A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  “They will still follow the one to where the countess is. Ah!” He thought about that too, as he and Sir Bryning looked at each, with some understanding of what that meant. The goblins might show them where Sunnil was, with just a little effort on their part.

  “I enjoyed your magic,” Wayland said to Leofind. “But now I have something I want to show you.”

  They prepared Wulman to ride, and he would take Ludt, Edou, Lady Sabine and Getline down out of the mountains with the rest of their remaining gear and ponies.

  “Tell them what has happened,” Wayland told him, “and what we are trying to do. Though it will not aid us, someone should know. Walk all night and ride with the girl double when the sky lightens up, then hide somewhere in the afternoon if you are too tired to continue. Keep the Lady of Sabine quiet, and go unhurried if you can, but if you are pursued, kill one of the ponies and go as fast as you can.” Wulman nodded, flexed his injured arm, and looked over at it with contempt.

  “I will give all your regards to my sister, and tell them of your deeds,’ he said to them. They prepared the horses and ponies, and split them apart as to their need. The fighting men that remained watched Wulman lead his horse and the others away away in the dark, those going giving many a worried glance back, as they went east down along one of the trails. When they were out of sight, the remaining men walked over across the rim of the ridge, to where it started to descend toward the lake shore, and made a cold camp there. When the sky began to lighten, they rode away back into the dawn, and made a fresh trail across the field of earth fire and geysers, and then stopped and dismounted on its other side.

  They walked their horses on for a few hundred feet, and then took them slowly up into the hills, across the barren rocks where they could. When they could see the high point of the ridge above, they found a flat along the side on the slope and hid their horses behind some trees there. They then returned out to an edge and looked down, and assured themselves of their ability to see the end of the valley floor.

  Below was the irregularity they had seen, and now it was clearly some sort of old ruin, and it had not been built on or used by the buggers as they had at Warukz, but still it showed enough signs that someone had used it. There were piles of rubble stacked in places, and some of the walls had been rebuilt, sloping and without mortar in the stype of the goblins. Perhaps Johnas Tygus would have been able to name it, Wayland thought, but he did not ask him to.

  There was a little stream going down over the rocks from the side of the ridge near them, and they watered there, and then put their mounts into some grass, and fed them oats. They ate hard cornbread and dried meat, and some cheese. Then Wayland went and got back into a position with Sir Bryning where he could overlook the valley below.

  “You are limping now,” Wayland observed to Sir Byrning. “Will you be able to fight when the battle comes full upon us? You could hold the horses and tell our tale, if we do not return.”

  “It would not be an epic then,” he replied back, “if the heroes did not undergo it without hardship and a few wounds among them. Face enough danger, struggle all the way, only to then survive by luck, and keep searching when all others have given up. We are nearly half way to that measure, by my reckoning, and that is what I want the people to hear.”

  “There was a hunch I have held since we met at that inn outside Rydol,” Wayland said. “You have held your own story close, like a moth to a flame. I have asked myself as a merchant, what profit is there for you in this? Then it came to me that you are out on a quest. Quests are used in the legion to settle disputes, gain advancement, or to atone for a crime, are the not?”

  “You have figured me out,” Sir Byrning said. “But that could be deduced from my pursuit of the Tuvier Blade alone. Perhaps I will tell you the whole story some day, if we survive this adventure. Sometimes, no one will listen to your point of view, until you go and do a thing like what we are doing here.” That was as much as Wayland had ever gotten from the knight, and it seemed he would never let out any more.

  “You didn’t try to take the sword though,” Wayland said. “I was half surprised.” The knight hesitated, but then he replied.

  “So was I, but that was a very tough looking troll. He was reckoned the king of people at one time, and it was brave of me to even consider it.”

  It was a long time before they saw their trick pay off. In the early afternoon a group of goblins came down the road from the east, passing over the mud vents and hot water on the trail, and then approached the ruin. It was plain that they were the remnants of Weech’s war band, who were known collectively as the Water Dogs. They called out to the sentries in the ruin, and they came forward and exposed themselves from where they had been. A short discussion followed, and then the Water Dogs seemed unsure of what to do. They went back up the trail and were soon investigating the cave in more detail, trying to figure out what had happened.

  “That’s was our place,” Horwit remarked, as he sat near Wayland now.

  “I wish I could hear what they are saying right now,” Johnas Tygus commented, as they watched the shapes move about on the lower part of the ridge line. There was a note of haughty disgust that came through in his voice, as he reckoned the goblins.

  “Maybe it’s not Weech’s warriors,” Wayland considered. “Has enough time really passed for them to get back out here? It might just be the local king of the caves having a look around after what went on, like any lord would do after hearing a report of fighting.”

  They considered that each silently, and wondered if the ruin below them really held the countess, or if they had been too clever all along for their own good. The goblins took many of the things they had discarded in the cave and then they headed back up over the ridge line, into the woods. Wayland and the others lay low in the grass and rocks and watched them go.

  They waited as the shadows lengthened below in the canyon. Wayland knew he was losing valuable time, as the survivors of the raid had now run with the news over to Weech’s hall at Warukz, and though only a few had been seen so far, more might be gathered and now headed back.

  “Since they chose to approach the ruin, we should go down and try it,” Sir Bryning said to the others. “They seemed to be on good terms with them. Is that the way it is now between the thrings and goblins?” He was referring to the war that had been fought, by all reports between those two groups.

  “Hard to tell,” Wayland said. He knew that every one of them was their own creature, and that the war was over, and they were all lazy and haphazard in their alliances. Would anyone else but Weech’s warriors go to the length of approaching the ruin to find out what was going on there, knowing they might be attacked by a pack of ghouls?

  “Well there will be no trickery to this bard’s tale,” Wayland admitted. “There will be no easy valor even if this is the dungeon, because they now suspect that we are coming. It’s the front for us, to go see what is really there. I’ll knock with the pommel of my sword on their front door.”

  “We may doom the girl if we do not move now,” Sir Bryning admonished the others, though Wayland had learned earlier that chance of rescue was not a reason for buggers to kill their captives. But the work the thring was doing was sure to have victims, and it might think differently.

  “If we are wrong, we can then try to figure it out where she is,” Johnas Tygus said.

  “Yes. How much warning does a thring really need to fight you?” Leofind asked all of them, from where he sat. But it would be stupid to stay there any longer and wait for Weech to come back down the trail and make a real fight with them.

  “Get ready to attack,” Wayland said, getting up. They were mostly ready, and so they quickly went back to the mounts, forcing away anymore talk and thoughts of uncertainty. They led their horses as quietly as they could back down to the floor of the valley, and they drew up behind some trees near the ruins.

  “We’ll hang the leads of the horses and ponies on the branches of the trees here,” Wayla
nd said to the rest. “If we lose, the last men left can head here and make their escape.” He looked at Leofind. “Are you ready with that magic of yours?”

  “Yes, but if I make fire too many times, the stone in the censor will crack. Then I will have to get another crystal and coax the light back into it, which is a long process of many days. And as I have used it yesterday, the fire will be weaker today.”

  “Well, make sure you use it at the crucial moment, when we really need it,” he said, and turned to Sir Byrning. “I would prefer you lead the way for us into the opening, with your armor, shield, and sword. Johnas Tygus and I will follow you, then your squires, and finally my men.”

  They drew their swords and moved away from their horses, going through the small trees and brush ahead, following the trails or open areas they found there, at the edge of the slope. They were now opposite the side of the ruins where the goblins sentries had appeared, and where the Water Dogs had talked to them. There were already several dark holes apparent in the largest stonework face before them, of gray sandstone, all heavily weathered and chipped. An even larger entrance, perhaps the original gate now opened up into a small yard. It was all done in an antique design, and its original purpose now unknown.

  There was a cart to one side just outside the arch. As they went by it an awful stench arose from the dark stains across its bed. A few barrels and some broken boxes were set on the other side of the entrance, against an intact wall. Between two of the walls ahead was a pile of trash, made by goblins or trolls, consisting of bones and partially eaten food. They had been correct however to assume it was not a real warren. Though attempts had been made to take the stones and create new walls, it seemed done mainly to clear them away. It was just an old, sinister pile that the other buggers mostly avoided.

  Sir Byrning went first through the gate, wearing his helmet, and he advanced openly, as if challenging anything to take a notice of him and attack. Wayland would have went more quietly, and looked about to see what was there first. Leofind dropped back, and stood with his censer by one of the broken walls, waiting for something to show itself and make him a fine target.

  After the knight walked through the arch and across the court, he stopped and gazed back and forth at the mortared stone and plaster to both sides. The court went on with only sone fragments of walls at its end, before opening completely up to the front of the compound, where several broken down buildings stood around a larger central square. To one side of the court they were in had been a door, and the floor beyond it had given way, and now where a stair might have been a spiral of rubble descended with a path on it, into what looked like a natural cave below. A pair of trolls stood at the back of it, standing at guard it seemed, motionless.

  Wayland had seen the troll Kulith sit for hours on his keg of treasure in front of Weech’s hall, but not like these. Sir Bryning moved forward and down the ramp, exposing himself. He stood there and looked at the both of them, and they were either statues, or more likely they were dead.

  “Chalice! I have a message for Chalice!” Sir Bryning called out in Mancan down into the cave, trying to use the goblin accent that they had heard used.

  A pair of goblins they had not seen before moved forward now in the cave, appearing to step out of the wall to one side. They looked around warily and saw Sir Bryning. There was a sound of a sword blade on wood, and then the hum and pass of at least two arrows. Wayland found himself right then stuck on the path of rubble between the two floors, with the action going on now both above and below at the same time, with him not being able to see any of it.

  “Back!” he shouted down at Sir Bryning, and then he turned around to come up the slope of the stone fall. The archers there had just shot at several guards who had come to investigate Sir Bryning’s call, and he supposed they were now trading arrows back and forth. He saw that Johnas Tygus engaged with a large goblin, the two of them trading sword blows on each other’s shields. Wayland had come up on the creature’s side, and he thrust up through its chest, his sword cleanly splitting the old chainmail.

  There were more some goblins, crowding them in now. The creatures were armed with axes and iron hangers, and they fought them back and forth at the end of the court, as the archers moved forward, to follow their targets, past the cart and the boxes. They shot several of the goblins down, as they monsters moved around and tried to circle Wayland and Johnas Tygus. Then they fled, running off across the open area out in front of the ruins. There were four bodies sprawled out in the court as Sir Bryning came back up the ramp of rubble. He was moving quickly now, with the pair of trolls lumbering after him, both white like marble with black in the creases, and the old wounds upon their bodies.

  “Get out of the way!” Leofind shouted to them all, as he made ready with his censer, turning it and shaking the chain. They were more afraid of the fire from it than the goblins, and they all moved out of the narrowed way, as the two white trolls came up the ramp of rubble, each armed with a spear. There was a sound like a whistle again, and then a heavy sheet of flame shot out and engulfed the two thrings, making the walls glow orange. They trools were caught in the blast and they steamed, smoked, then finally withered and fell over, beneath the intensity of the blaze.

  Sir Bryning stepped back into the court from the wall where he had take refuge and cut the head off of one with his sword. The other thrust the spear at him, from where it lay on the ground, and he took the point on his shield, where and it rung like it had been hit by a hammer. Wayland jumped forward and cut with his own weapon, opening a long black wound in the monster’s side. It seemed to ignore it, and a hanger slashed up at him a moment later from the ramp below, as one of the goblins moving there attacked him.

  There was shouting, and the clatter of arms from the space below, and he could see the helmeted heads of more goblins coming forward, up the ramp. Wayland moved back, as the goblins filled up the space, as Sir Bryning swung around his sword and cut the head off the other troll thring.

  “Get ready Leofind!” Wayland called, and he pulled Sir Bryning back with him, away from the opening to the ramp. They retreated back across the court, as the goblins boiled up out of the hole. They came abreast of Leofind as placed his censor out, then he spoke and there was a great squeal and flash of fire as a sheet of flame like before shot forward across and struck the goblins. They shouted and dispersed, burning or not, and were mostly shot by arrows or cut down as they tried escape, or come forward and swing their weapons.

  Wayland and Sir Byrning moved forward again as soon as the flame passed, to where Johnas Tygus was dispatching a wounded goblin, and looking down past the white bodies of the trolls at the entrance to the passage in the ground. He went down into it, and was immediately followed by Sir Byrning and a squire. Wayland saw that that their archers were still in command of the area, with Horwit, Samur and the other squire standing ready, while he could see some goblins running away, abandoning their stand and the ruins. When he turned back again, all the swordsmen had gone below where he could not see them, and he heard the sounds of fighting come back up out of the hole. He went down, with Leofind right behind him, careful of the still hot censor.

  A few goblins below were still fighting, with Johnas and one cutting at each other just aside the ramp. A goblin tried to dart up out of the hole past them, and Wayland spitted it with a thrust the creature ran right into. He pushed it off his sword and went father down, and joined the others there on the floor, as they fought across the cavern. They formed a line with their shields and hacked down or thrust out into any goblins that came at them. It was a focused fight now, of the pairing of shields and swords to block and then strike, to punch and thrust. They chopped and struck the goblins down, one after another, and were in turn hit by spears and even had an axe thrown across low at them, from somewhere in the cave, as goblins were known to do during a charge. Leofiend turned his censer on the goblins there when they massed and fired a tongue of flame into them. There were screams and whimpers, a
nd yet the remainder fought on savagely with Sir Byrning, Wayland, Johnas Tygus and the squire.

  The squires took a cut and dropped back, and then the two goblins that were finally left turned and ran off into one of the cave mouths ahead. With a curse, Wayland pursued them with Sir Byrning, down a wide but poorly lit cleft with a pebbly bottom. It yawned out at the end into a rectangular room with walls of large, cut stone blocks, and it looked as if the chamber had been opened out to the surface through the cave and ramp they had fought down. The ceiling was collapsed to the left, showing some swept off rubble blocks in a corner that had been impossible to do anything with. An arched ceiling went back to the right, and appeared to then make a slow turn off to the left, where there was some light. A couple of goblins crouched back and watched, near a tall, narrow door to one side. They did not appear to be armed and made no move to attack. As the party went forward some goblins shut the door, while others were heard to slide hastily back down the corridor, and disappear through the other openings off of it.

  The group moved down the other passage, and came into a large room with several doorways, like a crossing hall. Some small storage rooms were built into the walls, and they could see their contents, put onto shelves or packed in old trunks. There were two openings down into the floor, one right on the corner of the room, and one down a passage off to the left. Both had rounded rim of packed clay, and gave off a strong, stinking smell of death. A white corpse was climbing up the side of the one as they looked upon it, as if it had come to see what the commotion was above. Sir Byrning walked over and cut off its head as it tried to pull itself all the way up.

  A decayed but still brilliant curtain shut off one large doorway across the room. They were looking for places that a large wooden cage could be moved through, and because of its size Johnas Tygus tore it down, and they went past it into another vault, this one a little larger than the other rooms, and in good shape. An old bed sat against the right wall, with two tables, some chairs and some chests. Three large timbered cages stood in a line near the left wall, with another clay pit opening in the room’s far corner.