Blood Keep (March 2022)
By Harold R. Thompson
Thus the king determined that he could no longer tolerate the presence of the Bloods within the imperial city. This ancient order of Knights had amassed great wealth and influence, and through the use of Persuasion — an art which they had perfected — increased their power daily. Lest he becomes a mere puppet within his own land, King Lopoll declared the Bloods outlaws and abominations before Zahn. He then took swift action to counter their vile powers and eliminate their presence.
“The Reign of Lopoll III of Rontiok”, author unknown, 1146 YZ
The city of Ke’an … is known for the broad tree-lined avenues of its ancient imperial district, tall buildings — most of four storeys — and elegant pitched rooftops of clay tile. The loftiest structure in the city is the Blood Keep: a circular tower that stands within a wide square south of the river. The entire surface of the square is paved with regular stones, an expensive feat of engineering paid for by the Knights of the Blood themselves. The Keep is plain and daunting in appearance, fashioned of gray stone, with narrow windows and battlements at its peak, and said to be impregnable thanks to its so-called Stone Gate.
“Travels in Rontiok”, Kay Weslan, 1107 YZ
I am Ter Robyn Toryn, knight of the Bloods, and this is my confession…
The king’s men have laid siege to our Keep, and we are outnumbered and face utter destruction. They cannot get in, thanks to the stoutness of our tower and its Stone Gate, but we cannot get out. We have a deep well and food for a month, perhaps two or even three, but that is all. The king has three-thousand men and a city to feed them. We are sixty knights and as many servants, and I expect we will all die.
My comrades say we are tested, but I believe that we have already failed. Our order has mistaken what Zahn wished of us, and now he forsakes us. We are the last Keep of the order, having been driven from city after city, and each time we move, our numbers shrink and each king becomes jealous of what little influence we exert over the peoples as we pursue our mission of justice. We thought to do the work of Zahn, and for that, we are persecuted. Zahn teaches we are all one, blood is blood, that we are to defend the weak, and so we have done. How many have we saved?
I recall a time some years past when we first came to Ke’an. I had ridden out into the streets, dressed in full mail armour and my tabard of bright red so that all would know me. I came upon a crowd in the market, shouting and casting bits of earth and bricks at what appeared to be a wretched family of poor travelers. Then I recognized, by their small stature and the way they had clipped their ears, that these were members of the Fairn, what appeared to be a family of three generations, the youngest children including three girls and two boys. One of the girls looked at me, and I saw the light of magic in her eye, though more of artisanal skill, for they do not possess powers of Persuasion.
I walked my horse into the crowd, and the assembled rioters gave way. I could have drawn my sword but resolved that fear and the threat of death and injury would change no one’s thinking on this day. I resolved to use my Words. I would Persuade them that they were in error.
“Stop!” I called. “Why do you mistreat these people?”
The crowd paused, intimidated by the presence of a Blood knight, but not yet ready to give up their murderous designs. “They are thieves,” someone shouted, and another claimed they carried disease!
“They were a great people once,” said I, for the Fairn are descended from a sect of the ancient imperials, abandoned and scattered after the Fall. “Maybe they will be again. How would you have them treat your descendants?”
I had pitched my voice well and saw doubt begin to form on many a face. Some looked down in shame and even shed tears. A few dropped bits of stone that they had been intending to cast.
“Zahn teaches that we are all one,” I said, and I smiled as a compliment to my Words. “We all have our place. Now go in Zahn’s peace!”
The crowd dispersed, Persuaded, and the Fairns fell to their knees to thank me, and I laid my hand on each on their foreheads in turn and bid them go in peace as well.
In the years since, my hair has grown gray and the Fairn have expanded in the city thanks to our protection. As a people, they are small in stature and perform tasks others shun. They work in the mines, chimneys and small, dark places. And yet, they do not worship Zahn. They do not know Zahn. In time, I believed they would come to know him, and what did it matter if they did not? We are All One, regardless of belief or knowledge.I was in error and now we pay the price. We are not tested. No longer. We have displeased Zahn and I expect to die here with my comrades. As I write, the enemy is hammering at the Stone Gate, and on the north side of the Keep, we can hear them undermining the walls, digging to get in.
”The Confessions of Ter Robyn Toryn”, fragment, discovered in 1342 YZ
Our Ter Lord, Ter Robyn Toryn, had lost his faith and offered no hope for our survival. My rage at his weakness was great as I watched him weep and pray over his sword in the alcove, facing the Lantern of Zahn and demanding to know why we have failed. I was resolved to slay him myself and proclaim myself Ter, but at that moment I heard the rumble of the Stone Gate as it opened, the great slabs rolling away into their alcoves. I looked at my closest companions, my fellow Bloods, in dismay, for the gate should have remained closed. In our alarm, we rushed to the lower court and formed a wall of shields and swords, facing the open gate and expecting the king’s men to come rushing inside. Instead, we saw a single figure approaching. At that, the reason for the gate’s unexpected opening became clear. Our own men had opened it at the Words of a Champion Speaker, sent by the king.
We believed ourselves the greatest Persuaders and this came as a great shock. That and the fact that our gate keepers had been so easily influenced, despite our many techniques of resistance.
The Champion entered the lower court. Not a man, but a woman of middling age, broad-hipped with gray streaks in her hair. A rare and untrained talent, perhaps. I wondered how Zahn could allow such a one to exist, and to be ranged against us?
The woman halted in front of us, hands hidden within her voluminous sleeves, and said, “The king commands that you lay down your arms and surrender to his mercy.”
Swords flashed in the lamplight as fully a third of our number, maybe more, knelt to place their blades on the cobbles. I felt the dreaded urge myself, the sense of inevitability, but resisted by way of Pain, gripping my sword hilt until it bit into my palm and the compulsion to surrender washed over and away from me.One man stepped forward from our line, and I saw it was Ter Robyn. He had sheathed his sword and for a moment I feared he had succumbed as well, but then he raised both hands and said, in a gentle tone, “Lady, return to the king and tell him we will never surrender.”
She took a step back, eyes filled with doubt, but then she rallied, and I saw the resistance in her.
“You are doomed here. Surrender is the only path open to you. Lay down your arms!”
Again, I was forced to grip my sword hilt, but I saw that Ter Robyn was unaffected.
“We will not surrender. We are Knights of the Blood. To surrender is to deny our existence and our mission. Go and tell this to the king.”The woman took two stumbling paces back this time, then turned. As she passed through the archway, Ter Robyn commanded, “Close the Gate!”
The great stone slabs rumbled back into place.
It had been a test after all. The king had sent his greatest Champion against us and our greatest Speaker, our Lord Ter, had prevailed. I felt hot tears on my face and fell to my knees, holding my sword aloft in renewed loyalty and supplication.
“My Lord Ter,” I cried, “lead us in a sortie! Persuade the king’s troops to let us pass!”
Ter Robyn spoke to me, reminding me that the king’s archers would slay us from a distance. We were simply too few to fight them in the open. “Listen,” he said, pointing to the north walls. “They are still digging below us. We will meet them as they emerge from the ground, and fight them there, on the narrowest of fronts. Perhaps we will prevail.”
”The Great Siege”, Erron of Mastif, 1119 YZ
Then did Ter Robin Torin face his greatest foe, the Speaker of the King, a knight of great stature clad all in black mail with a black tabard, and this knight commanded that the Stone Gate be opened, and such was the power of his Words that even veteran Bloods could not resist, and so the Gate was opened. Ter Robin at once made to face this creature of darkness, and they fought with swords in the depths of the Keep, and none of the Bloods provided aid, for the Champion bid them to lay down their weapons. But at last, as both men grew weary, Ter Robyn rallied his remaining strength and shouted, in a voice which rang within the Keep and was heard on the fair banks of the Kean River, “Go from this place!”
Then did the Champion’s sword fall to the stones at his feet, and, clasping his ears, he turned and fled as the Stone Gate shut fast behind him.
“Now, my brave Bloods,” Ter Robin said, “take up your blades and prepare for battle!”
For the king’s men were digging like rats beneath the Keep, and their mine was almost completed. So did Ter Robin form his remaining comrades in a line, and waited to meet their enemies as they struggled from the ground …
”The Deeds of Robin Torin”, author unknown, 1153 YZ
My comrade Erron said to me, as we waited, naked blades in our hands, “Should we take up picks and spades and commence digging ourselves, and so meet them halfway?”
“No, we wait,” was my reply. “We wait and we pray to Zahn for strength.”
I did not say that such strength I believed we must now find in ourselves, that the victory over the king’s Champion Speaker had given me renewed hope, but not conviction.And the hours went by as the scrape of spades grew louder and nearer, and at last the cobblestones beneath the north wall were shoved aside or gave way, and lantern light gleamed from the breach, and we took up our fighting stances.
“Hold,” I commanded in my concern that some of my comrades would show too much eagerness and break our ranks. “Hold and wait until they have come into the Keep.”
But the figures who emerged from the pit, covered in fresh earth, were too small to be the king’s men, and not armed nor armoured, and held up their hands to us. One looked at me and drew a rag from across his face, and I saw a smile and eyes that I knew but had not seen in a great age and had never expected to see here.
“My Lord,” she said, for it was in fact a young woman, “put up your sword! I know ye from many years past, when I was but a child and you dispersed a crowd that would have done myself and my family great harm!”
And I knew these were not the king’s men that had been digging under our walls, but the Fairn people, experts at mining and working in small dark spaces. They had fashioned a tunnel that stretched to the river, over a hundred fields long, and our deliverance was at hand.
“We have come to lead you to safety,” the young woman, whose name was Allerin, told me, “out of reach of the king’s army.”
Now I saw the workings of Zahn and my belief was restored. We were sorely tested, but the Bloods would endure.
Others of the Fairn had brought wooden beams and planks to reinforce the tunnel ceiling, but the work was rough and the earth crumbling even as they fought to keep it at bay, and they urged our haste. Erron of Mastif led the first group, including servants and retainers, and I waited until the last with Allerin, and so we entered the narrow tunnel, stooping low, following those who had gone before us.
But not twenty paces beyond, the ceiling began to fall, small pieces at first, and then a cascade, and Allerin shouted at us to run. The tunnel filled with dust that obscured the lights, but at last I came to a section where the beams had been more properly fitted, there having been more time, and the ceiling held. And yet behind us, rubble had filled the tunnel, and there was no sign of Allerin and she was not seen again.
Did Zahn demand her return? The Fairn do not know Zahn at all, but we fool ourselves to think we know his designs even a little.
”The Confessions of Ter Robyn Toryn”, fragment, discovered in 1342 YZ
… yet it was not the king’s soldiers who emerged from the sap, but the Fairn folk of the city, who had dug a mine that stretched for two imperial miles to the north, a tunnel which can still be seen and travelled to this day, and it had been dug in secret at the urging of Ter Robin himself.
Ter Robin met the captain of the Fairn in the tunnel mouth and they clasped hands. Turning to the assembled Bloods, Ter Robin said, “I could not reveal this ruse, lest there be king’s spies amongst our servants, but now we must all take heart, for our deliverance is at hand. Take whatever you can carry and follow me!”
”The Deeds of Robin Torin”, author unknown, 1153 YZ
There was among the People in that time a brave young woman whose name was Allern Miner, whose family were miners of copper and other metals … The Knights of the Blood, they said, were a light in a dark world, and the king’s hatred of them was a great wrong in a long list of wrongs. So Allern convinced the others amongst the Fairn in the city to go to the aid of the Bloods. So they began digging this Great Mine.
No mine tunnel of such length had ever been constructed in so little time, and it’s still there. It’s been fixed up and you can see it. Merchants use it to transport their goods now when it rains, watched over, they say, by the spirit of Allern herself, who was the only miner killed when it was built. Her bravery and her deeds live on in the memory of the Fairn.
”Tales Told by the Fairn”, recorded by Reggan of Lorn, 1650 YZ
After three days of silence, it was evident to the king’s engineers that no one remained within Blood Tower. The king called for masons, and after several days work, unmolested by any defenders upon the battlements, the Stone Gate was dismantled. The king found the tower abandoned, and a mine tunnel leading from the lower court. The tunnel had collapsed, and the majority of Bloods had perished as they had attempted escape.
King Lopoll proclaimed: “The Knights of the Blood were an antique order and a scourge upon the land, an order whose members believed themselves to be above the law of the many places in which they sought to take root, and used their skills of Persuasion for nefarious purposes. Their notorious fanaticism will no longer plague our cities and lead our subjects astray. We give thanks to Zahn for their utter destruction …”
“The Reign of Lopoll III of Rontiok”, author unknown, 1146 YZ
Under the leadership of Roben the Great, there commenced a time of rebuilding and recruiting, and the Knights of the Blood swelled to five times their number in their new stronghold of Allarin, in the Mountains of Tarnomia, where no king held sway and no political jealousies existed to hinder their efforts. The Second Era dates from this time, when the Bloods had passed their greatest trial, and had risen from a time of great struggle and near disbandment, but their deeds and their great mission would not fade, and so endure.
“Annals of the Blood”, Ter Geryld Molvin, 1432 YZ
Text copyright © 2022 by the author. Illustration by Pixabay, used under license.
About the Author: Harold R. Thompson (website) is the author of the bestselling “Empire and Honor” series of historical adventure novels, which include Dudley’s Fusiliers, Guns of Sevastopol and Sword of the Mogul. He has also written non-fiction and short science fiction and fantasy for a variety of print and online magazines. He lives in Nova Scotia and, when not writing or spending time with his family, works for Parks Canada.