How to Build a Lordship in One Bad Winter - The Purge of the Old Oak

Baron Wulfram’s letter lay cracked and soot-smeared on the desk when Victor lifted it to the tallow dip.

“He says the old oak is down,” Victor muttered into the empty room where only the steady drip of a leaking drain-pipe kept time. “And the crows are already fighting over the acorns.”

Stellan leaned against the timber door-jamb, his arms folded across his leather jack, his scarred knuckles rubbing the small of his back where a touch of old rheumatism always settled whenever the wind turned out of the north. “The Green-Oak family had it coming, Master Victor. Thorn was a peacock who spent more time oiling his mustaches than clearing his boundary ditches. When the center broke at Lawoc, he didn’t even have enough sense to ride east with your father; he stayed behind to kiss Morra’s stirrup-leather, thinking a royal smile would pay his tenant-debts.”

“Morra doesn’t pay debts with smiles,” Victor said, tracing with his thumb the jagged tear in the bottom margin where the courier had cracked the red wax seal open. “He pays them with other people’s cattle. Father says the new Duke has already signed the writ of attainder. Green-Oak’s holdings are split down the middle, half to the Crown’s war-chest, half to whatever northern captain is willing to keep the road-guards off the wine-carters.”

“Which means,” Stellan muttered, shifting his weight until the floor-timbers groaned, “that our southern flank is wide open. If Keld’s borderers decide to push past the Dour while the ice is holding, there isn’t an organized spear between here and the central shires to stop ‘em.”

Victor didn’t answer. He laid the letter flat against the walnut boards, weighting it down with an iron nodule from the Red-Clay Ridge. The metal was cold, dark, and reassuringly heavy. His mind raced through the inventory tables stored behind his eyes: Four hundred pikes at Barrow-Fork, two hundred mounted lances at Salt-Mooring, sixty tons of winter-press cake in the silage vaults, and twenty-five miles of frozen bog between us and the nearest royal tax-collector.

“They won’t push south yet,” Victor said, and his fingers beat a slow, dry tattoo on the wood. “Morra is too busy hanging his brother’s friends in the capital to worry about a few miles of gorse-scrub in the north. The capital is a snake-pit right now. Every minor lord with a rusted breastplate is crawling into the palace courtyard, begging for a title that belongs to a dead man.”

“And your father?”

“Father is staying at Stone-Garth,” Victor said, a strange, hard knot tightening in his chest. “Managing the oil-presses, arguing with the grain-factors, and waiting for the roof to fall in. He says if the court gets too hot, he’ll load Mother and the little ones onto the last flat-bottomed barge and push them down the Dour toward the sea.”

“They’d never make it past the river-forts,” Stellan grunted. “The ducal river-guards are stopping every skiff that doesn’t carry a royal seal, shaking down the carters for silver before they let a sack of flour pass the locks.”

“They’ll make it if they come by sea,” Victor said, glancing at the dark window where the sleet was beginning to tap against the greased parchment. “The Gouen Chamber’s cogs are running the God’s Tear in seventy-two hours now. Theobald’s captains don’t care about ducal seals; they care about the price of teak and tallow.”

A heavy, boots-first trudge sounded on the wooden stairs outside the chamber, followed by the dry, rattling scrape of a scabbard hitting the door-frame.

The door swung inward without a knock.

Jocelyn entered, his face flushed red from the wind, his wool cloak caked with wet grey slush around the hem. He didn’t take off his cap; he dropped an armful of birch-shingles onto the edge of the desk, startling a cloud of grey dust from the ledgers.

“We have visitors on the lower road, Victor,” the young nobleman said, breathing hard, as if he had run the last mile from the horse-lines. “Two horsemen. No lances, but they’re wearing the blue-and-silver tabards of the central regency. They crossed the frozen reach an hour ago under a white flag, and they’ve been sitting on their mounts outside the ditch-gate like two crows waiting for a carcass to cool.”

Victor picked up his wool cap from the peg behind his chair, pulling it down over his ears. “Regency heralds? In November?”

“One’s a herald with a brass trumpet that looks like it’s been dented by a cabbage-cart,” Jocelyn spat, leaning his back against the cold pine wall. “The other is a civilian clerk with a leather dispatch-case strapped to his thigh and ink-stains all the way to his elbow. They’re asking for the Baron of Gold-Tallow. Or his ‘duly appointed representative with power to sign royal parchments.’”

“A tax-collector with a brass horn,” Stellan chuckled, his hand sliding toward his knife. “Shall I take four lads and tell ‘em the bridge is washed out?”

“No,” Victor said, standing up and buckling his sword-belt with a crisp, dry snap. “A herald under a white flag is an official witness. If we kill him or chase him into the snow without hearing his piece, Morra’s clerks will write us down as outlaws in the capital’s black book before the week is out. And right now, we need the black book to stay as clean as we can manage.”

He walked toward the door, his boots hitting the boards with a sharp, measured cadence. “Jocelyn, bring them into the council shed. Not here, the roof leaks on the ledgers. Use the dry grain-barn by the south gate. Stellan, get six of the billmen in grey coats to stand by the door. I want them looking like they’ve just finished cleaning their pikes with mutton-fat.”

The grain-barn smelled of dry husks, mouse-droppings, and the sweet, heavy dust of crushed barley.

A charcoal brazier had been dragged into the center of the dirt floor, throwing a weak, flickering circle of orange light over the flour-dusted boots of two men who were stamping their feet to keep the circulation in their toes.

The herald was an elderly fellow whose red wool tunic was threadbare at the elbows, his brass trumpet tarnished to the color of an old kettle. His companion was younger, a pale, thin-faced clerk with watery grey eyes and a nose like a snipe, clutching his leather dispatch-case against his ribs as if he expected the straw to bite him.

When Victor stepped through the sliding barn-door, his broadsword clinking against his grease-stained greaves, the clerk flinched, taking half a step backward into the pile of empty sacking.

“Baron Victor of House Gold-Tallow?” the herald asked, his voice trembling slightly as he tried to puff out his chest and assume the grand, booming register of the royal courts. He raised a parchment scroll tied with a narrow ribbon of purple silk. “I bring a writ from the High Court of the Grand Duchy, issued under the seal of—”

“Save the breath for the road back to the river, master,” Victor said, walking straight past them toward an upturned rye-tierce that served as a chair. He didn’t offer them a seat. He sat down, resting his elbows on his knees, his dark eyes fixed on the purple ribbon. “It’s four degrees below freezing out there, and your horses are standing in three inches of slush. State the business.”

The clerk swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his tight linen collar. He reached into his case, pulled out a second, smaller roll of vellum stamped with red wax, and laid it on the grain-bin between them.

“The… the Council of the Regency,” the clerk stammered, his fingers twitching against the parchment. “In consideration of the pacification of the northern marches and the suppression of the nomad disturbances… hereby confers upon Victor, son of Wulfram, the title and patent of… of…”

He stopped, his eyes darting toward Victor’s face as if waiting for a blow.

“Go on,” Victor prompted softly. “Of what?”

“Northern Border Viscount,” the clerk blurted out, closing his eyes for a second. “With full administrative authority over the Northmarch ridings, subject to the annual delivery of two hundred head of trained mountain cavalry to the royal muster at Dun-Dour and the regular payment of the crown’s fifth on all timber-tolls originating from the Huchen basin.”

A heavy, greasy silence filled the barn.

In the shadows by the sliding door, Stellan let out a short, sharp snort of pure disbelief. Two of the billmen shifted their pikes, the iron points scraping against the timber rafters with a dry, metallic screech.

Victor did not smile. He didn’t reach for the vellum.

“A viscountcy,” Victor said, his voice empty, flat. “Just like that. Without an army in the field, without a single regiment of guards standing in the capital’s square, and without my father even signing the resignation papers at Stone-Garth.”

“The… the capital is in great need of loyal, energetic lords on the frontiers, my Lord,” the clerk babbled, his hands fluttering like two trapped moths. “The northern border is disintegrating. Margrave Keld has moved four thousand lances into the central plateau; the northern passes are choked with barbarian refugees; and the Council needs a bulwark that doesn’t require four months of debate before it draws a sword. The patent is genuine! Signed by Grand Duke Morra himself!”

Victor reached out, picked up the vellum roll, and tossed it without looking down onto the dirty straw at his feet.

“Take it back,” Victor said.

The clerk’s jaw dropped so low his chin seemed to touch his collar. “Take it back? My Lord… it’s a peerage! It raises your house above every independent baron between the Dour and the sea! You outrank the Lapis-Briars, you outrank the Black-Pines…”

“It’s a noose,” Victor corrected him, leaning forward until his face caught the red glow of the charcoal. “Morra wants me to take two hundred mountain cavalry, every trained horse I own, and march them three hundred miles south into the central plains to help him put down his own cousins and tax-farmers. And in exchange, he gives me a piece of sheepskin that calls me a viscount over a territory that is currently being overrun by three nomad khanates and two regiments of the Margrave’s border-irregulars.”

Victor stood up, his height dwarfing the pale, shivering clerk.

“Tell the Grand Duke that the Gold-Tallows are well satisfied with their barony,” Victor said, his voice cold and relentless that brooked no argument. “Tell him we don’t need a higher title, because a viscount has to pay four times the war-indemnity of a baron, and our treasury is currently spent on buying wheat-meal for our ditch-diggers. And tell him that if his tax-collectors come north of the Dour looking for my cavalry, they’d better bring more than a brass horn and a roll of purple silk, because my pikes don’t know the difference between a royal herald and a northern horse-thief.”

The herald’s face went the color of curdled milk. He grabbed his dented brass trumpet as if it were a shield, backing toward the door with frantic, stumbling steps. “Treason… that’s… that’s open defiance of the royal—”

“Stellan,” Victor said.

“Aye, sir?”

“Escort the gentlemen back to the ice-bridge,” Victor ordered, turning his back on them. “Give their horses four quarts of oats and a bundle of dry hay. They have a long, cold ride back to the capital, and I’d hate for Morra’s heralds to freeze to death before they can tell him what I did with his purple ribbon.”