For all the pleasure the Upani had from regaining that beast-dirtied castle which once had been theirs and was again, they had done so for a sure purpose they meant to fulfill. Other matters also waited their doing, as Juliano recalled when the next morning he gathered the knights and his family to give them his counsel, as was his right as the family's head. “We have tasks before us, my friends, my cousins, my brothers and sisters. Some small and some large, but all worth our toil and vigor. The first of them I name, because the easiest, is the burial of the Cuculna dead our friends desire. We will put Father Eusebio over that, if no good reason is ranged against it, and it will be done today. Second, easier in labor but not in time, is that we must send our part of the mural to Aequinium. The other families, I ween, will do so, or already have, not slowed by strangeness in their holdings. Our honor will suffer unless I go, and also I would have guards with me and all our wives and daughters, for reason of the third matter that I now make my topic.
“We must not forget the thought that sent us here where we had so much of trouble, which was to gain for ourselves a fastness useful against the brigands that threaten any who strive to live rightly. There will be risk in that, and so those only who have these three merits, that they are young, strong, and trained in the use of arms and how to obey orders in the fearsome slaughter we should allow to man this castle. We Upani ought also to make use of our wealth and ask any knight who has a liking for this effort to stay and fight at our cost, and that one among them lead us in battle. For they have skill we do not.”
So Juliano advised, and the Upani praised what he spoke. Sir Hring on behalf of the knights said this. “All that were well done. I am eager to have the burying finished, and after that each knight will give what answer he wants. I know mine already, but though made the leader, I cannot speak for all. Each has his own mind as to what he will do.” He did not say what every knight save one thought, which was that Sir Micah had outdone them all in feats, so that the sole doubt at hand was whether fighting bandits was best to win honor and fame or to go alone in search of less common adventures.
Plans were made without delay. Juliano set out that very morning with his own armed men and the Upani women for river-mastering Aequinium. Meanwhile the knights went back to the post where they trusted Sir Johan and Sir Clovis kept watch. Sir Hring advised also that the garrison go with them that those men, willing to fight but not practiced in war, might learn better how to march and hold stricter ranks than they had shown before.
That army, small but too big for any band of robbers that was bold when the king set the wrong above the right but not at any other time, traveled untroubled to a place where the knights learned much had happened worthy of alarm. A grave half-dug, the ground trampled by feet intent on doing ill, and piles of unworn mail and greaves were signs that the two knights had not deserted their duty without being forced to it.
The Upani and their armsmen took fright at that and grasped their spears and shields tight as they looked every way, their heads turning about not unlike dice that, once thrown, know not where to rest and tumble edge over edge to no purpose. The knights, though, were firmer. They moved about in pairs, one looking at the strife-torn earth and the other watching for foes that liked ambushes.
“Which way points the vane, Sir Mikkel?” Sir Hring asked that of his squire of old.
“Wherever it may, the winds blow somewhere among clouds too dark for my honest eyes. I can never follow them, and have pride enough to boast no other knight here will do better. There is this though, that there is no blood or cleaved flesh or splinters of shields here which are the proof of battle.”
“There is more to say than that, I ween.” Sir Cassian, a little off, ended his scrutiny and spoke. “Looking over what is here while not forgetting what is, I come to this claim. That the brigands left such arms here as these is passing hard to believe, fit for selling or use as they are, unless they became unable to do so by some cause. Perhaps that someone did for them as they had hoped to do for those two knights, but far from here.” His fellow knights were glad at that, for they guessed his words had something like the truth in them. He said more. “I was minded to go in search of some deed worthy of fame, alone, but now I like more to aid the Upani. It is not that the brigands went against our friends that I hate, for a brave man might do that. It is because as easy as waiting for knights to finish their work before giving them battle is, they did not.”
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Not all the knights were of that view wholly, but they did put off their homeward journeys that they might join in warfare against the brigands after the burial was done, which took no long time. “And yet I would have you leave,” Sir Hring of Krystila told them, “most of you, that the brigands be wrong in the count their scouts will take of us. I will leave too at the front of the rest and make to rejoin Juliano with much of merriment so we seem to have no more care for the castle after we gained it. The brigands, after learning that, must move to take or destroy it before we think to man it ourselves and add to the strength of Aequinium that way, but it will go hard for them whatever they do.”
That was the plan Sir Hring devised, and the men with him praised it as sure to bring the robbers to battle who would run from the challenge of warlike men, were they wise. Sir Thurbert of Trilling set out, and most of the knights beside, Sir Micah of Luros, Sir Bevan of Gwellas, and others of like daring toward Ambiripali as the Upani advised them, a city famed for its theater. They walked in no hurried or quiet way. Rather they lingered now and then to measure themselves one against the other in bringing down birds with the bow or else boasted of what feats they would do in loud speeches the brigands would surely learn, unless they tasked the deaf to be scouts.
When the earlier company passed out of sight, Sir Hring took up the march. He led his men at a faster pace, but all the louder because of that. In whispered words hard to hear for the noise Valerio Upanus, brother of Juliano, told him places where men might hide well, and there they placed runners whose eyes were good. Six men had been set to that job when the second out from the castle heard the clatter of armed men and saw some, though he could not make out the full number of them.
He left the rock that had hosted him for a brief time, but was no less to be thanked for that, and Sir Hring soon knew all that scout had seen. Though the men under him started as if a crown awaited at the end of the race, he restrained them as does the servant of a wealthy man whose master is eager to add Argetych plate to his belongings enough that he begins to pay a merchant the first price asked before his man, warier, recalls to him how little he is sure of the source of the plate, the state it is in, and whether like goods might be had at a better price from other sellers, more honest because jealous of their name or else less in want of money for the debts that they bear. Not otherwise than that did Sir Hring behave then and tell them for their good that to arrive in order and after the brigands had busied themselves with the many tasks they might have in the castle was to better their chances in war.
Therefore his sixty men left off from folly and set their speed to an equal pace, and they marched toward battle in a conquering way. The castle, unguarded, welcomed them back, and the bandits searching for goods left behind were startled and cut down, eighteen in all, and as they died their cries leapt over the walls. “The chief was right!” They shouted that, and they yelled as loud as they were able before their wind left them forever.
The Upani were minded to rejoice in the victory, but the knights were grim, and Sir Hring bade all form up for a second fight, and that a harder one. “How many must be in this band, if this group we slew is a part of it that went against the chief's will? More than that, he is wary of us, from what we heard. A man heedful of war's ways.” What Sir Hring warned was true, for through the gate they saw an army approach not smaller than eighty men, all armed with spears. And they had slings as well, which sent stones with some skill at the Upani.
Sir Hring led his men forward for this reason, which was that the earlier foe had done mischief before it died in tearing down the castle doors. The enemy could not be prevented therefore from harassing as it wished, but he judged it not likely the bandits had such craft in war as to barrage his men well and withdraw both together. He and Sir Mikkel charged forward in the frontmost place, their shields ready to ward off bone-cracking bullets aimed at them.
Nor did they fail in that. And yet not without hurt did they pass the gate and sally, for the slingers battered those two, the only men they were able to hit, with such strength that their limbs were sore and bruised and their shields grew hard to hold. But there outside the walls was ground enough for the men behind Sir Hring and Sir Mikkel to spread out, twenty wide and three deep, so that the bandits had more targets and less time to hit them.
The Upani did not bear that they should be struck but that each blow should be repaid in grief to the dealer of it, and therefore they ran at the brigands who did not keep up their barrage, as Sir Hring rightly guessed, but instead dropped their slings and readied their spears to pierce flesh in the melee. Nor was that task beyond them, for the looters who had ignored the orders and warnings of their chief were dead, their haste to plunder the castle their undoing. The living bandits surpassed their fallen comrades in having better heed for what battle had taught them, the wisdom of sorrow and loss. Furthermore they despised the Upani as men of faint will who had gained nothing by robbery and force during all of the hateful rule of Viljami though they had armsmen enough to injure the weak and the good.