The Unwilling Warlord (3 page)

Chapter Three

At first, the discovery that he would not be required to walk thirteen leagues came as a relief. By the end of his first hour on horseback, however, Sterren was having second thoughts, and wishing he had found an opportunity to slip away during the night. Riding had always looked so easy! All you had to do was to get up there — which was simple enough when one had two burly guards willing to hoist you into place — and then sit there.

He hadn’t realized how hard it was to just sit there, with the saddle bobbing up and down underneath, on and on and on unendingly, as the four horses Lady Kalira had bought carried them up out of Akalla of the Diamond onto the high flat plain to the east. His backside already felt very scraped and raw.

He was surprised to see, between bounces, that they were not following either of the main inland roads, which led north. In fact, the road they did follow faded quickly away, leaving them on featureless sun-washed grassland that seemed to extend clear to the horizon in every landward direction. To the south and southwest, at least at first, the plain was chopped off short by the cliffs and the sea below.

The only structure in sight anywhere was the castle, gradually diminishing behind them. Sterren had no idea how his companions were finding their way once the road had vanished, but they seemed confident of the route, so he did not question it.

For one thing, he was far too busy trying to minimize the bruising of his backside to worry about where he was going, or why. He put aside all worries about wars and warlords and life among the barbarians, concentrating solely on matters closer to hand — and closer still to his seat.

By the time the party stopped by a tiny stream for a midday rest and refreshment, out of sight of even Akalla Karnak‘s highest tower, Sterren’s throat ached from dryness, his hands ached from clutching the reins, his feet ached from being jammed into the stirrups, his back ached from trying to keep him upright, and worst of all, his rump ached from the constant abrasive collisions with his saddle. He did not descend gracefully, but simply fell off his mount onto a tuft of prairie grass.

Alder and Dogal politely pretended not to notice, but Lady Kalira was less kind.

“You haven’t ridden before, have you?” she demanded without preamble.

Sterren took a moment to mentally translate this into Ethsharitic. “No,” he admitted. He was too thirsty, weary and battered to think of any sarcastic comment to add, let alone to translate it into Semmat. Her blithe assumption that an Ethsharitic street gambler would know how to ride seemed to call for a cutting remark, but Sterren could not rise to the occasion.

“You should have told me back at the inn,” she said. “I could have gotten a wagon. Or we could have walked. Or at the very least we could have given you a few lessons.”

Sterren tried to shrug, but his back was too stiff for any such gesture. “I . . . It was . . . It did not . . . damn!” He could not think of any word for “appeared” or “looked” or “seemed.” Before any of the Semmans could volunteer a suggestion, he managed, “I saw it was not bad, but I saw wrong.”

“It looked easy, you mean.”

Sterren nodded. “I guess that’s what I mean.”

“A warlord really should know how to ride,” Lady Kalira pointed out.

“I’m no warlord,” Sterren said bitterly.

“You are Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma!” Lady Kalira reminded him sternly.

“I’m Sterren of Ethshar. I play dice in taverns,” Sterren retorted.

Lady Kalira backed away slightly. “You know, you mustn’t tell anyone that when we get to Semma,” she said.

“Why not?” Sterren demanded.

“Because you’re the warlord!” Lady Kalira replied, shocked. “You hold a position of great power and respect. We can’t let it be common gossip that you made your living cheating at gambling.”

Sterren did not follow all of this speech, but he guessed one vital word from context. “I didn’t cheat!” he shouted; the effort sent a twinge through his back and legs, and more than a twinge through his buttocks.

“Then how did you win regularly enough to live?”

“I was lucky,” he muttered unconvincingly. He had learned the word aboard ship.

“Ha!” she said. “Wizard’s luck, if you ask me.”

“Wizard?” Sterren asked. He knew the word meant one variety of magician, but wasn’t sure which. “Warlock,” he said in Ethsharitic.

Lady Kalira did not recognize the word; instead she changed the subject.

“You must relax,” she said, demonstrating my letting her arms fall limply, “when you ride. Move with the horse, not against it.”

Sterren nodded, not really believing that he would ever learn the skill.

“And we can pad the saddle — that velvet tunic in your pack will help. And you can walk sometimes.”

Sterren nodded again, with a bit more enthusiasm.

By mid-afternoon, thanks to additional cushioning, a slower pace, and walking when the blisters on his rump became unbearable, he had improved enough that, al­though he still ached in every joint and in several unjointed places as well, he was able to think about his future and to carry on some limited conversation with his companions as he rode.

He began by pointing in each direction and asking what lay there. All they could see was sand and sun and grass, which made it obvious that he was asking what lay be­yond.

Ahead, of course, was Semma; behind was Akalla of the Diamond. To the left, the north, Dogal told him, “Skaia.” The name meant nothing to him.

The reply when he pointed to the right was more interesting.

“Nothing,” Dogal told him.

“Nothing?”

“Well, almost. A couple of leagues of sand, and then the edge of the World. If you stand up in the stirrups and stare, you may be able to see it.”

“See it?”

“Yes.”

That, Sterren thought, was a very interesting concept, seeing the edge of the World. Standing up in the stirrups, however, was a terrifying concept, so he decided to forgo the view.

How, he wondered, could one see the edge of the World? What did it look like? What lay beyond it? The southern horizon, he noticed, did look slightly different from the others; there seemed to be a yellowish tinge to both ground and sky in that direction. He stared, but could make out nothing.

The very idea fascinated him, all the same. To be so close to the actual edge!

He had thought that Ethshar of the Spices was in the center of the World, but if he had come so close to the edge so quickly, then that could not be so; he knew the World was bigger than that. He had heard travelers speak of Ethshar as being in the southeast, but had, until now, put it down to a distorted worldview.

Obviously, it was his own view that had been in error.

That was quite a realization, that he had been wrong. He wondered if he had ever been wrong about anything important.

Dogal distracted him from that line of thought. “Might be Ophkar to the north of us now,” he remarked. “Skaia’s not that big. Bigger than Semma or Akalla, smaller than Ophkar.”

“Semma is next, beyond Ophkar?” Sterren asked.

Dogal nodded. “That’s right. Your accent is improving greatly, Lord Sterren; congratulations.”

Sterren said nothing in return, but felt a touch of pride. He had tried very hard to get the accent right on the barbaric names of the surrounding kingdoms, and it was good to know he had succeeded.

He had come to realize that Akalla, Skaia, and Ophkar were all indeed separate kingdoms, squeezed into the thirteen leagues between Semma and the coast, and he marvelled that the Small Kingdoms were that small.

He also wondered all the more just what he was getting into. If the kingdoms were crowded together that closely, they must surely rub each other the wrong way every so often. No wonder they needed warlords.

“What is Semma . . . What . . . Tell me about Semma,” he said unable to come up with the words to ask, “What is Semma like?” or “What sort of a place is Semma?”

Dogal shrugged. “Not much to tell.”

“There must be something you can tell me; are there many cities?”

“No cities.”

Sterren could not think of a word for “town.” Instead, he asked, “Are there many castles?” The word for castle was indeed karnak; he had checked on that back at the inn.

“Just one, Semma Castle. That’s where we’re going.”

Dogal was not exactly a torrent of information, Sterren decided; he nudged his mount over toward Alder, on his right.

“Hello,” he said.

Alder nodded politely. “Hail, Lord Sterren.”

Sterren sighed; he supposed he would have to get used to that pompous greeting. “Tell me about Semma,” he said.

Alder glanced at him curiously. “What do you want to know?”

“What it . . . what I . . . how it is there.”

“What it’s like, you mean?”

Gratefully, Sterren latched onto the phrase he had been missing. “Yes, what it’s like.”

“Well, Lord Sterren, it’s hard for me to say, because it’s the only place I’ve ever been, except for this trip to Et’shar to fetch you. I was born there, never lived anywhere else.”

“Ethshar, not Et’shar,” Sterren said idly, pleased to be the one correcting for once, rather than the one corrected.

“Et’th’shar,” Alder said, spitting messily as he struggled with the unfamiliar combination of aspirants.

“Are there many people?”

Alder shrugged. “I don’t know, really,” he said. “The castle is certainly crowded enough.”

“I didn’t just mean the castle.”

“Well, that’s where everyone lives except the peasants.”

That startled Sterren, and caused him to wonder if he was still misunderstanding the word karnak after all. “Every­one?”

“Just about.”

“Peasants?” The word was new to him.

“The common people, the farmers,” Alder explained.

Sterren nodded — he knew about the easy marks from outside the walls. “Are there many peasants?” he asked.

Alder shrugged again. “I guess so.”

“Are you a peasant?”

“I’m a soldier, Lord Sterren.” The reproof was obvious in Alder’s tone.

“You weren’t born a soldier,” Sterren pointed out, proud he had remembered the word “born” from Alder’s earlier comments.

Alder reluctantly admitted, “True. I was born a peas­ant.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Sterren said, seeing he had hurt the big guard’s feelings. “I was born a peasant, too.”

This was a lie, of course; he had been born into the merchant class. He meant, however, that he had been born a commoner.

Startled, Alder corrected him. “No, Lord Sterren, you were born a nobleman.”

“Well, I didn’t know it,” Sterren retorted.

Alder considered that, then smiled. “True,” he said.

Sterren rode on in silence for a long moment, marshaling his thoughts.

At least, he thought, he would be living in the castle, which would presumably be at least an imitation of real civilization. He had feared that he might find himself in some muddy little village somewhere. A castle was not a city, but it was, he hoped, better than nothing.

In the remainder of the afternoon, and around the campfire that night, Sterren pieced together a rough idea of what Semma was like from a constant questioning of his two guards. This also served to improve his Semmat considerably, adding to his vocabulary and giving him practice in pronunciation and sentence construction.

Semma was a quiet little kingdom, almost all of it occupied by peasants on small family farms, scraping a living out of the sandy soil by growing oranges, lemons, dates, figs, olives, and corn, or by raising sheep or goats or cattle. At one time some peasants had grown spices for export, but Semma had lost its spice trade long ago, when Ophkar had temporarily cut off all the routes to the sea and the markets had found other, more reliable sources. The soldiers knew of no mines, or towns, or any sort of manufacture or trade.

In the center of the kingdom stood Semma Castle, with a large village clustered around it — the closest thing to a town or city that the kingdom could boast. The castle itself was home to something over a hundred nobles — Sterren had balked initially at believing that, but both Dogal and Alder had insisted it was the truth. Sterren could imagine a hundred people willingly jammed into a single building readily enough, since he had seen the crowded tenements of his native city, but he could not imagine a hundred people living like that who called themselves nobles.

Back home in Ethshar, Azrad VII surely had a hundred or more people living in his palace, but only a few could call themselves nobles; most were servants and courtiers and bureaucrats.

Alder had noticed his disbelief, and had explained, “Well, that’s counting the kids, and besides, a lot of them are lesser nobility, and it’s a big castle. You’ll see.”

Sterren considered that, and Lady Kalira took this op­portunity to present him with a salve for his developing saddlesores.

“It’s always a good idea to bring a healing salve when travelling,” she said, “though this wasn’t exactly the use I had in mind.”

Sterren accepted it gratefully, and crawled away from the campfire somewhat in pursuit of privacy. Lady Kalira discreetly turned away, and the Ethsharite slid down his breeches and applied the ointment liberally.

That done, he rejoined the others. He had just begun to inquire about the army he was supposed to command when Lady Kalira announced it was time to shut up and sleep.

Sterren obliged, leaving military matters for the morning.

Chapter Four

They spotted the castle’s central tower by mid-morning of the third day, scarcely an hour after they had buried the ashes of their breakfast fire and set out again. Sterren had to admit that it looked like a big castle, as Alder had said.

At that point they had just begun to pass farms, rather than open plain — compact yellow houses surrounded by small stands of fruit trees, patches of tall corn, and miscellaneous livestock grazing the native grass down to stubble. The various inhabitants of these establishments, intent on their own concerns of herding or cultivation or hauling water, invariably ignored the travelers.

The plain was no longer quite so smooth and flat as it had been for most of the journey; the ground they traversed had acquired something of a roll, though it was still far from hilly.

Sterren had never gotten around to asking much about the army, but he had learned that Semma was roughly triangular, bounded on the southeast by the desert that stretched to the edge of the World, on the north by the relatively large and powerful kingdom of Ksinallion, and on the west by Ophkar. Semma had fought several wars against each of her neighbors over the last two or three centuries — particularly Ksinallion — but under the Seventh and Eighth Warlords had stayed at peace for an amazingly long time. Alder and Dogal did not remember any of the wars themselves, but Alder’s maternal grandfather had fought against Ksin­al­lion in the Sixth Ksinallionese War, about fifty years ago. Sterren was still patiently listening to tales of ancestral bravery when the castle came into view.

Not long after that a cloud of dust appeared ahead of them, and grew until a dozen horsemen emerged from it. Sterren was worried, but the three Semmans seemed very pleased by this welcoming committee.

The horsemen were all large dark-skinned men dressed much like Alder and Dogal, riding horses in red and gold trappings, and Lady Kalira announced that this was an honor guard, sent to escort the newfound warlord to the castle.

Sterren was relieved to discover, when the party came to a halt a few paces away, that this was correct. The government had not been overthrown since Lady Kalira’s departure.

The conversation between his original escort and the new arrivals was too fast for him to follow, so Sterren simply sat astride his horse until it was over.

The newcomers wheeled about and formed up into a column around Sterren, Lady Kalira, and the two soldiers, and waited.

Sterren looked about, puzzled, and saw Lady Kalira gesturing with her head. It dawned on him that he was in command; this guard was in his honor, and they were waiting for him to start.

Reluctantly, he urged his mount forward, and the entire party rode on toward the castle.

Sterren found his inquiries about Semma’s army inhibited by the presence of a dozen uniformed strangers. He shrugged and accepted the situation. After all, he would be able to see for himself, soon enough, just how matters stood. He rode on in dignified silence, up the dusty road and into the village that surrounded the castle.

The travelers were greeted at the castle gate by a ragged fanfare of trumpets — at least one trumpeter was always a fraction behind the others, and an occasional sour note could be heard, but in general it was an impressive and gratifying experience for Sterren. He had heard far better, far more stirring music played in the Arena, or in the overlord’s occasional parades, or even by impromptu street bands, back in Ethshar, but never before had he heard more than a brief cheer in his own honor. He counted a dozen trumpeters spaced along the ramparts; impressed, he tried to sit up a little straighter on his horse, to live up to his role.

Certainly, being a warlord had its positive aspects; as long as he could avoid any actual wars, he thought it might be enjoyable. Unfortunately, he doubted he would be able to avoid wars; the Small Kingdoms were notorious for constantly going to war over stupid little disputes.

On the other hand, Alder and Dogal had said that Semma had been at peace for more than forty years. Maybe that peace would last.

Or maybe a war was overdue. He simply didn’t know anything about the situation.

It was time, however, to start learning as much as he could, as quickly as he could. With that in mind, even as he tried to ride with dignity and pride, and to look the part of a warlord despite his shabby, travel-worn clothes, he was studying everything in sight.

The castle stood upon a slight rise, the closest thing to a hill that Sterren had seen since leaving Akalla; Sterren could not tell if the little plateau, standing eight or ten feet above the plain, was natural or man-made, but it was certainly not new, in either case. Surrounding the castle and its raised base were scattered two or three dozen houses and shops, all the same dull yellow as the outlying farmhouses, all built of some substance Sterren had never seen before and could not identify, all with thick walls and only a few heavily-shuttered windows. Gaily-colored awnings shielded most of the doorways and served as open-air shops; there was no single market square, just a small plaza at the castle gate, and the streets were rather haphazard. All the ground in the castle’s vicinity was dry, hard-packed bare dirt, trampled smooth and even, and the houses and shops were not arranged in clear, sharp streets, but just ragged lines that wiggled every which way.

Outside the village in any direction Sterren could see scattered farmhouses, built in the same way as the village’s structures, strewn unevenly across the plain.

The castle itself was a stark contrast to these humble dwellings; it was an immense and forbidding structure built of dark red stone. An outer wall topped with iron-braced battlements stood more than fifteen feet high, with no opening anywhere in it save the gate by which Sterren’s little party entered.

As they passed through this portal, Sterren saw that the wall was roughly twenty feet thick, and the gateway equipped with three sets of heavy doors as well as a spiked portcullis, and openings overhead through which assaults might be made on anyone trying to enter uninvited.

It was not, perhaps, as overwhelming a piece of engineering and defense technology as Ethshar’s city walls and gate towers, but it had its own grim power, certainly. Sterren was quite sure that he would not care to try and pass that wall and gate without a very clear invitation.

Of course, his escort, now numbering fifteen in all, clearly constituted an invitation.

The castle within that outer wall was vaguely pyramidal in its overall shape. Low wings, a mere two stories in height, stretched out to either side of the central mass, which stood some six stories, and was in turn topped by a great central tower whose peak was, Sterren judged, fully a hundred feet from the ground upon which the castle stood. A few turrets protruded here and there, ruining the stepped outline. Window openings were nonexistent at ground level, but grew steadily from narrow slits on the second floor to broad expanses of glass under graceful stone arches on the uppermost level of the tower.

The strip of ground between the curtain wall and the keep was entirely taken up with paved walks and close-packed patches of garden; Sterren was a bit surprised to see no inner line of defense there. The gap between Ethshar’s walls and its outermost street, he knew, was carefully kept clear of trees and permanent structures of any sort, to allow for the deployment of troops and military equipment in the event of siege or assault; in times of peace, such as the past two centuries, this area filled up with the city’s criminals and homeless. Semma Castle had no equivalent of this infamous Hundred-Foot Field.

He had little time to look at the gardens, though. As soon as the last of the company had passed the outermost gate the trumpet fanfare ended with a final flourish, wait­ing guards slammed the outermost pair of the heavy doors, and servants in red and yellow garb leapt forward to take charge of the horses. Sterren was quickly lifted from the saddle and lowered to the ground by half a dozen of the men in his escort, as his mount was led to the stables beside the castle’s inner gate.

This assistance was welcome, since he suspected he would be too stiff, after so long in the saddle, to have dismounted under his own power.

He was whisked past the stables and into the castle proper. The main door was, like the outer gate, equipped with a full range of defenses, but on foot, and alerted by the intervening greenery, he looked a little more closely this time and saw signs of disuse — dust on the hinges, a spider-web across one of the overhead openings. Forty years of peace, he guessed, had had an effect.

He had expected the party to stop and disband once they were all inside, perhaps leaving him in the charge of servants, or a guard or two, but instead the whole contingent marched on down a broad, marble-floored central corridor. The soldiery kept him carefully centered in the group.

“Where are we going?” Sterren demanded, in Semmat.

Lady Kalira glanced toward the commander of the honor guard and whispered a question Sterren could not catch. The soldier nodded in reply, and Lady Kalira called back to Sterren, “The king is waiting to meet you.”

“The king?” Sterren wasn’t certain he had heard the word correctly; he did know its meaning, as it had come up in discussions with Alder.

“Yes, the king, His Majesty Phenvel, third of that name, by right of succession king of Semma and lord of the southern deserts.”

“Oh.” Sterren had never met a king before, and was unsure how to react.

A pair of heavy, gold-trimmed doors swung open, and Sterren found himself swept into what he immediately identified, despite a complete lack of previous experience with such things, as a throne room. A broad red carpet stretched from the door to the base of a dias, and up three steps to the feet of a portly man in scarlet robes, seated on a large black chair. To either side of the carpet stood a small crowd of people, all well-dressed, of all shapes and sizes.

Lady Kalira stopped at the foot of the dias; the soldiers stopped at the same instant she did, and gracefully stepped away to either side, with the exception of Alder and Dogal, bringing up the rear, who remained on the carpet.

Sterren, not having known what was coming, took a step or two forward before he stopped himself, coming uncomfortably close to walking into Lady Kalira’s back.

Kalira bowed deeply, going down on one knee before her sovereign. Hesitantly, and awkwardly, since he had never made such an obeisance before, Sterren copied her actions.

Lady Kalira rose, and Sterren stood again.

The hall was almost, but not quite, silent; Sterren could hear a steady hiss of whispering among the watchers.

“Your Majesty,” Lady Kalira said, “may I present your servant Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma.” She gestured toward Sterren and stepped aside, turning so that she stood on the edge of the carpet, her back to the audience and able to speak to either monarch or Ethsharite.

Thinking some action was called for, Sterren bowed again, from the waist this time, wishing somebody had seen fit to coach him a little.

“Hello,” the king said.

“Hello,” Sterren replied nervously. He tried to judge the king’s age, and guessed it at something over forty, but almost certainly still short of sixty.

“Are you really Tanissa the Stubborn’s grandson? It’s hard to believe.”

Sterren, still unfamiliar with the language, needed a moment to puzzle that out and phrase a response. This was not the sort of question he had expected from a king in what he took for a formal audience. “Yes, I . . . Yes, your majesty, I am,” he replied. He was grateful that Lady Kalira had provided him, in her introduction, with the correct form of address.

“I never met her,” the king said, “but I heard about her when I was a boy, especially from her brother — your great-uncle, that is, the old warlord. She ran away with that merchant a couple of years before I was born. And you’re really her grandson, are you?”

Sterren nodded.

“There’s no need to be shy, lad,” the king said, smiling. “After all, we’re all family here.”

“We are?” Sterren asked, puzzled.

“Oh, certainly; didn’t you know? You’re my seventh cousin once removed. I looked it up.” He gestured expansively, taking in the crowd of observers. “And these,” he said, “are the collected nobility of Semma. And all of us, lad, are descended from Tendel the First, first king of Semma.”

“You are?”

“You, too, lad,” Phenvel corrected him, gently.

“I am?”

“Yes, indeed; I’m in a direct male line, of course, and you descended from the second son of Tendel the Second, rather than the first son. You’re also descended from a couple of Tendel the First’s daughters — the nobles here tend to marry back into the family.”

This came as something of a shock to Sterren, once he had puzzled out exactly what had been said, and at first he simply didn’t believe it. A king, one of his ancestors? All these people his relatives? He was in the habit of thinking of himself as having no family at all; to find himself in a room crowded with his distant relations was more than he could absorb. He could imagine no reason for the king to lie about it, however.

“Oh,” he said.

“That’s one reason you’re here, straight from your journey. We all wanted a look at you, our long-lost cousin.”

“Oh,” Sterren said again. This whole situation was beginning to seem unreal. Oh, the castle was real enough, and the people — he could smell them, as well as see and hear them, and he’d never heard of an illusion that detailed — but the idea that they were really the ruling class of one of the Small Kingdoms, just a few leagues from the edge of the World, and that he was one of them, a hereditary warlord, seemed so completely absurd that for a moment it was easier to believe the whole thing was a gigantic joke of some kind.

An uncomfortable silence fell, to be broken by Lady Kalira.

“Your Majesty,” she said, “I believe that our new warlord is weary from his journey, and overwhelmed by meet­ing you. Nor has he eaten since dawn.”

This was not strictly true, since Sterren’s party had finished breakfast well after sunrise, but it was close enough.