Lord Ubo Visits the Gray Friars
Lord Ubo sat on his horse, smiling as the gates swung open. A lantern appeared, bobbing up and down three times—the signal. All was working perfectly.
Two days ago, six Gray Friars had left his fief and returned to their monastery. They had groveled before the new abbot, begged his forgiveness, and presented him with the purse of gold sovereigns Ubo had provided for this purpose. After a severe reprimand for their apostasy and a promise of dire consequences should they ever again deviate from their vows, the six were allowed to resume their previous positions.
Actually, Abbot Jerome, the former cellarer, was secretly quite happy to receive them—he needed people. The order had been reduced by more than a third during the internecine butchery of two weeks past. The dead included his chief rival, Brother Julian, struck down by Jerome’s own flail, and Festus, the previous abbot, smothered with a pillow while asleep in his bed. No one knew by whom.
Jerome was completely unaware that the prodigal friars had no genuine interest in rejoining their order, that they were feigning repentance only to gain admittance to the monastery’s grounds. Their real purpose was to slay the monastery’s guards and throw open the gates to Lord Ubo’s forces lurking just outside.
All went just as Ubo had envisioned. The brace of sentinels was disposed of quickly and silently by a quick slash of a blade across the men’s unsuspecting throats. Then the gates were unbarred, and Ubo’s men came rushing silently from the darkness.
These men were not soldiers, only peasants and woodsmen armed with improvised weapons. Ubo had sent his only real fighters off in pursuit of some meddlesome Adventurer, and they had not returned. But even this piss-poor rabble would be adequate for the task at hand.
Within moments, they were through the gates. Ubo urged his horse forward, followed by his personal retinue—a dozen of the most likely of his followers. Even before he entered the monastery grounds, the screaming began. Guided by the renegade friars, his men were now bursting into the various cells and chambers in which the friars reposed. Half asleep and in their nightclothes, they were cut down without mercy.
Only Abbot Jerome, Balthazar the treasurer, and a half-dozen others were spared. These were stripped naked and brought into the courtyard where Ubo sat on his tall horse. Thrown to their knees before him, they began to beg for their pitiful lives. Torches were lit, revealing faces white with fear.
Ubo looked down on them with disgust.
“I would have thought holy men such as yourselves might possess a bit more dignity—but no matter. I have come for the treasure that you have extorted from the people of this county for years beyond count. Give me what I want, and I will leave you with your vapid lives. Defy me, and you will suffer.”
He signaled to one of his men—a fellow armed with a heavy hunting spear.
“You, fellow, show him I mean what I say.”
Without hesitation, the man pushed his spear through the back of one of the kneeling friars. The man writhed and screamed until silenced with a second thrust through the heart.
Ubo continued.
“I require the key to your strong-room. But I am not so naïve to believe that the bulk of your wealth resides therein. You have a secret hoard somewhere. You will show it to me.”
Abbot Jerome began to protest this outrage. It was one thing to murder his friars, but quite another to steal his money.
“Profaner! Recreant! Scoff-law! The gold here belongs to Allfather Charon…”
Ubo signaled again, and Jerome was struck in the mouth with a heavy club, breaking his front teeth.
Ubo looked slightly amused.
“Your yawping has just cost the life of another of your people.”
He gestured, and another friar was thrust through with the spear.
Now Ubo frowned, all trace of amusement gone from his face.
“I tire of this game. You will tell me what I want to know or I will have my men disembowel the next man. He will see his own entrails slither to the ground before he dies. We will then move on to the next, but he will die even more slowly, more painfully than the last. Each will receive, in turn, a more terrible death than the man before. You, Abbot, shall be saved for the end.”
That was enough for Balthazar the treasurer—it was the Abbot’s money, anyway.
“I’ll tell! I’ll tell! The key to the strong-room is hidden in the Abbot’s bedchamber. Only he and I know where it is kept. The treasure cache is under the floor of his private privy. I’ll show you.”
Ubo dismounted.
“Take me there.”
He gestured for the men of his retinue to follow along, and then turned to the man with the bloody spear.
“Slay the Abbot and these others—they are of no further use.”
Ubo had spoken the truth when he told Jerome that he had come to take his treasure, but not the whole truth. In fact, he was specifically there to seize the monastery. The treasure was but a secondary consideration. It was all part of his great scheme. He had always before been contented to sate his simple appetites within his own demesnes. But lately, Skut had come to seem a dreadful little place, entirely unfit for a man of his abilities.
Ubo took stock of his position. Under normal circumstances, the seizure of a monastery and the slaughter of its inhabitants would have an immediate reprisal by Brandon, the county sheriff. But Brandon was fully occupied in containing the civil brawls that continued to erupt in Gorgonholm with distressing regularity. He would not interfere with Ubo’s plan.
The only person who might intervene was Earl Ralf. But he, too, had other, more pressing problems. Several of his normally compliant vassals had risen in rebellion, and the county’s towns and villages were torn by insurrection. The earl would have no time for a pack of friars.
The monastery was only the first step. It was to be the base Ubo needed to move on to the second and third phases of his plan. There, he would gather his forces before undertaking the conquest of this city of Gorgonholm. Then the county of Avincraik. Then…who could say. He would expand his holdings one increment at a time. He could not fail.
When every Charonite symbol had been pulled down and smashed, when every holy item was destroyed, then would the Black Stone be brought to the courtyard, there to be raised and venerated by an ever-growing host of devotees.
Lord Ubo would then come into his rightful destiny.
On the far side of the river, Fergis listened to the pounding of the drums with a joyous heart. They beat out a song of victory, of vengeance, of vindication. Countless generations of his people had been waiting for the old days to come again. For the land to be cleansed of the laigi, the weak city people on the far side of the river. For his tribe to range, as they used to, through the rich lands of the east.
This was, at last, the destiny foretold in the stories of the old times. Never before had the tribes mustered with such shared purpose. Marching from their remote woodland glens and stony duns, Warriors of the Bear-Breeks clan, the Hardshod, the Black-Spear, the Quickthrottle, the Long-Tooth—bitter enemies all—had put aside old grievances to unite against their common foe.
Wily Hamish Wolf-Eye had brought his clan, as had old Cannok Mor and young Cannok Beg. Coinneach mac Coinneach had led more than a thousand spears from his great roundhouse on Ben Wyvis. Most surprising of all was the arrival of the notorious outlaw leader, the Tyree, and his host of renegades.
The Painted Men had come from the stygian forests of the far west—tattooed warriors with dark skins and smoldering blue eyes, who fought with stone axes and stabbed with flint-tipped spears. They moved as silently as a breath of wind.
The painted ones would go in first. They would scale the high stone walls on rawhide ropes, cut the throats of the sleepy sentries, and open the city’s great gates. Then they would move through the houses, killing the hated laigi in their houses in the dark, in their beds.
The iron armor of the laigi would avail them not. Their steel swords and long lances, their prancing horses and far-shooting crossbows would be useless against the creeping death of the forest men. With warriors such as these, what need had he of iron armor?
At the same moment, he would lead the gathered tribes over the river. They would burn the city, pull down its tall towers and foul churches. They would exterminate the laigi, and in so doing, bring again the old days and the old ways—the only proper path for men to follow. Fergis’s name would be praised for a thousand years.
The attack would commence as soon as the bulk of his force had assembled—hopefully by the next full moon. Until then, his shamans would beat their drums, summoning the spirits of the four elements to their aid.
Though Fergis knew it not, there was something else arousing his martial ardor—a dim voice calling him from the far side of the river. The voice of the Black Stone promising conquest, riches, and renown.
Sir Brandon Phugg, sheriff of Avincraik, stood on the crenellated roof of City Keep and stared down at the streets below. They were littered with fractured bricks, bits of torn clothing, broken crockery, and the smashed remains of furniture hurled down from the high windows of the houses. He saw none of the hawkers, laborers, or housewives who, in normal times, filled the lanes with bustle and chatter. The houses, like the streets, were soundless, with doors and shutters closed and barred.
Brandon did not know what might be going on inside those houses. He did not want to know. But he did know that the present quiet was deceptive, that at any moment those doors might fly open, the inhabitants spilling into the street to fall upon each other with whatever weapons came to hand.
In the distance, lazy columns of smoke drifted skyward from the smoldering remains of shops and houses. Half of Old Shambles was reduced to ash. Good riddance.
Brandon was a practical man and decidedly not given to heroism. Nonetheless, he and his two-score constables had made a genuine effort to quell the rioting that kept erupting throughout the city. It was his sworn duty, after all, to protect the rich against the deprivations of the poor.
But his men were, in truth, little more than fat, lazy gate-warders with scant skill with arms and no real appetite for blood, particularly their own. They had fled in a panic when attacked by a population gone mad.
Since that first day, two weeks before, many had deserted, either slipping away to the countryside or going over to the rioters. Those remaining steadfastly refused to leave the safety of City Keep.
In desperation, Brandon had sought the aid of the city’s privileged classes—the nobility and wealthy merchants. Such men regularly kept armed retainers for their personal security. The sheriff assumed that they would be willing to use them for the defense of the city. He was wrong. The Quality kept their men-at-arms at home.
His repeated appeals to Earl Ralf were also denied. A curt message informed him that the earl was beset with his own problems—peasant uprisings, rebellious vassals—and that restoring civic order was his, Brandon’s, responsibility. He was expected to attend to this duty with all alacrity.
The sheriff was not an especially astute man, but he was keenly aware of the bind he was in. Without sufficient forces at his back, any attempt to take control of the city would be doomed from the start, nothing more than an empty gesture that would most likely result in his death. But were he to do nothing, Earl Ralf might decide to remove his head.
Florio stood on Grimsgard’s common, staring westward, listening to the pounding of faraway drums, their rhythm monotonous, relentless—BOOM-boom-boom-boom, BOOM-boom-boom-boom, BOOM-boom-boom-boom. Day and night for the past three days. Getting steadily louder as more drummers joined in.
The Keltins were undeniably gathering. Laying plans, getting things in order, singing their battle-chants, and sharpening their spears. Distaining the soft city folk to such degree that they made no effort to conceal their intentions.
How long did he have until the last savage tribesman arrived to add his bronze-headed battleaxe to the swelling Keltin host? Until the last spear was honed to a needle point? Until the clans were driven to frenzy by their murderous songs of war?
And what was he to do? He had, not long ago, held off a band of mercenaries who attempted to seize Roscoe’s towerhouse. But there had been no more than a score or so of them. How many thousand would come sweeping up from the river? No amount of planning or preparation could stem that red tide.