The room wasn’t particularly large, or even that well lit. It boasted only a few smallish windows along the southern wall. The remaining three walls were lined with bookshelves, many of which were now empty – especially the upper shelves – their books scattered across the floor, the result of a cannonball hitting too close. Luckily it wasn’t a direct hit. The windows were cracked but in tact. And there weren’t any holes in the walls. Which couldn’t be said for other parts of the castle.
In the center of the room was a large desk, still littered with papers. She walked over, carefully avoiding the place where she’d last seen her father’s body, and looked down. Her father’s handwriting stared back at her and brought a lump to her throat. He’d spent his entire adult life as the King’s Scholar. He’d taught the children of nobility, he’d kept the king, both Daric and his father, informed on anything of import, and he’d met with neighboring kings – before they wouldn’t come anymore, before Kern and magic, before tensions rose and alliances became strained. And perhaps most importantly to Maren, he’d gathered all the books he could find into this one small room.
The room where he’d died, and where she’d last seen Philip before he disappeared.
She sank to her knees, glad she hadn’t come here before. Even now it felt like it had happened yesterday. Disappearance and death. She didn’t know which was worse. She missed both her father and Philip with a pain worse than the physical pain she’d endured – because this kind of pain was all consuming.
At least she knew her father’s fate. Philip was just…gone. She didn’t know where he was or if he was all right or even aliv—
She shook her head. She hadn’t come here to visit painful memories. She’d come for answers.
She walked along the walls, running her hand over the spines of books she’d grown up with. She stopped in the middle of the third wall and glanced up to the very top shelf. The books that were once there now decorated the floor. She knelt, picking up the closest, and holding it to her chest. Her father had never allowed her to read these books, but she knew what they contained: Magic. Spells, lore, history, whatever a person might want to know. And probably a lot they didn’t.
If there was information on how to stop Kern, it would be in these books.
She just had to find it.
Eight
A year. That’s how long they’d been trapped, and things had progressively gotten worse.
After the first few weeks of chaos, Daric had gathered his armies and anyone who would volunteer and tried to fight. That had only led to hundreds of men cut down without mercy. After that, they’d taken refuge behind the walls, waiting for the inevitable onslaught by Kern. Only it never came. Eventually, they’d realized Kern didn’t intend to kill them. At least not quickly. He was content to surround the city, cutting off all contact, all food supplies, everything that could keep them alive. On top of that, Kern kept up his volley of cannon fire – torturing the city in an entirely different way.
Maren was tired. Not the kind of tired a good night’s sleep would cure, but deep down. In those dark places where hunger is a constant companion and despair a daily reality.
And she still had no answers, no way to defeat Kern.
She scooped another spoonful of oats into the cup held out to her. Then she did it again. And again. And again. The same as yesterday. The same as tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. Until there was nothing left to give.
Signs of damage were everywhere. A house here. A business there. All leveled by cannon fire. And all a reminder that it wasn’t over.
It would only get worse.
Especially at night.
Nights had become truly dark. No fires. Not even candles. It just gave Kern and his men a better target.
Maren pulled her cloak closer. Of all the years, winter would come early this year. Many of the castle windows had shattered, allowing wind to whip through the corridors. It only contributed to the gloom that had descended over the city.
As the cold crawled in, so had sickness, intensified by low nutrition.
Adare stood next to her, handing out the few blankets still unclaimed, always with an encouraging word, a kind smile. She’d spent everyday here with her people. Eating what they ate. Feeling what they felt.
They loved her for it. Finally. It took a siege and fear and death.
Maren set the spoon back in the pot as the last of the line disappeared. “What else needs to be done?” she asked.
“Could you take this to the medical building?” Adare handed her a jug of water.
She grabbed it with her left hand and then quickly transferred it to her right.
Adare frowned, as if realizing something she’d forgotten. “You’re still in pain.”
“Not really.” Maren shrugged. “It’s just…it won’t ever be completely gone. But it’s better. I can live.”
“It’s still not the same.”
“It’s not the same for anyone now.” Maren set down the water and sat down beside her friend. “When I was fourteen, I fell off my horse when he spooked and took a jump I wasn’t expecting. Ph—” She took a deep breath. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of Philip in a long time. “Philip rushed over and pulled me up. I hurt everywhere. I was crying and begged him to take me home. He refused, instead leading me towards my horse and signaling for me to mount. Which was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I was afraid. More than afraid. I was hurt.
“Then Philip said something I haven’t forgotten since. ‘You have to forget the pain. You have to conquer your fears.’” She took Adare’s hand. “It’s even more true today than it was then. My pain doesn’t matter. It truly doesn’t. It’s nothing. I wouldn’t even describe it as pain. More of an annoyance, an ache that never goes away.”
Adare dropped her hand. “And it’s because you tried to save my son.”
“No,” Maren insisted. “It’s because of Kern. Everything is because of Kern.”
Nine
A rock flew at her head, and Maren ducked further behind the table. Adare crouched next to her, arms wrapped protectively around a small child.
“We must surrender!” a man yelled from the crowd. “We will not spend a third winter here to die!”
It had been like that for an hour. People swarming the streets, thinking with their hearts instead of their heads, waving makeshift flags and adding more ruin to an already devastated city.
They’d destroyed food and burnt down buildings. Anything to bring the city even further to its knees, to force the people to give up.
Another volley of stones crashed through the window.
“We need to get to Daric,” Adare whispered beside her. “This can’t go on.”
Maren agreed. She just didn’t see a safe way of getting to the castle. Not with so many people in the streets who weren’t going to be happy to see the queen. “Any suggestions as to how?”
Adare only shook her head, pulling the child closer.
They were in the medical building. It only had one way out. Not an option since it led right into the rabid crowd. There were no weapons, no rope, noth—
Maren crawled to a pile of filthy clothes in a corner. Most of them were too ragged to wear, with more holes than fabric. But worn over what they already had, they’d blend in with the mob. She motioned Adare over.
“Put some of these on and dirty your face.” She grabbed a handful of dust and rubbed it in Adare’s hair. Then she did the same for herself. “We’re going to mix in with the crowd until we can get away.”
“What about the child?” Adare said.
“You’re going to have to leave him.” Maren felt heartless, but taking a child into that crowd was tantamount to murder. “He’ll be fine. Once everything calms down, he can go home.”
Adare crawled back a minute later, and Maren looked her over from head to toe and gave a satisfied nod. She didn’t look like a queen.
Maybe they’d actually make it back to the
castle alive.
* * *
Maren had never seen the market so packed, even before the siege. Men and women, even children, huddled together, waiting. Tense whispers floated in the air. Scared glances rolled through the crowd.
It was calmer than it had been earlier, but that was only due to the presence of Daric’s soldiers, something that hadn’t made the underlying tension better – especially since those same soldiers spent most their time stopping internal disputes, and no matter how hard Daric had tried, too often that led to intimidation and sometimes worse.
Daric climbed onto the makeshift podium and raised his hands for silence. “To say the past two years have been hard is the greatest understatement I could make,” he began. “We’ve suffered death and sickness. More buildings have been destroyed than remain standing. Nothing is as it was.”
“Then end it!”
Maren couldn’t tell who said it, but the crowd seemed more in agreement than dissent.
“Surrender!” Someone else yelled.
Maren saw a quick flash of pain cross Daric’s face, and then he was back to the composed king.
“I understand your fear,” he said, sounding more defeated than Maren had ever heard him. “But I can’t surrender to the man who murdered my parents and my son.”
Angry murmurs spread through the crowd like a wave, threatening to crush anything in their way.
Daric raised his hands again. “However…” He looked over his people and Maren felt tears prick her eyes at the love she saw on his face. Others saw it too, and little by little, the crowd quieted. “However,” he said again, “I can’t force you to make the same decision I’ve made. Anyone who wants to surrender to Kern may do so in three hours time. You need to decide now because opening the gates at all is a huge risk. I will do it one time and one time only. Decide carefully. Understand what surrendering to a man like Kern could mean.”
Suddenly, the crowd was less certain, perhaps more willing to take the hell they knew than to walk into one they didn’t.
Daric looked over the crowd one last time. “I want you to know how sorry I am. I don’t take responsibility for Kern’s actions. Those were his to choose alone. But perhaps there was more I could have done. I don’t know. And I hope you can forgive me. For everything.”
* * *
There were fewer people gathered at the gates than Maren would have thought. Only a few hundred. Maybe more rational minds had prevailed as people truly realized that surrender meant Kern. And Kern meant…well, maybe worse than death.
Daric faced them one last time. “Are you sure?”
A few, probably the ones who’d stirred the frenzy in the first place, looked at him with disgust, even thinly-veiled hatred. A larger number shifted on their feet, perhaps doubting their chosen path but unwilling to turn back now.
Daric took a deep breath and took Adare’s hand in his. “Open the gates.”
Soldiers began pulling on the massive chains that had kept Kern out for two years. They creaked and groaned, but slowly a small gap appeared. A few more pulls and the gap was big enough for a man to pass through.
“That’s enough,” Daric said. Then he met his subject’s eyes for the last time as, one by one, they left the protection of the walls.
When the gates were once again shut tight, Daric leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
“Daric.” Adare said after a minute. “We should get you somewhere safer.”
He nodded. “Let’s get to the castle. I want to watch, to see if…”
No one wanted to finish that thought, and they all walked back to the castle in silence, climbing onto the ramparts to watch the people slowly making their way to Kern’s army.
It seemed half the city had the same idea. Maren had seen the doubt in their faces, the indecision. Some had questioned their decision to stay. Some worried they’d doomed themselves to a slow and painful death. Either way, the choice had been made. Now all they could do was watch.
The refugees approached Kern’s line and a soldier rode out to meet them. Words were exchanged and then the rider went back, returning a minute later with a larger group. Five total.
But Maren could only look at the man in front.
Kern.
He sat proudly on his horse. His shoulders straight. His head high.
He stopped ten feet in front of the ragged group and slid off his horse. Then he took a few steps forward and gave them a slight bow. Maren saw his lips move in words she couldn’t hear and realized she was grasping Adare’s hand in hers.
Then Kern turned his face towards the castle, as if he could look right into Daric’s eyes.
Dread like Maren had never experienced filled her, crushing her in its grip. Adare must have felt it too. And Daric. And the rest of the city. Almost in unison, they held a collective breath. Waiting.
But nothing happened.
Maren almost thought she’d imagined that feeling of dread.
Until Kern turned back to the small group gathered in front of his army. He raised a single open hand, as if to signal his soldiers, and then closed his fist with what felt like an audible snap.
As one, every single man, woman, and child who’d surrendered collapsed.
The silence grew until it was a weight threatening to crush them all.
And then the sobbing started. Deep and soul-wrenching, piercing Maren’s heart until she fell to her knees beside Daric and Adare, their cries joining the mourning all around them.
Until one voice cut through it all. It wasn’t loud. Nor was it something they heard with their ears. It was a whisper on the bitter wind, carried to all the people of Tredare.
There is no escape. There is no surrender.
Ten
The castle rocked as another shell hit the outer walls. No one even flinched anymore. No one did anything. There was nothing to do but live with the damage, the starvation, and the rats until there was no living at all.
Kern couldn’t be defeated.
Maren had tried. Every day for more than two and a half years, she’d spent hours in her father’s study, pouring over books until her eyes blurred or she was forced to leave to help put out a fire, or hand out rations, or bury the dead.
She’d found nothing, and now it took everything she had to maintain any kind of hope.
“Maren?”
Daric stood in the doorway. He looked older, gray coloring his temples much earlier than it should. But then, he shouldn’t have dark shadows under his eyes or creases in his forehead either. He’d expended everything trying to hold his kingdom together.
Now he grasped a crumpled piece of paper in shaking hands, and stared at it with an intensity that scared her.
“Daric, what is it?”
He didn’t answer, just stood there, staring.
“Daric!”
His eyes met hers and her breath caught. Hope. It was there. Faint, like a flicker of a candle.
She grabbed the letter from his hand and skimmed the contents, not even realizing she was holding her breath, until she had to lean heavily against the table.
“Is it possible?” Daric whispered. “Is it his writing?”
Maren didn’t have to look again. She knew it like her own. “Yes. It’s Philip’s. Where did you get it? How did you get it?”
Daric stared down at the letter again, almost like he couldn’t believe it was real. “It was wrapped around an arrow that nearly embedded itself into one of my soldiers.” He sank into a chair. “Could it really be true? Could Philip actually be gathering an army, intending to fight Kern?”
“I don’t know,” she said, desperate for answers that weren’t going to be there. “But I don’t think he’d send this, give us hope, if he wasn’t.”
Daric stood, taller than she’d seen in a year. “I’m going to tell Adare and the Council, but not everyone else yet. If it’s true, we can be as ready as possible. If it’s true…maybe we can live.”
When the door closed behind him, Maren bu
ried her face in her hands. Philip was alive. He was coming to save them.
And would most likely be killed in the process.
Eleven
They’d received another message. And this time it came with a sort of validation. Kern’s men were preparing. And not for another set of shots at the castle. Their attention was turned outward, to a different enemy.
Philip had gathered an army. For two months, they’d made their way towards the castle, battling smaller bastions of Kern’s men. Philip had been victorious every time.
But Maren was as terrified as she’d been two months ago. Philip didn’t have magic. And Kern’s forces were made up of more than just men.
“I can’t believe it might finally be over,” Adare said, staring out the windows at where Kern’s armies crawled over the land like a disease.
Adare was thinner than she’d been three years ago, but the siege had done one good thing. It had given her something else to focus on besides the death of her son.
“It might not be over.” Maren turned away from the window. “It took ten mages to defeat Kern last time. Philip doesn’t have mages. How can he possibly win?”
Adare put her arms around her. “I don’t know, but Philip knows what it took last time. Would he really attempt this if he didn’t have a plan?”
Maren wasn’t sure. If he were angry enough? At Kern. At discovering their relationship. She just didn’t know. The old Philip wouldn’t have risked thousands of lives knowing they’d likely lose. But she didn’t know who Philip was now.
Or what decisions he’d make.
She only knew she was scared. For him. And for herself. Because if he died, part of her would die with him.
Siege: A Borrowed Magic Novella Page 5