Leonard

Leonard, who asks to be called by his byname Gümüşel, is a human soldier in the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel"). A veteran of the war against the drow, he is the closest friend of the mage Castor, whom he follows on a dangerous errand after the war.¹²³

Background

Leonard comes from a once rich and powerful merchant family of Mavi Koru and was well educated. While his elder brother Richard learned the trade, Leonard was trained as a soldier to smooth the family's dealings with customs and the army. A fire in Mavi Koru, tied to the Korn affair, burned the family's goods; the family was ruined and his father died of grief. His mother went to live with her brother, and the two brothers came under the protection of the local lord, Hogar Baldrick.¹⁴

Leonard entered the lord's service as a soldier after saving his life, while Richard rose to become the house's chief merchant. When Castor was posted to House Baldrick as its mage adviser, Leonard welcomed him; Castor found magic in Leonard's nephew Luke and sent him to the Archon.⁵⁶⁷

In the war beneath the earth, The Underdark Campaign, Leonard rose from corporal to captain. His swordsmanship won him a place in a special unit although he was not a citizen of White City, and he spent the whole two years of the war below without the usual rotation, which left deep marks on him. Castor says that Leonard saved him from the drow and that the two saved each other's lives many times. During the war Leonard chose to carry word of an attack to the legion instead of rescuing his lord, and Hogar formally dismissed him from his service, though the two remained on good terms.⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹

When the emperor stayed at Lord Baldrick's castle on his way to meet the elves, Leonard practised swordplay with him, and in return for his technique the emperor gave him a suit of plate armour in the imperial colours.¹²

Appearance and character

Leonard has dark brows and dark eyes, stands about 1.85 metres tall and weighs about 85 kilograms. He wears the purple-worked imperial plate, good travelling boots and a half cloak. He looks like a knight and is often taken for one, and he enjoys being treated like a noble, but at first he is only a soldier and says so.¹³¹⁴¹⁵

He remains loyal to the throne, the law and the feudal order, and having seen the emperor face to face makes it hard for him to think against him. Yet the way soldiers who were not citizens of White City were treated after the war, and the nobles' indifference to them, shook his trust, and he no longer holds that nobles are worthy by birth. After the war he also came to hate elves bitterly, and he has a weakness for drink and gambling.¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸

Gümüşel is a byname, not a surname; Leonard expects to take a surname only if he is knighted. He wears a silver hand he made himself, which he thought unworthy of a knight. His ambition is to win glory and fortune and buy land and a house where he can live safely, and to send a regular allowance to his nephew Luke, while he feels bound in debt to House Baldrick.⁶¹⁹

The Hand's errand

In White City after the war, Leonard borrowed a guard's surcoat and halberd from an acquaintance to enter the nobles' quarter, where he sold a sword taken as spoil to a merchant. He ordered armour for his white warhorse Rüzgar from Hector, a horse-armourer near the south gate.²⁰²¹²

When Castor revealed that he belonged to the secret society of mages called The Hand, Leonard said he would not denounce his best surviving friend and agreed to meet its envoy, Traumir, without promising to take on work he did not know. Before Traumir he swore a binding oath never to reveal anything about the Hand, under any circumstances; he was told he could later give up the task itself, but never the oath. Traumir promised that the Hand could see him properly knighted if the whole task succeeded, and Leonard handed over gold to be passed on to his nephew.^322232425

On the road south he introduced himself to the leader of an ambush as "Sir Leonard Gümüşel", though he held no knighthood. He objected when Castor read the mind of a guest at their camp and when killing the bound captives was proposed, arguing that they should be handed over alive to the law; yet before leaving he broke the bandit leader's leg so that he could not escape. The second captive led him to the bandits' camp, where he dug up their hidden money and took a magic longsword from a hollow tree.^2627282930

In South Razel he gave that captive to the garrison captain Nirati, told him how the man had helped and asked for prison or a cleaner death. Nirati recognised the sword as that of Sir Talon of Akşelale, stolen while the knight slept in camp; Leonard kept it to return, and Castor later gave it back to Talon in Akşelale.^31323334

Beneath the town, Leonard's glaive passed through a fire elemental without harming it, and the creature burned his arm and face and ruined his gloves. Even so he stayed with Castor and opened the chest of Bloodstone with his glaive. He opposed killing their guide, the mage Aypol, saying he could not go on helping Castor if they did; instead he cut away the guide's arcane focus and staff with his glaive.^3536373839

In North Razel he trained Castor's brother Gaius, showing him the glaive forged by the emperor's order in the dwarven lands and teaching him to disarm. A quarrel with Castor over law, the woodcutters' lies and the law that would have burned Glanfall ended with Leonard drinking and gambling in the tavern. The next morning he wrote a list of the good and evil he had seen from nobles, and decided that Hogar's goodness came from his character, not his birth. He asked the priest Otto whether trading and shaking hands with elves was a sin, and was told that the elves are subjects and allies of the empire.^{40414243444546}

Akşelale

A coldness lasted between Leonard and Castor on the two-month road to Akşelale. There he bought a dictionary, a simple novel and a scholar's study of place names at the bookshop Karaca Kitap to learn Lingua Imperium, though the books alone would not teach him the language without a teacher. He still believed Castor's earlier joke that Gnomish must be learned before Elvish.^47484950

He refused to shake the hand of the high-elf smith Farnon and suspected him of having stolen a dwarven gift, then bought a short sword named Bane from another weaponsmith, which he later gave to Glanfall. During the inquiry into the shooting of the townsfolk he would not shake the elf Glaran's hand either and suspected him of steering the search, though he admitted he could not be sure of his own suspicion. Later, Castor asked Farnon to make Leonard a new silver hand; the smith agreed on condition that Leonard come and ask himself, and Leonard walked in with his eyes lowered.^{5152535455565758}

Leonard held that asking the city lord Balbus for a fair fee was not begging. Summoned to the legion camp by the tribune Cornel, the commander blamed for the firing on the townsfolk, he asked leave to speak frankly: high interests could cost lives, and the affair touched both the people they had fought for and the honour of a commander with a good record. Cornel had the commission Balbus had given them cancelled, ordered them to stop, and left gold that both of them refused.⁵⁹⁶⁰⁶¹

Spoiler: In the legion campGösterAçık ettiği: Mürekkep ve Çelik #7 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

Later, in the legion camp, the Justicar announced that Cornel was removed from command on suspicion of conspiring against the empire. Cornel refused to hang like a thief for a crime he had not committed and attacked with his sword; Leonard wounded him so that he could not walk, knocked away his sword and shield and held his long blade at the man's throat, taking him alive.⁶²⁶³

After the affair Leonard spoke of taking a noble title and living quietly in a town for a few years, but he agreed to escort Glanfall and Luke to their examination at the Archon. Castor handed him a spellbook that had survived dragon fire, bought for Luke. Leonard then rode north to Mavi Koru and the lands of Baron Hogar, meaning to see his family first; Castor later gave Luke the book in his name.^646566676869

In Hogar's service

Back in the baron's service, Leonard was keeping the courtyard secure one night when his sister-in-law came to him, worried that the baron should be checked on. He broke down Hogar's barred door and found him on the floor with a poisoned dagger in his shoulder and a pale, veiled, elf-like attacker in the room. Leonard beat the attacker senseless but chose not to kill him, and his warning about poison let the physician save the baron. His sister-in-law told him she had felt magic being worked, and they agreed to keep it between themselves.^7071727374

Other nobles came at night to talk with Hogar, and Leonard was troubled that the baron did not turn them away. When he asked about it, Hogar asked him in turn whom he would obey first if the baron himself turned against the emperor. Leonard answered that the baron had raised him up, but that he could not answer where loyalty and honour collided.⁷⁵⁷⁶

Warned by sources he would not share, Hogar set his army marching early, and Leonard drew up the plan of march. He addressed the gathered soldiers, showing the papers that proved his service beneath the earth, and made a hard example of a handful of unruly men; afterwards he was seen as the baron's right hand.^77787980

Dwarf Gate

At the battle of the Dwarf Gate, Leonard chose to command the small cavalry and set seasoned soldiers among the peasant volunteers. From the high ground he led a flank charge on the mutated orc infantry, singled out a huge four-armed orc wielding two great axes and killed it, but a blow laid his arm open to the bone. Wrapping the arm in his cloak, he rallied some three hundred leaderless legionaries and led them against the heavy knights who were attacking Hogar's forces.^818283848586

Ravenhill and Reiseburg

After the battle the wounded Hogar sent him either to lift the siege of Ravenhill or to hunt the raiders; Leonard chose Ravenhill. His scouts found the besiegers' supply roads, and his men ambushed a supply party and took its leaders alive. Learning that the party was probably the last supply and also carried advice to retreat, Leonard had the prisoners killed and their bodies destroyed so that the siege would go on. He split his force into three groups of fifty and attacked together with a sally from the castle; the siege was broken at a terrible cost on both sides, and the few men still standing raised the imperial flag over the castle.^{8788899091929394}

Some weeks later, in the castle courtyard, Hogar knighted him with the family sword as "Sir Leonard Gümüşel". Leonard swore to courage and honour, to bear his sword for those who cannot defend themselves, to fight for the emperor, and to be loyal to House Baldrick and the children of Alarath. The family that rules Ravenhill paid Hogar enough to build a castle, and Hogar used it to build a new keep on the undefended north of his lands, at the forest edge guarding the trade road, and gave it to Leonard. Leonard named it Reiseburg after Vincent Reise, who had died at Ravenhill. His arms show a clenched silver hand with coins flowing beneath it and a sword gripped above.^9596979899

On Hogar's suggestion he took as his squire Vulgar Yeşiltepe, a nineteen-year-old smith without family who had fought with his hammer among the peasant volunteers, and left Rupert to run the keep in his absence. Leonard trains him in the longsword and treats him like a son, within the bounds of master and squire.^100101102103

At court

At the celebration in the palace, Leonard proposed to Snorri Demirsakal, a nephew of the dwarven king, a small trial trade along the road through Reiseburg, with a low tax and a promise not to raise it for five years; the dwarf agreed in principle to divert part of his family's trade. When Hogar was called away by Einhart Lorenz, he left Leonard to represent his house. Castor brought him a letter in which Luke wrote that he had passed his examination, had been accepted at the mages' tower in Mavi Hisar and meant to serve House Baldrick as its mage.^{104105106107108109}

Spoiler: Champion of the throneGösterAçık ettiği: Mürekkep ve Çelik #15 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

The emperor, the son of the fallen Conrad, called on the loyal houses for a champion to fight in the trials of nobles accused of treason. Leonard stood in for the absent Hogar and offered to fight, and die if need be, for the emperor; the ten trials were set for the following ten days, and Hogar approved on his return. In private the emperor recalled that Leonard had once bested Conrad at sword practice and warned that if he now lost to a traitor, everyone he loved would pay; he also decided that Leonard should carry his father's sword whenever a trial was fought with swords.^110111112113