A Hero's justice

Chapter 18

The sun was setting on a sweltering day. It dipped behind the smooth walls of Caergoth, lending to the cool white stone the sheen of old gold. Humid and heavy, the day had passed quietly. The Juramona Militia and the five hundred Riders acting as cavalry escort guarded the treasure and kept out of sight.

Tylocost remained on the hilltop for most of the day, his face shaded by the wide brim of his gardener’s hat. He did not speak. Now and then he plucked a stem of grass and chewed it thoughtfully.

On the other side of the hill, Zala and Casberry completed preparations for their foray into the city. The forty kender chosen by the queen had left to enter the city in whatever way they could. At the appointed time they would join up at the prison cages in the center of Caergoth. In spite of his urgent pleas to be taken into Caergoth, Helbin had never shown up. He likely had developed cold feet, Zala thought. She was glad. That was one less worry on what would probably be a dangerous night.

Zala, with her glean, could enter the city by the gate. Casberry declared herself too old to climb high walls or wriggle through drain pipes. She wanted to accompany the half-elf, and pondered how she could accomplish this since the glean covered only Zala herself.

Her solution to the problem caused Zala, in spite of her nervous excitement, to break out in laughter.

Casberry dispatched Front and Back, her sedan chair bearers, to find her a wheelbarrow. While the men went off to search the treasure trove for such a thing, the queen and the half-elf put together their disguises.

Zala was to be a peasant woman. The queen happily rooted through the numerous chests of her “royal luggage” to find an appropriate dress for her. A lady’s gown of green velvet was just Zala’s size, but much too fine. It would draw attention, and they certainly didn’t want that.

The dress the kender queen finally produced was a patched and well-worn homespun garment. Zala pulled it on and put her arms into the long sleeves. She squirmed a bit, trying to accustom herself to the garment’s unfamiliar feel. Its full skirt covered her legs and the trousers she had flatly refused to remove, and transformed her into frumpy shapelessness. Her hair had grown in the weeks since she’d left Caergoth, but she tied a grimy kerchief over her head to make certain her ears remained covered.

Casberry stripped to her white linen smallclothes, carefully folding each piece of her flamboyant attire and stowing it in her sedan chair. In moments, she completed her own transformation, and Zala was left to stare at her in open-mouthed astonishment.

The kender was clad in a dirty green dress. Around its neck and hem were the remnants of embroidered flowers and bumblebees. A matching bonnet covered her head and cast her face into deep shadow. In one hand, she held the final piece of her disguise-a decrepit cloth doll. Casberry, who must have been at least a hundred years old, was dressed as a human child.

She grinned widely, showing many ancient yellow teeth. “I’m your darling baby!” she declared.

Zala began to laugh. Casberry joined in, her high-pitched mirth sounding like a cat yowling in pain.

Front and Back returned at last with a two-wheeled pushcart. Zala and Casberry put their weapons in and covered them with blankets, then Casberry climbed in.

The sun was nearly gone; only an orange sliver remained above the western hills. Zala wanted to tell Tylocost they were leaving, but the elf was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s sulking,” said Casberry, arranging herself in the pushcart. She cocked a sly look up at Zala and added, “He wants something he can’t get.”

Zala frowned, but before she could say anything, Casberry began issuing orders to Front and Back. They would tell Tylocost of the rescue party’s departure.

On the way to the city, Casberry regaled Zala with ribald stories about her travels through the lands beyond the empire. Hearing these, Zala decided the kender queen was an unscrupulous old wench, but shrewd, brave, and without a doubt never, ever dull.

The paved road was empty when Zala wheeled the creaky barrow onto it. Few travelers dared move after sunset, fearing the wild animals and even wilder raiders who prowled by night. The Dermount Gate bulked large in front of them, blazing torches marking the entrance and the soldiers guarding it.

A figure appeared, instantly and without warning, on the grassy verge just beside Zala. She jumped in shock, her hand reaching for the sword she no longer wore.

It was Helbin, sweeping back the folds of the loose, dark cape that covered him from head to toes. He seemed to appear out of thin air.

“How’d you do that, Red Robe?” Casberry piped.

In reply, he drew the front of the cape up around his eyes. When the motion of the moving cloth subsided, he all but vanished. If Zala looked very closely, she could see the pale oval of his forehead.

“A cloak of invisibility, eh?” said Casberry, sitting up in the barrow. “I could’ve used one of those in Silvanost, a few years back. With garb like that, why do you need us to get you in?”

Helbin folded the cape’s edges back and stood revealed again. “It’s not a cloak of invisibility. Such garments are written of, but they’re fiendishly hard to come across. This is a lesser artifact, a Mockingbird Cloak. It mimics the colors around it, hiding the wearer. It works fine as long as you stand still, but movement, especially against a changing background, renders its mimicry useless.”

“Come along,” Zala told him. “If I can pass as a mother, you can be a father.” The queen of Hylo chuckled, but Helbin looked appalled.

Zala hung her head and slowed her footsteps. She didn’t have to feign weariness. Pushing the barrow in the smothering heat was exhausting, and the sweat was streaming down her face.

A score of paces ahead, the soldiers heard the barrow’s squeaking approach. Their desultory talk died. By the time the newcomers entered the torchlight, the guards were standing ready, swords in hand. Their vigilance made Zala sweat even more.

“Kind of late for travelin’,” said a sergeant with brass chevrons on his helmet. “What’s in the wheelbarrow?”

“Only my darling Cassie.”

Warily, the sergeant parted the blankets. The queen of Hylo pretended to be asleep, sucking her thumb and clutching the cloth doll close to her cheek.

The soldier’s eyebrows shot up, and he recoiled as if slapped.

“Sweet Mishas! That’s your child?”

“Spitting image of her father, she is,” Zala said, turning a glowing smile upon Helbin. The wizard shuffled his feet and looked at his toes. Fortunately, beneath his cloak he wore plain attire and not the robe of his Order.

The sergeant motioned a corporal over. This second soldier bent to see Zala’s passenger and guffawed.

“Someone shaved a gnome!”

Indignant, Zala presented her glean. “This night air isn’t good for Cassie. I must get her home.”

Shaking his head over the young mother’s homely offspring, the sergeant noted their entry in his log.

“You can go, once I search the wheelbarrow,” he said, handing the log to another soldier.

Zala’s breath caught. “Search? For what?”

“Contraband. Folks try to smuggle goods into the city every day, to avoid paying the merchants’ tax.”

Zala’s terror did not show on her face, but her mind was racing. If the soldier found the swords hidden in the barrow, she and her party were doomed. Worse, if they looked closely at Casberry, they’d know for certain she was no child. The three of them would end up with the prisoners they had come to liberate.

The sergeant had only begun to feel among the blankets when he suddenly stepped back, a look of disgust on his ruddy face. He fanned his nose with one hand.

Helbin made a gagging sound, but Zala cooed loudly, “Poor Cassie! Do you need changing?”

“She needs burying!” the corporal replied catching a whiff.

The sergeant gestured vigorously for them to pass. “Go! Pass on, at once!”

Once in the city, Zala wheeled the barrow quickly into a dark alley and whisked away the blanket. Casberry sat up, tugging the bonnet from her head.

“Faw, what did you do?” Zala hissed, as Helbin continued to make retching noises.

“Kender learn many things, wandering the world. For example, a sprig of frogbone root, snapped open, gives off a remarkable stench.” She held up a dry bit of broken twig.

“Throw it away!” Helbin gasped, waving a hand desperately. The queen flicked the offensive root into the gutter.

They shucked their disguises and retrieved their weapons from the barrow. Zala’s cotton undershirt was thin and sleeveless, which felt good after the sweaty confinement of her long dress.

Helbin would have left them at this point, but Zala pulled him up short. He insisted he must go and find other Red Robes.

“No,” she said flatly. “You’ll stay with us until the prisoners are freed.”

Away from the well-patrolled streets just inside the city wall, Caergoth was busy. Refugees and leaderless soldiers prowled the wide lanes seeking diversion. As there weren’t enough taverns to accommodate the flood of newcomers, enterprising residents had set up pushcarts and peddled bread rolls, cold meat pies, and a variety of cheap drinks: raw young wine, cloyingly sweet mead, and fizzy beer. In some of the lesser city squares, where the press was especially thick, Casberry mourned the loss of her frogbone. Its odor would have cleared a path through the throng in no time. Helbin shuddered at the memory of the loathsome stench.

For her part, Zala paid close attention to the people around them. The general mood was one of disgruntlement. The refugees had been driven away from their farms, forges, and shops into a city that had no use for them. They wasted their days drinking, gambling, and fighting. Theft was common, as was Governor Lord Wornoth’s harsh justice. For a first offense, a thief lost a finger. Second offenders lost a hand. Anyone caught a third time lost his head. Many heads decorated the high wall of the citadel.

Soldiers in the crowd were bitter. As Riders of the Great Horde, they were used to sweeping all enemies before them. Now, having been defeated by a swarm of barbarian nomads, they were reduced to cowering inside stone walls. It was no life for a warrior. More than a few times Zala heard Wornoth cursed as a miserable coward. The emperor in far-off Daltigoth had forgotten his loyal hordes, so they rotted in the peasant-choked streets of Caergoth.

Zala and Casberry kept Helbin between them, to be certain the wizard wouldn’t be tempted to use his Mockingbird Cloak to evade them. Casberry sampled a pocket or two on the way, but found the pickings uninteresting. The refugees were as poor as they complained they were.

Luin’s Field was lit by clusters of torches, set around the vast cage complex in its center. Pairs of guards on foot stood watch by each set of torches, while mounted warriors circled the fence. The smaller cage by the temple of Corij, which held the condemned, was better illuminated. In addition to the torches, bonfires burned at each corner. Zala doubted anyone in the cage could sleep with the glare of light and constant noise.

She wondered how they were to get close to the prisoners. Helbin offered to go, but the half-elf quickly vetoed that idea.

“You don’t know my father, or the Dom-shu,” she pointed out.

“I know Miya, wife of Lord Tolandruth.”

An argument threatened, but Casberry put an end to it by giving Zala a shove.

“Get under that cloak, girl, and both of you go!” she hissed, then turned away, melting into the shadows beyond the firelight.

Helbin was slightly taller, so Zala stood in front of him while he drew the Mockingbird Cloak around them. The intimacy inside the cape would have been disturbing had she been sharing it with Tylocost or Lord Tolandruth, but Helbin radiated nothing but indifference.

“Walk very slowly,” he whispered. “The cloth must have time to adapt to its surroundings.”

At a snail’s pace they moved toward the condemned cage. The ensorcelled fabric gradually took on the bloody orange hue of the bonfires. Peeking through the open slit in the front of the cape, Zala saw the dark outlines of sleeping prisoners inside the pen, which smelled worse than she remembered.

When they were near enough, she parted the cloak. As loudly as she dared, Zala called her father’s name.

“Shut up,” said a voice from the mass of unmoving captives.

“I must find Kaeph the Scrivener!”

“He’s here. Keep talking so loudly, and you’ll be in here with him.”

Helbin whispered, “Is that Miya?”

One of the shapeless mounds stirred. It was indeed Miya. Moving slowly, as though languid with sleep, she sat up. Although she acted sleepy, her voice was clear and her ears sharp.

“There are two of you,” she said.

“Yes. We’re here to get you out.”

“Just two of you?”

“No, there are forty kender here, ready to help.”

Miya stiffened. “Forty kender? May the gods have mercy.”

She leaned forward and prodded the figure in front of her. He snorted and woke, grumbling noisily. Miya clapped a hand over his mouth, and hissed, “Quiet, all! Guards!”

A pair of foot soldiers approached. Their hobnailed boots struck in unison as they marched along the length of the cage. Zala drew the edges of the cloak together again. She and Helbin stood motionless.

“…out of beef, they said,” one guard was saying. “So I put my knife to the innkeeper’s throat and told him if he didn’t have beef, he could give us his daughter!” His partner joined him in rough laughter.

The men’s voices drew closer. Zala held her breath and wondered if they would bump right into her.

As the men passed, one brushed lightly against Helbin’s back.

“What was that?” he asked, stopping abruptly.

“What was what?” said his comrade.

“Something touched me.”

Zala flexed her fingers around the grip of her short sword. At close range, she could take both men down, if they weren’t wearing heavy armor.

“There’s nothing here but stinking prisoners. Come on. We’re off duty.”

In spite of his comrade’s urging, the first guard drew his saber and swept the air around him. The flat of the blade struck Helbin in the back. The wizard stumbled forward, throwing Zala against the bars of the cage and out of the cloak’s protection. Instantly she was revealed, and out came her sword.

Both guards shouted, tearing the cloak from Helbin’s back. More soldiers came running in response to their yells.

“So much for being rescued,” said Miya sharply.

“Wait,” Zala hissed. “We’re not done yet.”

The Ergothians quickly ringed the wizard and huntress in a wall of swords and halberds. An officer on horseback demanded Zala lay down her weapon. Instead, she cut the air with her blade. The soldiers started to close in.

Miya and the Dom-shu rushed toward the bars, shouting. The sudden movement distracted the guards. Zala thrust the pommel of her sword through the bars to Miya. “Free yourselves!” she said. “Run, wizard!”

Helbin tried. He got about ten steps before soldiers tackled him, knocking him down on the grimy pavement. Zala proved more elusive. When she felt fingers snag the back of her undershirt, she spun, gripped her pursuer’s arm, and used his own momentum to send him flying. Then she took off in a new direction.

The houses along the eastern side of Luin’s Field had been turned into barracks for hundreds of soldiers. As Zala raced down the street, she heard shouting from within the barracks, followed by a furious pounding. Sparing a glance in that direction, she saw that every door was blocked with timbers, piles of masonry, casks, or barrels. Further on, she passed a solitary figure leaning against the columns of one of the fine houses now home to part of Caergoth’s garrison.

Queen Casberry. She and her kender troop had been busy. They had blocked the barracks’ doors.

The commotion near the prisoners’ cages had become an uproar. Zala’s sword had been passed back among the ragged Dom-shu and vanished. The guards who hadn’t chased Zala demanded it back. Miya’s reply was brief but pungent.

The sergeant of the guard summoned a squad of archers. Soon, ten bows were leveled at the foresters, standing shoulder to shoulder just inside the bars. Other prisoners scampered out of the line of fire.

“Give up the blade!” shouted the sergeant..

“Come and take it, grasslander!” Voyarunta bellowed back.

The Ergothian raised his hand. Ten bowstrings creaked as they were drawn back.

“Will you murder us all?” said Miya. “I am the wife of Lord Tolandruth!”

The archers glanced at their commander. “You are all condemned prisoners of the empire!” said the sergeant. “Yield the blade or die!”

Uncle Corpse pushed his daughter behind him. “Enough talk! Dom-shu, time to go!”

The tribesmen rushed the bars, smashing into them with all their weight. Bows twanged, and arrows flashed in a short flight to meet the oncoming wall of flesh.

Governor Lord Wornoth’s factotum was a plump, fussy man named Tello. He arrived at his master’s bedchamber to find the doors already closed. Squaring his shoulders, Tello lifted his baton of office and rapped on the portal. A loud voice beyond the door yelled at him to enter. He did so, and the servant behind him scurried in to light the room’s lamps.

Wornoth sat up in bed. Although he was not an old man, the strain of ruling the second city of the empire in Ackal V’s name showed in his hollow eyes, sallow complexion, and thinning brown hair. Tello pretended not to notice the young woman lying next to Lord Wornoth, her face buried in the bedclothes. She was not, he knew, one of the governor’s wives.

“Tello, if the bakali aren’t at the gates, I’ll have you flogged for this interruption!”

“My gracious lord,” Tello said, putting his soft hands together and bowing. “The prisoners in Luin’s Field are rioting!”

“Sweet Mishas, you woke me to tell me that? Tell the guards to quell any disturbance. When they’re done, tell the captain to give you forty lashes!”

Tello bowed again in acknowledgment of his master’s judgment, but added, “There is more, Lord Governor. We have captured one of those who was trying to free the prisoners. It’s the Red Robe Helbin, my lord.”

Wornoth’s annoyance vanished. “Helbin! Where is he?”

“In your audience hall, my lord, under heavy guard.”

The governor slid out of bed. A lackey hurried forward to hold his robe. As Wornoth tied the sash around his waist, he told Tello to rouse the garrison.

“Have them clear the streets,” he commanded. “Anyone caught helping the prisoners escape is to be killed on sight. I will see Master Helbin at once.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Factotum and servants departed, and Wornoth’s bedmate exited through a door concealed in one of the room’s walls. Wornoth donned his rings of office and hung the heavy governor’s medallion around his neck. The golden emblem of the House of Ackal felt cold against his skin.

So, the Red Robe deserter had been caught. The emperor’s pleasure at this news would be great-as would his gratitude.

He went to the small gong by his bed, intending to summon a scribe to take down an immediate dispatch, but he paused. Perhaps it would be better to find out exactly what Helbin knew first. Great discretion had to be exercised in dealing with any important person from Daltigoth, especially Ackal V. Although the emperor had issued a death warrant for the wayward wizard, it was entirely possible Helbin was acting on the emperor’s behalf, and the warrant was only a ruse to confuse Ackal V’s enemies.

Wornoth rubbed his forehead. Countless possibilities chased themselves around in his brain. He could feel a major headache beginning, just behind his eyes.

Dirty and exhausted, Tol and a twenty-man escort rode into Tylocost’s dark, fireless camp. They had covered the distance between the Isle of Elms and Caergoth in less than two days. The Army of the East, moving more slowly, was strung out behind them. Its full strength would not arrive for another day, possibly two.

The Juramona Militia cheered Tol’s arrival. The noise brought Tylocost out of his tent, and he bowed to his captor-commander.

Drink was brought. Tol gulped cider as Tylocost apprised him of the discovery of the Dom-shu prisoners and Zala’s father.

The wooden cup fell from Tol’s gloved hand. “Miya is here? And Chief Voyarunta?”

“So I am told. Is Kiya well? I’m surprised she isn’t with you.”

Tol said only that Kiya was well and was coming later with Egrin and the main body of the army. In truth, she had been profoundly affected by her experience at the Isle of Elms. Tol had told her to remain behind and watch out for Egrin, and she hadn’t objected. Oddly, she seemed sad, as though the slain nomads were her own kin and not the enemy.

Tylocost had little faith the kender could prevail against an entire city garrison, but Tol didn’t share these sentiments. The kender, he said, could be a valuable asset to Zala-if the erratic little folk remembered they were on a rescue mission and not in Caergoth to “find” interesting things.

Tol glanced at the eastern sky. It was well past midnight, but daybreak was still marks away. Nevertheless, he made his next decision quickly.

“Muster your troops, General. We go to Caergoth.”

“My lord? You intend to force an entry with only five hundred Riders and a few thousand foot soldiers?”

Tol smiled grimly. “I don’t plan to force anything,” he said. “The governor will invite us in.”