Chapter Ten #3
Pelun looked… almost faintly pleased, and Tor had to suppress the urge to… what, puff out his chest and preen?
Goddess help him, he was a fool. He tried to turn his attention to something else.
Carefully, he asked, “Is the raiding as much of a concern as it sounds like it is?”
The thing was, the raiding wasn’t happening this close to Baless and the castle, but for the farmers and townsfolk to have heard about it and to worry? It wasn’t a good sign.
Pelun hesitated, and his words came out like he was choosing them one by one. “It’s gotten distinctly worse in the last year or two.” He hesitated, and then blurted, “The King is determined to deal with it internally. He wants to crush the exiles.”
Tor pointed out mildly, “The land was granted to them as long as they stay out of our lands.”
“My father considers that they have broken that pledge with the raiding.”
Tor thought that the situation was a lot more complicated than that, but it wasn’t as though Alossa was much given to being raided—certainly not by the exiles beyond the Tond mountains. Each of the realms had criminals and thieves from time to time, but nothing outrageous.
The biggest group of malcontents lay beyond the Tond mountains, where they’d been exiled when they forswore their Fealty during the war. But that had been twenty-five years ago, and apart from the occasional skirmish, the peace had held—or so Tor and Varex thought.
Of course, there was another reason to get rid of the exiles.
“He wants to expand?” Tor asked softly.
Pelun’s eyes flew to his. “I didn’t say that!”
He hadn’t really needed to say it, since everyone knew Forex hadn’t been happy with the shrinking of his realm in the peace accords. But… such an overt statement could be construed as treason, and Tor was the brother of the High King.
Tor corrected himself. “He wants to make sure that his people are safe.”
Pelun continued to stare for a long, measuring moment, and then he looked away to the farmland that they were riding through as he carefully agreed, “Yes, of course.”
And Forex probably did want to keep his people safe…
inasmuch as he couldn’t rule over no one.
Their Fealty brought him magical strength, and they worked the land.
In return, the King strengthened the land and protected the people.
If Tor were being generous, he could only imagine how frustrating it would be to have your people threatened by regular raids.
“What are they taking?” he wanted to know.
“Food, mostly,” Pelun answered, more easily now. “Grain, root vegetables. Mostly items that can be stored. But they’re opportunistic, and they’ll take whatever they can get their hands on. Sometimes metal and other goods.”
“Are they not able to support themselves?” Tor asked.
Pelun frowned. “It doesn’t seem so.”
But they hadn’t raided in the early years. Did they think everyone in the realms had become complacent now? Had something changed?
“Are they caught?”
“Sometimes. Rarely.” Pelun grimaced. “They’re sometimes killed in the fight. They do not… tolerate captivity.”
Tor grimaced. It had definitely not been that bad the last time he’d been here—but the last time he’d dealt directly with the exiles had been two years ago in Filon… when twelve people had died thanks to Tor.
He wondered now if Varex knew more about this than Tor did, if he’d deliberately obscured the facts from Tor, or if Forex had obscured them for Varex—or perhaps a combination of both.
If people were willing to die rather than be taken prisoner, it wasn’t usually a good sign.
“They aren’t mistreated?” Tor asked.
“Of course not!” Pelun bristled. “We’re not monsters!”
“No one is saying that you are,” Tor answered calmly. “I’m trying to ascertain why they would think that death was preferable to captivity, that’s all. It’s a sensible question.”
“Not if you think we’re decent human beings,” Pelun muttered.
“Have you seen the dungeons in your castle?” Tor demanded.
Pelun glared. “Of course.”
“As I have seen the ones in my brother’s castle,” he responded. “I think they’ve been pretty responsibly used over the last twenty-five years. But can I swear to the same during the war? To how they were used by my parents or grandparents? Extreme situations tend to engender extreme reactions.”
Pelun stayed silent for another very long moment, and they continued to amble along the road.
And finally, he said quietly, “I heard a whisper that they disappear sometimes. From the dungeons.” And then, a little defiantly: “I’ve never seen any bodies. Nor any firm evidence of anything of the sort.”
And if anyone was likely to be confided in by the servants, Tor thought it was Pelun.
So what did that leave? He didn’t think Forex was hoisting bodies and carrying them away somewhere.
But that didn’t mean he might not have highly loyal—or highly paid off—servants or guards who did the work for him.
That was all speculation, though. The risk-taking part of Tor wanted to demand to see the dungeons and be told what was going on.
The part that had been schooled by his mother—and maybe even his brother—acknowledged that the evidence was flimsy at best, and the stories could easily be exaggerated.
If he wasn’t careful, he’d only make the situation worse.
But perhaps there was more than one reason why it was good he was here.