dark doublet and breeches in the new style from Bezet, with gold foiled glass buttons in two long rows down the jacket front. His long yellow hair was loose today, the strands partly graying in their curls as they fell over his shoulders like ice and gold twined together. It framed his broad face, his hawk brow, and his dark blue eyes.

  He was followed out by the lady of the Stocking, who it was maintained had been an heiress of some renown on the continent. Her chestnut hair, peachy skin and slightly slanted green eyes marked her as different from the regular set, but then there were old households of Sabecks right up the road who looked about the same. Arles had fought with a few of their children, and knew they were as mortal as everyone else. Several strands of pearls were looped around the lady’s neck to hang down across the front of her dark satin dress. A favorite blue jewel they had all seen before twinkled from one of her fingers.

  She was well accounted for by her oldest son, a younger version of Wrun, dressed in a green coat and breeches with brass buttons. Behind him came their two daughters, and lastly a small boy of no more than six who had to be held in place by his nanny from immediately running away through the hall. They took their seats at the head table where a setting of white plate from Pendwise had been laid out for them. A few moments later, as the rest of the hall quieted, Wrun came forward from behind the table to stand out on the tiles. He was still tall and straight, though he carried a silvered stick, and he used it now to help address his hall.

  “It has been a year of bounty from out of the north fields, and from the lower pastures as well. The apple harvest was plentiful and of good quality. Three of my ships sailed forth this year and returned from Abesh without any incident of storm, almost without even tearing a sail, and one of my mines has come on a particularly good vein of silver and tin.”

  He leaned forward and rocked, using the cane, looking out at his friends, at his enemies, and at his other vassals with equal amusement, but also with a rueful look of sad caution. He leaned back a little and wagged the stick about at them.

  “But even now, with fat pockets and full larder, I worry what the next year will bring us? It is often in the days of bounty that men use these new means to do whatever bad end they have long considered and planned. They do not suffer to do this with the famine or the plague. No, they do it instead when everything is easy, when life should be sweet and good. You have no doubt heard the rumors surrounding the Lakeland succession, and there have been disagreements even here among you that I cannot mend.”

  Arles looked around at the knowing faces of the other people near him. The lake lords were drumming their men and accusing each other of new thefts, or were peeling off the old scabs of precedence and claims from the lower branches of their family trees. Already, riders of several lords had gone around, these having the nerve to even enter Wrun’s lands without his leave. They had gone to the related families for money and men to be sent immediately, or when the real fighting began. Though he might shut his castle gate on it, the baron of Clews could not fully escape what was happening a little farther north between the lakes.

  “So have I decided to give you something at this feast that I have hinted at for a long time,” he told them. “I have with my coin brought to our Fall Tide a great teller of tales from Alonze. He will render of us the story of the Beast and the Princess, so that no matter what happens a month or two from now, it cannot be later said that it was not told in this hall. I instructed our fine Father Stuxus to keep this bard company until the blessing. If there is any humor to be had with this troubadour, I bade you to please let me provoke it, since it was I who paid his price.” He wagged his stick out at them again. “You are as you should be tonight: my fine guests, and his grand audience!”

  The lord of the Stocking used the cane now to gesture over to Sir Eaton, and the knight went stiffly away to fetch back the two from out of the chapel. A tall, severe looking man in black soon came in with the much rounder priest. With a close cropped beard and darting dark eyes, he looked more like the Devil being chased, or a scholar, than a tale-teller and player. Yet he carried a glowing wooden lute with him as he gazed slowly about the hall, a little frown of trepidation showing though his beard, perhaps indicating that he was used to a better stage.

  Father Stuxus almost bowled the slighter man over as he lifted and waved his ringed hands out, bidding them to rise for the prayer. He blessed the meal, thanking the Father, the Son, and the Daughter for the bountiful harvest and pleasant summer they had just enjoyed. He then withdrew to a seat, as the squires and pages began bringing around plates of baked fish, potatoes and gravy. A mead bucket reached back to lord Wrun as he sat back down, and he tipped it up and heartily finished off its final notches. One of his daughters slapped the little boy across the hand as he tried to reach out and steal one of the sugared nut breads that sat as the centerpiece on the table. He bawled out. The bard turned back at the noise, and then addressed the lord from where he stood upon the old central mosaic.

  “Sire, you have asked for the Beast and the Princess, but perhaps a pleasant country song before is in order first?” Lord Wrun stood up and pointed with his stick across the table at him.

  “You’ve been paid to tell just that, and that is what you will do. I hear of this great, long tale, going up and down the land, through Tolwind, through Alonze and Galfan, getting more polished and better with its each retelling. And so I asked at c
ourt, at Rezes about who told it best: oh who is the greatest player with this song? And they all chorused back that it was you, Ricard of Tyrie. So I sent to Tyrie in Alonze at considerable expense, and hired you at the wage and considerations you stated to my agent. I brought you all the way across Tolwind’s Ribbon to tell the score: the saga you had contracted to play. Should I go get the sheriff now and present him with my complaint?” Someone waved from a table above the salt, off to the left. Wrun waved back to him with his stick.

  “Oh, Sir Jacobs is here, together with us I see. That will expedite things a bit.” Ricard of Tyrie turned back around, his face red, and began to tune his instrument.

  He played it out to the hall, working up a melody in a fine bit of finger work that he repeated several times in various themes. The golden lute was full of beautiful music, and as he let it out, it quieted them all down. He walked back and forth across the hall’s old tiles, giving the folk some more time to fall under his spell. Then he began.

  “Listen now, those with yearning ears in the heart of Towind, from the isles and cracked claws of Ballatch, over the iced shores of Flanweg, across the green meadows and stony rows of Wellund it comes. Through all the land this tale sings like a fine fairy wind! Of the knights that were, of the knights that were made so by their daring, and of a knight who was not a knight. It sings of a night in the east so deep and cold that the fires almost went out in all the hearths of the halls under the snow. And also will it tell and ring of the pure spring that followed that, only made possible by a great beast and a princess of gold, upon a road through the forest.”