At Hrath’s side of the table were some of his own stout sons, along with the men who had helped free Aaath Ulber from the wyrmlings.
“I’ll need food for our journey,” Aaath Ulber said, “just enough for me to carry south to the wyrmling’s stronghold in Mystarria. Our ship is lying just off the coast.”
“Done,” Hrath said.
“I’ll need good weapons, to boot. I mistrust using your tall swords in wyrmling tunnels. A good war ax for an off-hand weapon, and a large dirk would be best. I’ll want wyrmling battle darts, and spare weapons to boot.”
“Finding weapons fit for a man of your size will be hard,” Hrath said, “but we’ll scour the town.”
Aaath Ulber stared hard at the old lord. His wife and children and extended family were all in the longhouse—grandmothers, and babes— packing goods swiftly, preparing to flee. Aaath Ulber hardly dared ask for more.
“I’ll need endowments if I can get them,” Aaath Ulber said. “Some of your young men have taken them already. I don’t know how much blood metal is available.”
Aaath Ulber hoped for twenty endowments of metabolism at the very least. He couldn’t fight powerful wyrmlings with any less.
With twenty endowments, he would be twice as fast as a wyrmling who had ten. That was an advantage, but it wasn’t an insurmountable benefit. A wyrmling with well-honed instincts, excellent training, and ten endowments would still pose a considerable threat.
And if I meet a wyrmling with forty endowments of metabolism, Aaath Ulber worried, I’m in trouble.
Warlord Hrath held up his hand, begging Aaath Ulber to stop. He sat for a long moment, elbows on the table, and laid his head in his hands.
“I cannot easily offer you such a boon,” he said at last, “unless you can give us something more in return.
“You talk about sailing to the south into Mystarria, to strike at the heart of the wyrmlings, and this makes sense to me: Cut off the head of the snake, not the tail.
“But there is still power in the tail. Regardless of what you do next, the wyrmlings will make us pay dearly for this night. My family might flee, but where could we hide? I do not know. The wyrmling scouts can track us down by scent, and no matter where we might go, the wyrmlings are already there. They’re scattered everywhere across Internook, ten to this village, fifty to a city. You and your men slew but five. I don’t even know where the rest of the city guard is to night. Usually the number of guards is double or triple what we found. Perhaps they had trouble in the countryside. It is rumored that they go to search for blood metal at night sometimes, when the town is sound asleep. . . .”
“It’s not just our town’s guards,” a young man added. He leaned forward, whispering as if a wyrmling might overhear him. “Many of the largest and most fearsome of the wyrmlings’ runelords have been leaving the past couple of weeks. I’ve gotten reports from many villages.”
“There’s no mystery to that,” Aaath Ulber said. “It’s high summer—time for the wyrmling rut. Only the largest and most fearsome of the males are allowed to breed. They will have returned to their stronghold, deep within its recesses, down where the women are kept as breeders.”
Aaath Ulber did not dare say it, but he suspected that the lich lord had purposely either called much of the guard back to rut or sent them on some fruitless errand.
For reasons that he did not understand, she had sided with him against the Wyrmling Empire.
Perhaps, Aaath Ulber thought, this lich hopes that when I slay the emperor, it will leave her in charge.
Or maybe she is merely mad.
Wyrmlings were not the most stable creatures.
But, he vowed to himself, what ever she wants, what ever she offers, I refuse.
Warlord Hrath pounded the table, gazed at Aaath Ulber. “We will give you what endowments we can, and we will send word far and wide that you have come. We can gather the blood metal that we need. But if we do this, we will need your protection.”
Aaath Ulber was loath to make such an offer, but there were no good choices. If he took a few endowments and then left, the wyrmlings would likely hunt down his Dedicates and slay them, leaving Aaath Ulber weak and vulnerable.
But he did not want to spend the rest of his life here defending the barbarians on this island. Aaath Ulber sighed. “Just my luck,” he said. “I come to town for a loaf of bread and piglet, and what do I get? A war!”
At that, the barbarians laughed, Warlord Hrath pounding his mug on the table.
“I suspect that you will need my help,” Aaath Ulber admitted. “But you understand that the wyrmling presence here in Internook is thin? Their main stronghold is in a fortress called Rugassa, in the very heart of Mystarria. You have tens of thousands of wyrmlings here on this island. There are millions more down in the heartland. I intend to breach their stronghold.”
“You intend to fight them? Millions?” Warlord Hrath asked. “Just you few?”
“I intend to do all that I can,” Aaath Ulber said. “But I hope for more aid. There are men of my stature to the south, or there were before the binding. I do not know how many might yet survive, but my plan is to unite them against the wyrmling hordes.
“I cannot fight that empire myself, but a thousand warriors like me, men with endowments, we could make the foundations of Rugassa tremble. . . .”
“No doubt,” Hrath said, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “So you think to sacrifice us?”
The warlord was testing him, Aaath Ulber knew. He was asking if Aaath Ulber would simply take endowments and march into war, leaving the island defenseless. Hrath needed a commitment that Aaath Ulber would leave them secure.
“A man who takes an endowment,” Aaath Ulber said, “takes the greatest of boons that another may offer. I would not want to put the men, women, and children of Internook at risk.”
“Yet it is what your people have always done,” Warlord Hrath intoned. “Your rich lords in Mystarria have hired our children, put them at the front of their battles, and used them only to blunt the weapons of the runelords that they were fighting. I know this. I myself was one of those young men. I fought for King Orden against the Merchant Princes.”
Aaath Ulber stifled a groan. He had been but a child when he learned of that fray. Gaborn Val Orden’s father had been king at the time. The Merchant Princes had sought to establish a trade route down into the forbidden lands of Inkarra, and King Orden had defied them. The Merchant Princes were known cowards who never fought their own battles, and so they had hired heavy lancers out of Beldinook and wild hill men out of Toom.
King Orden was a pragmatist, and had not wanted to test the enemy’s resolve with his own troops. So he’d hired mercenaries out of Internook, and ordered them to form a shield wall that took the brunt of the enemy’s charge—all while he held off at a good distance and gauged which among Beldinook’s lancers were most rife with endowments.
The lancers from Beldinook had taken more attributes than King Orden had surmised, and Orden’s mercenaries were decimated.
“I am not King Orden,” Aaath Ulber said at last, reaching his decision. “I will not leave you defenseless.”
“Then what will you do—secure Internook in our behalf before you go?”
Taking Internook would be a monumental task. Doing so might require months or weeks, if the land could be taken at all. And every minute that Aaath Ulber spent here was one more minute of frustration, one more minute of aching to learn if his wife Gatunyea, his children, and his people in Mystarria still survived.
Myrrima leaned forward, touched Aaath Ulber’s arm, begging him to help these folks.
Aaath Ulber was loath to accept such a heavy onus, but Myrrima said, “We can’t just leave. This island must be secured. If we try to just sneak away, the wyrmlings here will attack. This village itself will be demolished. Our only hope is to secure this island, then go south.”