Glen Cook - Octobers Baby

As Ragnarson examined that mass of blood and steel, weighing nearly a ton and a half, he began to doubt. The horse was as protected as its rider.

Bragi continued leaning as if bored. He was commit­ted.

Vodicka wasted no time talking. He couched his lance and charged.

The King's horse began to loom castle-huge. Bragi dropped to one knee, set his pike, lifted his shield. Could he hold each solidly enough?

He had made a major miscalculation. Vodicka's lance outreached his pike.

He shifted slightly, was unable to finish before impact.

Vodicka came in with his lancehead aimed at Ragnarson's chest, intending to blast him off the pike and finish him with his sword.

Bragi twisted his shield and pushed, to deflect the lance.

It ripped through his shield, down the underside of his forearm. Its impetus bore him over backward. But his right arm and hand remained oak-firm for the instant needed to bring Vodicka to grief. The pike head met the horse at the juncture of shoulder and breastplate. The screaming beast's momentum levered it into the air.

Ragnarson's sprawl forced Vodicka's lancehead into the earth.

Rearing horse and levering lance separated Vodicka from his saddle. As Ragnarson scrambled away, Vol-stokin's King landed with a horrendous clangor. Bragi was on him instantly, swordtip at the slot in the man's visor.

"Yield!"

"Kill me," muffled, weak.

Ragnarson glanced toward Vodicka's encampment. No rescue mission yet. He wrestled the helmet free. Yes, he had caught the genuine fish. He punched the King's jaw.

"Ouch!" He kissed his knuckles, with a knife cut the straps and laces holding Vodicka's armor. He finished barely in time to get uphill ahead of a band of would-be rescuers.

"He's in bad shape," Ragnarson told the Queen as he rode up. "Better get him to a doctor. To the palace. Won't be worth a farthing dead. Somebody find me some bandages."

While men dragged Vodicka away, the Queen took Ragnarson's hand. "For a minute I thought..."

"So did I. I'll grow up one of these days." Examining his arm, he found no major veins severed. A surgeon put a field dressing on, told him to avoid exertion for a few days.

"Sir Andvbur," he said, "begin the next phase. The knight's men began pushing earthworks forward.

i) Recovery and preparation

Volstokin's army fell apart. Man by man, then by companies, Vodicka's soldiers surrendered their weap­ons, and began the walk home. Within a week the encampment was deserted—except for El Murid's advisers and a few high officers. Ragnarson withdrew to the capital. Blackfang and the Trolledyngjans finished the job.

Pledges of fealty flooded in, especially from the provinces wasted. From Walsoken, Trautwein, Orth-wein, and Uhlmansiek the response was spotty. From Loncaric and the Galmiches there was a forbidding silence. From Savernake they expected nothing, and nothing was what they got.

Rumors from the east had winged men soaring the cold winter nights," flitting from castle to castle.

Kavelin had two small industrial regions, the Sieges of Breidenbach and Fahrig. Breidenbach served the mines of the Galmiches, Loncaric, and Savernake. The Royal Mint was located there. To secure this, and as an experiment, Ragnarson sent Sir Andvbur Kimberlin north—across Low Galmiche.

Militarily, Fahrig was more important. It lay at the heart of iron-rich Forbeck, and received ores from Uhlmansiek and Savernake as well. It was there Kavelin's iron and steel were made, and weapons and armor forged.

Both Sieges were heavily Wesson. The Queen would find support there.

Forbeck and Fahrig became Ragnarson's pet winter project. Securing them would not only insure his weapons supply, it would split the still rebellious provinces into two groups. The southern tier were comparatively weak.

They had gotten numerous declarations of fealty out of Forbeck, mostly from lesser nobles whose fortunes depended on open trade routes. The great landholders favored the Captal's pretender.

While Ragnarson studied, pondered, maneuvered his troops through the Siege of Vorgreberg, made requests and recommendations, and wished he controlled some means of communication as swift as the Captal's, the Queen put in eighteen-hour days trying to rebuild a shattered hierarchy. There were banishments and outlaw­ries, and instruments of social import, each bitterly resisted in council.

Most resisted was confirmation of Ragnarson's bargain with the aldermen of Sedlmayr. On confirmation, Sedlmayr sent Colonels Kiriakos and Phiambolos and six hundred skilled arbalesters to Vorgreberg, and raised levies to pacify Walsoken.

Another edict guaranteed certain rights of free men, especially Wessons.

Even for serfs there was a new right. One son in each family would be permitted to leave the land for service with the Crown. For Kavelin, with its traditional class rigidities, this was a revolutionary device for social mobility.

Though they moaned, the Nordmen yielded little there. The chaos in the west had separated countless serfs from their masters. Many had become robbers and brigands. The device would bring them out of outlawry.

Men began filtering into the Siege.

Responsibilities went with rights. Ragnarson, slyly, injected into the decrees the concept of every man a soldier in defense of his own. Each adult male was ordered to obtain and learn to use a sword.

He was surprised how easily that slipped past the Ministers. Men with swords stood a little taller, stopped being unquestioning instruments of their lords' wills.

Two months passed. Warnecke came into the fold. Vodicka became the dour, grimly silent tenant of a tower shared with a manservant sent him by Sir Farace. The Wessons of Fahrig hinted interest in a charter like Sedlmayr's. Rolf Preshka's health deteriorated till he spent most of his time in bed. Turran and Valther disappeared. But their hands could be seen. The winter in the lowlands was unusually mild. In the high country it was bitter beyond memory. Sir Andvbur occupied Breidenbach. And Bragi spent more and more time in the field, drilling his forces in the southeastern portion of the Siege.

One blustery morning his engineers threw a pontoon across the Spehe to the Gudbrandsdal. He invaded Forbeck.

ii) Ghost hunting.

Mocker huddled between buildings in Timpe, a minor city in Volstokin, cursing the weather and his own ill fortune. He had been in the kingdom two months and had yet to uncover a hint of Haroun's whereabouts. The warmest trail hadn't been hot since autumn. A few guerrillas remained, but the big man had vanished.

A ragged party of soldiers appeared, returning from Kavelin. They exchanged bitter words with people in the streets. Mocker retreated to deeper shadows. No point giving foul tempers'a scapegoat.

"Well," said a voice from the darkness, softly, "see what the hounds have flushed."

One hand darting beneath his robes for a dagger, Mocker looked around. He saw no one. "Haroun?"

"Could be."

"Self, have been traipsing over half arse-end of world..."

"So I've heard. What's your problem?"

Mocker tried to explain while hunting. He saw nothing but unnaturally deep shadow.

"So what's Bragi want?" the sourceless voice de­manded. "He's doing all right. He could make himself king."

"Hai! Enemies thus far ground in mill of great grinder northern friend like ants in path of anteater. But now anteater comes to narrow in road where lion waits..."

"What're you babbling about? El Murid? He won't attack. He's got trouble at home."

"Woe! Know-it-all son of sand witch, spawn of mating of scorpion with open-mouthed jackass, or maybe camel, plotting like little old lady Fates, mouth always open and eyes always closed..."