Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (23 page)

Barryn watched the sun rise over the horizon in front of him and to his left as they rounded a gentle bend in the stone-paved road. The smell of latrines, smoke, baking bread and the hundred other smells that mixed in the city air had passed, and he breathed in the scent of the dewy earth and smiled. He was free.
 

And yet he wasn’t. Barryn was responsible for Jasmine’s safety until they reached the Keep, and then he would belong to the Black Swan Company for at least a year or perhaps many more, if that was Ashara’s will. But until then, he had to escort a woman and a wagon safely to the castle.
What if we’re attacked by robbers while we’re riding? I don’t know how to fight from horseback. Do I jump off the horse and fight them on the ground? How do you attack a man on horseback with a sword? What if we’re attacked while we sleep? We. Ha! When will I sleep? How do you divide up the watch when there’s only one man on guard?

Barryn relaxed his shoulders, expanded his belly and chest, and depended his breathing. Soon, his mind was calm and the flurry of questions had abated.
Only from a calm mind will answers arise unbidden
, the familiar druidic knowledge whispered to him.
 

“Don’t worry, Barryn,” Jasmine said, lightly brushing her fingers on the dainty hilt of her dagger. “I can take care of myself. I mostly want your company.”
 

“How do you know that’s what I was thinking about?”

“Silly Barryn, what do you think I spent two years learning how to do at the House of Portia? To lie on my back and spread my legs? Any slut or two-copper whore can do that,” she said with a smile and mischief in her eyes. “Ladies of the Guild know how to read men’s minds just by looking. We read their desires, their fears, their fantasies—their stories are written all over them. And it’s usually a short, boring book to read.”
 

“Am I as boring as the others?”
 

“Not at all,” Jasmine said warmly. “But then again, there’s more on your mind than getting me naked.”

“How do you want to split up the watch at night,” Barryn asked, awkwardly changing the subject.
 

“Watch?” Jasmine laughed. “We’ll never be more than a day’s ride from a decent inn this whole trip. If it makes you feel better, you can keep your sword propped up next to our bed.”

“
Our
bed?”
 

“It will be cheaper to share a room,” she said matter-of-factly. “And it will be easier for you to defend me if you’re close by. Just in case anything happens, of course.”
 

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to seduce you?” Barryn asked, and immediately regretted it.
Where the hell did that come from?

“Many, many bad things happened to me when I was younger, Barryn. And I’ve done many bad things in turn. Maybe I’ll tell you about some of them. Someday,” she said.
 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean…”
 

“Besides, you’re still too timid to seduce me,” she said, looking ahead at the road in front of them and smiling faintly.
 

They both fell silent until they reached the inn at which they would spend their first night.
 

“What the fuck is this, you?” the stocky, mustachioed sergeant yelled at Barryn a week later in the ward of Falgren Keep. He was dressed in black pants and boots and wore a dark gray arming doublet. A blackened cuirass encased his barrel-like torso in a cocoon of steel, and a floppy black beret covered his bald head.

He snatched the freshly signed enlistment papers out of the young man’s hand.
 

“My papers…”

The document specified the terms of his one-year contract with the Black Swan Company and served as a hand receipt for his sword and his horse, both of which he was required to surrender during the four months of training he would undergo. Consideration for boarding, feeding and watering of his horse would come out of his pay, as would his initial equipment and uniforms.
 

A younger, clean-shaven sergeant strode across the courtyard of the castle and placed his nose an inch away from Barryn’s cheek. He yelled, “Do your papers tell you how to dig a hole? That’s all you’ll ever do here! You’ll dig holes and stand in line!”

“I…”
 

“Why the fuck are you talking to him? I’m talking, you!” the mustachioed sergeant yelled.

“Put your hands by your sides when you’re talking to a sergeant!” the second man screamed.
 

The older sergeant examined the enlistment papers, squinted, and handed them back to Barryn. “You’ll regret ever signing this every single day you’re at Falgren Keep. Every miserable day. But don’t worry, you. Sergeant Otaraz is your good friend. He’ll let you ring the bell in front of the castle, and your contract’s void. You can go home any time you wish.”
 

Barryn went wall-eyed straining to look at a brightly polished bronze bell in the center of the ward without moving his head. Next to the bell stood a weathered, rugged whipping post.
 

“You’re about to enter your own private hell. This is just getting started!” Otaraz shouted. “Do it. Ring the bell, and it all stops. Hurry, while Sergeant Drake isn’t looking. I think you can make it across the yard before he tackles you, recruit!”

“He won’t run, Sergeant Otaraz!” Drake said to his compatriot. “He’s turned in a sword and a horse. He must be a fucking knight!”
 

Otaraz bent even closer to Barryn and regarded him with a look of feigned wonder and revulsion. “What the fuck is this, recruit? Are you too highborn to run?”
 

“No, Sergeant.”
 

“Louder when you answer us!” Drake shouted.
 

“
No, Sergeant!
”
 

“Do you even know how to use that sword?” Otaraz shouted.
 

“No, Sergeant. I want to learn!”
 

“Bullshit,” Drake yelled. “Which end goes into the enemy?”
 

“The pointy end, Sergeant!”
 

“He
is
a fucking knight, Sergeant Otaraz!” Drake yelled. “A real master-at-arms!”
 

“Why are you here, Recruit?” Otaraz yelled into Barryn’s cheek. “Why should I let you survive training and march with the Black Swan Company?”
 

“I want to kill for money!” Barryn shouted. It was the only coherent answer he could muster, and it came unbidden, without time for thought or contemplation.
 

“Twenty-three hells, Sergeant Otaraz! We’re dealing with officer material!” Drake shouted. “Beat feet for the armory and sign for a shovel and uniform. That will be your primary weapon while you’re here. Formation is at midday, so you had better hurry!”
 

“Beat feet, Sergeant?” Barryn asked, awkwardly trying to make the shout come out like a question.

“You beat your fucking feet on the ground!” Otaraz shouted hysterically. “I’ll show you. Run! Run! If you beat the ground hard enough, you’ll get where your’e going! Move out! Go go go!”
 

Barryn ran toward the armory with Sergeant Otaraz running next to him shouting a string obscenities sprinkled liberally with instructions and orders. He wondered what he would do with his life if he rang the bell, but the shouting and the running tamped down any possibility of complex rumination on the prospect. The universe became a cone that had nothing but a shovel at the point and the weight of existence pushing him toward it in a blur of brown turf below him and gray stone and blue sky around him.
 

It had been a particularly tense Council this year culminating in two votes against the General Peace: Relfast and Brynn.
 

Of course
, Emperor Mithrandrates thought as he stood alone in his study.
Our two haughtiest, most strong-willed siblings will fight it out to see who will lead the Great Uprising against Mergova, then lead the Dominions into a new golden age free of the Imperial yoke.

He stared intently at a map of the Empire that covered most of the great table in the middle of the room. Referring only to his memory of this morning’s briefings from Garon, he placed small wooden tokens representing military forces in all the provinces on the map as if setting a game board. He smiled at the comparison.
The game of rulership
.
 

White pieces represented bands of Templars who had joined the growing incursion into the Heathen Realms adjacent to Brynn. A majority of the pieces had gold dots, signifying heavy influence—or direct leadership—by the quasi-heretical Sons of Mahurin. What had started as a straightforward play by Duke Grantham of Brynn to raise revenue at the expense of the Caeldrynn had morphed into a crusade against the pagans of the wilderness that was drawing Templars from across the Empire.
 

The chaos the holy warriors stirred up at Brynn’s hinterlands gave Governor Drucilla cover to fortify and to put nobility throughout the province on a war footing that Relfast’s provocations did not by themselves quite justify. Mithrandrates stroked his beard and noted the even distribution of Brynn’s forces. Duke Grantham was playing at a defense in depth, the Emperor concluded, probably against Drucilla’s wishes.
He’ll let Relfast play the aggressor, draw them in, and cut them up from his mutually supporting strongholds
, the Emperor thought. V
ery good, Grantham. Then counter-attack into Relfast. And calmly talk Drucilla out of surging helter-skelter across the border. At least until you’ve marshaled the forces necessary to invade. You’re the only one who can talk sense into her
.

The other provinces looked to be sitting this one out, at least militarily. Mithrandrates placed other pieces representing agricultural and industrial production and their lines of trade, markers representing grains, textiles, metals, timber, livestock. And thus a complete picture of the situation formed. Lines of supply stretched between Relfast and Balgroth, while Brynn appeared to be sustaining itself on its own resources and cash infusions from the plundered Caeldrynn.
 

And then there were the mercenaries to consider. The Black Swan Company was sure to renew its contract with Brynn. Duke Grantham and Alcuin Darkwood seemed to get along very well, by all accounts. Meanwhile, Relfast had been quietly hiring, and in some cases coercing into service, the non-guild free companies to augment its ranks.
 

Finally, the Emperor placed red, castle-shaped pieces to represent the Imperial fortresses securing the growing road networks within the provinces. New fortresses and roads had been built under Mithrandrates’ reign, and he wondered how long it would be until the governors realized the roads that were enriching them with tax revenue from the increased trade they facilitated were at the same time undermining their feudal rule.
 

He ran his index finger over the Shoraz-Athar Rift, the mountainous, water-filled scar that cleaved his empire quite literally in half. Mithrandrates’ finger stopped in the middle of the enormous barrier where a pass and a bridge were marked. Shivar’s Bridge had been abandoned for nearly 1,000 years, ever since the uneasy truce between the M’Tarr and the Old Mergovan Empire was shattered during the Seventh Chaos Moon and the Wars of the Cleansing. The Old Empire had managed to wipe out the elfin L’Neesh and chase the dwarfish Haughrav deep underground, but the recalcitrant M’Tarr had held fast and eventually claimed the entire Rift.
 

Very few were privy to that suppressed history. The Wars of the Cleansing were nothing short of genocide, and the annals of that period were closely held state secrets. The fairy tales of elves, dwarfs, and magic of a bygone age were far more historical than mythical. The trick for Mithrandrates’ ancestors had been to convince the following generations that they were only myth.
 

All well and good
, the Emperor thought bitterly. He would have accepted all of the dangers of that bygone age—every dwarf legion, elvish sorcerer and fire-breathing monster, if he could only have that bridge back. He placed the castle on the map where the bridge was. To take it and unite the two road networks, and in so doing unite the Empire once again, he would have to march every legion he had and clear the Shoraz-Athar at least 100 miles up- and downstream, not to mention the bandit-infested Dread Marches. Doing so, of course, would leave Mergova proper undefended and vulnerable to assault from the provinces. It was a torturous paradox: taking the bridge would require a unified Empire, and the Empire could not be unified without taking the bridge.
 

Suppose the M’Tarr were not so numerous and powerful as we assume?
Mithrandrates shook his head and reminded himself to be patient.
Unifying the Mergovan Empire will be the work of five emperors, perhaps more. I must concentrate on my part and let my successors mind theirs
.
 

Mithrandrates removed the castle and wordlessly scolded himself for such useless whimsy. But his training with the Order had encouraged
useful whimsy
, for in controlled flights of fancy could hidden connections be observed. He walked across the room to a globe-like contraption filled with gears and various metal bands and set it for the current date and approximate time. He then wrote down the astrological data the device indicated in his magic diary and set the pen down while he considered meanings of the symbolism it yielded.
 

After almost an hour, Mithrandrates stopped and closed his eyes. He took cleansing breaths in through his nose and out between his lips, imagining the
vir
descend down from the sun and energize him before sinking into the depths of Fentress below. The tension in his shoulders began to disappear, and the turbidity in the waters of his thoughts started to clear as his mind stilled. The Emperor continued thus for several minutes, then opened his eyes and began to write furiously in the diary—numbers of troop formations, distances between castles, alchemical meanings of the animals and symbols in the provinces’ sigils. The number five appeared frequently enough for Mithrandrates to note, so he circled it and scribbled “Investigate thoroughly” in the margin.