A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  He supposed he would have to quit the castle now and go and live on the floor in the little traveler’s station that existed at Krolo, or perhaps use one of the inns where he could get a cheap bed. He realized that his position of importance was over, the commission having been completed. The lord’s stick, which he had never felt right swinging, had now passed out of his hands. He had been correct to mistrust nobility, and what they did was mostly selfish, not for the common good, or done with much common sense. Johnas Tygus had made no mention yet of writing to the Yellow Duke to stop the harassment of the buggers, now that the countess had been returned.

  He had heard that Temmi had returned with his other two men, but he had not seen them yet. Wayland supposed that with Sascha safe at the Krag, he would have to wait a few days for his new orders to arrive, and then disband all the men. He wondered if it was worth keeping on Horwit and Sarmur through winter, which would cost him a small pile of silver coins, or send them back to Marmad.

  Would Sascha’s cousins keep looking for him now, as he moved around, or would he be safe by sticking close to the other Traveler Knights? Private quarrels were a thing done between the nobility, who could support such ventures. He had only been the knife, as they called it in Tolwind, in the situation. But the small men who struck a blow for someone else were often killed themselves, unless that lord helped them.

  A servant approached and placed an upholstered chair down on the flags before the fire, more centered, across from his bench. It looked like someone of importance in the castle also couldn’t sleep. He had half a mind then to go to bed, but the other half wanted to stay there and find out who would come, and it might be someone he needed to talk with anyway. So he heated another cup of wine on the stone, and waited there.

  The Countess Sunnil appeared a few minutes later, dressed in a sleeping gown, with a wrap of cotton across it stitched with designs in red and black. She glared over at him, and then settled down into the chair when he refused to leave. They had nothing to say to each other, so his hesitation had been a waste of time. He sipped off his cup of wine, now refusing to withdraw just because she had come and sat there.

  “Fix me a cup of wine also, varlet,” she told him. It looked like she would command him now as her servant, since he had stayed.

  He went forward to the fireplace and poured another cup, then placed it down on the rock to warm. She settled back further into the chair, her breath becoming slow, and he thought she might have fallen back asleep.

  “Why did you go back to help the troll?” she asked him, from out of the depth of the chair.

  He leaned forward and took the cup off the rock, checked its warmth, and then turned it and handed it over to her. He studied her for a moment. She did indeed still look like a child, but there was something else there also, emerging like bones beneath the skin. It was the adult woman who would someday come forth, and bear the same haunted green eyes. He sighed.

  “A hunch I had, and nothing more,” he said. “I might also have been able to lead any pursuers I encountered away on a wild goose chase through the forest. Now that would have been something. It seemed worth the effort of doing, and if you appraise it critically, it was a plan with merit. Did I care about the troll? I did not, but we owed our own quick success to him.”

  “You don’t know how many times he lied and threatened us,” she said to him. “You have no idea what I endured at his hands.”

  “I do not your grace,” Wayland admitted. “Perhaps that explains why I did what I did. But never will I do so again. If he were to approach you, which it appeared he intended; it would go immediately to a fight between us. But as you have no doubt also surmised, he has done what he intended: to see you back to your people, so that the Duke of Wallenz would stop bothering them. He has now returned back to the swamp from which he came.”

  “I’m not certain of that,” she said. “The monster was very strange.”

  “I suppose there is no regular path or story for any of them. If one has survived to be considered their king, then that must be a very strange tale.”

  “You have no idea,” she added.

  “I’m just a road knight,” he said, “and not a very ardent one at that.” She was silent after his words, sipping instead on the wine he had given her. The Traveler Knights competed with the nobles’ commercial interests at times, and the road cut through their territories, creating little swaths of authority that overrode their own. Their road caravans were each run like a ship out on the ocean, with their own captain and law. In the towns they became a garrison of the kings, second only to the sheriffs, where the local lord might draw men whose loyalty was always uncertain.

  “I realize that this would not have worked without you,” she said. “You should be rewarded.” That was very noble of her, he thought.

  “I fought a duel at Troli to save a friend. As my penance, I was told to go to the West Lands and make right what Sir Augustus did wrong.”

  “Well, you have done it,” she said. “But if you ever see that troll again, you must kill him for me.” Of course, she would insist about that.

  “As you command, your grace,” he replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  KULITH

  THE VALLEY OF KASSAL

  Kulith had waited until the road knight went away, and then he took stock of where he was and what he could accomplish. Little Toad was headed back into the world of the stone men, though he had been unable to collect her ransom. She had served her purpose, and the thring Weech had been protecting was probably destroyed. Weech was also dead, run through by Aluury’s sword bladed spear before Kulith had been able to do it himself.

  He came out of the rocks after the knight left and looked around, noting how all the people were far away from him, working about their farmyards, or gathered outside the barns, perhaps threshing and storing grain. The great raid and spoil of the summer had not penetrated this far south, and so things were as normal as they ever were in the West Lands.

  He avoided the keep and the village, staying underneath the trees as he passed over the road and along the boundary between two sets of fields, where a pair of wagon ruts stood out, that had flattened the grass and some loose grain stalks. He went to the east, by instinct and desire, his stride lengthening as he got farther away from the oblong top of the keep and the guards on its walk.

  He sensed he was getting away with it, and it was hardly surprising. The focus of the soldiers and stone men would naturally turn to the people who had just arrived. After a quarter mile, on the skirt of an orchard, he stopped and filled a bag up with apples and olives. He began chewing the latter, and spitting out the pits. They were bitter and savory, since they were raw and he could not cure them. He filled his skin with water from a ditch, and looked out ahead to the east, over the dry, sandy lands there, over a gentle decline spotted with outcroppings of gray rock and bunches of spindly sage. In the distance was a white flat, of salt he thought, bordered by darker rocks, with some trees over on the more distant, next set of hills.

  Kulith knew about the crossing to the Khaast Forest, from some of the buggers who had made it there and come back. It took three days of travel, mostly at night because of the heat and the patrols put out by the stone men of the West Lands. There was water, but it had to be found. There was almost no food along the way, and he would like them arrive ravenous in the trees, perhaps half out of his mind. He went back to the ditch and drank as much water as he could, then returned and started out down the slope, toward the flat slash of white.

  He had not done what Ovodag had told him to do at the gate of the Stone Pile. He had instead tried to raise the south shore of the Dimm to do his bidding, and they had not known him, resisted him, and then he had gotten drunk and fallen under the power of Weech. He sensed that the buggers were not ready to be something different than they were: the war on the Stones had been too sudden and quick, and now that it was over all the worst things that had gone on before would be pursued again withou
t restraint. He had decided that it was not a good time to be there, since they had excluded him, and he had felt a yearning to see Little Toad’s lands. Perhaps in a couple of years he would return to the Dimm, but he knew it was better right now to be away.

  By noon he had reached the white expanse of salt, and since it was too exposed, he waited in the shade of a stream bank and the brush for dusk. When the sky went orange, he fixed his direction, aiming for a point on the distant hills, and then started on across. He was soon walking through the night across the salt, without a moon above, and he could still feel the heat off the white crust that covered the ground. After a couple hours, long after the moon finally rose up he reached the other side of it and started up into the hills. When he came to the top of them, the land on the other side was dark, uneven, contorted in a series of coarse rocky hills and dales, and there was what looked like a walled village to the north because torches and lamps were now visible in lines along its walls.

  He was a Priwak troll, and he did not know these trails. Still, one hill or face of rock was very much like another. In the early morning he came across a herder’s fold, and he spooked the goats, and they ran off across the hill in front of him. At least one had a bell, and the herder came out of his fold and shouted toward him, out into the night, while he lit up his fire brighter and held a spear.

  Kulith went wide around him, as he realized it was starting to go toward dawn. He wondered if he should keep on going, and he decided that it was a good idea. The sun came up, passed overhead, and when he got thirsty he dug for water in the bottom of a streambed. There were springs, marked by changes in the vegetation where the water seeped out of the hills, and he chose a ledge near one for his camp. He dozed as the sun passed the rest of the way across the sky and went down. The day had been windy and cool, and now the night was cold, as he started his journey again near dusk.

  The ground rose a little and flattened, with sweeps of low hilltops, like frozen waves on an ocean. Trees and grass became more common, finally forming broken meadows. Then there were scattered fields, and houses, and at least on stone manor glimpsed at a distance. He came into heavier forest, with great trees and thickets, and he knew that he had finally passed over into the Khaast.

  He found roads and trails there, and scattered dwellings with fields between the trees or cut into the forest. He raided a corn crib and then later threw a stone and brained a chicken that had wandered too far out of its yard. He wished then that he had a pot, but he did not have one. He withdrew back into the forest until the trails became animal tracks, then went farther until he found another track, perhaps belonging to hunters, or to those considered outlaws. There was an old smell of bugger on it also, and so he followed it north for several miles, until he came to a ridge with a cave. It was unoccupied, and so he built a fire and cooked the chicken and the corn on spits.

  He began to eat the bird before it was fully cooked, but his hunger was so great by then that he did not care. When half the bird was gone, and three pieces of corn eaten, he sensed that someone was approaching the cave, carelessly. He picked up his kit but left the bag containing the rest of the olives and apples there next to the fire. Then he walked up the hill and waited behind some trees.

  About half hour later there was more noise out in the forest, which had now gone totally dark. There were several bird calls, and then a group of men warily approached the cave with their knives, axes, and bows in hand. He counted them but waited, then watched as three others eventually came in from the forest.

  There were seven of them there, looking through his bag and starting to eat his corn and chicken. This angered him, and so he walked back down and entered the mouth of the cave. They turned and stood up, and they confronted each other.

  The wood men knew that someone was camped here, but not who. When they saw only one man approach, they let him come forward, into the light of the fire. When they saw his face, his height, and his golden color they became concerned. He wore the Tuvier Blade, and he had a long knife on his belt. None of them would carry a sword, this being the West Lands. They had been stripped long ago of their ability to defend themselves by the stone men.

  They were bandits, and so they let him come back in to his own fire. After another moment, they had all sat back down or relaxed against the walls of the cave. It was unlikely that they would report to anyone his presence here, and he would certainly not tell anyone who mattered of theirs. However they might still rob him at their leisure, take his weapons, and sell his head somehow to one of the local lords.

  “I thought the raids into the West Lands were over,” one of them spoke up. He was a big man, perhaps their chief. Kulith considered his words, and that the humans as often as not gave away their intentions by what they said. He sat down, and this either put them at ease, or made them nervous because he showed them by doing it that he was unafraid of them. Kulith leaned forward and took the rest of the chicken from beside the fire and began to finish it off. After a few bites he replied.

  “All of the buggers are now under one king. He has just returned the Countess of Rydol to the West Lands, and wants to see now what happens. There are dozens of us that have just crossed over from the Priwak, and we have spread out through the Khaast to see what happens, then bring back the news.”

  “A bugger king, huh?” one said. “Hear that boys, the poor goblins and trolls have got themselves a king now!” There were a few chuckles, but his statement had made them more nervous. “It seems like we would have heard and seen all these other buggers going around through the woods.”

  “You will not find us,” Kulith said. “We know this place too well. We have in fact found you.” The man stood half way up, then sat back down. Most of them now showed some alarm, or at least were uneasy with his boast.

  “How many of you are out there?” the wood man asked Kulith.

  “Enough,” he stated, almost casually. “What we want to know is what the stone men are doing right now.” He fished out a couple of silver coins. “Do you know?” he asked. The man looked at the money, and considered it.

  “Well, you are right about that,” he replied. “They are parading the Countess of Rydol up from Kassal to Krolo, bowing, scraping and feeding them in gay feasts at the castles and holds. We weren’t invited though. Somebody must have forgotten.” Kulith placed the coins down on a stone near the fire. He stood back up, and so did they.

  “That is what I wanted to know,” he said. “We must go now and report it to the others. You can keep the food. We have plenty.”

  “Well, go and do that,” the bandit said, and they watched him back out of the entrance of the cave, then turn and go off into the night. Kulith had blazed one of the trees earlier to know which way to go from there, and he found it and went up that trail.

  He traveled for the rest of the night, stopping twice to watch the trail, and listen for pursuit. Near sunrise he found a fir tree and climbed up into it, then dozed and considered what he would do now. There was a road that went through the forest past Riweel and Sabine, and the Countess was sure to travel upon it back to Rydol, as she had tried to do when she was captured. Though there was no great pack of marauding buggers to do his work, there would not be much of a guard on her either: only the man he had met before with his men, and he did not seem to be much of a danger.

  He considered the sense of what he was doing, and felt immediately a conviction that it was the right thing to do. He could roam unmolested in her realm, and learn the secret of water mills, which he thought important, to replace some of the work of the thrings in the factoria. She still owed him for killing the Vagrim, and there were still parts of him that occasionally hurt from that fight, as though he had been burned and scarred by fire. There were other times, when the buggers would have killed her and worse, and he had stepped in and prevented it, and times when she was about to say the wrong thing, and he had stopped her.

  He wondered if she was popular in her realm, and thought that she was probab
ly not. If he had informed her of this, she would just glibly reply back that it was a ruler’s place to be hated for ruling, as no one wanted to be told what to do. He knew that the wood men cut, moved and stacked the stones that built the castles, and that some of the fortresses were only necessary because the lords acted stupidly, and made many enemies. The terror of the thrings had prevented much of this in the Dimm, but the buggers now had the time and leisure to contract this same disease.

  He considered briefly if he should just give up on her and go north, up into the Gure River valley, and see how things were done there. He had heard of the four major towns there, and of their enlightenment of rule by counsels of wise men, instead of warlords. They had mills and other machines, and had even tried to throw off the yoke of the repressive orthodox religion of the Three, which Kulith considered a waste of time and effort. But then he came back to the idea that Sunnil had gotten away without fulfilling her promise, and that the sword had once used her for its vessel of communication to him, and that he needed to consult with it again.

  A little later he started to get hungry. This did not bother him at first, but he did become more aware of his surroundings, fixating on noises as a possible sign of prey. He should have kept a few of the apples but it was now too late, and he had to soon go and discover what there was to consume. Sounds came to him from the south, through the forest, and he decided that whatever it was would have to do as food.

  He climbed down out of the tree, and almost as soon as he did he saw a group of deer break from out of the brush and hurry on across the trail. They moved far out around him, to continue on. If he had a stone handy, he would have thrown it. Behind them, not very far away was something else, moving up after them perhaps, or looking for him. He got behind a tree trunk and waited for them to come near, and soon one of them came across the forest floor, and approached his tree. He pivoted on his legs and turned out to face him. It was one of the bandits he had talked with in the cave, unmistakable because the man had carried a bow and been bald, and Kulith had studied him as they had talked.