The Unwilling Warlord Page 4

  Sterren was relieved to discover, when the party came to a halt a few paces away, that this was correct. The government had not been overthrown since Lady Kalira’s departure.

  The conversation between his original escort and the new arrivals was too fast for him to follow, so Sterren simply sat astride his horse until it was over.

  The newcomers wheeled about and formed up into a column around Sterren, Lady Kalira, and the two soldiers, and waited.

  Sterren looked about, puzzled, and saw Lady Kalira gesturing with her head. It dawned on him that he was in command; this guard was in his honor, and they were waiting for him to start.

  Reluctantly, he urged his mount forward, and the entire party rode on toward the castle.

  Sterren found his inquiries about Semma’s army inhibited by the presence of a dozen uniformed strangers. He shrugged and accepted the situation. After all, he would be able to see for himself, soon enough, just how matters stood. He rode on in dignified silence, up the dusty road and into the village that surrounded the castle.

  The travelers were greeted at the castle gate by a ragged fanfare of trumpets—at least one trumpeter was always a fraction behind the others, and an occasional sour note could be heard, but in general it was an impressive and gratifying experience for Sterren. He had heard far better, far more stirring music played in the Arena, or in the overlord’s occasional parades, or even by impromptu street bands, back in Ethshar, but never before had he heard more than a brief cheer in his own honor. He counted a dozen trumpeters spaced along the ramparts; impressed, he tried to sit up a little straighter on his horse, to live up to his role.

  Certainly, being a warlord had its positive aspects; as long as he could avoid any actual wars, he thought it might be enjoyable. Unfortunately, he doubted he would be able to avoid wars; the Small Kingdoms were notorious for constantly going to war over stupid little disputes.

  On the other hand, Alder and Dogal had said that Semma had been at peace for more than forty years. Maybe that peace would last.

  Or maybe a war was overdue. He simply didn’t know anything about the situation.

  It was time, however, to start learning as much as he could, as quickly as he could. With that in mind, even as he tried to ride with dignity and pride, and to look the part of a warlord despite his shabby, travel-worn clothes, he was studying everything in sight.

  The castle stood upon a slight rise, the closest thing to a hill that Sterren had seen since leaving Akalla; Sterren could not tell if the little plateau, standing eight or ten feet above the plain, was natural or man-made, but it was certainly not new, in either case. Surrounding the castle and its raised base were scattered two or three dozen houses and shops, all the same dull yellow as the outlying farmhouses, all built of some substance Sterren had never seen before and could not identify, all with thick walls and only a few heavily-shuttered windows. Gaily-colored awnings shielded most of the doorways and served as open-air shops; there was no single market square, just a small plaza at the castle gate, and the streets were rather haphazard. All the ground in the castle’s vicinity was dry, hard-packed bare dirt, trampled smooth and even, and the houses and shops were not arranged in clear, sharp streets, but just ragged lines that wiggled every which way.

  Outside the village in any direction Sterren could see scattered farmhouses, built in the same way as the village’s structures, strewn unevenly across the plain.

  The castle itself was a stark contrast to these humble dwellings; it was an immense and forbidding structure built of dark red stone. An outer wall topped with iron-braced battlements stood more than fifteen feet high, with no opening anywhere in it save the gate by which Sterren’s little party entered.

  As they passed through this portal, Sterren saw that the wall was roughly twenty feet thick, and the gateway equipped with three sets of heavy doors as well as a spiked portcullis, and openings overhead through which assaults might be made on anyone trying to enter uninvited.

  It was not, perhaps, as overwhelming a piece of engineering and defense technology as Ethshar’s city walls and gate towers, but it had its own grim power, certainly. Sterren was quite sure that he would not care to try and pass that wall and gate without a very clear invitation.

  Of course, his escort, now numbering fifteen in all, clearly constituted an invitation.

  The castle within that outer wall was vaguely pyramidal in its overall shape. Low wings, a mere two stories in height, stretched out to either side of the central mass, which stood some six stories, and was in turn topped by a great central tower whose peak was, Sterren judged, fully a hundred feet from the ground upon which the castle stood. A few turrets protruded here and there, ruining the stepped outline. Window openings were nonexistent at ground level, but grew steadily from narrow slits on the second floor to broad expanses of glass under graceful stone arches on the uppermost level of the tower.

  The strip of ground between the curtain wall and the keep was entirely taken up with paved walks and close-packed patches of garden; Sterren was a bit surprised to see no inner line of defense there. The gap between Ethshar’s walls and its outermost street, he knew, was carefully kept clear of trees and permanent structures of any sort, to allow for the deployment of troops and military equipment in the event of siege or assault; in times of peace, such as the past two centuries, this area filled up with the city’s criminals and homeless. Semma Castle had no equivalent of this infamous Hundred-Foot Field.

  He had little time to look at the gardens, though. As soon as the last of the company had passed the outermost gate the trumpet fanfare ended with a final flourish, waiting guards slammed the outermost pair of the heavy doors, and servants in red and yellow garb leapt forward to take charge of the horses. Sterren was quickly lifted from the saddle and lowered to the ground by half a dozen of the men in his escort, as his mount was led to the stables beside the castle’s inner gate.

  This assistance was welcome, since he suspected he would be too stiff, after so long in the saddle, to have dismounted under his own power.

  He was whisked past the stables and into the castle proper. The main door was, like the outer gate, equipped with a full range of defenses, but on foot, and alerted by the intervening greenery, he looked a little more closely this time and saw signs of disuse—dust on the hinges, a spider-web across one of the overhead openings. Forty years of peace, he guessed, had had an effect.

  He had expected the party to stop and disband once they were all inside, perhaps leaving him in the charge of servants, or a guard or two, but instead the whole contingent marched on down a broad, marble-floored central corridor. The soldiery kept him carefully centered in the group.

  “Where are we going?” Sterren demanded, in Semmat.

  Lady Kalira glanced toward the commander of the honor guard and whispered a question Sterren could not catch. The soldier nodded in reply, and Lady Kalira called back to Sterren, “The king is waiting to meet you.”

  “The king?” Sterren wasn’t certain he had heard the word correctly; he did know its meaning, as it had come up in discussions with Alder.

  “Yes, the king, His Majesty Phenvel, third of that name, by right of succession king of Semma and lord of the southern deserts.”

  “Oh.” Sterren had never met a king before, and was unsure how to react.

  A pair of heavy, gold-trimmed doors swung open, and Sterren found himself swept into what he immediately identified, despite a complete lack of previous experience with such things, as a throne room. A broad red carpet stretched from the door to the base of a dais, and up three steps to the feet of a portly man in scarlet robes, seated on a large black chair. To either side of the carpet stood a small crowd of people, all well-dressed, of all shapes and sizes.

  Lady Kalira stopped at the foot of the dais; the soldiers stopped at the same instant she did, and gracefully stepped away to either side, with the exception of Alder and Dogal, bringing up the rear, who remained on the carpet.

  Sterren,
not having known what was coming, took a step or two forward before he stopped himself, coming uncomfortably close to walking into Lady Kalira’s back.

  Kalira bowed deeply, going down on one knee before her sovereign. Hesitantly, and awkwardly, since he had never made such an obeisance before, Sterren copied her actions.

  Lady Kalira rose, and Sterren stood again.

  The hall was almost, but not quite, silent; Sterren could hear a steady hiss of whispering among the watchers.

  “Your Majesty,” Lady Kalira said, “may I present your servant Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma.” She gestured toward Sterren and stepped aside, turning so that she stood on the edge of the carpet, her back to the audience and able to speak to either monarch or Ethsharite.

  Thinking some action was called for, Sterren bowed again, from the waist this time, wishing somebody had seen fit to coach him a little.

  “Hello,” the king said.

  “Hello,” Sterren replied nervously. He tried to judge the king’s age, and guessed it at something over forty, but almost certainly still short of sixty.

  “Are you really Tanissa the Stubborn’s grandson? It’s hard to believe.”

  Sterren, still unfamiliar with the language, needed a moment to puzzle that out and phrase a response. This was not the sort of question he had expected from a king in what he took for a formal audience. “Yes, I ... Yes, your majesty, I am,” he replied. He was grateful that Lady Kalira had provided him, in her introduction, with the correct form of address.

  “I never met her,” the king said, “but I heard about her when I was a boy, especially from her brother—your great-uncle, that is, the old warlord. She ran away with that merchant a couple of years before I was born. And you’re really her grandson, are you?”

  Sterren nodded.

  “There’s no need to be shy, lad,” the king said, smiling. “After all, we’re all family here.”

  “We are?” Sterren asked, puzzled.

  “Oh, certainly; didn’t you know? You’re my seventh cousin once removed. I looked it up.” He gestured expansively, taking in the crowd of observers. “And these,” he said, “are the collected nobility of Semma. And all of us, lad, are descended from Tendel the First, first king of Semma.”

  “You are?”

  “You, too, lad,” Phenvel corrected him, gently.

  “I am?”

  “Yes, indeed; I’m in a direct male line, of course, and you are descended from the second son of Tendel the Second, rather than the first son. You’re also descended from a couple of Tendel the First’s daughters—the nobles here tend to marry back into the family.”

  This came as something of a shock to Sterren, once he had puzzled out exactly what had been said, and at first he simply didn’t believe it. A king, one of his ancestors? All these people his relatives? He was in the habit of thinking of himself as having no family at all; to find himself in a room crowded with his distant relations was more than he could absorb. He could imagine no reason for the king to lie about it, however.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “That’s one reason you’re here, straight from your journey. We all wanted a look at you, our long-lost cousin.”

  “Oh,” Sterren said again. This whole situation was beginning to seem unreal. Oh, the castle was real enough, and the people—he could smell them, as well as see and hear them, and he’d never heard of an illusion that detailed—but the idea that they were really the ruling class of one of the Small Kingdoms, just a few leagues from the edge of the World, and that he was one of them, a hereditary warlord, seemed so completely absurd that for a moment it was easier to believe the whole thing was a gigantic joke of some kind.

  An uncomfortable silence fell, to be broken by Lady Kalira.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, “I believe that our new warlord is weary from his journey, and overwhelmed by meeting you. Nor has he eaten since dawn.”

  This was not strictly true, since Sterren’s party had finished breakfast well after sunrise, but it was close enough.

  “Of course,” the king agreed. “Of course. Take him to his room, then, and let him recover himself. We’ll speak with him more when he’s rested and has eaten.” He waved a hand in dismissal.

  Lady Kalira bowed, and Sterren imitated her again. Then she motioned for him to follow, and led the way to the right, through the crowd to a door, and out of the throne room. Alder and Dogal followed discreetly.

  They emerged into a corridor, where Lady Kalira turned left and led the way up curving stairs. Sterren’s stiff legs protested, but he followed her.

  At the second floor she kept going, and Sterren followed without question.

  At the third floor he paused, hoping she would change her mind, but she kept on climbing. He suppressed a moan.

  At the fourth floor he considered asking how much further they had to go, but couldn’t think of the right words in Semmat.

  At the fifth floor he was panting heavily.

  At the sixth floor the staircase ended, and he breathed a sigh of relief as Lady Kalira led him down a passageway—and then she reached another staircase and started up again. He balked.

  Alder and Dogal came up behind him and did not stop; he yielded, and hurried on, up into the tower.

  After just one more flight, on the seventh floor, they left the staircase and headed down one more short passage, to an iron-bound door. Lady Kalira turned a large black key in the lock, and then swung the door open to reveal the room beyond.

  “This is your room, as the warlord,” she announced. She stood back to let him enter. “It was your great-uncle’s for almost twenty years, and his father’s—your great-grandfather’s—for half a century before that.”

  Sterren stepped in cautiously.

  He was in a large, airy chamber, one side mostly taken up by three broad, curtainless, many-paned windows. Thick tapestries, slightly faded but still handsome, hid the stone walls. A high canopied bed stood centered against one wall, with a table on either side, a wardrobe beyond the left-hand table and a chest of drawers to the right. Opposite the bed was a desk, or worktable, flanked by tall bookcases jammed with books and papers. A chair was tucked away in each corner of the room; counting the one at the desk, there were five in all.

  Sterren turned, and discovered that the wall around the doorway was covered with displays of weapons—swords, knives, spears, pole-arms, and a good many he could not put a name to, even in Ethsharitic. He wondered if he, as warlord, was expected to learn to use them.

  The weapons were all dusty. In fact, everything was covered by a layer of dust—the desk, the books, the papers, everything. The air was full of the dry, dusty smell of disuse. It was plain that nobody had been living in the room recently.

  Hesitantly, he crossed to the windows and looked out. He judged the angle of the sun and decided he was looking almost due north.

  The view was spectacular; he could see the castle roofs below him, hiding his view of the outer wall and most of the surrounding village. Beyond that he could see a few houses—and then the plain, rolling on into the distance, spotted with farmhouses, orchards, and various outbuildings, marked off into individual holdings by hedges and fences. He saw no roads, however; what traveling was done here was apparently done straight across country.

  To the right he thought he could see, out near the horizon, the farms and grasslands fading into desert sand; somewhat to the left of center he thought he might be seeing the peaks of distant mountains somewhere beyond the horizon.

  He turned back to the doorway, and saw that Lady Kalira and the two soldiers were still standing in the corridor. He had a sudden vision of the door slamming, trapping him inside.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” he asked.

  Lady Kalira nodded and stepped in.

  “What did you wait for?” he asked.

  “I would not enter your private chamber without an invitation, Lord Sterren,” she replied.

  Baffled by this pronouncement, which clearly implie
d that he had some authority and was not merely a prisoner, it took Sterren a moment to realize that Alder and Dogal were still waiting in the hall. He looked at Lady Kalira.

  She looked back, paying no attention to the soldiers. “May I sit down?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Sterren said in Ethsharitic, again caught off-guard by her sudden deference. He corrected himself, repeating it in Semmat, as he remembered his escort waiting for him, back out on the plain.

  Maybe they were serious about calling him a lord.

  She pulled a chair from a corner and sat. Sterren considered for a long moment before lowering himself cautiously into the chair by the desk.

  The healing salve on his saddlesores was working; he could sit with only mild discomfort.

  “You must have questions,” Lady Kalira said. “Now that we’re safely home, maybe I can answer them.”

  Sterren stared at her for a moment, still puzzled, and then smiled crookedly. “I hope so,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  “Everything in this room is yours,” Lady Kalira said. “This, and the position of warlord, are your inheritance from your great-uncle Sterren. Nothing else; everything he owned when he died is right here, or was given, at his request, to others.”

  Sterren struggled with that for a moment, and carefully phrased a question.

  “How did he give anything to me? How did he know I ... I was alive, when he hadn’t seen my grandmother for so long?”

  “Oh, he didn’t know you existed, but he had no choice in the matter,” Lady Kalira said, waving the question away. “Semma has very clear and definite laws on the lines of succession. This room and its contents were his as the warlord, not his, personally, so he had no say about who would receive them, nor who would receive the title. If people were allowed to influence successions it would result in all sorts of intrigues—and frankly, we have too much of that even as it is.”

  “Succession? Intrigues?”

  Lady Kalira explained the words as best she could, and eventually Sterren thought he understood.