Tom Garnett remounted his horse. ‘I’ve got half the company chasing after the archers who lay in ambush, and I’m going to have to take the rest out after those who ran away here. We’ve got to run these dastards to ground before dark, or they’ll be breaking into cottages and killing bondsmen. They’re no military threat, not now, but…’
Durine nodded. ‘But you still don’t want them killing your people.’
That was the problem when dealing with an enemy so far behind his own lines. Retreat wasn’t a practical option.
Durine didn’t know much about what was and wasn’t a military threat, but a scared man with a black blade almost as long as he was tall was the sort of thing he wouldn’t have wanted to encounter unawares.
It apparently took Kethol a moment before he realized that the Captain had been talking to him.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said at last.
Tom Garnett indicated the two nobles and their coteries, huddling together further down the road. ‘You three and a squad under Sergeant Henders will bring the civilians on to Mondegreen, and the rest of us shall meet you there.’
Kethol made a sketchy salute with his blade.
THREE
Mondegreen
Pirojil halted his horse. He paused to let the column catch up to him before kicking it into a walk next to the grizzled lancer sergeant.
‘There’s no need for outriders, Sergeant,’ Pirojil said. ‘I’d just as soon we keep everybody together.’
‘That’s very interesting, freebooter,’ Sergeant Henders replied, his frown and tone in sarcastic counterpoint to his even words. ‘I’ll tell you again, I am always so very glad to have another opinion as to how I should run my squad.’ He raised himself in the saddle. ‘Hey, you!’ he shouted. ‘Yes, Sanderson, I mean you, you poxy son of a misbegotten cur. You and Scrupple take the point!’ Then he turned to shout at another pair of riders. ‘Williams! Bellows! You two are up as flankers–smartly now, or we’ll see if you can run ahead faster without your horses. I said move it!’ He turned back to Pirojil. ‘Always happy to have advice, Pirojil, and particularly from a man as well-favoured as your good self,’ he said, the sneer only at the edges of his mouth and voice. ‘But I’d just as soon know if we’re facing another ambush.’
‘We’re not going to see another ambush between here and Mondegreen,’ Pirojil said. ‘Maybe a straggler or two, but more likely they’ll be too busy running away.’
‘If you say so,’ the sergeant said, making no motion to recall the outriders.
Pirojil bit his lip, then decided to try again. ‘Look, Sergeant, if there were more Tsurani within tens of miles of here, their commander would surely have used all of them for the ambush. The Tsurani commanders aren’t stupid; they’re just greedy. As it was, he split his forces too small, hoping the attack would drive the column into a killing zone for his archers.’
‘I thank you much for that opinion, Pirojil,’ the sergeant said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a squad to run. Shouldn’t you be off counting your high pay or wiping Baron Morray’s backside or something useful?’
Pirojil shook his head. There was no point in trying. It was impossible to convince somebody who wouldn’t be convinced, and while the three of them were in charge of the nobles, they hadn’t been explicitly left in charge of the party, or even of the sergeant’s squad. Now instead of having one rider away from the column, they had four, just because a sergeant got irritated at getting some good advice.
Tom Garnett should have been more direct and simply put the party under Kethol’s command. The three mercenaries had understood that he had meant for them to be in charge, but the sergeant didn’t, or affected not to. Pirojil could either live with that, or fight it out, with him, Kethol and Durine against the entire squad; and then they would have to make their escape rather than explain to Tom Garnett why they had killed all of his men–assuming that they could, of course.
Pirojil relaxed. So be it. For now.
It would probably be necessary to have Durine take the sergeant aside at some point and work this out, privately. He didn’t particularly like asking Durine to do that, but he was used to doing things he didn’t like. He’d had to do it a time or two before. That was the nice thing about having Durine beat somebody up: they didn’t lose their comrades’ respect by having Durine mess up their face just a little. Few men could stand up to Durine and no one–so far–could emerge unscathed from a fight with the big man.
He tried to be philosophical about it.
Relationships between regulars and mercenaries were always uncomfortable. Forget, for just a moment, that regular soldiers thought of freebooters as little more than land pirates, mostly because during peacetime, and around the fringes of war, they spent more time hunting them down than working with them.
Even when mercenaries were employed by the Crown, there were conflicts built into the relationship. The freebooters tended to report directly to an officer, who was expected to take a long view of things and understand that too many unnecessary fatalities among the mercenaries inevitably meant widespread mercenary desertion or revolt. It usually didn’t work out when mercenaries had to answer to a sergeant, who would be much quicker to expend a mercenary than one of his own men, and while few mercenaries died in bed, even fewer wanted to spend their whole, short lives on point, or worse. The second or third time a mercenary company was ordered to be first over the wall, they started considering the wisdom of their employment choice.
Relations between the mercenaries and the regulars were unlikely to get any better in Mondegreen. The regular soldiers would be housed in the barracks at Mondegreen Castle. But Baron Morray would be housed in the Residence, and therefore Kethol, Durine and Pirojil would be as well, with the three of them sleeping in soft featherbeds, their every need being tended to by beautiful maidservants. At least that’s what the regulars would think.
It wouldn’t actually be that way, of course, but that was the way the story would be told around the barracks. Never mind that they would probably be bedded down on damp reeds in the kitchen, except for whichever of them drew the short straw and spent the night sleeping on the stone floor across the threshold of the Baron’s bedchamber. And the maids were almost certain to be old, fat, ugly, or all three. But, the regulars would complain that the mercenaries were getting a soft assignment.
Pirojil slowed his horse to allow Baron Morray and Kethol to catch up with him, while behind, Durine trailed Lady Mondegreen and her maids.
Kethol arched an eyebrow; Pirojil shook his head. Kethol shrugged.
The Baron eyed them curiously. After a few moments, when neither of them answered the unvoiced question, he cleared his throat for attention. ‘What was that all about?’ he asked imperiously.
‘Nothing for you to bother yourself with, my lord,’ Kethol said, when Pirojil didn’t immediately answer. ‘Just a minor disagreement between Pirojil and the sergeant.’
‘All that from a shake of the head?’ Morray was visibly sceptical.
‘Yes,’ Pirojil said. But that wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the Baron. ‘Kethol and I’ve been working together for years; Durine’s been with us only a little less. After so much time together, my lord, each of us knows how the others think.’
The Baron raised an eyebrow as if questioning the remark.
‘You don’t mask your thoughts to the man at your back, my lord. If a man insists on keeping his thoughts to himself all the time, well, you find somebody else to watch your back.’
The Baron scowled. ‘I’m not overly impressed with the three of you,’ he said. ‘You distinguished yourself with bravery during the ambush, certainly more than one would expect from a bunch of freebooters, but your swordwork was clumsy–at least what I saw of it–and if Lady Mondegreen hadn’t spurred her horse so quickly, she would have been brought down by the Tsurani without much trouble at all.’
Kethol started to open his mouth, but desisted at Pirojil’s head-shake.
‘W
e’ll try to do better, next time, my lord,’ Pirojil said. He had already had enough of arguing with somebody who would not be persuaded for one afternoon.
But you couldn’t trust Kethol to keep his mouth shut about such a thing. Kethol would have to explain himself–it was one of his few weaknesses–and that would do nobody any good at all.
Pirojil pointed a finger toward the front of the column, tapped the finger against his own chest, jerked his thumb toward the rear of the column, and spurred his horse.
Lady Mondegreen’s eyes held steady on Kethol as he dropped back beside her, replacing Durine. ‘How soon do we arrive, Kethol?’ she asked.
If he remembered right, and he did, the outer wall of Mondegreen Town was just beyond the next bend, across a stream, and then over a ridge. ‘I believe we should be there within the hour, Lady.’ Why the Lady of Castle Mondegreen wouldn’t know the area around the keep better than a soldier who had only been through here once, during the war, he didn’t know. ‘We’ll have you safe in your own bed this night, and may it be a comfort to you.’
‘I’ve some comfort in my own bed, that’s true,’ she said. ‘Though my husband is a good man, a gentle man, but a very sick man, and has been, for the past few years.’
Oh, he didn’t say. And is that why you spend your time warming other men’s beds? ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he did say. It seemed like the appropriate response.
She pursed her lips momentarily. ‘Others suffer far worse than do I.’
‘Is the Baron much older than you?’
She frowned. ‘Yes, he is. And is there something wrong with that?’
‘Not at all.’ Kethol shook his head. ‘But it must be difficult–’
‘Yes, it’s difficult.’ She patted at her belly. ‘It’s difficult when you marry an older man, and are expected to produce an heir, and don’t.’ She started to say something more, then stopped herself.
‘There’s no need to watch your words around me, Lady,’ Kethol said. ‘I’m not loose of tongue, and I’ve got no stake in local matters.’
She didn’t look at him. ‘How fortunate for you,’ she said, through tight lips.
They rode in silence for a few minutes.
‘I seem to have something of a widespread reputation,’ she said at last.
‘Perhaps.’ Kethol shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. The only gossip I get to hear is usually about how one sergeant is a glory-hound, or another officer will never send his men out in front of him if he doesn’t have to–the private lives of our betters isn’t a topic for barracks conversation.’
Which wasn’t entirely true. It might not have been a topic for Kethol’s barracks conversation, but some of the Mut soldiers gossiped like fishwives, and Lady Mondegreen was often a subject of their chatter. If you believed the gossip–and Kethol never either believed all or none of it–she flitted from bed to bed with wild abandon, looking for the satisfaction that her ancient husband couldn’t have given her.
She looked at him, long and hard, as though trying to decide something.
A crow fluttered down and took a perch on an overhanging tree limb, and cawed down at them.
Well, as long as it didn’t shit on him, he didn’t mind.
Pirojil shook his head. Unless you knew how and where to look, the castle didn’t look like the weapon that it actually was.
Castle Mondegreen rose, huge and solid and dark on its hill, looming above the town below. On top of its six towers watchmen stood, probably bored out of their minds, but even more probably happy to be bored. It didn’t take much experience with battle to teach you that combat was far less romantic in real life than in all the tales, ballads and legends.
Of course, it wouldn’t take long before the sights and sounds and particularly the smells of war would fade in the memory, and it wouldn’t be long before young soldiers would be puffing their chests and strutting about, bragging of the great deeds they would do the next time the alarm horns sounded. Some of them would do very well. Some of them would die, and all of them would be changed, in ways many of them would not recognize until years later, if ever. A soldier’s life gave you plenty of time for introspection, but many just pissed that time away.
Pirojil himself had pissed away many an hour that could have been spent just thinking about things. On the other hand, he had not wasted all his hours, and he had long ago worked out that it was dangerous to keep weapons too near you. Necessary, yes, but dangerous–weapons changed people, and not just enchanted weapons.
Like the castle itself.
Originally, Castle Mondegreen had been built by some cousin of the conDoin family, as a way to establish a permanent foothold in Yabon. While invited in to help drive out the Brotherhood of the Dark Path and their allies, many of the Yabonese had not expected the Kingdom to stay in Yabon once the enemy had been dislodged. Like neighbouring Bosonia, Yabon had been a far-flung colony of the Empire of Great Kesh.
Unlike Bosonia, which had many Keshian colonists living there, Yabon had been an administrated district with a few Keshian nobles and many Yabonese tribal chieftains and lords. The Kingdom’s position was that once the Dark Brothers and their ilk were driven away, the natives were unable to protect themselves and therefore Yabon required a permanent Kingdom garrison. A rescue had turned into a conquest.
Some lords and chieftains had welcomed the Kingdom, and were rewarded with titles and lands. Other locals had, as locals did, resented their conquerors, and were primed for revolt in the early years. During that time, the remnants of the old regime would eye the new rulers, usually waiting and sometimes probing for weaknesses, ready to throw off the yoke of the newly-appointed Kingdom earl and his lickspittle barons.
And that was what the castle was for. Let the old regime raise an army in the countryside, let them gather together horses and men, bows and breastplates and swords, and let them rant and rave and fume as they would–so long as the new rulers controlled the castle.
Sometimes, the revolt could be put down by the Baron’s troops riding out and dispersing the rebels. More often, the trouble could be stopped at the much smaller wall around the town, protecting not just the nobility in the castle, but those loyal to the new regime who were, during the early years, the only ones permitted to live in the town, directly under the protection of the Baron.
But sometimes, the occupying troops would have to retreat into the castle, and wait to be relieved by the Earl’s troops. Stockpiled food and water were as much a part of the castle’s armoury as stockpiled arrows and bolts. As conquests go, Yabon’s was a relatively mild one, and by the third generation after the Kingdom annexed the former Keshian colony–which just happened to be Pirojil’s generation–Yabonese and Kingdom were interchangeable, except maybe for a bit of a funny accent in Yabon.
And so, the castle stood: a monument to persistence, just as the tumble down wall of the town was a monument to mutability, to how things never lasted.
Pirojil couldn’t tell how much of the town’s wall had been destroyed in the war–the Tsurani had broken through into Mondegreen Town on their way to the castle–and how much had been cannibalized before the Tsurani invasion by locals seeking building materials. After a generation or so of peace, the wall around the town was more of an inconvenience than a benefit, and it took a wise ruler to remember that walls were important.
The wall around the keep itself, though, was intact, although as battle-scarred as the rest of the landscape. Ashes were all that remained of the siege towers the Tsurani had built against the western wall, and while the southern wall still stood firm, it was scarred by a patched breach in the stonework, above where Tsurani sappers had failed in their attempt to undermine its integrity. The slump in the ground at the foundation told Pirojil all he needed to know about the failed attempt. Nasty way to die, he thought, with tons of rock and earth suddenly falling upon you, crushing you in the darkness like a bug. The trick was to make the tunnel as large as you safely could, with just enough timber to hold everythin
g above you in place until you were ready to fire the supports, collapse the tunnel–hopefully while you were a respectable distance away–and thereby collapse the wall above, forming a lovely breach through which your comrades could attack.
Pirojil had been in a mining party, down in the Vale, and the whole damn thing had failed to hold. He remembered the earthy smell as dust had been forced up his nose when the ceiling of the tunnel had come crashing down–on the heads of a few of his companions–leaving him and the rest of the sappers trapped with no way out but up out of the ground, emerging through the fire and rubble of a collapsed wall. They were half-blind, sneezing and coughing from dust and smoke, knowing full well that they had to kill all the defenders, who would fight–and die–like cornered rats.
As they had.
Once in a while, some captain or duke or prince got the wonderful notion that you should tunnel further so that you emerged inside the walls. Nice theory, if you weren’t the idiots picked to be the first ones popping up out of the ground…
‘I said,’ Baron Morray reiterated, ‘that you may take my horse to the stables, when I alight.’
Pirojil nodded, coming out of his momentary reverie. ‘Of course, Baron.’
‘I’ll speak to the housecarl about your billets. Perhaps they can find room for you three in the barracks, rather than the stables.’
Well, they might as well have that out now as later.
‘No, my lord,’ Pirojil said, ‘we’re not staying in the stables. We’ll all be staying in the Residence while one of us stands watch before your door.’
Baron Morray wasn’t used to being contradicted. The reins twitched in his fingers. ‘I hardly see the need. The barracks or perhaps the stables will be perfectly adequate for the likes of–for the three of you. If I find I need you in the middle of the night, I’ll send a servant.’