of you who drew your weapons. You will not violate the ancient rules of parley in my hall.” Morag grinned again at that, but the harmach turned and pointed at him next. “And you, Morag, be glad that you speak under a flag of truce. You will not be killed for what you say, but if you insult me in my own hall, you will be driven from my door with nothing but your bare hands to take back to your master.”
The old chief’s grin faded to a sour frown. “If you dishonor me, human, you dishonor my king.”
“If I decide that your king means to march against me no matter what I do, then I see no reason why I should concern myself with his honor,” Grigor retorted.
“As you say, then,” Morag growled. “So what is your answer, Chief of Hulburg? Will you render tribute or will you choose war?”
The harmach leaned on his cane and studied the orc for a time. Then he sighed. “I must weigh your words, Morag. I will give you my answer soon. Now go.”
The gray-haired chief snorted. “King Mhurren said that humans can decide nothing without endless talk. He told me to grant you three days. If you do not give me an answer by sunset of the third day, I will tell Mhurren that you have chosen war. I go to wait at my camp.” He turned slowly, contemptuously turning his back on the harmach and striding back to the door. His escort of warriors followed, snarling at anyone who came too close.
In a few moments the Bloody Skull emissary was gone, and the Shieldsworn pushed the heavy doors of the hall closed with a resounding boom.
Harmach Grigor gazed after the orc messengers. Then he sighed and sagged back down into his seat. Quietly he said, “Well, you’ve all heard Mhurren’s demand. What say you?”
“The Bloody Skulls are blustering,” Maroth Marstel said at once. “They have never threatened us in the past. Their keep is more than a hundred miles from here. I say that they hope to extort a kingly ransom from us by simply baring their filthy fangs and snarling. Well, I for one am not impressed!”
Ravenscar, the master mage, cleared his throat and looked to Kara. “Lady Kara, you know the tribes of Thar as well as any. Is Morag telling the truth about Bloody Skull numbers?”
“He could be. I would guess that they could muster about two thousand warriors from their various strongholds, but if they managed to subjugate some of the nearby tribes and add their numbers to their own… yes, it could be close to four thousand. But they wouldn’t all get along with each other.”
“What of his words about Glister?” the mage asked. “Have the Bloody Skulls sacked it?”
“They may have,” Kara answered. “Yesterday a man from Glister came into town with his wife and children. They fled Glister seven days ago because they’d seen orc scouts and marauders in great numbers, and they had word that orcs were marching against the town. What might have befallen Glister after they fled, I can’t say. But I’ll have scouts on fast horses sent out within the hour to see.”
The High Magistrate, Theron Nimstar, leaned forward to look at Kara. He was a stout man with a heavy beard of rusty gray, thoughtful and deliberate in his words. “Assume that Morag is telling the truth. Can the Shieldsworn defend Hulburg against so large a horde?”
“No, my lord.” Kara saw the sharp shock in the man’s face and let it sink in for a moment. “We could defend Griffonwatch and Daggergard Tower and shelter hundreds of townsfolk within their walls. I feel confident that we could withstand a siege of months. But the town itself would belong to the Bloody Skulls, and most of our people would have to flee, since we wouldn’t have space for them within our castles.”
“What if you added the armsmen belonging to the Merchant Council to the Shieldsworn?” the old magistrate asked. “Would that help?”
“Certainly,” Kara replied. “I think Morag included those when he said that we could muster six hundred, because that’s three times the number of Shieldsworn in the harmach’s service. But we’d still have to meet them in the open field to keep them away from the town, and I can’t promise you that we’d win such a battle-if Morag was truthful about the Bloody Skulls’ numbers.”
The mage Ravenscar looked around the table. “If we decide not to fight, can we actually meet the tribute demand?”
“The tribute he demands is beyond the Tower’s purse,” Keeper Wulreth said in a quavering voice. “One time, perhaps, we could gather the gold, livestock, and arms. But it would ruin us, and it would be years before we could manage another such ransom.”
“And what is the cost to the Tower of sending one hundred people into thralldom?” Kara asked sharply. “Whose daughters do you intend to provide as ‘wives’ to the Bloody Skulls?”
“The Bloody Skulls likely don’t care where their slaves come from,” Sergen said thoughtfully. “No Hulburgan need become an orc’s thrall when there are slave markets in other cities that could meet our need.”
“Which would also be a substantial expense,” Lord Assayer Goldhead grunted. “It would cost thousands of gold crowns to purchase so many slaves in Melvaunt or Mulmaster.”
“How is it better to condemn some other unfortunate souls to drudgery and death in the Bloody Skulls’ hands?” Kara demanded. “At one stroke you’d have us become the most vile slave merchants in the Moonsea!”
“I will have no more talk of this,” Harmach Grigor said firmly. “My father decreed that no slave would be taken or sold in Hulburg, and I will not be the harmach to reverse his law. We will buy no slaves to send to the orcs.”
“Then you must fight, or you must send one hundred of your own to become thralls,” Darsi Veruna coolly observed. “I suppose you might try to negotiate with Mhurren and see if he can be persuaded to accept a lesser tribute. But I suspect that he is not inclined to bargain with you, Lord Grigor.”
Silence fell over the great hall. The harmach looked down at his lap, his brow furrowed in thought. Finally he shook his head and slowly stood. “We all must think on this more,” he said. “Keeper Wulreth, prepare an exact accounting to see if we could possibly meet the demand. Kara, send out your riders. I want to know if Glister has been sacked-and if it has, there may be refugees abroad in Thar who are trying to find their way to safety in our lands. And I want to know where the Bloody Skull horde is, and its true numbers.”
“Yes, Harmach Grigor,” Kara answered. “I’ll see to it now.” She rose with a jingling of mail, bowed to her uncle, and headed for the door. As she left, she heard the arguing begin again.
THIRTEEN
24 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One
Geran and Hamil rode out from Rosestone Abbey two hours after sunrise. The morning was dank and gray, but the bitter cold of the previous night had passed in the dark hours before dawn. It was wet and windy on the Highfells, but there was no sign of the grim specters that had dogged their heels the night before.
They rode for most of the morning in silence, heading westward from the abbey. The city of Thentia stood a little less than fifty miles off in that direction, and the two travelers soon found their way onto a rough, lightly traveled trail between Hulburg and Thentia that meandered past Rosestone. Most traffic between the two cities went by sea or followed the so-called Ruined Way closer to the coast, which was relatively level and wide enough for cart traffic. Geran had come by the abbey’s path once or twice as a young man, but he’d never followed it all the way to Thentia.
A few miles from the abbey, the trail started to climb along the bare shoulders of brown, sere hills, some of the highest prominences to be found in the Highfells. Geran began to watch the trailside more carefully for the landmark the Initiate Mother had told him about, and soon he found it-the old stone foundations of a long-vanished watchtower.
“We turn here,” he told Hamil.
The halfling glanced at the old ruins. “Who put a tower here?” he wondered.
“Mother Mara said that this old path used to be an important road of old Thentur. I suppose it fell into disuse when war wrecked the kingdom and Hulburg-the old city, that is-was destroyed.” Geran turned his mount uphill and left the path, picking his way toward the bare stony hilltop. “It shouldn’t be far now.”
There was a very faint track above the old trail. It wound higher up the hillside. Geran supposed that the view over the moorlands would have been spectacular on a clear day, but as the weather was overcast, the hilltop was shrouded in blowing mist. They crossed over a shallow saddle, and there on the south-facing slope of the hill stood
