Stormed Fortress Read online

  Late Summer 5671

  Foray

  A man’s heart could grow sick, watching the smoke-plume spread on the wind across the scorched fields of East Halla. Yet a veteran captain of Talvish’s stature knew better than to criticize Duke Bransian’s pre-emptive strike. Never mind the fact, that the order to raze the earth’s bounty was an ugly defiance of charter law.

  Sited beyond the bounds of the free wilds, Alestron would not incur direct censure by any Fellowship Sorcerer. Melhalla’s caithdein held the steward’s right to cry debt in the name of crown justice. Her concern for clan survival in Atwood came first. This razing of crops could scarcely incite the town garrisons to invade her domain any faster.

  Already, the Light’s call to arms swept the peninsula with a brush-fire’s kindling speed. Galleys raced Lysaer’s summons the length of the eastshore, while word winged its way inland to Shand by pigeon and post, through Six Towers, Ganish, and Atchaz. The onset of winter would bring no relief: fresh troops from the south would bolster the ranks as rough weather thrashed the northern harbours. Faced by an assault of unprecedented scope, the brothers s’Brydion ripped off the muzzle of peace and torched their last hope of diplomacy.

  Today’s standing grain would never supply the war host inbound to besiege them.

  Retainers since birth, Vhandon and Talvish had fought such brutal campaigns under Alestron’s banner before: the same reiver’s tactics would be launched at Kalesh or Adruin, or both towns at once, when hostilities caused by a bottle-necked shore-line progressed from hurled threats to bloodshed. Alestron’s harbour mouth was flanked by armed adversaries. No s’Brydion duke could ever afford to negotiate peace with complacency. When enemy galleys cut off the narrows, Bransian’s field-captains deployed their light horse like hawks and burned out the hayricks and crops. Ships’ crews could not hold a determined blockade without provender to sustain them.

  Yet where Talvish once wielded the torch under orders, now his scouring silence reflected a new-found frustration. He and Vhandon had been stretched for too long to keep pace with Prince Arithon’s astute innovation. They had experienced the cross-currents of Alliance politics at first hand. This time, a pitched stand against Lysaer’s hot cause would not wane with the advent of snowfall.

  Both men remained too determined for despondency, when Vhandon strode from the outer-gate ward-room at dusk, armed and dressed out in a new surcoat bearing Alestron’s bull blazon. His shout sent the officer’s equerry running to fetch him a saddled mount.

  Talvish looked on with half-lidded, green eyes, fast to notice the crested officer’s badge stitched to the senior campaigner’s left shoulder. He said nothing. Just collected his stakes from the barracks dice game and crossed the vacant parade ground. He nipped through to the stables in time to measure his companion’s squared jaw, then the rock set to stout shoulders. Without reference to the late meeting gone bad, he said only, ‘You’ve chosen to stay the brute course.’

  Vhandon shrugged. ‘Old habits die hard.’ He had served as Bransian’s field-captain for twenty years, before debt of honour had seen him transferred into Arithon’s service.

  Yet Talvish saw past the stark front of the stoic. His quiet held drilling intensity.

  ‘The duke asked!’ Vhandon stated, his raw burst all but drowned by the racket of armourers’ hammers. ‘Should I have refused?’

  ‘Not my call to make, friend.’ Talvish side-stepped the lamp-man just arrived to snuff the wick by the entry. Before the flame died, he measured the grief masked behind the rapacious decision. ‘I know there’s been word from a Fellowship Sorcerer. What went down when the grey cult fell at Etarra? If Arithon had perished on the dark moon, you’d be off to get drunk. Not leaving the keep with a captaincy.’

  Vhandon unburdened. ‘The duke’s raised his stakes. Called us to lay waste to more crop-land. Southward to Six Towers. Westward as well, clear over to Pellain.’

  Talvish sucked a sharp breath. ‘Better say what ill news has blown in from the north. Was it Luhaine? Seems he always bears the rough tidings.’

  The equerry dashed up with Vhandon’s fresh horse. The reinstated veteran accepted the reins, checked the girth, then ran down his stirrups. ‘Kharadmon delivered the worst to Dame Dawr, since the s’Brydion men weren’t minded to listen. The gist?’ He shrugged, helpless. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘With Prince Arithon involved? Say again!’ Talvish collared the servant, sent him back for a second mount. ‘Shall I guess? There’s not a Kralovir cultist left standing, but half the north’s mayors pissed their sheets out of shock. Dead bodies consumed by white mage-fire aren’t subtle. When Rathain’s town-born are done being scared, they’ll draw steel for revenge. Cheek by jowl with everyone else in East Halla, they’ll be ramming our gate, mad as hornets.’

  Vhandon laughed, bitter. ‘Fate wept! Did you eavesdrop?’

  Yet Talvish could not be hazed off. The shrill clang of steel and coal fumes from the forges did not cause his closest friend’s headache, tonight.

  ‘Aye, you’re right,’ Vhandon cracked at due length. ‘The grey cult’s destroyed. But Arithon’s tactic unleashed Desh-thiere’s curse. We’re not going to face necromancy, but elemental light. The Fellowship’s sent warning that Lysaer’s come undone, verging on geas-bent madness. He’s swayed Tirans from fixed independence, that fast.’

  The worst followed, quickly: that Kharadmon had pressed on to awaken the matrix of the old centaur markers and seal the free wilds of Atwood. Some forest clan families could withdraw to the Tiriacs. The rest would shelter at the ruin of ancient Tirans, where Traithe stood in residence to advise Melhalla’s caithdein.

  ‘The duke refused sanctuary,’ Vhandon summed up. ‘Nor would the wives relocate their families, or send out the young heirs to protect the core strength of the blood-line.’

  ‘The siege would be lost on morale, if they tried,’ Talvish allowed, brushed by dread. Nor could Bransian change his chosen course, now. Lysaer’s muster had progressed too far.

  The seasoned campaigner, looking ahead, must take icy stock of the walls and the gates, the trebuchets, and the causeway and winches. Against force of arms, the citadel was secure, if not very near to impregnable. But faced by the mage-gifted mastery of light, wielded by a curse-driven fanatic, no mortal might answer except for the one the fearful named Spinner of Darkness.

  ‘I am not made as his Grace of Rathain, to forsake my loyalties over a principle.’ Vhandon jammed his foot into the stirrup, laid raw. ‘This is my country, and my parents’ and grandparents’ before them. If Alestron goes down, where else would I go? I can’t stand to watch from the side-lines. Our day for defeat is not written, besides.’ Astride, he deliberately gathered his reins. ‘The Mathiell Gate’s stonework was laid to stop drake fire. Before we’re starved out, the moment may come when a cool voice for reason might spare a disaster.’

  Talvish raised his eyebrows. ‘Keep on wasting your breath to explain. I was hanging around to hear orders.’

  Vhandon stopped in midtirade. ‘You want to serve with me?’

  The blond swordsman grinned. ‘Damned well not under anyone else! Tell that laggard to hurry along with my horse. Then we’ll argue in earnest, or maybe toss straws.’

  ‘Over which of us trims that jackanapes goatherd into something resembling a soldier?’ Vhandon shook his head, as close as he came to flummoxed exasperation over the temperamental young grass-lander left in their charge. The Araethurian had won their affection, a frank complication since a bad turn by Koriathain had shapechanged him into Arithon’s double.

  ‘Daelion’s bollocks!’ the elder campaigner ran on. ‘Keep Fionn Areth here, and Mearn or Sevrand will crash heads to unwind his insolent tripes. That’s if Parrien can’t ram a pike through him, first. We daren’t turn the yapping fool loose with that face! Not with the country-side swarming with spies and encampments of Sunwheel skirmishers.’

  ‘Well, we could,’ Talvish argued. He accepted the mare trotted out by th
e groom and vaulted astride. ‘Though you’re right. With nobody watching, the yokel might march off to Kalesh. Find himself slaughtered as Shadow’s own self, as he hops into line to enlist.’

  The next morning’s dawn, Talvish took charge of the sweep down the trade-road to Pellain. Under his handling were eighty crack horsemen with standing orders to raze the fields through the back country. When the reiving was done, they were to fall back to the Tiriac foothills, in position to send warning should the town salve its wounds by trying an east-bound invasion. Since Fionn Areth was too much underfoot, and offensive with inflamed opinions, Vhandon attached the young man to the foray with hopes he might learn through no-nonsense experience.

  The tight-knit troop of veterans rode out. All speed and grim purpose, they skirted the southern fringes of Atwood, doused by the squalls that raked off the Tiriacs. Scorching heat did not faze them, or fireless nights. They slept on rough ground and ate hard-tack and cheese, and met a greenhorn’s complaints with clipped laughter. Fionn Areth’s brash ideals and drawled, grasslands vowels were made the butt of crude jokes.

  Jaw set, the young man shouldered detail with the shovel, night after blister ing night. His riding improved, and his sword-play became less classically neat and more dangerous. While his face tanned in squint lines, the hazy horizon revealed only flocking blackbirds and galloping post-couriers. The empty road was the precursor to war. The caravans spurned the land route through East Halla, the merchants staying well clear to avoid the outbreak of hostilities.

  Talvish bolstered his scouts. Into the rolling hills south of Pellain, his picked company took to the brush. Half mounted, half on foot, they fanned out, all business as they slipped like grey wolves past the verges of Atwood. Kharadmon’s warning forbade them to enter the forest. The old centaur markers were realigned for protection, and to broach their tuned ward without Fellowship leave might well cost a strayed man his life.

  ‘Damned well makes things dicey,’ the watch scouts complained. ‘Flush an enemy, we could easily become cut off, or get ourselves hazed against the defences and shot down like cornered rabbits.’

  Yet day followed day, with no movement sighted. Each evening, Fionn Areth dug the latrines, cursing his blisters in the ripe dialect once used to malign stubborn goats.

  ‘You haven’t figured, boy?’ cracked the scarred veteran wringing his shirt by the river. ‘A soldier’s life is all grinding routine. Who sold you the rosy notion of honour, trumped up in bright flags and glory? We’re here to burn barley. Tossing a torch takes a damned sight less practice than trenching hard ground with a spade.’

  ‘Don’t listen,’ admonished the rear-guard lieutenant sent to string up the evening picket line. ‘Keep your sword sharp, and both eyes open. Pellain’s patrols won’t be sleeping. We’re six times outnumbered, and if we’re attacked, a slacker’s mistake’ll drop you stone-dead in a second.’

  Yet the sultry night passed without disturbance. Men tossed and turned to the shrilling of insects and the cries of rodents razed down by an owl.

  Pre-dawn, under a dank scud of fog, the advance line spied a head-hunters’ party on foot with three couples of dogs. The man with the report came in breathless, his professional summary bleak. ‘Onto somebody’s trail, tracking south-east from Silvermarsh. That points to a clan runner with news, moving hell-bent to reach Atwood.’

  A ghost presence in his dull brigandine and blacked helm, Talvish weighed the development. ‘That’s a damned problem.’ The Sorcerer’s sealed warding might not let a messenger through; this, alongside the confounding snag, that the bounty hunt posed a hindrance to his skulking task force. ‘Listen up, men! I want ten, armed for skirmish. By daylight, we’ll have that league squad cut down. No noise, without fuss! Sink their dead in the river. Can’t have a batch of circling vultures to warn off the couriers from Spire.’

  Those chosen strung bows and slipped off to snipe headsmen. The unsavoury chore of weighting the corpses would be handled without complaint. They were too small a company, camped amid open land, far too deep into unfriendly territory.

  Talvish moved next for chance-met opportunity. ‘I’ll have a cordon. We’ll net the live quarry as well.’ He would hear what grave need sent a fugitive clansman at risk near the towns of West Halla. ‘I’d know what’s afoot at first hand, and not wait on the pickings of rumour.’

  The company’s reserves assembled at speed, with Fionn Areth on fire to go with them. Three weeks tasked with menial chores had pitched his quick temper to snapping. ‘Leave me in charge of the horses again, I’ll go out of my skull slapping flies.’

  Talvish scarcely paused. ‘You want the assignment? Then streak your face, bantling.’ The suspect, cat gleam to his glance should have roused second thoughts, under daylight.

  In darkness, the veterans smiled, unfooled: the testy Araethurian was going to be dealt an arduous lesson in patience. Bagging forest-bred talent amid covert thickets called for hours of motionless vigil. The insect bites, nettle rash, and tedium could drive even a seasoned man fidgeting crazy.

  Even so, Talvish was not complacent. Entrusting a greenhorn with critical action, he finished his raking review. ‘Keep your wits, goatherd. Stay self-reliant. Don’t think for one second you’d be here bearing arms if Vhan hadn’t left his word with the duke to vouchsafe your weathercock character.’

  ‘I won’t fall short,’ Fionn Areth insisted, absorbed with the fit of his baldric.

  ‘Fall to napping, more likely,’ Talvish tossed back.

  The effect was predictable: Fionn Areth huffed in retort, ‘A month’s beer to my promise I’ll stoop to fleece goats, first!’

  Talvish clapped the young man’s rigid shoulder. ‘Should I pity the goats? It’s not my place, but I have to presume that a sword makes a hack job of shearing.’

  The duke’s captain strode on his self-assured way, aware his brisk handling had whetted the edge he required of hot-blooded new recruits. If league trackers had flushed a clan runner crossing Melhalla on desperate business, the creature would sense Alestron’s fixed line. The mistake must not happen, that forestborn instinct should snatch the least chance to slip through. ‘Bring this scout in safely! Such news as he carries might become critical to holding Alestron’s defence.’

  Sunrise over East Halla dispersed the ripped tatters of mist. The rolling land emerged, its crabbed briar and crowned oak as a layered etching stamped on dull foil. Heat followed. The late-summer sun beat relentlessly through, bleaching the hazy sky powder blue and silting the parched vales in shadow. Jeynsa s’Valerient stirred as the first breeze riffled the leaves of the oak where she hid. She ached. Her tucked posture amid the crooked boughs had stiffened the muscles stressed hard by the zeal of league trackers. Her moment to catnap had lasted all night, a fool’s lapse and a perilous set-back.

  Thirsty, still tired, in need of the meal she dared not pause to forage, she took wary stock. In hindsight, she should never have shortened her route by choosing the east way past Backwater. Either the boatman she paid for her crossing had talked, or a child sent out to pick brambles had seen her; or else an inquisitive crofter’s dog had dug up the warm ash of her campsite. Whatever the cause, the league pressed the chase. Her capture by townsmen would see Eriegal branded by Feithan’s undying, cold fury. Sidir, as well, would decry the bold course that had led her into Melhalla. Her predicament should have borne deadly stakes, except that her mother and Halwythwood’s council had been duped by Rathain’s corrupt crown prince. His vile practice left Jeynsa no choice but to win through regardless of danger. In a country-side busy with pennoned outriders, armed skirmish parties, and couriers mustering troops, she had been chased, every step, since leaving the sinkpools of Silvermarsh. Though she was well trained to elude close pursuit, seventy-five leagues across open terrain had sapped her youthful resilience.

  Now beaten lean, with the refuge of Atwood a day’s run past the Pellain road, Jeynsa confronted the desperate fact she had lost her cover. The mist had burne
d off. Worse, a snapped twig from below revealed someone’s unwelcome company.

  Jeynsa silently unslung her bow. Prepared for a bountyman, she swiped back her hacked hair and peered downwards.

  Another stick cracked. A snagged briar rustled. A slinking form wearing town cloth paused in step, while gingerly fingers unhooked the thorny grip of the underbrush. Her stalker was armed, and masked with streaked walnut, though clearly he was not wood-wise. He never inspected the boughs overhead. The bumbler parked himself under her tree, oblivious as a straw target.

  Jeynsa chose not to shoot him. Aside from the fact she had killed only deer, a dead body would attract scavengers and flag the dog-pack. This man was no scalper. Her indistinct view through the foliage unveiled a jerkin sewn with a troop badge. Which device did not matter. The town-born rooster would have armed companions. She dared not risk a redoubled pursuit, dizzy with hunger and wracked by exhaustion.

  Past help, her niche in the oak was a trap till the fool on the ground chose to move.

  Jeynsa curbed her impatience. He would fall asleep. Flushed by the scald of the sun on her back, she must bank on the rankling certainty. Amid sultry air, fecund with summer greenery, a man by himself on a boring patrol would nod in the shade and succumb.

  But an hour passed; two. The young man remained standing. Back braced to the oak, he raked his dark hair from his streaming forehead. Jeynsa chewed her lip. Inwardly swearing, she wrestled her need to climb down, find a bush, and relieve herself. The man-at-arms, whoever he was, had not picked his vantage at random. She had detected the rest of his company staked across the next vale. Their placement deepened her growing anxiety, that their cast net had marked her as prey.

  Noon came and went. Burgeoning cumulus fluffed into columns, then flattened to towering anvilheads. Unlike a town-born anyplace else, this soldier maintained his vigilance. He wasted more time than her straits could afford. Jeynsa smothered her insults maligning his ancestry. She had to move, or her bladder would burst. The squall line that darkened the sky would deliver its cloud-burst too late to shield her.