“That’s mine!’ Brenn protested weakly, but he did not resist. Haim barely stifled an urge to knock him on his ass.
Aelfric turned to the Blackboots mercenary. “Let me guess. The northern camps have been shot to hell and Walcox is surrounded by archers. The town is on fire, I can see that.” The fire in Walcox had now grown so large that the men could see each other clearly in its fitful glow, even beneath the cover of the mantlet.
“Aye, that’s so.”
“All of the cavalry is gone and so is the heavy plate. The only gate not being covered by their bowmen is the south gate, because we’re keeping that clear. Sort of, anyway. So the only way for the five or six thousand people in Walcox to keep from burning with their town is through the south gate, and once they’re through there the only place for them to go is into the Whitewood.”
“And the only way into the Whitewood is through this fort.” Haim concluded.
“It’s not a fort, it’s a latrine.” Blacwin O’Galt said automatically.
“You see my problem, Blackboot?” He looked at the mercenary. He was pleased to see that the man was wearing chainmail and a helmet, and had had the presence of mind to keep hold of both his shield and his broadsword as well. “We can barely hold as many people as we have. Luckily when we were digging out this latrine we piled the diggings in a line toward the woods, and we were fortunate enough to site it as close to the woods as we could get.”
“Luckily my arse.” Said Terrick Kalliner in his sniveling way, running his hand through his sparse hair. “It was the Privy Lord planned it all out.”
“Shut up, Kalliner.” Helyas O’Zoric and Blacwin Woodwright said in unison. “Although it is true.” Helyas added after a moment.
On the third floor of the Dashing Snake, in a luxurious apartment that had been furnished at great expense by the innkeeper with the lower nobility in mind, the Duke of Dunwater awoke to the sound of furious knocking at his door. Annoyed, he rose from his bed and crossed the room, jerking the door open to find his body servant Edwell standing. For a moment the man dared to meet his eye, but half a second later he fell to his knees and bowed deeply. “What is the meaning of this?” The Duke demanded angrily. “I was sleeping.”
“Your pardon, Your Grace.” Edwell said fearfully, plainly more frightened of the Duke than he was of whatever terror had sent him to dare the door. “The town is under attack. The houses are burning.”
Duke Prosk D’Tarman’s mouth twisted sourly, and he walked to one of the shuttered windows of this third-rate inn and opened it. His window was sited just a few ells lower than the height of Walcox’ watchtower, and he had a good view of the western side of town. He could see that several houses were burning and that the bodies of a few peasants and lowborn soldiers lay in the streets, amid a milling crowd of rabble and sellswords.
“Assemble the household guard.” He commanded, and Edwell sprang to obey, thumping down the stairs in an unseemly panic. He could hear the man yelling like a frightened goose at every turning of the stairs. Calmly the Duke took his steel breastplate, embossed with the red skull with the white star eyes of his house and the greaves from their stand and put them on. He stepped into his ornately tooled black leather boots and strapped on his leg armor, then he took a moment to select a decent cloak. He was slightly annoyed that he’d sent his panicked manservant away when he had to pack his own purse, but he did so patiently, making sure that he had a good supply of gold and his toiletries.
By the time he left his room and went downstairs to the common room, and indeed it was so common as to be disgusting, it was empty except for half a dozen of his men, armed and armored as he was. An unfinished game of tiles lay scattered about one of the tables. The unarmed Edwell stood trembling among them. All bowed and took a knee when he stepped off of the lowest step. “Where is the innkeeper?” He demanded.
“Gone, Your Grace.” Bishop Weymort replied. “Half the town is fled, Your Grace.” When Bellis Weymort had first come to Dunwater he had needed a great deal of instruction in how to properly address the Duke, for the Bishop had taken some fool notion that they were of equal social rank, despite the fact that Bellis was merely a Weymort. The Weymorts and Weymores may have been the first family in Flana, but the D’Cadmouths were the first family everywhere, and Prosk D’Tarman was a D’Cadmouth. It was an accident of fate that had named him D’Tarman, and truthfully, had his father Frask D’Cadmouth not been found unsuitable for the crown, it was Prosk who should have been king. Only when the Duke had threatened to have Weymort flogged had he learned to show proper respect. Now he bowed and refused to lift his face, as was proper.
“You may stand.” The Duke told his men. “What of the town’s defenses? Are they holding?”
“No, You Grace.” Said his captain. “The town watch is fled. The mercenaries is fled and the muster’s been shot to He … shot to pieces, You Grace.”
The Duke tolerated Sir Charth’s illiteracy because the man would do as he was told without asking why, no matter what he was told to do. Charth had butchered children and hanged girls at the duke’s insistence, and never questioned once. Actually, the duke suspected the man enjoyed the things he’d done.
“Gather what you can of our people, Edwell.” He ordered, and the slender servant leaped to obey, bowing twice before leaving through the inn’s front door.
“Charth, I wish to leave. Where can we go?”
“You Grace, the north gate’s busted and covered by archers, same as the east and west gates. Only way to get out of town is the south gate. People says there’s a mercenary band that’s helping people escape that way.”
“I am not escaping.” The Duke corrected the captain icily. “I am leaving. No Aulig rabble will make me run.”
“Of course, You Grace.” Poor Charth tried to choose his words carefully, but he hadn’t been selected for his rhetorical abilities. “What I means is that we can leave by the south gate and we can leave into the woods. If we leave to the king’s road we can leave south and hopefully not get shot to pieces by them damned Auligs.”
“Make it so, Charth.” He stopped to pour himself a glass of wine. “How soon must we depart?”
“The sooner we departs the better, You Grace.” Charth replied. “The fuc … the flaming town is on fire. We needs to depart and leave. Now, You Grace.” He amended awkwardly.
Edwell burst in the door a few seconds before Duke D’Tarman finished his wine. He was plainly in a panic to tell the Duke something, but Charth signaled him to hold his tongue until the Duke was ready to hear it.
The Duke finished his wine. He was tempted to pour himself another glass just to torment his body servant, but he decided to be merciful. “Yes, Edwell?”
“Your pardon, Your Grace, but I’ve gathered all of our men I could find. Perhaps fifty armsmen. They await your pleasure.” Edwell’s shirt was torn and he stank of wood smoke and death. He appeared to be bleeding slightly from the area of his collarbone.
“Let us go, then.” The Duke commanded, and his bodyguard formed quickly around him. When they walked into the streets of Walcox, the Duke saw that nearly half of the buildings of Walcox were now on fire. Many more bodies lay scattered in the street, and arrows were raining down in periodic clusters, like gusts of spring rain. “Your shield, Charth.” The Duke held out his hand expectantly. Reluctantly his captain handed over his shield and the Duke lofted it over his head like an umbrella. Every few minutes an arrow would bounce off it and tumble into the street. His men stayed in strict formation while they marched, even though some few fell when lucky arrows found them.
They began to walk toward the south gate. Charth strode in front, shouting. “Make way for the Duke of Dunwater! Make way or we will cut you down, you filth!” He had his sword out and was menacing the large crowd that had gathered there.
“Bugger your Duke!” Shouted a red-faced freeman from a few paces away. “He needs to wait his turn like everyone else!”
“Kill that man.” The Duke
ordered, and two of his guardsmen leaped to obey, grabbing the offender, who tried to flee too late, stabbing him repeatedly, then leaving his bloodsoaked body on the ground. Some peasant woman screamed, like they always did.
“Make way, damn you!” Charth shouted again, and the crowd parted, staring with cold eyes at Dunwater’s Duke. Two large mercenaries in the ridiculous orange and cream livery of Arker’s Hammers had seen everything, and they helpfully moved the crowd out of the way by thrusting their shields into the bodies around them. They seemed to be in charge of proceedings at the gate.
“Everyone get out of the way for his majesty!” One of them shouted. “Get out of the way! He just kilt a man who got in his way, give him his turn!”
The other mercenary turned to the Duke’s party and bowed ridiculously, his arms nearly touching the ground. “Begging your pardon, your Lordliness.” He declared in a pompous voice. “This here gate is open and your party may proceed.” He held an arm extended toward the open gate. “You lot!” He shouted at the men, women and children who had been waiting for their chance to brave the gauntlet of arrows and leave the town. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to bow for the Duke of Dunwater? Everbody take a knee!”
Staring at the Duke with eyes full of hatred, the people at the gate went to one knee. Some of them gestured invitingly toward the open gate. They didn’t have the manners to lower their eyes, but what could one expect from Northcraven scum?
After helping to direct the Duke and his royal escorts toward the gate, Busker O’Hiam whispered in Gorlim’s ear. “We need a shield wall for this bunch?”
Gorlim tugged absently at his tabard. The hammer had gone awry, so he straightened it and favored the Duke with a smile. When the Duke nodded down his nose and turned away he replied in the same whisper. “He don’t need a bloody shield wall, Busker. He’s the Duke of Dunwater. His lordly powers will protect him.”
The black lacquered armor worn by the Duke’s party made them difficult targets in the shadow of the gate, so the Auligs who had gathered at a distance to harry the people who dared that fearful passage did not at first see them. It was not until the entire party had assembled on the bridge and begun walking toward the shelter of the wagons that the iron-tipped arrows began to fly.
“Run, you fools! Hell’s wrong with you?” A voice came from the wagons ahead. Duke Prosk D’Tarman, who should have been king D’Cadmouth, stood still, amazed that anyone would dare address him so, then he looked about in disbelief while half of his men broke discipline and lurched into a stumbling run toward the wagons and half of them threw up a belated shield wall in an attempt to protect him. Men were falling and screaming and dying all around him, and he knew with sudden certainty that he was not going to make it to the protection of the wagons. He turned back toward Walcox just as the gate slammed shut in his face. The men forming his shield wall began falling around him.
“Open the gate, you rabble!” He demanded.
Gorlim heard him screaming from the other side of the gate. They weren’t much in the way of last words, but the Duke wasn’t much of a man, he figured. He looked around and saw a number of grimly satisfied smiles on the faces of those waiting. “All right, next group gets a shield wall, courtesy of the Hammers of Arker. Who’s it gonna be?”
Through the night the stream of refugees continued, coming in bunches of as many as a hundred at a time. When they came to the Privy Fort, as everyone had taken to calling it, each group balked at leaving its protection and going into the Whitewood Forest, but one by one they all eventually did as Aelfric and the Blackhill Gang ordered. Haim and two fyrdes of spearmen had gone with the same bunch Fyrdman Brenn had come into the Privy Fort with, and Lio willing they had set up a defensible camp in the Whitewood.
When the last Mortentian bowmen gave up on defending the northern side of Walcox Aelfric’s group gained a respite of nearly three hours. Refugees told him that the Auligs were now in the mercenary camp, so engaged in looting the bodies there that they ignored the occasional arrow that came from the walls. Meanwhile every building in Walcox had either burned to the ground or was on fire, and Auligs had been seen even in the town’s streets, looting and killing any survivors they found hiding in cellars or wandering dazed in the streets.
The Hammers of Arker who had managed the exodus through the south gate came last, along with a few stout men who had refused to abandon that post until the very last refugee could be sent through it.
A Hammer named Gorlim complimented Aelfric on his construction of the Privy Fort, but the Red Tiger archers knew that they would soon have to abandon it to take their chances in the forest. The corridor between the city and the fort had become safer as the night wore on, for the bodies of so many dead lay along it that it was difficult for the Auligs to tell if they were shooting the living or the dead.
By the time the eastern sky began to glow with the promise of another day the wagons had been abandoned, the exhausted men defending them grabbing what they could carry of provisions and running to the Privy Fort. The sun was cresting the horizon when the last of the Red Tigers, Aelfric among them, stumbled wearily beneath the eaves of the forest. Haim was waiting for him, as were the surviving members of his fyrde.
Kandin O’Northcraven was dead, shot down less than three paces from the Privy Fort, as were Kandros O’Bolter and Helyas O’Zoric, who died when they went out to rescue a group of refugees who had walked off of the path between the wagons and the Privy Fort. Fyrdman Warin Bribiker, whom Aelfric kept expecting to find among those leaving Walcox, never showed up. Aelfric assumed he died in town, although he never found out.
Only four men actually died within the Privy Fort itself, two from wounds they had received outside of its protection and two from Aulig arrows that found their marks more through luck than any skill. More than two hundred and fifty Red Tigers survived the battle, although this was hard to measure, for once they were in the forest more than half of the surviving mercenaries threw off their tabards and sought to join the band commanded by the Privy Lord, as they all now called him.
Chapter 43: East Forest, Five Leagues South of Nevermind
Night had fallen, and a thick blanket of clouds hid the sky, so that the rising moon was no more than a suggestion of light painted on a background of blackness. Beneath the thick canopy of the East Forest it was darker still, and beyond the ring of the small fire even the Brizaki’s night eyes showed them nothing. Five nearly still forms lay on their backs around the fire, cleverly sited in a small dell so that its flame could be seen no more than a few paces away. It was a smokeless fire, not that it mattered. Not even a deer could have known they were there, not unless it stumbled right across them. Six tired horses occasionally whickered from their place by the fire.
The Brizaki were not sleeping. The events of the previous day had left them wary and full of the knowledge that they were far from home, in a land that was as dangerous to them as any jungle in the Wild Lands. Jahaksi eyed Jhumar Ghaz across the flames, looking as nonplussed and impassive as always, but with his sword close at hand.
“You remember the long defeat?” He asked, a propos of nothing.
“Remember it? By Soiranee’s beautiful left tit, Jahaksi. What makes you want to bring that up?” Jhumar Ghaz sounded only slightly irritated. He knew his commander well enough to know that some deep thought lay behind the question.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking? A bad habit.” Jhumar’s voice was jocular. “Balls of seven devils, when were you ever not thinking? Even then you always had your head in a book or a scroll, not that it did us any good.”
“I was only called to the war for the Great Victory.” Akarn Jav spoke up from his place beside Jhumar.
Jhumar snorted derisively while Jahaksi chuckled. “Great Victory? There wasn’t any victory in that war, man.”
“No.” Jahaksi added. “No, there was no victory in the War of the Six Armies.”
“Six?” Jhumar scoffed. “I only rememb
er three. There was us, those gigantic Skundalhese spearmen and the Fucking White Horse. Jahaksi saved my life at least fifteen times during that war, the biggest, most colossal, most unbelievable clusterfuck in the history of the Empire, Akarn. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“You saved my life, too, Jhumar.” Jahaksi’s voice was humble.
“Only the one time, Jahaksi. Not that I was keeping count.” Replied Jhumar.
“I thought we won that war.” Baklam said sleepily.
“Won? Nobody who was there thought we won, I assure you. Mercy, how they harried us. First all our wizards went lunatic, that was what broke us. Then came the Fucking White Horse.” Jhumar seemed to think the three words were a single title. “The Fucking White Horse came after us everywhere we went. Giant sand devils out of Araquesh with their strength bows and their long spears and those damned scimitars. They smashed us on the Telderin Plain, ripped us to pieces on the Gillean Peninsula, harried us across the Hulmini Peninsula and even found us in the Wierdwood. Whenever the Fucking White Horse ran into us on terrain we could hold against cavalry, here came the Skundalhese. Giant black men out of Skundallah who fought us in half plate with ten foot spears. They could throw the spears nearly as far as a bowman can shoot.” When Tathaga grunted, Jhumar turned his gaze on him. “I’m not kidding. They could track like hounds, break a shield wall with their bodies and those spears had blades on them like short swords.
“Five armies? They needed only the two.”
“But we beat them in the end.” Akarn observed.
“Beat them my mother’s ass.” Jhumar laughed. “Did you see the Fucking White Horse at the Great Victory, Akarn? Did you see the Skundalhese? We beat a bunch of Tolrissan knights who didn’t have the sense not to charge fortified positions and a bunch of so-called legions of Hulmini who didn’t understand anything about tactics. Oh, and a bunch of Vheradoran rebels who ran at the first flight of arrows.”
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 45