Brotherhood of the Wolf (7 page)

“It appears the stool beside me has been vacated, Baron Poll,” Roland said. “Perhaps you will join me for breakfast.”

“Why, thank you,” Baron Poll said courteously. He waddled over to the stool, sat down, took half the loaf, dipped it in Roland's trencher.

The whole crowd gaped in wonder. Roland thought, They'd not look more astonished if Baron Poll and I were a pair of toads flying about the room like hummingbirds, chasing flies with long tongues.

Horrified, the young knight exclaimed, “But you're not to be within fifty leagues of each other—by the King's own command!”

“True, but last night, by mere happenstance, Borenson and I were thrust into the same cot,” Baron Poll replied contentedly. “And I must say, I've never had a more cordial bedfellow.”

“Nor I,” Roland offered. “Not many a man could warm your backside as well as Baron Poll. The man is as big as a horse and as hot as a smithy's forge. Why, I suspect he could warm a whole village at night. You could fry fish on his feet or bake bricks on his back.”

Everyone stared at them as if they were daft, so Roland and Baron Poll loudly discussed such mundane topics as the weather, how the recent rains had aggravated the gout that Poll's mother-in-law suffered from, the best way to cook venison, and so on.

Everyone watched them warily, as if at any moment the truce might break, and the two men would go at it with knives.

Finally, Borenson slapped Baron Poll on the back, went outside into the early morning light. The village of Hay was aptly named. Haycocks stood everywhere in the fields, and black-eyed Susans grew huge so late in the summer. The margin of the road out of town was a riot of yellows
and deep browns. The countryside was flat, and the grass had grown tall in the summer, but now was sun-bleached white and dying.

At the front of the inn, the pigs had wisely fled. A couple of red hens pecked in the dirt by Roland's feet. Roland waited while a stableboy went to fetch his horse.

He stood looking up into the hazy sky. The air was moist with wisps of morning fog. Volcanic ash drifted in the mist like flakes of warm snow.

Baron Poll came out, stood with him a moment, staring up and stroking his beard. “There's mischief in this volcano blowing, and powerful magic,” he predicted. “Raj Ahten has flameweavers in his retinue, I hear. I wonder if they're mixed up in this?”

Roland thought it unlikely that the flameweavers had anything to do with the volcano. It had blown far to the south, and Raj Ahten's soldiers were converging on Carris a hundred miles north. Still, it seemed ominous.

“What is this about the King's command?” Roland asked. “Why are you not to get within fifty leagues of my son?”

“Ah, it's nothing.” Baron Poll grinned with embarrassment. “Old news. I'd tell you the story, but you'll hear some minstrel sing of it soon enough, I imagine. They get most of it right.” Baron Poll sheepishly glanced at the ground and wiped some fallen ash from his cloak. “I've lived in mortal terror of your boy these past ten years.” Roland wondered what his son would have done if he'd wakened in this man's arms. “But dark times can make even the worst of enemies into friends, eh?” Baron Poll said. “And men can change, can't they? Wish your son well for me, if you find him.”

His expression begged Roland for forgiveness, and Roland would have been happy to give it to him, but he could not speak for his son. “I'll do so,” Roland promised.

Far down the dirt road to the south, fifty knights were racing north, the hooves of their chargers thundering over the earth.

“Perhaps your road north won't be so dangerous after all,” Baron Poll said. “But mark my word. Beware of Carris.”

“Aren't you coming north? I thought you'd ride with me.”

“Pah,” Baron Poll spat. “I'm going the wrong way—south. I have a summer estate outside Carris, so my wife wanted me to remove a few valuables before Raj Ahten's men looted the place. I'm helping the servants guard the wagon.”

That seemed cowardly, but Roland said nothing.

“Aye,” Baron Poll said. “I know what you're thinking. But they'll have to fight without me at Carris. I had two endowments of metabolism until last fall when some of my Dedicates got slain. I'm feeling too old and fat for a real battle. My armor fits me no better than would my wife's undergarments.”

Those words had come hard. The Baron did want to go north and fight.

“We could skirt this battle at Carris,” Roland suggested, “and find one more to your liking. Why don't you come with me?”

“Hah!” Baron Poll guffawed. “Eight hundred miles to Heredon? If you're not worried for your own health, or mine, at least you could show pity to my poor horse!”

“Let your servants haul off your treasures. They don't need you guarding them.”

“Ah, my wife would give me such a tongue-lashing—the shrew! Better to anger Raj Ahten than her.”

A maid came out of the inn and expertly grabbed one of the hens that had been pecking in the dust. She snatched it by the neck. “You'll be coming with me. Lord Collinsward wants your company for breakfast.” She wrung the chicken's neck and was already pulling off feathers when she carried the hen round back.

In moments, the knights from the south reached the village, wheeled their horses toward the stable. Apparently
they hoped to rest, get some news, and care for their mounts.

When the stableboy brought Roland's horse around, he mounted, gave the boy a small coin. The filly was well rested, frolicky. She was a huge red beast with a blaze of white on her hooves and forehead. She acted ready for a brisk run in the cool morning air. Roland took off along the road, through a field shrouded with mist that soon turned into a low fog.

Roland sniffed at the smell of volcanic ash, searching the scent for signs of danger. On the road north ahead was Raj Ahten's army—an army said to contain sorcerers and Invincibles and frowth giants and fierce dogs of war.

He could not help think how unfair life could be. That poor chicken back at the inn hadn't had a second's warning before it died.

Moments later, while Roland was preoccupied with such grim thoughts, the sound of a horse riding hard startled him.

He glanced behind, worried that it might be a robber or assassin. He was riding through a thick fog, and could not see a hundred feet ahead.

Spurring his mount off the road, he reached for his halfsword just as a huge shape came thundering from the mist behind him.

Baron Poll bounced up on his horse. “Well met!” the fat knight cried, sitting precariously on his charger. The beast looked about with a terrified demeanor, eyes wide and ears back, as if afraid its master would give it a good cuffing.

“Aren't you going south with your treasures?” Roland asked.

“Damn the treasures. The servants can abscond with them for all I care! Let them take that shrew of a wife, too!” Baron Poll bellowed. “You were right. It's better to die young with the blood hot in your veins, than to die old and slowly of being too fat!”

“I never said that,” Roland objected.

“Pah! Your eyes said it all, lad.”

Roland sheathed his sword. “Well, now that my eyes are so eloquent, perhaps I'll give my unruly tongue a rest.” With that, he wheeled his horse into the mist.

3
HOSTENFEST

Myrrima woke at dawn with tears in her eyes. She wiped them away and lay wondering at the strange sense of melancholy that had overwhelmed her each dawn for the past three days. She did not know for certain why she woke crying.

She should not have felt this way. It was the last day of Hostenfest—the day of the great feast—and it should have been the happiest day of the year.

Moreover, in the past few weeks, she had won several small victories. Instead of sleeping in her shack outside Bannisferre, she had wakened in her room in the King's Tower at Castle Sylvarresta. Over the past three days, she'd become a close friend to young Queen Iome Orden, and she'd married a knight with some wealth. Her sisters and her mother were here in the castle, living in the Dedicate's Keep, where they would be taken care of for life.

She should have been happy. Yet she felt as if the hand of doom weighed on her.

Outside her window, she could hear the King's facilitators chanting out in the Dedicates' Keep. Over the past week, thousands of people had offered to dedicate their attributes into the service of the Earth King. Though Gaborn was an Oath-Bound Lord and had sworn not to take a man's brawn or wit or stamina unless it was freely given, and those had been freely offered, he still had not taken a
single endowment. Some feared that he had forsaken the practice altogether, yet he did not forbid his knights to take endowments.

King Gaborn Val Orden seemed to have an endless supply of forcibles, and for the past week, the chief facilitator had worked with his apprentices night and day, doling out endowments to Heredon's knights, trying to rebuild the kingdom's decimated troops. Still, the Dedicate's Keep was only half full.

A soft knocking came from Myrrima's door, and she rolled over on the satin sheets of her bed, glanced out through a window of the oriel. The morning light barely glowed through the stained-glass image on the window—mourning doves winging through a blue sky, as seen through a screen of ivy. She realized that the low knocking had wakened her.

“Who's there?”

“'Tis I,” Borenson said.

Throwing back the sheets, she leapt up, rushed to the door, and yanked it open. He stood in the doorway, a lamp in his hands, its small flame wavering in the drafty castle. He looked huge there in the darkness, grinning like a boy with a joke to tell. His blue eyes twinkled, and his red beard fanned out from his face.

“You don't need to knock,” she laughed. They'd been married now for four days, though he'd run off and spent the last three on a hunt. Worse, they had never consummated their marriage, and Myrrima had to wonder at him.

Sir Borenson seemed smitten enough by her, but when she'd thought to bed him on her honeymoon night, he'd merely said, “How can a man take such pleasures, while tonight he will hunt in the Dunnwood?”

Myrrima was inexperienced with men. She did not know if it was right to feel so hurt by his rejection. She'd wondered if he really was overexcited by the hunt, if that was natural, or if he had a war wound that kept him from showing affection. Perhaps Borenson had married her only because Gaborn had suggested it.

For days she had felt hurt and bewildered, and had longed for Borenson's return. Now he was home.

“I was afraid you'd be deeply asleep,” he said.

He stepped forward, ventured a small kiss, holding the lamp far out to his side. She took the lamp from him and set it on a trunk. “Not like that,” she said. “We're married.” She grabbed him by the beard and pulled him down, kissed him roughly, leading him toward the bed. She hoped that by now he might have settled down.

Almost immediately she regretted it. He was covered in dirt, and his ring mail was caked with mud. It would take someone hours to get her bedclothes clean.

“Ah, that will have to wait.” Borenson grinned. “But not too long, of course. Just until I get cleaned up.”

She stared up into his face. The melancholy she'd felt only moments before had dissipated completely. “Go wash, then.”

“Not quite yet,” Borenson chortled. “I've got something to show you.”

“You killed me a boar for Hostenfest?” she laughed.

“No boars this Hostenfest,” he answered. “The hunt didn't go as anticipated.”

“Well, I suppose the lords at the table could make do with a rabbit,” she teased. “Though I shan't want anything smaller. I never have developed a taste for field mice.”

Borenson smiled mysteriously. “Come on. Hurry.” He went to her wardrobe and pulled down a simple blue dress. Myrrima threw off her nightclothes, pulled on the dress, and began to tie the laces of the bodice. Borenson watched, delighted to be entertained by his new bride. She pulled on some shoes and in moments he had her rushing down the steps of the keep, trying to catch up.