A coward’s revenge

Kojor's belly was swollen and stiff, its legs even stiffer, dead as the block of wood on which it lay. Raina let out a scream and ran towards her dog, intent on holding it one last time but Hyrman restrained her.

"You can't touch it, my lady," the hunter said. "We don't know how long it's been dead. Or if the skin has been laced with the poison."

"Poison?" Raina asked, not daring to believe it.

Hyrman nodded. "Yes, my lady. I have seen such signs before."

"Who would do such a thing?" Raina wept.

"I can't say, my lady. Definitely some coward. This is a coward's revenge."

"Revenge? Revenge for what?"

"For Ervin, my lady," Hyrman said. "He was very popular. There are many who hold you responsible for his death."

"I didn't kill him," Raina protested.

"I know, my lady," Hyrman agreed. "But Ervin was a soldier. He was found drunk and asleep on duty. That is a death penalty offense. His Lordship couldn't do otherwise. The men don't fault him."

"But they fault me?" Raina asked.

"There are those that do, my lady."

"Why?"

"There are whispers that it was you who got Ervin drunk, my lady. That you gave him the wine and that you spiked it with a potion to render him unconscious."

Raina's heart quickened but she kept the fear out of her voice. "Who is saying this?"

"I do not know the source of the rumor, my lady. Everyone has heard it but I don't know who started it."

Raina tried to remain calm but she could feel shivers deep in her belly. "Why kill my dog? Why not come after me?"

"Like I said, my lady: a coward's revenge."

"Where would someone get such a poison?" Raina asked.

"My stores, my lady. Someone took quite a bit of it yesterday while we were all at the wedding. I wager that is when your dog was poisoned."

"Why would you have poison in your stores, Hyrman?"

"We use it on wolves, my lady. That's how I can identify the symptoms. Now that the weather is turning, wolves are coming down from the north in ever greater numbers. There isn't enough game in the woods so they hunt our sheep. We can't kill them fast enough."

"And this poison. Can it kill people?"

"It can, my lady. But I doubt if a craven that poisons dogs has the guts to come after you."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Raina asked, trying and failing to hide the tremor in her voice.

"I have the antidote, my lady. I have accidentally poisoned myself once or twice. The poison leaves a residue on the hands. I will have Melilla bring you the antidote. I will go to His Lordship myself and have him start an inquest to find the culprit. I just wanted to tell you first."

"No," Raina said flatly.

"No?" Hyrman asked.

"Yes," Raina said. "I don't want my father involved. If he starts brutalizing the men, they will just hate me more. I don't want to seem shaken by this and I don't want word getting out."

"Is that wise, my lady?"

"I don't know," Raina admitted. She was terrified out of her mind. "Whoever did this wanted to scare me. I don't want him thinking he has succeeded. Can you keep this quiet? How many people know about this?"

"Just me, my lady," Hyrman said. "I found the dog dead last night after the wedding. I haven't told anyone else."

"Can you keep it that way, please?"

"Of course, my lady. I will see to it that it's discreetly buried."

"Thank you, Hyrman. And the antidote?"

"Aida's Serum. A couple of apothecaries in Lamania and Deltopolis stock it. I don't know if you can find it closer to here. I will give you some of mine to use before you can buy yours."

"How do I know I have been poisoned?"

"Your stomach rumbles and bloats. It feels like a stone. You belch and fart at the same time. Very stinky farts. This usually happens about an hour after a meal. The first thing you should do is force yourself to vomit. This is usually enough but you should take the antidote just to be sure."

Raina squeezed the hunter's hand. "Thank you, Hyrman."

Hyrman favored her with a rare smile. "I live to serve, my lady."

Raina spent a restless ten days at home. Food lost its taste, the sun seemed duller, and even her husband seemed less annoying despite his best efforts to the contrary. She missed her dearly departed dog. She had friends but she had never loved any as she did Kojor.

When the day came for Sir Willarn to depart Glory Point, everyone was surprised by Raina's eagerness to accompany him. He was leaving on a military expedition, not a romantic stroll.

While the Lamanbhurgs had been busy fighting their fellow Rhexians up north, a Reendeni border lord had used their distraction to seize First Fork, the southernmost of the six Lamanbhurg castles.

First Fork was the castle Raina and Robyr were set to live in after they got married. Now Sir Willarn was the man Raina would share the castle with. But he had to take it back from the Reendeni who held it first.

Raina could have waited at Glory Point until First Fork was taken and then ridden south to join her husband but she couldn't bear staying at the castle one more day than she had to.

Someone at Glory Point had poisoned her dog. That someone could try to poison her too. Raina wanted to get as far away from that someone as she could.

"I want to be with my husband," Raina said when her mother told her a siege camp was no place for a lady.

"Newlyweds," Lady Carla said with a shake of her head, half happy, half frustrated. Raina let her believe the fiction.

No one could dissuade Raina. Not even her husband. "You could catch a stray arrow," he warned.

"I have no doubt that you will protect me, my lord," Raina said. She would sooner run naked into a storm of arrows than spend one more day at Glory Point.

The march started on a gloomy morning, eleven days after Raina's wedding. Sir Willarn commanded a force of 500 Karkbhurg men-at-arms augmented by 200 Lamanbhurg spearmen and 50 lancers.

Raina wasn't too happy to see her father's soldiers accompanying them but she knew they would be sent home after the siege. As long as she stayed close to her husband and his men, she would be safe from the dog murderer, whoever he was.

Another surprise member of their party was young Caedmyr XIII, the boy king. Raina found him saddling her husband's horse. "What are you doing, Exalted One," Raina asked.

"I am saddling Sir Willarn's horse," the boy stated the obvious.

"You are the king!"

"Not yet," the boy king said. "It will be eight years before I am crowned. Technically, I'm still a prince."

"Still," Raina said. "Why are you saddling a horse?"

"I need to learn to do such things."

"Why?"

"I am to be Sir Willarn's squire," Caedmyr XIII said.

"The king is squiring for you?" Raina asked as soon as she came across her husband.

"Is that a problem?" Willy asked. "The chancellor wants Young Caedmyr needs to learn the ways of war. Who better to teach him than the best warrior in Rhexia?"

"And who is the best warrior in Rhexia?"

Willy chuckled and thumped his chest. "Me, of course. Why do you think your father was so keen to have me as a son-in-law?"

"You do not suffer from the affliction of modesty, do you?" Raina asked.

"Modesty is a form of cowardice."

"I never took you for a philosopher."

Willy winked. "I would rather you took me for a lover."

Raina turned from him in a huff and joined the boy king's party. Caedmyr XIII had brought a complement of half a dozen warrior priests, twenty knights, and a hundred men-at-arms to guard him. These swelled the Karkbhurg-Lamanbhurg army to nearly a thousand.

As they marched south, freeriders, sellswords, and contingents of men sent by Nylarn Lamanbhurg's bannermen swelled their numbers even further.

Days of tedious marching from dawn to dusk finally brought Raina and the army within sight of First Fork. The castle sat on a hillock, guarding a bridge on the first distributary of the Luche, a distributary also called the First Fork.

In a strange twist, it was the river that was named after the castle, not the other way around. The mighty Luche split into a dozen branches as it approached the sea.

The First Fork was actually the second of these branches but the first branch was only twenty feet wide, barely a stream. Everyone tended to ignore its existence in favor of the 400-foot-wide Pygmy Fork, a name that had been transformed into First Fork thanks to centuries of Lamanbhurg propaganda.

The First Fork emptied into the sea some 30 miles to the southwest. At the mouth of the First Fork sat another lost Lamanbhurg possession: Lamania.

But this time, Raina was focused on the lost possession in front of her eyes: First Fork Castle. The castle that was to be her home for the foreseeable future. If her husband could take it back.

They set up camp a mile north of the castle. The outnumbered Reendeni defenders retreated into the stronghold after losing a few preliminary skirmishes.

Brisk and efficient, Willarn Karkbhurg took control of siege preparations. He conscripted all the men from neighboring villages. In two days he had a series of trenches encircling the base of the hillock the castle was built upon and fortified both sides of the bridge.

"When are you going to storm the castle?" Raina asked her husband after half a month in the siege camp with no signs of progress. Catapults launched stones at the castle at a rate of two an hour but the walls and towers of First Fork looked no closer to crumbling than they had been on the day they arrived.

"I won't storm the castle," Willy said. "We will wait out here and starve them out."

"How long will that take?"

"Months. They have enough provisions to last the winter but come spring, things will get rough. I expect they will surrender by the first day of summer."

"Summer!" Raina exclaimed. It was only mid-autumn. "We are going to be out here, living in tents, until summer?"

"Yes," Willy said, looking at her as if she was insane. "Sieges take months, my dear. Years even. They can be dreadfully dull. Once the trenches are dug and the siege equipment is built, it's just a lot of waiting really. You can ride back to Glory Point. I will send for you once the siege is over.

"Why not just storm the castle and end the siege tomorrow?" Raina asked. "There are only 200 of them in there."

"I will not send my men to attack a fortified position uphill. A third of them would die marching uphill. Half the remaining ones would die trying to storm those walls if they don't mutiny first. Why risk it?"

The flaps of the tent burst open and Sir Alyrn Karkbhurg, Willy's cousin and commander of the scouts, rushed in.

"A Reendeni relief army is gathering in Cardinum, my lord. They're ready to march any day now. If they set out tomorrow, their vanguard will be here in four days. Six if we're lucky," Sir Alyrn said.

"How many men?" Willy asked.

"Five thousand. More than we have."

Who is leading them?

"Count Artapharnes himself."

Raina knew the green-bearded Reendeni warlord only by reputation. It was a black one. A ruthless and vicious man, Artapharnes followed no law but his own.

While a nominal vassal of the king of Deltopolis, he had led two rebellions against his king. Artapharnes had forced the king to marry his sister and disinherit all the sons by his first wife. Sons who had been "mistaken for commoners" and castrated by "unknown thugs."

It was also Artapahanes' father-in-law who had seized Lamania from the Lamanbhurgs two decades earlier and it was his men holed up in First Fork. Hearing that Artapharnes the Cruel was coming their way had Raina wishing she had stayed home.

"Should I tell the men to break camp and retreat?" Sir Alyrn asked.

"No," Willy said. "We came here for a fight. We're not going to run from one. I will be damned if I ever run from Reendeni. Tell the men to saddle up. It's time for a hunt."

"We're not going to attack Cardinum, are we?" Alyrn Karkbhurg asked.

"No," Willy said. "We will wait until they start marching. Once their column is spread out over ten miles, we will strike at a hundred different points. Retreat when they form up for battle and attack when they resume marching. Hopefully, they will run. If not, we will tear them to shreds. 800 mounted men should be enough."

Sir Alyrn smiled. "At once, my lord," he said with a bow and left.

"How many men do we have?" Raina asked as soon as her husband's cousin had left.

"3,000, give or take," Willy said.

"And the Reendeni have 5,000?"

Sir Willarn nodded. "Yes."

"Is it wise to attack?" a fearful Raina asked.

"One might be forgiven for thinking you're worried for my safety, my dear," Willy said with a cheeky smile. "I'll do my best to get myself killed. It should free you from this marriage you loathe so much."

"Do you have to make light of everything?" Raina snapped.

"I am not a god. I cannot make light."

"I hope they kill you," Raina fumed.

"Wouldn't that be a thing to see," Sir Willarn said with another annoying smile which made Raina fume even more. He kissed her on the cheek and darted away before Raina could slap him. Her hand smacked a table. Hard. Pain shot up her arm and Willy chuckled as Raina winced and suppressed a scream. "Bye, my dear," he said with another smile and walked out.

Just before sunset, Willarn Karkbhurg rode out of the camp with 800 horsemen. Raina stayed behind with the rest of the army to maintain the siege.

Alone in her tent that night, Raina wondered if she should pray for her husband. "What do you think, my love?" Raina asked Robyr while caressing the pouch with his ashes. The ashes didn't answer back but something else did. Her stomach.

Raina felt her belly swell like a balloon and then harden into stone. She belched and then let out a thunderous fart. The stench filled the tent, suffocating her. She remembered Hyrman's description of symptoms. and felt sweat trickle out of every pore on her body. Mamaaa...