The Road To Sevendor - A Spellmonger Anthology (37 page)

From beyond the firelight, but before the circle where the sentries patrolled, Sir Sastan and Captain Antrig watched and listened.

“We’re doomed,” Antrig said, conversationally.  “That lot . . .”

“They’ll be fine,” grunted the older man.  “A few weeks out here in the wild, they’ll grow eyes in the back of their heads.”

“They’d better,” warned Antrig.  You heard the mage: there are goblins all around us.  What chance do we have?”

Sir Sastan grunted bitterly.  “Whatever chance we give ourselves, of course.  Whatever chance will, steel, and our determination can earn.”

“Right,” Captain Antrig agreed.  “You know, I think I agree with Hastan,” he said, after a moment’s thought.

“That we’ll have to eat whatever we clean out of the castle, if the food doesn’t hold?” asked the knight.

“No,” Antrig said, sipping from a flask, “we’re all probably going to be dead in a week.”

*
                            *                            *

While the darkness was filled with strange noise that could keep a man from sleep, nothing attacked the men of the Iron Ring that night, and when dawn broke it found them preparing to investigate their new home. 

Half of the men had bows or crossbows, and were detailed to provide cover for the skirmishers and scouts Captain Antrig ordered forward.  Behind the most stealthy – Gos the Feather, the smallest but most quiet of the order – went the two largest men in full armor, their war shields canted in front of them, their infantry swords at guard.  No one answered their hail as they approached, and no arrows or rocks pelted them.  In moments Ginar the Hammer was pushing the heavy iron portcullis up with his shoulder while the Feather sought out the mechanism.  The scout called the gatehouse clear, and the men wasted no time in securing it.

“A well-executed operation,” said Captain Antrig, agreeably.  Sir Sastan snorted.

“Against an empty gatehouse,” he pointed out. 

“I would hesitate to sully the memory of your first victory as our commander thus,” Antrig said, sipping from his flask.  “It might be bad for morale.”

“At least we’ll have someplace dry to sleep tonight,” commented the priest, from behind them, as they advanced with the rest of the men to occupy the gatehouse.  “And if we’re lucky, the place will be defensible.”

From the gatehouse the men of the Iron Ring spread out and methodically searched the nearby structures.  Sheds and stables, storehouses and a smithy, there was no one there. 

But they began to find corpses. 

Most had been weathered or rotted to bones, but some were still frighteningly life-like, their flesh frozen solid during the winter and only now thawing.  There were, thankfully, few defenders left to face the goblins when they came.

But as the sun reached its peak the men found the first signs of their enemy: an abandoned camp in the midst of the bailey, its fire long cold.  But around it was strewn debris from the sacking of the castle the beasts had elected to discard.  Smashed boxes and rent baskets revealed all manner of trinkets, pins, jewelry, rings, thimbles, lamps, and other treasures, as well as a great heap of clothing stolen from the lord’s chambers.  Beautiful tapestries were ruined, half-burned and bloodied. 

When the men went to unroll one such banner, they found a horror inside.  Thereafter they took great caution in disturbing the inadvertent shrouds.

The second gatehouse was barred from within, but jammed open with a great log. 

“Troll,” sniffed Sir Sastan.  “I can still smell it.”

“If he opened it up, he didn’t get in that way,” observed the mage from behind him.  “That hole is only big enough for a man, or a gurvan.”

“Be wary,” the priest cautioned as the Feather ventured forward through the hole.  No sinister trap lurked beyond, but the smell was far worse.  They found out why soon after: the inner bailey had been turned into a slaughtering pit. 

The remains of hundreds of men, women and children were piled in great heaps all around the yard, the bones blackened and charred.  The flesh had been stripped from the bones, sliced, and dried over fires, it was clear, as the gurvani turned their dead enemies into rations. 

“Hold steady!” commanded Sir Sastan as some of the men were overcome with emotion.  A pile of scalps elicited the worst response, more so than even the stack of human hides left to rot in the sun.  From a few feet away the long tresses of beautiful women mingled with the tangled gray locks of widows, next to the curly scalps of their husbands and sons.

“This is an offense against the gods!” barked Durwan, tears streaming down his face.  “Against the very gods!”

“This is war,” Sir Sastan said, hoarsely.  “The worst part of it.  Look around, my brothers.  Look around and drink in that fetid air, see the inhuman nature of our foe, and know that there is no quarter, no truce in this war.  There is only death: yours and theirs.”

“They’ve quit this camp before the winter,” observed Captain Antrig, as he poked through the gruesome fire pit with the point of his sword.  “Probably rounded up everyone who was well enough to travel to march them back to the Black Vale.  Everyone else . . . lunch.”

Brother Thune made a face.  “Young Durwan was correct: this is an offense against the very gods.  How can we expect to live here, knowing such horrors happened right outside our door?”

“Can you think of a better motivation to pick up a sword every morning, Warbrother?” asked Sastan.

“I can think of no better motivation for putting my head in a noose of my own making,” Captain Antrig said, shaking his head.  “Or drinking myself into a stupor.”  To emphasize his point, he sheathed his sword and drank from his flask.

“Pile the remains respectfully here, in the pit,” commanded Sastan.  “It will have to do until we can find some way to bury them.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Hanith the Warmage said, rubbing his hands together.  “I am no High Mage – yet – but I do have my Talents.  Of all the greater elements, fire is my servant,” he said, and to prove the point he produced a flare of good size in his palm.  “Let us give them a pyre to lay their souls at peace.”

“Fire cleanses,” the priest agreed, gravely. 

“So do spirits,” agreed Antrig, taking another pull from his flask.

“So does vengeance,” said Sir Sastan, quietly.

“Being a bit melodramatic, isn’t he?” asked Antrig of the priest when their commander was out of earshot.  “Keep a humor like that and we’ll go mad long before the goblins gnaw our bones.”

“A dark humor oft rides a fell hand,” quoted the warbrother.  “He lost everything he had, everything he was.  Everyone he had.  Duin has his soul, now.”

“Perhaps,” sighed the mercenary captain.  “I just don’t want to be locked up with a horror as bad as the one we face.”

The priest looked at him skeptically.  “Does this look like a happy place?”

“Not at the moment,” agreed Antrig.  “Indeed, it looks like the unhappiest place on Callidore.  I just think it’s bad for a man’s morale to hear how doomed he is, day in and day out.”

“I . . . I shall speak to the commander,” agreed the chaplain, after a moment’s thought.  “Privately.”

“I would be grateful, W
arbrother,” he agreed.

The rest of the keep, while deserted, was not necessarily destroyed.  The goblins had been reckless in their plundering, but not thorough.  They had missed entire storerooms in their haste, or perhaps due to their lack of familiarity with human custom.  But their oversight ensured that the brothers of the Iron Ring would not starve.  Four rings of wheat and six bushels of oats were stored in the lofts against pests, and the cellars had barely been touched.  Goblins, it seemed, had an aversion to pickled eggs.

Apart from the gruesome manufactory in the courtyard, the keep was surprisingly intact.  The lord and his retinue had retired in good order, if in haste, and while the great hall and his private apartments had been savaged, many of the smaller chambers of the keep were virtually untouched. Sir Sastan ordered the men to re-inhabit the structure that very evening while the mage used his sorceries to render the dead into ashes.

A watch was set at the apex of the highest watchtower, which Hanith took for his lodging.  Day and night one brother or the other took to the stairs to scan the horizon for signs of enemies approaching.  The mage made a discipline of scrying the region well every day and every night.   And always to the northwest was the sinister shimmer of the shadow, the Umbra in which lay the heart of the horde.

Indeed, Hanith the Warmage was quiet busy those first few days.  He conjured wardings and watch spells all around the castle to help make up for the lack of men to man the walls.  The stress of the endeavor was apparent after the first hard day’s labor.  Brother Thune made him rest in the great hall, near the fire.

“Food,” Hanith insisted that evening at the common meal, “I just need food.  And something other than water to wash it down.  Food and ale and sleep and I will be fine.  Spellwork takes a toll on a mage,” he admitted. 

“Your work is appreciated,” said the warbrother.  “You lift the hearts of your comrades with your diligence.”

“They lift mine by dragging away what wouldn’t burn.  That bone fire was vile . . . the smell still clings to me. “

“Get any of this stew on you and it will knock it clean away,” remarked Jagan with a loud belch.  “Duin’s beard, Durwan, how much garlic did you use?”

“I heard goblins don’t like garlic,” the young man said, apologetically.  He had been chosen to cook for no better reason than he had helped his mother in the kitchen more recently. 

“They don’t,” agreed Sir Sastan, “but they dislike it so much that they can smell it instantly.”

“So . . . should I use it, or, or not?  Sir?” asked the confused boy.

“Use it in the castle,” agreed Captain Antrig, as he chased around a bit of onion with his spoon.  “But not for the men who go out on patrol.”

“Aye,” sighed Sir Sastan, “we’ll need to start thinking about that.”

“Patrols?” asked Jagan, his mouth open.  “We can barely man the gatehouse and keep watch above!”

“We won’t be alone forever,” promised Sir Sastan.  “In another week another score of your new brothers will be arriving.  With horses,” he added.  “When we thicken our numbers, then we can begin to venture forth.”

“We’ll likely be dead in a week,” pointed out Antrig.  “But I’m game to stick around until then.   It’s not like the goblins have been knocking at our door.”

“Not yet,” agreed Hanith, “but they’re coming.  I scryed a patrol north of here.  They will likely have seen our lights and smoke.  There was no way I could hide that pillar of smoke,” he pointed out, apologetically.

“I didn’t think you could, lad,” the knight said, quietly.  “I never thought we could hide here.  I never intended to hide here.  We came to establish a presence in the Penumbra, and we can’t do that by hiding.”

“But we’re not ready for a fight yet,” Hanith pleaded.  “We should be careful!”

“We are being careful,” Captain Antrig admitted.  “We’ve been in the field for weeks now, and not a single fatality.”

“Oh, Duin just loves it when you tempt him like that,” warned Jagan.  “Isn’t that right, Warbrother?”

“Duin takes or gives as he sees fit,” Thune replied, evenly.  “He listens to no man’s pleas or prayers until he’s died in battle.”

“A singularly unhelpful divinity,” agreed Antrig.  “But it isn’t prophesy to predict the dawn.  We will be attacked.  I’m just amazed we haven’t been, yet.”

“They’re coming,” Hanith warned, hoarsely.  “Believe me.  They’re coming.”

*                            *                            *

As if Duin had heard Antrig’s dare, the next morning the first skirmishers scouted the castle.  The mage detected them first, and then when he pointed them out to the watchman in the tower the man followed them with his eyes closely.  Hanith sprinted down the tower’s stairs to alert Captain Antrig, who was the officer on duty. 

Hanith half-expected Antrig to dismiss the report as inconclusive.  Despite the captain’s casual manner, he knew his duty.  He dispatched a squadron of five men, led by the Warbrother, to tend to the skirmishers.  They moved out on foot, after being briefed by the mage about where to find the goblin patrol.

They were gone almost four anxious hours, but returned just before dusk.  They were covered in dark fur and blood, but all were hale, if not unscratched.  Ginar the Hammer had taken a slash to his thigh from a wickedly-curved falchion, and had to be helped back to the castle.  Warbrother Thune dragged a bloody burlap sack of goblin heads back to the keep to post outside of the gate.  If the smoke from the pyre did not alert the other goblins to their presence, that horrid sight would have enraged them.

“That was a blessed scrap,” Thune assured Sir Sastan when they returned.  “Ginar is impressive, despite his wound.  He took four of them himself just by smashing their heads with that hammer of his.”

“He says he was apprenticed a smith, before his master died,” Captain Antrig mentioned.  “With that wound he might consider the forge again.  We’ll have need of it, before long.”

“We’ll have need of more supplies, too,” warned Sir Sastan.  “Send a party out on the morrow to scout the nearby villages.  Some of them might have been overlooked when the invaders moved through.”