Not Exactly The Three Musketeers

by Joel Rosenberg

  Dereneyl

  The road twisted down into the side of the valley, entering and emerging from a small stretch of forest that fringed the farmlands of Keranahan. Out in the fields, peasants in floppy hats carrying weed bags stooped to pluck out unwanted plants growing among the green leafy plants that they were tending.

  Whatever the plants were. They didn't look familiar. Durine didn't know, and he didn't much care.

  It had been years since the war had ended, but the baronial capital still showed scars from the war, particularly if you knew where to look, and Durine knew where to look.

  Some things never heal.

  The castle on the hill overlooking the town was the easiest sign to see. The breach in the wall had not only not been repaired, but it had been expanded into a very broad and permanently open gate. The gatehouses at the other two gates were gone as well, leaving them permanently open. What remained of the wall was useless for defense, and would probably eventually suffer the same fate as the Woodsdun castle, of being disassembled, stone by stone, for construction down in the town. For the time being it was the residence of the governor and his troops, but even if and when control of their baronies was fully returned to the Holtish barons, they wouldn't be returning to their castles.

  Holtish nobles were not going to be permitted to hole up in their castles and resist a siege.

  A castle wasn't just a place to live. In fact, as a place to live, it was a lot less comfortable than an unfortified house.

  It was a weapon.

  It was a stronghold, a safe place from which to hold out to fight at the owner's time, on the owner's terms. Certainly, the empire could crush a rebellion in any one barony at a time - as long as the borders were quiet, of course, and you could never count on that, particularly these days, with magic turned loose in the Eren regions, upsetting balances of all sorts, political included - but that just encouraged coalitions and conspiracies among the barons. A wise emperor didn't encourage such things; they grew aplenty without nourishment.

  But Durine didn't much care about that, either. Conspiracies could be solved with some complicated political maneuvering - or, better, with the sharp edge of a good sword slipped between the right ribs, or a pair of massive hands fastened around the right throat.

  But that was other people's problems. He was just the sword, just the pair of hands.

  Not caring was the safe way, the good way.

  Everything, everybody he cared enough about died on him. There had been a couple of women - well, four, if you included his mother and his sister - and two horses, and once an officer he had served under, and a stray dog that followed him and these other two around for a while. But they had all died on him. He had had to kill the dog himself.

  The last person he had truly loved, truly cared about, was the Old Emperor, and the inconsiderate bastard had blown himself to little bloody chunks protecting his son, Jason.

  All the bastards died on him.

  Except, he thought, keeping a secret smile, for Kethol and Pirojil, except for these two.

  But he had solved that one. Durine had finally figured out a way to cheat fate: he just didn't let himself care about them. They were his companions, certainly, but that was all. He didn't like them as much as everybody thought he did, as though the three shared some deep and intimate bond. Kethol was too brave and reckless, and ugly Pirojil not nearly as smart as he thought he was, and both of those qualities grated on Durine in a way that he constantly thought about, constantly picking at a scab so it wouldn't ever heal.

  Erenor was complaining again.

  "So why do I have to be outfitted like a servant?" he asked, his voice whiny.

  The pack he had kept ready for a quick exit contained, among other disguises, a soldier's cloak, sword, and belt - the wizard didn't seem to want to have to use a seeming as part of a quick exit. Erenor looked silly with a sword in his hand - typical for wizards - and Pirojil had decided that he would pass as their servant. A silly idea, three ordinary soldiers with a private servant to cook and clean for them, but Pirojil probably had some scheme in mind. He usually did. There was a brain behind that ugly face, even if it didn't work as well as Pirojil thought it did.

  Erenor was decked out in a light cotton tunic and leggings that they'd procured in Woodsdun. The tunic, belted with an ordinary rope belt that held only a belt pouch - not even a knife - gave him an entirely inoffensive and decidedly unwizardly air.

  "You want reasons?" Kethol asked, letting himself smile. "I'll give you three. One: Pirojil says so. Two: Durine says so. Three: I say so."

  "How persuasive," Erenor said.

  "I'll give you five." Pirojil counted out the reasons on his fingers. "One: because Erenor the wizard is being looked for for his help at Riverforks, so you don't want to look like a wizard. Two: because there are two soldiers who escaped jail, and we being three soldiers and a servant, we aren't them. Three: because servants sometimes hear things that others don't. Five: because nobody but a wizard is going to be able to pierce that disguise, and maybe not even a wizard."

  Erenor sniffed. 'I'll thank you not to try to teach me about magic. Any wizard is going to be able to see at a glance what I am. It takes a lot of skill to bank your flame down to the point where another can't see it, and I don't quite have that skill yet."

  Pirojil laughed. "Meaning you aren't anywhere near powerful enough."

  "That's another way to put it, certainly. And you missed the fourth reason."

  "No." Pirojil shook his head and frowned. "No, I didn't. I just used a seeming to make it invisible."

  Erenor's laugh sounded genuine. "You're not likely to forgive me for outwitting you, are you?" He tugged vigorously at his forelock in a sarcastically overdone display of a peasant showing respect "Very well; I'm a servant."

  Durine permitted himself to like this Erenor person, just a little. He wasn't much of a wizard, perhaps, but he had been smart enough to swindle Pirojil, and that was unusual in itself.

  And he had been useful in getting Durine and Kethol out of jail and as a sinkhole for some of the blame that would go with that. And while he resented his sudden change in station, he at least had a sense of humor about it. With any luck, Durine would learn to like him just enough to get him killed, but not enough to care about it.

  Kethol preferred to keep things straightforward when he could, and the other two didn't have a problem with that, not this time.

  It took some time to talk their way past the guards at what had been the castle, but Keranahan had been at peace for too long, and eventually they were let in without escort and pointed toward what had been the southeast corner guard tower. The keep at Keranahan was older than the one in Biemestren, and had been built with but a single wall, rather than the double-walled arrangement that had been more common for the past while. Surrounding the keep with two walls added a tremendous amount of protection: if the first wall was breached and enemy forces entered the outer ward, they could be attacked from above from both walls, from both in front and behind. Attackers would have to not only breach the outer wall, but at the very least evict the defenders in order to have a real chance to try their luck with the inner wall and the relatively soft meat of the inner ward beyond.

  But this castle had had but a single wall, and a single ward, and with the wall breached and never repaired it was no longer a castle, just a collection of stone buildings surrounding the donjon.

  There was something pitiful about that, if you could feel sorry for something made of stone and mortar.

  The ward of the castle was now the home of the occupation troops, with ramshackle wattle-and-daub buildings set up against the inside of the walls as barracks and stables, as well as storehouses and such. The grasses and low shrubs of the ward had long been war casualties; it was bare dirt, baked and hardened in the sun, weeds growing at the juncture of what remained of the walls and the ground.

  They had been pointed toward where the governor was, and soon found themselves climbing u
p the absurdly long, winding staircase to the top of what had been a corner guard tower in the old days.

  Knock down the walls on either side of a corner guard tower, and it isn't good for much. A lookout tower, perhaps, but if you really need a lookout tower, you really need castle walls. Not much of a place to live, not with hundreds of stairs on the long, winding staircase to climb in the dark every time you dragged your weary body home to sleep. About the only benefit Kethol could think of, offhand, was that with the garderobe that high off the ground, even the lightest breeze would blow the smell from the dung pile away.

  Treseen had put his birdery up there.

  What had, in the old days, been a useful place was now filled with wooden cages, five of them holding big scowling birds, the rest empty, save for a big one in the corner that held a dozen or so pigeons on various perches, either too stupid or too sullenly pessimistic to figure out what their purpose was. One curved wall held a curved workbench, tools and gear set out on it in careful order. A straw mattress lay against the wall behind the big cage. Kethol figured that it probably wasn't Treseen who slept up here.

  Of all the silly ways that the nobility could waste their time while the rest of the world worked to support them, Kethol ranked falconry somewhere between discerden and dueling. There was nothing wrong with hunting rabbits and such. But why not just leave that to a peasant's snares? There was a certain efficiency in turning the pests that fed on a peasant's crop into his dinner, but this was just a matter of sport to the nobility. As a way of procuring food for the pot - not that they needed to - it was just plain silly. Nobles didn't need to hunt their own food.

  And Treseen wasn't even nobility. He had been a commander under General Garavar during the war, and the Old Emperor himself had put him in charge of the troops occupying Keranahan, and eventually he had replaced the governor.

  And was busy putting on airs, it seemed. He ignored them while he adjusted the hood on the small falcon clinging to his left forearm, which was protected by a thick glove that covered him up to the elbow, and then tickled its beak with the end of a long shred of meat, carefully snatching his bare fingers back when she snapped it up.

  His assistant, a wild-haired little man whose face and arms were peasant-brown, scowled. There was something about the way Treseen was doing this that bothered him, or maybe he just didn't like Treseen in the first place.

  Treseen fed the bird another few pieces of meat, then sighed and returned the bird to the cage. Stripping off his glove and tossing it to his assistant, he shook his head. "Think she'll be ready for the jesses soon?"

  "I think she's ready for the jesses now, and I can prove myself aright in that by telling you that I've had her out on them seven days of the last tenday," the little man said. "She'll be ready to fly free for the lure before you know it," he went on, just the faintest emphasis on the word you, "and bringing down game soon after."

  Treseen ignored that, or at least affected to. "Good," he said. "The sooner the better."

  "That, of a certainty, is true."

  He had been ignoring them long enough. Kethol cleared his throat.

  Treseen turned to the three of them, and his gaze wavered for a moment before he settled on Kethol. "Yes? Well, what is it?"

  Kethol glanced over at Pirojil, who nodded microscopically. Kethol would have preferred that Pirojil handle Treseen, but it didn't look as though he was going to be given much of a choice. "We've come from Biemestren, Governor. We've been sent to look into a problem here," he said.

  Treseen arched an eyebrow. "By whom?" He snickered. "The emperor himself, perhaps?"

  "Almost." Pirojil dug the papers out of his pouch. "Perhaps you should look at these, sir," he said. "They'll explain it all."

  Treseen walked to the window and held the papers out in the light. Kethol would have sworn that the man's hands didn't tremble in the slightest. Which meant that he was brave, although it probably didn't have anything to do with his innocence or guilt.

  "I see." Treseen shook his head. "I can't see what the problem is, and why the dowager empress has had to involve herself, but there's nothing to it. Just a matter of a nervous little girl with some overly romantic notions about - well, about life, and such."

  "As may be." Durine frowned. "I don't doubt that."

  "But..." Pirojil seemed to be choosing his words with extra caution. "We haven't been ordered just to come out here and talk to you, Governor. We've been told to talk to the girl herself, and find out what the situation is, and I'd not care to explain to the dowager empress that we came all this way and then didn't do what we've been told to do."

  "You have done what's necessary," Treseen said. "You've spoken with me. Do you doubt my word? Is that the courtesy they teach soldiers in Barony Cullinane these days?" His lips tightened. "These are not the days of the Old Emperor, you know, where insolence is rewarded, where - " He stopped himself with visible effort and raised a hand. "But enough of that." He turned his back on them. "You may go."

  "Very well," Pirojil said. "As you will, Governor. We certainly can't flout your authority to order us out of Barony Keranahan and go back, empty-handed, frustrated, and ignorant, to Biemestren."

  Kethol looked over at Pirojil, whose eye closed in a wink. They'd be looking up the baroness immediately, more likely than not. The dowager empress wouldn't take their word on the governor having ordered them out of the barony, and in fact he hadn't. Not in so many words.

  Nor would he. Treseen turned back. "I didn't say that, now, did I?" He frowned. "I'm irritated with you doubting my word, and I can tell you that there will be a note dispatched to Baron Cullinane about your manners, I can promise you that. As to ordering you out of the barony, I didn't say anything of the sort. Do what you will. It seems like a lot of fuss over a little problem that I understand has already been well settled, but..." He handed the papers back to Pirojil and turned back to Kethol. "But far be it from me to interfere with the wishes of the dowager empress."

  He placed his palm on his chest, over where his heart was supposed to be. "I've been a loyal servant to Bieme and to the empire for my whole life, and I'll not stop now. If you insist on seeing Lady Leria, then go ahead and do so. She's at the Residence."

  "Residence?"

  "Before the war, it was the old baron's preferred place to spend most of his time. I can understand that: it's out in the country, away from the sights and sounds and smells of the city. He kept the castle as a going concern only in case of need. Ever since the war, of course, the family's been in residence there, and it's been called the Residence, out of deference to them." He smiled slyly. "I understand some of the other Holtish barons suffered rather a lot more, but then most of the others weren't as cooperative as the late baron."

  Kethol suppressed a snicker. It was easy for the last of the Holtish barons to be conquered to see the benefit of cooperation.

  He shook his head, as though to dismiss the thought. "You can ride two sides of a square of the roads around the forest, but there's a nice path through. It's a pleasant ride, and I'd guide you there myself, but I'm otherwise occupied this morning. Tell the captain of the guard to have Ketterling draw you a quick map; there're only three or four forks on the path." He cocked his head. "And tell him that you've the run of this place, and you can be billeted in the barracks, if you'd like, or you can find lodging in town, if that's more to your taste."

  He turned back to his bird assistant, dismissing them. "Now, about the jerfalcon ..."

  As they walked down the long, circular staircase, Kethol could practically hear Pirojil frowning.

  "That went awfully easily," Pirojil said. "I've seen token resistance before, but..."

  "Yes. And you've seen it again." Durine grunted.

  It had gone too easily.

  But why shouldn't it? Kethol thought.

  It was just another one of the spats and arguments that the nobility used to occupy their time instead of honest work, and having somebody see that the problem had been reso
lved, while it might irritate the governor, shouldn't be a big deal. He could guess what it was: the overbred little bitch had decided to marry the man the baroness had insisted that she should, and it was all over.

  All they had to do was ride out to hear that, then ride home and tell the dowager empress that there had been nothing to it, and let the old biddy live her little victory: she would have proved that she could get men from Barony Cullinane to run a minor errand for her, and that would be that.

  Durine grunted again.

  Kethol nodded. It could be that easy, it could be that simple, but it wouldn't be.

  Chapter 9

  Simplicity Itself

  The little country home, of course, was nothing of the sort. Pirojil had expected as much. His... he had known some nobility in his youth, and the only dwelling he could recall that one of them owned that was little and ordinary was a primitive hunting lodge high in the mountains, little more than a shack.

  They paused their horses on the crest of a hill. Below, a stream twisted beneath the Residence, which had been built on the rocky crest of a further hill along Darnegan lines: a central, generally cubical stone building that rose a full three stories, flanked on either side by a long two-story wing, each wing fronted by a full-length portico. The whole structure was overgrown with ivy, and twittering birds fluttered in and out of nests hidden in the green tangle.

  There were the outbuildings one would expect: a stable next to the barracks, although Pirojil expected that was a remnant of the old days, and the barracks would be occupied by a skeleton guard. It was one thing to permit the occupied barons to have a small force of guards; it would be another thing to allow them to raise armies.

  A quick series of whistles shattered the afternoon quiet, sending a flock of birds fleeing into the air from their nests, a few minutes later followed by a half-dozen mounted soldiers issuing from the barracks, who quickly cantered in their direction.

  Well, Pirojil thought, at least somebody was paying attention. That was nice. Maybe.