Knights Magi (Book 4) (58 page)

Rondal recalled that when she had first met him, she had almost shot him.

“So why don’t you give me a tour?” Tyndal asked, as her welcome ended.  “As I’m going to be staying here, getting to know my hostess is demanded by the laws of hospitality.”

“And I would be remiss in my duties as a lady if I failed to do so,” Arsella said, beaming.  She slid her arm into Tyndal’s offered elbow, and without a word or even a look back at him, she left the yard and went inside.

“Orders, Captain?” asked a familiar voice, breaking Rondal’s brooding.  He looked up . . . and into the face of his squadmate Walven.

“Walven!” he burst.  “What are you doing here?”

“I told you I was headed for the front,” he reminded Rondal after they had embraced.  “I got in with a mercenary outfit just in time for it to be hired permanently by the Crown.  I’m a corporal in the Third Royal Commando, now.”

“Third Royal Commando?” Rondal asked, confused.

“It’s supposed to be an elite unit – all the Royal Commando units are.  But right now it’s mostly just the best of the mercenaries coming upriver to Barrowbell.  The first two are deployed in other advanced regions near the front.  Having completed the Mysteries got me in.  One nasty battle in Gilmora got me promoted.”

“But . . . the cavalry?” asked Rondal, skeptically.  “You always struck me as more of an infantryman.  Or artillery.”

“Versatility,” chuckled his squadmate.  “That’s supposed to be our watch-word.  Part ranger, part knight, part soldier, part spy.  And the Commando is a mobile unit, in theory, so that’s why I’m mounted.  I hadn’t planned that, but they had a spot available for a corporal and I wasn’t going to turn down the pay increase just because my arse hurts when I ride.”

“I don’t blame you,” nodded Rondal.  “You know, I don’t even know if I’m being paid,” he grumbled.

“So what is the local situation like?” Walven asked, returning to business.  “I like this place – remote.  If we hadn’t known where to turn, we might have missed it.”

“Not with Sir Haystack with you,” Rondal reminded him.  “But that is one reason I like it.  You have that long stretch of nowhere to get through before you get here.  And now that the entire region is depopulated, we can let it grow up over the road, if we need to conceal ourselves.”

“Which we will,” Walven agreed.  “There are apparently one or two manors and castles that have been turned into cantonments in this barony.  We’re to find them and scout them.  And that patrol this morning told us we’re close.”

“We set out tomorrow,” Rondal promised.  He glanced suddenly up at the tower above, where he heard the sound of Lady Arsella laughing – too hard – at something witty Sir Tyndal had said.  “And let’s hope there are some goblins around.  I feel like stabbing someone.”

*                            *                            *

The next morning Rondal awoke before dawn and detailed a five-man squad to accompany him, including Walven and the rangers.  Lady Arsella, who had stayed up late into the evening around the fire in the great hall, meeting and laughing and drinking with the new arrivals – especially Sir Tyndal.  He found her barely awake, stirring porridge in the kitchen around dawn, and she was able to provide him vague directions to Ketral Manor, only eight miles away.  Farune was just to the north of that, she said, but she wasn’t certain.

Rondal had his maps from the castellan’s room, so he wasn’t operating blindly – but he had anticipated Arsella being more help than she was.  She didn’t know much at all about either place, or what he could expect. 

Worse, she treated him cordially, but distantly.  The warmth he’d come to expect from her wasn’t there, and she barely paid attention to him.   She did ask him to keep an eye open for bacon and lard while he was scouting, as they had not been included in the inventory in the wagons.

He gruffly took his leave with Walven and the men.  He didn’t say when he would be back.  She did not ask.

He felt better as soon as they passed beyond Maramor Village and into open country.  They rode along the deserted road, almost daring an attack.  Frequent stops to scry, particularly at crossroads, told Rondal there was little chance of that, but he almost hoped he’d overlooked a goblin.

The countryside was ruined.  The cottages were either burnt or broken or both.  Unlike the round huts the peasants in Sevendor lived in, these were more rough poled sheds of wattle-and-daub.  It didn’t take much to break the walls.  None were occupied.  It looked as if a giant burglar had broken them open, searching for coins.

The fields were unplowed since last season, and the crops either growing wild or absent.  As they came to a hamlet four miles from Maramor, they saw one of the gurvani’s grisly tributes, a man and a woman flayed alive and displayed in an obscene position in the ruins of the town’s shrine.  Swearing angrily, Rondal used the power of his witchstone to incinerate the unfortunate couple’s corpses, giving their deaths at least a modicum of dignity.

“Ishi’s tits, that’s awful,” Walven swore.

“They do that constantly,” Rondal complained.  “Just to taunt and terrify us.  We do it back to them, too – after battle we spike their heads.  But we usually burn the bodies.  Not . . . entertain ourselves with them.”

“This Goblin King is a nasty fellow,” Walven said, appraisingly.

“He’s not a goblin king,” Rondal said, shaking his head.  “He’s an unearthly undead magical construct.  He’s not even alive.  All he wants is us dead.  And things like this,” he said, gesturing to the smoldering corpses now mercifully at rest, “
delight
him.”

“How old were they?” Walven asked, looking away.

“You can’t really tell, when you find them in that state, but – oh.”  Rondal swallowed.  “ Uh, probably six, seven weeks?”

“A while, then,” Walven nodded.  “Good.”

They turned left at the next crossroad, a ghost village called Ricoy on the maps, and proceeded down a narrow dirt track that led through a swampy area before spreading out into what once had been rich cotton fields.  By noon they were riding through Ketral Village, which had once enjoyed a sophisticated prosperity due to its use as a market town.  Now the houses lining the high street were empty or gutted, the smell of ashes in the air. 

Rondal stopped to scry while the rangers scouted ahead, and when he pronounced the manor clear, they rode cautiously through its twisted gates.

The folk of Ketral Manor had put up a fight, those who had been left.  There were huge bales of last year’s cotton piled in a barricade in front of the manor house, peppered with gurvani darts and javelins and black with dried blood; one had been hurled through the upper story of the manor, creating a large crater in the masonry and exposing the interior.  Two rotting horse carcasses and piles of debris from the hastily-looted hall littered the once-tidy yard.  In the worsening heat, the stench was overwhelming. 

Particularly when you accounted for the defenders who had been honored for their heroics by being flung from the second story with their intestines nailed to the wall.  Their bodies were still where they had suffered their excruciating deaths.

In the end it was easy to see who the victors had been.  Crude gurvani symbols had been painted in blood across the face of the manor.   Apart from a few stray goats, there was little other sign of life here.

“Search it for food and whatever might be helpful,” Rondal ordered, his stomach in knots.  “And weapons.  Anything we can scavenge and keep out of goblin hands is a good thing.”

Their efforts yielded a few sacks of rye flour, some preserves in earthenware, a few pounds of salt, and a sack of maize.  They found a sheaf of spears and a battle axe that had been an heirloom, but little else of value.  There were other good supplies left in the stable, and Walven had them gathered and protected.  He was about to cut the offending entrails off of the manor house, but Rondal stopped him.

“Leave them.  That way whatever goblin patrol happens by might not realize we’ve been here.  And those weapons, hide them in the stable.  We need to start caching weapons when we can’t carry them off.”

‘Why not just destroy them?” asked Walven, curious.

“Because it’s likely that we’ll have a human insurgency here, even if it’s just irregulars, if the goblins are planning on staying.  It would be nice to be able to direct them to weapons and not have to worry about supplying them.”

Once they had packed all they could carry, they set out for the second manor, Farune.  Farune was smaller but better fortified than Ketral.  It had a small, sturdy keep within its walls, almost invisible behind the tall, narrow manor, and thought the gate was open, it was undamaged.  After scrying, Rondal led his men inside.  The whole countryside smelled of death and decay now, he reflected, but the difference from the stench of Ketral was striking.  It wasn’t quite as bad here.

A grain farm, not a cotton plantation, Farune was nonetheless every bit as prosperous as Ketral had been, and the village outside the walls would have been charming, had it not been deserted.

The goblins had been here, it seemed, but had found no one when they arrived.  Farune seemed to have been abandoned in anticipation of the attack, and abandoned in an orderly fashion.  When the goblins arrived, Rondal reasoned, they did not find the humans they were hunting . . . so they moved on after a token looting. 

While the interior of Farune Hall had been trashed it had not been destroyed.  Better yet, the kitchens were still well-stocked even after the withdrawal, and there was both food and firewood.  Rondal ordered two big slabs of bacon to be brought along, and selected some roots and a wheel of cheese before he ordered everything else loaded into the keep.

“So we have a place to retreat to, if Maramor gets hit,” Walven nodded.

“Exactly,” he nodded as they opened up the thick wooden door to the keep.  “This is the most secure place I’ve seen in Gilmora.  It’s intact.  If well-supplied, we could hold out for weeks in here.”

“While no one comes to our rescue,” Walven nodded.

“Well, maybe the goblins would get bored,” suggested Rondal as he sent a magelight ahead.  “Look, this place has weapons,” he said, pointing to a rack of pikes and shields, “it has water, it has food . . . and it has walls that are two bloody feet thick.  Even a troll would have to take his time with that.  And if we could strengthen them with spells, they’d be good enough to keep them busy a long time.”

“You’re such an optimist, Striker,” Walven chuckled.  “At least it doesn’t smell of death in here.”

“No,” agreed Rondal, “just chickens.  Someone left that window unshuttered and a couple of hens got in.”

“Lovely.  Oh, well.  Just leave them there.  We’ll enjoy the eggs.”

Darkness was still a few hours away when they quit Farune Hall, leaving behind a tidy amount of provisions and a possible second refuge.  Rondal had even spellbound the door before they left to keep it that way.  On the way back he felt noticeably better, now that he and his men had an escape route.  As comfortable as Maramor had been, it was disposable. 

“No sign of refugees or insurgents, yet,” Walven pointed out as they re-crossed a stream.  “Otherwise those manors would have been looted bare.”

“I think the attacks came too quickly and were too thorough for anyone to just slink away undetected.  Especially once the goblins started hunting in earnest.  From what Arsella has said, they were very thorough about it.”

“Still, you’d expect to see . . . someone.  One girl.  That’s it.”

“I expect there are some about.  But if the gurvani are using human confederates, I’m sure they don’t want to assume that everyone over six feet tall is a good guy.”

“Good point,” conceded Walven.  “You’re pretty good at this command thing.”

“Don’t spread that around,” Rondal told him.  “It’s a royal pain in the arse.”

They arrived back at Maramor Manor an hour shy of dusk.  Rondal found the place bustling with activity as the new men settled in.  Both towers sported sentries, now, and Tyndal had spent the day improving the wards and other defenses around the place . . . including repairing the great wooden gate.  It was intact with a guard behind it when they arrived, to Rondal’s pleasure.

Tyndal was in the hall and the evening meal was almost ready to be served.  Rondal saw that Arsella had excused herself from cooking duty, as one of the drovers fancied himself an army cook, and was instead near to Tyndal’s elbow at a table when he came in.

“Here’s the bacon you requested, milady,” Rondal said in a toneless voice as he flopped half a slab on the table in front of her.  “Sir Tyndal, if you’ll meet with me in the castellan’s room, I’ll go over what we saw today.”

Tyndal looked up at him, clearly not eager to leave cup and fire for military intelligence.  But the knight mage knew his duty.  He heaved a heavy sigh.

“All right, all right.  My arse was just starting to heal, after all that riding, but I suppose I can take a look.”

Rondal led the way upstairs to the old castellan’s solar, stripping his armor off his
body wearily as he did so.

“So what’s the news?  Any gurvani?”

“No signs,” admitted Rondal.  “But they’re out there.  Both manors had been visited.  Farune was abandoned and might make a good refuge.   Ketral . . . Ketral tried to fight.  No survivors.”