Kings Of The North Part 11

Dinner progressed from course to course; Kieri tried a few more topics with the princesses but could not sustain any conversation with them, as Elis seemed both angry and frightened, and Ganlin took her cues from Elis. They were so young...not only in age, but in experience. Kieri found himself thinking of Paksenarrion, as he often did-not much older than these girls, the age his daughter would have been if she'd lived. His Estil would have been much more like Paks; he could not imagine either of them in a formal dress. And these girls, with their capable outdoor hands...were they really princesses, or...or what? As far as he knew, Pargun and Kostandan had no women soldiers-rude jokes had been made about that from time to time-so he would not have expected princesses to learn soldiers' skills. Yet if an enemy wanted to send in agents-even a.s.sa.s.sins-young girls pretending to be princesses might evade suspicion.

Vonja outbound, a tenday after Midsummer

Jandelir Arcolin, at the head of slightly more than a half-cohort of his soldiers, had been on the move all morning, trying to catch up with a band he believed had attacked his camp a few nights before. They moved north on a trail running along the west flank of a ridge. Along the ridgetop, Arcolin knew, was a footpath, rocky and difficult. Below this trail-the widest of the three-was another, twisting around the many swampy areas at the headwaters of the little streams that fed the tributary in the valley. Beyond were fields and then the same north-south road they'd taken from Cortes Vonja.

In the humid midday heat, the woods' rich green smell competed with the sharper odors of sweaty men and mules. Sweat trickled steadily down his face, his back, his sides. Arcolin resisted the impulse to take off his helmet and let the air cool his head, but spared a thought to the men left behind in camp, including the three who'd suffered burns when fire arrows set a tent alight. The cohort was understrength now, not even counting the ones left behind in the city to help with Stammel. Thirteen dead, another eight in addition to Stammel unable to fight.

The inexorable mathematics of war would soon reduce the cohort's effectiveness to the point where he'd have to tell the Cortes Vonja Council he could do no more without reinforcements. Though his cohort had killed more of the enemy than they'd lost, the so-called brigands, unlike any ordinary brigands, had not disappeared or quit hara.s.sing them. They were being supplied from outside-that was obvious-but who had the resources of men and money? Was it really Alured the Black? Or was another adversary at work?

Arcolin's horse snorted; he yanked his attention back to the moment. Ahead of him, on the trail, he saw a pile of horse manure, fresh and glistening. His first impulse was to press forward faster; perhaps they were catching up with the fugitives. He looked around. He saw nothing, heard nothing but the creak and jingle of armor, harness, and packs from his own cohort. Too quiet, more than the simple noontime stillness. He pa.s.sed back a hand signal, and his troop moved off the trail downslope, into the woods.

Silence closed around the cohort when they had moved ten paces off the trail and closed into a fighting column again. Arcolin backed his mount down the slope. He could just see Burek at the other end of the column. Arcolin's horse lifted its head, ears p.r.i.c.ked toward the trail. A few moments later, Arcolin heard a rustle of leaves, someone moving down the slope across the trail from them. He could still see nothing. He glanced at his troop. None of them moved, waiting his signal, Devlin's eyes flicking from him back to Jenits, Jenits watching Devlin.

Louder rustling. Now, because they were so silent, he could hear a few individual footfalls, someone slipping and b.u.mping into a tree, harsher breathing. Suddenly, far off on the left flank-what would have been ahead of them if they'd kept going-he heard a man's voice, an obvious command. Louder noises near the trail, bushes thrashing as men pushed their way into that open s.p.a.ce, more noises now on their left front.

A well-constructed little ambush, if it had worked. Was this all of it? Suddenly his horse threw up its head and blew a rattling snort. Arcolin looked up and caught sight of someone who seemed to be walking on air parallel to a ma.s.sive oak limb. His mind refused to accept it for an instant, then he knew: he'd seen sailors in Immerdzan port, feet on a rope slung below the horizontal poles-what did they call them?-resting their elbows on the...the yard, that was it. Guards, he'd been told, to keep thieves off the ship in harbor and fight pirates at sea. Even as this ran through his mind, he signaled Devlin, backed farther downslope...surely not all the trees were rigged, just those around planned ambush sites.

A shrill whistle sounded loud as a scream, and yells followed as the enemy charged toward the trail. Arcolin risked quick glances upward, aware that any one of them could end with a crossbow bolt in the eye-ropes rigged on both sides of the trail but none here...or here. His own troops backed down the slope in order; the brigands followed, more raggedly as they rushed to close and the slope pulled them on.

His cohort reached the lower trail, the one skirting the wet ground around tributary headwaters. Arcolin halted them, and in the seconds before the enemy reached them they had time to form the tight, protective formation-the flexible flexible tight, protective formation-he wanted. tight, protective formation-he wanted.

The first enemy charged out of the woods, five-six-seven-the fastest, least controlled-and tried to stop, still slipping, sliding-and then, desperate, charged into the waiting cohort and died. Behind came more-a ragged line-and hoofbeats of more than a few horses. Those on foot arrived first-fifteen-twenty-with a motley collection of shields and weapons, including two short pikes. The first rank held them off without difficulty. Devlin dispatched one of the pikemen, and Jenits took the other.

Hors.e.m.e.n burst out of the cover, three close together, three more behind, clearly intending to break the formation. At his signal, Arcolin's formation split, opening a lane through which the horses charged even as their riders tried to halt and turn them. One, indeed, managed this, but at the cost of slowing his mount so much that Arcolin's soldiers easily surrounded him and pulled him off.

The rest of the brigands fled back into the woods; those whose horses were mired in the swamp floundered through the muck, and a tensquad caught and killed three of them. Two more fell to the crossbows they'd captured on that first patrol.

"That's more like it," Devlin said, surveying the row of brigand bodies. "And if we were better with our crossbows, we'd have had more of them. What warned you about the bowman in the trees, Captain?"

"My horse as much as anything," Arcolin said, patting the sweaty neck of his chestnut. "And I saw how they'd been picking us off despite our scouts. They've got sailors up on the trees."

"Sailors?"

"Remember the harbors we went through? The guard sailors up on those crosspieces-the yards, they called them-standing on those ropes slung below when they weren't walking on the yards themselves? They've rigged trees beside the main trails, at least in some places, and can shoot down on us."

"That's bad," Devlin said. "We didn't see anything like that in Siniava's War."

"No. But Alured was on our side then. These will be pirate friends of his, I have no doubt. They'll be able to look right down and see our scouts-and our scouts aren't looking up. This fellow must've been four or five armspans up-that would be no height to a sailor."

"What do we do?" Burek said.

"Today? They'll expect us to pursue, and they'll try to lead us back where their aerial bowmen can attack...so we're not going to do that. Today we take the swamp trail back south, as if we're running away, then we'll cut back upslope, cross the main trail, and go right over the ridge."

Burek and Devlin both looked puzzled, but Jenits's face lit. Arcolin gave him a quick nod. "I don't expect we'll run into a trailing force-though we might-but we should see evidence of their tree rigging. If we can get to the main trail across the ridge before they realize what we're doing, we should be able to see how they get up and down, and estimate how far ahead they set up ambushes and the kinds of locations they pick. And then-"

"We can put our own archers up there," Burek said. "And ambush them."

"They'll need practice shooting down at that angle," Arcolin said, remembering what Cracolnya had always said about his cohort's practice on rising and falling ground. "But yes. The thing is, we know nothing about rigging ropes in trees, not even what size rope."

In the long summer afternoon, the cohort moved as Arcolin directed, encountering no brigands they could detect. Just as they crossed the main trail, Burek spotted a coil of rope tucked into the crotch of a tree. They looked up. At intervals along a nearly horizontal limb, loops of rope circled the limb, stained dark, unnoticeable to a casual glance. One end of the coil ran up the tree trunk, looking like a vine stem, to the base of a limb higher than the one that held the loops of rope.

"They climb the rope, pull it up, thread it through those loops...they must tie it off at the far end," Burek said.

"Now we know they have trees ready to rig along the main trail," Arcolin said. "So they can move their ambush site. We need to know how many, what kind of trees they use, how many sailors they have to climb them."

"Our siege-a.s.sault specialists could climb it," Devlin said, looking up.

"Later," Arcolin said. "For now, we don't want them to know we noticed this. We'll go on over the ridge and look there."

He wondered how many brigands were actually good at climbing trees and standing on ropes to shoot crossbows. The ones they'd just killed all wore conventional shoes or boots. He remembered the sailors aloft being barefoot, remembered asking someone about that. Boots were too slippery when they got wet, he'd been told. Bare feet callused by hard use and salt water clung to the ropes and spars.

They reached the crest of the ridge, and Arcolin looked back at the slope they were leaving, the furrow in the trees that showed where the main trail ran. He could not see the trail itself, but someone aloft in one of those trees could signal to a watcher here without being seen from below. A troop, no matter how quietly it moved, still made enough noise to cover the sound of a crossbow's string...and a bolt fitted with a ribbon could be seen from here.

On the far side of the ridge, they moved cautiously through woods as the light slowly waned into twilight. Scouts reported a clearing ahead with rigged trees covering the opening.

"Looks like a camp-maybe for twenty, by the size of the jacks."

"How recently were they there?"

"Hard to say, sir. Not yesterday, but within the last hand of days, most like. Fire-pit has bones in it, but there's a pile of offal still downslope. It's been dragged about by vermin but not consumed yet. They're planning to come back this way sometime; we found a barrel of meal hidden in a brush pile."

"We'll camp here tonight," Arcolin said. "They're sure to notice us, but we can't move far enough before dark to be out of their range, either. So they'll attack, but our people will be up the trees, not theirs."

"All night?" Burek asked, looking up at the trees.

"Better than theirs sneaking in and having the height on us," Arcolin said. "Short watches, since there's no way for anyone to rest up there."

That, it turned out, was an error. The first climbers sent into the trees found fishing-net hammocks tied into the crotches of each rigged tree, water jugs with lines tied to their handles.

"They could stay up in the trees for days," Burek said. "That explains how our scouts missed them."

"That and not imagining such a thing," Arcolin said. "Siniava's people never did anything like this, so none of us even considered it. And yet-I saw those ships, the last year of Siniava's War. And I knew Alured had been a pirate."

"Risky," Burek said. "But we hurt them today."

"We've hurt them before," Arcolin said. "Ordinary brigand bands would have retreated by now. There's something keeping them in this area, and they're being reinforced."

The best climbers in the cohort went up the trees and tested out the rigging. Nothing happened through the early and midnight hours of darkness, and Arcolin finally woke Burek and lay down at the foot of one of the rigged trees. So far none of his climbers had fallen.

He woke to a blow in his back, the sc.r.a.pe of a blade on his mail. He rolled away, yelling, grabbing for his dagger. More yells from his sentries...someone landed on him again, this time with a heavy cloth that missed his head but caught his arms for an instant. He stabbed through the cloth, felt the dagger go home into flesh, yanked and stabbed again-and then his people were there, the weight on him gone, and his a.s.sailant lay dead on the ground.

In the torchlight Arcolin saw a small, wiry man in short trousers and a sleeveless jerkin, barefoot-his soles h.o.r.n.y as goats' hooves-his hair in a stiff braid. He had elaborate tattoos on both arms-sea monsters, Arcolin thought-he remembered the sailors of the south being heavily tattooed. On a thong around his neck was a medallion with a design Arcolin did not recognize. The blade he'd attacked Arcolin with, broad and curved, was much like those they had captured before.

"Was there only one?" Arcolin asked. "And how did he get past the sentries?"

"Sneaks," Devlin said, nose wrinkled. "They're good at that, if nothing else."

"Didn't see or hear another one," Jenits said. "Maybe because he's barefoot?"

"Could be," Arcolin said. "He's a sailor...but why would he come here alone and then attack openly? Why me, and not a sentry? Killing a sentry would open the way for others to attack. He could have avoided us easily enough."

"Something here he wants," Burek said. "And perhaps he didn't realize you were there. If he wanted to climb the tree and stumbled into you, he'd have to attack."

"Maybe," Arcolin said. "Come morning we'll see what we find."

The rest of the night pa.s.sed quietly. In the morning, they found another barrel of meal and an empty cask that smelled of the wine it had once held.

"That barrel's heavy," Devlin remarked, when they'd pulled the lid off. "Let's see what we've got."

"Grain," Tam said.

"Poke it with a sword," Devlin said. "Let's just see."

Far down in the barrel Tam's sword met resistance. "We could just eat the grain," he said with a sly grin.

"Pack it up," Arcolin said, shaking his head.

In minutes, men were shifting the grain to the extra sacks. They found a heavy leather-wrapped bundle at the bottom of the barrel: a small anvil and a hammer.

"They have a farrier with them," Burek said. "We know they have horses, and most of the horses are shod. But this anvil looks small to fashion horseshoes. And there's no sign of a forge-none at all."

"They could have the forge somewhere else and keep the anvil here-though I wonder why," Arcolin said. He looked closely at the anvil; something about it tickled his memory. The street of the smiths in Cortes Vonja-the different sounds of the hammers, the anvils ringing to the blows in different smiths' halls, different sizes of anvils..."What would this anvil be good for?" he asked Burek. Devlin answered.

"Captain, I've seen an anvil like that in a medaller's-where they make badges and medals and things. This hole here-that would hold the anvil die-"

"Dies!" Arcolin said. "Of course! He came back for the dies."

"Sir?"

"Coins, Dev-they're striking coins. Changing the marks, at least, and maybe the composition, making counterfeits. That's That's what was worth one man sneaking back in the night, and if he came to the foot of that tree, it's because he wanted to climb it. They sent a sailor-the dies are hidden up the tree somewhere." what was worth one man sneaking back in the night, and if he came to the foot of that tree, it's because he wanted to climb it. They sent a sailor-the dies are hidden up the tree somewhere."

Those who'd spent the night in trees climbed back up and poked into every hollow, every tangle of limbs. "Found something," Forli said. "Limb broke off and they hollowed out a s.p.a.ce." He lowered the leather sack on a line; inside were two pieces of steel. "And here's something else," he added. "Sack of money, looks like." He tossed that down.

Burek fitted the tang of the lower die into the hole on the anvil, and Arcolin set the hammer die atop it. "That much fits," he said. He looked in the sack of coins and found a mix of coins: some Guild League with different marks, some from the far south with the marks of Immerdzan and Aliuna, a few from the duchy of Fall. In the bottom of the sack was another, of thinner leather, holding pewter disks, a dozen or so plain and several bearing confusing blurred marks.

"Practice," Devlin said. "The shop I saw, a 'prentice was learning to hammer straight, and the master used disks like this for him to learn on."

Arcolin upended the hammer die and looked at the surface that would shape a coin. He could not read the design-surely it was intended for a Vonja coin, but...

"Let me try," Burek said. "We can use one of the practice disks. Someone get me a hammer." One of the soldiers rummaged in the tool bag they always carried and found one. Burek fitted the disk between the two dies and struck the top one a solid blow. The disk looked lopsided-it had not been exactly centered-but now Arcolin could read the mark: the Guild League symbol on one side and Vonja's own mark, PCV, on the other.

"In silver, it would be a niti," Arcolin said. "I wonder if this is the only coin they make." He pulled a niti from his belt-pouch to compare.

"Those nas and natas we found in the merchant's wagon were some of them counterfeit."

"And where did they get the dies?" Arcolin said, thinking out loud. "These are hard steel, not something an artisan can carve out."

"Mints have dies. Maybe they're stolen?"

A breeze rustled the leaves overhead, and Arcolin looked up: clouds moving in again. "Later. Pack everything up; we'll go back to our home site."

"Take the dies and anvil?"

"Of course. We need proof for the Vonja Council. Scouts, be alert for rigged trees. I think they're still north of us, but we don't want more losses, in case they sent for reinforcements."

By dusk, the cohort was back off the ridge and within a gla.s.s's march of their former campsite, where they'd left the wagons and two tensquads.

"I don't think we'll see any attacks for a few days," Arcolin said. "They'll be resupplied, no doubt, but that will take time. We must be hurting them. We'll send word back to the city. These dies could be stolen from their mint, or made elsewhere. I want to take them in myself, in case they do have a traitor who might intercept them. Perhaps if we get word about Stammel." It had been so long, he did not expect good news.

Burek nodded. "I wouldn't trust them either-not after what they tried before."

Arcolin gave the dies to their own smith, who looked them over carefully.

"This little anvil's definitely a coiner's," he said. "At the mints they'd use a water-powered hammer to strike multiples at once; this would be a merchant's set. Seen them up north, to strike Finthan coins with Tsaia's mark."

"I thought both pa.s.sed easily in the northern realms," Burek said. "Doesn't the north have a sort of Guild League?"

"No," Arcolin said. "Finthan and Tsaian coins are commonly accepted at mint value-at least in Verella and Fin Panir-but everything else must be changed-at a cost-and some are regulated."

Burek looked puzzled. "But doesn't that impede trade? I mean, if the money changers take their snip, and the realms-"

"Yes, but not so much that most people mind it. We use letters of credit, as you saw. And the periodic bankers' caravans-heavily guarded-often carry gold bullion and lump silver, so it can be fresh-minted in Tsaia. There's no tax on letters of credit and much less on unminted metals."

"What about the others, like Pargun and Lyonya and so on?"

"Pargun doesn't trade in Tsaia."

"But they trade on the coast," Burek said, scowling. "I've seen Pargunese coins-not many, to be sure, but some."

"I suppose..." Arcolin had not ever considered where the Pargunese traded. Down here? They must go by sea, down the river. "I suppose they trade in Bannerlith, on the northern coast, north of the Eastbight-perhaps they themselves have come to the southern coast."

"Even Andressat uses Guild League standards for coinage. It would be simpler if everyone did."

"True," Arcolin said. "But the money changers would hate it. They'd lose half their trade."

"I suppose," Burek said. He had picked up the dead sailor's medallion and now turned it over and over, examining the designs on both sides. "I wonder what this means."

"I never saw it before," Arcolin said. "It's not the device Alured picked when he claimed the duchy of Immer. He went with one from the Cortes Immer ruins." He poked through the pile of coins, setting them in stacks according to size, metal, design. "Some of these wouldn't fit the dies at all. If you stamped this one width of the die-" He held up a small silver. "-it would be obviously thinner than standard. There must be more dies."