Intrigues

“Soon’s ye get t’ the fust guilty man, he’ll get all nervous-like,” said Mags, thinking of how that sort of thing had gone back at the mine. “Th’ other feller, he said they went through lotsa people t’ do this, but an’ ye get the fust feller t’ talk, it’ll go up chain pretty quick, I bet.”

They both nodded, and the King sighed. “I wanted to get this settled quickly, but I suppose I shall have to resign myself to getting it settled thoroughly.” He stood up. “Mags, I’m getting some tutors arranged for you Trainees. There are a number of intelligent young people in Haven that are being interviewed, fine scholars, but poor, who would certainly benefit from this idea. In fact, the only reason we haven’t got some tutors yet is because we are making sure that they are good at teaching.”

Mags felt his eyes widening. “Twas a good idear then?” he said.

“Very much so. And I am looking forward to seeing you and Dallen trying for a Kirball team. I’d like to see if Dallen can run with the same eagerness that he eats pocket pies.” The King’s face split with a grin.

:Hey!:

Mags smothered a laugh.

“Now, I’ve taken up enough of your time . . .” the King hesitated.

Mags supplied what he thought the King was looking for. “Eh? I wuz never here, never talked t’ yer Royalness ’bout nothin’, an’ I don’ know nothin’ ’bout sheepses and wool. Herald Nikolas, he jest wanted t’ ast me ’bout what Bard Marchand said, ’xactly, when he sent me on that there errand he shouldn’t of.”

The King nodded. “Exactly so. Good night, Mags. It was good to meet you formally, so to speak.”

Mags got to his feet, managing to control his knees, which still felt a bit weak, bowed, and let himself out. As he left, he sensed that the King and the King’s Own had only begun an evening of intense conversation and decision-making.

He was very, very glad that he was never going to be in Nikolas’s shoes.

:And between you and me, I am just as glad not to be Rolan. Now come on back and let’s talk about this Kirball business. I’ve made some inquiries.:

Bear and Lena seemed to have forgotten the project that had taken them all into the Guard Archives this past winter—but Mags had not. Although his opportunities to go back and search had gotten a lot rarer, he still presented himself at the door of the Archives from time to time for a candlemark or two of research.

And the next day gave him one of those rare opportunities, as he finished an exam unexpectedly early and was dismissed with a smile. He headed for the Guard Archives at a trot, feeling as if he was getting very close to what he was looking for. The last time he had been through the reports, there had been mention of an unusually large bandit group, one that the Guard felt probably had a substantial encampment. “It would not be difficult here,” the Guard Captain had written. “There are many caves and abandoned mines, and it would be possible to hide as many as fifty or sixty fighting men and their hangers-on in some of them. The raids we are seeing are growing bolder and more pernicious, and suggest that these miscreants have organized under a clever leader.”

That sounded like what he was looking for, and Mags had already had enough disappointments that by now he was well over the dread of finding out who his parents had been. He just wanted some answers, any kind of answers.

Besides, if anything had shown him lately that just because your parents were something, it didn’t follow that you were the same, it would have been encountering Bard Marchand. There could not possibly be a person less arrogant and self-assured than poor Lena, and there could not be a person more arrogant and self-centered than her father. So if his parents had been bandits—well—

So what.

Maybe he would at least find out why they had become bandits. Lena had spun all sorts of fanciful tales for him. His mother had fallen in love with one of them who was noble at heart, and had followed him to the encampment. His mother had been a captive who had lost her heart to one of the bandits. His mother had been an unwilling captive. His mother had been the bandit, and his father a poor shepherd she had seduced. He thought it was a lot simpler than that. Likely that his parents had been— something—shepherds, farmers, even traders—and had a bad run of luck. Turned to robbing and fell in with the bigger group. It was a common enough story, and he was living proof that you’d do almost anything when you were starving.

He nodded at the archivist at the front desk, who knew him so well by now that the man just waved him inside, and he went up the three stairs into the Archives themselves.

It was a huge barn of a building, not just a room, with floor-to-ceiling shelves packed very closely together. There were ladders at intervals along the shelves, for there was no other way to reach the upper shelves. On the shelves were identical wooden boxes. Shelf upon shelf, row upon row, up and down the entire room. There was nowhere to sit and study, since the Archives were rarely visited by more than one person. Instead, there was a single table with several chairs around it at the door end of the room. The place was heated the same way that Bear’s indoor herbarium was heated, from beneath the floor. The room was a little stuffy, very warm, and very dry, and the air was scented with the smell of old paper, but not of dust. Now he knew this was because one of the duties of the Archivists was to keep everything dust free. The lighting was good too thanks to the narrow windows up near the roof all the way around, windows with real glass in them.

He went to the shelf where the boxes of records he had last gotten into were stored, and took down the one with his ribbon marker on it.

He was three reports further along when he began to feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. This was definitely looking like the right year. There was no doubt in the Guard Captain’s mind—or in his reports—that he had a substantial and well-organized brigand group on his hands. They knew what they were doing; they weren’t raiding randomly. They hit wealthy traders but ignored caravans of items that were bulky and hard to find a market for, they overran entire farms and looted the places, but only at intervals that suggested that these were re-supply raids.

He asked for help; his little Guardpost didn’t have the manpower to take down a group that big.

He got the help he requested, in the form of an entire Guard troop, mounted and foot.

And then, there it was. In the middle of the reports, a fatter packet. Lists, lots of them. The roster of the Guard company that had come to augment his troops. The list of the townsfolk that had volunteered. Loot captured. Casualties. The list of the dead on both sides.

And the all-important after-action report. Mags hands shook a little as he opened the folder and read the first page.

From the beginning, we made our real plans in secret. The Fourteenth did not make a camp; they entered the town singly and in pairs, and were quartered among the townsfolk. Their scouts scoured the hills for a full moon, looking for the signs of the passage of men. They were clever, as I knew they were—the scouts found nothing, which told me that the hiding place was probably deep in the caves. Finally I sent out the sacrificial caravan, one with the rich prize of weapons and wine, and one I knew that the brigands could not resist. Of course, these were flawed; the swords weakened to break at the quillons, axes with handles drilled, bows that would snap at the first draw, arrows with heads that would shatter on armor. I was not minded that we give them that which they could turn against us. Furthermore, the wine was triple strength, but sweetened with honey, so that the taste would not betray the strength.

As I expected, the brigands appeared, and the scouts followed them back to their lair. Now we had them, and after a few candlemarks had passed, the Fourteenth assembled, all men at the ready and with the volunteer townsfolk making a rear-guard of pikemen, we marched on the caves.

The scouts found and silenced their outer guards, but given how cunning they had been, I did not expect to catch all of them surprised and drunk, and as I anticipated, an alarm was raised before we got to the entrance.

There was fierce fighting; first, at the fortified entrance, and then as we made our way through the rats-warren of tunnels, until all the brigands were dead or fled. The chief made his last stand at what we took to be the central cavern. There we found what was left of his loot, the stores he was putting up against the winter, what looked to be a surprisingly orderly camp. There was a handful of camp-followers, some of whom fought the Guard with the same fierceness as the bandits, some of whom cowered in fear and could scarcely be gotten sense of. One of them, however, was a captive from an earlier caravan, and she led us to a hidden chamber that held