“I have told them the truth that they wanted to hear,” Kulith said. “I told them that I quarreled with Sarik in the West Lands and fought him. And that I killed him. By the old ways if not the exact wording, the Stone Pile must now open for me when I make my claim, for I am the Overlord of the Dimm.”
“That is what I wondered,” she said. “But how did you do that? I remember Sarik from when I lived in that castle. He was very terrible, and all powerful.” She shivered a little bit from just her memory of those times.
“I also fought the Vagrim and destroyed him, then fought the Whisper and made it crawl off into a hole to hide from me,” Kulith said. “It’s granted that I am very good at destroying thrings, so why not Sarik also?” It seemed like she wanted to hear something more from him, so he added. “I cut his dammed head off, and the Prayer’s also, and threw them into a fire.” He gestured broadly out across the camp with his arm.
“I have directed the chiefs and leaders to not move the camp up the valley any closer to the castle. I expect that we will be attacked while we lay siege to the Stone Pile, and I don’t want to move any farther away from the shore of the lake, to be able to quickly guard and renew our supplies, which are mostly now moving by boat. This tent will operate as the new center of the Dimm while the Stone Pile is under siege. This will of course enrage Sterina, who was also receiving a part of the tribute, in bodies, goods and taxes.”
“Can’t you see why they made you their king?” Kabi asked him, as she looked around like she was seeking some refuge to run to.
“Of course I do!” he answered her. “I’m not some silly little pot boy. They made me their king so that if we are defeated they can blame someone else for everything that has so far happened. It’s rather clever I think, for a bunch of buggers. I have set myself to this course with oar, rudder, and sail and will not waver from it until my port is reached. And I will win.”
Kabi was still quivering a little. Maybe she was a little excited now, but Kulith thought it was more likely that she was terrified. The burden seemed to be too much for her, and she was stone bred and hadn’t risked her life as much as he had. Time would tell he guessed, as he went all in on this last great roll of the dice.
“You can wear the gold necklace now,” he told her. “You are the first female of this realm. You are my queen, and all the other sows will be watching you, and the buggers will uphold and respect your magnificence.” At least that is what he hoped would happen, from what he knew of the way the stone men acted and did things. But that didn’t seem to have any positive effect on her, and so Kulith left her to go over to the base of the scaffold, to start the tally of the dead penny with some other trolls.
They had taken another day to get ready to talk to Vous Vox. The nine chieftains he took had chosen themselves by being the most convinced that it must be done. He realized also that they would be seen there as both supporting him, but also as willing to listen to what Vous Vox had to say. He supposed that the worst thing that could happen was for them to all turn on him under some charm, or of their own accord. That would be a nasty bite to swallow, and it would cause the dissolution of the alliance. As he asked around, the sentiment seemed to be that the sack must occur, one way or another, and this made him think that he was not the one that needed to be concerned.
He had everyone outfitted with an oversized shield that had a good, thick covering of hide on top of it. In the other hand they also each carried a long iron rod like the ones placed atop towers and other structures to carry away the strikes of lightning. To the rods had been affixed several cane tubes filled up with broken glass, as everyone knew it attracted lightning and was sometimes found in the ground where a bolt had struck.
They had about half the buggers in the forward section of the camp form up in a great rank, and move down the valley past the burn pits and other debris from the previous battles. They stopped twice the distance of bowshot from the walls and the towers of the Stone Pile and showed themselves, blowing their horns, waving their banners, and beating on their drums. The bugger horde rested there, and ate and drank the food they had brought along; the whole outing considered a spectacle of bravery and might not to be missed.
Kulith and the nine others briefly discussed what they would do and who would talk, and in what order. They discussed how Vous Vox might reply to them and to Kulith’s demand, and what they would do if the lich responded back in certain ways. With it all settled until it actually took place, Kulith had the goblins down the line blow the horns in one mighty blast and get the attention of the Stone Pile, if they had already not gotten it by marching ten thousand monsters up the hill and making a great racket.
The horns blew out, trailed off in places, then kept going, and were answered then by other horns and drums down in the great camp below, played by those who had stayed there. It was more than a call, it was a realization that they were all not afraid, that they were in charge of the castle before them, and of all the Stones. It was realizing that the power that had threatened to kill them since they were born had now no power at all. Kulith let it go on for quite awhile, with whole sections of the ranks shouting and raising up their arms and shields at once, to be louder than the group that had just gone before, or the sections standing beside them.
The ten looked back down, then around at the others, and some began to laugh. The confidence came back into their eyes and the weight of worry shifted from what Kulith had told them to their hopes of what they might get in riches if the Stone Pile was broken open to spill out its contents at their feet.
Kulith waved the mass of warriors down and when they had quieted a bit the ten turned and went forward up the road toward the main gate of the Stone Pile. The height of it confronted him now, as he looked up along the walls and across the battlements to the pointed tops of the towers. He could make out the inner ward behind, surrounded by its high galleries of chamber blocks. It was indeed another complete fortress within the wall of the first.
He compared it to Krolo, and another large castle he had glimpsed down in Alonze. Each was made impenetrable by its wall, but with its own set of ways to keep massed attackers from getting through or over to seize what was inside. The Stone Pile was by far larger, but was also less well maintained and more haphazard in its construction than Krolo, or what must have been Lowes. Ledges and stone block faces protruded in places along the walls, and the vampire had used these as steps to jump up back inside during the last battle they had fought.
Some of the outer wall joinings from face to face of stone were uneven, and mortar had been used in places to seal the gaps, and chisels had cut off the ends of some stones to try and make it all appear smooth. The towers looked newer and in better repair, but all had a lot of rough adornment and ornamental work done that riddled them with potential weaknesses or blind spots. Some of them even had the ends of the beams used in their inside floorings showing outward in places. He put together what Kabi had told him with what he saw, and made some rough assessments of how it would be easiest to get inside.
He signaled to the first troll in the group and they began to stick their iron rods into the ground, spacing them out evenly about every thirty feet or so, until they reached a place on the road about sixty feet off from the Stone Pile’s front gate, what he figured was equal in distance to the height. There was no drawbridge spanning a moat, or even a discernible ditch dug before the walls. Kulith appraised the gatehouse and confirmed what Kabi told him. There were two gates at either end of it, meaning a small passage existed inside where anyone manning a ram would be killed before the second gate was knocked down. Though he could see helmets and weapons through the embrasure slits, and atop the wall, no one had fired at them yet. They stood there, waiting for something to happen.
“Perhaps our arrival has caught him on the plank in his toilet?” the goblin chief Narus the Nail said with great bravado, then added, “Perhaps at this very moment he is trying to shit out a skull.”
“Perhaps he wi
ll shit out his own skull when I hit him on the head with my hammer,” Kroson commented.
“Too much talk can ruin a fight,” Adgahd said to them all, as he shoved his iron lance down into the ground and shook it a bit to make sure it was standing firm. “Both in a negotiation, and from boasting.”
“I’ll soon likely be roasted like a chicken by this old sorcerer,” Kroson said. “I’ll have my say now, any way I see fit.”
“You all came here to fight,” Kulith reminded them. “Then you all decided you wanted to hear what he had to say. If that is not the case, then let’s go back now and figure out how to bring this wall down.”
“We’ll hear out the thring wizard, if for nothing else, so that we may boast later that we did so,” one of the other troll chiefs replied, and he looked around at the others and got nods and rough grunts of assent. They turned now and looked up at the gate. Kulith drew out the Tuvier Blade, then the champion’s sword, and with both displayed, he shouted up at the merlons.
“I am Kulith, Overlord of all the Buggers, the Priwak Warrens and the Stones. I have come to make my claim to the Stone Pile, by right of my defeat of Sarik the Mad, the Vagrim, and the champion of the Stone Pile sent to slay me at Doom Wall.”
There was no immediate answer, but the heads and shapes behind the merlons above shifted and moved about, as news was carried away down the wall and others came to see. Finally, when they had almost decided that it had been a wasted effort, and Kulith himself felt cheated since they had forced the admission from him and he had gained nothing, a tall robed figure appeared above and castle wall and looked down, the head peering out over the merlons, a hood concealing most of his visage.
“I am Vous Vox,” he said, in a voice that both boomed out and rang hollow, like the doors of a dungeon cell being clanged shut. The face was long and had a trimmed white beard and red vampire eyes darkened by an intake of fresh blood. “But the mistress of this keep is not here, but is coming here soon. I rely on my patron, the White Child, the Marsh Queen. You claim all her titles, but her name is Sterina, and I will not raise my gate but by the beckon of her sweet voice and black locks.”
Kulith had dealt before with a few lords in their castles in the West Lands, and so he was not put off by the answer. “This is not Marsh Gate or the Knife Back Palace. This is the Stone Pile on the Stones, and Sarik was its thring lord. I wish entrance into my own palace now, by right of conquest, by victory in battle as the new Overlord of the Stones. You cannot call Sterina your mistress because she is neither here or greater than I am. Open up your gates to us and we may let you keep your body and your tower.”
There was a long pause, and then Vous Vox replied in his loud, hollow voice. “I knew that someday something would come. One cannot abide for as long as I have without understanding the greater forces and laws of the world. Even if I opened my gate to you and let you take your throne, I cannot make a bargain with that thing that you carry. It possesses you, and never will it be at peace with me. Any thring would be stupid to believe someone with that blade in their hands could be at peace with them. Cast it away I say. Sink it down in the marsh sands, or throw it into the lake, but you will not do so because it is the source of your strength. You are no better than a jumped-up thring with a magic toy.”
Kulith had not considered that the creature’s reply would take such a form. It was oracular, direct and revealing, and it exposed him to the judgment of the others with him. He was however not daunted.
“By your own words then, I am an equal to the lords of the dead. You must open your gates to my horde or I will open them for you. If that comes to pass, your peril will be absolute! Make a bargain with us now and I will let you sail over to the marsh with everything that is yours.”
Vous Vox laughed. “My mistress is coming soon, and she will turn you all into her puppets.” He raised a slender white hand with a black rod in it and the air around the ten suddenly turned cool. They backed off as a bolt of lightning flashed down through the air and sizzled across the short gap to strike one of the iron poles and discharge with a flash and concussion down into the ground. They put up their shields as a few arrows were now shot down at them from the embrasures and the top of the wall, and they all retreated as quickly as they could down the road.
Vous Vox summoned another bolt of lightning and it flashed down and blew up an eruption of dirt, also throwing two of the chieftains into the air, to cartwheel over before striking back into the ground. It had been aimed in among them, and Kulith had been stung, numbed, and momentarily deafened by it. One of the trolls pulled a fallen goblin away, and was helped by another as the rain of arrows coming down off the wall increased. One struck Kulith’s leg and he wobbled, and then another glanced away off his heavy armor jacket.
They dragged the goblin chief back out of arrow range, leaving the body of the other there where it had fallen. A vampire hopped up on the merlons atop the gate, its black cloak rolling in the wind, but then it paused there as if it had decided that jumping down over the wall to fight was a bad idea. The buggers along the Stone Pile’s walls blew their horns back at the mass on the slope, and banged with their weapons on their shields.
The buggers standing below, watching the scene play out were enraged, roiling, and shouting their battle cries as if they would immediately rush up and attack the walls with what they had there for equipment. Kulith came back in among them and waved them down. They calmed a little, and he tried to talk to them, to make them see the sense in what he wanted them to now do.
“Vous Vox has denied my claim to the Stone Pile!” he shouted to them. “We will return to the camp and begin preparations for the siege.” He turned back and waved at the walls of the citadel with his magic sword, then moved away, through the mass of buggers, going back down the incline they had fought over more than once, and perhaps would again.
The goblins and trolls were still angry. One of the warriors of the Red Ears whose name Kulith did not remember, but he had seen before caught up to him. The goblin was covered with scales of brass and iron sewn down onto his leather leggings and shirt, with a jacket of black mail covering that.
“What are you going to do about this?!” he shouted. “The lich has just slain Baggar!” Kulith stopped and turned back to talk to him. Others were there too, coming back down the slope, and they stopped also to listen.
“Don’t waste your war band against that wall yet,” Kulith told him. He looked back at the Stone Pile. Yes, it had already happened. Baggar’s body had stood up by the wall and was now waiting there for them to attack the castle. Kulith pointed it out to the others.
“The sorcerer will raise up as a zombie every one of our dead soldiers who is killed attacking that wall, and we will have to fight them as well. This is his grand strategy: for us to build him an army as we destroy ours.” The goblin warrior understood what he meant and snarled, showing his fangs.
“Do not attack the Stone Pile yet,” Kulith told him, told the others who had stopped around him. “It will take a special trick to siege that fortress successfully. The Red Ears should organize under Baggar’s successor and take revenge against Ghost Harbor or one of the other surrounding warrens for your chief. We will systematically attack them all and strip them bare to support our army.” The goblin grunted, nodded, and moved off, looking about for the rest of his war band.
“What do we do next?” Kroson asked Kulith a little later, as he stared into the fire pit at the camp and drank a cup of watered down tump mixed with cane sugar. The root tea’s potency had either passed, or he had gotten use to the sickness it caused. Little Toad had looked ill as she had prepared it, so there seemed to be no need to give her another dose. The archer had never shown any signs of going white, probably based on his lowborn origins.
“I’ve sent off the band who lost their chief at the castle today to destroy and pillage the Ghost Harbor and whatever else they take a mind to,” Kulith said. “That should confuse Sterina, who I think must be about ready to att
ack us. If she lands to defend one of those sacks, it will buy us some time and let us fight her in pieces.”
“There was news about the Red Tower today, but no one has had time to spread it around,” Kroson told Kulith.
“What has happened?” he asked him back, as he picked up a skewer of pony meat wrapped up in a loaf of baked bread dough. Kabi was doing a more than acceptable job with their food. Kroson stared at the bread and the juicy meat wrapped in it and his words came out slow.
“The Whisper came over the wall of the castle and overpowered the garrison and the slaves we left there. They were killed and turned white, except for those that fled to the villages on the edge of the woods.”
“What are the thrings there doing now?” Kulith asked.
“They are just standing around the castle waiting, with some moving about in it and acting like they are alive.”
Kulith had heard of this, and the behavior was not that baffling to him. The thrings were the undead, and they haunted places the same way that ghosts and spirits did. And considering the way they had behaved while in the forest, the creature might have been seeking revenge, and then stayed in the Red Tower as it might inhabit any available lair. He had also guessed something about its nature.
“The Whisper may have spread its spirit out too thin,” he told Kroson, “into too many bodies so that it is weak now, and stupid. There may be no way to permanently destroy it except by burning down the whole wood and digging up the ashes. If it is stays there in garrison and does not stop us from cutting at the outer edges of the wood, then we will leave it alone for now.”
But that was not a satisfactory answer to the problem. For all they knew, the Whisper might continually spread outward from its new base and become the next Growler or Sarik. It also provided a port for Sterina to use, if she discovered its vulnerability and she was able to control or ally with the Whisper. It was a bad situation that they could not address without sending a small horde back down into the forest, and then struggling with it as they had before. It made their future seem grim: a difficult, hasty struggle to get inside the fortress before any one of a number of other problems arose, or those that existed now got so big that it became impossible.
A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight Page 35