Ascendant

by Florian Armas

  “The ‘old man’ is only three miles from here,” Ferio told Valer. “I can’t say if there is a gap between this side and the eastern edge, but these hills are small, it should not be an issue to pass to the other side.”

  “Captain Reno’s men are now in place in a gap close to the top of the hill. They are waiting for the main army to attack.” A soldier from the captain’s companies had returned and reported to Pierre, who nodded. The sun was now high in the sky. “They are half a mile from the ridge where Codrin’s archers are hiding.”

  “Did you see the archers?” Pierre asked.

  “We have a direct line of view to the ridge, but the archers are hidden. They were probably expecting that our scouts would reach the top of the hill.”

  One hour into the afternoon, the army of Tolosa was ready to march north. Pierre sat up straight in his saddle. “Hear my command.” He looked round at his army and gave the signal move to move forward.

  Company after company moved in their usual marching order. The four elite companies marched in front, prepared to counter any surprise attack. During long marches, after three hours, the companies would rotate, the first one falling back to fourth place. Pierre had planned things down to the smallest detail. This time, they rode more slowly than usual, leaving their horses to choose their own speed.

  “The pressure is on the enemy,” Pierre said to his captains. “Let them boil.” He was still pondering about the reason for the unequal battle in front of him, but kept the thought to himself. His guess was that Codrin was trying to delay him, but he wasn’t sure. Jaun may be able to find the reason; Codrin knows what he’s doing. Soon, I will meet him. Half a mile before the ridge, he halted the march, waiting for the latest reports from his scouts. This time they were able to return, and Pierre listened to their report with a calm that transferred to his men. “I want to see their army.” He mounted his horse and twenty men of his guards mounted too. They advanced at leisure, up to the point where the scouts stopped them, as Codrin’s archers, who were still invisible, could send a volley. The ridge on the right had the disadvantage of being too steep on this side, and Pierre’s scouts could not climb it.

  “We need to dismount and climb to that rock on the left. From there, Codrin’s army is visible,” the scout said.

  Pierre climbed the rock, but he was disappointed by the view. There is an army there, but there is nothing useful to be seen from here, he thought. He liked to see the enemy from proximity, try to understand their emplacement and to guess their tactics. It was not possible from their position. They hurried down at the sound of riders coming from the left, through the forest. Half of his guard moved to intercept the incomers, half surrounded Pierre, who mounted his horse.

  “Our men,” the scout who was still on the rock said.

  Julien’s men, Pierre thought, seeing the riders, who were now at the edge of the forest. “Report.”

  “There is another force coming over the hill to join Codrin.”

  “How large is it?”

  “We saw it in the forest. Something between fifty and a hundred soldiers. They will be there in half an hour.” The scout pointed toward the place where Codrin’s army was waiting, prepared for battle.

  “One hundred men will not change the balance of things too much. Tell the rest of the army to come here.”

  “Will we attack now?” one captain who had arrived with the troupe asked.

  “Not yet,” Pierre smiled.

  “Codrin’s army has left the battle line.” The scout was painting hard, as he went in his mission without a horse and, at first, no one believed him. It sounded like a joke.

  “Explain,” Pierre ordered.

  “Fifty men joined their army, and in fifteen minutes they were all gone. They went north, probably toward Poenari.”

  “We can set the camp again,” one captain said.

  Julien... “Mount your horses. We ride now!” Pierre shouted.

  ***

  Three armed groups arrived at the Burned Forest Cross at a two hours interval between them. Codrin was the first to arrive, then Pierre and then Jaun. By coincidence, the first Mountes arrived at the same time as Pierre, who rose into his saddle to understand what was happening.

  That may be the reason of Codrin’s actions, Pierre thought, seeing the long caravan. I don’t see Codrin’s army. Cautious, the Spatar of Tolosa stopped his army two miles away from the cross. He shielded his eyes from sun, trying to see the caravan better. “Send two more teams of scouts to verify the hills around the cross and the caravan. We stop here, and wait for Jaun.” They knew already that the second group from Tolosa will arrive in two hours.

  “An embassy from the Circle will come in half an hour,” one of the scouts from the first team reported.

  “Who is leading it?” Pierre asked.

  “Octavian.”

  Ah, the scoundrel. I would have preferred Verenius.

  Led by Codrin, ten riders left the forest hiding his army, climbing down the hill. They stopped in the middle of the plain south of the Burned Forest Cross. Taking ten men with him, Pierre rode to meet his enemies. When he was three hundred paces away, one man came toward them. Pierre did the same, and they met in the middle.

  “Tudor,” Pierre said, surprised. “I was expecting Codrin, but I am glad to meet an old friend.”

  “Sir Pierre.” Codrin bowed slightly.

  “Both men dismounted and they clasped hands. “Why are you here?”

  “That’s a bit difficult to explain. This time, it is not Tudor you meet. This time, I am Codrin.” He looked at Pierre with a tentative smile on his lips. “I hoped that they would not send you or Julien, but you are the best Spatar in Frankis.”

  “So you...” Pierre pointed three times at Codrin, “are ... both Codrin and the Wraith of Tolosa?”

  “Yes, I am sorry for hiding it from you, but I had no choice.”

  “I see... Things are more complicated than they looked in the beginning. We are... No, we are not enemies. We will fight each other, but we are not enemies.”

  “Thank you, Sir Pierre, I was hoping for that. How is Julien?”

  “Two years older since you saved his life, and he is becoming a good soldier. Do you want to see him? You ... vanished from Tolosa for some time. I understand now the reason.”

  “Tolosa has a horrible jail. Very damp. I did not like the place. I was lucky that you freed me after two weeks.”

  “It was just a misunderstanding, but...” Pierre burst into laughter. “If Lady Laure had known who we had arrested, I would not have been able to free you. Do you want to see Julien? He is here, too.”

  “I would like to see him, but I would like even more to keep my real identity hidden. There are very few people who know that Codrin and Tudor are the same person.”

  “I see...” Pierre thought a moment. “So, Codrin, what brought you here?”

  “The people on the road. There are soldiers among them, but most of them are women, children and old people.”

  “How many armed Mountes are there? And how many are unable to fight?”

  “There are fifty armed men at the moment, and more than six hundred who are not fighters.”

  “And you are willing to fight an army which is five times as big to help those people.” Pierre spoke to himself, and Codrin knew it. “There is a snake in my camp who wants me to attack the convoy.”

  “Octavian, the Sage of the Circle.”

  “Why did you let him pass?”

  “I wanted you to know that Bucur’s army will arrive here in two days.”

  “Next time, hang him. That man is worse than any other Sage Itinerant. We are lucky that he was sick when their new Primus was elected. Verenius may be a tricky man, but at least he has some honor. Tell the Mountes that they are safe. I don’t attack women and children.”

  “Thank you, Sir Pierre.”

  “How is Poenari? Just an old man’s curiosity.”

  “It’s the best fortress I’ve ever s
een. I hope that one day you will come and visit it. There is something strange there, and you are the best architect of fortifications in Frankis.”

  “I will remind you about the invitation.” The Spatar of Tolosa stretched his hand toward Codrin’s, and they clasped again. Both men turned and left the field without a word.

  Chapter 31 – Codrin

  The merged armies came to a halt about seven hundred paces from the fortress and set up siege lines. Sava could see the careful battle lines from where he stood, behind an arrow loop above the gate. Codrin could see them too, from the top of the hill where his army was camped. It was a classic Tolosa tactic. They raised Bucur’s new flag having three stylized white flowers on light blue background. The flowers resembled more a halberd than a known flower. It was an old chimera and the standard flag used in battle by the Frankis Kings, but there was no wind, and so the banner hung limp and its boldness was lost.

  “That weakling raised the Frankis flag,” Sava laughed on the walls. “Even the wind mocks him.”

  Once the flag was raised, ten riders broke off from the main body and thundered towards the gate.

  “Bucur, the Candidate King requests entry in Poenari,” one of the riders shouted.

  “It is denied,” Sava said flatly. “Scoundrels are not welcomed here.”

  “Then we shall take Poenari.”

  “I pity you.”

  “We don’t need your pity,” the rider growled.

  “Don’t worry, son, in the grave you will need nothing.”

  By late afternoon, the army moved to make camp for the siege. Tolosa auxiliaries had already done much of the preparation work, marking out flags where lightweight wattle were to be constructed, and clearing the area of obstacles. The companies went to their assigned positions – for the Tolosa army, they had the same positions that they held in the permanent camp. The other three armies were less organized. Some of them erected tents from the baggage train, then setting about digging the perimeter ditch and constructing the wattle to protect the army from night attacks. There were not many tents.

  The siege of Poenari had begun.

  Late in the morning, Pierre gathered the war council in front of his tent. He need to see the fortress, and he stayed silent, setting his mind free to absorb the environment. Once the most important details settled in his mind, he recalled the most significant sieges of a long life, filled with many wars. Codrin was right. This is a strong fortress; the wall is some seventy feet tall; there is a twenty feet large moat, and no one from the Circle knew about it. “We don’t have enough men; we don’t have assault towers, and we have only ten catapults to take those walls by force. For half a year, we prepared ourselves to take Deva not Poenari, and it seems that those who changed the target did not feel the need to check what is here. There is no way to make a successful assault with our forces. We must find solutions”

  “Let’s be more optimistic,” Octavian interjected.

  “Octavian,” Pierre said absently, his eyes still searching the walls for some hidden weakness. “Interrupt me again, and I will boot you out of the camp. Codrin is there,” his thumb pointed back, “and you know well how fond he is of Itinerant Sages. We will try first to burn the gate. Sandro, Doren,” he looked at the second Spatar of Peyris and the Spatar of Arad, “you have assault shields and oil too. We need to form a shell. Fifty men should be enough. I have thirty, each of you should provide another ten.”

  The shell took the sinuous road, dug into the stone, curving around the tower. From his place on the wall, above the gate, Sava was watching them with a mischievous smile on his lips.

  “Should we shoot?” one guard asked when the shell came into the range of their ballistae.

  “Let them sweat.”

  “Do you want to keep them...” The guard could not finish, and laughter filled the wall above the gate.

  “Why not?” Sava smiled; he was the only one not laughing.

  The road toward the gate was not steep, but carrying heavy shield, able to resist ballistae heavy bolts was not easy, and there were five barrels with oil too. Even when they stopped each five minutes, the men were panting and cursing.

  “A hundred paces to the target,” the leader of the shell announced, and the men forced themselves to advance faster. The defenders did not shoot; he wondered.

  When they arrived at forty paces from the gate, the road in front of them broke and, pulled by strong chains, the mobile bridge started to raise. Behind their heavy shields, a hundred angry eyes followed the moving bridge, which was invisible from the valley.

  “Bloody bastards,” the shell leader cursed. “Turn now. Do it orderly.”

  The soldiers tried to turn orderly, but the road was narrow, the shields were heavy and they were angry and tired.

  “Team one, fire,” Sava ordered, and ten ballistae shoot heavy bolts. Some of them were deflected by the shields, some of them found a way between them, and four shields fell. “Team two, fire.”

  The shell lost its cohesion; the men threw their shields away, and started to ran for their life.

  “Fire at will, the chickens are running.”

  “It didn’t work,” Pierre said, keeping an apparent calm, his sad eyes following the running soldiers. I will eat some more humiliation, but we are not prepared to seize Poenari. We don’t have enough men to take a seventy feet tall wall, and I don’t want to lose them for nothing, yet I can’t leave. “We start positional siege. Poenari has only one gate. They are cut from the world, and have no way to receive new provisions.”

  Bucur and Octavian stared at him, but the Spatar of Tolosa ignored them.

  “Do you know who is the Chief of the Guard in Poenari?” Pierre asked no one in particular.

  “Sava,” Verenius said.

  “From Leyona?” Pierre looked at the Sage, who nodded. Another friend, and the best Chief of Guard I know. I know him from the time when we chased young girls in Tolosa. We ended by chasing Neira and Celeste. The girls are cousins, and they are our wives now. Vlad and Pintea are some of the best scouts in Frankis. Last year, Calin wrote to me that Mara was Codrin’s Secretary in Cleuny. I met her in Sava’s house, when she was just a girl. She is intelligent, and the second Secretary of Tolosa speaks well of her. How could Codrin find so many good people in such a short time? People of honor, not scoundrels like Octavian and Bucur. I am on the wrong side in this war. Only because Baldovin is ill and, and Laure leads Tolosa. “Send men to retrieve our dead.”

  “We will just lose more soldiers,” Bucur said.

  “We won’t.” Sava is a real man.

  ***

  The night was overseen by a pale moon, as large as a chariot wheel, and it only took a few moments for Codrin’s vision to adjust to the meager light, when he came out of the forest. He swayed in the saddle, feeling his nerves tingle with excitement at the prospect of the upcoming night raid. Everything had been planned down to the smallest detail. For two weeks, he had not bothered Pierre’s army; none of his soldiers came close to the enemy camp, but no enemy scout, from those who ventured too far from the plain, returned to the camp either. Codrin carried his helmet in the crook of his arm, because he did not want anything to obstruct his hearing. The wind played in his long mane. The last two days came with a strong wind which uprooted some old trees. The evening before, the wind stopped as suddenly as it came from the ocean. It was replaced by fog and a cold frizzle of rain too. The wild outburst of the nature suited his plans, as the enemy scouts were blind, and anyway they did not know the area well. His mind flew back to Severin, to Cernat’s hunting house. That evening, for the first time, he heard Saliné singing. She pulled a lyre from a large chest made of polished acajou wood, a dark red color like her hair. Gently, like a mother caressing her child, she plucked a string with delicate fingers, and the note filled the room, warm and vibrant. Sometimes she would catch him looking at her and she would smile, making Codrin lose himself even more. An owl called out three times from the plain in front, then
two times more, and Codrin jerked his head in response to the sudden sound.

  “The scouts have done their job,” Vlad whispered on Codrin’s left. He, Vlaicu, Damian and Julien, who was Sava’s elder son, would form a wedge behind Codrin to lead the riders. The second wedge was led by Laurent.

  The scouts had gone ahead to take down the enemy sentries on the left side of the plain. They also planned to level the wooden palisade Pierre had ordered to be raised. The excitement of the fight already burned through his veins; for the first time, Codrin knew that he had to fight a seasoned army commander. Pierre was a mighty Spatar, the best in Frankis; no wonder he was called the Lion of Tolosa. Despite the difference in age and the war which was impose on them, they were still friends, and each commander respected the value his opponent.

  On paper, Codrin’s plan was simple. His main force consisted of two hundred men, his best riders, of which thirty were Ban’s archers, and was split in two, one being led by Codrin, the second one by Laurent. The archers were to send volleys of arrows into the enemy camp first to cause confusion and panic. The third volley would be made of fire arrows that would burn the tents and light up the camp, making the advance of the cavalry easier.

  A few dark silhouettes moved in front of Codrin; the scouts were returning. “All done,” Pintea reported.

  “Thank you, scouts. You have made our task easier,” Codrin said. “How long until dawn, Vlad?” Codrin asked, gazing up at the stars. He was good at reading the path of the constellations, but Vlad was a mountain man, and better than him. Vlad’s life was ordained by the flow of the stars and moon. Or perhaps Codrin just wanted to flush out his inner tension.

  Vlad sniffed the wind, gazing up. “Two more hours. Most of them are asleep in the camp, except the sentries, who are dead.”

  “We march now.” His words were carried by mouth, and after a minute, the riders went down toward the plain, like a black wall. They did not hurry.

  Two hundred paces from the camp, the archers prepared their arrows. One volley flew, and its sound was the sound of death. Screams filled the night inside the camp and, here and there, sleepy soldiers stood up. A second volley followed. Two men, carrying buckets of pitch, dismounted, and ran from one archer to another. The next volley left behind long trails of fire. They hit the tents, which were of light colors and visible under the moonlight. Some of them burst into flames, lighting up the plain.