The RuneLords (52 page)

It seemed a shame to Orden. A rich tradition had been lost. In some small way, the nation became poorer for it.

The aeries were badly kept. Stone watering troughs lay empty. Gnawed bones lay about, leftovers from past feedings.

Over the years, Orden had sent messages north by graak, and some graaks had stopped here. No one had ever cleaned the dung from the floors; now lime liberally covered the stone. The stairs leading to the aerie were age-worn. Vines of morning glory climbed from cracks in the rock, their blue flower petals open now to the evening sun.

But Orden found that one could see well from the landing field on the aerie--even down to the roofs of the Dedicates' Keep and Duke's Keep. So he secreted six archers with steel bows there, ordering them to hide and watch, shooting only if Raj Ahten's forces made it through the gates. He added a single swordsman to guard the steps.

In the semidarkness, he waited for his body servant to light a lantern; then by its light he toured the Dedicates' Keep. From the outside, it looked to be an austere, grim keep--a round tower that could hold a thousand Dedicates. For windows, it had a handful of small slits in the stone. Orden imagined few Dedicates ever stood in the full sunlight once they gave endowments. To become a Dedicate for the Duke, one virtually had to consign one's self to a prison.

But the interior of the Dedicates' Keep was surprisingly plush. The walls were painted white, with images of blue roses or daisies stenciled along the small windowsills. Each level in the tower had its own common room, with beds arranged around the outer walls, and a fine hearth in the center. Such rooms were devised so that at night a pair of caretakers might watch over a hundred or more Dedicates at once. The rooms each had chessboards, comfortable chairs to sit in, fresh rushes mingled with lavender on the floors.

King Orden worried for his son. He still had no word of Gaborn's whereabouts. Had the boy been killed? Did he sit in Sylvarresta's keep, a Dedicate to Raj Ahten? Perhaps he rested beside a warm fire, weak as a kitten, playing chess. One could only hope. One had to hope. But Orden's hope was waning.

The Duke's Keep now cloistered less than a hundred Dedicates, all in a single room. Orden calculated that it should have held at least five hundred to serve the fortress defenders. But at least four hundred Dedicates had died in the fight to win back the castle.

The battle for freedom claimed that many victims.

Fortifications for the tower concentrated at its lowest level. With great thoroughness, Orden inspected these defenses, for he hoped to fight Raj Ahten here, where he might have some advantage.

A portcullis opened to a guardroom where a dozen pikemen might keep watch. The gears to the portcullis were kept some eighty feet back, in a separate room. A pair of guards could be housed in the gear room.

Off from the gear room lay an armory and the Duke's treasury. The armory was well stocked with arrows and ballista bolts--more than Orden would have imagined. The arrows were bound into bundles of a hundred. A quick guess told Orden that at least two hundred thousand arrows lay there, most newly fletched with gray goose feathers--as if the Duke had been vigorously preparing for the end of the world.

The Duke's armor and that of his horse were gone, taken by one of Raj Ahten's Invincibles, no doubt. Still, Raj Ahten's men had left a princely long sword--fine Heredon spring steel, honed to a razor's edge.

Orden studied its hilt. The name of Stroehorn was branded into it, an artificer of exceptional skill some fifty years past--a veritable Maker.

The Indhopalese, who'd never worn anything but leather mail in battle till fifty years ago, didn't value Northern armor or swords. In the desert, heavy ring mail or plate was too hot to fight in. So men there had worn lacquered leather armor, and instead of the heavy blades of the North fought with curved scimitars. The curved blades maximized the cutting edge of the sword, so that a single strike could slice through a man's body. Against lightly armored opponents, curved scimitars proved to be elegant, graceful weapons. But when a scimitar's edge met ring mail, the blade quickly dulled or bent.

For fighting a man in ring, one needed a thick Northern blade, with its straight edge and hard steel. These could pierce armor with a lunge, or could chop through small rings.

Seeing this fine sword abandoned here in the armory gave Orden hope. Raj Ahten marshaled a great number of troops. He might terrify, but he fought in an unfamiliar clime, with inferior Southern steel. How would his desert troops fare come winter?

Eight hundred years ago, the kings of Indhopal had sent gifts of spices, ointments, and silk, along with pet peacocks and tigers, to Orden's ancestors, in hopes of opening trade. In return, Orden's forefather sent back a gift of horses, gold, fine furs, and wool, along with Northern spices.

The kings of Indhopal spurned the gifts. The furs and wool seemed overburdensome in warm lands, the spices unsatisfactory. The horses--which they thought of inferior quality--were fit only for use as draft animals.

But they loved the gold, enough to send the caravans.

So Orden had to wonder how the Indhopalese would acclimate. Perhaps they'd not learn the value of wool or fur until half of them froze. Perhaps they'd spurn mounts bred for Northern mountains, just as they spurned Northern steel.

Last of all, Orden inspected the treasury. The Duke had stocked it with a surprising amount of gold blanks, used for striking coin. King Orden studied the stamps--which bore Sylvarresta's image on the front and the Seven Stones on the back.

It seemed odd that the Duke should be striking coins. A balancing scale sat on the floor, and Orden took a golden coin from his own pocket, placed it on one pan of the scale, then placed the Duke's blank on the other pan of the scale.

The blank was light. Whether it had been shaved too small, or whether it was light because the gold had been mixed with zinc or tin, King Orden could not tell.

But it was clear that the Duke of Longmont had been a counterfeiter before he'd turned traitor. "Scurvy-infested dog!" Orden muttered.

"Milord?" one of his captains asked.

"Go cut down the carcass of the Duke of Longmont. Cut through the intestines that keep him hanging from the keep, then fling the corpse into the moat."

"Milord?" the captain asked. It seemed a singularly disrespectful way to treat the dead.

"Do it!" Orden said. "The man doesn't deserve another night of royal hospitality."

"Yes, milord," the captain answered, rushing off.

After touring the Dedicates' Keep, Orden decided not to tour the others in the castle. The manors for the Duke and his lords seemed paltry. Orden saw no sense in guarding them.

Besides, it would be better to concentrate his men on the outer walls. Longmont was so narrow that an archer on the east wall could shoot the hundred yards to the west wall, which meant that if enemy soldiers managed to breach one wall, numerous defenders could still fire on them.

Fifteen hundred men, maybe sixteen hundred. That was all King Orden had at the moment. He'd sent messengers to Groverman and Dreis, hoped for reinforcements. Perhaps Borenson would return with most of his army intact.

But they would have to get here soon. Reinforcements that did not arrive before dawn would not get in.

King Orden had finished inspecting the Dedicates' Keep when Captain Cedrick Tempest, the Duchess's aide-de-camp, came to meet him, followed by a Days, a plump woman of middle age. Captain Tempest was a stout man, with thick curly brown hair cropped close. He carried his helm in hand, a sign of respect, but did not bow on meeting King Orden. For a flicker of a second, Orden felt slighted, then realized this man was acting lord of the castle. As such, by right, he did not need to bow.

Instead, Tempest reached out to shake hands at the wrist, as an equal. "Your Highness, we are happy to receive you, and offer you and your men such comforts as we can. But I fear there may be a battle soon. Raj Ahten has an army advancing from the south."

"I know," Orden said. "We'd like to fight beside you. I've sent to Groverman and Dreis, begging reinforcements, but I suspect they'll hesitate to honor a request from a foreign king."

"The Duchess also sent for reinforcements," Tempest said. "We should soon see what it gains us."

"Thank you," Orden said, watching the man's eyes.

This was the worst news. If no help had come yet, it meant Dreis and Groverman, on hearing of the invasion, had chosen to fortify their own positions rather than send aid. One could hardly blame them.

After a moment Orden asked, "May we speak privately?"

Tempest nodded discreetly; together they walked into the Duke's Keep, climbed a flight of stairs. Orden's men waited outside. Only Orden's and his son's Days followed him into the room, with the matronly Days who followed Tempest at their heels.

In the great room, blood still smeared the floors from a fierce battle. Wood chairs lay in splinters; a gore-covered axe lay on the floor, along with a pair of long daggers.

The Duchess's battle had come down to knife work in here.

A pair of red hounds looked up curiously as Orden entered, thumped their tails in greeting. They'd been sleeping before the cold fireplace.

King Orden got a torch, lit it, placed it under the kindling in the fireplace. Then he took a seat by the fire, ten feet from Tempest's own chair.

Tempest looked to be in his early fifties, though it was impossible to tell. A man with endowments of metabolism would age fast. But Mendellas could often guess a warrior's age by looking in his eyes. Even with endowments of metabolism, some men maintained a look of innocence, a look of inexperience. A man's eyes stayed young--like his teeth and his mind and his heart--though his skin might become spotted and wrinkled.

But Tempest's brown eyes looked full of pain, battle, and fatigue. Orden could tell nothing by gazing into them. Tempest's eyes looked a thousand years old.

The King decided to lead to his subject tactfully. "I'm curious to know what happened. Raj Ahten obviously garrisoned soldiers here--good force soldiers. How is it that the Duchess defeated them?"

Captain Tempest said, "I--must base my report on hearsay. I myself was forced to give an endowment, and so was housed in the Dedicates' Keep when the revolt took place."

"You say Raj Ahten 'forced' you to give an endowment?"

A strange look came over Captain Tempest, one of revulsion mingled with worship. "You must understand, I gave myself willingly. When Raj Ahten asked for my endowment, his words seemed to be daggers that pierced me. When I looked at his face, it seemed more beautiful than a rose or the sun rising over a mountain lake. He seemed beauty itself; everything else I've ever thought noble or beautiful seemed a dim forgery.

"But after I gave the endowment, after his men dragged my body down to the Dedicates' Keep, I felt as if I awoke from a dream. I realized what I'd lost, how I'd been used."

"I see," King Orden said, wondering idly how many endowments of glamour and Voice Raj Ahten had, that he could gain such power over men. "So, what happened here? How did the Duchess manage this coup?"

"I am not certain, for I was weak as a pup in the Dedicates' Keep, and could not stay awake. I heard only snatches of reports.

"As I understand, the Duke apparently got paid to let Raj Ahten pass through the Dunnwood. But he dared not let his wife know of the payment, and so kept it hidden in his private apartments, not daring to show it.

"After his death, when the Duchess realized that he must have been paid for his treason, she searched his private apartments and found some hundred forcibles."

"I see," King Orden said. "So she used the forcibles to furnish some assassins?"

"Yes," Tempest answered. "When Raj Ahten entered the city, not all our guard was in the keep. Four young soldiers were in the wilds, investigating a report that a woodcutter in Greenton had spotted a reaver--"

"Have you had many reports of reavers hereabouts?" Orden asked, for this was important news.

"No, but last spring we tracked a trio in the Dunnwood."

Orden thought. "How large were the tracks?"

"Twenty to thirty inches long."

"Four-toed, or three-toed tracks?"

"Two were three-toed. The largest was four-toed."

Orden licked his lips, found his mouth suddenly dry. "You knew what that meant, didn't you?"

"Yes, Your Highness," Captain Tempest said. "We had a mating triad."

"And you did not kill them? You didn't find them?"

"Sylvarresta knew of it. He sent hunters after them."

No doubt Sylvarresta would have told Orden of the reavers. We might have hunted more than boars this year, Orden thought. Yet this news bothered him, for he'd heard other troubling reports of reavers moving through the mountains along the borders of Mystarria--war bands of nines and eighty-ones. Not since his great-grandfather's day had he heard so many reports. And on his journey north, while traveling through Fleeds, Queen Herin the Red mentioned problems with reavers killing her horses. But Orden had not expected the depredations to extend so far north.

"So," Orden said, "you had soldiers on patrol when Raj Ahten took possession..."

"Right. They stayed out of the city, until Raj Ahten left. They saw the Duke hanged, so they sent a note to the Duchess, asking her orders. She sent her facilitator into town with the forcibles, and the soldiers took endowments from whomever would grant them, until they had enough to attack."

"So they performed an escalade?" Orden asked.

"Hardly. They entered casually enough, after Raj Ahten left. They played at being candlemakers and weavers, bringing in goods to display to the Duchess. But they hid daggers beneath the candles, and chain mail beneath folds of cloth.

"Raj Ahten had only two hundred loyal soldiers here, and those young lads--well, they handled the situation."

"Where are they now?"

"Dead," Captain Tempest said, "all dead. They broke into the Dedicates' Keep and killed half a dozen vectors. That's when the rest of us joined the fray. It wasn't easy."