by Janny Wurts
Peril hung over their furtive efforts. At any moment, the hammer might fall: unwarned, unprotected, they might burn to ashes beneath the surprise fury, if Lysaer raised Light and attacked.
The false religion’s self-proclaimed avatar remained with his field-troops, now entrenched outside the shut gates. Beyond the vacated battlements, he could be observed, a toy figure trotting his caparisoned charger up and down his poised lines. Such glittering prominence maddened the eye; served as flaunting reminder, that his gift of elemental power could unleash destruction and slaughter at whim. Under noon sun, in parade-drill order, his captains in their Sunwheel surcoats faced their war host against the lowest tier of the citadel.
No movement was hidden. The chopped turf saw no contest. The gables built to shelter the sappers creaked across the burned ground, dragged by the lashed muscle of ox teams. The scaling towers and trebuchets inched into position, brought to bear on the outermost walls. Streaked by the pervasive, soot-laden dust and the rust stains leaked from spiked iron, the log rams in their slings were lined up on the studded, barred gates. Pressed by the overseers, the ant streams of labourers with their levers and ropes warped the engines of siege into place.
Duke Bransian’s men-at-arms might grind their frustrated teeth, while Mearn’s skulking companies set furtive traps in the emptied mansions. They dared not mount any open resistance. Sunrise to sunset, the air boomed to the ominous beat of the enemy drums. Each passing hour, growing dread choked the crowded baileys of the upper citadel. Under flapping, sagged awnings, and on blankets spread over rough cobbles, the refugees endured their pent-up misery beyond relief. Crammed into barracks, or waiting foot-sore, in ration lines that snaked past the ramshackle cook-shacks, Alestron’s folk settled their crying infants and broke up the disputes that unravelled to fisticuffs. Anxiety already pinched the colour from their haggard cheeks.
No able hands could be spared. All day, teams of soldiers hauled jakes to the slop carts. They boiled wash water, and scoured the latrine drains with lye, or scrubbed the bath houses with brine, winched up from the Sea Gate.
Talvish was not exempt from such duties, despite his nuisance assignment: he set Fionn Areth and Jeynsa to hauling fresh water from the spring-house well.
All hours, every day, they trudged with yoke buckets to fill the outdoor stock troughs and catch barrels. The stiff-necked pair were too proud to complain of aching shoulders and chapped hands. With each sloshing load carried up the steep stair, then hauled breathless through the windy sunlight, they vied with bets to lift their dull spirits and relieve the back-breaking tedium.
Fionn Areth lost his stake for the second time running. Not, in this case, by fair contest, since he had delayed to return a strayed child to her mother. The pause left him filling the last trough at twilight, too tired to care if he stumbled. The wind had risen. Icy gusts flapped the soaked knees of his trousers and whined over the darkened dormers. No lamps burned in the pewter grey street, and no squabbling gulls roosted on the bleak cornices.
A hurrying matron bundled up in a shawl chided him for leaving his jacket. ‘Storm’s coming in. Cotton fog and cold rain. You’ll see ice on the puddles, come morning.’
‘Last trip,’ Fionn Areth assured her. He leaned into the howling teeth of a gust, and passed through the narrow wrought-iron gate that led to the yard where the duke’s couriers watered their horses.
Because of the wind, his approach went unheard. And because the stripped man at the trough had his back turned, Fionn Areth had warning in time to stop short. No guess, that a veteran fighter with such livid scars ever chose to be caught, sluicing down in an alley at curfew.
The buckets were too full to set down without spilling, upon the sloped cobbles. Hard-breathing, unsure, the goatherd surveyed the man’s sable hair, streaked with silver, tied tight at the nape, but too short for a clan braid. The old scars, left by blades, and the new, cut by whips, that marred the taut musculature of a wild animal: this would be the forest-bred clansman from Halwythwood, whose mission had failed to curb Jeynsa.
Now absorbed by unwise curiosity, the grass-lander regarded the bracing, left forearm, and confirmed: the Sunwheel imprint found there was a recent brand.
He had made no sound, no slight move to betray his fascination.
Yet, without warning, the man at the horse-trough exploded into a spin. A flash of silver sped from his hand: a thrown knife! The blinding speed of such reflex left Fionn Areth no instant to duck; no chance to take panicked flight, as the whistling steel flicked past his neck and shaved skin in a burning cut.
He shouted with shock. Would have hit the cobbles on his knees, except that the uncanny hunter was on him. Harsh fingers gripped his yoked shoulders and pinned him, while stripping grey eyes raked him over.
‘Sliesheng dhavi! Aykrauk i’en kiel’ d’maer tiend!’ snapped Sidir in a torrent of outraged Paravian. He shook his prey, hard. ‘Stand up on two feet! You are not worse than scratched, though by Ath! for rude presumption alone, you deserve to be more than just bleeding!’
‘Because you might have killed your sworn liege? That’s if your thrown blade had not missed!’ Fionn Areth retorted with injury.
The clansman’s hold shifted. The bucket yoke lifted away in his grasp, while his left-handed cuff slapped the goatherd aside. ‘Fool puppy, to think I’d make such a mistake.’
As the Araethurian reeled against the stone plinth that supported the gate hinge, Sidir brushed past. He retrieved his cast dagger. His victim dismissed as beneath his contempt, he returned for the full buckets. Their contents were dumped without splash in the horse-trough. Each coiled move precisely deliberate, he set the yoke down without anger. Then he rinsed his fouled knife. He wiped the blade dry on his cast-off shirt before he redressed his soaked skin, or his nakedness.
Fionn Areth shivered. Chilled and bruised, with his palm pressed to stanch his let blood, he realized: the dead accuracy of that thrown knife had been pulled! The rumour was true, then. Forestborn clansmen were trained from infancy to track and fight by their arcane instincts. Nor did they seem to be bothered with modesty.
‘What crime saw you branded?’ the grass-lander inquired, point-blank.
Already reclad in his breeches and belt, Sidir sheathed his cleaned steel. He granted his observer no second glance. ‘I was born.’
Fionn Areth bridled. ‘Didn’t your vaunted prince leave instructions that you were to answer my questions?’
Sidir straightened. The cold wind between them ran beyond chill, and yet, he displayed no discomfort. The soiled linen he refused to wear had been tossed, without shame, over his disfigured forearm. ‘I don’t answer to insult. Or stoop to the sick curiosity that itches to pry into a man’s private history. You may ask of things that bear on such subjects only where royal will binds me. But I think, not tonight. Your appalling discourtesy owes nothing less than an honest and heart-felt apology.’
Regretful or not, Fionn Areth received no opportunity to redress his affront to Sidir. For three days, a salt-laden wind whipped the citadel, lashing in sudden downpours laced with the needling rattle of sleet. Such weather was untimely, Duke Bransian declared, pacing in angst from his draughty vantage atop of Watch Keep.
While Mearn’s companies swore over clogged drains and drenched thatch, the distress of the families in the baileys burdened down the benighted garrison. Their crowded misery rose to fresh heights, as men laboured to secure frayed canvas and tarps, and keep mothers with children in shelter. Outside the walls, thickened mist masked the view, a trial that fretted the ranks of attacker and defender alike.
Lysaer’s war host stood, mired. The last of the siege engines loomed, sunk in mud to the axles, while shivering squads laboured with shovels and boards to free the stuck wheels. The assault staged to launch at the dark of the moon was deferred for three wretched days. While the roped field pavilions shuddered and swayed, the readied war host languished. Men hunched, grumbling in their rust-stained cloaks and soaked gear.
They chafed their cold hands around spitting fire pits and endured the stink, as icy torrents sluiced through the horse pickets and brimmed the latrines.
Disease posed a threat that could not be ignored. Alestron’s citadel was not sited within the free wilds, where the surge of the flux lines ran strong enough to stabilize robust health. Stored food and crammed quarters bred vermin. Sickness could blunt the campaign, while sinking morale could attract storm-charged iyats, their pranks to cause accidents and misfortune.
Since the Light’s priesthood did not wish its faithful seeking remedies from Koriathain, the houses abandoned in Alestron’s lower citadel became a strategic necessity.
If their fair avatar might have preferred to attack after the return of his first Lord Commander, high seas off the Cildein stalled all inbound galleys. Quarrels rode the disparate contingents of garrison troops, until their hag-ridden captains sweated the hours and cursed, awaiting a break in the weather.
And the day came, when the shrouding mist lifted.
The sharp winds backed and changed, shredding the cloud cover to racing scud, then tatters. Sunlight sheared like spilled brass through the rifts, and the puddles steamed and dried to pocked dirt. The last scaling towers nosed up to the wall, with the furtive squads of Mearn’s saboteurs forced to dash in last-minute retreat. They left the lower town emptied behind them; bolted at a breathless, single-file sprint across the span bridge at the Wyntok Gate. Once the stragglers crossed, a distant s’Brydion cousin, and three older veterans with war injuries removed the board treads that planked the stone gap. They oiled the steep cobbles and unshackled the massive chains that secured the narrow, wood causeway. A sparkling flash, their mirror-sent signal leaped across the rock chasm that funnelled the tidal race.
The duty watch at the Mathiell Gate returned a horn blast in salute. The traditional flourish, repeated three times, that denoted full honours for heroes.
Then dreadful, uneasy quiet descended, filled by the croaks of the wheeling ravens, and the rattle of chain, as the drum winches were turned to draw in the span bridge. More men dismantled the cross-links that supported the board-walk. When its length wrapped the drum, and the slender thread of the stay-chain was left rocking over the chasm, the stalwart volunteers at the Wyntok Gate sawed the anchor pin at the stanchion.
The chain fell with a mournful whistle of air; splashed into the white flood in the channel under the cliff.
The town was cut off from the ancient keeps that crowned the island promontory. Four men, now alone, made the last preparations: lowered the grilles and barred the armoured gates at the Wyntok gap. A rushed word of parting, a wrist shake for luck: split into pairs, they retired atop the flanking towers to stare down the face of death.
For the mournful clang of the steel grilles that secured the Mathiell towers was no longer the only sound of men’s industry. Above the cutting rush of the wind, the war-drums of the Alliance infantry boomed out the rhythm to march. The din rolled upslope, shattering echoes off the deserted house-fronts. A roar like surf answered: shouts from poised ranks, shaved by the throaty bray of bronze horns to signal the fleet in the estuary. More trumpets blared. The quavering note hung on the tissue of air, until a bass roar welled up from beneath: a crescendo wrung from the throats of tens of thousands of armoured men, as a thin line of gold creased the sky.
Lysaer engaged the Light’s signal, calling his front-line officers to engage the advance.
The seething blocks of troops charged in step. No arrows sleeted to meet them; no burning wads of oil-soaked rags, bound over rocks hurled from mangonels. The arbalests of the attackers spoke first, launching the grapples with their unreeling tails of rope. The positioned siege towers shuddered beneath their layers of soaked hide, and lowered their wooden traps. Hobnailed wood clanged and bit glass-studded stone; snagged and lodged fast, while the yelling, steel figures streamed forth in storming assault. They poured over the unmanned, outer battlements. From the heights’ vantage, they came on, a teeming wave flecked with glittering steel, and the stainless flash of white surcoats.
The land-based attack on Alestron’s defences began as a triumph, unopposed by a murmur of aggressive response from her s’Brydion defenders.
Autumn 5671
Vantages
As the ram manned by the Alliance attackers reduces the triple gate of Alestron’s outer wall to burst wreckage, a Sorcerer in the form of a golden eagle turns from its circling flight and wings steadily southward …
Sequestered in Selkwood, and recovering mazed wits from the healing bestowed by the Paravian presence, Arithon traces the left scar from the light-bolt that subjected him to Desh-thiere’s curse; and awareness brings thought, that the mark stayed untouched to remind of the horrors of suborning enslavement, an experience he must bear throughout life …
In port at Vhalzein to off-load the prized wines from Carithwyr, and accept a shipment of lacquer furnishings bound in trade for the silk guild in Atchaz, Captain Feylind of the merchant brig, Evenstar, first hears of Lysaer s’Ilessid’s whirlwind campaign to destroy the s’Brydion seat at Alestron …
Autumn 5671
VI.
Counterstrokes
The eagle who was the live construct of a Sorcerer soared over the plain of Orvandir. Each flap of broad wings engaged powerful spellcraft that shifted both air and earth. Gliding on thermals, the bird passed over the town of Six Towers. His flight flickered a shadow across the beaten track of the trade-road, where the creeping industry of commerce goaded the caravans southbound towards Atchaz.
He skimmed by that town’s baked, saffron walls, then the angular sprawl of its compounds and silk sheds to a hiss of knifed wind, parted by razor-edged primaries. The eagle banked into a lazy circle. His lofty presence scattered the mayor’s outbound messenger pigeons into fluttering panic, before his yellow beak turned to the east. His course bent to follow the watercourse that gleamed like kinked ribbon, and whose stepped, silver waterfalls snagged the shaded channel of the River Lienriel, which crossed into the free wilds of Alland.
The raised wardings of the Paravian marker stones acknowledged the eagle’s request. His presence crossed their ranging protections and ignited a brief shimmer of golden light. The display passed unseen by the party of scouts hunting for game on the river-bank. Unchallenged, the avian predator swooped inside the guarded borders of Selkwood.
His strafing descent set him down in a clearing, a stone’s throw from the secluded encampment surrounding Lord Erlien’s lodge tent. There, the black-haired subject he sought did not fail to mark the intrusion.
Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn laid down the strap leather his lock-stitches were fashioning into a shoulder sling for Alithiel’s scabbard. ‘You don’t need to perch in a tree to intimidate. Why not converse from the ground? Let Kyrialt adjust to unannounced harbingers without thinking I talk to myself for no reason.’
To the liegeman, whose scout’s instincts were already ruffled, and whose hand had snapped to his sword-hilt, Arithon explained, ‘The day Davien alighted upon the Evenstar’s taffrail, his surprise visit stunned the wits out of Feylind’s deck-hands.’
That statement as warning, the eagle unfolded its majestic wing-span and glided down from the limb overhead.
Unsmiling, Arithon watched the descent, still musing in piquant after-thought. ‘You haven’t come here to recoup your loaned cloak?’
‘Which won’t be found where Feylind’s ship’s steward last stored it!’ came the acerbic reply. ‘You are criminally careless with gifts, Teir’s’Ffalenn.’
What alighted was no longer a bird, but two-legged. The Sorcerer’s trim height wore a tailored jerkin and hose, flame-coloured in orange and russet. He had a narrow, intelligent face, with greying, fox hair tumbled over straight shoulders. One tapered hand bore a citrine ring, and the boots fitted over his elegant calves were cuffed in costly black lynx. His striking mantle was loomed from jet wool, bordered with chased-silver bosses and gleaming embroidery: unmistakably
the same garment just mentioned to open a sparring exchange.
‘You wanted news?’ Davien the Betrayer provoked. ‘Your siege has begun, at Alestron.’
Unlike Kyrialt, blanched by startled shock, the Sorcerer regarded the crown prince before him with avid, dark eyes and flushed interest.
‘My siege?’ Arithon’s lifted eyebrows shrugged off that hurled challenge. Seated with what had been cross-legged indolence, he showed no concern, despite the shadow his visitor cast over him.
Kyrialt stayed on guarded edge, helpless to warn off a maverick Sorcerer whose unsavoury reputation and long exile had done nothing to reconcile a past fraught with murderous acts.
Neither was Arithon back in trim form, since return from his trial in the King’s Grove. Ten days after his unshielded encounter, the mark of Paravian presence rode him still. A haunting, near sorrow, distanced his manner – as though yearning change left his spirit bereft. Former high kings had wasted and died of such loss. The histories recounted their trials: the searing experience of an unworldly grace that could not be retained, or reconciled. Yet where other crown forebears had languished from that relentless, invisible wounding, this s’Ffalenn prince fought his way back. As the after-shock of tranced vision and dreams brought intervals of silenced weeping, he turned the adamance of initiate discipline to rebuild his shocked equilibrium.
For this morning’s fresh onslaught, to Kyrialt’s relief, the royal wits seemed resharpened.
‘What tedious news can you bring, if Alestron’s inner citadel is secure?’ Arithon pressed the rogue Sorcerer. ‘More to the point, I’d planned to call you. But not within the next fortnight, and only concerning a favour to balance the uncivilized service I was just asked to render.’