Michael Mathias - Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

The demon-boar grunted beside them and made a low gurgling noise. The slow but solid sounds of trees being pushed aside, of fragile limbs suddenly being shaken loose, and the thump of heavy retreating footfalls followed.

“It’s getting away,” the Captain said. “Should I give chase?” His words sounded far braver than his voice.

“We’ll track it together in the daylight,” Mikahl replied.

The archery captain’s sigh of relief was louder than he intended it to be. Mikahl thought that he could see the man flushing with shame, but didn’t hold it against him; didn’t hold it against him in the least.

A short while later, General Spyra’s guardsmen came storming through the forest like a chaotic parade of giant fire bugs. Ironspike lay not three paces from where Mikahl sat, which saved him some embarrassment on the long ride back to Tip. Captain Finley died from the head injury he sustained when the boar threw him into the tree, and two other men had been wounded when they gave chase by torchlight. Mikahl learned all this by the campfire while munching on the hot greasy haunch of one of the does they’d killed. He raised a toast to the fallen man and then proceeded to down several cups of stout ale before promising the good people of Tip that the demon-boar would be rooted out before the host moved on to Dreen.

General Spyra didn’t like the idea of staying any longer than necessary, but didn’t voice his opinion. Instead, at first light, while Mikahl lay sleeping off the intoxication of the night before, the General organized a party to go kill the beast and get it over with. He sent two hundred men far to the north and had them form a tightly spaced line from the river all the way out to the tree line. They moved southward through the forest at a steady clip most of the morning before finally finding the creature. It was already near death from the wounds Mikahl had inflicted with Ironspike’s magic.

Mikahl woke to the news, brought back from by rider just after midday. A wagon was sent to bring the carcass into town, and upon seeing Mikahl’s hung-over condition, the General informed the men to take their time as they would be staying in Tip for one more night.

Later, after seeing the massive body of the dead boar, the townsfolk of Tip put on a feast for the General, his captains, and the hero of the day, High King Mikahl, who, according to the men, had more or less killed the beast single-handedly. As much as he wanted to, Mikahl didn’t drink more than a goblet of ale that night. He didn’t like the attention these people shoveled onto him for such a trivial deed as defending himself. It was a deed that he couldn’t even credit to his own action. Everything he had done had been a reaction. Nevertheless, the people of Tip were happy and relieved, and that was enough to keep the smile on his face genuine until he found his way to his bedroll.

Five days later they passed through Kasta, a small city and fully fledged trading center that had only tasted a minimum of damage from Pael’s army. “The undead just marched right through,” the people told Mikahl and the General. “They killed a few, but didn’t stop long enough to do much more.”

Pael, it seemed, hadn’t been around when his army of living corpses had passed. All of the people of Kasta knew who Pael was, though. Dreen was just up the road, and of the several thousand that had lived there, only a few hundred had escaped the death and destruction Pael had wrought. The story was that half the people of Kasta had moved to Dreen to claim the shops and farms of their dead families.

The entire two days it took for them to march the troops around Kasta, Mikahl was swamped with invitations to enjoy the hospitality of every noble, and some not so noble, house in the city. Both afternoons were spent wading down the avenues with a small detachment of Blacksword soldiers, through the sea of gathered crowds that just wanted to see and cheer the great young king who had defeated Pael.

In the evenings they went out of their way to avoid the persistent city folk, but it didn’t matter. The crowd came to them. The last time Mikahl had seen this many Valleyans gathered in one place, they had been living corpses, wielding everything from farm implements to two-handed swords, trying to kill him and Queen Willa’s soldiers. Now they were wielding the Valleyan banner, a dark shield on a red and yellow checked background, and they were cheering the very people they had been trying to kill. The Valleyans had been attacking Queen Willa and Highwander even before Pael had come along. It amazed him what a common enemy could do to get folks on the same side.

Besides being accepted by the Valleyan people, the only good thing to come of the attention Mikahl’s arrival was generating was the young, proud, and fully trained destrier that was presented to him that second evening. Thunder was the beautiful animal’s name, and Mikahl graciously accepted the horse. He had a squire get the information of the house that had given him the gift and hand wrote a letter of appreciation.

Thunder had the ill luck of being owned now by Mikahl. Thunder had heavy horseshoes to fill. Mikahl would take excellent care of the creature, but he would also compare the horse’s every action and detail to Windfoot. Mikahl had already vowed to retrieve Windfoot from the Skyler Clan village when he had the time. Thunder would never find a more caring owner, but when Windfoot came home, Thunder would probably spend a lot more time in the stable than he was used to. Windfoot and Mikahl had survived a lot together.

Mikahl was glad to get Kasta behind them. The road to Dreen seemed to be as crowded as the city had been. Many a cart and wagon was passed on the way to the Red City. Swine herds, goat herds, people making the journey on foot as well. Nearly all of them stopped to cheer Mikahl as he and the Blacksword detail rode past. When they finally reached Dreen, an escort of Valleyan cavalry led them from the outskirts of the fringe settlements into the big red clay brick wall that surrounded the capital city itself. Beyond the city, to the north and west, the Wilder Mountains rose up out of the arid plain.

When they approached the wall Mikahl was awestruck, not by its height, but by the amount of space it enclosed. It was said that, on foot, a man might take most of a week to walk the top of the wall all the way around the city. Mikahl didn’t doubt it. The main gates and the sections of wall to either side of them had been newly rebuilt. The fresh clay brick was a lighter shade of pink than the weathered brick around the gates. And the thick wood planks that had been bolted to the old rusty iron bands of the gate itself were still fresh and white. All that could be seen rising above the thirty foot wall were two crenellated towers that were set deep into the city.

When they passed through the gates, Mikahl saw that the wall was half as wide as it was tall. Clanking iron portcullises were being raised on the inside. Once clear of them he found that the Red City was not misnamed. Nearly all of the well-spaced buildings were made of the same clay brick as the outer wall. No building was higher than two stories save for the twin towers, which reached up out of what could only be King Broderick’s modest castle. The streets here were not crowded, and every other building appeared to be empty and abandoned. Most every structure boasted a fenced corral; some held prized Valleyan horse stock, others held sheep or goats. There were a few head of cattle here and there and more than one weary looking bull, but mostly there were horses ranging in the pens. The clay streets were wide and pocked with the hoof prints and cart tracks of the millions of animals that had been driven through over the years. The bulk of High King Mikahl’s host made an encampment near the east gates where they entered the city. King Broderick’s cavalry attachment led the others-King Mikahl, General Spyra, two archery units, and Spyra’s fifty man guard attachment-through the city toward the castle. They had to stop for the night before reaching it, and it was well into the afternoon the next day when they finally came to the unimpressive head-high wall that surrounded Broderick’s abode.