by Daniel Ford
“You are indeed a proper host, goodman. I believe I can secure you some help.” Allystaire stood, and he and Idgen Marte eased the harried man to a chair. Then, clearing his throat and once again filling his voice with a ringing note of command, he boomed, “Folk of Thornhurst. I believe that your gracious host is unused to housing quite so many under his roof at once, and is performing, dare I say it, heroically, in the face of the challenge. Of course, there is no thought in his head of turning any of you out. But he has need of assistance. Everything from sweeping and fire-tending to feeding animals, beating the rugs, washing linen, and grooming horses needs doing. I am sure he will find no lack of volunteers.” With that, he gave a small nod to Idgen Marte and held up the letter from Baron of Bend, then walked toward the front door, scabbarded sword and belt in his other hand.
He emerged into a day that was promising to be blinding in its brightness and oppressively humid. He tore open the letter, piercing the blue wax stamp without a thought for its elegant design, and read it in the sunlight as he headed for the stables. Idgen Marte followed a few steps behind.
“Damned if we don’t need a great storm to blow away this heat,” the warrior grumbled, as Allystaire paused to read:
Sur Alastare,
Yew arr hearwith commandid to present yourself before the Baron Windspar I o Bend at yor earlyist conveenyance. Yew arr too ansur charges of murdur, assalt from ambush, theft, and enturing the citee of Bend undur fals pretens. Yew may be kalld upon to ansur at an Assize aftur the Baron’s enquest. Make yur arrangement with my messengur.
Baron Tallenhaft Windspar I of Bend
Halfway through the letter, Allystaire’s laughter turned to a fury as cold and bright as the sun off thick ice. His pace had quickened, and his hands had started to pull the sword from its sheath, when Idgen Marte dashed around him and pushed her hands onto his chest.
“Stop. If you go into that stable and kill his messenger, you’ll only prove your guilt.”
“He has no right to judge me,” Allystaire snarled, slamming the foot of steel back into the scabbard.
“That may well be true, but he has the means, and that’s what matters. Ya can’t cut your way out of this. Frightening as it sounds, your best weapon is your brain. Y’have to outsmart the man.” She paused, tried a grin. “Or let me outsmart him for you.”
To remove the temptation, Allystaire swung the belted sword over his shoulder and cinched the buckles at his chest, wincing only slightly as he moved his bandaged left arm. “Where would you start?”
“Give him exactly what he wants. Play the lordling, the knight. What you are is as plain as day—so let him see it all bright and polished like a tourney jouster’s armor. Call him baron and treat him like a peer.”
“And if he calls an assize, what then?”
“Pay him off, if you must. I think if he wants to see you convicted, he will. But I think if he wanted to kill you, his watchmen would’ve been swarming this inn yesterday.”
Allystaire thought over her advice, wetting his tongue with his lips. His stomach roiled sourly, but he nodded. “Aye. Very well. I will return his message.” He stalked into the stables, throwing open the loosely swinging doors as he went. In the corner, a man in blue and white livery lounged on a barrel. Allystaire pointedly ignored him in favor of checking on his animals.
The huge grey was the first to notice him, and it whickered and lightly stamped in the stall. Allystaire reached out to stroke along its neck, and soon the riding horse and the mule were clamoring for his attention. He could hear Idgen Marte barely avoiding snickering behind him, then the thump of the messenger sliding off his barrel and his footsteps stumping up the hard-packed dirt floor of the stable.
“Lordly animal, there. Mayhap the gift of it might calm my lord baron’s anger at you, sir,” the man intoned nasally.
Idgen Marte must’ve seen or sensed the way Allystaire’s back and shoulders tightened as he whirled on the messenger, the way his hands quivered with the impulse of violence, for she instantly glided between them, her face suddenly a smooth gambler’s facade.
“You are a fine judge of horseflesh, and do your lord baron credit, but the value of a fine-blooded, war-trained stallion such as that is far beyond any damages incurred to his interests.”
The messenger sniffed, a cavernous nose twitching as he did, and hitched his hands onto his swordbelt. “And you are?”
“Her name is Idgen Marte, and she is my man-at-arms and servant,” Allystaire said, drawing himself to his full height, within a hair of six feet, and spreading his shoulders and chest to their full and imposing breadth. “She can be assumed to speak for me in all matters unless I say otherwise, and she is correct: my animals are part of no discussion with your lord baron.” Once again, his authoritative tone rang in a note of easy command that simply assumed whoever heard it would leap to obey.
When the liveried man grinned lecherously at man-at-arms, Allystaire made ready to interpose himself between him and Idgen Marte, but her face remained impassive, hands calmly at her sides. “As you say, m’lord. What news shall I take back to the Baron of Bend? Will you require ink and quill?”
The messenger unslung a leather satchel that rode under his arm.
Idgen Marte turned toward Allystaire and gave a slight nod, encouraging him to play along. He, in turn, nodded graciously, though imperiously, toward the messenger, who rummaged in the bag and brought out a fresh sheet of parchment, a quill, bottles of ink and sand, and a smooth wooden plank.
Allystaire accepted the items, found an empty crate, and perched upon it, placing the board upon his knee. The ink was thin and runny, but serviceable, and the quill well cut. In moments he had scrawled out a response:
Lord Baron Tallenhaft Windspar I of Bend,
I received your message this morning and commend your messenger for his speed, bearing, courtesy, and demeanor. I will be happy to present myself at your Lordship’s residence later this morning after I have had time to attend to matters of private business; I will be accompanied by one servant. I do hope that your Lordship does not believe I have done him any injury. If you do, there is, of course, a simple expedient by which men of our standing may discharge such grievances. I do assume that such arrangements will be unnecessary but I stand ready to receive your Lordship if necessary. As to the matter of standing before an assize, if your Lordship is able to provide a suitably neutral magistrate that both sides would approve, I would be willing to argue a case and accept the ruling. I must, however, insist upon a neutral presiding judge.
At your service,
Sir Allystaire.
He sanded the ink, blew upon it, waved the page in the air, and, satisfied it was dry, folded it with a careful delicacy that seemed odd in his thick, calloused fingers. He handed it to the messenger. The liveried man seemed to be waiting for something else, but Allystaire merely raised an eyebrow. The man tipped up his huge nose, fetched a small shaggy horse not unlike Allystaire’s gelding, swung into its saddle, and trotted out the open stable doors.
“I would have thought that his lecherous insinuation would have angered you,” Allystaire ventured, once the sound of hoofbeats on uneven cobbles faded.
Idgen Marte snorted. “If I wasted my time killing every fool who suggested I was bedding the man I worked for, my blade would never be dry.”
Allystaire chuckled a bit, and then shared the contents of the letter he’d written.
“You just couldn’t resist implying that you’d be happy to face him in a duel, eh?”
“If your judgment is accurate, the mention of a duel will delight this so-called baron, though he is unlikely to accept such a challenge. The essential thing is that he believes me to be taking his nobility seriously.”
“What if he accepts?”
“I kill him. Problem solved. Wine all round.”
“What if he turns out to be a great ri
ver pirate who carved his way to the top of this mess?
“He kills me. Problem solved. Wine all round.”
Idgen Marte laughed and gestured toward the stall that held Allystaire’s mounts and mule, saying, “Go and tend to your horses.” She started for the door, then turned back around. “By the way…before she sent me to find you, Mol said she’d figured out the big grey’s name.”
Allystaire smiled and turned toward her, his hand gently on the muzzle of the very animal. “Oh?”
She nodded, solemnly enunciating the word as she repeated it—“Ardent.” The swordswoman shrugged her rangy shoulders and stalked into the bright morning light.
Allystaire resumed petting the horse, trying out the name. “Ardent.” The grey continued looking at him, flicking an ear. “Where did a lass like Mol ever hear a word like that?” He cast his eye around the stables till he spied a small basket of hard green apples; he went over, seized a handful, and tried the name again. “Ardent.”
The grey charger turned to stare at him intently. Allystaire shook his head to clear it, murmuring, “It is only because I am holding apples.”
CHAPTER 11
The Baron, the Priest,
and the Soldier
Barely more than a turn of the glass later, Allystaire and Idgen Marte were mounted and letting their horses pick their way through the heat-dazed crowd on the winding and muddy streets of Bend. Allystaire was streaming sweat; his shirt was soaked through, the wounds on his left arm itched fiercely, and the heavy weight of his sword was irritating.
In short, he felt in a perfect mood to confront Baron Windspar of Bend.
He rode his grey warhorse, and Idgen Marte sat atop a lean, dark bay courser that responded to every twitch of her hand or press of her knee and seemed to gather itself to break into a run whenever space opened in front of it; she occasionally had to tug the reins to keep it in check. The destrier, meanwhile, was happy to be free of his stall and apparently wanted to find, or start, a fight; his muscles bunched under Allystaire, he tugged on the reins, and he snapped at the courser any time it ventured close.
Unlike Allystaire, Idgen Marte seemed calm, even happy, as they rode in the brutal, damp heat. While he mopped his face and grunted, she smiled, glowed.
“Where the Cold’s his bloody house? Rather, where is the Baronial Residence,” Allystaire called out.
“Oh you won’t miss it. Trust me. It’s in Old Town, as those with the links call it.”
“And what do those without the links call it?”
“Brick Town.”
“Imaginative lot,” he snorted. “I find it hard to credit that this place has grown so large in so short a time.”
“Been growing a score of years now. You people’ve been so busy with your wars for…how long, now?”
Grimacing, Allystaire said, “Forty-one years. Though, to be precise, it is one war, not wars.”
“Could’ve fooled me. What is it you call it? The Succession Strife? But there’s no king to fight for or against anymore,” Idgen Marte pointed out. “I’m just a southerner ignorant of your ways, of course,” she added, smirking, “but seems to me now what you’ve got is a lot of little border wars caused by old men trying to write their names bigger on a map.”
Allystaire said gruffly, “There is more to it than that.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “There always is, and it rarely matters to the folk who flee from it. Best I can tell, Bend has been giving them a place to flee to for most o’that time, though only in great numbers for the past score of years.”
Allystaire grunted. He felt the steps of the horse beneath him change as dirt and gravel suddenly gave way to more regular cobbles. The streets widened, as well, and the construction of the buildings improved; instead of motley shacks and shanties built almost atop one another, stone and brick of a more or less regular size and dark brown color began to appear.
Beyond them, a much larger building loomed straight ahead, surfacing in the swimming haze of the morning heat. A vast house—too large for the space it occupied—squatted, froglike, at the end of a street. Instead of brick, it was fashioned from a hotchpotch of grey, white, and brown stone and looked like an idiot’s approximation of a fearsome castle, only far too small and vulnerable. Allystaire stopped his destrier and leaned forward to stare at it, blinking slowly.
“Is that a moat?”
“Six feet deep and three wide. A fearsome barrier,” Idgen Marte laughed. “Don’t forget the barbican and the portcullis.”
The effect of this martial edifice was singularly absurd: the moat surrounding it was no impediment; the barbican was a squat tower of less than two full stories high, and the portcullis appeared to be a flimsy thing, with a sigil—clumsy river upon a field of white—carved from wood and hung upon it.
One part of the comical concoction appeared to be legitimately fortified—an old watchtower with a crenellated top, situated for a good view of the Ash River. It stood at the north corner, and was both the most dilapidated and the most secure part of it all.
Allystaire shook his head as he took in the full measure of the baronial folly before him. “This is what happened to the fort that once squatted here. An ignoble end.”
“Probably an ignoble building,” Idgen Marte offered.
“Men died to hold this place once,” Allystaire reflected. “Their lives depended on the walls and on the tower this farce has been built around.”
“And look at the good it’s done them. No one remembers their names and nobody cares about the fort except the pirates and poor folk who’ve fled the wars altogether. Wonder why the baron’s let it go so far.”
“Nobody north of the river here worth fearing, I suppose. Lionel put down the Islandmen who had conquered Vyndamere, and pretty hard at that, some years ago. Nothing up there but fish, fur, and misery.”
“Lionel?” Idgen Marte tilted her head to one side as Allystaire mused aloud.
“The Baron Delondeur.”
“I know his name. Just don’t often hear him referred to that way. Familiar n’all,” she said, peering at him. She grinned then, lightly, then looked back to the “so-called castle” and sighed. “Doesn’t it strike fear into your warrior’s heart?”
Allystaire slumped over in his saddle laughing for a moment, the absurdity of the castle capping, as it were, the absurdity of the day’s mission. Finally, he drew a deep breath and said, “I have knocked over more impressive keeps with morning wind after a breakfast of eggs and beans.”
It was Idgen Marte’s turn to lean over the pommel of her saddle laughing, but for only a moment. They exchanged a glance, stifled their grins, and rode on with impassive faces and erect backs toward the gate.
They drew close enough to see a pair of gate-guards. Allystaire rode ahead, Idgen Marte falling behind and to his right. “Ware the gate,” he called, while they were still a few yards distant.
The guards stepped forward, shouldering spears. Unlike the other watchmen Allystaire had seen in Bend, these both wore hauberks that appeared in fighting trim; they gleamed with oil and scouring, and bore neither brightwork nor rust. “Announce yourselves if you wish entrance,” one called, his voice bored.
“Baron Windspar is expecting us,” Allystaire answered, as they drew to a halt just out of spear’s thrust.
“Tell us your names and titles and we will see if he is inclined to receive you,” the guardsman said, his tone still distant and unconcerned. His bearded face streamed with sweat under his coif.
Allystaire drew a deep breath. This idiot baron is like to be impressed by titles. What have you got left to lose? “Lord Allystaire Coldbourne, of Coldbourne Moor, Lord of Coldbourne Hall, lately Castellan of Wind’s Jaw Keep, seat of Baron Oyrwyn, and with me is my man-at-arms and servant, Idgen Marte.”
He heard Idgen Marte’s jaw snap tightly shut, and could all but feel her eyes
boring triumphantly into the back of his head.
The bearded guardsman stared hard at him a moment, then nodded respectfully, bending his head and shoulders carefully under their hot weight of mail. “Sir Allystaire. I bid you welcome to Windspar Castle.” Though he acquitted his duty with what Allystaire found to be impeccable courtesy, the guardsman couldn’t keep the sigh out of his voice, or stop his eyes from rolling a bit as he spoke. “I will see to your animals.” He nodded to the other guard, who tromped across the drawbridge in three quick steps and pounded on the portcullis.
It rattled like an ill-fitted door and soon rose on thickly knotted rope. Allystaire swallowed another snort as he carefully climbed down from his destrier. He heard Idgen Marte’s soft boots land lightly on the cobbles behind him. They walked forward, led their horses across the tiny drawbridge one at a time, and emerged from the gate into a courtyard that was, like the castle surrounding it, a mocking miniature of a real courtyard. The guard followed them and held out a hand for their reins.
“Your mounts will be properly seen to while here, m’lord,” the bearded guard said, as he wrapped the reins around his hand and started to lead the animals to what Allystaire could only assume was the stables, a structure built against the inner wall and smaller than the stables attached to The Sign of the Stone Wall.