sources. The soldiers knew of no mines, or towns, or any sort of manufacture or trade.
In the center of the kingdom stood Semma Castle, with a large village clustered around it, the closest thing to a town or city that the kingdom could boast. The castle itself was home to something over a hundred nobles. Sterren had balked initially at believing that, but both Dogal and Alder had insisted it was the truth. Sterren could imagine a hundred people willingly jammed into a single building readily enough, since he had seen the crowded tenements of his native city, but he could not imagine a hundred people living like that who called themselves nobles.
Back home in Ethshar, Azrad VII surely had a hundred or more people living in his palace, but only a few could call themselves nobles; most were servants and courtiers and bureaucrats.
Alder had noticed his disbelief and had explained, “Well, that’s counting the kids, and besides, a lot of them are lesser nobility, and it’s a big castle. You’ll see.”
Sterren considered that, and Lady Kalira took this opportunity to present him with a salve for his developing saddlesores.
“It’s always a good idea to bring a healing salve when traveling,” she said, “though this wasn’t exactly the use I had in mind.”
Sterren accepted it gratefully and crawled away from the campfire somewhat in pursuit of privacy. Lady Kalira discreetly turned away, and the Ethsharite slid down his breeches and applied the ointment liberally. That done, he rejoined the others. He had just begun to inquire about the army he was supposed to command when Lady Kalira announced it was time to shut up and sleep.
Sterren obliged, leaving military matters for the morning.
CHAPTER 4
They spotted the castle’s central tower by midmorning of the third day, scarcely an hour after they had buried the ashes of their breakfast fire and set out again. Sterren had to admit that it looked like a big castle, as Alder had said.
At that point they had just begun to pass farms, rather than open plain, compact yellow houses surrounded by small stands of fruit trees, patches of tall corn, and miscellaneous livestock grazing the native grass down to stubble. The various inhabitants of these establishments, intent on their own concerns of herding or cultivation or hauling water, invariably ignored the travelers.
The plain was no longer quite so smooth and flat as it had been for most of the journey; the ground they traversed had acquired something of a roll, though it was still far from hilly.
Sterren had never gotten around to asking much about the army, but he had learned that Semma was roughly triangular, bounded on the southeast by the desert that stretched to the edge of the World, on the north by the relatively large and powerful kingdom of Ksinallion, and on the west by Ophkar. Semma had fought several wars against each of her neighbors over the last two or three centuries, particularly Ksinallion, but under the Seventh and Eighth Warlords had stayed at peace for an amazingly long time. Alder and Dogal did not remember any of the wars themselves, but Alder’s maternal grandfather had fought against Ksinallion in the Sixth Ksinallionese War, about fifty years ago. Sterren was still patiently listening to tales of ancestral bravery when the castle came into view.
Not long after that a cloud of dust appeared ahead of them and grew until a dozen horsemen emerged from it. Sterren was worried, but the three Semmans seemed very pleased by this welcoming committee.
The horsemen were all large, dark-skinned men dressed much like Alder and Dogal, riding horses in red and gold trappings, and Lady Kalira announced that this was an honor guard, sent to escort the newfound warlord to the castle.
Sterren was relieved to discover, when the party came to a halt a few paces away, that this was correct. The government had not been overthrown since Lady Kalira’s departure.
The conversation between his original escort and the new arrivals was too fast for him to follow, so Sterren simply sat astride his horse until it was over.
The newcomers wheeled about and formed up into a column around Sterren, Lady Kalira, and the two soldiers, and waited.
Sterren looked about, puzzled, and saw Lady Kalira gesturing with her head. It dawned on him that he was in command; this guard was in his honor, and they were waiting for him to start.
Reluctantly, he urged his mount forward, and the entire party rode on toward the castle.
Sterren found his inquiries about Semma’s army inhibited by the presence of a dozen uniformed strangers. He shrugged and accepted the situation. After all, he would be able to see for himself, soon enough, just how matters stood. He rode on in dignified silence, up the dusty road and into the village that surrounded the castle.
The travelers were greeted at the castle gate by a ragged fanfare of trumpets, at least one trumpeter was always a fraction behind the others, and an occasional sour note could be heard, but in general it was an impressive and gratifying experience for Sterren. He had heard far better, far more stirring music played in the Arena, or in the overlord’s occasional parades, or even by impromptu street bands, back in Ethshar, but never before had he heard more than a brief cheer in his own honor. He counted a dozen trumpeters spaced along the ramparts; impressed, he tried to sit up a little straighter on his horse, to live up to his role.
Certainly, being a warlord had its positive aspects; as long as he could avoid any actual wars, he thought it might be enjoyable. Unfortunately, he doubted he would be able to avoid wars; the Small Kingdoms were notorious for constantly going to war over stupid little disputes.
On the other hand. Alder and Dogal had said that Semma had been at peace for more than forty years. Maybe that peace would last.
Or maybe a war was overdue. He simply didn’t know anything about the situation.
It was time, however, to start learning as much as he could, as quickly as he could. With that in mind, even as he tried to ride with dignity and pride, and to look the part of a warlord despite his shabby, travel-worn clothes, he was studying everything in sight.
The castle stood upon a slight rise, the closest thing to a hill that Sterren had seen since leaving Akalla; Sterren could not tell if the little plateau, standing eight or ten feet above the plain, was natural or man-made, but it was certainly not new, in either case. Surrounding the castle and its raised base were scattered two or three dozen houses and shops, all the same dull yellow as the outlying farmhouses, all built of some substance Sterren had never seen before and could not identify, all with thick walls and only a few heavily shuttered windows. Gaily colored awnings shielded most of the doorways and served as open-air shops; there was no single market square, just a small plaza at the castle gate, and the streets were rather haphazard. All the ground in the castle’s vicinity was dry, hard-packed bare dirt, trampled smooth and even, and the houses and shops were not arranged in clear, sharp streets, but just ragged lines that wiggled every which way.
Outside the village in any direction Sterren could see scattered farmhouses, built in the same way as the village’s structures, strewn unevenly across the plain.
The castle itself was a stark contrast to these humble dwellings; it was an immense and forbidding structure built of dark red stone. An outer wall topped with iron-braced battlements stood more than fifteen feet high, with no opening anywhere in it save the gate by which Sterren’s little party entered.
As they passed through this portal, Sterren saw that the wall was roughly twenty feet thick and the gateway equipped with three sets of heavy doors as well as a spiked portcullis and openings overhead through which assaults might be made on anyone trying to enter uninvited.
It was not, perhaps, as overwhelming a piece of engineering and defense technology as Ethshar’s city walls and gate towers, but it had its own grim power, certainly. Sterren was quite sure that he would not care to try to pass that wall and gate without a very clear invitation.
Of course, his escort, now numbering fifteen in all, clearly constituted an invitation.
The castle within that outer wall was vaguely pyramidal in its overall shape. Low wings, a mere two stories in height, stretched out to either side of the central mass, which stood some six stories, and was in turn topped by a great central tower whose peak was, Sterren judged, fully a hundred feet from the ground upon which
