The Conqueror

The Conqueror

Louis Shalako

Copyright 2014 Louis Shalako and Long
Cool One Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-927957-57-8

The following is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or
events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters
and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination.

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The Conqueror

Louis Shalako

Chapter One

With aching bodies and buttocks numb,
with cracked lips and burning eyes, they rode out of the backwoods
farm country into Windermere. On its crag above was the castle of
Queen Eleanora. It rose before them in discolored white towers and
heavy stone walls encrusted with moss and mildew.

The long wagons lurched along the
rutted road, with riders in front and riders behind. Men with
crossbows sat or stood precariously behind the driver and the
gaoler on their heaving slab of a seat. The two wagons at the front
of the train were official county prison wagons. Those bringing up
the rear were consignments or other privateers. Having paid a small
fee for the privilege, they traveled under the aegis of the Crown
for protection from outlaws and bandits. They’d come seventy-four
miles in a little less than three days and everyone was
hurting.

As for the horses, covered in foam and
sweat, flies buzzing around their eyes, those in the traces were
looking at an early retirement to the knacker’s yard. The troopers’
mounts, although rather more loved at times, were little better off
in the long run.

At first, the peasants, the
idlers, the women drawing water from the fountain at the centre of
the village took no real notice. This was in spite of the noise
being considerable. Laden as it was with its cargo of miserable,
sweating, thirsting humanity, it was a common sight. A few faces
looked up when the cavalcade was right upon them. Mothers pulled
their wide-eyed children out of the way. There was little sympathy
for the huddled forms behind those black iron bars, neither was
there much rancor towards the other unfortunates, the ones destined
for market. Those who rode naked and unwashed, chained to open
boards, those who sat on those land-scows at the rear of the column
were merely unfortunate. They were unable to pay a debt or a fine
and so they had to forfeit. It was easily understood that it could
happen to anyone…or
almost
anyone. The horses that towed
them
looked as if they desired death
by this point in their journey. They had made a good pace, but no
one had the mercy to give it to them.

More than one onlooker had prayed
fervently that it didn’t happen to them.

If it wasn’t for the severest
penalties, people would borrow money and run up prodigious debts
and then simply abscond. Right-thinking people didn’t get into debt
in the first place. Not if they could help it, anyways.

The riders in their colorful jackets
and plumes, those flanking the teams, rode forward as the rest of
the train slowed. Seated beside the driver, Serjeant-at-Arms Garvin
thought the need for vigilance would be greatest on the fringes of
a large town. Human nature being what it was, the men tended to let
their guard down.

It was the quietest part of the day.
The busiest time, early morning, was past, where anyone who could
was at the market. The market was the centre of life, of gossip, of
news and not incidentally foodstuffs and all sorts of other
provisions.

Before too long the shadows would begin
to lengthen and people would be thinking of supper, and more than
anything, their beds. Early to bed, and early to rise, had made at
least the more successful, healthy, wealthy, and wise. There were
others, of course.

There were many fools and fools seldom
prospered. Everybody knew that except for the fools themselves, who
would never learn.

Some people, men and women, even
children sometimes, were always at a tavern. They practically lived
there. A lucky few would be feasting and gaming the night away at
the castle. This tended to be the privileged minority in a
hard-working and tightly-knit community based on hand labor and
open-field farming where the individual strips were all laid out
all over. The work was always hard and the days were too long and
too short at the same time.

A small boy, bored and seeking almost
any kind of diversion ran alongside, rattling a stick against the
heavy black bars of the second wagon. Wide metal straps in a
cruciform pattern, they were secured in deep sockets top and
bottom, hot-riveted where they intersected, heads flattened and
distorted by the blacksmith’s hammer.

A trooper scolded him but the youngster
just laughed and ran away. The prisoners, intent on their own fears
and hopes, took no notice of this latest indignity. They had enough
on their plates as it was.

As the last few mounted figures
disappeared up the winding road into the castle proper, the town
became quiet again. It was the hottest part of the afternoon on
what might be the last of the fine, late summer days. Those days
were getting perceptibly shorter, one by one, in their inexorable
fashion. With nothing much to do except work, eat and sleep, people
were enjoying the brief respite before the harvest and its
inevitable strains. Then would come the rains, and then another
long, cold, harsh winter.

Circling up and around the hill, the
wagons finally came to the entrance proper.

Serjeant at Arms Kann held up his hand
and bellowed at the gate-keepers in the barbican, despite the fact
that the gates were thrown open at sunrise and only closed at the
appointed hour. A couple of rather plump, heavily-bearded young men
came out and stood there, hands at their sides and with halberds
lazily trailing.

His own men, clean-shaven or with much
more rakish facial hair, were something else. Kann saluted smartly
and received a laconic greeting as he went past.

“
Hey.”

Kann almost spat at the man, but a
glare would suffice.

Proper military form would be observed
at all times, with one such as Serjeant Kann. The keep lay further
above. Its eminence dominated the surrounding countryside, with its
rolling, forested hills and intervening fingers of low, flat
plains. The granges were waving in golden wheat, shimmering under
the haze of dead, dry dust that the afternoon breeze always picked
up. From its highest battlements one would be able to see the
ocean, wine dark under moonlight and scudding grey clouds. Kann had
always thought he had a poetic soul, his present occupation
notwithstanding. It was a nice thought.

Thundering across the bridge, the dust
of the county high-road finally settled and the last of the riders
came along and bunched up at the head of the column. Cheerful
remarks were made, and retorted back upon each other. It had been a
long ride, and yet this day at least was ending early. They
straggled across an open space of a hundred yards to the second
gate. The inner wall was higher still. The inner gate was thinner
and less heavily defended. The keep within was a formidable set of
fortifications in itself. This part of the castle had been built
hundreds of years before the outer walls and was consequently
simpler in concept, although still composed of a Cyclopean masonry.
The tops of the tall walls were heavily crenellated. Loopholes for
crossbows went swirling up, following the staircase inside of every
tower. The top of the wall over the gate was heavily galleried, for
the pouring of hot oil and the discharge of missile weapons. Even
then, they knew enough to put the towers well out, with places to
shoot along the facing walls.

Interesting.

Very nice.

Garvin quite approved. He admired its
purity. The builders had clearly been thorough-going bastards. It
was a trait he had always admired.

A flock of chickens browsing in the
immediate vicinity of the entry-way scattered a few feathers,
beating a hurried retreat before an onslaught of menacing noises
and plodding dark shapes. The dim tunnel echoed with heavy iron
tires on oaken rims, rough cobbles throwing the carts from side to
side. The prisoners inside cursed and hung on for dear life, or
took the knocks with a becoming fatalism. Upon coming out the other
side into the hot glare of the yard, Kann shouted instructions, and
then sat his horse, looking around and muttering quietly. The
wagons halted all in a row, in the usual place in front of the
Baillie’s office. This was just to the right inside of the inner
gate. All hands were tired, sore and dry in the mouth after a long
journey. In the sudden quiet, their murmurs took on added
significance before being lightly tossed aside by the breezes at
this elevation, a full five or six hundred feet above the town. He
pulled off his stinking helmet, wearing a hole in his scalp in one
or two places, and held it under his arm. With no shade for the
eyes, he blinked back a sudden watering. Shading his eyes, he kept
looking.

Kann could not help but approve of
clean pennants on whitened staves, hanging from the battlements,
and fit-enough looking men in the vicinity. They were in red and
black uniforms that look well-tended and bore weapons that looked
competent enough for most purposes. With nothing but dull, drab
routine to go on these days, there seemed to be very few of the
Queen’s household troops about. To their left, for a considerable
distance, lay stables, the smithy, small paddocks and stalls. His
eye took in the all-important water troughs. There was a tower with
a wooden water tank, probably rain-fed and even a windmill pulling
water from below. It went gushing into a tank at the far end of the
yard. A few men and boys could be seen working here and there.
People came and went, ignoring them. Some stood just watching, and
some were clearly from other places, as several standing teams,
their drivers nowhere about, quietly attested. Two young men yanked
down bags of carrots, beans and other provisions from the back of
one wagon, an official checking them off a numbered list as they
carried them away on their backs. The castle loomed above
everything else, dominating the skyline and drawing the eye in
admiration. In purely military terms, it was well placed and well
built. The question of water supply had been relatively well
solved, as to his knowledge there was a stream that had been
diverted ages ago, which also led under the citadel. There was a
strange beauty here too, he conceded. Whoever built this knew what
they wanted, and arguably, what they were doing. They weren’t far
wrong, either. The place was only a few miles up from the sea and
commanded all the land trade routes for a hundred miles in all
directions. The Queen’s fleet held sway in this end of the Great
Sea. There was relative peace at present amongst most of the
adjoining states.

Her capital looked strong and secure
enough for most threats.

Half a dozen men stood at his stirrup,
all ready for drinking up their pay. This was a natural assumption
once you got to know them a little.

“
All right, lads.” Sounding
pleased almost, Kann finally dismounted.

After the long road, his nostrils were
almost blocked with the dust.

Garvin was hustling around with his
pouch of papers.

“
All right, all right.
Where is everybody?” Garvin cast a sharp eye on his own
affairs.

He had a bag of coins, a list,
everybody’s time-sheets, and a record of anything they had charged
or advanced against the good name of the Crown. Technically, he was
in command but content to let Kann handle the boys and
men.

The troopers were under strict orders
not to break off and head for the nearest tavern until all of this
was sorted out, but one never knew.