The Wizard and the Warlord (The Wardstone Trilogy Book Three) (21 page)

A knot of wood popped in the fire, sending up a fountain of tiny orange sparks. Telgra eased slightly closer to Phen, who was captivated by the lieutenant’s story.

“The arm went back even farther as the huge Valleyan was pulled sideways and there was a grinding snap and a scream as his shoulder came undone.

“You’d think that would have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. Lord Gregory rolled to his feet and staggered around while the Stallion roared and tugged at his dislocated arm.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” Lord Gregory said. “The man should have been down. I felt his arm break. I don’t think I’ve ever been that afraid of anyone in my life. He just looked at me and ground his teeth as he snapped his arm back into place.”

“It showed on your face,” Welch chuckled. “You looked like you might bolt away from the circle.”

“Believe me, I thought about it.”

“Don’t believe him,” said the lieutenant. “Our Lion is too modest. When that big, scary, blood-covered Valleyan charged him, Lord Gregory jumped up and did a spinning thing. When his back fist hit that sucker, he froze in his tracks then slowly toppled over like a felled tree. The Valleyan stayed in the dirt that time. The Red Wolf soldiers guarding the circle had to protect him from being trampled.”

“The next day, my hand was the size my head should have been.” Lord Gregory smiled at the memory of the glory and the pain. “My head was the size of a pumpkin.”

“Will we be able to stop and see your name on the Spire?” Lady Telgra asked.

“Aye,” Lord Gregory answered. “Maybe seeing the names of the elven archery champions carved there will help you remember something.”

“Isn’t that where Hyden met Vaegon?” Phen asked.

“Aye,” Lord Gregory nodded. “The two of them were in the middle of the championship round when the Dragon Queen—she wasn’t the Dragon Queen then, just Pael’s daughter, and one evil bitch—she started the battle that broke the Dragon Pact. They never finished the competition.”

“Hyden told me that Vaegon was winning when the battle started,” Phen said.

“Aye, but Hyden made the most impossible shot and saved Vaegon’s life.”

Lord Gregory strolled over to Oarly and reached for the dwarf’s flask. Oarly passed it up, but it was empty. Lord Gregory threw it at him with a snarl. Oarly laughed and feigned offense, but quickly pulled another full flask out of his boot. Lord Gregory took a pull from it. Phen noted that the look on his face was intense. The Lion Lord had been poisoned, beaten within inches of his life, and then dropped from a great height by some terrible dark beast.

“Hyden shot an arrow out of the air right before it sunk into Vaegon,” Lord Gregory told them. “Then the two of them saved me from Pael’s poison.”

“The squat weed,” Oarly barked with a laugh. “Vaegon gave you the squat weed to get the poison out of you.”

Lord Gregory chuckled with the others, but it wasn’t a very fond memory. “The elf swam the Leif Greyn River in the night to get it from the Reyhall Forest, where it grows.”

“Will there be a festival next year?” Jicks asked from his watch post at the edge of camp.

“There should be a Summer’s Day festival for the ages next year,” Lord Gregory said. “But you won’t find me brawling anymore. The last one nearly killed me.”

“You could win the brawl, Marble Boy.” Oarly cackled drunkenly at his own revelation. “By Doon, we could make a fortune. No man could so much as bruise ye.”

“I read that, before your people went underground, the giants used to have a competition, too,” Phen said, with a flare of annoyance showing in his tone. “They called it dwarf tossing. The giants would throw a dwarf as far out into the swell as they could. Now that your folk have returned, maybe I could get with Borg. You two would make a great team.”

“Bah!” Oarly swatted at the boy then rose and made his way to his bed roll. He muttered under his breath, “No giant’ll be tossin’ this dwarf like a tater sack.”

Everyone laughed, but within moments the camp, and the surrounding valley, was filled with the sound of Oarly’s snoring.

One of the wagon drivers threw a couple of pieces of deadfall on the fire and stirred it to a roar. The cold of the coming season, and the breeze coming from the mountains, made the night bitter to everyone, save for Phen. The clear sky was reflected on the still surface of the reservoir the river formed. Phen sat with Telgra and enjoyed the beauty of the night. It didn’t take long for the others to turn in. Phen looked down to see that Telgra had fallen asleep against him. He gently woke her and helped her to her bed roll. He put one of his blankets over her, since he didn’t need it.

Jicks was on watch with the lieutenant, and Phen would have normally sat with them for a while, but tonight his mind was full. Lord Gregory’s great brawl, and Hyden and Vaegon competing on the archery range, filled his thoughts. Ages and ages of champions had competed against one another here so that the victor could have his name carved on the Spire for people to see for all time.

Phen woke from his light sleep to see that the sun was coming up. Oarly had just crawled out of his bed roll, Phen knew without looking. It was the sudden lack of his friend’s snoring that had woken him. He was feeling less and less intimidated by the dwarf as each day passed. They were the best of friends, and the unsettling image of the bloody dwarf throwing around a dangerous animal that he had killed with his bare hands had lost its edge.

He wished that Oarly would believe him when he said that he had nothing to do with the wildcat. He found Oarly and they spent the morning chatting and speculating about the Spire, Hyden’s village, and the long, treacherous journey beyond that. Apparently, Oarly didn’t like the cold, and Phen didn’t have the heart to tell him that up in the Giant Mountains, even in the summer, it was ten times as cold as it was right now.

According to Lord Gregory, not this night, but the next, they would leave the wagons behind and make the half-day’s ride up into the foothills to the Skyler Clan’s village. Oarly seemed more intrigued by the clan folk’s underground rabbit holes than the chance to see the great Spire.

For Phen, the morning wore on as slowly as any he’d ever endured, but finally the base of the towering black triangular Spire came into view. It was awe inspiring, and the entire group was silent as they approached it.

Each of the three faces of the Spire’s base was about a dozen paces wide at the ground. It rose up hundreds of feet, tapering inward slightly as it went, forming a perfect needle-like spike.

Phen walked around it, scanning the hundreds upon hundreds of names carved carefully into the faces. The most recent names were just above eye level, and the space between them and the ground was filled with the names of champions. Phen noticed that the lower names were strange, and some were even carved in the old language. He observed that for many years, possibly centuries, the names had been carved in fancy script. From waist-high to the present, the names had been rendered in plain, simple lettering.

“Dwarves carved those,” Oarly boasted, pointing at the fancy work. “The lettering is too clean and complicated for even the elves to manage.”

Phen nodded. Oarly was probably right. Dwarves did stone work far better than any other race. They came around one side of the Spire to find Jicks, Lieutenant Welch, Lady Telgra, and a few others eyeing Lord Gregory’s name. Phen saw it and then eyed the Lion Lord. Pride radiated from the man like heat from the sun.

For many years Phen saw that there was a member of the Skyler Clan listed as the archery champion, but for the last two dozen festivals the names were all elven. Telgra studied those intently, but no sign of recognition showed on her face.

“If they had a competition for who could sink in the mud the fastest, you could be on there too, Phen,” Oarly laughed as he took a pull from his flask.

Phen pointed to a place only a few feet off the ground. “Look Oarly,” he exclaimed. “Tection Shardsworth, thrown forty-two paces clear by Draran.”

“No,” Oarly said, peering closely at the inscription.

Phen wondered if Tection was one of Oarly’s relatives. Shardsworth wasn’t a very common name in the dwarven history books.

Oarly huffed with a curious, yet prideful look on his face. He scratched his head and looked Phen in the eye. “How do you think they land, lad?” he asked seriously.

Phen shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Commander Lyle wasn’t pleased to be on the verge of heading back to Dreen empty-handed. He was sure that the High King wouldn’t be happy with his failure. After crossing the Southron River, they hadn’t seen a trace of the skeleton crew or their strange beasts. They spent a whole day going up and down the far shore and searched for another day in the village of Crags, questioning the folks about the fisherman and his initial catch. Then, just to be thorough, the commander had them search the rocky terrain around the village for any sign of the undead. There was nothing. It was like the skeletons they had been following just walked straight into the river and never came out.

Lieutenant Garret suggested that the skeletons had boarded a barge similar to the one they had used to cross the river. It made sense, but this mystery barge hadn’t been found. Nor was there a single witness who might have seen it.

Commander Lyle was certain that a barge was a possibility, but the lay of the land made it highly unlikely for a barge to pass by unseen.

At night, a barge with a capable water mage might have been able to land somewhere along the vast shore of Ultura Lake. Searching the shoreline of such a massive body of water would be next to impossible. It could be, Lyle decided, that the skeletons were going back in the direction from which they had come. Leading the commander’s group to the edge of the Southron River, then backtracking, didn’t seem likely for them to do, either. The idea that these things were intelligent enough to lose a trained pursuer was frightening.

As they rode into the town of Lake Port, failing King Mikahl was eating at Commander Lyle’s pride. He had to make a decision soon. Searching fruitlessly would only delay him from explaining what had happened. He was sure that failing to report an attack upon kingdom men by armed skeletons was some sort of dereliction of his duty. High King Mikahl should know everything that happened. Commander Lyle just couldn’t bring himself to give up the search yet.

After securing enough rations for the men and horses to last another week, Lyle found a merchant who had a detailed map of Valleya. While his men ate a hot meal of beef stew and freshly baked bread at a nearby inn, he studied it. After asking several questions about the surrounding areas, Commander Lyle made his decision. He had Petar choose four men to accompany him and ordered the other five to ride to Dreen. He gave Petar a written account of what had happened. It included a list of the dead and explained that Lieutenant Garret and six of Weir’s city guard had joined his company.

“Ride to Southron, then head straight north to Kastia Valley,” Commander Lyle told Petar. “Stay on the roads and make as much time as you can.”

“Yes, sir,” Petar answered.

Commander Lyle dismissed him to his duties and then ordered lieutenant Garret to take four men and go a few miles west out of Lake Port, and then work his way north to the town of Southron looking for any signs of the skeletons’ trail. The commander and the rest of the company would travel the road and the shoreline north and do the same.

“Don’t scout at night,” the commander said. “Study the terrain and scout for tracks till the light runs out and then make your camp. We should meet up at the north side of the lake, in Southron City, by tomorrow evening.”

“What if we find a trail?” Lieutenant Garret asked.

“Follow it,” the commander answered. “Use caution, and leave us a trail to find. If we don’t see you in Southron by the morning after next, we will come search you out. Do you really think you will find anything?”

Lieutenant Garret smiled and gave a shrug. “In just the last few days, far stranger things have happened.”

“Yes they have,” Commander Lyle agreed with a grimace. “If we find a trail, I’ll send a pair of riders out to find you.” He looked at his remaining men and then back at the lieutenant. “Make your trail obvious.”

“Yes, sir,” the Weir city guardsman replied. Without hesitation, he found his horse and started rounding up the men he would take with him.

The next night they met up in the lively trading town of Southron. Neither group saw anything to indicate that the skeletons had passed through. Reluctantly, Commander Lyle gave up the search. The next morning, as they started out for Kastia Valley, the whole group seemed defeated.

Commander Lyle reasoned that, when he reported his failure to the High King, at least it wouldn’t be a surprise. The message he sent with Petar would break the news for him. It was a small consolation, for he had to face the families of the eight men who had been killed under his command. That, he felt, was far worse than facing King Mikahl’s disappointment. The fact that he couldn’t report a success, that those men had died in vain, was the worst of it. Commander Lyle wasn’t looking forward to his return to the red city.

Three long days later, the commander entered the castle gates followed by his men, and the seven others from Weir. He sent them all to the stables to tend the needs of their mounts while waiting to see if they had new orders, or if they were to be dismissed to their regular duty. Lieutenant Garret would be interviewed by the king himself, since Lord Gregory was afield; that much he knew. Most likely the others would be questioned before they were added to the High King’s roll.

Lyle entered the castle and noticed immediately that something was happening. Servants and ladies hurried about with strained looks on their faces. Some were carrying bundles and boxes in their arms. He saw Cresson and got his attention. The mage came over, stroking his long goatee beard and informed the commander that the king and queen would be departing for Westland on the morrow. The whole place was in an uproar trying to prepare for the departure.

“I must see him,” Commander Lyle said urgently.