Blood of the Falcon, Volume 2 (The Falcons Saga)

by Ellyn, Court

  ~~~~

  61

  Through the trees, the Brenlach filled the eastern horizon, shimmering like a sheet of beaten steel. Kelyn rode beside the king as the army emerged from Whitewood and drew up near the stone-and-timber palisade of the river fort. Across the river loomed Nathrachan’s fat drum towers. Aralorr’s bright blue banner snapped over the turrets in anticipation of Rhorek’s arrival. A detail of Falcons trotted across the bridge to make sure Aralorris, indeed, still held the castle. It would be in full character for the river twins to take it back and not tell anyone, then sit tight, waiting for their enemy to march blithely through the gate. When Lissah and the dozen Falcons rode back with Lady Genna among them, Jareg relaxed and gave the nod for squads to start crossing.

  Genna was nearly the mirror image of her older sister; fairer headed, however, with a less steely cast to her dark eyes. She saluted the king and bowed from the saddle. “Sire, Nathrachan is yours.”

  “A long winter, was it?” he asked.

  “It was, but you won’t hear a man complain.”

  While Genna informed the king of the state of the area, Kelyn watched Lissah. Trudging south for nearly a week was trying enough, but riding with the rest of the Falcons who knew exactly what had transpired between them, was humiliating. Lestyr of Whitebarrow was in a position to twist the blade in the wound, but he kept his loud mouth shut for once. Black bruises ringed both his eyes, and his nose was irreparably bent, a fair enough warning. How it hurt to ride so close to her, yet be invisible to her.

  She must’ve felt him watching, for she started fidgeting and finally backed her horse from the council to oversee the crossing of the cavalry.

  Cantering hooves announced Lord Lander, coming up from the rearguard. He reined in beside the king and announced, “This is where we part ways, sire. I know you’ll miss me.”

  Rhorek returned a dry chuckle. “I can think of more troublesome companions than you, Lander. Be careful. Our border needs you.”

  “Once you reach Midguard, m’ lord,” Kelyn said, “find Lord Rhogan and send him with half your wagons on to Tower Last. You’re to start burning on the same day. The Fierans don’t get to ride to each other’s aid.” Rhogan of Mithlan and Va’eth of Dravahyll, who had come east with Uncle Allaran, had spent a bitter winter patrolling their ally’s borderlands. Doubtless they would welcome the action.

  Lander must’ve been feeling generous this morning, for he didn’t argue or question Kelyn’s orders. That, or he was chomping at the bit to be away from the boy who acted the commander. “Will do,” he said, turned his mount, and led two dozen supply wagons around Whitewood Tower and onto the westward road. Most of those wagons were heavy with barrels of captured Dragon bile.

  Once the king was safely ensconced in Lord Birél’s former suite, Kelyn saw to the second part of his plan. Garrs selected five swordsmen from all that remained of his Helwende regiment, while Lord Davhin summoned fifteen archers from the barracks. They spent the next day gathering peasant’s garments from the fishing village, then headed south, each with a flask of Dragon bile on his belt. Kelyn’s bones ached as he watched them go without him. If he understood the king’s reason for holding him back, staying behind might’ve been easier to bear.

  In the meantime, the river twins proved themselves ready for blood. Having anticipated that the Aralorri incursion would strike again from Nathrachan, Lady Drona and Lord Degan had concentrated their troops at Ulmarr. Only one day after Rhorek’s banner rose over the towers of Nathrachan, indicating his residency, war drums echoed in the west. “They couldn’t have gotten here so fast,” Rhorek said, watching the horizon from the battlements. His commanders gathered around him.

  “In all likelihood,” said Lord Davhin, “the river twins expected to besiege the castle before your armies arrived, sire. They stood a good chance of retaking it, with so few of us holding it during the winter.”

  “Then we arrived not a day too soon,” said Rhorek. “Kelyn?”

  The castle resounded with the familiar clangor of soldiers arming, cavalry mounting. After the winter he’d endured, Kelyn looked forward to the ferocity of the charge, the honesty of the sword edge, the openness of his enemy’s intent. Excitement built inside him until he could barely draw breath. “Degan and Drona’s scouts will have reported our arrival by now. Until they arrive with the main division, we can give their vanguard a good thrashing, maybe even rout them.”

  “Optimistic, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all. Uncle Allaran can lead the charge.”

  Smashing through the lines of advancing Fierans, Lord Wyramor showed himself a mighty hammer, indeed. But Kelyn’s assessment proved to be on the optimistic side, after all. Mile by mile, the relentless push of the river twins forced the Aralorris and Leanians back toward Nathrachan. Blood stained the Ulmarr road; mass pyres burned in one field or another; villages emptied as Fierans fled for safety. After a week of fighting, Rhorek’s commanders agreed to fall back to Nathrachan. An inauspicious beginning to the season.

  ~~~~

  “Kelyn, wake up.” Someone shook his shoulder. He bolted up from the pillow, reaching for a sword that wasn’t there.

  “Easy, nephew.” Dawn cast gray light over Allaran’s face.

  “Are they coming again?”

  “Come see. Hurry.”

  The Falcons’ wing of the barracks rang with voices and the clink and clatter, not of battle, but of breakfast. It took Kelyn a while to remember where he was. He’d hardly slept since arriving at Nathrachan, and when finally Rhorek and Jareg insisted he get some rest, he fell hard. Eliad was on hand to help him back into the mail and plate, then he followed his uncle up the western wall. Just beyond arrow range, the green tents of the Fieran camp spread out like muck on stagnant water. Soldiers shoveled at earthen fortifications, and engineers supervised the building of trebuchets. To counter the enemy’s progress, sorties were scheduled every few hours; the day’s first, consisting of a hundred dwarven berserkers and twenty Leanian knights, prepared in the courtyard. All this Kelyn had seen to last night, so why wake him?

  Allaran pointed toward the northern edge of the camp. Two dozen oxen, harnessed into two long lines, approached from a makeshift paddock, heads low, pace leisurely, despite the cracks of whips over their backs. A guard of a hundred foot soldiers escorted them.

  Kelyn asked, “Any indication of their intent?”

  Allaran chuckled. “I don’t suppose they come to offer them as a gift.”

  Davhin joined them, sedate as always. “They could pull the gate down.”

  “Aye. Then what are the trebuchets for?” asked Kelyn. “Something else…”

  The ox herders brought the animals to a standstill in a space of open ground alongside the river, then threw heavy blankets over the animals’ backs. Each blanket took two men to lift and lay in position. “Mail,” Kelyn said. “They’re outfitting oxen in mail.” The blankets covered their flanks, drooping halfway to the ground. The armorers of Ulmarr and Athmar had not been idle this winter.

  “Never heard of such of thing,” said Davhin.

  “They mean to bring them close. Maybe for the very reason you say. Get your archers into position. Is the sortie ready?”

  “Not yet,” said Allaran. “I’ll see to it.” He hurried down to the courtyard.

  While the archers hurried from the barracks and clustered along the western battlements, the foot soldiers formed a phalanx before the animals, pikes poised, hedgehog-like, and the herders maneuvered the oxen until their tails flicked at the fortress. With calls and mighty tugs on a mess of reins, the herders backed them slowly toward the river. There, Rhorek’s bridge was well on its way to becoming a mighty construction of timber and stone.

  “They’ll cut off our supplies,” said Davhin, “and our way home.”

  Kelyn called into the courtyard, “Release the sortie now! Guard the bridge.”

  Davhin shouted an order. Bowstrings twanged. Half a hundred arrows scraped the sky. A
herder dropped, along with a dozen foot soldiers. Still the oxen shifted back, back. A pair of soldiers strung out long hempen cables and ran with them to the bridge.

  The portcullis rose; the sortie dashed out. But the Fierans were expecting it. From the earthen fortifications galloped a brigade under the green boar of Athmar. The sortie fell apart, and Allaran ordered a fallback. The oxen pulled, grunting and tossing their horns, and the southern pylons of the bridge gave way.

  With a sigh, Kelyn muttered, “Well done.” A couple hours later, he led the next sortie himself. Several of his knights carried flasks of Dragon bile. Galloping close to one of the trebuchets, they smashed the flasks against the beams. A couple of pitch-soaked arrows set the contraption aflame. The stout timbers might not burn, but the ropes, cables, and leather straps would take time to replace. Now, with the bridge impassable, they needed all the time they could buy.

  Limping back to the battlements with a gash across his calf, Kelyn squinted into the western sunlight. “Where are the fires?” he asked no one in particular. Along the Bryna’s banks, trees and thorn bushes boasted a pale sheen of new green, and high clouds in the north heralded late snow or cold rain or both. Much good the Dragon bile would do them if the Brambles were too wet to burn. Finally, late the next day, after more sporadic rounds of attacks from the sortie gate, an archer on the wall spotted the first plume of smoke rising in the west. The plume widened until a great swath of white smoke climbed the sky and wafted south. Clouds rolled in, low and heavy, but the rain fell miles south of the river. It took another two days, however, before word of the fire’s severity reached the Fieran commanders. In the middle of the night, half the Fieran camp deflated and deployed west for Athmar. By dawn, Lady Drona’s banner receded over the horizon.

  Lord Degan, on the other hand, stayed behind to carry on the siege of Nathrachan. “This is our chance,” Rhorek told his commanders. “With the river twins divided, we can break out of here.” His host issued from the fortress en masse. In a single morning, the Aralorris overwhelmed Degan’s camp and sent them fleeing after Drona. They abandoned their oxen and their trebuchets. The Black Falcon’s armies pursued. Easy enough to encourage the oxen to drag the siege engines back the way they’d come. In a splendid turn of fortune, the Aralorris set up camp around Ulmarr. This time, however, Degan did not give up easily. Perhaps the White Falcon had threatened him with his lands or life if he surrendered the castle again.

  In the following days, Rhorek received word that his carpenters had begun repairs on the bridge and that Lander was leading brief, brutal raids onto Athmar’s lands. “As long as he keeps Drona busy,” he told his commanders, “he can steal all the sheep and cattle he wants.” Farther west, Lord Rhogan and Lady Va’eth set the Shadow Mounds aflame, and with the help of their Leanian countrymen, torched towns and fishing villages as well. “I can’t stand it, Kelyn,” Rhorek said in the privacy of his pavilion. Rhogan’s report lay on the trestle table. “Women and children suffering because of disagreements between kings. What the Leanians do is their own business, but I stand by my commands to your father. Aralorris will not take part in murdering innocents.”

  Innocents? Kelyn wanted to say. What were militias made of, if not crofters and villagers? Instead, he asked, “If that command should become impractical?” After all, how many Fieran children would go hungry because their fathers would not return home? Directly or indirectly, harming innocents was unavoidable.

  “We’ll do the best we can.”

  “Yes, sire.” Kelyn bowed out of the pavilion. On his way to supervise the digging of fortifications outside Ulmarr’s main gate, a courier intercepted him with a letter. He broke the seal, read the signature. Lady Ulna. She’d been left in charge of Nathrachan’s defense. She wrote: Garrs is returned from Nithmar. He desires to deliver his report, but his wounds do not let him travel farther. Lord Ilswythe is advised to return to Nathrachan, post haste.

  Wounds. Saddling Chaya, Kelyn sent Laral to round up a detail of ten men to ride back to Nathrachan with him. He was riding east within the hour.

  Garrs was laid up in the new surgeon’s hall, now on the lower floor of the barracks. The stink of blood had been scrubbed from the dining hall during the winter months. Starched white sheets stained with indelible brown splotches blanketed the casualties of last week’s sorties. Halfway down the row, Garrs was propped on pillows, untamable black hair wild with too much sleep. Both of his feet were wrapped in linen, as was his left hand. “Burns?” Kelyn asked the nurse on duty.

  “No, m’ lord,” she said. “He walked most of the way back without his shoes. They were attacked in the night. And he lost two fingers to an axe. He had a big dose of poppy wine a few hours ago, but you’re welcome to wake him.”

  Garrs stirred. “Commander,” he grunted.

  “Watch your mouth, Helwende,” said Kelyn, grinning. The nurse brought a chair and set it beside the bunk. “You look like hell. Don’t you know not to go grabbing sharp blades.”

  Garrs raised his left hand in a boast. “Hell, I was trying to live up to the Warlord’s reputation. Didn’t work too well.”

  “How are the others?”

  “Two of the archers are across the way there. Three more should be resting up in the barracks.” One of the archers lay in a bunk an aisle away; his right leg had been amputated.

  “The rest?”

  “They didn’t make it out, Kelyn.”

  He sat back hard in the chair. Goddess, it was a hard thing to swallow, ordering men into action that led to their deaths. He didn’t like the taste of it at all. How had Da dealt with it?

  “Objective met, though,” Garrs added. “Nithmar is ash. The White Falcon will be cursing us soon enough.”

  “Had he stationed troops there?” How was he to foresee all the possibilities and prepare his men? Impossible, he decided.

  “Just local militia, old men and boys, and that’s the shame of it. Our attack went off without a hitch. Just like you said, we hired ourselves out as refugees needing work. We had access to the whole town, found all the mills and storehouses. Couple nights later we snuck back to the woods where we’d hidden our weapons and the bile and set fire to the place. No problem.”

  “Then what went wrong?”

  “Them highland lumberjacks must be good trackers. They caught up with us five nights later. We were almost back to Karnedyr by then, but they were on horses and we weren’t. They surrounded us and there you have it. It’s a wonder any of us survived. I’m sorry, Kelyn. I keep thinking what I shoulda done different to get more of them out alive.”

  Kelyn put a hand to Garrs’s shoulder. “You did the best you could with what you had. You saw the job done. That’s all any of us can do. Your next objective is to heal up.”

  “Yessir.”

  Kelyn saw to the archers across the aisle, though he had no words for the man who would go home without his leg. Riding back to Ulmarr, he tried to remember what his father had said about losing men. Something about the greater good, the larger scope, the all-important objective. But he’d had too much of Rhorek’s influence lately, and the words carried little encouragement, true though they were.

  ~~~~

  Autumn

  “We’re getting close,” said Brugge, “but we’ve hit a wall of sandstone. Hardest stone in my memory.”

  Kelyn frowned at the schematics of Ulmarr’s grounds that the engineers had drawn up, based on their measurements and their best guess. They hadn’t foreseen impenetrable bedrock below the castle, though it made sense. A construction of Ulmarr’s grand, imposing size needed a good foundation. “Can you break through it?” he asked, having lost his patience with the project. The commanders had decided to test his mettle by placing him in charge of the task of breaking into the castle. Perhaps they had passed it to him because they knew all too well what was involved. Over the summer, the engineers had taught him much about siege warfare that his studies as a squire had not. He’d soon learned that he preferred straightfo
rward melee to the tediousness that went into building better machines and inching forward through gates and walls. Ulmarr had proven a tough egg to crack. The red sandstone gates were well defended and deeply padded with layers of mattresses that refused to burn. By now, the mattresses had turned black with mold and sun rot, but they still kept the battering rams out. The trebuchets that Degan had abandoned at Nathrachan in the spring had been employed against him. While they pummeled roofs and destroyed buildings inside the castle, the walls themselves owned a few dents at best. In return, Degan’s catapults, high on his ramparts, flung stones and chunks of masonry at his attackers, forcing the Aralorri camp to move a hundred yards farther back.

  Sapping the walls had started earlier in the summer, and it proved their last available option. Kelyn was not happy with Brugge’s report. The commander of the dwarven regiment stroked his ruddy beard. “The ground was nothing till now. My boys are used to chipping through granite. Cutting through this lowland farm soil, they barely broke a sweat. We’ve got a lot of digging left in us, lad.”

  “That’s a yes, then?”

  Brugge tugged on an earlobe while he calculated.

  “In a timely manner, I mean,” Kelyn clarified. “It won’t take you another season, will it?” Too many turns of fortune could happen in a week, much less a season. How many times had the Aralorri camp come under attack while they waited for the castle to open up? Only yesterday, troops from Brengarra had charged up the road under a gray banner and put the western half of the camp into a frenzy. Kelyn was sure his people would rout and waste their long efforts here, but after a couple of hours of desperately holding their ground, Morach and the knights under him had sent Brengarra’s troops fleeing back south. Morach reported that the Fieran commander had taken a pike in the belly. Lord Brengarra’s own son, or so said the rumors. No wonder his troops had lost heart and retreated. A narrow victory, that.