by Court Ellyn
The girl’s voice followed him, thin and confused, “My lord, what has Aralorr got to do with anything? I thought we were allies. Was it Aralorr who sacked Endhal? Was it? You’re responsible, aren’t you? You did it.”
He wouldn’t be blamed for such carnage. “My regiment and I arrived only four days ago. You saw no banners either, I assume.”
“No, my lord, not a single banner. I saw only our city burning. From the towers of the keep I saw people dying, but I never saw who cut them down. They just ran screaming, and fell and bled. My brother, too. He saw it. Ask him. Please, you must believe us.”
Three witnesses, three stories, all telling the same lies. The castellan of Brimlad, the clam-digging whore, and now this panic-stricken highborn girl. Armies did not raze a city unseen, for the Goddess’ sake. Yet how could three people unrelated to each other tell the same story?
“Where is this father you mention? And your mother?”
“Dead, Goddess, they’re dead!” The girl barely kept her sobbing under control. “They must be. Mother and Father got us out of the keep. Our nanny came with us. She can tell you. They said they would follow, but it’s been ten days or more, and we haven’t heard a word from them.”
The girl could be lying to protect them, Kethlyn supposed. Holding their children prisoner might bring them out of the woodwork. But if she was telling the truth …
“Hult, did you see any sign of an army gathering in town? Troops, drilling men, weapon stores?”
The sergeant frowned and worked his tongue against his teeth, reluctant to answer. “No, Your Grace.”
Kethlyn narrowed his eyes at the man. “Don’t tell me that, Sergeant.”
“Doesn’t mean men and weapons aren’t being hidden, sir.”
“Damn right, it doesn’t. You’re going to search every nook and cranny until you find out for sure. Take the division with you. The Black Falcon has ordered us to strip the town clean. Ship the food and livestock east to Bramoran. And secure prisoners. Everyone you can round up. We’re to hold them in Brimlad.”
“Yes, sir. What about them?” He nodded at the two heirs.
“I’ll worry about them! Move out.”
Three hundred men mounted up and rode over the hill, eager to cause a little chaos. Clouds of dust wafted in Kethlyn’s face, stinging his eyes. He was a terrible soldier. He had orders to carry out, but he hesitated. These highborns should be corpses on the ground by now, yet Kethlyn secured two live prisoners to the tent poles. He detected only terror and ignorance in their faces. Their only crime appeared to be that they were next in line to inherit Endhal.
He poured himself a goblet of wine, guzzled it down in a single breath, then sank onto the camp chair, his fury turning sour in his belly.
Someone was lying. These two children or the Black Falcon himself.
The shade under the awning was suddenly too stifling. Kethlyn hurried into the sunlight, dropped heavily onto the dead tree. His supply officers called after him. Did he need anything? Was something wrong? He needed to speak with Valryk, but he had no idea when the king would contact him. Hundreds are dead. Fieran assassins. Battle unleashed in Bramoran’s corridors. Ilswythe in ashes. Mithlan and Endhal, too.
Surely Valryk wouldn’t lie to him. Kethlyn had been with him during the planning. No, he could not believe his cousin was capable of mass slaughter. And certainly not of his own people. “Wait … think,” he told himself. His voice was raw in his throat; his entire body shook.
Valryk meant to replace the leading lords of Aralorr and Evaronna, this was true. The two of them had discussed the process many times over brandy or while hawking on the moors. There was sure to be some bloodshed at first. A few of the highborns would try to rebel against the king’s measure. Their titles, their homes, their livelihood, stripped from them would infuriate the lot of them, understandably. But Valryk assured him that he had plans to care for them until they had recovered and adjusted to the changes. Once the king had named a new Lord Ilswythe, Da and Carah were to live with Kethlyn and his mother at Windhaven, angry surely, but unharmed. You promised me … “They belong to my father’s time, to my father’s way of thinking,” Valryk had told him once, twice, scores of times. “They are not trustworthy advisers. I want friendship and unity across the Northwest. With these war-minded nobles governing the land, that can never happen. They must go. I really don’t have a choice.”
They must go … must go … If Valryk wanted peace to last throughout his reign, murdering the noble families was the surer way to stop rebellion before it started. And if he meant to murder his own nobles, why not do the same to those of Leania and Fiera? What were they to him? How easily Valryk could invade the lands of his neighbors and enforce this peace he preached.
No, that’s not what happened. It can’t be.
Kethlyn glanced toward the awning. The girl’s head drooped against her chest and bobbed with silent sobs. The boy had finally opened his eyes and risked peering about.
Peace that comes through terror was no peace at all. It was only tyranny. Valryk understood this, didn’t he?
Kethlyn had no recourse but to ask. To question his commander. He was a terrible soldier.
~~~~
15
Ogres swarmed Ilswythe like sharks tasting blood. The roar of their attempts to break into the fortress thundered against the walls. Rams bashed the gates. Horns trumpeted. A hide-covered drum boomed like the heart of a vast beast. Feet splashed across the ford and trammeled the grassy hillsides to bare earth. Kelyn perceived these signs, but not their source. It was unfair that his twin brother saw the ogres with little effort. The same blood that gave his brother his talents flowed in Kelyn’s veins, too. He tried forcing his eyes to see, but only gave himself a headache.
Over the past three days, the fighting had rarely paused for more than an hour. Because ogres saw well in the dark, the nights had been bloody and noisy as well. The dwarves, being too short to use bows effectively atop the wall, followed Dagni and Drys in sorties beyond the gate where they could put their khorzai to good use. Kelyn had to trust the dwarves’ judgment. They alone knew when to charge out the sortie gate and when to withdraw again. They brought back trophies when they had time to scavenge. Rather than the heads of their enemies, the dwarves rounded up all the hutza steel they could drag off corpses, be it armor or weapons, and sent it to the smithy for reforging.
The third day of the siege had grown old. The sun settled heavily into a cloudbank in the west. The sortie gate was barred shut. Dagni bellowed orders for the lines of human archers to aim farther east. She told Kelyn, “They’re sending platoons around the wall.”
He hated having to rely on her moment-to-moment reports. “Attacking the north gate again?”
“Likely, sir.” The ogres had impaled three battering rams on Ilswythe’s iron-spiked gates and been unable to dislodge them, thanks to the wicked prongs set at the end of the spikes. Dagni’s design was ingenious.
“Lady Maeret!” Kelyn called. “Take your bow and run to the north gate. Tell them to prepare for another ram.”
The girl slung her bow onto her shoulder and stepped out of line from between Haldred and Kalla. As she darted off, Kelyn called after her, “And stay there. Command the archers, then report to me.”
A smile threatened to brighten her sullen face. She suppressed it behind another salute.
After that, there was little to do but wait for Dagni’s next report. Kelyn pressed at an ache in his back and wandered down the wall to where Laral kept a close eye on the lines of archers he’d been training. Because there were no visible targets, all they had to do was get the arrows through the crenels and hope they hit something. Bryden ran along the lines stuffing arrows into quivers. Boys his age seemed to have limitless energy, but even he was slowing down. “I’ve grown soft,” Kelyn said.
“Old maybe.” Laral wasn’t usually one for banter.
Kelyn had to laugh. “Something about this siege reminds me of Slaenhyll.�
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Laral glowered. “I could’ve done without remembering that night, thanks. What’s similar about it? As I recall, we fought in the ice on Slaenhyll.”
“Ice, that’s right.” Enduring the ice storm in the shadow of the standing stones was the coldest Kelyn had ever been. “It’s the way these ogres keep running up my hill, I think. They’re as fanatical as those Zhianese.”
“Ah,” Laral said, nodding. “But we chased off the shavers quicker than this.”
“That was your brother’s doing.” Kelyn smiled at the memory. He had an arrow in his shoulder by then, but felt no pain as he galloped down the hill to join Leshan in his charge of the Zhiani flank.
“Are you hoping for cavalry to show up out of the blue again?” Laral asked. “We could light the fire in the tower if you’re worried.”
“I’m not worried. We aren’t so desperate that we need to sacrifice the Leanian host just yet.” He prayed he wouldn’t be forced to light the summons fire. The result would be more blood on his hands than he could stand.
“I admit, I’m almost glad I can’t see them,” Laral said. “I think I’d be more afraid if I could.” He yawned and rubbed bloodshot eyes with the heels of his hands.
Who had time for sleep when there weren’t enough skilled soldiers to divide into shifts? Archers and dwarves snatched a wink of shut-eye curled up beneath the battlements, then shook away the cobwebs to loose more arrows over the wall. Old men and highland women pushed huge pots of watery soup around the walls on carts. Mutton, onion, and barley surfaced when the ladle stirred deep enough.
At least the soup was hot. Kelyn blew into his steaming mug, but before he had the chance to drink it, Dagni called for him. The urgent nod of her head prompted him to come close.
Into his ear, she said, “I was mistaken about the ram. They’re digging.” Her finger indicated the southeastern slope of the hill. He stared hard. As if through gaps in a breeze-ruffled curtain, he glimpsed a mound of freshly excavated earth. Dagni whispered her suspicions about their intent, and Kelyn wasted no time.
Rhoslyn was entertaining King Arryk in the drawing room. They focused on a chess board, or tried to. A teapot grew cold beside them. White Mantles stood against the walls but couldn’t help glancing out the windows. Etivva stood in the light slanting through the pane, a hand held aloft as she muttered prayers. One of the king’s mastiffs raised herself onto the window ledge, ears pricked at the roar of battle, hackles bristling.
Kelyn’s abrupt intrusion startled them. Daisy lunged, snarling.
Arryk snapped his fingers; the mastiff sat back on her haunches.
“My apology, sire,” Kelyn said, offering a hasty bow, and beckoned Rhoslyn to join him in the corridor.
The pleats between her eyebrows indicated she was steeled for the worst possible news.
“Where’s Queen Briéllyn?” he asked.
“She went to the barracks. She was displeased with how the infirmary was arranged. Why?”
“You’ll need to fetch her, discreetly, and prepare the household. We can’t afford panic.”
Her fingers clenched his hand. She tried to hide her fear, but Kelyn felt it in the bite of her grip. “Is the gate about to give?”
“They’re mining, trying to dig under the wall, maybe bring down a tower.” He tried to ease her fear by laying his hands upon her shoulders. “If they collapse a wall, we won’t be able to keep them out. And if Dagni is correct in her estimate, they could chance to break into our escape tunnel. You have to get the people to Bransdon before that happens. We have more people to move underground this time, so we can’t afford to wait.”
“Am I to take them back to Drenéleth?”
“Thyrvael.” Dwarven gates were far safer than a leisure lodge surrounded by a rushed timber palisade.
“You’ll follow last?”
He hesitated an instant too long before replying with a nod. He didn’t mean to abandon Ilswythe a second time. Besides, someone had to seal the escape tunnel before the ogres discovered it.
Rhoslyn aimed a finger at his face. “Don’t be foolish, or I’ll have you trussed like a hog and dragged along behind me.”
He grinned. “That would be one for the history books.”
Good manners alone restrained her from slapping him. “Goddess, you men! Always thinking about what people will say of you after you’re dead. Try to stay alive now.”
“I will do that, wife.”
He started for the courtyard, but Rhoslyn called after him. She raised her chin and said, “He will come.”
He nodded to make her feel better. He had no doubt that Thorn would return. Only, he feared he would return too late.
~~~~
Within the hour, highlanders, lowlanders, and royalty filled the courtyard. Panic among the adults spread to the children. Desperate people, wailing and shouting, jostled to be first in line for the escape tunnel. Hundreds pressed into the shadow of the tower.
Atop the gatehouse, Rhoslyn banged a hammer on the stone, demanding order. Roars from the ogres and bellows from the dwarves stifled her voice. Initially, she had tried standing at the door to the tower, but the onrush of people convinced her she’d be trampled. Fists banged on the door even now. The keyring hung from Rhoslyn’s sash. Goddess’ mercy, they look like cattle herded into a slaughtering chute.
Astonishing how quickly fear turned civilized people into brutes. Grown men shoved aside women with babes in arms. Women in wimples slapped their neighbors. People disappeared underfoot, certainly crushed. All to win themselves one step closer to the tower. Rhoslyn pounded the hammer harder, making chips of stone fly from the crenels. To no avail.
Dagni had told her the ogres had fifty yards or more to dig, while shoring up the earth. “If the digging is good,” the dwarf added, “it will take the bastards a couple days to delve as far as the southeast tower. If they hit bedrock, they’ll have to start over somewhere else. There’s no need to panic yet.”
We have time, Rhoslyn wanted to tell the people, but they would not listen.
Upon the steps to the keep, free of the indignity of the crush, a ring of White Mantles surrounded King Arryk and Queen Briéllyn. The latter still wore a blood-stained apron and a hairnet. Before she wed King Rhorek, she had tended to the wounded during the last war with Fiera; she insisted on wading into the blood and screams again. Better if she had kept a tighter rein on her son and avoided the bloodshed altogether, Rhoslyn thought, then wilted a little inside. Tell that to yourself.
Eliad emerged from the keep, herding his two mistresses. They bickered with each other. Ah, here was the help she needed. To avoid the crowd, Rhoslyn took a circuitous route along the wall. She reached the keep out of breath and grabbed Eliad by the elbow. “Come with me.” She turned to Captain Moray. “Will you spare a couple of your men?”
Four Mantles broke a path through the crowd. At the tower door, Rhoslyn called over the sea of faces, “Get into single file, or none of us will leave. I’m not unlocking the door until you do as I say.”
Eliad guarded the door with a hand on his sword hilt while the Mantles herded the people back from the towers. In full armor and billowing white cloaks, the royal guards were too intimidating to defy. A line slowly formed across the courtyard and out into the bailey. Etivva helped, too. She clicked around the courtyard on her wooden foot, raising her face to the heavens alongside any cottar or townsman who wished to pray with her.
With order reestablished, Rhoslyn returned to the keep. “Your Majesties, if you will make your way to the tower…”
Neither Arryk nor Briéllyn took a step. “Children first, Your Grace,” said the White Falcon.
Briéllyn raised her chin in agreement.
“With all due respect…”
“No.” Arryk said it with a smile, and that smile was full of stubbornness. “Families with children first.”
He left Rhoslyn no choice. She walked up and down the line beckoning, “Families with children. Children under twelve.
Move to the front of the line. Children under twelve.”
At last she was able to unlock the door. In the center of the floor, a trapdoor opened on darkness. The first few families disappeared down the ladder without mishap. Then came the cry from the battlements. “Ladders!”
Rhoslyn thought nothing of it. In her mind, the word had nothing to do with battle. But Eliad stopped helping mothers and babes down the shaft and ran to the guardhouse door to take a peek.
“Tell them we already have one.” Rhoslyn might have spoken her request to a wall. “Eliad?” She joined him at the door and glimpsed the Mantles escorting Arryk and Briéllyn back into the keep.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re scaling the walls!” Eliad cried, as if she should understand. As if she was the only one listening.
People started shoving. Eliad shoved back. The woman in the shaft tried to descend too fast and slipped, screaming to the tunnel floor. The next family in line didn’t wait to learn if she was all right. A mother and father scrambled down the shaft with sobbing children clinging to their backs.
A rush of footsteps echoed down the tower and Kelyn emerged from the stairwell. He dragged Rhoslyn aside. “Go next.”
She twisted her wrist free of his grip. “I’m not fleeing ahead of the children. Arryk is right.”
“Rhoz, there’s battle inside the walls!” His whisper was no louder than a hiss, but it was not soft enough. “The dwarves can hold the ogres only so long. We topple one ladder and the ogres raise three more. The archers are headed to the roof of the keep. You must go now.”
She watched a rivulet of sweat trickle down his cheek, across a scar another woman had dealt him. With a dreamlike calm she said, “No. I told you. We stand with you. I stand with you. If this is our last stand, so be it. At least Carah is not here. We’ll get out as many as we can.”
For half a heartbeat, Rhoslyn thought he was going to kiss her. Instead, he headed out into courtyard, into the blazing light of sunset and waved his arms. “Quiet, people! Calm down! Get the children into the tunnel.” Eliad and the four Mantles tore children from parents’ arms, dragged them from behind mothers’ skirts, and pushed them into the tower. Even while Rhoslyn helped them down the shaft, promising them all would be well, she thought to herself, Futile. Eventually the ogres would sniff out these children in one village or another, bash down Thyrvael’s iron gates, perhaps. This gesture was useless.