by P D Ceanneir
One of his senior officers, Captain Paulin, drenched in blood that coated his left side and burns on his face, but with a determined look in his eyes, explained to the duke that his main host were dead from the dragon’s attack and the remaining mounted troops were engaging the Unduli to the north.
‘Unduli?’ said the duke in complete surprise, ‘Prince Creed’s private army?’
‘Aye, sir. They have come out of nowhere. Captain Goren attacked them so we could reform here.
Lord Rett looked north, ‘we have been led into an ambush. Damn it! I am a fool!’
He had no time to ponder the looks of dismay on the faces of his men as at that moment the screaming horde of Unduli ran towards them from the darkness. Grim faced, the Red Duke raised his sword and charged.
Marshall Junno made several mistakes at Laden Howe, though none was entirely his fault because the outcome of the battle was dictated by events that were not to his liking. His first mistake was to split his host into three. He sent a hundred into the manor house’s keep in order to dispatch the servants loosing arrows down onto his men. This, to him, was a priority. Unduli soldiers were thinning in numbers as they fell to the arrow fall from the building’s upper windows. The second detachment he sent north to break through the cattle pen fences and attack the Bellmen on their exposed left flank. This would have worked if it were not for the fact that not all of the Bellmen were contained in the narrow draw beside the keep and the pen’s fencing.
As the detachments split from the main host, a hail of arrows loosed from the dark shadows of the farm buildings and other landmarks to take out his men to the rear of the main host and force them to turn and hide behind shields. His north detachment fell to shock charges of Bellmen that ran out of the night and attacked them from behind. Junno now realised that the Bellmen surrounded him. He surmised that his men still outnumbered the enemy, for now.
His one hope was the death of General Elkin. He had seen the spear thrust the general received over an hour ago and knew that man was either dead or dying. He passed the word out to his men that Elkin was dead. The rumour spread, the Unduli renewed the attack with vigour.
Behind the front line of Bellmen sat a pile of dead dragged in from the front as they fell to Unduli swords. The Bellmen’s numbers were thinning, yet they still held on as they lunged with spears or hacked with billhooks. The toll on the Unduli was just as severe.
The rumour of the general’s death now reached the Bellmen and there were frantic looks from the soldiers as eyes sought out their leader. Those Bellmen to the rear turned to look amongst the piles of dead.
Sergeant Herun held up the limp body of General Elkin. The young standard-bearer, called Findly, supported him from the other side. Two more Bellmen of senior rank crowded the three as they walked the body of the general towards the fighting mass. Herun, effecting a decent impression of the general’s gruff voice, screamed at the Bellmen to hold the enemy at bay.
The Bellmen’s spirits rose, they roared Elkins name, they screamed it in the faces of the enemy and pushed their spears forwards. Every lunge was the general’s, every killing cut delivered with the name of their leader on their lips and the Unduli fell back in disarray.
Two Unduli fell to Selnour and the Red Duke ducked under the third’s sweeping blade, he shouldered his opponent to the ground, inverted his blade and plunged it into the soldier’s chest. Blood gurgled from his throat as he died.
The duke looked around him. They were hugely outnumbered. His men, brave to the end, were being cut down and this only enraged him further. He used the Wind Element to blast away the line of enemy to his front and summoned flame to dowse a dozen more. Yet still they advanced.
Out from the throng of battle a slightly built soldier stalked towards him. He wore his black armour like a second skin. The glowing Lobe Stone on the helmet stared at the duke balefully.
‘Creed,’ growled Rett.
The helmet opened of its own accord. The black visor under the stone simply flowed away from the face underneath like liquid to reveal the teenage boy with the bright red birthmark on his temple and cheek.
Prince Creed bowed, ‘your grace.’ The boy looked so much like his father, King Kasan, not just in looks, but also bearing and manner, that the duke had to look again. Those green eyes stared at him, mockingly.
‘You have drawn me out,’ said Lord Rett, ‘congratulations.’
Creed grinned and nodded, ‘yes, as my father predicted. I see you have met Tyre.’
Lord Rett frowned, ‘is that the name of the dragon or the rider I skewered?’
It was Creed’s turn to frown. It was a vile look of dark anger and building rage. He raised his sword, a long-bladed weapon with a snakehead hilt.
‘Selnour meet Norux,’ he hissed.
Lord Rett stepped back and caught the blade of Norux as it angled towards his head. He pushed it off and counter-stroked with a low drive to the boy’s midriff. Creed moved with agile speed, dodging the duke’s sword and stepping around him to lunge for his back, but Selnour swept around and knocked the attack away.
The boy was quick. The elemental armour gave him great speed and strength, but the Red Duke was not a master of the blade for nothing. His many years of experience and skill brought Selnour under the boy’s defence and he struck Creed’s shoulder with a mighty grunt.
Creed stepped back and chuckled, the armour was barely scratched.
‘You shall have to do better than that,’ he said. He stepped forward with lightning speed, gripped Selnour’s blade with one hand and punched the Red Duke in his chest piece. Lord Rett sailed through the air and smashed through one of the low lot walls before rolling against a barn wall. He groaned as he straightened himself, several of his ribs were broken and his badly dented armour pressed against his chest. He quickly used the Rawn Arts to knit the bones of his ribs together and fix the dented chest piece.
Creed appeared at his side and the duke ducked as a fist entered the wattle wall of the barn where his head had been. Rett slammed his gauntlet into Creed’s face, but the impact jarred along his arm and he hissed in pain. The boy lashed out, catching the duke a glancing blow to the head, but it still sent him flying over the lot wall, once again.
The duke crawled away, looking for his sword. He heard the wall behind him disintegrate and he turned to see the large stones hover in the air around Creed. He held up his hand as the rocks hurtled towards him, and he summoned the Earth Element to smash the stones into dust, cleverly keeping two intact and sending them back towards the boy with a strong gale. The rocks struck the boy and he grunted in annoyance as they shattered on his armour.
The duke summoned flame and he used it as several long whips, sending them to spiral around the boy, but this had no effect on the armour. Creed stepped through the inferno, punched Lord Ret in the stomach, and forearmed him in the face. The duke went spinning through the air landing hard on the cold packed ground.
‘Look around you, your grace. The battle is over,’ taunted Creed as he walked towards him.
Rett looked up. Blood tricked from his lips. He dared not turn around to see the lines of dead. The dead he once commanded. He just scowled up at the approaching prince instead.
‘It would give me great pleasure to kill you, but father likes prisoners for some reason,’ said Creed.
Lord Rett tore his eyes from the prince and looked towards the barn, which was now aflame and belching smoke from gaps in the roof and windows. A young girl with long pigtails walked out of the open door and through the smoke. She looked neither dirty nor coughed from the fumes.
‘Gods!’ he said as he recognised her.
Creed regarded him with a tilt of his head and then slowly looked around. The girl walked towards him with slow steps. She carried a stuffed fabric doll by the leg, holding it as if it was part of her, but something she neither wanted nor needed. She was transparent; the duke could see the flames from the burning barn through her body.
‘Verna?’
whispered Lord Rett in awe.
Creed took a step back, clearly stunned. He knew the girl, knew her from portraits that hung around the basement rooms of the castle back in Dulan-Tiss. He watched, hypnotised, as the spectral image of his half-sister walked towards him.
Strangely, she kept her eyelids closed yet her step did not falter, in fact, she seemed to close the distance with flashes of speed, moving several feet within a split second. She halted before Creed. Around her, the battle had ended and the Unduli survivors encircling the small field watched the ghostly form of the teenage girl with wide fearful eyes.
She tilted her head upwards. If her eyes were open, she would have been staring directly at the prince.
‘Shadowfall,’ she said.
Creed’s visor opened like liquid and his face showed concern, ‘wha...what?’ he said.
‘Shadowfall has begun,’ said Verna, ‘the Dark Force of the Earth shall remain contained no longer. His influence shall increase. Prepare the Earth for his arrival.’
‘Dark Force…? What are you…?’ Creed frowned.
The girl’s eyes opened suddenly and Creed flinched away from the burning red orbs she had for eyes, ‘we are My’thos!’
Everyone that heard that revelation, gasped.
‘Prepare the way for the Keeper,’ said the entity, her corporeal form began to flicker and fade.
‘The Blacksword is coming.’ She disappeared, leaving a deathly silence broken by the chuckling of the Red Duke.
‘They have found the Gredligg Orrinn,’ he said and began to laugh. Creed looked down at him and then at the startled looks on his men’s faces around him. He shrugged and shook his head.
‘Shut up!’ growled the prince.
The duke laughed louder.
‘I said shut up!’ Creed kicked Lord Rett in the face and the laughing stopped.
The Unduli at Laden Howe finally broke formation.
Marshal Junno and about forty of his men fled into the keep’s entrance to the manor and barricaded the door. The rest of his men sought safety in the barn. Sargent Herun issued orders to wedge the barn door with wooden posts and burn it down.
Bellmen, wounded and exhausted kept a watchful eye on the burning barn and ignored the terrified screaming that came from within. The surviving Unduli attempted to hack their way out of the barn door or through the wood and lath of the west wall, but the Bellmen cut down anyone escaping the inferno.
Inside the keep tower of the manor house, arrows fired by the two dozen servants kept Junno’s small group of soldiers confined to the lower rooms of the keep. When he realised that escape via the cellar’s ceiling hatch was out of the question due to a strong contingent of Bellmen guarding the other side, he ordered his men to stand watch at the room’s entrances and await the dawn.
The sun crested the horizon hours later bringing a freak heat for that time of year. The fire from the barn was out by this time, just blackened and smouldering ruins jutting out from the earth marked the site of where the tall barn once stood.
Sargent Herun, one side of his face still caked in blood and his arm now bandaged, approached the manor house gate and called to Marshal Junno to surrender.
‘I will only give up my sword to General Elkin,’ said the marshal, shouting from one of the keep’s smashed windows that were the size of arrow slits.
‘Then come out, Vallkyte, and I will take you to him, my word as a soldier that no harm will befall you.’
Therefore Junno walked out from the keep entrance with his arms in the air holding his sword scabbard in one hand.
Herun, recognising the marshal’s rank of the golden chain that ran around Junno’s right shoulder, welcomed him with a bow. ‘Come, marshal, come and meet the Lord of Laden Howe. He took him to the stable yard where wounded Bellmen were being treated and pointed to a bench on the outer wall of the stable where an old man lay clutching his sword to his chest. He could have been asleep, but the large patch of dried blood on his side told a different story.
‘Pay your homage, marshal and give up your sword,’ said Herun in a whisper as if afraid to awaken his leader.
Junno crouched and placed his sword on the ground before Elkin’s body.
‘It does me no good to take the life of such a great man,’ he said and because of those words, Sergeant Herun accepted his surrender and his men as prisoners of war.
Years later when scholars wrote the account of this battle, it was widely accepted that General Elkin had his last wish to win a battle even if he died in it.
In all of the stories that were to unfold in the Dragon Wars and the preceding conflicts, the small skirmish at Laden Howe was the most famous. It would go down in history as the only battle in the civil war won by a dead man.
The farmlands to the south west of Caphun became flooded with soldiers and horseflesh. The first to arrive was the van of the Vallkyte Heavy Horse showing their banner-knight’s pennant and various noble standards. The next to appear before the walls of Caphun were the regular foot soldiers. The gold and red standard livery of the Vallkyte infantry, the companies of the Dulan and Wyani regiments from Fort Tressel. The Vinton Archers came next in their yeoman garb of padded jupons, and then more mounted soldiers arrived, these were noble men-at-arms. Those people watching from the battlements of Caphun’s walls recognised the standards of the Lord of Duli, the Duke of Keveni’s son, Lord Pelthan, the Earl of the Sytheni and his sons the lords of Flattal, Mond and Aith. Many more countless nobles of lower rank arrived later. Somewhere in the midst of all of this was the larger royal standard of King Kasan, but by that time the darkness was deep and the enemy made camp in the fields beyond the boundary walls, so the arrival of the Vallkyte king went unnoticed.
In the morning, the siege engines arrived. Six tall-armed trebuchets and seven smaller catapults were pushed into place by teams of oxen amongst the many thousands of operators and the stifling heat of the day. Engineers worked day and night to build rampart and protective redoubts around the pieces and even took time to build a makeshift bridge across the moat.
Due to the lay of the land, Caphun virtually grew out of the slopes of the Haplann Hills. To the east of its walls, the level ground on the town’s south eastern flank was far too boggy to move large, heavy siege engines into place and the wide natural moat was only at its thinnest at the main entrance in the west. This would cause a problem for any besieging force because that only had a small area of land they could use to mount any attack. Land that was well within striking distance to longbow fire from the Caphun’s archery towers and her collection of static catapults that could launch many flaming hay and stone bales drenched in oil onto the engineer units that tried to move the bridge sections into place.
High on the battlements, the Countess of Haplann, bedecked in fine meshed steel mail, breastplate and tabard depicting the old battle crest of Haplann, the prancing White Hart, watched the invasion of her homeland with a savage scowl under her coned steel helmet.
No herald had come to ask for her terms of surrender, no letter from the king, nothing. Secretly, she was glad there was no contact. Invasion by the Vallkyte obviously meant that the Haplann Treaty was now null-and-void, but it would have been nice to receive something in writing to understand the enemy’s point-of-view.
‘Damn it, Bleudwed. Tell me what you’re thinking?’ said Morden, none too harshly, because it was not often he used her first name in public, and he kept his voice to a whisper. Morden had been with her for hours as she silently watched her land being overrun by soldiers.
‘I think you should be with your wife and children, Morden,’ she said in a quiet, calm voice.
‘They are safe. My place is here with you.’
She placed a mailed glove on his arm. ‘Loyal Morden,’ she smiled up at him, ‘Prince Havoc chose you well.’
Morden grunted, ‘he saw something in me that even I did not know I possessed. Now, answer my question, please?’
She hesitated for a moment and then looked
north east over the town towards the White Castle in the distance. ‘I will not give her up,’ she said, ‘not like my parents before me. My duty is to Haplann and its people. I will not become a coward and run like my father,’ tears began to well in her eyes and Morden nodded.
‘Your father had his reasons.’
‘He wanted to save his family first,’ nodded Bleudwed, ‘I have no family apart from the men, women and children inside these walls and I will protect them with my final breath.’
Morden grinned, ‘good, that’s the answer I was looking for.’
She looked at her Regent. He wore much the same armour as she did and the White Hart livery, which most of the other officers of her private army wore. She and Morden were the only ones with white feather-plumed helmets.
‘I’m also thinking of Havoc most of the time,’ she confessed.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I wish he was here.’
‘Me too, countess, me too.
Chapter Nineteen
A Feast for Ravens
The Tenth of Sin 3040 YOA
S
ub-sergeant Robard of the Vallkyte Light Infantry spat another wad of green phlegm onto the blade of his dagger and used the small piece of whetstone to sharpen its edges. As he worked the stone into the moisture, he looked around him at the army that had spread before the walls of Caphun. Dark clouds flitted across the half-moon, casting an eerie light over the twisting moat at the foot of the white walls. The moonlight sparkled silver when it chose to peek out from the behind the clouds, and the steady east wind graced the water’s surface so that ripples flashed a shimmering moon-dance onto the cracks and pits of the battlement walls.
Robard watched as a Derma Ken Priest walked amongst the sleeping army, dishing out blessings and prayer to the sick and wounded in the hospital tents. The church of the Derma Ken provided highly trained physicians who were kept busy ministering to the wounded for the past year. Those damn Haplann Archers were deadly if any soldier got within range of the castle walls, and they had lost many soldiers and engineers early on in the year when the siege was at its harshest.