Mask of Swords (7 page)

She led the way from the great hall, the armor heavy against her shoulders, though she had grown accustomed to its weight. Sigaldra and Liane walked from the doors of the keep and looked at the village. 

Sigaldra’s village, she supposed. Under the laws and customs of the Grim Marches, she was Lady Sigaldra of Greatheart Keep, holding these lands in vassalage from Lord Mazael of Castle Cravenlock. If she wished she could grant some of those lands in fief to other men, to raise knights sworn to her. The thought was alien. Mazael was her hrould, she was the holdmistress of this hold, and she would raise spearthains and swordthains. Why bother with lords and knights? 

The keep sat upon a hill, and Sigaldra walked down the path to the village. Once, before the awful day of the Great Rising, the village had held seven hundred souls. Then the runedead had killed them all and haunted the ruins. After the defeat of the runedead, the Jutai had been in need of a home, and Mazael had settled them here. The last fifteen hundred of the Jutai had been eager to farm their own land, and Sigaldra had hoped they could live in peace with their neighbors.

But their new neighbors, it seemed, had other ideas. 

She turned a wary eye to the north and kept walking. 

People greeted her, and she made sure to greet them back, to inquire after their lives and homes. Once, the Jutai men had worked the fields and the Jutai women had tended the houses, but there were too few men left to work the fields. So now men and women both worked in the fields, save for those craftsmen who worked full time. Their first year here had brought in a good crop, and their herds had increased. Sigaldra hoped the next year would be even more prosperous, that they could finally lay away a surplus for the future. She had confidence that the Jutai could do it. 

Unless, of course, they were driven from their homes yet again. 

With that dark thought in mind she went to the shop of the blacksmith. 

Her father had been a blacksmith, and Vorgaric’s shop always made her a bit wistful, its familiar smells of wood smoke and hot metal and sweat filling her nostrils. Over Vorgaric’s door hung a mangled steel cuirass, a massive hole in the center. At the great battle of the Northwater, a Justiciar knight had attacked Vorgaric, gloating that his magical black dagger would steal away Vorgaric’s life. The blacksmith had responded by collapsing the knight’s chest with a single blow of his massive two-handed hammer. 

Vorgaric’s wife Helen greeted Sigaldra at the door with a hint of nervousness. Helen was not Jutai, but a Marcher woman of common birth, her husband slain fighting the runedead at Swordgrim. Sigaldra was not sure how she felt about that. Vorgaric’s wife had died in the middle lands, there were no Jutai women of suitable age and birth for him, and she certainly did not expect him to spend the rest of his days alone. Many Jutai women had also married Marcher men. Yet if too many Jutai married the Marchers, would they cease to exist?

At least Vorgaric had not married a Tervingi. 

“Holdmistress,” said Helen with a bow. She was at least ten years older than Sigaldra, but still remained nervous around her. “You wish to see Vorgaric, yes? He is inside.”

Sigaldra nodded and stepped into the shop with Helen and Liane. Vorgaric straightened from his fire as she approached. He was a huge, shambling boulder of a man, his head a tanned dome, his remaining yellow hair and beard slowly turning to gray. 

“Holdmistress,” said Vorgaric, his voice a rumble. “You are here about the gates?” His teeth flashed in his beard. “Then I have good news for you. The braces, hinges, and bars are done.”

“Already?” said Sigaldra. 

“I know my business,” said Vorgaric. He smirked. “Plus, you always expect the worst, so it amused me to surprise you.”

“If I expect the worst I have rarely been disappointed,” said Sigaldra, “but you have disappointed me excellently, Vorgaric.”

“The carpenters are installing it now,” said Vorgaric. “Should be done by the end of the day. Is it true, though?”

“Which rumor?” said Sigaldra.

“About the valgasts,” said Helen. She shivered. Odd that valgasts should frighten her when she had lived through the Malrags and the runedead. But the unknown was ever terrifying. 

“Aye,” said Sigaldra. “It’s true. A band of them tried to make off with some of the sheep three nights past, and the watchmen shot them down. We’ll hang the bodies on the walls as a warning. Let them seek easier prey.”

“Will they be able to get inside the walls?” said Helen. 

“Perhaps,” said Sigaldra, “but I doubt it. We rebuilt the walls when we settled here, lining them with spikes to keep anyone from climbing over.” Perhaps that was why Sigaldra had a hard time thinking of herself as a lady of the Grim Marches instead of a holdmistress. A noble lady would have sipped wine and watched as her peasants toiled. Sigaldra and Liane had helped carry buckets of earth, had helped carve the stakes lining the ditch outside the walls. “I suppose they could tunnel into the village, but that much digging would draw notice. No, so long as everyone keeps their arms close at hand, we shall merely have to be vigilant.”

“Peculiar,” said Vorgaric. “In the middle lands, the valgasts only came forth on the days of midsummer and midwinter. I wonder what has changed. Perhaps fear of the Malrags or the runedead drove them forth from their caves.”

Sigaldra shrugged. “Perhaps. Or maybe the valgasts of the Grim Marches follow different customs, just as the people do.”

Helen laughed. “Surely, holdmistress, the people of the Grim Marches are better than these valgast devils.”

“I happen to think so,” said Vorgaric, giving his wife’s rump a pat. She turned the color of Vorgaric’s fire.

“Such high praise, husband,” said Helen, but Sigaldra could tell that she was pleased.

She left the blacksmith’s shop and headed for the wall. 

“She has conceived,” Liane announced. “She will bear her first child in nine months.”

“Truly?” said Sigaldra. “The Sight has shown this to you? That is good news.” 

“Probably,” said Liane.

“Probably?” said Sigaldra. “She might miscarry?”

Or would something worse happen to her?

Liane sighed. “I do not know, sister. The vision is cloudy. The future is cloudy.”

“Tell me something I do not know,” muttered Sigaldra. 

She climbed the stairs to the rampart. The village had been equipped with a sturdy wall of stone, fifteen feet high, but that had done the villagers little good during the Great Rising when the runedead turned immaterial and strode through the wall. Sigaldra had ordered the fortifications strengthened further, adding a stake-lined ditch and spikes upon the wall to deter anyone from climbing over it. Some of the Jutai had grumbled at the work, but Sigaldra had been proven right. 

She hated being proven right, since she always expected the worst. 

Talchar One-Eye, her only swordthain, waited atop the rampart, scowling to the north. He had lost his left eye long ago, long before Sigaldra had even been born, and replaced it with a red crystal sphere stolen from a tomb of Old Dracaryl. It gave his stern, craggy face an even more fearsome aspect, and at various times he claimed the crystal eye made him immune to magic, let him see when a man lied, or allowed him to see through an attractive woman’s clothes. 

But not ugly women – apparently the crystal eye had standards. 

Below Sigaldra saw the carpenters at work on the gate, pounding the final bars into place. Another few hours and they would be done, and the last weak point in the wall would be made strong. No place in the world was truly safe, but it would take a large and determined force to take Greatheart Keep. 

“Any valgasts?” said Sigaldra. 

“Maybe,” said Talchar. “Just one, I think. Old Eogar saw one last night near his sheep. Shot an arrow at it and the damned thing ran off. Or Eogar had too much beer and was seeing things again.” He turned his eyes towards her, one blue and one red. “We have bigger problems, though, holdmistress.”

She sighed. “Earnachar?”

“Aye,” said Talchar. “Another group of Tervingi horsethains rode through the northern fields last night. Didn’t damage anything, didn’t hurt anyone. But they all had torches, and they shouted at the top of their lungs.”

“To everyone know that they were here,” said Sigaldra, “and that they could burn our fields.” 

“That’s the way of it, I suspect,” said Talchar. 

A shiver of rage went through Sigaldra, and she kept her face calm, though her hands curled into fists. 

There was no one, no one at all, she hated as much as Earnachar son of Balnachar.

When Ragnachar had forced the Jutai to follow him, Earnachar had been the hrould’s trusted right-hand man. When Sigaldra had come before the terrifying, black-armored Ragnachar, Earnachar had urged him to kill at the Jutai and claim their goods and supplies for the Tervingi. Sigaldra asked Ragnachar to spare them, highlighting the valor of the Jutai thains against the Malrags. Earnachar mocked and belittled them, until finally Sigaldra had spun upon Earnachar, calling him an odious little keg of a man, a flatterer who polished Ragnachar’s armored boots with his lying tongue. 

Earnachar would have killed her then and there, but Ragnachar had laughed once, a brief, harsh grunt of amusement, and permitted the Jutai to swear to him. 

Ragnachar was dead now, cut down by Mazael Cravenlock on the day of the Great Rising, and Earnachar had sworn in haste to the new hrould. He had fought against the runedead and the Justiciars, and Mazael had awarded him and his followers with lands. Earnachar had been slowly but steadily expanding his influence, and now one of his villages bordered upon the lands of Greatheart Keep. 

“He wants our pastureland,” said Sigaldra. 

“He wants it all, I expect,” said Talchar. “Those pet sorceresses of his have made him bold.”

Earnachar had been a troublesome neighbor, but a cautious one. There was only one thing that Earnachar feared, and that was the wrath of Mazael Cravenlock. He had seen what happened to those who challenged the Lord of Castle Cravenlock.

Then the three strange women had come to Earnachar, and he had grown much more confident. 

Some said they were sorceresses, renegades from the realm’s Brotherhood of wizards. Others claimed they were priestesses, perhaps even servants of the San-keth. Sigaldra rather doubted that one. Earnachar detested the San-keth, as all the Tervingi did. Still others said the three women proclaimed a new faith and a new goddess, and that their leader called herself the Prophetess of this new goddess. 

“My guess?” said Talchar. “He’s going to try and force you to marry him.”

“No,” said Sigaldra. “He hates me too much for that. He shall try to force Liane to marry him.”

“I will not marry Earnachar,” said Liane calmly. Perhaps the Sight had revealed it to her. Perhaps she was simply in denial about how much danger they were in.

“You will not,” said Sigaldra, “I can promise you that.” 

“Earnachar’s not going to like it,” said Talchar.

“I do not give a damn what Earnachar wants,” said Sigaldra.

Talchar grinned, which made him look more villainous. “Good girl. But Earnachar gives a great heaping damn about what Earnachar wants. He’ll do everything he can short of open war to force you to yield. His men will set ‘accidental’ fires, disguise themselves as bandits and steal our cattle, poison wells, everything. If you appeal to the hrould, Earnachar will claim that he is innocent, that he knows nothing of these nefarious doings.”

“He is not going to marry my sister,” spat Sigaldra. “He wanted to kill us all in the middle lands. He will marry Liane over my dead body.”

“I suspect,” said Talchar, “that he would prefer it that way.” 

“Why I can’t I simply marry you?” said Sigaldra.

Liane made a choking noise, her eyes widening.

“Well, you are young and pretty and thirty years younger than I am,” said Talchar, “so I can’t say I would object. My wife might, though, and she would express that displeasure by feeding us both to her dogs.” Sigaldra could believe it. Talchar’s wife Kuldura had survived the Malrags and the exodus and the runedead, all while raising eight sons, and Sigaldra had once seen the woman beat a Malrag to death with a cast-iron pan. 

“I would rather marry Kuldura’s dogs than Earnachar,” said Sigaldra. 

Talchar grimaced. “You might get to tell him that in person.”

Sigaldra followed Talchar’s pointing finger with her eyes. 

A band of twenty horsemen were visible, riding down from the north. 

She turned to Talchar. “Sound the alarm and close the gates.” 

###

A short time later Sigaldra stood in the dust before the closed gate, arms folded over her chest. Talchar and Vorgaric and a dozen of her spearthains flanked her, weapons in hand, and militiamen waited upon the ramparts with short bows. Liane had wanted to come, but Sigaldra had refused. She would not put it past Earnachar to kill them all and kidnap Liane. 

The horsemen reined up, and Sigaldra stared at Earnachar son of Balnachar.

He was a squat, bald keg of a man with a round head and narrowed eyes, but only a little of his bulk was fat. He rode with an easy grace that surprised Sigaldra. Horses had been unknown in the middle lands, and mounted knights had been the chief reason Richard Mandragon defeated Athanaric and Ragnachar at the Battle of Stone Tower. The Tervingi had spearthains and swordthains and skythains, but Earnachar had created horsethains, equipping his followers with horses and lances. 

Earnachar walked his horse forward a few steps, staring at Sigaldra, and four other riders accompanied him. Three of the riders wore black robes, their faces concealed beneath heavy cowls, though the robed shapes seemed somehow feminine. Were these the mysterious sorceresses who had been visiting Earnachar of late? 

The fourth figure was a hulking giant in steel armor. He was so large that he made his horse look like a pony. A pair of sword hilts rose over his armored shoulders, and more weapons waited at his belt and in his saddle. A peculiar steel mask covered his features, looking as if miniature sword blades had been layered over his face like falling leaves. The effect was disturbing and grotesque, and Sigaldra felt the masked man’s eyes settle upon her with a heavy weight.