Tales of the Three Kingdoms: Silver Falcon Falls

I had never seen Uncle's manor. He had lived with us at Iron Tower for as long as I could remember, and I had never bothered to visit him in his retirement this past year. Still, I knew the commanderies and estates under my father's jurisdiction, and I had heard of the town where he had settled when the news had reached me a while back.

Finding the trail in the increasingly dense forest was more difficult than finding the town on a map, and Uncle lived a bit outside the now-smoldering town in any case. We eventually found our way to it, about a watch after dusk, and the bandits in the distance melted away like so many ghosts at the sight of a walled, well-lit complex.

We knocked on the gate, and when it swung wide, I thought we had arrived at the wrong place.

The man who greeted us was white and frail, bent by age and unadorned by armor. Strangest of all, this man seemed happy to see me.

"Uncle?" I asked.

Uncle chuckled, a bit drier than usual, but it was still undoubtedly my uncle's laugh. "Right you are, little Sparrow. I know I probably look old and tired to you now. But come in! Come in. No use standing out in the night air. You could catch an arrow that way."

He stuck his head out of the door and looked side to side, just to be sure.

Uncle's home was a village unto itself, the walls surrounding a handful of muddy courtyards where children and chickens roamed, with a few smaller houses and outbuildings ringing the edges.

Despite the hour, a few generations milled around us as Uncle showed us to the main house.

It wasn't a mansion, more of a sprawling farmhouse largely open to the air. The only thing keeping the chickens out was a porch rising a span or two out of the soggy ground and a few well aimed kicks by one of the house's many workers and denizens.

I didn't know Uncle had a family outside of his sworn brother and the broader clan, but I supposed he had been gone from Iron Tower about as often as he was there throughout my childhood. I had always assumed he was out on patrols, missions and conquests. I never thought that one of those conquests would have been a woman, a house, and a family of his own. Still, looking back, Uncle had spent so much time by my father's side, it was hard to imagine he had taken a very active role in the raising of his own offspring.

Once my companions and I were all seated under a roof around the fire, a woman who I guessed was a sort of Auntie to me – though I had never met her before, or even heard of her – brought us tea and wrapped a blanket around Uncle's sunken shoulders. I don't think I had seen my uncle without armor or layers of crisp formal robes in years, but surely he could not have deteriorated so much in only a year, could he?

"Uncle, what happened here?" I asked instead.

He sucked his tea, grimaced, and pulled the blankets tighter around himself. With his frailty obscured, I could almost convince myself that this was the same man who had led troops against the rebels those last six years, and had fought by my father's side, keeping the peace on the Plains of the Falcon for far longer than that.

The way he scowled… I could almost believe this man had once been my father's stalwart general.

"The Commandant had it all well in hand until a few days ago," Uncle began.

A few days ago? I exchanged significant looks with my companions. Had Dreadwolf somehow retaliated so swiftly against my clan for my role in the plot? Surely not.

"At first it all seemed like rebels. They wore yellow scarves like they did in the old day. They were disorganized, ill-equipped, couldn't form a proper formation to save their lives. Your father didn't think anything of it to send out the first wing of riders. But as he was riding south to deal with the first outbreak, there was word of a larger uprising in the north. He split off to meet both rebellions. Then there was word from the northeast… then southeast. Finally, Wolf's men took advantage of the confusion and took out the entire western front almost unopposed."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "How… How can you be sure of all this?"

Uncle sipped his tea and sucked his teeth. "Eight nights ago, maybe, middle of the night we had a Silver Falcon scout stop in to rest. He was on his way to Iron tower from the western edge of the holdings, same as you. He recognized me and said he was on his way to report that the Gray Wolf clan had made their move. The rest of it must have happened the night before that."

"Nine nights ago?" My mind was still spinning in disbelief, but I counted back the days, looking for some flaw that could prove Uncle's information was wrong in some way. Muddied by chaos. "That would have been the night before I delivered Noble Lion's sword."

River nodded, having come to the same conclusion. "The timing is uncanny, but…"

"Too soon," Brass Bell finished for her, "for an attack to be launched across a province in so short a timeframe. This was no mere retribution for our plot against him."

"It would have taken months of planning," nodded Uncle, not bothering to ask what plot we had been mixed up in. "Gathering provisions, making the contacts, mustering the men, kitting them out. All of that takes time. We saw your wanted posters in town. By the time they showed up, the rebels had already cut the plains down by half."

Half? There was no way my father had lost so much of the Falcon Plains in so short a time.

"How much does he hold now?" I asked, grim but needing the facts.

"Sparrow, your father's a brilliant general. His men trust him as much as any man can trust their commander. But let me tell you, this was no rebel uprising. This was a well orchestrated coup. An assassination of an entire kingdom."

"How much, Uncle," I insisted.

"Bandits are like sheep you see. They all wait to see which way the others are turning. This all happened-"

"How. Much."

Uncle sighed. "Iron Tower. No more than a bowshot in any direction beyond that."

My eyes went wide. There was nothing left. The Plains of the Falcon were captured, taken over, my father on the verge of utter defeat. And it had all crumbled in nine days. "So Iron Tower's besieged?"

"Not as such. More… crippled. As far as I've heard, he's down to his last few dozen horses. And a few dozen horses can't hold a province. He's holding the only thing he can with so few soldiers left."

"But I thought he had been making preparations for more than a year. That's why you and I had been ordered to stay in the capital."

Uncle nodded sagely. "It's the only reason he still holds the tower. It's the only reason he's still alive."

My eyes went dark and my quivering hands threatened to crush the teacup as I fixed Uncle with an accusing stare.

"And where were you during all of this?"

Uncle's face softened as he looked down for a moment before meeting my eye again. "I'm old, Sparrow. What can one more old man do in the face of all this? Look around you. I'm not a commander anymore. We're not fighters here."

Yes, it was mostly women and small children within these walls. But there were at least a dozen men of fighting age. They didn't wear swords, per se, but they had daggers, and there had been racks of bows and arrows by the gate. There had been a stable with a few half-decent horses. It wasn't much but it was something.

"So? Didn't you swear to be his brother? Born under the same star, die on the same day? Isn't that how the oath usually goes?"

"Sparrow, I…"

"But you sit here cowering with your real family. If you broke your oath to my-"

"Sparrow!" River's voice lashed out.

I was standing now, hand on my sword while Uncle's family looked on in fear. Young women gripped their small children, their peasant husbands making a show of looking tough, but I could tell they were just as frightened as the rest of them. Somewhere an untended kettle rattled on its hook above a fire.

"Your uncle is right," said Brass Bell. "If this was an attack from Dreadwolf, it was well thought out. Planned months ago, they might have been waiting for a slip from the Falcon clan or Dreadwolf might have chosen one moment to cripple both the Lion and the Falcon. This was his big play to break the provincial resistance before it could even be arrayed against him."

I opened my mouth to respond. I didn't even know what I was going to say – probably something about honor and loyalty – but River cut me off.

"This is Dreadwolf's fault," she said forcefully. "No one else's. But the only thing keeping these people alive is your uncle's Mandate… and his reputation. If he left here he'd do more harm than good." What she wasn't saying was that if Uncle left here he'd be dooming these people – his family, which I was still struggling to wrap my head around – to a horrible fate at the hands of the bandits. They'd attack the moment they realized the only person with power was no longer there.

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I sat back down on the cushion by the fireside.

"I'm sorry," I said to River and then repeated myself while bowing to our hostess who was standing clutching her family. "I don't know what came over me. Forgive me."

She gave a terse nod, then turning to those behind her, she shooed them away. Many of them looked like they had been in the middle of chores when they had heard the commotion, holding pots or vegetables or tools, and the matriarch made sure they went back about their business.

"There is nothing to forgive," said Uncle, who looked so small I thought he might disappear into the blankets covering him. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and filled with shame. "I went back to Iron Tower, first, you know, when I told the wolf I was retiring. I tried to convince your father of the kind of man Dreadwolf is. I tried to tell him to raise an army then and there to march on the capital, before that bastard had any more time to settle his ass onto the throne. Your father heard my pleas, but he didn't listen. You know what he said? 'Go home,' he said. Sparrow, he ordered me to go home.

"I said, 'For fifty years, Iron Tower has been my home,' but he shook his head. I told him I wouldn't leave his side this close to the end, but he said that if the end is near it wouldn't fall to old men like us to stop it. He told me again to go home. I made him make it an order. I told him I wouldn't leave him unless he were willing to exile me for disobedience and strip me of rank. I told him that if I left now, all of our years would have counted for nothing and I may as well be a poor old man. In the end, he still commanded me to hold this little village he had gifted to me so many years ago.

"He commanded me to look to my family, because he would look to his. Only once I got here, saw my own boys, saw how young and strong they are compared to me now, did I realize what your father meant. He was never going to lead an army from Iron Tower. He wasn't preparing for his next war. He was preparing for yours. He was holding what he could for the moment you were ready to take command of the Silver Falcon clan."

Me? The head of the Silver Falcon clan? Leading my father's armies? I mean, yes I was the heir so that would have been the plan eventually, assuming I could manifest a Mandate or maintain some elaborate ruse as Dreadwolf had but still… It felt too soon. I was still too powerless, too low in rank, too… rash.

I looked into my tea, unable to meet Uncle's gaze. "I… I'm sorry, Uncle. You've sacrificed so many years of your life for the clan. It's not right that I should ask any more of you."

Uncle seemed to muster his strength, then waved it off as if it were nothing, "It's been a long night and dawn is not far off. I suggest we all get some rest and we can talk about what to do in the morning. Besides, I think for that discussion, we'll need some wine. I'll send out a son-in-law first thing in the morning."

There was a clatter beside me and Brass Bell set her cup down hard on the table.

"Bell," asked River, bending toward her, "Are you alright?"

"Oh, yes," Brass Bell laughed nervously, "Just… overtired and clumsy. Sorry about that."

I glanced at Bell then quickly forced a smile. "I think you're right Uncle. Best if we all retire."

"One of my daughters will show you to your rooms."

"Um. One room will suffice," I said awkwardly.

Uncle cocked his head at that, looking over my companions.

"Windstopper sleeps at the door no matter what I tell him," I explained, "and, um…"

Uncle snorted a laugh and held up his hands. "No need. No need."

A young woman did indeed lead us to a room, or rather a small one roomed house at the edge of the small village. The entire complex was walled on three sides, tall dark trees looming above them. On the fourth side there was a steep bank leading to a brook. The room the four of us found ourselves in had a lovely view of the riverbank and the sounds of gurgling water would have soothed us to sleep in minutes… had we not known exactly what was happening to our companion.

Brass Bell doubled over as soon as the door shut behind us.

"Your Mandate?" asked River, helping her to a pallet.

"Bad one," she said through gritted teeth. "And still going,"

"What's causing it?" I asked without thinking.

Brass Bell just shook her head, apparently in too much pain to answer.

"It doesn't work like that," River reiterated. "She only knows when danger is near, not what's causing it."

Windstopper just looked back and forth between us, unsure of how to help or what was going to happen.

I was racking my brain too to try to identify the source of the threat, but I kept coming back to one of two conclusions. Either the bandits had waited until this one unlucky night to finally finish off Uncle's strong point in the woods, or…

"River?" I asked. "Did something seem off to you about Uncle's family?"

"Yes, you were very rude." She was preoccupied with a bowl of cool water and a towel, trying to soothe Bell's pain.

"No, beyond that. Did something seem off about their dynamic?"

"I don't know, Sparrow. The man has apparently been gone for fifty years serving a lord a few days' ride away. I would imagine the past year has all been an adjustment for them, bandits and rebels notwithstanding."

A thought struck me at that, and I fell to counting on my hands.

"And that girl who just led us to the room? How old would you say she was?"

"I don't know Sparrow? What's this about?"

"Just give me a guess."

River sighed and finally helped Brass Bell to lie down. "Twenty maybe."

"So no more than twenty five, and no less than fifteen."

"Certainly more than fifteen. Less than twenty-five… I would say so. Yes. Why, Sparrow? Why is this so important?"

"Because for the first ten years of my life, I was raised by a stranger."

"What's that got to do with…" River seized on where I was going with this, at least in a broad sense, even before she finished her question. A former Imperial concubine would know that the legitimacy of a child had nothing to do with who actually fathered the child, but everything to do with some fairly hard math.

"My father and Uncle were on campaign in the lost province of the shepherds for ten straight years after my mother died giving birth to me. It's the reason my next oldest sibling is ten years my junior. Half-sibling really, but my father never drew that distinction. It's the only reason…"

I was going to say, "It's the only reason my father has waited so long for my Mandate to manifest," but stopped myself with a glance at Brass Bell.

"What are you saying?" said River, finally looking up at me before returning to the stricken woman.

"I'm saying that there's no way the woman who led us here could be Uncle's daughter."

"So he adopted a daughter. Or she was a daughter-in-law, wife to one of his older boys. So what?"

"Adopted a daughter, maybe. But a whole family? Every one of those daughters and sons is the age in which I have no siblings. None of those daughters could have been sired by my Uncle. So… what? He takes over some other man's family? He settles into some other man's life"

"We Did Not Get To Meet Any Of Your Cousins, Sparrow," said Windstopper.

"No we didn't, did we?" I mused. "I could believe that some of them are older or younger than my estimation, but all this time I've known Uncle, he hasn't bothered to mention a wife, or a daughter, or bring up a son or even a son-in-law to get trained alongside me. I know he was a rough man. But no one is that callous. Surely he would have mentioned the woman at some point on campaign."

"This is a stretch," said River. "You have a blind spot when it comes to your Uncle. Your Uncle and your father. You harbor too much resentment toward them."

"I'm telling you. He's lying to us. There's no way this is his family, and there's no way my father sent him away." I was pacing the room now.

"So he hired actors to play a family just in case you were to drop by and call him an oathbreaker? What's the end-game here?"

"Do you want to know what I think?" I strode around the pallet and lowered myself to the opposite side of Brass Bell's bed so I could meet River's eye again.

"Oh please, this is just getting good." She glanced up at me with an annoyed look but otherwise stayed focused on tending to Bell.

"I think those bandits left us alone… on command. They might have even been under orders to funnel us here."

"Are you saying your Uncle turned bandit chief and carved out a piece of land for himself after years of serving as your father's number two?"

"Only because the alternative is unbelievable."

"And what is the alternative?"

"That those bandits leave the manor alone because they're scared of Uncle's mandate. Do you want to know why that's unbelievable?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Because Uncle's Mandate is a martial one. He lends speed to metal, same as my father. He's best with a lance and horseshoes. A few other weapons too but not much unless he's riding. Either way, one thing's for certain… if my Uncle can barely sit a cushion much less a horse, and struggles to lift even a cup of tea, there's no way any bandit would fear his Meteor Lance Mandate."

"And," River asked, looking at Brass Bell, still nearly crippled by her headache that told us calamity was less than an hour away, "There's no way your Uncle could defend himself with just a sword?"

I shook my head. "Like I said, his gift worked best on a lancetip. He specifically excelled at making a fast-moving thing go inhumanly fast. My father was better with control, thus he always used blades. But even when Uncle was in his prime, if you took him off his horse, he'd be little more than a common footsoldier. Now I wouldn't even bet on him holding a blade, much less accelerating one."

River thought about this. "Why else might those bandits fear him?"

I grimaced and wracked my brain.

"Certainly not his allies. Unless he's picked up a new ally, perhaps a very powerful one to the west, rather than his sworn brother in the east… One way or another," I said, actually hoping I was wrong now, "he's in league with my father's enemies. Whether they be vultures or wolves…"

I shrugged.

River looked out the window at the gurgling water. It was barely more than a creek, just wide enough for a man to have to swim across it, but apparently not too deep for a horse's legs. Because as we looked on, we saw a young man on a dark horse, with bow and arrows strapped to his saddle, ride out from Uncle's complex, ford the river, and ride pell-mell into the forest.

"What do you suppose has him in such a hurry?" I asked River, "And don't say he's gone for the wine."

"An urgent message perhaps? Your uncle is remarkably well informed for a retiree."

"He knows the carcass of my father's land so well, you could almost believe him to be the butcher. He's betrayed us, River. Admit it."

"You think I have any reason to protect this man over you?" she hissed. "But an accusation like this leaves no room for supposition and mistakes. If you make the claim, you'd better be right. More than a few lives depend on it."

I crossed to the other window, and peered through a gap in the shutters. I could see that the kitchen's fire still burned hot, and there were sounds of cooking within. Periodically I caught a glimpse of someone within.

"Then we find out," I said. "We go see just what this supposed family is up to, so late in the evening?"

"And if we find proof?" asked River.

"We carry out martial law," I said, gripping my sword. I motioned to Brass Bell, still incapacitated on the cot. "Unless you want to wait around and find out what's setting off the emperor of all warning signs inside her head."