by T. O. Munro
At last the tangle of horrified thoughts in Niarmit’s mind resolved themselves into a single word. An emphatic ‘no’ charged up her throat, pursued by a rising gorge of choking nausea. That Kimbolt could be suspected of such a thing? That her actions could be construed in that way? It made her physically sick. The intended denial became a stifled splutter as the taste of vomit bit the back of her throat. She clamped a hand over her mouth in desperation. Her stomach heaved again. It was all she could do to shake her head.
With some difficulty she gulped back the queasiness and found some words. “Kimbolt did nothing wrong,” she said. “Don’t think that of him.” She moderated the shrill edge to her voice. “He is a loyal and trusted servant.”
Hepdida raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Then why did you send him away?”
“It was an important assignment. It needed him.”
“You could have sent Rugan, you were going to once. Why did you send Kimbolt away?”
“Matters of state and strategy are complicated, Hepdida,” Niarmit insisted.
Hepdida groaned. “Another bloody secret.” But this time she did not seem disposed to chase it down, and the fluttering in Niarmit’s belly faded with the dimming of the princess’s curiosity.
***
A dog barked, the raucous noise splitting the night air. Elise froze, Kaylan paused too at her side. A door to the steading was flung open spilling light onto the farmyard. A man stood in the opening, silhouetted against the bright illumination of the room behind, a kitchen Elise guessed.
The animal gave another throaty roar. “Quit your mythering, Henry,” the man growled. “No one wants to hear your nonsense, barking at your own farts no doubt.”
Henry gave a half-hearted snarl. With a rattle of chain the man cussed the dog into a kennel and kicked the door shut. “You can wait there ‘til you’ve a civil tongue in your head.”
Still Kaylan and Elise didn’t move, nor the two dwarves at their sides. The man rubbed his hands together and strolled across the yard to lean on the boundary fence. He was a bare ten yards from the edge of the copse in which they were concealed.
“It’s all right,” the man called. “You can come out. I’ve put the dog away, not that he’d do much more than give you a good gumming. Not allowed to keep a dog young enough to have its teeth these days.”
Kaylan took a step forward. Elise grabbed at his arm to hold him back. “It could be a trap,” she hissed.
He shrugged her hand off. “He’s expecting us, and he knows he would not long survive the experience of betraying us.”
“That’ll be a great comfort to me in my grave,” the sorceress muttered as she followed the thief from the cover of the trees.
“Ah,” the man called in a cheery voice. “So this would be the general, his lovely lady and…” he paused as their two companions emerged from the foliage. “and your children?”
“I carry my axe level with your bollocks longshanks,” Glim-ap-Bruin growled a threat more real than the toothless dog’s. “So if I were you I’d be taking more care as to who I was calling children, especially if I had plans to sire any of my own.”
“And I’m not his lady,” Elise hissed. “Lovely or otherwise.”
The man bowed low, deep enough to honour a dwarf and a sorceress. “Please forgive my presumption,” he insisted. “And accept my hospitality. I am Jin Dietril, I have bread and some wine.”
“We know your name,” Kaylan insisted. “And we have wine and bread of our own. You sent word you wanted to see me; let us cut to the chase.”
Elise shivered, hugging her shawl around her shoulders as she scanned the night’s shadows. Dietril’s farm was on the cusp between the land that acknowledged Kaylan’s protection and the land where the invader’s writ still ran. It was territory ripe for the plucking yet still not without its dangers.
“Well come inside, General. I have some people who are anxious to meet with you, friends if you please. You have come far, we hope to help you go further still.”
Kaylan stepped inside the yard despite Elise’s hissing wariness. “Is it safe, Kaylan?”
The thief glanced at the two dwarves, who shrugged. “No orcs here, nor wolves,” Mag-ap-Bruin said. “I’d know their stench at a full two leagues distance.”
Kaylan turned to Elise. “And no horses either, a nomad travelling anywhere without his mount? Inconceivable. I trust this man, my instincts have rarely played me false.”
Jin Dietril bowed again. “You honour me with your trust, General.”
“You honoured Quintala with your trust too,” Elise whispered at Kaylan.
His eyes widened in a glare of fury which the shadow filled darkness could not entirely obscure. “I never trusted her.” There was a hard edge to his voice and he added an emphatic, “never.”
Elise’s gaze swung back and forth as they crossed the yard. The doors of two sheds hung open, devoid of ambush or even of fodder or grain that the farm might have held in more prosperous times. “Please,” Jin held the kitchen door for them. “This is my wife Jocasta, and our other guests.”
Jocasta stood by the hearth stirring the contents of an earthenware pot. She straightened up as her husband ushered the newcomers in. She smoothed her rough woollen skirt with one restless hand, while the other swept a stray lock of hair away from her face. Her unease appeared to owe little to the newcomers. It was the two figures seated at the broad kitchen table that drew her flickering gaze.
Two scimitars in jewelled scabbards lay across the rough oak surface. The swords’ owners sat impassive, arms folded, behind the weapons. The fire light glinted off the gold torcs and bracelets that adorned their upper and lower arms. Thick rings pierced the cartilage of their ears, with long hair swept back to display the ostentation of their wealth. Their skin was a deep mahogany from long hours in the saddle with no shade from the desert sun. The one nearest the door was older, his hair pure white, but still his biceps bulged with muscles in repose. The younger one bore some similarity of feature, a certain squareness of jaw, the aquiline nose. His gaze was less settled, straying briefly from the new arrivals to his older companion and then back again.
“Nomad scum!” Glim-ap-Bruin spat, unshipping his axe from across his back.
Kaylan drew his own sword with a rasp of steel. “I have misjudged you, Jin Dietrel,” he said in a voice deep with self-reproach.
***
The glass had toppled over. The last dregs of its contents spilled a sticky green trail across the desk. The aroma of mint and menthol filled the air. Vesten tutted his displeasure at the sight; Odestus mumbled something in his sleep, the words obscured by the flattening of his mouth against the desk’s oak surface.
“Come, Governor,” the secretary chided as he gently shook the little wizard’s shoulder. “This is no place for sleeping.”
Odestus lifted his face clear of the table. The pattern of the grain and of the gaps in the planking was imprinted in relief on his cheek. “I see her still, Vesten, in my dreams.”
The secretary frowned. It was time to inject a little realism and some home truths into his master’s maudlin reverie. “The dreams that alcohol sends are empty delusions, Governor.” There was at least the comfort that if his harsh words should cause Odestus offence, there was small chance of the little wizard recalling the matter in the morning. “They offer as little substance as the prattlings of drunk orcs and outlanders in the taverns. There was one of them even laid a fantastical claim to having seen the Lady Dema, much good did it do him. It is time to move on Governor. You have responsibilities, to yourself and to others.” Vesten swallowed nervously. In the patronage driven hierarchy of Maelgrum’s world, he knew how much his own prospects, his very survival, depended on the little wizard performing an effective and necessary function within the master’s plans. He wondered for a moment if he had overstepped the mark.
Odestus blinked slowly. His head swayed slightly with the effort of concentration; the secretary’s words must have snagged
on a tiny outcrop of sobriety within the flood of his inebriation. “Wha?”
He made no protest as Vesten prodded him into a more upright position. “Really, Governor, this will not do. You are not so old that you can give up on life now and sink into a bottle. Come, let’s get you to bed.” He hauled on Odestus’s arm and shuffled him in halting rhythmless steps to the simple cot bed.
“Who saw her? Who saw?”
A part the wizard’s awareness splashed and floundered on the surface of drunkness. With the intense focus on working the muscles of mind and mouth, the rest of his body submitted limply to the secretary’s ministrations as Vesten laid him back against the sheets and swung his legs up on to the bed.
“Who saw who, Governor?” Vesten fussed about settling Odestus to a safer more comfortable slumber, pulling a blanket free to cast over him. Conversation was little more than a backdrop of irrelevant noise.
“Dema, who said they saw Dema?” Odestus found enough direction to master one arm, his hand seizing Vesten’s shirt. “Who saw her?”
“Nobody saw her, Governor. A drunk orc in a tavern told some tall tale about seeing her, that’s all. She’s gone. You and the orc both need to move on.”
“Which orc?” Each word was forced out, a drain on the little wizard’s alcohol dulled consciousness.
Vesten clucked and shrugged as he tucked the blanket around Odestus’s shoulders. “I don’t know, Governor. He came in as escort with the latest convoy of undead from Morwencairn.” Vesten shuddered at the memory of the shuffling swaying undead, reeking in the growing heat of summer.
“Gone?” Odestus’s eyes were puppy dog wide. “Gone back?”
“No, Governor,” Vesten said. “Willem threw him in a dungeon. That’s where all trouble causing drunks go.” He looked down at the near somnolent wizard. “And if you don’t mind me saying Governor, that’s where you’ll be going if you don’t sort yourself out. You’re being a fool to yourself and if you don’t shape up then Willem might yet take a chance on throwing you in a cell. And then what would become of you?”
A deep snore rattled from the wizard’s throat. Vesten stood over him, hands on his hips in an unaccustomed pose of command with no-one present to witness it. He shook his head sadly. “And what would become of me?”
When the wizard’s reply was another adenoidal breath, the secretary muttered. “You’re an old fool Odestus, and you’ll forget this in the morning, but I won’t.” He turned and slipped from the room.
***
Elise forced herself to take a breath, suddenly realising that a long moment had passed in which even the involuntary act of breathing had ground to a halt.
The two nomads sat motionless, arms folded. Kaylan’s sword was up but he had taken no step towards them. The two dwarves, taking their lead from the thief, were content to slap the hafts of their axes against the palms of their hands. “Well, Jin Dietrel,” Kaylan repeated, his eyes still on the farmer’s other guests. “Have you betrayed me?”
The younger nomad snorted his displeasure and spoke with a thick desert accent. “We came in peace, my father and I. We sit, our weapons sheaved and in full view, offering you no hand of violence and yet you draw your weapons and greet us not.”
The older nomad turned to his son framing a short question in an alien language. The younger nomad replied in the same tongue.
“Speak plain, nomad scum,” Glim-ap-Bruin barked. “Let us know what you be talking about.”
The younger nomad gave him a dismissive sniff. “My father does not speak your barbarous language. I am only telling him what it is that I have told you.”
“Allow me please, to make the introductions,” Jin Dietril insisted. “And if you could put up your weapons, it might smooth the discussion.”
“I have no authority to parlay with the enemy,” Kaylan said calmly, his sword still raised. “Only to kill them.”
“Aye, the same is true of me,” Glim echoed.
Elise saw the farmer’s wife press herself against the wall, alarm writ large across her face. Jin flapped his hands in a desperate calming gesture. “General, Vezer Khan and his son have come here at the risk of their own lives. If any of the other Vezers should know they sought this meeting it would go ill for them and all their kin. At least do them the courtesy of hearing them speak, and do so without a drawn blade.”
Kaylan lowered his sword but did not sheaf it. “You sought this meeting?” he addressed the older nomad.
The man blinked back at him.
“Please, General,” the son interjected. “My name is Ismael and my father speaks and hears through me.”
“I like to watch a man while he speaks, Ismael,” Kaylan said, his eyes still on Khan. “Let me see his face, while you interpret my questions and his answers.”
Ismael sighed and launched into a translation. Kaylan and the Khan held each other’s gaze throughout the exchange.
“My father asks why you have not yet put away your sword. He has shown you many tokens of peace and friendship and you have shown us none,” Ismael said. Then, while Kaylan considered his answer, the son flung in a comment which Elise suspected was purely on his own account. “We walked here. We tethered our horses and walked to this place.” From his tone, Elise guessed this was the sacrifice that galled the young nomad most and for which he expected a far greater appreciation than Kaylan had so far shown.
“There are many of my people whose bodies now rot in the ground or, still worse, shuffle in undead slavery on Maelgrum’s battlefields. They saw no tokens of peace of friendship from you or your orc allies, tell your father that.”
In the midst of Ismael’s translation, Vezer Khan spat on the floor of Jocasta’s kitchen. Elise raised an eyebrow but the farmer’s wife was unmoved by the rudeness, still standing pressed firmly against the wall by her fear. Khan made a forceful reply, unfolding his arms to emphasise his points with chopping and slicing gestures of his right hand.
“These allies are not my father’s choice,” Ismael said. “He won his first stallion for killing orcs in the west of the desert. When first the little wizard came to us my father spoke against this alliance. It is not by his choice that the horsemen of the desert serve the same cause as orcs.”
“But still your father rode with them.”
“There was justice in our people’s anger. You wagon riders and foot walkers did not treat fairly with us. You barred the grazing grounds to us and would charge a price in gold for our use of land that belonged to all. How can a man lay claim to the land?” Ismael flung a hand upwards in mimicry of a gesture his father had used. “A man may as well charge for the sun that warms us. It is not his right to sell it, nor our duty to pay for it.”
Kaylan waved the point aside. “The cause of our quarrel with your people is old news, and I can see no dispute that would have justified you siding with orc rapists and the necromancers who keep the dead from their rest.”
“Please, General,” Jin insisted. “Would you not be more comfortable seated, and with your sword in its sheaf. I fear that naked steel may lead us all to speak more sharply than we need.”
Kaylan shrugged and slotted his weapon into its scabbard. “I think you will find my words lose little of their edge, Jin, but I have no other plans this evening, so I will hear what Khan and his son have to say.” He took a seat opposite the nomads, folding his arms in imitation of their posture. The Vezer gave a nod so brief and slight that Elise was not even sure she had seen it.
“As we have said,” Ismael went on. “My father spoke against this alliance, but the Little Wizard won the day with gold freely given and the promise of more to come. The younger Vezers were easily persuaded. They lacked the blood of their fathers.”
“But still you rode with them, you and your father. You rode against my queen’s people at Bledrag field. You have been the enemy’s servants from Dwarfport to Listcairn. You have killed by the Saeth, in Woldtag and in Hershwood. What reason have I to treat with you or to trust any promises
you give?”
Elise saw the hesitation as Ismael considered how far to convey Kaylan’s mood and meaning to his father. But a jab on the elbow from the older nomad and the darkening of Khan’s expression showed where Ismael had been encouraged to speak frankly and the reaction his words had wrought. The older nomad’s voice rose in volume, the words quicker, the gestures harder.
“My father is an honourable man.” Ismael glowered. “He has slain no children or women, nor ridden with the walking dead. He came here to offer you peace. There are many amongst us who believe our people have lost their way. There are four other vezers who will follow his lead, who will declare him their ubervezer, that is a third of the nomad people. He can claim them all if you would help.”
“Why should I help resolve the internal power squabbles of invading savages?”
Elise saw the older man’s fingers flex towards the hilt of his scimitar as the translation unfolded. The tone of Khan’s reply was lower this time, but laden with menace, the dull note of a barrel that that was almost empty. “If my father can promise our people peace on the terms we should always have had, then he can lead them away from the orcs and the foul wizards. He may even persuade them to fight against those allies.”
Kaylan shook his head. “I am the queen’s servant. I have no authority to offer you anything other than the edge of my sword. If peace is what you seek than I suggest you take yourselves back to the desert and hope that your people have the wisdom to follow you. There is nothing for you in Undersalve but death. This is not your land, it is ours.”
Ismael did not mince his words in the translation and at the end of it both Kaylan and Khan shot to their feet, swords drawn. Jocasta gave a squeak of alarm and slid down the wall. Jin gave a cry, part command part groan, of “no.”
“Kaylan,” Elise discovered her voice and, to her surprise found it had effect.
The adversaries both looked at her, their swords held high ready in an instant to fence across the kitchen table, but for a momentary breath they were in her power.