The trolls went around and speared them all through with piles, then cut them up. They went down every side annex to find out what was there. They quickly returned, throwing down several more unmoving thring bodies they had found there. Kulith sent for oil and brimstone as they looked over some loot that had come from one of the passages.
They broke open the tombs and lit the pile of corpses on fire. They came out and collapsed the entrance to it by using other piles as levers between the bricks and stones. They returned back up the slope, leaving more than a dozen smoke trails behind them going up into the sky. They were not attacked again, and moral improved on the way back with even the burned goblin laughing insanely from where he sat up on one of the carts, holding a golden armband that had been taken from one of the tombs and given to him.
They returned the next day to the main horde and discussed what had happened with the other chiefs. They took it as the best of news that could be had and considered the Whisper destroyed. Kulith wasn’t so sure, but they had dealt it a serious blow. Even the undead could reckon how to lay low and not fight a superior force, and he figured the Whisperer had saved a few bodies, ones that it would be impossible for them to dig up and destroy.
They organized themselves into battle lines and began moving toward the Red Tower. The force that they had thought to fight against had pulled back, leaving their camp and old lines empty. They followed the small river to where it slowed in the deeper woods and found the Red Tower sitting there, built out on bedrock in the middle of a moat formed by the river going around both sides. There were actually a series of towers, all of them red with a few courses of gold and maroon stone mixed in, with the center tower on the scale of a full sized keep out in the West Lands.
There was a long causeway spanning the river that led to the front gate. Instead of going across it and attacking at once, Kulith had the goblins and trolls stop there on the bank. He looked over the walls and defenses, then had one of his more useful trolls go around using a raft and look at the other side, where a similar gatehouse stood, connected by a shorter causeway with a drawbridge.
Kulith had the goblins build a ram with an apron of wood and wet hide above it, narrow enough to roll across to the gate. In the meantime, he sent several hundred warriors around to the rear to watch and block it. Two days later he had them push the rough built ram up to the gate and try to break it down. The goblins and trolls of the garrison fired hundreds of arrows down off the wall and towers, and when the ram got close, the hidden blocks were pulled out with a rasping sound along the end of the causeway. The last part of the length, all made of wood, dropped away and turned over in the current. It sank at one end, throwing the ram and all the goblins manning it into the moat.
The goblins and trolls nearby gnashed and snarled, as their comrades and pot mates flailed around in the water and tried to save themselves from drowning. Some of them ran forward down the remaining span, regardless of the arrows. They put up shields and tried to fish the others out. It was a route back, and they lost more little buggers than they saved. Kulith had the rest of the army go to camp and start building rafts to ford over the moat. He stood by a tree and watched the fortress from a distance, trying to figure out the best way to get into it.
He was angry, as he looked out at the Red Tower, knowing that the more important battles on Big Stone were being fought elsewhere, out on the central plain: a place simply called the Meadows. He had gone from being the central figure in the horde who they all asked for advice to just one of many leaders, and with a shaky claim to that. It was a long time since he had taken Fugoe Castle, and the magic sword and the countess were fleeting tokens of power. If he had a couple of warrens himself and was a chief somewhere he thought, then they would give him respect, or what passed for it in their world, which was showing fear.
He was pretty sure that was how the human world worked also. If the countess had been able to project Rydol and Grotoy’s military might down onto the surface of the Dimm, they would all be fighting with them right now instead of the thrings. He knew that the West Lands were tough, but perhaps the other parts of Gece were more civilized and softer. He, like most of the buggers were generally worried of what might happen to them if the Grand Prince made a real effort to destroy them, as had been done in eastern Galfan a generation earlier.
He realized then that he had not made an effort to find the black sword that the Whisper’s doll had used during the fighting. Could it have been another magic weapon? There was bound to be more of them than just the Tuvier Blade. Had someone taken it away, only to use it in a worse way than he used his now? Would that bugger eventually become his enemy, he wondered?
One of the troll captains and a couple of the goblin chiefs were now approaching him, and so he scratched in the dirt and made a rough map of the Red Tower and its moat. The map worked to sooth them, and they discussed where the walls looked weakest.
“What are you orders?” Amegis asked him, the big troll looking over past the trees at the walls of the Red Tower. The castle was everything Kulith ever wanted, and the buggers thought it both great and strong. The surety of the place, inside its haunted forest was a fantastic, impossible dream most of them harbored, no matter how transient their own lives. They were about to destroy it, a place so much like the place he had told the countess he would someday build. But the castle had a wood full of trees, and food, and it had harbored the Whisper, so it would have to go. He figured he would feel even worse when they attacked and destroyed the Stone Pile. He also realized he had become morose from not being able to drink tump, and it was affecting him, making him sick and perhaps it had made him make the bad plan with the ram.
He pointed to a part of the wall with a stick. “The bank here is wide and long enough for us to carry over pavis, and build a barrier for our warriors and archers to attack from. They can put up maybe a dozen ladders along this wall, and attack up them.”
“They know that we are going to do that,” one of the goblin leaders complained.
“I remember what a goblin captive told me, and I have watched what is going on along the wall,” Kulith told the others. He pointed to another area. “There are debris and leaves collecting at this point, where there is just a bit of rock and masonry. The fortress is in the middle of a river on rocks. It probably doesn’t have a proper well.” They had done things in the past like throwing pieces of thring bodies into wells, or collapsing them down to make a garrison capitulate. This would be a little different. “If they have a gate or grate there to allow the water in, they would just need to walk down to that opening on their side and haul it up.”
Amegis shook his head. “I thought of that, but how big is the opening there? Of course, the stairs from that inlet will branch out all over the interior of the fortress, but we will not be able to squeeze or break through. Maybe a few trolls could get in over the wall, and cause a lot of havoc while the other side is under attack.”
“One of my bands wants to try and burn down the front gate,” a goblin chieftain said to them. “I say let them try it. Perhaps when they see our numbers, and have three attacks on their walls at once, they will put up white smoke and let us in.”
Kulith thought about that. He had the numbers to do it, but he was more concerned right now about getting attacked by wolf riders, or another enemy horde coming at them through the woods. The time was right for such a force to have assembled itself and began its march back to fight them. But he just let that go for the moment, and pressed on with what they were saying.
“Then get everything ready and we will give it a go. I will lead the trolls over the wall at the well gate and on into the Red Tower. Perhaps the day after tomorrow would be a good day to attack. We will go out this afternoon and walk around the moat and look at the walls, and plan out more how we will carry out the attack.”
There was night fog off the Dimm still drifting in patches through the trees on the morning of the attack. The warriors inside the Red Tower must have
known what was coming at them because the conditions were almost perfect for it. If they had put up white smoke through their chimneys as the rafts were polled out into position and the ladders floated behind them with ropes attached, no one in Kulith’s horde would have been able to see it. He had kept a few wounded goblins chopping, to not alert the garrison to the fact that something had changed.
They let the fortress’ defenders focus on the rafts they could hear and see being built, that were sometimes seen through the mists, and the arrayed bands of goblins on the shore getting ready to board them to attack. While most of the eyes were looking that way, a band of goblins rolled fascines: large bundles of sticks off the end of the fallen causeway to make a crude finish to it that they could walk across to the gate. They threw hide bags of oil and brimstone at the foot of the gate and lit it all afire, then retreated back to watch the wet wood smoke and finally burn.
They could tell from their position on the bank what was happening. The burning at the front gate had made the Red Tower warriors confused, and they ran back and forth along the walks and towers, trying to find the enemy. Under some arrow fire, Amegis landed the goblins and trolls on a rocky strip of dirt and mud that stood before one of the Red Tower’s walls. They cut the stay ropes on their ladders and brought them forward to place along the length of the curtain. Archers moved onto the bank with them and spread out, firing, keeping the heads of the defenders on the wall down as the other goblins and trolls went forward to scale.
Kulith and the other trolls listened to the heavy noise of battle coming from around the walls. After a few minutes he turned back and nodded to the others, and they uncovered and pushed their four rafts down into the moat and then got aboard. They pulled the ladders out on ropes and then separated from the bank and began moving, by poles and oars, across the moat. The current was slow here, but they still had to estimate its drag and adjust their path.
They aimed at a point on the wall where just a tip of bedrock stuck out, perhaps hiding the grate or gate on its other side where the water lapped and moved against the curtain wall. They tested the area around it, and found the rest to be a rocky shallow. One of the goblins slipped off into the water and examined the bars covering the water portal, then resurfaced and shook his head to indicate that it couldn’t be gotten through. They hooked the rafts onto the rocks and fitted the ends of the ladders down into sockets they had cut into the raft wood. They went quickly up the ladders, one at a time, and jumped out onto the wall to confront the guards there.
There were only a couple of goblins on the wall above, and they were immediately surrounded by four trolls in heavy armor. The guards were armed with broadswords and axes, and had small round shields in their off-hands. They began to defend, as the lesser creatures there among them sprang down off the wall and raced up the stairs, calling out the alarm. A few attackers went over and ran up the stairway after them, leading from the water to the great red tower. They were met by a downward rush of warriors, who came to defend faster than the trolls could get up over the wall. They moved back and forth on the fighting walk, and slashed and struck aside each other’s weapons on the stairs below. They pivoted and tried to throw one another off the wall and into the moat. It was a wild skirmish of weapons hacking at helms, of swords thrust from underneath on the tight, confined walk.
Kulith jumped through two of the merlons from the ladder and kicked one of the goblins in the head with his boot, lifting his helmet off to fly through the air. The beast reeled away and tried not to join his helmet. He met the sword thrust of another goblin and parried it down, then hammered at the shield swung over at him. He beat at the weapons that were thrust, while trying to slip one of his own swords around the faces of the presented shields. The defending goblins grunted and tried to work their weapons back the other way.
Strength won in the end, as Kulith and the other trolls slammed the shields aside, and then cut through armor into flesh. Another troll moved up from the courtyard below with a pole sword and jabbed it out, trying to skewer him. He was forced backward as the other monster climbed up the wall stairs and tried to chop him to bits against the merlons.
More defenders arrived, while the trolls moved forward, to drop off the wall and land on the roofs or the stone paths below. From there they fought on the stairs going up from the pool of water, trying to get to the doors. As Kulith fought, he wished he had brought more trolls, since it had proved so easy to get inside. Now it was hard, and he pushed and levered the troll’s blade away, until he finally went forward, breaking the sword pole, and then slashing the troll who wielded it.
They started to take arrow fire from the tower windows, and from farther down the wall. Three arrows hit him in rapid succession. His new armored coat and helm absorbed their points, or made them just glance off, and likewise most of the weapon strikes he had taken earlier had been deflected. The Red Tower warriors they fought however were first rate, and it was like fighting against the tough household soldiers out in the West Lands.
Just as the wall was cleared, a half dozen more trolls came down the steps, probably the reserve stationed in the great tower. More goblins with bows began shooting at them from the windows, and from the other walks, and they got off the fighting walk and all went down into the yard. Kulith jumped off the wall onto the roof of a building, and then worked his way down until he landed near the water well. He ran after the other trolls, as the goblins shot at him, and he began fighting with the new group of enemies, the trolls standing, while the remaining goblins scattered in the courtyard.
Kulith hacked the shield off of one troll’s arm and blocked a thrust away with his other sword. Two of his trolls were down, riddled with arrows and cut open by blades. But the others kept going, their heavy coats and helms protecting them as they killed the defenders, sending the rest back, running up the stairs. He moved slowly forward from behind, as the bodies fell, and they came out into the court area beyond the stairs. There they dispatched the last troll, and found themselves right before the door of the great red tower.
He stepped over bodies and things strewn about, and tested the door of the keep with the hand that still grasped the champion’s sword. It had been bolted solid from the inside, and would not budge. The other trolls came up behind him and they all moved closer to the walls to avoid arrow fire from the windows, and the rocks now being thrown down on them from above. Kulith looked around and saw that they were all getting battered, with no possible gain. A couple of them still had arrows still stuck in them from the wall that couldn’t be removed. If more trolls or a serious group of goblins came out into the court, they would be finished off.
Perhaps that would have relieved the deadly hail, but nothing more came for awhile, as they explored where they were more fully, and tried not to get brained from above. The defenders had decided not to trickle in to fight them and were probably building a force somewhere to come and finish them off after a good pounding by rocks, and arrows. There was no way they could get into the big tower right now. While the outer wall might have been too low, the chieftain’s tower was a great strongpoint that would give any attacker pause.
They might have stood against those walls all day if one of the trolls hadn’t shouted an oath and ran out along the wall past the door. He went out into the street that ran along the tower, between two long lines of buildings, all in good repair and looking to be storehouses or garrison halls. Arrows followed him and one struck him in the shoulder, but it didn’t seem to do much damage. He ran and disappeared, and the rest of them all lurched up to follow him, fleeing out into the maze of streets inside the fortress.
As they were seen, the resident goblins who were not warriors began screaming and scurrying away. Most of Kulith’s warriors headed toward the gray smoke rolling up now from the burning front gate, as they understood what was happening there and could see it. There were dozens of servant goblins in the court before the gate, bringing buckets of water over in gangs to keep the wood wet, and sheafs o
f arrows to supply the archers. About two dozen bow men and some warriors were standing above the gate, on the fighting walks, looking out and trying to keep the goblin band attacking there away.
The trolls tore across the courtyard, their swords dropping down or lifting up to swing, almost cutting the unarmored goblins they found in half, and of course these all dropped their buckets and scattered to get away, either through the streets and doors, or on up the stairs. The archers and warriors turned around and began to fight. Kulith was hit with two arrows and he grunted as one point went through his coat and stabbed into his side.
Most of the other trolls had shields and they began to guard with them, lifting them up as they moved around to the stairways going onto the walls. They began to fight their way slowly up the stairs, or to push through the guards to the gatehouse doors where the gate mechanism sat. But there were not enough of them, and goblin arrows shot this way and that, trying to strike them down.
Kulith took a swing at one of the goblins running in terror across the court and had the Tuvier Blade turn itself flat at the last moment and only swat the creature across the back. Kulith was surprised, not that the weapon had refused to strike a blow for him, but that it had refused to do it against a goblin. What one among them had not been a complete and utter villain to exist?
A warrior with an axe came down a stair at him. Kulith knocked the axe head aside and shoved one of his blades into its throat, then pushed the body away with a kick. He watched one of the other trolls throw a couple of goblins off the wall. His momentary pause earned him another arrow, this one shattering against a metal plate, and so he lumbered on ahead, knocking another small, hapless servant out of the way. Several of them got up onto the fighting walk at about the same time and began sweeping it with their swords, but mostly they threw the goblins archers there off the front of the wall.
A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight Page 23