With a broad smile on his face as he remounted the vehicle, Grimm said, "This is the full complement, I'm pleased to say. Heaven help Lizaveta, with Tordun on our side!"
The wagon rolled on and the albino's deep bass voice joined the cheery chorus in the back, but Grimm was pleased to note that Guy's voice was somewhat more subdued than it had been.
Quelgrum turned left at a fork in the road, past a leaning signpost reading 'YOREN-30 MILES'.
Grimm knew both Crest and Harvel regarded Yoren as a dangerous place, but he could no longer bring himself to worry about it, with Tordun on his side. Everything would be fine.
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Chapter 24: Yoren
As the wagon rolled towards Yoren, it seemed to Grimm as if all colour had been washed out of the land. The afternoon sun still shone as brightly, but the young mage was struck by the town's dilapidated appearance, which seemed to dominate the landscape, depressing and subsuming it. He saw an endless expanse of grey stone, from ancient, crumbling remains of city walls to small, boxy dwellings. Even the flagstones of the ramshackle streets and thoroughfares seemed to be made of the same dull-coloured substance. The conurbation appeared not so much to have been designed as thrown together by some giant, petulant child who had discarded his unwanted toys.
Imaginative architecture and town planning don't seem high on the list of priorities here, he thought, with a wry smile, reflecting on the cheerful appearance of the reborn city of Crar.
The Questor saw no towering battlements, portcullises, forts or other protection against possible invasion; Yoren seemed defenceless.
Not too surprising, I suppose. Who'd want to take over this benighted hole? If some insane horde of barbarian raiders stormed in here and demolished the place, it'd probably improve it no end. And from what I've heard of the gentle people of Yoren, a band of marauding savages would probably be regarded as a minor public nuisance.
The only nod in the direction of civic defence appeared to be a small hut by the side of the road, beside a flimsy, bleached wooden barrier before which Quelgrum brought the vehicle to a stop.
Grimm noted the horses' wild, staring eyes, their fitfully-flicking tails and their nervous whickers and whinnies.
Wonderful. This place even makes the animals uneasy.
"Hello! Anybody there?" Quelgrum cried in a commanding, parade-ground bellow, to be greeted by a wall of silence.
Grimm frowned. "We can just drive round this, General. It doesn't seem much of an obstacle to me."
"I think you may be right, Lord Baron. We don't want to hang around here all day."
As the General raised the reins, a dishevelled man walked out of the hut. He wore a strange melange of armour: faded, cracking leather, rusty scraps of chain mail and dented fragments of steel plate all figured in his bizarre clothing. Grimm noted that the wooden shaft of the guard's halberd was warped and parched, and the head was dull and pitted. This, clearly, was not a man of arms who took pride in the condition of his equipment, or of his appearance.
"Byersel? Whassit?" The guard spoke in a guttural, almost impenetrable accent.
"I'd love to put this fellow through a few weeks' basic training," the General muttered to Grimm. "I'd soon shape him up, I promise you." In a louder voice, he addressed the shabbily-dressed man. "What's that? Speak up, can't you, man?"
"Just who ju fink y'are? Comin' in here, shoutin' th'bloody odds 'sif you owned the bloody place!" the scruffy watchman whined. "Gotta job t'do, ain't I? Buy or sell, what's it to be?"
Quelgrum shrugged. "We must be here to buy, I suppose, watchman. We don't have anything to sell."
"Show me the colour o'yer money, then."
Grimm saw the General's jaw tighten, and put his hand on the soldier's arm. "We don't want to start trouble before we've even got here, General," he muttered.
Cursing under his breath, Quelgrum showed his money-pouch to the untidy, ill-mannered moron. "There's plenty here."
The drab little man smiled, displaying a mouthful of decaying, broken teeth. It was not a friendly smile. "Gimme eight gold, else yer can't come in."
Quelgrum exploded. "Eight gold pieces, just to enter this stinking hellhole? The whole place isn't worth a copper groat!"
"You must want sumfink." The guard's face bore a mask of naked, feral avarice. "Else you wouldn't be here. There's some fings you can only get at Yoren; fink I don't know that? You must want sumfink awful bad to come here, a man wiv your money. Gimme eight golds, and I'll let yer froo."
"I'll give you the back of my bloody hand!" the General snapped.
"'Ere, 'old up, mate. You don't want to freaten me!" The shabby sentinel brandished his corroded weapon. "I ain't afraid o'you. That'll be nine golds now, so 'and it over or piss off."
This is going nowhere, Grimm thought. It's time to use a little persuasion.
His Mage Sight showed the guard's mind as a grey, greasy worm squirming in a soupy sea of muck, unprotected and vulnerable. It was a simple matter to grasp hold of the slimy tentacle and push. A fragment of the Questor's personal spell-language burst from his lips: "Th'kak'ka sh'tat!"
The sentinel was stronger than he looked, and the Questor needed to use more power than he had intended, but the wretched man's slack jaw and limp posture told him he had succeeded. The guard's eyes glazed over, and he lowered his halberd.
"Here are ten gold pieces," Grimm said, forcing his will into the watchman's psyche as he held out his empty hand. "I think you will find this in order. Be so kind as to lift this barrier, and we will be on our way." Despite the unexpected resistance, Grimm felt no more than an irritating tickle at the margins of his sensorium.
"Yeah, that's good. Fank you, guv'nor," the guard said in a dull monotone.
"When we have left, you will not remember us." Grimm added a little extra thaumaturgic emphasis to push his will home.
The watchman's only response was a vague grunt, but he raised the barrier, his eyes wide and unseeing.
"I'd love to have you in my army," Quelgrum said as the wagon rolled into Yoren.
"Yeah, I've always wanted ter be a sojer," the man absently said, wearing a vague, beatific smile, as if he had received some unexpected bounty.
The General smiled. "I thought so. Thank you for your invaluable assistance."
With that, they were in the town of Yoren, leaving the irritating little man behind.
"If you can cast spells like that, Lord Baron, we shouldn't have any trouble here," Quelgrum said.
The Questor shook his head. "It's not that simple, General, I'm afraid. Every attempt at Compulsion robs me of some strength, in direct proportion to the intellect and willpower of the subject, and it requires absolute concentration. The subject also needs to be off-guard and unprepared. Each attempt to dominate a man carries a risk of an undesired Resonance in the spell, and I don't want to take that risk any more often than I need to."
"A resonance; what is that, Lord Grimm?"
"It's a little technical, General," Grimm responded, "but the upshot would be that I'd be stuck inside the spell, pouring ever greater quantities of energy into it but unable to withdraw. That man was alone, and I could see from his aura that he was a weak character, so the risk was negligible. If we'd been in the middle of a large, noisy, belligerent crowd baying for our blood, I wouldn't have tried it. It's not a battlefield spell. It's more a useful tool than a war-winning weapon."
"Still, at least the streets seem fairly quiet." The soldier waved a hand towards the vacant thoroughfares. "I don't know what all the fuss is about."
It is quiet; too damn' quiet for my liking, Grimm thought as he surveyed the empty, narrow street.
He noted the rows of tall buildings at either side. If we're attacked front and rear, we're trapped. Surely Quelgrum can see that.