People said a lot of things about the Baron of Geid. They said he lived underground, spoke with spirits, and could put out a fire just by looking at it. Some said he was born in the Otherworld. Others claimed he was banished from it altogether. No one could quite agree.
Most of these conjectures were rather silly. Fenwith was a recluse and a lunatic, but Senna did not suspect him of being a supernatural creature. As she stood before him, though, it was easy to see how these rumors got started.
The Baron looked like a ghost, with his jaw shoved up too far, making his lips curl against his nose. His skin was so pale she could see the veins underneath—especially in his thin hands, which were clutching the arms of his chair like claws about to snatch away prey.
The Baron’s eyes scanned Senna for one brief, indifferent instant, then drifted to the armored man at her side. “What is this, Lodin?”
Lodin was the Captain of Fenwith’s Guard. Captains seemed to change fairly often as the Baron became displeased with the old one and had him banished or beheaded. Most of the Guard had stopped vying for the position. Lodin was about three times stupider than his predecessors, and a good deal less ruthless, but so far he had managed to keep the title longer than anyone else.
Lodin bowed awkwardly as he pointed to the maiden. “Her name is Senna, Lord.”
“I don’t care what her name is. What is she doing here? If I want a whore to entertain me, I’ll let you know, understand?”
Senna bit her lip. She was counting on her poor looks to save her from that fate.
Captain Lodin fumbled with the sword at his side. “She’s your new housekeeper.” Senna had bribed him to consider her for the job. He looked as if he were regretting it.
Fenwith laughed in a way that made the hair on her skin stand up. In the weeks that followed, Senna would notice that he had a habit of laughing when an occasion least called for it. “She’s only a child,” he said.
That was an interesting objection, from his perspective. The Baron was maybe twenty. He had an unlined face, though his hair was a strange color for someone his age. In direct sunlight it looked like bleached grain; in the torchlit shadows of the castle it reminded Senna of dirty snow.
Senna forced herself to look demure as she bowed. “If it please you, Lord, I’m a hard worker and I have experience managing my uncle’s inn.” She kept her eyelids lowered as she spoke, playing to his sense of authority.
The Baron stopped looking angry for a moment, and Senna was relieved to see his jaw settle into a reasonable position. “The Ironfoot Inn?” he asked.
Senna bit her lip again. “No, Lord. You had my uncle’s inn burned to the ground last month.” She should have phrased her reply less accusingly, but he was too callous to notice.
“Fine. You can get started by dusting this room.” He lowered a finger and ran it across one of the curls that adorned the base of his chair, then flicked the black residue off with his thumb. “I don’t think that it has ever been dusted before.”
—
Jedomar rested his cheek against the rough bark of a branch. His eyes scanned the road a hundred spans in either direction. There was no movement, save that of a treeskunk that ran across the road and shot a curious look into the leaves, probably displeased at the six men displacing it from its home.
His accomplice Grath pointed to the animal. “Skunks on the ground and men in the trees. That’s an amusing reversal.”
Jed shrugged. He didn’t consider a tree to be out of his element. He was perfectly comfortable with the twelve spans of empty space between himself and the ground.
The branch swayed as Jed’s friend shifted position beside him. “If I were Lodin,” said Rimick, “I would petition to have this road rebuilt away from the forest. That would make it a lot harder to ambush these carts.”
“By the Queen, Rimick, don’t curse us with such an idea.” Grath kept his words low, even though there was no danger of being overheard.
“The cart should be here by now,” someone else said. “Maybe our information is wrong.”
Young Mister Hack stuck his tongue out. “Or maybe the cart’s so stuffed with grain they can’t get the horses to pull it.”
The Baron of Geid regularly confiscated a portion of the grain harvest in lieu of hard currency, which the farmers were unable to provide for legal taxes. It was taken to Candige for sale and eventually made its way north to Mackabine, where they suspected that most of it left the country. Four times out of five, Jed let the cart go through, but the tax was so harsh that full payment left nothing to sustain the farmers through the winter. Quite often the theft was tolerated, but every now and then the Baron would urge Lodin to set up some scheme for their capture. These schemes were occasionally troublesome, but none of them had worked. In his head, Jed could hear the retort Rimick would use to counter that thought. It only has to work once.
“There they are.” Rimick pointed down the road at the group of Guards coming into view.
Jed’s mood lightened. Waiting was always the hardest part for him. But his spirits sank again as he counted nine Guards. That was more than expected. In fact, it was nearly half the standing Guard. The Captain wasn’t opting for secrecy today.
“Still think we can take them?” Rimick asked. He didn’t appear doubtful, only interested in Jed’s opinion. He might as well have been asking about a game of Six Feet.
Jed smiled with more confidence than he felt. “Simple as School-Day pudding, my friend. Let’s do a one-man rabbit.”
Rimick nodded. “I’ll do it.”
Jed acceded with a nod. He would have liked to do it himself, but the truth was, he trusted Rimick’s judgment more than his own.
Six against nine wasn’t great odds. Besides the competent aid of Rimick and Grath, Jed had brought three others for secondary support: Hack, Sable, and Brade. However, Brade was rather elderly, and Sable was barely fourteen. Jed’s posse had anywhere from five to as many as fifty members. There were a few core people that Jed trusted, and the rest he picked up when the need arose for large numbers. He just hadn’t realized this would be one of those occasions.
Rimick dropped gracefully and concealed himself in a copse of undergrowth. Jed signaled for the rest to follow. Dohack pulled against Jed’s shoulder. “Are you crazy? We can’t take on that many Guards!”
Jed glared at Hack’s hand until he removed it. Then he answered nonchalantly, “Don’t worry. I won’t make you risk your life any more than you’re willing.”
Hack could take this as an invitation to leave, but Jed doubted he would. Jed and Hack had grown up on neighboring farms. They’d both been active, carefree boys, almost the same age, seen as best friends by everyone who knew them. Neither had disputed the label, but time and temperament had distanced them, if they had ever been close to begin with. Despite his complaints, Hack insisted on being near the center of the action. He would follow Jed as long as there was fun and glory to be had.
“Grath?” Jed said.
“I want Sable to stay here,” Grath said.
“That’s what I thought.”
Sable was Grath’s son, joining them today for the first time. No one was ready to risk the boy. Sable looked at his father and frowned, but he didn’t protest his exclusion.
Grath was arguably the most respected member of their group. The Baron’s men had never pegged him as a Queensman. That generally meant Jed kept him out of fights, although he wasn’t sure they could afford to do that today. Grath eased Jed’s concern by pulling a small sack out of his pocket and stuffing it over his head. A rough hole across the middle revealed his eyes and nose. It wasn’t the most elegant disguise, but it was doubtful Grath would be recognized.
“O…kay,” said Jed. “That’s fine.”
“That’s hilarious,” said Hack.
When the Guard escort was close enough, Rimick expertly nocked an arrow and aimed it at the wooden plank that ran along the front of the cart. This was the easiest trick they knew how to pull, so they tried not to pull it too often. Lucky for them, the Captain of the Guard wasn’t the ripest peach on the tree. Rimick shot a couple more arrows for good measure, one into the ground and one into the trunk of a tree opposite a startled Guard. Then he scampered into the forest.
“There! Go quick!” Captain Lodin shouted to the other Guards.
One by one the Guards charged away until only the Captain and one other remained to watch the grain cart. Lodin ordered the driver to pull the cart away from the trees, but it was slow work to move horses off the road.
Jed waited until the crashing of the Guards in the underbrush had receded. He kissed his ring once for luck, then jumped down in an attack posture. Jed hoped to knock Lodin out with his first blow, but the Captain’s head proved resilient. Lodin fell to his knees, still conscious.
Grath and Hack tackled the second Guard from behind and drove him to the ground. Mister Brade pinned Lodin to the side of the cart. The cart driver put his hands up and scuttled down the road away from the fray.
“Hoke,” Lodin squeaked through clenched teeth. “Rodebath!”
Jed had a small second to recognize the names of the absent Guards before one of them ran back from the forest into the open. He ducked just before Guardsman Rodebath’s sword swung over his head and embedded itself in the wood of the cart. Jed kicked hard into the Guard’s chin, propelling him backwards. Lodin screamed in frustration. Another Guard, close behind his comrade, threw himself against the closest target, who happened to be Brade.
Jed tried to clear his head. Lodin hadn’t fallen for their ruse after all. He kept his Guards back. All of them? Lodin had only called two names. Jed spared a nervous glance back at the forest, but didn’t see any more. With luck, the other five Guards were still following Rimick.
After buffeting Lodin on the head to keep him down, Jed scanned the scene. Grath was unconscious. Sable was out of the tree. He was holding his bow out in confusion, a look of panic on his face, but at least no one had tried to attack the boy yet. Hack had managed to take out two Guards on his own. One lay skewered in a bloody pile behind him. The other was hunched over in agony, but clearly still alive.
As Hack met Jed’s eyes in an expression of triumph, Guardsman Rodebath dragged himself angrily out of the road, sword raised towards Dohack’s exposed back. Jed called a warning and Hack started to move, but not fast enough to escape a blow to the shoulder. Hack crumpled. Almost at the same time, Rodebath tumbled back with an arrow in his neck.
Good shot, Sable, Jed had time to think. He turned on Brade’s opponent and subdued him with a sword against his throat. “Help Hack,” Jed called to Sable as he methodically bound the last Guard to the wheel of the cart. Sable was already on his way. Lodin and Guardsman Hoke offered no more resistance.
“Sorry about this,” Jed murmured half sincerely to the angry, trussed-up Captain.
The Captain hacked a red-tinged gob of spittle into the dust. “Don’t apologize. It’s stupid. You’re a bandit.”
“I prefer Queensman.”
“You steal things. That’s what you do. You’re a bandit.”
There was a truth to this that Jed could not deny. But he was pleased with the title the townsfolk gave him: Jedomar the Queensman. In the old days, a Queensman was someone appointed by Queen Benta. Saying someone was a Queensman meant they worked directly for the government. Since the Revolution, this term no longer held any meaning. But gradually folk had come to apply it to those few who openly opposed the Regent.
Grath came to and compulsively hugged his son. The Guard that Sable had shot was still alive, convulsing with tremors down the length of his body. It was obvious he wasn’t going to make it, so Jed put him out of his misery. He cast a brief curse at the Otherworld for making him do it.
Hack rose from the pool of blood that he and the dead Guard had contributed to. “I’m all right,” he groaned at Jed’s touch. This could have been bluster on Hack’s part, but a quick examination convinced Jed otherwise. Hack’s wound was superficial. His collarbone had stopped the blade, which had damaged little but skin. He would be able to walk.
“Let’s get out,” Jed called to his comrades. He didn’t care to think of the position they would be in if the other five Guards returned. They took what grain they could carry and vanished into the leafy refuge of the forest.