High Mage: Book Five Of The Spellmonger Series (33 page)

“What about the hobgoblins we were seeing at Cambrian?  Any more of those?”

“About a mix,” he agreed.  “Maybe one hob for every four uncut gurvani.  But the hobs are almost docile, if they don’t have a priest around to keep them in line.  They’ll even surrender, sometimes.  Without a fight,” he added.  “Of course, there are exceptions.  That warmage, the Mask, keeps a half a legion of hobs around at all times.  But ones so large they can ride horses.  They still can’t couch a lance worth a damn,” he admitted, “but they’re starting to be something like a proper light infantry force.  They won’t surrender at all.  It looks like Mask got all of the meanest ones to command.  But they’ll tell you more about that at Megelin.  That’s where the real offensive work is being done in the war.”

Chapter Thirteen

Megelin Castle

The country between Tudry and Megelin Castle was torn.  Though well-patrolled, it was also popular for ambushes, as evidenced by the long row of goblin heads adorning every spare surface.  Crows were a common sight.  The isolated farmsteads that were the norm in the Wilderlands, as opposed to the communal village structure of the Riverlands, were deserted, the fields untended.  Only where people could get behind a sturdy wall at night was there any sign of life.  Livestock was a rarity.  What wasn’t carted off by foes, looters, or appropriated for military use was guarded as jealously as daughters’ virtues. 

The Iron Band maintained an armed outpost midway through the journey.  The courtyard of the fortified manor bustled with activity when we rode in at dusk – a patrol had returned from deep inside the Penumbra
to the walls of the Umbra itself, after many close scrapes.  Curious, I quietly made my way to the fire where they were telling their tale to their mates for the first time. Without revealing my identity.

Seven had set out.  Five had returned.  They were rugged men, their dark leather armor battered and slashed, the metal dented and gashed with shiny rents.  Their faces and cloaks were covered with road dust, blood, bits of black fur, and were weathered by wind and rain.  But they were alive and among civilized men once more, and that had been in doubt for them, apparently.  It took me a moment to catch up with their tale, but they repeated parts often enough I soon pieced it together.

Apparently the Iron Band men were detailed to make a foray into the heart of the Penumbralands to investigate a hunter’s tale of a keep re-occupied.  The new owners, it seemed, were a grisly band of gurvani.  Nor were they using the place to bivouac – they had moved in permanently.  The gatehouse and battlements were tended by regular sentries.  The great hall had become a pit of feasting and sacrifice. 

They were not the only new residents.  The hovels and cots that remained outside the keep were now home to Gilmoran slaves, their necks and hands fettered in iron chains.  They had broken ground in the fallow fields this spring by hand, pulling the plow with teams of struggling wretches.  Now cabbages, beans, maize and barley were poking up through the ground almost to spite them, and they were flogged into weeding and tending the crops. 

The slaves were overseen not by the gurvani, who seemed content to garrison the castle and sport among themselves.  The overseers were human, the Iron Band men reported.  Evil men with whips and clubs. They drove the slaves mercilessly, demanding ever more work and levying arbitrary punishments of the cruelest sort.  They lived with the garrison, sleeping at night while the gurvani patrolled because they were safer among the goblins than their own folk.  Hundreds of slaves packed the yards, they reported.  And they were building sheds for more.

“Were the human guards Soulless?” I asked, catching their captain’s eye.

“Some,” he answered, after sizing me up.  “Two we slew wore the foul brand.  But four we slew did not.  Some of Bucklers’s mercenaries, no doubt,” he grunted in disgust.  “We could do little against them ourselves, but we raided the place at midnight, when most of the garrison was out patrolling.  We gutted as many as we could,” he said, grimly, “but there were enough scrugs left behind to give us a fight.  Maybe two dozen of those poor bastards broke free, when we raided the sheds.  That’s all.  No telling if they got passed the patrols, but it’s better than waiting for the stone and the soup pot.”

“That wasn’t the worst of it, though,” another man with bedraggled hair and a fresh wound on his face said.  “The worst of it was when we got in there, we expected scrugs – which there was aplenty – but we weren’t expecting an armored knight to spring out at us,” he said, with the satisfaction of a man delivering a good tale.

“Aye, a knight,” the first man agreed.  “Clad in black mail as if he’d stepped out of a tourney.  A terror, he was, using a greatsword like he was born to it.  He rallied the men and pushed us back.  Took Garaby in the throat before he could utter a sound.  Trin stayed back to duel him, Duin take his soul, and that covered our retreat.  But I crossed swords with him,” the man avowed, “he was strong as a demon under that mail.”

That didn’t bode well.  It was bad enough that the Dead God was finding human turncloaks among the cutthroats and thieves who valued gold over human life, men like Mask and Buckler and Garkesku.  They were common men who, perhaps, had issue with their status in human society.  A knight among them was different.  Finding allies among the nobility was even more disturbing.

“Was he a wilderlord?” I asked, when the murmuring died down.

“Nay, he had that southern armor,” one of the other Iron Band men offered.  “Coat-of-plates, well-forged and blackened, with a steel hauberk and a close-fitted great helm.  He bore no token that we could see,” he added.  Then he gave me a searching look.  “Who are you, sir, with so many interesting questions?”

Suddenly everyone in the room was looking at me.

“Uh . . . Minalan the Spellmonger,” I muttered.  “Baron of Sevendor.  Magelord.  I’m on a tour of inspection through the Penumbra.”

Of course that cleared the room.  Suddenly I was the most popular man there, not these brave souls.  I made a point of pushing away those who would honor me for my fame when I was on a mission. 

“This could be important,” I insisted.  “How many abandoned manors in the Penumbra?”

“Hundreds,” said the captain of the band.  “Most were smallholders, with a few villeins or freemen to tend their fields.  Dozens of castles have been abandoned, after the first wave.  Some still hang on.  We thought that one was abandoned for good.”

“And now it’s not,” I pointed out.  “They’re trying to take in a crop . . . when we know they’ve brought back plenty of loot from Gilmora.  Why bother?”

“Got to feed the people,” grunted one of the Iron Band men stationed at the outpost. 

“Indeed,” I agreed.  “Which means that they’re inclined to stay for a while.  Goblins don’t farm.  Goblins prefer meat.  They would only tend crops if the meat they were raising was . . . human,” I swallowed.  “And to rule a human population best, use a turncloak knight.  Have him hold the land just as he would for a human liege.”

“What man would serve such beasts?” spat Sir Festaran in disgust.

“All too many care not what master they serve,” another pointed out.  “I like not where this is going.  Last year it was scrugs.  Then scrugs and thugs.  Now it’s scrugs, thugs, and knights . . . and dragons.  How is
that
fair?” he complained.

“There’s worse than knights out in the Penumbra,” their captain said, darkly.  “Worse even than those clawed terrors they let slip at night.  In the place now called the Blood Tower, once a manor holding, the dark magi and the Dead God’s priests conspire to produce the most perverse abominations – the dead themselves guard the ramparts because no living soul will do so.  The terrors within are unholy.  Slaves are led in by the dozens to labor, it is thought, but none ever returns.”

“You’ve seen this place?”

“With my own eyes,” the captain affirmed.  “Two months ago we were ranging through the area and stumbled upon it.  I made a full report,” he promised, “but there weren’t enough parchment in the Kingdom to detail all the horrors I saw, Magelord.  Beastmen.  Goblins who were . . . stretched out of all proportion.  Some bigger than hobgoblins, hands like claws, arms and legs long enough to ride a horse.  Some brutes as big as tolls, almost, and almost as stupid. 

“But the dead are the worst.  Some dark forces at work there, Spellmonger,” the man assured me, solemnly.  “Rotting corpses of men still move tirelessly around the walls, though they hold their armament surely enough.  No pain they feel, and it takes far more effort to slay them entirely than it does a living foe.”

“That’s necromancy at work,” I said, equally grimly.  That was dark practice.  Imperial magic stays away from that sort of thing, beyond the theory.  Animating a corpse is a grisly process, akin to creating an elemental but with the structure of a human brain and body as the framework.  That makes it easier to do . . . but it’s hardly a terribly ethical thing to do.  Such creations are mockeries of life, ephemeral by necessity.  Even if you spent the time and energy needed on preservation spells to keep the flesh from decaying, there was no real metabolism to sustain the process.  Eventually it took far more magical energy to keep the construct going than it was worth.

I wasn’t speaking from theory on this.  I’d faced the dead on the battlefield in Farise.  Undead troops were a favorite method of the Mad Mage to reinforce his troops’ positions.

“That bodes not well,” affirmed Alscot, shaking his head.  “How strongly was this Blood Tower defended?”

“Stoutly,” admitted the captain.  “It would take a considerable siege to destroy it.  The dead alone number two hundred or more, and there are hobs and gurvani legions in the region aplenty.”

“Then it sounds as if the Meglini Knights have their job cut out for them,” I decided.  “I will be sure to bring the matter up with Magelord Azar when I arrive at the castle.”

*                            *                            *

Megelin Castle is a stout, baronial-level fortification built in the later Wilderlands style.  Instead of a motte-and-bailey and a palisade, which was a common solution in the lumber-rich region, the barons of Megelin had spent two generations and fortune to build a proper shell keep on a prominent hill overlooking their domain.  It was still small, by Riverlands standards, but it was thrice the castle I owned at the moment.

Unlike Sevendor Castle, Megelin Castle was a citadel at war.  The portcullis was down when we approached, and we had to cross four checkpoints before we reached it.  The greenery and underbrush had been pruned from the slopes leading up to the ditched wall.  We were covered by archers from the moment we were spotted on the road from the watchtower, and I felt several layers of wards alert their casters to our presence. 

I was pleased.  If this was the level of vigilance practiced at the headquarters of the Horkan Order, I felt far more secure about our ability to hold the region.  A mouse couldn’t have crept up to the gatehouse without being spotted, scryed or detected.  The vicious-looking Ilnarthi death rune that was the sigil of the order hung on banners from every battlement and upon the tabards of every soldier.  The road leading to the gatehouse was littered with hundreds of staked goblin heads on both sides.  The trophies were trapped, I saw with magesight.  No one wanted any more Shereuls.  The Dead God’s head had been stolen from one such spike and secreted away two hundred years ago – and then raised from the dead.  We didn’t want that to happen again.

The castle loomed fearsomely overhead as we passed through the final checkpoints.  Luckily several old friends in the order recognized me at once, which speeded things up considerably.  Within twenty minutes of passing the gate we were sitting within the Great Hall, a cool mug of decent ale in hand.  I summoned the masters of the hall myself, mind-to-mind, and let them know that I had arrived.

Azar was in the field, it seemed, but his second-in-command, Bendonal the Outlaw, was in residence.  He was awaiting us in the Great Hall when we arrived.  Bendonal wasn’t an outlaw any more, of course – his crimes had mostly been against the Censorate, and once Rard disbanded the order in his realm he was safe again.  Bendonal was a warmage, and his quality and the respect of his peers had convinced me to grant him a stone. 

The decision had paid off handsomely.  From renegade warmage to military commander, Bendonal had proven the perfect counterpoint to Azar’s flamboyant leadership style.  When I first met him he looked disheveled and shabby, the result of years on the run.  Now he was well-dressed and neatly trimmed, his beard and hair looking like one of the upper nobility.  But the nick-name had stuck even after he had become respectable again.

Where Azar inspired fire and fear and loyalty among the Megelini Knights, Bendonal demanded discipline and accountability – and he got it.  As impressed as I was with Astyral’s hold over the garrison at Tudry, Bendonal’s men were models of military discipline.

There were actually several orders living and working and fighting together from Megelin Castle.  At the top, of course, were the Horkan Order, who maintained command and furnished the high-powered magical corps.  There were twenty or more High warmagi working out of the castle at any time, including a permanent staff of ten.  Another group of regular warmagi, unaugmented by irionite, bided their time and honed their skills in the Penumbra. Though they were Horkan Order, they were designated by yellow sashes, not red, to tell them apart from the High Magi.  Alscot the Fair had worn a red tunic before I’d raised him, I discovered.  The sister order, the Hesians, had a large depot here, too, and five warmagi dedicated to defensive magic and logistics worked at Megelin.