Chapter 10 Olivestone Barony
Movement came to the Inn’s stable
early. The chickens ousted and fed, the goats
milked and put to pasture, but she remained oblivious to it all. Her horse was watered and fed, and she slept
through it all. When she roused and
entered the Inn to recover her things and have some food to break her fast, she
had to do a little talking. The Innmistress
was sure that she was inside when the inn was locked up, so how did she get
out? And why? “I slipped out the window. I thought to enjoy a nice walk after the performance,
and I thought to investigate the rumours I heard during the intermission. I heard that there were graves being
disturbed and strange shadows up there in the night, so I went to look.” She explained.
The Innmistress looked at her with skepticism,
“And you found out that men in their cups spread rumours easily?”
“While I agree with you in most
cases, I thought it prudent to investigate a bit, and I found that these rumours were based on
fact, for there were three disturbed graves and the mausoleum door was
ajar. I poked a little into this and
found that there was a unnatural thing being performed there and one of them
was still there,” I paused to eat a little of the cold food and to drink the
watered wine.
She took a seat across the table
from me and said in astonishment, “You say not!”
“I say it was so. There was an abomination there that smelled
worse than death and it lurched toward me after throwing off the sarcophagus lid
and attacking me. But luckily for me
that Cyr Astra’s attention is ever with me, for my blows with my sword,”
gesturing with the knife I now held, “put it back to a final rest.” With my knife and fork I put to end the fresh
cooked eggs that were before me, placed by the inn’s cook while I described the
battle. He was sitting beside the
Innmistress. “I turned to leave and by
some unknown art or signal, the abomination had summoned its minions from the despoiled
graves nearby.”
I had told the stable hands to make
ready my horse and cart as I would be leaving very soon, so when I finished
with the second half of the battle, I found that they too had joined their
parents and were listening to my tale. I
finished of with, “and that is how that you found me sleeping in the stable,
because it was either that or wake you up to let me in and I know that you all
needed your rest.” And with that, I took my leave of them and mounted the cart,
clucking to the horse to get him to start forward.
A light rain had fallen in the
night and as I started out the suns broke through the clouds warming the land
up and drying the mud. I was still a
little tired from the performance the night before so the pace I set was none
too onerous, but one that would assure that we reached the next village in good
time. I stopped at a little clear stream
to fill my bottles and stretch my legs. Sitting
in a cart all day for a week would be the death of me. Fighting undead, playing a full set and
sleeping on a pile of straw was far better for me than sitting in that
cart. I ate the remaining fruit that I
picked a few days ago at the crossroads before starting up on the cart
again. I noticed a rider coming from the
village behind me. The village had no
riding horses that I saw, so this was odd, but not the oddest thing of the past
few days, but I did not want to be caught on the road at night again in these
parts, so I continued on.
The rider appeared to be on so
urgent business and did not slow to a trot before he caught up with me. He did not trot when he came up to me, but instead
wheeled his horse to a stop before me, raising a cloud of dust in the
meantime. The figure on the horse was
dressed in a military uniform in an archaic form. The brass buttons were polished to a shine
and the jacket and pants matched dyed in a light gray green. The was a shiny cutlass at his side and a
light lance resting in the saddle with a pinion near the tip with the coat of
arms of the local Baron, one Baron Olivestone.
The soldier rose to read in the saddle from a scroll, on his horse, “By
order of Byron Olivestone, twenty-third Baron Olivestone, the Traveling
Minstrel will be accompanied to Olivestone Manor, so that they may be
interviewed by his Honour forthwith,” he paused in his speech and looked at her
and asked uncertainly, ”You are the minstrel that battled the undead in the
graveyard at Olivepress village,” seeing the question answered, he continued, “Please
come with me, my Lady.”
The initial stiffness wore off the
soldier within a few minutes. We stopped
while we watered his horse and began to head off at a steady walk. Reginald, the name the baron called him, and
his parents was not the name he preferred to answer to, Reg or Reggie was preferred. He had grown up on one of the outlying farms
and joined up with the Baron’s Horseman as soon as he was able to. He was very proud of the uniform and the
buttons which he kept brightly polished.
He told her that for most of his friends growing up the idea of staying
on the farm was unappealing. There was
the draw of the big city, the town of Causeway and the capitol of Trystal. Olivestone was unexciting and had no appeal. He felt lucky that he could serve the baron
and be close to his family and one day he might retire with land to farm
himself, after he had the excitement of being a soldier.
Reg stood up in his saddle and
looked to the right of the road and then bade for me to follow. There was a break in the holy hedge that
lined the roadway and Reg rode confidentially just to the side of where he
wanted me to go. The grass was as tall
here as any other place beside the roadway had been but when I followed instead
of soft earth, the wheels turned on hard pack of some old roadway. Reg explained that there were old roads
everywhere in the Barony as once before the War the barony had been important
and bigger than it was today. He was a
little older than her eldest, Mora, but he seemed to have lived another life in
his head.
He gestured to the various
directions and talked about the seven villages that survived the past, Olivepress,
Oilstone, Almondpress, Olivegrove, Olivewine, Almondgrove and Olivestone. He then stopped and stated it is clear that
in the elder days they had no imagination, but he continued, apologetically
that they had to be forgiven as they all wanted to pay tribute to crop that
made them so prosperous, Olives and Almonds.
He stopped and held the lands all around in contemplation before
speaking. The entire land was covered
with olive and almond trees with the spaces between them long strips of grain
crops. The grain filled the people’s bellies,
and the olives and almonds filled their pockets with money. This barony had six wealthy towns the size of
Causeway and one city the size of Trystal at the start of the Succession War,
but at the end, it was as you see it now.
He bowed his head and then looked up with a tear in his eye like he was
repeating a story he had learned long ago.
In the first few years when The Succession
Wars were new, but before there was real fighting and the loss of life was
small, groups of lords from less successful regions on the other side of the
river looked to the wealth of Olivestone and crossed the river to lay siege on
the six towns and the one city. the
hearts of the men that did this act were not intent on taking the land and
holding it, but on breaking the land and destroying it. The Baron and the soldiers in his command
were off loyal to the commands of their Prince when the force came across the Thyme
to take the lands. All knew that the
walls of the least town here would hold against any force for weeks of the
latest siege craft, but the invaders did not bring any of that. Instead, when they came, they gave plenty of
time for the people to get to safety behind the walls and when the towns and
cities were shut, they raped the lands around them. They hewed the almond and olive groves and
burned them. The groves that had taken
centuries to build were torn apart in weeks.
When the armies of our lord thundered down on them routing them from the
land, all the damage had been done and the heart of the Barony lay dead. A century later and the barony is as you see
it now, poor and sparsely populated.
Reg cast his eyes down and then
perhaps that is why people my age leave this place, seeking the vibrancy that
was stolen from them before they were born.
He looked up and pointed, see over there, that is where I grew up. Off to the direction he pointed was a narrow
strip of trees that grew up around a small group of buildings, when the
invaders had been pushed of the land this was the only strip of those ancient
groves left. The ancient roadway we
traveled on was hedged with quince, whose fruit had not been picked in decades. Just before dusk, we arrived at Olivestone.
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