The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (58 page)

He carried the knife to where Jonderill sat, bowed deeply and laid the blade across the magician’s knees. “Forgive me, master, for my failure, I have done you dishonour with the poorness of my devotions.”

Jonderill bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement and offered the knife back to Allowyn. “Your failure has been noted and I will consider a suitable punishment. Now take the knife and rededicate its blade to the Goddess at your next devotions.”

“Your will, Master.” Allowyn took the knife, bowed deeply once again and went to retrieve the other blades buried in the wooden posts. Rothers watched in awe, not certain if he was allowed to speak yet or not.

“Your timing was not good, my friend. Allowyn can be touchy about who watches him offering himself to the Goddess.”

“I’m sorry, Jonderill, I didn’t mean to impose. What was that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“That was a protector’s devotions to their Goddess and their master.” Rothers raised an eyebrow in question and Jonderill shrugged. “It’s an old and archaic ceremony, but it is part of a protector’s identity and so, for Allowyn’s sake, I play my part and say the prescribed words. I did the same for my own protector once, a long time ago when I wore the white, and for his honour and memory, I do the same again.”

“And the bit with the fallen knife and the punishment?”

Jonderill gave a small laugh. “Allowyn is a perfectionist and a blade which falls in the dirt is dishonoured. For that he has to be punished. I understand that at one time a whipping would have been the prescribed punishment, but I think I shall find something more suitable. Now, my friend, what is it that disturbs you and makes you seek my help?”

Rothers gave a deep sigh and told Jonderill about the dithering of the council and his concerns that Lord Sallins would have already sent a message to Borman. His problems were not unexpected, although Jonderill had hoped that Rothers would have been able to find his own solution.

“You know that I cannot intervene don’t you? It would undermine your position and one day soon, when I’ve found what I am looking for, I will be gone and you will have to manage the council on your own.”

“Yes, I know that, but this is all new to me and I don’t know where to start.” He gave an ironic laugh. “It would appear that having the ability to lead is yet another thing my cousin and I don’t have in common.”

Jonderill returned the laugh with an edge of bitterness. “Oh I wouldn’t say that. Borman has never had to lead, he just demands and people obey. Nevertheless you are right, it was wrong of me to expect you to be able to lead the council without some support, and whilst I cannot do anything about messages to Borman, your first concerns are military matters and I think I have a solution.”

He looked over at the far corner of the courtyard where Allowyn had removed his armour, dried himself with a cloth and was now going through his routine of stretching exercises. As if he’d been called Allowyn suddenly stopped what he was doing, wrapped his cloak around his steaming body and hurried across to where Jonderill sat.

Jonderill smiled a greeting. “Allowyn, my friend Rothers has a problem which I would like you to help him with. It would seem that the council are in two minds about the defence of Northshield from its previous owner, and he is having difficulty getting them to make a decision. It would be helpful if you could advise them on possible outcomes of their indecisiveness, and persuade them to appoint you as military commander until the threat of Borman’s return has passed. You will have to be very diplomatic though. Both the commanders of the palace and city guard sit on the council so you will need to take care not to upset them too much.”

“My Lord, I’m no diplomat.”

“No, that’s true, but I think it will be a fitting punishment for your clumsiness today to have to solve this problem without resorting to your blades.” He gave a small laugh at the look on both Allowyn’s and Rothers’ faces. “I think working together will be an interesting experience for both of you, not to mention the council. Now you had better get to it, we all have work to do.”

*

Setting up the people’s council had been the easy part. In the void which had followed Vorgret’s death and the withdrawal of Essenland’s troops it had been relatively simple for Barrin to walk into the palace where he was well known and announce that Vinmore would now be ruled by a council of the people. The announcement hadn’t been greeted with as much enthusiasm as Barrin would have liked, but on the other hand it hadn’t been opposed.

Barrin and his supporters had taken that as a sign that the people of Alewinder were prepared to have a go at self government. They had spent a day setting out who would be responsible for what, how they were going to conduct meetings of the council, and most importantly of all as far as Barrin’s father was concerned, when and how elections were going to take place. Then the news had arrived and everything turned into chaos.

Why it had taken so long for him to be told that Borman and three thousand armed men had crossed the border from Tarbis into Vinmore when everyone else seemed to know mystified him. However, from that moment on the subject of how the council was going to work became unimportant, and all their attention turned to the defence of Vinmore. That is everyone’s attention was focused on that except for the defeatists, who wanted to greet Borman with open arms.

It had been his intention to fight Borman from the edge of the southern woods where the closeness of the trees would give them the advantage. They could then use the northern forest as a fallback position if things went horribly wrong. Unfortunately, by the time he was informed that the king had crossed the border, Borman was already camped on the outskirts of the woodland and had started cutting a broad pathway through the ancient trees to reach Alewinder by the most direct route.

That had been two days ago and now his army was camped on the plain outside the city where Swordmaster Dilor had once fought Essenland’s army and had lost. The grey tents of the invading army were set in orderly rows and Borman’s pavilion, which was at the rear, was surrounded by the larger tents of his officers. Barrin moved away from the window where he’d been looking out across Alewinder. He couldn’t see the enemy camp from there but it didn’t matter, he’d been to the top of the gate towers and had seen everything he needed to see.

It was obvious that Borman’s army was well trained, well equipped and after conquering two kingdoms, would be well practiced in the art of warfare. That was more than could be said of his army, which existed in name only. Vinmore had never had much of an army to start with. The local militia used to practice with sword and bow every seven day, but the Queen had stopped that. She had also reduced the army so much that Swordmaster Dilor had only been able to field four hundred well trained and well equipped horsemen, who fought bravely until they were cut down by Vorgret’s men.

He wished he had them now, but instead all he had was himself, his three friends and around two hundred volunteers who had trained for two days mounted on an odd collection of horses. Even their weapons were makeshift; mostly ceremonial swords which, until recently, had hung over fire hearths as mementoes of the past. If the deal had been made with the arms merchant, it would have been different, then they would have had bolt bows, but all they had now was a few hunting bows and a small stock of lightweight bolts. It wasn’t much with which to defend a city.

“Are you still with us, boy, or have you dropped off to sleep?” Barrin brought his attention back to the council meeting wishing his father wouldn’t refer to him as ‘boy’. “As I see it we are going about this back to front. Here we are discussing how we are going to defend Alewinder from that bloody big army, when what we should really be thinking about is what is Borman’s army doing here in the first place. If we knew that we could give them what they have come for and let them go on their way.”

Barrin resisted the temptation to sigh in frustration. He’d lost count of how many times he had said the same thing. It was as if nobody heard him. “We know why Borman is here. He wants to be King of Vinmore.”

“Now why would he want to be King of Vinmore?” put in the warehouse owner, a small man who sniffed a lot. “He’s already King of Northshield, Leersland and Tarbis.”

“Because he’s a greedy bastard,” snapped Barrin.

“There’s no need to be disrespectful, boy, and in any case I think you are wrong. I think he’s here because he wants revenge on Vorgret for trying to kill him.” The other council members nodded vigorously. “But he doesn’t know that Vorgret’s dead and his reason for being here isn’t here anymore.”

“So if we tell him Vorgret’s dead he’ll go away, won’t he?” questioned the vintner with a whine.

“Of course he flamin’ well won’t! If he finds out that the throne is empty and undefended he will be through Alewinder’s gates faster than a bolt from a bow.” It was the turn of Barrin’s friends to nod vigorously.

“Not if we tell him we haven’t got a throne anymore because we’ve got a council,” put in the baker. The other members of the council murmured their agreement. “Perhaps I should go and tell him.”

Barrin scowled at him. He shouldn’t have been at the meeting but he’d come along anyway. “That’s the most stupid thing I’ve heard all day, but if you want to try it go ahead.” He stood and pushed his chair back scraping the legs noisily against the stone floor. “I’ve better things to do than to sit around here listening to this rubbish. When Borman sends your fat head back on a spike you can find me organising the city’s defences.” He stamped out of the room with his friends trailing despondently behind him.

*

Borman had forgotten how much he disliked sleeping in an army camp where he was surrounded by noisy men and smelly horses. It made it almost impossible to sleep, and every mouthful of food tasted like horse shit despite it being prepared by his own personal cook. On top of that there was the mud and the dirt. He didn’t recall that there had been so much of it the last time he’d been in Vinmore, in fact he remembered it as a pretty little kingdom covered in vines and orchards. It seemed that Vorgret’s occupation hadn’t had a good effect on the land or its people, but that was only to be expected, the man was a cretin.

At the thought of Vorgret, the scar on his back, which was still red and weeping and held together by stitches, began to pull. He cursed and poured himself another measure of the expensive golden berry spirit laced with red poppy seed to numb the pain. Then he had to wait for the soporific to take effect, which was a feeling he could happily get used to. Perhaps his physic had been right after all and he should have waited for a moon cycle to pass to allow his wound to close before he set out to remove Vorgret’s head. He would have waited except that he’d always been told that revenge was best served hot, and he didn’t want his appetite for retribution to cool. Not that it was likely to but you never could tell.

There had been enough delays as it was with him having to wait for his back to heal sufficiently so that he could ride, and then having to cut their way through the damn forest with its huge trees. They could have gone around it of course but he didn’t want to leave that kind of barrier behind him just in case he needed to quickly withdraw. He needn’t have bothered. Since they had arrived on the plain in front of Alewinder there hadn’t been any sign of the enemy who were probably holed up inside the city, hoping that he would just give up and go away. That wasn’t going to happen though, not after he’d put up with all that pain and discomfort to get here. He was going to have his revenge and nobody was going to stop him.

There was a loud knock on the door pillars of his pavilion, making the six burly guards who protected him day and night reach for their swords. It was inconvenient having them there all the time but there was no way that someone was going to stick a knife in his back ever again. The flaps of his tent were pushed to one side and the guards relaxed as Malingar and Sharman ducked inside. Malingar looked as he always did, eager but slightly anxious, whilst Sharman looked sick, haggard and had a grey, waxy pallor to his skin. Borman made a mental note to have him refused entry in future in case he had something disgusting and contagious.

“My Lord, there is a man here under a white flag with a message from Alewinder requesting an audience with you.”

“Have you searched him for weapons?”

“Yes, My Lord. He is unarmed and even if he did have a weapon, I don’t think he would know how to use it. He appears to be a cook or a baker and says he’s part of Vinmore’s new council.”

Borman raised an eyebrow in bemusement. “Well you had better bring him in and make sure he hasn’t got a rolling pin hidden in his breeches.”

Sharman bowed slightly and left, giving the king a chance to empty his pot of grain spirit and hold his goblet out for Malingar to refill it with wine. It was Vinmore’s best red, but the poppy seed had made his tongue go numb so it tasted odd. Sharman returned in moments with a small round man who wore dusty white breeches and a checked shirt beneath a faded blue cloak which had seen better days. He looked around nervously at the armed guards and then bowed several times to both Borman and Malingar until the king lost his patience.

“Well man, out with it! What is this message you have for me?”

The man wrung his fat hands anxiously. “It’s like this, sir, Your Majesty. The council sent me to tell you that His Majesty, King Vorgret is dead, on account that he got burnt up by his magician, that be Sadrin, and now he’s gone off somewhere else and as the rest have all gone back to Essenland we don’t need saving no more, so the council have told me to tell you thank you very much for coming, but now they have gone, we are all right and you can go home as we don’t need you no more.”

Borman blinked in confusion trying to work out what the man had been gabbling on about. “You mean Vorgret is dead and his army has returned to Essenland?”

“Yes sir, king, that’s what the council told me to say to you, and his black robe, he’s gone too.”

The King shook his head, still not quite sure what he was hearing and needing time to work it out. “Guards, take this man away and find him a pot of ale to quench his thirst whilst I consider this matter.” One of the six guards came forward and took the quaking baker by the arm almost dragging him out of the door. “Did I hear that right or have I had one pot of grain spirit too many?”