B3Ch65-Meeting the Lords (Patreon)

Harold had been awake since everything had kicked off, practicing his mana control within his room. He needed something to calm and occupy his mind, and sitting on the edge of the cot with a cold cup in his hands, listening to the fort work overhead, was a good alternative to doing nothing. Boots on stone. A runner on the ramp. The low grind of a war going on without him for a few hours while the men who ran it let him pretend to rest.

Adeline stirred behind him and put a warm hand flat on his back.

"You didn't sleep," she said.

"I slept some." He hadn't. "Reports came down most of the night. Hale's people first, then the eagles checking back in, ones and twos."

"And?"

"And since no one has come to fetch me, I'm going to assume it's working." He turned the cup. He should have felt something about that. Mostly he felt tired.

She sat up and pulled the blanket around her shoulders, and for a moment neither of them said anything. The brazier in the corner filled the room with warmth, but that wasn't the warmth he felt right now.

"I'd give a lot for it not to have needed doing," he said. It came out more bleak than intended, though. "That's all. Not that it was wrong. Just that it had to be done."

Adeline reached over and turned his chin until he was looking at her.

"Don't do that. Not this morning." Her thumb moved along his jaw. "You didn't invent one name on those lists. You read Garrick's proof, same as I did. Men who kept people like that don't deserve it." She held his eyes. "You're a good man, Harold. Doubting it doesn't make you a better one. It just makes you slow, and you can't afford that today."

He nodded, and something he hadn't known was pulled tight released a little. He leaned in and kissed her softly, one hand in her hair.

"I'm glad you came," he said against her mouth. "I mean it. I'd be down here talking to the wall otherwise."

He stood and pulled her up onto her feet after him by both hands.

"Come on. I have to go upstairs and be seen."

Adeline came up against him and didn't step back. She looked up at him, slow and warm, and hooked one finger in his collar.

"The lord could be five minutes late."

"He could." Harold laughed, caught her hand, and, with real regret, moved it off his collar. "But there are a few hundred lords waiting to see me flinch. If I come up late and smiling, they'll know exactly what kept me — and Hale would know immediately, and then I'll never hear the end of it as long as I live."

"That's fair." She let the finger go. "But I don’t like you putting us on hold."

"The man sees everything. It's insufferable. And I don't like it either."

She was already reaching for her dress. "The rest of them can stand in the yard and freeze."

"That's the spirit I need this morning." He kissed her knuckles once and let her hand drop. "Bring the ledgers up when you're dressed. I'm going to need Margaret's numbers on everything and probably your take on a few things."He walked out of the door cursing. Duty sucks. 

The ramp came up into the big upstairs hall, and the noise hit him before the light did. They'd built this room for him to hold court in. For now it was tables and slate and charcoal and men who hadn't slept, runners threading the lanes between the boards.

"Attention in the TOC!"

The call snapped across the room, and heads came up, hands lifting off maps.

"As you were," Harold said it before the echo could start. "Sit down, all of you. We've got a long day, and I'd rather you spent it working than standing there admiring my handsome face."

The room dropped back into its work. Tribune Cess met him at the center table, where the confirmations had been stacked in a neat pile at his place through the night. Harold picked them up and went through them while standing.

Lord Rourke. Confirmed. Below it, in a clerk's small hand: enslaved workers in his mines until they dropped, then bought their replacements off the auction block at Ashford, season after season. Harold had walked past that mine once, in another life, and not looked too hard at it. He turned the slate face down.

Lord Bricht of the Fen. Confirmed. Sold the town of Emmerdale to the Velthari — opened the gate, took his payment in advance, and rode out the west road before they came in the east one. Left his own sworn people to be slaughtered.

"That one I remember," Harold said, half to Cess. "I remember the town, anyway."

Cess said nothing and handed him the next.

The crafter Sil Verrow. Confirmed. Cut his healing draughts with something that made a man need the next one like an addiction. Sold the cure and the sickness in the same vial and got rich on the loop of it. This one Harold knew personally. He and Verrow had ended up in the same facility, a life ago, and Harold had watched the man work up close. Verrow's experiments had earned him a unique set of perks — he could induce an addiction in a man with just a couple of drops — and the Concord had used him to keep its troubled people in line and reliant on him for it. And in this timeline, Harold had handed him his head start himself. Verrow had built the whole thing off a recipe Harold released on the forum.

He turned it down and picked up the next, and this one he didn't set down as fast.

Lord Emeric Voss. Confirmed. Burned a barn full of his own townspeople he'd decided were Velthari sympathizers. From Garrick's notes on the man's letters, he'd believed it. Thought he was cutting a rot out before it spread. Thought he was saving the rest.

Harold stood there for a moment.

"That one I'm less easy about," he said, quieter. "He wasn't afraid, and he wasn't greedy. He thought he was doing right. Killed forty people to protect the rest, and went to bed certain of it." He rubbed his temple with two fingers. "Being wrong isn't a crime. Burning forty people is. But it doesn't sit the same as Rourke." He glanced at the pile. "There's one more like him in here somewhere. The one who locked the granary through winter's hunger and let the poorest of his own town starve, and wrote in his ledger the whole time that he was being fair about it. He might even have been right about the fair part."

Cess didn't have anything to say to that.

Harold flipped through the rest with a sigh, name and act, name and act, until —

"Attention in the TOC!" A slate came up hard in a clerk's hand at the far board. "Targets one-bravo, one-charlie, two-alpha, and two-bravo have been actioned. Confirmed positive effects on each — steles destroyed."

Harold let out a slow breath.

The officer who kept the map and the high-value-target board — the HVT board — crossed to it with the slate in hand. He found the four target tags along the board's edge, turned each one over to its struck face, and slid them up into the confirmed column one after another.

Hale came up the ramp a while later, rubbing sleep out of one eye with the heel of his hand, coat half-buttoned. Outside the arrow-slits the light had gone thin and gray. Sun just starting to clear the eastern shoulder. Call it seven.

He went straight past Harold to the coffee, filled a cup, drank a third of it standing there, and only then came over to the table.

"I didn't see your report in the pile," Harold said. "How'd it go with Halloran?"

Hale grunted. "He's still a douche." He drank. "I don't know what he did in your last life to make you want to recruit him. I could have walked in and slit his throat and he was more worried about his whiskey."

"Is he with us or not?"

"Thinking. Which, for that one, is a lot." Hale set the cup down. "But I'll tell you, Harold, I don't get it. I served under him. He made his stars behind the wire. What's the man ever done that's worth a seat at your table?"

Harold set the slate in his hand down and looked at him.

"First time around, when the Velthari came through the northern passes, everything broke. You've heard the story — nobody could form a line; we died by the thousands." He cast his mind back to the difficult memories. "Halloran held a pass. Twenty thousand men, give or take, in a pass above the Reach, against better than a hundred thousand of them and all their bonded. Held it four days so the army behind him could get clear." He paused. "I was in that army. I was one of the ones who got out because he didn't."

Hale went quiet.

"The man might be a douche and a political animal," Harold said. "But when it was needed, he stepped up. That's the only test I've got for anybody up here."

Hale thought it over, and sighed, and nodded slowly.

"Yeah. That does sound like him, at that. He'd want his name remembered — that's the part that fits." He picked the coffee back up. "Alright. I think I've got him. Guess we'll know in about thirty minutes, huh? The summons went out?"

"It went out." Harold nodded. "The rest of the lords still standing in this valley should be here inside the half hour. Whether they come with their armies behind them or on their own two feet, who knows. The forums are scattered this morning. Nobody knows what to think yet."

"Huh." Hale drank. "What's the plan?"

Harold looked at him and laughed.

"I'm going to make them fall in line." He put his knuckles on the table. "We gather the armies and we march on the goblins. Every lord here either summons his troops to our staging ground so we can move out — or he stays behind and secures our rear. One or the other."

"That's politics," Hale said, half his attention already on the map. "How d'you decide who marches and who stays?"

"I don't." Harold shook his head. "If I get so much as a rumor that one of them's playing foul, I send the eagles, and I burn his stele. That's my judicial process today." He spread a hand flat over the valley on the map. "For now I've got an absolute advantage, Hale. I'm going to abuse it and get as much done as I can while I've still got it. These threats can't be left standing — so we can turn and face the bigger ones."

Hale turned to look at him fully. "And what's the long plan with the Velthari, then? Kill them all? Drive them back?"

Harold met the look, and let out a breath.

"I don't know. We never got that far the first time." He turned a marker under his finger. "Right now the plan is to hit them so hard they don't want to keep fighting. The only way I know to do that is to obliterate their army in the field and drive deep into their own ground."

"Show them we're more trouble than we're worth," Hale said slowly.

Harold waggled his hand and nodded. "Yeah. That's the plan so far."

"Then we need to come out swinging."

"Which is exactly why I need every one of these lords rowing the same direction." Harold straightened off the table. "We don't have the time to spend on the politics."

A runner came up the ramp at a jog and handed a slate to Cess, and Cess crossed the room and put it in Harold's hand.

"Sir. The lords are arriving outside the wall. They're — furious, sir. Demanding answers. Demanding to see you."

Harold rolled his eyes and handed the slate back.

"Course they are." He shook his head. "You'd think a valley full of grown men would know better than to come pounding on the gate the morning after."

"Want me to go sort them out?" Hale said.

Harold gave him a sideways look.

"No. I think I'd rather send Elroy and Jenkins." He let it sit half a beat. "With Caswell and Fitch."

Hale let out a startled bark of a laugh, coffee nearly going the wrong way.

"That'd do it," he said.

Harold started to laugh too, and turned to Cess.

"Dispatch Elroy and Jenkins to the gate, with Lords Caswell and Fitch to keep an eye on them. I'll come out when they've all arrived — every last one." He held up a finger. "And pass the word to the gate. No one enters this camp without being tested. And no one enters at all until every lord is here. All of them."

Cess nodded and walked off to see it done.

The guard formed on Harold at the base of the ramp without anyone giving the order. Churchill took his right shoulder, Carter the point, Ren and Corwin taking their normal points, and the knights fell in behind. Below in the yard two cohorts had already stood up in the cold, staged where they could be at the gate inside a minute. Every man of them knew it, and none of them moved.

"Reckon any of them'll be fool enough to draw on you, my lord?" Churchill asked from his right shoulder. He sounded like he hoped so.

"For their sake, no," Harold said. "For yours, I know it's a disappointment."

"A small one," Churchill allowed.

Hale caught him at the door, still working a button.

"Adventurers?"

"Mark counted heads." Harold kept walking. "Everyone's back or respawning at the Landing. Cost him a few teams. But there's nobody left outside the wire."

Hale grunted, which from Hale was as close to cheerful as the morning was going to get.

Harold heard the gate before he saw it.

Caswell's voice came over the wall first, big and delighted, and under it a general roar of generally unhappy people. Harold came around the last turn of the track, and there it was — the mess he fully expected Caswell and the fools to make of it.

Caswell stood square in the gap of the gate with his arms out, playing gatekeeper to the lords and their retinues, and enjoying it far too much. On the wall over his head, Elroy and Jenkins leaned on the palings and heckled anyone who raised his voice.

"— you can't keep us standing in the snow like — like tradesmen —" a lord was saying, red to the collar.

"He's got a point," Elroy called down. "Real tradesmen'd be inside by now. They know how to queue."

"Manners on 'em," Jenkins agreed, shaking his head. "Terrible. And these the good ones. Maybe we should talk to the lord about adding some names to the list."

"You, sir!" Elroy leaned out over the palings and pointed down into the crowd. "In the very fine and lady-like coat! What's your name, sir? For the list."

"Would you two — " Fitch was somewhere in the middle of it, hands up, trying to be six places at once. He had the harried look of a man doing diplomacy at volume. "My lords, please — it's a formality, everyone submits to it, the Count included — Elroy, I swear to God — my lord, if you'll just —"

The lord in the fine coat decided he'd had enough of the formality and put a hand on Caswell's chest to move him aside.

Caswell headbutted him.

It was almost gentle, the way Caswell did it — a short, economical drop of the forehead — and the lord went down flat on his back in the churned snow like a dropped sack, out before he landed. Caswell straightened up, rolled his neck, and laughed uproariously.

"Yeah, don't do that, mate," he said to the unconscious man.

"Ohh." Elroy winced down at the body with enormous sympathy. "Never mind, sir. We'll put you down as 'the coat.'"

Behind Harold, one of the dwarves grunted low. "No wind-up on it. Good line." A couple of the guards lost the fight with their mouths, and Harold felt it happen and couldn't stop it. Mostly. He could always count on these people to make a spectacle.

It was Jenkins who saw him. He straightened off the palings, elbowed Elroy hard in the ribs, and jerked his chin down the track.

Elroy turned, saw Harold, and lit up like a man who'd been handed exactly the moment he'd been waiting for. He cupped both hands around his mouth.

"ALRIGHT — line up for entry!" His voice cracked across the whole yard, and heads turned. "Now that you're all finally here, Count Calder will allow you in! Every one of you gets tested before you're let through — no exceptions, I don't care whose cousin you're sleeping with! And max of three guards per lord! THREE!"

The yard exploded in chaos. Every lord in it had an opinion and demanded to be heard, and Fitch waded straight into the middle of the noise, and to his enormous credit, started sorting it. He knew every name. He got them into something like a line. He got the retinues counted off, and the fourth and fifth guards peeled back, grumbling, and, one lord at a time, the gate started to allow them entry.

Jenkins had already picked two faces he liked out of the press. "Lord Emrys!" he called, delighted, waving him up out of the crowd. "Round the side, my lord, round the side — you don't stand in with this lot. And Lord Tovar, come on up with him. Can't have the pair of you mistaken for riffraff."

"You'll still be tested," Elroy put in. "But we’ll be nice."

Harold stayed where he was and watched them file through. As each cluster cleared the various tests and entered, a squad broke off from the waiting cohort and escorted them to the bunker. A cohort's worth, gone up the hill by the time the line was half down. The TOC would be cleared out by the time they got there.

It was working. It was, in fact, going better than it had any right to.

Which was when it stopped.

"MA'AM!" A legionary at the iron test had his voice pitched to carry, hard and flat, no give in it at all. "You will NOT be allowed to enter if you do not consent to being tested."

Harold turned his head and looked at Hale.

Hale had already closed his eyes. He stood like that for a second, then opened them, dug into a coat pocket, and put a gold piece into Harold's palm without looking at him.

"I am so tired," Hale said, "of you being right."

Harold closed his hand around the coin with a large smile. “Thank you for your donation, sir. Happy to play anytime.”

"One of these days you'll be wrong about something," Hale muttered, falling in behind him, "and I'm going to have it carved over the gate."

"Keep a chisel handy."

He went up the watchtower two steps at a time, came out onto the platform over the gate, and looked down.

The line had opened up around the testing point. An Optio stood at the front of it with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword — Reyes, one of Tran's, a steady man — and he was arguing.

She was easy to find in that crowd. Long black hair, loose down her back. Some kind of pale dress under a heavy fur coat that had never seen a day of wear. Skin white enough to catch the thin morning light and sparkle in the daylight. She stood in the churn and slush with her hands folded in front of her, unbothered and very noble-looking. Whatever Reyes was saying to her she answered without heat, in a voice too low for the tower to catch. And then she lifted one bare hand and turned it palm up. Offering it. She would let him touch her with the iron.

Harold watched her do it. Then he looked at Hale, who had come up behind him and was looking at the same thing, and Harold nodded once.

Hale leaned over the rail.

"Optio Reyes." His voice dropped into the yard, flat and clear. "Allow the lady to enter, under armed guard. Do not harm her. Do not lay a hand on her; do not use force of any kind. The Lord will see her right away."

The reaction came up off the yard like heat off a fire.

"Her? You'll take her and leave us in the — "

"Tested and cleared and STILL in the snow, and she walks straight — "

"Do we mean nothing to you, Lord Calder?"

Harold was already back on the stairs. He let the noise chase him down. Let them wonder. It cost him nothing, and it was going to save him a great deal of explaining he had no intention of doing.

He waited for her off to the side of the track, away from the gate, where the ground opened out and there was room to see someone coming for a good while before they reached you.

Mark found him there first. He came up the track from the wire with a couple of adventurer teams at his back, still in the day's gear, and stopped beside Harold with his arms crossed.

"Heard you got one," Mark said.

Harold huffed. "Word gets around fast."

"Word ran up the hill faster than I did." Mark looked down toward the gate. "That her?"

She was coming up the track now with Reyes and a full squad ringed around her, and she walked through the middle of all that iron and armor like she was taking a stroll she'd planned for weeks.

Mark sucked in a breath through his teeth. "Damn, she's beautiful."

"She is," Harold agreed. He kept his eyes on her hands, on the set of her shoulders, on the space she left around herself. "And she's probably more dangerous than almost every knight in this camp."

Mark's arms came uncrossed. "Ah," he said, quieter, and the look on him changed and settled. "Right."

"Take your teams up to the bunker with the others. Keep them close." Harold didn't look away from her. "I have to handle her alone."

Mark went.

She came up the last of the track slowly, and she looked at Harold the whole way.

Her eyes were very pale. The guard around her held its distance, in its silence, and did not seem to enjoy it either.

Harold let her come. He waited until she stopped, a few paces off, and then he spoke, and he chose every word before he let it out of his mouth.

"I'm Harold Calder. This is my home away from home." He kept his voice level as he spoke to her. "You are a guest in my home."

Her eyes narrowed. Just slightly. A flicker of something behind her pale blue eyes.

Then Harold felt it — a fine thread of her mana, slipping out, reaching for the space around him, trying to lie against his skin.

He put out a thread of his own and knocked it aside. The way you'd slap a hand off a table.

She blinked.

"Now," Harold said, pleasantly. "That's not the action of a guest, is it?"

For a moment she looked frustrated, the poise cracking just wide enough to show it — and then it closed over again, and when she spoke at last, her voice carried a cold that had nothing to do with the season.

"Thank you," she said, "for granting me entry. And guest status." A small incline of the head. "I have long desired to speak with the fabled Potion Lord."

Harold nodded once, accepting the compliment for what it was.

"Now that we're on the same page," he said. "What can I do for a representative of the Winter Court of the Fae?"