A Marriage of Friends (The Inner Seas Kingdoms Book 8) Read online

  “And these are your friends,” Jonson leaned over to comment sotto voce.

  Servants began entering the room with platters of food at that moment, and Kestrel found that his mouth was watering at the prospect of a cooked meal. He said little for the next several minutes as plates of food were delivered to the head table, and he ate ravenously.

  “Kestrel friend, we will have more food tomorrow,” Jonson said to him at last. “You do not have to eat all your meals at once tonight.”

  The gathering continued on into the evening, until Kestrel’s profound exhaustion finally overtook his delight in the reunion with his friends.

  “Let me show you to sleeping chambers,” Killcen quietly suggested as Kestrel’s eyes grew heavy.

  “So you do not know where Stillwater is?” the imp asked as he led Kestrel to a small, quiet room with a bed and covers.

  “He could be anywhere around the Inner Seas, but I do not know precisely where,” Kestrel agreed as he placed his gear in a corner, then sat to pull off his boots. “I hope he’ll arrive back in Blackfriars soon, his mission safely accomplished.”

  “We hope so too, and we’re glad to see that you are already safely back,” Killcen smiled quietly, as he watched Kestrel’s head lay down and his eyes close.

  Chapter 3

  Kestrel found that he had to rest, relax, and lounge all the next day, as the imp kingdom hastily composed an army to send with Kestrel to set the Oaktown manor and its lands free. For the imps, the martial expedition was exciting, an unexpected call to action that drew a feverish wave of volunteers among the members of the guard. But it was also an expedition unlike any in memory, as the imps had to reckon with logistics and supplies in a way they never had before, because of their traveling limitations. The number of packs they had to fill with enough food for a campaign up into the Eastern Forest depressed the imps who had not traveled and fought with Kestrel before, as they came to understand that they would have to carry those packs.

  The following morning, with Kestrel feeling refreshed and the imps feeling secure, they descended from their nests in the Blackfriars towers.

  “We can go directly this way,” Killcen explained, as they started walking along a trail unfamiliar to Kestrel, “instead of going down to the river and back up again. This will lead much more directly to the Eastern Forest, and save a day on the journey. We could be at your home by tomorrow night,” the imp explained.

  “So what,” Killcen began to delicately ask, “happened to Stillwater, exactly?”

  “I think he is somewhere here in the Inner Seas,” Kestrel replied. “He and Wren and the others,” he started to explain before Killcen interrupted.

  “The humans and the gnome?” he clarified.

  “Yes,” Kestrel agreed.

  “And you say the gnome was pleasant?” the imp asked skeptically.

  “Yes, I thought so,” Kestrel answered mildly, not wishing to waste time listening to a rehashing of the ancient prejudices between imps and gnomes.

  “So, will we pass through any villages in the Eastern Forest before we reach Oaktown?” he changed the subject.

  “We’ll come to a village called Stonewalls,” Killcen answered. “It’s not far inside the Eastern Forest. I used to go there to pull pranks when I was young,” he added sheepishly.

  “You know,” he said guiltily, in response to the mock look of shock that he misinterpreted on Kestrel’s face, “hiding the chicken eggs, putting all the shoes on the roof, harmless fun.”

  Kestrel grinned, and the party moved on along the path through the forest. Within an hour though, Kestrel took to traveling through the trees, as the imps floated in the air overhead, and they left the twisting trail to move in a straight line that brought them to the edge of the Eastern Forest as the sun set. He made a small camp fire that night, and several of the imps joined him near its flames.

  “How long will it take for us to get to Stonewalls?” Kestrel asked.

  All the imps looked at one another and shrugged.

  “We’ve never gone this way before,” Mulberry explained. “We have always transported ourselves there in the past.

  “It seems much farther away than I realized,” she added. “But we should see Stonewalls early in the day, unless we don’t start early in the day.”

  The sortie did start its journey early the next morning, and within an hour they reached the elven village. Kestrel walked into the village alone, as the imps flew high overhead and monitored his location closely, ready to drop down to protect him.

  “What the blazes are you doing out in the street this early?” a pair of guards questioned Kestrel when he reached the center of the village. They did not speak with the soft, lilting accent of the southern portion of the Eastern Forest, as nearly every other elf Kestrel knew in the region did. Instead, they spoke in the same flat dialect that Kestrel himself used. They were not natives of Stonewalls, Kestrel was sure, and so he assumed they were Center Trunk flunkies.

  “I’m walking towards Oaktown,” he answered. “What are you doing out here?”

  “We aren’t looking for smart mouths,” one of the guards answered, as he lifted the club he held in a menacing fashion. “Get back in your home, now. Wait until the curfew is lifted,” the elf said, and then he casually swung the club at Kestrel’s head.

  His club never struck its intended target, as Kestrel, whose energy had been primed for use, immediately projected a protective shield around himself. The cudgel struck the blue field around Kestrel, then deflected downward, and imps came plummeting down to knock both aggressors to their feet.

  Kestrel shifted his shield so that it became a low dome that trapped the two malefactors on the ground.

  “The curfew is lifted,” Kestrel told the two, as he looked down at them, while they lay on their backs, looking up at him with wide-open eyes. “Do you agree?”

  “Yes, my lord,” they spoke in unison.

  “Then if I allow you up, do you agree to leave this village immediately, and to go all the way back to Center Trunk without stopping? Tell the people in charge there that they are to leave the elves of the Marches alone, unless they have my permission. Do you agree?” he asked, as the imps hovered above him, in full view of the two cowering elves under the blue force field.

  “We’ll do so immediately,” one of them said.

  Kestrel heard a sound, and turned to see that the inhabitants of the village were peering out of their windows, or standing on their porches, watching the confrontation take place.

  “You must run,” Kestrel told the captives in a loud voice. “Run all the way to Center Trunk. Do not go to Oaktown; do not warn them that change has come to Stonewalls.

  “Now disarm, completely, and go,” he said, as he dissolved the blue shield that hovered above the two elves. They both jumped to their feet and removed their knives and bows and arrows, then started running, going due north, cutting between houses to go in the direction they had promised Kestrel. As they passed a house, a large bowl flew from a window and struck one of them in the head, then another object was tossed, landing just behind them as it shattered.

  A steady rain of projectiles flew from the hands of the residents of the village, along with a stream of oaths, and the fleeing guards redoubled their efforts to escape, then disappeared into the surrounding forest.

  A chorus of cheers erupted from the elves of the village, who came streaming out, and formed a circle around Kestrel and the imps, then grew silent.

  “What happens now? Do we trade one set of bullies for another?” someone asked.

  “Are the imps here to harass us?” another voice asked.

  “Who are you? What did you just do?” a woman’s voice called.

  “I am Kestrel, from Oaktown, the Warden of the Marches,” he answered.

  “The one who visited all the other villages? Why didn’t you ever come here?” the question shot at him.

  “I never heard about magic like that before from the Warden,” anot
her commented.

  “I would have come to your village earlier, but the king and the princess sent me away on a mission months ago, during the spring. I’m just returning to the Eastern Forest,” he explained, speaking loudly. “I asked the imps to help me fight against the guards from Center Trunk,” he explained. “The imps are my allies.”

  “They’re trouble makers!” someone shouted back.

  Kestrel looked up at his companions, and saw several guilty looks and shrugged shoulders.

  “They are, at times,” he admitted, “but now, they have pledged to help me set all of the Marches free! We are on our way to Oaktown to fight for freedom. Anyone who wants to come along and join us may do so.”

  A half dozen elves stepped forward immediately. “We’ll help you and the small ones fight against these thugs,” one of the elves said. Four were males, and two were females, and one of each gender was too young to send into battle, Kestrel decided. “You two,” he pointed at the youngest, “will stay here as a home guard to protect the village from further mischief.

  “The rest of you will come with us,” he told the others. They broke apart to gather up supplies and weapons, then immediately started out.

  “The next village on the way to Oaktown is Dry Ditch,” one of Kestrel’s new companions explained. “Then there’s Slaggyford, and then there’s Oaktown itself. If you don’t stop too much on the way, you can be in Oaktown by the evening. We can speed up and skip around Dry Ditch.”

  “I imagine we’ll have to stop for at least a bit in Slaggyford,” Kestrel answered. “The guards there won’t be likely to be beaten as quickly as these were, will they?”

  “We don’t know, my lord,” an older man, one of his volunteers answered. “We’re not allowed to travel from village to village since the palace guards took over the Marches.”

  “That must have felt cramped,” Kestrel commiserated.

  “Tell me about it; I had to stay in the village with my parents for all these weeks,” the young woman among his new squad of volunteers lamented as they walked along the forest road that led towards Slaggyford.

  They arrived on the outskirts of the village, larger than Stonewalls, but still a village, in the early afternoon.

  “Mulberry, would you have scouts fly over the village and tell us if there are any guard locations to watch out for?” Kestrel asked.

  “It shall be done,” Mulberry replied affirmatively, and the whole body of imps took to the air to reconnoiter the village.

  “They saw us and shot arrows at us!” Odare said in outrage as she returned to the waiting elves a few minutes later.

  “They all came running out of a big stone building with their bows, and starting shooting wildly,” Killcen added.

  “That’s the tavern,” the senior member of the squad from Stonewalls explained. “They have a good lager,” he said defensively when the others looked at him. “I’ve stopped there a time or two on my way to Oaktown.”

  “Killcen, take all the imps and fly to the far side of the village. Lure the guards that way, away from the village, so that we can get into the settlement without a fight,” Kestrel ordered. “Then, if our father figure doesn’t stray into the tavern,” he made the group grin, “we’ll be able to come up behind them and round them all up without a fight.

  “I want you two to go around to the right,” he pointed to the senior fighter and the girl, “and I want you two to go around to the left,” he told the other two volunteers. “I’ll be in the village green in the middle. Let me challenge them first, before you do anything. We don’t need to harm them; we just need to drive them out of the Marches,” he instructed.

  He didn’t want to have to kill any of the elves who had invaded his home; he had seen enough violence, and he hoped that most of the Center Trunk forces were simply following orders, not seeking to be predators because it was appealing. He simply wanted to drive them away.

  The plan proceeded as he had outlined. A quartet of Center Trunk guards re-emerged from the tavern upon hearing that the imps had returned, and they followed the imps to the eastern edge of the village, while Kestrel’s small force easily took up their positions, unhampered. When Kestrel called out his challenge to the Center Trunk guards, he had a glowing blue shield around himself, and he advanced towards the shocked – and slightly inebriated guards – while he warned them to flee directly towards Center Trunk. They took his advice, and in a matter of only minutes, the residents of Slaggyford were joyfully stunned to find that they had been liberated.

  “You’re the Warden? The one who went to all the other villages and gave healing to their people?” a woman in the village asked as a young girl held her hand. “Why didn’t you come here to treat us?”

  Kestrel repeated the explanations he had made earlier in the day at Stonewalls.

  “If all that’s the case, then what are you going to do now?” one of the villagers who had gathered around him asked.

  Kestrel looked at where the sun stood in the western sky. “First thing in the morning, we’ll go take Oaktown back,” he answered.

  “Why are you going to wait? You’ve got the imps; you’ve got that shiny blue thing; you’ve got all of us. Why not tonight?” a voice in the crowd asked. “We’re just a couple of hours away from the manor.”

  Kestrel looked around at the people who were watching him. He felt the urge to do as the questioner proposed. He wanted to go back to the manor, to see Clara and Bernie, the housekeeper and cook. He wanted to purge his own home of the squatters who had moved in. And he wanted to finish scouring away all of Center Trunk’s forces so that all of the Marches were free again.

  Because when all those things were accomplished, then he could go on to find Putienne and Remy, and bring them back home.

  He stopped and flashed back through a blur of memories, and realized that in the past fortnight he'd been in the company of six deities. After seeing and sharing such absolute power – watching the gods work to use their powers to the maximum advantages in trying circumstances – he felt a recklessness overtake him. If the people wanted to go do battle, he was willing to oblige.

  “We’ll do it,” he said with a grin, and the crowd broke into a cheer.

  “Who’s ready to join us in the march on Oaktown?” he asked.

  Hands went shooting into the air, and he spent the next hour sorting out those he planned to take, then planning the approach to the manor and the surrounding community.

  Kestrel had no sure idea of the number of guards from Center Trunk that were occupying Oaktown. He assumed that the number had to be fairly large, for the princess must have been determined to control Oaktown to make sure she controlled all of Kestrel’s lands within the Eastern Forest. He wondered what the purpose was, and asked those around him what the invaders had said.

  “They said you were half human, and you were going to invite the humans in to control us and take over the Forest,” one of the men near him said, looking him in the eye.

  Kestrel had been considering whether to go to Hydrotaz to ask Yulia for soldiers to support his battle against Center Trunk, but he had quickly dismissed the tactic; he was glad he had, for it would have fed directly in to Elwean’s lies.

  “I am part human, but I’m an elf, and I’ve fought against humans to help elves,” Kestrel answered. “I’m not trying to take over the Eastern Forest; I haven’t even been here in months,” he said. “I just came home and found that there was trouble, so I asked the imps to help me fight to straighten things out,” he motioned towards the allies who were floating overhead.

  “If we’re ready to go,” he glanced at the setting sun, “we might as well start marching. Odare, will you send scouts ahead to look for any resistance?” he directed.

  The newly recruited elves from Slaggyford surged forward and took the lead, while Kestrel and his small band of followers from Stonewalls marched steadily forward, and Kestrel began to ponder what was happening.

  The princess and whoever supported her
in her attack on Oaktown had seen a small display of Kestrel’s abilities and powers during his last visit to Center Trunk, but they would have no idea of the greater exercise of energy he was capable of now. Hampus had seen Kestrel battle Ashcrayss in the northern lands, but either he had not passed his knowledge along, or he had been ignored. And how Hampus could be allowing all of this to happen was also a part of the mystery; Kestrel had thought that the elf he had set down in Estone was a reasonable, reliable person, ready to become a sensible leader. He couldn’t imagine how he had become party to such an attack on the Marches.

  "The princess was betrothed," Kestrel spoke loudly to those around him. "Does anyone know anything about her fiancé, Hampus?"

  “He’s the one in Firheng,” a voice answered.

  Alarms went off in Kestrel’s head. He had been told that Remy and Putienne had headed to Firheng, and that had made sense. Kestrel assumed that the forces at Firheng would battle against any tyrannical attack by the princess’s guards from Center Trunk. Could Hampus have led an attack on Casimo’s outpost that had succeeded? It seemed unlikely.

  “Hampus attacked Firheng?” he asked the elves around him.

  “No, he fled there for freedom,” someone said. “At least, that’s the rumor we heard.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Kestrel murmured.

  “It doesn’t make sense for elves to be bullying elves around, but here we are. It’s worse that when Sir Chandel was the Warden, because he was rarely actually here to stir up trouble,” a man next to him told Kestrel.

  The sun set as they walked through the forest. The imps who were ahead of them came back every few minutes to report that there was no sign of patrols or opposition on the way to Oaktown. Nearly two hours later the large group reached the Oaktown boundary and stopped.

  “I think most of the attackers are staying in the manor house,” Kestrel said. “I’ll go into the village and approach the manor with my shield lit up, and force the Center Trunk forces to retreat out the back. When they do, you take them all captive and hold them,” he directed.