The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [23]
He shrugged again, and added bitterly, "When I was young, of course, I knew all truths with fire-graven certainty-when I bothered to think at all beyond my loins, belly, and the point of my sword. Later, I saw I was no more than a hotheaded brawler… and then was caught in a Dwaer-blast that left me with but the shards of my memories and my thinking. Now I'm a simple soldier indeed."
He smiled at the Lady Talasorn. "I think many Aglirtans are like me. They've known so much disappointment and war that all they remember is their anger and their loss-and how to fight."
" Aglirta is the anvil upon which all hammers fall,' " Embra murmured, quoting the old Vale saying.
"I don't think the 'why' of the strife matters, particularly to those who puzzle when they should be swinging swords, and so wind up dead," Hawkril rumbled, leading his horse to join them with Craer right behind. "Our task is to defend the realm. As always. How we do that is our puzzle."
"Our task?" Tshamarra echoed. "As overdukes?"
"As overdukes," the armaragor agreed heavily. "Our work is simply put: Find whatever crisis tightens its jaws about Aglirta now, and deal with it before the next hungry trouble comes."
"My only real complaint," Craer put in, as he swung himself back into his saddle, "is that overdukes seem to spend their waking lives riding hard from crisis to another. Can't the things grow in bunches, or at least on the same bush?"
"Now, Cleverfingers," Embra said affectionately, "you'd miss these endless rides-ho ho-if ever you weren't racing wild-cloaked across the realm."
"Which brings us back to what I was yammering about before yon carters went mad," the procurer responded with something like triumph. "If discontent and lawlessness among Aglirtans are rife from one end of the Vale to the other, and we've already harvested all the bad barons and dangerous wizards we know of-hidden Phelinndar and his Dwaer excepted, I'll grant-where precisely should we now be racing to? Wouldn't it be easier to establish ourselves somewhere pleasant that's well supplied with wine, platters of good food, and willing wenches, and wait for the foes of Aglirta to come to us? We could rig up some traps or the like, to-"
"My Lord Delnbone," Tshamarra Talasorn said in a dangerously silky voice, "I hardly think I missed hearing you say 'willing wenches.' "
"Ah, I was thinking of Lord Blackgult's comfort, my lady!" Craer replied brightly and a shade too swiftly. "Truly! I-"
"Craer," the Lady Talasorn said coldly, "I can tell your lies from several hills away. I think you'll be sleeping in cooler and lonelier circumstances. This night and henceforth."
The procurer winced and looked imploringly at Tshamarra, but she turned her head away, to stare west, downriver.
"Cold place, this 'henceforth,' " Hawkril told the nearest tree trunk conversationally, into the deepening silence. "I never liked visiting it, myself."
"The less said, here and now, on any personal matter between the Lady Talasorn and the Lord Delnbone, the better," Blackgult said firmly. "At the risk of sounding like some doom-tongued old father, let us speak only of other things. I can see much crawling in Craer's future, and things growing only worse if more words are uttered now. For all our sakes, let there be fair feeling between us. Two of us were for Stornbridge, as I recall. Embra, pray give us the reasons a warcaptain might head there, rather than take the other trail."
His daughter nodded. "As Craer started to say ere his tongue rode away with him, the easily identified foes of the crown have fled, fallen into our hands, or lie well hidden. We need some honest answers as to their whereabouts, or doings, or odd happenings locally-and about how Raulin is truly regarded by the local commoners, not what self-serving tersepts and barons and priests may tell us of what the folk feel." She gave her fellow overdukes the beginnings of a smile and added, "Several of us know the Tersept of Stornbridge-well enough to take our measures of him, at least. He's a bit of a fool, weakling,