“Is the harmach coming?” Kara asked Sergeant Kolton, who stood beside her on the small mezzanine above the banquet hall and below the doors leading to the upper bailey. Six Shieldsworn guarded the upper doors of the chamber, commanding a good view of the spacious chamber below. Another half dozen of the harmach’s guards stood watch by the great doors leading to the lower bailey. All the Shieldsworn were armed and armored for a fight; they wore long coats of mail and carried crossbows or halberds and long swords. They weren’t the only soldiers in the room. More armsmen in the colors of various merchant costers or guilds stood watch by their council members assembling around the table in the center of the hall.
“I think he’ll be here momentarily, Lady Kara,” the round-faced soldier said. He glanced to the gilded doors-now old and peeling-that led from the banquet hall to the interior courts and passageways of the castle. Then he looked back down at the hall below and shook his head. “Doesn’t seem proper to me, though. He shouldn’t be at anyone’s beck and call.”
“It would be worse if he didn’t greet his guests,” Kara said. She sighed and descended the stairs that led down to the hall’s floor. In the middle of the room, immediately before the harmach’s carved wooden throne on its old dais, Griffonwatch’s servants had set up a horseshoe-shaped table facing toward the hall’s doors. Nine chairs were spaced around the table for the Harmach’s Council, and behind the council’s table, the castle staff had arranged plain wooden benches for the councilors’ retinues, such as they were. She took her seat at the foot of the right-hand arm of the horseshoe, automatically arranging the skirts of her own mail over the chair and turning her sword parallel to the ground so the hilt wouldn’t poke her under her ribs. She made sure to sit a good two feet back from the edge of the table. If she needed to get to her feet and draw her blade fast, she didn’t want the council table in her way.
“Ah, Lady Kara. Perhaps you can tell us what this is all about?” Kara glanced to her left, where Lord Maroth Marstel had his seat at the table. The Marstels were descended from a high-placed captain of the old Red Plumes of Hillsfar, a lord who had taken up residence in Hulburg after the Red Plumes had been driven out of their city, and he’d established a wealthy estate with the plundered loot and sworn armsmen he’d taken with him. Maroth Marstel was a tall, red-faced man of middle years who affected a much higher station than his family’s checkered past likely warranted. “This is most irregular. Our bylaws insist on three days’ notice of a meeting of the council.”
“That’s a custom, not a law,” Kara replied. She had always found Marstel a leering boor, but as a Hulmaster and advisor to the harmach she was expected to sit at the table alongside buffoons such as the head of House Marstel, whether she wanted to or not. She set aside her irritation at his insipid manner and said, “It’s not for me to say why you have been summoned, Lord Maroth, but you’ll see soon enough.”
She took her eyes from his and glanced at the other members of the Harmach’s Council. They did not meet often; most attended to their own particular duties in administering the small realm of Hulburg and rarely needed to confer with the others. Directly across from her was Wulreth Keltor, the Keeper of Keys-a careworn, petulant old man who administered the sorely depleted treasury and the public works of the city. Beside him sat the wizard Ebain Ravenscar, the town’s Master Mage. He was a young, dark-bearded Mulmasterite who was in theory the most competent wizard residing in Hulburg. The Master Mage was supposed to be responsible for ensuring that practitioners of magic observed some basic precautions while within the city, and he was entitled to the ear of the harmach. In practice Ravenscar gave his official duties little attention, and Kara strongly suspected that the wizard was well paid to be so inattentive.
Next came the chair reserved for the captain of the Shieldsworn. Jarad Erstenwold’s seat sat empty, and Kara didn’t know when it might be filled again. The sight of the vacant chair gave her a pang in her chest; she missed Jarad’s crooked smile and plain-spoken ways every day. At the head of the table sat Lady Darsi Veruna, head of the Merchant Council, stunning in a dress of deep blue with an ermine stole over her shoulders; Theron Nimstar, the town’s High Magistrate; and then her stepbrother, Sergen, the Keeper of Duties and the harmach’s deputy on the council. Finally, on the other side of Lord Marstel, the old, white-haired dwarf Dunstormad Goldhead brooded in his own seat. He was the town’s lord assayer, but in practice Sergen’s oversight of the Hulmaster lands left him with little to do except indulge his passion for drink.
“It seems we’re all here,” Kara murmured to herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen all of the council at a meeting, let alone one called on such short notice.
The ranger heard a rustle of motion behind her and looked up to the stairs at the back of the hall. Harmach Grigor made his way stiffly down the steps with the aid of his heavy cane. He wore a long burgundy coat over a ruffled white shirt, with a matching hat and gold medallion of office around his neck. Two Shieldsworn guards flanked him, ostensibly to guard him from an unexpected attack, but more likely watching for a stumble on the old steps. Everyone in the hall rose to their feet and waited until Grigor took his seat on the dais overlooking the council’s table. He leaned his cane against one arm of the great seat and said, “Please, continue. Sergen, summon the messengers when you are ready.”
Sergen looked up and down the table, reassuring himself that all the council members were indeed present, and then motioned to Sergeant Kolton. “Bring them in, sergeant. Be on your guard.”
Shieldsworn guards at the lower entrance to the great hall pulled open the doors. There was an uncertain swirl of motion as they stepped aside and more guards entered. Then the orcs pushed their way into the hall-five of them, all draped in heavy hauberks of mail. One was older than the others, a hulking gray-haired brute with only one tusk. The others were younger warriors, fierce and proud. They glared at the humans around them, their hands gripping tightly the hafts and hilts of weapons they wore on their crude harnesses. Each warrior had a simple red emblem painted across the mail of his chest-a jawless red skull. The gray-haired one even had a red-painted skull hanging from a short chain at his hip. “I am Morag One-Tusk, Morag the Slayer, Morag the Old,” he roared at the great hall. “I speak for King Mhurren, the Scourge of Glister. Who here is chief?”
Bloody Skulls, Kara thought. She hid her consternation behind narrowed eyes. She knew something about the tribes of Thar, having hunted-and been hunted by-quite a few of them over the years. The Bloody Skulls were about the strongest and most numerous of Thar’s orcs, but fortunately they had rarely troubled Hulburg, since the territory of several smaller tribes lay between Bloodskull Keep and the Winterspear vale-the Red Claws goblins, the Bonecrusher ogres, and a few other smaller bands as well. The fact that the Bloody Skulls thought that Hulburg was a concern of theirs was a bad sign. Something must have happened to turn the alliances and enmities of the Thar tribes in a new direction, and Kara suspected that she would not like it at all.
“I am Grigor Hulmaster,” the harmach said. He kept his voice even. “I am the harmach-the chief-of Hulburg. You stand before the council of Hulburg, Morag. You told my soldiers that you had a message for the leaders of Hulburg. We are here to listen to your words. Come forward and speak.”
Morag and the other four advanced, looking around the room with poorly disguised contempt. They marched to the foot of the council table, heads high, sneering at any who met their gaze. The old orc looked at the councilors in their seats, snorting in derision when the Keeper of Keys averted his gaze, growling when he caught sight of the dwarf Goldhead, and finally pausing when his eyes reached Kara. “You, I know of,” he muttered. “The Blue Serpent, mighty hunter. You do not look so fearsome to me.”