A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  There was a second loud crashing from behind, and then a broken line of infantry with shields and weapons moved up to him, and then they went by. He stopped there and let it pass, as the dust swirled up over them, as some horses and riders went around. A wolf rider was caught suddenly before the line, and the beast was quickly pierced a dozen times. It turned its head back abruptly and bit into its own rider, as it fell. Wayland backed away, from the appearance of more horses and wolves, then farther away from the infantry line, as they began to fight with the approaching goblins and trolls.

  The dust rose up in the air now, like a red blanket, and he heard the clash of arms more than he saw it. Had he done enough? What if he died here and never completed his mission? What if he did not continue to fight and the soldiers of the West Lands lost? Would these people then have to wait more months for another silly Traveler Knight to come down the road and tell them what they already knew? It was frustrating, chaotic, mixed with the relief that he was now getting out of it.

  Other men nearby had lost their mounts, and some were being knocked about and mauled by the wolves. Others had gotten together in a ring, and they struck back out any enemy that passed or menaced them. The line of footmen moved back, and they were united with it, and a lull then came over the field. The clash of metal and shouts slacked, and the dust began to blow away.

  Wayland could just see what was left of the goblin cavalry riding back, going toward the castle’s gates, as the West Lands foot halted, and held the field. The mass of trolls and goblins that had attacked had turned off, and were now moving away, through the trees on one side of the field, running from the scene of their defeat.

  “Hold! Hold!” Wayland called out to the men still on horses, and they did not pursue. It may have also helped steady the line, and he thought Halgrim of Kassal echoed it from somewhere, just a moment later. Sir Otel rode up with a bloody sword in his hand and nodded down at him.

  “Now that’s how we negotiate in the West Lands,” he said, and he seemed in good spirits.

  “Have you soldiers take prisoners.” Wayland reminded him. “I will give them each my message, and release them one at a time back to the castle.” He walked forward then, over to his horse and saw that it was finished. Men were going around with staves and lances, lifting up the other horses, freeing the men and stripping off the saddles and tack. The dead goblins were being piled up; while their own dead and wounded were being carried back into the area beneath the trees that they controlled.

  He saw that his orders were been carried out, and that several goblins were being moved back under guard to their side of the battlefield. He approached them and found Tazah there walking with the group, with Sir Byrning, guarding them with his squire candidates. The right side of Tazah’s brigantine was covered with blood, though it did not seem to be hers. She had a wild look in her blue eyes, and some of her golden hair had gotten loose.

  “My lady, are you hurt?” he asked her.

  “My hurt is only from knowing that more should be done here.” She pointed out at the castle. “Nothing much has changed, and we cannot now mount a siege.” He knew what to say, but he did not want to say it to her. It was never really his intention to take back Fugoe Castle, only to free the ransoms out of it. He turned to Sir Byrning. “You seem to now be missing a squire?”

  “He received an arrow in the shoulder while we were riding back, and has now gone to get it taken out. Rotten luck for him, but he’ll have a scar now to show off to the girls and a tale to tell.”

  Wayland nodded and then turned to look at his captives. When seen up close, they were a rougher looking lot than he had imagined. It was easy to see them as apart from men, and justify any fancy of how they should be treated. They were now tied up and had been pushed down beside a lopped off tree trunk to await their fate. He approached them.

  “Do any of you understand what I am saying?” he asked them. “I need someone to do an errand for me. It means you’ll be released.” Two of them looked at each other, and they began to laugh, one barking more than laughing. Wayland thought about hitting them with something, perhaps with the flat of his sword. But he hurt from the strain he had put out in battle, and he didn’t want to make it worse. He made a pass on brute force.

  “I bet that a good little piggy or doggy would want to know what they had to do to earn that release,” he said to them. The thyr growled at him, and the other goblins’ faces were instantly hostile. Though it was reported that they spoke a debased form of Mancan, they could certainly tell when they were being insulted.

  They were done with him for now, and he could not have offended them them if they had been free. He looked over at a goblin that he could find no easy association with to an animal. It looked like it had posed for the stone carvers who had made the monsters crouched atop the cathedral at Rydol.

  “Maybe even a gargoyle off the side of a church?” Tazah said from behind him, reading his thoughts. It growled over at her and Wayland finally reacted, kicking it in the face with his boot.

  “Do you know that they use such terms to be rude to one another?” Tazah asked him, seemingly satisfied by his act.

  “If they will listen to their pot mates say such things then maybe they will listen to me.” He pulled a wolf-faced one out that bunch who had been hostile, and he led it away painfully by the bunch of the greasy comb between its two ears. He let it fall down and put his sword point on it when it had turned back at him to see what he would do.

  “Do you understand me?” he asked. It looked up at him and growled. He got ready to kick it.

  “No!” it said. It seemed that they could understand each other, and so he set down his boot and lowered his sword.

  “The Grand Prince of Gece has sent me here to get all the people out of that castle. Are there still ransoms and slaves in there?” It nodded back.

  “Ask your leader what he wants for them,” Wayland said. “I will give fifty silver pieces for each. That’s a big bag of silver coins. There is a girl from Rydol who was taken, who is special. She was captured riding in a coach. I will give a thousand silver pieces for her. That’s ten big bags of coins. Do you understand?” It nodded back. He got his foot in position to kick it, if need be. “Repeat back to me what I just said.”

  “A bag of silver for every captive,” the wolf replied. “Many bags of silver for the Rydol girl.” It was close enough, and so he relaxed his foot, setting his boot back down on the ground. It would not be needed again, he thought. He wished that stall yard men were this easy to deal with.

  “Spears!” he commanded. Sir Otel’s birds came around and put the points of their lances on the monster, as Wayland cut its ropes. They fanned out and guided the creature back away toward the castle. Wayland watched it go, walking away with many an angry look back. The main gate opened after some words between it and the guards above, and then it went on inside, and they waited.

  And nothing happened. An hour went by in which the lords used to clean up the battle site. A pit was dug to one side and they began burning all the goblin, troll and wolf bodies in it. A few heads were taken in sacks, to place out in front of Kitzy and Krolo on stakes.

  Sascha and Wayland watched the gates and walls of Fugoe, but only saw the helmeted heads of the goblins keeping watch moving back and forth between the merlons. There was no sign that the message had been received, or was being acted on.

  “We think we might be able to take the castle,” Lord Sirlaw said to Wayland, as he approached him again. They looked back and stared at Fugoe’s walls with anger, with malice.

  “Burn the gate and force our way in before dark?” Wayland wondered out loud.

  “There’s a slim chance,” Sir Byrning said, considering it. “But one we might ought to take. We could give my squire candidates rope, and let them try to scale over the wall.” Lord Sirlaw looked over at the knight, trying to decide if that was a joke.

  “Well, decide quickly what you want to do,” Lord Sirlaw said. “There is s
urely more than one group of goblins like the one we chased off up in the hills. I will not be caught between them and those castle walls when it gets dark. If nothing else is to happen, we will start heading back down to Kitzy in three hours. From there you can send out correspondence while I collect up more men to come back here for a proper siege. Your mission may be all but over.”

  Wayland turned his next exhale into a curse, as he considered that. He could just go home, or go on to some garrison, or he might finish his time fighting on the Golden Slope with the other Traveler Knights. He was no good with the black stick, he decided. Lord Wenslig of Rydol had effectively doomed the girl, and this was all going to climax in a final, exhaustive and bloody siege.

  He straightened up and dusted himself off. He walked back over to the remaining goblins they had taken and looked them over, wondering what to try. He became thoughtful when he saw one of the more wolf-like ones continually lick its fangs in hunger.

  He turned, a bit disgusted by what he had just seen. The aroma coming from the fire consuming their comrades and dead mounts in the distance was appetizing. He scratched at his neck and chin, then dug his fingers in a little under his surcoat and armor, near to where he had been stabbed by Bole. Perhaps that was the way to get them into action: to play on the traitorous hunger he had heard about.

  “Sergeant,” he said the leader of the guards there, “get some other men to butcher up one of the dead horse and roast it on a spit.” They did as he asked, and in half an hour a fire was cooking up a haunch, and a whole side of ribs. Wayland sat and watched his captives, as they watched the meat cook. Their eyes grew glassy, and they all began to drool. Wayland remembered what had been said as he watched: that their only real loyalty in the end was to their stomachs.

  “Listen to me,” he said, coming back over to them, clapping his hands to get their attention. “I’ll feed you if you go and tell the castle I want to trade silver for the captives in there. I want to ransom our people back. Have someone from the garrison who can bargain come back here to me, and I will give him as much meat as he can eat and carry away.”

  He cut off a great slice of dark horse meat from the haunch with his sword and threw it down on top of his ruined shield. He picked the goblin that looked like a gargoyle out and cut the ropes binding its feet. Then he turned it around and cut the rope on its hands. The points of three spears followed it as it leapt forward and seized the chunk of meat off his shield, biting into it and chewing ravenously.

  Tazah made a little noise of disgust and made a show of looking away, then turned back to watch. Wayland tapped the creature on the shoulders with the flat of his sword blade to turn it around until it was facing the castle, and then he let it go. It shuffled off, focused on eating the meat, only stopping to smack its lips between bites. Wayland then repeated the same bargain with two of the other goblins, letting them also go with a piece of meat. He watched them move back to the castle gate with their hands full, eating as they went.

  This upset the soldiers that had just fought with them, and there were some disgusted looks shared about. Tazah narrowed her eyes and showed a wicked smirk several times which also could have also been hostile, but it was more likely that she enjoyed Wayland’s cunning. Sir Byrning watched them, and shook his head.

  “Though this ploy is offensive,” he said, “sometimes you must lock up glory and keep bravery safe for another day. I wonder like the rest of you, will it work?”

  There was more commotion at the gate as it opened up and let the three goblins disappear inside. Wayland feared that they had simply been attacked and robbed by the others, and that he might have sent them off to their doom. A few minutes later however, the gate of Fugoe Castle reopened and a great black shape emerged, to stand there with an oversized sword in its hand.

  The troll came forward slowly, looking about at the warriors from the three castles, at the burn pits, and at the horses, both living and dead. Then it saw the meat roasting there, hanging over the fire. It bellowed out, the shout spooking the horses and the men, and then it came forward quickly, raising its great sword over its head like a club. They moved back away from it, their weapons coming out in the anticipation of attack.

  But the sword only came down and broke the spit holding the meat above the fire in two with a shuddering crack, and it all fell down into the embers of the fire where it hissed and sputtered. There were half dozen spears points ringing in the creature now, but it appeared to not care. The troll leaned forward over the fire and speared up a large chunk of meat from the coals with its sword. It rotated the seared flesh around, the juices dripping off, cleaning it, and then it brought it back close and took a great bite out of it. It sat down and ate the chunk ravenously, ignoring them all as it did so. After a second great piece of meat was devoured, it smacked its lips and looked around at them.

  “Who wants to buy my slaves?” it asked them.

  “I do,” Wayland replied.

  “I am Hovus Black Smile,” it said, and revealed its teeth with a grin to show why. It began to cut another piece of meat away from the haunch with its sword. “I come from the Sunless Gorge in the Priwak. I fought with Kulith and Ovodag, and was their pot mate. No one else could take this castle, but we did.”

  “I want to buy all the people you captured,” Wayland said to it. “Ransom them back to me.” It kept on talking, ignoring his demand for the moment.

  “Sarik wanted the castle. Sarik wanted this whole land. Some say Sarik’s goblins made Kulith mad and that he made the gold sword sing, and now Sarik is gone. Kulith went down to Doom Wall with the girl. Now he is out on the Stones fighting. I want to go back to the Priwak now, or down to Doom Wall. Sterina is angry with the buggers out on the Stones.” It shook its head and continued.

  “Slaves eat too much, and we can’t eat them. Sterina’s buggers try to switch sides. My own buggers desert because they are too hungry. Little buggers are trying to get at the slaves all the time, to eat them. They are too much trouble to watch. All the buggers are starting to run away now, back to the Dimm, just to eat fish and frogs out of the lake. The ones who attacked you did it to get at your horses, and maybe to eat you. When they could not, they ran off.” Wayland saw his approach now.

  “Do you want our silver, or do you want meat?” he asked it.

  “I stole a whole chest of silver and gold from Kulith, but I cannot eat it.” It looked over at their mounts, at the dead animals that lay across the field. “You leave all the dead horses here,” it said, picking at one of its black fangs now with a fingernail. “Give us ten more alive. I will trade you half of the slaves.”

  “How do I get the rest of them?” Wayland asked it.

  “I will take them down with me to the Dimm, so you do not attack. Some men we trust come into the Priwak and trade. We sell them all the ones that we no longer want. ”

  Wayland nodded, but he thought also of the people’s fate under those terms. There were a lot of names on the list he had been given, and some would suffer greatly if he did not now push the troll for their release. He wanted to report just such a thing back to Tig Morten: that he had tried to bargain as hard as he dared.

  “I tell you, none of this guarantees your safety at Fugoe Castle,” he said. “An army may come here at any time and drive you out. In fact what you see here is just the vanguard of a larger force preparing to lay that siege. If you agree to immediately sell all of your remaining captives to the traders once you reach the Dimm, then we have an agreement that will guarantee your safety.” It nodded, but then it also smiled across at him.

  “Also lots of goblins are still around,” Hovus said. “They just do not want to fight right now. You were attacked today by the stupid, hungry ones. If you attack our walls, the others will see your backs, and that is their chance. And if you attack, I will let my little buggers into those cells, to eat their fill.” It looked like they both understood each other, and Wayland was surprised by both the bravery and cleverness that the creature was s
howing. It stood up, reached down, and picked up the rest of the haunch.

  “We will all go back to the Priwak soon, or down to the Dimm,” he said. “There’s not much food left around here, and winter is coming on. Tie up the horses and show them to me, and I will open the gate and let half of the slaves go free.”

  “There was that one person, taken from a coach along the road,” Wayland persisted. “It’s a girl with dark hair who is from Rydol. She is important and I want her back. In fact, giving her to me will make you all safer. ” Hovus Black Smile shouldered the haunch, then stopped and looked over at him, in consideration. The troll was obviously troubled by it, as if he feared what would happen.

  “I told you. She is down at Doom Wall at the troll’s court.” He smiled again. “Or maybe she is out on the Stones, with Kulith, when he went there to go fight Sterina.”

  Wayland stepped back and lifted his arm to signal to the others, to let the troll pass back. It lumbered off, and Wayland had the rest of the goblins cut free now to follow it back into the castle. The creature shouted up at the gate as it neared, and it opened to admit him and the rest. Wayland turned and looked back at the West Lands lords behind him.

  “Pick out the animals for the exchange. We will get the people we can right now, and head back down within the hour.” The West Land lords went and selected out the wounded animals, and the poorest of the remounts, knowing what their fate would be. They brought them up and picketed them between Sir Byrning’s squires, where they could be seen plainly from the castle wall. There was some commotion, and soon the gate opened again. A line of people slowly emerged out from it.

  The goblins following them out for a bit, and then left them there, blinking up into the brightness of the afternoon sun. They walked forward across the battlefield to meet their saviors. The creatures then pushed out a wagon holding all of those who couldn’t walk, and waited for the horses to be sent.