Paul Thompson: A Warrior_s Journey

Tol looked over the brief legends inked on the outside of the rolls. Finding the one he wanted, he tapped it with a finger.

“I haven’t forgotten you,” he said. “This dispatch mentions the bakali, your role in helping to stop the Red Wrack, and our battle with XimXim. I would be very surprised if His Highness Prince Amaltar didn’t reward you for your deeds.”

He closed the box and clamped a soft lead seal around the hasp. Rising, he said, “I thank you, Mandes-for everything. And I know you’ll see my words safely into the proper hands.”

After Tol departed, Mandes rose from his chair, swaying slightly from too much wine. He summoned two kender from the kitchen to carry the box to his room on the second floor. Gathering up his old manuscripts, he followed them upstairs.

Alone in his room, he sagged heavily on the straw-stuffed mattress. His features lost their carefully neutral expression and twisted with omnipresent pain. Agony lanced through his shoulder, throbbed down his left arm, and ended as it always did, in the tips of the fingers of his left hand-arm, hand, and fingers he no longer possessed.

Mandes held up his right hand, palm down, and felt his crippled shoulder flex as though lifting his left as well. He could see his left arm and hand alongside the right; the phantom limb glowed faintly in the gloom. His searches through the scrap shops of Old Port were not merely a cure for idleness. Mandes was looking for magical tomes that might contain secret recipes to restore his arm, or at least give flesh to the phantom limb he was certain he possessed. He’d found nothing so far and had begun to despair. But now-

Now he was to go to Daltigoth!

The empire’s capital contained perhaps the greatest concentration of wizards and sorcerous literature in the world. Only the libraries of Silvanost could rival it, and they were beyond the reach of a mere human.

Mandes shivered, more in anticipation than from the autumnal chill. Lord Tolandruth’s offer was a gift from the gods. Yet it was a gift he felt he had more than earned with his suffering.

Pain was replaced by the equally familiar rage. Mandes stood and flung the useless manuscripts across the room.

Tolandruth! It was that fool’s fault he’d lost his arm! True, he had consented to help in the fight against XimXim, but he’d never imagined he’d have to battle the monster himself in that hellish cavern!

Now, Gilean’s book of fate had turned a new page. He was getting that which he most desired: access to the great and powerful. In Daltigoth he would place his magical skills at the disposal of whomever offered him the highest rewards. It was only right and proper. Wealth and power belonged to those who could do, whether they were warriors, woodcutters, or sorcerers. One day, he vowed, he would be the most powerful wizard in Ergoth. When that happened, his persecutors in Tarsis would have cause to regret their past injustices to him.

Giving the bakali the Balm of Sirrion had been a mistake, he now realized. Embedding the Red Wrack in the mist had been an even greater folly. The lizard-men hadn’t asked for a plague. That had been his own idea. Since the Tarsans and kender were not sufficiently admiring of his talents, he’d decided to repay them with pestilence. But the dead bakali had taken the blame, and no one living knew the truth but him. Even so, he wondered if Tolandruth still suspected.

The sealed box sat by the door, black and bulky. Within were Tolandruth’s thoughts on the events of the past sixty days. His decisions, his opinions, his praise, his condemnation-all were locked inside that box. Mandes needed to know what had been written. It would be to his advantage to embellish adulation of himself and expunge any criticism.

The lead seal was weighty in his hand. He knew no spells to remove seals intact, but he did know how to re-forge broken ones.

Mandes was awake till dawn. He read and wrote all night, scraping off Tol’s carefully penned letters and inking in his own. The former farm boy had little skill as a writer; his simple handwriting was easy to alter.

The last scroll, addressed to Princess Valaran Mandes found most interesting, but it mentioned him not at all. He did not bother changing any of it. Instead he made a copy.

The caravan rolled out at sunrise. Tol saw it off. Egrin led the homeward-bound column on horseback. He saluted his former shield-bearer proudly, and Tol returned the gesture with enthusiasm. Egrin bared his dagger and raised it high, holding it there long after he’d passed Tol.

Behind Egrin came those riders going home to their families and farms. Most were from the Caergoth region. They raised four cheers for their valiant commander as they rode.

In their wake came the walking wounded. Weakened, they did not shout so lustily, but there was pride in their stride and gratitude in their eyes.

Lastly, a long, irregular parade of carts and wagons rolled by, filled with warriors too hurt to walk. Leading the line of wagons was a black coach drawn by four matched bay horses, once the property of a rich Tarsan merchant who spent some months each year in Old Port. Tol’s men had found the coach hidden away in a barn and liberated it for their commander’s use.

Mandes sat in the coach’s rear seat. The other places were taken by riders who’d lost limbs or sustained other grave injuries. The wizard did not wave as he passed, but did incline his head to the author of his new opportunity. – Tol called out, “Farewell, Mandes! When I return to Daltigoth, we’ll feast at Juramona House!”

He remained until the last cart in the long caravan was gone, then turned Cloud about and rode back to camp.

It was the middle day of autumn. Tol expected that once his letters were received, he would be recalled to the capital to confer with the crown prince and the highest warlords of the empire. Fresh hordes would be needed if Tarsan territory was to be invaded. Tol had fewer than seven thousand men, enough to defend Hylo but not enough to conquer the powerful city-state.

He knew no attack could be mounted until spring. Winter’s snow would close the roads and make troop movements laborious and expensive. Tarsis might launch coastal raids in the meantime, but the loss of a huge army and their best general had to give them pause. Time would tell how much.

Riding back into camp over ground crunchy with frost, Tol was stricken anew with longing for Valaran. She’d been much on his mind during the journey north, but once they encountered real danger, his mind had been fixed on the peril in front of him. His pent-up desire surfaced with a vengeance now. How long would it be until he saw her again? The letter he’d entrusted to Mandes begged her to write to him. Before, when he’d been on the move, there was no way for her letters to find him, but he would be in camp for some time now and regular correspondence was possible. He was lord of the northern hordes. The thought made him smile with pride.

A few flakes of snow drifted down, melting on Cloud’s gray hide and Tol’s bare hands.

It will not be long, Val, Tol vowed. Not long.

Snow was falling in Daltigoth. The sun shone warmly over the Inner City, as it always did thanks to the college of sorcerers, but the outer city lay muffled under a fresh mantle of white.

Treading carefully through the drifts came a man swathed in furs from head to heels. He made directly for the gate of a darkened villa sited in a cramped corner of the Old City. Stucco was peeling off the villa’s wall in wide patches, exposing red bricks underneath. Snow padded the spikes atop the wall.

Few people dared approach the crumbling mansion. It was inhabited by a gang of disreputable nobles, former members of the city Horse Guards, drunkards, wastrels, and thugs. They were called-though not to their faces-Nazramin’s Wolves, in honor of the prince who was their patron.