The force of his fall carried Dunstin over onto his side. As death took the nobleman it granted him two last boons.
Above the crumbling of the remnants of walls, and the crackling of the flames, he could hear the wild ringing of the bells from Andrew’s tower, the call to arms that would warn Stephen. Despite his agony, Dunstin’s blackened lips pulled back into a smile at the sound.
He was gone from the world and on his way to the light, and thus spared the sight of Andrew falling from the tower.
15
The clamor of the carillon bells initially surprised only Stephen. When they first began to ring, the populace, still cheering the victors of the sledge races, assumed that the tumultuous noise was merely an additional part of the celebration.
The Duke of Navarne, however, had been involved in the planning of the carillon program, and knew that the bells were out of schedule. He looked up from the reviewing stand at the precise moment when the Sorbold column crested the last of the undulating hills that led up to the east-west thoroughfare and the keep’s entrance. He rose shakily, his hands gripping the arms of his chair.
“Sweet All-God,” he said. His lips moved. The words did not come out.
Stephen glanced quickly around the festival fields, assessing the situation between beats of his pounding heart.
His mind went first to his children; both of them were with him, along with Gerald Owen and Rosella, their governess.
The clergy, both the benisons of Sepulvarta and the Filidic Invoker and his high priests, were seated with him and the other dukes on a makeshift dais that served as a reviewing stand, composed of raised wooden pallets cordoned off with rope. The reviewing stand was just outside the eastern gate of the walled rampart and faced east onto the open land that had served as the venue for the sledge races. The dignitaries would be fairly easy to evacuate.
Stephen’s focus shifted immediately to the festival attendees, certainly more than ten thousand of them, gathered in a loose oval that extended more than a league’s distance to the east, out in the open, rolling lands of central Navarne. The minor nobility and the landed gentry were closest to the reviewing stand. With the decline of social position distance was added, leaving the poorest of the peasantry farthest away. As always, the ones most likely to die.
His stomach lurched.
In a heartbeat Stephen had leapt from his place on the reviewing stand, dragging Melisande with him.
“To the gate!” he shouted to the dignitaries. “Run!” He swiveled and caught the eye of his captain of the guard, pointing to the advancing column. “Sound the alarm!”
He estimated there were about one hundred horsemen, another seven hundred on foot, with several long catapults in tow. As they advanced they seemed to be splitting, the horsemen gravitating toward the wall behind him, the infantry veering off to the east, toward the bulk of the merrymakers.
Tristan was at his side, gripping his elbow.
“They’re riding the wall!” the Lord Regent shouted above the din of the crowd, which was still in the throes of celebration. “They’ll cut off access to the gate—”
“—and slaughter everyone,” Stephen finished. The horns blared the alert as Stephen’s guard began rallying to the captain’s call. The duke turned to the elderly chamberlain behind him.
“Owen! Get my children to safety!”
The chamberlain, pale as milk, nodded, then seized both children by the arms, eliciting a shriek of protest from each of them.
“Quentin!” Tristan Steward shouted to the Duke of Bethe Corbair. “Take Madeleine with you. Go!” He gestured wildly at the gate, then turned and seized the arm of his brother, Ian Steward, the benison of Canderre-Yarim, averting his eyes from his fiancée’s terrified face as Baldasarre dragged her over the ropes off the back of the reviewing stand and to the gate.
A thundering of hooves could be heard from the western barracks as a contingent of Stephen’s soldiers rode forth, scattering merrymakers and bales of hay that had delineated the racetrack before them. By now most of the crowd had heard the commotion and turned to see the black lines of Sorbold soldiers descending the hill, sweeping across the snow in the distance, riding and marching relentlessly forward. A great gasp rent the air, followed by a discordant chorus of screams.
A furious wave of panic swept through the crowd, followed by a human tide surging forward toward the gate in the rampart, hurrying back inside the protection of Stephen’s wall. Within seconds the access was clogged, and violence broke out, great cries of anguish and wails of terror as people were crushed into each other and up against the unforgiving stone of the wall.
“M’lord!” shouted Gerald Owen. “The children will never survive the press!”
Stephen stared in despair at the throng of people pushing in a great swell toward the only opening in the rampart. Owen was right; Gwydion and Melisande would easily be crushed to death in the throng.
Over his head he heard shouted orders and the slamming of doors in the guard towers atop the wall as the archers took up their posts. As one broad young man made ready his arrows, Stephen was struck with an idea.
“You!” he shouted to the archer up on the wall. “Stand ready!” He snatched the ropes from the reviewing stand and ripped them from their posts, hauling them over to the wall away from the gate. “Owen! Come with me!”
Stephen stood back from the wall and heaved with all his might, silently thanking the All-God that he had purchased the ropes from the king of the Firbolg some months back. The Bolg had discovered a manufacturing process that had reduced the weight of rope products while increasing their tensile strength. A normal rope would have been far too heavy to toss in this way. After two tries the archer atop the wall caught the frayed end and signaled his success. Behind him Stephen could hear his soldiers riding past on their way to interdict the mounted assault.
“Rosella, hold on to Melisande,” Stephen said to the frightened servant. “Don’t let go.” Rosella nodded mutely as Stephen wrapped the rope end twice about her waist. “All right, my girl, up you go!” He nodded to the archer, and turned Rosella toward the wall, rudely grasping her hindquarters, helping her ascend in a flurry of scattered stone and torn cloth. He tried to smile encouragingly at Melisande, who was wailing in terror.
“All right, son, you’re next,” he said to Gwydion. The lad nodded, and grasped the rope as it was lowered from the top of the wall above him, twice again his height.
“I can climb, Father.”
Stephen looped the boy’s waist with the rope’s end as Gwydion grasped the length. “I know you can, son—hold on, now.”
The archer pulled as Gwydion scaled the wall. Stephen sighed in relief as the lad’s long legs disappeared on the other side of the rampart. He turned to Gerald Owen.
“You’re next, Owen.”
The elderly chamberlain shook his head.
“M’lord, I should stay until you are inside as well.”
“I’m not going inside, not until it’s finished.” Stephen raised his voice to be heard over the building pandemonium. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Tristan had heard his declaration and had made note of it. “Now get my children away from the wall, and as many more as can be hauled over. You up there!” he shouted to the archer who had manned the rope.
“Yes, m’lord?”
“Maintain this post. One less archer will not be missed, and they’re not in range yet anyway. Pull as many people to safety as you can.” He reached out and grabbed the shoulder of a burly peasant man hurrying with his children to the gate. “Here, man, pass those children up, then stay and round up others—women, the old, anyone who needs help getting over the wall.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“Inside, Owen. Try and quell the panic. Move those inside back from the wall—the Sorbolds have catapults.” He cast a glance over his shoulder at the resolutely approaching column, then turned back to Gerald Owen.
“Tell the Master of the Wall to prepare to m
aintain bow fire to cover the evacuation of the people, and then the troops once the Sorbolds are in range. And find the commanders of the third and fourth divisions inside—tell them to watch for a charge from the west, and hold the north gate.”
The chamberlain nodded his understanding, then grasped the rope and was hauled over the rampart, out of the fray that was turning bloody beneath him.
Tristan was shouting orders to the commander of his personal retinue.
“Sweep as many of those people as you can around the wall to the north—there’s another gate there, and it’s out of sight.”
A shock rang through him as he was jolted from behind, rammed into by several people fleeing the fields in panic in the face of the coming horsemen. Tristan, a strong man with a solid frame, maintained his balance and stepped out of the way of another oncoming wave of villagers, their faces set in masks of terror, eyes glazed. In the distance near the wall he could hear Madeleine’s shrill voice shrieking his name.
“Set up two fronts,” he shouted to his commander. He pointed to the approaching column that was marching forward at the east to flank the festivalgoers. “Set up a picket of pikemen and foot soldiers, and any peasants you can find—give them anything, sticks, haybales, balehooks—and form a line in front of the crossbowmen to set against the infantry charge. Stephen’s cavalry can engage the horses riding the wall until they come within bowshot of those archers on the rampart.” The chaos swelled around him. He looked to find his cousin as the commander saluted and began calling orders.
At the wall Stephen was utilizing one of the rampart archers to pull some of the people gathering near the bulwark over the top to safety. Once the process was working the Duke of Navarne stepped back from the wall, shielded his eyes for a moment, and shouted something to the soldiers atop the rampart. One disappeared, returning a moment later with a handful of weapons, which he tossed clear of the wall.
Stephen scooped the blades from the snowy ground and began quickly passing them out to the men and women standing in wait. He trotted over to Tristan and tossed him a longsword.
“I guess we’ll see if Oelendra’s training stayed with us, cousin,” he said calmly, though his eyes gleamed. Tristan nodded, turning once more to the oncoming column.
With a thunderous roar a second wave of cavalrymen from Navarne’s northern barracks came into sight, joining with the tail end of the first wave from the eastern quarters. The two mounted lines galloped forth, charging to engage the Sorbold horsemen while Stephen’s foot soldiers hurried, amid a furious clanking of armor and clanging weapons, to interpose themselves between the oncoming infantry. Scattered huddles of men and women stood, armed with whatever they could scrounge and frozen in panic, watching the ebb and flow of the mob struggling to squeeze through the eastern gate, the last desperate line of defense between the townspeople and the wall.
“I’ll face the charge,” Tristan shouted to Stephen. “You rally the people—there are hundreds of able-bodied who can defend the wall.”
Stephen nodded and the two noblemen parted, Tristan running forward toward the oncoming column, Stephen toward the makeshift dais upon which he had been sitting only a few moments before.
“You!” the duke called to a clump of heavyset men, sledge-race participants most likely, hovering near the wall, axes and spades in hand, steeling themselves for the coming charge. “Seize those platforms! Throw a few obstacles in their way—set up some barricades!”
Like a spell shattering, the trance in which they had been rooted vanished. With a swell of shouting, the men took hold of the makeshift dais and splintered it apart, smashing the bracing boards with axes, barrels, bare fists, whatever was within reach. In moments the enormous platform was broken into sections of pallets, which the townsfolk hauled forward and planted at the wall’s edge and across the field, directly in the path of the line of thundering chargers riding the wall.
The randomly strewn pallets served as partial cover for the hailstorm of arrows and crossbow bolts slamming forth now from the Sorbold force. The air was rent with the screams of the missiles as they tore forward in waves. A sickening staccato of popping and thudding sounds erupted, followed by cries of agony or shuddering gasps as the bodies of the festivalgoers began to fall rapidly, littering the once-pristine racing field.
“Halt—hold your position!” Tristan shouted to the double line of foot soldiers from Stephen’s northern barracks, the pikes in front, the bowmen in back. “Train your crossbows on the front line and wait until they crest the field. Pikemen—keep down! Hold this line against the charge!” He looked away, his stomach turning at the looks on the faces of the conscripted peasants as realization took hold of what they were facing.
Stephen felt the wind grow colder; it stung his cheeks and eyes, kicking up a veil of sharp snowy crystals from the ground. He glanced in the direction of the two gates in his wall; the throng was still clamoring to move inside, but it was thinning as the soldiers Tristan had assigned to manage the crowd maintained a fragile order. Children were running in terror, following adults dashing blindly around the wall to the northern gate. The snow-devils in the wind spun around them, hurling some of them to the ground.
He turned and looked toward the oncoming army. Like a smoothly flowing river the Sorbold soldiers marched forward, relentlessly, unhurried. One catapult came to a halt in an unlikely place and began training on the scattered crowd of defenders manning the wall. Stephen’s brow furrowed, and then his throat closed in the realization that the enemy was not positioning to attack the keep, but rather to wreak as much death among the attendees as possible.
Behind him the wind grew sharper, more insistent. Stephen shielded his eyes and turned. The look of consternation on his face melted in astonishment.
Llauron the Invoker stood in the middle of the field that had been the sledge arena, atop the small rise of packed snow where the timekeeper had stood to start the races. He was alone in the distance except for Gavin, his chief forester, who was crouched on one knee, his heavy bow far out of range of the advancing army, positioned to defend Llauron, standing as his only guard.
The Invoker seemed unaware of the cacophony all around him. His expression was calm, almost serene, his arms at his sides, the white oaken staff of his office in one hand. Llauron’s eyes were closed, his face turned toward the late-afternoon sun, which would soon vanish into the long darkness of night.
Llauron raised his empty hand; Stephen looked above. The wind picked up strongly, shrieking with a moaning howl across the wide fields, whisking more sheets of frozen crystals into the swirling air. The duke closed his eyes against the blast of cold that stung his face as the wind slapped him hard.
He put his hand to his brow and looked to Tristan. The Lord Roland had not noticed the Invoker; he was instead struggling to stand and keep his soldiers trained on the approaching column.
The light of day surged, then diminished quickly. Dark clouds formed over the sun; suddenly, the hazy light of afternoon vanished into the gray of dusk as the snow began to fall rapidly stronger, coating the air thickly, rising and falling in twisting patterns on the moaning wind.
The Invoker raised his other hand, holding his staff high. The gold leaf atop the white wood gleamed like a beacon in the coming darkness. Stephen thought he could hear Llauron chanting an invocation, but the sound of it was lost in the keening music that screamed in his ears. He looked to Tristan again, who now stood erect, staring directly in front of him. Stephen ran to his cousin, pulling the front of the hood of his cape down to shield his eyes from the bite of the wind.
“What is it?” he shouted.
The Lord Roland said nothing. Stephen followed his gaze to the approaching horsemen riding Navarne’s wall.
Alongside the galloping steeds the snow swirled menacingly, the wind howling wild and shrill. From within the clouds of twisting white a staccato growling sound emerged, echoing over the field, in a thousand earsplitting barks.
The snow itself rose
up, took form. The men of Roland watched in amazement as it slapped at the legs of the horses like a claw, snapped like a snout, growled.
First one, then a dozen, then a score, then a hundred of them, ephemeral wolves white as winter seemed to form from the snow itself, rise up and slash at the legs of the now-frightened horses. The wind screamed in deafening, feral howls; one of the Sorbold soldiers yanked back on the reins as his horse reared in fright.
A shattering blast of air blew through again, spinning the ice crystals of snow aloft. As it rose more lupine forms rose with it, rampant, angry, snapping, tearing at the Sorbold chargers. The frosty blanket of white that had cloaked the meadow swirled viciously into a thousand more feral wolves, clawing and savaging the horses and foot soldiers in a horrific chorus of snarling howls that matched the screaming wind. A contrapuntal cry of fear blazed up from the startled army, wailing discordantly in the wind.
“Dearest All-God,” the Lord Roland whispered.
The Sorbold cavalry charge broke into chaos as the horses reared frantically, twisting and dodging to escape the phantom wolves. The prince and the duke stared as soldiers were thrown, some into the rampart itself, tossed on the boiling sea of confusion and trampling hooves.
On the eastern flank the neat lines of the column crumpled into jagged rows. Tristan laughed harshly in amazement as the oncoming infantry broke ranks, some ignoring the biting snow that tore at their heels, others succumbing to the Invoker’s magic and giving in to the frenzy around them, swatting and slashing at the swirling snow-devils in lupine form. Navarne’s cavalry charged in, slashing ferociously.
The Lord Roland squeezed Stephen’s arm tightly.
“He’s done it! Stephen, he’s done it! Llauron’s broken the charge!”
The gruesome sound of ratcheting metal broke through the keening of the wind. A moment later the air was rent by the repeated noise of catapults firing, and the lines of defending bowmen and foot soldiers erupted in caustic fire. Stephen and Tristan were blown back by the impact as clouds of oily smoke exploded in front of them, followed immediately by shrieks of agony and the bright flash of fire as it consumed the impacted soldiers.