The Wanderer by Cherry; Wilder, Katya Reimann Read Free Book Online

all his service. Knaar, after all was said, had been the noble Yorath’s bosom friend, and Valko Firehammer, Knaar’s sire, had been the father to Yorath that Gol’s own sire had denied him.
    The young recruits always eagerly clamored for stories of the lost heir of the Duaring Kings.
    Near the broad road, the “King’s Way” which traversed the plateau, was the strange ghost town of Silverlode—long deserted since its veins of silver were mined out, and since the bloody day when Huarik the Boar had lost his head to Yorath Duaring inside its tall Roundhouse, following the betrayal that triggered the bloodiest phase of the Great King’s War. Now Silverlode, in the gentleness of summer, was a place of pilgrimage. Druda Strawn led his troop there on a sunny day in Oakmoon, the Midsummer Month, and there they met other riders. A working party had arrived all the way from the Eastern Rift to clear away the weeds that rose up between the stones and to wash down the queer small buildings of brick and stone that stood about the Roundhouse. Gael thrilled to the tales of Silverlode, but in itself it was a cold, bereft place, and nothing could bring life or warmth to it.
    Inside the tall Roundhouse daylight shone down from open shutters in the roof; there was a long table with a fine red cloth and many wreaths of flowers. A group of women from the rift had arranged the greenery; now an older man, a tutor from the great house of Pauncehill, came forward and recited for them the tale of The Bloody Banquet of Silverlode. He told of Huarik of Barkdon, called the Boar, both for his house’s crest and for his savagery. This lord had plundered and raged up and down the eastern border of the High Plateau.
    The Boar made a secret pact with the mad old King Ghanor, who used his authority to summon all the lords from the Great Eastern Rift to the neutral ground of the High Plateau, calling them as if to a peace table and a field of martial games. The Rift Lords had little reason to trust Ghanor, who had not sent his soldiers to aid them in the campaign to hold Huarik from their fields, but Ghanor sent his daughter, Princess Fadola, and her husband, Mel’Nir’s vizier, as an earnest of his goodwill, so the followers of the Rift Lords put aside their wariness. In this very Roundhouse the lords and their ladies sat down to feast. As they ate and spoke and laughed, readying themselves for the tourney, their troops, housed in the compound, were treacherously brought to sleep by drugged wine. And underground, hidden within the old mine, waited fresh troops of Huarik, a secret double muster.
    Then, at the appointed hour, Huarik the Boar showed his true face. The Rift Lords were set upon as they sat at table; the Boar himself slit their throats, and they lay weltering in their own blood at the festive board. Their wives were herded away from the table; servants who intervened were struck down. Even the princess and Sholt the Vizier were appalled, stricken with fear and loathing, for they had not been privy to this awful deed. Young Knaar of Val’Nur, come up from the Rift, where he had trained with Strett of Andine at Cloudhill, was seized for ransom.
    Ah, but a warning had been given. The men of Cloudhill did not drink, and they warned others. A rescue party came in underground and climbed up, up—to the gallery yonder, where the musicians had played. They gazed down upon the frightful
carnage in this great hall, and Yorath Nilson, a gangling untried warrior, a loyal man who had served in Strett of Cloudhill’s houseguard, took charge. While some stole away and opened the outer doors, crying for their life and freedom, this Nilson strode instead to the gallery railing, and there he took his stand. He cried out in a loud voice—a champion had arisen! Calling Huarik a foul and treacherous murderer, he challenged the Eastmark’s lord. Then over the rail he went, and he was so tall, such a mighty man, that it was but a little step down into