The Silver Crown

by Joel Rosenberg

  "That won't do it, not all by itself. You'll need somebody extremely talented—ahem!—riding ahead, doing recon and watcher removal."

  "Can we do it?"

  "Maybe." Slovotsky considered it for a moment. "They've set out watchers along the Prince's Road, so the obvious route is out. I'm sure that they've also got some in the forest, but not as many. Besides, the visibility is poor; we'll be able to slip by a lot. If you're willing to go the forest route, I'll try to clear the way, about half a day ahead. But I can't do it by myself. Not and have a half-decent chance of getting all the watchmen."

  "That's the problem. If one reports back we're in trouble."

  "It's worse than that. Think it through, Karl: If one of them doesn't report back on time, that's a warning. But that kind of warning should move slowly; we can probably outrun it." He paused, closing his eyes. "Ten. Give me Peill and nine others who can move quietly, all of us with the fastest horses available. Crossbows and longbows—if we need to use guns, then we've already blown it."

  "Any chance of pulling it off?"

  "Fifty-fifty. If Aveneer's people are any good. Do I get my choice of backup?"

  "Talk to Frandred, but he'll want to clear any selections with Aveneer."

  "Fine. How about Tennetty?"

  "No." Karl shook his head. "She's my second."

  "You'll trust her with your back?"

  "Looks like it, no?"

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Siege

  He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That puts it not unto the touch To win or lose it all.

  —James Graham

  Marquess of Montrose

  During peacetime, a trip from Biemestren to Furnael Keep would have been a slow, pleasant five-day ride along the Prince's Road, their nights spent in the inns scattered along the road, each inn an easy day's ride from the next. They would have slept on fluffy down mattresses in dry, airy sleeping rooms, taking their meals at the common table along with merchants and and other travelers.

  But this wasn't a normal time. None of the inns were open; trade along the Prince's Road was suspended for the duration of the war.

  They had to try to avoid being spotted. So they traveled at night, eating cold meals when they camped at daybreak. Daytime was for sleeping, the night for traveling, carefully, quietly, trusting to Walter Slovotsky and his scouts to kill or capture any watchers, to ride back to warn of any concentration of troops, or to tie white cloths at eye level on the proper side of forks in the paths, blazing the trail in the only way that they could follow at night.

  It took a full ten days to get from the outskirts of Biemestren to where the forest broke on cleared farmland in barony Furnael. Ten days of interrupted sleep during the day, uninterrupted hours of plodding on horseback at night.

  * * *

  In the distance, the battered keep rose above the morning fog. From his hiding place just within the tree line, Karl could see the charred remnants of a siege tower against the south wall, the stone near it blackened, some merlons cracked, others broken and tumbled to the ground below.

  The keep was battered, yes, but not broken. Several of Furnael's soldiers stood watch on the battlements, occasionally peering out an embrasure to try a chancy crossbow shot at one of the Holts below.

  Slovotsky had been right: The Holts were tunneling, and that meant trouble.

  Karl swore softly, then stopped himself. It could have been worse. There were basically four ways for the Holtish to lay siege to the castle. First, they could just try to starve the defenders out. That would be a long and drawn-out process, one that the Holts had undoubtedly discarded immediately.

  Thank goodness for small blessings. That would have been most dangerous for Karl and his people; if the Holts were taking a passive view about attacking the keep, they would likely be ready to repel a relieving force.

  The Holts' second option was to try getting over the walls, either by siege towers, ladders, climbing ropes, or some combination. The charred remnants of one siege tower showed that they had tried that, and it had failed; the lack of further tower or ladder construction suggested that the Holts had abandoned that idea.

  The third possibility was for the Holts to try to break the walls of the castle or force the gate. They could do it with rams, or with siege engines like catapults and onagers.

  Karl had been hoping that the Holts had switched to that. It would be the easiest technique for Karl to counter; a quick attack on the siege engines would leave them in flames.

  But the Holts had chosen the fourth method: They were mining, attempting either to break into the keep at a point which they hoped would be a surprise, or simply to undermine the walls and collapse them.

  The chained workers were likely captured Furnael slaves or freefarmers, now forced to work for the Holtish, which explained why the watchmen on the walls didn't simply fire their bows at the workers bringing wheelbarrows loaded with rocks and dirt from the tunnels.

  Doesn't look good, and that's a fact.

  Karl worked himself back from the tree line and made his way into the woods to the clearing where Walter, his outriders, and Tennetty stood waiting with their horses.

  The problem was one of coordination. Between Karl's people and Furnael's warriors, they probably had force enough to disperse the Holts, despite the fact that the Holts probably had them outmanned. Home guns were more accurate than slaver blunderbusses, and a score of sharpshooters on the keep's ramparts would quickly make the notion of an active siege unattractive. Combined with a couple hundred mounted troops that could strike anytime, anywhere, the Furnael/Home forces should present a strong enough threat to scare the Holts off, or kill them all, if necessary. But in order for it to work, the keep's defenders would have to know that they had allies out here, and Furnael—or whoever was commanding the defenders, if he was dead—would have to agree to cooperate, to coordinate.

  And even so, it would be bloody. "I read something once, something that concluded two armies of roughly equal strength meeting is a recipe for disaster," Karl said. "You know where that comes from?"

  "Sorry," Walter Slovotsky said. "Sounds familiar, though." He raised an eyebrow. "You've got something better in mind?"

  "Yup. Two things. First, we have to do some damage to the Holts, to demonstrate our credibility. Second, we've got to get someone close to the wall with a voice and a note—and that calls for a major diversion."

  "So? You're going to try something tricky. Maybe a combination ambush and bluff?"

  Karl smiled. "Almost right. A combination feint, decoy, ambush, and double bluff." He turned to Tennetty. "You willing to take a few chances?"

  She nodded. "As many as you are, Karl Cullinane."

  Good, he thought, here's where you can die to settle your score for Chak. You deserve—

  He caught himself. No, that wasn't right. There was enough evil in the world, more than enough. There was no need to add to it by betraying one of his own people.

  "Tennetty," he said, "ride back and tell Aveneer to set out guards with crossbows, then bed everybody down until dusk. I'll want him to bring his people forward then. Dig up eight volunteers who don't mind trying something risky, and bring them back with you at dusk—oh, and bring Erek, too."

  "Make that seven volunteers, Tennetty," Slovotsky said. "I haven't volunteered for a long time; I want to make sure I remember how."

  "No." Karl shook his head. "Before this is over, you're going to remember why it's been so long. Besides, I've got something else for you. Get moving, Tennetty. Remember, it's eight volunteers, with their horses."

  Slovotsky stared into his face. "What are you up to, Karl? Am I supposed to sneak through the Holts' camp while the fight is going on, or is it something even more idiotic?"

  "How did you guess?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Go back into the woods and get some sleep. You're going to need it."

  * * *

  A cool night breeze whispered through the branches
, caressed his face.

  The night was clear and almost cloudless. Which was just as well, for once; rain would make that it anywhere from difficult to impossible for Karl's people to reload.

  He patted at Stick's neck, then reached across to check the short horn bow lashed to his saddle horn, and the quiver, crammed full of short arrows, that was stuck tightly in his rifle boot. There would be no guns, not for the first rush. Guns would announce who they were, and that had to be avoided as long as possible.

  He swore, uncomfortable in the cold steel breastplate and helmet, but there wasn't a remedy for that, not this time. This was one time that putting up with his armor's weight was going to be a necessity, even if the damn breastplate and its underlying padding did seem to weigh half a ton. It would deflect anything but an unlucky point-blank shot, and it was more than likely that he'd need that luck and that breastplate before too long.

  He looked over at Tennetty. "Think we've given Slovotsky enough time?" It would take Walter a while to work his way close enough to the keep to take advantage of the diversion.

  She nodded.

  "Then let's do it." He hoisted himself to the saddle, then leaned forward and reached down to hitch at his greaves. The damn armor kept slipping.

  He made sure that his sword was firmly seated in its scabbard, although he hoped that he wouldn't actually have to use it on this run. If Karl ended up in sword range of any of the Holts, that would mean that everything had fallen apart. Still, he'd rather have it and not use it than the other way around.

  At his right, Tennetty and the eight others were already mounted, their horses snorting and pawing the ground in impatience. No guns for them, either; they carried only crossbows and bolts, except for Bonard, who had a horn bow like Karl's.

  Aveneer signaled for Erek and Frandred to raise their lamps; the two mounted them on the trees on either side of the path, the baffles barely letting traces of light peep through.

  "Let's go," Karl whispered, digging in his heels and ducking his head as Stick stepped over the stone fence and into the fallow field, the others following.

  He spurred the horse into a canter, and then a trot.

  * * *

  There were things about This Side that still amazed Karl, even after all this time. The number of soldiers around the keep, for one. Back at school, there had been dorms with more people than the thousand or so laying siege to Furnael's keep.

  It seemed strange that something as impressive-sounding as a siege was capable of being carried out by only a thousand or so soldiers. Maybe it really shouldn't have; hell, Richard Lionheart's Crusade expedition hadn't numbered more than eight thousand, and that was a force that had been raised throughout all of England. Maybe it was reasonable that the whole Holtun–Bieme war was being fought by just a few tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

  But it still looked funny.

  The Holtish commander had divided his force of a thousand men into four groups, each one camped just out of bowshot of one of the four walls of the keep.

  They hadn't been divided equally, of course. That would have been foolish. The largest group, slightly more than a third of the Holtish force, was camped opposite the keep's main gate. Another two hundred and fifty were planted across from the minor gate, the two remaining groups of about a hundred and fifty each camped opposite the remaining two walls.

  It was an intelligent arrangement, one that prevented the keep's defenders from safely attempting any sort of horseback smash-and-retreat sortie; in the time that it would have taken Furnael's forces to raise even the small portcullis, both of the smaller Holtish forces could have joined the attackers at the rear gate and used the opportunity to force an entry.

  Furnael and his people were sealed in, tight.

  Karl rode slowly across the fallow field toward the main force of the Holts, the others strung out to his left.

  Off in the distance, he could barely see the main gate of the keep, its iron portcullis visible against the flickering flames of a watchfire inside the keep. Karl had ridden through that gate years before; now, he hoped that Slovotsky had worked close enough to it to alert those inside when the time was right.

  He transferred the reins to his teeth and unlashed his bow, nocking an arrow.

  The Holts clearly weren't ready for an attack from outside; Karl had closed to within two hundred yards of the guards' fire when a soldier leaped to his feet and shouted a warning into the night.

  "Do it," Karl said, drawing back the arrow to its steel head, then sending it whistling off into the night. Karl was an indifferent shot with a shortbow or longbow; no sense in trying for an accuracy that he didn't have, not from Stick's pitching back.

  He drew another arrow and fired it at a forty-five-degree angle, aiming as best he could for the center of the encampment.

  Tennetty steadied her crossbow and pulled the trigger. A Holtish soldier screamed and grabbed at the bolt in his thigh, then fell forward.

  "Aim higher, dammit!" Karl yelled. "This isn't the time to play sharpshooter." A low shot would just plow into the ground; a high one might find flesh deeper in the camp.

  "No closer, anyone," he said. The nearest of the Holts were at just about maximum effective range for the slaver rifles.

  He let another shaft fly, noting with surprise and pleasure that as the arrow fell it caught a Holtish soldier in the throat.

  Screams and shouts echoed through the camp. Karl unstrapped his lantern from his saddle and dashed it to the ground. Stick danced away from the flaring fire that marked his position, just in case any of the Holts had missed the point.

  As gunshots sounded from the camp, Karl quelled an urge to dive from the saddle. At this range, the enemy's guns were next to useless. They would have to mount up and give chase. Which was just fine.

  "Ready another volley." He nocked an arrow and waited for the crossbowmen to load their weapons. "Aim high, now, and . . . fire!"

  Nine bows went off in a volley, immediately rewarded by more cries and screams from the Holts.

  It had been only a few moments since the fight had started, but already a troop of a hundred, perhaps a hundred and twenty, soldiers were mounting up, preparing to repel the attack. Good. Both the size and the speed of the troop spoke well for the abilities of the Holtish commander, and Karl was counting on him to be good at his job.

  "Secure weapons and prepare to run," he called out, already tying down his own bow.

  One of Karl's horsemen started to bring his horse around.

  "Hold your position!" Karl snapped. "Run before I tell you to and I'll shoot you down myself."

  It was going to be tricky. They would have to draw the Holtish along with them, not letting them get close enough to do any damage, not outdistancing them altogether. About ten seconds, he thought. Nine. Eight. Seven.

  To hell with it. "Run for it!" He wheeled Stick about and galloped for the trees, the others following him.

  Their baffles now fully aside, the lanterns at the tree line beckoned to him; the path broke through the forest exactly halfway between the two. Stick galloped for the path, hooves throwing soft earth into the air as the stallion leaped over the low stone wall.

  It was fortunate that the path back into the forest was straight: Stick's hooves had trouble finding it; branches and brambles beat against Karl's helmet and face until he had to close his eyes tightly for fear of losing them. Behind him, the others crashed through into the forest.

  A signal rocket screamed into the sky; Karl opened his eyes to see it explode high above the trees in a shower of white-and-blue fire.

  Aveneer's basso cut through the night: "Fire!"

  Seventy rifles went off in a volley, their almost simultaneous whip-cracks sounding more like a sudden flurry of popcorn popping than anything else.

  Horses and men screamed.

  The path widened. Karl pulled Stick to a stop and dismounted from the horse's back, while Tennetty and the others galloped beyond him.

  "Secon
d section," Aveneer's basso boomed, somewhere off in the distance, "fire!"

  Again, the crack of seventy rifles firing in a volley sounded; Karl dashed back down the path.

  Aveneer's first section, the one that had fired the initial volley, advanced over the dark and bloody ground, their rifles now slung, using their swords and knives to administer the coup de grâce to wounded animals and humans alike. Of the hundred cavalrymen who had pursued Karl and his nine warriors, barely a dozen had survived unscathed, and those few were riding hell-for-leather back toward the main Holtish camp.

  Karl began stripping off his armor as Erek ran up with Karl's rifle, pistols, and a large leather pouch; he accepted Karl's breastplate, helmet, and greaves in return.

  "Message to Aveneer—deliver, wait for a response," Karl said. "Begins: No casualties on my team; Tennetty and others moving into position. Orders: Advance by section, volley fire and leapfrog. Send another runner back with Erek. Query: Any casualties? Ends. Go."

  The boy ran off.

  Karl primed his rifle's pan. Now we'll see if the third part works. The first part of his plan had worked like a a charm: A hundred Holts lay dead on the ground, and the Holtish were buzzing like bees. The second part had either succeeded or failed by now; either Slovotsky had or hadn't been able to take advantage of the distraction to get within throwing and shouting range of one of Furnael's warriors manning the ramparts of the keep.

  But the third part depended on just how good the Holtish commander was. When what had appeared to be a small Biemish raiding party had approached, his first response had been the conservative one of sending out an apparently overlarge troop of cavalry.

  But then, when the guns had gone off, his whole picture of what was going on would have, and should have, changed. As far as the commander had known, his side was the only one in this war that had guns—the only other force in the world with guns and powder was Karl Cullinane and his warriors—so he would identify Karl as his opponent. Or, perhaps, he would consider the possibility that his slaver allies had turned on him.

  Either way, it would be a whole new development. And what would a good commander do when confronted with an attacking force of indeterminate size?