Stormed Fortress Read online

  ‘Stand down!’ barked the captain. ‘No one moves without leave! Damn you, those horses are too hot to be standing. Where are the boys to attend them?’

  The chastised riders dismounted, while the idle grooms jumped to take charge of their blowing mounts.

  Engulfed by that bottled-up swirl of banked rage were two onlooking bumpkin recruits. They still wore the sunburn of toil in the field, rough-clad in the stained boots and coarse cloth of crofters.

  ‘You there!’ bawled the thick-set master of horse, too overburdened not to collar the available by-standers. ‘Hop to! We’ve got bridles to clean and soiled brass that needs polish!’

  The pair were shoved forward by one of the sergeants and heaped with armloads of stripped harness. The older one tugged his grey forelock and bent to unbuckle stained bits, while his freckled companion fetched a bucket and rag, and crouched over the task foisted on them.

  ‘We’re hooked, now,’ the younger one fretted, as pandemonium continued to inflame the surrounding Alliance encampment. ‘We’ve got to reach Keldmar. Dharkaron’s black bollocks, he’s got to be warned the false avatar’s due on the front lines in an hour!’

  Vhandon buffed the rimed dirt from a curb chain and frowned. ‘Be still! Mind your tongue. Slouch your posture, and damned well stop acting desperate. We’ve got to wait for a safe opening to slip out.’

  The impatient scout with him snatched up the next head-stall. ‘What if the moment fails to present?’

  Vhandon shrugged, absorbed. ‘Then we do our best to create one. If we fail, there’s no gain in suicide. We bide on the hope that someone from our party finds his chance and wins through.’

  Climbing sun burned off the last wisp of sea-mist. The camp hummed, set in ominous order, with too many sentries left sharp at their posts in the atmosphere of agitation. The two covert observers cleaned bridles with lowered heads, while Tirans’ abrasive captain at arms convened a council of war. He could not give the order to deploy the Light’s troops. But zeal could ensure the men were prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.

  The shed pile of harness was only half-cleaned, when Lysaer s’Ilessid arrived on his dappled charger. He reined in, a white cloud against storm amid the mounted guard wearing the silver-and-sable surcoats of Kalesh. From shining blond hair to immaculate appointments, to eyes glinting blue as cut sapphire, the avatar’s presence seared sight to witness. Men in his shadow were reduced to servants, but never so callously disregarded. Lysaer’s smile of welcome to his least groom made the bearded, blunt mayor in his gaudy wealth an overstuffed caricature.

  Both men dismounted. For an instant, the attentive descent of trained staff obscured the immediate view.

  Then the acting captain at arms shoved from the shaded pavilion. Massive and rumpled, he forced his way through. Man and horse, groom and equerry, the tableau before the staked standards and awnings crystallized to expectation.

  Sunlight shone down on snowy silk and cold majesty as the dawn’s urgent news reached the Blessed Prince.

  ‘Ath above, show us mercy and sense!’ murmured Vhandon, unwittingly stunned. No thought had prepared him as his lungs stopped with awe. He had never expected such beauty and strength, or the impact of Lysaer s’Ilessid’s innate charisma.

  Every retainer’s rapt face showed that grace. His brief smile to the least, insignificant page could have fuelled a torch by sheer caring.

  Before this, the patient years spent unravelling Arithon’s reticent quiet became as a dream, scoured off by noon heat.

  Then the moment passed. The pavilion’s flap was thrust open again. More ranking officers rushed out in a pack, declaiming Keldmar’s brute ferocity. Lysaer asked them for calm. Against abashed silence, he demanded the recount of his Lord Justiciar’s murder.

  There came no self-righteous cry to raise arms. No flourish of trumpets to strike in retaliation. Lysaer stood firm. Upright as the poised spear-shaft, he heard through his officers’ riled account with focused attention. That stillness gripped him for one second more. Not a diamond stud on his gold-braided collar flashed in the flood of the morning.

  Then he said, ‘Fetch the banner-bearer who carried the Light’s abused standard. I want a front-rank witness to corroborate.’

  ‘But of course!’ Flushed by self-conscious embarrassment, the subordinate captain from Tirans backed down. Movement ruffled the packed horsemen as he sent an equerry, bearing the summons. Liveried grooms crept on with their chores, apologetically gathering reins and running up dangling stirrup-irons. Inert in their midst, Kalesh’s flummoxed mayor watched the proceedings like dead wood.

  ‘Carry on,’ murmured Lysaer. His wave dismissed the hovering escort. Sun burned through his jewels, as he raised taut fingers and raked back his sweat-damp blond hair. For that brief moment, he averted his face, a seamless pause, apparently made to ease his overwrought company. The wise leader with set-backs allowed his fraught men to vent their unconstrained reactions.

  Yet the perfect, staged move granted Vhandon full view, as the impact touched Lysaer’s expression.

  He looked tortured with pain. Sorrow transformed his face. Given his stance, he now had to act, regardless of personal preference. He was no born killer. Only a man, dedicated to courage, who carried a steadfast commitment. He commanded selflessly, and without stint. But never without thought: and not without feeling the hideous cost for the retribution he must now carry forward.

  Soul spoke, in that instant of scalding agony, torn down to honest revulsion. For Lysaer’s sworn covenant to stay unbroken, he would bear the weight of the service he had pledged all his resource to defend.

  Then the distraught standard-bearer arrived. Lysaer straightened to meet him; reforged the façade that claimed to be avatar, and with the purity of his conviction, requested the spoken truth.

  Hush fell over the officers gathered for council. Their advice was not asked. None ventured to speak, while the barbaric fate of the Light’s dead ambassador became repeated in full. Lysaer s’Ilessid did not interrupt. Every inch of him royal, he listened as though each stammered word was the last sound in the world.

  Then, as fresh anger savaged the ranks, shouting for blood in redress, Lysaer raised his fist.

  Silence descended. ‘Fetch another white stallion,’ he bade. ‘Bridle and saddle him in full state panoply.’

  As his dismounted lancers crowded and begged for the chance to bear arms as his vanguard, Lysaer turned them down. ‘I have no need for protection! No call to risk you, or rely on your bravery. Not for this, the opening hour that the Light is called to scour this land of hypocrisy.’

  ‘You will burn them out!’ exclaimed the war-captain from Tirans. ‘Rout the enemy with fire until the citadel boils to magma!’

  ‘I support no such cruelty!’ Lysaer pealed back. His cool purpose was un assailable, a chiselled display that cowed those men closest, and pressed the faint-hearted to unwitting retreat. Justice enforced the gap between the aroused dedicates and their hailed idol.

  ‘The enemy captain of Alestron’s field defences was the man who delivered the honourless order to fire. His archers enacted this uncivilized death. The farm-hands they defended condoned the crime. These are the guilty. I shall not tear down walls! Or destroy innocent town citizens over an action they did not commit!’

  The crestfallen officer flushed. Around him, his fellows shifted, abashed, as though the ground trembled beneath them.

  Against that crushed pause, where none dared opinion, the Mayor of Kalesh cleared his throat and clapped the shoulder of Lysaer’s white surcoat. ‘My Blessed Lord! That’s ingenious strategy! Of course, if you raze the field troops alone, those trapped inside the citadel will mew themselves up. They’ll crowd in panic and stress their own garrison, while we set our leisurely course for a siege.’ His shark’s smile widened. ‘We can watch in comfort as the s’Brydion fortress becomes overburdened, then starved to submission.’

  Lysaer s’Ilessid’s smile curdled with frosty polite
ness. ‘Quite, as you say.’ He sucked a sharp breath. ‘Except, for civility, I will deliver their barbaric duke his due warning.’

  His poised fist stirred. Lean fingers snapped, once. Out of clear air rose a pillar of light. The beacon pierced like a needle towards heaven, dazzling unshielded sight. The self-proclaimed avatar shone for the masses. He became as the blade of the unsheathed sword, crowned in white fire and diamonds.

  ‘Mercy!’ gasped Vhandon, forgetting the young scout, who shared equal danger beside him.

  How could any man bear to witness such splendour? How not to become bedazzled by triumph? Could any mortal mind fail to be stirred by the clarion cry to honour the moral high ground?

  ‘Mercy alive!’ Vhandon wept, torn in pieces, and all but seduced by the lure of sheer fascination. Such glory could not do other than blaze. Every last blinded follower would marry their efforts to what seemed a lofty ideal. Those who cheered with their dazed eyesight sealed would hurl themselves into a life-and-death struggle. By sheer mass and numbers, they would kill every standing troop caught in their path.

  Vhandon ached for hope’s loss. He was alone, clenched fast in the breach. His hand was not other than human. No field-captain possessed a sorcerer’s wisdom. To denounce the false avatar in the enemy camp could only bring swift self-destruction. The horrific thought chilled him: that he was informed. Had he not held an intimate association with Arithon, he would not have escaped the insanity. Would not have grasped what these followers never had grace to perceive: that this war had been seeded by Desh-thiere’s curse. If not for the memory of a clearer music, called forth from a Paravian-made sword, Vhandon realized he could have been swept off his feet. Too easily, ignorance swayed decent men to cast their lot with the Light’s mustered soldiers.

  Yet he had heard. His vision saw past ennobled passion as the bridled white stallion arrived, and its blond rider accepted the reins. Lysaer received the dazzled salutes of his officers, then strode forward to mount.

  Which left ten s’Brydion liegemen still masked under cover inside the enemy’s camp. They could send no word, before the forces unleashed. Make no move, lest they risk their companions. Alone, they held out on the rags of torn will. For they knew, beyond doubt: their duke’s brash defiance was futile.

  Such rage masked under self-righteous nobility would spark the irrevocable fire and not rest until the citadel was reduced to ashes.

  Autumn 5671

  Strike

  The first blow unleashed by the white rider exploded, an eruption of light that burst like a scream from the eye of a malevolent sunrise. The conflagration roared forth as a wave, storming across the hedged pastures, and breaking the outlying farm-steads under a blast of annihilating heat. The flash-point lasted but a fleeting instant. Yet amid the booming report of shocked air, the fields and hayricks surrounding the s’Brydion citadel were engulfed by scouring flame. The scourge destroyed everything: devoured all in its path without any breath of resistance.

  No hamlet escaped the sweeping assault. No farm-wife or miller or child was spared, no matter that they were innocents. The thatch and timber over their heads became torched at one hammering stroke. Chimney stones were reduced to slag, tumbled over the carbon scorched earth, where all life was stripped of animal industry and autumn-rich foliage.

  Smoke drifted, stinking, where moments before, crofters had scythed the last cutting of straw and raked the cured stalks into windrows. The drays and ox teams were immolated also, bone and carcasses scattered to ash; undone alongside them, the steadfast, armed guard of Keldmar’s veteran troops. No man in the open lived to report. Lumped metal remained of wrought weapons and wheel rims, glowing dull cherry upon the sere ground.

  Inside the burst barns, where the bulwarks of revetted stone had been melted, the shrieks of a handful of light-scalded sentries shattered the morning quiet. They were the misfortunate few, roasted to agony until death could relieve their wracked suffering.

  Vhandon and his picked company of scouts witnessed the horrific flare of the assault while set on the run. Half a league to the north, miserably huddled in a marshy covert that verged the enemy camp, they had never dispatched the warning to spare their commander. In flight for their lives, they had hoped to swing wide and cross the far side of the lines.

  As the rumbling report shook the earth, and pummelled wind through the frost-killed hummocks, Vhandon needed force to restrain his young men.

  ‘Hold fast where we stand!’ While an unhinged scout surged to avenge his dead family, Vhandon tripped the man’s rush, then clouted his nape and dropped him sprawling. ‘D’you think you’re the only one that’s bereaved?’ A stiff swallow, to jam back the upsurge of grief none could afford at the battle-front. Vhandon snapped, emptied, ‘I just lost a son! His wife bore my grandchildren, four of them, gone! By Ath, you’ll keep courage, if I can!’

  He helped the weeping man to his feet. ‘Steady on. Bear this! Believe what I know of the wars fought before! None of us can outface Lysaer’s powers. Nor can we salvage what’s wrecked, or snatch back one life delivered to Daelion’s judgement!’

  ‘If the field troop’s razed down, we’re now cut off, here!’ a rattled veteran argued, afraid. Parching gusts raked from the blast site in back-lash, hard enough to suck tears from dry eyes, and wilt the brush that provided inadequate cover.

  ‘Down!’ Vhandon ordered. ‘Smear your faces with mud!’

  But no skulking tactic allayed his dread: that no defence at arms might mount a counter-strike against the baleful fires of the s’Ilessid gift. With Keldmar’s field troops lost, the cruel fact wrecked morale: that the citadel’s lower walls lacked the shielding grace of the ancient Paravian craftwork. Every man nursed the horrific pain. Caught in hiding, they seethed to act before abject destruction should slaughter their fellows on guard at the trade gate.

  As a second fool moved to draw steel, Vhandon clamped a harsh fist. ‘No! Stay your hand! You’d bring death upon us, and for what? A martyr’s end here will serve nothing!’

  ‘Merciful Ath!’ The man shook with rage. ‘My wife and kinsfolk are still alive inside the lower citadel.’ Over dry coughs, as another man vomited, he vented his raging despair. ‘This false avatar can destroy us all on a whim. I can’t skulk here and suffer the ruin of all I hold dear in this life!’

  ‘You’ve forgotten!’ Vhandon slashed back. By ice-water nerves, he would pull these men clear, wrestle their poisoned stew of emotions until they could be steered from lethal danger. ‘Keldmar s’Brydion had the savagery to murder an accredited ambassador!’ Feet braced, his callused fist locked in restraint, the field-captain crushed sapping distress; forced reason above shock and heart-break. ‘We can’t measure the toll of destruction from here! Can’t know the full story, until we make our way beyond the direct line of fire.’

  While the screaming winds lashed the turned leaves from scrub maples, and whipped smoke hazed the pristine morning, the ranked sergeant among them responded. ‘Our innermost walls were designed to stop drakefire. Surely the heart of the citadel stands secure!’

  Yet even if their duke’s banner still flew, the experienced eye must acknowledge that their straits had gone from dire to desperate. Fellowship intervention might preserve Atwood’s timber inside of East Halla’s free wilds. But the shipworks at Kalesh and Adruin stayed supplied by the zeal of the Sunwheel Alliance. Their galleys would import cut lumber from elsewhere. Cordwainers and craftsmen pressed by the campaign would labour to erect siege engines. With Alestron stripped at one stroke of her field troops, the duke’s superbly trained men-at-arms were left in no position to stop the advance.

  Construction could start within range of the outside walls. Lysaer’s ruthless gift could burn down the defensive board hoardings. Clearly, the first line of fortifications was useless.

  ‘Depend on this much!’ Vhandon cracked with brute honesty. ‘We’ll see sappers mining our last unbreached wall before the full onset of winter.’

  Thrown back on
resolve, he jammed on his helm. ‘Talk will not save us! Nor can retreat serve a thing but add our hungry mouths to the strapped needs of our countrymen.’ Grim as carved oak, Vhandon turned his back on the smoke-hazed wrack of the farm-steads. ‘Stand firm with me! Use our loyalty wisely. Outside, as free agents, we can best serve our duke through covert raids and harassment.’

  The blast that scorched Alestron’s pastures and fields outstripped any word for destruction. Inside the s’Brydion citadel, the explosion enacted stunned shock, an inbreath before pandemonium: the painstaking lists with the garrison’s scribes were no longer going to matter; detailed inventories of food stocks and barrels of preserved rations were thrown into eclipse by the staring shadow of crisis.

  Panic struck every man, woman, and child as the city’s craft quarter was confronted by the stark scope of the wreckage. The false avatar’s ultimatum had been served upon the ashes of competent troops, loyal officers, and by-standing innocents. The act shattered morale. Unless every member of the duke’s family should be delivered to Lysaer’s justice in chains, today’s rain of fire and light would not end. Not before the Fatemaster’s Wheel had turned, and the last life was reaped out of havoc. Hold fast to their own, and the folk of Alestron were foredoomed, with all ties to diplomacy forfeit.

  The crushing aftermath fell hardest of all on the defending companies posted at the outer walls. Mearn s’Brydion suffered the brunt, as their commander at arms.

  The cocky dandy in him was no longer recognizable. Ripped haggard, his neat surcoat singed by the cinders that swirled as the scorched air recoiled, he retched on his knees, gagged by the reek of singed meat. His equerry, his officers, and the fleet-footed boy who ran his messages were wrung just as wretched beside him. They all fought to breathe, as the poisonous pall of hot smoke rolled off the surrounding, raped acres.

  Mearn dared not languish. He choked down rank nausea and his cry of grief, for the death of a feckless brother. Though loss savaged his heart, and his sword-arm was burned, he straightened, then moved: grabbed the nearest of his shaken captains, and yanked him onto his feet. ‘Jervald! Now! I need you to find Talvish! We have people to help. Whole families and tradesmen. They aren’t safe until they’re secured inside of the upper citadel!’