About three hundred years ago, the first lord of Olthalle had built a stone round tower on this site, a bluff overlooking the meeting of two rivers-known in another world as the Assabet and Sudbury-that combined to feed the Wergat, gateway to the western mountains. Over the course of the subsequent decades he and his sons had fought a bitter grudge war, eventually driving the Musketaquid wanderers west, deeper into the hills and forests of the new lands where they'd not trouble the ostvolk. But then there'd been a falling out in the east, among the coastal settlements. An army had marched up the river and burned out the keep and its defenders, leaving smoking ruins and a new lentgrave to raise the walls afresh. He learned from his predecessor's mistake, and built his walls thick and high.
More years passed. The Olthalle tower sprouted a curtain wall with five fine round bastion towers and a gatehouse larger than the original keep. Within the grounds, airy palace wings afforded the baron's family a measure more comfort than the heavily fortified castle. The barons of Olthalle fell on hard times, and seventy years earlier the Hjalmars had married into the castle, turning it into a gathering place for the clan of recently ennobled tinker families. They'd bridged the Wergat, levying tolls, then they'd driven a road into the hills to the west and wrestled another fortune from the forests. The town of Wergatfurt had grown up a couple of miles downstream, a thriving regional market center known for its timber yards and smithies. His majesty had been unable to leave such a vital asset in the hands of the witches-the Hjalmar estates were a dagger aimed at the heart of the kingdom. And so, it had come to this...
The festivities had started at dawn, when Sir Markus, beater for the royal hunt, had led his levies up to the gates of Wergatfurt and laid his demand before the burghers of the town. Open the gates to the royal army, accept the Thorold Palace edicts, surrender any witches and their get, and be at peace-or defy the king, and suffer the consequences. He had put on a brave show, but (at Otto's urging) had carefully not placed troops on the town's south-western, upstream, side. And he'd given them until noon to answer his demands.
Of course, Otto's men were already in position in the woods, half a kilometer short of the palace itself. And when they brought the first of the captives to him in early afternoon, bound so tight that the fellow could barely move, he had found Otto in an uncharacteristically good humor. "You're Griben's other boy, aren't you? What a surprising coincidence."
"You- " The lad swallowed his words. Barely old enough to be sprouting his first whiskers, barely old enough to know enough to be afraid: "What do you want?"
Otto smiled. "An excuse not to hang you."
"I don't know-" The boy's brow furrowed, then the meaning of Otto's words sank in. "Lightning's blood, you're just going to burn me anyway, aren't you?" He glared at Otto with all the hollow bravado he could muster. "I'm no traitor!"
"Perhaps." Otto glanced towards the stand of trees that concealed his position from the castle's outermost watch-towers. "But you're not one of them, either. You don't have their blood-spell, you'd never have inherited their wealth, all you are to them is a servant. A dead, loyal servant-the moment my men find another straggler who's willing to listen to reason." He turned back to the prisoner. "It's quite simple. Show me the way in and I'll have Magar here turn you loose in the woods, a mile downstream of here. We never met, and nobody saw you. Or." He shrugged: "We hold you for the king. I hear he's a traditionalist; takes a personal interest in the old folkways. And he doesn't approve of people who put his arms-men to the trouble of laying siege to a castle. If you're lucky he'll hang you." Otto paused for effect. "I hear he holds with the Blood Eagle for traitors." His nose wrinkled: the kid had pissed himself. And fainted.
"You mean to scare him to death, sir?" asked Magar, toeing the prone prisoner with professional disdain: "Because if so, I can go fetch a burial detail..."
"I don't think that'll be necessary." Otto peered at the unconscious boy. The Pervert's carefully cultivated reputation for perpetrating unspeakable horrors on people who crossed him had certainly come in useful on this campaign, he reflected:
"Aye, I got that much, sir." The boy was twitching. Magar kicked him lightly in the ribs. "You, wake up."
