by Daniel Ford
“Who are you and how did you—” The baron’s grating voice stopped in a short choke as the tip of the knife suddenly pricked, very lightly, just under his chin, and the strong fingers covered his mouth again.
“I said hush. This isn’t a social call. I’ve brought you a message. I am under orders not to hurt you if I can avoid it.” Suddenly the woman’s husky voice, after a chuckle, deepened in a slightly mocking tone. “There is a basic decency in him…we can try talking to him, he said, so that is what we’re trying.”
Her voice was arresting; something about it struck the baron as wrong, yet it had a quality that demanded attention. The knifepoint moved away from his throat, and the fingers released his mouth.
He stood up quickly, wincing at the pain that shot up his legs and into his back. He whirled around, looking for his attacker. “Where’ve you gone, you demonspawn?”
“Nowhere,” said the woman’s voice, right into his ear. He felt her lips, and her breath, and her tall form behind him, and he whirled around quickly again.
He saw nothing save the darkness of his tent. He heard the sounds of the camp beyond—horses, tents moving in the wind, fires crackling, the shifting of equipment, the talking and movements of men who couldn’t or didn’t sleep. But he saw only darkness.
“You aren’t going to see me,” the woman’s voice said again, still in his ear. “Stop trying. Now be a good boy and take the message.” Her arm reached around him and pressed a folded parchment into his hand. “And know three things, Baron Lionel Delondeur. First, I am no demonspawn, nor witch, nor sorceress nor devil’s whore, nor any of the other names I’ve heard these many weeks. I am the Shadow of a Goddess. Second, none of your host saw me enter and none will see me leave, so think on how it’ll make you look if you start talking about this. Third, if ever you do see me, it will be because the Mother has given me leave to kill you. Now read.” With that, the presence behind him vanished. He didn’t hear her leave, nor did he see any movement. His tent wasn’t disturbed. The voice and the form that went with it were simply gone.
Not being one to waste time, the baron groped around in the dark and found his sword; he felt reassured holding it. Then he shuffled his way to the brazier and picked up a short rod hanging off of it, stirred up the coals till they flared, lit some small wooden sticks with them, and used them to start lighting lamps. Soaked in sweat that was quickly growing cold in the cool air, and bathed in the light of his many lamps, he opened the parchment and read:
Baron Delondeur,
I am writing to you because I believe from what I knew of you that there is, somewhere, some decency in you. All that old soldier rot you talk cannot be purely facade. I know you are wondering what an Oyrwyn exile is doing rooting around in your lands and filling your folk with far-fetched notions. I need you to understand that Oyrwyn has nothing to do with this. The Young Baron has, no doubt, published his Writ of Exile upon me. It is no ruse. I am no longer Lord of Coldbourne Moor, much less Castellan of Wind’s Jaw. There is no army with me. If I have any friends left in Oyrwyn, I do not want them.
As for what I am now, any tales that have reached you may have grown in the telling, but there is a measure of truth in them. I bring the words and the anger of a Goddess with me, and She has an anger greater than any you can know. To be frank, Lionel, the Mother has plenty of reason to be angry. With you, with me, with the Young Baron, and with Harlach and Innadan and the rest. All the madness of the past forty years rests on our shoulders, and all the blood on our hands. Mine are as red as yours. I cannot clean them off now, but neither will I raise them in the name of glory to the few and dross to the rest. The rich man, the strong man, who grows richer or stronger on misery, is my enemy now.
There is misery in your barony that beggars description, in a town that calls itself Bend, at the bend of the Ash, just before it empties into the bay. How much you know about it is a question I am not asking you. Yet.
What I am telling you, Baron Delondeur, is that all the people that have suffered from this war, from the widows and the orphans to the legless heroes, are my people now. Mine and the Mother’s. Keep them free of your squabbles. Find a way. Cling to that decency like a man on a storm-tossed sea clings to his rudder in the hopes that it’ll see him out of the clouds and into the sun. The sun, Baron, belongs to the Mother. Find it, or be lost.
You know that I was never given to bluffing. Now I cannot lie even if I wished. I will ask you that question about Bend in person one day, Lionel. And your life may depend on the answers.
Yours,
Sir Allystaire, Arm of the Mother, formerly of Coldbourne Moor.
Baron Delondeur read and re-read the folded note four times. Each time the weight on his shoulders and the cold, sick steam in his stomach came closer to meeting each other in an explosion. Finally, he pushed himself to his feet, took another look at the letter, set his jaw, and held it into the brazier until it caught fire.
CHAPTER 26
The Alchemist on the Gallows
After several weeks spent on the roads, Allystaire, Idgen Marte, and their horses found themselves winding up a muddy track into a village nestled in the foothills along Delondeur’s southern reaches. The Thasryach range rose above them to the north and the sun was declining towards the long Delondeur coast to their west. Twilight’s shadows had just begun to swallow the lingering bronze light of a slightly cool autumn day. Another ruined village. At least this one hasn’t burned yet, Allystaire thought, trudging past the first few sod houses, their low-slung roofs and hide-covered windows shutting out the world. He heard no shouts of children, no young men in the muddy, nearly empty fields surrounding the village.
“Surely three or four years ago their farms stretched a few miles back into the mouth of the valley,” he said aloud, to himself, to his horses. Idgen Marte, riding behind him, had grown so used to hearing him mutter to himself that she no longer nagged him about it.
When they finally reached the center of the village, Allystaire guiding Ardent and their packhorse on leads, a grim scene lay before them: a hastily erected gallows that looked none too sturdy, surrounded by an angry crowd. Upon the gallows stood a dwarf with a rope around his neck. The crowd jeered at him while an old man standing behind him knotted the noose with gnarled hands. The dwarf was animatedly angry, his cheeks purpling with rage, but he couldn’t speak, as rags had been stuffed into his mouth, and his thick shoulders were bent with the tension of the ropes binding his hands together. Instinctively, Allystaire let the leads in his hand fall to the ground, replacing them with the hammer from its iron loop on his belt.
As his heavy, determined tread carried him into the village square, he had the sense that Idgen Marte had slipped down off her courser, but he didn’t bother to turn around and look; he knew he wouldn’t see her. When he was perhaps twelve or fifteen yards from the gallows, he called out, “What in the Cold is going on here?” His voice rang like a bell above the general din of the jeering crowd; as one, they turned to stare at him.
The old man on top of the gallows paused in his work with the rope and sputtered, his cheeks darkening. “Nothin’ m’lord, ah, nothin’ for greatfolk like ya t’go concernin’ yerself wi’.”
Allystaire sighed and looked at his boots for a moment. With an indrawn breath and a gathering of his will, he looked back up and said, “I know what you see. You see the horses, the armor.” He rapped a leather-clad, iron-studded knuckle against the breastplate he wore, tried a faint smile.
Nobody laughed or even returned his smile.
Nothing for it but to soldier on. “You see a lord, and think, I am here to tell you what to do. To eat your food, drink your beer, and corrupt your daughters. I promise you, none of that is true—but I did ask a question. Out of courtesy, I would like an answer.”
Nobody spoke. The old man fiddled with the rope. The dwarf stared at Allystaire, his eyes bugging out and his jaw working around
the rags stuffed into it, thoughtfully, almost, if a man facing the gallows can be thoughtful.
Allystaire pursed his lips and tried again. “My name is Allystaire. You appear to be, ah, passing a rather permanent sentence on yon dwarf.” He lifted his hand from where it rested on the head of his hammer and pointed. “May I ask why?”
Half of the crowd remained silent; the other half tried to answer all at once. The specific answers were largely unintelligible, but Allystaire picked out the words ‘thief’, ‘liar’, and ‘cheat’ enough times that he concluded they provided the basic theme of the dwarf’s crimes.
He raised his hands to quiet the mob, and—showing what he knew to be their conditioned response to armed men—they silenced themselves immediately. “Has he been sentenced by anyone? A magistrate, a justiciar? Has there been an assize?”
The silence lengthened till someone from the crowd called out roughly, “We ain’t seen such as them in years. Got t’take matters in our own hands.”
“I believe you when you say you have not seen a magistrate in years. I do. But if you are willing, I can offer you something fair. Something just.”
“What? You come in wi’ high talk that you’re no lord nor knight an’ ‘ere you are, gonna tell us what t’do wi’ a man who wronged us!” The old man on the gallows found his gumption and started tying the noose again, finishing it with a flourish and cinching it tightly around the dwarf’s neck.
“I said that I was not here to harm you. I am not. I did not say that I am not a knight, for in fact, I am. But not of your baron, nor of any power you have yet known. And if you let me speak to that dwarf before you hang him, I can show you what I mean.”
“How d’we know yer not ‘is partner? How do we know you canna be bought?” The old man spat on the wood and gave the dwarf a hard shove on the shoulder, trying to position him over the trap; the dwarf hunkered down and refused to move, but, Allystaire knew, it was a strategy that was only going to work for so long. The old man picked up the long end of the rope and prepared to throw it over the bar. “Got a silver tongue, this’un, and likely a fair pot o’links in his goods, he’ll buy you or he’ll sell you somethin’…” The old man tossed the rope, and Allystaire’s patience reached its end.
“Stay your hand,” he bellowed, the force of his voice surprising even himself. The horses whinnied and Ardent came trotting up to his right shoulder, snorting, ready for a fight. The villagers all took a step away from him. “I mean no harm to anyone here,” Allystaire called out, “and that means the dwarf as well. I will know what he did. I will have the truth from him. And the rest of you will stand aside while I get it.” With that he took a purposeful step toward the gallows.
The crowd parted before him, and Allystaire smoothly ascended the steps. He reached out a gauntleted hand for the rope. The old man, who, Allystaire saw now, was not as old as he’d thought, merely baked by a life in the sun and with a mouth less than half full of teeth, hesitated. Allystaire reached out and snatched the cordage.
Then, with a practiced ease that had the dwarf raising a heavily-browed eye up at him in mistrust, he slid the noose off and undid the knot. Tossing aside the rope, he reached out and pulled the rags free of the dwarf’s mouth, unleashing a considerable quantity of dwarfish spit. Thank the Mother for these gloves, Allystaire thought.
The dwarf, like most of his kind, was burly in the shoulders, but the top of his head didn’t come close to Allystaire’s chin, yet his features were proportionate to his height. He wore no beard, but a heavy two-or-three day growth of stubble covered his fleshy cheeks. His head was shaved bald and gleaming, and his brows were thick but similarly bare. He worked his jaw and moved his tongue around inside his mouth, then rolled his neck around on his shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and raw, but held a promise of deep, sonorous power.
“Don’t suppose you’d untie me, son,” he croaked at Allystaire.
Allystaire smirked very slightly to himself. He tugged a glove free and put his bare hand on the dwarf’s shoulder, concentrating a bit. “And if I did untie you, what would you do?”
The dwarf said quickly, “Talk you out of hanging me, stall till you’re all asleep, then find my wagon and my ponies and see how long into the night my ass can stand the buckboard on these artless mud tracks you people call roads.” Then he stopped, stood up a little straighter, and eyed Allystaire, then shrugged his hand away while the crowd laughed and the old man smiled in gap-toothed triumph.
“How’d you do that, boy?” the dwarf croaked, narrowing his brows till they almost touched.
Allystaire let his hand fall to his side and ignored the question. “I think your hands can stay tied for now. How about you tell me your name?”
“Not till you answer my question,” the dwarf insisted.
Allystaire reached out and put his hand on top of the dwarf’s head, frowning in gentle apology. “Your name.”
The dwarf struggled and clamped his lips together, then spat out, “Torvul.”
“Torvul, these people accuse you of theft, of fraud, counterfeit, and deceit. How do you answer?”
Torvul snorted. “I sold them exactly what I told them I was selling. That they’re as bright as the crops they raise isn’t my crime.”
“And what did you tell them you were selling?”
“Cures for what ails you,” the dwarf said. “Cures and potions, distillations and tinctures for every complaint; alchemical concoctions of the finest ingredients and the most exotic extracts. Ancient dwarfish formulae and thousands of years of alchemical lore…” He began to fall into a cadence, his voice rising despite its raw condition.
The old man lifted up his hand to aim a huge beauty of a cuff at the dwarf’s ear; Allystaire caught it on the downswing and gave it a light squeeze. The man winced and tried to tug back his hand; Allystaire did not let go. “The dwarf is telling the truth. Why is he on a gallows?”
“His cures only made us sicker, m’lord,” the man protested, yanking his arm free with a great tug. “E’reyone who took one spent a day swoonin’ and the next sickin’ up and every new cure was worse. Like to near killed us all. We figured he were a witch or at least a thief, here to make us ill so’s he could rob us blind.”
Allystaire grasped the back of the dwarf’s neck as he swung his gaze back down to the prisoner. “How do you answer?”
The dwarf’s eyes shifted side to side a bit. “Well, ah…they are dwarfish cures, ya see. And I, ah…I have had some trouble with some equipment lately. And some formulae. But I had it worked out! I needed to compensate for elevation, you understand, and, ah, make some necessary substitutions for some ingredients that are beyond my reach just now.”
Oh for the Mother’s sake, he is no liar, just an incompetent, Allystaire found himself thinking. “Did you mean to steal anything?”
“Nothing here worth stealing, son. I’ve nicked and shaved and skimmed a bit in my time but never from custom…”
“Did you make restitution for the failed cures?”
The dwarf eyed Allystaire with the hardest, deepest-browed stare the paladin had ever seen. “Restitution?”
“Return their links.”
The dwarf almost hissed. “Nobody died. I’m not paying any blood price for less!”
Allystaire turned to the would-be hangman. “Goodman. Would your folk accept their links back in lieu of a hanging?”
“Mayhap we could work out sommin’ like ‘at,” the man replied, licking his chops thoughtfully.
“Then we shall. Untie him.”
The dwarf opened his mouth to speak, and Allystaire raised a hand. “Better to lose some silver than lose your life.”
“You haven’t met many dwarfs, have you, boy?” Torvul groaned in audible pleasure as his bonds were cut free; he immediately lifted his hands and began to rub his wrists with surprisingly long and deft-looking fingers that bore
innumerable small stains and scars. “Still. If I have to hang I’d rather it be in a decent place.” He took a deep breath. “Londray, f’r instance. I could hang in Londray. Hangman likely knows his business there, been brought up in it like any trade. Or better, Keersvast. Yes. If you’re going to hang me,” the dwarf went on, nodding, “do it in a city, one with the stink of silver and the throb of life in it.”
“I do not mean to hang anyone,” Allystaire replied, adding almost absently, “today.” The memory of hauling a rope over the edge of a tree limb outside Thornhurst and the snap of a man’s neck came to him suddenly.
Torvul narrowed his wide, dark eyes and bored them into Allystaire’s face for a moment. “You’ve the look of a hangman about you, I’d say. Maybe more like a justiciar that passes sentence and then grabs a sharp sword. Regardless, there’ll be no hanging today, so if you’d be so kind as to move aside, I’ll just bid farewell to the fine folk of…ah…er…” He turned his eyes toward the man who’d been fixing to hang him, and shrugged.
“Grenthorpe o’the Hills,” the man answered, with a glob of spit that landed suspiciously close to the dwarf’s boot.
“Right. A lovely name for a lovely place. Well, I’ll just be looking for your links…” The dwarf began to shuffle with slow, painful looking steps to the stairs. “And thank you, Allystaire the Meddler.”