TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

  Night followed night, while the townsfolk of Alestron held their collective breath. Under confusion and back-breaking labour, the lower citadel accomplished its evacuation. The winds stank of ash. The drays that stripped the emptied homes of their blankets and food stores moved through air clogged like tarnish, with each breath men took made harsh with silted dust and the scorched taint of debris. Keldmar's distraught widow could not be consoled. At Dame Dawr's behest, Parrien's wife shouldered the burden of loss, making rounds to acknowledge the field garrison's bereft families.

  Pitched sleepless by Duke Bransian's white-heated rage, the elite guard held their posts on the innermost walls, while Mearn's captains oversaw the chaotic influx of distraught refugees without faltering. The looming spectre of siege was not new. Behind the massive keeps that guarded the Mathiell Gate, amid starlit dark, Alestron's stalwart companies imposed order. They kept watch, while the inner citadel's burdened resources became strained, then overwhelmed by the crush of displaced families and craftsfolk. Through the night hours, when torches were doused to sharpen the night-vision of the sentries, the storytellers spoke in the overcrowded encampments jammed into the open baileys. They recited the course of bygone history, passed down through each generation.

  The citadel's inhabitants were reminded again: they were a proud people, descended from the deeds of high hearts and war heroes . . .

  The first flame of the uprising remained unforgotten, when insurgent townsmen had crept through the houses and halls, slaughtering resident clanborn. On that dread night, the reigning s'Brydion duke and his family had died in their beds, betrayed by their own merchants' henchmen. The clan heir who survived to stand off the assault had escaped execution because he had jilted his wife to indulge himself with a mistress. Naked, sprung from bed by a panicked page, he had rallied the Mathiell garrison. Alongside the watch captain, he and the skeleton company on duty had barricaded themselves inside the flanking drumkeeps. They had cocked the catapults. Hurled flaming bladders of oil into the rioters sweeping the streets.

  To the screams of the dying, friend, family, and foeman, they had hardened their nerves. In cold desperation, to foil snipers with cross-bows, they had loaded the massive arbalests with fire-bolts and torched the wood span to the Wyntok Gate.

  Even after six and a half centuries, the echo of horror still lingered: of the hour that the floors in the ducal palace ran wet with the blood of the slain. As the cries of their murdered kinsmen and children shrilled under winter starlight, the trapped guard, who were fathers lashed insane by grief, had forced through a suicidal sortie. Their berserk rage had burst from the barricaded keeps, leading the charge that smashed through the insurgent force holding the palace gate. A few knots of fighting survivors rallied to their initiative. Half-clad, or armed, or bearing the stubs of smashed furnishings, they cleared the streets of the inner citadel by killing all comers who failed to fall in at their side through the melee.

  By dawn, the flag with the s'Brydion bull blazon still streamed from the height of Watch Keep. While angry factions denouncing the Paravian presence still ravaged the craft district down-slope, the assault that had murdered the reigning duke was repulsed, and its backing ringleaders faced with a siege . . .

  * * *

  The legacy inherent in Alestron's oldest revetments had withstood far more than the savagery of human rebellion: the innermost walls had been crafted by Paravians, centuries before the Fellowship's compact had granted surety for mankind's refuge on Athera. History spoke, in sealed stones: the mysteries of centaur masons and the flutes of the Athlien singers had laid down defences against concerted attacks by Khadrim, themselves errant offspring spun into form by the dreams of grief-maddened dragons. The sea-tides that ripped through the sluice from the inlet had flushed the let blood of besiegers, even before the Third Age insurgents cast down the high kings enthroned by the Sorcerers.

  Alestron guarded her freedom, this day, by the gift of her forebears' resiliency.

  So the spinners of tales and the bards reassured the frightened mothers and their clinging children. Brave epics were offered to bolster the uprooted families who faced horror, and certain privation . . .

  When the next traitorous assault tried to storm the high citadel from beyond the burned span of the bridge, the attackers had been shattered by archers and sliced to ribbons in routed defeat. Starvation served as the enemy's weapon, then. The innermost defences were forced to endure a dreadful four months, spent besieged. Children were taught to overset scaling ladders. Grandames boiled oil to flush out the sewers encroached on by enemy sappers. As supplies failed, the populace ate the garrison's horses, then turned to trapping the rats in the culverts. The hale learned to wield weapons, regardless of age. Dress-makers used their thread to wind fletching and refurbish arrow shafts. Each wave of attack had been broken at harrowing cost, in the tidal chasm under the cliffs of the Mathiell Gate. Names were remembered, and acts of selfless sacrifice, until the town rebels' resources were mangled, and finally worn to exhaustion . . .

  The duke's restored banner had never been struck. Men on the embrasures, and grandsires making shift to watch toddlers were told over the fact as a litany.

  Yet where yester-year's brutal rising against charter law had accosted the s'Brydion by stealth, the offensive waged now by Lysaer's Alliance resumed the ominous massing of troops. From the upper walls and the sea-misted battlements, Alestron's penned citizens watched their industrious enemy, unlading timbers from galleys. They heard the chants, as the work crews dragged lumber over the blackened earth of their wrecked farmsteads. Wind carried the groaning of the log carriages that fed the insatiable saws of the carpenters. Hammers banged, to the shouts of the engineers' overseers. Just out of weapons' range, swarms of conscript labourers constructed the wheeled shelters for sappers; the frame slings for the rams; and the squat, spring-cocked arbalests, that would fire pronged grapples or incendiary arrows over the crenels and walls.

  Such activity was not reserved to the ground scorched lifeless by Lysaer's first overture.

  Wooden structures notched the hills, where no timber grew: a leafless framework of scaling towers, the throwing arms of wheeled trebuchets, and the squatter beams that would mount the notched winches that cocked back the mangonels.

  The Light's forces closed by the muscle of ox teams. Their inexorable, creeping pace advanced less than a league, in a day. Soon, only hours remained, before the duke's stronghold became surrounded.

  At the last moment, three furtive, cloaked figures ran the Alliance gauntlet. Their desperate mission aimed to enter the citadel, before the poised war host established position. They skulked by the eyes of the enemy; slipped under the arcane vigilance of Lysaer's initiate priesthood by crawling through middens. They slunk, heads down, where the rank-and-file recruits sweated in drill with the shock troops.

  Petty officers waved the intruders along.

  Masked by Dakar's knowledge of Fellowship wardings, and Elaira's skilled use of hedge glamouries, the trio traversed the naked acres scorched sterile by Lysaer's assault. They threaded the gamut of unquiet haunts, disoriented still by the horror of life's savage ending.

  The shut, unmanned gates at the lower wall posed the arrivals a strategic difficulty: the singed timbers and stout grille-work had been left secured, too massive for Dakar's light fingers. That forced a return visit to raid Lysaer's encampment, where Sidir's forest-bred stealth purloined a stout rope, some twine, and a bow. Better prepared, they waited for nightfall, crouched near the stripped bones of dead sentries. Dakar whispered cantrips to settle the shades, while Sidir kept sharp watch. Darkness did not relax their protections, as they poised to slip over the barbican.

  'I don't fancy being done like a seamstress's pincushion,' Dakar grumped, nursing a heel with burst blisters. He distrusted the duke's archers. Year upon year spent in hair-trigger drills made them shoot at the first sight of movement.

  The s'Brydion won't have winched in the span bridge' he arg
ued, against Sidir's doubt. 'That precaution will be held until the last moment, since they hope to draw in the Prince of Rathain'

  'Over the stinking meat of my carcass,' Sidir snapped under his breath. The murderous glint that sparked his pale eyes did not bode well for Jeynsa. 'I would be done here. Soonest is better, that my liege should never behold this sorrowful place.'

  Still thin from captivity, the tall clansman shouldered his work with bow and arrow and unreeled the twine after the shot used to thread their rope through the battlement. Once the knots were secured, Dakar kept his counsel. While Sidir lent his strength to assist Elaira through the arduous effort of scaling the outer grille, they climbed, breathless, and breasted the gate arch.

  Then reached the far side, scraped by rough stone, with tough leathers snagged by the slice of embedded glass. No sentry emerged to call challenge.

  'Learned their lesson' wheezed Dakar, overcome by exertion, and starting to sicken from excessive use of fine spellcraft.

  'Is that blessing or curse?' Sidir whispered back, through the sea-mist that curled through the lanes. The full moon was rising, a set-back beyond any forest-bred skill. Since the Mad Prophet looked ready to snooze where he sat, the Companion extended a firm hand and raised him.

  'Why haven't they burned this place down?' he snapped, fretful. 'These houses can only shelter the enemy.'

  'Don't ask' murmured Dakar, braced on a yard gate, and white as rolled dough.

  The three of them slunk through a craft quarter emptied of people. Nothing moved but the foraging rats and a gaunt cat, stalking for vermin. They climbed, while the incoming fog lapped the shop-fronts, and moonlight carved shadows deep as Sithaer's pits, and glanced in mercury ripples off the roundels of the unlit windows. s'Brydion reigned with an iron-clad fist: no looters had rifled the deserted craft shops. Doors and shutters remained locked, while strained silence hung in the streets.

  'Ath's own grace, don't ask,' Dakar repeated at a mumble. Sidir voiced his rattled thoughts anyhow. 'Be seen here, we're apt to be cut down for thieves.'

  'Dakar's spent out,' Elaira protested. 'After settling the dead, he's left unfit to weave wardings.' She raked a wisp of hair from her face, forced to quell the clansman's raw nerves on her own. 'I don't sense any presence. Since Bransian's men trust main strength before talismans, my old hedge wife's skills ought to serve.'

  Cloaked against stabbing chill, touched by a desolation that bit to the bone, the three skulked under the ephemeral veil of Elaira's suggestive illusion. Stray sound was less biddable. Dakar's staggered footfalls cast echoes before them, up the zigzagged streets, and through closes, past the dead chimneys of the forges and the vacated barracks that loomed still as the sealed vault of a tomb.

  The pervasive quiet unnerved, even words an unnatural intrusion.

  Ahead, carved in jet silhouette, the lead roofs of the upper citadel drum-keeps notched the indigo sky. No watch lamps burned, there. If candles lit the alcoves for healers, attending to births and infirmities, not a gleam pierced the pervasive black-out. Only moonlight painted the empty lanes. The air smelled of oil, perhaps leaked from stores at the gatekeep, though the oddity grated, with no imminent sign of attack yet in evidence. Nor did the saving blanket of sea-mist wreathe the height of the promontory. The clear night exposed knife-edged shapes without mercy: in fraught stealth, the party of three crept upward to the gap at the Wyntok Gate. Under its inky shadow, Elaira came forward with her woman's voice to approach the sentries.

  'Hello, the watch!' she called out. 'You have friends, come in peace to the citadel on behalf of the Crown of Rathain. With your duke's leave, we ask to treat directly with Jeynsa s'Valerient.'

  Which opening was honest, if not what Alestron's overstrained guardsmen were disposed to hear. The response came back surly. 'Stand forth! Show yourselves and disarm!'

  'Obey!' Dakar cautioned, as Sidir bridled to protest. 'Now they know we're here, Bransian's archers will have us skewered at the least hesitation.'

  'In the dark?' Sidir snarled. 'You claim they're that good?'

  'Skilled as your best forest clansmen. Incompetents don't serve the watch at this bridge.' Dakar gritted his jaw, shoved away from the door-sill that sheltered them. 'Disarm, as they ask. We'll be shown to the duke under surety, once they've recognized me for a Fellowship spellbinder.' Then, as six armoured men blocked the lane, with more cross-bowmen positioned at vantages in the battlements over their heads, Dakar gave rushed advice to Elaira. 'For today, you're no crystal-bearing Koriathain, but a healer trained by Ath's adepts who's chosen to side with the clans.'

  'I won't lie to them,' Elaira warned, a freezing reprimand.

  Dakar rolled his eyes, caught a fist in his beard as though to yank hair in frustration. 'For love of your prince, then! Try to limit yourself to the strategic truth that's least likely to rile s'Brydion temper.' He added, wrung nauseous, 'I have faced the whip, here, only spared by a Sorcerer's intervention. These men never compromise. They'll kill without thought. If they're shown cause to believe they've been cornered, even your Teir's'Ffalenn cannot handle them.'

  Then the moment for breathless precautions was past, as the men down the lane advanced to take charge of them. Sidir was given their blunt command to drop his bow. No one cared that he possessed no quiver or arrows. Surrounded at weapon-point, inspected and frisked, the arrivals were made to stand, half-clad and shivering, while torches were fetched. The flaming brands were thrust into their faces, within a whisker of blinding them.

  The splintering light made Dakar's head spin. He wrestled back dizziness, given no choice but to suffer rough handling.

  'Disapprove as you like,' snapped the burly captain at arms, unfazed by Sidir's hackled dignity. 'The last ambassador here got an arrow through him. You haven't, because Dakar is known to us.'

  The torches were snuffed, then, perhaps not a mercy. Held captive, the three were prodded forward, stumbling in their state of rifled undress, and scrambling to snatch loosened laces.

  Sidir set his chin, large enough to balk at the shove that would spill a lesser man to his knees. "The lady,' he said, 'is deserving of courtesy. You treat with her no better than ruffians.'

  The protest met laughter, followed up by the clap of a gauntleted fist. 'You'll not get your weapons back yet, feral scout. Peace with you, for now, since there can't be honour between us until you've survived your coming interview with our duke.'

  * * *

  The hour was uncivilized to question intruders who might be spies sent by the enemy. Yet Alestron's ruling duke was awakened from sleep no matter the time was past midnight. He would interrogate all surprise guests, and without the amenities of state courtesy. Bransian rolled from bed, slit-eyed, while the report still tumbled from the lips of the runner sent in by his vigilant sentries.

  'Not that filthy gambeson!' snapped Liesse, still blinking.

  The duke glowered. He settled for the scarlet dressing-robe. Let the scuttling servant throw the garment over his shoulders, roped with surly scars and hard muscle, and skinned by the chafe of his chainmail. 'I look like a floor mop,' he groused, and shook off the wife's urgent plea for a comb. 'Beard tangles be damned! And forget boots, as well.'

  He stalked for the door, while the extravagant gold tassels sewn at his hem tapped and glittered against his bare ankles. He paused at the threshold to snatch his sheathed broadsword, belting on the steel-bossed baldric.

  Concerned that such driven haste boded ill, Liesse kicked free of the sheets. She grabbed the nearest dress in her wardrobe and slapped off the dithering servant. 'Fetch up Keldmar's widow. Run, do you hear? If my husband holds this interview by himself, we'll be mopping up someone's let blood off the carpet!'

  Liesse hurried, yanking at laces. Already, the duke's voice boomed up from below, directing the session to the closet room he used for hostile receptions.

  * * *

  That tiny, cramped chamber was airlessly hot, sealed by felt curtains for black-out. Only two of the a
vailable wicks were alight, thin flame struggling in the tall candelabra that flanked the duke's raised chair. Mearn was not present; as the only other sibling in residence, he stood active watch on the walls. But Sevrand sat as the s'Brydion heir apparent, clad in his silver-trimmed captain's breeches and sartorial, bare-chested splendour. The two wives called at short notice showed their unfinished dress, lacking state jewels, and in hair falling uncoiffed to the waist. Their tight faces redoubled the ominous weight, imposed by the row of heraldic chairs with Alestron's bull motif worked into the cushions, and stamped in chased gold on the finials.

  The presence the women commanded instructed the captain at arms: the petitioners just prodded in from the stairwell were offered a seat before the raised table. Dakar accepted at once, of necessity. Red-faced and puffing, he leaned back, straitly desperate and battling dizziness.

  Elaira perched also, rough in her scout's buckskins. If her level stare did not disclose the focus of her order's training, she would seem ordinary, with her bronze hair tied back in a farm-wife's plait. Sidir declined to sit. His insistent presence kept a liegeman's stance, on his feet at her right shoulder.

  Which mannered defiance bespoke her importance, and also proclaimed the ritual warning that Rathain's crown interests would not yield the s'Brydion cause undue deference.

  Bransian's eyes glittered: tight as cranked wire by threat at his gates, he came stoked for explosive contention. He introduced the raw-boned, brown-haired matron as his wife, gave the name of his heir, then nodded his greying, leonine head in salute towards the more fragile woman in mourning. 'Lady Sindelle, my late brother Keldmar's widow.'

  Despite the late hour, Bransian's expectation burned incandescent as he addressed the captive delegation. 'Do you bring us news of Prince Arithon? Has he changed heart? By Dharkaron's thrown Spear, if he has, we have a need that commands our survival.'