The Dinosaur Lords (30 page)

—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

“Not bloody prepossessing,” Rob Korrigan said. He sat near the abandoned farmhouse on a mostly intact stretch of fence long since weathered to grey. “I’ve seen a more impressive lot turned out of a tavern at closing time. Not the best tavern either.”

Forty or so volunteers, all commoners, all male, peered back at him and Karyl from a grassy field. Wood and ground and foliage all smelled damp from the rain that had roused Rob from sleep in the early hours, drumming on the Garden manor’s tiled roof. He’d noted the fact and returned promptly to sleep. After an arduous month on the road he didn’t want to waste a second in the luxurious strider-down bed. Sleeping rough with all of Paradise for a mattress made a nice poetic fancy, which minstrel Rob appreciated. It made a shitty bed, though.

“No doubt they’d say the same about us,” Karyl said. He stood next to Rob with hands folded over the top of his walking stick. He’d refused their employers’ offers of rich clothes. Instead he wore a new robe of coarse sackcloth not too different from what he’d had on when Rob first found him in the village square of Pot de Feu, but without the hood.

“They’ve a point, so.”

The S
é
verin farm lay just off La Rue Imp
é
riale. Perhaps four hectares of leveled land, now overgrown, it was crossed by a small stream and bounded by feral fruit orchards and a sizable oak and maple wood, both thickly undergrown with brush. The house was two stories of fieldstone and timber in the local style; beyond the windowpanes being broken out or stolen and a pervasive whiff of mildew, it seemed in decent shape. Up here the land didn’t reclaim its own with the ferocity it did along the coast, or even on the central plateau.

A small flock of bipedal bouncers, drab-feathered with the season and no more than half a meter tall, browsed among vines and thornbushes that had overgrown a fallen-in outbuilding. From time to time they sat back on thick, short tails to peer curiously at the men fidgeting in the field.

“An ancient wise man of Tianchao-guo wrote that the longest journey begins with one small step,” Karyl said.

“Where?”

“Ch
á
nguo is the Spa
ñ
ol name. The Celestial Kingdom.”

“Ah. Where they speak the Holy Language as their everyday tongue, poor bastards. Right?”

“Indeed.”

The volunteers stood or sat or squatted. Some smoked long, thin clay pipes. Most were townsmen. They affected bright shapeless caps, lightweight linen smocks, either bleached or natural, and colorfully dyed dinosaur-leather shoes. The peasants mostly wore loincloths and sandals, some with straw hats or light cloth yokes to protect their shoulders from the stinging high-country sun; though it was winter, and near the Shields, the day was warm. The countrymen ran to wiry and more than a little grubby. Their urban cousins showed signs of leading easier lives. Or at any rate cleaner ones.

“I don’t see any of our friends from the banquet last night,” Rob said.

“Look closer,” Karyl said. “Your drinking companion, young Lucas the painter, is hovering nervously in the rear.”

Rob squinted. “So he is. One Gardener’s willing to get his hands dirty, at least.”

Karyl stepped forward.

“I am called Karyl,” he called out. “My companion is Rob Korrigan. We’re here to teach you to defend yourselves.”

The volunteers exchanged glances and muttered comments. They didn’t seem altogether approving to Rob. He had a fine sense of such things. Any jongleur had to, when even a subtle shift in audience attitude could spell the difference between an ovation and a quick sprint for the kitchen door.

“Weren’t you the great mercenary captain, then?” a bare-shanked farmer asked.

“That he was,” said Rob, not trusting Karyl’s modesty to let him answer.

“And aren’t you dead?”

The onlookers laughed. Rob scowled. Karyl showed no reaction at all.

“Who I was doesn’t matter,” Karyl said. “But yes, I commanded the White River Legion. And yes, I was dead. Clearly I’m not at the moment. We proceed.”

Rob couldn’t hold down a grin.
That quieted the rabble down,
he thought. Karyl had just secured his audience’s undivided attention in a way no bluster or braggadocio could have approached.

For all the years I’ve spent hero-worshipping the man,
he thought,
here and
I still find myself underestimating the actuality.

If he’s such a fine performer
, a voice from the back of Rob’s head asked,
what use are you?
A familiar voice, it sounded like his, but as always reminded him of his mother.

“Ah, but I brought him here,” he said into his beard. “That has to count for something.”

“Has anyone here fought in battle?” Karyl asked. “Not a street brawl or a tavern fight. Real war.”

The men looked uneasily at each other. Rob observed much shifting of weight and shuffling of feet. No one spoke or even looked directly at them.

One man raised his hand. “I have. I’ve fought Count Guilli’s marauders, if that counts.”

He stood at the front, a little apart from the others. He was a tall, rangy man with long, shaggy blond hair and moustaches framing his mouth. He wore low soft strider-skin shoes and leather leggings. A panache of brown and silver feathers nodded over one ear. A shortbow and quiver of arrows were slung over his back. The scuffing on the inside of the nosehorn-hide bracer around his left forearm suggested they saw a lot of use.

“More likely hid in the brush like a wood-rat,” one of the peasants muttered.

Another spat on the ground. “Woods-runner.”

Karyl gave them a hooded look. They didn’t have the sense to cringe.

“What’s your name?” he asked the woods-runner.

“Emeric.”

“So, Emeric. What’s a woods-runner?”

“Two-legged vermin,” said the first farmer who’d disparaged Emeric. “Cowards and sneak thieves.”

He was middle-aged, balding, and bearded, with a leathery belly overhanging his loincloth. Karyl narrowed his eyes at him. He paled.

Karyl returned a less alarming gaze to Emeric. After a moment the woods-runner said, “We’re free folk who roam the Oldest Daughter Telar’s Wood. She shelters and feeds us. We care for the forest, as best we can.”

Rob noticed he didn’t deny stealing from the peasants. He’d heard of the woods-runners. They had a doubtful reputation—like own his people, the Travelers. He suspected they deserved about half of it as well.

“Do you hide from Guillaume’s men?” Karyl asked.

Emeric’s well-weathered face worked as though he were thinking about taking offense.

“When we must,” he admitted.

“And you shoot them down from cover, when you can?”

Another pause. Emeric licked his lips. “Aye. When we can.”

“Good,” Karyl said. “You might live.”

He turned to the others. “Anybody else? Surely somebody has some experience with weapons.”

A grizzled farmer with a dirty blue rag tied around his head raised a hand. “I’ve used a spear to keep the harriers and horrors off my beasts and children,” he said. Rob noticed he had a long white scar down his right thigh, which might have been left by a raptor’s killing-claw. “Most of us countryfolk have done the same.”

“It’s a start,” Karyl said. “Let’s pair you off with staves and you can show us what skills you have.”

“Who put you in charge?” demanded a young man in town garb. He had a green cap arranged so its peak dangled rakishly down the left side of his face.

Karyl looked him up and down. “A fair question,” he said. “Bogardus hired me.”

“He doesn’t rule us,” the swag-bellied peasant declared.

“Watch your tongue,” yelled someone from the rear. “The Council rules us all, in the name of the common good!” Only a few heads nodded agreement.

Karyl approached the contentious farmer. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Guat,” he said after brief hesitation. “The Town Lord Yannic is my liege.”

That brought hoots and sneers from some.

“I’ve been hired to organize and teach you to fight,” Karyl told the group. “It doesn’t really matter by whom. The reason I was hired is that I know how.”

“But you lost,” the green-cap youngster said.

“Name?” Karyl asked.

“Why? So you can get back at me for speaking truth?”

“His name’s Reyn,” a man called from behind, “a journeyman carpenter. He’s Town Lord Percil’s man.”

“Well, Reyn,” Karyl said, “it is true. “I did lose, at the last.”

He waved at Rob. “And here’s the man who beat me.”

That rocked them back on their heels. Rob laughed.

“It was mostly luck,” he said, trying to sound modest. “But now you know why to listen to us.”

“Why have you all come out today?” Karyl asked.

“Fat Guilli’s rangers hunt us for sport,” Emeric said. “They ravage the woods and slaughter the beasts for no reason.”

Karyl nodded crisply. “And the rest of you? Why are you here?”

“I—I want to learn to handle a sword!” Lucas sang out.

No one else said anything.

Karyl approached the old man with the blue head-rag and the scarred leg. The man returned a defiant glare.

“My name’s Pierre,” he said. “I can’t speak for nobody else, but I came because my lord Melchor told me I must.”

“Is that so?” Karyl said. He got back a chorus of agreement.

He told Bogardus we’d have no conscription,
Rob thought.
Some lordling’s butt is in for a fine toasting
. He grinned.

“I thought everybody was equal in the Garden of Beauty and Truth,” he called.

Pierre shrugged. “We peasants still find it better to obey our lords.”

“What about you townsmen?” Karyl asked. “You’re not entailed to any fief, surely.”

The townsmen shuffled their shoes in the still-damp grass and looked everywhere but at Karyl.

“These ‘town lords,’” Rob said, “Percil, Yannic, Melchor—any others?”

“None of consequence,” Pierre said. He clearly had decided he might as well be hanged for a fatty bull as a calf.

“So they’re barons who hold fiefs nearby, but choose to live in town, am I right?” Rob didn’t bother awaiting a reply. “They’re big employers, I’m guessing. Who strongly suggested to the Guild-masters they should make sure we got some warm bodies.”

“You seem to have it all figured out,” Reyn sneered.

Rob smirked. “Can you tell me I’m wrong? Thought not.”

“If you peasants join us and fight,” Karyl said, “you won’t be bound to your lords anymore.”

That made their eyes go as wide as those of an old tomcat who had just seen a full-grown matador wander into his alley.

“Do you mean that?” a farmer asked.

“Yes. And I can make it stick.”

“Won’t their lords have something to say about that?” Rob burst out, astonished as any of them.

Karyl glanced back at him and smiled. “Everybody’s equal in the Garden, remember.”

Rob shook his head. “They’re not going to like it.”

In fact it offended
his
sense of the natural order of things. He chose not to mention the fact.

“If the town lords don’t like it, let them defend themselves. I’ll command real volunteers, or go elsewhere.”

“Can we talk about this?” Rob asked, sotto voce.

“Also,” Karyl declared, “you’ll all be paid. Not handsomely. Your families can eat. And you can drink—off duty.”

“Paid?” Rob squeaked. “By whom? We’ve scarcely got two centimos to clink together!”

“You’ll grant I was the premier mercenary captain on Nuevaropa,” Karyl said to him.

“Oh, aye.”

This time Karyl grinned like a deinonychus. “Then believe me: you
can
squeeze blood from a stone. If you know whose stones to squeeze.”

“And there’s loot,” called a townsman, an apprentice to judge by his age and shabby dress. “Plunder. And—and ransoms for rich nobles!”

“Don’t rely on getting rich from this war,” Karyl said. “The idea’s to defend yourself and your neighbors, not beggar the people of the next province.”

“They make war on us!” a peasant shouted. “Let the bastards suffer!” Many cried agreement and waved fists in the air.

“They make war on you because their lords order them to,” Karyl said. “It’s not peasants raiding your lands and pillaging your homes. It’s nobles, and their knights, men-at-arms, and mercenaries.”

“Then why should we fight them, if not for a reward?” Reyn demanded. “They haven’t troubled the city yet. They wouldn’t dare!”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Rob said. “Who’s to stop them, if not you?”

The “volunteers” looked at him in confusion.

“But they’ve got great nasty spears and horses,” old Pierre said. “And armor.”

“And war-dinosaurs,” another man said. “How can we face dinosaur knights?”

“In all Nuevaropa,” Rob said, “there’s no one better to teach you that than Lord Karyl.”

He was immediately afraid his lapse would get him yelled at. Instead Karyl said, “We can follow the example of friend Emeric, here. Strike from ambush. Never fight fair. I’ve … been a nobleman myself. We bleed and die as readily as you do. You just need to learn the chinks in our armor.”

The crowd fell to squabbling with one another. Some seemed outraged at the notion of not fighting fair—which struck Rob as flat insane. Others more sensibly wondered what good a handful of defenders might do against Cr
è
ve Coeur’s might, however cunningly they fought. And some demanded to know why they should risk loss of limb and life while others sat home getting fat.

The woods-runner stepped up beside Karyl and Rob. “I’ll fight!” he cried.

Lucas shouldered through the bickering mob. He had the shoulders for it too, Rob noted.

“I’ll fight too, Lord Karyl,” he said, blue eyes shining. “Just teach me how! It’s all I ever wanted.”

“Beware getting what you want, son,” Rob said gruffly. If the boy-prodigy painter heard him over the crowd, he showed no sign.

The dispute continued as if it would never end. “They’ll never come ’round at this rate,” Rob told Karyl. “Why not just order them? Force them to heel!”