by M. C. Planck
They built one last fort. It was a good fort, perhaps the best they had ever made. Either they were getting better with practice or they felt a subconscious desire to impress their foes. Christopher felt the same pressure. He feared a trap, of course, but he also feared a massacre. If he could not make a treaty then his men and the ulvenmen would eagerly turn to bloodshed. Even more he feared actually making a treaty. What did he know about state diplomacy? How would he recognize a good treaty, or an enforceable one? He had no idea how to balance the competing interests of the ulvenmen, the army, the King’s orders, the human slaves, and his conscience.
Knowing that a bloodbath would suit everyone but himself was no comfort.
“Whatever happens tomorrow, you have done by them fairly,” Gregor told him. “If you came into our Kingdom and asked for a treaty, we would respect that.”
“Some of us would,” Lalania said. “Others would vow resistance to the death, and still others would pretend to yield while plotting treachery and deceit. And when the invader properly chastised the wicked, many would demand rebellion. No, I think if Christopher marched an army into Kingsrock, the numbers of dead would be legion.”
“The numbers are already legion here,” Christopher said. D’Kan had estimated that they killed some eight thousand ulvenmen over the last year. When asked how many were left, the Ranger shrugged and said the swamplands should only have held two thousand to begin with.
In the morning his men were eager, assuming that this great battle would break the back of the ulvenman resistance. Christopher did not bother to explain that a campaign of smoking the remaining dog-men out of jungle camps would be as painful and unrewarding as Vietnam had been for the American army. The men formed up into a solid battle column, taking their wagons of supplies with them. They expected that the night would see them in a fort built by Lalania’s magic, surrounded by dying ulvenmen. Christopher was afraid they were right.
But the landscape changed as they marched into the heart of the ulvenman kingdom. First were the fields, rice paddies neatly terraced in walls of mud. Second were the slaves, large barns of dirty, ragged people who gawked in awe at the freemen. One white-bearded man stumbled forward, babbling, and only after a moment did Christopher realize he could understand his speech without magic.
The slaves so far had been younger, though the ravages of their existence made it hard to tell. As best as could be determined, they had all been born into slavery, implying that the ulvenmen had been keeping human slaves for at least thirty years. They spoke no language other than the ulven one; they remembered no history other than the jungle. The people captured in the last great raid against Carrhill ten years ago had apparently been judged too difficult to tame and thus useless for any other purpose than food. It was a testament to the darkness that clouded Christopher these days that he sometimes thought they had been the lucky ones.
The man groveling at the foot of his horse had white hair and human speech. Lalania and Disa knelt beside him, offering comforting touches like a pair of beautiful, grieving angels. The man looked past them to the only solace he could accept: the sight of a man clad in steel.
“Praise the gods, my lord,” he babbled. “All praise to you, my lord.”
“Why do you speak our language?” Christopher asked. Looking from the outside, he was shocked at the harshness of his own voice, but from the inside he was a welter of wildly inappropriate emotions. Disgust, that a man who had been educated as a human being had accepted life as an animal; anger, that he had to confront the misery of the slaves face-first instead of as an abstract quality; fear, that he could not provide what this supplicant asked for; shame, that he had taken so long to effect a rescue.
“I was born in Balenar. For forty years I grew wheat for the Gold Throne. I was headman of my village, as my father before, and as my son would be in my turn. Then the monsters came in the middle of the night and carried off my entire village. Those who fought were slain instantly. When they ripped my boy’s body from my hands I vowed I would live long enough to claim justice.”
“Be calm, father,” Lalania said, putting her arms around him. “You are safe now. Think only of that.” The way she pressed up against him, any man would be hard-pressed to think of anything other than her presence. Christopher wondered at such solicitude; it seemed more intent on distraction than comfort.
The old man blinked, but pushed away from her, his words a flow that could not be stopped by such mere distractions.
“Lord, whatever county you rule, whatever gods you serve, I claim the right of justice. The Golden Prophet took our wheat and tael for naught. His protection was like the wind, a promise that vanished as soon as the night fell. He has forgone the lord-right, and my servitude is unbound. I vow to serve you, my lord, if you would but claim me. The lands I farmed for generations will flower under your hand. If you but claim them.”
The old man fell to his knees, trying to kiss Christopher’s stirrup. Lalania let him go, a look of failure on her face.
“You wanted a cause for war,” Gregor said, looking on from horseback with dismay, “and now you have it. If those words were said within the bounds of the Kingdom, honor would bid you challenge the Gold Apostle within the hour.”
“Or see the old man hung,” Lalania said. “The more usual outcome, I can assure you.”
Christopher flinched. “Let’s do none of those today. Please stop that. Somebody make him stop.”
Lalania struggled with the man, who seemed to have latched onto Christopher’s boot like a shipwrecked sailor with an oar. The contest began to become undignified, until Lalania whispered a word into his ear. For the first time, the old man noticed her; now he followed her gentle lead, trusting her completely with his fate.
“These are serious charges,” Disa said, standing white-faced while Lalania led the old man away. “Merely to speak of this would count as a challenge.”
“And well deserved.” Gregor scowled. “A lord who cannot defend his peasants is a fraud. Losing an entire village is incompetence on a grand scale.”
“Or worse,” Torme suggested. He stood in the old man’s place, having dismounted and come up to help Lalania before she solved the problem with magic.
“What could be worse?” Gregor asked.
“A village not stolen, but sold.”
“Please stop talking,” Disa begged. The young priestess looked as if she was going to throw up. “Speak no more words we cannot unspeak.”
“Did you notice,” Gregor mused aloud, “he mentioned the Gold Prophet? So, he has been gone from the Kingdom at least five years. How coincidental that the Gold Throne should purchase enough tael for another rank after suffering the loss of an entire village.”
“Those were specifically the words I was referring to,” Disa said, glaring at her husband.
“Why would anybody even do such a thing?” Christopher asked. Black Bart had burned whole villages for tael. Who would sell one for gold?
“A good peasant is worth more than the tael in his head,” Torme answered. “No doubt the old man was expected to pass on his farming skills. And what would the shaman do with a pile of gold, out here in this swamp? The Gold Throne no doubt got a good price for its goods.”
“And those words,” Disa said. “One might almost think we were accusing the Gold Apostle of treason.”
“If the shoe fits . . .” Gregor started to say, but Disa interrupted him.
“Are we the cobbler then, to boot the demon’s hoof?”
Christopher had a less metaphorical question. “Where would the shaman get a pile of gold?” The swamp did not seem like gold-mining territory.
“The same place he got his armor and his rank,” Gregor said with a shrug. “Just the coat you are wearing is worth a small village.”
Christopher had thought the chief allure of wandering around in the swamp was turning people into tael. If there were treasures this great buried out here, that meant he owed the late Baron Fairweather an apology
for the low opinion he had formed of the man’s financial planning. No doubt the Baron had been disappointed to discover that the shaman had found the hoard first, and used it to make the Baron part of the treasure for the next lucky adventurer. If that was what had killed the missing Baron. D’Kan seemed to think there were a million other ways to die in the swamp.
“Are we going to find Baron Fairweather as a prisoner?” Christopher asked, largely at random. His ability to redirect conversations was a pale shadow of Lalania’s.
“No,” Gregor said. “Nobles are not peasants or craftsmen. Their only value is in their heads.”
Lalania had returned alone, having passed the old man off to the lesser priestesses. Christopher looked at her, an unspoken question on his lips. Was this the work of the hjerne-spica?
“No,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “This is no more than ordinary, mortal evil. You need not invoke theology here.”
She was reminding him to speak circumspectly in the midst of so many witnesses.
“Nothing has changed,” he said. “We still have to subdue the ulvenmen. I still have to . . .” He had been about to say, Destroy the Gold Throne before they destroy me. But Lalania’s example had put some sense into him. “I still have to walk the path of good without upsetting the applecart.”
Torme made a dubious face. “You evidenced some difficulty walking past a cabbage cart at Joadan’s door, with far less provocation.”
“He has greater rank now,” Lalania said. “No doubt power and time have led to wisdom and restraint.”
Lalania’s words had another meaning. The higher his rank, the closer he came to calling out the Gold Throne openly. He looked forward to where the remnants of a great treasure still waited for him and urged his horse forward.
For all of a hundred paces his vengeance carried him on. He sat straighter, his horse stepped higher, and the looming possibility of violence began to take on a silver lining. Could the deaths of the ulvenmen be redeemed by the destruction of the Gold Throne? Would removing that cancer tomorrow justify this slaughter today?
Fine theological questions, to be undone by the simplest of arguments hammered out on dull iron. Riding into a clearing surrounded by a thicket of huts he came upon an ulvenman working at a forge. The creature was shaping a spear point; it looked up only long enough to snarl, and then returned to its work with only the slightest increase in tempo. For sheer courage the ulvenmen could not be faulted. Christopher already empathized with their other positive qualities: simple honesty, passion for life, and a casual disregard for authority. The sight of one engaged in his own profession undid all his battle ardor.
There but for a completely different genetic code go I.
Someone spoke, a liquid and pleasant voice that rendered the barks and growls of the ulvenmen almost dignified. The smith threw down his tools in annoyance and scampered off. Christopher, dislodged from his introspection, finally noticed what the rest of his army was gawking at.
An oddly attractive girl, slim and pale, with wide lavender eyes and silky white hair that looked as if it had been artfully blow-dried, sat on a rock at the edge of the forge. She was bound by a thin gold chain to a heavy, misshapen lump of gold lying on the ground. The girl was covered only in a scrap of cloth that she wore with such innocent simplicity as to render her twice as alluring as if she were naked.
D’Kan’s reaction was startling. He sprung from his horse and rushed forward, stopping ten feet away and staring intently. Haltingly, he spoke some kind of challenge in the language Niona had used for magic.
The girl listened attentively, and helpfully corrected his pronunciation when he stumbled over a difficult vowel. That was too much for the Ranger. He dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
“Ser,” Gregor called out, “explain yourself.” The knight had a hand on his sword. So did Cannan, Torme, and Karl. Really, everyone with experience or a lick of sense was uneasy. Nothing spelled danger like the unusual, and nothing spelled unusual like a pretty girl in the middle of a jungle. Only the common farm boys ogled.
“My lord.” D’Kan’s voice trembled in awe. “We are blessed. The noble Lady before you is an elf.”
“Or,” Christopher said, “she just looks like one.” He’d seen magic that could do that. “And talks like one.” He’d seen magic that could do that, too.
“I am indeed an elf,” the girl said. Her voice was sweetly melodic, and Christopher could feel Lalania’s annoyance from twenty feet away. “I did not think it necessary to prove, but if there is anything I can do to ease your mind, please name it.”
“How is it you speak our language?” Christopher challenged. This was becoming a thing. Maybe he should have it printed on a card he could hand out to random unlikely strangers.
“I know many languages,” she answered. “The human tongue is but one of them. It may please you to know I also speak the ulvenman language, if parley is on your mind.”
The twitch in Lalania’s cheek was so pronounced Christopher fancied he could hear it.
“It is, in fact. But I do not understand your position with the ulvenmen, since you wear a chain.”
“I am currently a slave,” she acknowledged. “As the property of the shaman Keisari, I brought him entertainment. As the property of his successor, the chieftain Rohkea, I brought prestige. Now I am yours, given as a gift in the hopes of bringing peace.”
Christopher glanced at Lalania for help. The bard wore a frown that was either suspicion or jealousy, but in either case kept her silence. As the principal he was expected to do the speaking. Stalling for time, he asked a question at random. “Tell me about this new guy.”
“He is a young warrior. Strong, of course, as all rulers must be. But also more curious than the usual of his type. He is . . . manageable, I think.”
No one who viewed this coolly self-possessed woman sitting half naked between an empire of inhuman slavers and several hundred rowdy young men could imagine, even for an instant, that she was a slave. Now she had admitted to being more.
How much more remained to be seen. Christopher’s hand reflexively drifted to his sword. The Skald had spoken of monsters who stood behind thrones and guided kingdoms like shepherds herding sheep to the slaughterhouse. True, she had described them as figures of nightmare, but she had also taught Christopher that seeing was not believing in this world. Magic could put a beautiful face on anything.
“So . . . have we now met the true power in this damned swamp?”
“Not as such,” she said, shrugging delicately. “Ulvenmen are not much swayed by entertainment and prestige. But if you are not intent on wholesale murder, I would like a chance to try.”
A perfect ploy, to offer him the one thing he desired most. A chance at peace. Doubt mastered his tongue, and like any fool, he said exactly what he was thinking.
“How do I know you’re not a hjerne-spica?”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise, while D’Kan exploded in outrage.
“My lord! You cannot be so blind as that!”
“Hush, boy,” Cannan said. Even with all of his attention fixed on the mysterious girl he could not pass up a chance to chastise D’Kan.
“Well,” the girl said, “there are a dozen ways to check, depending on your resources and patience. The easiest would be a Lens of Perfect Acuity. If you happen to have one, I will gladly submit to your inspection.”
He didn’t even know what that was. He had to glance at Lalania, just in case it was one of the spells he hadn’t bothered to study yet. She shook her head sadly at either his ignorance or his poverty.
“Start with the simplest,” Lalania suggested. “For my part, I am already convinced.”
“By what?” Christopher asked.
The bard shrugged. “I can think of a dozen better ways I would seek to lead you into a trap. This is none of them.”
It occurred to him that Lalania might not actually feel that way. If she did think it was a trick, she might well play along until sh
e could figure out how to trap the monster back. She would expect him to have already guessed that, and to trim his sails to the wind, whichever way it might blow. So many roles to play, until the curtains came down and the actors were forced to reveal their true faces. He really missed the Skald’s null-stone now.
All this plotting made his head hurt. He cast the aura-detecting spell, the only non-killing spell he kept in memory other than the gift of tongues. The girl’s aura blazed white with a purity that put Gregor and Torme to shame.
When he reacted to this fact by raising his eyebrows, she spoke a sentence in Celestial.
“Perhaps you should contact your Patron directly for advice.”
A good bluff on her part. He could hardly admit he had no idea how to do that. Maybe he could ask Disa about it later.
“Assume I believe you. Now what?” A safe assumption, he did believe. The sophistication of this ploy seemed wholly unlike the crude play of force the hjerne-spica had displayed so far. If they had enough magic to fake an aura and two holy languages, then they could have just as easily knocked him to the ground and forced a ring onto his finger. Or, more aptly, replaced Lalania with their own doppelganger. Their power had to have limits; he could not doubt every juncture, or he would go mad. Indeed, that would be the ultimate plot: to make him doubt every stroke of good fortune, every potential ally, as merely another stab from the dark. He decided not to fall for that one, which, necessarily, meant embracing this one.
The girl rattled her chain, and returned to the common tongue. “First, you strike this from my body, to show the ulvenmen that you decide who is free and who is not. Then you force Rohkea to swear obeisance to me in your stead. Then you leave. I will deal with the creatures as best I can. Should I fail, either through chaos or death, you will be free to exterminate the tribe.”