by Tony Daniel
“The honor is mine, Earl Keiler,” Ravenelle replied quickly, in maybe too clipped a tone, she thought. She was being very careful not to say something offensive, even though the bear man standing before her had been the chief diplomat who negotiated the peace after the Little War. He was the very person who had taken Ravenelle from her mother’s arms and locked her away in a dank castle in barbarian lands.
Keiler suddenly doubled over with a coughing fit. He wheezed and coughed for an uncomfortable moment, covering his mouth and nose with a silk handkerchief. The cough sounded deep and unhealthy. Then he straightened up.
“Beg pardon, m’lord, m’lady, it’s the scrofula. Gotten worse lately. I’m afraid I might soon be with my dear Hilda in Helheim,” he said. “But not quite yet. Come join us in the circle.”
Earl Keiler wore rich clothes, and a bright red cape of fine wool that had to have come from the Old Countries. Ravenelle was envious. Her mother had never shipped her any material quite that nice.
As they walked toward the council circle, Keiler moved beside her. He bent his head toward her and spoke in a lowered voice.
“I’m afraid not everyone shares my happiness that you are here, m’lady,” Keiler said. “You are Roman, and some Tier have long memories of the bad times with the colonies.”
So they do want to eat me after all, Ravenelle thought. What would Mother do? It was hard to say. She’d only ever seen her mother in Raukenrose. What would Ulla do?
She’d go with her instinct, that’s what.
“Earl Keiler, I will do all I can to help my foster family the von Dunstigs,” she replied, trying to keep her voice even, but sounding, she knew, strained. “They have been nothing but kind to me.”
“Well said, Princess.” The bear coughed again, but this time didn’t descend into a fit. “And they are your own blood, you know. Your great-grandmother Sybille was a von Dunstig.”
“I wish I’d known her, Earl Keiler, but my mother’s told me about her.”
Keiler nodded. “Sybille was quite a handful, I remember. So, your being Roman, one concern we have is that you can speak mind to mind with those who are bound to you as bloodservants?”
“Yes, that is true,” Ravenelle answered.
“You could show what is said in the hall to others you are bonded with?”
“Yes. If there were any within a league, Earl,” she answered. She felt again the anguish of Raphael and Donito ripped from her mind and heart. That was really why she wanted to beat the Sandhaveners to a bloody pulp. She felt her eyes growing moist.
They will totally not understand blood tears, she thought. Do not cry.
She concentrated on a stalagmite long enough to get the memory of Raphael’s body filled with arrows to recede.
“The raiders killed my people.” She raised a clenched fist and imagined she was pounding the raiders. “I want those murderers dead, dead, dead.”
Keiler cocked his head to consider her. He seemed impressed with her outburst. He turned to Wulf. “Do you vouch for Princess Ravenelle Archambeault, Lord Wulf?”
“With all my heart, Earl Keiler,” Wulf answered immediately.
“All right, then,” he replied. “It is my determination that she be admitted to the law-speak council. Now, let’s take our places.” He motioned them toward the fireplace. On either side of the fire were two half-circles of what looked like tree stumps. Ravenelle saw that that they were actually upright logs sawn into chairs. Plain wooden seats, no cushions. Barbaric. But there was so much splendor to the cave, she could see the point of not having the furniture take away from it.
There were all sorts of Tier in the council semicircle. Some of the Tier were more manlike than others. The badger person looked very like a stocky man, but with brushed-back hair with a gray-white stripe down the middle. His ears were small and folded like his namesake animal. Otherwise, he was human in appearance. Well, until he raised a hand and revealed long claws for nails.
Bear people and buffalo people were some of the strangest appearing of the Tier, since their heads were very much like the animal’s, and their lower bodies were more manlike. The antelope and horse clans of Tier were different. They had manlike upper torsos. There were no fauns here except Grim. He had ridden behind them and was now seated somewhere in the law-speak audience. Fauns were goat people. There were no centaurs, horse people, but there was a deer person in the council circle. She was a doe, and wore a green silk blouse that Ravenelle thought was gorgeous, and a veil tied around her head with a scarf. Only the male deer people had antlers. The buffalo war chief Tupakkalaatu had ridden with them. Keiler bowed in his direction and motioned for him to take his place in the council circle. From the casual way they acted, the two seemed to know each other well.
Keiler indicated two empty side-by-side stump seats saved for Ravenelle and Wulf. They sat down. Keiler went to his own seat, which was not a stump made into a seat like the others, but a padded chair with massive carvings on the legs and arms. He remained standing in front of it.
Keiler then held up a large staff with a bear’s head carved on the top. He banged the staff against the floor three times. There must have been a hollow space underneath the rocky floor, Ravenelle thought, because the bangs of the staff sounded like a kettle drum being pounded.
“I call this law-speak back into session.” Keiler turned to Wulf and bowed. “We have with us Lord Wulfgang von Dunstig, son of Otto von Dunstig, our duke and liege lord. We meet in dire circumstances. It is right that we ask Lord Wulfgang what action he wishes us to take.”
Ravenelle glanced at Wulf. He looked shocked. All the color had gone out of his face—what color there was to begin with—and he looked like he was going to faint.
She poked him in the shoulder and whispered, “Stand up, von Dunstig.”
Wulf stood. He took a moment, and spoke in a quavering voice. “I’m here to find out what you are planning, Earl. I want to help.”
He sounds like he’s been called on by Master Tolas and hasn’t done his reading for class, Ravenelle thought. Not that Wulf ever skipped his reading.
Earl Keiler didn’t speak for a moment. He turned his great bear head and considered Wulf.
“Look…I mean to say…I’m the third son of my father.” Wulf shrugged, as if that explained everything he was trying to say, but when no one spoke, he continued. “The truth is, I wasn’t trained to lead a battle, if that’s what we’re going to do, I mean, have a battle. I’m trained to fight, and I will, but I just don’t have the background to give someone like you orders, Earl Keiler. I mean, Father says you were his right hand in the Little War.”
“Well…that was long ago . . .” Although it was hard for her to read bear people’s expressions, from the tone of his voice Keiler seemed surprised at Wulf’s reluctance, and a little worried. “Let us…sit down and discuss what’s to be done.”
Wulf sat, and Ravenelle put a hand on his arm. “Relax, von Dunstig,” she whispered to him. “Stop whining.”
“I am not whining,” Wulf whispered back.
“Nobody here cares that you’re the third son,” she said. “You stand for our family.”
Wulf turned to her. He smiled. “Our family. I’m going to remember you said that, Ravenelle. And never let you forget it, either.” He took a deep breath. “Earl Keiler?”
“Yes, m’lord?”
Wulf stood back up. “The princess reminded me of something important—that I’m a von Dunstig.” Wulf turned and addressed the rest of the half-circle. “We will take back Raukenrose and kick out these invaders. At least, that is what I plan to do, with the help of the divine beings. I ask your aid in doing this.”
Wulf remained standing, obviously trying to figure out what to say next. Ravenelle quickly reached a hand up, grabbed a bunch of cloth from the back of his tabard, and pulled him back down into his seat. She leaned over and whispered. “That’s more like it, von Dunstig.”
Keiler’s expression was unreadable, but Ravenelle c
ould hear the relief in his voice.
“The people are with you, m’lord,” he said. Though he spoke quietly, his deep voice echoed in the silent cavern. “We are vassals to your family, and we are yours to the death.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
The Wall
The Sandhaveners threw another set of siege ladders against the wall, and a line of men began climbing up. Some tried to do it quickly and uncovered; some tried to climb with one hand, holding shields over their heads.
Stones and arrows smashed down. When a man got to the top, he was met with poleaxes and spears. A sword point could normally not puncture plate mail, but a poleaxe thrust with enough power could get through. Sometimes it didn’t even take that. A push from a spear could knock an attacker off balance and send him flailing off the wall.
After one ladder had been cleared of attackers, Rainer helped four other townsmen topple it. Even from this distance Rainer could hear cries and groans of pain when the ladder fell onto those below.
There was no time to wait. Rainer ran down the wall hoarding to the next ladder and helped pitch it off as well. An arrow from below sunk into the wood near his head, but Rainer ignored it and pushed as hard as he ever had pushed to get the ladder off the wall of Raukenrose.
The attack had come from the northeast. The Sandhaveners had encircled the town, but their main force of what was supposed to be three or four thousand men according to some estimates was concentrated north and east. At least, that was the way it appeared.
Rainer knew there might be a nasty surprise coming, maybe an attack from the south, or even somehow up from the river and out of the west. Or it could be something else.
Otto has a lot on his mind, Rainer thought. But there’s nobody who can handle it better.
In a way, he was glad the duke himself was cut off while out hunting. Rainer hoped he, Wulf, and Ravenelle were all right. But the duke in the confused state his mind had fallen into lately was a terrible bet to lead a defense of the town. His son Otto most definitely was the right man.
Otto was brave, but not reckless. He liked to think things through. Rainer had seen him scratching out pro and con lists on wax tablets when he had a decision to make. He might not be as smart as Wulf or Adelbert, true, but he was steady and nobody’s fool.
Because most attacks in the history of the mark had come from the south, the north wall was not as well tended as the south. Fortunately, the town had advance warning of the attack. Lord Otto had taken command of the township forces, which mainly consisted of the castle garrison and the town sheriffs, plus any other able-bodied man or woman who could lend a hand.
There was not any walkway hoarding on the north wall, so the first task was to take what there was out of storage and install it. They had robbed the south wall of its hoarding planks to finish the task. It was a gamble. The attackers might circle around the town and try to force the south gate, and then the hoarding would have to be put back in place.
But the attack was from the northeast. There were some sections still putting up hoarding even then, but most of the walkways had been finished. Archers were peering over the top of the wall. Otto had taken a position at the northeast corner bastion and sent his captains to direct the defense from other bastions along the northern and east walls, and in the barbican tower at the eastern gate.
Rainer was near Otto’s position. He’d sought out his foster brother as soon as he’d received standard plate armor as well as a battle-ax and buckler from the north township armory. The men had helped one another buckle on the plate before reporting for duty. But to Rainer’s disappointment, Otto had immediately made him a runner. When the ladders had been thrown against the wall, Rainer had been returning from delivering messages far down the eastern wall. Things were quiet there, and he had nothing to report to Otto from his southernmost commander, so Rainer had thrown himself into helping the defenders get rid of the siege ladders.
After the Sandhaveners were blocked from overrunning the wall in that spot, Rainer headed for the bastion where Otto and his command group were stationed.
“All quiet to the far south,” he reported to the duke’s son. “But there was some fighting just down from here, and we threw off three ladders and killed or wounded . . .” Rainer rapidly did the calculation in his head. “About twenty or thirty men.”
Otto turned his grave face toward Rainer. “We?” he asked.
“I helped as best I could.”
“Be careful,” his foster brother said. “You have a lot of fighting spirit, brother, but remember, your first duty is to deliver my orders.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Rainer answered. “Has the commander any further orders?”
“Not at the moment, but stay near,” Otto answered. “I have a feeling Siggi or Trigvi or whoever is out there is about to pitch everything he’s got at us.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Arrows were flying overhead in clouds. The Sandhavener archers seemed to be shooting in union, so Rainer risked a glimpse through the bastion loopholes between volleys.
There were a lot of Sandhaveners on the mud-flat plain to the northeast. There was no way he had enough time to count them, but he was sure it was thousands, and not hundreds. This was going to be a very long day.
An arrow flew past Rainer’s cheek, and the fletching cut a thin line into his skin as it passed. Rainer ducked down, but it was too late. Some archer had made a perfect shot through the loophole and almost killed his man. So much for the theory that he could look out between volleys.
Rainer mouthed a quick thanks to God.
The Sandhaveners had hurried to make their attack, and they hadn’t built any stone slinging equipment or shielded siege towers. For the moment, they would have to depend on exposed ladders. The east gate was also vulnerable. It was made of great oak slats banded together with iron. Though the wood had been doused repeatedly with water in the past few hours, the gate might be forced or burned if fire could be applied long enough. But Otto had concentrated his defenders there, and archers were perched in every window of the guard tower, with a dozen human and bear-man longbow archers on the roof.
Rainer was good with a bow, but the longbowmen were true masters. The best longbows were made from the Osage orange tree, and bow staves made from the tree were a well-known export product of the mark. A longbow stave was a hand taller than the man who used it.
The bow wood came from a triangular stave slice made from the sapwood under the bark inward to the dense heart of the tree called latewood. The sapwood was wonderfully bendable, but the heartwood was strong. It held the shape that the bow would return to after the bowman took his shot. Bowstrings were made of carefully worked hemp. Faun-grown hemp was considered the best.
A bow was useless without the man who could handle it. A longbowman had to pull the string back to his ear. It was almost impossible for a normally muscled man. Rainer had enough work pulling a regular bow’s string back and getting a shot on target. Good bowmen, even amateurs, practiced every day and shot hundreds of arrows in a week. Their arms were bare so they could easily put on armguards. Even from here Rainer could see the beefed-up muscles the longbowmen developed in order to shoot their weapons.
For the bear men a longbow was the same as a regular bow. They still had to repetitively practice, but a normal bear man was already strong enough to shoot a longbow.
Thousands of arrows in barrels had been stacked in the rooms on the three floors of the barbican. The archers shooting from windows helped themselves to more when they ran out. Many of the arrows had a brand near the fletching, a pickax, showing that it had been made by bowyers in Kohlsted. Those made in Raukenrose had the sign of the Raukenrose bowyer guild, a tree shape that represented the Olden Oak.
Rainer’s father owned stock in a large shop where dozens of men and women made arrow after arrow. He’d visited one day with his father when he was on summer vacation. The place smelled like boiling glue. Inside were rows of craftsmen and women. Some tur
ned the shafts on treadle lathes. Some dressed the goose feather fletches. All of the arrows were fletched with goose-feathers imported from Sandhaven and the Chesapeake Bay, where millions of geese spent their winters. The feathers came in huge burlap bags labeled as left wing and right wing, because all the fletching on an arrow should be from the same side wing.
Other craftsmen made the hardwood hickory nocks with small saws and files. A row of smiths turned out triangle-shaped barbed arrows for hunting and for maximum flesh wounds in battle, and the narrower bladelike bodkins for piercing armor. Then there were the assemblers, mostly women, who glued all the pieces together and set the finished arrows to dry on huge racks.
The town’s fauns ran barrels of arrows to the archers. The fauns were as surefooted as mountain goats and streaked up and down inclines and stairways.
Arrows were made from Shenandoah birch or from a type of cedar wood brought in from the far west. Rainer liked birch arrows the best because you could straighten them with your hand just before you shot them. But when the idea was to get off ten shots for every twenty breaths, cedar was best.
Now we’re trying to kill the men who sold us the fletching, Rainer thought. And the Sandhaveners were shooting at the defenders of Raukenrose with bows made by Raukenrose bowyers from Shenandoah Osage orange trees.
“They’ve got fire!” a lookout yelled. Rainer glanced out and saw a line of arrows being lit by a man with a torch passing down a row of archers with drawn bows. Moments later a rain of arrows with burning ends wrapped in tow cloth soaked in birch pitch and lashed on with hemp cord flew over the wall.
Many landed in the streets of the town behind the wall. Rainer looked back and didn’t see anyone hurt. People had found cover or gone back into the town. He saw a row of arrows that had buried their tips in the cross timber of a building. It looked like a shop with a couple of stories of family rooms over it. They were catching the building on fire.
Eight people carrying a ladder together, men and women, ran up and were followed by other people bringing rope-handled wooden buckets sloshing with water. Others were doing the same thing where other flaming arrows hit.