“The duke of Elderest is the king now.” Fyella said patiently. “King Falante was killed by Auligs in the King’s Town, from what they were saying, and Limme is a princess now. They were going to try to get her to Nevermind and ship her home. They took Ivetta and Grissel with them, for she insisted, but they refused to move you. Their captain said that you and Kuljin were already dead men, but your bodies just hadn’t caught up yet. I overheard everything.”
“Why didn’t you go with them?”
“I didn’t want to.” She replied simply.
“How is Kuljin?”
“He lives still, but he’s still fighting the pox. I’d given up on you, to be honest. I’ve only stayed on to care for Kuljin, and to bury you when you finally died.”
Levin’s head was aching and his muscles felt as weak as water. “You may have to bury me yet.” He rasped. “I feel as if I’ve been run over by a bull.”
“I’m not digging any more graves.” Fyella said grimly. “I’m done with that. If you want to go and die on me now, it’s the ravens that will have you.”
“Then I guess I’d better not die.” He replied. “I’ll not feed ravens, they’ve done well enough already. Is there any food left?”
“I’ll fetch you some broth.”
When Kuljin came to himself it was the middle of the month of Merryis, and he had been either unconscious or delirius for seventeen days. The first thing he saw was an apparition that looked suspiciously like his friend Levin, but so scarred and disfigured that he wasn’t sure. This thing that looked like Levin wore an eyepatch on its left eye, a triangle of blue cloth that nestled on a bed of dense and pitted scar tissue that ran from its scalp to its neck, making the whole left side of its face look as if it had been burned in a fire.
When the thing spoke, it did not use Levin’s voice, but a raspy and ruined parody of a human voice, barely audible. “Good morning, Kuljin.” The thing said, but it had Levin’s form and Levin’s hands, so Kuljin ultimately decided that it must indeed be the man.
“Good morning.” Kuljin tried to say, but no sound came from his throat. Levin handed him a skin of water and he drank it. “Good morning.” He repeated, and this time it was his own voice he heard. “I feel like hell.”
Half of Levin’s face smiled. “You look like hell, too. Not that you were all that handsome to begin with.”
Normally Kuljin might have replied with a stab at Levin’s appearance, but he judged that was a wound still too fresh to reopen. “Who is left?” He said instead.
“Just you, me and Fyella.” Levin replied.
“Limme’s dead?” Kuljin gasped.
“Not dead, gone.” Levin replied. “Some of her father’s people found her and took her back to Mortentia proper. Apparently the bastard is the king now. Fyella hid out and took care of the two of us.”
“Fyella? You mean the mute girl?”
“Yes, although she’s a mute no more. And since she’s saved your life now, and mine too, probably you should speak kindly of her.”
“I want honesty, not kindness.” A girl’s voice said. “Just speak truth to me and I’ll be content.” Kuljin sat up and looked across the room. At first the girl’s form was quite fetching, but as her face came into the light he saw the same kind of scars that ravaged Levin’s face, if not so deep or so many. Catching his look, she looked back boldly, her brown eyes sharp in her ravaged face.
“You’re still beautiful, don’t worry.” She said. “You weren’t marked like we were.”
“Thank you for taking care of us.” Kuljin replied. “I am very grateful.”
“You should be.” Levin said in his strangely broken voice. “I was all for leaving you to the rats and bugs, but she wouldn’t let me.”
“Honesty, I said.” Fyella scolded. “You hovered at his bedside like an old mother.”
Kuljin looked up at Levin, who was looking away, embarrassed. “Thank you, my friend.” He said simply, grasping the Mortentian’s wrist. Levin merely nodded, a single tear hanging unshed in the eye that wasn’t blind.
Chapter 67: Aelfric in Redwater Town and Cthochi Lands, Early Kastanus
The first day after they left Maslit they made nearly eight leagues, which was a record for infantry, as far as Aelfric knew. The road was level and clear, and the scouts were all cavalry, which helped, but it was the men who did the marching, and eight leagues was a damned fine march. At the end of it they put up a sleeping fort, and again they set a record, building the thing from empty field and forest to walls up and tents pitched in just under three hours. Aelfric had never heard of an infantry army marching that fast, and he was proud of his men.
It helped that there were no Auligs abroad to hinder them, and Aelfric grew a little uneasy when he didn’t encounter them, for even on the road between Walcox and Maslit they had run into the occasional band of marauders. It was plain that the Earthspeaker had pulled them back or ordered them elsewhere, and Aelfric hoped they weren’t waiting on the other side of the Redwater. He wanted his fort on the Cthochi side up and defensible before it was attacked in force.
The eight leagues they had covered today meant only five to reach Redwater Town tomorrow, and even less if the entrance to the tunnel that lead under the river was where Tuchek said it was. Aelfric knew that the Cthochi were watching his progress from the other shore, for the speaking drums rattled through the night as his army moved steadily north. His plan for action tomorrow was a bold one, and depended on Redwater Town being under siege. He meant to make his army disappear.
Discipline was good, morale was high, and his men were eager to bring an offensive battle to the Cthochi, for so far the attacking had all been on the Aulig side. Reports of towns surrounded and burned had reached him from all across Northcraven, so often that they had become tedious. He had studied those reports carefully, and they told him a story of an opportunistic and fast moving enemy. The Aulig were quick to strike at poorly defended targets, but slow to break fortified ones, and many times Aelfric cursed the Mortentian policy of destroying the hundred kingdom castles. Everywhere Aelfric went he built fortified positions, and so far not one of them had been taken or even raided.
He knew that his luck wouldn’t last forever, for no commander won every battle, but he knew how to retreat in order and he knew when to cut his losses. As the leader of the smaller force, he always had to keep its preservation foremost in his mind, for if he lost big, he lost all. The Auligs could lose ten battles and still win the war, but Aelfric couldn’t afford to lose a single one. Eight leagues in a day and a fortification at the end of it! It meant that his army and the Earthspeaker’s lightly armed raiders were moving at the same speed, which took away any advantage in mobility the Auligs might once have had.
It also meant that if he beat them in a pitched battle he could pursue and destroy whatever force they had. Speed, terrain, armor, weapon combinations … he was slowly becoming a master of all of these things, and he no longer feared the Auligs. He respected them as first class individual fighters, but their armies? Not so much.
“It’s here.” Tuchek declared, walking his spotted gelding beside Aelfric’s gray. He pointed to a collection of boulders on a hillside. “Up in the rocks there. A series of wide steps going down, looking like the entrance to any kind of cave. At the bottom we will need torches.”
They were a league south of Redwater Town, and probably fifty-thousand of the Auligs were camped around it, ready to repel Aelfric’s attack. The Auligs had taken a page from Aelfric’s book, although they hadn’t read the whole page apparently, for they had fortified their camps in a haphazard fashion with pits and stakes driven into the ground to repel cavalry. They had not built any walls except for a corral of sorts in which they kept their few horses. Most of the Cthochi disdained cavalry, figuring that their feet were good enough and fast enough, and they preferred always to fight on foot.
Aelfric’s scouts had gotten within half a league of the Aulig camps, and a strange sort of miniature war had ensued, with the
Earthspeaker’s scouts trying to kill Aelfric’s and Aelfric’s trying to kill the Earthspeaker’s. The lancers had made the difference, sweeping protectively to cover his retreating scouts whenever the enemy bunched up enough to go after them, and the scout fyrdes had been able to obtain a fairly clear picture of the disposition of the Cthochi.
He could break the siege easily enough, he knew, for he had heavy armor and cavalry. Even if all the cavalry did was to prevent his infantry from being flanked, he knew his infantry was more than a match for the Cthochi foot, no matter how they had entrenched themselves. In addition, for some reason he could not fathom, Sir Celdemer had given him essentially complete command over the godsknights, and with six hundred fully armored knights properly deployed, even the Cthochi’s trenches and stakes wouldn’t stop him. He suspected they had pikes, but he doubted they knew how to form them up into proper schiltrons, and again, his archery fyrdes could handle them if they did.
But breaking the siege would be costly, and he didn’t have any men to spare. He’d picked up nearly a thousand raw and untrained spearmen and a few dozen experienced swordsmen from Maslit, swelling his army to eleven-thousand, nine-thousand of whom were fighting men. Breaking the siege of Redwater Town would cost him at least a thousand men, and he had no intention of using them in that manner when he didn’t have to. He showed Anbarius where he wanted tonight’s sleeping fort, and the man immediately objected.
“But Lord Aelfric, it’s not level ground. It’s covered in rocks and brush. To build the sleeping fort here will take twice the time, and there are stretches where we will have to be building the wall without proper support and without a dry moat.”
“I know Anbarius, but this is where it needs to be. I don’t want to go after the Cthochi where they are dug in, I want to force them to come after us, and I need a fortification here so I can fight them defensively.”
Anbarius pointed to a wide and level place less than half a league to the west. “What about there, Lord Aelfric? We could have a regular sleeping fort up in three hours there.”
Aelfric pointed at the hill. “It has to be here, and it has to go up right now.” He commanded, and the frustrated farmer began issuing orders. The fyrdmen began scrambling and the soldiers began cursing loudly, careless that Aelfric was listening.
Kerrick the Sword stood with his chieftains and the chieftain of the Faith Island Auligs upon a hill that was barely higher than the surrounding plain. He was standing at the center of his army, camped in a great half ring surrounding the stonecutter town called Redwater, and they were well dug in. He watched the scouts chase off the scouts of the Mortentians, and he laughed aloud. “They think to frighten us with cavalry charges.” He said. “That might have worked in the last war, but I no longer fear their horses.”
For days now the Cthochi had been drilling with pikes, and they were able to quickly form up into thick and well-disciplined boxes within the additional protection of wooden stakes driven into the ground. Cavalry would crash against these formations and die. His kilt-wearing warriors now also nearly all carried swords and round shields or spears, and they drilled with them, too. Kerrick was an innovator among the Cthochi, and he understood and respected the use of disciplined formations in ways that few other Cthochi did. He looked at Areido, the feather-and-leather clad chieftain of the Faith Island Auligs, and he saw a man who was past his time. Areido wanted to fight the Mortentians like the Sons of the Bear had, matching the valor of the individual Auligs against what he saw as Mortentian softness, but Kerrick knew that those methods would only lead to another slaughter.
Kerrick was wise enough to know when he faced a cunning and creative antagonist, and this one bore the same name as the man who had defeated the Earthspeaker at Maslit. Young or not, he was not going to underestimate Lord D’root. He waited for the words from his scouts. He did not have long to wait.
“They are building another fortress.” Stalksdeer told him. “Like the ones they have built each night. A fortress to sleep in.”
“We should prevent it, now that they are near.” Areido said. “We should not let them take a strong position.”
Kerrick shook his head. “They have come to relieve Redwater Town. They cannot do that unless they break the siege. This fortification of theirs will be strong. I have seen them. If they want to build a fort to sleep in, that’s fine, but in the morning we will still be camped here and they must still come against us. If they are building a night fort, it is for sleeping safe from raids, or it is bait for them to trap us. I will not throw men up against it uselessly, nor will I leave entrenched positions to face their horsemen on the march. We stay. In the morning we will still be here and they will still be there.”
No matter how much his fyrdman cursed him, Soolit couldn’t pick out boulders the size of horses, and he said so. It would take fifty miners to do it, he declared, and fortunately for him, he was not the only one complaining. The sleeping fort took ten hours to finish, and there were still incomplete sections when the men finally staggered and fell exhausted into their tents, hastily pitched on ground that was uneven and unfit for the task. Men with axes cut brush and cleared small trees long into the night, while tired horsemen ran patrols beneath a waxing yellow moon.
This fortification had the single advantage of being placed on fairly high ground, and no height overlooked it. This advantage and the cluster of boulders in the middle of it made up for any lack, in Aelfric’s estimation. In two days, his army would march again, but they would not be seen outside of the fort.
Celdemer’s knights were almost in open revolt. At Eskeriel’s suggestion, he had done away with nearly every advantage the nobles had insisted on in joining Aelfric’s army, and he had heard both openly and in second-hand gossip that his tenure as their commander might be soon coming to an end. When his most trusted aid de camp Sir Brant approached his tent near midnight, the final piece fell into place.
“I’ve come to warn you that the knights are speaking of having a council.” The young knight said. “There’s talk of forcing a vote to make you step down.”
Sir Celdemer jumped up from his chair as if stung. “What?” He demanded angrily. “They would dare? That’s outrageous after all of the things I’ve done to make them relevant to this campaign! You may tell any knights that say such things that if I am removed from command I will no longer be a godsknight! How dare they?”
Brant reassured his commander that the knights would be unlikely to take such action, but he was not so sure. Whenever Sir Rioman was not off with his Red Tiger fyrde, he was complaining loudly about his treatment at Sir Celdemer’s hands, and many of the senior knights were frustrated at being used to run simple patrols, as if they were mere lancers. Every man there objected to taking orders from the Privy Lord, and matters were coming to a head.
Sir Celdemer might very well be the best swordsman ever to wear the cornflower cape, but he was rapidly failing as a commander. Brant liked the man, even though he secretly suspected that Sir Celdemer was a boy-lover at heart, and he hated to see him fail. His corps had never before had the discipline that Sir Celdemer instilled. Perhaps Sir Celdemer’s threat to quit the godsknights would be enough to prevent their removing of him, but Sir Brant did not think so. Things had probably gone beyond that, and it was with a heavy heart that the young knight returned to his tent.
“I know it’s something new.” Haim was telling the men of his fyrde. “And I know we just built this sleeping fort on rocky ground, but it is high ground. I don’t want to hear any more griping, though. This is orders, and this is what we are doing. You should be grateful we aren’t marching.”
Despite his admonitions, the men were grumbling. At various times that morning, they had been sent beyond the walls of the sleeping fort to cut timber, and it was unsettling. They had built this sleeping fort on a hill, and according to Aelfric, it was an important hill, although Haim could not see why. From his point of view, it was too distant from Redwater Town, which they could see i
n the hazy distance lying down by the river, to do them any good. On the other hand, it was too damned close to the assembled armies of Cthochi lying in siege around that town.
Sending out foragers to look for timber seemed a waste of time and an unnecessary risk, for the sleeping fort was already built. It seemed his fyrde’s time would be better spent fortifying the existing fort. They had slept last night uneasy, with the tents all in disarray and not in their proper positions, which was unnerving. It was funny how you got used to things being a certain way. Every man in the army could see that the sleeping fort needed attention. The way it was constructed on the stony hillside might have given them the high ground, but many of the walls were short or thin due to the need to place them on top of boulders or obstructions that were too large to move. Haim hoped that Aelfric had not built the thing as bait.
It was also plain to see that the advantage of high ground would not mean any kind of victory against the massive army below them on the plain between their fort and the town. There were just too damned many Cthochi down there, and these were different from the ones they had met before, any fool could tell that. These Cthochi marched in square formations and were even drilling. Somehow the Earthspeaker had turned his tribes into a professional army. Aelfric’s army was more effective attacking than defending anyway, and the idea of sitting in a wooden fortress on a hill and waiting for the Cthochi to break it didn’t sit well with anyone.
Of course, it was Aelfric, so there could be any kind of wild-ass plan in the works. On top of that, orders were orders, and that meant foraging for wood. When Haim and his fyrde returned, escorting a collection of large timbers tied to two axles and drawn by a team of ten horses, he saw what the wood was for, and his disgust only grew.
Anbarius knew the overall plan, but he did not know if it was a good one or not. He was just a farmer, after all, and he trusted Lord D’root in such matters. He had his orders, and if they caused confusion among his men, they would cause confusion among the many Cthochi scouts he knew were watching, and so much the better. He oversaw the unloading of Haim’s timbers and ordered the carpenters to start shaping the logs. Piece by piece the inner fort was going up, a fifteen pace high palisade complete with mock towers and archer stations.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 90