Kerric the Mercenary: Episode 9, Meeting the Baron
Kerric find the Baron as run down as his barony.
Kerric wordlessly dismounted Akrus. As he let the guard lead him through the keep gate, Kerric assigned faces to all four voices he’d identified. He’d assumed others in the court and on the walls that had remained silent, but there were none. Just the four ancient men in mismatched armor with thread bare tunics on that he’d heard speaking. This place was worse off than he thought. By listening carefully, he could hear women and children on the upper floors. The lower floors sounded abandoned, but for a few people.
The three doors he passed following that man going deeper into the keep, did nothing to improve his opinion of the place. Kerric doubted the main door designed to make penetration into the inner rooms hard had been closed in a century or could be closed now.
Down several halls, they did reach a door his guard had to open. Inside was the first clean and well-maintained room Kerric had seen in the keep. Books lined every wall of this study, and setting at a heavy desk with two smokeless reading lamps sat a fat man.
“You have my children?” the man whined.
“No, but I know who took them and where they are. My man scouted their camp, and they are as yet unbranded. Corman has them. They near Aring.”
His voice rose in pitch as he said, “But you can get them?”
“Unless you thought to send a rider to Aring with a commission, I am likely the only one who can.”
The baron’s voice became full of doubt. “Should I have sent the boy there instead of DarkGate, if that is where he’s headed?”
“No, there’s unlikely to be anyone there that would give Corman much of a fight. Whoever hired him must have truly hated you to spend that kind of money. Who was it?”
“DeSon, has nothing. No one that rich has been here in three decades and I haven’t been off my estate since visiting DarkGate two decades ago. I haven’t had a chance to make an enemy that powerful. Nor has my heir.”
That could be the truth. The craven little man before him would not risk offending anyone of power.
Kerric was honest with him, “I am just as expensive to hire as Corman. If you have other heirs, you should concentrate on using your money to make them safe, not hiring me.”
The fat man took a deep breath and sighed. “It isn’t just my heirs I need. Every skilled man I have was numbered among their two scores of guards. The barony is dead without those men.”
Then take your heirs and flee with that money Kerric didn’t say aloud. What he did say was, “Two Hundred Lumars, in advance.”
The fat man’s eyes bulged. “You want enough to buy 200 wagons of grain? In advance? What if he beats you to Aring and brands them?”
It didn’t surprise him that this rustic baron used that outdated definition of a Lumar. No, I want you to turn me down, he avoided saying. He said, “If that happens, I’ll not only return your money but add gems of my own equaling to one hundred Lumar more to what I return.”
The baron shifted his eye to the man standing next to him. “You get the jar from the armory; you know the one I mean. I’ll get what is upstairs.”
The fat baron stood, and both men left.
Kerric used the time to look over the books of that library. There was little in it useful in running a keep such as this, mostly corrupted approved histories and poetry and a few diaries of earlier barons.
The guard was the first one back. The baron took long enough that Kerric wondered if he was delaying enough in hopes of Corman beating him there and making one hundred Lumar from Kerric’s failure.
“Sorry, the stone hiding this jar was stuck,” he indicated one of the two he carried.
He emptied both onto the desk. Then the one the guard carried.
It was a disappointing total. Even if the three largest gems had been real, it would not have been equal to two hundred Lumar.
Kerric reached down and pulled out the three gems and handed them to the baron. “Those are fake. What is left is only worth about one hundred Lumar.”
The baron’s face paled, and he stood there in confusion for a time, then spoke. “I know where I can get more, but it will take a few days.” He pulled off his baron’s signet ring and set it on the pile. “I must have that back. Is it sufficient collateral to give me those days?”
If the fool was willing to pay that much, so be it. “Very well,” he said. Then, after looking the ring over to be sure it was the genuine signet ring, he pocketed it and scooped those gems into his coin pouch, turned and walked out. By law, this man was no longer a baron until that ring was returned. That, more than anything, showed how desperate he was to have those people back.
The sun was far higher than Kerric liked when he climbed back into Akrus’ saddle. This baron had wasted too much time. Once more he headed Akrus across country at a full run. Not even the Tolar could keep up the Warcat’s pace once they cleared the field and had to dodge the trees in the forest.
If the information he had from his man was correct, Kerric knew the farthest up that Aring road Corman could be if he was pushing hard. That was the point he aimed for.
