Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  Allystaire nodded and went to retrieve his shield. Ardent was already trotting back to his side, tossing his head and snorting, his ears flickering, and his tail low.

  I think he is embarrassed that I let myself be unhorsed. Aloud, he said to Johonn, “My thanks. We have work yet to do here. There was a priest. Let us find him.”

  Johonn raised his bloodstained axe in salute and stood at Allystaire’s stirrup as he swung back into his saddle. Ardent’s height gave him a good vantage. There were red-surcoated men down, horses dead, knights of varying plumage struggling with injuries, yes. Yet for every wounded or unmoving man of his own he could see, they were strewn about with dead, wounded, or surrendered Islandmen.

  He turned his horse towards the river; a tall figure in blue was making for it at a dead run.

  “Ardent!” Yelling the destrier’s name was as good as a command; he took off like an arrow, with the paladin bent low over his neck.

  * * *

  Landen had strung her knights and lances in a thin line, with several paces between each trooper and horse, trying to cover the entire southern bank of the river with just over two score lances.

  She glanced down the line to the Damarind knights. Much like the Baroness and her daughter, they favored a lighter scale armor, and smaller, faster horses. They were somewhere between outriders and heavy horse; the concept intrigued Landen even as it mystified her.

  A pair of Allystaire’s so-called knights of the Order came running into Landen’s view, one a big barrel-chested fellow with handaxes thrust into his belt, while the other, the only woman among his Order, wore a half-mask and carried the stave of a long, unstrung bow, and a quiver that bristled with the fletchings of long arrows.

  “They’ve broken and a few, a dozen or so, are fleeing this way. We’re not to let them pass,” the larger one said as he slipped the handaxes off his belt. The hafts nearly disappeared into his hands.

  “Thank you, Sir…”

  “Mattar,” the axeman said, “and I’m not particular about the sir. It’s not like he knighted us.”

  Landen didn’t need to ask who he was; it seemed as though whenever someone in this little army said ‘he’, no one needed to clarify. “My thanks then, Mattar. But I do not need reminders of Sir Stillbright’s orders.” The big man rolled his shoulders in a shrug, and Landen went on. “Did you see any Dragon Scales amongst them?”

  “Those bastards’re not likely t’retreat,” the half-masked archer said. “Not from what I’ve heard.” She had slipped her bowstave between her legs and pulled a long coil of string from a pouch on her belt, tied a loop around the notch on top of the stave.

  Landen nodded. “Let’s teach the rest of them the wages of cowardice then, eh?” She flushed as soon as he said it, wished she could call the words back to her mouth. The knights of the Order seemed to ignore it, slipping past her horse and moving along her line.

  To cover her embarrassment and the flush of her cheeks, Landen pulled her helm down over her head, having slung it by a strap from her pommel. Freezing stupid. Trying to sound like Allystaire, she told herself, even as she drew her sword and held it up. She let the sun catch it, and quickly snapped her wrist forward once: advance.

  Other knights and lances to her left and right did the same, spreading the order up and down the line quickly without need of a trumpet or drum. She nudged her horse and started it walking.

  The line lurched forward unevenly, as some perhaps hadn’t been saddled or ready, but only a few needed their mounts to even break into a trot to bring things back into good order.

  Good order was not something Landen could say about the oncoming Islandmen. They became visible at quite a distance, a ragged and disunited band. A dozen seemed about the right count. They wore no uniforms or tabards, only unadorned mail, a smattering of helmets, waving new-looking swords and spears as they ran.

  Landen held her sword aloft again, then lowered it over her mount’s neck, bending low herself, and gave her horse the spur.

  That was, in broad daylight, all the signal the men around her needed. Naturally she surged ahead, the knights to her immediate left and right drawing closer.

  The Islandmen, fleeing one charge of horsemen straight into another, immediately sought strength in numbers, and drew together in a ragged line. Landen’s heart almost sank to see it; it was the worst strategy they could possibly have adopted.

  They raised and held their weapons, though without shields, none of them could present much of a defense to the oncoming heavy horse.

  It was over in moments. Landen felt the glancing blow of a sword ineffectually swung rebound off her greaves, while her own sword bit deeply.

  It took but one charge, when the survivors—now encircled by ranks of riders closing in on them, threw down their weapons. Four of them, pale, bearded, frightened, wearing stolen Delondeur mail. At their feet, nine of their comrades lay dead or dying.

  She leveled her bloodied sword at them. It was hard work, keeping her hand level with her blood pumping, with the long expected fight ending so quickly. Hard work, but she managed.

  “Do any of you speak Barony tongue, or only Islander?”

  One, a man Landen would guess a few years older than herself, with a black beard in a craggy face, looked up. “I do,” he grated. “M’mother was Vyndamaran.”

  “Good. Relay my words to them. You are prisoners now, and you will not be mistreated or killed out of hand. But if you try to escape, no mercy will be shown you. Do you understand?”

  The man turned and spoke in the harsh rapid strokes of Islander tongue. Keersvaster, which Landen spoke, was related, but more civilized and regular. Islander was more ancient, closer to wind and stone and sea.

  The half-Vyndamaran turned back to Landen, nodding, which the others were doing as well.

  “Excellent,” Landen said. “We will have to tie your hands, and your arms and armor are forfeit.”

  Once more she waited while this was relayed. One of the men, younger, fierce-eyed, started shaking his head and answering angrily back.

  The others seemed to try to reason with him, but he shouted and swung an arm wildly at one of them, started to back away.

  “Lakuv says he won his steel in honest raiding and will give it to no man. He will die first.”

  “What does honest raiding mean, and why does he think that should matter?”

  The half-Vyndamaran cleared his throat. “We raided south and returned to our villages with thralls, to the Choiron w’plunder. For that we were given swords and mail.”

  “Honest raiding against crofters and herdsman?” Landen felt a shout building in her chest and finally let it out, cutting the interpreter off. Her swordhand had fallen to her side, but she raised it again and flicked droplets of blood from the tip of the blade towards the reluctant Lakuv. “Against children asleep in their beds, and old farmers whose strength is long forgotten? Neither was the steel the Choiron’s to give; it was stolen, by subtlety and secrecy, from my keep. Let me have no more talk of honest raiding. Quiet yourselves and hold out your hands. We’ll have your mail back later.”

  The other three held out their hands, tentatively. Lakuv began yelling again, slide-stepping away from Landen, only to find nothing but more horsemen behind him, brandishing more steel. He pointed at all of them, shaking his fist, shouting a challenge.

  “Ah, Lakuv says none of you fight like men. On foot, face to face, man to man, without your beasts or arrows.”

  “If it’s an honest fight he wants, I’ll give him one.” Mattar stepped forward, slipping his bulk between close-gathered horses with ease, palms of his hands resting casually on the heads of the axes belted at his hips. “Clear a space.”

  “Mattar.” The masked archer’s voice was muffled, but her annoyance was clear. “We’ve not the time.”

  “It won’t take long, Teague.” He clapped hi
s hands together loudly, then waved them at the horsemen. “Go on. Give him a space. Indulge me, lady Baroness Delondeur,” he said to Landen, then turned to the translator. “Go on, my good son of lost Vyndamere. Tell him I’m his man.”

  While his words were relayed to the young, wild-eyed Islandman, Mattar turned away, flexing his shoulders. Knights and lances looked to Landen, who nodded curtly and turned her horse expertly, with light pressure from her knees.

  “Give him whatever weapon he desires,” Mattar said, still keeping his back to the man. Landen watched as Lakuv quickly went to the sword he’d thrown down. From this close, Landen could see the smithy mark from the Dunes just above the hilt.

  Mattar turned to face the Islandman, as casual and calm as if he were heading to the local taproom, except for his face, his cheeks drawn flat and eyes tight with anger.

  “Whenever you’re ready, honest raider,” Mattar said.

  The Vyndamaran said something quickly. Yakuv, blond hair streaming behind him in a braid, charged, raising his sword high.

  With an indifference that was almost insulting, Mattar plucked an axe from his belt with his fingers wrapped around the blade. He tossed it lightly into the air, caught the haft in a forward grip, stepped his left foot forward, then raised his arm, lowered it quick and threw with a snap.

  The axe didn’t tumble end-over-end; it sailed straight and true and took Yakuv in the shoulder, dropping him in his tracks and sending the sword tumbling away.

  Mattar sauntered over to the Islandman, shaking his head. “Honest raiding. As if there could be such a Freezing thing as honest. RAIDING,” he shouted. “What is gained by theft is not yours. Not ever. And when you gain by murder, you forfeit more than the goods. Yet I think I will leave it to the Arm to judge you.”

  Yakuv reached for the axe in his shoulder, gasping. Mattar knocked his hands aside and seized the haft of his weapon. “Be ready to bind this, someone.” He pulled it quickly free, and turned to face the other three, while Yakuv bled, Teague running forward and pulling a bandage free from a pouch at her belt.

  “I could arm all of you and kill you as easily as you did unarmed farmers,” Mattar spat at the cowed Islandmen. “P’raps I should, for what you say you’ve done to ‘earn’ your blades. Yet I won’t. I want ya to know what those farm folk felt. I want you to face the Arm of the Mother, and I want you to know the fear of him.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Counsel and Revelation

  Night had fallen, and the camp of the small Baronial army was shrouded in darkness on the moors and hills of Barony Varshyne. Just as he’d dispensed with pavilions and long mealtimes, Allystaire had forbidden fires and unshuttered lanterns.

  Sentries worked on a volunteer basis with some of Torvul’s night-sight potion smeared upon their eyes. When it wore off, other volunteers took their places. The Order of the Arm guarded Allystaire’s central position in the camp, where he met with the Barons, and where the growing knot of prisoners were kept.

  Landen, Arontis, Ruprecht, Byronn, and Loaisa sat with the paladin around the fractured light of Torvul’s shuttered lantern.

  Allystaire sat on a folding chair—one of the few concessions to luxury he allowed himself—with his hammer at one foot, listening to the flow of conversation.

  “These Islandmen are obviously no account,” Ruprecht Machoryn was saying. “We ought to be able to smash them against the walls of Pinesward Watch.”

  “We haven’t an accurate count of their numbers,” Byronn Telmawr countered. “Perhaps we could encircle them in turn. Besiege the besiegers, as it were.”

  Allystaire wanted to lower his head into his hands. Or to scream. Instead, he cleared his throat, and felt all eyes turn to him.

  “Arontis,” he said, “what do you think of trying a great thrust at their leadership, and breaking them against Pinesward, as the Baron suggests?”

  Even in the dim light and the shadows of the lantern, Arontis’s face had a handsome nobility that Allystaire found hard to credit. The young Baron took time to think. Finally, looking directly at Allystaire, he spoke.

  “As my Lord of Telmawr says, we have no accurate count of the enemy, but we know he outnumbers us at least three to one. Perhaps four. Even if the bulk of those men are unblooded, and even if they have spent themselves somewhat in assaying the walls of Pinesward, should we falter for a moment, should we become bogged down, should competent leadership escape, they would have the numbers to surround and destroy us in detail.”

  Allystaire nodded affirmatively, feeling inwardly that his confidence was affirmed. “Landen? What of besieging them?”

  “Out of the question.” The young Baroness, seated at Arontis’s right, didn’t hesitate in the slightest. “We haven’t got the numbers or the supplies for a siege. The very moment we show ourselves in our full strength to what they’ve gathered around the Baronial seat, we’re done for.”

  “Surely,” Byronn Telmawr interrupted, “you’re discounting those inside the fortress.”

  “Of course I am,” Landen said. “What role has Barony Varsyhne played on the greater stage these past five years? These past ten, or longer? Vyndamere fell when my father was young, before I was born, and Varshyne has never escaped its shadow in all that time. We don’t know who’s defending Pineswatch or how many of them there are or how long they can hold. For our own sake, we must discount them.”

  “Arontis and Landen see the truth of it,” Allystaire said. “As things stand, our advantages are mobility and experience. If we try to invest a siege, we lose the first, and if we allow ourselves to be swarmed, we lose the second. As long as Symod is content to send his men out piecemeal, we will keep picking them off. Yet we cannot fight a straight battle when the numbers tilt so far in his favor.”

  Allystaire let that hang in the air for a moment before going on. “And we have nothing to account for the Gravekmir.”

  A hush swept over the Barons in the wake of that statement. They looked at him, at each other, and tried, Allystaire thought, not to imagine the prospect of club-wielding giants twice the size of a tall man wading into their midst.

  “Damarind horse-archers would make short work of giants,” Loaisa said. “Yet they are weeks away, at best.”

  “We do not have weeks,” Allystaire said. “In that time, Pinesward will fall, and Symod will learn how to direct the men he does have. The last thing we can do is fall into the trap of waiting for more men. Even so,” he added, “the Will tells me that Baron Harlach should link with us tomorrow. A hundred stout Harlachan longaxes is nothing to sneer at.”

  “What of Oyrwyn, then? Will Gilrayan ever join us?” Byronn Telmawr hooked his hands on his belt and leaned forward, into the lantern light, to peer at Allystaire.

  “I mean to find that out tonight,” he answered. “Before I sleep. Which we should all be after. On the morrow, we meet with Unseldt, and then to creep closer to Pinesward, see if we cannot draw out another party.”

  “What of the Gravek? What if they give chase?” Ruprecht’s voice had a slight quaver in it.

  “If it comes to that,” Allystaire said, “leave the giants to me.”

  He stood. The crowd of Barons took his hint and started to melt away to their own camps, which were simply mass shapes in the darkness beyond Torvul’s lantern light. Allystaire thought of the small knot of prisoners, the priest especially. He’d had enough work healing them, and the wounded of his own forces, that he’d not had the time to question them yet. He saw Arontis and Landen departing, talking quietly to one another, and called softly, “Baron Innadan. Speak with me a moment.”

  Both of them turned. The taller of the two shapes reached a hand to the other, clasped, and then came forward, the shadows resolving into Arontis’s tall form.

  Allystaire waited till the others were out of earshot, and said, “Tell me, Arontis, when our campaign is done, what do you see happenin
g to the Baronies?”

  “Assuming our campaign is victorious?”

  “I can assume nothing else. If we fail, then I am dead, and all my assumptions gone to dust. So answer my question.”

  Arontis nodded. In the dark, Allystaire couldn’t read his features, but he saw the younger man lift a hand to his chin. “With luck, the peace holds. We start sending wine and wool over our borders instead of men and horses.”

  “And from there?”

  “With increased trade, the Baronies grow closer again, or so I’d hope. We rebuild proper roads, maintain them through the passes and to every Seat and Keep and town. Start reclaiming the pastures and fields that have been battlefields.”

  “What about the eastern Baronies? Only Damarind and Machoryn seem interested in our travails.”

  “Ormandich, Arransay, and Lyrranth? I don’t know,” Arontis admitted. “Innadan hasn’t had contact with them in my lifetime. They’re names on a map. I couldn’t tell you the names of their sitting Barons. Cold, I couldn’t tell if you they still stand, much less.”

  “What of Rhidalish?”

  Arontis stopped cold, turning to stare at the paladin. “What of them? You know as well as I do the line is dead, the Vale empty.”

  “Their lands are still there. Part of Innadan, part of Machoryn, part of Damarind. No king,” Allystaire admitted, “no one occupying the Stone Crown.”

  “A pile of burnt rock and rotting timbers. Of course no one occupies it.”

  “My point, Arontis,” Allystaire said, “is that there was a time when the Baronies were a country. Not eleven or twelve or fourteen countries fighting over each other’s lands, trying to elevate one lord above another. They had a common ruler and a common interest. It might be,” Allystaire said, very quietly, very slowly, “that they cannot truly see that they have the latter unless they plainly see that they have the former.”

  There was a long and pregnant pause.

  “What are you telling me, Sir Stillbright?”