The Warden, page 23
At this range, to miss with even a decent crossbow, they’d have to barely know one end of the weapon from the other. She lifted her hands up, calling wards into the back of her mind. Only the strongest Abjurers could stop a crossbow bolt from absolute point-blank range; she’d seen Lavanalla do it in demonstration from a bow that was no more than a yard from her, fixed to a post, a rope in her own hand tied to the trigger. The better strategy was to try to deflect their flight, which any Abjurer could do from a distance. This close, it was a near-run thing at best.
Ten yards is farther than one, she thought. Am I a tenth of the Abjurer the Archmagister is? Surely I am, she told herself with a confidence she certainly didn’t feel.
“I mean no one here any harm,” she called out. “There’s no need for those.”
“We’ll decide that,” called out one of the men with the bows. “Don’t come any closer till the boss has come out to have a look,” he added.
“I won’t,” Aelis yelled. “But I’m going to lower my arms.”
“Don’t put a hand anywhere near that sword,” another man added, his voice a bit shrill. From what she could tell at this distance, he seemed younger than his watch partner, as he was beardless while the other sported full whiskers.
“I won’t,” Aelis said. “I’ll just rest my hands on my belt. They’ll not move.”
“Best not,” the young one yelled out again. “Currin’s comin’,” the lad added. “That’ll sort you.”
What exactly do you think I’m going to do with two feet of steel from twenty yards when you’ve got height, a gate, and a crossbow between us? Aelis wondered privately. If things turned sour, she wasn’t trying a mad dash for the gate, though she did admit that the words mad dash probably did play a role in such plan as she did have. It was just in a direction opposite the gate.
While she held wards in her mind, ready to summon, she spared a glance for Tun. He had not lifted his arms, but he didn’t look pleased, with his lips drawn tight against his teeth. He was watching the crossbowmen intently. Aelis had a sense that Tun was measuring the distance between him and the wall and that if everything went to shit, the plan was for her and Tun to go in opposite directions.
“Tun,” she murmured, as low as she could and still get his attention. His eyes flicked to her but only for a moment before going back to the crossbowmen. “You’re not thinking of rushing them,” she breathed.
“I do not,” he whispered, in a voice that came out rather too much like a growl around his teeth, “take well to weapons pointed at me.”
“It’s not exactly a day at the tavern for me either,” Aelis said, worried about the expression in Tun’s eyes, the tension in his huge frame. In the time she’d known him, he’d always seemed relaxed, controlled, composed. She was seeing something different now and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. “Calm. It doesn’t have to—”
Whatever words she was reaching for were cut off with the creak of roughly hewn and badly lashed wood as the gate swung open. Out came a party of four, three men and a woman. In the main, they wore sturdy woodsmen’s clothing, though the leader—she had little doubt of that—wore an old breastplate strapped over his jerkin. For all that it had seen a blow or two in its day, the plain gray steel was still perfectly serviceable, and the man wore it as though used to it. He wore an axe on his belt, not a woodsman’s tool, but a weapon with a heavy spike. The two other men carried spears, and the woman had slim daggers thrust through the belt that kept her oversized jerkin from swallowing her. The sleeves were clamped back and the hem fell practically to her knees, which, Aelis was surprised to note, were in the same kind of hide trousers as the rest of the men.
“So,” the armor-wearing, axe-carrying leader began, instantly confirming Aelis’s suspicion, “what brings you to Currin’s cave, hmm?”
“You’re Currin then?” Aelis asked.
“None other,” the man said, his dark bearded face cracking in a wide smile.
“Well, Currin,” she said, “I am Warden Aelis de Lenti of Lone Pine. Tracking a fugitive who came this way. You seen anyone recently?”
Aelis kept a close eye on reactions as she revealed her title. Currin held his surprise, but she saw the flicker as his eyes widened before he got them under control. The spearmen to his left blanched, both of them, one of them fighting not to take a step back and the other doing it no matter how it looked.
The woman simply did not react. Her eyes didn’t widen, her breathing didn’t change, her body language betrayed nothing but casual boredom.
Currin smiled amiably. “Warden, you say? Empowered by a Crown and all that?”
“Three of them, in point of fact,” Aelis said.
“We’re not much with those Crowns out here,” Currin said, sticking his thumbs into his belt and rocking back on his heels. It was the act of a friendly merchant meant to set a mark at ease, Aelis thought. Shame the effect is ruined by the armor and the axe.
“I haven’t come to debate politics,” Aelis said. “I am sure there are not many travelers in this country. I’m only asking if you’ve seen one.”
“Politics are everywhere and in everything,” Currin said. “Our position is that no man’s a fugitive this side of the border, where the Crowns’ rules don’t bother us overmuch.”
“Does harboring a fratricide bother you?” Aelis said, eager to take control of the conversation. “Or aiding him, at the least? I want to be perfectly clear here. I don’t care the least about your band, or what you’re doing here, or what principles or accidents of fate or personal foibles led you to Old Ystain.” To land that treaties specifically said would not be resettled yet, she thought but didn’t add. “I care about one man, who committed one crime.”
“I think we could invite this one in for a drink, Currin,” the woman said. Her voice was rich, and the suggestion so unexpected that Aelis found it entirely reasonable.
“I suppose you’re right, Nath,” the burly axeman said. “Very well. Come on, then,” he added, gesturing with one hand back toward the open gate. “Welcome to our little home,” he muttered, standing back and sweeping his arm as if inviting them in.
Aelis glanced back at Tun, whose face was dark beneath his hood, with his head bowed slightly forward. She could read nothing in it, so onward she went.
It was a bit disconcerting, the way the spearmen flanked her to either side. Even more was how uninterested in all of this the woman seemed.
The walk was short and the company quiet. Aelis counted men as they passed the gate—four more, in addition to the four people they were with. The wooden palisade didn’t enclose a lot of open ground, only enough for a well and two small huts that Aelis would’ve had to stoop to get into, much less a tallish man like Currin. Tun wouldn’t have fit through their doors. Given the scent pouring out of them, she guessed they were curing sheds for meat or fish, and they both had simple open holes in their thatch where smoke would escape.
The mouth of the cave dug into the hillside was covered with a big piece of an even bigger old tapestry. A rich, costly piece of work, or it had been once, Aelis reckoned. The flash of silver and gold threads caught the sunlight and pulled her up short. She studied it, finding a courtly scene with dozens of figures picked out. The center appeared to depict a great hall, with knights and wizards aplenty, the former in grand parade armor and the latter in hugely impractical robes with trailing sleeves and improbably grand hats that were themselves haloed with concentric rings of different colors.
Something about it jarred Aelis’s memory and she stopped, abandoning the pretense of only glancing at it. In the center two figures faced each other on chairs of equal height, one wearing a crown of gold and handing a similar circlet of silver to the other, both of their arms extended.
“This is priceless,” she suddenly blurted out. “Or it was. It’s three hundred years old or more. This depicts the King of Ystain accepting the Earl Mahlgren’s homage.”
“Not homage,” Currin pointed out somewhat stiffly. “Not really. The Earl, Donnus I—nearly as much a king in his day as old Huld III there—willingly handed his golden seals and circlet to the king and took silver back in exchange. He ruled most of what became northern Ystain, and we now call Old Ystain. Doubled the size of the kingdom and did it without war. That earl was a hero, saving thousands of lives by swallowing his pride.”
“And this tapestry was part of a series hanging in Mahlhewn Keep,” Aelis muttered.
“You know your art history, Warden. Of course, Mahlhewn was lost twenty years ago and shamefully ceded to the orcs when the war officially ended,” Currin added. “Mostly a ruin now. Fallen walls and rotted timbers and animal dens. Its gardens overgrown and its armory pillaged.” His voice took on a heated edge as he spoke, and Aelis found she did not like the sound of the words in his mouth, or the set of his eyes. “All mistakes that will have to be remedied one day.”
“By … whom, exactly?”
“By the rightful heir of the Mahlgren earls, of course,” Currin said, and the smile that spread over his broad features was unsettling. “And those who’ll follow me.”
19
THE EARL
The new seat of Earl Mahlgren proved to be a surprisingly expansive series of caves. Aelis imagined they’d probably begun as something natural, but they showed signs of guided hands. Timbers braced the ceilings in corners, and wooden floors guarded against mud, though not as thoroughly as she might have preferred.
No one had given any thought to ventilation, though, and even a small cookfire burning in a central pit in the largest chamber filled the rest with smoke that burned the eyes and the throat. She’d had no sign of Elmo and was increasingly worried about Tun, whose hands were dug deeply into the vast pockets on the sides of his long coat, his shoulders hunching up like boulders threatening to roll over a cliff.
So far, Aelis estimated there were more than one but fewer than two dozen people inside the caves. The haze made it hard to determine if she was counting anyone twice, or if there were simply nooks hiding men she couldn’t see. Most were armed, but taken individually they didn’t seem threatening. She had her doubts about taking on a dozen men at once, though, even with Tun’s help.
It was to that central cookfire and chamber that Currin led them. A single heavy wooden chair sat at the head of it, along with seats of canvas stretched over wood or stumps and large, roughly flat rocks that were gathered around it. The higher ceiling of the central room made the smoke more tolerable. Currin grinned as he sat down, stretched out his legs, and crossed them at the ankles before his fire.
“So, Warden. What do you think of my new seat?”
Nath had settled behind him, leaning one arm on the back of the chair and watching Aelis and Tun with her disinterested flat eyes. Aelis tried to ignore her.
“I think reclaiming your family’s land is a noble cause,” she said carefully. Albeit strictly forbidden by the terms of the treaties you or your father or your mother signed, if you are who you claim to be. “I think it doesn’t concern me.”
“Ah yes,” Currin said. “The fratricide. What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t. I merely asked if you’d seen a man, or taken one in, in the recent past.”
“Even if I had,” Currin said, “my retainers number…” Here he smiled, and waved a hand vaguely in the air. “Well, fewer than they must, if the work is to be achieved. I’d be a fool to turn aside any willing hand.”
I have had just about enough of this farce, Aelis thought, as someone glided to her side with a full cup. She took it and held it unsipped while the man, the younger spearman from outside, held out another to Tun.
For all the attention her guide paid to the youth with the cup, he may as well not have existed. Tun wasn’t moving except to breathe. Aelis had the sense he was gathering himself for something.
Currin took his cup and threw half of it back. “In fact, I’d be doubly the fool to turn aside willing hands as skilled as those of a Warden—and who- or whatever your companion is. It just so happens I’ve an opening as a Court Wizard you’ll be only too happy to fill.”
Court Wizard? Too happy to fill? Aelis was getting ready to shout these, and rather more pointed, objections, when some buzzing presence flitted against her mind and brought her up short.
Her training as an Enchanter told her instantly what was happening, but Currin hadn’t moved. Her eyes flitted to Nath behind the chair, narrowed, and just barely made out the wand dangling against her leg, most of its length concealed by her hand and sleeve.
The time to draw her own, or to leap forward with her sword, would give Nath time to react. So she made do with what she had to hand and threw her full cup, as hard as she could.
The bottom skipped off Currin’s forehead and shed some of its force, but it still surprised Nath enough to throw off her spell, startling her as much as hurting her.
The room exploded into motion.
The cupbearer flew across the room and thudded into the far wall with a crash that Aelis didn’t envy, propelled by Tun’s outthrust hand.
Aelis ripped her sword from her scabbard, but by the time she had, Nath had recovered and fled. As she went, she flung a hand out at the fire and spoke a word. Aelis didn’t catch it, but smoke, thicker and more acrid than what was already in the air, began to boil out of the firepit at an alarming rate.
Currin was coming up out of his chair and reaching for his axe, but before he could bring it into play, Tun’s staff had whipped forward, the end tapping the would-be Earl Mahlgren in the throat. His hands instantly went to his neck and Aelis heard him gasping for air, but Tun had already leapt forward and wrapped one arm around him. His knee intercepted Currin’s hand as it drew his axe, and the weapon clattered away.
Tun pulled his arm tightly around Currin’s neck. In response to the man’s gasps, Tun rumbled, “You’ll be fine so long as you don’t panic. I didn’t crush your windpipe, I just hurt it. If you strain yourself, you’ll fall unconscious, and I’ll have to drag you. I’d rather not.”
At just the right moment, Aelis saw one of Currin’s flailing arms reach for his belt. The dagger mostly concealed in it was only just flashing when the flat of her sword smashed against his fingers and the small blade went skittering away.
“Think a hostage gets us out of here?” She bent down and retrieved the knife, sticking it in her belt.
“I think it makes a better chance than otherwise.” Tun’s face was getting lost in the roiling smoke that was billowing out of the firepit. It was stinging Aelis’s eyes and making navigation nearly impossible.
“Grab my coat!” Tun yelled, and Aelis did as she was bid, fixing her grip tight on the back of Tun’s fringed jacket. Currin wasn’t providing much resistance, and Tun unerringly knew his way out. Aelis held her sword ready for attacking men to leap out of the murk at any moment, but before any could, they saw sunlight and soon they were back out into the small green space behind the wooden palisade.
Which was lined with armed men, three of them pointing loaded crossbows, the rest leveling an assortment of spears and, Aelis was sure, a few agricultural implements.
Elmo was among them, a spear wavering in his hands. He gave Tun and Aelis no sign of recognition.
Nath stood before the gate, brandishing a wand. Aelis, with little time to study anything further, threw up the widest ward she could in front of her, Tun, and their erstwhile hostage.
She grunted with the impact of holding it as a bolt, loosed from the wall, thudded against it and fell harmlessly to the ground.
That widened some eyes, including one of the older, more sure-looking men before them, who shouted, “Hold! Hold, they have the Earl!”
“That’s right, we have your fucking earl!” Tun roared. “And we are walking out of here with him. Lower your weapons!”
“And with him,” Aelis said, pointing the tip of her sword toward Elmo. “He’s the man we’ve come for, and if we don’t leave with him, your earl dies.” Along with us and as many of you as we can bring down with us, Aelis thought, amazed at how clearly she could think on the situation, with the business ends of over a dozen weapons pointed at her.
“Do as he says,” barked the grizzled man on the wall. Aelis watched for Nath’s reaction; the woman’s eyes merely narrowed. They seemed more alert now, but her lips parted slightly, as if she was considering countermanding that order.
For his part, Currin was nodding his head and croaking what Aelis took to be an affirmative. The tap of Tun’s staff and the huge arm snaked around his throat seemed to be letting him breathe and not much else.
Nath’s eyes narrowed, and she raised her wand. Aelis felt the pressure against her skin, the tingle, the force behind her eyelids. Magic was being done.
“Kill them,” the Enchanter said. “He is no earl. He was the son of a gardener at Mahlhewn, no more. I will make the man who kills the Warden the new earl.”
The men aimed their weapons. Tun roared and shoved the hostage back toward Aelis. Currin was too stunned to resist, and Aelis was too busy erecting wards to protest.
Then Tun began to change.
She felt two more crossbow bolts thud against wards that she kept up only long enough to deflect the missiles into the ground.
Tun grew taller, broader, wider. Where he’d once been huge in an ordinary sense—the biggest man she’d ever seen, but not beyond the bounds of what she imagined a man could be—he was now something much larger still. His hair grew longer, streaming down his back in a dark wave, and it seemed as though the long coat he wore blended with it. A hump began to form and his arms grew toward the ground, and only when his mouth widened into a muzzle and his skull thickened and a roar emerged did Aelis realize what was happening.
