A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  He put the man in a chair and stood next to him, waiting for the results. He went through his coins and got out several silver ones, and in a casual way, added two gold ones amid the scatter. The man looked up in shock, and then he bit his lip to stop whatever he was about to say.

  It was a great windfall, one that would take time to properly convert to whatever the farmer wanted. Now that they shared a secret, the farmer was less apt to report what had happened here, instead remaining silent and sitting on the money until the time was right. He probably realized that Kulith was bribing him, but because of his position said nothing. When the other, younger man Kulith had kicked opened the door and limped in with the axe, he looked at what was going on and let the tool slide down to the floor.

  The older man gestured for him to come and sit one a stool, and they watched the coins and the women, as they gathered up and put down in feed and seed bags what Kulith had asked for them to get. When they were done he asked them questions about the place, and found he was on the edge of the territory between Grevies and Palnus, and he knew from reputation that Palnus had a large castle there almost as formidable as the one at Krolo.

  He took a wooden crook sitting against one of the walls and used some leather straps to secure the bags along its length, and then he placed a couple more coins down on the table, adding another gold one. The humans were all focused on them now: a sudden windfall probably worth two years of work. He hefted the staff up and pushed back out the front door with his load. No one followed him outside. He picked up the dogs, one in each hand and walked away with them, down the road across the fields and into the woods.

  He secured the dogs like game and then made a great circuit back around through the woods to the south, and then out to the west, crossing several streams he came to before going back up to the north. He ate some of the crude bread the farmer’s wife had made with a large slice of their white cheese. Their apples they had picked were good, and he ate a few, throwing the cores into a stream. He moved back carefully to his camp and did not reach it until the morning of the next day. He lay down in his shelter when he got there, drank some water, and then he dressed and cooked the dogs on a low fire. He dozed for most of the following day. The next morning the trouble with the knight began.

  He had been watching the road for awhile, from the time it had just been a lighter line through the blackness of the trees ahead, until the sun had risen up and turned it tan and brown, the soil darker where it had retained part of the rain, and the leaves and needles left on the trees in the forest were a dark green. There had been some light traffic on it, mostly carters of wood, and some dairy people, moving their cows over to barns for milking, and a peddler, with a wagon load of tin and farm implements.

  He watched them with little interest, and they never once looked back out into the woods at where he was sitting, but only stonily ahead, fixed on a destination they could not even see yet. As he waited there he ate some of the dog left over from the day before, throwing away the bones as he finished. After a few hours, when the sun was now coming straight down through the trees, making the leaves steam, and creating little patches of light on the forest floor, he heard unusual noises in the woods to the south, and so he went back to his camp.

  He could smell many men and dogs by then, even though they were out of the wind, and it concerned him. He got the rest of his fighting gear and went closer, to go see what the commotion was all about. A few minutes later he saw several men with bows moving through the woods toward him, coming down one of the little forested rises of the Khaast, they all going abreast in a line, about sixty feet apart.

  Kulith moved back away from them through the trees as a couple of dogs barked out, off to one side. Instinctively he moved to put the men between himself and the animals, trying to make them lose his scent. After another minute they stopped, but then the dogs seemed to pick up one of his old trails, and he observed and listened as they came forward now through the trees, right toward his camp.

  He turned around the trunk of a large tree until he could just see one of the archers walking in profile. He was a serf, like the one he had taken the food from, armed with a hunting bow, and he had a little knife hanging down from his belt. It appeared that the farmer had let out the alarm after all, or someone else had, since he had killed several men and robbed almost every other farm he had come across in some small but hurtful way.

  Kulith drew his bow taunt and shot him in the leg with an arrow, the man shouting and dripping his own bow, as he looked down at the shaft now going through the meat next to the bone. He hobbled around and looked over at Kulith, and he shouted out to the others, making a mess of his words, in his panic. He shouted once more, and then slid down behind a tree to get out of the troll’s view.

  When he did so, Kulith moved off quickly through the trees, running back so that he would not be immediately located by the others. He drew another arrow, as three more men came through the trees with bows, and several dogs on leather leashes with a handler. He picked one as they helped the wounded man and talked with him, and he shot him with the arrow, it hissing through the trees to sink through his hip. Now there were two men on the ground, shouting, with the others turning to fire arrows back at him, as he took shelter behind another large tree.

  The man holding the dogs went to release them, calling for them to heel, and give him slack. Two or three other men came over from the right, flitting through the trees, and shot arrows that came so close that he had to abandon the big tree and dodge back between the smaller ones, hearing other arrows slap off or bury themselves into the nearby bark. He was forced out by their numbers, retreating back down another small hill and down into an open area where someone had long ago cut a passage through the trees, so that two wagon ruts ran in more or less a straight line, going from the fields and cottages to the south out to the road, he reckoned.

  He glanced back and saw that the man holding the dogs had not released them after all, and the others with bows had stopped there next to the fallen men, watching him now but not coming forward or shooting any more. Where would he go now, Kulith wondered? Then he heard the approaching gallop of a heavy horse, coming from off to his left. He turned to look that way and saw that a knight was coming at him on a black war horse, it wearing a shiny peytral of metal scales, and a headpiece of iron and bronze.

  The knight had on a coat of chainmail, reinforced across the front with a cuirass made of bands of steel. There was of course a helmet on his head, and some type of heraldry on silk. The steel lance tip grew large; it set at the end of a slightly bobbing wooden shaft.The man had positioned himself to take Kulith from the off-side, as they often did when two mounted knights faced each other in combat.

  Kulith dropped the bow, drew out the Tuvier Blade, and then he jumped across the front of the horse’s path as the point of the lance followed him around and sought to run him through. He had jumped too early, but he figured it was for the best. The knight attempted to move his lance around and follow him, but only ended in lifting it up over the horse’s head. Out of position to strike with it, he passed by Kulith and went by down the track, his wind making the low branches on the trees sway back and forth.

  Kulith saw what was happening. He had been driven out of the woods and was now being hunted for sport, which was an old and passing fancy of all the lords in the West Lands when they found a few buggers raiding across their jurisdiction. The knight began to wheel his horse around, as two men in livery with crossbows, and a third, perhaps a groom came out onto the road, from the other direction. Kulith’s anger turned to concern, as he summed up the new odds with all these men now against him.

  He ran now toward the knight, as the man brought his lance down and came forward to make another charge at him. The lance snaked out, the sharp, glittering steel head trying to find him as he moved it out to the side. Kulith used it as his target, and the Tuvier Blade flashed and caught it, striking its end off. The rest of the lance shaft then struck him,
almost sideways, and knocked him down. It took the air out of his lungs and he lay there for a moment, as the horse charged by, and the cut lance was dropped. The knight rode on over to his men, and the squire handed him up a great morning star, with a spiked ball on the end of a chain, it meant for swinging from atop a horse with great force, to crush a foe.

  As Kulith got up the knight rode back towards him, and danced his horse in at Kulith, to get into range and strike him. The horse reared up, and lashed out forward with its hooves, trying to slash and break his bones. He went back out of the way, and the horse came down where he had just been. Then the morning star swung around and descended down to brain him. The ball struck near the guard of the Tuvier Blade, making a shower of sparks between the weapons, and then they slid apart.

  The knight raised it back up to strike again, as he forced the side of his horse with his spurs into Kulith. When they came close Kulith reached up with his other hand, grabbed the knight, and pulled him down off his horse, and the force of the downward strike went over them, and only helped topple the man to the ground.

  He struck the grass with a clattering crash, and the black horse shied away, then reared up again, before bolting off. Kulith struck about on the man with his sword, beating him, as the Tuvier Blade turned itself naturally, trying to avoid doing him much harm. Kulith was just unlucky enough to have been attacked by a good, pious man.

  A crossbow bolt whistled over his head, and he jumped away, and then he ran off through the woods, leaving the knight laying there on the road. The second bolt hit a tree and as soon as he got a dozen feet away, the archers on the side of the hill started to shoot down and across at him. The shafts ripped through the leaves, seeking him out, striking through the branches, flying around and burying into the forest floor. One struck off a tree and cut him across the leg, through his leather. The worst thing had just happened: and now he was bleeding when they released the dogs.

  The dogs began to bark and chase after him, as they followed through the woods, and he knew it was better to deal with them sooner than later, as this was an old game played between the hunters and their prey that he could not win. He sheathed his sword and picked up a piece of solid wood from a nearby deadfall. The pack charged in at him, a bunch of large, brown and gray mutts with white, snapping teeth. He struck the first two in the air and knocked them back, whining and limping, and he kicked off a third. The two that were left unhurt decided to keep back, and the pack only followed him for a bit more, until they fell away because of their injuries.

  The archers began to fire at him again, and he darted into the heavier trees, growing across the backs of some rolling swales. He went down through them, and when he came out to a stream, he waded into it and walked up for about a hundred feet, before coming out on the shore over some rocks. Then he climbed up over the crest of a small ridge of stones, and went down the other side.

  Immediately as he got on a flat beyond the ridge, he turned and began to run in a wide circle back through the trees, in a path that would take him around the humans and finally put him back near his camp. He would get his things from it if he could, and move to the east, and then haunt the forest on the north side of the road.

  But he had only gone about three miles before he came to a large, old estate with a big brown stone house surrounded by several barns. He watched it, and considered it, and eventually a wagon came up to it with a group of men, with two horses being led behind. One of them was the big black stallion, and after watching more, he realized that the knight he had fought was in the back of the wagon, laying there injured, and that gave him a big, satisfied grin that spread across his face.

  As they neared the manor, women and servants came out, and they fussed over the knight, and helped him on inside. Then the men left in the yard made a fire, and someone brought around more dogs, to be used when the hunt resumed, Kulith thought. He went back and looked around for food, and found a corn crib, which was hardly satisfactory. There was also a milking shed with cheese in it, and a smoke house, and he raided them in turn to fill himself up, chewing oh ham as he returned to watch the men drink ale and eat beans around a fire out in the yard. He wondered for a while what he should do, and finally decided that he must handle the whole situation in the most brutal, bugger-like fashion possible.

  When the dogs had been put into a kennel, and the men had mostly bedded down in the barns, and those left seemed slow and retired at the fire, Kulith went out and walked around the manor and its buildings three times, making a lot of trails. Then he slunk back in and started his own small fire, with a half-dozen torches stuck down into it. He took the brands around, not being very careful, and set fire to the thatched roofs of the five barns. Then he went back to the smoke house and closed the door, as the stone men and their guards shouted out in alarm, and tried to save the buildings from burning down.

  He chewed on another piece of pork, and waited, to see if someone would come in the confusion and open up the smoke house door. There were screams and shouts, and wails of sadness, and the men working to move water around in buckets, and to save things, and he just ignored it all unless the sound came from close by.

  He dozed, even though the smoke became heavy at times, and fire could be heard all about him. He was in the most fireproof building in the manor yard, he figured, and so he tried not to worry. He had a dream, reliving behind his shut eyes the second gate attack on the Stone Pile, watching the apron blow up again and again as he stood there next to Little Toad and the lame archer. He woke up at the end of another explosion, and he heard that the sounds outside had changed, and become more muffled. The wind had picked up through the woods, as it always did in the morning, and this blew out most of the white haze hanging around the manor.

  He opened the door of the smoke house and looked out. Three of the barns were completely destroyed, while the others had taken some damage. He went into one of them and got up into the loft, and there made holes in the thatch in order to watch the yard. After some time, about twenty men gathered on the road with their bows and other weapons, and they followed the dogs off, to go and look for him. They now found the trails of crisscrossing scents he had made, and they went around for awhile, before finding his initial trail to the manor. He had turned his feet on it, to make it look like he had also used it to leave by, and so they followed it, fooled by one of the oldest tricks in the West Lands. The dogs barked, taking to the scent, and they moved off, back around following the great circle out toward the road.

  A groom came and saddled the big black war horse a little later, then led it out to wait in front of the manor house. Then the other horse was brought up also, and the two men with crossbows came with a wagon, it now holding two lances. Kulith waited and watched, and eventually the knight slowly made his way out of the stone house and was helped up onto his horse. He was in a bad way, but wanted to still be in on the kill. Instead of the morning star, he appeared to now be equipped with a respectable long sword.

  Kulith had seen enough, and so he dropped down from the loft before they could get out of the yard to follow after the others. He picked up a barrel top as he walked out of the barn and held it before him like a target, as he advanced across to the manor. The lady screamed as she saw and realized who he was, and one of the men with a crossbow fired a bolt at him, which he took with the barrel top. The other one didn’t fire, but instead hustled the lady back into the manor, and then barred the door.

  The man reloaded, as the knight drew his sword. Kulith threw the barrel top out at the man with the crossbow, but he didn’t see the result. The knight pushed the horse forward with his spurs and tried to trample over Kulith, as his sword rose up and moved around to find and strike down at him. It came around in a silver blur, and Kulith caught it with the Tuvier Blade, and they threw sparks from their edges and they scraped together and exchanged sharp, ringing blows.

  The horse crowded him with its metal scaled withers, and he was pushed back across the yard toward the front of
the manor. He ran back around its tail, to not get caught against the wall, the knight turning his helmet and sword around to follow him, waiting for the next strike. The horse kicked with its shoes at him, but they came too late, and merely flashed by through the air.

  The knight turned the horse partly, and they struck at each other four more times, with Kulith slapping the man once across his armor with the flat of his blade. Finally, perhaps out of boredom, or because the knight had just had a particularly evil thought, the Tuvier Blade let him fight through the man’s guard and Kulith pricked him with the tip of it in the shoulder of his sword arm.

  The knight reeled and dropped his sword, and thus disarmed, Kilith grabbed him again as he had done the day before, and he threw him down out of the saddle. The knight wheeled over through the air and struck the dirt and stones with his back, and Kulith slapped him once with the flat of the sword on the side of his helm, making it ring.

  He sheathed his sword and grabbed at the reins of the black horse, that was not trying to figure out what had happened. He had taken one or two before, when he needed to make some distance and good time, and he did so now, pulling himself up into its saddle. It would also disgrace the stone man more, perhaps so much that he would never speak of what had happened here to anyone else.

  It bucked three times, and then came under rein as he stuffed the stirrups with his boots, and then it took off down the road with Kulith on its back. The hooves broke up the mud, splashed through the puddles, and sparked off the rocks. He had a general sense of where the main road was from the blowing wind, and he kept to the trails and roads that went in that direction. It was only after a couple of minutes that he looked down at his left hand and saw that it was bleeding from where the crossbow bolt had gone half way through his palm.

  He came out onto a road he knew, and drove down it to where his camp was located, and went off there, up over the small hill that the men had come down in a line the day before to flush him out. He circled around, and saw that his shelter had been torn apart, and his food just beyond it, despoiled or taken. He watered the horse and himself, collected some things that could still be eaten, and loaded them all into a sack. Then he mounted again, the horse putting up a fight about it, and he turned it to the east, and rode off through the trees.