The Ravenous Siege (Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 2)

by R. G. Triplett

  "Engelmann," Chaiphus said with a wry smile.

  "Engelmann?" Jhames questioned as the two of them sat down to Chaiphus' table. "He has only given you great measures of grief as of late, questioning my rule and subversively leading the naïve hearts of our citizens to chase after wind-whispered myths and frivolous old fantasies." He took the newly offered chalice of tea and blew a cooling breath over its surface. "What in the name of the THREE who is SEVEN could he have possibly done to produce such an air of levity?" Jhames continued.

  Chaiphus smiled. He sipped his tea and pinched one of the crispy, sweet croquets between his thumb and forefinger, eying the doughy morsel with deliberate hesitation before he took a deeply satisfactory bite. "It would seem, Your Brightness, that Engelmann the hopeful has now become Engelmann the arrested."

  "Oh?" Jhames said with a lift of his heavy, white eyebrows.

  "Indeed," Chaiphus gloated. "The green-haired fool is across the river in the care of the master warden as we speak."

  "Did you authorize this, Chaiphus?" the Priest King said with a surge of disproval. I thought we had agreed-"

  "No, the old Arborist brought it upon himself. The sergeant-at-arms had no choice but to lock him up, for he took his rants too far this time. Too far, indeed."

  "And the people?" Jhames asked, a bit concerned that their energies would now be spent quelling yet another uprising of the frightened and irresolute citizens. "Have his people rioted? For I have not heard news of pardon demands or bloody skirmishes reported from any of our officers."

  "Neither have I, Your Brightness," Chaiphus said as he savored the last bite of his pastry. "Neither have I."

  The chamber doors of the office of the Chancellor burst open with a loud bang. They turned in startled unison to see the frightened and weary face of the bedraggled rider who entered through them, and his visage quickly stole the momentary joy of the dark morning without even so much as a word. The Priest King and the Chancellor exchanged worried, knowing glances before rising to hear the message this guardsman had traveled long to bring.

  "Your Brightness," the rider said with lowered eyes. "My Lord Chancellor," he greeted with a nod of his head. "Captain Armas sent me to inform you that the North Gate is under attack."

  "Does the captain know the … nature of our new enemy?" Chaiphus prodded.

  The rider took a deep breath, bracing himself for the fallout that might very well come upon the answer of his question. He looked the Chancellor in the eye and then turned his gaze towards the white-haired Priest King. "Dragons," he said stoically. "Their legions advance under the winged protection of twin monsters, and even now I fear that the defenses have broken and the wall is … lost."

  Clang. The sound of silver on stone reverberated through the chamber as the chalice fell from the Priest King's hands and clattered to the floor. His eyes slipped closed as he took in the news. "Our once-bright city," he lamented aloud.

  "What will you have of me?" the rider spoke resolutely. "What word if any, would you have me send?"

  Chaiphus took a moment to think in the tension of the silence. The weight of the attack and possible breach threatened to rob his very chambers of the necessary breath to will words to be spoken.

  "Ride to the barracks of the Capital Guard." Jhames spoke more confidently than Chaiphus expected, his lament now turning to outrage. "Deliver this message to the commanding officer." Jhames turned his gaze from the weary guardsman to the hunched scribe sitting at the ready. "Take this down," he ordered.

  The scribe nodded his obedience and retrieved a small piece of parchment from the writing table. His quill moved quickly across the page as he wrote the desperate words of the Priest King.

  "Assemble the remaining guard of Haven with banners unfurled and blades terrible, for an enemy has breached the North Wall, and we will ride out to meet them," Jhames said, his words devoid of emotion.

  "But Your Brightness!" the rider objected. "They must be nearly ten thousand strong! The whole of our strength is already on the wall; those who remain here in the city barely number seven hundred."

  "I do not intend to march the leagues of our kingdom to be willfully slaughtered, rider," Jhames said to the young guardsman, annoyed at the insubordinate questioning. "We will ride to conference, to parley with the enemy ... and I will not do so with my tail tucked between my legs like a wounded dog. I will ride, and our people will ride, as though we are not afraid to strike back at the night!"

  "But what if they will not parley? What if our remaining strength is consumed in the green evil of the dragons' fire?" he asked.

  "Tree or no tree, we are still the center of the world, and that, by its very nature, demands audience!" Jhames fumed, clenching his spindly fingers into an angry fist. "The strength of our kingdom has NEVER been subject to magic trees or holy fire! Rather it was built—and has remained—because of our determination and our resolve to shine!" Jhames turned his attention from the young rider back to Chaiphus. "This is what our Priest fathers before us once spoke of, the great darkening of the world. The task now falls to us, my old friend, to remind our city and our enemies that we can make our own light."

  Chaiphus nodded in nervous agreement while the scribe dripped the melted wax upon the newly commissioned orders. Chaiphus walked to the desk and raised the brass sigil of the Priest King, speaking as he pressed the seal into the molten green. "May it be so."

  Jhames took the rolled parchment from the hands of the Chancellor and turned to give it to the rider. "Ride now, for soon we will meet our enemy together."

  "Yes, your Brightness," the rider replied in defeat, understanding the intentions of the orders and yet mistrusting their effectiveness in the face of the dragons. He saluted the Priest King and the Chancellor with all the respect he could muster, then turned to take his leave.

  "Rider?" Chaiphus said with a condescending tone, stopping the man mid-step.

  "Yes, my Chancellor?" he replied.

  "What is your name, son?" he continued.

  "Benhiram, my lords," the rider said.

  "Remember this day, Benhiram, who it is that you serve, lest your treasonous allegiance to fear rob you of both king and country," Chaiphus scolded.

  Benhiram nodded his obedience and then left the chambers in great haste.

  Jhames watched as the heavy, elaborately carved doors closed behind the frightened and weary rider. "Send for Ispen and Aspen, Chancellor. Perhaps there is some hidden strength still left in their gnarled old trunks."

  Outside the walls of the Chancellor's office, there under the rotunda of the Citadel, Benhiram whispered a silent prayer for his brothers at the North Gate. "Protect them please ... and if there is still a way for victory," he said as he exhaled an exhausted breath, "make it clear somehow, and lead us down its true ways."

  A faint thunder could be felt beneath soles of his boots, and Benhiram looked up toward the northern borough of Piney Creek. There in the far and distant blackness of the great darkness that had shrouded the entire kingdom, he saw the bursts of green light that faintly illuminated the black sky in a terrible unison with the rumbling ground tremors.

  "Oh victory ... please," he said aloud.

  "Look out!" came a frantic shout from behind him. "This fool of a beast has lost her senses!"

  He turned too late to move out of the way of the oncoming brewers cart, and he went sprawling to the stone street in an aggravated heap.

  "My pardon to you, son!" yelled a green-haired Arborist. "I don't know what in the damnable dark has gotten into the old nag, but she is spooked right out of her good sense! We are about a very important task now, please, forgive us!"

  Benhiram got to his feet, dusted off his tunic and rubbed the throbbing spot on his lower back. He watched as the Arborists rode off down the stone street, trying to control the reckless mule that seemed to lose her mind each time the ground shook beneath her.

  "I don't blame her," he called after them. "Important task? Why don't you look north and se
e where the real importance lies!"

  But the Arborists was already well removed from ear shot, so Benhiram mounted his weary horse and rode off with parchment in hand to deliver the words and wishes of the Priest King.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "HEY!" MICHAEL SHOUTED THROUGH THE iron bars at the frantic guardsmen running urgently out in the main courtyard of the prison hold. "You there!" But despite his calls, not a single guardsman slowed to pay any mind to the prisoners.

  "It is no use," he said to the men in the hold. "They have been at it all morning like this, running here and there, loading down mule carts and whispering their orders. Whatever it is that has their attention has robbed them of the good sense—not to mention the common courtesy—to feed their prisoners."

  "Aye, all their commotion has got me a bit on edge, to tell it plain," said a long bearded brewer who went by the name of Timorets. "I've been inside these damn blasted walls, behind these damn blasted bars for three weeks now and I've never seen any of the green-coats like this."

  "Three weeks is all, huh?" said Celrod, a round-bellied schoolmaster. His small eyes and full cheeks made his face appear as if he were always smiling, even when he was most angry. "Well, you are the expert now, aren't you?" he said sarcastically.

  "Don't you worry, Michael," Timorets said while staring daggers through Celrod. "If they forget to feed us, we can just eat the schoolmaster here; there is plenty of him to go around."

  But Michael was not concerned with the banter between the two inmates. The fearful and hurried state of the guards made him worry for Margarid. She was still out there, somewhere, without him in the madness of the darkened city.

  "It would seem to me, my dear friends, that what we have feared most is perhaps happening … now," Engelmann said matter-of-factly.

  "Oh yeah, Arborist?" Celrod asked. "And just what is it that we have most feared? If you ask me, I do not know what else there is to fear now that the tree has failed us and darkness has taken up its permanent residence over our city."

  Engelmann smiled a knowing smile at the large man, much the same way a grizzled and battle-wise old knight would smile at his naïve squire. "It is not darkness that poses the real threat to us, nor is it the absence of light … no, it is not even the death of our stalwart bastion of brilliance. What we should fear—and what I suppose these anxious guardsmen are indeed preparing for—is not the darkness itself ... but rather what lives within it … what moves in the wake of its ravenous wings."

  The words of the green-haired sage left the cell silent as their meaning took form in the minds of the prisoners.

  "Just what are you saying, Arborist?" Timorets asked nervously.

  The bright blast of the guardsmen's trumpets filled the air and cut through the inmates' conversation. The men moved to gather near the window of the prison hold, straining to hear what might be said in the courtyard and hoping that the Arborist's assumptions were indeed nothing more than the senile superstitions of an old man.

  The master warden brought the whole of his company to order with a raised hand and a grim expression. He was neither tall nor short, not particularly threatening or commanding by appearance alone. However, since the death of the great tree, his dark skin and hairless head caused him to nearly disappear in the blackness; lending him an air of intimidation by the fires of his torchlight that he could not have manufactured on his own.

  "We have received our orders, and we have made our preparations," the master warden bellowed to his small company of guardsmen. "We will be the last to join the parade of the Priest King, but make no mistake, men; our position will not provide for your safety." The dark man scanned the faces of his tired men. "So say your farewells, kiss your flints and speak your words. The vanguard approaches as we speak."

  "And what of the inmates?" Engelmann shouted with authority through the iron bars that looked out onto the courtyard where the guardsmen gathered. "What if you do not return? Will you just leave us here to starve, helpless in these iron graves?"

  The eyes of the master warden reflected angrily in the flickering fire of the torches, and he turned to meet the gaze of the defrocked and imprisoned Arborist.

  "While you and your men are off, hopeful to parley with the residents of darkness, what will become of these men who have made their homes in the city of light?" Engelmann continued.

  "While we may hope to parley with the enemy, we will not entertain the badgering of mossy-bearded traitors," the master warden rebuked.

  "Badgering or not, my dear jailer, the question still remains ... and these men are still in your charge," Engelmann pressed. The air around him seemed to invisibly pop and thunder, a storm of indignant offense brooding in the atmosphere around him. "Do not foolishly dismiss the possibility that these very men you are leaving trapped behind your iron bars will be all that is left to defend our city."

  "The Priest King himself ordered that every able guardsman is to march with him to meet our enemy face to face." The gaze of the master warden softened almost imperceptibly as he turned his attention towards Engelmann's iron cell. "I cannot disobey the will of the Priest King to care for you traitors."

  "Do NOT damn these men to iron graves just because you willingly walk to yours," Engelmann roiled.

  The master warden stomped angrily towards Engelmann, his impatience with the whole matter pushing him beyond the limits of decorum. "What would you have me do then, Arborist?" he growled as he made his way across the courtyard. "Huh? And why should I listen to you? You could not even save the one thing you were meant to care for, so what makes you presume you can lecture me about how I should care for mine?"

  Engelmann stood, silently resolute. His mind was a storm of words and yet he refused to give into the brooding tempest, for he knew the exchange of thunderclaps with this small-minded man would not yield the results he was hoping for.

  Michael and the rest of the prisoners watched nervously as the standoff continued. "You demanded this conference, Arborist! Now tell me what it is that you think I should do that will make any difference to the length or quality of anyone's lives? Or do you not truly see, fool, that we are all already doomed?" The master warden's voice scraped and stretched his vocal limits. "Tell me now!"

  The master warden's guardsmen shuffled nervously in the courtyard as the words of their leader rattled the empty darkness.

  "Not all things that are lost are inevitably doomed, and not all treasons are truly treacherous," Engelmann spoke quietly. "And for that matter, all oppositions are not spoken from the lips of enemies alone." The Arborist paused to let his words sink in. "Perhaps … perhaps the voice of life might come from one who rightly dares to not so easily abandon it, regardless of its perceived length or quality."

  The dark-skinned man just stared, the flickering light of his torch dancing in his frightened, wide eyes.

  "Release the prisoners," Engelmann confidently demanded.

  The horns of the Capital vanguard woke the heavy atmosphere with bright, brass tones, breaking the standoff and rousing the urgency of the guardsmen. "It is not my place to riddle with irrelevant old sages. It is my duty to serve the will of the Citadel." The master warden turned to his men and gave the order. "Do not turn your ears to this fool of a traitor, for he is merely trying to save his own skin. Raise the portcullis and fall into formation! We march with the Priest King, and we will meet our enemy in the way that all enemies are meant to be met." He turned back to the mossy-bearded prisoner in an effort to emphasize his next words. "Blade to blade and face to face."

  The tired and terrified company of guardsmen began their march as the iron gate of the prison hold was raised with ominous intention. The remaining strength of the Capital guard was moving in slow, practiced steps along the stone streets of Westriver towards Kings' Gate, and as the last of his men passed through the raised iron bars of the prison hold, the master warden spoke for the last time.

  "What I value is obedience, and the lives of my men. I do not have the
time nor the energy to care otherwise. If you want to sort through the rubble and determine for yourself which of these traitors are truly treasonous ... well then, so be it. The Priest King waits for his guard, and I will not keep them from him."

  Just then came the soul-chilling reverberation of a distant crash, as if something massive and heavy had unexpectedly collided with the ground.

  "What in the name of the THREE who is SEVEN was that?" Timorets asked.

  Michael looked to read the brown-barked face of his friend and teacher, but all he could find was some sort of worried understanding.

  "That, brewer, is our doom coming to pay us a visit," Celrod said mockingly. "I, for one, am grateful it had the courtesy to knock before just barging into our cozy cell."

  "I do believe that the schoolmaster is not too far from the truth, my friends," Engelmann said, his gaze not for a moment wavering from its northward stare.

  "What does that mean, Arborist?" Timorets demanded. "What doom? What is coming for-?"

  "Shhh … quiet your worries for a moment," Engelmann interrupted. "I must listen."

  "Quiet my worries?" Timorets said in utter disbelief. "You speak of evil riding on the wings of the darkness, and the master warden screams of our doom, and the teacher here babbles on about something coming for us, and the guardsmen have all left us here to rot! My worries are quite un-quietable!"

  BOOM. The distant rumbling sounded yet again. The faces of the three men seemed to drain of color as dust and sand began to fall from the cracks of the stone ceiling overhead.

  "Engelmann?" Michael asked, but no answer followed. The old Arborist stood there, stone-like and unmoved, and the green of his eyes faded to a milky white.

  "What is he doing?" Celrod asked, his jovial demeanor now replaced with a sickened worry.

  Michael looked at his two cellmates, unsure how to answer. "Engelmann?" His words were laced with uncertainty. "Engelmann, are you alright?"