“Tolerated but not loved. She’s an outsider, and she expects people to live up to the teaching of the church. Not just praying, mind, but actually doing. She’s made a lot of enemies, most especially the local priest. Stood up in his church and pointed to his whore and his children, asked him where in the book it says a priest can behave like that!”
“In front of the congregation?” asked Mace, amazed.
“In the middle of his sermon. Called him a fomicator.”
“She said that in church? For a nun she has little shame. Spirited, though. I don’t suppose the priest is campaigning for her release.”
Wulf chuckled. “Says she’s demon-possessed and ought to burn.”
“What about the meeting?”
“You were right. It is at a barn on the western side of the town. They’ll be heading there now.”
“Then let’s join them,” said Mace.
I was baffled by Mace’s actions, but I said nothing as we walked through the town. The streets were empty, but there was blood upon the hard-baked clay of the town center.
The barn was tall, used to house all the winter feed for the local cattle, and it was situated in a wide meadow surrounded by trees. As we approached it, a militia soldier carrying a spear stepped out into our path.
“What’s your business here?” he asked.
“We have come for the meeting,” said Mace.
The soldier stared at him for a moment. “I don’t know you,” he said.
“Yes, you do, my friend,” responded Mace with a broad smile. “For I am the Morningstar. And this is Wulf the hunchback and Owen Odell the bard.” He did not introduce Ilka.
The man stepped back, mouth open. “If this is some kind of jest …”
“You think I would jest while my friend is a prisoner in the keep, while they prepare Brackban for hanging?”
The man was impressed, as well he might be. Mace was an inspiring figure, tall, handsome, and rakish, the very fabric of legend. The soldier hesitated. “I’ve been told to keep all strangers away. But not you, sir. They’d not want me to stop you, God bless you!”
Mace patted the man’s shoulder, and we walked on. He turned to me. “Make my entrance dramatic, Owen.”
Two more soldiers stood guard at the double doors of the barn, but they had watched us walk past the first sentry and therefore greeted us more warmly.
“You are a little late,” said one. “The meeting has already started.”
Mace said nothing but strode inside. Some forty men were present, seated on bales of hay, listening to a gray-headed elder who was talking of making an appeal to Azrek in Ziraccu. Mace walked to the front, while Wulf, Ilka, and I remained behind the listeners.
“Who are you, sir?” demanded the gray beard.
I let fly the spell, and golden light flared around Mace’s head, rising to form an arched rainbow beneath the rafters.
“I am the Morningstar!” thundered Mace. He let the words hang in the air for several heartbeats. Then: “And I am here to see if you will allow the enemy to hang Brackban.”
“No, we won’t!” shouted one of the guards, but the assembled townsmen sat silently. These were hard-nosed men of business, traders, merchants, landowners. They might have been unhappy over the fate of Brackban, but they would sacrifice him in an instant to save their livelihoods.
Mace shook his head. “All over the north the banner of rebellion is being raised. The Angostins are finding that the Highlanders do not make willing slaves. They pay a toll now to travel our roads. They pay it in blood. They will go on paying it in blood until we are free of them.
“I know what you are thinking, each and every one of you. You do not want war to visit this town. You do not want to see your buildings burning, your wives raped, and your children murdered. You want life the way it was. There is nothing shameful in that, my friends; that is what we all want. But it is too late. In the south of the forest the Angostins have burned and pillaged the settlements. They are bringing in Ikenas to settle the land. Look at the events of today! You are a free town, yet foreign soldiers can ride in, arrest your captain of militia, and take their swords to innocent citizens. What will come next? Taxes will be doubled, tripled. They will take everything you have.”
“And what do you suggest?” asked the elder who had been addressing the men when we arrived. “War? We have just lost a war, all our knights and nobles slain.”
“Angostin knights!” stormed Mace. “Angostin nobles! North against south. Who cares what happens to Angostins? How many Highland knights were there? How many Highland nobles? But this war we will not lose. Even now I have an army building that will sweep the enemy from our lands. A Highland army!”
“Where is this army?” asked another man. “I see no warriors.”
“You will see them, my friend. But they are not needed here, not where there are Pasel men of stout heart and great courage. Highlanders! Or has Angostin wealth eaten into your souls, turning your blood to water?”
“It hasn’t turned mine to water!” shouted a stocky bearded man, rising to his feet. “What would you have us do?”
“Sit down, Jairn,” ordered Graybeard. “No one here has given this man the right to speak for us.”
“Yes, sit down, Jairn,” said Jarek Mace. “Sit down for the injustice. Sit down while they slay your captain. Sit down while they break their promises and rape your wives. Sit down and listen to spineless old fools like this one.”
“No!” roared Jairn. “I’ll be damned if I will. When my leg was broken the fall before last, it was Brackban who came to my farm and brought in my crops. And you, Cerdic, who was it that gathered the men to help you rebuild when the fire gutted your home? It was Brackban! And when raiders took the prize cattle, who was it that hunted them down? Who was it that brought them back to their owners? Is there any man here who would sleep well at night knowing that he did nothing to help Brackban in his hour of peril?”
Several of the men shouted agreement, but the majority began to talk among themselves, arguing in loud voices. Mace raised his hands for silence, but he had lost the attention of the crowd.
I sent up a swift spell sphere, dark and small, that exploded like a thunderclap.
There was silence then, all right!
“Now there is no more time for talk,” said Jarek Mace. “All those who will fight to see Brackban freed, walk to the left. Those with no stomach for justice can remain seated.”
Jairn was the first to stride across the barn. Others followed until only seventeen were still seated. Mace called the sentries to him. “Make sure none of these cowards leave this barn until morning,” he said.
“You can’t imprison us!” a balding sandy-haired merchant complained.
Mace dragged the man to his feet. “I can do what I like with you, you gutless piece of horse dung! Be thankful I’m leaving you alive!” Hurling the man from him, he swung on the remaining sixteen. “There comes a time when a man has to choose sides,” he told them. “When the day of freedom comes, the Highlanders will know who fought for them—and who left them to rot. Then there will be a reckoning. Prepare yourselves for that day!”
I think he was unfair to them. Several were old, and as to the others—well, it is no crime for a man to know rear or to need time to reach weighty decisions. Some, no doubt, were family men concerned for wives, children, or infirm parents. But he left them feeling ashamed.
We walked into the sunlight, where Mace sat down with Jairn and the others. For some minutes I sat with them, but battle plans and strategies were of little interest to me then, and I wandered away with Ilka to sit on a stone wall and stare out over the mountains. I had no idea why Mace should suddenly become the hero, and it unsettled me. I felt I had missed something of import, as indeed I had.
Ilka sat beside me and pointed to the harp bag slung from my shoulder.
“I am in no mood for music,” I told her. She looked crestfallen, and I relented. “What would you like to hear? A ballad? A dance melody???
? She shook her head. “What, then? A marching tune? A battle song? No? Then I am at a loss, lady.”
Leaning forward, she touched my chest just above the heart, then gestured toward the trees and the mountains and the sky.
“You would like to hear the music of the land?”
She nodded and smiled.
I tuned my harp and, closing my eyes, let my mind flow free, my fingers dancing upon the strings.
But it was not the music of the land or of the trees or mountains. It was the music of the birth of love as I felt it then on that summer’s day on a stone wall, beneath a cloudless sky. After a while I opened my eyes, watching her as she listened, and I saw that her eyes were moist with tears, her cheeks flushed.
I know now that she understood my feelings, reading the message in my music from the first halting notes.
But I was younger then and not so wise.
The assembled men discussed plans for attacking the castle for almost an hour before Wulf, his face flushed and angry, heaved himself to his feet and stalked across to where we sat.
“How goes it?” I asked him.
He hawked and spit. “What if? That’s all I’m hearing. Let’s storm the walls! What if they’ve hot oil? Let’s burn the gates! What if they charge out at us? I shall go insane if it carries on much longer. Already some of them are losing the will to fight. They ask: ‘What if we win? What then? More troops will be sent; the town will be put to the torch.’ ”
“Surely the taking of such a small keep should pose little difficulty,” I said.
“Really? Well, why don’t you go and tell them, General? Mace is just about ready to crack skulls.”
“Very well.” Replacing my harp in its shoulder bag, I strolled back to where the group sat. Wulf followed me, his anger replaced, I think, by amusement. When I saw that expression, my doubts flared. Who was I to plan an attack? What experience could I offer? Mace glanced up as I approached. He, too, was looking angry, his face flushed. In that moment I realized it would be wrong to offer yet another opinion to the argument. It was time, as my father would have said, for decisive action. Yet even were my plan to be a good one—which I was beginning to doubt—then it would still take away from Mace the authority of the Morningstar, for it should have been he who thought it. “Could I speak with you for a moment?” I asked him. He nodded and stood, and we walked away from the debating townsmen.
“A gutless bunch of whoresons,” he said as we moved out of earshot.
“They need leading,” I told him.
“I am trying, damn you! I have never been an officer. And to be truthful, I don’t know how to attack a castle, save to storm it!”
“There are fifty men at the keep,” I said, keeping my voice low. “But they will need to sleep—no more than four or five will be on watch in the darkest hours of the night. But we do not have to storm them; we have already been invited in. Lykos has ordered the town leaders to attend him at dusk. We will just walk in.”
“And then what?” he snapped.
“Once we are inside, we will take Lykos as a hostage. Then I will send a signal to Wulf and the others, and they can disable the sentries and take the keep.” As I outlined my plan, I became more nervous, expecting its flaws to be brutally pointed out. instead Mace slapped me on the shoulder. “By God, it is worth a try!” he said. “I’ll put it to them!”
“No!”
“Well, we cannot do it alone!”
“I know. That’s what I meant by leadership. You have been a soldier. At what point in a battle did your officer say to you, ‘Well, men, I’m thinking about signaling the charge; what do you think?’ Now is the time to establish your authority. Think like a king, Jarek. Praise them for their courage and tell them what they are about to do.”
His eyes narrowed, and he nodded solemnly, standing silently for a moment. “What if they laugh in my face? Or simply refuse?”
“Then you tell them they are not worthy of the Morningstar and we leave.”
He swore then and rubbed at his chin. “By God,” he hissed, “I’ll not be thwarted by this miserable bunch! If it is a performance that’s needed, then that’s what they’ll get!”
He grinned at me, then returned to the waiting group. But this time he did not sit among them; he stood with hands on hips, waiting. The conversations died down. “I have listened to all that has been said,” he told them, speaking slowly and with great authority. “You are all Highlanders. You have courage. I am proud that you have chosen to stand beside me. Very proud. But the time for talking is done. Lykos has called for the town leaders to attend him at the keep. Ten of us will go. Wulf, you and the others will remain outside, hidden. Now, I have already commended your courage, but the eight men who walk into that keep beside Owen and me must be warriors, swordsmen, daggermen, men who know how to fight. I cannot judge which of you are the best; you must decide that. Do it now, while I explain to Wulf what needs to be done.”
Signaling the hunchback to him, he turned his back on them and strolled away once more.
I watched the men, saw the change in them as fresh confidence filled them. For a moment only they were silent, then they began to talk of skills with the blade. Who should go, who should stay? From fear-born indecision they were now vying for the right to accompany the Morningstar.
I held the smile from my face and approached Mace and Wulf. “You have them,” I told him. “That was well done.”
“So easily swayed,” he, said, contempt in his voice.
“It is a valuable lesson to learn. Men will always follow confident leaders even if the way is fraught with peril.”
“Well, it is that,” said Wulf. “Ten men walking into the enemy’s fortress. I think you are insane.”
In that moment I felt the terrible weight of responsibility upon me. It was my plan, and on it rested Piercollo’s chance of life. I cared little for Brackban or the woman, since I did not know them then, but the giant Tuscanian was my friend, and my fears for him were great.
All my nervousness returned with doubled force. I have said that I had little interest in matters of strategy, but that was because my father and brothers were masters of the art. Young Owen, on the other hand, was a simpleton in such matters. I thought of the plan again, imagining my father examining it. Its one strength was its simplicity, but the weaknesses were many. I tried not to think of all that could go wrong.
But if I was worried at that moment, it was as nothing compared with the nervousness I felt as we approached the keep. The sun had vanished behind the great peaks to the west, and the sky was the color of blood as we walked slowly up the hill. The round tower with its gates of oak was a simple structure, no more than 60 feet high and perhaps 150 feet in circumference. I had seen many such. On the ground floor would be the dining hall, on the first the sleeping area, with its double-tiered rows of pallet beds. On the third was situated the home hearth of the captain and his lady, usually two rooms—a small bedroom and a dining area. Above that was the roof, from which archers could send down arrows, spears, or hot pitch on any invading force. The small dungeons, perhaps two cells, would usually be dug into the hillside below the keep.
I guessed that Lykos would see us in his rooms on the third floor.
We could see a single sentry up on the roof, leaning over the battlements and looking down as we approached. He shouted an instruction to the gatekeeper; we heard the bar lift, and the gates opened.
Two armed men stood beyond them. “All weapons to be left here,” said the first. We had expected this, and Mace unbuckled his sword belt, followed by Jairn and the other men, most of whom were Brackban’s militia soldiers. None was wearing armor now, but loose-fitting tunics and leggings of wool. The swords and knives were left on a bench inside the doorway. One of the sentries moved forward to search Mace; as he did so, I sent a tiny sound spell into the man’s right ear, a buzzing like an insect. He jumped and twisted, then the sound moved behind him and he turned swiftly. “What’s the matter with you??
?? the second sentry asked.
“Cursed wasps!” said the first.
“Are we to stand here all night?” asked Mace. The man swore, for the buzzing had sounded by his left ear now.
“Take them up!” he ordered the second man. Slowly we filed after the sentry into the dining area, where several soldiers were seated at a bench table, eating soup and bread, and on to a winding stone stair that led up through the sleeping quarters, where around twenty warriors were lounging on their beds. Something about the scene aroused my fears, but there was nothing overtly threatening, and I forced myself to stay calm.
At the next floor, to the right of the stair, was a door upon which the sentry rapped his knuckles.
“Enter!” came a muffled voice from within. Just as the soldier laid his hand on the catch, Jairn slid a short iron bar from his sleeve, cracking it down on the man’s neck. The soldier fell back without a sound, and Jairn caught him, lowering him to the floor. Mace and the others drew the daggers they had hidden within the folds of their tunics and prepared to enter the room.
“No!” I whispered suddenly. Mace froze.
“What is it?”
My mouth was dry, and I knew with sick certainty that we had walked into a trap. But before I could explain, I heard the stealthy sounds of footfalls on the stairs both above and below us. Mace heard them, too. He cursed softly, then smiled. “It is not over yet,” he said grimly.
And hiding the dagger in his sleeve, he opened the door.
Slowly we filed inside. There were fifteen soldiers, armed with swords and shields, waiting for us. Lykos was standing at their center, his arms folded across his chest.
“Welcome, Morningstar,” he said. “I shall do my best to make your stay as unpleasant as possible.”
“You are too kind,” Mace told him. Then, his voice calm, he spoke to me. “It is rather dark in here, Owen.”
The room was lit by several lanterns, casting dancing shadows to the walls, but I knew instantly what Mace wanted. Soldiers were crowding behind us on the stairs now, pushing their way into the room. The men with us did not attempt to resist, for they were in a hopeless position. I closed my eyes, let the power swell, then sent a blast of white light up to the ceiling, adding a thunderclap in the process.