I’m off to make a fool of a fool,
and a fool of a kingdom too.
I might lose my head to the kingsman’s ax,
but I’ll try to fool him too.
The wall around Dyntalla was as impressive as it was imposing. It was built for the sole purpose of keeping the wilderness at bay with absolutely no attention paid to aesthetics. Vanx estimated it to be thirty feet tall. It was made of dull, grey granite and had a crenelated top. Its plainness was broken by the two square towers that flanked the heavy, iron-banded double gate. Each tower rose about fifteen feet above the top of the wall. Vanx could make out an archer and the triangular kingdom banner posted atop each one. On the left was Duke Elmont’s family crest, a rampant lion silhouetted in a field of green. The other displayed the spread-winged Parydon Falcon in gold on a field of bright purple. The men looking out at the approaching procession were armed with heavy crossbows. Vanx knew this was so that they could easily shaft someone below them at the gate. Not until Prince Russett’s banner men raised his pennant, which showed the Parydon Falcon swooping with outstretched claws in purple on a field of gold, did the distant rattle of the gate chains come to Vanx’s ears.
To Vanx, the scene was right out of some epic song. Dark wizards scheming under the nose of a young, headstrong prince; a snake-skinned duke who cared little for his own honor, and even less for the life of the daughter he didn’t know wasn’t his. The poisoned princess and her common-born lover, a crazy old wizard, and a would-be hero chained in the back of a supply wagon unjustly. Vanx laughed at the last thought.
He was no hero.
Still, as they drew nearer to the slowly opening gates he couldn’t help but feel that he was in some wild tale told by the hearth to pass away the winter months. All that was missing, he decided, were trumpeters blasting a proud, heart-quickening anthem, and a crowd of flower-throwing commoners waiting to greet the procession’s arrival.
Vanx let his wandering mind drift back to the beginnings of the new wall they’d passed a good mile back. Farmsteads and grazing swaths littered the span between here and there. None of the dwellings had the homey feel of permanency, as if the brave occupants knew they might have to flee back to Dyntalla for safety at any moment. Humans might spread across the new land like a plague, as some of his people thought, but at least they did it thoroughly well. And who was to say they were wrong for doing it?
Once the new wall was completed the human’s foothold on the Wilds would be more of a headlock, maybe even a chokehold. He pondered the idea that this uprising of magic-influenced ogres might be nature’s way of rejecting man. Then he remembered how the king of men had sworn to protect the Wildwood and how the ogres had chased away most of its inhabitants.
Sir Earlin, who had kept his men close to the wagon throughout the day, spurred his big, grey destrier up close to them.
“I owe you double now, Vanx,” he said. “You saved my chops again last night.”
“So you remember then?” Vanx felt a wave of relief. He hadn’t mentioned the incident with Coll for fear of causing himself even more trouble than he was already in. “I thought maybe you’d blanked it from your mind.”
“Nay, friend.” The knight paled at the memory. “As much as I’d like to forget that foul magic, I doubt I ever will.”
“That sorcerer is dangerous,” Vanx warned. “Someone has to warn the prince.” As much as Vanx disliked Duke Martin, he felt he had to say what he said next anyway. “There’s a strong possibility that the Duke of Highlake is under his sinister influence.”
“Yes,” Sir Earlin agreed. “I’ve spoken to the prince already. That’s why I’m here. He has a message for you. He wants you to be ready to leave your cell at two bells past midnight. Rest until then, my friend. My cousin is the dungeon master and you will be fed and treated well.”
Matty shot across the wagon bed. “All of us, or just him?” Her movement was so fast that she startled the knight’s horse.
Sir Earlin grunted at her. “That I cannot answer, lady,” he said. “I was told only to give a message to Vanx.”
“You can’t leave us in there, Vanx,” Matty said, giving a slight nod back at Darbon. “Especially him.” Vanx didn’t catch the meaning of Matty’s glance, but knew it had significance and that he should figure out what she meant.
“I’ll not let the prince forget about you two, Matty, I promise.”
“Why am I even in chains?” Darbon blurted out defensively. “I am an apprentice smith. I was on my way to Parydon with my master to get my guild badge.” His voice had grown into an indignant yell that everyone could hear. “I’ve done no wrong, and people in Parydon are expecting me.”
Seeing that Duke Martin, Coll, Prince Russet, and even Bear Fang Karcher were now staring at them, Vanx lunged out a wild boot kick at Sir Earlin’s horse. “Sorry,” he mumbled under his breath, more to the animal than to the rider, as his heel thumped the side of its head soundly. The well-trained horse snorted then lowered its head and gave the wagon’s side-plank a solid head-butt.
“Shut your mouth, boy,” Sir Earlin barked. “Or me horse’ll shut it for ya!”
This drew a bit of laughter from some of the men, but a lot of the chuckling seemed forced. Vanx saw the duke’s expression pale when Darbon was speaking, and how he hurriedly leaned in to hear what Coll whispered to him in private. The duke wasted no time easing his horse over to the prince’s side. He spoke quietly for a moment, and then Prince Russet gave a glance up at the Dyntalla wall. They were still some hundred yards from the gate. The prince shook his head and left the duke awaiting a reply as he trotted his silvery-gray mount over toward the wagon. With a look of frustrated regret showing plainly on his face, he spoke harshly.
“Aiding escaped slaves is a crime, boy! Duke Ellmont will hear your case and pass judgment.” Russet Oakarm’s eyes caught Vanx’s for a moment. The look said far more than any words could. “Until then, bind your tongue, or maybe someone should bind it for you.”
Matty snatched Darbon back by the collar. “Shhhh! Don’t anger His Royalness,” she hissed.
Behind the prince, Vanx saw the smug look of relief wash over Duke Martin’s face, and the mild look of amusement on Coll’s.
Suddenly, trumpets blared out, exactly as Vanx had imagined. But now the reverie of the moment was forgotten as the gate portal swallowed them into shadow.
“Sir Earlin, Sir Cyle,” Prince Russet ordered between the repetitive stanzas of the quick, stirring royal anthem. “Find Commander Gorn and turn over these slaves to the dungeon master.”
Vanx was impressed with the sheer size of the wall. Not only was it some thirty feet tall, but it was also twenty feet thick at its base. The gate tunnel’s arched ceiling was full of murder holes and arrow slots, and big enough to hold half a dozen fully loaded wagons and their teams. The whole of Prince Russet’s party fit in between the inner and outer gates with ease. Only after the huge outer panels were ratcheted closed did the scroll-worked iron gates before them lift.
It was surprising what lay behind the wall. Vanx wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t what he found there. He thought he was entering a crowded, city-like setting, a place teaming with carters and criers and the general tumult of such places. In his limited experience, that’s what one found behind stone walls, but not here. Beyond the Dyntalla gate lay squared pastures and long, wide fields of what might be early wheat. These were offset by tracts of neatly planted rows of one crop or another. The air smelled clean, with just a trace of brine. Not far from the village-like cluster around the gate, there were more pastures of green. These were fenced and dotted with sheep that were ready for the shear. Some held tan and brown aurochs that barely seemed to move as they chewed away at the thick grass beneath them. The only other notable feature of the area was a single building sitting off to the side of the road. It was made of logs, like a huge mountain cabin. Around it were several wagons and a hitching post where horses were tethered. Young men labored to load heavy sacks of grain, barrel kegs, and burlap bags bulging with supplies into the wagons. Vanx decided that it was a trading post.
A road crossed the one they were on. It ran in the long shadow thrown by the wall. A cloud of dust in the distance showed that a group of horsemen was galloping their way, probably from the distant corner tower.
For a while they rolled onward along the road they’d taken through the gate. The prince and Duke Martin’s escort stayed behind, only to be replaced by a dozen leery-looking men in leather armor riding horses that were either of a poor lineage, or were malnourished. Sir Earlin and Sir Cyle led the way.
In the distance, for the amount of land encompassed by the great wall extended far beyond the limits of Vanx’s vision, a lazy brown haze hung in the air. It was the same sort of corruption he had seen clinging to the tower tops and palace roofs in Parydon. The smoke marked the location of Dyntalla proper. Vanx expected the air there to smell of wood smoke and coal-fired forges, of sea salt and freshly caught fish, of pitch, and sewer, and filth. That is how his nose remembered Parydon. His homeland didn’t have a metropolis that would qualify as a city. There were villages, many of them, but nothing like the life-infested corruption of Parydon proper. He’d once estimated that the island of Parydon was one third the size of his homeland, yet in that smaller space more than thrice the number of humans lived. It was madness, but he had to admit that he loved the place. Inns and taverns, hawkers and whores; the divergence of peoples was astounding. People from Curn, fur-clad Northmen, and half-naked Carrells intermingled with the small, stout dwarves and the boisterous folk from Harthgar.
Dyntalla, he was beginning to suspect, was going to be a little different. It was less populated and farther away from the center of the Parydon kingdom seat than any other stronghold, including Highlake. Vanx decided that it might be farther away, but it was too large a place to be less populated. Duke Martin’s mountain stronghold was nothing compared to this. Vanx longed to question the knights about it, but thought better of doing so.
Any one of these men riding guard might be their enemy.
Who exactly was the enemy here? Coll? Duke Martin? A monstrous beast on a distant island? Hordes of ogres? He wondered where he would be taken at two bells after midnight. He looked at Matty, who was staring back at him with half-closed lids. Darbon’s head lay in her huge bosom, bobbing and jiggling as they rode. Vanx didn’t find any answers in her eyes, but he remembered the look she gave him earlier and it suddenly became clear why she didn’t want Darbon to be in the dungeons. No matter how well the knights said she would be treated, she was a whore, or had been. Vanx tried not to judge. The guards, the fat, slovenly noble bastards, merchants who’d lost themselves in their cups, and probably as before, Duke Martin himself, would venture down to her cell door and hang their wick in.
Darbon would go mad for she wouldn’t be able to refuse them, not without being beaten, starved, or killed for not giving them what they wanted. Not even a good-hearted knight would be able to maintain a chivalrous stance against anything done to a one-handed, therefore marked, slave.
“I’ll survive it,” Matty said quietly. Apparently his expression had revealed his thoughts. The setting sun threw their shadows far ahead of them. In its unkind light Vanx could see every day of Matty’s age, every grime-filled wrinkle and loosening sag of skin. “Just make sure Darbon goes with you tonight.” She stroked Darbon’s hair. “Demand it, Vanx. Demand that Darbon go with you, wherever it may be.”
Vanx knew there was nothing he could say to ease her torment so he nodded that he would do what she wished. “I’ll try to have you along as well,” he added, hoping to give her a bit of hope.
“No.” She smiled at his kindness but the look changed to a sinister grin. She patted her cleavage, indicating the razor-sharp dagger that was still nestled between her breasts.
“I’m hoping Duke Martin stops in for a visit while you’re gone,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “He won’t be the same when he leaves, I assure you.” Her eyes fell back on Darbon’s sleeping face. Vanx could see the love in them, but he could also see the part of Matty that had brought her to where she was.
“Besides all of that, where you’re going, I’ll just get in the way. Darbon can use a bow. Don’t forget how he spitted Captain Moyle’s throat.”
“I remember.” Vanx nodded, but still hadn’t caught what she was getting at. “Where is it you think we’re going, Matty?”
“Why, Dragon’s Isle of course,” she smirked. “Do you think old Quazar and Trevin have just been lazing about these past few days? I’d bet my other hand that you and Gallarael’s brother are getting on a ship.”