Swordmage botm-1

by Richard Baker

  Assume that Urdinger is involved in both, Geran decided. What did the Verunas want with the barrows, anyway? Was it simply a matter of mercenaries looking for some easy riches that could be had from plundering the tombs of the forgotten dead, ignoring the danger that might attend? Or was it something that Urdinger had ordered his men to do for some reason of his own?

  “Well, what now?” Hamil asked, interrupting Geran’s musings. “A good night’s sleep so that we can get an early start on tomorrow’s provisioning? If we get to the tradeyard at sunrise, I believe we could get in two round-trips before dark and double our daily pittance.”

  “I think we’re done playing at mule drivers.”

  “I thought I’d never hear you say that. Well, good. What do you propose next? Lie in wait for this fellow Urdinger and ambush him? Trail the Veruna blades and see where they go when they leave the camps?”

  “Some of them are likely patrolling the wildlands near the camps, watching for monsters or marauders,” Geran answered. He clicked his tongue at the mules and lightly flicked the reins to urge them onto the Lower Bridge. “There’s little point in following them. And even if we were confident that we were following the right group of armsmen at the right time to catch them in some mischief, well, it’s damned difficult to trail mounted men out on the Highfells without being spotted yourself. No, I think we’re going to have to lay a trap for them.”

  “We could start a rumor that someone else opened a barrow and found something,” Hamil said, thinking aloud. “With sufficient riches in the tale, they’d have to investigate. We could set watch over the barrow in our story and wait for them.”

  “Not a bad idea, but half of Hulburg might show up on our doorstep.” Geran smiled grimly at the notion. Few native Hulburgans would open a tomb in defiance of the harmach’s law, but the town was full of poor and desperate outlanders these days. And no laws pertained to looting burial mounds that were already standing open. “We might waylay dozens of men before the ones we’re looking for show up. We’d have to stack them up like cordwood behind the mound so that we didn’t scare away the rest.”

  Hamil laughed and shook his head. “I see your point. Never mind.”

  “We’ll talk with my uncle tomorrow,” Geran decided. “He’ll know which barrows have been broken into. Maybe we can discern some pattern to it all if we see more of the burial mounds the Veruna men have visited.”

  To finish out their ruse, Geran and Hamil picked up a few barrels of salted meat and sacks of flour and drove back to the castle. Drivers delivered provisions to the garrison often enough that one more wagon wouldn’t seem unusual. No one seemed to pay any special attention to them, so they left the the wagon with the Shieldsworn stables and returned to their rooms for much-needed baths, changes of clothing, and a good night’s sleep in warm beds.

  In the morning, Geran rose, exercised, and dressed, then met Hamil in the great room. After breakfast, they made their way across the small court in front of Harmach’s Tower to the library. A steady, cold drizzle was falling, a mix of rain and sleet. As before, they found a pair of Shieldsworn standing watch by the harmach’s door. A small handful of clerks and chamberlains hurried in and out, carrying out the business of the castle. Geran and Hamil waited only a moment before they were shown in to see his uncle.

  Grigor Hulmaster sat at his writing desk, studying a stack of parchment as they entered. “Ah, Geran! Master Hamil!” the old lord said warmly. “You have certainly made yourselves scarce lately. I understand that you had quite an adventure with Kara a few days ago, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to ask you about it.”

  “I doubt I can add much to what Kara must have told you already,” Geran observed. He took the seat his uncle indicated. “I wanted to see for myself the place where Jarad was killed, so we rode up to the Highfells to have a look.”

  He went on to describe their exploration of the barrow to the best of his ability, including the discovery of the two bodies and the encounter with the strange sorcerer. Grigor listened attentively without interrupting; the harmach might not have been a young man, but he had a keen memory and never forgot the details of a story. Geran knew that his uncle would get around to his own questions eventually, after he’d had ample time to weigh all the accounts.

  When Geran finished, Grigor leaned back in his leather chair. “Weren’t you worried about breaking into the barrow? You know that’s dangerous.”

  Geran met his uncle’s gaze evenly. “Someone had moved those stones recently, and I wanted to know why. Kara didn’t want to disturb the burial mound, but I thought there wasn’t much risk.”

  “As it turned out, you were right. It’s not in Kara’s nature to trust her intuition, but I’m glad that you trusted yours.” Grigor sighed heavily. “I knew that Darsi Veruna and the rest of the Merchant Council had reasons to want Jarad Erstenwold out of the way, but I had no reason to think that Veruna mercenaries might be involved with the tomb-plundering that Jarad was investigating.”

  “Speaking of which, I’d like to know exactly which barrows have been broken into, and when,” Geran said. “Jarad must have discerned some pattern to it. He had a reason for choosing that barrow to keep watch over.”

  “You believe the Verunas aren’t finished plundering the barrows?” the harmach asked.

  “We’ve spent the last few days watching the Veruna sellswords,” Hamil said. “Small bands of Darsi Veruna’s armsmen are constantly coming and going from the camps and yards. By our rough count, we’d guess that as many as a third of the Veruna men-thirty to forty mercenaries, all told, mostly in bands of five or six at a time-are engaged in some activity that takes them away from Veruna mines, sawmills, and wagon trains.” The halfling glanced at Geran and back to the harmach. “We doubt they’re all out patrolling the wilds at the same time.”

  The harmach sat in silence for a long moment, gazing out the leaded glass windows of the library. Finally he said, “Assuming your suspicions are well founded, Master Hamil, what business is it of yours? You are not sworn to my service-nor is Geran. There is no reason to make Hulburg’s troubles your troubles too.”

  “As I told you before, my lord Harmach, I’m here to look after my partner.” Hamil nodded at Geran. “A few years back, when Geran and I were both members of the Company of the Dragon Shield, Geran saved my life at terrible risk to his own. I’m obligated to him for that, if nothing else. But beyond that, Geran is my friend, and his fights are my fights too.” The halfling paused. “Besides, it seems that many of the foreigners in this town know your men all too well. We might be able to get answers your Shieldsworn couldn’t.”

  “In that, you may be correct, Master Hamil.” Grigor shifted his watery gaze to Geran. “But, Geran, it doesn’t explain why you’ve chosen to make this your fight. I’ve never blamed you for your decision to seek your fortune elsewhere. You have no debt to repay me or Hulburg.”

  “I’ve nothing in Tantras that I need to hurry back to, and I think I’ll be staying a little while.” Geran kept his eyes locked on the harmach’s. “I find that I’m not satisfied with the questions that are left unanswered, Uncle. And I don’t like what I’ve seen so far of this Mulman merchant coaster that Sergen has apparently sold Hulburg to. This whole business doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “Nor with me,” the harmach answered, with surprising firmness in his voice. “Very well, then-I have the reports of tomb-breaking close at hand.” He pulled open a drawer in the desk, then checked another. “Ah, here they are.”

  The old lord glanced through the papers and handed them to Geran. Most were in Jarad’s handwriting, simple and terse summaries of each break-in he’d discovered.

  “There were five instances that we know about before Jarad’s encounter,” Grigor said. “Of course, there may be more we haven’t discovered yet. There are literally hundreds of barrows scattered from Thentia to the ruins of Sulasspryn, and most are so far from traveled paths and grazing land that no one would ever know if they’
d been broken into.”

  Geran looked at them quickly and handed them to Hamil. He’d read them more thoroughly later. But first, he wanted to see where the robbery attempts had taken place. He glanced at the crowded bookshelves in the harmach’s study. “Do you still have Wolther’s map, Uncle?”

  “Of course,” Grigor answered. He pushed himself to his feet with a slight wheeze and shuffled over to a rack where dozens of large leather cases lay gathering dust. He ran his frail fingers over each, muttering quietly to himself, then he settled on one case and tapped it once before removing it and bringing it back to the desk. “This is the one.”

  Geran waited while Grigor carefully opened the case and pulled out the large, yellowed parchment map. He spread it out over the top of his desk; Geran and Hamil stood and gathered around to see it better. The map showed the hills and valleys around Hulburg in exquisite detail, dotted with lakes and bogs and crisscrossed by small streams and old footpaths. Small triangular marks speckled the lands surrounding the Winterspear Vale. “My father hired the mapmaker Wolther to make a survey of the Hulmaster lands,” Grigor explained to Hamil. “It would be more than fifty years ago now, but no one’s ever taken a better measure of the lands around Hulburg.”

  “What are the triangles?” the halfling asked.

  “Marker cairns,” Geran answered. “You’ve seen a few already-the whitewashed stones out on the Highfells. You’ll see that Jarad’s letters begin by mentioning the cairn nearest to each of the broken barrows. Read them off to me, Hamil.”

  The halfling looked back down at Jarad’s letters. “The first is, let me see, ‘Twelve north-northeast, eight hundred yards southeast, right of small rise.’ You can make sense of that?”

  “The marker cairn is twelve miles north-northeast of Griffonwatch. From the marker, the barrow is eight hundred yards to the southeast.” Geran found the marker symbol on the old map and carefully marked it with a pin. Hamil read off the rest, and Geran marked each. When he finished, no immediate pattern seemed obvious. Some of the barrows were east of the Winterspear Vale, some were west, and none were particularly close to each other.

  “That doesn’t help very much,” Geran said.

  “What did you expect to see?” the harmach asked.

  Geran sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was hoping that something might seem obvious once we’d looked at all of the locations together.” He looked at Hamil. “How do you feel about sleeping under the stars tonight?”

  The halfling grimaced. “It seems likely to rain all day, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “If we leave soon, I imagine we could visit all these sites by midday tomorrow, so it’s only one night out in the Highfells. And there are plenty of herdsmen’s shelters and huts up there, so we’ll probably have a roof over our heads.”

  “I think we’d be better off watching the Verunas,” Hamil said sourly. “I propose that we spy out the taverns their armsmen frequent and eavesdrop on them for a few evenings. We’ll have to make ourselves comfortable, eat well, spend coin generously, and feign revelry, but I am willing to make those sacrifices. That seems to offer better prospects than riding around to look at abandoned barrows.”

  “We’ll try your suggestion next if the barrows have nothing to say to us.” Geran glanced at his uncle. “Can we borrow paper and ink? I’d like to copy down the locations.”

  “Of course.” Grigor found Geran a small journal, and the swordmage carefully copied Jarad’s notes about the barrows that had been found open. He thought he knew at least two of the mounds already, just from Jarad’s descriptions, but distance and direction could be deceptive on the Highfells. Geran did not want to spend hours riding around in circles looking for a marker or a barrow because he hadn’t bothered to write anything down.

  When he finished, he tucked the small book into his vest pocket. “Thank you, Uncle,” he said. “We’ll be on our way. I expect we’ll return tomorrow.”

  The harmach took his hand. “Be on your guard, Geran. I will see you soon.”

  NINE

  19 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One

  Orange pillars of smoke filled the night sky above the mining town of Glister. It was not much of a town by human standards, of course, little more than a permanent camp and trademeet in the foothills bordering Thar. Few women or children lived there; it was a place where hard and desperate men came to work and wring gold from the ground, gold that they could then carry back to the so-called civilized lands and use to buy better lives. That did not diminish Warchief Mhurren’s pleasure at Glister’s pillage. His nostrils flared wide as he tasted the hot reek-wood, grain, straw, and wool burning in the ruin of the town, and the sweet smell of burning flesh too. That was livestock, of course; the townsfolk had abandoned the town to the Bloody Skulls and their allies. A few screams echoing through the muddy, smoke-filled streets suggested that not all of the town’s inhabitants had fled in time, but that sport wouldn’t keep Mhurren’s warriors entertained for long.

  “A good beginning,” Sutha said to him. She stood behind him, dressed in chain mail with the symbol of Luthic, the Cave Mother, hanging on a chain around her neck. The Skull Guards surrounded them both, watching for any danger. Mhurren had reluctantly left Yevelda at Bloodskull Keep. He couldn’t have left the two of them alone while he went off to war, or he was sure that he would have returned home to find one or both of them dead. And Sutha’s priestess-magic was unquestionably useful on the battlefield. “The weaklings fled at the mere sight of us!”

  Mhurren shook his head. “They were wise to give up the palisade and the town. We outnumber the humans and filthy dwarves ten to one. We would have slaughtered them all in an hour.”

  He pointed to the unconquered stronghold at the top of the steep-sided hill on which the town stood. It was a crude stone fort known as the Anvil. Little more than a thick fieldstone wall enclosing the hilltop, it had a strongly defended gate and a single squat tower. “That is where they will stand and fight. Other tribes before us have plundered the town, but none have taken the Anvil. Glister is not destroyed until it falls.” He grinned at the challenge of it and shook his spear. “Come on, Bloodskulls! I want to hear for myself the bleating of the sheep in their little stone pen.”

  He led the way beneath the open gate of the palisade and up through the town’s rough, muddy streets. Glister stood on a rocky prominence in the center of a steep-sided valley in the shadow of the Galena Mountains. The buildings were thick-walled bunkhouses and storehouses of fieldstone and turf, with a few ramshackle wooden buildings scattered here and there. Those accounted for most of the fires, since the stone-and-turf buildings did not burn well at all-one more measure of defense in a town whose location was decided by defense instead of comfort. Mhurren doubted whether there was much worth looting in the parts of the town that had been abandoned to the Bloody Skull horde, but for the moment he was content to let his warriors and their allies have their fun. Soon enough there would be real work at hand.

  He heard heavy footsteps and snarling curses approaching from a side street and suppressed a growl of annoyance. The one-eyed priest Tangar stormed up to him, his fangs bared in fury. “We are betrayed!” the servant of Gruumsh roared. “Where are the old, the weak, the women, the children? They have escaped us! The Vaasan warned them of our attack!”

  Mhurren scowled, careful not to allow his canines to show. As much as the priest irritated him, he couldn’t risk an open break with Tangar and his followers. “I did not think to surprise them, Tangar,” he answered with more patience than he felt. “We have many spears. Of course the rock-diggers and goat-herders heard of our march. But do not fear-they did not run far.” The scouts told Mhurren that a number of the Glister-folk had fled along the trails leading south to Melvaunt and Hulburg, but Mhurren’s new Red Claw allies were watching those paths. Those humans who hoped to carry their families or their gold to safety would be easy prey for the wolf riders. He pointed up at the fortress with his spear. “Most
of the Glister-folk hide behind the walls of the Anvil with their gold and their women. No, they did not run far at all.”

  He came to a broken storehouse at the upper end of the town, not more than eighty yards or so from the Anvil’s gatehouse. From there he had a good view of the challenge ahead. A narrow path led up to the sturdy iron-riveted timber gates. The walls of the stronghold were not very tall-twenty feet or so, it seemed-but, other than the path leading to the gatehouse, it was a steep scramble up a bare and open slope to reach the foot of the walls, and Mhurren could see the dark shapes of bowmen and spearmen hiding behind the crenellations, waiting to repel an assault. No doubt the Glister-folk had food and water enough to withstand a siege of a month or more. The humans and dwarves who lived in this remote place had waited out more than one orc or ogre tribe, hiding behind their walls until the besieging forces grew hungry, or bored, or turned against each other.

  Mhurren did not intend to repeat the mistakes of chieftains before him. There would be no siege against the Anvil. Instead, he meant to storm the stronghold before dawn.

  “Bring the Vaasan here,” he told his Skull Guards. One of the warriors dipped his spear and jogged off into the smoke and darkness. A few minutes later, he returned with the Warlock Knight Terov. The human wore his battle armor of black plate with the ram’s head helm, but he seemed to handle the weight of the steel well. Several Vaasan knights accompanied their lord-likely to protect him from any sudden misunderstandings with his Bloody Skull allies.

  The human glanced up at the walls, measuring the likelihood of an arrow from the ramparts, and then turned his back on the defenders contemptuously. “Well done, Warchief Mhurren,” he said. “You have boxed the badger in its den. Will you smoke him out, or do you have something else in mind?”

  “We have not yet tested our new Vaasan mail,” Mhurren answered. He had kept his own armor, which included heavy plates worked in the form of snarling demon faces over the mail he routinely wore, simply because he didn’t want his warriors to think he’d become too close to the Vaasans. But eight hundred of his best spearmen had traded their leather jerkins and crude scale shirts for the strong Vaasan hauberks, helms, and greaves. Since the Glister-folk had not defended their palisade or town, Mhurren hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see how it stood up in battle-but he knew good steel, and Terov hadn’t stinted on his promise. “I will take the Anvil before sunrise.”