A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  “Sir Heuber of Kreuz, please?” she asked the guards at the front gate. One man looked them over and replied.

  “Sir Heuber is down fighting with the new count, in the hills south of Rydol. Would his wife be acceptable as a substitute for your business?”

  “Yes. We would like to speak to her,” Sunnil replied.

  “Who shall I say is here?” he asked.

  “Lady Sunnil of Berize,” she told him. The guards looked at each other and came to attention, and then one of them hustled with his spear back across the manor’s yard. In a few minutes, the Lady of Kreuz herself came back out, kneeled to Sunnil, and then let them all come inside.

  They made it to the town of Zinsy three days later. The town sat to the north side of a long, wide valley with a lake at the north end, feeding several mill races. The main road from Grotoy to Rydol came up to the town gates, and a bypass road snaked around the outer perimeter of the walls and earthworks, so that all the heavy cart and wagon traffic would not have pass through its streets. There were eight high stone towers on the walls, and a fortified barracks and dungeon block near the middle of the town for the sheriff, across from a tall, ornamented white church with some colored glass in its windows.

  “My Lady Sunnil, I present to you the town of Zinsy,” the sergeant from Kreuz said over to her. She just nodded back to him, as she had seen it enough times before. Despite her cemented dislike for him now, she had followed Wayland’s earlier advice and gotten two bracelets of ivory on her account, and used them to cover over her wrist scars. Her maid wore a pair carved out of rosewood, decorated with small chips of shell.

  Lady Sunnil had taken over her own arrangements the morning after they had arrived in Kreuz. She now wore a blue and white silk jacket and a long blue skirt, and rode a bay mare she had bought against Kreuz’s tithe. It was a fine mount, but Wayland figured it had cost half a year of income from the village.

  They were now being escorted in by the sergeant and six lancers, stripped from Kreuz, and by most of the archers, who had stayed on, intrigued by the whole adventure. She was well protected, and Wayland had gotten the urge to just turn up the road to Grotoy with his men, and ride on out of her life. He didn’t think anyone would miss him.

  The wagon was being driven by Edou, with Sunnil’s maid Brigha sitting next to him, with Ludt now sitting alone on the back seat. There was another wagon coming behind theirs, holding food and gear for the men at arms, being driven by a servant, and a cook Sunnil had taken from one of the small villages they had passed sat beside him.

  “When I come to the gate, have the horns blown,” she said to them, as the sun shone down on her long brown hair, turning it to gold, making the polished silver chain she had long worn on her neck glint. A red ring of amber hung from it now, and perhaps always had, touching her bodice and her tanned skin. Wayland moved his horse forward, and signaled back to them with a hand.

  “Let me go there lady, and make it so,” he said to her. She did not immediately prohibit it, so the sergeant riding next to her nodded across to him.

  Wayland set off on his horse down the road, across the fields toward Zinsy, to announce that Lady Sunnil had arrived, and for them to blow the horns. He scanned the wall as he came close, seeing that the mortar work and the stones looked to be in good repair. The ditch work was old though, and an excavation was needed to make it formidable again, and not just a nusiance. There was a hoarding over the gate, a few unfriendly neighbors perhaps justifying its presence there.

  He raised his road hat as he came near and showed himself to the gate guards. One of them took his reins as he stopped there. He got down and stretched, then delivered his news.

  “I’m Wayland of the Traveler Knights. The party coming along the road toward this gate is the fair Lady Sunnil of Berize, your new liege. She tells you to get out the trumpets and blow her a welcome, when she comes up through the gate.”

  The guard saluted him and went off to make it so. Wayland decided to not return back to the party, but to just go into town now and look around, as Lady Sunnil finished her progress. The streets were well laid out, with thought to what buildings went where. There was not much clutter to the roof lines, a thing that was all too common in Tolwind and in other places, and in Rydol, where lack of space had caused them to build up, with the higher floors sometimes sticking out, and blocking the sun and air. There were fruit trees in stone planters in several places, like little parks, and room for the tents of soldiers or traders stalls along the main boulevard, that ran to the steps of the church and the sheriff’s gaol.

  There was an open square between the church and barracks, and a building along the near side of it to him had been turned into a hospital for the Tourade of Alonze, and for the crusade. A checked red and blue banner hung down from the window above the door, with the golden lily emblazoned upon it. Some cavaliers idled outside it, perhaps resting there after finishing a patrol.

  He walked his horse into the square and found the traveler’s station also sitting nearby, with the scales in bronze and wood above the door, and painted in black upon the blue shutters of the windows. Before going there and reporting, he turned and stood, waiting patiently for the trumpets to sound, and for Lady Sunnil to make her entrance. They played the call out from the south towers, causing the heads of the people on the streets to look back at that gate. As Lady Sunnil came in, those who saw her bowed or made a leg, only rising once she passed or nodded over to then.

  The trumpets played the call once more, as she waved for the rest on the streets to rise. She was making a statement, coming through the gate on the gray mare, wearing the blue of Grotoy, looking like one of its knights. People along the street were moving on now, or just coming out and stopping in groups to talk about her arrival here. She looked back and forth, waving, if seemed now for them to all disperse.

  Behind Wayland, several knights of the Tourade had come more forward out onto the street in their quartered red and blue jackets, with the gold lily stitched on the cross of the colors. Others wore the white sack cloth jackets of the crusade, the lily more stylized, either done in red or black linen.

  “Who’s that just come through the gate?” one of the knights asked Wayland.

  “That is the Lady Sunnil, the Lady of Berize,” he answered him. “This is her town.”

  “Sakes of the holy, aren’t the colors of Berize a white cross gate on red?” one of them then asked him, as a comment on her blue dress.

  “I don’t know,” Wayland admitted, but they probably were. He watched her wave to some other people standing on the street, and she talked with several briefly, as if they were familiar. She turned her head then and saw him standing there in the street with the men of the Tourade. He saw her lift her head, and say something to the sergeant now riding next to her, in a long command of words. She repeated it with more emphasis when he hesitated, and pointed off with her hand at the tall stone barracks to their right.

  The sergeant saluted her and jerked back away, calling out three of the other mounted men from the file. Lady Sunnil then pointed down the street, right at Wayland, and they came for him, lowering their spears as they did so. He quickly went to mount up and try to make it out of one of the other gates of the town. Then he heard one of the Tourade knights behind him call out.

  “It’s too late!” the man shouted. “The church! Get into the church!” Wayland looked over at the church doors, decorated in bronze, open and just a few feet away from him now, safe and inviting. He pulled his saddle bags and his roll off his horse and stepped away from it, as one of the knights of the Tourade walked across the cobbles, reached out, and grabbed its reins.

  “The church!” the knights all chanted at him. “Get into the church!” Wayland turned and ran up the wide stairs, two at a time. He went in through the double doors as the sergeant rode by outside, wheeling his mount around and stopping there, carelessly scraping the stone with the tip of his lance. A priest came across the floor, to see what the commoti
on was about at the door. Wayland dropped his saddle bags, his roll, and quickly undid his sword belt.

  “I’m requesting sanctuary from the Lady of Berize,” he told the priest, handing him over his weapons. The priest pointed over at a rough, dark stone set into the floor near one of the walls, between two marble caskets.

  “Go sit there and I will get the prior,” he told Wayland. He went and leaned back against the stones, and waited there as the priest went away, back into the cloister and rectory. After several minutes another priest came out, a bit older from the heavy gray on his head and some wrinkles, with the gold ring of his office on, and a silver touch piece on his chest.

  “I’m the senior here: the prior,” he said. “Now you say you want sanctuary from the Lady of Berize. Her court and guard are right here you know, across the street. You might go there instead and petition her magis, though I do not know if they will give you justice.”

  “That’s why I am asking you, dear prior,” Wayland said, “because it is just so. She wishes to imprison or harm me for a falsehood. I have done something that the lady herself is angry about. It is a small matter, of a nature I think you most able to arbitrate, for it involves the faith, and a holy object. I have given you my weapons and asked for your sanctuary. I am being hindered in my duties here also, as I have been directed to perform by the Grand Prince himself, his Excellency Ewald Zhury.” He took out a copy of his orders and showed it to the prior.

  The man stood up and read it, and his mood went dark, his head and his heart clearly troubled. He sighed then, realizing nothing terrible was going to happen right then, and went out the doors to confront the men still there. Wayland sat alone on the sanctuary stone; waiting and watching the dust drift through the doors, to hit the shafts of afternoon light coming down from the glass windows and be illuminated. He could not hear what was said outside, though it seemed prolonged and the voices were raised at one point. The prior eventually returned, shaking his head and holding his touch piece away from his chest.

  “They have taken your horse and your men on to Berize,” he told Wayland. “A lancer and an archer remain outside, to sieze you if you try to leave.”

  “Then let us go now to the altar,” Wayland replied, “and before the Three, I will confess to you my crime and leave my fate in the hands of God.”

  Later the night service began, Wayland taking part with the rest, standing and saying the accolades and listening to an uplifting sermon regarding their obviously dark times. After sharing the wine, he was given a blanket, a bowl of water, a piece of bread, and a carrot. It followed the verses of Elius, as it was the same succor he had received from the Abbeds when he had arrived by boat at Manca. A few parishioners who had lingered now went by him, some glancing in interest and speculation. When they had all left he was able to talk again in privacy with the prior.

  “I have thought on what you told me at the altar,” Prior Alrenni ruminated. “I will send out to Berize for the lady there, and to the bishop, and we will find a solution together to this matter. Priests from all the villages to the west of here are coming in three days for a meeting. We will discuss your problem then. If we cannot get agreement between the parties involved, then perhaps you can be recalled directly to Kavvar, and another man sent here to wait on the lady.”

  “I thank you,” Wayland said.

  “No. Thank the Three,” the prior replied, as he stuck three of his fingers up towards the roof of the church, at the now dark, twinkling heavens resting over it. Wayland sealed himself, and said a good word. The prior nooded, then he moved away, across the floor to the doors behind the altar. Wayland could smell the beans, the bread and pork for a long while after those doors were closed again. He picked a spot behind one of the limestone sarcophagus and bedded down with the blanket, looking up at the painted supports of the ceiling until he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  SUNNIL

  THE HONOR OF BERIZE

  She got out of the carriage as it rolled to a stop before the two story lodge, with its surrounding low wall of piles. The footman who had wanted to open her door just shut it instead, and then ran around to get her things from the carriage boot. He doggedly followed her as if he was aftraid he would lose sight of her between there and the manor’s front door. Ahead at the entrance the estate bailiff had come out, an old knight she knew from Rydol, and he waited there for her between two of the ornamental pillars. She stopped in the grass before she came to the first hedge, and she looked up at the building.

  The manor was old, with much of the original wood still in it, in the shape of a long, high hall. At either end were newer red brick chamber blocks, with two sets of old Mancan pillars used in a veranda now creating the ornamental face. There were stairs in both blocks, with the rear one contained in a round tower, the top room of that serving as the treasury, and as a hold fast if needed. The red brick had white stone mixed in, and trellises of vines with roses and other flowers, looking very romantic clothed halfway in a covering of green vines and small red and white bulbs. Berize was quaint, and she had never liked it, and it was nothing in comparison to the rose brick palace at Rydol.

  Wenslig had always belonged here, and she had always belonged in those pink bricks, in the white marble and brown paneling inside the great city, and that had been the natural order of things. Now the world had been turned upside down. At least she hoped it was so, and not just her that was unfastened, because that suggested she had been partially to blame for what had happened to her and that the world was in the right.

  She went on inside, receiving the bow of Sir Wulff as she passed him, and then he followed her in. The serving maids, the cooks, the gardeners, and even the hunter stood in a line near the first stair, and they all gave her a very respectable leg. She went past them, waving for them to rise. Edou came in behind her, walking forward on his crutch, to find a comfortable place to sit down. His leg was swollen again, and it was time to have the doctors in Rydol sent for, to have it reset properly.

  She went about the hall, and then stopped and took a close look at the wooden, canopied throne set to one side, at its paint, its gilded ornaments and ivory embellishment, the whole of it being too big and fancy for the manor, even if it was a great manor. She thought it was bigger than the one she had sat on when in state at Rydol.

  “Give me a sword,” she commanded Sir Wulff, who was slow to comply, and the sword he finally handed over to her was not his own, but one taken down from a nearby wall.

  Sunnil had followed the bad news on her way back east through the forest and she knew what was happening to Bagheri and to Gece. Her uncle might have done something else if he was still here, but now it had fallen to her, since their roles were now reversed. He would have found some pretense, and she had been given the perfect one. And she would, from now on, do things her own way.

  Sometimes nobles acted off, or behaved eccentrically. She had better reasons than them to now do so, perhaps more right than any other in recent memory. She had lost her birthright, lost her freedom, been called a toad for too long, almost been turned into a monster, and had been turned into something else. Sometimes nobles did things that only their inner circles understood. No one understood her, but she felt her uncle would know what she did, what that message was to him, and everyone else would understand.

  She went forward with the sword and first used it to pry the ivory gate of Berize off the red shield it was fixed on to. With a satisfying pop it came free, bending the gilded bronze frame in the process, and she took it up and smiled. She would have Ludt clean it up, and then she meant to wear it on her neck, from her silver chain.

  Then she took the sword and with both hands struck the heavy throne with it repeatedly, scoring the wood, cutting off a piece of the railing with her second blow, and with her third opening up one of the pillows, to make a cloud of small, downy feathers fly around through the air. That was a pity. Sir Wulff went forward to stop her, but she just glared at him in anger and th
rew down the sword to clatter and slide across the old tiles. She turned back to her servants.

  “Bring me a bench to use!” she commanded them. “Don’t you know that it’s bad luck to sit in a chair?” She stopped, realizing that some of the words she had just used were of bugger origin, in very old, rugged Mancan. She repeated herself to them in Gecic, as one of her maids put her head down into her hands and started to cry. She had perhaps gone too far, and she turned and looked back at Sir Wulff, who was still standing there watching her critically. She didn’t trust him one bit.

  “Send for the palace doctor at Rydol,” she said. “I think he will still accept my summons. I promised the Alonic soldier with me, who accompanied me during my ordeal that I would have his leg mended properly. You may pass along to my uncle that I have settled in here, as best as can be expected. I will have the throne repaired, when it is the right time for me to do so. ”

  Brigha had now come in behind her, and was looking around in wonder at the golden wood, the paintings, the fierce hunting trophies, and the great red banners hanging down from the carved, age darkened braces of the hall. She gave the damaged court throne only a passing glance. Like Sunnil, she had seen the Dimm, and everything there had been broken in some way.

  “Now show us to my rooms,” she commanded them. As they walked up the far tower stair she considered the state of the realm that she no longer controlled. Wenslig would have his hands full, she thought. And of the lords in southern Rydol, in the Vara, in the mountains: they were a weak and spineless foreign lot, given their lands mostly by her grandfather, for their service during the Varrek civil war, or they had just been there forever and never proved their titiles. Yes, her uncle would have his hands full, and it seemed like the Goloks and the Sund knew what they were doing, coming into Gece the way they had. Someone must have been looking at the possibility of it for a long time.