- -
- 100%
- +
‘We’re not going to see another ambush between here and Mondegreen,’ Pirojil said. ‘Maybe a straggler or two, but more likely they’ll be too busy running away.’
‘If you say so,’ the sergeant said, making no motion to recall the outriders.
Pirojil bit his lip, then decided to try again. ‘Look, Sergeant, if there were more Tsurani within tens of miles of here, their commander would surely have used all of them for the ambush. The Tsurani commanders aren’t stupid; they’re just greedy. As it was, he split his forces too small, hoping the attack would drive the column into a killing zone for his archers.’
‘I thank you much for that opinion, Pirojil,’ the sergeant said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a squad to run. Shouldn’t you be off counting your high pay or wiping Baron Morray’s backside or something useful?’
Pirojil shook his head. There was no point in trying. It was impossible to convince somebody who wouldn’t be convinced, and while the three of them were in charge of the nobles, they hadn’t been explicitly left in charge of the party, or even of the sergeant’s squad. Now instead of having one rider away from the column, they had four, just because a sergeant got irritated at getting some good advice.
Tom Garnett should have been more direct and simply put the party under Kethol’s command. The three mercenaries had understood that he had meant for them to be in charge, but the sergeant didn’t, or affected not to. Pirojil could either live with that, or fight it out, with him, Kethol and Durine against the entire squad; and then they would have to make their escape rather than explain to Tom Garnett why they had killed all of his men – assuming that they could, of course.
Pirojil relaxed. So be it. For now.
It would probably be necessary to have Durine take the sergeant aside at some point and work this out, privately. He didn’t particularly like asking Durine to do that, but he was used to doing things he didn’t like. He’d had to do it a time or two before. That was the nice thing about having Durine beat somebody up: they didn’t lose their comrades’ respect by having Durine mess up their face just a little. Few men could stand up to Durine and no one – so far – could emerge unscathed from a fight with the big man.
He tried to be philosophical about it.
Relationships between regulars and mercenaries were always uncomfortable. Forget, for just a moment, that regular soldiers thought of freebooters as little more than land pirates, mostly because during peacetime, and around the fringes of war, they spent more time hunting them down than working with them.
Even when mercenaries were employed by the Crown, there were conflicts built into the relationship. The freebooters tended to report directly to an officer, who was expected to take a long view of things and understand that too many unnecessary fatalities among the mercenaries inevitably meant widespread mercenary desertion or revolt. It usually didn’t work out when mercenaries had to answer to a sergeant, who would be much quicker to expend a mercenary than one of his own men, and while few mercenaries died in bed, even fewer wanted to spend their whole, short lives on point, or worse. The second or third time a mercenary company was ordered to be first over the wall, they started considering the wisdom of their employment choice.
Relations between the mercenaries and the regulars were unlikely to get any better in Mondegreen. The regular soldiers would be housed in the barracks at Mondegreen Castle. But Baron Morray would be housed in the Residence, and therefore Kethol, Durine and Pirojil would be as well, with the three of them sleeping in soft featherbeds, their every need being tended to by beautiful maidservants. At least that’s what the regulars would think.
It wouldn’t actually be that way, of course, but that was the way the story would be told around the barracks. Never mind that they would probably be bedded down on damp reeds in the kitchen, except for whichever of them drew the short straw and spent the night sleeping on the stone floor across the threshold of the Baron’s bedchamber. And the maids were almost certain to be old, fat, ugly, or all three. But, the regulars would complain that the mercenaries were getting a soft assignment.
Pirojil slowed his horse to allow Baron Morray and Kethol to catch up with him, while behind, Durine trailed Lady Mondegreen and her maids.
Kethol arched an eyebrow; Pirojil shook his head. Kethol shrugged.
The Baron eyed them curiously. After a few moments, when neither of them answered the unvoiced question, he cleared his throat for attention. ‘What was that all about?’ he asked imperiously.
‘Nothing for you to bother yourself with, my lord,’ Kethol said, when Pirojil didn’t immediately answer. ‘Just a minor disagreement between Pirojil and the sergeant.’
‘All that from a shake of the head?’ Morray was visibly sceptical.
‘Yes,’ Pirojil said. But that wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the Baron. ‘Kethol and I’ve been working together for years; Durine’s been with us only a little less. After so much time together, my lord, each of us knows how the others think.’
The Baron raised an eyebrow as if questioning the remark.
‘You don’t mask your thoughts to the man at your back, my lord. If a man insists on keeping his thoughts to himself all the time, well, you find somebody else to watch your back.’
The Baron scowled. ‘I’m not overly impressed with the three of you,’ he said. ‘You distinguished yourself with bravery during the ambush, certainly more than one would expect from a bunch of freebooters, but your swordwork was clumsy – at least what I saw of it – and if Lady Mondegreen hadn’t spurred her horse so quickly, she would have been brought down by the Tsurani without much trouble at all.’
Kethol started to open his mouth, but desisted at Pirojil’s head-shake.
‘We’ll try to do better, next time, my lord,’ Pirojil said. He had already had enough of arguing with somebody who would not be persuaded for one afternoon.
But you couldn’t trust Kethol to keep his mouth shut about such a thing. Kethol would have to explain himself – it was one of his few weaknesses – and that would do nobody any good at all.
Pirojil pointed a finger toward the front of the column, tapped the finger against his own chest, jerked his thumb toward the rear of the column, and spurred his horse.
Lady Mondegreen’s eyes held steady on Kethol as he dropped back beside her, replacing Durine. ‘How soon do we arrive, Kethol?’ she asked.
If he remembered right, and he did, the outer wall of Mondegreen Town was just beyond the next bend, across a stream, and then over a ridge. ‘I believe we should be there within the hour, Lady.’ Why the Lady of Castle Mondegreen wouldn’t know the area around the keep better than a soldier who had only been through here once, during the war, he didn’t know. ‘We’ll have you safe in your own bed this night, and may it be a comfort to you.’
‘I’ve some comfort in my own bed, that’s true,’ she said. ‘Though my husband is a good man, a gentle man, but a very sick man, and has been, for the past few years.’
Oh, he didn’t say. And is that why you spend your time warming other men’s beds? ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he did say. It seemed like the appropriate response.
She pursed her lips momentarily. ‘Others suffer far worse than do I.’
‘Is the Baron much older than you?’
She frowned. ‘Yes, he is. And is there something wrong with that?’
‘Not at all.’ Kethol shook his head. ‘But it must be difficult –’
‘Yes, it’s difficult.’ She patted at her belly. ‘It’s difficult when you marry an older man, and are expected to produce an heir, and don’t.’ She started to say something more, then stopped herself.
‘There’s no need to watch your words around me, Lady,’ Kethol said. ‘I’m not loose of tongue, and I’ve got no stake in local matters.’
She didn’t look at him. ‘How fortunate for you,’ she said, through tight lips.
They rode in silence for a few minutes.
‘I seem to have something of a widespread reputation,’ she said at last.
‘Perhaps.’ Kethol shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. The only gossip I get to hear is usually about how one sergeant is a glory-hound, or another officer will never send his men out in front of him if he doesn’t have to – the private lives of our betters isn’t a topic for barracks conversation.’
Which wasn’t entirely true. It might not have been a topic for Kethol’s barracks conversation, but some of the Mut soldiers gossiped like fishwives, and Lady Mondegreen was often a subject of their chatter. If you believed the gossip – and Kethol never either believed all or none of it – she flitted from bed to bed with wild abandon, looking for the satisfaction that her ancient husband couldn’t have given her.
She looked at him, long and hard, as though trying to decide something.
A crow fluttered down and took a perch on an overhanging tree limb, and cawed down at them.
Well, as long as it didn’t shit on him, he didn’t mind.
Pirojil shook his head. Unless you knew how and where to look, the castle didn’t look like the weapon that it actually was.
Castle Mondegreen rose, huge and solid and dark on its hill, looming above the town below. On top of its six towers watchmen stood, probably bored out of their minds, but even more probably happy to be bored. It didn’t take much experience with battle to teach you that combat was far less romantic in real life than in all the tales, ballads and legends.
Of course, it wouldn’t take long before the sights and sounds and particularly the smells of war would fade in the memory, and it wouldn’t be long before young soldiers would be puffing their chests and strutting about, bragging of the great deeds they would do the next time the alarm horns sounded. Some of them would do very well. Some of them would die, and all of them would be changed, in ways many of them would not recognize until years later, if ever. A soldier’s life gave you plenty of time for introspection, but many just pissed that time away.
Pirojil himself had pissed away many an hour that could have been spent just thinking about things. On the other hand, he had not wasted all his hours, and he had long ago worked out that it was dangerous to keep weapons too near you. Necessary, yes, but dangerous – weapons changed people, and not just enchanted weapons.
Like the castle itself.
Originally, Castle Mondegreen had been built by some cousin of the conDoin family, as a way to establish a permanent foothold in Yabon. While invited in to help drive out the Brotherhood of the Dark Path and their allies, many of the Yabonese had not expected the Kingdom to stay in Yabon once the enemy had been dislodged. Like neighbouring Bosonia, Yabon had been a far-flung colony of the Empire of Great Kesh.
Unlike Bosonia, which had many Keshian colonists living there, Yabon had been an administrated district with a few Keshian nobles and many Yabonese tribal chieftains and lords. The Kingdom’s position was that once the Dark Brothers and their ilk were driven away, the natives were unable to protect themselves and therefore Yabon required a permanent Kingdom garrison. A rescue had turned into a conquest.
Some lords and chieftains had welcomed the Kingdom, and were rewarded with titles and lands. Other locals had, as locals did, resented their conquerors, and were primed for revolt in the early years. During that time, the remnants of the old regime would eye the new rulers, usually waiting and sometimes probing for weaknesses, ready to throw off the yoke of the newly-appointed Kingdom earl and his lickspittle barons.
And that was what the castle was for. Let the old regime raise an army in the countryside, let them gather together horses and men, bows and breastplates and swords, and let them rant and rave and fume as they would – so long as the new rulers controlled the castle.
Sometimes, the revolt could be put down by the Baron’s troops riding out and dispersing the rebels. More often, the trouble could be stopped at the much smaller wall around the town, protecting not just the nobility in the castle, but those loyal to the new regime who were, during the early years, the only ones permitted to live in the town, directly under the protection of the Baron.
But sometimes, the occupying troops would have to retreat into the castle, and wait to be relieved by the Earl’s troops. Stockpiled food and water were as much a part of the castle’s armoury as stockpiled arrows and bolts. As conquests go, Yabon’s was a relatively mild one, and by the third generation after the Kingdom annexed the former Keshian colony – which just happened to be Pirojil’s generation – Yabonese and Kingdom were interchangeable, except maybe for a bit of a funny accent in Yabon.
And so, the castle stood: a monument to persistence, just as the tumble down wall of the town was a monument to mutability, to how things never lasted.
Pirojil couldn’t tell how much of the town’s wall had been destroyed in the war – the Tsurani had broken through into Mondegreen Town on their way to the castle – and how much had been cannibalized before the Tsurani invasion by locals seeking building materials. After a generation or so of peace, the wall around the town was more of an inconvenience than a benefit, and it took a wise ruler to remember that walls were important.
The wall around the keep itself, though, was intact, although as battle-scarred as the rest of the landscape. Ashes were all that remained of the siege towers the Tsurani had built against the western wall, and while the southern wall still stood firm, it was scarred by a patched breach in the stonework, above where Tsurani sappers had failed in their attempt to undermine its integrity. The slump in the ground at the foundation told Pirojil all he needed to know about the failed attempt. Nasty way to die, he thought, with tons of rock and earth suddenly falling upon you, crushing you in the darkness like a bug. The trick was to make the tunnel as large as you safely could, with just enough timber to hold everything above you in place until you were ready to fire the supports, collapse the tunnel – hopefully while you were a respectable distance away – and thereby collapse the wall above, forming a lovely breach through which your comrades could attack.
Pirojil had been in a mining party, down in the Vale, and the whole damn thing had failed to hold. He remembered the earthy smell as dust had been forced up his nose when the ceiling of the tunnel had come crashing down – on the heads of a few of his companions – leaving him and the rest of the sappers trapped with no way out but up out of the ground, emerging through the fire and rubble of a collapsed wall. They were half-blind, sneezing and coughing from dust and smoke, knowing full well that they had to kill all the defenders, who would fight – and die – like cornered rats.
As they had.
Once in a while, some captain or duke or prince got the wonderful notion that you should tunnel further so that you emerged inside the walls. Nice theory, if you weren’t the idiots picked to be the first ones popping up out of the ground …
‘I said,’ Baron Morray reiterated, ‘that you may take my horse to the stables, when I alight.’
Pirojil nodded, coming out of his momentary reverie. ‘Of course, Baron.’
‘I’ll speak to the housecarl about your billets. Perhaps they can find room for you three in the barracks, rather than the stables.’
Well, they might as well have that out now as later.
‘No, my lord,’ Pirojil said, ‘we’re not staying in the stables. We’ll all be staying in the Residence while one of us stands watch before your door.’
Baron Morray wasn’t used to being contradicted. The reins twitched in his fingers. ‘I hardly see the need. The barracks or perhaps the stables will be perfectly adequate for the likes of – for the three of you. If I find I need you in the middle of the night, I’ll send a servant.’
Pirojil shrugged ‘Very well, my lord. If you’d be kind enough to put that in writing, I’ll have a messenger send it to the Earl. If there’s a fast enough horse available, it might reach Yabon before –’
‘What?’
Well, at least the Baron was smart enough not to raise his voice.
‘We’ve been assigned to protect you, night and day, by the Earl, my lord. If some accident or misdeed were to happen to you while we were neglecting our duty, it would be our heads into the noose. If I’m not to follow Earl Vandros’s orders, I think he’ll want to know why.’
The Baron started to say something, but Pirojil took the chance of speaking first. ‘Please. We’re assigned to protect you, my lord,’ he said, quietly. ‘Not just your body. We have been known to tell stories around the fire late at night, just like everybody else, but we don’t gossip about what our betters are doing.’
If you’re fool enough to have your dalliances with Lady Mondegreen under the very nose of her husband, then so be it, he didn’t quite say.
The Baron was silent for a moment. ‘I’m not quite the fool you take me for, freebooter,’ he said. ‘I take your full meaning, but I’d not dishonour even a churl under his own roof, much less a good man like Baron Mondegreen, no matter what you seem to think.’
‘It isn’t my job to think,’ Pirojil said. ‘Except about protecting you.’
‘Then so be it. Protect me if you must, but don’t bother me about it.’ The Baron clucked at his horse, which responded by picking up a posting trot.
Pirojil sighed. It was going to be a long tour. He urged his own horse forward and followed the Baron.
A tall, slender and almost preposterously buxom serving maid brought a tray holding an enormous joint of mutton and an only slightly smaller pile of flatbread, still steaming from the oven. She was prettier than most, with nice, even features, her impressive breasts straining the ties of her blouse, her brown hair up in a simple knot that left her long, elegant neck bare. Tendrils of hair teased at the back of her neck as she walked, and Kethol envied them.
She didn’t say anything, but looked from one to the next, barely avoiding sniffing in distaste, then set the tray down on the table without comment, leaving the three of them alone in the hall as she headed down the winding staircase, walking unselfconsciously, indifferent to the three pairs of eyes on her.
Kethol watched her go. You got used to being treated like garbage after a while, or so you told yourself. A soldier’s life was full of lies.
‘Hmm. I think I need a bath,’ Pirojil said. Or maybe, better, a new face.’
‘Bath sounds good.’ Durine nodded.
‘You take the first one, then me?’
‘I can wait,’ Durine said. ‘Rather take my time. Looks like a good bathhouse outside the barracks. You can sluice off some of the road dust before you turn in, but as for me, soaking in some hot water sounds good about now. Just be careful to wipe your boots coming back in, eh?’
Pirojil looked at his boots, which were mud-free; the three of them had already received a thorough talking-to from the housecarl.
The west wing of the keep’s second floor was dedicated to the use of guests. Of the dozen doors up and down the hall, all but two stood open, presumably waiting for their next occupants. The family residence was in the east wing, and on the floor below. Judging from the grumbling and dirty looks that the three of them had received from the soldiers on watch downstairs, the Baron’s captain of the guard was less than pleased to have his master’s care put in the hands of outsiders, and had placed soldiers on station on the floor below to drive home the point.
Pirojil’s gaze followed where the serving maid had disappeared down the staircase, as though looking beyond to where Mondegreen troops were posted at the entrance to the family quarters. ‘It’s a sad day when people don’t trust a trio of cutthroats like us.’
Durine laughed. Kethol shrugged.
While Kethol stayed outside, watching the entrance to the Barons rooms, Durine and Pirojil had gone through the chambers, emerging to report nothing out of the ordinary: no Tsurani assassin waiting in the bureaus; no covey of Dark Brotherhood killers hiding in an armoire, which wasn’t particularly surprising.
You spent most of your time on this sort of job taking precautions that would turn out to have been unnecessary, but as certain as flies in summer, the one time you didn’t check under a bed, that would be where the killers would be waiting.
Looking silly was the least of a soldier’s worries, after all.
Behind the heavy oaken door, Baron Morray was probably already sleeping in the big bed, warmed by the fire in the small hearth and the metal trays placed under the mattress. If the bed was warmed by anything else – if, say, Lady Mondegreen had sneaked in through one of the secret passages with which all castles were rife – there was nothing that Kethol could do about it, and probably nothing he should do about it, so he decided not to worry about it.
Kethol hacked off a piece of mutton with his belt knife and chewed it. Old, tough and overcooked, but it was hot food, and probably better than whatever they were having in the barracks. On the other hand, there would probably be a dice game going on in the barracks, and it would be a shame to miss that, after such a hard day of travel. Bouncing on the back of a horse could tire the mind almost as well as strong drink.
‘Hmm … you two mind if I take the first watch tonight?’ he asked.
Both of the others shrugged.
‘Sure,’ Durine said. He rubbed at his lower back with one massive hand as he rose.
‘Fine with me,’ Pirojil said, rising.
For a moment, Pirojil looked as if he was going to say something more, but they each hacked off a huge chunk of mutton and carried it away on a bed of flatbread. Pirojil and Durine walked down the hall to the room where the three of them were billeted, Pirojil reappearing momentarily with his rucksack before disappearing down the winding stairs, presumably heading for the bathhouse as he popped the last bit of mutton and bread into his mouth.
Kethol was by himself, which was fine with him, although it felt a bit funny to have the first watch. You got into a pattern if you worked together long enough. The usual thing would be for Pirojil to take the first watch, then Durine and Kethol. Stolid Durine could will himself to sleep almost instantly, no matter what had been going on, and once Pirojil was down for the night, nothing short of an attack could easily get him out of bed.
Besides, Kethol liked watching the dawn, and the eastern window at the end of the corridor would have given him a nice view of the sun rising beyond the far wall.
But he just didn’t feel like it, not tonight. Too busy wool-gathering, he supposed.
He walked over to the heavy oak door and carefully, gently, slowly, tried the knob, pushing the door open a scant inch, just enough to assure himself that it wasn’t locked from the inside.
Any attack was unlikely, and one that could reach the Residence itself quickly even more so, but you had to take every precaution you could think of, and pray to a soldier’s god that it would be unnecessary this time.
He sat down in the big leather chair next to the end table and nibbled at the mutton. Not enough garlic, and too much salt, but that was to be expected. Probably a little off, too, but the rabble could hardly expect to get the best cuts.
He was still nibbling away at what remained of the joint when Durine finally reappeared up the stairs, his hair damp and slicked back from the bath. After a quick nod, the big man disappeared into their room.
Kethol would have preferred that Durine stay up for a while to chat, but he wouldn’t ask that of the big man. Sleeping time when you were taking a one-in-three was scant enough.
The trick when standing watch by yourself was always to stay awake and alert. Too much food would be a bad idea, and only an idiot would drink wine on watch. Kethol had known an old, moustachioed sergeant from Rodez who claimed that he was a bit sharper, a bit brighter on watch with a couple of skinfuls of wine in him, and if there was any justice in the world – always a bad bet – somebody had run a spear through his guts soon after Kethol, Pirojil and Durine had lit out, as they had not at that time been desperate enough to be serving under an idiot.