A Hero's justice

born into wealth if not outright nobility, considered this their due-daily tribute in the form of terror. But Tol had chosen the life of a soldier because it promised more than endless years grubbing in the dirt, herding recalcitrant pigs, and praying daily to the gods for sun and rain, but not too much of either. He’d led a full life, earned loyal friends, and loved an intelligent, beautiful woman. The time had come to pay for those past pleasures and glories.

Forty paces away from his waiting comrades he found a waist-high stone pedestal and climbed on it. An alabaster disk was inset in its top. From this spot, when the square was clear, one could mark the passage of Solin through the seasons.

Those immediately around him fell silent and regarded him uncertainly. The quiet spread through the square, with neighbor nudging neighbor and gesturing at the warrior standing atop the Solin pedestal. Tol waited until the silence was complete, then spoke.

“People, listen to me! I am-” An instant’s thought, then-“Tol of Juramona. I bring you good news. The tribes who ravaged your homes have been defeated!”

There was no response. A baby began to cry. Several people coughed.

“You can go home! The nomad invaders are gone!”

The baby continued to howl. There were more coughs. A woman called out, “We ain’t got no home! They burned it!”

“You can build another!” Tol replied. “But you must leave the city! It’s too crowded for you to remain!” He was amazed disease hadn’t broken out among the refugees already.

“You drivin’ us out, m’lord?” asked a man standing nearby.

Exasperation sharpened Tol’s voice. “No! I’m telling you, you can leave! The nomads are driven out.”

“So it’s safe?”

Tol’s impatience evaporated. He answered honestly. “No, it’s not.”

The crowd began to mutter, confused and unhappy. Tol raised his voice again, saying, “But when were you ever safe? Were you safe when cruel warlords ruled over you, and a ruthless, mad emperor ruled them? You’ve never been safe, but the nomads have been defeated, and you must leave Caergoth. Here, there is only poverty and illness!”

Unfortunately, the wider import of his words was lost.

“The emperor is mad?”

“We was never safe? I thought the city wall was supposed to keep us safe.”

“I told ya’ they’d come to drive us out, and here they are!”

“This emperor is mad, too?”

“Let’s get out ’fore they attack us!”

Some refugees grabbed their meager possessions and set out for the nearest gate. Others argued whether to stay or go. These grew so heated that Tol was jostled off the platform.

When he disappeared into the crowd, Zanpolo and his captains spurred their mounts forward. They separated Tol from the mob and ushered him back to his waiting people.

Zanpolo’s bearded face wore a smile. “Clever stratagem, my lord! You’ve sowed the seeds of a riot,” he said. “It will tie up Wornoth’s loyal troops!”

Tol didn’t bother answering. He hadn’t meant to start a riot. He’d hoped to make the people understand they should reclaim their lives and not blindly follow the whims of emperors, warlords, or any of their lackeys. But the hopeless, helpless squatters didn’t see him as “Tol of Juramona,” born one of them. To them, he was Lord Tolandruth, Rider of the Great Horde, oppressor and protector. That he could be interested in their well-being was as unfathomable to them as the workings of the celestial map on which they squatted.

The noise around him quickly grew deafening. The unrest Tol had unintentionally incited radiated outward, spreading from the Starwalk through the clogged streets, to the next square, and the next.

“What did I tell you?” Miya shouted above the chaos. “When Husband acts, the world trembles!”

“This is crazy!” Tol protested. “I told them to go home and live for themselves. They think I threatened them!”

Tylocost said, “You did threaten them. You told them they weren’t safe. Safety was the one lie they all believed in.”

Zanpolo bawled orders at his men. Tol, feeling stunned and stupid, mounted his horse.

They headed for the citadel, sited atop the tallest hill in the city. Zanpolo’s hordes banged their sword hilts against their armored chests. The ominous sound frightened the refugees and they shrank from the column of fighting men. The hordes cleaved through the crowd without bloodshed, as Riders swatted slow-moving squatters, or booted them aside.

At the Great Square of Ackal Dermount, near the center of the city, they encountered their first serious opposition. The square seethed with panicked refugees, and at the opposite end of the plaza were several hundred horsemen in the funereal white and silver livery of the Governor’s Own Guard. Their sabers were out.

“Here’s where we cleave a few skulls,” Zanpolo said.

“Can we try persuasion?” asked Tol.

“Not with them, my lord. They take Wornoth’s coin, even as the Lord Governor takes the emperor’s. They’ll fight.”

Tol knew he was right. “Give quarter to any who ask for it, but we must reach the citadel before Wornoth seals himself inside.”

Zanpolo rallied his own horde, the Iron Falcons, with a roar that made Tol’s hair stand on end. With an answering bellow, the Riders raised their sabers high, then extended them at arm’s length. Zanpolo called for a point charge. In the tight confines of Caergoth’s streets, there wasn’t room for a full-tilt attack.

The Iron Falcons bolted across the Great Square. On their flanks, the Lightning Riders and the Bronzehearts surged forward. The Juramona Militia broke out of marching order and formed a wall of shields around those on foot. Tol rode with Zanpolo.

Innocent townsfolk and terrified refugees raced out of the way of Zanpolo’s charge. Some did not make it, and were trampled.

The Governor’s Own men were confused. They thought Zanpolo’s attack was directed at the refugees choking the Great Square. Their hesitation lasted only briefly, but it was long enough. If they had withdrawn immediately up the narrower side streets, Zanpolo’s thrust would have been less effective. Instead, they took the full brunt of the Iron Falcons’ charge.

Tol was bent low over his horse’s neck, Number Six extended. A guardsman tried to deflect his point with the small iron buckler strapped to his left forearm. Dwarf-forged steel pierced the buckler and, propelled by Tol’s strength and the horse’s speed, drove on through with only a momentary scrape of resistance. As their horses collided, Number Six buried half its length through the man’s neck. Tol recovered, and the guardsman slid lifeless to the ground.

After the initial contact, a brisk, slashing battle followed. The weight and power of the Falcons drove the Governor’s Own men back to the walls of the House of Luin, the hall of the Red Robe Order in Caergoth. Stubbornly, the governor’s men fought on.

“We can’t spend all afternoon at this!” Tol shouted at Zanpolo. “Keep going here-I’ll take my footmen on!”

“Can you really get through with that lot?” said Zanpolo, with a Rider’s traditional disdain for foot soldiers.

“They got me here, didn’t they?”

Tol broke off and rode back to his Juramonans, standing at the other end of the Great Square. All the civilians had fled and he made quick time across the empty plaza, sheathing his saber as he arrived.

Tol and the militia would head for the palace, with Zala leading the way. Her father, Voyarunta, and the other wounded would remain behind with the Dom-shu men. Miya, armed with spear and shield borrowed from a Dom- shu warrior, stood ready to go with Tol.

He gave her a surprised look, and she shrugged. “If you get yourself killed and I’m not there, Sister will skin me.”

Tol’s lips twitched at her reasoning, but he addressed himself to Queen Casberry, asking her to remain behind also.