A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  “It was a murder, attempted in your streets,” Wayland replied. “I know what a dignity is and you seem very casual about the idea of assassination within a blood line to get it, and of what that would do to the royal offices. What will the Grand Prince in Kavvar say about this?”

  “I don’t know,” Tig Morten replied, “but the timing of its occurrence is very important. Anton moved quickly to gain precedence once Kraxika was besieged and there was the possibility of a national mobilization. Well, with the man having now played his cards and out of the way, it will be much harder for another Sobrezek to try anything.”

  “Since it was an affair of your state, and I acted in the Grand Prince’s best interest, am I now vindicated?”

  “Hardly, I think,” Captain Tig Morten said. “Sascha has been running around the Vara on one pretense or another for the past three years, ignoring his dignity. A change might have been in the best interest of all, with the problems now in Bagheri. You see, the Krag is the armory of central Gece, and Sasha of the Krag is the hereditary marshal of the Grand Prince’s war baggage. You traveled with this man and probably noted some odd behavior. Do you really think you did this country a favor?”

  “As they say in Kavvar, the money will now loosen the stones,” his deputy added.

  “Perhaps,” Tig Morten considered. “But we are not at the capital.” He pointed across at Wayland. “You are too good with a blade to be just another merchant from, where was it? From off of the Isle of Tolwind?”

  He took a sip of cider and considered it, and tapped Wayland’s sword with his fingers. “Done some training somewhere haven’t you? Well, the fact is that you now owe me for two Traveler Knights and a minor noble, and we are now at war.”

  He rapped down with the wooden mug on the table top. “I am fining you two pounds, to be paid now in hard money or goods. Also, all your road equipment is being purchased by the Canteen of Troli, on credit, redeemable by you on the completion of this stipulation. You must swear to the road and fulfill half the remaining service time of the men that were killed and injured. Sascha of the Krag will have to serve out the rest. I will also buy the service of your factors and guards, if they agree.”

  He pushed Wayland’s sword kit back across the table, and then laid a gilt brooch next to it bearing the traveler’s scale. “Or I could just throw you off the top of the wall. You could probably profit from a year’s service on the road, even in this manner, and it is better than shoveling gravel in a peasant gang. What do you say?”

  “I know your rules,” Wayland said. “I will swear to the road.”

  “Release him,” Tig Morten told his reeves. “I already have something for him to do.”

  They took the chains off him and he reached across the table and took his brace back. He cleaned his sword and sheathed it, then read and made his mark on the papers that were brought. The promised credit amount was good, subtracting the fine which he now paid out from his purse. He wondered what Captain Tig Morten had meant. What kind of plotting was going on before him?

  “I have a task for you,” Tig Morten repeated, as Wayland took up the cloak pin and fixed it on. “The heiress of Rydol and some other nobles have been taken hostage by an upstart bandit over in the West Lands. Of course, we want these people back, but I am currently mobilizing all my men along the southern roads, in case the Goloks and those Sunds come up over into Gece.”

  He paused and then continued. “I want you to go to Rydol and be our agent for the release of these people, since we were guarding her when she was taken. The acting regent and magis of Rydol will probably have it all sorted out by the time you get there. You will take Sascha with you, and go around the long way through the Vara. If he does not come back, then Kavvar will have to figure out what to do about it.”

  “I won’t get home until next Fall Tide,” Wayland grumbled.

  “Don’t be so sad, Islander,” the captain said. “Don’t you know that travel through Gece is always faster in the winter?”

  Wayland walked out of the west fortress of Troli half an hour later, as free as any other sworn knight to the road. He stuffed several packets of letter down into his belt, explaining and authorizing his mission to the lords and burgers that lay in his path, and to the captain of the canteen at Rydol. He looked across the yard and saw his men waiting there, the wagons and animals beyond them with only a couple of guards to watch what happened next.

  He took it as a good sign that no one else was waiting there. If the two travelers or Anton Sobrezek had been popular, he might have had to just immediately face another duel. But there were only a few lookers, and some of them were now moving away. The word was going out perhaps, but nothing more would happen until later, if at all. He walked over to Temmi, who had earlier acted as one of the witnesses to the court.

  “How are Uffo and Sascha?” he asked him.

  “Alive, but Uffo took a rap to the skull and a bad cut to the side. Sascha is getting drunk and stitched up right now in the back of the canteen.”

  Wayland nodded. “Tell him that he’s been assigned to duty with me. We’re riding out for Rydol at dawn, to go and save a lady fair.”

  “He’s injured,” Temmi reminded him.

  “The passage master didn’t just say it, but I think the hard riding is a part of his punishment.” He waved with his hands to say there was nothing more to be done about it. Then he motioned for Temmi to follow him over to his wagons. They walked across to them, and his men all turned around now to see what he would say. He hitched his thumbs up on his sword belt as he stopped to address his drivers and his men.

  “It’s hard for me to say gentlemen, but we’re never going to make Kraxika this year. Now with this street fight: I’ve been found in the right, but I have still been sentenced to serve with the travelers until next winter. Take your things and your wages and go back to the house in Marmad, or find employment as you like. They think that there’s going to be a war with the Sund and the Goloks over on the Golden Slope, or perhaps right here in Gece.”

  He released the men, and they moved about on their business. Wayland used a little scribe desk and pen to make letters out for them, and then he wrote others to the house in the duchy, to explain what had happened.

  “What are you doing with that?” one of the guards asked him, after observing the retrieval of the hidden chest of silver from under the wagon.

  “They are drawing their wages,” Wayland replied, as his men began to line up, and he undid the fasts on the narrow box. The lid was pried up with a knife and he began to cut the coins free of their sacking. The guards turned around and went back to their post. Too much had already happened that day.

  The next morning Sascha was hung over, stitched up, sore and angry. A little blood came through his bandages as he rode along, bowed under a gray cotton cowl that hid most of his face and upper body from any watchers and kept the worst of the sun off his head. Wayland had taken the best four horses and retained two of his men: Horwit and Samur, as guards. They passed back over the river and rode to the south-east, going across a field and over a wooded hill to lose sight of the tall gray walls of the two keeps and rolling sweep of white walls as fast as they could.

  “This treatment after being wounded will turn me into a rough man, and a mean lover,” Sascha complained. “I will be coarse and unfit for my destined Pendwise milk maid, when we finally meet.”

  But even as Horwit and Samur traded a look and a chuckle, the grim truth was that such an improbable occurrence would be even more remote now, though they were now headed in the right direction. They would be skirting the border that Gece shared with Pendwise, just north of the barren, arid stretch of wasteland known as the Varmond. The Vara Fringe was a rough stretch of old Mancan villages, towns and western Golok freeholds. It would be weeks out of their way, and they would then have to then approach the city of Rydol from the south, first climbed up and over the tops of the highland mountains.

  Forests and fields went down the vall
eys, and the sides of the hills were green with these. But after fifty miles, the water ran out and the rocks, sand flats, lizards and brush took over. In times of distress, the road to the east had been shifted to go across this waste, along the remains of the old Mancan roads to Adise, or through the Oasis of Laurent, but it was a long and hazardous way. The loss of the Varmond to desert, and the civilization upon it had been noted by more than one historian as the reason for the collapse of the old empire. As Wayland looked down across the pans of sand and salt, at the little hillocks of rock with brush covering their tops, it seemed to have never been inhabited or cultivated. A thousand years now separated the blare of legion war horns and marching boots here from Sascha’s current misery and caterwauls.

  The road they took curved far to the south, and they only encountered herders and farm carts every mile or so in passing. They turned west at a crossroad, to follow a line of abandoned watch towers that had once discouraged raiders and monsters. About every five miles stood a larger keep, surrounded by its own little town of village, all of mixed vassalage to Laurent, Rydol or to Troli. Wayland used the traveler stations, inns, posts, and pastures they found liberally. The knights were well liked here it seemed, and the people he met obliging.

  In addition to Sascha, Horwit and Samur there were three archers led by Temmi, and the mission seemed most useful in that it kept almost all of the people involved in the street fight together and away from Troli. On the fifth day out they came to a stone post marking the official border between the counties of Troli and Rydol. The dark stone marker had been surrounded by a score or so of stakes driven into the ground, atop of which had been placed the heads of goblins and the wolf-men called thyrs. Wayland got down and walked around them, staring at the hair, the pointed ears, the large teeth, and the other animal features of them.

  “This land looks full of monsters,” he remarked.

  “Some of the worst monsters in Rydol are the men,” Temmi replied. He had some knowledge of the city, which Wayland hoped would eventually help them. Wayland didn’t care much for the dry remark, and he decided to ignore it.

  “Where do they come from, these creatures?” he asked instead, having seen nothing quite like them in the Isles, and though he had heard of course that they existed, seeing one was quite different. He swished his hand to clear away the flies so he could get a better look at a particularly demonic one.

  “Hard to say, but they always show up, even this far from Lake Aven.” It was one of the archers who replied to him. “Mancans had to keep a couple of legions around there, and there are soldiers’ grave markers all along these roads. They come up from the swamps between the two great lakes west of the Vulge Mountains. No one can drive them out of the land for good. There are strange things in there, around those two lakes. The garrisons watch it like a pot over a fire and try to keep anything from getting out.”

  Behind them, Sascha of the Krag fell off his horse and thudded hard on the road. He cursed deliriously and tried to sit up, as one hand dropped down and pressed against his bandaged wound. When Wayland went and looked to him, he was feverish and mumbling. He had gotten sick from a reopened cut, and now appeared to be in real trouble.

  There was a tall rectangular keep off in the distance that used one of the Mancan watch towers as its corner. A small, prosperous looking village sat around it, and pastures, olive trees and grain fields went out over the nearby hills. They made a litter from some saplings and dragged Sascha down the road the rest of the way to the keep’s gate. They dismounted there in the yard as a pair of armed men came out to meet them. Wayland took off his wide brimmed road hat and bowed down to them.

  “I am Wayland of Rezes, in the service of the road. I’m traveling on official business to the court of Rydol. One of my men is sick from a wound he took, and we would like to have the hospitality of your hall.”

  One of them went back and brought out the tall, gray haired lord. He appeared well off, wearing a dark silk shirt in his colors under a stitched cotton jacket. A gold chain with an enameled locket hung down from his neck. Wayland repeated himself as he admired the man’s affluence, using more deference this time, and also asked to see if there was a healer in the village.

  The lord looked them over. “Bring him on inside. You can put your horses in the yard and get hay for them from the barn. I will send one of my men to fetch the priest.”

  The hall was large and used up an entire side of the keep. It had a very military and practical look, retaining the old amenities of a martial holdfast, of the type used during the anarchies that had plagued the kingdoms several hundred years before. There was a falcon on the arms above the fire, a type of sigil used by the old Mancan families. Women came from the doors off the hall and stoked up the fire. They set out more chairs, made a pallet for Sascha, and put on a pot of stew.

  “I am Lord Coln of Honot Tower,” he said. “I would have someone bring you wine, but it is too early in the day.” He leaned over Sascha and sniffed his wound, then examined the red stained bandages. “Ah, he won’t be going anywhere for a couple of days. Why was he forced to ride on this shape? Did you have a fight with some bandits out on the road?”

  “He was sent out of Troli for dueling,” Wayland explained. “We may have to leave him here for now, for my business in Rydol is pressing. It’s said that a bandit has seized the castle at Fugoe in the West Lands and holds hostages, including the Countess of Rydol. What is the word along the road?”

  Coln sighed and fell back into one of his chairs. “Perhaps we will take that wine now, and he signaled over to one of the women attending them. Bowls and bread were put out, and stew ladled around. The men dropped their gear and settled in, eating their fill at a trestle table.

  Lord Coln waited for the wine to be poured around, and then he drank out of a fine piece of purple glass as the rest made due with wooden cups. Wayland decided that the man liked to show off but did not get many opportunities to do so.

  “So who told you that bandits had seized Fugoe Castle?” Lord Coln asked.

  “The Canteen Master of Troli, Captain Tig Morten, right before he kicked me out with these orders.”

  “He could not have been so cavalier!” Lord Coln said, straightening up in his chair and rubbing his hands across the table top in front of him like he had just found a stain there. He wiped his hands on a cloth and then thought for a long moment, looking past his glass down the hall.

  “It’s as if he expects you to fail,” he declared. “Not with a hundred archers could you accomplish this mission. How were you supposed to go about it?”

  “We are to meet with her grace’s uncle Wenslig, and the magis council of Rydol, then go across the West Lands to Fugoe Castle and hear the terms of the outlaw. We would then return with the ransom and free her.”

  “Did he mention to you that the outlaw who is holding the castle is a seven foot tall troll with a magical sword?” Lord Coln asked. Wayland looked about; watching the expressions of the others in the group sour. It was not from the food, the wine or the company. It was only from the words.

  “That’s one of those monsters from Lake Aven,” Wayland commented back, not ready to give up. “That’s the lake that they call the Dimm.” The situation sounded complicated now, but also more interesting. “We were informed by the Master of Troli that the whole situation might be resolved by the time we actually reach Rydol. Our part may be to simply carry the news and tallies back to paid, and perhaps ride around and make sure all the freed hostages are returned to their homes.”

  “It’s like some fairy tale, don’t you think?” Wayland next commented to Coln, and looked around at the others there, to help encourage them in the quest. “Perhaps Captain Tig Morten sensed in me the talent to do what others could not. How would you bring about the completion of this impossible task, to comfort the children hearing such a tale, before putting them to bed?”

  “I would get a thousand Traveler Knights and arrest the magis of Rydol, and Wenslig also,” Lo
rd Coln said.

  Wayland dropped his cup, cursing as it clattered across the hall’s flagstones. He went over and picked it up, examined it, and wiped off the lip of it with his sleeve.

  “You see, it’s the girl’s family,” Lord Coln said, as Wayland sat back down. “Wenslig is her uncle and he is not going to pay for her release when he can just let her die and inherit that seat. That poor orphan girl, now an orphan of justice! The circumstances are set so, that she has every chance of rotting slowly away in a dungeon somewhere, subject to the whims and torments of that fiendish troll.”

  This had taken the usual turn in Gece, Wayland thought, as he bit his thumbnail and considered what Lord Coln had said. The Traveler Knights’ wardship of Rydol’s countess to prevent a power struggle with her uncle appeared to have gone right back against the Grand Prince, like the proverbial ‘stone thrown,’ as the men from the Isles said. But the men of Tolwind were also renowned for their cleaver maneuvering, and eventual come-uppance of others, or some adversity.

  “Is there anyone who will take her grace’s side, to be of more help than Rydol, or the Traveler Knights?” he asked.

  “She is very close to her maternal aunt, the Countess of Grotoy. They are up to the north a bit, but still not too far away from the West Lands. In time maybe, something might change, but for now it serves the regime in Rydol to let her languish, and for the monsters raiding from Fugoe to use her as their shield.” Wayland knew about the Count of Grotoy. He was arguably the third most powerful man in Gece. If he could cultivate and have such an ally, he knew that he could accomplish great things.

  “Wenslig crossed over into the West Lands two weeks ago with a thousand men,” Lord Coln said. “But after threatening the great black troll of Fugoe, they did little more than talk for a bit. Then he withdrew back through the Khaast Forest to Rydol, and the goblins started raiding again as soon as he cleared out.”