A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  The other great horde of enemy buggers that had fought to the north had fared better, taking the field, withstanding the ligter arrow fire, and had tried to join across the field with the ghouls, only to get driven by goblin ponies that rode in across Kulith’s battlefield, where they came into contact with the remains of the Red Marks, the White Knife, the Black Reeds, and the veteran reserve, who had not been a part of Long Ridge’s maneuver, and had stopped there to rest. After some fighting they observed that the ghoul command and thrings had all been destroyed or fled, and saw also the collapse of the south horde.

  Their noose had become too loose then, and even a promise by Sterina of giving out pieces of the dead penny to the victors could not keep the northern horde in the fight. There had been four large war bands making up its majority, and it broke apart in these pieces, as the chiefs who commanded the warriors individually directed them to retreat. The mass had finally gone back up the slope onto the hills and then down from there into the forest, and only the deep devils knew what would happen to them there.

  Kroson had been wounded, and Urubo was dead. If it could be believed, Narus the Nail had been hit by one of their own iron tipped thring lances- it was not known who had done it- and there were several versions of the same joke about it now being told. Kulith could not find Amegis or Ovodag either, but he thought they were probably down by the remains of the ram, burning and looting the great southern mass of bugger bodies that were there.

  A White Knife warrior had come already to him that morning and told him that Little Toad was safe, though it was felt the wounded veterans had planned something from the start, perhaps to seize her to assure that they would still get their shares of the dead penny. This had never happened, as thrings had also come out of the harbor water, rampaged into the camps, the town, and their stockpiles of supplies. The reserve they had positioned along the water fought them, and the wounded in town had marched out to also fight, as best as they could.

  Why would no one say that they had won, Kulith wondered? Perhaps they were waiting for him to go and say it. That is what he now needed to do, perhaps. He dropped the thring he carried with another bugger into a fire, sliding the lance free at the last moment to save it before it was also burned. He took it over to a growing pile of still good lances and added it.

  He turned from it and went to look for Kroson, then for the chief he had argued with at the Red Tower. He needed to get them all together to tell the buggers the good news, and get them ready for the next part of their task. He felt stronger, and the group around him grew. They headed in a knot toward the place where the horde had destroyed the right flank of Sterina’s army on the valley floor. It had a sweet smell: the smell of blood that was not yet corrupted spread like paint with a heavy brush over the grass. After the smoke and corruption they had experienced on their part of the battlefield, the difference was a noticeable relief.

  He saw Ovodag was there, and he turned back to look at Kulith as the group approached. His forehead had been cut open by a spear point or some other weapon, in a long diagonal that went back up and disappeared into his hair.

  “Amegis is dead,” he told Kulith. “He is asking for you.” Long Ridge snarled when he heard this said, but then he settled for just baring his teeth, and going with him to see what the troll had meant by it, though they all knew what had happened.

  They went a little way across the field and came to a large burning pit, with fire and smoke billowing up out of it, where the bodies of the slain were being tossed in and disposed of, falling upon the golden flame, red embers, and white and black coals below. A group of thring lances had been set as a land mark near its edge, with two of them thrust into the ground to cross and the third standing up in the middle, to create a rest, and there were piles of armor and weapons there from the dead, and two of the barrels that Kulith had paid Long Ridge to put out earlier on the field.

  Amegis, the great leader of the Priwak trolls, his pot mate and friend as any troll could ever have one, who they had all relied upon to silently agree with what they did had been killed. He was propped up by the three lances, his back resting against the shafts. His armored coat was opened by a great wound, and there was darkened blood running from it now, collecting in a pool that had formed under his legs, and began to dry.

  “Kulith,” he said, from his bloodless white lips, looking up at them with eyes that had gone fishy and black, with a point of red fire now at their center, which was common among the thrings.

  “Did you try and drink the root tea?” Kulith asked him.

  “Twice,” Amegis replied. “All it did was burn another hole through me. I thought that there would be no pain, but there was.”

  Kulith drew the Tuvier Blade and extended the tip toward him. “Try to hold it. It might still force the devil out of you.”

  Amegis lifted his arm and closed his hand on the sword’s metal, just behind the point. He made a weak shout, as his hand burst into flame and started to burn and turn black.

  “It’s no use,” Long Ridge said, as the burning hand dropped away.

  “Well, don’t wait any longer,” Amegis told them. “There is no help from this. I don’t fancy going back home and getting the urge to eat my own cubs.” He pointed with the white fingers of his other hand at Kulith, then moved them slowly away and steadied them to point at Ovodag instead.

  “Take the trolls forward, unless they should not want it greatly and unseat you,” he told Ovodag. “Don’t forget who I was, and who we are. The greatest feat of our race was done here on this field yesterday. If this was our last battle, then I do not mind dying in it.”

  “Good last words,” Long Ridge said, as he stood watching them. “Those are the words of a troll chief.”

  Kulith and Ovodag stepped back, and then Kulith turned the Tuvier Blade sideways and cut off the thring’s head with one swift, strong blow. It began to burn as it struck the ground and rolled across the grass. They picked the body and the head up and put them on the lances, and then they carried it all forward and threw it onto the pyre.

  Since they would soon need the open space in front of the Stone Pile for the siege, Ovodag ordered that they begin to move all the remaining unburned bodies by cart and stretcher to the north, where the great pit they had built for the executions lay bare. Driftwood, broken thring lances, and anything else not needed and likely to burn was thrown down inside it. They partially stripped and laid out the bodies, both thring and bugger, and then when it had become unmanageable to add more, they stepped back and lit it all at once on fire.

  A great column of smoke soon rose up from it, like a towering tree that split the sky down the middle. Kulith knew that Sterina could easily see it from the Marsh Shore, and the West Lands men also, probably wondering now what was going on over the Priwak to make it so. Most of the other bonfires were slowly extinguished, then buried over with dirt to make a series of mounds. The weapons, gear and usable debris were loaded into carts and wagons and taken over into the town, to be sorted through in the warehouses and barns. Items polluted by thring magic were rounded up and placed into several barrels, and these were transported out by boat and sunk immediately in the lake.

  The ram they had built had been partially burned, and Ovodag ordered the rest of it broken apart to be rebuilt in a more realistic, heavier style, incorporating iron piles that would direct Vous Vox’s lightning down around it and on into the ground. Kulith waited until he was done talking, then they walked around and proposed where they would start the six tunnels for the attempt to slight the walls.

  The buggers seemed listless and disoriented from the great battle, and so they set them immediately on these tasks. Kulith gathered a small horde, mostly from troops who had not fought desperately and for too long, and he moved with these during the afternoon up to the top of the hills, to see where the rest of Sterina’s army had gone, and to try and figure out what they were doing now.

  They climbed up across the grass, past the small warrens, a
nd they discovered pickets left there for just such a possibility. These retreated back into the woods without fighting, and they crept down part way themselves through the trees, to see what they could see. The remains of the enemy army did not respond, or show themselves, and it was a great mystery. They camped tightly upon the hilltops that night, suspecting an attack at any time. In the early morning light they saw that part of the army had moved back to the barges, and was now boarding them. Perhaps a score of barges and rowboats sailed away a little later, going back to the west, toward the Pale Shore.

  Long Ridge had come up the hill with two hundred thyrs by then, and they shared the sight of the disappearing enemy, while talking over the sapper work that would now commence.

  “I need you to send back to your warrens and bring us all the pigs you can get,” Kulith told the chieftain. “We will use their fat to burn the wood supports out of the shafts and bring them down.” Long Ridge thought about that, and then he added an idea.

  “There are mineral oils in places we know of also, on the lands we control. It can burn just as hot and as long as pig fat. It could be used for instance, to burn down their front gate.”

  Kulith nodded back, remembering how the thyrs had burned the first rows of the thring spearmen during the battle, and of how they had attacked the base of the observation tower with it before that. But now he cautioned Long Ridge about the ram and the gate.

  “That ram is just a distraction, to keep them busy, for them to watch and guess at. Even if we burn down the gate, on the other side of it is a deep pit they will have exposed now by taking out the flooring beams.”

  “We could fill that up with sand and rocks maybe,” Long Ridge said, not wanting to give up totally on his idea. “Then the fortress walls can serve us later, instead of being destroyed.” Kulith had thought of that too, but whatever Vous Vox had waiting for them as his final defense would be prepared and waiting there, at the gates. Those were losses that he didn’t think were necessary, and in fact might make the whole thing eventually fail. He still remembered the danger of instantly creating a thring army for Vous Vox from their own dead, even if Long Ridge did not. Besides, the way he had planned to do it would be more interesting.

  “If you want to dig a burrow so badly, I will give you one of the tunnels, just for the thyrs alone to work on,” he said. Long Ridge grunted, catching the slight, but otherwise liking the idea. Kulith turned back to him, and caught whatever he was going to say as a reply.

  “This is a contest,” he said, “to see who can get the wall down first. The group that does will receive and extra fifty shares of the dead penny, and will have the right until there are no more pot fires to boast around, that they were the ones who did it.”

  “When can we start?” Long Ridge almost shouted. His voice and eyes were full of enthusiasm now for this contest between the thyrs and all the rest of the buggers. Kulith held up his hand in a gesture of calming, of patience.

  “We will have to bring wood down from the forest again, but much more now. This will build the ram, and it will shore the tunnels to go under the walls of the Stone Pile. But all of this will be undone if we do not get those pigs. I will turn over portions of the dead penny that I have collected equal to fifty silver pennies, for every year old pig that I can get. We will eat the meat and carry the fat down under the foundations, perhaps with some of your oil.”

  “Would it not be easier to just drive them down into the tunnel while they are still alive?” the thyr asked him.

  “You are right,” Kulith agreed, “but that will raise an alarm, and I want to keep them guessing. We also need to eat, and I could do with a good piece of pork.”

  The White Knife veterans had waited until the sounds of battle had died down outside, and then they had gone down into the twisting shaft of the tower stair and cut their way out by dismembering the thrings and chopping apart the lances. There had not been any fire, and the buildings still stood ready to use, as places for the wounded and for the storing of the dead penny and the spoils from the battle. The supplies that had been on the shore were now being moved also, since they had been attacked.

  Sunnil didn’t see much more that night, but the next day she was called from the inn to an audience with Ovodag, who had been made the new leader of the trolls, as the old chieftain had been killed during the battle. She stood and explained the way the dead penny would be divided out to the other chiefs and warriors, and then Kulith had her talk about the walls of the Stone Pile, and the great observation tower along it, and of how they supposed they were supported differently underneath. After she was finished, they began to talk back and forth, and they brought out the tracings that Kabi had helped Kulith make earlier on the cow hide, and they selected the areas where they would start the tunnels to undermine the walls, and of the spots they though weakest that they would try and dig for. At the same time, a ram would be built, or a series of rams as needed, and these would try to break down the fortress’ main gate.

  She looked at them and saw that they were behaving and acting differently after the great battle they had fought. Perhaps a third of them had died in it, and they had in turn exterminated most of Sterina’s army. All of the dead were now going up in smoke, from a great pyre in the gladiatorial pit Kulith had earlier built. They had all disappeared from the land, but the memories of those who were left were now heavy with nostalgia, and shocked by what they had seen and persevered through. They could not number their dead, and had no adequate was to pass through their grief. They were numbly focused ahead now, as if the buggers had all passed through a great strainer and come out the other side of it as something new.

  After they were done, a few of them turned and threw a gold coin or two at her feet. She picked them up and put them in her pockets. It was ridiculous, but the customs of the buggers were something she just had to put up with. Having gold here had taught her one thing, and that was that it could be easily robbed away from her, with her getting beaten it in the process. She could use it to buy food perhaps, but as a bribe to get free it would not work. There was a much bigger prize than a few coins to now be had, and anyone who helped her escape would be immediately executed or considered a pariah.

  She went back to the inn and gave each of the White Knife warriors who had guarded them in the tower a gold coin, and then had them bring her chests of clothes that they had taken as booty, and she went though these and picked out something new to wear. She cleaned herself off, trying with little success to get rid of the smell of the thousands of burning bodies, and remove the ash that now fell out of the air and lay like a frost upon the ground. When she had just about finished dressing, the door to their room opened and a female troll with black hair came in. She threw her things down in one corner and then sat on a stool to wait. Edou looked back at Sunnil and they exchanged a worried look about what would happen next. Kabi had returned.

  Kulith went around with the chiefs of the bands and they marked exactly where the tunnel entrances would begin. Each group was anxious to claim their spot, to begin work, and they set up small camps on them, and then went and looked for tools. These were not hard to find, since there were a lot of things in the supplies that could be used, and the factoria in the town had produced iron products, as well as used tools in production.

  A force of pony cavalry was sent up to the top of the hills and just behind them went buggers to start cutting down the wood and carters to bring it to the sites. They had practiced this all before, when they had constructed the ram and the pit, and so the work went quickly.

  Kulith looked up at the walls of the Stone Pile, and he thought that he saw Vous Vox walking there, following his progress and watching intently what he was doing. Around the base of the fortress was a thin ring of thrings, generated from the thyr attack, and of those that had gone white and been compelled to go there during the battle. There were several powerful, sentient thrings inside the Stone Pile now, Kulith knew, that had in fact gotten in over the wall during the bat
tle, and perhaps caused all the funny rumors.

  He returned to the town afterwards and went over to see Little Toad. He wanted to know what she had thought, and he wanted to guarantee again her safety for himself. He came into the tavern common room, so like the ones found out in the West Lands, in the Golok March, and in southern Alonze, but filled with wounded monsters, some groaning and all resting after the great battle as they could. He saw Kabi almost immediately, helping with some of them, as the White Hoods had pressed everyone who hadn’t fought into some duty to try and make sure no more warriors died from lack of care.

  He didn’t say anything to her, and he was not surprised. Now that the threat of annihilation was past, she had slunk back to try and claim her reward. He would wait for her to come to him, and until then she could help the White Hoods care for the injured.

  He went on upstairs with a couple of White Knife warriors, and there they shed their heavy gear. He had discarded the burned up sword somewhere on the battlefield, not wanting to carry around such a scarred, magic damaged object, and he had found a better one dropped by someone during the great battle. Little Toad and the archer watched him warily, perhaps not knowing what his mood would be now, or just because he had come in still covered over in thring ichors, and bits of white flesh.