Ascendant

by Florian Armas

  “I will ask Bernart for a soldier who knows the high paths through the mountains,” Vlad said.

  “What about our soldiers from Severin and southern Mehadia? Only seventy have arrived, and I was waiting for eighty more.” Codrin looked at Vlaicu this time, but he already knew the answer to his question.

  “I don’t think that they will come,” Vlaicu said. “Laurent is the only one who fully answered your call. Marat and three more Knights sent some men too, but they have a foot in both camps.”

  “Eighty soldiers fewer,” Codrin mused. “We still have five and a half hundred. At least, we will have if... Valer might have been delayed too. He is supposed to arrive tomorrow with a hundred mercenaries, but Tolosa’s army could have given him troubles, and forced him take another road. Valer is an experienced commander; we should not worry. He will avoid a fight with Tolosa on the road. I can’t say the same about the Mountes.”

  The door opened, and Pintea burst into the room, breathing heavily. He waited a few moments to gather his breath before speaking. “The Mountes are coming.” There was a sudden relaxation in the council room. “Yesterday, they were in Relermont village.”

  “They will be here in less than two days,” Codrin said.

  “I don’t think so, there is something strange about them,” Pintea said, still breathing hard, and all eyes in the room were on him. “They have come with their families. Boldur’s clan, I mean; children, women, elders and their belonging. Sixty carts. That’s why they were delayed.”

  Codrin closed his eyes for a few moments. Have the Mountes expelled Boldur? “How many soldiers are coming?”

  “Seventy-five, if we don’t count the very young or the too old. Boldur’s words.”

  I was expecting two hundred. “Did he tell you what happened?”

  “No, but he was not in a good mood. There was a look in his eyes, like he was itching to crush a skull or two. He wants to talk with you first.”

  “It looks like migration to me,” Sava said, “and the Mountes are not eager to leave their land. They fought hard to keep it free from Arad and Peyris.”

  “Did Boldur mention more soldiers coming later?” Codrin asked, and Pintea shook his head. “Boldur’s clan was expelled, and we may be the cause of that.”

  “The mountains around Poenari are empty,” Sava said. “Give one mountain to them and they will be happy.”

  “Happy may be too strong a word, but I will consider that, after Boldur tells me what happened and what they intend.” Codrin thought for a while. “This means fewer soldiers for us, but we can cry later; right now we need to help the Mountes. Pierre will arrive at the Burned Forest crossroads before them, and with the carts, diverting the Mountes through the mountains is no longer an option. We have two hundred and sixty soldiers. Vlaicu, take thirty and join the Mountes. I will take two hundred and try to delay Pierre for a while. Sava, you will guard Poenari.”

  “Pierre has fifteen hundred soldiers,” Vlad said.

  “I will not take him on in open battle, but he will not know this. All I need to do is to delay him for two days. That will give the Mountes enough time to reach the crossroads before the Tolosa army gets there.” Codrin stood up and went to the map again. “Vlad, we leave in one hour,” he said without turning, his eyes still searching the map. “Bernart, you will lead the council in my absence.”

  Fate was kind to Codrin, and he arrived at the place he wanted to be just three hours before the Tolosa army. Below, on the left, the road was flanked by a ridge, thirty feet high and six hundred feet long. On the right, the ridge was only nine feet tall, but it was covered with dense forest. It was not an ideal place for an ambush, but it was all that Codrin had. As they had arrived in a hurry, there was not enough time for his scouts to take over the ridges, and some scouts from Tolosa were able to escape, stopping on a hill from where they could survey the area. It was already known by many in Frankis that Codrin had the best scouts, yet sometimes Fate tricks even the best. He used the Assassins’ training methods for his scouts, and that was not known, even to the Wanderers.

  “Prepare the army for battle,” Codrin said to his officers, looking at the road from Poenari toward the narrow gap in front of them: it sloped downward for two hundred paces, through a large meadow. Most of his small army was still hidden in the forest behind him. “Ban, take thirty archers and set up on the left-hand ridge.” He stared up toward the sky, and his eyes followed the sun, going west. When he turned, Codrin saw the worry in the eyes of his officers. “We will not give battle, but don’t tell that to Pierre. It’s an hour past noon. He will not want to start a fight today, so he will camp somewhere down in the valley. Tomorrow, we will take up position for battle again, most of our soldiers hidden in the forest behind us. Only our front line will be visible from the valley. They need to prepare for battle too, and they will know that we have archers on the ridge but, if we keep their scouts away, Pierre will not know how many soldiers we have. I’m sure he will think that we have more than two hundreds. No one is crazy enough to attack a thousand with two hundreds. Right? They have to prepare, so half of the morning will be gone when they arrive where the road enters between the ridges. They will advance with care. If they are able to climb the ridge from the valley,” he looked at Ban, “mount up and vanish into the forest. If not, rain arrows on them until they are able to get to this side through the gap. You run before they can turn and climb the ridge from this side.”

  ***

  “Codrin sent his army to fight us,” the scout said even before dismounting in front of Pierre, the Spatar of Tolosa. Unhurried, his army was taking a break for lunch. “It is arranged in a battle line on the top of a hill overseeing the road, waiting for us. One hour’s ride from here.”

  “What advantage does that place hold?” Pierre asked the scout. The Spatar of Tolosa was a tall man, towering over most people in his army, and he liked people who were as tall as he was. With his dark brown mane and massive frame, he resembled a lion, and the Lion was he called. There was even a joke, that no one was promoted to captain if he was not able to take his insignia from the Lion’s raised claw. But his smile was his most outstanding feature; it was bright and distinctive and a rare sight; Pierre was now fifty-one and thinking that this was his last battle. The scouts were not usually tall men; they needed to be able to sneak everywhere, unobserved.

  “The road passes through a gap between two ridges. Their archers have already taken over the ridges. Some thirty men.” The scout still tried to look up at Pierre, but the Spatar was so tall he had to tip his head right back.

  “How many soldiers does he have?” Pierre controlled both his impulse to smile at the short man’s effort and his urge to rip off his armor, which felt like an oven in the heat.

  “Difficult to say. We could see only the vanguard, around a hundred and fifty soldiers. The rest of the army remained hidden in the forest.

  “You hide an army when you don’t have many soldiers. A hundred or so in the vanguard, and perhaps the same amount in the forest. Why are they here?” Pierre pondered. “It makes no sense, and it make even less sense to arrange themselves for battle and wait for us in a tight formation. I will not start a battle without resting my soldiers. Their soldiers can stay at battle stations until tomorrow, if that’s what Codrin wants.”

  “Maybe there are more soldiers hidden in the forest...” one captain said tentatively.

  “The Circle guaranteed to me that Codrin has less than four hundred soldiers. War is a terrible thing, but this one started some months ago, with the battle between our embassies. As things stand, the Circle has won everywhere except Peyris, but Duke Stefan sent five hundred soldiers, so it is still to our advantage. Valer was coerced into keeping his mercenaries at home, and the Mountes rejected Codrin’s plea for help. I still don’t know how the Sages were able to buy the Mountes; they have the most rigid spines in Frankis. Even some of Codrin’s knights did not answer the call. It suits us, but I despise these traitors;
if you are a Knight, then you answer the call for war. How long until we are able to see the ridge?”

  “In half an hour.”

  “Then we will talk again in half an hour. Stay close to me,” Pierre ordered the scout. Is Codrin trying to attack us before we can join Bucur? He has no chance... Has he set a trap, maybe? He defeated Orban’s much larger army by concealing a crevasse. But he had no time to set such a trap here.

  “That’s the ridge.” The scout pointed forward, the moment they rounded a large curve in the road. “Their army is not yet in sight. It will be in fifteen more minutes.”

  Pierre stopped his horse and rose in the saddle, his palm protecting his eyes from the strong afternoon sun. “Send a team of scouts to see if two hundred strong men can pass behind that small hill and get behind the ridge where Codrin’s archers are hidden. Let’s go.” He pushed his horse to a fast trot, then stopped again when the enemy army came in sight. “We will camp here!” he shouted before dismounting.

  The council started when the first team of scouts returned, with the news that a small force would be able to pass through a ravine and observe the archers hidden on the ridge. The sun was now only a thin line above the hills in the west.

  “Reno, in the morning, gather two hundred soldiers and take up position behind their archers. You will not attack until our forces arrive at the ridge. We should let them think that we were caught by surprise by the archers. Don’t attack them directly, just cut off their escape. It should be easy to capture thirty soldiers.” Pierre shifted his weight on his long legs, from one to the other, sweating underneath his chain mail armor. “We will continue the council when the other two teams of scouts return.”

  To Pierre’s chagrin, the scouts never returned; ten good soldiers had been lost.

  ***

  It was early morning when Pierre woke again. “Still no news of our missing scouts?” He looked up at the hills, and shielded his eyes from the early morning sun, which bathed the hillside in a dazzling white light.

  “Nothing,” the captain said. “They must have been captured.”

  Killed, most probably. Pierre agreed with a nod; he had guessed as much the day before. “Is Reno ready to go?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The riders were ready and waiting for the order to go, but the order did not come. Eyes closed, Pierre let his thoughts wander. It was his way of approaching the same issue from a different angle. Why is Codrin here? He doesn’t have enough men to attack me. Maybe he wants only to delay me. Why? “Jaun, take three hundred men and go to the Burned Forest Cross. There is a parallel road going to Orhei. You need to go twenty miles back south, then turn north. Close to the cross, leave the road and ride through the forest. Hide your men on top of a hill overlooking the cross and wait there. Watch the roads.”

  “What should I look for?” Jaun asked; he was his son and the second captain of the army.

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. You have full liberty to engage if something happens. Go now and assemble your men.” Pierre turned toward Reno, who was still waiting, and gave him the signal to go. “Let your men rest,” he said to his other three captains. “We will attack at noon.” Or maybe even later...

  “I can’t wait to fight.” Dulain, Pierre’s nephew spoke with bright eyes, full of confidence. He was only eighteen years old, and under Jaun’s command. This was his first war. “We have enough men to defeat whatever army we find at the cross.”

  “What if you find two thousands soldiers there?” Pierre asked, half-amused. I wish I could have left him at home. But his sister had insisted and he thought he would be able to protect the untrained man. I can’t protect Dulain from himself. “I admire your spirit, young Dulain, but beware of overconfidence. It will not get you far.”

  Dulain turned slightly red at a speed which only young people possess. “Of course, uncle, I apologize for my over-eagerness.’”

  Pierre slapped him on the back. “Eagerness for battle is a virtue, but so is wisdom. Let the old wise heads decide when to start the fight.” Pierre laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll see action soon enough.”

  Reno did not hurry his men. They rode back south for five miles until the ridge vanished from sight. After a tight curve leading through the forest, he felt confident enough to leave the road, following a small creek on the left. In the camp, the scouts had told him that the creek allowed passage around a long chain of hills rising parallel with the ridge where Codrin’s archers were hidden. After half a mile, they left the creek and moved north again. Now and then, Reno matched the landscape with the mental map the scouts had given him: You turn left and leave the creek in front of a yellow rock with a small yew tree on top. You go north around the foot of the hills for five miles. You turn left through a gap between two large rocks the size of a house. They are strange rocks with parallel layers of stones, some of them yellow, some of them white. There are several gaps there, so we scratched three parallel lines at the bottom of the rock on the left.

  He found everything as they said, even the scratches, and a sense of pride swelled in him; they were his scouts. In two hours, they arrived at a place situated in a gap between two hilltops. The road toward Poenari and Codrin main army were no longer in sight; but he could see the ridge where he knew Codrin’s archers were positioned.

  Followed by fifty riders, Valer rode north, toward Poenari. He had left home the other fifty men to promised to Codrin, but he had to obey the Duke of Tolosa, yet he had trick the Duke who did not know about the fifty men behind him. They traveled through small roads that only the locals used. They were in a hurry, but they did not rush. Each road was traveled with caution, the scouts going first, then the rest of his men. Sometimes, they rode through the forest. That slowed them even more. Even with all that caution, at one point, his scouts almost bumped into Pierre’s scouts. Only the swifter reactions of the mercenaries saved the day; they slid silently into the forest and hid behind some bushes. In a regular war, they would have killed the scouts from Tolosa, but Valer did not want Pierre to react because of the missing scouts. The stealthiest journey is the one that is not guessed at by the enemy, and Valer did not want to be seen; Duke Baldovin would have had him hanged.

  “Army ahead,” Ferio, his best scout said, stopping his horse abruptly on front of Valer. “Tolosa, but it’s not Pierre. A splinter group, three hundred soldiers.”

  “Where are they heading?” Valer asked.

  “That’s a kind of a riddle. They came back south and, at the crossroads that lies three miles from here, they took the left fork toward Orhei. I left two men to watch the place; it was too risky to follow them.” Valer’s teams were small by necessity.

  “A hard riddle,” Valer rubbed his brow. “Ride again, and see if Pierre’s main army is camped somewhere ahead. We will wait for you at the crossroads, hidden in the forest on the eastern side.”

  The morning was already old when Codrin arranged his army for battle again, at the edge of the forest, trying to hide how small it was. There was no sign yet that Pierre was going to attack anytime soon, but scouts from Tolosa were swarming the area south of the ridge. He ordered his own scouts to avoid riding at the border of the ridge. The later Pierre attacks, the better, he thought. Early in the morning, a courier had arrived from Poenari with the message that the Mountes had increased their pace, and they would arrive at the Burned Forest crossroads half a day earlier than they had expected. He needed to delay Pierre’s army for just a day and a half, and half a day’s delay had already been achieved.

  “Pierre’s main army is twenty miles away from here,” Ferio reported to Valer when he returned to the crossroads with his two men. “They are preparing for battle. Codrin is waiting for them.”

  “How many men does Codrin have?” Valer asked, convinced that his army was much smaller than the one from Tolosa.

  “Difficult to say; some parts of it are hidden in the forest. Maybe three hundred strong.”

  Why did Codrin chose to confront Tolo
sa here? Pierre is an old fox, and it’s not easy to trick him. “The splinter troop from Pierre’s army is trying to surround Codrin. We must warn him.”

  Abruptly, Valer pushed his horse on the road leading to Orhei, parallel to the one where Pierre and Codrin had assembled their armies. They dispensed with caution and rode at a full gallop until the enemy soldiers came into sight. At that moment, they left the road and went on, at a lower speed, through the forest on the west side.

  “Strange,” Valer murmured to himself. “They are not in a hurry.” He thought for a while, then turned toward Ferio, who was on his left. “How far are we from the place where Codrin’s army is waiting?”

  “I can’t tell from here. The hill between Codrin’s place and this road has a peculiar bunch of rocks on the top. They vaguely resemble a bust of an old man. It may look the same from this side. I need to…” He gestured toward the road that was just visible through the trees.

  Go, Valer nodded.

  Ferio stopped his horse at the edge of the forest, and searched the road left and right. It seemed peaceful. He prompted his horse and passed onto the other side, and entered the forest again, where he turned. He felt a moment’s apprehension as they first rode among the tall pine trees. From his saddle, he looked at the hills ahead. He could not see their tops and decided to go further up, to reach an open place inside the forest that was a hundred feet higher than the road. Close to the gap in the forest, the path became too steep, and he had to dismount, and lead the horse by the halter. Arriving at the highest place in the meadow, he looked again at the hills to the east. “The old man,” he said to himself, as the stones were now visible north-east, three miles from him. At the road, he glanced left and right again, then crossed the road.

  Three hundred paces from him, a troop of four men watched him vanishing between the trees and rode north. They wore the colors of Tolosa.