With a sooty hand, Gundling rubbed his head. His hair was a little singed, his right ear bloodied. Otherwise, he thought, he was unbroken and sound. And yet he felt he had seen… no doubt had imagined …
What was it? He couldn't remember, and the opaque, troubled stare of the girl riding beside him told him nothing.
With a groan, Graaf sat up on the other side of the girl, weaving atop his horse, almost falling, until Aglaca rode up and caught him.
"Be calm," the Solamnic was saying with a thin, unas-suring smile. "Rest and try not to stir. You nearly fell from your horse there, Sergeant Graaf, and it'd be a shame to weather threescore ogres only to break your crown in a riding accident."
The ogres. Where were the ogres? Gundling steadied himself, turned painfully in the saddle.
Behind him, dark in the light of the waning fire, Master Verminaard stood on the plains. He was shouting- riotous words, incomprehensible-and lifting a black mace to the night sky. A dozen ogres lay lifeless around
him, and he stood over the last one shouting, the mace rising, wheeling, and falling in a lethal, silent rhythm.
Twelve of them, Gundling marveled, a strange and numbing awe spreading over him. Twelve of them, by the gods, and if he's been unsung before, he will be unsung no longer.
Not if I have breath and voice to sing.
Chapter 13
It was a custom in tbe mountains, a custom honored since tbe Age of Might, that victory in battle was followed by a night of banquet and celebration, but also of the Minding, when the story of the victory was told, the fallen mourned, the brave honored, and the history of the battle enrolled in the thoughts and memories of those who had not been present. Regardless of rank or station, everyone was permitted to speak.
So was it done in other castles throughout Taman Busuk, in Jelek and Estwilde, through the Kalkhists, into the Doom Range, and down into Neraka.
Not so, however, in Castle Nidus. It had been Daegh-refn's custom to conduct the Minding all by himself.
Instead of allowing the men to tell their version of the day's events on the battlefield, the Lord of Nidus would assemble the troops and speak briefly of the deaths that had befallen his house that day, of its heroism and tragedy. Then the ceremony was over-observed, so as not to arouse the traditionalists, but bleak and quiet and altogether joyless, the words floating aimlessly into the dark rafters of the great hall.
After the surprising, near-disastrous battle with the ogres on the plains near Nidus, many of the men wondered if the Minding were in order at all, if what had taken place that night, within sight of the battlements, could have been more defeat than victory.
And yet on the next evening, after wounds had been stitched and bruises salved, the boards of the tables bent low with fowl and venison. The wine swirled and spilled, the servants busied themselves with pouring and porting and setting salt, bread, and water by each place, and the music began at sunset, a thin and graceful trumpet signaling that the Lord of Nidus requested the pleasure of his soldiers at the meal.
In preparation and prologue, the Minding began like the dozen or so that had taken place at Nidus since the Nerakan Wars had resumed. And yet, almost before the sound of the trumpet died, all who were summoned- from the family of the lord to his noble hostage, to the veteran cavalrymen who returned with him yesterday, all the way down to the youngest of the servants-knew that this night would be different, would be like no other.
As usual, Daeghrefn was the last to arrive at the Minding. Flanked by two cavalrymen, he made for the long table, for his customary seat in the high-backed chair adorned with the arms of Nidus: Raven Displayed on a Field Gules, the stormcrow of ancient lineage, sign of the house, perpetually and unchangingly honored.
And yet something had changed in the climate of the
hall. The dozen chairs by the lord's seat, by the gift throne, were empty tonight-empty of petitioners, courtiers, sycophants. The knights and retainers who usually sat at the master's table had moved elsewhere, to the opposite end of the chamber. To the table by the fire, the far hearth which now blossomed with laughter and the first of the songs, for the men in the great hall had gathered around Lord Verminaard.
Daeghrefn scowled from his distant vantage. He struck the boards once, twice, but only Juventus and Onnozel, two of the younger troopers, untested in battle, even looked in his direction.
Gracefully, confidently, Verminaard held forth in the midst of the men. Raising a black mace, a weapon that seemed to catch the firelight and set it astir and spinning, Verminaard began the festivities, as the hero should-or in the absence of a single hero, the lord of the castle- with the formal, warlike speech of the mountain mead-hall.
"Say to me, soldiers, soul-mated in battle, stones and mountain, sea and river, before whom the fire has broke, is breaking, will break in the final hours of fire. Say to me, soldiers, the afternoon's story of what came to pass in the country of ogres, to honor the Nine in the Regions of Night, a dirge for the Lady dwelling in darkness, a song for Takhisis, a song for the queen…."
Daeghrefn leaned back in astonishment. Where had Verminaard learned the songs of the mead hall? This kind of foolishness had never gained ear in Castle Nidus-too sloppy and eastern, it was, smacking of Nerakan dives and the dockside bars of Sanction. This was a solemn hall, after a solemn battle. Men had been slain. Men had not
returned. And this … this cursed usurper …
Daeghrefn had heard enough. With a shout, he rose and stalked to the center of the hall, hiding the limp from the wound suffered at the ogre's hand. The long scoring lacerations had been stitched neatly by the girl Judyth, the very one whose rescue had prompted all the disastrous, harebrained journeys of the last several days. Stiff and aching, Daeghrefn stood before the entire garrison, folded his arms, and glared balefully at the young man who would commandeer his place at table, who would turn the solemn occasion into a pulpit for vulgar legend and drunken boast.
All eyes turned to the lord of the castle, and for a moment the hall fell hush. A pigeon flapped in the eaves, and a solitary dog padded across the flagstone floor on its way to the safer darkness.
Old Graaf stood first to tell the first story, as was his place by age and honor.
Daeghrefn smiled. A loyal retainer. A man who knew his benefit and safety in the ranks of Nidus.
Slowly, with a strong voice unshaken by time and wounds in the service of his lord, Graaf turned to the young man standing at the head of the new table.
"Master Verminaard," he began, humbly but assuredly, "I haven't the high lord's poetry, nor the song of the olden times, when men such as my grandsire spoke in verses themselves, a song to the gift throne."