A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Anaka tilted her chin up and said back to him like the matron she was slowly becoming. “There are hard tidings in the principles from every direction this fall. We are in for a fierce season, with the Kundi, Goloks and Sund making trouble out in the Sanakand Grass. We have birthed our children into a time of danger, I fear.”

  “There is still much light in this darkness, and it will not fail,” Erich replied. And he was not past a few more battles himself, if need be. She was being too pessimistic, now talking about what was happening two kingdoms away to the east.

  “Anaka,” he said, “you have listened too long to Sarwin’s talk.” That was the name of the holy scribe that they had kept at the palace’s court since the high summer. “That kind of tale comes over the top of a county wife’s kitchen door, not from the mouth of my lady. Regardless of what Sarwin says, the world is not ending tomorrow. We have a few days at least, surely. Sometimes I think your father cheated me and exchanged his daughter for a fortune teller’s brat.”

  “Do you promise that we will return soon?” she asked him, her voice cracked and unsure. He knew that he could field three thousand men within the week and sweep back through the West Lands if need be, but that was a week away.

  “By the Father, the Son, and the Daughter, I do pray for it to be so. This is but a well-reasoned precaution.”

  “A very strong precaution,” she observed.

  “Yes, and when we do return, I will be vindicated that this was the right thing to do.” She turned back to the palace hall.

  “There’s so much left,” she said, referring to the things of their lives, their belongings, and the trappings of the summer court of Grotoy at Gilsflor Pools.

  “Yes, but we need to leave it for now. I’ll send a knight and his men around to bar everything up in the house, and then keep watch over it for as long as they can. They will do everything you have asked.” He waved down the line of wagons with his black leather gloves, drawing in most of his men. The last of the chests and the food were now going into the wagons, with his wife gone off and directing the servants to also bring the other things she had mentioned out. His archers and riding swords came around and joined the lancers there, the men and horse spilling out across the lawn, dismounting and standing there with their horses ready. Erich looked back down the line of wagons, squinting a little and shading his eyes with his gloves.

  “Why is Sunnil alone in her own carriage?” he said. “She should be riding with our children. I’ll have to go and see what is going on.” He took his horse from an archer and mounted up. He rode back along to the last carriage as his wife and children got up into the first. His eldest son Johnas Tygus moved over and rode beside him with his helm dangling down by its strap from his saddle. They were both dark haired, but Johnas had the longer, more handsome features of his mother, as well as her dark green eyes.

  They were met in front of the wagon by Sunnil’s guard, led by a high ranking Traveler Knight. Most of the men in the Traveller Knights were just factors or merchant guards, but even these needed to be led. Sir Augustus was a sandy-haired gallant in charge of the canteen at Rydol, and had been entrusted with the young countess by the city’s assembly. He gave Count Grotoy an angry, inconvenienced look as he approached. It was apparent that he had just been trying to get the driver to pull the coach out of line from the others and turn it out onto the road by itself. Though Erich had explained last night to the court what they would do, the man was now again of his own mind.

  “As the guardian of Countess Sunnil, I have decided to take her back now to Rydol,” Sir Augustus informed him. We will stop at Riweel Castle tonight on the east road, and be at Braus Palonz the next day. They both have stone walls and adequate garrisons. After the horde at Fugoe gets tired of feasting on its bones, won’t they head down to the Gure, to follow it, instead of further east into these lands? Better safe at home than quickly menaced again at Grotoy, and then even further away at Stenza of Kavvar by Fall Tide, when her presence will be needed at Rydol to conduct the court, and deal with the business along the river.”

  “You are leading her into danger,” Erich told Sir Augustus gravely. “The road goes south more than it goes east for twenty miles after it leaves Gilsflor Pools. You’ll wake up in Riweel Castle tomorrow morning more in danger there than you are here today. She is my niece through my wife, and I will not have her sent away toward possible jeopardy.”

  “But you forget Count Grotoy,” Sir Augustus said, “that the Grand Prince of Kavvar himself entrusted the regency of Rydol to the Grand Master of Veps, and through him, the Captain of Troli. I have here a document with all three of their signatures on it that gives me the power to make this decision. I am in all but name right now the Marshal of Rydol, and this is a matter of its estate.” He drew out the silver case holding the document from the inside of his riding jacket and extended it toward Erich Grotoy like he was trying to stab forward with his sword.

  Erich did not flinch in response to the sudden move, or show any sign of anger. He frowned over his forked beard and said instead, “You go too far on that piece of paper, and somewhere is the edge of it. They did not give you permission to make a bad decision on top of all their good names. She will spend the Fall Tide safe at Grotoy with Johnas Tygus, the twins and Woodslaw.”

  “But as you see Grotoy, she is already in her coach,” Sir Augustus reminded him. “And if you look upon the doors, you will see the arms of Rydol there, and on the livery of many of these men,” he gestured at the group of lancers and archers hanging around the carriage, wearing the green cross with red Mancan faces in the quadrants. “The household guard is here, the yeomen of its county present, as are my companion knights. Will you break our sovereignty by going against me?”

  Erich frowned and bent down, looking through the carriage window at the girl sitting inside it, presses into layers of fur and leather for travelling. “What say you Sunnil? Is this your wish?”

  Sunnil of Rydol looked back at him with the same green eyes of his wife and son. She bent to the side and opened up the door of the coach a little. Sir Augustus hissed though his teeth, possibly trying to warn her from stepping out of it. She had long chestnut hair, an ivory comb keeping most of it up now, to display a youthful, comely face very much like Johnas’, almost so that they might be reckoned to be twins.

  “I have been put Sir Augustus’ charge,” she said, “and the decision of that charge was not made lightly, to a foolish, poor-reckoned man. He has not failed me before, and I agree with him for us to return quickly now to Rydol.” She did not sound so sure to him, but she had said she was. Erich thought it was a bad idea, but she was the Countess of Rydol and a sovereign of equal rank to him.

  “By your wish then, Countess Sunnil,” he said, but there was a lump in his chest now that had not been there before. He looked back at the triumphant, beaming Sir Augustus. It was a risk that did not have to be taken. It was true that it would be unusual for a horde to break from a sack and head out so far north or east, toward the stronger walls and garrisons of Grotoy, and the towns and holdfast on the edge of the Khaast. Yet this campaign by the creatures from Lake Aven had become unusual, and the quick defeat and overrun of the frontier castle had been unexpected.

  He turned and rode back with Johnas Tygus to the other carriages. He knew he was letting the upstart Traveler Knight get the better of him, but Countess Sunnil had agreed to it. He felt that the knights were becoming too powerful at the capitol and in the provinces along the road, and that he should have been made Sunnil’s guardian. Perhaps with some sense of things the Grand Prince had feared he would wed his son to her and produce a rival dynasty in control most of central Gece.

  “What’s going on now?” Anaka asked him. “Why are they breaking away?” She watched the driver turn around Sunnil’s team of horses, the front wheels of the carriage pivoting on their axle. It lurched out and it began to move away, surrounded by Rydol’s mounted lancers and archers.

  “Sunnil’s mar
shal has convinced her to return by the east road to Rydol,” he said. “They will be leaving now to make the journey.”

  “That’s dangerous, Erich. Why let them take such a chance?”

  “To make sure that the Traveler Knights, and not Grotoy appear to be the champion of her cause. He thought quickly of what he could do.

  “Sarwin!” he shouted. “Sarwin! Where the devil are you?”

  “Here I am my lord,” the holy scribe replied, as he jumped down out of one of the wagons. He came around the carriage, holding now as he usually did a couple of books in a leather flap bag. He was young but markedly thin, and wore a dark, working cassock with stockings and a pair of humble leather shoes. His belt was a sash of blue cotton, showing that he belonged to one of the learned Alonic orders. He had a long face and nose, and the golden brown eyes and thick black hair of the plains Goloks.

  “I want you to go and accompany the Countess Sunnil back to Rydol in her carriage,” Erich said to him. “Take a chest of our silver plate, and if you are chased, throw it out onto the road a bit at a time to make sure your escape. If the coach fails, get her out of it and up onto a horse and away. You are the only help I can give her that Sir Augustus will accept from me.”

  “That’s nothing but a pleasant trip across the drove way,” Sarwin replied, “with guard towers and good water spaced out every three or four leagues.” Sawin might be lean, but he was hardened by the physical demands of his profession, which often required that he be active, as a builder and artisan. If not for his academics and vows Erich thought, he would have made a passable knight. “I’ll see her safe to Rydol, and your silver also,” he added.

  “I thank you for your continued friendship to Grotoy and Rydol,” Erich said, and avowed, “This deed of yours will not be forgotten.”

  Sarwin nodded and watched as a chest of plate came back carried by two lancers. He moved with it off toward Sunnil’s coach, loudly calling for them to stop, then blessing the whole endeavor with his silver trinity as he reached them. As the soldiers circled around and watched him with amusement, he talked with Sir Augustus, who looked back once at Count Grotoy with anger. Then Countess Sunnil then opened the carriage door and welcomed him and the chest inside.

  Then they pulled away, turning the horse team all the way around on the gravel drive then they made for the road that would take them eastward toward the Khaast and Rydol. Sunnil got free for a moment from her furs and pushed herself up out through a window, her brown hair flapping in the wind and turning gold as her pale face looked back at the front of the palace hall and the family of Grotoy, it all receding, slipping away as the hedges and other buildings they passed covered it over.

  As the lancers of Rydol and the guards of the Traveler Knights fell in beside her coach, Sunnil wondered if she would ever see the old Mancan statues along its front wall again. The stones had no doubt seen countless similar departures in their time, as people went out upon their separate ways, on roads of disparate adventure, wondering each what tomorrow would bring. To the stones perhaps, it was all much the same. To the people though, it was their lives.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WAYLAND

  THE PASS OF PAHOK,

  THE GOLDEN SLOPE OF THE BAGHERI

  “Looks like another Ballatch carnival of complaints and bitching is just ahead for us,” Sascha of the Krag said across to Uffo and Wayland as they rode abreast together on their mounts. He wore a gilded brooch of merchant’s scales on his left breast, and it was probably weighing heavily on him today. As their caravan approached the Bagheri Plain, the tidings coming back along the road seemed ominous. It was obvious to all that something was going on ahead, and they all wondered just when and how hard that boot would drop.

  The Ballatch merchant Sascha had referred to was at the head of the caravan, and had stopped right up on the top of the pass. His three wagons stood there braked, his factors milling around them. The entire line behind him had been forced to stop where they were, and now they were all bound to be angry. They could see that the man had now climbed up onto the top of one of his wagons and was signaling back down to them by wildly waving his hands. The fir trees and oaks on the side of the road were tickled now and then by a puffy gust of wind that mercifully also blew the reddish road dust away and on down the canyon side.

  “Surely Sir Rolis or Temmi would have come back to us if it was something important,” Uffo considered, but he slipped his riding axe free just in case.

  “I’ll bring my wagons up and park them behind him,” Wayland said, and guided his horses back around to talk with his drivers. As he did so, Sascha and Uffo quickened their horses into a trot, and brought them up breathing hard to the Ballatch’s wagons. The merchant had climbed down by this time and was waiting. His horse teams were stamping around, nervous in their traces, and his men looked cross.

  “What the hell are you doing? Wet your brakes and start going down,” Sascha ordered him. He looked about for Sir Rolis and Temmi on the road and saw both men’s horses hitched up to a tree over on the side, a new trail of crushed leaves and disturbed ground going away where they had gone up the slope of the hill and around its crest.

  “Can’t you smell the smoke on the wind?” Maddon of Ballatch asked them.

  “Yes. There’s too much in this spot.” Sascha waved back to Wayland, and then he and Uffo rode over to the side of the road where the other two horses were standing. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

  They dug their boots into the soft earth as they crept up through the scattered brush, around the big clumps of trees, and avoided the rocky places until they came to where Sir Rolis and Temmi had stopped to sit on a ledge and look off at the Bagheri Plains below. Sascha looked back along the hill to see if Wayland had followed them, then turned back as they sat together and consider the shapes and movement they saw below.

  There was still one more valley and hillcrest before them, but beyond it they could see the headwaters of the Tygus, where it branched to either side of a large island edged with high yellow walls of stone. Pink, green and blue domes, belonging to the great basilicas and palaces of Kraxika were visible over the blue tiled top of the city wall, as well as larger expanses of dark slate, red tile and stone. It was in old named Kraxut, once the largest Mancan colony in the north and site of the principle shrines to the Daughter, those moved when Tiger Bay had formed and drowned out the old coast.

  The two branches of the Tygus were alive with activity, as on the near side, called the Gece branch, there were many groups of people and wagons moving across the bridges, headed away for the towns and villages in the west, toward the line of mountains called the Golden Slopes.

  On the other side of the city the Varrek branch flowed,and there were massed groups of troops moving on the bank, shiny like the heads of nails at this distance, and before them long bridges of boats and rafts put together, and set out across the current to reach the yellow and blue walls. The town beyond the river on the far bank of the Varrek branch was known as Akerethi, and it was partially on fire, and this great conflagration of wood slotted buildings with thatch and clinker roofs was what they had smelled up on the pass. The smoke rose and covered the city’s domes at times, in a pall like a giant death shroud, making the streets and walls below dark with shade.

  “You could have come back and gotten us Temmi,” Sascha said. “You are always too quick to do everything, as the girls on Barracks Street were saying.”

  “Fine words coming from the Lord of the Krag,” Temmi replied. “The only krag you are the lord of is the one between your legs, and it is a small thing, as those girls also say.”

  “Shut up you two,” Sir Rolis commanded them. He was the master of the passage, of the caravan, and wore a more aleaborate, gilded and enameled scale on his shoulder as a cloak pin. He was considering now that he might have made a terrible mistake a few days before when he had not heeded the news given them by the people going west back into Gece.

  “Dark banners,” Uffo sai
d, and that gave them part of the story of what was going on. A few things could be easily told of the host building the rafts and attacking the walls of Kraxika. Sir Rolis nodded back to him in agreement.

  “This could be the same horde that was menacing Livvis and Port Tygus in the spring.” The Goloks and Sund of Sanakand, long across the eastern grass had purple and black banners.

  “What’s this though?” Sascha said. “There’s a whole flank of them closer at hand with some different colors.” Sometimes the tribal nomads banded together into a great horde to take on bigger prey, but not in living memory had they attacked the city of the Daughter itself.

  “What do you think?” Temmi asked Uffo, who they all knew had went out into the Kundi and the long grass, and so had the most practical knowledge.

  “I can barely tell that they are mostly yellow, with a darker stripe and some green. It’s another tribal group or potentate for sure. We could perhaps learn who they are by talking to some of the refugees coming out of the city.”

  “There are a lot of refugees going out of Kraxika’s gates,” Sir Rolis stated, shaking his head. “They must think of it as a serious attempt.” He was surprised that no one had passed them by lately and told them this news, as it had great bearing and novelty. But then they were quite a bit to the south, on a much less-traveled road from Troli.

  “There is something else to the back of their mass: another pennant maybe there, and a great bunch of fresh troops.” Kraxika had been threatened before, and as the hub of the major trade route across the continent, had proved itself either strong enough to repel the raiders, or rich enough to buy them off and spare themselves the disruption of warfare. The eastern outer city of Akrethi had been burned twice before in their lives, and the general trade eastward disrupted perhaps half a dozen times. The scene below looked momentous though, both vital and grim.