Manda and her stepmother speculated between themselves but decided not to ask more deeply as to who, exactly, was who in this boisterous crowd. It didn’t seem to matter to the Frost clansmen. A few awkward minutes after their arrival at Pinkleterry, as Frost called his old keep, daily life resumed its even if rather noisy way.
Several of the young menfolk quickly rounded up a half-grown beef and led it off outside the crumbling curtain walls. When the King’s party next saw it, the beef had been skinned and was basting, turning slowly on a spit over a bed of glowing oak coals that lit up the outer bailey of the ruined old castle.
“Do you rest easy,” Frost advised jovially. “Be a while yet afore the bobby-cue is burnt enough to chaw. Take yer ease away from the smoke, Majesties. Me ‘n’ the boys have herds to bed down and hogs to feed and the ladies, bless ‘em, have cows to milk and baking to attend to, and such.”
He showed them to an open-air pavilion of beautifully cured and tanned leather hides stitched neatly together and supported by slender poles, not far upwind from the open fire pit. There were surprisingly comfortable old chairs and divans to sit upon, brought from the castle, Manda assumed.
One of the women brought the Queen a horn cup of fresh milk, still warm from the udder, for Princess Amelia. Beatrix had doubts about its cleanliness and contents, but the King nodded for her to give it to the tired child.
Amelia had no such qualms, and within ten minutes the little Princess was sound asleep on a soft, clean lambskin on the dirt floor beside her mother’s chair.
“A King ought to travel thus to get to know his people,” observed Eduard to Manda. “These are rough, bluff folk but honest and good-hearted and hospitable to strangers.”
“I recommend you don’t lay your wallet aside when you sleep, and keep your knife handy, too,” advised his oldest child in a low whisper. “You must beware of surface appearances, Lord King.”
“Princess Alix Amanda Trusslo!” cried the King, shocked.
“Well, that’s my advice, free for the taking,” retorted Manda with a fond chuckle. “Take it or leave it, Papa dear! Personally, I plan to keep my blade near to hand and sleep with an eye and both ears open.”
As it happened, they were fed huge quantities of deliriously roasted beef, entertained with fireside tales of birthings and deaths in the back country, of ancient doings and yesterday’s musings.
They all slept—with both eyes closed tight—in complete safety on the second level of the ancient keep, and woke at first light to a hot breakfast of coarse yet very tasty porridge with fresh cream and wild honey, and wild raspberries and cranberries with the dew still upon them.
They said many grateful thank-yous—it was all that Frost and his wife would accept no payment—and after cordial good-byes, they rode on, waving back at the sturdy herdsmen and their waving women and prancing progeny.
Chapter Six
The Grand Blizzardmaker
The bone-weary Historian shifted his aching bottom on the too-small saddle, borrowed along with the tough, lanky gelding from Lord Granger Gantrell’s Morning-side stable.
He wished he’d waited while young Granger had mustered his pikemen and archers. The road was cold, empty, and lonely.
He’d crossed the broad Samber by the ferry and ridden through the quiet, cathedral aisles of Greenlevel Forest. He’d stopped only to order Manda’s Chief Forester, Strongoak, to issue the call to arms to his men in Manda’s name—it was her forest and they were her retain-ers—before pushing on through a light snowfall in the late afternoon, refusing escort again as he had in Morningside.
The walls of Lexor were now a dark loom in the frost-gray late afternoon. No sound or light came from either the city or the villages and farms clustered about the capital’s southwest gate.
The southwest high road that circled the capital walls was completely deserted, he thought. He’d just turned in toward the city gate when a dozen white-fur-clad men in steel-pot helmets leapt from a close-set stand of dark cedars, bearing him and the Morningside horse to the ground with a loud bump and startled double snort from the man and his poor mount.
“Hold up there, stranger!” snarled a guttural voice in his ear.
He felt a sharp prick near his Adam’s apple and caught the dull flash of cold steel.
“Hold on, here! Ye’ve found a home in our army, I’d say!”
“Rellings!” muttered Murdan in a hoarse gasp. “I’m not surprised.”
“Softly, now,” snapped his captor. “Truss the bloody rich man up!”
To a chorus of rough laughter, leather thongs were whipped about his wrists and elbows. His sword and dagger disappeared in a trice.
His horse was set on its feet again and led away into the gloom.
“Rather eat walrus!” said someone leading the animal, laughing.
“Still...beggars can’t be too particular!”
Someone thrust a nasty-tasting gag into the Historian’s open mouth before he could protest or even utter a curse. The Rellings jerked him rudely to his feet.
“Drag him to old GB now,” ordered their leader.
Mutters answered him.
“None of your nasty fun and sassy games, says I! GB won’t take it at all kindly if the prisoner can’t be interro...interrog...ah, questioned.
Hustle, you sons of eared seals! Get back here on the run! Others may be following this one.”
Smelling of rank sweat and rancid fish oil from long days of marching and meals of salted fish, the soldiers hauled the Historian along the perimeter road at a fast clip, laughing when he stumbled, but waiting until he regained his footing on the slippery pavement before moving forward again.
Two hundred yards beyond the tightly barred and heavily fortified west gate, the band turned onto a path that followed the high wall around to the north. The going became more difficult; the snow here was deeper. Murdan had time and breath to glance about.
He glimpsed movements on the top of the city’s outer wall and sensed the presence of Carolna soldiers up there, keeping careful watch. His captors moved carefully and silently, just out of range of longbow shot, obviously fearing a sortie in the dark from behind the silent walls.
The city had been warned of the invasion and had managed to slam shut its gates before the invaders could force an entry, that much was clear.
Lexor was under siege.
Two hundred or so paces farther along, as they slogged through the deep, soft snow, the guard sergeant halted his men with a growl and plowed forward to mutter a password to a snow-covered sentry.
Beyond him, the Historian could just make out groups of heavily armed men in white fur huddling together for warmth about tiny campfires.
The soldiers and their prisoner left the road to enter an open field. A bit farther they climbed a low stone wall and crossed a narrow, wooden bridge over an ice-glazed moat, frozen black by the early cold.
They passed through a double-towered gate guarded by a company of archers, their bows held at the ready.
“Brevory, by the gods’ toes!” swore Murdan to himself.
He recognized the Achievement of the traitor Fredrick of Brevory, long since stripped of his property for kidnapping Murdan’s daughter and grandchildren under the orders of Peter of Gantrell.
“Lively, now!” snapped the Relling sergeant, taking Murdan’s arm as they came to rising steps. “GB’ll be at supper. Speak up and speak truth, stranger. He’d as soon slice your gullet as toss you in a snowbank.”
They marched into the dim entry hall of Brevory Castle’ s square keep, stamping caked snow from their boots and coughing at the smoke that filled the air from cook fires laid on the bare flags.
Here inside it was overly warm, Murdan thought, and he soon began to sweat profusely. His bound hands wouldn’t allow him to loosen his coat buttons or remove his scarf.
“Be the culprit armed?” asked a heavily furred officer, returning the guard sergeant’s salute negligently.
“We’ve not stripped him, but he seems unarmed, sir,” replied the soldier. “We didn’t want to take the time and keep old Coldness waiting. Such were our orders.”
“Fools!” snarled the officer. “Incompetents! Nitwits! He could be an assassin or a magician! He may carry a short, sharp dagger in his boot, ready for all sorts of foul deeds! You should have searched him right down to the shivering buff! Do it at once!”
Cowed and sheepish, the Relling sergeant ordered two of his men to untie the prisoner and remove all his clothing. In a minute Murdan was standing, naked as a plucked turkey, in a widening puddle of ice-cold melt-water. He tried to look as though it were perfectly normal to stand thus.
“He’s unarmed, Sergeant!” called one of the searchers.
“He’s completely disarmed, sir!” reported the sergeant to the officer.
The be-furred Relling officer walked around Murdan three times, slowly, closely inspecting his naked body for hidden weapons. He kicked at Murdan’s discarded clothing, dumping them also in the middle of the spreading puddle.
“Who are you?” he shouted suddenly, leaning into the Historian’s face. Murdan jerked back in surprise. The officer smelled of fire, fish, and sour ale. “Here, you stupid walrus, remove that gag so he can answer!”
“Murdan of Overhall,” replied Murdan as soon as he could speak.
He had, in the maneuvering to remove his clothing, managed to step out of the puddle onto a thick rug nearby.
“Some puffed-up, bottom-kissing, mid-country lordling, eh?”
sneered the officer.
“Well, I do have the title of Royal Historian,” said his prisoner.
“Historian!
What bloody sort of title is that, I ask you? What do you do? Sit in a leafy bower and scribble on scented parchment all day?”
“More or less, yes,” answered Murdan mildly. “Do you mind if I put my clothes back on now?”
“No questions, prisoner!” shouted the other. “Give him something to wear,” he added to the sergeant. “It’s not seemly he should come before Grand Blizzardmaker naked as the day he was born!”
The soldiers gingerly plucked several sopping items from the puddle and handed them to the Historian, who nodded his thanks, wrung as much of the cold water from the clothing as he could, and began to redress.
From beyond a thick door at the other end of the entry way came a shout of loud laughter and louder clapping. The officer gestured for the sergeant to bring Murdan and stalked stiffly through the door into Brevory’s Great Hall.
The scene within was a riot of sounds and smells due to the heat of two vast hearths, one at either end. A hundred Relling warriors were seated at long tables, eating, drinking, and shouting in laughter.
A gaudily clad jester was singing a song of some sort in a nasal, piping voice, accompanied by a badly played flute and a flat-toned drum. The aroma of steaming wet leather and fur was almost overpowering.
At the head table, dressed all in snow white fur, sat an enormously fat man with a sour red face, the color continuing up to the top of his bald head. His beady eyes were almost buried in fleshy cheeks and his ears were crumbled and chewed like those of a catch-as-catch-can wrestler.
“That’s Grand Blizzardmaker,” the officer muttered to Murdan.
“Answer his questions and be respectful, I advise you. He has a sudden and foul temper!”
“Agreed,” replied Murdan.
For several minutes they stood watching and listening—Murdan, the sergeant, and the officer—near the door. Murdan strained to catch the words of the salacious ditty the jester was attempting to project over the noise, but to no avail.
Grand Blizzardmaker suddenly roared and the crowd fell silent.
The jester sang on a moment or two, then let his song fade away, unfinished. The fat Northern War Leader waved him away and the jester and the two musicians fled from the hall by a rear door. Murdan thought they looked rather relieved to get away.
“What’ve you got there, Fraggle!” roared Blizzardmaker. “Bring it forward, sirrah!”
Murdan was pushed down the narrow serving aisle between the long tables. The audience of Northmen stared at him with curiosity and made uncomplimentary remarks about his state of undress. One or two threw bits of bone or fat at him, laughing uproariously when someone scored a hit.
The guards halted in front of the nomad War Chief and waited while Blizzardmaker studied Murdan and gulped a full goblet of Fredrick of Brevory’s best fortified brandy.
“Now, sirrahs! Who is this?”
“Murdan of Overhall, he says he is, sire,” answered Fraggle, bowing deeply.
“Royal Historian to His Majesty Eduard Ten, King of Carolna,”
added Murdan.
“Eduard? Ten? Oh, your lord and master, I presume,” rumbled the obese War Chief thoughtfully. “Historian? What do you do?”
“He scribbles, sire,” said Fraggle.
“Of course he does,” GB jeered. “A lot of people in this kingdom do silly things like that. When I finish my—our—conquest, I intend to outlaw all writing and reading on pain of a long, slow, and painful death!”
He hitched himself forward in his chair and reached for another full goblet, knocking over two others in the process. Murdan couldn’t decide if he was drunk—or just clumsy.
“Where is your Eduard Ten?” GB asked suddenly.
“Last I heard—” Murdan began.
“Last I heard,
sire!”
growled Fraggle.
“Keep out of this, Fraggle!” cried the War Chief of the Rellings. “I can snarl for myself.”
“Aye, War Leader!” said the officer humbly.
“Answer me! I am addressed as sire! Majesty! Lord High War Chief!
And, and, and...stuff like that,” sputtered GB at Murdan.
“The last I heard,
War Chief”
resumed Murdan evenly, “our King was visiting his Queen’s ancestral home in the southeast.”
He decided there was no profit in concealing it. This GB undoubt-edly had other sources of information.
“At Knollwater, then,” grunted GB, betraying that he did, indeed, have other sources. “What actions do you see him taking, when he hears his capital city has fallen?”
“Issue a call to arms. Raise an army from his loyal Achievements everywhere,” said Murdan quickly. “Lead the Royal Army into battle against you.”