Lord of the Silent Kingdom Read Free Page A

and lust of mortal men.
    ***
    TWO DOZEN SOLDIERS DEMONSTRATED SOUTH OF CARON ande Lette, drawing the attention of the mercenaries. Bishop Farfog moved to confront them, contemptuous of their numbers.
    The villains who remained with him were not bright enough to worry about a handful of men who seemed determined to bait them.
    The Bishop himself did not see that — though he was supposed to think these few wanted to lead him into a trap. Count Raymone Garete’s clever strategy nearly foundered because his enemy was too stupid to be suspicious.
    Inertia and laziness kept the Grolsachers from charging. Plus a dim fear that the defenders of Caron ande Lette, all twenty-two, might fall on them from behind.
    While the few demonstrated and the Raults waited, Count Raymone’s troops slipped past, out of sight, to the west, taking care to raise no dust. A few passed to the east, too, filtering through the trees along the river’s edge. The demonstrators withdrew. The Grolsachers resumed taunting the besieged and dodging the occasional arrow.
    The demonstrators reappeared next morning. With two hundred friends. When some mercenaries considered following the example of friends smart enough to take off earlier, they discovered Connecten companies behind them. They watched their pathetic camp be overrun.
    There was not much of a fight. The Grolsachers scattered, suffering their casualties on the run.
    The Connectens only pursued those who did not flee in the direction they wanted. Back along the river, toward home. Where they found themselves ambushed, pinned down by archers, then set upon by heavy infantry.
    That left the river. The Connectens let them be once they entered the water.
    Bishop Farfog was one of the few who swam well enough to reach the far bank. Having abandoned his armor and plunder.
    Brother Candle arrived while Count Raymone’s men were burying the mercenary dead, some of whom had not yet stopped breathing. They had no need to lay down any of their own. The rabble had scattered before the Connectens suffered any damage.
    The Perfect Master saw no one who had died of wounds from the front. Many looked like they had been murdered after their capture. Few prisoners had been retained.
    Which fit Count Raymone’s character. The Count believed that the best way to discourage attacks on the Connec was to obliterate anyone inclined to attack, leaving the corpses to the scavengers.
    Brock Rault and his brothers were behind what courtesy was being shown the fallen.
    The Perfect Master walked the killing fields in sadness. The mercenaries, refugees and Grolsachers alike, were the poorest of the poor. The dead often even lacked weapons worth looting. They had counted on arming themselves with weapons taken from their victims.
    Nor was that new. Grolsach in particular produced poor, would-be killers the way Ormienden produced wines and the End of Connec generated songs, poetry, paintings, and marvelous tapestries.
    Grolsachers led by Adolf Black had joined the illfated Arnhander incursion that ended with the Black Mountain Massacre. Two years before that, thousands of Grolsachers, again in service to Arnhand, perished in that kingdom’s defeat at Themes, when the King of Arnhand tried to enforce his dubious rights in Tramaine.
    Brother Candle joined Brock Rault and his siblings, Booth, Socia, and Thurm. Brock and Booth were thoughtful, Thurm unsettled. Socia was totally bloodthirsty. She wanted to put heads on poles facing the Grolsach border.
    Brother Candle observed, “The human species has an attention span like that of a bluebottle.” Flies became more numerous by the hour. Had Brother Candle entertained any strain of paganism he might have recalled that pre-Chaldarean Instrumentality known as Lord of Flies, Lord of Maggots, Prince of Ravens, or Rook. Rook was the last god who visited battlefields. He followed Ordnan, god of battles, Death, and Hilt, or the Choosers of the Slain. The latter collected the greatest