Within the Hollow Crown (2 page)

Book 1

Relics Lost

Chapter
1: The Toll at the Bridge

The land of Arwall was known for very little besides its mud. Just as those in the northern tundra had developed over a hundred words for snow, so had the Arwalls coined more than thirty words for mud. “If there was a market for
red-dirt
,” Lord Kelliwick had once said in a speech, “We would certainly have cornered it. And just as certainly, we would be trading it all for a pair of dry socks.”

Lord Kelliwick was a favored Baron in the Arwall region for his honest disposition, his disarming sense of humor, and most importantly, his inability to levy taxes effectively. Count Arwall had spent a considerable amount of time editing a tax code for his County, and most of the Barons were able to provide the appropriate income. Lord Kelliwick, however, was somehow incompetent, and always came up short.

“
I’m very bad at math,” Kelliwick had explained to the Count, “Also, it’s hard to get to everyone; there’s so much
slurve
.”

It was the slurve and the tax code that Jareld had to deal with on a drizzling Thursday in March. Jareld was not from Arwall, and so he only had one word for mud. He was one assignment short of graduating from the Towers of Seneca, the most prestigious academy in the Kingdom. At the age of seventeen, he would be the youngest man to do so.

“Stop there,” said the bridge attendant, a rotund man named Carl. “I’m afraid there’s a toll for the use of this bridge.”

Jareld and his travel companion, Thor, stopped their horses. Thor was from a place called Maethran, where they had a considerable number of words for chicken. Thor was several years younger than Jareld, and also a scholar at the Towers. But where Jareld was accepted based on merit, Thor was probably enrolled as a result of the generous contributions from his father. It’s not that Thor was spoiled. It’s just that the phrase Thor the Scholar was an oxymoron.

The Academy had a rule about sending their scholars out into the real world. They always sent them in twos. It wasn’t that they hoped that two of them would be able to defeat ruffians where one of them couldn’t, but it was in the hope that at least one of them would get away to report the death of the other.

“How much?” Jareld asked.

“Well, I can’t say just yet. I have to ask you a few questions.”

“Are they easy ones?” Thor asked.

Carl looked up at Thor, disgusted at the puerile joke, and also slightly offended, as though being a bridge attendant wasn’t good enough for Thor. But when Carl saw Thor’s face, he realized that the man was serious, and actually wanted to know how difficult the questions would be.

Carl sighed, took out a parchment, and read from it.

“Are you carrying any weapons?”

“No,” Jareld answered.

“Are you carrying any expensive items?” Carl asked.

“We each have one of these,” Jareld said, holding his hand down from his horse to show Carl. “It’s a Signet Ring from the Towers of Seneca, showing that we are scholars of the Academy.”

“Scholars, eh?” Carl said, scratching his head, “Interesting…”

“So, how much do we-” Jareld started.

“Not just yet,” Carl interjected, “Still have some questions. What is your purpose in our fine land of Arwall?”

“Well, we think there’s a cave,” Jareld said, “About four miles north of the shore and two miles east of your western-most border.”

“
Well, there are many caves,” Carl said. “But at this time of year, those caves are full of
worm-glue
.”

“Worm what?” Jareld asked.

“If you want some dryer and, dare I say, nicer caves, you could try up near Johnstown.”

“No,” Jareld said, “You don’t understand: We need to get to that specific cave. We believe that Sir Dorn, the last of the League of the Owl, went there when King James II died, one hundred and forty years ago, and--”

“So, the purpose of your trip is recreational?” Carl asked.

“Well, no, it’s exploratory, or for research.”

“
Ex-plor-a-tor-y,” Carl sounded out, while
misspelling
it on his parchment.

“
So, how much do we owe you?” Jareld was getting tired of the drizzle, and his horse was getting stuck in the
turcle.

“Well, exploratory fees, plus the rings…carry the two…horses, unarmed…about three kilos of luggage… Neither of you has ever committed a crime, or spent any time in a jail in Arwall in the last three years, have you?”

Both Jareld and Thor felt they could answer the question with an indignant stare. They had spent their formidable years reading large texts, translating books, learning languages, astronomy, mathematics, savoir-faire, and being sent to their room for mispronouncing the Galbosian word for turnip, which many believe is impossible for a non-native speaker. The idea of committing a crime was ludicrous to them, and they each hoped that his frown was enough to show this to Carl.

“Alright then,” Carl said, “Looks like you owe one silver farthing.”

“One silver…” Jareld started. “One silver farthing. That’s it?”

“Well, to be honest,” Carl said, “I’ve never been good with numbers. But Lord Kelliwick said I should never charge less than a silver farthing.”

Jareld dismounted, the turcle getting all over his boots and the bottom of his leggings. “Let me see that,” he said, grabbing the parchment from Carl.

“What’s your name?” Jareld said after pondering over the tax code.

“Carl.”

“Well, Carl, let me show you something: See this, this is the left bracket, all fees are taken from this column. And see on the bottom, those are the adjustments. So, two adult men, two horses…see the letters in red…OK, and then there’s the unarmed adjustment…no criminal record…and I would say, seriously, that we have almost four kilos in luggage…OK, plus the adjustments…Are you following this?… The adjustments for the time of year…and you have…seven ducats and four farthings.”

Carl took the parchment back from Jareld and looked it over in wonder, as if he had just discovered that there was writing on it at all.

“But,” Jareld added, “As a scholar from the Towers of Seneca, I have a fee for instructional sessions. As it turns out, your fee for a tax code today is seven ducats and three farthings, so…”

Thor flipped a silver farthing to Carl.

“Don’t let anyone make a fool of you, Carl,” Jareld said as he got back on his horse. “And take care.”

Jareld and Thor trotted their horses across the bridge. Carl looked over the tax code again, a smile growing on his face.

“May your boots be dry,” Carl called after the two scholars. It was an Arwall expression to wish travelers a good journey. Carl wiped the turcle off his boots, which he thought was really becoming more of a splishle,
and returned to his post.

Chapter 2: Nothing But Steel

If you took the very same bridge as Jareld and Thor west instead of east, then covered the fifty-three
kilometers
of the north highway across Ralsean, then swung south by way of the Deliem River, and went down to the coast of Deliem, you would be where Lady Vye was that very moment.

If you were thirty-one klicks north of where Lady Vye was at that moment, you would be where Lady Vye wanted to be at that very moment: In her bed.

Instead, she was in the well-groomed courtyard of Rutherford Manor, nervously keeping her hand on the hilt of her sword. Rutherford Manor was the home of the Baron Harold Rutherford, the most inbred, generally incompetent, irritating member of the Deliem Nobility. Vye didn’t think she could recall the number of times he had screwed the County of Deliem, but this was the third time in a year, and it was getting on Vye’s nerves.

Some of Rutherford’s transgressions could be chalked up to him being dumb. He once called Lord Fatroud, Lord Fart-Loud, even though Lord Fatroud did not pronounce the “d” at the end of his name. He had burned down the windmill in Dagos during a festival. He even accidentally declared war on a neighboring County during a tour of the Royal Gardens.
He was, in a word, a
mess
.

But most of time, and the reason Vye had so little patience for the hapless Baron, he was causing problems with his penis. Vye was thankful that she had never seen, touched, or otherwise interacted with said member. But nonetheless, a lot of her life recently had been dedicated to helping Harold keep it in his pants.

Harold’s
ability to offend anyone within earshot often led to put off Maids and Wenches, but it was the Lady Marisa Endior that was the most common problem for
Rutherford
.

Vye supposed she was pretty enough, in that gangly, redheaded, fifteen-year-old sort of way. But for whatever reason, she was the apple of Harold Rutherford’s eye. If he could have written poetry, no doubt she would be his muse. If he could speak in complete sentences, no doubt he would have actually talked to her.

Instead, he tended to make clumsy, aggressive passes at the wily, young woman. Vye wasn’t worried about Marisa. She could take care of herself, and even if she couldn’t, Vye doubted Rutherford had the wits to actually get what he wanted from her. But it was Marisa’s father that was the problem.

Lord Endior prized only two things: A 2nd Place Archery Trophy from the 3rd Annual King’s Tournament given to his grandfather by the King’s grandfather, and his daughter’s virginity. There were many young Ladies in the Court that Rutherford could have targeted with less protective fathers. But, naturally, Harold had chosen her.

So there was Vye, about to go to her feather bed, when a messenger had arrived at Hartstone Castle. Lord Endior had sent two hundred men to kill Lord Rutherford. Over Vye’s strenuous objections, Count Michael Deliem decided to put a stop to this nonsense. He sent his best diplomat, his High Lieutenant Landos, to negotiate a peace. But he also sent Lady Vye to keep the peace.

It probably sounds strange, sending two people to stop an army of two hundred. In case you’re not a mathematician, those are terrible odds. Even so, Michael trusted Landos to figure something out. The level-headed diplomat could get the best terms out of even his mortal enemies, and make them feel good about those terms.

And if Landos was sent for his smile, Vye was sent for her right arm. Her right arm was pretty tough, and many men could testify to the hurt it could cause when swung in a bar brawl. But when you combined her right arm with her sword, sh
e was nigh unstoppable. All two hundred soldiers on that battlefield had heard of Vye, and they knew not to fuck with her. She wouldn’t be afraid to take them on. She would lose, no doubt, but the bookmakers would set the over/under on dead Endior soldiers at fifty. You read that right.

Vye was simply one of the best combatants in the history of the Kingdom. She was gifted and skilled in other areas, but the one thing she had worked on, the one thing she was always great at, was her swordplay. She was at the head of her class until she was thirteen years old.

Then something happened. Well, two things happened, right on her chest, which changed the way the men in her life treated her. Her father started trying to find her a suitor.
Her brothers challenged other men to fights over offhanded insults against
her
. Her peers stopped asking her to show them that cool maneuver with the sword and starting talking about her beautiful dark hair, her beautiful blue eyes, and other beautiful parts of her she would just as soon they hadn’t mentioned.

So Vye literally had to go to a class of her own. Most people would have been satisfied with the considerable level of mastery she had achieved, but she knew she could be better. She left. Her father objected, of course, since he had finally found a man that he thought would be appropriate for her. But she would have none of it, and he knew better than to disagree with his brightest, if most female, child.

So she trained with Tallatos, a reclusive Sword Master in the Hilwera Mountains in
Khiransi. Tallatos had trained Kings, Knights, Templars, and entire armies in his youth. And while he obviously noticed those two ever-more-prominent features on Vye’s chest, they didn’t distract him.
She wasn’t
his type
.

He did not teach Vye a technique, or a series of maneuvers, or tricks, or feints, or how to connect with her totem animal. In fact, when he described his method, he said there was only one lesson, and it took years to learn. And the lesson is this:

“There is nothing but steel.”

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, before you open a neighborhood dojo and charge people for that lesson, know that it is deeper than just the words. Vye had strength, agility, focus, perception, speed, and intelligence. But it was this lesson that elevated her to a new echelon of talent.

“There is nothing but steel.”

When Vye first heard it, she scoffed. Had she left her Father and her Brothers, abandoned her home, and traveled thousands of miles to hear an old man say that meaningless sentence? It turns out, she had.

The complexity of the lesson was in its simplicity. Of course, in the end, you practice all those maneuvers, tricks, and feints. Of course you practice holding your sword parallel to the ground for three minutes. Yeah, you wax on and wax off with the best of them when training with Tallatos, but the focus of his instruction was just that simple concept.

“There is nothing but steel.”

“What if they have a shield?” Vye protested, a month into her training.

“It is part of the steel. It is a sword without a point.”

“What if they’re faster than me?” She inquired, another month into practice.

“Speed requires movement. Anticipate where the sword will be and hit them where it won’t.”

“What if they have armor on?” She pressed, now a year after leaving her home.

“
Even a man covered
cap-a-pie
c
an be toppled. He has allowed the steel to dictate his movement. Use that against him.”

“What if I’m outnumbered?” Vye insisted. But Tallatos never lost patience. He had trained the best fighters of the last three decades, and they always had questions.

“There are only so many blades that can reach you at one time. Do not count your enemies. Count the steel that is within thrusting distance. That is your only concern.”

A big part of Tallatos’ instruction was that the steel, that is, Vye’s sword, had a limited amount of use before it became ineffective. How many times could she swing her blade before the motion was noticeably slowed? Vye learned to keep track of her swings throughout her sparring sessions. Tallatos could stop a dual at any time and ask for a tally. As Vye got better, he wouldn’t stop fighting when he started asking.

The idea was to know your limits and strategize accordingly. If Vye could swing her sword
sixty-six
times before her arm fatigued
, then she should press her attack at fifty-one to try and finish the combat, and she should retreat at fifty-six and use her last good swings to cover her escape.

After
three years of training, Vye got her swing count up to
one hundred, seventy-one.

So Vye returned to Deliem as a Sword Master, a title that meant nothing to the locals. And she didn’t understand, at her age, how much more advanced she was than her peers. She had assumed that
her former peers had trained only slightly less than her. She was confident she could beat almost anyone, but she thought it would be close.

It wasn’t. Vye was superior to every opponent she faced. And she had plenty of opponents to deal with. A feud between the Vyes and the Staffords had become bloody, and her father and two older brothers were dead. She returned just in time, rescuing her younger brother, Luke, from a terrible siege and rallying Stafford’s forces back to the borders.

The skirmish on the border raged on for two days before Lord Lagos Stafford himself charged to the front lines. It was two days, or so the legend goes, because that’s how long it took Stafford to get his armor on. His armorer was largely inspired by the armadillo.

So there was Lady Vye, on foot, facing down Lagos Stafford and his heavily barded
Clydesdale. A lesser fighter would quit the field. Any other general in any other battle would have surrendered and saved his hide. But Vye knew something nobody else knew. She realized what nobody else noticed.

There is nothing but steel.

Horse in full barding plus a knight in plated armor plus a shield plus a sword. That’s a lot of steel. But it was all heading in the same direction. Despite the sheer volume of steel, it was, in the end, one very clumsy attack. Vye spun aside, a matador against the charging steed. She finished the spin with a hard tap on the underside of the horse. Not enough to kill it, but enough to spook it.

The horse reared, almost throwing its rider. Stafford was an expert horseman, so he managed to keep his seat. But he learned his lesson. Vye wasn’t going to fall under the charge, and his horse was uneasy from the cut. He dismounted, stomping up to Vye, every step a low-grade earthquake under his metallic boots.

They engaged in a melee. Stafford was confident he would outlast Vye. After all, his armor was far superior to her skullcap and chainmail. But Vye was confident she would win the day. Because she knew the guy who made his armor. Stafford’s armor allowed for a wide stance. This was both to facilitate riding a horse, but also so that his legs could support a lunge during a fight on the ground. Vye played him like a fiddle. She teased him into a lunge, letting him stretch his right leg all the way out.

And that’s when she feinted left, dove right, and slipped
her sword up into his exposed crotch. There is nothing but steel. Unless your armorer didn’t give you a codpiece.

If you ever want to see an entire army run away with their balls between their legs, have them watch their Lord fall to the ground while a woman pulls a bloody sword from
his manzone. No fight has ever ended faster. It took Lord Stafford a couple of hours to bleed out. In theory, she didn’t like that every man in the Kingdom crossed his legs when she entered the room. In public, Vye took umbrage at the insults calling her a castrator. But secretly, she relished the title.

So, Vye and the surviving Staffords called their overlord, Count Michael Deliem. And Michael dispatched Landos to negotiate the terms of the peace. Luke Vye
, Lady Vye’s brother, became Lord of the House of Vye. Maybe that seems unfair, but these weren’t the most enlightened of times. However, there was one man who recognized the injustice in that promotion.

Michael knew that Lady Vye wasn’t some berserk, perpetually PMSing witch. She was a skilled warrior. And she was smart. And Michael needed a Military Advisor. Yeah, a couple of eyebrows went up when he appointed a woman to that traditionally testosterony position. But nobody was foolish enough to say it to her face. And Michael didn’t care. He wanted the best person for the job.
And Vye respected Michael. While she was sure he had taken a peek from time to time, she never managed to catch him staring at her cleavage.

Which is why, when a messenger arrives and says Lord Endior is about to kill Lord Rutherford, the Count sends Landos to negotiate, and Vye to make sure Landos comes back alive. Vye was relieved to see Landos finishing his conv
ersation with Endior’s Captain.

“They’ve agreed to leave,” Landos said, just as Endior’s men filed for the gate. “They’re going to march to Hartstone, and we’re going to put them up for the night.”

“What did he do?” Vye asked, looking at the silhouette of Lord Rutherford standing at one of his third story windows.

“He tried to sleep with Endior’s daughter,” Landos said, and sighed. Before Vye could say what he knew she was going to say, Landos continued, “Look, I just had to promote Lord Endior’s cousin to Magistrate of Merrick.”

“What about the current Magistrate of Merrick?” Vye asked.

“He’s going to become Steward of Fort Lockmey,” Landos said.