The Conqueror (12 page)

He waved them in closer, keeping his
voice low.

“
Okay, lads, I’m staying
right here. Off you go. Just ride up real slow and try not to hit
any of us, right?”

There were excited nods and eager
expressions as the men tapped their heels against their mounts. The
animals picked up a gentle walk. They fanned out and moved
upslope.

The animals’ ears pricked
up. Most of the men had some hunting experience—not always on a
horse. Some of them came from very poor households where only a
father and possibly one or two older brothers might ride once in a
while. A military career was sometimes the only career available.
It was better than being a field hand on an older brother’s manor,
and living in a ramshackle
cruck
house for what would a life that was nasty,
brutish, poor and oftentimes rather short as well.

The animals had varying degrees of
learning and tractability. The serjeants did the best they could to
match man and mount in some credible manner. After that, it was up
to the troopers themselves. Man and horse trained together, to the
extent that lending or exchanging horses was frowned upon. It could
be done, as long as the serjeant approved of it in
writing.

Having a horse of their own was one of
the attractions of service. That’s what Lowren had always thought.
They were allowed to use their personal mounts when they visited
home, and on private business on their days off-duty. The policy
had paid off, that and having some good, attractive mounts when the
teams toured the villages on recruiting drives. After seeing the
troops of Windermere up close, he was wondering what he could do in
terms of proper uniforms for his own men. If nothing else, a short
cloak of a distinctive color and some sort of crest for the helmets
would give them a sense of comradeship, and help in identification
in the heat of battle.

Whatever it was, it had better be
quick, slick and simple.

It was a question of not enough time,
not enough resources.

***

On the way there, and especially in the
immediate vicinity of the country house, as his mother called it
without ever having been there, they kept a sharp eye on the
trails. A careful examination of the ground revealed no recent
prints from hooves, men’s feet or even any really big canids. The
native snow-dogs were more prevalent here out on the plains. They
found the gate still tied shut. The knot was special and
distinctive. The majority of the party waited fifty yards back.
Lowren had ordered a couple of the greenest men to ride up, open
the gate and go in.

Three minutes later, one came back to
the gate, all flushed with the success of his mission.

“
It’s all
clear.”

On a nod, they spurred up and went on
in. His compound was surrounded by oak palisades, not meant to
withstand serious siege but the walls sent a certain message to
travelers and the odd party of roving bandits.

It wasn’t exactly unheard-of for a
certain sort of person to use a remote summer place and then
somehow burn it down. That sort rarely left a note or made
apology.

With their small train of pack animals
and the three dead swine for their dinner, they had arrived at the
camp a couple of hours before sundown. Lowren kept the place as a
hunting lodge, which was fairly substantial compared to the tents
and even small cabins mounted on wagons favored by some other
nations. A fairly humble dwelling, it was a hundred feet long and
two and a half stories, all wooden walls, heavy oak timbers for the
frame and maple planks prevailing on the exterior. Oaks, maples,
beeches, hardwoods were common enough. Some of the wood for the
house had been taken from the clearing it stood in. There was
nothing decorative about it and the overhanging upper story, tall,
narrow windows and thick, iron-strapped doors all conveyed messages
of their own. And yet when whoever was occupying it went away,
there really wasn’t much point in locking it, and so they never
did. They just tied the doors shut and rode away. Lowren had loaned
it to any number of folks, nobles, a foreign diplomat or two, over
the years. Lowren’s lands were located on the northern fringes of
the Juniper Mountains, rolling down into the steppes. His
north-eastern boundary was the Juniper River, which was not a
particularly large river. It rose in the mountains far to the west
and drained a quite a hinterland. The crest of the ridge-line to
the south was the agreed-upon boundary with Windermere. With them
being stable and peaceful, he’d always thought it a lucky thing to
have that mountain barrier, just in case as it were. There was a
point where the boundary with Windermere ended and then there was
nobody there, just mountains. He had no great ambitions in that
direction. Let the small bands of skin-clad native hunters have it,
he had concluded after no great thought.

His people, mostly farmers and hunters,
preferred to clear lots lower down in the valleys, in forested
bottomlands where the soil was deep and black. The land, when his
grandfather came, had been an enclave of unspoiled
wildness.

In winter, he hunted elk and bear from
another lodge, one up in the hills fifteen miles to the northeast
of this location. It was his only royal reserve, all other lands
being open to the common weal. Whenever a group of venturesome
souls went off five or ten miles, started clearing the forest and a
new hamlet sprung up, he would make them as many gifts as he
could—more policy. It was not exactly cheap either. It had to be
done, and ultimately, it would pay off for sovereign and people
together.

Lowren sometimes thought he might be
kidding himself, but he might one day find a more equitable method
of governing his people. It was an inherited system and he wasn’t
responsible for all of its faults—or was he?

Again, his attention had been brought
to the present by the others.

“
Whoa.” The party
dismounted, stretching their legs and muttering quietly amongst
themselves.

The younger ones had never been there
before. While his discipline was relaxed, they knew enough not to
go running around like little boys.

Bibbs, familiar with the place from
previous visits, opened up the doors to the stables and then went
with Lowren to the door of the main house. The pair went in for a
quick inspection and found the place livable if a bit dank and
musty-smelling inside. There was kindling and a bundle of
birch-bark beside the hearth, and water in the bucket. Bibb made a
mental note to have that properly rinsed out before anyone took a
drink.

They came back out quickly enough.
Lowren stood in the shade, on the low, wide veranda, waiting for
someone to unload a cask, and Garvin went among the men giving
good-natured orders to the newest ones and suggestions to those
more capable of listening properly. He soon had them disposed. One
or two others looked on in amusement.

Garvin took the hunters under his
wing.

“
All right, lads.” The
lucky troopers were responsible for untying their dead animals,
getting them down off the backs of the horses, and then putting
them up on the big outdoor table.

Not far from this was a horizontal
pole, one supported about eight feet up by trestles, with a pair of
benches on each side.

There were chains and hooks and bits of
soft iron wire hanging along its length.

“
All righty, then. You
three. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

He was gratified to see that none of
them turned too green at the thought of draining, cleaning up and
skinning out their own meat.

“
Here boy, I’ll show you
step by step, and each of you will get some help. It pays to listen
when I speak, incidentally.”

Garvin got up on one of the benches and
took down some of the wire.

“
Okay, this goes around the
hind legs, tied together as tightly as you can. See?” He looked
around the area of the pole and found a short piece of iron rod, a
half inch in diameter. “We keep this, one or two of ‘em, around for
the tightening of aforesaid wire.”

He had picked one of the smaller
animals to work on.

He showed them how to stick it into the
braids of wire he had made. He twisted it and twisted it until the
wire bit through the flesh and the blood flowed fresh and
hot.

“
You don’t want to break
the wire.”

It was biting into the bone now and it
looked safe enough to support the weight.

He had five or six feet of wire,
several strands of it, now tied to the young hog’s hind
legs.

He stood back and took a deep
breath.

“
What we do here, lads. I
lift the thing up as high as I can get it—”

“
And one of us ties it
up.”

“
That’s right. Here we go
then.”

One of them had a question.

“
What about my arrow,
sir?”

“
Aw, don’t you worry about
that. They come right out when they’re properly cooked.”

The others laughed although the one
that asked the question looked as if he didn’t quite believe
it.

“
We’ll get to that later,
boy.”

The dummy probably wanted it for a
souvenir, which said much about their thinking at that
age.

Garvin grabbed the hog by the head,
leaning forwards as he did so, and then turned away from it. He
straightened up, spun around and gave a good heave, finally leaning
forwards under the weight.

“
Not too bad.” He grunted
and staggered over on bent knees and with short, careful
steps.

It wasn’t much over his own weight, he
reckoned.

A couple of the boys were right with
him, trying to help support the weight but not helping
much.

He went in between the benches and
under the long pole. The boys hopped up onto the
benches.

They were on both sides of him. They
each grabbed a leg and took some of the weight. He stopped and took
a breath. Now he gave a good shove and the thing went up a few
inches under their combined impetus.

“
Tie her off,
boy.”

“
Yes, sir.” The last kid’s
sticky red hands flew, and then Garvin gratefully let go, albeit
cautiously.

The wire took the weight with no
discernable problems. The hog hung upside down, swaying
slightly.

He grabbed the nearest
trooper.

“
There you go. Now slice
its throat and then you men can do the other ones.” They all stood
there looking sheepish. “I want you to wait about a half an hour,
right? Basically, after that you make a big long slit. Starting at
the breast, you go from the breastbone right down to the pecker,
the cunt or the asshole. Do not cut through the genitals or the
asshole. Use a real sharp blade. Do not cut too deeply. A half an
inch, maybe even
less,
that should be plenty, and then you carefully go through the
second layer, without cutting into the intestines and all
the
shit,
get it?
We don’t want to spoil our King’s dinner, or our own for that
matter. Then you pull all the guts out. Save all that because some
of it’s good eating. After that, come and get me and I’ll show you
what comes next.”

They were only going to be given so
many options. He turned away decisively.

So.

That is the way it is done,
boys.

His hands were pretty bloody, and he
hadn’t done his tunic much good either.

He strolled away to let them figure it
out and have a few minutes away from the boss.

They would have much to talk
about.

Chapter Nine

Vall, Ambassador of the Great Khan, had
arrived in Windermere with barely enough warning to have proper
quarters prepared. The Khan’s official couriers had only arrived
four days previously to announce Vall’s imminent arrival. Members
of the party were to be installed in the largest apartments in the
castle excepting her own and Theo’s. The higher-ranking were
located in the southeast tower and up several flights of stairs.
The foreign servants had been scattered where they could be fit
in.

It was the best they could do for an
honored guest. Vall was a scion of a very old family. Vall held a
province or two in his own right as one of the highest-ranking
vassals of the Khan. He was the most important guest they had ever
had, in that sense, in a world where virtually all ambassadors and
prelates were of lesser or greater noble rank.

His arrival had been a diplomatic
success, and more privately, a kind of confirmation.

Maidens, as many of the prettiest girls
as they could scrape up on short notice, lined both sides of the
steps to the keep. The tallest ones were at the bottom of the
steps, the smallest at the top. Fitted with long, diaphanous white
gowns, they had garlands of red roses in their hair and held
bouquets of wildflowers, running riot now that the season had
climaxed on the brink of autumn. Her maidens and common
seamstresses had worked overtime to produce the gowns in the short
time allotted. The children’s heads were all turned to face the
Ambassador and his party as they dismounted from the enclosed
carriages that Eleanora affected for all important state occasions.
Their high, sweet voices chanted a traditional song of welcome.
Drawn by matched teams of four dappled grey stallions, the road
between the docks and the castle had been patched. Holes and ruts
were filled in, in order to impress the dignitary and perhaps even
make his ride a little smoother.