A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  On one of the tables were some bottles, some small knives and a book, but the chief thing there among them that got Wayland’s attention immediately was an old cup of ruddy gold with red and green stones in a line near the rim. Sir Byrning stuck out his sword and tapped it on one side, causing it clink and wobble there. There was a dark, foul looking liquid inside of it, and it splashed out upon the table. The whole place stank of death and Sir Byrning made an un-knightly oath.

  With a hiss, something large and white jumped out onto the knight, entangling him in its spindly, white arms. He circled about, as a matted head with black hair tried to bite down through the armor near his neck. A white serpent, like a whip lashed out from the creature and knocked Johnas Tygus down. Wayland got a good look at the spindly back of the monster as Sir Byrning turned, and tried to go forward and wrench it off. Wayland caught it with his sword blade, cutting it, and also scraping it along Sir Byrnings’ armor. He turned and sliced one white shoulder of the monster, going down to the black bone.

  The whipping snake flicked around through the air and lashed back at him, slapping across his shield. He cut it through, as it slid along the edge of his blade. The creature biting at Sir Byrning shrieked, and jumped off of his back. The knight caught it though, before it could get free, and he twisted it around and threw it into the front of one of the cages standing across the room. Now three screams rose up all at once.

  The white corpse got its footing, turned back and sent the whipping snake to lash across, where it struck off their line of shields. Johnas Tygus pushed it away, and then he leapt forward to run the thring’s body through. The face with its fangs, hideous black eyes with pin points of red fire for pupils hissed and moved forward toward him, farther up his blade. It contorted its neck, stretching it out to bite at him with a rank, slavering mouth full of yellowed teeth.

  Sir Byrning lifted his sword and brought it down, cutting from the side through its now extended neck. The hiss was cut short as the head fell and rolled, but then something else inside the ragged body roiled and shuddered, and then it all seemed to collect itself, to grow strong again, even without a head any longer, and the spindly white arms tore at Johnas Tygus.

  Wayland stabbed it through the chest, and it let out another hissing wail, and then it slumped down onto the floor and quivered there. The squire kicked the head away, back against one of the walls. Wayland buried his sword farther down into the body, beneath the worn shift and cloak of old, rotten silk. They had just dispatched one of the greater thrings that Wayland had heard of.

  “Malice Chalice,” Sir Byrning said, naming the white corpse: the thring. They stepped back away from it and looked about the room. A whoosh of fire was heard, and they saw a flame through the remains of the curtain they had come through. There was sobbing now coming out from two of the cages. Shackled in them was a pair of young women in rags, while the third stood empty. Their arms had been pinioned forward in metal cuffs to the fronts of their cages, so that they stuck out through the bars. There were cuts along their wrists, and Wayland knew he had seen them before on the Lady of Sabine. Johnas Tygus tried to find keys on the thring’s body, and then Sir Byrning located them hanging from a hook on the wall. They began to unlock the cages and the fetters. Sir Byrning pointed back at Wayland and his squires with the tip of his sword.

  “Get that cup and the head. Put them into separate bags. Don’t touch either of them!” he cautioned.

  Wayland thought the last command unnecessary, plainly self evident. He went through the things arrayed around the room and found some bags. He spilled the black liquid out of the cup and slid it into one made of leather. The squire staked the head and gathering it into another.

  “Where does that snake of flesh come from?” Wayland wondered, looking down at the quivering white body lying on the dirty stones. “How is it attached?”

  “I don’t want to know,” the squire responded, holding his trophy uneasily, tightening down the drawstrings. He was right. It was not a time for idle curiosity. It was a dark place they were in now, and they needed to get out of it. He heard Johnas Tygus talking to one of the girls in the cages.

  “I’m here now,” he said. “It’s all better once I get you out of here. I’m taking you home.” When he had gotten them out, both the girls wept and fell into his embrace, and clung to him. Wayland caught a glimpse of their wrists and knew what had gone into the golden cup he now held in the bag.

  “Let’s get out of here now!” Sir Byrning said. He tore the curtain back away more with his sword and moved over its remains to take up a torch from the wall. He looked around, perhaps for more goblins, or for more thrings. Only Leofind and the other squire stood there: Gatan who had been injured in the fighting. There were several charred white bodies on the edge of the pits now, explaining what the mage had been doing.

  “No more fire!” Wayland told him.”It’s time for us all to get out of here.” Several white bodies were climbing from one of the holes now, and beside what Wayland had just ordered Leofind lit his censer again with a shriek, bathing them in fire. Sir Byrning moved by behind him with one of the girls, and then Johnas Tygus with the other. They went back out into the first cavern, where the ramp led up, and they arranged themselves better, with Wayland now leading. He rose up on the ramp and back out into the open air.

  Horwit, the other squire and Samur still stood there, unwilling to leave and clearly in command of the ruins with their bows. They others all ascended up behind Wayland, with the fire mage coming out last. The rest of the goblins were either staying back, or had cleared out to save their own skins. Perhaps some had gone to get help, but Wayland doubted that would come, and if it did, there was nothing he could do about it. He edged out of the broken archway, and led the others back across to their horses.

  They had two extra people with them now, and one of the squires was so injured that he had to be helped back up onto his horse. When they went to mount, Wayland found that two of the pack ponies were missing, but there was nothing to be done about that either. Though they had been lightly tethered, he felt sure that someone had come up and just helped themselves to some fresh meat.

  They all mounted, the countess riding double with Johnas Tygus, and the other girl with a squire. They rode back up along the trail, leaving the ruin and its horrors behind, the great, flat gray surface of the Dimm in the background, getting farther away and harder to see with every passing moment. They rode out directly east, following the bottom of the valley, passing the small farmsteads and the marsh islands, then the earth fire vents above them, on the side of the hill. There were trees ahead, across the flat ground, and they went into them at their break, upon the most well used trail. Wayland looked to the high ground to the south they had traveled over to get to the ruin. There were buggers there, but they were far away now, and there were always buggers around in these hills. He rode up along Johnas Tygus and looked over at him and the dirty girl, and though it pained him to do it he made his farewell.

  “Here we must separate for awhile,” Wayland said to him. “Move as quickly as you can and find the main road, then ride upon it down to the floor of the Vara. Don’t stop until you reach the place where we camped before the Darkling’s Gate. Rest there, and then press on toward the first outpost with walls on the road.”

  “What are you going?” Sir Bryning asked him, drawing up beside them.

  “I made a promise to that troll that I would give him a signal if the countess was rescued, so that he does not waste his time sitting there at Warukz,” Wayland explained.

  “What need do you have to honor a bargain made with that creature?” Johnas Tygus said to him, clearly annoyed and angry that he would now ride away and leave them to their fate. The girl was also looking over at him angrily, like he was being incredibly stupid. At least she was not gone mad from her ordeal, and appeared to have kept her wits. He could not explain it, but Wayland had the odd feeling that going to the troll was the right thing for him to do.


  “I cannot let my honor slip, though you are well reasoned in thinking as you do,” Wayland replied back to Johnas. “I must go.” He nodded to them, and then slowly rode away, back up the paths toward Warukz, moving off the more beaten trails as he came out onto the open ground on the hills, easing his horse to a canter between the scattered pines, brush and cedars of the forest they had crossed the day before.

  Wayland made excellent time, free of the packs, the ponies, and the others. His speed and return to the village would give him an advantage, as they would not be expecting it. He aimed to overpower the guard on the watch bell sitting on the hillside, and ring it as a signal to the troll, perhaps just by throwing rocks at it. However after Wayland had ridden a little more, he saw a black line of smoke rising up from the south west, near the edge of the lake.

  Kulith watched with passing, mild interest as the village chief sent out a strong party of goblins to kill the traders and bring back the loot and slaves he had exchanged with them. It had been more than a month since the end of the war on the Dimm, and the great trades that had occurred at Warukz had ended, and the commerce between the Golok March and the Stones had shifted farther to the south, to villages there along the shore. Kulith bought some cooked alligator meat and a measly jar of watery tump, mixed it with the wine and some edge berry juice, and then drank it slowly from a clay bowl as he thought about what he should do now.

  A large trading sloop was coming in to the dock, and he watched it rock back and forth and play the wind as he ate and drank his fill. When it got closer he saw that it was the ridiculous toy carrack that Vous Vox had built, now captained by buggers, looking to pick up a load of food and nails that had been assembled by trolls earlier on one of the lakeside wharfs.

  “They have come to me again,” Weech commented on it, as he came out of his hall and stopped there to stand next to Kulith. “They need me still, and they do not need you anymore, Golden Sword.” Kulith stood up off his keg and reached for his swords, like he was finally going to round on the monster and kill him. Weech’s group of warriors grabbed at their own weapons, or put them forward, and then they were facing each other again in a standoff.

  “Watch what you do. I still have the princess,” Weech warned him.

  “I care less about that with every passing day,” Kulith replied. “Return her to me now, while there is still time.”

  “I don’t care about what happens on North Stone, or about what Big Stone thinks,” the chief said back. “What I do care about is what she is worth to me. If you would go and get the stone men to pay out that ransom for her, then we will split it. You didn’t think you would ever manage that on your own, did you?”

  There were a lot of problems with what the chief had just said, with flaws and a lot of nonsense in it that was not worth speaking. Weech said these things to Kulith as if he could be moved to accept them. It was a stupid form of one-sided persuasion that only worked with the local goblins here. It just gave Kulith a headache, and now he wanted to kill him again.

  “Time is running out for us,” Kulith repeated.

  “Then we shall see which one of us prevails,” Weech told him, and then he walked off with his warriors, down toward the dock to meet the fancy sloop. They were gone for awhile and then they returned, going past Kulith without a word, as he now drank from a bucket of water.

  Only a few minutes later a large troll came up from the wharf, and he stood there looking down at Kulith in disdain. If was a regular horde troll, and Kulith had to wonder why Weech had not seen it and been worried about it: it was like missing a door in a wall. It was Aluury, one of Kulith’s original pot mates, not wearing his great jacket of armor anymore, but still armed with his sword-headed spear and a couple of smaller blades.

  “Ovodag has sent me,” he said to Kulith. “What are you still doing here?”

  Both Kulith and Weech’s time had just run out. But Kulith knew how to play it, in the particular way he had become great at, and that Weech could not do. He had in fact prepared something to say, but he said this instead:

  “That chief here has taken Little Toad from me,” he told the other troll. “But beside that, I was able to arrange for her return return anyway.”

  Aluury stood there, now interested and not angry. “How was that done?” he asked.

  “The stone men came to me, and I told them where she could be found. If you wait, only a few hours, the Water Dogs warriors will return here, badly beaten by them I think.”

  The troll crossed his arms. “What happened to them? What will happen then?”

  “We will kill all the rest of them,” Kulith said, “and loot this goblin’s silver and gold. Can you get a couple of others from the sloop to help us?”

  “How much plunder is in it?” Aluury asked, scratching at his chin.

  “Weech collecting a piece of all the trade that came through here at the end of the war,” Kulith said.

  “You’ll have to pay them something beforehand to make such an effort,” Aluury said, shaking his head to show that it would not be enough. “Do you have any money?”

  Though they had all received a share of the dead penny, much of it was now gone. Some had been used to pay debts and some of it had been used to build with. A lot of it had been drunk, gambled and whored away. It had been gathered in to be sat on by another set of lords. At least there were buggers sitting on it now. Kulith was the king of the buggers, and Overlord of the Stones, and the dead penny they now collected was supposed to be his to do with as he saw fit. But that was not the way it had turned out.

  “Yes,” he answered. He did have some of the money he had been given left. It would be worth it.

  “Narus the Nail has taken Toothstone, using your scheme,” Aluury said. “He is rumored to have gotten thirty thousand pounds of silver and some gold out of it. Ovodag and Kroson are furious.”

  “That is why I wanted to take it,” Kulith responded. “It is not my problem now, but theirs.”

  Aluury grunted, just to show that he had heard what Kulith had said. He looked back at the sloop, which had almost finished its loading, and Kulith considered it also. They would be heading back over to Big Stone as soon as the wind changed and blew off the shore. They both knew they would have to watch it set sail, while Aluury helped him, and then he would have to catch a ride back over later.

  “Don’t worry,” Kulith told Aluury. “The chief of the Water Dogs also owes me for a boat.”

  The trolls formed a circle, and each got a cask or a piece of wood to sit on, and they made a good fire. Kulith bought more tump and some good boar meat, as well as cooked potatoes and other vegetables. They used wild apricots, peaches and water to flavor and dilute the tump down until they had four big jugs of it that they could pass around. Kulith gave them each a handful of coins, a part of it gold, and they all settled in to get full and drunk.

  Weech came out once and looked them over once, but they were so drunk and loud by then that he just swore out in disdain and went back inside his hall. Behind them, unremarked upon, the sloop rang its bell, picked up its sails and glided off back across the Dimm, its gold painted railing and woodwork glowing red in the setting sun.

  They had put aside buckets of water as they lay down on the short grass upon their sleeping mats and skins. The fire burned down and they drowsed, only getting up to drink water, or some of the tump that was left. Long after midnight there were calls from the sentries, as Weech’s warriors returned to the village. With mild interest they roused and looked on, Kulith noting how less than a handful had come back. There was no procession of loot or captives, and so it looked as though they had been beaten. Weech rounded on the Water Dogs angrily, shouting for more warriors to muster as the trolls looked on.

  “What are looking at,” Weech shouted down at them once. “Go back to your beds!” Kulith got up and came forward immediately, and held out two gold coins to the goblin. Weech was unsure of what he was doing, and he went closer to find out, but did not take them.
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  “What is that for?” he asked.

  “For the door,” Kulith replied. “It is a very good door.” The other trolls turned around, and they went back to the fire. That was the signal.

  “Stupid, drunk troll!” Weech said, snarling, and turned back, dismissing him. Kulith let the coins fall on the ground, and the goblin warriors eyed them, but then followed Weech back up into his hall. They began to shout and argue there inside it about what they should do next, while more warriors came and gathered there.

  Kulith went over to the stone building next to the hall that was used as a croft, where most of Weech’s stores were kept. There was a locked door there with a bar on it, and some heavy bands of iron. With the Tuvier Blade Kulith he cut and pried the lock apart like it was made of lead. He pushed the bar through and picked up the whole door, wrenching it until it broke mostly free. Two strikes from the Tuvier Blade cut the last hinge, and the muscles in his shoulders did the rest.

  After he had taken the door, one of the trolls lit a torch from their fire and threw it into the building. Two more took torches and tossed them up onto the nearby roofs. Weech’s warriors shouted out in alarm when the burning started, and they began to boiled back out of the hall, to see what was going on and to fight. The weaker ones looked at the scene and ran then, to get out of the way. Kulith took the door and turned it around, and he slipped his left arm into the iron cross braces, and held it then before him like a great shield. It was a good door. When Weech came out, he knew what was going on immediately.

  “Kill the trolls!” he shouted out to the Water Dogs.

  “Put these pig faces back in their place,” Kulith said to the others, and held up the door to block the arrows they began to fire across at him. He charged at them with it then, as the metal points of arrows struck like someone hammering nails into the other side of it. But as Kulith had said, it was a good door. The other trolls followed him, and they began cutting the goblins apart.