The Sword and the Dragon (The Wardstone Trilogy Book One)

by M. R. Mathias

  Willa the Witch Queen had sent him to Wildermont as soon as she had heard the reports of Blacksword impostors flying her banners and firing arrows into crowds. She claimed that, though some of the merchants and traders of her land had surely attended the festival, no one that represented Highwander, or her Blacksword army, in any formal capacity had been there. She and her kingdom held no ill will towards any other in the realm at the moment, and Targon assured King Jarrek that if she did, she would handle the dispute swiftly, and in the open.

  Targon had come there to assist in the investigation, and to find out who it was that had impersonated the Blacksword. He got caught up in the Westland surprise attack. Now, acting on his newest orders from Queen Willa, his full services as a War Wizard had been offered to King Jarrek and Wildermont in this time of need.

  The other wizard, Keedle was his name, had been born right there in the castle eighty years earlier. The riverside villa he had been raised in was now being used as a Westland Command post, and he was none too pleased about it. His bitter anger at King Glendar was the only thing keeping him from being jealous of Targon’s presence in his kingdom.

  Keedle, with his long, white hair and beard flowing over his red and gold trimmed black robe, stood looking out the glassed-in window wall at his city. The audacity of Westland’s new king showed. Placing his pavilion tent right there in front of the main gates, as if inviting them to charge out and take him, was maddening. The fact that, for days now, he had paraded the women of Wildermont in and out of his tent, as if they were his, was infuriating. Keedle had decided that he would show no mercy if he had a choice in the matter. Glendar wasn’t just a bad neighbor or a land-greedy tyrant. He was a menace to humanity.

  Others in attendance were: General Coron and two of his captains, all three representing the army of the Redwolf; Lord Marshal Culvert of the Castlemont City guard; one of his deputies, and the King’s Investigator, Lord Greenwich and his page. A few nervous, but busy scribes sat to the side, scribbling away as the orders and suggestions were thrown out on the table for discussion.

  “Why would he leave so few men to hold us?” Lord Marshal Culvert asked the room. The “he” he was speaking of, was of course King Glendar of Westland.

  “He’s keeping us pinned up, while he gets the bulk of his army through the mountains,” General Coron explained. “Is it possible that once they’re through, he will pack up and follow them?”

  “That’s a very optimistic question, General,” King Jarrek commented politely. “If that were his plan though, I doubt he would’ve looted the outer city, and marched all of our women and children south towards Dakahn.”

  For a moment, no one spoke. Courtly manner dictated that the King be allowed several moments to add to his own statements before anyone might interrupt his Highness’s thoughts.

  “I agree,” Lord Greenwich, the King’s Investigator finally said. “Why give us a hundred reasons for vengeance and retaliation, and then just up and march away?”

  “Not to mention the fact that Westland has got to be nearly defenseless,” said General Coron. “Twenty thousand men have marched across that bridge, maybe more. Who’s guarding the henhouse while the young rooster is out strutting?”

  The General spoke in a way that made it clear that he didn’t really believe what he had suggested a moment ago. “They have to hold that bridge no matter what happens here. If we break the siege, we’ll be able to march right into Westland.”

  “Oh, we’ll break the siege, General,” King Jarrek said, with confidence. He turned to Lord Greenwich. “How many men did you estimate Glendar had left in our city?”

  “At best, twenty four hundred, a few hundred more on or around the bridge, maybe.”

  “We have as many, if not more, men inside the walls with us!” Marshall Culvert blurted out, his overly optimistic enthusiasm showing again.

  His city guard had been routed in the streets. He was as bitter as he was embarrassed by the fact. Those men had not been trained to handle a full scale attack on the city. They were there to protect the people from each other, not from an invading army. That was the job of General Coron’s men, most of whom had been too busy dealing with the myriad problems associated with Summer’s Day to muster a defense. Marshall Culvert didn’t blame the General. His men had put up so little resistance, that they may as well have not been there. They mostly died in vain. He manfully accepted his share of the blame. He took no comfort in the truth, and he lustfully wanted to break the siege. He wanted to take back some of the pride that had been stripped from him.

  “I’ve got three hundred men up at High Crossing, maybe a few more.” General Coron offered. “They retreated into the lower Evermore, on the Leif Greyn side when the Westlanders turned north. If we can get word to them, they should be able to at least break through the encampment where the fargin Lion’s men went into the mountains.”

  “I can help you there, your majesty.”

  Targon, who had been listening intently, finally spoke. His voice was deep, and radiated a sort of confidence that was greatly needed among them.

  “Not only with getting orders to those men.” Smoothing his robes, he stood and faced the window, where the other wizard was brooding. “I can help protect them when they sack the encampment, and with the help of my colleague, Keedle, we can communicate, and make sure that the arrival of those men here is timely to your cause.”

  “Yes,” the General nodded, and mumbled under his breath as the plan formed in his head. The idea that it was put there by the Witch Queen’s Wizard was lost on him.

  The King was about to ask the General to share his thoughts, when Keedle spun and strode towards the table. The look on his face demanded that he be heard next. King Jarrek gave him a nod and steepled his fingers, intent to listen to his trusted old wizard’s words.

  “When you send your men storming out the gates, General, I’ll make them appear to be twice as many as they really are.” Keedle’s anger made his word sharp and cold. “If King Jarrek will allow it, I’ll take the outer wall, so I can be over them, and wreak as much havoc as I can manage. I’ll draw the attention to me. With Targon coming with those other men to catch them from behind, and my surprises, we should be able to break the siege, and take our city back with minimal losses. At worst, we could run the cavalry right over that pavilion tent, and crush the young Westland dog in his sleep.”

  “Now you’re the one being optimistic,” said General Coron.

  Though he would love nothing more than to flatten the cocky young bastard just as Keedle had suggested, the fact remained that they didn’t hold the outer wall anymore. A charge out of the secondary gates would allow the Westland King enough warning to be long gone by the time they got there. He shook his head side to side.

  “I have no doubt you’ll be able to do as you say, but we can’t run all of our men out of the secondary gates, Master Keedle. It will take at least half of them to hold the castle, if something should go wrong. Even fifteen hundred wolves would have a hard time taking on all those fargin Westlanders. It’s almost two to one.”

  Keedle’s brows narrowed, as he realized the truth of the General’s words. Even with two wizard’s working together, two to one odds would be hard to overcome in open battle.

  “We mustn’t forget about Pael,” Targon said in his deep voice. “The Westland wizard is no mere conjurer.”

  “I pray I get the chance to face Pael!” Keedle said hotly. “This whole attack stinks of his rotten influence.”

  “General,” King Jarrek spoke, then placed his steepled fingers to his chin, and pursed his lips for a moment before continuing. “If it were an even battle, man for man, so to speak, do you think this plan would work?”

  The General’s nostrils flared, and his chest swelled proudly.

  “Man for man, your Redwolf Army can beat anyone.”

  “So, if I allowed you to march out of here into the city with two thousand men, with Keedle’s help, and Targon, and the men fr
om High Crossing to surprise the Westlanders, you think you can come out victorious?”

  “I’m sure of it,” The General said flatly.

  “Of the thousand men who stay behind, I think four hundred should be left inside the gates,” said King Jarrek. “The rest should be our best archers, and they should take to the secondary wall when you go out, to keep your men from getting trapped between the secondary gate and the outer walls. Once your men are clear, and into the city, they will be shut out, General Coron. As I’m sure you’re aware, this is an all or nothing sort of gambit.”

  The General had to fight to suppress the smile. He could never remember loving his King’s boldness more than he did at that moment. Jarrek, he decided, was a warrior through and through.

  “I will proudly lead them myself, Your Highness.” He stood, and bowed his head in respect. “I understand the risks fully, and relish the chance to overcome them.”

  “I want all of you to think on this plan while we break our fast,” King Jarrek told them. “Keep in mind that we don’t have to do this. We can just sit, and wait for a better opportunity to present itself. If we have to, we can wait out the whole of fall and winter.” He rose from his seat, and ran a hand through his dark hair. “But don’t forget those of our people that Glendar marched south. They might not have the luxuries that we have. We have to get them home.”

  After they had eaten, and had time alone to think, the King took a consensus of the men’s thoughts on the matter. All of them agreed. The plan was sound, the situation would probably never be more opportune, and they had to do something about the women and children King Glendar had sent south before they were sold into the Dakaneese slave market, or worse. They were all fairly certain that Westland would soon send in reinforcements. Right now, the odds were surmountable. They might soon become impossible.

  King Jarrek privately decided that he would ride out, with his personal guard attachment, through a secret exit way. The expert swords would be needed, and he wanted to get his own steel into the enemy as badly as anybody. He ordered the plan to be executed, and the wheels of the Kingdom of Wildermont’s fate clicked into motion.

  Young King Glendar was enjoying the company of the wife and daughter of one Wildermont’s most prestigious merchants. Outside his tent, six of the bloodiest, most ruthless men Glendar could find in his troops after the battle for Castlemont City, stood guard. They weren’t bloody now. Glendar had given them the pick of the armaments and weapons that had been collected from the many smithies and armories around the city. They were now his personal guards. They stood brilliantly in the hot summer sun, in gleaming chain, and plate mail, under a pair of Westland’s biggest banners. The weapons were newly forged and razor sharp. A few were works of art, with extreme value. They were the envy of the Westland troops that remained in Wildermont. Their only duty was to protect their King, and with their very lives if necessary. They had pledged to do so with their own blood.

  Inside the tent, Glendar was just finishing up his present business. The shade that the canvas provided did little to cool his sweating body, and the aroma of many couplings hung heavy in the thick air. He had taken, or been offered, in some cases, the virtue of many a Wildermont woman while he waited for Pael to return.

  He had done exactly as Pael ordered, and sent the bulk of the women and children south to O’Dakahn. Of course, he had handpicked the ones that he fancied, and imprisoned them at a wealthy nobleman’s mansion near the city’s edge. The Duke, or Lord, or Regent, or whatever title the man held, didn’t mind. His head was drawing crows on a pike in the house’s yard. Tonight, very soon in fact, out of sheer boredom, King Glendar was going to start terrorizing King Jarrek and his men from afar. It could be weeks before Pael came back to help him take the castle, and King Glendar figured to weaken their spirit while he waited.

  The idea of his tent sitting just outside of the fortress’s outer walls gave him a sort of smug satisfaction. It showed a cocky lack of fear, or respect, for his enemies. Besides that, it made him feel superior. At first it had unnerved him. The idea that a horde of Redwolf soldiers could, at any moment, come storming out of those open gates had been overwhelming. Only after he had toured the area beyond the gates, with the smoldering buildings, body-strewn streets, and the clouds of carrion that attended them, did he realize that he had nothing to fear. He would have moved his pavilion in front of the secondary wall’s main gate, if doing so wouldn’t make it too hard for all those eyes way up in the castle to look down upon it. Where it was now, any who looked out toward the west were forced to see it. Glendar was about to decorate the area around his tent properly, so that all those peering eyes had something substantial to see when they gazed out.

  “Out now!” he ordered the two women who were trembling and naked in his bed.

  They rose quickly, and began searching for their clothes on the floor. “I said now!” he screamed, and shoved the mother out the tent flaps into the dirt, sniveling and bare-skinned. He gave the daughter a swift boot in the rear as she stopped to grab her mother’s dress. She went sprawling out behind her mother, her arms so full of bundled clothes, that she couldn’t stop herself from smacking into the ground. The mother, shamed and terrified, helped her daughter up. They huddled together right in the middle of the street, until a soldier from a group of Glendar’s attendants came hopping over to lead them back to their prison.

  “Roark!” Glendar yelled through the closed flap of the tent.

  The biggest, and meanest of the guardsmen turned and stepped into the tent. He quickly averted his eyes, while Glendar pulled his leggings up over his spindly white legs.

  “Yes, your majesty?”

  The big man had to stoop awkwardly, because the pavilion’s roof pressed down on the sharp horns of the helmet he sported. Glendar found it comical and chuckled.

  “From now on Roark, remove your helmet before entering the tent.”

  Glendar laughed again as the man fumbled the helm off like a scolded child.

  “It’s a rule now. Tell the others.” Glendar voice turned serious, almost sharp. “I don’t want the canvas ripped by those fargin helmets.”

  He looked around the room for something, then sighed heavily and continued.

  “Send a handful of men over to where Lord Abel is holding the rest of the Wildermont City Guardsmen, and help escort them all here.”

  He gestured through the tent wall towards the open gates outside.

  “As you command,” Roark nodded. He bowed in his gold chased plate armor, as if the heavy steel weighed nothing on his frame, then spun, and exited the tent.

  He froze three paces later, with this helmet held nearly in place over his head. King Glendar was calling out his name. He turned to go back inside, but Glendar stuck his sweaty grinning head out saving him the trouble.

  “Have Captain Stimps bring some torches and the chopping block. Oh yeah, pikes, Roark. We’re going to need plenty of pikes.”

  Chapter 35

  King Glendar had expected a reaction over his gruesome display, but not so soon. The sun had long illuminated the sky, but hadn’t risen up over the mountains that cradled Castlemont quite yet. Glendar’s pavilion was deep in the morning shadow.

  Glendar’s evening had been spent laboring. Now he was being ripped from a deep, deep well earned sleep. The kind of sleep a lumberjack might find after a day of felling trees, or a blacksmith, after swinging his hammer all day; or maybe like a young tyrant might earn after a night of piking men’s heads.

  “Your majesty!” Roark yelled for the third time. This time, he pulled the silken sheets off of his king, and added a threat. “I’m going to yank you out of bed and carry you out of here! Get up and dress!”

  “What is it man?” Glendar growled. “Didn’t last night’s display teach you better manners?”

  Glendar held his hand up in front of his eyes to shield them from the brightness of Roark’s lantern. He was naked, save for his small clothes. To Roark, he looked like a blea
ched wood scarecrow, with a dark mess of a wig on his head.

  “They’re riding out to break us!” the big guard said excitedly. “Captain Hinkle’s man said there are at least four thousand of them between horse and footmen. Maybe more!”

  Suddenly, King Glendar was fully awake.

  “What? Four thousand men?” King Jarrek couldn’t be foolish enough to send out the whole of his forces. Blast!

  That’s more men than Glendar had left himself in the city. Panic tore through the young King. He had no idea what to do. He had sent the bulk of his forces through the mountains, just as Pael had instructed him to do. Pael! Where was Pael anyway?

  “Get dressed, uh, um, if you please,” Roark stammered, holding out the King’s leggings and an undershirt.

  “Bring my chain mail,” Glendar barked, as he took the offered clothes. His stiff attitude did little to hide his confusion, though it did mask is growing fear fairly well.

  He could hear the distant sound of battle now, the chink and clang of steel on steel, the clattering of horses, and the occasional death cry. The sound was coming from somewhere beyond the open gates. He could tell, though, by the sounds of his own men riding in from the encampments around the city, and the hustling of his troops outside his tent, that there was not much time to waste.

  Suddenly, an explosion shook the earth. A brilliant flash of light lit the morning shade so brightly, that its glow could be seen plainly through the thick canvas walls of the pavilion tent. The sheer volume of the noise was deafening.

  In the long, relative silence that followed the blast, the shriek of a man died away slowly. The terrified “oohs” and “aahs” of the men outside of his tent, made Glendar tremble.

  What could’ve made that explosion? He had no idea what was happening. He heard the words, “wizard” and “magic,” shouted in fear outside. He remembered vaguely, Lord Brach once warning him about King Jarrek’s old sorcerer Keedle. He had scoffed at the warning, saying that Pael was far more capable. Where is Pael anyway? Glendar needed him right now, and badly.