As they cut across the field to join the road once more, Theophanna was sure that Torm had spoken correctly, Yattar was not a place one was likely to forget. It was an entire city of colorful tents that stretched out in a broad arc around the northern shore of Lake Fonde. Perhaps tents was too common a word, pavilions might have been closer to the mark. Great silk and linen edifices were erected on poles in a riotous assault of color. Some were gorgeous embroidered things, other simple linens painted with clashing patterns of color, their tops formed a varicolor wall of peaks that gave the impression of an enormous castle built by a mad man or a mountain range that had been decorated by a particularly garish tinker. The air seemed to constantly ripple and crack with the snap of pennons, some flew from the pavilions, countless more from lances in racks or driven butt first into the ground in front of tents. A forest of guy wires and ropes snaked down, desperate to hold the canvas carnival to the ground. It had a plan to it, simple streets marked out by mutual agreement mostly dirt but a few of the larger ones had acquired paving stones in the years since it had been established. Yattar had started a hundred years ago when the then Arch-Prelate had been driven from the malarial city of Carce to make a new capital at Gevione. The duchy of Avrin had been his fief and the Duke had been happy to welcome his spiritual overlord. That was until the Arch-prelate decreed that because they were great occasions for sin and a vainglorious foolishness in which men imperiled their mortal souls, that no tournaments would henceforth be held in the duchy. Duke Francois, a famous tournament champion, had been distraught, and begged his Holiness to relent. The Arch-Prelate had refused and furthermore produced a Synodical Decree that until the end of time, no new tournaments might be held within the territory of Avrin. It was said that Francois had been close to suicide at the decree, until his wife, a Basalian woman as it happened, pointed out that the Decree specifically stated no ‘new’ tournaments might be held. At the time a small local tournament had been underway at Yattar and Francois ordered that it must continue indefinitely, thus neatly evading the Holy Father’s stricture. And continue it had. Yattar had functioned as a continual tournament for over a century, growing from a modest fair to a temporary city. The clergy continually denounced it as a wicked abomination but Theophanna suspected that many of them, less pious than that original Arch-Prelate were just as much a part of the game as everyone else. People loved to hear thundering denounciations of the sinfulness of Yattar, almost as much as they loved attending. 


Today it was a city, on the eastern side of the lake more permanent buildings had sprung up: blacksmith shops, coopers, wainrights, vintners and a great port to welcome the ships and barges which bought the food, wine, and spectators up the river Tae from the wealthy cities of Tarlia and the Central Sea. Tanners and more fragrant trades were forbidden, though there was a settlement of them on the south side of the lake to provide the leather required to outfit so many armed men. Yattar even smelled better than most cities, wagons laden with horse manure left the encampment constantly, driven by happy peasants who bartered for it as manure for their fields. Human excreta was also deftly handled by an ingenious covered canal maintained by the ironically named Guild of Flowers which used water from the lake to flush the noxious burden of so many men to the south side of the lake where the Tae carried it to the sea. That was not to say it was without scent. Cookfires and cooking meat were heavy on the air as a thousand stew pots and bake ovens competed. There was the smell of perfume, sweat, and pomanders, as well as the damp smell of the lake and the dust kicked up by tramping feat.  It was a noisy bustling place, knights and men at arms clattered, horses thundered at the list, the roar of crowds all but covered up the impact of lances against shields and breastplates. Troubadours stood on gaudily decorated platforms at street corners, striking instruments and lifting their voices in song. Cattle lowed, carts clattered, and the muffled voices of thousands of people seemed to fill the air with a constant susurrance that seemed to press on the skin.


“Have you ever seen the like?” Torm asked his voice hushed at the sight.

“When I was a girl the… my father took me to the Hippodrome in the Imperial city for the chariot races,” Theophanna replied. That teeming multitude, screaming for their themes would have overmatched even this, but it was the only such sight she could recall that might be competition. She felt a similar sense of fear and exhilaration. Torm nudged his horse into motion and the great beast trotted to the low stone fence by the road and leaped over it to join the steady stream of men and women heading into the permanently temporary town. There were nobles on horseback, priests walking barefoot, and peasants driving wagons or carrying produce on their shoulders or balanced on their heads. Boys ran along with buckets full of wine tied to their necks with miniature halters,, trading ladles full for a copper piece and enduring the more or less good natured cuffs and curses from those who claimed this was no better than banditry. A minstrel strutted along commanding the attention of pimply faced peasant girls of dubious virtue, there was even a coach, not too dissimilar from Theophanna’s bearing some noblewoman or canonness to business or pleasure.

“My Lady,” Torm whispered urgently, and gestured with a nod of his chin to where a group of knights was heading back out of town. They wore no surcoats and their shields were hung against their saddles so as to conceal their devices. Their armor was scuffed and road worn and both men and horses looked dirty and tired. Theophanna thought she saw a leather cover protruding from a saddlebag. Their eyes met and the group of knights stiffened and came to a halt, earning them curses from those behind them. The scene was too public though, and they could do nothing but glower at Torm and Theophanna as they passed not thirty feet away. Theophanna smiled at them and then was seized with daring.

“Sir Knight!” she called to the leader of the party, “Sir Knight might I beg the pleasure of your name!”
“My Lady…” Torm asked in a strangled voice aghast at her affrontory. 

“My Goodman, can you ask that knight his name, he has done me a great service and the Countess d’Orbai would feign die as not repay a debt,” she called to a young squire on foot. They boy gawped at her like a landed fish but then nodded and strode toward the knot of stalled knights.

“Please Sir Knight, don’t deprive me of your name, am I to be forever in debt of a mysterious knight?” she demanded. By now the crowd was murmuring and eyes were turning towards them. The leader of the knights snarled and kicked his horse into motion, leading his men away before the crowd could become fully engaged in the drama.

“Was that wise?” Torm asked, letting out a breath and removing his hand from his weapon.

“Wise or not,” Theophanna replied, “the story will spread and by nightfall people will be desperate to know who that mysterious knight was. If he knows what is good for him he will stay away, and if he comes back, I’m sure someone will be just breathless to tell me about it.”

“Clever,” Torm admired, and Theophanna let out a silvery laugh.

“My Lady!” a voice called, and Theophanna turned to see a pimply faced boy of perhaps twelve summers, quite overwhelmed by his newly acquired duty as a squire.

“Osric!” Theophanna replied, “my husbands page.” she explained to Torm sotto voche.

“His lordship is waiting in his tent, he told me to take you to him as soon as you arrived,” the boy called, then opened his eyes wide as though shocked.

“What happened to the carriage?”


____________

“They what!” Sigfried Falkenrath, Count of Orbai, thundered. He was a powerful man in late middle age, though good wine and good living had put more layers of fat over his musculature than was welcome. He wore a red and gold doublet with white hose and long cavalry boots in the fashion of Imperial Eisenriek. His face had bluff but hands some features, somewhat spoiled by a broken nose and the interesting shade of red it was turning as Theophanna explained what had befallen her.

“Dearest, be calm or you shall be carried off by apoplexy," Theophanna cautioned. Sigfried glared at her for a moment, then turned to snatch up a goblet of wine from a sideboard which he tossed back without hesitation before slamming it back down.

“Attack my wife? On the King’s Highway? By the bleeding balls of Il I will hang them with their own bloody entrails!”

As calming exercises went, Theophanna was not convinced this one was effective. She reminded herself to make a potion for his humors when time allowed, that at least might stop him from dropping dead on the Ranian rug.

“The Castellan’s boy was killed and Brother Albrecht too I think, compared to that a few cuts and bruises is a small price,” Theophanna cajoled. Sigfried’s face grew melancholy, though it did lose some of its anger.


“Poor Ruprecht, whatever will I tell his father,” Sigfried lamented.

“That he died bravely doing his duty, and perhaps that in dear Ruprect’s memory we might commute two years rent on the wine press,” Theophanna suggested. The Castellean had five sons and Theophanna suspected that he might easily sustain the loss of Ruprect in such a good cause. It was a shame though, they boy had been brave.

“Yes, perhaps so, it is good to be generous to those who serve you, and their penny pinching fathers also,” Sigfried decided, apparently sharing Theophanna’s opinion of the Castellan more completely than she had imagined. The Count ran his hands through his salt and pepper hair and sighed before turning to Torm.

“And you Draufkrieg, I owe you more than a few years discount on crushed grapes,” Sigfried admitted, sizing up the young man with a searching look.

“He saved my life and slew two of my attackers,” Theophanna put in.

“More likely he saved me from ransoming you at Il alone knows what price,” Sigfried corrected, “but I am still in his debt.” A careful observer might have noticed Theophanna’s jaw tighten infinitesimally at the correction but she smoothed it away with practiced Convent self control.

“Im sure we can find a suitable figure…”

“Husband,” Theophanna interrupted, her previously flawless Vencal developing a touch of Basalian accent in a few short syllables. “Torm is a trained squire and without a master of his own… perhaps with Ruprect dead we might reward his gallantry more chivalrously?” 

“Yes… we might at that, if that is what he wants,” Sigfried mused, he pressed his fingers to his temples for a moment before nodding his head.

“What do you say boy, I can promise you no fief or lands, but if you want to serve as my squire… well Orbai is a good place for a capable man. What do you say?”