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 everything 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.’
Pirojil shrugged ‘Very well, my lord. If you’d be kind enough to put that in writing, I’ll have a messenger send it to the Earl. If there’s a fast enough horse available, it might reach Yabon before –’
‘What?’
Well, at least the Baron was smart enough not to raise his voice.
‘We’ve been assigned to protect you, night and day, by the Earl, my lord. If some accident or misdeed were to happen to you while we were neglecting our duty, it would be our heads into the noose. If I’m not to follow Earl Vandros’s orders, I think he’ll want to know why.’
The Baron started to say something, but Pirojil took the chance of speaking first. ‘Please. We’re assigned to protect you, my lord,’ he said, quietly. ‘Not just your body. We have been known to tell stories around the fire late at night, just like everybody else, but we don’t gossip about what our betters are doing.’
If you’re fool enough to have your dalliances with Lady Mondegreen under the very nose of her husband, then so be it, he didn’t quite say.
The Baron was silent for a moment. ‘I’m not quite the fool you take me for, freebooter,’ he said. ‘I take your full meaning, but I’d not dishonour even a churl under his own roof, much less a good man like Baron Mondegreen, no matter what you seem to think.’
‘It isn’t my job to think,’ Pirojil said. ‘Except about protecting you.’
‘Then so be it. Protect me if you must, but don’t bother me about it.’ The Baron clucked at his horse, which responded by picking up a posting trot.
Pirojil sighed. It was going to be a long tour. He urged his own horse forward and followed the Baron.
A tall, slender and almost preposterously buxom serving maid brought a tray holding an enormous joint of mutton and an only slightly smaller pile of flatbread, still steaming from the oven. She was prettier than most, with nice, even features, her impressive breasts straining the ties of her blouse, her brown hair up in a simple knot that left her long, elegant neck bare. Tendrils of hair teased at the back of her neck as she walked, and Kethol envied them.
She didn’t say anything, but looked from one to the next, barely avoiding sniffing in distaste, then set the tray down on the table without comment, leaving the three of them alone in the hall as she headed down the winding staircase, walking unselfconsciously,
indifferent to the three pairs of eyes on her.
Kethol watched her go. You got used to being treated like garbage after a while, or so you told yourself. A soldier’s life was full of lies.
‘Hmm. I think I need a bath,’ Pirojil said. Or maybe, better, a new face.’
‘Bath sounds good.’ Durine nodded.
‘You take the first one, then me?’
‘I can wait,’ Durine said. ‘Rather take my time. Looks like a good bathhouse outside the barracks. You can sluice off some of the road dust before you turn in, but as for me, soaking in some hot water sounds good about now. Just be careful to wipe your boots coming back in, eh?’
Pirojil looked at his boots, which were mud-free; the three of them had already received a thorough talking-to from the housecarl.
The west wing of the keep’s second floor was dedicated to the use of guests. Of the dozen doors up and down the hall, all but two stood open, presumably waiting for their next occupants. The family residence was in the east wing, and on the floor below. Judging from the grumbling and dirty looks that the three of them had received from the soldiers on watch downstairs, the Baron’s captain of the guard was less than pleased to have his master’s care put in the hands of outsiders, and had placed soldiers on station on the floor below to drive home the point.
Pirojil’s gaze followed where the serving maid had disappeared down the staircase, as though looking beyond to where Mondegreen troops were posted at the entrance to the family quarters. ‘It’s a sad day when people don’t trust a trio of cutthroats like us.’
Durine laughed. Kethol shrugged.
While Kethol stayed outside, watching the entrance to the Barons rooms, Durine and Pirojil had gone through the chambers, emerging to report nothing out of the ordinary: no Tsurani assassin waiting in the bureaus; no covey of Dark Brotherhood killers hiding in an armoire, which wasn’t particularly surprising.
You spent most of your time on this sort of job taking precautions that would turn out to have been unnecessary, but as certain as flies in summer, the one time you didn’t check under a bed, that would be where the killers would be waiting.
Looking silly was the least of a soldier’s worries, after all.
Behind the heavy oaken door, Baron Morray was probably already sleeping in the big bed, warmed by the fire in the small hearth and the metal trays placed under the mattress. If the bed was warmed by anything else – if, say, Lady Mondegreen had sneaked in through one of the secret passages with which all castles were rife – there was nothing that Kethol could do about it, and probably nothing he should do about it, so he decided not to worry about it.
Kethol hacked off a piece of mutton with his belt knife and chewed it. Old, tough and overcooked, but it was hot food, and probably better than whatever they were having in the barracks. On the other hand, there would probably be a dice game going on in the barracks, and it would be a shame to miss that, after such a hard day of travel. Bouncing on the back of a horse could tire the mind almost as well as strong drink.
‘Hmm … you two mind if I take the first watch tonight?’ he asked.
Both of the others shrugged.
‘Sure,’ Durine said. He rubbed at his lower back with one massive hand as he rose.
‘Fine with me,’ Pirojil said, rising.
For a moment, Pirojil looked as if he was going to say something more, but they each hacked off a huge chunk of mutton and carried it away on a bed of flatbread. Pirojil and Durine walked down the hall to the room where the three of them were billeted, Pirojil reappearing momentarily with his rucksack before disappearing down the winding stairs, presumably heading for the bathhouse as he popped the last bit of mutton and bread into his mouth.
Kethol was by himself, which was fine with him, although it felt a bit funny to have the first watch. You got into a pattern if you worked together long enough. The usual thing would be for Pirojil to take the first watch, then Durine and Kethol. Stolid Durine could will himself to sleep almost instantly, no matter what had been going on, and once Pirojil was down for the night, nothing short of an attack could easily get him out of bed.
Besides, Kethol liked watching the dawn, and the eastern window at the end of the corridor would have given him a nice view of the sun rising beyond the far wall.
But he just didn’t feel like it, not tonight. Too busy wool-gathering, he supposed.
He walked over to the heavy oak door and carefully, gently, slowly, tried the knob, pushing the door open a scant inch, just enough to assure himself that it wasn’t locked from the inside.
Any attack was unlikely, and one that could reach the Residence itself quickly even more so, but you had to take every precaution you could think of, and pray to a soldier’s god that it would be unnecessary this time.
He sat down in the big leather chair next to the end table and nibbled at the mutton. Not enough garlic, and too much salt, but that was to be expected. Probably a little off, too, but the rabble could hardly expect to get the best cuts.
He was still nibbling away at what remained of the joint when Durine finally reappeared up the stairs, his hair damp and slicked back from the bath. After a quick nod, the big man disappeared into their room.
Kethol would have preferred that Durine stay up for a while to chat, but he wouldn’t ask that of the big man. Sleeping time when you were taking a one-in-three was scant enough.
The trick when standing watch by yourself was always to stay awake and alert. Too much food would be a bad idea, and only an idiot would drink wine on watch. Kethol had known an old, moustachioed sergeant from Rodez who claimed that he was a bit sharper, a bit brighter on watch with a couple of skinfuls of wine in him, and if there was any justice in the world – always a bad bet – somebody had run a spear through his guts soon after Kethol, Pirojil and Durine had lit out, as they had not at that time been desperate enough to be serving under an idiot.
That was the good thing about being an independent: you could be a bit choosy, if you weren’t too choosy. Kethol wouldn’t much care what a sergeant’s personal habits were – he could prefer that his bedmates be large-breasted blonde women, or slender brown-haired boys, or flaming goats, for all Kethol cared – but you stood enough chance of getting killed as it was without having to rely on somebody who made it easy for the enemy.
The distant sound of Durine’s snoring came to his ears, a regular snorp-bleep, snorp-bleep that announced that the big man was resting for the night. Good. Kethol didn’t know why Durine didn’t do that when they were out in the open, when something as innocent as snoring could tell somebody where you were, but he didn’t much care.
The trick was to not close your eyes on watch. Not ever; not for a moment.
Once, as a young man, he had decided to rest his eyes for just a moment on watch, and the next thing he knew, the sun was shining in his eyes in bright reproval. That he had got away with it, that nobody had known of his shame, then or ever, made it worse than if the sergeant had found him asleep and kicked him bloody.
The problem was –
He jerked upright in the chair. He’d heard something.
Damn! There were groans coming from Baron Morray’s room.
‘Pirojil! Durine!’ he shouted, but Kethol didn’t wait for them; he kicked through the door, careless of any damage to the jamb, and rushed in, sword in hand.
The room was dark, lit only by a flickering fire in the hearth up against the wall.
Two bodies were struggling on the massive bed up against the far wall. The simple thing to do would have been to stick a sword-point into the writhing mass, but –
‘Stop.’ Baron Morray, his torso bathed in sweat, was sitting up in his bed. His fingers clawed for the knife on the bedstand, but he had Kethol transfixed with a glare.
Durine and Pirojil were close behind Kethol; he more than saw them, knowing that Durine would move to his right, while Pirojil would guard him on his left.
But not from this.
A pair of eyes pe
eked out from under the blankets, accompanied by giggling.
‘I’d ask what the meaning of this is,’ the Baron said, ‘but it’s all far too clear, I’m afraid.’ He ignored the giggling, and the way that his bed companion’s struggles to hide herself under the blanket momentarily revealed a flash of a particularly shapely rump.
The Baron patted her on it and snorted. ‘I don’t see much point in hiding, young Kate,’ he said.
She shrugged, and let the blankets drop below her shoulders, brazenly revealing the high young breasts that were every bit as firm as Kethol had imagined they would be.
Just as Kethol had suspected – too late it seemed – it was the serving maid who had delivered the food to the three of them. Easy for a young wench to turn up her nose at a trio of soldiers when she had what no doubt were more rewarding arrangements already made.
Beyond and to the right of the bed, a wooden panel in the inlaid wall had been swung wide open, revealing a dark passage behind it, through which the Baron’s bedmate had apparently arrived.
‘I apologize,’ Kethol said, ‘but –’
‘Get out,’ the Baron said. ‘Just get out of this room. Now.’
It was a bad time to argue with him, but since the Baron wasn’t raising his voice, and probably didn’t want to raise a ruction now, maybe it wasn’t the worst time.
‘No.’ Pirojil’s voice was quiet, but insistent. ‘No, my lord. Not until the door to the hidden passageway is secured.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s no concern of ours who comes and goes into your rooms with your permission, but it’s every concern of ours that nobody can gain access to your rooms without getting by us.’
Durine had taken a lantern down from the wall and was examining a piece of wainscoting on the far wall. ‘There’s another one here,’ he said, grumbling.
And you didn’t see it before? Kethol didn’t ask. It was the sort of thing that they should have thought through, but this sort of bodyguarding was a new thing to the three of them, and they were bound to make mistakes, and Kethol didn’t much like it. He knew enough to act as though the walls had ears, but the walls having doors that could swing open and shut more often than a whore’s crib?