War in Tethyr (19 page)

"Would you mind," Zaranda asked mildly, "telling me what this is all about?"

Stillhawk, hands tied behind him, stood on a three-legged stool with a noose about his neck and the rope's far end tied to a thick limb of an oak. Farlorn was perched on a nail keg, similarly bound and attached to the tree. The mercenaries, also tied, sat in a clump across the common from the hetman's house, guarded by village volunteers armed with spears taken from vanquished bandits. Most heavily watched of all, and garlanded with sufficient rope to rig a Waterdhavian caravel, stood Shield of Innocence, glaring at his captors with eyes that glowed coal-red in the torchlight.

"Whatever you do, Zaranda," the half-elf said cheerfully, "think twice about accepting an invitation to dine with these folk. Such terrific bores: we go to eat with them, and here they've tied us up all evening."

Osbard opened his mouth but couldn't seem to quite find words.

"It's about your treason," offered Moofar, an elder who stood at his side. He was a wizened old bird with a wen on his beaklike nose. "Specifically and to wit, your treating with our enemies, the people of Pansemil."

"By your own admission," Osbard said, emboldened, "you were negotiating to teach them how to attack and overrun us."

"I admitted no such thing," Zaranda replied, "because I did no such thing. I offered to teach them to defend themselves, even as we're teaching you."

"And they mean to use those skills to assail us," said Storric, exploring a broad nostril with his forefinger. "They envy how cultured we are."

"They don't want to attack you. And what if they do? You're strong enough to send them packing, with the knowledge and weapons we've provided."

"It's true, Father!" exclaimed Fiora, who had taken to passing time with Farlorn when she wasn't training. "They'd stand no chance against us."

The hetman blushed and scowled furiously. "Hush, Daughter. Don't speak of matters you know nothing of."

Zaranda laughed. The villagers gaped at her. "I see. Osbard, you sly old kobold, you-you were planning to use our teachings to invade them, weren't you?"

He sputtered and dropped his eyes. "We did, and what of it?" demanded Storric.

"Why should you attack Pansemil?"

"Because," the miller began. He stopped, frowned. "Because-"

"Because they're different!" someone sang out.

"Because they're deviants!" Moofar brayed in a spray of spittle. "Sister marries brother, and they frequently enjoy carnal knowledge of their barnyard animals!"

"Odd," Zaranda said. "They hold much the same beliefs about you."

The Tweyarites squalled with communal outrage: "See! The wretches! Such insolence is not to be borne!"

"I must point out," Zaranda added, "that I've seen fully as much-or as little-evidence of such activities in both places."

Moofar turned white as bleached linen. "Intolerable insult!" he screeched. "Burn her!"

Osbard started forward with the torch, then turned and thrust it into Storric's hands. "You do it."

"Why me?" the miller asked, and promptly handed the torch to Moofar.

In his eagerness to pass the torch back to Osbard, Moofar lost control and had to juggle it briefly to keep it from falling to the ground. "You! You take it. You're the hetman!"

Bellowing elephantine rage, Shield of Innocence began to strain against his bonds. Veins stood out on forehead and stump-thick neck. Ropes parted with a twang. He lunged and with clawed hands caught scrawny Moofar around the neck and hoisted the elder so high that sandaled feet kicked a foot off the ground.

Village volunteers raised the crossbows they had confiscated from Balmeric's mercenaries. Turning purple, Moofar gestured frantically at them to hold their fire.

"Hold!"
Zaranda shouted.

Everybody froze and stared at her. "Shield, it's all right. Put him down."

The great orc looked puzzled but obeyed. Stepping back he folded his arms across his chest. Moofar teetered about, feeling his neck.

"Shoot him," he croaked. "Shoot him, shoot him, shoothimshoothimshoothim-"

"No, no, no," Zaranda said firmly. "Nobody's shooting anybody. Now behave yourselves, and listen to me, before I start turning people into newts."

"Um," Osbard said, eyes starting from his head. "You said-newts?"

"Newts," she repeated firmly.

"She's a sorceress!" gasped Storric. "How could you forget such a thing, Osbard? And you call yourself a hetman?"

"
I
forgot? I? I didn't hear you reminding anyone!"

"If you don't all pipe down and let me have my say," Zaranda said sweetly, "you'll find out why newts so seldom interrupt conversations."

Zaranda could no more turn anyone into a newt than she could turn the hetman's house to solid gold. Under the circumstances, she didn't feel constrained to point that out.

Still fingering his neck, Moofar glared accusingly at her. "You allowed yourself to be taken."

"Of course I did," Zaranda said. "You were starting to get notions. I saw you needed a little talking to, and I wanted to be sure I had your undivided attention."

She raised her head and looked around the common. The mob drew back as if her gaze were hot to the touch.

"You should be ashamed of yourselves," she told them. "We come to your village to teach you to protect yourselves, to throw off the yoke the bandits and the tax collectors of the self-proclaimed nobles have laid upon you all. Yes, we did so for pay; but what we've had from you so far is little more than what spoils you recovered from the bandits-which you would never have gotten without our help. Thanks to us, you need never again cower in your houses at first sight of riders approaching. And this is how you treat us."

The villagers looked suitably contrite. Zaranda was just warming up.

"But that's not truly what you have to be ashamed of. Oh, no. With your newfound abilities, your new sense of power, all you could think of doing was marching down the river road and afflicting your neighbors with the same depredations you've been suffering at bandit hands all these years. Is that worthy?

"We did not come here to help you conquer. We came to help you become unconquerable. Now, do you let us get on to the next stage, or do you throw away everything we've all worked for, here and now?"

Silence ruled. "It, ah," Osbard said. "Well, it
could
be we've acted a little hastily."

"Could be and is. Now-look at me, Osbard!"

The village chief raised his head as if an anvil were tied to his neck. "Where is my apprentice, Chenowyn?"

"The little bi-the spitfire called up a blight of invisible things that stung like hornets," Osbard said. "We tied her in a sack and threw her in a woodshed."

"Good for her. Now, let her go. And if she's harmed, someone I might name will spend the rest of his days wriggling on his belly in river muck and catching water striders with his tongue."

Osbard turned to the village troops. "Are you deaf? Release the girl at once!"

"And while you're at it," Zaranda said, "best let the rest of us free. Me in particular, the way you folk wave torches around."

The villagers hustled to release the captives. Looking entirely abashed, Ernico clambered up on the pile of firewood to cut free Zaranda's hands.

"We never meant to hurt you," he muttered.

"I'm sure that would have been a great comfort had you got the bonfire lit."

She stepped down the pile of wood as regally as a queen descending from her throne. Chenowyn came hurtling out of the darkness, red hair streaming, and caught Zaranda in a fearful embrace.

"Oh, Zaranda!" she sobbed. "I was so scared. You wouldn't really have let them burn you, would you?"

Zaranda hugged her and kissed her head. Then she turned and gestured with one hand.

The torch, which Moofar had somehow managed to hang on to through thick and thin, went out. A beat, and then the bonfire blazed up, untenanted, flames reaching high as the old oak's top.

"No," she said.

"So it would appear," said Zaranda, sitting cross-legged in the oak tree's shade. She held up the papyrus the little village girl had found nailed to a sweet-chestnut tree on the Sulduskoon's bank, four furlongs up the broad, slow river. It was a benchmark of the burgeoning Star Protective Company's success in the region that a child so young could venture so far from the village. Although in truth, had the girl not made so momentous a discovery, she likely would have faced a spanking for straying such a distance without the escort of a brother or sister old enough to wield a spear-which would have been purchased with wealth gained from the revived trade among villages in the limited area under Star's sway.

It was a sleepy-warm noonday in the midst of the month Eleasias, commonly called Highsun. In fact, most of the two-score trainees under instruction at the moment would already be bedded down under shade for their midday naps had the little girl not run into the village shouting and waving her discovery.

Siestas were not a luxury Zaranda Star could indulge in. Midday break was time for her, between bites of lunch, to continue instructing Chenowyn. And likewise Shield of Innocence, who had become her apprentice in matters military.

She finished chewing a mouthful of apple and read aloud: " 'Be It Known By These Presents-' This is really spelled abominably, but I'll spare you the details. 'Known by These Presents that in the interests of maintaining the Safety and Welfare of the Nation of Tethyr, acting under the authority of the city council of Zazesspur, Baron Lutwill, Ruler of These Lands, Decrees that the Taxes owed by the Inhabitants of these same Lands, and due one Week hence, shall herewith be Doubled.'"

The villagers growled. Farlorn's look was a superior smirk, Stillhawk's stern, and Shield sat beside Zaranda like a stone statue-which was approximately how the three would've greeted news that Zaranda had been made Queen of Faerun, or that a rogue planet was about to smack into Toril. Chen lurked on the outskirts, sitting in the shade of an eave and drawing magic symbols in the dust with a twig, waiting for all this boring military talk to be done so her time could begin.

Zaranda lowered the parchment. "It goes on in that vein, if anybody need hear more."

"What authority has the Zazesspurian city council?" burst out Janafar, a young woman trainee from the village of Dunod two leagues inland from Tweyar. Seated near Zaranda, she was small of stature and trim, but broad shouldered and muscular withal, rather like a compressed version of Zaranda herself. Her honey-colored hair was restrained by a red bandanna. She was quickly becoming adept with spear and short sword, and displayed a positive genius for small-unit tactics.

"The same as anyone," Zaranda said. "All 'authority' consists in the expectation that, if they order you to bend your necks, you'll bend them."

" 'The Nation of Tethyr,' " quoted Byador, shaking his dark, shaggy head. He hailed from Masamont, biggest and most prosperous settlement in the vicinity. His long frame was already rangily powerful, though still gawky with adolescence. He had grown up shooting a short bow, and under Stillhawk's tutelage was learning to handle-and hit targets with-a powerful longbow brought from the forest of Tethir by a Star-escorted caravan. "It's a long time since we heard that."

"I think we're getting a glimpse at the pretensions of Baron Hardisty," Zaranda said, "not to mention his intentions. Now, what can you tell me of this Baron Lutwill?"

Byador snarled and spat. "Loot-well, we call him. He's a bandit and nothing more. But a powerful one, with a hundred men-at-arms to serve him, secure behind stone walls in a castle whose keep throws its foul shadow across Masamont."

Zaranda looked around at her audience, which now included most of her trainees, as well as no few villagers drawn from their naps by the commotion. Her current class, which included Ernico, Fiora, Rudigar, and Bord from Tweyar, comprised not recruits but cadre, the likeliest youths from the villages that had made compact with Star, who would serve as nuclei for other self-defense forces as the protective company began to expand across Tethyr. While it was not part of their regular curriculum, more and more of them had begun to forgo their own siestas to sit in on the lessons Zaranda gave Shield.

The orog was frankly stupid. Yet Zaranda found him a near-ideal student because he persisted doggedly until he had each and every bit of learning cemented firmly in his mind, and he had no scruples about asking questions when he did not understand-and continuing to question
until
he understood. Routinely, he showed up Zaranda's young human pupils, much more mentally agile though they were, by dint of ironclad study habits and an innate sense that enabled him to grasp the core wisdom of Zaranda's teaching. He set such a magnificent example that Zaranda suspected the siesta sessions had become the most effective part of the whole training program.

"What will you do about this, then?" she asked, waving the parchment.

Trainees and villagers passed a glance around. Zaranda saw shoulders slump, as if her audience were deflating en masse.

"Pay, I guess," Ernico said. "We always have before."

"Why?" Fiora asked, cheeks flushing with anger. "What are we training for, if not to stand up to thieves?"

"Not to get ourselves massacred by trained soldiers with shields, helmets, and mail hauberks," said Byador. "Not to mention men with crossbows shooting us down from the castle walls."

Standing on the sidelines, Balmeric emitted a gravel-in-a-pail chuckle. "Wise lad," he said. "You'd shatter like a glass jug thrown against a wall, pitting yourselves against regulars."

Zaranda cast him a dangerous look. Janafar leapt to her feet. "You can bend your necks to councils, keeps, and crossbows if you like!" she declared. "I at least want to see this castle before I give up all I've worked for."

"Now you're thinking," Zaranda said, nodding serenely. "When in doubt, reconnoiter. When you don't think there's doubt, reconnoiter anyway-you save a lot of unpleasant surprises that way."

She stood up, dusting off the seat of her trousers, and looked to the youth from Masamont. "Now, did I hear you say…
crossbows?"