by Daniel Ford
Sighing, Allystaire nodded. “I will be down.”
He started to close the door, but Idgen Marte’s boot stopped him. Her hand darted toward his chest and stopped just short of poking the wound on his left shoulder. “This is healing faster than it ought.” Carefully, she probed it, Allystaire abiding it sleepily, both of them frowning. “You’ve some manner of luck, anyway.” She slipped out with a curious backward glance.
A few minutes later he was tromping into the stables, flexing his foot in his boot and rolling his left shoulder. Aside from his usual morning stiffness, he felt almost no pain. The two wagons were pulled up in front of the inn with folk milling around them. His palfrey and mule were placidly tied by leads to one wagon, but the grey remained in the stables. Idgen Marte and Renard were there, and Timmar, but most of the village folk were staying well away.
“Hey. Hey, calm,” Allystaire said to it, raising his hands and walking toward the beast. Almost instantly it trotted over to him, tossed its head, and whickered. He reached up to seize the bridle and started to walk it toward the door as the other three watched curiously. The destrier followed him, and he casually said, “See? Nothing to it.”
He led it out front toward his other animals, meaning to tie it in the same spot, but instantly its legs straightened and its muscular neck pulled away from his hands. Scowling, Allystaire grasped the bridle again and said firmly, “Now is not the time to be stubborn.”
“He doesn’t want to go. He means to stay. And you should call him Ardent, because that’s his name.” The voice was quiet and came from a few paces behind him. Allystaire turned around, incredulous; Mol was standing by the front of the wagon, looking at him intently.
Her eyes were wide and dark and seemed to stand out in circled hollows in her small, pale face. The huge horse whickered and tossed his head when she said Ardent, and something seemed to fall into place in Allystaire’s mind—the click of a door unlatching, or the clean rasp of a weapon drawn.
The villagers, including her uncle, stood watching Mol in silent shock.
Allystaire smiled at her a bit uneasily and said, “Mol, I am glad to see you’re up…” and would’ve said more, but Mol cut him off with a shake of her head.
“Stay with him,” she said, though whether she was speaking to the horse or to him, Allystaire wasn’t sure. Then she took two slow steps backward, turned around the edge of the wagon, and scurried into it. Every one of the villagers paused in their bustling, stared at him for the briefest moment, then turned their eyes away and scurried off twice as fast.
Heaving a sigh, Allystaire walked the destrier back into the stables, rubbing its neck along the way. “Ardent it is then, eh? Damned if I know why, but you seem suited to it.” He secured the horse in its stall and fetched a small apple, held it in the flat of his hand, and let the stallion devour it quickly.
Once he was back out in the street, he sought Renard and Idgen Marte, who were both leading their own horses. A short, curved horse bow was loosely tied to Idgen Marte’s saddle, and a quiver of short, darkly fletched arrows rode on her hip, opposite her sword. Renard’s spear rested in a boot attached to his right stirrup, and on his belt he carried a handaxe and a long dirk.
“You two,” Allystaire said, waving them over. He tilted his head toward the ground and said quietly, “According to what Timmar told me, there may still be a reaver or three out there. Scouts and such. And some of their own folk, boys I suppose, who ran off when the town was taken. Keep a sharp eye.”
They nodded, listening with the careful, loose intensity of practiced soldiers. Allystaire continued, “Renard, do you know who guards the gate this morning? And more, how many men in towers within crossbow range? Or how many that know how not to shoot their feet?”
Renard chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “Men on the gate will stand down to my challenge, I expect. As for the other…” He smiled wryly. “You know a bit more of Bend’s guards than I would’ve expected, m’lord. How is that?”
“Ask me again later. Now. How many men in bowshot?”
After another speculative chew on his lip, the bearded warrior answered, “No more than four. And their chances of hittin’ anything moving in less than bright noon? Poor.”
Allystaire nodded. “Good. Then if the gate guards attempt to impede your progress, cut them down. If any of the villagers know how to use a bow…never mind. No time to find and buy bows.”
Idgen Marte twisted her lips and narrowed her eyes. “You think I was idle while you slept, crusader? I was able to salvage most of what the reavers had. Obviously,” she added, waving a hand to indicate the wagons. “There are crossbows under the buckboards and I managed to find a couple of shortbows. Inferior stuff, bad wood, and no horn, but they’ll do. At the very least the farmers can look menacing.” She leaned forward and grabbed Allystaire’s right arm with her hand and gave it a rough, friendly squeeze. In a much softer voice, she added, “Kill that choiron if you can. I mean it. I don’t want him as an enemy.”
“Mayhap he does not want me to be his enemy,” Allystaire said, though he wasn’t sure what he felt or meant by it. He nodded, clasped both of their hands, and retreated to the inn. As he climbed the stairs he could hear their voices calling out, Idgen Marte’s strong, laughing rasp, Renard’s low and rumbling, cracked but strong, like an old wooden shield—split in places, but held together with iron bands. Soon the sound of wagons rolling off, underwritten by horse’s clopping hooves, drifted to his ears.
Once in his room, he did the soldierly thing and went back to sleep.
* * *
A few turns later, sun blazing overhead, Allystaire sat atop Ardent, wrapped in steel over quilted gambeson, and armed with sword, shield, and hammer. No half measures this time, no bracers hidden under sleeves or leather cap. His plate armor didn’t gleam or shine; it was dark, pitted, functional stuff. Scarred and beaten, yes, but strong. His helmet was slung from the pommel of his saddle. He worked his jaw as sweat already streamed down his freshly shaven cheeks, stinging the raw, reddened flesh.
Heavy grey clouds sat thickly on the horizon, and the smell of rain promised respite from the heat. The crowds parted for Allystaire and the broad destrier. They were of a piece, both with a size that projected beyond them and was due as much to breadth as to height. In his armor, Allystaire even shared a color with the horse, more or less.
He rode almost absentmindedly to the so-called castle, picking out the way with surprising ease. For his part, the horse seemed happy to be out again, but his gait was more contained than the previous day; he didn’t have to be reined in or held back, and proceeded with the same quiet determination as his rider. When he reached the gates, Allystaire dismounted and wrapped his gauntleted hand firmly around the reins as he marched toward the guards.
“I am here for the assize. Make way.”
Whether it was his tone, the fact that he was armed like a knight—albeit fresh off a campaign and not in the lists—or simply his presence, the gate guards snapped to his words. The portcullis quickly lifted, the pathetic gate swung open, and soon Allystaire was leading Ardent into the courtyard. A liveried servant trotted forward, hand out for the reins. Allystaire had halfway handed them over when Mol’s words from the pre-dawn morning echoed in his mind: Stay with him. Whether she’d been addressing him or the destrier he still didn’t know, but he shook off the servant and led the horse himself.
He didn’t have far to go. A crude stage had been erected in the courtyard itself, a wooden platform upon which three chairs sat. The largest of the three had been raised on a slight and none-too-sturdy looking dais of three steps in the center, at the back of the square wooden platform; one chair sat to its right, and another directly in front of it.
It occurred to Allystaire rather quickly that the entire affair bore more than a passing resemblance to a gallows platform, minus the pole. Probably it was Bend’s gallows without the
pole erected and with some hasty additions. He pushed the thought from his mind.
Stepping slowly but resolutely across the grass, he reached the edge of the platform, dropped Ardent’s reins to the ground, and stepped on them; the well-trained mount settled down and started picking at the nearest grass. Allystaire relaxed himself by resting one hand on the head of his hammer and flexing the other around the strap of his shield. He relaxed his knees, rolled his shoulders, and waited as stormclouds gathered overhead and the first distant rumbles of thunder echoed over the river.
He knew very well how to wait.
Time passed, neither very much nor very swiftly, and others started to gather. The Baron of Bend hobbled out, dressed up in finery that could only be drenching him in sweat—bright blue robes and a creamy white scarf that seemed, somehow, to signify his office, or at least his wealth, with its yards of silk. Servants scuttled around him like tenders swarming around a massive ship of war. Some bore pitchers of wine, others trays of food, another a towel, and two more carried a large cushioned chair, which they quickly placed on the ground. When the baron sat, it sank visibly into the hard earth, its legs pushing into the ground.
Once he’d been served wine, the baron saw Allystaire waiting and waved him over, wearing a haughty expression that Allystaire guessed was intended to convey magnanimity.
“Could still forget all this bad business, y’know, Sir Allystaire,” the baron tried, his voice as grating to the ear as a knife dragged across a whetstone. “Just pay me what I’m owed and be off wi’ no trouble.”
“I will let the choiron decide what, if anything, I owe you,” Allystaire replied. He paused, let the silence hang in the air for what he knew was a beat too long before adding, “My lord.”
The baron’s face darkened, and his jowls shuddered as he said, “And when he decides to hang you? What then?!”
Allystaire smiled the careless smile of the puissant man, and said, “I will not hang today. And if the choiron decides that my life is forfeit, then, my lord, we will learn how many of your men are willing to die for their silver.” Seized with a sudden anger, he turned toward the nearest liveried servant, though the man bore nothing more than a dagger on his belt. He thrust out a finger like a spear and barked, “You! Will you lay down your life for the man whose wine you pour?” The man blanched and took half a step back. Allystaire turned toward the next servant. “And you? Will you stand against my hammer for this pig?” His finger became an open hand and he swept it toward the baron, who sputtered in his chair.
Neither of the servants, nor their blue-and-white-clad fellows, answered. Most turned away their eyes.
Allystaire turned toward the grossly corpulent man and said harshly, “See, my lord, how loyal and daring your body servants are. It would behoove you to remember that should you care to make any more threats. I am not Godsworn to ‘take no revenge upon you’ yet,” he finished, dropping his hand and whirling away before the baron could recover his own fury to muster an answer.
When he turned, he found himself eye to eye with Choiron Symod, dressed still in his seal-skin trimmed finery, the huge amulet around his neck gleaming under the stormclouds with its own light.
The Sea Dragon’s priest smiled coolly at him. “Do you come to the assize armed, as if it were a trial by combat? I did not offer such terms.”
“Well for the baron you did not,” Allystaire replied, once again forcing himself to meet the priest’s intense, sea-green gaze. “But no. I came here wearing steel and bearing arms because I come as myself and that is who and what I am.”
“Few men know truly what they are, and I doubt you are one of them,” Symod replied loftily. Softening his tone and smiling that chill smile again, he added, “But you may be nearer to it than our friend the Baron of Bend. And mayhap today’s assize will play some part in helping you to discover it.”
Allystaire misliked the way those particular words fell from the priest’s lips; he liked less the rumble of nearer thunder that followed them. Thunderheads had advanced till they hung over Bend like an army readying to shatter its pathetic wall.
“We will never know if we do not begin,” Allystaire replied, letting the last of his anger drain from his voice. “And the weather bodes ill if we are not quick about it.”
Puffing as he sat up straighter in his chair, the baron said, “Aye, for once I am in accord with this brute. Choiron, let us take this affair indoors afore we are all soaked through.”
“Nonsense,” the priest replied, in a tone that, though quiet, brooked no dissent. “The coming storm is a sign of Braech’s favor, that the Oath you are about to make in His Name will be well and truly bound with His power. Now attend me, both of you.”
You could probably crush his skull before he had anything to say about it, whispered Allystaire’s pragmatic self. But that tingle of power he remembered, that unsettling note of vast authority in Symod’s voice bid the thought remain a thought.
The baron had to be helped to his feet and tottered over with the support of his servants. The choiron reached into the bag he wore over one shoulder and removed a thin, flat piece of wood with parchment tacked to it, and a pen with a bright copper nib. He held the board and parchment and pen toward one of the servants, the gesture of a man used to being obeyed without question, regardless whose colors the men around him wore.
“Unless all of your servants wish to be sworn under my Lord Braech as well as you, milord, it is best that they move off for the nonce.” The choiron raised his hands and threw back his head then, his arms wide to encompass Allystaire and the Baron of Bend. The men in livery beat a hasty retreat, leaving Tallenhaft Windspar standing unsteadily under his own power.
The wind picked up and the first intermittent splashes of rain began to plink against Allystaire’s armor as Symod began to half-chant, half-shout into the grey midday air. They were small drops, and few, the mere vanguard of a mighty host.
“Braech Sea Dragon! Father of Storm and Wave! Lord of Trade and Master of Accords, cast Your Ears and Eyes upon the shore of this river, a piece of the great water that is Your demesne. Fix Your sight upon these men as they swear to hear Your judgment! Grant me the cunning and the wisdom to see the truth of what they shall tell me, and to apportion out blame and praise as You would see fit. Let them swear to abide by the judgment of Your wisdom and to seek no vengeance if they find it bitterer than sea-water. Let those who swear be placed beneath Your baleful curse should they by will or weakness see their word and bond not held. Let their wealth and wares dwindle, their nets fail, their sails tear, their hulls break apart on the rocks, and all their plans and means come to naught. Under Your eye do we consecrate this agreement. In Your ear do we declare the terms. In Your sight do they sign. Let no man later deny to what he now agrees.”
As the priest spoke, Allystaire felt the wind intensify, tugging at his hair, while another drop of rain slapped at his raw cheek. He felt the tingling charge of lightning building to strike, smelled the air burning when it crashed somewhere in the town, was stunned by the enormous wave of thunder that followed.
The servant held the parchment board in front of the baron, who signed in large, looping child’s letters; Allystaire took the pen and, despite the clumsiness of his gauntlets, signed in a quick, neat scrawl. The choiron inspected the parchment, eyed them both. To Allystaire he said, “You signed without title or surname?”
“I signed with the only name that cannot be taken from me.”
“Very well.” The priest pointed Allystaire toward the chair on the right of the judge’s chair. “Take your place, Allystaire.”
Treading with heavy steel-clad stamps and lightly jingling spurs, Allystaire ascended the gallows platform and strode over to the chair, but did not sit.
“Let those who bring accusation come forth.” Symod’s rich and powerful voice rolled over the courtyard. It demanded attention, and more. It demanded obedience.
The Baron of Bend, once again walking with the support of a liveried servant on either side, struggled up the steps to fall heavily into the other chair. Wheezing, he called out, “I come before this assize to formally accuse that man,” he said, pointing to Allystaire, “of Assault from Ambush, of Murder, of Theft, and of Failing to Pay Legal Duty.”
“What do you seek?”
Another deep, heaving wheeze of breath. “I seek my lost revenues restored,” he shouted, his jowls wobbling and beginning to tinge with red. “I seek him punished to the fullest extent.”
Symod, sinking into his seat, turned to face Allystaire, his every movement stately and grand. “And how do you answer?”
“To his first charges, I do not, until he provides evidence of them. For his last, I say there was no legal duty. He is claiming a right to taxes on the sale of slaves, and such is not legal here or in any neighboring barony.”
“I decide what is legal in Bend! And you owed taxes when you came through the gate which you did not pay!” The baron’s jowls were shading to purple now, and the rain began to fall more steadily. The wind picked up the baron’s voice and blew it away, so that Allystaire had to strain to hear.
Smiling coolly, Allystaire replied, “If I owed any taxes on property I brought into Bend—and again I question your legal right to claim such—it is moot, because I paid a gold link to your guardsmen upon entering.”
The choiron listened to Allystaire and dimmed his eyes for a moment; he nodded and turned his level green gaze on the baron. “He speaks the truth of this. If he paid a gold link, what more tax could he possibly owe?”