He picked a camping spot near the road again and secured the horse nearby, out in some withered grass with fresh green shoots starting to come up under the yellow. Then he sniffed the food and ate it sparingly, and wondered what he should do next. He had been gone for two days from the road, and earlier he had thought that he had smelled the stone man’s unusual odor, but it had been very faint. If it had come from the road, they would now be ahead of him moving further off to the east. He bandaged his wound and soon fell asleep, fitfully, from the exhausting two days that he had just been through.
In the morning he ate most of the rest of the food and then wondered again what he should do. He had three different choices now, he thought. He could return and take his chances out on the Dimm with his brother, or he could now follow Little Toad down to Rydol, and somehow foolishly press his claim to her, as she stood behind her walls and hundreds of her soldiers. Or he could stay in the Khaast and continue marauding. He chose the third option since it allowed him to sit between in the trees, rest, and watch the road, and he could always pursue either of the other two things later. About noon three men came walking west along the road, and by the look and smell of them Kulith knew who they were. He went back and got the horse, and he made it reluctantly carry him again.
He checked for other travelelrs before he rode out of the forest, and then he came onto the road behind them, where they would not turn to see who it was until he was right on them. They did so eventually, and were all astonished to see a troll wearing in dark hood riding on the Grand Prince’s road, as if he was the Black Dealer himself. He put up his bandaged left hand and signaled to them, trying to appear as if he meant them no harm, though surely he had killed their friends only a few days ago.
“We are here now,” he called out to the three highwaymen. “We are all around you, in the woods!” They considered it, glancing furtively, this way and that into the trees before their eyes came back to look at him.
“What do you want?” the tall one asked him.
“We are still concerned about the Countess Sunnil,” he said. “Has she passed this way, and gone back to her city?”
“She has,” he replied, “but she is no longer the countess of anything. Her uncle stold away her crown, or the Grand Prince did, and she has gone to Berize, the place that she received instead.”
“You have seen her?” Kulith asked them.
“Day before yesterday we saw her, in an inn up the road. We thought you would want to know, if we ran into you and your kind again in the woods. They are moving slowly east with a wagon, upon the left fork of the road past Palnus.” He held out his hand, expecting to now be paid something.
Kulith knew that men who held some coins in their hands always had a harder time shooting a bow. He had prepared for such a situation, and he brought out some money in a small bag, and he threw it to him. Then he touched his hood in thanks to the three, and he rode off to the north, back into the forest.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
WAYLAND
THE ROAD TO BERIZE
“Make sure we have both barrels filled to the top,” Wayland told Ludt, as the builder checked over the entirety of the ox wagon they had gotten and were now loading up for the trip to Berize. Edou and Temmi were placing things into it still, as Wayland’s two men Horwit and Samur, having returned from their dispatch to Jonas Tygus, got the rest of their horses ready. It was not a very strong showing, Wayland felt, but the four men, acting as archers would get things done until he could find some more. The lord of Kassal and others had just moved hundreds of men along the roads to the east for the first muster, and he assumed the bandits and highwaymen would fade back into the trees for a few days after such an event.
“Why can’t I have a horse?” Lady Sunnil asked him, as she looked in disdain at the wagon they were preparing for her to ride in, her sitting with Brigha on the second seat slotted across the back, softened for them by a single blanket placed and fastened across it.
“Because I am paying for all of this with a promise note in the name of the Grand Prince, may he be ever victorious,” Wayland said. “I will have to justify my expenses directly to one of his clerks when this is over. A countess perhaps warrants her own horse, or a carriage, but a lady sits on the wagon while her knight rides.”
“This is a bad way to start a journey,” Temmi observed, looking between the two of them.
“You are not a knight,” she declared loudly so that everyone in the court before the gate could hear, but then she just got up with Brigha and sat on the long second bench of the wagon. Edou got up atop the baggage in the back, and he sat there with his bow.
“The birds are singing, and it is not raining,” Wayland said after a pause, to the other men, pointedly ignoring her now. “I’ll take that as a favorable sign for our journey.”
“Bring your team out,” Wayland told Ludt a few moments later, “and we’ll go out the gate and chase the yeomen of Kassal all the way to Berize.” They mounted and rode out of the town gate, looking at where the tents were pitched outside, at where drays and animals lounged in a nearby pasture, these things all waiting until the numbers were sufficient and trained enough to send another command eastward toward Rydol, or to somewhere else.
Wayland signaled to them as they went by, by lifting his road hat up in the air, and a few of them shouted back and saluted him: the cow night who had rescued a princess. There were a few wagons out on the road, and they turned out to follow one of them to the east. There was no dust now because of a recent rain, the road dark and muddy in places, and they looked back as Krolo’s smooth rock wall and the fairy tale castle perched up on its hill until they approached and were swallowed up by the Khaast.
The journey was much as Wayland remembered it coming in, and in moving back and forth to Sabine. The hills rolled one after the next, with Temmi telling him now the names of the holds and villages that they passed. Rock fences guarded fields cut of their grass, or reaped of their crops during the harvest, and of some places burned and ruined by the buggers. Fires were lit in the cottages and houses, since it was colder, and wood smoke rolled up through the air. Wayland could smell pig fat, lye and sugar, and half a dozen other things sometimes on the wind.
At night they stopped again at Grevies, it turning into a very solemn affair because there were two captives of the witch present that had been saved, while the lord’s daughter, the one that had not been was conspicuously absent. During the early morning a rider arrived from Krolo, and it turned out to be Sir Bryning’s injured squire Gatan, who had recovered enough to journey with them now to Berize. He would go on from there to Sarsving Castle on the Gure, where he had been invited to train and do garrison. He had acquired a presentable suit of chainmail, a sword, and a tabard with the anise seed of the Pendwise Knights now depicted upon it.
They set out again, thus bolstered, and began to make good time through the forest, though it was at times constrained by the wagon traffic or soldiers moving ahead of them. It seemed like every croft or small hold was sending their tithe toward the army amassing at Rydol, or further along between Kavvar and the Troli Valley, where the Sund and Goloks had come through the various passes and been slowly checked by the armies of Gece. The roads were wet, crowded, and they made bad time.
They used the various inns and taverns that existed along the road, relying on what they had learned on the trip out to Krolo, but also now picking the better ones, because of their company. It was subdued and without the pageantry extended to them in the West Lands, and Wayland thought everyone was fine with that. In one of the inns, as the women settled into a room upstairs and the men made beds near the fire, three men with an unsteady look to them, like the ones Pawel had commanded, seemed too interested in their party. They went out when the curfew went on, but Wayland stayed awake for a long while afterwards, and woke up Gatan later, and set him to watch for the rest of the night.
They reached the turn off north to Berize on the third day of traveling. Wayl
and had bought some chickens from a farmer and feasted them the night before. He had proposed to teach Lady Sunnil how to pluck them, with each step becoming more and more ludicrous as Brigha and the others watched them and laughed. He knew that Palnus, the walled town before the crossroad was where he could now make amends to her. Wayland wanted to also go into it and try to gather men there, if he could, while the women were refreshed. Though the Lady Sunnil and Brigah looked remarkably well for having journeyed on the road for the most of a week, they could now do with a bath and a good meal.
It was hard to imagine Sunnil as having lived as she could in the Dimm for several months with nothing but the dress on her back, but she had. Then she had endured the humiliating demotion, a thing that would have crushed others, but it seemed to have not even left a dent on her. She was at that moment sharing some private joke with her maid when he rode back to her, and they both stopped abruptly and looked at him blankly, wondering what he would say.
“Lady Sunnil, do you know this town?” he asked her.
“It’s Palnus,” she replied to him.
“It’s not connected to the Honor of Berize?” he asked her, checking.
“No. There is a castle just past it called Braus Palonz, where the road forks and goes north to Berize, and south to Rydol.”
“We’ll go into it and hear the news, and I will look for some more men to take along with us,” he said. “You and your maid can get clean there, and sit down and have a meal at an inn.” She considered it, and then nodded back to him, and so they pulled in through the gate of Palnus a few minutes later. He found the traveler’s station and parked the wagon and horses before it in the street. Three of the men stood guard while Wayland went inside with the others. A single clerk looked up at them from a desk set in the corner near the door.
“Are you the deputy here?” Wayland asked him. The young man’s mouth dropped half open as he looked at the peaople that had just walked in with him.
“The captain of the road is out working on it between here and Rydol today,” he said. “I’m the knight on watch.” Wayland nodded and pulled out a copy of the orders Rhus had given him and presented it over to the clerk. The big purple seal on the bottom of it with the swans and suns got his attention, and his mouth hung open again before he folded it shut and handed it back. He looked over at the ladies now standing next to the hearth.
“Is that the old countess?” he asked Wayland.
“Yes,” he answered him back. “She is now the Lady of Berize. You should report our arrival in the official log. I was looking to pick up some men here with weapon experience for garrison duty at Berize. I want a couple archers, and at least two men good with swords who can ride.” The young Traveler Knight shook his head; his black wool cap staying fast like it was glued onto it, substituting for his hair.
“There’s been a levy to raise men through the entire area to go fight over by Rydol. The only men left here are spoken for in some way, or too old or lame to muster.”
“As I had thought,” Wayland said, but he glanced back for a moment, to show the man that he noticed who had not mustered with them. “These positions would be for garrison duty on her estate, and to help around Zinsy. I need men to keep watch and do some light work, then otherwise sit around a hearth all winter in a hall and drink beer.” The clerk smiled back, but he did not take him up on the offer.
“Sounds like a good life. You could check the common houses for pensioners and other men free of obligation.”
“I’ll do just that.” He saluted him in an old Mancan manner, his hand across his chest, and then walked back out of the station. The others followed him reluctantly, and they were all hit by the smoke whipped off the chimneys and down the street by the cold morning wind. He saw that there were shops and common houses all along the street, easy to reach because the town had been built flat on an old bench put down by the Gure. He pointed over at his men by the wagon and horses, and made a fist to tell them to stay put. He turned back and gestured with his hands to the Lady Sunnil, and her maid, to lead them on where they wished, and they went across the street to a good looking inn.
When they had gone inside Wayland bought the ladies what he had promised them, the rest doing with some hot stew, bread and mulled cider. They passed around the bucket while the women ate the richer fare. Then Wayland went around and began talking to likely men. He found out of course that he was in the wrong inn, but he had known that, and they told him now where he should go look.
He arranged for a change on the guard outside, and then proceeded out and down the street. He found the pensioners house, but discovered they were all gone to garrison duty in Rydol, or elsewhere in order to use the younger, hale men from that city in the army, up in the mountains north of the Vara. He returned to the wagon, and sat on the driver’s seat with Horwit, while Samur stood to the side.
“There’s no one here,” he told them, shrugging. ”We’re going to leave this town after the women are refreshed, perhaps by noon. I want to get to Zinsy as quickly now as we can.” He went back into the inn and sent hot drinks out to the wagon, and then troubled the inn keeper to get the latest news. The man stopped from cleaning plates in a bucket and came around to the tables. He bowed to Sunnil and Brigha, and then sat down with them there.
“There has been a battle up in the hills south of Rydol along the frontier, almost to the Vara.”
“How about the crossing on the Gure River, east of Rydol?” Wayland asked, as he knew that the Sund were close to it through the valley of Troli. “I’ve heard Isur cavalry are out burning the land ahead of Kalla’s advance.”
“Grotoy is there now with the Tourade of Bavies and a good part of Aukwen’s army, fighting the second Kalla named Agu Kalla. It’s the brother of Kustan Kalla, and I guess that whole family must be insane, no offense meant to the ladies here. The Tourade is out trying to check the Isur light horse, but fights like that are always a mess. There are little garrisons of them all along the road and the river.”
“Any indication of how it is going?” Wayland asked him.
“No one here knows,” he said. “It’s happening all the way on the other side of Rydol, or to the east in the mountains.” Wayland thanked him, and had a tub of hot water prepared in a room for the women to bathe in, and for the washing of their travel clothes. He was bored as he sat with Horwit, Samur and the bandaged Gatan, who now as a squire of Pendwise had caught the attention of one of the serving girls.
Wayland had been thinking of other strategies he might try to get men, perhaps even of writing back to the duchy for his cousins and their men to come. But he did not want them also pressed unwillingly into service as he had been, just because of their association. They women took his attention for a moment by returning, looking clean and refreshed though they had just changed back into the same road-worn clothes. Lady Sunnil and Brigha both now favored him with smiles. He stood up, and swayed a little on his feet. He had drank too much of the cider.
“We’re proceeding on to Berize now,” he told them. “I’ve thought of something I can do later to muster more men.” Maybe he would send for his cousins, as she would end up having to pay someone, and it might as well be them.
They mounted up and drove out the town’s north gate, finally catching sight of the castle of Braus Palonz, its gray battlements growing up from a man made hill covered over in thorns and ivy, the high-peaked roofs shingled with dark, gingerbread slate and dull lead sheeting, the walls of its hall holding a few tall windows of glass. The road forked there aside it, and they turned on the left branch to travel to the north and east, on toward Berize.
The land they passed through began to live up to what Wayland expected to see in eastern Gece. Pine shouldered hills and mountains rose up on the horizon like the homes of old gods, their peaks already frosted white with snow. He remembered passing by them in the summer, along their other side when they had come down in caravan from Kavvar to Troli, thus missing Rydol on the trip. He knew it was a
small range, and he imagined he could just see the end of it off in the distance, where the line of ridges descended back down to meet the low, green and gray hills.
He turned back and rode by the wagon. “Are those the Silver Slopes?” he asked Lady Sunnil.
“Yes they are. You must have seen them before, when traveling through Gece from Alonze?” There were several ranges with similar names, usually associated with the lighter color of the rock. People agreed that these were called the Silvers, and they were mostly uninhabited, as the fords and the roads were bad. There was one old castle up a valley, only an uninhabited shell of walls, which had belonged to Pendwise during their golden years of adventure.
“I’ve travelled down the other side of them where the Ressel flows, so I’ve seen that view,” he told her. “Now I can place them in with everything else I’ve seen. Rydol is south-east, Kavvar is to the north, and Grotoy is to the north-west. Am I right?”
“You are correct in a very rough way. I doubt it is as simple as that, and you have missed what is between all of them. Between them are Zinsy and Berize.”
“Are there any passes in those mountains?” he asked her.
“Just one and it’s not worth going over as compared to just going around.” Her voice was airy, full of light for once. “There’s a stone gate: a canyon at the top that the snow seals shut for half the year. The ford on the Ressel is deep and treacherous, and a ferry must be used to get across the Gure or over the ice in winter.”
A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight Page 69