The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [74]
Baron Loushoond shrugged and sat, stiff and clumsy. Aye, he must be drunk, though whatever it was he'd imbibed didn't have the reek of ale or some other throatslakes. "The lances of Loushoond are utterly loyal to me," he said abruptly, "but I can see no peaceable pretext for whelming them and marching them up the Vale unless it is to attend Snowsar's recoronation-and then only if he invites us all to come in armed array, or if other barons choose to bring their war-might."
The Tersept of Sart smiled tightly. "I think you see things very much as I do in this," he said, "but I also know that the fields of Loushoond yield much provender for us all, and have done so for many a year-wherefore trees are regrettably few in your fair land."
Somewhere dark, where the image of two men sitting in a tomb glimmered in a pool that glowed, a woman stiffened and hissed, "Trees?"
She turned swiftly to seek guidance, disturbing the two dangling serpents that were her only garb. Their fangs tightened on the tips of her breasts, and fresh streams of blood, mixed with the purple foam of their spittle, ran down her flesh. She shivered, her eyes half-closing.
"Lose yourself in venom-dreams later, Sssister," the serpent-headed man said sharply. "This is more important than even the fool of Sart believes. Have our good puppet now speak thus…"
The baron's brow wrinkled. Again his response came very slowly. "This is so," he said, in tones of obvious puzzlement. "We buy barges of firewood every harvesttide."
"And would it not save Loushoond much coin if its strong warriors could fell and cut wood freely?"
The baron frowned. "It would-but that entails war with the lands around, to gain forest ground… and I count the spilled blood of my armaragors and the mistrust of all my neighbors as a high price indeed, not a road to 'free' wood."
The Smiling Wolf of Sart held up a hand. "What if," he purred, "the far-seeing and bold Baron of Loushoond remembered the news of wild battles in the ruins of Indraevyn, and thought not of magical Stones or ruling kingdoms, but instead of… miles upon miles of trees for the taking?"
The baron peered along the benches at the tersept. "Send men with felling-axes on their shoulders walking upriver, through all the baronies of the Vale? An invading army just strolling through? How happily d'you think our fellow barons and tersepts will look upon that?"
The tersept shook his head, still smiling. "What if they went by another way?"
Baron Loushoond frowned again. "What, up into the Wildrocks and stumbling through the hills? Some barons would still see that as invasion-and I'd lose scores of men with broken legs and necks, with more of them lost and still more gone outlaw or stabbed by outlaws! Three above! Are these idiocies the 'schemes that cannot fail' your wizard's message promised, Sart?"
Tersept Glarsimber's smile never wavered. "Barges float firewood down to you every year-and you sell the bargemen crockery and ground-nuts and cheese to take back with them, do you not?"
"Aye, of course, but what-"
"You've many lances and strong men to wield them, do you not?"
"Aye, and wha-"
"Well, what are lances but long poles? The bargemen of Adeln and Brostos pole their barges back home each year; what's to stop Loushoond sending a barge or six all the way to the Loaurimm? From whence, when they're done cutting and-at just about the time of oh, say, the glorious recrowning-have grown restless to don armor and swing swords again, it's but an easy drift downriver to Flowfoam?"
A baronial jaw dropped, and its owner sat blinking at the Tersept of Sart for long moments, goggling like a fish out of the Silverflow.
A room away-in the dark rear chamber of the tomb, where he sat slumped-a small, slender man in tattered leathers shook his head in disgust at this treason. He was still too weak to move, even if he'd dared to, too wracked with pain to trust his limbs… and still bewildered at being snatched from a wellhouse acrawl with battle-magic to this place. Whoever it was who enjoyed hurling Craer Delnbone up and down Aglirta