A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Lord Coln was in a good humor and toasted him from down the table with his glass goblet. “Good luck to you now sir, as you go to take your part in what will surely prove to be an interesting story.”

  Wayland toasted him back. “And I thank you for your hospitality. We will leave tomorrow morning, to pick up circumstances in Rydol as we find them.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  SUNNIL

  DOOM WALL

  The day after the battle on the Shore, the new lord of North Stone led his army of goblins and trolls on over the wooden bridges and causeways to it. They crossed the shallows to the shoreline and marched down the old road a short distance to Doom Wall, and waited out beyond its ancient, broken ramparts for an invitation, or another fight. The lame archer Edou had gotten a bowl of cooked rice and beans from one of the goblin kitchens and Sunnil shared it with him. Around them the horde had been busy devouring great chunks of roasted meat, rough slabs of bread, and drinking down whatever they could get hold of, this being mostly a vile milky gold drink of fortified barley wine they called tump.

  No one had expected a fight when they reached the fortress gates, as good or neutral tiding had already come out of the old Mancan bastion. Kulith had spent the night before going through the Vagrim’s small baggage, then lusted in his tent with a couple of strong, devilish looking troll women he had gotten out of one of the warrens. He had chained up his humans beforehand and put sacks over their heads to protect their sanity and his own slight modesty. He had also taken a horse from one of the warrens on the shore, and he now sat astride it, riding badly as his dog and pig-faced goblins ranks stood around him expectantly, ready to go on across the old moat and draw bridge and do whatever was required.

  “Open your gate!” Kulith called up to the broken, square walls beyond the swampy ground, at the helmeted heads and brown fur caps of the goblin chiefs who stood atop it.

  “By what right do you ask us to open up our gate, to you and your horde?” one of them called back down to him.

  “By the right that I am the new lord of Doom Wall!” he called out, and he took up a tump pot he carried and shook from it onto the ground dozens of gold, brass and iron plates that he had removed from the Vagrim’s pyre, that had once decorated the jacket of armor and troll hide.

  There was a minute of hesitation, perhaps as the chieftains second guessed each other about the choice they were going to make. Was it really a good idea to let them in, or did they need to try and make a fight of it? Then the drawbridge began to creak and lower itself back down to finish off the end of the stone bridge. A couple hundred little buggers broke ranks from the front of the horde and rushed forward, then waited there for the timbers to fully lower and set into place with a loud groan and thud.

  Then they scrambled across and disappeared into the rotten streets. Kulith raised his breaker in the air and waved to the rest, and they gave him a loud cheer and then rushed in behind the others. Kulith waited, watching them pass, glaring triumphantly over at Ovodag and the other trolls chiefs.

  “Get ready my lady,” Edou said, nudging Sunnil with his hand, bidding her to rise up from where they sat, for his and her own good.

  Sunnil had been feeling ill since the misty fight between the troll and the white monster on the shore. The monster: the undead creature they had called the Vagrim had leaked it vile, polluted waters on her. It had splashed her during the fight with its retched, fish-stinking ichors, and no amount of washing could get her clean. That smell had not gone away but instead intensified, now to the point where she was having trouble keeping down the poor food they were given to eat.

  Edou lifted her up, and they both stood there in chains behind a wagon loaded down with booty taken from the shore warrens as tribute or prizes, and with what the Vagrim had possessed that Kulith had decided to keep. When there was a large break in the stream of black and gray goblins going across the drawbridge into the fortress, Kulith signaled to them and the wagon was driven out to roll across into Doom Wall. Kulith came in behind it, and his goblin guards walked beside the two prisoners, to make sure no one treated them badly.

  The streets were now full of warriors, looking at what the stall merchants were hawking, and they seemed to be selling everything. They stood on boxes and shouted about how powerful and splendid their tump was, of how wicked and wild their sows and slaves could be, of fresh meat, blackened, hot and covered with salt, and of other things she could not understand. In one place a fine tabard could be had with only a few blood stains and a patched hole. In another place they could purchase a good sword or knife, or a dozen other, more fanciful weapons.

  Sunnil found their language loud, dizzying, and accompanied by too much gesturing. As they passed the front of one of the broken buildings there was a scream and a shuffle inside, then a blood splatter in the doorway that flowed out into the street. The goblins watched the door as they went by it, and then when they were past, they laughed. Kulith rode behind them, showing himself and trying to impress the denizens of Doom Wall. The Vagrim had been generally unpopular, and had been a living nightmare to some. He was gone now, and they had not thought about tomorrow yet.

  Sunnil felt certain that the creatures, however vile they were, shared and understood the acceptable level of violence and horror that they would stand for. How long could the troll riding behind her exist in charge of such a place? She coughed out, almost retching the beans and rice onto the too worn down stones they walked over. She shivered, and the archer caught her up and put her in the wagon, on top of the folded tent made from hides.

  The rest of the ride was a dizzy blur, but eventually the wagon came into the court of an old walled manse, rambling, with a low peaked red tile roof, of the type popular in Bezet. There were several burn pits dug out in front of it, currently full of the smoldering, blackened remains of the lesser thrings that the goblins and trolls had cleared out and destroyed. Kulith got down and went over to talk to a group of trolls, and the goblins slowly moved away and went in through the doors of the buildings, searching about and seeing what was there.

  Kulith came back as the trolls went on into the manse after the goblins, perhaps to command some restraint, or just to get comfortable themselves. He picked up Sunnil from the back of the wagon, held her for a moment, and unlocked her chains. She nearly collapsed on the paving stones then, but was instead supported by him, and he turned her to look at the blackened main doorway.

  “Go inside Little Toad,” he told her.

  She and Edou went up the small set of stairs, the archer cursing as his leg slipped and refused to work right. They came into the hall and looked about at the broken plaster and spoiled wood work on the walls and ceiling. The far end of it was in better shape, cleaned and repaired with a great black chair that Sarik had used and perhaps the Vagrim also, though she thought the latter had been too big for it, or might have never bothered.

  Sunnil felt herself go ill again, and she threw up all over the dirty stones and chipped tile. The trolls turned, looked at her and then talked quickly among themselves, in their odd Mancan. Kulith came over from inspecting the chair and looked down at her, then lifted up her chin with one of his hands and smelled her while looking closely into her face.

  “She’s going white on us,” he said, looking over at the other trolls. “Fetch some black tea to clean her out. Too much of the old blood is in this Little Toad.” He released her and looked around the hall. “And get some crones and matrons in here to clean this place out. I will pay them in hard silver after they have finished. Bring in benches and tables, even if you have to make them yourselves. This is now a place for the living.”

  Kulith went over to the chair, threw the silk cushion off of it into a corner, and he sat down. “Feasting will occur in Doom Wall, while we rest and plan our next campaign. Bring out the treasure and let it flow, bring us meat and cook it black on the hearth, bring in barrels of tump and ale, and fetch the best whores and sows this stinking Stone can offer.”

 
; There was a series of animal screams outside as some of the horses they had used were slaughtered. Two goblins wearing white hoods had brought in some small bags and were talking with a troll about them. They shoved the contents down into a pot, added water, and then put it out over the fire burning in the central hearth.

  They began bringing in fresh joints and quarters of meat, and hung the carcasses on iron trivets fixed into the stones. Sunnil watched, the blood dripping down off the raw meat drawing her attention. She looked at it and seemed to focus, realizing how hungry she now was. She couldn’t even wait for it to be done. She just needed some meat. It could be raw, new, only washed clean by its own blood and juices.

  Kulith came back over and casually pushed her down to the dirty tiles with one of his booted feet and held her there. Ovodag brought in an old, rotted chest and he threw this down with a crash near her that shattered it. Silver and gold coins spilled out through the splits in the wood, one rolling out on edge and hitting her in the nose. There was also a pile of musty silks and brocade, and some pieces of jewelry. The bigger troll now picked up one of these and held it to his nose, to sniff it over.

  But all of this was only a distraction. Sunnil had been denied the bloody meat and now her hunger grew. She growled at Kulith and he pushed her more firmly back down. Ovodag checked the pot they had put out on the fire and he lifted it off and showed Kulith what it had boiled down to. Kulith sniffed at it and nodded, and then Ovodag set it aside to cool.

  “You all there,” Ovodag called out to some idle goblins. “Come over here and help me with them.” They goblins had been distracted by the revealing of the treasure, but now they leered and came close in around the two humans. They grabbed them and held them still as the troll poured off some of the contents of the caldron into a silver cup. He poured a bit of tump in to cool it off, and then he reached out and grabbed Sunnil’s head in his hand. She tried to bite him, as he forced her nose closed. When she inhaled through her mouth, he poured part of the cup out into it.

  She swallowed down some of the hot, stinging brew and coughed back up the rest. There was a burning sensation beyond the fire or the heat of the tea. It spread out from her stomach and diffused through her torso, head and her limbs. Part of the lethargy and sickness she had felt before seemed to snap out of her, rising up like a spirit and dispersing into the air. With it went the odd thought of eating raw meat, of running through the swamps barefoot and naked, her flesh as white as a ghost.

  Ovodag did the same thing to Edou, and then they both lay there throwing back up the tump and the black liquid until it stopped. Kulith was by that time sitting back on the chair at the end of the hall, drinking tump from the silver cup.

  “Little Toad is better now,” he called out, nodding over to her. He motioned to his goblins. “Take her and the archer and put them in a cell.”

  Before they were carried out Sunnil saw something else brought into the hall from another room. It was a great map made on wood panel, of the entire Dimm, showing the chain of islands from the north shoreline to the swampy ground that lay out to the west. Kulith and the bugger chiefs cut great chunks of horse meat off the carcasses and then circled around the map as soon as it was put down across a table. They began to talk and make their marks on the black shapes of the islands, discussing who was in charge there, of what they wanted to do, and of how it would affect the alliance formed from Sarik’s old army.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WAYLAND

  THE VARA FRINGE

  The day of departure dawned blustery, with a rare line of dark clouds high off in the western sky. One of Lord Coln’s sons stood by, watching Sascha of the Krag, but they knew he was in no shape to cause any trouble. They also didn’t pitch him out the door or man-handle him up into his saddle, and it seemed whatever hostility he had caused in the past had been dulled by his lethargy and politeness. Despite the pleasant rest he had enjoyed at Honot Tower, Wayland doubted Sascha would ever be allowed back inside it.

  To perhaps taunt Sascha, Lord Coln’s two oldest daughters stood by the great hall door in their finest clothes and waved them all off. The third girl, the youngest one that Wayland had scared while milking goats held onto her mother’s dress and watched in wary silence. They rode out of the castle’s yard and down through the village, then turned out upon the old Mancan road and headed west and north, into the storm.

  “You have saved my life yet again,” Sascha of the Krag said to Wayland a little later as they rode along, the ruts and stones slowly guiding them back northward. The clouds had mostly settled in the mountains, with just a few getting over or between the peaks. This vanguard quickly dissipated, as it drifted down and met with the dry heat off the Varmond.

  “Merely putting off the inevitable, I think,” Wayland replied back to him. “But what spot you die in might be of some consequence to the Grand Prince, to your family name, or as the last marks on the page of a history book.”

  “That is bleak, but I agree that some fights are grander, and more worth the fighting,” Sascha said. “I thank you for your favor of me. I am the Krag, you know. My family is important and we remember our friends.”

  “I will remind you of that, even if you try to forget it,” Wayland told him dryly.

  “There may be a war in Gece soon,” Sascha mentioned a little later, as if he had just had an original thought regarding it. “You saw it with your own eyes down off the Pass of Pahok. Did that army look to you like it was going to stop after it sacked Kraxika?”

  “Shouldn’t you head north now and take up your post for the Grand Prince?” Wayland asked him.

  “I will go when it is time to go,” Sascha replied, “and it is not that time yet. My family will handle things at the Krag until then. If I go too soon and I am killed, we will lose everything and it will probably go badly for Gece.”

  “We may be killed soon anyway,” he pointed out to Sascha. “This is a fool’s errand.”

  “Perhaps,” Sascha replied. “After all, we know the fools sent out upon it. My hope rises now at the thought of the beauties we will encounter when we reach Rydol. I must try and recover fully by then.”

  They came in under the weather that afternoon and it began to lightly rain on them. A suspicion grew in Wayland, as he looked from the rocky mountain roots, seeing how they softened as they rose into green, tree covered tents that blocked the horizon like the camp of an army of giants. Everything they were headed toward looked more alive, with tall grass in the ravines and a few low lying wet areas full of ducks and geese.

  “Have we entered some special part of Gece?” he asked the others.

  “Aye, we have,” Sascha said. “These mountains are the east headwaters of the Gure River. Piss in a stream up there and it will flow by all the high castles and Rydol, pass close to Kavvar, go under the bridges of Sloksly and tickle the docks of Aukwen before finally entering the Medir Sea. The storms come in off the water, move south inland and drop their weight in these peaks, forming the high marshes. There’s rain all summer and ten feet of snow in the winter.”

  “Since I came east through Kavvar to Troli, I had not seen it.”

  “There is wood and animals for the taking up there and the lumber can be floated downriver to wherever it’s needed. They herd sheep and goats in those mountains, and lower down the cattle fatten up well. There are a good many wolves about, so we need to stick together and keep our bowstrings dry. It’s a land full of bridges and cottages of river stone, of tall keep towers, good music, and tolerable company.”

  “Do you have any friends here?” Wayland asked him. “I’d like to talk with someone who might know the court’s mood before entering Rydol.”

  Sascha lifted his gray hood and shook his head. “I think it’s best for us to come down into the city with no forewarning. I have been attacked, and there are only a few places I could pass through after leaving Troli.” That was the very reason that they had not went straight across to Rydol, and gone around instead through the Var
a.

  “It seems like this will be a wet and uncomfortable journey,” Wayland remarked.

  “Yes, but now you have seen it,” Temmi called up to them from the back. “The common inns on the road are good enough, and we can hear the news and gossip coming back out of the city. They will let Traveler Knights eat and sleep by the hearth for only a couple of black coins a night.”

  “Well, thank the Three for that,” Wayland said back.

  Almost a week later they rode into the town of Godele, it perched atop a plateau where one of the mountains had suffered some old calamity. It was now a high, broken escarpment of cliffs, greenstone cairns and soft looking meadows full of grass, autumn flowers and purple-bloomed thistle. The castle looked like an ornamental folly, built up on a platform atop the largest cairn, the stone walls going up for only about fifteen feet before being topped off with battlements. A long wooden hall two stories high rose from the middle of it and took up most of the space with some other buildings and what looked like a kitchen crowded over to one side. The woodwork beams were all painted black, with the walls plastered over mostly in white, or in a soft yellow.

  The town spread out around it and tried to match its impressive design, but long before the outskirts were reached everything turned crudely built of clinker logs with split shingle roofs. Because of the constant rain most of the roofs had turned green, and Wayland saw a goat perched up on the top of one, chewing on a mouth full of shingles as it watched him back.

  There was no outer wall to the town because there were no enemies here he figured, and probably few places to go and look for a fight if they wanted one. Wayland knew that defenses could be made without a town wall, but they had simply not bothered with it here. The road ran ahead into some thickly crowded streets where a market was taking place. On one side of the market street was the traveler’s post, with a fenced yard and a barn out in back.