The villagers hustled to release the captives. Looking entirely abashed, Ernico clambered up on the pile of firewood to cut free Zaranda's hands.
'We never meant to hurt you,' he muttered.
'I'm sure that would have been a great comfort had you got the bonfire lit.'
She stepped down the pile of wood as regally as a queen descending from her throne. Chenowyn came hurtling out of the darkness, red hair streaming, and caught Zaranda in a fearful embrace.
'Oh, Zaranda!' she sobbed. 'I was so scared. You wouldn't really have let them burn you, would you?'
Zaranda hugged her and kissed her head. Then she turned and gestured with one hand.
The torch, which Moofar had somehow managed to hang on to through thick and thin, went out. A beat, and then the bonfire blazed up, untenanted, flames reaching high as the old oak's top.
'No,' she said.
'What have we here?' Farlorn Half-Elven asked with a sardonic lift of his eyebrows. 'A proclamation?'
'So it would appear,' said Zaranda, sitting cross-legged in the oak tree's shade. She held up the papyrus the little village girl had found nailed to a sweet-chest-nut tree on the Sulduskoon's bank, four furlongs up the broad, slow river. It was a benchmark of the burgeoning Star Protective Company's success in the region that a child so young could venture so far from the village. Although in truth, had the girl not made so momentous a discovery, she likely would have faced a spanking for straying such a distance without the escort of a brother or sister old enough to wield a spear-which would have been purchased with wealth gained from the revived trade among villages in the limited area under Star's sway.
It was a sleepy-warm noonday in the midst of the month Eleasias, commonly called Highsun. In fact, most of the two-score trainees under instruction at the moment would already be bedded down under shade for their midday naps had the little girl not run into the village shouting and waving her discovery. Siestas were not a luxury Zaranda Star could indulge in. Midday break was time for her, between bites of lunch, to continue instructing Chenowyn. And likewise Shield of Innocence, who had become her apprentice in matters military.
She finished chewing a mouthful of apple and read aloud: ' 'Be It Known By These Presents-' This is really spelled abominably, but I'll spare you the details. 'Known by These Presents that in the interests of maintaining the Safety and Welfare of the Nation of Tethyr, acting under the authority of the city council of Zazesspur, Baron Lutwill, Ruler of These Lands, Decrees that the Taxes owed by the Inhabitants of these same Lands, and due one Week hence, shall herewith be Doubled.''
The villagers growled. Farlorn's look was a superior smirk, Stillhawk's stern, and Shield sat beside Zaranda thrее a stone statue-which was approximately how the three would've greeted news that Zaranda had been made Queen of Faerun, or that a rogue planet was about to smack into Toril. Chen lurked on the outskirts, sitting in the shade of an eave and drawing magic symbols in the dust with a twig, waiting for all this boring military talk to be done so her time could begin. Zaranda lowered the parchment. 'It goes on in that vein, if anybody need hear more.'
'What authority has the Zazesspurian city council?' burst out Janafar, a young woman trainee from the village of Dunod two leagues inland from Tweyar. Seated near Zaranda, she was small of stature and trim, but broad shouldered and muscular withal, rather like a compressed version of Zaranda herself. Her honey-colored hair was restrained by a red bandanna. She was quickly becoming adept with spear and short sword, and displayed a positive genius for small-unit tactics.
'The same as anyone,' Zaranda said. 'All 'authority', consists in the expectation that, if they order you to bend your necks, you'll bend them.'
' 'The Nation of Tethyr,'' quoted Byador, shaking his dark, shaggy head. He hailed from Masamont, biggest and most prosperous settlement in the vicinity. His long frame was already rangily powerful, though still gawky with adolescence. He had grown up shooting a short bow, and under Stillhawk's tutelage was learning to handle-and hit targets with-a powerful longbow brought from the forest of Tethir by a Star-escorted caravan. 'It's a long time since we heard that.'
'I think we're getting a glimpse at the pretensions of Baron Hardisty,' Zaranda said, 'not to mention his intentions. Now, what can you tell me of this Baron Lutwill?'
Byador snarled and spat. 'Loot-well, we call him. He's a bandit and nothing more. But a powerful one, with a hundred men-at-arms to serve him, secure behind stone walls in a castle whose keep throws its foul shadow across Masamont.'
Zaranda looked around at her audience, which now included most of her trainees, as well as no few villagers drawn from their naps by the commotion. Her current class, which included Ernico, Fiora, Rudigar, and Bord from Tweyar, comprised not recruits but cadre, the likeliest youths from the villages that had made compact with Star, who would serve as nuclei for other self-defense forces as the protective company began to expand across Tethyr. While it was not part of their regular curriculum, more and more of them had begun to forgo their own siestas to sit in on the lessons Zaranda gave Shield.
The orog was frankly stupid. Yet Zaranda found him a near-ideal student because he persisted doggedly until he had each and every bit of learning cemented firmly in his mind, and he had no scruples about asking questions when he did not understand-and continuing to question until he understood. Routinely, he showed up Zaranda's young human pupils, much more mentally agile though they were, by dint of ironclad study habits and an innate sense that enabled him to grasp the core wisdom of Zaranda's teaching. He set such a magnificent example that Zaranda suspected the siesta sessions had become the most effective part of the whole training program.
'What will you do about this, then?' she asked, wav-ing the parchment.
Trainees and villagers passed a glance around. Zaranda saw shoulders slump, as if her audience were deflating en masse.
'Pay, I guess,' Ernico said. 'We always have before.'
'Why?' Fiora asked, cheeks flushing with anger. 'What are we training for, if not to stand up to thieves?' 'Not to get ourselves massacred by trained soldiers with shields, helmets, and mail hauberks,' said Byador. 'Not to mention men with crossbows shooting us down from the castle walls.'
Standing on the sidelines, Balmeric emitted a gravel-in-a-pail chuckle. 'Wise lad,' he said. 'You'd shatter like a glass jug thrown against a wall, pitting yourselves against regulars.'
Zaranda cast him a dangerous look. Janafar leapt to her feet. 'You can bend your necks to councils, keeps, and crossbows if you like!' she declared. 'I at least want to see this castle before I give up all I've worked for.'
'Now you're thinking,' Zaranda said, nodding serenely. 'When in doubt, reconnoiter. When you don't think there's doubt, reconnoiter anyway-you save a lot of unpleasant surprises that way.'
She stood up, dusting off the seat of her trousers, and looked to the youth from Masamont. 'Now, did I hear you say… crossbows?'
20
'There it is,' whispered Byador-unnecessarily, since the castle of Baron Lutwill was rather hard to miss.
Lying on her belly in the midst of a thicket of aromatic scrub that did little to keep the afternoon sun from prickling her back through her linen tunic, Zaranda surveyed the scene. Masamont was a collection of a hundred buildings or more, the largest and most central of which were built of stone, with peaked red tile roofs like the coastal towns. Like most of inland Tethyr, the surrounding countryside was flat. Fields green with the long summer's second crops, beginning to fill out, broke up the landscape, interspersed with lines of shade from windbreak trees planted along irrigation ditches and neat orchards of half-ripened fruit.
However, flat did not mean entirely lacking relief, like a gaming table in the parlor of a Cormyrean lord; the thicket in which Zaranda and her small band lay hidden topped a slight rise backed by a creek. The prominence from which the castle rose, three furlongs away, was too symmetrical to be nature's work. Zaranda guessed it was an artificial mound, a motte, built at some unguessable remove in Tethyr's lengthy past to provide better outlook and tactical advantage for whatever fortification was first raised upon it.
The manor itself was a bailey, pitched rooftops peeking over a twelve-foot dressed-stone wall, and a stone keep perhaps four stories tall sticking up from the center of it. 'You're right,' Janafar breathed to Byador. 'It's a fortress.'
