The Cerberus Rebellion (A Griffins & Gunpowder Novel) (7 page)

“
It's late,” Raedan said with a wave toward the door. “We should return to the keep.”

“
I can tell you where there are more books, books that include many different forms of magic,” Auberon said.

Raedan stopped.

“
Tell me more.”

Chapter 4 - Magnus

Magnus Jarmann sat alone in his study.

The room was large and square. Lanterns had been lit along each wall and bookshelves were pushed up against the walls. Several large tables were spread throughout the room, surrounded by luxurious leather chairs. Maps and markers covered several of those tables and the leftover plates from a late meal were still strewn over another.

He waited until the door to his study was closed and locked before he reached for the envelope and a knife. No seal had been pressed into the blue wax, but the small blot of gold told him all he needed to know about the letter’s sender. The seal of the royal family of Nordahr would have been pressed into that wax, had the letter been an official communication from Hildegarde.

The envelope was addressed to the Duke of Agilard and had been delivered by a diplomatic courier from the north; it had been a twelve-day journey by rail. The letter was not the first that Magnus had received in this fashion. They had, in fact, become more frequent as his plans had come closer to fruition. The letters were always carefully worded, in case they fell into the wrong hands, but they had led Magnus to opportunities and options that he might not have seen otherwise.

Magnus slid the knife through the wax seal and pulled out the envelope’s contents. The letters were never signed but the writing was thick and hard. The wording left little doubt that the letters were penned by a man.

The time has come, my friend
, the letter began.
Our mutual friends have prepared to do their part, and you will have already heard of the opportunity that has presented itself. You are to follow the instructions given to you, but prepare your full armies.

Magnus folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope.

Short and to the point,
Magnus thought as he held the envelope over a candle. The fire licked at the paper and caught. The fire danced in his crystal clear blue eyes.

“
Bad news, Your Grace?” Rorik Karsten asked. The bodyguard had leaned against the stone wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

The Captain of Guards for the Agilard Duchy was a hand taller than six feet, with broad shoulders and thick muscular arms. His red hair was braided to the middle of his back and he had braided his usually wild beard to the middle of his chest.

“
No.” Magnus shook his head. He intertwined his fingers and pushed. The pop and snap of his knuckles made him flinch.“I was expecting this letter. Especially after the messenger from Aetheston arrived.”

The lesser lordling that had carried Eadric Garrard’s decree had been a man of the most disagreeable sort. The lord of some small keep and the attached village who believed he was able to stand on the same level as a noble whose house was older than the nation of Ansgar. Magnus had put the man in his place with a sharp word and the threat of imprisonment.

The decree had been plain enough in its instructions: Magnus was to collect the levies from his sworn nobles and lords and transport them to Aetheston. They would turn around and make their way back to the Forest Glen peninsula to await transport across the Straits of Steimor.

Magnus had delayed the decision on whether or not to call his levies for as long as he could, but the time had come and he needed to send word off to Aetheston. He wanted to tell Eadric Garrard to consider Agilard and its sworn territories as no longer part of Ansgar, but the letter from his mysterious contact in Nordahr would change the way that he approached the matter.

“
Call my council together,” Magnus said at last as he stood. He was of average height at just more than six feet tall. “I will meet with them in the council chambers.”

“
Your Grace.” Rorik nodded, unlocked the door and departed.

Magnus unrolled a map across the table, weighed it down at the corners, and sat down once more. He stroked this thick blond beard. The leather map showed the territories that he would rule once he had separated his nation from the grasp of Ansgar. At its heart was the red three-headed hellhound Gahar, the symbol of House Jarmann.

The territory that was marked as Kerberosi was larger than the lands that his nobles held, but he had taken into account a neutral buffer between his lands and those of the Ansgari nobles that lay along his border.

The edges of Kerberos would be further expanded to the north by the marriage of his daughter Talia to Alrik Renwyk, heir to the throne of Beldane, directly to the north. The betrothal had not yet been made, but discussions with Thorley Renwyk had been concluded. His daughter’s seventeenth birthday was all that stood in the way of the match being made official. One of Beldane’s eastern districts had become Crown Lands when the territory’s last duke had died without heir. Those lands would be granted to Magnus as soon as his daughter was married.

Magnus had not decided to whom he was going to grant those lands, though he had several options and more would present themselves when the fight for their independence began. If only—

A knock on the large oak door interrupted Magnus’ thoughts. He rolled up the map and shoved it into a drawer.

“
Enter!”

Rorik stepped back through the door. “Your Grace. The council has been summoned. They will be assembled by the time we reach the chamber.”

“
Very well.” Magnus stood and pulled his cloak off of its hook.

Agilard was so far north that its winters were brutal. Even the stones of Hellhound Castle, nearly ten feet at their thickest, could not keep the brisk winds and biting cold at bay. The city was not yet covered in snow, but it was only a matter of time before it was drowned in a thick white sea.

The council chamber was at the base of the tower behind a pair of massive oak doors bound with steel and studded with iron. With its high ceiling and painted glass windows, the room felt like a temple. The fireplace at the end of the hall was large enough for half a dozen men to stand in; a fire blazed to warm the spacious room.

A dozen and a half men sat in luxurious armchairs around a long table in the center of the room. Most of them were brothers or second sons of the nobles that ruled the other territories of Kerberos. Some had books and papers stacked neatly before them, others had mugs of beer or porcelain cups of coffee.

“
Please, don’t rise,” Magnus instructed as he swept around the table and took his seat. “We have much to discuss, and very little time.”

“
Your Grace, have you come to a decision on how to handle King Garrard’s demands?”

“
I have indeed, Derrick” Magnus confirmed. The gathered lords seemed to sit up a bit straighter. “We will satisfy His Majesty’s request for levies. They will be called up immediately and transported to Aetheston.”

“
Your Grace, the King’s demands are absurd. My father—”

“
If your father wanted to make his case to my court, he should have attended himself.”

The Earl of Forest Glen was represented by his youngest son, Kreiger Mallory, a boy of average height and no more than twenty years. Magnus’ sharp rebuke caused the boy to sink into his chair.

“
We have suffered under the rule of the Ansgari king for one hundred years,” Magnus continued. “We have married our daughters and our sisters to their nobles. We have watched as the King has abused our existence and taken advantage of our lands. But the time is not yet right for us to make our stand for independence.”

An uproar of disapproval surged from the gathered lords. Some of the elder representatives made a show of their disapproval by pounding the butts of their staffs on the stone floor.

“
Your Grace, this is the perfect opportunity!” cried Larsen Frisch, representing his nephew Stefan, Baron Ethelinde. Having just celebrated his sixty-seventh year, Larsen was the oldest man in the room.
“
The King is sending his most experienced soldiers and commanders thousands of miles away. The other nobles will be hesitant to call more soldiers to battle. Especially the nobles in the west.”

“
The nobles in the west will indeed be hesitant to call up more levies against us,” Magnus allowed.

He was disappointed with the lack of foresight amongst the noble representatives. Their families had waited as long as his for the chance to wrench themselves free of Ansgari rule, but they had not born the risk of planning for the inevitable battle. He would have told them all of the plans that he had made with Beldane and Steimor or of his secret advisor in Nordahr, but they were not ready. And those plans could still be foiled if the wrong person learned of them.

“
It will take nearly a year for all of the soldiers to make their way across the Straits of Steimor and more time for them to reach Kirton,” Magnus said. He paused when the doors swung open.

Roland Jarmann swept into the room followed by his bodyguards. The heir to the Agilard Duchy still wore his riding clothes: leather chaps over woolen pants, a black wool shirt, and a fur-lined black greatcoat. He was nearly identical to his father; even his blonde hair was the same shade as the elder Jarmann. He spent much of his time at sea in command of the frigate
Eastern Honor
; he was the most respected captain in the Kerberosi squadrons of the Ansgari navy.

“
Father, how unlike you to start without me,
” Roland said in their native tongue. Kerberosi was a throaty language, rough and loud. Several of the men whispered, others shook their heads.

King William the Defender had proclaimed that in exchange for the freedom of their nobility the Kerberosi would forget their language and learn the common tongue of the Ansgari.

“
You know the laws,” Magnus reminded his son, in Ansgari, as the younger Jarmann draped himself on his chair. One leg was hung over one of the chair’s arm and one of his arms draped over its back.

The others in the room spoke Kerberosi; they had all learned from the same secret order of priests that Magnus had. But to speak the tongue in open council was dangerous. No one knew whose guards were spies for the Ansgari throne.

“
The laws that tell us not to learn the language of our ancestors, or that we must follow the laws of a King that is not our own,
” Roland continued in Kerberosi. “
Those laws are—
”

“
Those laws are what has kept our people safe and under the control of their own nobles.
” Magnus was on his feet with a speed that no one would have thought him capable of. He slammed his fists against the table. Everyone stared. He continued in Ansgari, “We will continue this meeting without any further disruption. If anyone has a problem with that, you are free to leave now and explain to your nobles why they are not a part of my plans for this nation.”

No one stood. No one moved. Magnus wondered if anyone even breathed in the silence that followed his proclamation. Roland straightened in his chair under the withering glare of his father.

Magnus let his subordinates cringe for another long moment before he inhaled deeply and sat back in his chair.

“
I have plans for our nation,” he announced as if everyone didn’t know. “Those plans are not yet ready to be revealed. Nor are they ready to be set into motion.”

The lords looked at each other. Each hoped that the other would be able to say something to convince their king to tell them what his plans were. No one was courageous enough to push their luck.

“
You will return to your respective territories and see that the levies are called and armed. They will assemble here at Agilard and then travel by train to Aetheston,” Magnus ordered. “I will have no more need of your council here for some time.”

The lords stood, bowed and gathered up their things. Roland stood to leave but Magnus stopped him with a raised hand.

“
Stay,” Magnus said. “We have much to discuss.”

The sun had gone down hours before and a fire blazed in the hearth of the small study. Magnus studied the game board before him carefully. His next move would either seal his victory or consign him to yet another loss at the hands of his most challenging opponent. The game called Generals in the Ansgari common tongue was still new in Ansgar, but across the Vast Sea it was known as Taecel and was ancient beyond knowledge.

His pieces were spread wide across the board, the result of his very aggressive strategy for this match. He had sacrificed nearly all of his lesser pieces but had taken many of his opponent’s in exchange.

Roland Jarmann sat across the table from the his father. Twice a week the two had played this game since before Roland could walk. The father had enjoyed the upper hand for many years, but Roland’s relentless study and practice had turned the tides. Now the son won more matches than he lost, and usually in commanding form.

“
I see your moves, Father,” Roland said at last when his father failed to take his turn. “Move your infantry to take my cavalry and it will expose your general to my artillery. Move your skirmisher to flank my artillery, and you’ll lose your own.”