The Way of the Wilderking wt-3

by Jonathan Rogers

  “I don’t mean Father ever meant to make me feel unworthy. I don’t even think he knew he loved me more than I deserved. I just mean a love that intense can’t help but make you see your own selfishness.

  “So I spent my life trying to prove I deserved more than I was getting. That’s why I tried to pass myself off as the Wilderking. Who’s more deserving than a king?

  “When that didn’t work, I went to Pyrth. I had something they wanted, and I thought they would honor me for it. I could help give them victory over Corenwald, the one kingdom they had never been able to conquer. I could come home a victor, not groveling for Father’s forgiveness but making him grovel for mine.

  “But the Pyrthens didn’t love me. They broke me. They made me a slave, not a general. Then, when it was too late, I understood I needed unconditional love more than I needed anything in the world.”

  He began to weep again but softly this time, not violently as before. “I was sure I had finally put myself beyond Father’s love. But after all those years, after all that hurt, it finally tracked me down. And it saved me.”

  “He never slackened in his love for you,” Aidan said after a long silence. “I can tell you that.” He looked down into the canyon, which was now growing dark. “And now he’s gone. I can’t get my mind around it. It’s as if we woke up one morning back home and found that the River Tam was gone. Some things you just figure will always be there.”

  He waved his hand out over the canyon. “You know, a village used to stand there.”

  Maynard pointed down at the canyon floor. “Down there?” he asked, surprised to hear that anyone would put a village in the bottom of Sinking Canyons.

  “No,” said Aidan, pointing again. “Out there. It stood right out there, in a spot that’s now a hundred feet in the air. It was solid ground then, and the villagers built solid little cabins on it. They cooked their suppers, raised their children, visited with their neighbors. On nights like this, they stepped out their doors and watched the sun go down.

  “And then the earth opened up and swallowed their little village. Which goes to show, you’d better be careful what you put your faith in. The things of earth look mighty solid, mighty permanent. But then they go away.”

  The diggings were just visible in the failing light. “We found part of that village, by the way,” Aidan said, lest Maynard think he was making it up, or maybe speaking figuratively. “Dug it up with shovels. The name of that solid little village was right there on the gate stone: New Vezey.”

  Maynard got a strange look on his face. “Did you say New Vezey?”

  “That’s right,” said Aidan. “We think it was an old feechie settlement.”

  Maynard paused, deep in thought. When he finally spoke, he spoke slowly, carefully. “The Pyrthens have a saying: “ Until New Vezey rises, the Empire will stand. ”

  Aidan looked perplexed at the odd saying.

  “It’s like saying the Pyrthen Empire will stand until pigs fly or until the stars fall from the sky,” Maynard explained. “It means the empire will stand forever.”

  Aidan shook his head. “I still don’t understand.”

  “There’s a legend people tell on the continent about the Vezians, or Vezeyfolk. They were a warrior tribe that lived in a broad river valley they called Vezey Land.”

  “Veziland,” Aidan muttered, remembering the inscription on the coin that Arliss found.

  “When the Pyrthen empire first rose to power,” Maynard said, “the Vezeyfolk were one of the tribes they conquered. Vezeyfolk were driven out of Vezey Land, and their king, Halverd the Antlered, led them into the country that came to be called Halverdy. Which is where our people came from.”

  “The Halverdens started out as Vezeyfolk?” Aidan asked. “I never knew this.” Indeed, even the most learned of Corenwald’s lore masters were a little hazy on the history of the Halverdens before they came to Corenwald.

  “All that part is historical fact,” Maynard continued. “But then there’s the legend of New Vezey. According to the legend, King Halverd sent a select group of Vezeyfolk over the ocean to establish a colony called New Vezey, just in case they put them on ships and waved good-bye, and that was the last anybody ever saw of the New Vezians. They were shipwrecked on an island somewhere. Then, according to the legend, the earth just opened up and swallowed them.

  “Just fairy-tale talk, of course. Just a legend. That’s why the Pyrthens say their empire will stand until New Vezey rises again, because there never was any New Vezey.”

  “But there was,” Aidan said, his voice rising with excitement. “There was a New Vezey, and we found it. Vezeyfolk…” Aidan muttered. “Feechiefolk… Vezey… feechie…” He remembered Bayard’s misquoted rhyme: “‘Fallen are the Vezeyfolk…’” He remembered Bayard’s sudden realization that sent him running for the library.

  “The feechiefolk are Vezeyfolk,” Maynard said, the realization slowly dawning on him. “They’re descended from the lost colony.”

  “Yes!” said Aidan, nearly shouting. “Descended from the same people we’re descended from. That explains why we found a Vezilander coin in the diggings. Their Harvo Hornhead is our Halverd the Antlered. That explains why they speak our language.”

  The realization made him almost giddy. “The feechies are our people, Maynard! We’re one tribe!”

  “ The empire stands until New Vezey rises again, ” Maynard quoted. “So the Pyrthens have better reason to hate us than they know: We are New Vezians, together with the feechiefolk. If only we can rise again.”

  Aidan understood a new truth about the Wilderking prophecy: The Wilderking wouldn’t merely unite the feechies and the civilizers into a single kingdom. He would reunite them, two parts of a single tribe that had been separated for three centuries.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Preparations

  Days passed, and the expected attack by the Pyrthens didn’t come. News of the invasion soon came, however, and it wasn’t good. Tambluff had fallen. Much of the city had burned, and Tambluff Castle was now inhabited by Pyrthen officers.

  Rather than allow the Pyrthens to besiege Tambluff and subject its inhabitants to starvation and disease, the Corenwalder army had given the Pyrthens battle outside the city walls, led by King Darrow and Prince Steren. The Corenwalder army was scattered to the four winds. King Darrow was killed in the battle. It was believed Prince Steren survived-or King Steren now, if indeed he did survive.

  “They will surely be coming now,” said Aidan to his brothers. “And they will bring the main body of their force. This is the only army they have left to fight against.”

  To Aidan’s surprise, however, the Pyrthen army wasn’t the first army to arrive at Sinking Canyons. Word had gone out among Corenwald’s scattered warriors that resistance to the Pyrthen occupation would center on Sinking Canyons and Aidan Errolson’s army. They streamed in for a day and a half, in groups of ten, fifteen, fifty. Sometimes whole units came. Civilians came, men who had no part in the battle at Tambluff but had heard about Sinking Canyons and wanted to play a role. Some came believing Steren was king. Others came believing Aidan would be king, believing they were among the first recruits of the Wilderking’s army. Indeed, many of these stragglers suspected the Sinking Canyons army would be mostly feechies.

  With every new group that came, Aidan studied the faces, hoping Steren was among them. And at last, the fourth morning after the Tambluff battle, Steren rode up at the head of a cavalry unit, a dashing figure on a black horse.

  Aidan bowed before his old friend. “King Steren! You are welcome to Sinking Canyons. We are yours to command.”

  Steren leaped from his horse and, pulling Aidan to his feet, embraced him as a brother.

  “I am sorry to hear about your father,” said Aidan. “We are all sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Steren said. “He was beautiful, Aidan. I wish you could have seen him on that last day. He was first in the attack and last in the retreat. He was worthy of Corenwald that
day, Aidan, and I shall always remember him that way, astride his black horse, tilting toward the enemy.”

  “Then I will remember him that way too,” said Aidan.

  “The Pyrthens aren’t far behind me,” said Steren. “They’ll start arriving later today. They may attack as early as tomorrow. I need to review the troops immediately so we can prepare for battle. How many men do we have?”

  “Seven or eight thousand foot soldiers,” Aidan answered. “Then there’s your cavalry unit and a second cavalry unit we’ve cobbled together from individual horsemen who have arrived in the last two days and men riding horses captured from the Pyrthens.”

  “Seven or eight thousand,” Steren mused. “The enemy is probably twice that at least. Well then, we shall make do with what we have.”

  The rest of the day was spent in preparation for the coming battle. Scouts gave the officers a tour of the canyons’ terrain. King Steren organized the new recruits into makeshift units and assigned them to officers. Late in the afternoon, the scouts at the canyon rim reported the arrival of the first Pyrthen units on the north side of the canyon. The Pyrthens kept coming well into the night.

  Outside the tunnel complex, the five Errolsons and Dobro sat in a circle with King Steren. There were no fires on the canyon floor that night. Men circled around fires would have made easy targets for the Pyrthen archers, who were surely in position already at the north rim of the canyon. The Corenwalder scouts on the south rim could see hundreds and hundreds of Pyrthen campfires flickering across the plain on the other side.

  Aidan was explaining his plan to the others. “We could hold these canyons forever if we had to,” he said. “Archers can’t really hurt us. Any archer who was in position to shoot down on us from the rim would be very exposed himself. We could pick them off like flies.

  “They’d have to come in after us, down to the canyon floor. And they couldn’t roust us out that way even if they had a hundred thousand men. We know every crevice of these canyons and every hideyhole. They’d be fighting an invisible enemy. We could ambush them from a different spot every day.”

  “They could starve us out,” Brennus observed.

  “We could attack their supply trains, carry off their food,” Aidan said. “We could eat better than they do.”

  “Fine,” Steren said. “We can hold the canyons. Then what? The Pyrthens have Corenwald’s army contained in Sinking Canyons. As long as they get to keep the rest of Corenwald, I think they’ll be happy to make that trade.”

  “But don’t you see?” Aidan said. “From here we could wreak havoc on the Pyrthens. Their supply train will have to stretch from Middenmarsh all the way to Tambluff. Our raiding parties could hit them anywhere on the Western Road, then beat it back here to the canyons. We can organize resistance in the villages, create a whole country of insurgents. Eventually we could win Corenwald back.”

  “Eventually?” Steren said. “Eventually? Aidan, you’re still thinking like an outlaw: Hide out, bide your time, wait for something good to happen. Eventually!” He nearly spat the word. “Meanwhile, our people are living under the oppression of the Pyrthens. That’s no way for my people to live, Aidan. I am king of Corenwald. I won’t lead an insurgency in my own kingdom. We’re not a band of outlaws. We’re an army. We’re the army of Corenwald.”

  But Aidan had spent a lot of time planning his insurgency. He had also dug a lot of tunnels. He wasn’t ready to give up so easily. “We know every nook and cranny of these canyons,” he said, his voice rising. “Do you have any idea of the advantage-”

  King Steren raised a finger to his lips for quiet. “What’s that sound?” he asked. All night they had heard the murmur of Pyrthen voices and the jingle of horse tack, the occasional clank of weapons being moved or stacked. But now there were new noises coming from the northern rim-great metallic groans and iron squeaks, the blowing and stamping of horses under strain, the barks of the horse masters.

  Maynard had heard these sounds many times before in his travels with the Pyrthen army. “Gun carriages,” he said. “They’re putting gun carriages in place.”

  The term was unfamiliar to the Corenwalders. “Remember the thunder-tubes the Pyrthens used at Bonifay?” he said. “The Pyrthens call them cannons. They’re lining them up on the other rim.” The moon hadn’t risen yet, but by starlight the Corenwalders could just make out the silhouettes of men, horses, and thunder-tubes on the canyon rim directly across from them. A peninsula of land jutted out into the canyon, a huge semicircular stage with the canyon for an orchestra pit. Teams of draft horses pulled a dozen guns close to the edge, where the foot lanterns would be if it really were a stage.

  “They’ve done a good scouting job,” Percy remarked. “They seem to know our position exactly.”

  “We can’t hold this position,” said Maynard.

  “We can go deep in the tunnels…” Aidan began, but Maynard just shook his head.

  “We could hold these canyons forever against archers, infantry, cavalry-against any fighting force we Corenwalders are used to fighting against. But you haven’t considered what cannons can do to a place like this. Those iron balls will pulverize this canyon wall. These tunnels will collapse at the first impact. Anybody inside will be buried alive. Those who are outside will have one less place to hide. I saw those cannoneers blow a rocky cliff to bits on one of the eastern isles, where pirates were hiding. That was solid granite. You don’t want to see what they could do to this sand and clay.”

  Aidan envisioned his own hopes and plans blown away by the Pyrthen guns like the pirates’ granite hideout.

  “We’ll split the army,” Steren announced without any preamble.

  “We’ll what?” asked Aidan.

  “We’ll split the army for a night march. Aidan, you’ll lead half the men and one cavalry unit up the canyon. I’ll lead the rest of the men and the other cavalry unit down the canyon. What is it, a league upstream to the end of the canyon?”

  “A league and a half,” said Jasper.

  “And a little less than that to the downstream end, if I remember correctly,” said Steren. “Aidan, when you get out of the canyon, you’ll double back along the canyon rim, or as close as you can get without attracting the sentries’ notice. I’ll do the same thing from the other end.

  “In the morning, when they open up those thunder-tubes on this spot, you boys will hit them on their right flank, and we’ll hit them on their left.”

  “Like a pair of tongs,” said Brennus.

  “Exactly,” Steren answered. “This is no time to be playing defense. If we can engage the enemy, they can’t use their thunder-tubes without shooting into their own men. If everything goes well, we can just fold them up, back their right flank into their left flank. Then they’ll have to fight us in front and behind at the same time.”

  Aidan shook his head. “You’re talking about some sort of last stand?”

  Steren shrugged. “I hope not. No, I’m talking about winning this battle.”

  “But, Steren, we’re such a small force already. I just don’t think splitting up is a good idea.”

  “Aidan, I have already had your advice, and I thank you for it. Now I need your obedience.” He was every bit a king.

  “Yes,” said Aidan. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A Battle

  The moon rose after midnight to light the way for the Corenwalders as they made their way to either end of the canyon. It was only a quarter moon, but the white walls of the canyon reflected every bit of its light; for the men who knew the canyon, it was more than enough light. The newcomers who didn’t know the canyon followed the men who did.

  The Corenwalders were in their positions well before daylight. A little wet-weather creek paralleled the right flank of the sleeping Pyrthens, about fifty strides away. It was lined by scraggly bushes that stood about as high as a man’s chest. Here, behind the bushes, Aidan and his four thousand men waited for daylight to come.

&
nbsp; The sun had barely appeared over the lower canyon horizon when the Pyrthen thunder-tubes opened up on what, just a few hours earlier, had been the Corenwalder position. The earth shuddered with the explosions in the cannons’ mouths, and the smoke from the burning powder hung over the canyon. Great chunks of earth fell from the canyon wall to the floor after the first volley. By the second or third volley, the dust thrown up by the cave-ins made it impossible to see the other side of the canyon. Had the Corenwalders stayed in the canyons, any of those who survived the cave-ins would surely have suffocated in the dust.

  The Pyrthen soldiers crowded near the canyon’s edge to watch the catastrophe, cheering raucously at what they believed to be the destruction of the last remaining enemy. The sight convinced them they would not be fighting that day.

  A few of the Pyrthens saw the Corenwalders coming. A few on the right who had lost interest in the pounding of Sinking Canyons saw Aidan running toward them, his mouth stretched in a primal shout, with four thousand men behind him. A few on the left saw King Steren leading his men across the last few strides before they collided with the outer ring of Pyrthen soldiers. The sentries on both sides called warnings, but nobody heard them over the booming of the cannons. Hundreds of Pyrthens were struck down or hurled from the canyon rim before they had even drawn their swords.

  The Corenwalders made remarkable progress in the initial surprise of their attack. For a minute it appeared as if the two halves of the Corenwalder army would snap shut on the two Pyrthen flanks like the jaws of an alligator.

  But the Pyrthens were battle hardened, the veterans of many campaigns in many different settings. They soon regained their composure; though by the time they did, their numerical advantage wasn’t quite so overwhelming. The officers finally got the cannoneers to hold their fire, allowing them to better communicate orders to their men.