A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  She blinked, but said nothing back. She stood there as Grotoy’s soldiers began to pass on inside Krolo’s gate, then on up a street. Wayland saw that her lips hung open a little now, like some child gazing in wonder upon a new holiday toy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  KULITH

  THE GREAT CAMP BEFORE THE STONE PILE

  Kulith had gone forward that morning with Little Toad and the archer to the camp’s outward defensive works because she had started asking him pointed questions about how he was going to assault and break his way into the Stone Pile. It appeared that his knowledge compared to hers was inferior, and despite her age, she had already taken part in the siege of two castles held by rebel lords, one on the south edge of the Khaast Forest, and the other near a river town called Zergona.

  Since Kabi had deserted him and he had not officially picked her replacement from the available sows in camp, he now relied on Little Toad as his status symbol. He had picked out a Golok housecoat for her to wear made of black silk, threaded and embroidered in several colors over its entire surface. It would be wasted on a goblin, and it was too small to fit a troll sow, but it made her look like she had just walked out of a palace.

  The housecoat was easy to recognize, and it helped the other notables identify him when he moved about through the camp. It had improved her spirits, and the archer also seemed in a better mood. They could probably also sense the same thing that Kulith knew. His time was running out, one way or another.

  They went out beyond the camp ditches and wooden palisade and looked back and forth at the Stone Pile’s towers and walls. They were far enough away that the dead thyrs now standing in the darkness of the wall did not come forward down the slope and try to attack them. As Kulith had feared, anyone who died attacking Vous Vox’s stronghold would be converted almost instantly into a thring, and turned back against them. In this way could the lich have the buggers destroy themselves and make him a new army.

  “That tower is strange,” Little Toad said to him. “Do you plan on attacking it, because of its thickness and height?”

  “Yes,” Kulith affirmed. “It’s a tower to look at the moon and the stars, which the monster holds in great regard. It’s weak because of its width and height, and there are no merlons or traps along the top.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think it’s the strongest point on that wall.”

  He was frustrated, but also intrigued. She could talk, of that he was certain, and it seemed a good idea to let her talk now.

  “How do you figure that it is the strongest point on the wall?”

  “It’s a rock,” she said. “It has to be almost solid because of its height.” Then she looked at him and began to explain what she meant. “When you dig under a portion of the wall and sleight it, where do you usually go?”

  “Under the foundation of course,” he said with sureness, but it was only something he had talked about with Sarik. “You brace it as you go along with wood. When you are ready, you fill the space full of oil and pigs, and then light it on fire. The wood is burned, the foundation shifts, and the wall falls down.”

  “But bigger walls need bigger foundations, don’t they?”

  He crossed his arms. “You are saying that the observation tower the wizard built must have a larger foundation under it than the rest of the towers and walls. That shouldn’t prove a problem. A bigger foundation shifting will mean a bigger fall and a bigger hole for us to pour through.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, “but what if it’s on bedrock: on a natural rock foundation. Whoever built the original castle there built it for a reason. Why not next to the town, farther down off that hill on the flat, near the lake?”

  “It could have been built there to watch the water,” he said, “to watch everything at once from one wall since it is the highest point around.” She nodded, agreeing with him on that possibility.

  “What did Kabi say, regarding the foundations under the Stone Pile?” she asked him. Those facts he had kept to himself, until now.

  “It’s a mixture of solid rock, and rubble set in place with mortar,” he said.

  “Well then, that tower is probably built on solid rock. And because of its size and height, it will be very thick and sturdy. How do you think your buggers will do digging under it?”

  “Shut up, Little Toad,” he immediately said. Then he made a long sigh and asked, “Where do you think I should run the tunnel in under the fortress?”

  “Where you have a hunch, or know there are foundations that can be undermined. Was Kabi accurate enough in her descriptions to tell you this?”

  “It is all very rough,” he admitted. “I was thinking then of passages and doors, not of what was buried in the ground.”

  The wind blew up, and it was cold. Toad pulled the jacket closed and shivered for a moment. Autumn was half gone and Kulith knew what would happen if it got cold early, or it rained constantly. Then the cutting of the woods would not be enough. The second thing that could make a horde desert was being miserable for too long in the field. A frost was not enough, but after a week of rain, or an inch of snow, the heads would start to turn for home.

  “Not too big then,” Kulith said, referring to the structures. “But not too small either, which might point to a ruse, or a wall thrown up to fill a gap they knew was already well defended and prepared.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but I would mark where you think the rock is, using the certainty that tower is built upon it, and then try to find where it is not.”

  It seemed difficult, Kulith thought. The whole place could have been cleared off and built up from the bedrock. He didn’t pose this problem out loud to Little Toad, and kept the thought to himself. Still, digging through or under a foundation would be easier than digging through solid rock. It was an excellent, easy tactic, bypassing the litch’s spells and the great defense of the high outer walls. If it did not work, then he would have to start thinking about what else he could try.

  Perhaps he should burn all the exposed wood as a diversion, including the front gate, which might eventually prove to be their sure way inside. He had half expected the thyrs to make the wall break from their fire during the night attack. Cramming several thousand buggers through the gatehouse after it was burned out seemed unstoppable. But that would also cause a lot of casualties, thus produce a lot of thrings. It was another Fugoe Castle all over again, with an added nasty twist.

  Little Toad coughed, and held up her hand to her mouth to stifle it. He frowned, as her getting sick now would be another problem he didn’t need. He was beginning to experience a lot of leadership problems that had nothing to do with him, that were entirely avoidable. No one seemed to listen, and things always went the worst way they could go. He was tired of it, certainly feeling it more after Kabi had left him.

  “Let’s go back to camp,” he said. “I will show you my ideas after I have figured out the weak points.” She nodded, and they turned and walked back across the grass, the archer and the White Knife warriors following behind at a respectful distance.

  They had constructed the pit in three days. It had given them enough time to break down most of the boat and pier lumber that was usable at Ghost Harbor and strip the beams out of the nearby buildings that were not being used by the horde. Some of the south coast chiefs and warlords had caved in and put up the white smoke with messengers, and sent food to them to stave off more attacks. For now, none of the buggers in the camp were going hungry. Other usable wood had been transported across from the forest, where the Whisper had taken over the Red Tower and then gone to ground.

  Kulith had sent Ovodag away the day before with a small flotilla of boats, to one of the villages on the south shore of the Dimm with four thousand silver pennies to buy meat, beans and tump. His brother had balked at first, but then realized it increased his favorable reputation with the horde, and also gave him a chance to make contact with the buggers there, and the Bezet Goloks.

  That evening Kulith
roused everyone in camp with heralds, and then he took most of his remaining White Knife warriors with him to the pit, as well as the archer and Little Toad. The chiefs brought parts of their war bands and rubbed shoulders with each other on the rim of it, and on the midden of dirt that now circled it.

  There were a number of buggers that for one reason or another had been put up for execution. Kulith didn’t really care why, just that they had gotten the pit done and shored up in the allotted amount of time. The leaders and chiefs had already decided on the guilt of the condemned, and they began bringing them in and lowering them down to the bottom of the pit.

  When there were a dozen there, some of the other buggers brought up cages with various dangerous animals inside, and even a couple of goblins and trolls that had gone white. They threw these down into the pit, with much loud applauding and laughter, and with only a couple of accidents among the handlers. Then the condemned started to fight them.

  After all the creatures had all been killed, or immobilized in the case of the thrings, the survivors were drawn up on a platform of wood by a crude pulley and winch. They were then formally pardoned by one of the chiefs, and Kulith gave his approval also, with a wave of his hand from where he sat. He didn’t know how well their clemency would hold, about as long as the state of grace lasted after confession in a stone men’s church, he figured. There was an old saying that a fourth type of bugger existed, and always had. It was a bugger holding a grudge.

  The number of condemned in the next round of fighting was soon halved through attrition, as the monsters and beasts killed them, and one of the chiefs called out that he was satisfied. Another concurred, and so the five that were left alive were pulled out and pardoned, while the buggers lanced the thrings and caught or killed the creatures.

  Kulith had arranged for a bench to be set out for him on the hill of excavated ground, and he sat on it with Little Toad, surrounded by his warriors. The archer lay on the ground to the side and favored his crippled leg. There was a lot of betting going on, but he did not participate in it. He instead drank watered down tump brought in a big copper kettle he had taken out of one of the warrens on the Sword. The buggers around him also drank from it, and they ate fried fish and alligator meat on sticks. It was a windy but warm twilight, and the small tendrils of lake fog had already been pushed onto shore where they had burned away.

  “What do you think of this method of getting justice,” he asked Little Toad.

  “It suits you and your kind,” she replied. Kulith laughed and translated it across to one of the nearby goblin chiefs, and the chiefs and the thyr leader Long Ridge also laughed at it.

  Kulith eyed Long Ridge with side glances, and thought it might be worth trying to throw him into the pit at the height of the action below for what he had done several nights before, but he kept his temper. He was still angry over it, as well as some of the other chiefs, but there was nothing that could be done. The hundred or so dead thyr that stood before the north wall of the fortress waited for their call to attack or defend, and they would eventually have to be fought and burned.

  After four rounds of fighting had been completed, Kulith started to grow tired of the sport, and the original crowd was either settling in to get a good drunk, or moving on and letting others have their chance to watch the spectacle. The next group of condemned were lowered into the pit, and more monsters then brought up and dropped down over the side.

  Kulith became worried about Little Toad, who was coughing now every few minutes, and wiping away snot on the sleeves of the silk housecoat, or on a rag she carried in one of the pockets. Some of the Red Tongue warriors were stalking around through the crowd, and now he remembered going against them a time or two out in the woods.

  Then a figure fleeing across the floor of the pit stole his attention, and he followed it with his head as it scampered away from a large swamp gator that picked itself up to chase after it. The monster twisted its body and tail back and forth like a whip, as it attempted to strike him down.

  It was Rat Ears below in the pit, there was no mistaking the creature that Kulith knew and hated so well. The sport suddenly captivated him, and he called out, to encourage the gator to make its kill. It seemed he would get his revenge after all, though he would not do the deed himself.

  Little Toad would sometimes make the odd sounds between coughs, as when a troll who Kulith knew had slaughtered another more popular one killed a great swamp gator. He hacked through its neck with an axe, with only three chops, and it caused her to shout out excitedly. The troll pulled its other arm free of the creature’s teeth, and kicked the head away. It looked up for a moment out of the pit at her, probably also wondering why she had shouted.

  “That one shows us how he killed his pot mate,” Chief Kroson informed her, form where he sat.

  “Yes, practice has made him a fine butcher now,” Kulith agreed. He wondered what deed Rat Ears had done to earn its fate, and he looked back, hoping he had not missed the bugger’s end while following the other action. Something tugged at his mind. He hadn’t seen the creature since he had appeared with the Vagrim on the Shore to challenge him, and he had thought it would surely then go to ground with Vous Vox, or travel over to Sterina’s court and offer its services there.

  As Rat Ears evaded the giant crock by pinning one of its legs with a thring lance it had picked up, much to the amusement of the audience above, Kulith asked himself the question of why it was now here. It came to him at once, and he snarled and dropped his cup of tump.

  He stood up and followed the little rat-face’s antics. It had looked better, but there was no mistaking it. Kulith stepped forward, howled, and drew out both his blades. He pushed through the crowd and jumped down into the pit with the monsters and the condemned.

  He moved to his right and struck off the head of a thring, and then he went forward, away from the wooden side wall, and out across the circular pit. A swamp lion padded near, then stopped and menaced him with an uplifted paw and a roar. It was a fitting foe to fight against, but it was not what he was trying to do. He moved to his left, and it jumped away to the right and ran around the ring, looking for a way out, or for something easier to kill.

  A group of five thrings came at him, their mouths all bloody from chewing up one of the condemned they had caught. In a moment they were all trying to bite him with their teeth and rip him apart with their hands. He danced around, cutting as he backed away, not spending a lot of time on any of them, wrecking their legs, making them drop to the dirt one at a time.

  The Tuvier Blade went gold and lit one on fire as he cut through it, and this brought shouts and roars from those watching, from around the ring. He leapt past the thrings as they struggled about, and went on towards the side of the pit where the troll and some goblins were now fighting thrings to one side, and on the other the gator, who was now free of the lance and closing in to menace them.

  The reptile flexed its body and struck with its tail at the troll. The swamp gators were bigger and quicker than the river ones, and were giants compared to the crocks found along the marshy edges of the Kappernian Sea. The troll got out of the way just in time to avoid it, and tried to cut back with the rusty sword he had been given. It just scraped along the outside of the hide. Behind him, one of the thrings reached forward and took him into its hands, trying to bite down through the armor near his neck.

  Kulith hopped up on the back of the gator, it rearing its head up in the air to see what was going on, and it moved around now, to try and take a bite out of him. It found the Tuvier Blade waiting there instead, stabbing out and going through its skull with a crack and pop of bone. Kulith jumped back clear as it jerked and lashed wildly about, as blood welled up from the wound. It rolled back and forth twice, and then stopped and went still. The troll had disengaged from the thring and had cut off one of its arms. He recognized Kulith, and he cursed out in shock and wonder as he went by.

  He put the champion’s sword down through his belt to secure it, an
d then he reached out and grabbed Rat Ears by the scruff of his dirty, ragged leather jacket and armor shirt. He yanked him back from the fighting line, where Rat Ears had been menacing the marsh cat with another goblin. Kulith shook the spear out of its hands and brought it over to the chiefs, to stand right below where he had been sitting with them.

  The marsh cat bounded away and paced back and forth on the opposite side of the ring as the rest of the thrings were impaled and cut down. Kulith released the bugger, and it turned to see who had captured it. Rat Ear’s mouth dropped open below his snout, showing his teeth. Both his eyes got as big as a pair of chicken eggs.

  “A devil in the pipe!” Rat Ears shouted, realizing that his situation had impossibly just gotten worse. Kulith held up the Tuvier Blade, and they all quieted down to see what he would say. Little Toad looked especially interested, now that it was not her life that was in immediate peril.

  “I want to know, why was this bugger condemned to the pit?” Kulith called out.

  “Theft, and skulking,” a troll answered him back. Kulith knew there was more to it than that. They all did those things on occasion to get by. Those who had condemned him had obviously suspected him of more, or of what he really was.

  “He’s a skulker all right,” Kulith agreed, and then he added, “He’s the thring’s spy, sent into our camp to watch us! Why was this bugger not brought immediately to me when he was discovered, so that he could be questioned, so that he could be tortured for the information he might have?” Rat Ears looked for somewhere to run, but it was impossible.

  “Really, what could he know that would be worth our time?” Long Ridge said, and waved down at the goblin dismissively. “This was not right, for you to interrupt our sport.” Kulith looked over at the small, shaking goblin standing next to him.

  “Save yourself right now if you can, you rat-faced fiend!” he said to him. The creature quaked, the creature stammered a bit and the buggers cocked their heads a little toward him to hear what he might say. Kulith raised the Tuvier Blade up a little higher, preparing for a great down stroke that would surely cut him in half.