A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Kulith turned back to look over at Kabi. “You don’t always do as I say,” he said. “But I am the same way, and so I will overlook this. We will start there. Now come over and let’s see where I am hurt the worst. He loosened his under jacket and pulled it over his head, then stood there in his wet leggings, stained all over with blood. He looked back over at Little Toad and pointed at her with his finger, as Kabi and another sow inspected his wounds.

  “Get yourself cleaned up proper,” he told her, “and I will have a table and supplies brought to you to make another letter to send out to the West Lands. You are too great a danger to us now, and it is almost time to ransom you back to your kin. I can maintain my household at Doom Wall for several years in comfort, with the money I get for you.”

  She startled at that, and it showed that she had not cast off her hopes but only buried them very down deep inside herself. She bent down and picked up the jewelry, then cleaned it off with a rag she had saved. She sat down on one of the chests and played with the silver chain it in her hands, looking over at him occasionally as he got probed and stitched up where the vampires and thrings had hit him with their swords. It was the archer who finally gave him an argument.

  “You can’t expect them to pay that kind of a ransom,” he said. “When her uncle heard the amount, he probably decided that its bulk meant that there was no chance they would ever get her back.” This was a fine argument. He had hit it on the mark, what Kulith had tried to do, just like the bowman he was. The unwieldy bulk of silver coin might have caused Wenslig to make his decision to withdraw out of the West Lands. Kulith turned his head to look over at him.

  “She can write something to the effect that a negotiation of the ransom is now possible, within the range of what I have stated. It could be all conveyed over in gold for instance, or delivered in the form of cattle. But that will of course, take longer to work out.”

  “I’ll do it!” she shouted at him.

  “Anything?” he asked her back.

  She shut her mouth, surprised it seemed that he would mention that old promise she had made to him. She got up with her collection of baubles and went back into the big tent, possibly to dig through the things they had sacked out of the Red Tower and what had been gifted to Kulith by the chiefs seeking his favor. He would need someone to probably adjust what she chose down to fit her, to make her look more like a countess again and less like a toad. It could wait until tomorrow at least, when she was not so mad at him.

  The next morning Kulith came out of his tent and woke up the archer by kicking him in his uninjured leg. He looked up at him, swore and oath in Alonic, and then slowly untangled himself from the great coil of hemp rope he usually slept on. There was a low fog across the entire camp, with only a few hilltops and the castle completely visible off in the distance. The archer shuffled over to the fire and stoked it up, then set out a few lake fish on sticks for breakfast. He emptied out the old pot and put fresh water on to boil. Then he sat back and waited with Kulith for something to happen. By the time Kulith was drinking a cup of bark tea with some milk in it and crunching on one of the lake fish, it had.

  A Green Scale warrior came in to the fire with one of his White Knife warriors. He was reporting across to Kulith directly from one of the major allied goblin leaders from Second Stone, also sometimes called the Spear. Kabi emerged with Little Toad and the old sow from the tent to see what was going on, both bright and new looking in their jewelry, their new skirted jackets, and boiled white wool hose. Kabi has sensibly taken off the necklace and only wore the golden bracelets today. The Green Scale warrior nodded to him and delivered his message.

  “Vous Vox just lowered a thring toy down from his castle on ropes, and it walked over to our camp and delivered a message. Vous Vox wants to have a meeting with the chiefs and with you, to discuss the siege.”

  “A parlay?” Kulith said back with contempt. As he stood up, he put his hands on his hips, and then he kicked at the grass. “I’d rather use the chance to try and break into the Stone Pile while his attention is diverted. He has everything to gain from doing this, and we can get nothing from it that we do not already have.”

  “Do you want me to go back and tell Adgahad that?” The warrior asked.

  “No,” Kulith replied back. “Give me a few minutes and I will be along to the camp, and talk with them about it.” He sat back down first and finished his tea, and ate another lake fish off a stick. He wished for once that Ovodag was somewhere close by where he could consult with him, but he was now off somewhere on the lake, moving around the supplies that they never had enough of.

  They were both right where they needed to be, but it was frustrating. Kulith had wanted to oversee and drive the campaign himself, and the conduct and results of it were now on his shoulders. He put on his under jacket and then pulled on his great armored coat, and Kabi and the other sow helped him fasten it tight. He picked up his swords and belted their harness. He nuzzled Kabi face to face, and then picked up his helm.

  “Let’s not keep them waiting any longer,” he said.

  They set off through the camp, toward the silhouette of the Stone Pile, as it sat now beside the morning sun. Vous Vox’s observation tower stood tall on the wall, it pointed and black at the top, a troll among the goblins, in comparison with the other towers. Beyond the high curtain wall and various towers, halls and the square citadel were barely visible. It looked very daunting right now above the blanket of white ground fog, and Kulith sensed it was a bad time for them to make decisions.

  The Green Scale camp appeared ahead, as well as the edge of the ditch and palisade they had built to keep the thrings from wandering in and making trouble. There were still pyre wisps rising up from the burn pits along the outer defenses, and from the pits they had made up the slope after the battle. He couldn’t smell the stench over the more appetizing aromas of fire seared pony, crisped alligator, and baked fish that hung over the camp, and that was a good thing.

  At least a dozen of the most notable goblin and troll chiefs were assembled there, as well as a thyr chief, with that whole lot of wolf-goblins recently wavering in their support of the adventure. They had left for several weeks, then some had come back to fight after the result of the last battle before the walls of the Stone Pile. They had sworen that they would now support the siege of the fortress and its sacking, but the others had been doubtful, and agreed to pay them set wages, to keep them in camp. The way they had done it like that had made a lot of the trolls and other goblins sour, but the risk of what could go wrong was worth paying for their renewed support.

  Kulith knew they had a lot of pigs, and he might need them to make a sapping fire and collapse a section of the wall of the Stone Pile. In a twist of fate, Sarik had taught him how to do it when they were out raiding in southern Alonze. He stopped as he came to their fire, and regarded them all.

  “I’ve heard the news from the castle,” Kulith told them. “I’d like to hear what you all think about it, and the arguments for and against going and listening to the thring talk.”

  “We have decided to go and talk to it,” one of the chieftains stated.

  “Well, my opinion is that it’s a bad idea,” Kulith replied. “Simply based on the fact that the thring sorcerer has nothing to offer us that we cannot otherwise take. He could also single me out and attack me in this situation, when it would be harder or impossible for him to do on the battlefield.”

  “From my point of view, from a lot of the other chiefs’ also, we think that your claim to the Stone Pile should now be made,” a goblin chief said. “Perhaps the lich will let you into the Stone Pile to take whatever you want from it, then you could allow him to be your Baillie there, and the fortress could in turn serve as his prison. We could redistribute the dead penny and Sarik’s wealth, and then all go home.” They were all wavering again, more than he thought, and in a way he had not thoroughly explored. He tried to work his way out of this argument, and frame it in a way that made it unappetizi
ng.

  “Yes, but I only cut off the head of an already injured Vagrim, who had itself recently been thrown out of the Stone Pile when it made a similar claim of lordship. I only bested a loser who Sterina disposed of after Vous Vox hit it with at least two strikes of lightning from out of the air. You say this old corpse cannot fight us because half his bones are made of black iron? It disposed of the Vagrim easily enough. If we all stand up on that point before the gatehouse and try talking to Vous Vox, he will strike us with that same lightning if he does not hear what he wants.”

  “That is something to think about right there,” one of the other chieftains said. “It’s not going to like whatever we tell it. The chance of attack is too great, so I am against it.”

  “Unless there was some other reason for you to make a direct claim to the Stone Pile,” Ovodag said, as he stepped out from where he stood with the other trolls in his armored coat, a great axe and a sword hanging from his belt. It appeared he had returned, though he had not informed Kulith that he had. “My lesser brother should tell us now if there is anything to the rumor that we hear about him and Sarik quarreling over the attack against Krolo Castle. Did you slay Sarik and his subordinates in the Priwak with your golden sword?” Kulith frowned, and thought for a moment about how to word his reply.

  “I did not kill Sarik and his followers, to answer the question you ask,” he said. “He was doing some magic with a stone he had turned to black. Magic is bad, but sometimes magic goes very bad. You’re all lucky that he blew himself up out in the Priwak, or we all might be elbows deep in something worse than thrings or West Lands knights. How long will it be now until Vous Vox or some other thring tries that magic again?”

  “I think you are laying the plaster on too thick,” one of the goblin chiefs said. Kulith now changed the point of the talk, and he hoped it would put them all on the defensive.

  “Is it the factoria that you are really worried about?” he asked back, now stalking a bit to stare in wach of their faces. He had avoided going into the town below the Stone Pile, and had given its plunder and garrison over to three of the war bands. He knew what they had found. They had observed and then let be all the undead assisted crafts and food production being done there, and this had happened also on several of the other Stones as they had come south. He had not mentioned it until now.

  As long as the thrings in the factoria didn’t stop working, didn’t lay down their tools and begin attacking, he had let the chiefs continue collecting these free goods and services. In fact, they were eating some of the factoria food right here in the camp, a mile away from the creature that had created all its clockwork. With the thrings gone, there would be no more greater ones to put the lesser ones into their tasks and hold them there. They would revert to corpses, eventually fall apart, or go wild, and then all the work would have to be done instead by the living, by goblins mostly. The leaders knew this and were loath to have the system end.

  “No, it’s that sword you carry,” Ovodag said, pointing over to the hilt of it sticking up from its sheath. “That sword is doing the talking for you right now. But we don’t have to do what that sword wants to do, only you. There are many of us here who think that you are bewitched.”

  “I am bewitched with the truth!” Kulith said. “If we let Vous Vox stay in the Stone Pile, he will eventually produce another greater thring that takes over the Dimm, then leads out and massacres the buggers in the West Lands. It will then make free with the plunder of those who return. The dead penny will continue to move until there are no more coins left here for us to use. The corpse carts will roll again, taking our dead to be turned into thrings who will then exist as an army against us, as they do now. I say being a slave even once to them in life is too much.”

  The troll and goblin chiefs moved back and forth, shifting about and glancing at one another. They were unsteady in their conviction, slowly shuffling forward to reason, still chained and dragging their selfish little dreams, and the needs of their stomachs.

  “What is it that will make you attack the Stone Pile?” Kulith said, snarling at them.

  “Admit that you destroyed Sarik and the Prayer out in the Priwak, and we have little choice but to do it,” Ovodag said. “We must attack it, and it is our right to do so. That is our reason for destroying Vous Vox and for taking the Stone Pile.”

  The sword on his waist fought him immediately, opening up his thoughts, trying to make it all feel clear and well reasoned, filling him with a sudden surge of anticipation and righteousness. He fought the feelings, pushed them down and conquered them with his mountain of disdain and rough pessimism. He drew the blade out anyway, and he held it before him where it immediately flared up in a play of golden light, with sparks snapping from the metal. As he watched it with the others, he realized that the road before him had suddenly and dangerously narrowed.

  “Perhaps I was not as clear before as I should have been,” he said. “I did not destroy Sarik and his minions in the Priwak. But I did quarrel with Sarik over the proposed murder of the horde by foolishly using it to attack Krolo Castle without a plan. Sarik and I came to blows, and in the fighting, I prevailed and cut off his head with this sword.”

  “That is what we needed to hear, even if it is a lie,” Ovodag said.

  “No. It is the truth,” the troll chief Amegis said, like a warning to Ovodag. He looked about at certain chiefs and warriors in the group, and they nodded back. He spread out his hands from his sides with his palms facing downward, to indicate the matter was decided. Kulith thought that the thyrs who had helped him burn the thrings after Sarik’s destruction must have talked, and that information cemented into a generally held sentiment that was supported.

  Adgahd looked at Amegis, and then he slowly motion with his hands now toward the grass, and then he knelt down. About a score of the other chiefs and major band leaders followed his example, dropping down on one knee. The others more slowly did so when they realized what was happening, and decided it was right thing to now do.

  “You are the rightful lord of the Stone Pile,” Ovodag said, as he also kneeled down, giving Kulith the honor he would have given Sarik, or the Growler. “You must go up to the castle now and make your claim known to Vous Vox.”

  Kulith returned from the Green Scale camp and cut off a great steak of meat from the pony haunch that was now roasting over the fire. He mixed up a cup of water with some tump and berry juice in it, took a slab of bread to catch the meat juice, and he sat back down in his chair. There was a new look in the eyes of the White Knife warriors as they walked by and nodded over to him. Word had spread out from the gathering and he was sure things would continue to happen now in a way that he could neither easily predict, nor control.

  After about an hour several goblins with a troll leading them came to the camp and began erecting a scaffold near the front of his tents. He watched it go up with interest, seeing what would then happen. Kabi saw what was going on, came close to him and looked out at it. She wrung her hands a few times, making the big golden bracelets she now wore click. He wondered if she felt guilty now for giving away the secrets of the Stone Pile, or fearful of revenge from the thrings.

  “Did you make someone angry this morning?” she finally asked him. Perhaps they made a big play of their executions at the Stone Pile and the Red Tower, he didn’t know. Real buggers only raised scaffolds for one reason. All their butchery and summary justice was done on the ground, to show the might of the individuals involved, and the notion of their supposed, base equality to each other.

  After it was up they painted it red and then they went away. One by one the chieftains sent their banners over and placed them against the scaffold in a long line, so that they were all displayed. The dead penny had not been carted up to the Stone Pile and taken inside it for several days now due to the bugger army, and they now brought it over in chests and casks, and in other storage containers, but judiciously left the larger tithe items in a pile where they had previously been taken,
so that they could be quickly added to the horde’s other supplies. A detachment of troll warriors began to stand guard, while some of the others set up their shelters and tents nearer at hand.

  Kabi had seen the dead penny going into the Stone Pile regularly during her childhood, and as a scullion and a wench there. She sucked in her breath and steadied herself with one hand on a barrel when she realized what this meant. Little Toad and the archer just looked on grimly, perhaps still worried about the implications of the structure. They probably wondered if he had now forgotten about his promise to them.

  “Have a table and some writing materials brought over,” he told one of his warriors. “I’ll need something to make out the tallies on.” It took a couple of hours to get everything in place. When Little Toad saw the table and writing materials she visibly relaxed and smiled a little over at the archer. This usually meant she would be given the opportunity to send out a letter to further support her ransom and return. Kulith thought it best to humor her.

  “Make a letter of appeal to your fellow stone men and I will send it out with my brother to Bezet. With good luck and a few pieces of gold promised, it will reach the West Lands in only a few days.” She nodded and sat down at the stool and table, then tested the quills, paper and ink. Kulith watched her and then turned back to Kabi, who had watched him watching Little Toad. He sensed jealousy in her, and a questioning of what was going on. So he told her.

  “It’s time to ransom Little Toad back to her own lands before another human army decides to come and ruin what we are doing here. Can you imagine what I would have to do if Doom Wall was stormed by a couple thousand West Land soldiers?” She put a hand out instead and gestured over at the piled containers of coins and supplies under the scaffold full of banners.

  “Why now? What have you done to bring this here?” She was referring to the dead penny.