A Hero's justice

Chapter 9

The day after the repulse of the nomads, Tol awoke wooden and groggy. He’d grown too accustomed to the relative comfort of his Dom-shu hut. His bedroll seemed to grow harder with every night. He was getting too old to be sleeping on the ground.

After stretching the stiffness from his limbs, he left the lean-to. A grim sight greeted his bleary eyes. Tylocost’s gallows had been filled overnight. The Seventh Company deserters hung there, dark against the brightening sky.

Strong emotions filled Tol: anger, that men should have to die like this, but forgiving cowardice in war only bred more cowards. Then came sadness, at this reminder of the frailty of life.

His melancholy musings suddenly were replaced by puzzlement. The Seventh Company comprised one hundred men; he’d told Tylocost to punish only one in ten, so there should be ten men on the gallows. Yet, more than twice that number of bodies dangled from the improvised gibbets. Those at the far end wore buckskins.

Furious, Tol shouted for Tylocost and Wilfik. The first person to respond was Zala. In response to his demand for an explanation, she said, “Your Silvanesti did as you ordered. Then they hanged the nomad prisoners.”

She could not tell him who had ordered the execution of the prisoners. So, Tol strapped on Number Six and strode into the awakening camp. He shouted again for his lieutenants. Tylocost appeared.

“You bellowed, my lord?” the elf said politely.

“Who gave the order to execute the nomads?”

“ Wilfik. It was a popular decision.”

“Why didn’t you stop them?”

Tylocost pushed back his floppy gardener’s hat. “I am Silvanesti, and still your captive. I have no authority over these people, save what you grant me.”

Tol could barely speak, he was so angry. “They were prisoners of war under my protection! And they could have told us much about the nomad armies!” Lives and opportunity both had been wasted, lost at the end of a knotted rope.

Wilfik arrived at last. His explanation was simple. “The savages weren’t going to tell us anything else, my lord,” he said flatly. “After what they did to Juramona, hanging was too good for them.”

Tol’s fist connected with Wilfik’s broad jaw, and the warrior went down. All around them, heads turned. Even more turned when their warlord’s powerful voice reverberated over the camp.

“Get out of this camp, Wilfik! Get out of my sight! If I see you again after midday, I’ll string you up beside those men!”

Wilfik looked up at his commander in stunned confusion. He opened his mouth to protest, but the fury in Tol’s posture left no doubt he was utterly serious. With as much dignity as he could muster, Wilfik stood, straightened his brigandine, and walked away.

Tol began to berate Tylocost again, saying the elf should have awakened him before letting the prisoners be hanged.

The Silvanesti shrugged one shoulder gracefully. “As a rule, my lord, I try not to interfere when humans are killing each other, but if you wish it, I shall hereafter.”

This bland indifference to the injustice swaying in the wind only infuriated Tol anew. He considered banishing Tylocost, too, but a sliver of reason intruded itself. That might be exactly what the elf was hoping for. Perhaps he was regretting his decision to fight alongside his captor, but his oath of surrender bound him until Tol freed him. And Tol wasn’t yet ready to lose the former general’s expertise.

Instead, Tol ordered Tylocost to have the dead cut down and decently buried. The elf departed, and Tol was alone with Zala.

“In war horror begets horror,” he said.

Tol’s loathing of executing helpless prisoners had been learned at a tender age, when he was forced to watch the Pakin rebel Vakka Zan beheaded in the town square of Juramona. Egrin had been required to do the deed, honor-bound to obey the marshal of Juramona, Lord Odovar.

There was nothing more he could do for the dead, so Tol turned his attention to the soldiers who’d guarded the captives. Once they were brought to him, he asked whether the prisoners had said anything useful to them.

One fellow scratched his head with a meaty hand. “Some of ’em talked bold,” he allowed. “Said as how their chief, Tokasin, would come back an’ kill us all.”

The captives had mentioned two other chiefs-Mattohoc and Ulur-but it was on Tokasin they pinned their hopes. He was chief of the Firepath tribe, which they called the boldest and hardest-riding folk on the plains.

Tol, like most Ergothians, saw the nomads as a faceless mass of mounted foes, cruel, with quicksilver tempers. Learning the names of their chiefs was worthwhile information.

The guards contributed one other piece of information gleaned from the nomad captives. The prisoners claimed to be scouting for a much larger band. Their comrades who had survived yesterday’s battle would return to the main force and that, they boasted, would be the end of Juramona’s pitiful defenders.

Tol drilled the militia all day. He didn’t share what he learned from the guards, but word got around. There was no more trouble with shirkers. The twin specters of nomad blades and the deserter’s noose had resolved all qualms. It was fight or die.

The trick, as Tylocost dryly noted, was to make certain the militia fought, and the nomads died.

Two nights later, Tol went to inspect Tylocost’s work west of camp. The wind was up, sweeping across the long grass. Zala, his omnipresent escort, carried a torch that flared wildly with every gust.

Tylocost had erected a large number of obstacles to screen the vulnerable western approaches. What appeared as random piles of loose masonry and fire-blackened timbers hid a grim purpose. Riders would have to slow their mounts to navigate the narrow passages. When they did, they would be perfect targets for archers and pikemen concealed behind the mounds.

As he drew nearer and details of Tylocost’s defenses became clear, Tol’s brisk pace slowed.

The elf had left an open lane through the center of the field. The enemy would be funneled into this lane. The thigh-high plains grass gave way to loose dirt. A length of rope was buried just under the surface. Some distance further along, Tol could see another patch of disturbed soil. The seemingly clear lane was filled with traps.

“That elf is tricky as a kender,” Tol muttered. Trained Ergothian warriors would never fall for such an obvious ploy, but the reckless, unsophisticated plainsmen just might.

Zala interrupted his admiration of Tylocost’s deadly ingenuity. “My lord, do you hear that?”

Tol started to shake his head-all he could hear was wind moaning around the piles of debris-then came a lull, the gusty breeze died, and he heard it. Zala’s keen ears had discerned a faint rumbling. Not like thunder, rolling through heavy clouds, this was more like the steady, distant roar of a waterfall. Tol knew that sound.

“Run!” he shouted, and they legged it for camp.

Zala’s torch expired, snuffed by the wind of their passage, and she threw it aside without pausing. She covered the ground rapidly, with Tol only a few steps behind.

As soon as the camp came into view, he raised the alarm. Sentries took up the warning, beating an improvised gong-a battered brass tray from a Juramona tavern. Men and women came stumbling out of their shelters, grappling with helmets, bits of armor, and weapons. Tylocost, moving with all the speed and agility ascribed to his race, dodged the clumsy humans and hurried to Tol.

“Horsemen,” Tol panted. “Massed horsemen coming from the west!”

Tylocost rounded up his makeshift troops and led them out to his crazy-quilt fortifications. The able-bodied men had joined Tol’s foot companies, so following the elf was a motley band of boys, women, and old men. It was a lot to ask, that these folk should bear the brunt of the nomads’ first assault, but the survival of every soul at Juramona depended on their steadfastness.

It was two marks before midnight, and the night sky was streaked with clouds. Moving fast across the field of stars, the clouds were stained pink by the light of Luin, no more than a crescent of scarlet and hanging low on the horizon. Solin, the white moon, had already set. Tol hated night battles. Facing horsemen with green militia was difficult enough, but the dark gave an even greater advantage to veteran fighters.

He arranged his militia outside the dark, frightened camp in an arrowhead formation. Foremost was the reconstituted Seventh Company, led by Tol himself, with two of his steadiest companies behind them, and the rest echeloned behind. At Tol’s order, any who fled the coming battle were to be cut down in their tracks. The soldiers clutched their pikes, looking sleepy and frightened at the same time.

To the west, Tylocost doffed his gardener’s hat and tied a strip of white cloth around his forehead, to make it easier for his people to pick him out in the dark. He climbed atop the highest of the brick mounds to search the deep darkness for signs of the enemy. He could certainly hear them. Even the dull-eared humans couldn’t miss the low, constant thud of so many hooves.

In the open lane, he had arrayed a few troops as bait. Should the nomads prove reluctant to charge into his trap, the presence of those pitifully equipped foot soldiers should entice them.

Shards of brick skittered down the side of the mound on which Tylocost stood, shaken loose by the growing vibration of the enemy’s approach. The Silvanesti’s vision, far keener than a human’s, detected movement upon the plain. Bits of brass horse tack glimmered, as did hundreds of bare iron blades. It was only the advance guard. From the sound of it, thousands more nomads were behind the outriders.

Tylocost had done his best with the defenses, but inwardly he doubted that few if any of his people would survive the night. For the first time in his long life, he admitted the possibility of his own death, acknowledged he might never again look on the crystal spires of Silvanost, never walk among his own graceful, civilized people. Ugly, despised Janissiron Tylocostathan would die before his time, alone, surrounded by crass, bloodthirsty humans. Astarin and all the gods would weep!

The first wave of nomads cantered toward him. None seemed to take particular notice of Tylocost’s defenses, which looked very like the rest of the ruined town. The riders now were only paces from the stakes the elf had driven into the turf to mark maximum effective arrow range.

He removed the white cloth from his head and raised it high. “When I give the signal, loose all!” he called down to his troops. “Mark your targets well, but don’t dawdle! There are plenty for all!”

The first line of horsemen rode over the wooden stakes. Tylocost brought the white cloth down sharply. His archers let fly.

A rain of arrows in the dark is an unnerving thing. The nomads couldn’t hear the snap of bowstrings, or the thrum of the approaching missiles, over the noise of their horses. They glimpsed the hardwood shafts falling through the air only an instant before the arrows struck.

Riders toppled from their horses. The vanguard hesitated, then spied the bait troops huddled in the open lane between the obstacles. With much shouting, the enraged nomads charged.

Tylocost descended from his perch and stood beside his tiny band. Most were visibly trembling, but all remained where they were, gazes shifting between their unlikely leader and the oncoming horsemen.

“Remember what I taught you,” he called over the swelling noise. “At my command, fallback!”

Archers in the front ranks continued to sting the nomads, and marksmen atop the mounds also took their toll. A few plainsmen shot back, concentrating on the bowmen they could see silhouetted against the stars. One by one the Ergothians were picked off.

“Steady,” Tylocost said. “At my order, not before.”

When the nomads were just twenty paces away-close enough to see the flaring nostrils and gnashing teeth of their hard-charging ponies-Tylocost gave the command, and the small block of townsfolk broke apart. They streamed back down the dirt path, still clutching their weapons.

Ten paces along, the elf general halted and gestured with his bared sword. Eight Juramonans dropped to their knees and took hold of the buried ropes. Tylocost raised his sword, and the Ergothians hauled on the lines. Sixteen sharpened stakes rose up, hinged at the base, which was buried in the dirt.

There was no time for the leading edge of nomads to avoid the trap. They piled up on the stakes, and the press of horsemen behind them added to the carnage. Men and horses screamed.

“Withdraw!” Tylocost ordered. The Ergothians let go the ropes and followed as he backed slowly away.

Their charge disrupted, the nomads milled about in confusion. Finally, twenty riders worked their way around the first obstacle, and came on. Tylocost’s people uncovered a second set of ropes. The nomads reined up.

After raising the second hedge of stakes and tying the ropes to anchors already driven into the ground, the Ergothians withdrew further, and raised a third line of sharp pilings. Their part of the battle done, Tylocost’s troops filtered back through the waiting militia and returned to camp.

Donning his floppy hat once more, Tylocost joined the militia.

“Not much of a helmet,” Tol remarked.

“So far I’m having good luck with this hat. I’ll keep it.”

Their respite was brief. Horsemen had picked their way through the garden of traps and obstacles the elf had created, but arrived at the camp to find Tol’s troops drawn up to meet them. With veteran soldiers, Tol would have attacked the disorganized riders, but he didn’t dare break ranks to advance with his newly minted militia. Much of their courage came from solidarity with their fellows.

The nomads threw spears and showered arrows on the motionless blocks of Ergothians. Now it was the defenders’ turn to fall prey to death arriving out of the darkness. They raised their shields high, but not everyone had a shield, and the arrows slowly pared their ranks.

Tol held his men steady, knowing that, as bad as it was, the bombardment was another ploy to make the Ergothians break formation.

Zala, standing behind him, said, “Can’t we do something to stop the arrows?”

He watched shafts pepper the turf at his feet. “Send word to the leftmost companies,” he said. “At my order, they will advance into a solid line with us.” Zala hurried to deliver his message.

Tol’s blood was up. The nomads wanted to make things hot for them-he’d teach them what war was really about!

With much shuffling and clanking, the companies on Tol’s left moved forward. Immediately, the hail of arrows faltered as the enemy horsemen crowded forward. Pikes leveled, the militia halted in place.

“All front ranks will kneel,” Tol said. His order was repeated by his officers throughout the companies. The first line of Ergothians went down on one knee.

He drew Number Six. “There will be no retreat. When a soldier falls, the man behind him will step up and take his place in line.”

Tylocost drew a slim, straight blade and stood beside Tol, darkness cloaking his homely features.

“Juramona!”

Tol’s battle cry boomed out over the anxious Ergothian line. Raggedly, they echoed the shout. He repeated it, and this time the response was stronger.

The nomads hit the end of the line, trying to outflank the leftmost company. Tol’s men faced about, forming a square bristling with pikes. The horsemen couldn’t reach them with their shorter swords. After a sharp struggle, the riders broke off.

This continued for a seemingly endless space of time-nomads surging against one spot, only to be repelled by Ergothian pikes.

“This isn’t like them,” Tylocost panted, gesturing with his sword at the withdrawn enemy. “Usually, it’s one hard charge, then they quit!”

Tol agreed. Since their first attack on Tylocost’s defenses, the plainsmen had been fighting the Ergothians persistently for many marks, probing here and there. Although they broke off when things got too hot, they didn’t ride away, but came back at a different point.

Drenched in blood and sweat, the Ergothians battled on, leaning on their pikes to rest whenever the enemy gave them breathing space. Perhaps this was the nomads’ new strategy-to wear them down-but surely they and their animals must be exhausted, too.

Clouds in the eastern sky showed the first pink tinge of the coming dawn. Tol’s little army was drawn up on a slight rise below the ruins of Juramona, the western plain spread out before them. The first sliver of sun peered over the horizon at their backs, its light sending their shadows out ahead of them, banishing the last of the long night.

On beholding what the new sun illuminated, Tylocost exhaled slowly, face blank with disbelief.

“Astarin have mercy,” he breathed.

From north to south, as far as the eye could see, the western plain was covered with horsemen. The prisoners’ boasts had been true-the main body of nomads had returned when word of their advance party’s trouble reached them. The defenders of ruined Juramona, whittled by battle to barely eight hundred, faced thousands upon thousands of fresh, ferocious enemies.

The banquet hall of the imperial palace in Daltigoth was an enormous room one hundred paces long and forty-four wide, paved in black granite and walled with the finest North Coast gray marble. The vaulted ceiling rose to a height of two stories. A single massive table filled the center of the hall. It seated six hundred, and more guests could be accommodated at temporary tables erected alongside. For an imperial banquet, massive bronze ovens were wheeled in to keep hot the tremendous quantities of food necessary to serve so many.

The hall was so large it had its own weather. On damp days, mist formed in the high crevices of the ceiling, and dew collected on the cold stone floor. The worst heat of summer never penetrated the thick stone walls. If the great ovens weren’t present, roaring with contained fire, the chamber could be downright chilly.

Most found the banquet hall unpleasant unless it teemed with diners, but Empress Valaran relished it. In the vast open space, she could tell she was not being spied upon. Her every whisper in the palace was heard frequently by the wrong ears. In the echoing emptiness of the banquet hall, she almost felt free.

Clad in a white dressing gown quilted with red thread, the Empress sat at the head of the long table. Her son, Crown Prince Dalar, sat on her right. The only other occupant of the hall was a single female servant, standing a few steps away by a wheeled sideboard.

Dalar slurped loudly at his soup. The empress rapped her pewter spoon once on the rim of her golden bowl. Chastened, the five-year-old prince swallowed his next mouthful more decorously.

Twenty rooms and three floors away, the Consorts’ Circle was celebrating the birthday of Princess Consort Landea, the emperor’s fourth wife. A well-fleshed, vain chatterbox with a fondness for sweetmeats, Landea followed her husband’s example: the news of Lord Breyhard’s defeat did not interfere with her merrymaking. Her suite rang with shrill laughter, as sweet wine and honeyed confections were consumed in staggering quantities. The festivities would go on all night. Never mind that Breyhard’s army lay dead along the Dalti shore. Never mind the city seethed with discontent, riots, and murder. Not even the execution of Breyhard’s young wife dampened the spirits of Landea and her idiot friends.

A clang of metal on metal echoed lightly in the hall, pulling Valaran out of her dark thoughts. Dalar had tapped his spoon on the rim of his soup bowl and was looking up at her with a glint in his green eyes.

“Mama,” he said, “you’re fidgeting.”

Valaran realized she’d been drumming her fingers on the tabletop, just the sort of restless behavior for which she always chided her son. The look on his face was so endearing she couldn’t help but smile, but she thanked him quite seriously.

The boy returned his attention to his soup, pleased at having caught her. His mother never fidgeted. She could sit unmoving through even the longest, most boring speeches and ceremonies.

Her own dinner had congealed by this time, but Valaran didn’t notice. She continued eating mechanically, her thoughts once more on the terrible situation in the city.

Since word of the debacle at Eagle’s Ford, Ackal V had been on a rampage. Enraged beyond the point of reason, he ordered the families of the leading warlords in Breyhard’s hordes punished. Labeled as weaklings unfit to serve the empire, the warlords’ adult sons were beheaded. Their wives, sisters, and daughters were condemned to slavery on imperial estates far from the city. Any councilors or courtiers known to have favored Breyhard were likewise punished. The headsmen had been at it for days-another reason Valaran supped in the banquet hall. Here she was spared the sickening sound of the executioner’s axe.

The doors at the far end of the hall burst open. Two Wolves entered, one announcing, “His Majesty, the Emperor of Ergoth!”

Valaran touched her lips with a snowy napkin, and stood. The servant stepped forward to shift the heavy chair for the young prince, and Dalar hopped down.

Ackal V stormed in. These days he was perpetually furious. No richly bedecked councilors or warlords in glittering panoply dogged his heels. He was surrounded, as always, by his brutal, loyal Wolves. A black bearskin cape of prodigious weight was draped over his shoulders, and he had taken to wearing gloves, even indoors, but never could seem to keep warm.

“Lady, why are you here?” he rasped. Out of breath from his continuous tirades, he was disheveled, red hair and beard untrimmed and wildly awry.

Valaran replied calmly, “For dinner, Your Majesty.”

“I can see that! Why aren’t you with the Consorts’ Circle? Your absence is an insult to Landea!”

Valaran bowed her head. “I wished to dine with our son, sire. My heart is too heavy with recent events to pass an evening in idle pleasure.”

Ackal V plucked a morsel of bread from his son’s plate and chewed it rapidly. “You always have a glib excuse, don’t you?” She said nothing, as he glared at her. “Someday I’ll have your head, lady.”

“Your Majesty has my head any time he desires it,” she said, gazing steadily at him.

The Wolves, lounging casually around their master, exchanged startled looks. Few dared to speak thusly to the wrathful emperor, but Ackal V reacted with dark amusement.

“By the gods, you’re the only man in the whole palace, besides me!”

The emperor’s mercurial mood had turned remarkably affable. Perhaps it was all the bloodletting in the plaza. Dispatching underlings always cheered Ackal V.

Dalar had been edging slowly toward his mother since the emperor’s arrival. He stood now half-concealed by her dressing gown, pulling nervously at a red thread hanging from its silky surface.

Ackal V approached his son’s chair. The servant moved quickly to pull it back but was forestalled by a glaring Wolf. The emperor seated himself. His lip curled as he regarded the meal before him.

“What is this filth you’re feeding the boy? Carrots? Milk soup? A man needs meat!” He sniffed the pewter cup. “Fruit juice? He should be drinking beer!”

“He’s only a child.”

“I’ll make a man of him,” Ackal said, and bawled for a libation.

The servant filled a tall goblet with beer. The emperor drained it. The servant refilled it, and Ackal ordered Valaran to sit. Dalar stood by her chair, on the side farthest from his father.

“Have some beer, boy.” When Dalar didn’t move, Ackal V grabbed the boy by the back of the neck and shoved a brimming cup to his lips. Dalar swallowed once, then coughed convulsively. Disgusted, his father took the drink away.

A snicker came from one of the Wolves. The emperor looked to the giant he called “my Argon,” and snarled, “No one laughs at my son and lives!”

From beneath the silvery wolf pelt he wore, the giant drew a dagger in a lightning-swift motion and plunged it into his hapless comrade. The fellow dropped to the black granite floor and lay still.

Valaran was so proud of her son. Although Dalar’s hand clenched convulsively around hers, the boy made no sound at all.

Ackal finished the last of his son’s meal, drained the goblet of beer again, and jumped to his feet. Valaran stood as well.

“I’ve ordered the raising of a hundred new hordes from the western provinces,” he said. “They will form at Thorngoth under Lord Tremond. Our ships will carry them across the bay to the far shore and land behind the lizard-men. That will put paid to the beasts!”

Lord Tremond was one of the few warlords remaining from the reign of Pakin III. He was an honorable man, and had been a redoubtable warrior, but as governor of Thorngoth and Marshal of the Bay Hundred he hadn’t taken the field in ten years. New hordes would take time to gather and train. An aging commander in charge of green troops could have little hope of success against the wily bakali. The emperor was doing nothing less than sending thousands more to certain death.

“Do you intend to defeat the bakali by drowning them in blood?” Valaran asked, voice rising.

“If necessary.” He smiled. “Whatever succeeds is right-isn’t that what your ancestor Pakin Zan always said?”

“Pakin Zan was a cunning warlord, not a butcher!”

Ackal V kicked over his chair, face white with sudden fury. “Take care, lady!” he shouted, spittle flying from his lips. “You are useful, but do not task me! No life is sacrosanct in my realm-displease me, and yours will be forfeit!”

She’d heard similar threats so many times before, they no longer held any terror for her. She knew she could be killed at any time, but when the emperor was stomping about, shouting, she wasn’t much concerned. Only when he was still and quiet did she become frightened. Quiet meant Ackal V was thinking, and the thoughts of such a vicious, pitiless man were terrifying indeed.

Her silence pleased him. Thinking her cowed, Ackal V drew back, his color returning to a more normal hue.

“It’s always a delight to see you, lady. You never fail to stir my blood.”

He turned and walked away, followed by Argon. Just as the tension binding Valaran’s shoulders began to ease, Ackal V reached the far end of the great table and turned back to her.

“You will come to my chambers later tonight. One of my men will come for you.”

She acknowledged his command, and Ackal V swept out. Argon slammed the banquet hall doors closed behind them.

Valaran sank into her chair, her knees suddenly weak, an icy chill gripping her heart. She hardly noticed when Dalar climbed onto her lap. His frightened trembling forced her to put aside her own fears and focus on her son. He was small for his age, too small, like a seedling struggling for sunlight at the base of an overgrown oak. She held him close, stroking his smooth black hair and murmuring words of comfort.

Her glance fell on the gleaming utensils beside her plate. The knife’s silver blade was delicately engraved, its edge keen enough to slice tough parchment.

Not yet, she told herself. Soon perhaps, but not yet. Endure, Valaran. Endure, for him.