A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Kulith made out shouts and calls from beyond the wall, cries of enthusiasm and surprise on the causeway, he thought. Around the burning drawbridge gate were half a dozen rafts with groups of goblins on them, stripped of mail to their jackets so as not to sink if they fell into the moat. Instead of throwing oil at the wood, they were now trying to climb up past the steaming, burning mess and get on top of the battlements. It was the lowness of the walls that had made the ladders such an attractive strategy to them all, and now with the moat crossed, the unevenness of the outer wall also let the goblins find footholds and brave their way up.

  One of the trolls had gotten into the wheelhouse below and was trying to figure out the chains and sprockets. Another was bashing the occupants around, into one wall or the other with his shield, keeping them from interfering and generally brutalizing them. They then turned their attention to throwing levers and loosening the catch pins, mostly by hitting them with their weapons or the bars of iron they found there. A sharp, loud series of clangs followed, and breaking crashes before the chains quickly clicked and rang as they went slack.

  Kulith ran back from the gate, across the wall toward a group of enemy archers there on the fighting walk, keeping his head low, feeling the blows of arrows on his chest and helmet. He reached them and beginning to knock them off one at a time, this way and that, and they fell and splashed into the moat or onto the little beach of rocks, or down into the courtyard the other way.

  The drawbridge gave a sudden, loud heaving lurch and gaped open a notch from the wall. Kulith turned to watch it, to see if it would drop. But it hung there on a catch pin or lock, perhaps located at the base, frozen now and only revealing a tantalizing foot of blue sky. The goblins tried to hang on to it, and get inside or bring it down. It was hard to see now, through the column of white and black smoke that immediately blew in. Some of the ladders and climbers had made it over the top, and were fighting with the defenders that were left there.

  Kulith crossed his swords with a pair of goblins, and he was quickly struck twice, but neither blade hit was very strong or penetrated through his heavy coat. He lashed back with his swords; the tips cutting through their lighter armor, an arrow stuck under his arm, then tore free and fell out over the wall into the court yard. He bellowed out in pain and went into a flurry of blows with the swords, getting through the guard of one goblin and stabbing him in the arm. By choice or chance, it fell off the wall into the moat, and Kulith pressed the other back until he overwhelmed it and struck it down. He stood with the other buggers there and cheered, seeing that they had won the top of the wall.

  More ladders were put in place from the causeway, and goblins began to stream up over the wall as fast as they could. Some archers remained, shooting from the windows and tops of the towers. These struck trolls and goblins down, as they became targets along the fighting walk, or ran across the court below. They began to crouch down behind the stones in order to not get shot. One of the goblins finally found the stop for the gate and released it, and the great frame of wooden boards broke free and swung down toward its stone moorings, scattering the goblins on rafts around the fascine. It made a hollow boom that echoed out over the moat and the forest, causing all the birds there to leap at once into the air, filling the sky for a moment above the fens and the tops of the trees.

  Kulith went down on one knee behind a block of stone. He dropped the champion’s sword on the battlement and brought his hand up to check his side where the arrow had evidently pierced into it. Two or three hundred goblins were now through the open gate below, across the smoking drawbridge. They also still came up over the wall, to range out on the walks, running down their length to find new enemies. They formed up where they could and advanced on the archers and other warriors of the castle who had formed shield walls in the streets to oppose them.

  He sat back and exhaled, then fell down on his side where he embraced the coldness of the stones that formed the surface of the fighting walk. As his eyes began to close, he felt a surge of power come up his hand from the Tuvier Blade, and there was a burning in his chest that made him cough out and push himself back up to get more air. In another moment, he was able to stand and look out over the gate, and at the small battles going on through the streets of the Red Tower.

  As more of the horde got into the castle, there was an eventual bowing in of the defenders, and after about ten minutes more of intense fighting they all withdrew through the streets to the central part of the fortress. The goblins and trolls from the wall attack met with those from the gate expedition, and they slowly advanced together. They slew or took captive those they encountered, and swarmed now through the storehouses and barracks, looting as was their want.

  They reached the corner of the street opposite the Red Tower and came out beyond the wall to see what the opposition would do. They were fired on by archers and crossbows from the largest tower, and they hastily withdrew back. Most of the defenders had somehow retreated inside, Kulith assumed by some unknown way, and were now willing to hold out.

  He squatted down with Amegis and the other chiefs of the horde and planned out what they would do next. They waited until nightfall, and then had several heavily armored goblins run up and throw skins of oil, or brimstone on the tower’s door, the whole thing taking on a humorous twist with a lot of betting began done about what would befall each individual sapper when they exposed themselves and made their run.

  At about midnight, when the moon had descended, Kulith gave the order for the goblins to shoot fire arrows at the gate, and when they did so it quickly lit up and began to burn. The flames climbed up the front wall of the tower and illuminated the place, with wails and shouts coming from inside as the defenders tried to stop the fire. Kulith was well rehearsed on what he needed to do, and he made sure it kept burning until dawn, the entire wooden door finally falling blackening and falling out of its red iron frame.

  The last bags of oil they threw had splashed past the metal and embers to land inside the chambers of the tower and burst into fire there. Smoke had rolled up out of the windows and arrow slits, and it was hard to tell what was going on. The first light of the morning showed that instead of putting up white smoke in the night, they had draped a great white sheet from one of the windows. Still, no one had been able to see it.

  They advanced warily with their own buckets and doused the embers and hot iron. They quenched the opening, while other groups moved about the fortress, clearing it, disposing of bodies, and generally making it theirs. When the gate had cooled enough, they sent a party inside to find out the terms from the chief. There were no terms, as he capitulated to them on his deathbed in one of the tower rooms, this information passed along to Kulith who was still below. The goblins and trolls then began to sack the central towers of the keep, liberating the sows and claiming slaves. They put them all to cooking up food in the great hall, to have a bugger victory feast.

  Because of his wound and need to issue orders, Kulith had lagged behind and not been much of a part of this activity. He only came into the great hall later, after the old chieftain had died and some food had been put out. The hall had been damaged, but still showed a superb gallery and feasting court down its length. He grabbed one of the old sows preparing the food and had her walk around with him as he looked at it.

  “How did trolls and goblins build such a place?” he asked her, his mind now racing ahead to what the Dimm might look like some day, similar to what he now saw. She was weepy, as most of the men in her family had probably been killed on the wall, and if she had daughters, they were now engaged against their will.

  “They built it with slaves from Galfan, thirty years ago,” she told him. “Some of the Talvus vampires had made inroads there, and one swore to send the captives he took far away so that they would never be found.”

  Kulith had heard about that. The black eagle had scoured the far side of Lake Talvus beyond the marsh and built castles and gates up in all the passes. It had made the entire place
almost uninhabitable, and poorly suited for raiding. This had caused many of the troll and goblin clans to move east over onto the Dimm. He was frustrated to learn that it had been built by humans, but he was not surprised.

  He released the sow and went over where several of the goblin chiefs were going through the spoils, which they were dividing and piling into small mountains against the undamaged far wall of the hall. They turned and looked at him as he approached.

  “How did the battle go at the wall?” he asked them.

  “It was hard fought,” the chief of the Black Tounge said. “And as we attacked, some of the wolf riders from the Stone Pile rode into our camp on the bank and destroyed our supplies. Carts were burned and their porters slain.”

  It was an odd thing to do, or a perfect thing to do if the trolls of the Stone Pile wished to slow down their advance on toward the citadel and its surrounding lands. Perhaps they now wanted to disrupt the transport of wood across the island to the siege, or deny the roving bands access to food. He didn’t know. He had expected such things but had not planned for them, as the campaign against the Red Tower had been very sudden, and critical.

  “Has it gone hard on the Red Tower because of that?” he asked them. A couple of them looked annoyed at the question.

  “They held out for a long time,” one replied, “and then only the main citadel here surrendered. You know the rules of such things.”

  “Yes but I’m thinking we will need this place as we cut the woods,” he said, “and leaving a bunch of bodies laying around it is just helping the Whisper or another thring renumber to fight us later. I may have weakened that monster a great deal, and taught it a lesson, but what will happen when we are in the lines before the Stone Pile and there is only a small garrison here, and slaves perhaps cutting at the forest?”

  “You should be trying right now to pick up all the bodies and burn them,” he continued. “You shouldn’t be creating new ones for our foes, or wrecking this citadel and its inhabitants. The Red Tower had some sort of arrangement with this thring before we came here. We need to find out how what they did and see if we can use it to our advantage.” He had almost repeated himself, which was bad luck, but it looked like the others had not caught it.

  “I thought that you were going to kill all the thrings?” the chief asked instead, challenging him on that point. “I didn’t think we were going to make a deal with any of them.”

  “We are not, but this one is very strange,” he said. “It will take a long time to get rid of it. In the name of the greater prize, we need to move on and come back here to fight it at our leisure.”

  Some of the trolls were coming in with the members of the chieftain’s family that they had taken captive. There was a younger, angry troll who had been left commanding at the long wall they had scaled, and he yanked his head around as he looked at the inside of the great hall and what they had done to it. Two of Kulith’s chiefs began talking to him, and they exchanged angry slurs and biting allegations of why the siege and sacking were done, and of the great slaughter and damage inflicted.

  One of the trolls close at hand pushed out a chair from the table, as another troll chief used his finger to point out something to the captive, by tapping him hard in the chest repeatedly with his finger. As the younger troll made another rude remark as his answer, one of the bigger trolls, Kulith thought it was Alvury, pulled out a long curved dagger and grabbed him around the shoulder. He pinned him back for a moment against his chest and dragged the curved blade across his neck. There was a dark purple splash of blood on the stones and a final struggle, and then Alvury dropped the body down into the chair. One of the other trolls thrust a sword through its chest, to pin it there.

  Then they went back to discussing something among themselves, with only a few side glances over at Kulith to see how he had reacted to the execution. Kulith picked up a cup of tump and sniffed at it, felt immediately nauseous, and pushed it away across the table. He grabbed instead a chunk of meat someone had left on a plate half eaten. He found some cheese and broke it up, and ate it with the meat. One of the old servants came around and got him some water and some bread. He looked back and watched a group of goblins who had come in. They looked at the dead troll in the chair and said something, perhaps confirming with each other how unlucky it was to sit in one.

  Another group of goblins later chased in several sows and the trolls held them up and examined them. They had been hiding out somewhere in the citadel, trying to resist the surrender. They pulled their cloaks and hoods off to get a good look at them, and the warriors began to argue and fight over the young ones, about who would get them.

  Kulith relaxed back to watch the contests, and wondered about what they could find around the place to replace their lost carts. There were two or three villages further to the east, and a small warren to the south. There would be body carts perhaps, and some trading and work carts. There might even be a few animal drawn wagons they could get, if the buggers could be stopped from eating the pulling beasts, and if they were not destroyed beforehand. Big Stone was not really that big, and it was not the distance that mattered, only the weight and volume that could be brought across it quickly from one point to another. That was why they needed boats and carts to feed the horde, and soon perhaps to move the wood.

  “Please don’t hurt me!” one of the young sows cried. “I know the Stone Pile well. I can draw its walls, gates, and towers out for you!” The noise in the room died off as the trolls and goblins looked back and forth between each other, thinking, then over at Kulith, who had also taken an interest in what the sow had said. He pushed aside the food and stood up out of the chair he had taken.

  “Is that so?” he called out.

  “Yes my lord!” she cried in reply. The veterans from the West Lands didn’t like that word and they cursed her and showed her their teeth. Lords controlled the knights who officered the soldiers fighting and killing the buggers when they raided. Kulith had been trying to put his finger on what really disturbed him about the denizens of Big Stone and now he had pinned it down.

  They acted too human, like stone men. This thought caused him to question a bit of what he was doing. There were both positive and negative points to acting more civilized, or human. He and the horde were now fighting the thrings, and they were just too arbitrarily evil and had to go. The Red Tower had stupidly stood in their way, and so it had gone to ruin. He turned his energy back to the young sow who had just insulted him.

  “It’s rare to have someone say something to be saved, and then in the next moment say another thing that will get them killed,” Kulith said. He looked over at the other trolls and goblins, and they now made some rude, biting remarks in agreement, back over at her.

  “Very well,” he said, to the two trolls standing beside her. “Make sure that she can still be of use to us after you are done with her. Bring her back later, and we will discuss her claim.” The trolls then lifted her from the stones and dragged her off into one of the passages, to a nearby room. Kulith touched the wound opening on his shirt of plates and mail, where the arrow had gone through into him. He looked over at one of the goblins eating a piece of meat.

  “Do you have someone that can pull an arrowhead out, and stitch up the wound?”

  “Anything you need, Golden Sword,” it replied, and dropped off the bench to go look for a White Hood or a healer.

  One of the goblin chieftains then approached him, behind the table as the other trolls continued to squabble over the rest of the sows. He sat down and sniffed at the food, and then the watered down tump.

  “This Red Tower may still give us a lot of trouble,” he said. “As you feared, bodies were dragged away into the woods after the fighting yesterday. It was either other buggers or the Whisper, but all the money is on the last. I think they’ll be raised up to come against us soon. Shouldn’t we just clear this place out, one way or another, and not leave anyone behind?” Kulith realized that he was touching the Tuvier Blade as he n
ow spoke.

  “We can’t kill all the inhabitants of the Red Tower. That will just make more bodies. If we throw them out of it, where will they go? I don’t want them marching all over Big Stone, going to Vous Vox or Sterina, spreading news or reinforcing someone else and fighting against us again.” The goblin chief took a trial sip of the tump, scowled, and pushed it back away.

  “And I don’t think we should be destroying everything we find,” he continued. “This is a fine castle, even if the walls are a bit low. Though it may have been built by slaves from Galfan, the trolls and goblins here have not let it run down like Doom Wall, or the warrens we looted on the Sword.” The goblin chief on the bench looked over at him, narrowed his eyes, and shook its head. He was almost human, except for his sharp teeth, longer skull, and the points of small horns sticking out from the curve of his cheekbones.

  “This is just a different type of thring doll,” he replied back to Kulith. “Some thring set up a toy castle here in this toy forest so that they could visit it, or pass by and pretend. It was probably Vous Vox or Sarik, and you might know more about that than me. But should we try to be like this? I do not think that this type of thring nostalgia can exist without them. It did not hold out against us. If we want to build for permanence, let us look toward the humans and how they now keep us out. What are their successes?”

  “You mean like Krolo Castle,” Kulith replied, “with its rings of walls and great archery bulwarks, and that gatehouse passage?” The goblin spread his hands and the fingertips each ended in a rough black nail, except where part of one had been cut off during an old fight.

  “It would be more like that, but by goblin and troll hands, not human. We are all stone lifters, but how many stone masons are there among us? The odds are that such a skilled bugger would be killed in a raid or by war far before they could use their craft to make a difference. We need this war, but things cannot continue on in a perpetual state of war, or we will just find ourselves again under the boot of the thrings.”