The riot broke up after that, the miners unwilling to assault the building to retrieve their putative paymaster and the rest of the mob, always more interested in the excitement than the cause, began to break up to follow their own inclinations. The situation was much simplified when several local ale houses declared that the drinks would be free, each of them having been visited by a nondescript man who paid up front for their largess. At this news any steel that might have been left in the mob melted completely. 


“I’m glad it is only rented,” Calliope said as she looked out over the ruin of the lower level of the house. Jagged holes had been hacked in the walls, and the gardens had been completely churned to mud by the booted feet of their attackers. Trash of various sorts, mostly empty bottles and the occasional discarded tool littered the ruin.

“As it is I will have the Daemons own time getting my deposit back,” Calliope grumbled. Ernst Ruttiger stared at her hatefully.

“What are you going to do with me?” he demanded, his anger partially tinged with fear.

“Do with you?” Calliope asked, arching a dark eyebrow. “Why master Ruttiger, I merely intend to turn you over to the baliffs when they arrive. At that point, given you are guilty of attempted murder, I imagine they will toss you in prison. Not, I trust, before they strip you over your mining interests in order to cover the money you owe me, and the damage to this charming townhouse.” As though the house could hear them, a section of the kitchen wall chose that moment to collapse in a shower of dust and masonry. 

“I can pay you, I am an important man,” Ruttiger blustered. Calliope smiled, a cold and savage expression with more in common with an avalanche than an expression of human emotion.

“You WERE an important man,” she replied, “I suspect once those miners sober up, they will be just as happy to work for me, probably happier.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Ruttiger demanded, his lips trembling as though on the verge of tears.


“Do you recall the name Albrect Whittenwald?” Calliope asked, the unexpected venom in her voice making everyone wince.


“I… I can’t say that I do,” Ruttiger stammered. Calliope took a seat across from him, folding her arms on the table top.

“Strange, he came to you a few years ago, offering you his offices at the Imperial court to secure mining rights in exchange for a rather large loan,” Calliope said. Ruttiger looked confused and not a little scared; it was clear that he did remember the man but could not think of how it related to his current predicament.

“I make many such deals of course, politics and influence mean a great deal in my line of work,” Ruttiger admitted.

“Mine too,” Calliope replied coldly. “Do you know what Herr Wittenwald did with the money you provided him?”
“Of course not! It was simply business, what he spent it on is of no concern of mine!” Ruttiger protested.

“Ah.. but it is a concern of mine Herr Ruttiger,” Calliope replied, her voice uncharacteristically intense, all but caressing the words as they passed her lips. “It is of paramount concern to me.”


___________________


The sky was dark with a gathering storm as the column wound its way over the pass. The tramp of feet echoing off the cliff side and the cadences of Kayden’s marching troops filling the air. Calliope had forgone her carriage this morning and was riding her black stallion. The other horses didn’t seem to like the beast, sensing something fey and unnatural about the gleaming black steed.


“This is Bonnerhaven?” Kayden asked, as his horse drew level to Calliope’s. Mesmer and Otto rode behind her though the rest of the knights were at the rear of the column where the dust from their passage wouldn’t choke the foot troops.

“It isn’t much to look at,” he commented. Calliope looked out over the spreading vale ahead of them. It was a month since Ruttiger had been turned over to the Baron’s justice and Calliope had leased his mining concerns to one of his former rivals, her interest in them not extending beyond paying Kayden’s men. Let others grub in the dirt she thought. The high summer was beginning to slide towards autumn and there was a blush of color that spread across the forests ahead of them. Bonnerhaven itself was a walled town on the far side of the valley, distinguishable from this distance by the spires of its church, its dilapidated stone walls and the pall of smoke rising from its cook fires. The landscape around it was golden with grain fields, ripe and ready for the harvest which would begin in a few days judging by the various offerings to bundled wild flowers which hung from the intermittent oak trees which grew in the spaces between fields. According to peasant legend Taal despised that forests should be cut down to create fields and that each year he swore to destroy them with rain and ice. The flowers were offerings to his wife Rhya who, the legend went, interceded with her husband each year, just long enough for the growing season to pass. These were richer lands than those they had left, Solland was a marginal region but this far westward was usually safe from the depredations of the green skins. Large orc attacks would sweep through here but the kind of constant, low intensity raiding which kept the eastern most part of the province hard scrabble and poor didn’t extend this far.


“It is the cycle of life to death, death to life. There is a beauty in it,” Calliope responded, thinking of the crops rather than whatever tactical vista the mercenary saw.


“I prefer life while it can be had,” Kayden responded.

“Yet you follow a profession of death?” Calliope observed wryly.
“The idea is that the enemy does the dying,” Kayden countered.

“And yet a dead man is no one’s enemy, not this far from Sylvania anyway,” Calliope replied. Otto made the sign of the hammer and Mesmer growled in an uncharacteristic display of anger.


Further discussion was interrupted as one of Kayden’s scout cantered up the line to speak with his commander. The boy was young and looked like the hay hadn’t yet been knocked from his hair but Kayden swore he was one of the best he had seen at his trade. The scout pulled on his reins the wiry horse curveting in a tight circle. 


“We have scouted around the lake sir,” the scout reported, “all clear and an adequate camp.”

“Very good Waldstein,” Kayden replied, “have the troops leave the road wherever makes sense.” The scout touched his brow in respect then headed back along the column at a trot.

“A town the size of Bonnerhaven would have no trouble supporting this many men,” Otto remarked in a neutral tone that trumped what he thought of Calliope’s direction to encamp the men several miles from the city.


“No doubt, but it does not serve my purposes to arrive with an army,” Calliope responded, a touch acidly at having her decision questioned even implicitly. 

“Captain Caradwalden can bring supplies here by wagon and no one will be alarmed,” she continued. Kayden performed what Calliope thought of as his ‘your paying’ shrug, though she privately suspected he also would rather billet his men in town. Otto nodded his head though Calliope suspected that if she turned around he would be rolling his eyes.

“Twenty mercenaries and five knights should be a sufficient escort for a noblewoman,” Calliope continued, “you may rotate each day to give your troops a chance to drink and rut in Bonnerhaven.”


“Can you explain what exactly you will be doing while we are… drinking and rutting?” Kayden asked pleasantly.


“I need to look up an old acquaintance, he has something I need and I want it back,” Calliope responded.


“And is he likely to give up this mysterious item if you ask politely?” Kayden asked. Calliope grinned in a malevolent fashion. Above them thunder rumbled in the sky.

“There is always a first time…”