Steel And Flame (Book 1) (35 page)

“I’ve never had opportunity to spend a few seasons in
Thoenar’s library,” Dietrik replied airily.  “The only histories taught in my
hometown were related by the minstrels in the dock taverns.  And I was never
overly obsessed with them, like my companion here.”  He gestured to Marik.

“Then why don’t you ask him?”

Dietrik raised his eyebrows to his friend in silent
question.  After clearing his throat, Marik admitted, “Uh…the name sounds
familiar, but I can’t tell you why.  It’s an odd name, though.  It doesn’t
sound Galemaran.”

“It’s a holdover from before the Unification,” Landon
revealed.  “The old names always held deeper meanings than a simple name today,
but I don’t know what Vallan’zul stands for.  The Plain of Vallan’zul is where
Basill Cerella fought his final battle against the last of the Tristan
Warlords.”

“Ah, good old Basill,” Dietrik mused.  “Our great
Unifier of Galemar.  Known as ‘The Peacebringer’.”

Hayden repeated his snort, greater contempt lacing the
sound this time.  “Basill The Overrated is more like it.  How much peace is
there in the kingdom he forged?  All the lords still quip at each other,
straining their leashes, as eager to have at each other as they ever did. 
Fellows like us don’t have much trouble finding employers.  And for a
peacebringer,
he waded through a river of blood.”

“But we
are
a kingdom now, Hayden,” Landon
returned.  “If the warlords had kept at each other, their lands would have been
devoured by Tullainia and Nolier sooner or later.”

“These plains,” Dietrik continued.  “They were where
Basill Cerella brought the last warring lords under one banner?”

“The last of the Tristans at any rate.  The Tristans
only controlled the lower third of today’s kingdom.”  Landon’s voice took on a
somber quality.  He began chanting low.

Three days they tore the plains asunder, neither
yielding to the other.

Sharpest steel and coldest iron, neither toppling
golden wyvern.

Two days next the arrows flew, fast and far, straight
and true.

The standard still rode high, wyverns flying in the
sky.

As the last day came, the wyvern waned.

Grass and stone and fertile earth accepted those brave
men of worth.

The Warlords knelt at egret’s feet, humbled by their
great defeat.

Beneath his banner fair, their battle cries then
filled the air.

“Until our fight is done, we ride, we fight, we fall
as one!”

“What was that from?” Dietrik wanted to know.

“It’s part of
‘The
Ride of Basill Cerella.
’ 
It covers Basill’s battles to unite the warring lords into one kingdom,
according to Bard Wallace Mularian.  I’ve found most of his works tend to over-dramatize
whatever subject they cover.  He prided himself on shunning classically
structured stanzas and on using his own off-timing for the rhythms.  I’m not
especially fond of his prose.  It’s doggerel.  But for some strange reason,
everyone else who wrote prose about Basill is even worse.”

“And what were those wyverns he mentioned?”

“When the Tristans realized Basill was a serious
threat to them, they put aside their differences of the moment to fight against
him united.  That was probably a first in their entire history.  They chose a
golden wyvern for their standard and faced Basill under his silver egrets.”

Dietrik shook his head slowly.  “A battle lasting over
six days.  I scarcely want to so much as ponder that!”

Hayden added, “The wars lasted a lot longer than six
days.  It took Cerella over twenty years to beat the kingdom into submission,
and he destroyed half of it in the process.  Hardly any of the old names
survived.  Only a handful of monuments and no holdings at all date back past
the years of the Unification.”

Marik kicked in, “He was supposed to be a great hand
with the sword from the other tales I remember.  No one he faced in combat
defeated him.  He was supposed to be unmatched.  Basill’s might was awesome to
behold.”

“Maybe so,” Kerwin allowed.  “But coins to pickles
says that part probably
is
overrated.  You can always count on bards to
describe a sparrow as a dragon, and a toothpick as a lance.  He might have been
good, but I’ll only believe the tales when I see him myself.”

“I sort of doubt you’ll ever be able to, this side of
life.”

“Then I guess I’ll never know, will I?”

Marik noticed the officers dispersing and retreating
to their own fires.  He pointed it out to the others.

“Must have agreed without much trouble, then,” Dietrik
decided.  “That’s good.  I’ve seen peer commanders argue to the point of
fighting when the time came for a tactical decision.”

“That’s why you usually have one officer with
authority for the final say along on a Kings job,” Hayden told them.  “He can
override the others and keep the whole mess from bogging down in the mud.”

“I believe that’s the smartest way to handle it, yes.”

“Fraser’s going straight to his bedroll.  Tomorrow’s
probably going to be rough.  I think I’ll follow his lead.”

The others decided to as well.

*        *        *        *        *

“Is that it?” asked Marik when they approached a town
larger than any other since crossing Dornory’s border.

“I think so,” Dietrik replied.  “Yes, it must be. 
Look, there is Baron Dornory’s manor.”

“Looks like a keep instead of a lord’s manor.”

“I gather Dornory’s lands have been unfriendly with
Fielo’s for rather a long time.  It probably did start out as some kind of
fortress if the two families were established before the Unification.”

“That was a hell of a long time ago.  Those walls
don’t look six-hundred years old.”

“The entire place has most likely been rebuilt bit by
bit over the years.  I would be surprised if any of the original building
remained.”

“You think these two barons are descended from the old
Tristan families?” asked Marik.

“Who knows?  In this part of the world, with family
houses as old as theirs, I’d say it’s possible.”

“I suppose we have to go through town without
stopping.  I need to find new leather laces.”

“Fraser doesn’t seem to want to stop, no.  We can find
them later.”

“If we don’t get waylaid by the grand inquisitors
again, I suppose we can.  The others should be here by now at any rate.”

The bet the friends had joined in with Kerwin ended
with no clear winner, since the next morning the sergeants announced the force
would be splitting into halves.  Units One and Two would follow Vineyard Road
south and gather what intelligence they could on Fielo’s men while Three and
Four would take the ferry down the Spine River.  It was two days east to the
Spine and two days west to the Vineyard Road, but the ferry would spend days on
the river, followed by the trek overland.  All in all, Units One and Two should
have arrived in advance of them by a day.

Upon entering Dornory’s lands, they had found the
nearest guard station to inquire after road conditions and possible hostile
forces against the barony.  Marik received his first real taste since
Tattersfield of the esteem in which most of the world held mercenaries.

Despite the fact the Crimson Kings were fighting for Dornory,
the lord’s men held no love at all for the hire-swords.  Though they were
outnumbered in the event of a serious conflict, they wished the Kings
elsewhere.  Their fields died of thirst, yet they regarded the outsiders as
intruders, parasites feeding from their trough.

It was mildly understandable given the sort who
usually became mercenaries, but being regarded as the lowest of the low by
people he had never before met grated on Marik.  The prejudices from
Tattersfield seemed to follow him in spite of the reputation the band had
earned over the course of its history.

The attitude persisted as they progressed to Dornory’s
residence in Dornshold.  Low regard from all in Dornory’s service greeted them,
along with ill looks and mutterings from the common folk.  Marik thought back,
realizing why this seemed so odd to him.  The towns close to Kingshome were
accustomed to the mercenaries, familiar with the grade of man they employed. 
They might not be saints yet they usually caused no unnecessary trouble.  Once
on the road they had camped, minimizing their contact with residents in the
towns they passed.

If they had stopped anywhere along the way, they might
have been met with the same scorn most people seemed to hold for free fighting
men.  It almost struck him as funny when he considered it.  Men traveling alone
or in small groups like the one in which he had arrived at Kingshome were
usually welcomed and treated as any other traveler, while larger groups of
exactly the same men were called cutthroats, coin hounds and scum.  It bore
thinking about, this oddity of human nature.

He mentioned it to Dietrik as they passed through the
town, who replied, “Ah, that is normal.  Especially among the soldiers.  Most
tend to hold their position as honorable and patriotic and view anyone who
profits from the experience in low standing.”

“But they get paid their wages, same as us!”

“I never said they made sense.  And I would avoid
mentioning that to them.  You would only start a fight.”

“I’m about ready to start one anyway.”

At the gate, they presented themselves to the guards. 
They in turn ran to fetch Dornory who arrived dressed in riding leathers and a
fine tunic bearing his heraldry.  He exchanged quick words with Sergeants
Fraser and Giles before ushering them in.  Marik found the courtyard smaller
than he would have thought.

Long, narrow stables were pushed against the wall to
the right.  The main structure with its defendable bastions rose ahead.  It
might be a baron’s residence, but he had trouble looking at that cold stone
exterior and imagining any of the grand luxuries the nobles were accustomed to
enjoying.

They were sent to a stable that stood empty.  The
stalls were clean and had obviously been unused for a long time.

“Listen up,” Fraser shouted, his normal tone when
addressing the men as a whole.  “We’re bunking down in here, four men to a
stall.  The others haven’t arrived yet.  Until they do it’s free time.  You’re
restricted to this building and the yard outside.  We take meals in the main
hall when the meal bell sounds.  Stay out at all other times.  Don’t go to town
without asking.  Don’t screw up!”

Grumbling surged through the two units, mostly from
the Third who disliked Fraser telling them what to do, but Giles stood beside
him so they accepted it.  The other complaints addressed the restrictions.

“Where’s the other half of the squad?”  Fraser paid no
attention so Marik could as well have been asking the rough hewn beam next to
him.

“Ran into trouble, in all likelihood,” an answer
came.  He turned to see that it was not the beam responding, but Landon, who
had secured the nearest stall and claimed the far wall for his bedroll.

“How much trouble?”

“That’s the question of the day, isn’t it?” Kerwin
opined.  “You and Dietrik going take the other half or are we going to have to
share with the Third’s dog meat?”

“As long as I’m not by the open side here,” Dietrik
responded, entering the stall.

“Then you’d better hurry, hadn’t you?”

*        *        *        *        *

Evening arrived, though the other half of the squad
failed to.  Marik took his sword to the courtyard for a practice session,
seeing no reason to slacken his training now he had achieved his first goal of
qualifying for the band. 
When you achieve one goal, you set the next.
 
His father had been fond of saying that.

Sennet had taught him an interesting training
technique one day when Marik had returned to the armory to ask the weapons
master if he remembered Rail.  Thoughts of the tall man prominent while he
began the training in the dimming light, Marik suddenly recalled Sennet had
never answered the original question.  A clever segue into this technique had
completely distracted the younger man.  Marik resolved to track Sennet down
when he returned to Kingshome and see the inquiry through.

He concentrated hard.  It took several minutes, but
eventually he was able to visualize four enemies around him, one on each
cardinal point of the compass.  Each bore a different weapon and all charged
him at once.  Through the visualizations and his physical movements he
successfully killed the first one, blocked the second, but the third and fourth
enemies found their way through his defenses to cut him down.  Marik took his
beginning stance, looking for a new pattern to defend with while pushing the
limits of his combat ability.

The vital key for the technique lay in remembering the
weight of real weapons and equipment.  That, and keeping the movements of the
imaginary foes simple.  After endless practice for eightdays, Marik had
discovered he could visualize three different foes simultaneously without
sacrificing the realism.  Then, the longer he exercised mentally, the greater
his imagination’s capabilities became, increasing the number of opponents to
four while sharpening their movement definition.