Pirojil took a quick glance beyond the carriage into the stables. He reckoned it would be at least another hour before the Mondegreen detachment was ready to ride, and who knew how long they would be waiting for the nobility to–
‘You are Kethol?’ A soldier in Mondegreen livery had come up behind him without his noticing. Pirojil stopped himself from reaching for his sword. That was Pirojil’s fault, and he tried not to let his irritation at himself show on his face. He was getting old.
‘No. I’m Pirojil. Kethol’s the one under that wriggling pile of boys over there.’
‘The Baron will see him now. Will you pull him out of the pile, or shall I?’
‘Baron Mondegreen?’
‘Yes, Baron Mondegreen.’ The soldier frowned in disgust. ‘And in these walls, who else would the Baron be? Now, are you going to get him?’
‘I’d better do it.’ There were some risks involved in interrupting Kethol when he was distracted. The Mut would probably just grab Kethol by the collar or the foot, and the touch of a hand stronger than a boy’s might set Kethol off.
‘Then be quick about it.’ The soldier spun on the ball of his foot and set off toward the keep.
Pirojil shook his head as he walked toward where Kethol was rolling around on the ground.
Lady Mondegreen was attending her husband as he lay propped up with pillows on the massive, brass-railed bed. She smiled a greeting to Kethol, and beckoned him toward the chair next to the bed.
Kethol stood and waited. He hadn’t been told to sit, after all, and you could never tell when some noble would decide that you were being presumptuous.
The room smelled like old death, or maybe it was just the Baron himself. Mondegreen had, so legend had it, been a big and physically powerful man in his youth, but the wasting disease had turned him into a shrivelled relic of what he had been. Before Kethol lay a barely-living object trying not to pant with the exertion of sitting up.
‘Please–remove your cloak,’ the Baron said, ‘or I fear you’ll find yourself sweating furiously.’ His voice was weak, but he was forcing himself not to pause for breath until he completed each sentence. Death would claim Baron Mondegreen sooner rather than later, and it would come as more of a blessing than a curse, but he would not go down without fighting it.
Kethol removed his cloak, and after looking around, folded it over the back of a chair.
Even without his thick cloak, the room was too hot. Castles were famous for being draughty, but somebody seemed to have taken great care in the mortaring of the cracks in these walls, and the huge, floor-to-ceiling tapestries blocked any flow of air that remained.
The hearth, on the opposite side of the chamber to the bed, held a fire with a nice glow to it, and it warmed the room enough that Kethol couldn’t understand how the Baron could stand being under his thick pile of blankets.
‘Please sit by me, Sergeant Kethol,’ the Baron said, indicating the chair beside the bed. ‘I trust that you have breakfasted?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Kethol said, seating himself. It happened to be true, but the smell in the room would have taken away his appetite, anyway.
‘I understand that I have you and your two companions to thank for my wife’s safe arrival here,’ the Baron said. ‘I thought that it was only right that I thank you in person.’
Kethol didn’t quite know what to say. Lady Mondegreen seemed nice, was pretty, and was far more pleasant with the hired warriors than she had any need to be, but if he’d had to watch her spitted on a Tsurani sword while he protected Morray from a scratch, he would have done just that, and would have let it bother him later.
‘You’re welcome, of course, my lord,’ he finally said. ‘But I don’t think we actually did very much.’ That, at least, was true.
The Baron smiled knowingly. Kethol didn’t like the way the old eyes watched him. It reminded him too much of the eyes he’d seen in a mottled mirror.
‘Yes,’ the Baron said, ‘and a thousand tons of thanks will buy you a pint of ale, as long as it comes with a bent green copper, eh?’
‘Well, yes.’ Kethol nodded. ‘But the thanks are welcome, nonetheless, my lord.’
‘Yes. I’m sure that they are, Sergeant Kethol.’ Baron Mondegreen broke into a fit of coughing, and stifled it only with an effort, then turned to his wife. ‘My dear, would you be so very kind as to get me a half cup of that wonderful tea that Menicia has been brewing? I’d have the servant do it, but you always seem to add just the right amount of sugar.’
‘But–’
‘Please do it as a favour to a devoted husband,’ he said, gently. ‘And, if it would not dishonour you to do so, I think that Sergeant Kethol might well like to sample some, so perhaps two mugs?’
He might as easily have just come out and said that he wanted to talk to Kethol alone, but she smiled, nodded, and patted his hand before she left, shutting the door behind her.
‘And you may be in need of more than some thanks,’ the Baron went on, ‘given, as I understand it, the likelihood that Baron Morray will make some complaint–perhaps only to Steven Argent, but perhaps to the Earl himself–about your supposed bad manners last night in interrupting his…rest?’
Kethol wouldn’t have said something clever, even if he’d had something clever to say, so he just sat and waited for the Baron to go on.
‘Sick old men usually are ill-tempered,’ the Baron said. ‘I’m that lovable exception.’ A smile flickered over his thin lips. ‘I’ll have words with both the Swordmaster and the Earl on your behalf,’ he said. ‘Which might save you some embarrassment.’
Not that embarrassment was an important matter to the three of them, but…
Besides, how would he have words with them? The Baron looked as if he was about to breathe his last.
Well, it was a nice thought, anyway, even if it was an empty promise.
‘That aside,’ the Baron said, producing a small leather pouch from beneath his blanket, ‘it’s been said that gold is always sincere.’ He handed the pouch to Kethol. ‘I’ve written a letter to the Earl, and another to the Swordmaster, praising you for your service, and explaining that the little…disturbance in the castle last night was entirely my fault, not having discussed Morray’s…ways with the serving girls.’ He looked Kethol straight in the eye. ‘It’s one thing to have some sport with a willing young girl. It’s another to do so far from one’s own field, and be unwilling to provide for a bastard.’ His lips tightened. ‘You wouldn’t think of it to look at me now, but I’ve sired a few bastards in my younger days, and I can say that I’ve made arrangements for them all, and probably for some that other men sired, as well.’ He patted the pouch. ‘The letters are in here. I’ve put my seal on my signature, rather than using it to seal the letters shut.’
Well, that would save Pirojil the trouble of carefully warming the wax so that he could read them without breaking the seals. Kethol was sure that this baron was as good as his word–he liked and trusted this man–but Pirojil was more cautious by nature.
But letters? ‘Then you’re not accompanying us back to LaMut?’
Other than getting Morray out of town and away from the putative assassin, getting Baron Mondegreen to LaMut had been the main purpose of this expedition. The rest of it could have waited. Yes, rotating the Mondegreen troops would have been necessary–the barons didn’t like to have their own troops spend too long away from their own lands lest they form unlikely attachments to the wrong people–but there was no urgency…
‘I think you’ve worked out that that’s unlikely, at this point.’ The Baron shook his head. ‘Old Father Kelly says that I’m unlikely to survive an overland trip as far as LaMut, or even to survive many more days simply lying here,’ he said, as though commenting on a minor problem. ‘Duty compels me, yes, but it can not compel the flesh to be stronger than it is.’
Then why haul the lady out here and back? Kethol didn’t understand, but the Baron’s manner, while certainly unusually friendly, didn’t se
em to invite that kind of familiar inquisitiveness.
Kethol hadn’t picked up the pouch. The Baron pushed it towards him with trembling fingers. ‘I’ll expect you to watch out for my wife on the trip back, as well.’
Pirojil would have said something to the effect that they would try to do it as well as they had done it on the trip out, but there was something about the Baron’s manner that made it hard for Kethol to lie to him, even by indirection.
Damn.
There was nothing for it, so he picked up the pouch and looked inside–it was heavier than it looked; gold, not just silver–and stashed it inside his tunic.
The Baron smiled.
What was this really all about? Kethol was busy trying to work out a way to ask around the question–damn it all, why hadn’t the Baron called for Pirojil? Pirojil was good at this sort of thing–when the door opened, and Lady Mondegreen entered, two steaming mugs on a tray. She set the tray down on the bedside table, and then sat down on the bed next to her husband, helping him prop up his head so that he could sip at his tea.
‘I see that the carriage is being readied,’ she said. ‘But I know that I most clearly heard Father Kelly say that you’re too ill to travel.’
The Baron seemed to draw himself straighter. ‘Obligations, my dear. It’s important that Mondegreen be represented at Council, and–’
‘And–’ she stopped herself with a look at Kethol. ‘If you would excuse us for a moment, I would–’
‘Please, be still, my dear. It would be ungracious to ask someone who has done us such a service to leave as if he were merely a servant.’ He gestured at the mug of tea. ‘He hasn’t even finished his tea yet.’
Her lips pursed stubbornly. ‘Very well, then. Embarrass me in front of this man, if you will.’
‘Embarrass you? How could I do such a thing?’
‘Very well: I want you to let me represent you at the Council. There’s precedent, rare precedent…’
‘I couldn’t ask that of you, my dear,’ the Baron said. ‘You’re tired from your trip.’
Kethol sat motionless. At least if they didn’t notice him he wouldn’t be getting involved in an argument between a baron and his wife. What the argument was really about Kethol wasn’t sure–the Baron had just as much as said that she was going back to LaMut–
‘If you don’t trust me, then so be it,’ she said. ‘Who would you have speak for Mondegreen at the Council? Lord Venten? Benteen?’
Kethol didn’t recognize the names–staying out of local politics was always a good idea–but the Baron frowned and tried to shake his head. ‘Well, I suppose that my cousin Alfon could–’
‘Alfon is an idiot, with an eye on the barony.’
The Baron reached out and patted her belly. ‘I’d hoped that that would not come to pass,’ he said. ‘But…’ he sighed.
‘I’ll ask this of you one more time, my husband,’ she said. ‘Send me to LaMut, to the Council, to represent your interests, our interests.’
The Baron sighed, and nodded. ‘Very well, my dear. As you wish.’ He turned to Kethol. ‘I’ve great faith in my own troops, but I will expect that you will keep an eye on my wife, as well.’
Kethol was beginning to understand why the purse was so heavy.
‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.
‘He wants us to what?’ Durine shook his head.
‘Bodyguard his wife.’
‘And Morray?’
‘He didn’t say. I don’t think, though, that he much cares one way or another.’
Durine snorted. ‘Yeah, but Tom Garnett and Steven Argent do. We don’t need another noble to babysit. If we get jumped by some more Tsurani, we’ll have enough trouble trying to keep Morray alive, and we’ll have the Captain and the Swordmaster to answer to if we don’t.’
‘I’m not telling you what we should do. I’m just telling you what he asked.’ Kethol balanced the pouch on the palm of his hand. ‘And what he paid good gold for.’
‘Gold is a fine thing, but it doesn’t make a sword any sharper or a wrist any faster,’ Durine said. ‘If it all goes to shit, I say we protect the Baron, and let Lady Mondegreen fend for herself.’
Pirojil stood silently for a moment, watching the carriage being loaded. The crates of messenger pigeons being loaded on the top of the carriage and the troop of relief soldiers would have been required in any event. The wagons would have had to be loaded with the sacks of grain for the horses; the canvas bags and oaken hogsheads containing supplies for the troops would have been necessary, as well.
It was entirely possible, of course, that the lady’s travelling clothes had never been unpacked, and that a fresh set of dumpy maids had instantly been made ready; but the chests being loaded into the carriage boot and the presence of a second wagon suggested some degree of preparation.
Why? The lady was enough of a horsewoman to have preferred to travel on horseback…
He didn’t like it, any of it.
‘I’m with Durine on this,’ Pirojil said, finally. ‘You didn’t swear any oaths, did you?’ Kethol had strange ideas about keeping promises.
‘No, not really. But I didn’t empty the pouch out on his bed, either.’
‘Shit.’
‘Hmmm…’ Durine felt at the hilt of his sword, his index finger idly tapping at it. ‘I’m beginning to think that we might want to see if we can draw our pay as soon as we get to LaMut, and see if we can hole up in Ylith until the ice breaks.’
Pirojil nodded. Politics. The Baron’s obvious heirs were dead, and unless there was another one in Lady Mondegreen’s belly, there was sure to be some contention for the barony, once Mondegreen died.
Damn fool, to have let his last son and heir, presumably the son of a previous wife, ride off to be skewered by a Tsurani spear, but Kingdom nobles were like that. It would be hard to command men once you’d seemed too craven to lead them in battle.
‘So,’ Durine said, ‘what say we get the caravan back to LaMut–keeping an eye on the Baron, not the lady–then draw our pay, and watch the ice floes breaking in Ylith from some seaside tavern?’
Kethol started to say something, then stopped.
‘Go ahead,’ Pirojil said, knowing what he was going to say.
‘I like this baron,’ Kethol said. ‘He didn’t have to intercede for us over last night’s…embarrassment, and he didn’t have to load us up with gold. All he’s asking is that we do our best…’
‘Yes. Our best. Which suggests,’ Durine said, ‘that he’s got some reason to worry about the loyalty of at least some of his own men.’
‘Or maybe he has some idea about how good we are at what we do.’
Their survival was proof enough that they were not just lucky, but good. The Tsurani were tough opponents, singly or en masse, and there were few soldiers, regulars or mercenaries, who had survived half the fights against them that the three of them had.
Durine shook his head. ‘No. Have you ever met a noble who wouldn’t be happy to tell you that his own troops were the best there ever were? I think that what makes us so attractive to this baron is our political connection–we don’t have any.’
Pirojil nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’ It had been just what he was thinking.
Kethol frowned. ‘I think can we watch out for the lady, too,’ he said.
‘Yeah, and we can–’
‘Shh.’ Pirojil waved the two of them to silence. ‘If you two can shut up for a moment and let me think…’
If the Baron was as near death as Kethol said that he seemed, whoever was next in line for the barony would certainly not mind if, say, Lady Mondegreen broke her neck in a fall from a horse, leaving the succession open.
But that only made sense if……if she was already pregnant, and if the child was Mondegreen’s.
And from what Kethol said, it was unlikely that her husband was up to the task…
Which began to explain that Lady’s reputation.
She wasn’t some insatiable noblewoman, intent
on riding every stallion. She had been, perhaps even with the connivance of her husband, trying to get with child. He tried to remember all the men with whom the rumours had associated her. Were they all, like Morray and Steven Argent, dark-haired and grey-eyed like her husband? Perhaps she picked out her paramours for their physical similarity to her husband, hoping for a match.
Wheels within wheels within wheels.
From the Baron’s and his lady’s point of view, it seemed that this trip home had been engineered entirely to place Lady Mondegreen in her husband’s bed, at least one last time before he died, making the child the unquestioned heir, rather than throwing the barony into a succession dispute. That was the last thing that was needed anywhere in the Kingdom, even more so here in the West with the jostling already underway to see who would replace Vandros as Earl in LaMut when he became the next Duke, and of course, all those damn Tsurani running around trying to add to the gaiety.
It all sounded reasonable, if devious, and nobility anywhere was nothing if not devious.
Damn, in just a few minutes, this Baron Mondegreen had won over Kethol, and the last thing that the three of them needed was dissension between themselves.
Pirojil nodded. ‘We protect both of them–but the priority is Morray, understood? He wears that sword for more than just vanity, I’ll wager, so he might be foolish enough to draw it and start flailing about if we’re not close by. So, make sure there are two of us with him, one with the lady, whoever’s closest, if things turn dodgy. And if it’s a choice between them, save the Baron first.
‘You win on us watching out for Lady Mondegreen, Kethol, but Durine wins on us taking our pay and getting out of LaMut as soon as we can. No more waiting for this thaw–we settle them in at the Earl’s castle in LaMut, and then we head south to Ylith. Are we all agreed?’
Kethol nodded and Durine, after a moment’s hesitation, did, too.
It was a plan he could live with. Yes, garrison duty paid, but getting involved in local politics didn’t, and it seemed that the three of them were up to their entirely-severable necks in local politics. Besides, the extra gold from Mondegreen would more than compensate them for the few extra bits of copper they’d earn freezing on the ramparts in LaMut during the next storm. The worst of the winter storms was likely over, and they could make their way south and enjoy the renewal that spring brought.