CHAPTER 11
When Allystaire awoke, he stared at the wooden beams of the ceiling above him. Wonder if my breath will be visible if I let it out. Such was the cold that had seeped through the walls. Quilts and bedclothes had been tossed aside in the night, and a fire barely stirred in the small hearth.
“Damn,” he muttered, “did not bank it properly. Not sure I remember how.”
He shrugged, then rolled his shoulders and winced as the joints crackled. He moved to the window, pushing aside the hide that covered it and tugging at the edge of the oilcloth. The cold air of the outdoors slapped him across the face while thin sunlight needled his eyes. He hurriedly shut it.
“Cold rooms encourage wakefulness and activity,” he muttered, repeating it like some long-lost mantra.
He pulled on long underclothes, woolen socks and trousers that had been on the stones of the small fireplace, finding them only barely warmer than the air. He tugged on his boots and gathered his other clothes, then stumped downstairs.
To Allystaire’s surprise, he found Chaddin and Landen both stretched out upon benches pulled near the hearth. Timmar was moving quietly around the room, sweeping. Allystaire moved towards him, nodding at the sleeping pair and murmuring, “Found them this way when you awoke?”
Timmar nodded. “Aye,” he said back, though not as quietly. “Don’t think they’ve been sleepin’ long.” He pointed to the table and the stack of parchment upon it, pages thickly covered with precise writing. “Lamps were near out o’ oil,” he added.
Allystaire nodded, considering them. “I will wake them in a moment.” He bit at his upper lip. “Timmar, as to the oil, and to all we have been eating and drinking, I am afraid I have not given much thought to your expenses.”
Timmar waved a hand dismissively. “There’re no expenses for you, or the other servants o’the Mother. Not now nor ever. I’ll make allowances where I can for guests o’yours as well.”
“You have to make a living.”
“I’d have no life and no Inn and no family weren’t for you,” Timmar said, shaking his head. “This Inn’ll not collect a link from you while I live.”
“You have to get links from somewhere.”
“Do I? So far I can trade for what I need with the rest o’the folk,” the innkeep countered, with a shrug. “Ever’one wants beer and my brother and I brewed it best, had the knowin’ of it from our da. Still do. I need bread t’serve, aye. So I trade in kind w’ who’ers got some t’spare. Come spring sure I’ll be needin’ thatch, but I can get help for work like that.”
“That cannot last forever. There will be things you need that the village will not be able to provide. Peddlers and the like.”
“Torvul can fix anythin’. No need for tinkers. Links will come when we need ‘em an’ the Mother allows it.”
“That is dangerous thinking,” Allystaire murmured quietly. “The Mother surely wants you to live and work sensibly.”
“And isn’t that what we’re doin’?” Timmar smiled, revealing gaps and browned teeth. “Barter does for the Mother’s folk for now. If I’m needin’ silver, I’ll present your friend the Lord O’Highgate with his bill. And tha priestess. Links will come,” he muttered, smiling wider, before turning back to his morning chores.
Allystaire chuckled. “Very well. I see you have it well in hand, but Timmar, if you will not take silver from me, at least take my thanks. I have not always spoken them to the people of this village. Things appear in my room or my tent: food, scarves, warm clothes, wine, lamps and oil, and I think nothing of it, because all my life, servants have been there to provide such things. Yet you are not my servant. I am yours. And I fear I have not always said so.”
“Cold but you use a lot o’words t’say a little,” Timmar said, grinning. Then with the grin melting into a more serious expression, he added, “Just offer a thanks now’n’then if ya feel the need. All o’us ‘ave seen ya bleedin’ for our very lives. Three times now I’ve seen ya fall, and e’ery time thought you’d died. Seems t’me most men would be dead, what you’ve been through, and you been through it for us. Thanks go both ways.”
“Three times?” Allystaire’s brow furrowed.
“The warehouse, the knights who come t’take ya away, the…” He trailed off, shivering. “The dead things.”
“Battle-Wights,” Allystaire said. “Name a thing and we fear it less, or so I hope,” he added. “At any rate, Timmar, thank you. Now I am off to go break the ice in the water barrel.”
“Got a mallet back here for that,” Timmar said.
Allystaire lifted up his right hand, curled loosely into a fist. “If I am to found a knightly order it is time to be back in knightly training.”
Timmar snorted. “Holler when ya pass out the fourth time so’s I can drag you t’the fire ‘fore you die o’the cold.”
Allystaire laughed, then he was out the door and, bare chested and bare headed, his breath was stolen from him as surely as if he’d been punched in the gut by a Gravekmir.
Still yourself. Master it. Count slowly to ten. He made it to eight before he began pulling clothes on over his head. Though the cold was already inside them, and he felt only a little warmer than before, he fought off the urge to duck back inside and stand as close to the hearth as Timmar would let him. Instead, he went around the corner to the barrel.
As expected, ice had gathered thickly on the top. He pushed past his elbow the shirts he’d awkwardly tugged on and took a deep breath, curling his hand into a fist.
Allystaire drew his arm back and then hurled it, knuckles first, against the ice. It rebounded. Pain blossomed from his knuckles, up to his wrist.
He grunted, moved his feet to take a better stance, bent over the barrel, and punched again.
Cracks appeared in the ice.
A third time, then rapidly a fourth and fifth, and his hand plunged down into the frigid water. Hastily he scooped it up, splashed his face. Then, holding his arm gingerly at his side but walking at a carefully measured pace, he re-entered the Inn.
He found Timmar placing hooking a large kettle over the hearth, and Cerisia, dressed in spotless white furs, sitting at a table where she could watch the door.
Her lips turned upwards into a faint grin. She murmured, “Really, Sir Stillbright? At your age?”
Allystaire hoped his cheeks were already reddened enough by the cold to hide any flush. “It seemed appropriate, Archioness. It is how every Oyrwyn squire begins his winter mornings.”
“You’ve not been a squire for many long years,” Cerisia said, her mouth still quirked. “Still, I would imagine that five blows is a respectable number for a rain barrel so deeply frozen.”
“Once upon a time it would have been two,” Allystaire said, smiling faintly himself. “But you are correct to think it a foolish gesture.”
“One would imagine,” Cerisia said, “that you of all men should have no need to prove anything to yourself.”
Allystaire shrugged awkwardly, feeling exposed as he stood a few feet from the door, feeling the wafts of cold air that edged around it. “Winter encourages idleness. I only wish to guard against it.”
“Idleness? Have you slept more than a handful of turns any night since you recovered? Have you rested a moment when you when had it?” Cerisia looked to the sleeping Chaddin and Landen. “You’ve more than fifteen years on both of them, and the labors you pushed upon them have laid them low. You are up with the dawn, breaking ice. I should think, Allystaire Stillbright, if there is any man who could do with a bit more idleness, it is you.”
Allystaire wasn’t entirely sure, since the light inside was still dim, but he didn’t think he liked the way her eyes flashed when Cerisia said idleness. Or the set of her mouth.
Or perhaps you do like it, you idiot, he thought.
Cerisia lifted a brow. “Break fast with me, Allystaire? We probably have matters to discuss and I have found it difficult to find time in your schedule.”
Allystaire nodded and took a seat opposite the priestess. “Why did you stay? Surely you could have escaped near the end of the battle.”
“Straight to business then,” Cerisia said, with a faint fall in her voice. She brightened as she resettled in her set and went on. “By then I had a vested interest in your survival,” she replied. “And in you knowing that I was on your side.”
“Why did you come to the battle, anyway? Your Temple did not commit significant troops. Nor did Braech’s. Was the Anathemata less of a threat than you had promised?”
“After the Anathemata was proclaimed but before the former Baron Delondeur gathered his men to march, Braech’s Temple suddenly had less stomach for the fight. I refused to participate any further in the battle than they did. So far as they knew, anyway,” she added, leaning forward almost conspiratorially.
“Are you trying to tell me that you somehow aided in our…” Allystaire hesitated over the word victory. “Survival?”
Cerisia straightened. “Did it not occur to you wonder why Delondeur’s bowmen played so poor a part in his attack? Did you not wonder why he didn’t simply bury you in missiles?”
“Too little time to train proper bowmen. The men he brought were, in the main, not real soldiers. A real archer is at his craft for a lifetime. A man without that kind of time with the bow is more of a danger to his fellows than his foes. Not to mention,” Allystaire added, “the ruthlessly practical was never Lionel’s style. Not where others would see, at any rate.”
“While that may have been true, surely he would have engaged in more practical strategies as he was foiled. As it happens, orders were given to arm every man with crossbows for an assault. Someone had the sense to test the weapons before marching the men off only to find that every single one was flawed beyond repair. The strings, especially, were broken. And the spares had all rotted.”
Allystaire was momentarily puzzled, till he remembered a contemptuous flick of the Archioness’s hand snapping the string of a crossbow that had been aimed at her. “Your doing?”
“The initially broken strings, occasionally rotted stock or fouled mechanism, yes,” Cerisia replied. “I will admit that I was unaware of the cache of replacement strings. That, you can blame on Delondeur’s amateur soldiers; they weren’t packed well and the weather took care of it. But I would have done what I could.”
“Why? Your own Temple had proclaimed us outlaws along with the Baron,” Allystaire said. “I do not think I understand you, Archioness. You rode with an army to our gates, an army that your own Temple helped bring into being, and then sabotaged them from within.” He shook his head slowly, repeated, “Why?”
“Can you not credit that I meant what I said in the letter I left you about my sympathy for the people of this village?” Cerisia shifted uncomfortably, her eyes sliding away from his. “When I saw that the Baron had enlisted sorcerers to aid him, when I realized what that meant, I could not stand idle. I hadn’t the men nor the military knowledge to affect the battle directly. I did have the powers my Goddess grants to me, slight though they may seem to you, and I employed them as best I could.”
Allystaire was silent a moment. “Thank you, Cerisia. You risked a great deal in aiding us, especially, as I understand it, with sorcerers present. I am in your debt.”
Timmar bustled past their table, heading for the kettle that had begun to sing. As he carefully slid it from its pole, Chaddin and Landen began to stir, groggily sitting up and knuckling sleep away from their eyes, or the pain of having slept on a bare wooden bench from their backs.
“All I would ask of you is to do what I wanted when I came here in the autumn,” Cerisia said. She let that hang in the air a moment, and Allystaire felt the intensity of her stare, till it was broken by her delicate laugh. “Not that. What I want, Allystaire, is much the same as what you want: to avoid bloodshed.”
Allystaire swallowed, looked down at his hands on the table, noticed the slight swelling of the knuckles of his right hand, frowned. “What is it that you think I mean to do, Cerisia? Burn all Temples of the Sea Dragon to the ground? Tear Londray apart? Install myself as Baron in a bloody march to the Dunes?”
“The first had crossed my mind,” Cerisia noted. “I doubt very much that you seek a Baron’s seat, for if you did you’d be at Wind’s Jaw right now and none of this would’ve happened. But surely you cannot mean to rest here, confident that your victory against one foe will keep your people safe. You will have to take arms again. I had assumed, knowing you and your reputation, that you would not sit and wait. That you would carry the fight to your enemies while they reeled.”
“I have not yet decided what I will do with my enemies,” Allystaire said, then he waved a hand. “No, that is not true. I have not yet decided how I will do it. If more arise, I will fend them off, kill them as necessary to defend those I am called to defend. If you think I mean to lead a crusade, I would say that you are not wrong, Archioness. Yet I mean, as far as I am able, to make it a crusade of peace.”
“Those words do not go together, Sir Allystaire,” Cerisia said quietly.
“The Goddess did not call me to Her service to do the merely difficult.”
Cerisia studied his face for a moment, and was about to speak when Timmar interrupted, setting a teapot on their table and filling it with water from the kettle he’d taken off the fire. Almost immediately the scent of tea began to filter into the air, though to Allystaire’s nose it smelled dishearteningly weak. Landen and Chaddin had wandered over, standing nearby, shuffling, yawning, adjusting their sleep-rumpled clothing.
Allystaire turned to them, and Landen pointed to the stack of parchment. “We wrote out an agreement as you asked.”
“Suggested,” Allystaire corrected quickly.
“As you suggested. With all your suggestions intact as well as some of our own design,” Landen finished as if she’d never been interrupted. “Last eve you hinted that there was a further suggestion. We cannot put the seal to it if we don’t know what it is.”
“True,” Allystaire said. “Have you overheard my conversation with the Archioness?”
“I try not to eavesdrop,” Landen said.
For his part, Chaddin shrugged. “A few months ago I was a sergeant of foot. Eavesdropping is in my bones.”
That, Allystaire suddenly thought, is more of the man I thought I liked. Hiding a smile, he said, “What did you hear?”
“Something about a crusade for peace, which sounds like a lot of nonsense to me,” Chaddin said bluntly.
“I find myself in agreement with the Archioness as well,” Landen admitted. “It seems unlikely.”
“Well,” Allystaire said, crossing his arms over his chest, and wincing a bit as he pressed his right hand against his left arm, “the two of you are going to help me bring it about. No,” he said, raising a hand as their mouths opened, “I do not mean raising a banner and arming masses of men to tear down another Temple or destroy a Barony. Not Delondeur or any neighbor. I am going to ask you,” he said, pointing a finger at Landen, “to hold a peace council with Baron Innadan.”
“Innadan has been our primary antagonist every season when Oyrwyn was not for the past decade or more!” Landen’s protest was at volume and sharp with surprise. Timmar, effortlessly gliding around those who stood or sat at the table, cleared his throat as he set mugs down and began pouring.
“There’re folk sleepin’ upstairs m’lady, includin’ a lass with child and mournin’ her husband. I’d appreciate if you kept it a bit quieter.” He paused. “If you’d be so kind. M’lady”
Allystaire seized upon Landen’s slight shock at the innkeep’s frank address to press his point. “And how often has Innadan done more than defend his own borders, or what remains of Barony Telmawr, from your father’s incursions? Oyrwyn was his ally, never his enemy. I know the man, have since I was a child. He wants peace. He sued for it, years ago, and most of us laughed at him while we drank his best wine.”
“I have met Hamadrian Innadan as well,” Cerisia put in. Timmar stood solicitously at her shoulder, the remnants of a cone of sugar and a small pair of snips in a bowl. “He is as weary of war as any man could be. Some men thrive on it, even if it slowly strangles the land they claim to fight for. Gerard Oyrwyn was such a man. So was Lionel Delondeur, till his need for victory drove him to the extremes that led us to this moment. Baron Innadan is drained by it. He is a few years younger than your father was,” she said, one hand opening to include both Landen and Chaddin, even as she held her mug out for Timmar to ease crushed sugar into, “and yet he seems a score of years older. Every blow done to his beloved land inches him closer to death. If you would speak to him of peace, I promise you he will listen.”
“How would I even get him a message? I have no access to the birds or the couriers at the Dunes.”
“We will manage that in time,” Allystaire said. “We have some, after all. No one will campaign till the snows begin to melt. I just want to know if you will do it.”
Landen swallowed hard. “Fighting my father’s war is what I was brought up to do.”
“As I was brought up to fight Oyrwyn’s,” Allystaire replied. “It is time we stopped doing what we were taught to do. Time to learn new trades.”
“Why stop at Innadan?” Chaddin looked almost startled to have spoken.
Allystaire furrowed his brow, gestured at him to go on.
“Surely Baron Innadan can influence Oyrwyn,” Chaddin said, a little more tentatively. “Telmawr is little more than his vassal as it is. That’s two. Why stop there? Harlach. Varshyne. Go farther east: Damarind. Machoryn.” The words rolled faster off his tongue as he went.
“I am all for sending envoys to them,” Allystaire said. “Varshyne may take some doing, surrounded as it is by giantkin and Islandmen. But Innadan is the key, both his personality, and his Barony’s geography.”
“The bridge between the western and eastern Baronies,” Cerisia agreed. “And respected by all of his neighbors.”
“Sounds like you want to make him king,” Landen muttered. Allystaire shot her a dark look, and to the young woman’s credit, she winced and shook her head. “Not what I meant.”
“Good,” Allystaire said. “I think perhaps the problems the Baronies have had is not due to the lack of a king. I have no intention of making one.”
“Well, I suppose I shall start drafting, then,” Landen said, frowning a bit as she turned towards the writing implements arrayed on the nearby table. “All this ink and parchment is enough to make me wish my father had given me tutors who were the match of my armsmasters.”
“You have time,” Allystaire said. “You need not start it this moment. If you wish to return to your men and share with them what has gone on, I would not begrudge you the time.” His eyes flicked to Chaddin. “You as well.”
Landen sighed and shook her head. “The sooner we start the sooner we finish.”
“While I appreciate the sentiment,” Allystaire said, “and in the main, agree with it, whatever begins here will not be quick to finish. At best it will take months to secure any kind of agreement to meet with more than just Innadan himself. In truth it will take many years of moving relentlessly forward to secure anything lasting. I want you to understand what you are in for.”
Landen eyed Allystaire a moment before she replied, her tone slightly clipped. “At the least, you might not speak to me as if I am choosing this uncoerced.”
“I have leverage at the moment, Baroness Delondeur,” Allystaire said. “I would be a fool not to apply it.”
“And what responsibility will you bear if it turns to water in my hands and falls entirely out of them? What if Innadan, Harlach, and Oyrwyn decide to settle old grudges and invade Delondeur in a concerted effort?”
“I will bear the same responsibilities I do now,” Allystaire said. “Ending the war. However I must.”
Landen sighed and lowered her eyes. “You had best be right about Baron Innadan. I’ve only ever known him as an enemy. I don’t know how well he will take a message from me. And I doubt that Oyrwyn will take a message at all.”
“Leave Oyrwyn and its armies to me,” Allystaire said.
“Oh? And Harlach? Telmawr? The eastern Baronies whose heraldry I barely remember?”
Allystaire sighed. “We cannot control what all of them will do, Landen. We can control what we do. If you wish to be remembered as a greater ruler, a better ruler, than your father, then take this first step. I will help, in the ways that I can, to see that it does not tumble your people, or any other, into oblivion.”
“You speak of these things all too freely,” Landen said, shaking her head. “I cannot conceive what grants you your confidence.”
“Not confidence, Baroness,” Allystaire said, finally reaching for the mug of tea that Timmar had poured for him. “Faith.”
“As to your concerns, Landen,” Cerisia said, studying the woman over the rim of her cup, “many may be allayed by choosing the right messenger. Allow me to volunteer.”
Allystaire sat up straighter, setting his mug down with enough force to slop some over the side. “What?”
“I wish for peace as much as you,” Cerisia said. “Carrying and delivering messages are how I can serve to achieve it. We who serve Fortune are often seen as impartial in these matters. And letting me deliver the message for you, as opposed to a party of your knights riding under a flag of truce, reduces the chance of rumor moving ahead of it and muddying the waters. And last, but not least,” she added, pausing for a sip of her rapidly cooling tea, then smiling over the edge of the mug, “I can be very persuasive.”
I don’t doubt it, Allystaire thought guiltily, as he watched her lips, artfully reddened even so early in the day, curve above her drink. He quickly looked to Landen and Chaddin. “I would listen to her, Landen. She speaks a good deal of sense.” He threw down his tea in one great gulp, and stood. “Now if you will all excuse me, I have a squirehood to relive.”
Chaddin snorted, Landen winced, Cerisia merely smiled a bit more broadly. “And what is that to entail, Sir Stillbright? More shattering ice with your fists? Running barefoot in the snow?”
“Running barefoot and armored in the snow,” Allystaire jibed back, grinning.
“They didn’t actually make you do any of that, did they?” Landen asked.
“Not barefoot,” Allystaire said with a shrug.
“Cold, but you knightly lot are a great bunch of fools,” Chaddin said, then shrugged as eyes turned to him. “It’s not as if I’m the only common-born man who ever thought as much.”
“If more men like you said as much, Chaddin, then things might change.” Allystaire nodded to them, sketched the tiniest bow to Cerisia, and asked, “Archioness, is our business done?”
“For now,” she said, pushing the words slowly, with exaggeration, past her very red lips, her pale green eyes lightly narrowed.
Allystaire nodded and was glad of the cold that hit him when he stepped out the door.