Broken Rule | Chapters 17 and 18
This post is chapter seventeen of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on Steemit.
The story so far:
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Chapter 17
Traveling with Towne's company had not been pleasant for Marek. The poorly maintained roads of Tarkannan were unpleasant to travel at the best of times, and they were getting even more rocky and uneven as they neared the Wolf's Teeth. Towne himself seemed to think that he and Marek were intellectual peers and that the men under his command were beneath contempt. He constantly tried to engage Marek in idle chatter and seemed unable or unwilling to realize that Marek had no interest in his conversation. Marek had been giving stronger and stronger hints, but the knight remained oblivious. Since he was spending so much time in such close proximity to Towne the men had assumed the worst about him. This was a new experience for Marek, who was used to receiving either deference or trust, depending on people's opinions of the clergy.
As the company rounded a bend in the road they saw a group of men ahead, some wounded and bleeding. The body of a finely dressed man lay in the road, and the slashed and bloody corpse of the horse he had been riding was nearby. “Ho! What happens here?” called Towne. The unfamiliar men were armed for combat, but their weapons and armor were so mismatched and makeshift that the mystery was not as great as Towne's question implied.
“This is our business, fellow. You had best clear off,” said the leader of the highwaymen.
“I'm afraid that I would be failing in my duty as a knight of the realm if I let you continue to violate the king's peace. Put down your arms and I promise to render on you fair judgment,” Towne answered.
Petro shifted up from the rank behind Towne. “Oy, there's a right lot of them, sir. Perhaps we ought to leave them to it." After he saw Towne's scornful reaction, Petro added, "Maybe just this once?”
“Listen to your man,” said the bandit. “It seems the Most Holy gave him the sense that should have gone to you.”
Towne had now come close enough to see the coat of arms on the dead man in the road. “Those are Meers colors!” he declared. “You swine fell upon a knight? Foul murder, I say, and all of you shall pay the price.” With that he drew his sword and called the charge.
Events moved quickly, almost faster than Marek realized they could. He was not alone in being surprised. Neither the bandits nor Towne's men had been prepared to fight just then. Some of Towne's men rushed forward to catch up with their leader, some fell behind attempting to shoulder their packs aside before engaging. Petro put his big hand on Marek's shoulder and said, “You stay back here, Learned. This ain't no business for you.” He pulled out his large axe and stood in front of Marek, his stance wide, ready for anything.
Towne had tried to meet the bandit leader head on, presumably expecting a fair fight, but the highwayman simply dropped further and further back until one of his compatriots was able to drive a dagger up to the hilt in Towne's left kidney. Towne fell moaning to the ground, an obstacle for those locked in melee around him.
The ragged charge that attempted to follow Towne had felled a few bandits, but their spears were ill-suited to close quarters fighting. More bandits came at them from the sides with hatchets and clubs. Some of the soldiers tried to pull the tips of their spears out of bandit corpses and others dropped their primary weapons and fumbled for the short swords at their belts. Either way, they were defenseless against the bandits who engaged them, and they saw firsthand that the highwaymen's weapons, while not well maintained, were quite deadly.
Those that had decided to prepare themselves before following Towne's suicidal charge formed into a more disciplined rank. They surged forward with their spears and more bandits went down. They then dropped their spears, switching either to their own short swords or picking up weapons from the felled bandits. Their formation broke up as each man chased after a retreating highwayman, or ran away from a highwayman chasing him.
Petro held back at first, staying close to Marek. Marek was grateful for the protection, but wasn't sure that Petro could defend him against a large group. Petro spat on the ground and seemed to have come to some conclusion. He charged forward into the fray. Trapper ran by a moment later, following Petro. Marek hadn't even realized the old woodsman was behind him. Petro's axe cut through men like they were made of butter. The first bandit he reached lost his arm at the shoulder. The second crumpled to the ground as his head bounced away like a ball in some gruesome children's game. Another lost a leg at the knee when Petro struck him from behind. With a mighty overhand swing he buried his axe's blade in the bandit leader's skull. The bandit leader went down, and Petro stepped onto the man's chest to try to lever his axe out. While Petro's attention was on his axe, one of the bandits nearly got him, but Trapper slipped up behind the bandit and slid one of his stilettos expertly under the bandit's ribs and up into his heart.
It took a moment for Marek to realize the fighting had ended. His heart gradually stopped hammering in his chest, and he eventually convinced his body not to hold his breath every time he inhaled. The bandits were all killed, but Towne's men had not fared well. Petro, Trapper, and two others had come through unscathed, and it looked as if two more would survive their wounds, assuming they didn't take fever. The rest would never leave this place.
Marek took stock of the situation as he walked amongst the dead and dying. Towne had finally breathed his last breath, and the priest pushed him with the toe of his boot to roll him onto his back. If the men continued to think he was friends with Towne they might blame him for this debacle. The roads were obviously dangerous and, as he'd just seen, he needed these men to protect him. They had to know that he was on their side, wanted to be their friend. “Nobles and highwaymen both,” Marek declared. “It looks like all the thieves have been killed.” This elicited a morbid chuckle from Petro. That was a good start. Most of the men looked up to Petro. He had been the true leader of the company, even when Towne was supposedly in charge. Marek picked up the coin purse from the bandit leader. “This ill-gotten wealth should be given to those in need, as the Most Holy bids us to care for the poor.” He tossed the purse to Petro. “You men look sufficiently poor to me.”
Petro caught the purse with a smile. “I've never been much for the Blessed Book, Learned, but perhaps there's something to it after all.”
Marek stopped and grew more solemn. He did wish to win over the men, but he also had obligations. He was still Learned, and the men who had died had all likely been men of faith, and the Most Holy expected certain rituals for them. “We must dig them all proper graves,” he announced. The surviving men grumbled, but knew there was no way around it. Marek walked over to the body of Sir Roddy Meers, whose murder had been the start of the commotion. He pulled a rolled-up parchment from inside the man's surcoat. He broke the seal and began reading.
“What's that, Learned?” asked Petro.
“A letter to Duke Benedek from his lady wife. Some good news that may soften the blow from the other news I have to tell him.”
Chapter 18
Jonas and Rurik stumbled upon an abandoned house at midday, and Jonas decided that he wanted to spend a few days with a roof over his head for a change. They had sold the second horse for more supplies and had to travel by foot now, and Jonas's feet were sore. It would be nice to take a break. Jonas had persuaded the trader to include a short bow and some spare strings when they traded their horse, figuring that the boy would be able to use it to hunt some food for them. It was a sound theory, but in practice Jonas was reminded that there was a reason the boy's father had wanted him to become a wizard instead of a soldier. Still, with enough tries, the boy eventually killed a rabbit. With fresh meat and a roof over their heads, however leaky, this was going to be the best day they'd had in weeks. Or were likely to have for weeks ahead, he realized.
Jonas sat at a large table on a stool he had constructed by placing his coat atop some freshly chopped firewood. Rurik carried another armful of wood over to the crumbled fireplace of the abandoned house. The boy looked over the wizard. “Master, you're supposed to be cleaning that for dinner, not studying it!”
Jonas looked up and said, “Hush, boy. I am the master here, and if I choose to learn from this creature before we eat it, then that is how it will be.”
“But master, I'm hungry.”
“Hush, I said!” Jonas looked back at the rabbit in front of him on the table. The boy was right, he had intended to skin and clean the animal so that they could roast it for dinner. But when he cut into it, something had made him stop. As he peeled the skin away, he saw how the meat was connected to the bones, something he had never really paid attention to before. He moved one of the legs back and forth, wondering how the muscles must have done it when the creature had been alive. He placed his hand on his own arm and flexed, feeling his own muscles move under his skin. It must be something similar to that, he decided. He pulled the rabbit's skin back further, but no new insights were revealed this time. He finished cleaning the rabbit for dinner, and carried it over to the boy who had built a campfire in the ruins of the fireplace.
“Are you sure that no one lives here, master?” asked the boy.
“Yes, I'm sure. You saw all the graves outside. It was probably a plague house. It's not uncommon for the superstitious to abandon a house where people have died. They probably think that death hides in the floorboards or some such nonsense.” The wizard spitted the rabbit and positioned it over the fire to roast. He sat down in front of the fire and addressed the boy in the tone he used for his lessons.
“Now, I think you've had enough practice using spells to change an entire stone. You need to start being selective, changing only parts of the stone. It can be very useful.”
“What do you use it for, master?”
“Hush. It's time to practice. Fetch one of those,” he said, pointing to the fallen fireplace stones. The boy picked one up and hefted it in his hands. Good, he was learning to judge the weight of a stone. “Now, the spell will have aspects of both the weakening spell and the strengthening spell. Your goal is to weaken part of the stone, while keeping other parts strong. Imagine a shape inside the stone. You must be able to see it there. See its lines and curves, the space where it is and the space where it isn't. Send strength to that which you wish to keep and weakness to that which you wish to take away. Now, find the pitch and begin the spell.”
Rurik began to hum, hovering around the proper pitch for a while before finding the right one. His technique was definitely improving, even if he sometimes had trouble holding the note. Rurik spoke the Minauran syllables that would make up the spell, but Jonas had to correct his pronunciation on a few. He needed to remind the boy to study them again. Eventually, the boy stopped his chanting and looked at Jonas for further instruction.
Jonas handed his knife to the boy. “Put the tip against the stone, and hammer on the handle with your hand. It should chip away the weak parts, and leave only the strong.” The boy began working, the tip of his tongue sticking out the left side of his mouth in concentration. Eventually he finished and held his shaped stone up for Jonas's inspection.
“A bear?” Jonas asked hopefully.
“A dog,” said the boy.
“Well, there's plenty more here to practice on,” Jonas said, pointing again to the fallen fireplace stones. “Perhaps we can stay here a few days. Bring me a stone and I'll show you how it's done properly.”
Rurik dutifully pulled a large stone from the heap and put it in the wizard's hands. Jonas brought the stone close to his eyes and began his own low humming, which turned to mumbling as he spoke his magic words, softly at first, but then faster and more forcefully. When he stopped, he took his knife back from Rurik and freed his creation from the stone. A fine powder fell away from the stone where he tapped it with the knife, and the wizard methodically chipped it all away. What was left was a rabbit, caught just as it began a leap, its powerful back legs pushing it into the air. He passed the stone rabbit to the boy.
“Maybe it's your imagination that's letting you down, rather than your facility with the spell. When was the last time you saw a dog, weeks ago? And I'll wager you weren't looking especially closely at the details, even then. Try something more familiar, and perhaps you'll have better results.” The boy looked dubiously from the stone rabbit to its cousin roasting over the fire.
Jonas finished his portion of the rabbit, sucking the juices from his fingertips to savor the last of it. Today had indeed been a better day than most in recent memory. But how long could they stay in this ramshackle house, eating through their supplies? The boy only had so many arrows. How many was he likely to go through trying to get them a meal tomorrow? Jonas was used to living in the castles of the nobility, and he missed it. Missed it dearly. But how could he show his face in a noble's house? Word would certainly make its way back to Gavril, and Gavril wasn't likely to be patient enough to hear Jonas's explanations for why he had taken the boy. And even if Gavril didn't hear about a wizard and his apprentice, the Black Circle certainly would. As he pondered how miserable his future was likely to be, his eyes settled on the stone rabbit, and it occurred to him that wizards were not the only men who found patrons among the nobility.