Valkyrie's Shadow

Before the Storm: Act 7, Chapter 9

Chapter 9

“Come closer so I can kill you!” Countess Beaumont shrieked.

“Aiiiiieeeee!!!”

Magistrate Woodlund let out a shriek of his own as he fell backwards over his makeshift seat. As soon as he hit the ground, he crawled away from the furious noblewoman. He could only get so far as the ring of woodsmen surrounding him before he was tossed back. The man curled into a ball as the Countess glared down at him from the back of her wagon, brandishing a truncheon improvised from a piece of leftover lumber.

“Now there’s the hellion we all know,” Reed said. “Was wondering if you tamed her or something.”

Liam’s mind was too busy trying to digest everything he had heard to come up with a reply.

“Let ‘im have it!”

“Beat him to a pulp!”

“Roast him on a spit!”

The woodsmen surrounding the scene – who had heard everything along with Liam – made angry gestures and encouraged Countess Beaumont to act upon her words. With a flutter of her long skirts, Countess Beaumont hopped off of the back of her wagon and brought her stick of wood down upon the cowering Magistrate. Due to his defensive posture, however, she only managed to whack him on the wrist.

“Agh!”

Magistrate Woodlund scurried away again, cradling his injury. A swift kick from one of Reed’s woodsmen sent him scurrying in another direction. A clunk sounded in the air as the Magistrate’s abrupt change in direction caused the Countess’ next strike to hit the ground where he once was. The Countess let out a gasp, dropping her weapon and shaking her hands in pain.

More shouts of encouragement rose. The crowd grew as Olin’s men were drawn by the spectacle. Countess Beaumont picked up her stick and chased after the Magistrate again. Someone started taking bets on how many hits the Magistrate would be able to take.

Another cry of agony filled the air as the Countess landed a solid hit on the Magistrate’s hip. The man crumpled to the ground, groaning as he held his side. His groans turned into screams as the young noblewoman set upon him, ignoring his cries for mercy.

“Die! You’ve ruined everything, you…! Die! Die! Die…! Hah…die! Hah…hah…”

The Magistrate was still writhing in agony when Countess Beaumont ran out of breath.

“Liam,” the Countess panted, “why won’t he die?”

He was pretty old, so he had probably gotten quite strong as magistrates went. Barely anyone in Re-Estize would accept that explanation, though.

“Try using something sharp,” Liam said. “The blood loss will help him die faster.”

Lady Beaumont blinked several times before reaching into her bodice to produce a dagger. A few minutes later, she returned to Liam with a tired smile.

“I did it, Liam!”

“Uh…yeah.”

The young noblewoman stepped closer, resting her head against Liam’s chest.

“I’m so very tired,” she said. “Would you mind taking me back to the wagon?”

But the wagon’s right there?

Something told him that she would become cross if he pointed that out. Considering that she had just finished stabbing someone to death, that probably wasn’t a good idea. He quietly guided her to the rear of the wagon – which was five steps away – at which point he found Claire gazing coolly down upon them.

“Claire,” Liam said, “help Lady Beaumont board.”

Lady Beaumont let out a dissatisfied noise as she clung to his arm. Above them, the atmosphere around Claire grew more foul. Liam hurriedly swept the Countess off of her feet and dumped her onto the wagon bed like a sack of wheat. As he turned to leave, he thought he heard Claire let out a soft snort.

“Wait, Mister Liam,” the Countess said. “I wish to confer with you on several matters.”

“I don’t mind,” Liam replied. “But we should decide what to do next. Are we done here?”

“Yes, let’s continue our journey to the mines. I found what I was looking for here.”

“What do we do with Woodlund’s corpse, m’lady?” Reed asked.

The Countess’s gaze hardened as her eyes fell upon the bloodied remains of Magistrate Woodlund.

“Hang it in the village square,” she said. “If any of the villagers ask about him, tell them that he was executed for his crimes against House Beaumont and its subjects.”

“Don’t you want to speak with them yourself, my lady?” Liam asked.

“No,” Lady Beaumont answered. “That can wait until later. Our journey has been delayed for long enough as it is.”

With the excitement over, the men around the wagon dispersed to prepare for the road. Liam went to walk alongside the Countess’ wagon as it rumbled its way back up the road.

“What did you want to talk about, Lady Beaumont?” Liam asked.

The Countess peeked over the edge of the wagon at him, then her eyes went to the men nearby.

“Please come and join me inside, Mister Liam,” she said in a low voice.

Liam pulled himself up the side of the wagon, then stopped when he saw the two girls inside looking up at him expectantly as they sat on a shared blanket. He dropped back down and circled to the rear of the vehicle, opening the back to sit on the other side of the ‘desk’ from them. A disappointed look crossed the girls’ faces, but they wasted no time scooting over to sit at the desk.

“Would you like some tea, Liam?” Claire asked.

“Mister Liam,” Countess Beaumont told her.

“I’m good,” Liam answered. “What were these ‘matters’ you wanted to speak with me about, Lady Beaumont?”

The Countess placed her hands on her desk, idly tapping the wooden plank with the fingers of her left hand. After several seconds, she reached down behind the desk and produced a string-bound ledger. It was one of the many records that Liam had found in the Magistrate’s residence after the audience with Countess Beaumont had turned into an audit.

“Just now,” Lady Beaumont said, “you asked me if I wanted to speak with the villagers over what had transpired. I truly did, but…what could I possibly say? This is a hopeless situation!”

“What do you mean?” Liam asked.

“You must have seen at least some of the content of those ledgers,” the young noblewoman said as she held up the book in her hand.

“I did,” Liam replied, “but I’m not a Noble or anyone else who can make sense of a wall of numbers. What did you see?”

Lady Beaumont tossed the ledger onto her desk and released a long sigh. Her entire form seemed to deflate with it.

“It’s all messed up,” she said. “Everything, from top to bottom. How could my lord father allow this to happen?”

“You make things sound worse and worse,” Liam said, “but I still have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“As I said, it’s not just one thing, it’s everything.”

“Okay…so how did it start?”

“I can’t say for certain,” Countess Beaumont said as she eyed the records on her desk. “Magistrate Woodlund’s records only go back as far as his tenure as an administrator. That’s still over two generations, but…”

“Are you saying that he purposely destroyed the previous magistrate’s records to hide something?” Liam asked.

“That’s one possibility,” the Countess answered. “Another is that the records simply rotted away. Paper doesn’t last forever in damp places like this. Even if we assume that the records were purposely destroyed, we have no starting point to plot the direction of the Magistrate’s rule.”

“Oh, that one’s easy to answer,” Reed’s voice came from behind Liam. “It went in the direction of ‘worse’.”

The Countess’ lips turned up in a bitter smile.

“Even if that was the overall sentiment, Mister Reed,” she said, “it doesn’t identify the issues. Trying to address an issue without knowing what the issue is in the first place is an exercise in futility. The problems would simply catch up to any measures taken to remedy them.”

“Shouldn’t the Magistrate’s records say something about that?” Liam asked, “The Nobles that I’m familiar with can figure stuff out just from that.”

“Then they are blessed with both perfect accountants and impeccable archives,” the young noblewoman’s voice turned sour. “For my part, I can’t even trust Magistrate Woodlund’s paperwork.”

“Can’t you compare his stuff with House Beaumont’s records?”

“Yes, but I can’t see that getting us very far. The problem is that our records are built out of the records submitted to us by administrative officials like Magistrate Woodlund.”

“So you can’t even trust your own house’s records.”

Lady Beaumont nodded weakly.

“The more dubious information enters our archives, the more the integrity of our accounts comes into question. If behaviour like Magistrate Woodlund’s is pervasive in the fief as a whole, then the situation becomes even worse because our house uses that information to make decisions. I can’t even tell if I should be angry at my lord father or not. Did bad information lead him to make bad decisions, or was he complicit in everything? Or was he like I am now, trying to find his way out of a confusing and hopeless situation brought about by pervasive petty corruption?”

“It sounds like you’re wasting your time,” Liam said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said it yourself, didn’t you?” Liam said, “It’s an impossible situation. Why are you trying to fix something like that? You’re probably better off just starting from scratch.”

“Starting from scratch…you make it sound as if it’s easy to do so. So long as I must work with what I have, I inherit everything that comes with it. As the head of House Beaumont, there’s no running away from this.”

“Then at least work on something manageable instead of trying to swallow everything whole,” Liam said.

“I intend to,” the Countess replied. “But I have to be careful about which threads to unravel first. Dealing with the forestry tenants is too complicated at the moment, so I’ll be starting with the mining settlements. They don’t have the same, complicated system of claims.”

“It sounds like you had a plan all along,” Liam said.

“Not in any comprehensive form,” Lady Beaumont said. “It’s simply as I mentioned: mining communities are the most uncomplicated in terms of rural governance so it’s best to start with them if I’m to implement a series of reforms.”

“I see,” Liam said, “Well, I should let you get to work on that.”

Ignoring Lady Beaumont’s look of dismay, Liam slid off of the wagon door and shut it behind him. He fell back a dozen steps to walk beside Reed, who was idly scanning the rugged ascent ahead of them.

“How far is this mine we’re going to?” Liam asked.

“You can see it from here,” Reed answered, gesturing ahead of them. “There’s a bit of haze on the mountain up ahead at the edge of the treeline.”

“That’s a lot closer than I thought it would be,” Liam said.

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“It only looks that way,” Reed told him. “This road winds uphill through two valleys before it gets there.”

“Can we make it before nightfall?”

“No, not even close. We’re gonna get rained on before evening.”

Liam frowned up at the sky. It had cleared up since the morning and there was barely a puff of cloud overhead.

“How can you tell?” Liam asked.

“Dunno,” Reed shrugged. “Just feels that way.”

“You know,” Liam said, “only Rangers and Druids can feel stuff like that.”

“Animals can, too.”

“Only a Ranger or Druid would say that.”

The Ranger scoffed.

“You’re gonna have us fight Monsters at this rate.”

“Maybe,” Liam said.

“What?”

“What?”

Liam held Reed’s incredulous gaze for several seconds before a call came from ahead of the procession.

“We’ve got trouble!” A woodsman said as he came jogging towards them.

“Not Monster trouble, I hope,” Reed muttered.

“Might be,” the man said. “There’s a bloody mess a few hundred metres ahead.”

They called for the wagon to stop. Reed ordered his men to form a perimeter around the vehicle. From a gap in the wagon’s canvas, Countess Beaumont and Claire watched worriedly as the men unlimbered their longbows and nocked bronze-tipped arrows to their bowstrings.

“Mister Liam,” Claire called out to him, “what’s going on?”

“The forward picket found something,” Liam told her. “Stay inside the wagon and keep yourselves out of sight.”

Liam made his way past the wagon toward Olin, who had gathered his men in a loose semicircle facing the road ahead. The Eight Fingers director cast seemingly casual glances at his surroundings, yet his gaze was far sharper than Liam had yet seen.

“What do you think happened?” Liam asked.

“The Merchant caravan was probably attacked,” Olin answered “Undoubtedly, some guards were sacrificed to ensure that he and his goods got through.”

“You sound certain of that,” Liam said.

Olin smirked in the face of Liam’s suspicion.

“As I said earlier, that old Merchant knows his business. The best tricks are simple and reliable – you don’t need to be a genius to survive out here…well, you’ll probably see for yourself when we get there.”

“Are you saying it’s safe for us to keep going?”

“That, too.”

Just in case, Liam went ahead to take a look at what the woodsmen had found. On one side of the road, blood stained the sparse grass and soaked into the gravelly mountain soil. Aside from the insects that had gathered to clean up the drying mess, the site and its surroundings looked as normal as any other stretch of the road.

“There,” Reed pointed to a spot near the centre of the bloody scene.

“What do you see?” Liam asked.

Reed’s answer was to grab a dead branch lying beside the road. With it, he dug away at the place he had pointed out. Over the course of a couple of minutes, he exposed a black object buried in the dirt.

“Manticore spine,” he said.

“A Manticore attacked the Merchant’s caravan?”

“They’re called the Manticore Mountains for a reason,” Reed replied. “Manticores are powerful monsters, but they’re also pretty shrewd. When faced with a large number of opponents, they resort to flinging their spines from high above to pin their prey to the ground or kill ‘em outright. Once they stick someone, they’ll circle overhead until their victim bleeds out and the rest of the ‘herd’ moves on.”

“I see.”

That neatly explained why there weren’t any signs of a battle or bits of the caravan lying around. As Olin had said, someone had been sacrificed to protect the Merchant’s goods.

“Check this out,” Reed said.

Liam turned his attention back to the buried Manticore spine. Reed had continued digging, turning up several links of broken and torn chainmail.

“That bastard really knew what he was doing,” the woodsman spat.

“The Merchant?”

“And Olin,” Reed said. “Back in the town, I said that his new friends would attract Monsters. I was thinking that Olin should’ve known that too. Turns out he’s purposely brought ‘em out to use as bait. They’re strong enough to fend off tribal raiders and tasty enough to distract Manticores with.”

“How are they tastier than anyone else?”

Reed glanced at Liam with a frown, then shrugged to himself.

“Manticores eat two things: meat and iron. You notice how me and my boys don’t wear any? Even our arrowheads aren’t the usual hardened steel you’d see used elsewhere.”

“So when a Manticore strikes from above,” Liam said, “it aims for the guys with the steel armour…because they’re tastier.”

“Uh-huh. Best part is that none of those heavies are from around here. They got no clue what’s going on.”

Liam looked down at his equipment. He had bits and pieces of steel in his armour and his dagger blades were made of steel as well. Was it enough to draw the eye – or nose or whatever – of a Manticore? He made a mental note to try and remain concealed at all times.

Once they got the wagon going again, Liam casually examined Olin and his men. Olin was the only one equipped as Reed and his men were.

“That’s a pretty nasty trick,” Liam said to Reed after returning to his place behind the wagon.

“That may be so,” Reed replied, “but it’s a good trick. Some asshole that you don’t know dies and the world becomes a better place. Trying to actually fight a damn Manticore would lose us half of what we have here and chances are it’ll just fly away after that.”

Around mid-afternoon, the first signs of the weather Reed had predicted started flowing around the peaks to the north. Olin stopped them at a widened stretch of terrain just before the road crossed through a steep gully.

“This is as far as we go today,” he declared. “Make yourselves comfortable – it’s going to be a cold night.”

And just how do we do that?

They were already high enough on the mountainside that the forest had thinned out and the landscape was dominated by bushes and boulders. The wind blew incessantly over them and the coming rain promised an extra dose of misery. Probably only the Countess and Claire would be able to rest in relative comfort.

“How cold will it get tonight?” Liam asked.

“There’s gonna be frost for sure,” Reed answered, then chuckled. “I hope those puffed-up thugs from the city are prepared.”

His tone suggested that he wanted to see the complete opposite happen for his own entertainment.

“Never mind them for now,” he said, “how are we going to survive this?”

“Shouldn’t be too bad if you don’t mind roughing it a bit,” the woodsman said. “The problem’s how much noise Lady Beaumont’s gonna make about it.”

“She won’t complain,” Liam said. “I lent her a magic item that keeps the surroundings warm.”

Reed walked over to the wagon.

“Is it doing its thing right now?”

“Yeah.”

With a look of concentration, Reed pressed his palm against the wagon’s back door. A few seconds later, he unlatched the thing and pulled it open. Countess Beaumont looked up from her desk with a frown.

“Hey guys,” Reed called out, “what do you think?”

A few of Reed’s woodsmen wandered over. One of them looked into the wagon.

“It can’t fit all of us,” he said.

“Not that!” Reed whacked the man in the arm, “Feel how warm it is in there.”

The men reached into the wagon. Claire pulled a stick out from behind the desk, threatening any hand that got too close.

“What’s doing it?” One of the woodsmen asked.

“Magic item,” Reed answered.

“Is it like a fire?” Another asked.

Reed looked at Liam. Liam tried his best to recall the explanation he had received at the magic item outlet in Warden’s Vale.

“It’s a thing that regulates temperature,” he said. “It doesn’t heat up the surroundings like a fire, it just tries to get a certain volume of space to a certain temperature.”

“How much space?”

“Uh…I need two of these for my entire house, one for each storey. So a square about fifteen by fifteen metres?”

“…are you some kinda Noble, kid?”

“No, everyone’s house is like that where I live.”

The woodsmen stared at him for a good long time. Out of the corner of his eye, Liam noticed Claire sizing him up, as well. He cleared his throat.

“Anyway,” he said, “got any ideas?”

“Well,” Reed scratched his head, “if this magic item just makes a space a certain temperature, then why isn’t a huge space around this wagon warm right now?”

“Because the item takes time to change the temperature of the air,” Liam said. “When we’re outdoors, new cold air just keeps coming in.”

“So we put together a windbreak,” one of the woodsmen said.

“Or a big tent,” said another.

Reed’s men started tossing around more and more suggestions. Despite the claim that they could get by as they were, they seemed pretty excited over the prospect of having a warm place to sleep. Or maybe they were just having fun with a new gadget.

Once the Rangers dispersed to do Ranger things, Liam went to speak with the Countess again. She frowned at him momentarily when he climbed onto the back of the wagon, which was a good sign. Lady Zahradnik and her friends reacted similarly when they were busy working on something important and someone interrupted them.

He placed his magic light on the Countess’ makeshift desk.

“Here’s the light from yesterday,” Liam said. “You can use it when it gets dark.”

“Thank you, Liam,” Lady Beaumont smiled, “I don’t even know where to begin to thank you for your help.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Liam replied. “What have you figured out so far?”

“Plenty,” she answered. “The problem is whether any of it will be valid or not.”

“I don’t even know how mining villages work,” Liam said.

The Countess set down her quill and stretched before arranging her skirts and sitting primly on her blankets.

“Unlike agriculture or forestry,” she said, “landlords don’t rent mines out to individual tenants. Instead, miners are freemen who hold contracts that grant them the right to mine on a lord’s land. In exchange, they agree to follow mining regulations and pay a portion of their production at a rate that’s roughly comparable to a tenant’s rent.”

“So they can dig up as much as they want?”

“In theory. Realistically, most only work as much as they need to. Also, ever since slavery was outlawed in Re-Estize, finding labour for the mines has been an ongoing challenge. These days, they get a trickle of spares who opt to avoid the more popular urban lifestyle.”

“Why don’t more people try it?” Liam asked, “Won’t they get rich if they find gold or gems?”

“They won’t,” Lady Beaumont shook her head. “According to Re-Estize law, all gold and silver extracted in the Kingdom belongs to the Crown. In the Azerlisian Marches, the right to refine Mithril, Orichalcum, and Adamantite is held by specific companies chartered by House Blumrush – not that anyone else has the skilled craftsmen capable of doing it. As for gemstones…well, gemstones are plentiful, but finding gemstones of a suitable grade for jewellery is another matter entirely.”

“That sure sucks all of the excitement out of mining,” Liam said.

“That may be so,” the Countess replied, “but that’s the reality of the vocation.”

Dwarves seemed to love mining, so Liam always figured it was something fun. They mentioned the dangers that came with the work, of course, but the prospect of discovering new lodes of minerals and the rewards of a hard day’s work drowned out those concerns. Maybe they had funner rules.

“What do you plan on changing?” Liam asked.

“I can’t change anything on the legal side of things,” the Countess answered. “All I can do is ensure that contracts are fair. The fact that Claire’s father can’t support his family with his work suggests that they aren’t, but I need to know why that is.”

“Which is why you’re worried that your work might not be valid.”

Lady Beaumont nodded and sighed.

“That’s right. I know how things should be solved on paper, but, after seeing what was going on in Spruce Landing, I must accept that something is eating away at the prosperity of my fief. The rising price of food and all that it entails is woefully insufficient to explain where everything is disappearing to.”

“The Magistrate was taking a huge cut out of the rents, wasn’t he?”

“He was, but his accounting was ambiguous. Not that anyone would expect him to record the specifics of his crimes for all to see. If that wasn’t bad enough, his records suggest that nearly a third of the households in the villages under him were complicit in his illicit activities.”

“How did you figure that out if his records were so crappy?”

“Because he took the effort to communicate how productive the villages under him were,” the Countess said. “Normally, magistrates report to the manor with an annual summary. It seems he grew too comfortable with the idea he wouldn’t ever be subjected to an audit. He started using his records to keep track of all the other things he was doing.”

“That’s stupid.”

A murderous smile crossed the Countess’ beautiful countenance.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Very stupid. As of late, the world has hardly passed up the opportunity to show me how stupid everything in my life is.”

He excused himself to see how Reed and his men were doing. A cookfire had been started shortly after their arrival and now the men were busy moving boulders and deadwood around to form a low wall around the perimeter of their campsite. On one side of the wagon, Reed and four woodsmen were experimenting with a set of tents. Each tent was basically made out of two canvases, so they resorted to using each canvas as a wall. Reed sat in the middle of a ‘room’ being held up by the others.

“It works through walls,” he said. “Hey, Liam, you didn’t say it works through walls.”

“I said it regulates the temperature in a certain volume of space,” Liam replied. “It doesn’t matter if there’s a wall within that space.”

“Then I guess we have a plan,” Reed said. “We can attach two ‘barracks’ to either side of the wagon, then do our best to shelter the area around the cookfire.”

“Did you tell Olin’s men about this?”

“No, why?”

Liam rolled his eyes and walked over to where Olin and his men were setting up their tents. The sentries guarding the perimeter tried to stare him down, but it wasn’t very effective when he knew that they probably wouldn’t act against him.

“Why didn’t you guys camp with the rest of us?” He asked one of the sentries.

“Huh? Why?”

“Because it’s cold and miserable out here and there are things that might attack us?” Liam said, “It’s safer to stay together.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” the sentry said.

“We have a magic item that keeps the area around the wagon warm,” Liam added. “Plus, we sent a few hunters out this morning to bring back dinner.”

As if on cue, the half dozen woodsmen in question appeared up the road, carrying two big bucks between them. The two sentries exchanged a look. One of them turned and walked into the ring of tents, bringing Olin back with him several minutes later.

“What’s this about combining our camps?” The Eight Fingers executive asked.

“Isn’t it better than splitting up?”

“I’d rather not get into range of Countess Beaumont’s shrieking,” Olin said, “It seems to come with added violence these days.”

“She won’t do any shrieking tonight,” Liam said, “she’s too busy with her work to waste energy on anything else.”

“Work, huh,” Olin rubbed his jaw. “What kind of work?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Liam said. “But I’m pretty sure she’s not done killing people yet.”