24: Wollerda
He’d have gone to bed, but lacked the energy. Felt too tired to spread his blankets—Orthal’s blankets—on the pile of dry grass. Then three men came to the tent. One of them, Tarlok, peered in at him.
“Captain?” he said hesitantly.
“What is it, Tarlok?”
“There are things we want to talk to you about, but they can wait if need be.”
Macurdy got slowly to his feet, remaining somewhat bent because the roof was low. “No, let’s hear them now,” he said, and ducked out through the opening. The other two had come into camp with Tarlok. One was an older man who’d kept apart from the others at muster, like a bystander.
“Captain, this is Terel Kithro and this is Arva Bono, old friends of mine.” He put a hand on the shoulder of a man about his own age, perhaps thirty. “Bono joined the company when I did. For the last eight, ten years, he’s traveled around amongst the settlements, teaching the young to read and write and figure. Knows most everyone. He’s been helping me recruit.”
Tarlok paused as if ordering his thoughts. “I didn’t tell you the entire truth, earlier. Bono and I’d planned to murder Orthal. Last night. Orthal and Slaney and a few others had a reputation for fighting and getting in trouble. Making trouble. Then the reeve came in with his bully boys and killed some people, burned some farms, and drove off livestock. For holding back on taxes, he said. When the word got around, folks were pretty upset, and Orthal and his buddies were naturals to recruit wild or would-be wild young bucks to form up a rebel band.” Tarlok shook his head. “We didn’t realize what a damned troll he really was. In the long run he was a hindrance for recruiting. Bono and I brought in quite a few men that afterward slipped off and went home—didn’t like the way Orthal did things. It was their stories, more than anything else, that hurt recruiting. Looked like he’d turn the whole thing into banditry.”
Macurdy interrupted before Tarlok could say more. “I’m worn out, Tarlok. What are you getting at?”
Tarlok nodded. “Right. We brought Kithro back with us because people know and respect him, and because he’s a friend of Pavo Wollerda, the captain of Wollerda’s company. Of the eastern clans. It’s supposed to be a lot bigger than ours, and better organized and trained. And we figured when we had a better leader, maybe the two bands could work together.”
“Who did you figure would lead, once Orthal was dead?”
“Well, I sort of planned to, if we couldn’t talk Kithro into it. But now you’re here, and we’re all agreed you’d do a lot better job.”
Macurdy grunted. “Kithro, do you think this Wollerda would be interested in working with us?”
“I think so. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come up with Tarlok. I’m too old for a rebel. Old and spoiled by comfort.”
Kithro’s aura was pretty clean. Arbel would call him a warrior, in this case an overage warrior who’d go for his goals by other means than a sword: by focus and intelligence, and maybe other people’s swords. “Tell me about Wollerda,” Macurdy said.
Wollerda was of a lineage of chiefs, Kithro told him, and that still meant something among the Kullvordi, which was what the hillsfolk called themselves. When Wollerda had been a small boy, the king had been having trouble with the Kullvordi, and because Wollerda’s father and grandfather had both been headmen, Wollerda and his mother had been taken to the palace as hostages. Wollerda had grown up there, he and his mother living in a small room in the servants’ wing. As a bright, inquisitive child whom adults tended to like, he’d learned a lot about the flatlands, its government, and the royal court. And about the rest of the world, because the palace held a royal library with two or three hundred books, and the old man who looked after it took a liking to him.
When he’d pretty much grown up, he and his mother were let go, but after a few years of farming and herding, he’d returned to the capital, Teklapori, and set up business as a traveling salesman of books and jewelry. He not only traveled all over Tekalos, but east to the Great Eastern Mountains, west to the Great Muddy, and north to the Big River, buying and selling books, and fine jewelry made by the Sisters. He’d even been north of the river, into the Marches of the ylvin empire.