The Conqueror Read online

  The Conqueror

  Louis Shalako

  Copyright 2014 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books

  Design: J. Thornton

  ISBN 978-1-927957-57-8

  The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The Conqueror

  Louis Shalako

  Chapter One

  With aching bodies and buttocks numb, with cracked lips and burning eyes, they rode out of the backwoods farm country into Windermere. On its crag above was the castle of Queen Eleanora. It rose before them in discolored white towers and heavy stone walls encrusted with moss and mildew.

  The long wagons lurched along the rutted road, with riders in front and riders behind. Men with crossbows sat or stood precariously behind the driver and the gaoler on their heaving slab of a seat. The two wagons at the front of the train were official county prison wagons. Those bringing up the rear were consignments or other privateers. Having paid a small fee for the privilege, they traveled under the aegis of the Crown for protection from outlaws and bandits. They’d come seventy-four miles in a little less than three days and everyone was hurting.

  As for the horses, covered in foam and sweat, flies buzzing around their eyes, those in the traces were looking at an early retirement to the knacker’s yard. The troopers’ mounts, although rather more loved at times, were little better off in the long run.

  At first, the peasants, the idlers, the women drawing water from the fountain at the centre of the village took no real notice. This was in spite of the noise being considerable. Laden as it was with its cargo of miserable, sweating, thirsting humanity, it was a common sight. A few faces looked up when the cavalcade was right upon them. Mothers pulled their wide-eyed children out of the way. There was little sympathy for the huddled forms behind those black iron bars, neither was there much rancor towards the other unfortunates, the ones destined for market. Those who rode naked and unwashed, chained to open boards, those who sat on those land-scows at the rear of the column were merely unfortunate. They were unable to pay a debt or a fine and so they had to forfeit. It was easily understood that it could happen to anyone…or almost anyone. The horses that towed them looked as if they desired death by this point in their journey. They had made a good pace, but no one had the mercy to give it to them.

  More than one onlooker had prayed fervently that it didn’t happen to them.

  If it wasn’t for the severest penalties, people would borrow money and run up prodigious debts and then simply abscond. Right-thinking people didn’t get into debt in the first place. Not if they could help it, anyways.

  The riders in their colorful jackets and plumes, those flanking the teams, rode forward as the rest of the train slowed. Seated beside the driver, Serjeant-at-Arms Garvin thought the need for vigilance would be greatest on the fringes of a large town. Human nature being what it was, the men tended to let their guard down.

  It was the quietest part of the day. The busiest time, early morning, was past, where anyone who could was at the market. The market was the centre of life, of gossip, of news and not incidentally foodstuffs and all sorts of other provisions.

  Before too long the shadows would begin to lengthen and people would be thinking of supper, and more than anything, their beds. Early to bed, and early to rise, had made at least the more successful, healthy, wealthy, and wise. There were others, of course.

  There were many fools and fools seldom prospered. Everybody knew that except for the fools themselves, who would never learn.

  Some people, men and women, even children sometimes, were always at a tavern. They practically lived there. A lucky few would be feasting and gaming the night away at the castle. This tended to be the privileged minority in a hard-working and tightly-knit community based on hand labor and open-field farming where the individual strips were all laid out all over. The work was always hard and the days were too long and too short at the same time.

  A small boy, bored and seeking almost any kind of diversion ran alongside, rattling a stick against the heavy black bars of the second wagon. Wide metal straps in a cruciform pattern, they were secured in deep sockets top and bottom, hot-riveted where they intersected, heads flattened and distorted by the blacksmith’s hammer.

  A trooper scolded him but the youngster just laughed and ran away. The prisoners, intent on their own fears and hopes, took no notice of this latest indignity. They had enough on their plates as it was.

  As the last few mounted figures disappeared up the winding road into the castle proper, the town became quiet again. It was the hottest part of the afternoon on what might be the last of the fine, late summer days. Those days were getting perceptibly shorter, one by one, in their inexorable fashion. With nothing much to do except work, eat and sleep, people were enjoying the brief respite before the harvest and its inevitable strains. Then would come the rains, and then another long, cold, harsh winter.

  Circling up and around the hill, the wagons finally came to the entrance proper.

  Serjeant at Arms Kann held up his hand and bellowed at the gate-keepers in the barbican, despite the fact that the gates were thrown open at sunrise and only closed at the appointed hour. A couple of rather plump, heavily-bearded young men came out and stood there, hands at their sides and with halberds lazily trailing.

  His own men, clean-shaven or with much more rakish facial hair, were something else. Kann saluted smartly and received a laconic greeting as he went past.

  “Hey.”

  Kann almost spat at the man, but a glare would suffice.

  Proper military form would be observed at all times, with one such as Serjeant Kann. The keep lay further above. Its eminence dominated the surrounding countryside, with its rolling, forested hills and intervening fingers of low, flat plains. The granges were waving in golden wheat, shimmering under the haze of dead, dry dust that the afternoon breeze always picked up. From its highest battlements one would be able to see the ocean, wine dark under moonlight and scudding grey clouds. Kann had always thought he had a poetic soul, his present occupation notwithstanding. It was a nice thought.

  Thundering across the bridge, the dust of the county high-road finally settled and the last of the riders came along and bunched up at the head of the column. Cheerful remarks were made, and retorted back upon each other. It had been a long ride, and yet this day at least was ending early. They straggled across an open space of a hundred yards to the second gate. The inner wall was higher still. The inner gate was thinner and less heavily defended. The keep within was a formidable set of fortifications in itself. This part of the castle had been built hundreds of years before the outer walls and was consequently simpler in concept, although still composed of a Cyclopean masonry. The tops of the tall walls were heavily crenellated. Loopholes for crossbows went swirling up, following the staircase inside of every tower. The top of the wall over the gate was heavily galleried, for the pouring of hot oil and the discharge of missile weapons. Even then, they knew enough to put the towers well out, with places to shoot along the facing walls.

  Interesting.

  Very nice.

  Garvin quite approved. He admired its purity. The builders had clearly been thoro
ugh-going bastards. It was a trait he had always admired.

  A flock of chickens browsing in the immediate vicinity of the entry-way scattered a few feathers, beating a hurried retreat before an onslaught of menacing noises and plodding dark shapes. The dim tunnel echoed with heavy iron tires on oaken rims, rough cobbles throwing the carts from side to side. The prisoners inside cursed and hung on for dear life, or took the knocks with a becoming fatalism. Upon coming out the other side into the hot glare of the yard, Kann shouted instructions, and then sat his horse, looking around and muttering quietly. The wagons halted all in a row, in the usual place in front of the Baillie’s office. This was just to the right inside of the inner gate. All hands were tired, sore and dry in the mouth after a long journey. In the sudden quiet, their murmurs took on added significance before being lightly tossed aside by the breezes at this elevation, a full five or six hundred feet above the town. He pulled off his stinking helmet, wearing a hole in his scalp in one or two places, and held it under his arm. With no shade for the eyes, he blinked back a sudden watering. Shading his eyes, he kept looking.

  Kann could not help but approve of clean pennants on whitened staves, hanging from the battlements, and fit-enough looking men in the vicinity. They were in red and black uniforms that look well-tended and bore weapons that looked competent enough for most purposes. With nothing but dull, drab routine to go on these days, there seemed to be very few of the Queen’s household troops about. To their left, for a considerable distance, lay stables, the smithy, small paddocks and stalls. His eye took in the all-important water troughs. There was a tower with a wooden water tank, probably rain-fed and even a windmill pulling water from below. It went gushing into a tank at the far end of the yard. A few men and boys could be seen working here and there. People came and went, ignoring them. Some stood just watching, and some were clearly from other places, as several standing teams, their drivers nowhere about, quietly attested. Two young men yanked down bags of carrots, beans and other provisions from the back of one wagon, an official checking them off a numbered list as they carried them away on their backs. The castle loomed above everything else, dominating the skyline and drawing the eye in admiration. In purely military terms, it was well placed and well built. The question of water supply had been relatively well solved, as to his knowledge there was a stream that had been diverted ages ago, which also led under the citadel. There was a strange beauty here too, he conceded. Whoever built this knew what they wanted, and arguably, what they were doing. They weren’t far wrong, either. The place was only a few miles up from the sea and commanded all the land trade routes for a hundred miles in all directions. The Queen’s fleet held sway in this end of the Great Sea. There was relative peace at present amongst most of the adjoining states.

  Her capital looked strong and secure enough for most threats.

  Half a dozen men stood at his stirrup, all ready for drinking up their pay. This was a natural assumption once you got to know them a little.

  “All right, lads.” Sounding pleased almost, Kann finally dismounted.

  After the long road, his nostrils were almost blocked with the dust.

  Garvin was hustling around with his pouch of papers.

  “All right, all right. Where is everybody?” Garvin cast a sharp eye on his own affairs.

  He had a bag of coins, a list, everybody’s time-sheets, and a record of anything they had charged or advanced against the good name of the Crown. Technically, he was in command but content to let Kann handle the boys and men.

  The troopers were under strict orders not to break off and head for the nearest tavern until all of this was sorted out, but one never knew.

  “Right lads. Help the man.” Kann gave a sharp nod in Garvin’s direction and the troops, young and old, big and small, shuffled over with relative cheer.

  You had to keep an eye on them and keep a firm hand on the reins. Other than that, they were all right.

  Kann figured you could do worse.

  ***

  Upon dismounting, the County’s troopers had divided themselves up almost without bidding from the Serjeants at Arms, in command of this very detail.

  “Watch your mouth, Trooper Bibbs.” Kann had glared at the offender, and the fellow turned with flaming ears to attend to his mount.

  Every so often Kann picked one and made an example of him. This seemed to work well enough, and then after a time, the effect wore off again. This was especially true of the younger ones.

  Taking their own reins in hand along with those of their fellow-troopers, some of the junior men led the horses off to be watered, unsaddled, and put into stalls or turned out into the yard between the curtain walls, as suited their condition or temperament.

  The more senior troopers stood close as the door to the tall cell on wheels was opened by the gaoler with his bunch of jangling keys. One by one, with much talk, barked orders, threats and promises from the soldiers, the prisoners were brought down to be confined within proper stone walls for the night. It would almost be a relief, for some of them had come a long ways. They always took the women off first, especially the ones with kids. The Crown wasn’t heartless, after all. Kann was strolling around, pretending to ignore them, but the wiser heads kept the juniors on the ball.

  The job was easy, and it would be over soon enough.

  An officer of the guard, distinguished by the red lining of his short grey cloak, more a mark of office and a bit of a formality as the day was still middling warm, came out of the Baillie’s office.

  He was helmetless, which was understandable but it had always bothered Kann to be commanded by such men. When you took the metal hat off, you were just one of the boys, he thought.

  Kann patted Garvin on the shoulder after coming up on the blind side, and then made off after a gaggle of the men.

  “Hallo. Who goes there?”

  “It is I, Garvin of Boeth, in charge of prisoners of the Court and slaves for the auction.” He had a leather folder with a sheaf of papers attesting to just such a fact.

  The other nodded, after a glance. The official folder carried its own weight, and then there was the man.

  Garvin craned his neck, shaded his eyes against the glare coming off the white wall behind the fellow and looked at the tall, rather distinguished officer.

  “And your name, sir?”

  “Nyron. Officer of the Guard. It’s one penny a night for official prisoners. Two pence a night for slaves and private prisoners. If they have money, they can send out for their own food, assuming they can bribe one of my men to do that for them.” Nyron grinned pleasantly at this witticism. “Hopefully, we have enough space.”

  He stopped, and his mouth hung there as the last prisoner stepped to the door.

  “Absolutely.” Garvin nodded, all of that was simple routine. “Some of them are being bound over, and a few are going out again in the morning.”

  He’d been provided with enough cash for the eventuality, and he was a bit of a stickler in his own record-keeping.

  “Take a good look, er, Captain Nyron.” He smiled at the older fellow, and the insignia on the shoulder of his cloak was plain enough.

  The officer’s eyebrows rose in appreciation. This didn’t happen every day. Normally, it was the very dregs of humanity, mostly the criminals, the unfortunates and the fools that washed up here.

  The barbarian prisoner had to bow his head, reluctant captive as he was, with a pair of handlers tugging on short lengths of chain attached to an iron ring around his neck. The cell door was only about five feet high.

  “Dear me. Goodness, gracious.” The man certainly had an impressive physique, all bulges and ripples and pectoral muscles and things like that.

  He was very good looking, and unusual in that he was clean-shaven. His long brown hair swept back in healthy waves, falling on his shoulders, giving an impression of power and masculine grace.

  He wasn’t wearing much except a soiled green wool kilt around the middle, serviceable sandals an
d a short cloak made of some animal skin. The tawny color and white edges indicated that the skin came from a sizable feline of the puma genus.

  From what little Nyron knew of barbarians, one had to earn the right to wear such a garment, and there was really only one way to do that, now, wasn’t there?

  Holy. Shit.

  The man was trying not to let his heels slip on the short iron ladder at the front of the carriage, going down frontwards and with his hands bound in front. Nyron wouldn’t try telling these boys their business. A rough looking crew, the two of them would hopefully be enough to handle him. Four of his own troops stood idly by but close enough for any emergency. As far as he was concerned they were there as a last resort. The Crown could live without damage suits resulting from harm caused to the human merchandise, at least on his watch. The same was true in handling privately-owned animals, in a day and age when a good milk cow was said to be worth its weight in copper.

  While this wasn’t strictly true, some of those little folk sayings had a kind of wisdom.

  Men, women and children were being led away on halters and chains, properly segregated as much as possible. Queen Eleanora’s great-grandfather, Wlodimir the Great, had decreed that infants would not be separated from their mothers. In such circumstances, with Autumn Court only days away, facilities were crowded and inevitably they must compromise. Efforts were made not to break up families, even barbarian families. The professional soldier could see the sense of that—it prevented plenty of heartaches for all concerned and made handling the mob a little easier sometimes.

  Nyron did a quick head count: forty-three souls plus another hundred or so already in custody. He had a few empty cells, and most of the others, the really big ones, were not too outrageously overcrowded. The problem was a nice division of the sexes and ages, and just keeping trouble to a minimum. It made sense to keep the private shipments together as much as possible. This was not his favorite duty, but it had to be done. It came with the job.