by Guy Antibes
“How many?” the prior asked as the commotion died down.
“We don’t know,” Boxster said. “I’ve visited Dorwick before and recognized their uniforms. They wouldn’t be so deep into Presidon if they weren’t an attacking army.”
One of the monks spoke up. “You two had better find a different line of work. Dorwick has little tolerance for brigands.”
“Little tolerance for Presidonians. I hope you will all be safe,” Trevor said.
“Dryden, in the end, knows no boundaries. We will survive; our taxes might even be lower with a new ruler. It is good to be forewarned, and you have certainly paid for your dinners,” the prior said. “You may spend the night and leave at dawn with a sack of provisions.”
Trevor nodded. “We would be grateful for whatever assistance you can give us.”
“You will assist us by moving on. Where are you headed?”
“We thought we’d poke around in West Moreton, but that is quite a walk,” Boxster said, “and even farther now that we will have to go west for a bit before turning south. It won’t be particularly safe, but our line of work isn’t the safest. Like you, we will survive.”
“You don’t speak as roughly as I would have imagined.”
Boxster sighed. “We are both educated men, fallen on hard times. One must do what one must do to live. Dryden has been tolerant of us.”
A few monks laughed at Boxster’s comment, but that was the last of the evening as the prior sent the monks to bed immediately.
The morning dawned dreary, cold, and misty, but Trevor was happy to be leaving the area and heading away from the Dorwickians. They dragged themselves into a decent-sized village at noon and bought new clothes and horses with money Boxster had hidden in his boots. Weapons would have to come later, but lunch couldn’t. They put their purchased food into the empty sacks the monks had given them and continued toward the mountains.
A few hours later, they ran into a roadblock of soldiers wearing Presidon uniforms after a sharp turn in the road in a densely wooded area. They couldn’t turn and run without weapons to defend themselves and dismounted when asked.
“Your names?”
Trevor used the name of Bill Denton again.
“You look able-bodied enough.” The soldier looked at a squad casually standing close by. “Take them to the camp for induction into the Ginsterian militia.”
“Ginster?” Trevor said.
“We wouldn’t invade a neighboring country without a little stealth, would we?” one of the squad members said, and they took the reins and led Trevor and Boxster’s horses with them on them.
They rode along a track through the woods until the little lane opened up onto a field of tents. Here there was a mixture of Ginsterian and Presidonian uniforms. There had to be tents enough for a thousand soldiers.
“You are attacking Presidon?” Boxster asked one of the soldiers.
“Of course. Do you think we are here for a Dryden Day stroll? You two are new members of the Ginsterian militia. You will fight for our king, not for King Henry of Presidon, regardless of your loyalties. Consider yourself impressed into our army.”
As they approached the center of the camp, there was an enclosure of sorts around a large cluster of tents.
“The walls are to keep you in.”
The unit stopped at a table. “New recruits. They didn’t run or fight us off.” The soldier looked at them. “They don’t carry swords, but they look too fit not to be of use.” He gave them a paper with their camp names on it.
The man at the table nodded and scribbled onto a roster of some kind. “You brought your own horses? You will train with the cavalry. If you can’t make it, your horses will be confiscated, and you will be pikemen. No one wants to be a pikeman in the Ginsterian militia. Am I right?”
“You are right,” Trevor said. “Where are we headed?”
“Tarviston, of course. It isn’t a secret, not now. The Dorwickians have two armies converging on the west and northwest, and we will be coming from the north.”
“Who covers the rest of the city?”
The soldier smiled. “Rumor has it that there are Presidonian nobles on our side who will make sure that Tarviston is sealed off from all directions.”
“Your victory is assured, it seems,” Boxster said.
“Our victory, now that you are one of us. In a week, Queen Hyra will rule, and her daughter, Lilith, will be crown princess.”
Trevor didn’t think that would last long. He thought his mother wouldn’t wait too long before stepping aside for her daughter, and that might still happen. The last thing he wanted was to be in Tarviston when the usurpation was complete.
King Henry of Presidon was an utter fool, Trevor thought. Anyone could see his mother and Lilith had been plotting for some time. Perhaps Bering had caught the ear of his father enough to convince him that letting his wife and stepdaughter go would be solving a sticky problem in the castle. He thought of a question.
“And what does Ginster get out of all this?”
“Land. We will be annexing a northern slice of Presidon.”
Trevor thought that would be a buffer until Lilith recaptured the gift to Ginster when the time was right. That is what he thought Lilith would do, eventually. He hoped he was long gone from Presidon before that would happen if he and Boxster were able to survive being involuntarily drafted into an enemy army. There weren’t even mercenaries here.
“Dismount,” the man at the table said. “Lead your horses to the end of the compound; there is a picket line there. You will receive more information once you leave your horses.
Trevor wasn’t particularly attached to the beast he had met earlier in the day. He doubted he would be keeping the animal, although it wasn’t anything special. They walked to the end of the compound. There had to be at least two hundred tents within the confines of the enclosure. If two men were assigned to each tent, that would mean the Ginsterians estimated they would impress four hundred men. His father wouldn’t care whether the men came from Presidon or Ginster; in the king’s mind, he would kill them all. Trevor knew his father well enough to know that was how he would think.
They handed their horses over to a young soldier, too young to be in the regular army.
“Where are you from?”
“A village ten miles from here,” the boy said. “You want these horses? I can tag them for you.”
“Please do,” Boxster said. “The name is Karn Kissel.”
“I only know my numbers, sir.”
“5883,” Boxster said.
“And yours?” the boy said, turning to Trevor.
“4444,” Trevor said. He could remember that since he was the fourth oldest. He had no idea what Boxster’s number meant.
“Go to the tent flying the red pennant for your uniform and tent assignment,” the boy said when he took their horses, saddles, and all. Trevor took his saddlebag, and Boxster returned to his horse to do the same.
“Food,” Trevor said.
Boxster laughed. “More food. Who knows what they will feed us?”
Chapter Thirty-One
~
T he next morning, Boxster and Trevor sat astride bony horses, holding dull curved cavalry swords and lances with stuffed balls on the tips. The Ginsterians were attempting to train a company of lancers in their cavalry. The cavalry swords were always a bit dull, but they were heavy and could kill when wielded from horseback as well as any sharp blade.
Trevor felt excitement course through him as he held the lance in his hand. It wasn’t a tournament lance but more of a spear. “We shouldn’t show our best,” Trevor said.
“Goes without saying,” Boxster said.
Trevor felt naive. “But I just did say it.”
“Just keep learning,” Boxster said with a smirky smile.
Trevor adjusted his helmet. It wasn’t the right size or shape, but he could jam it on his head. The cuirass that covered his chest was buckled on and fit him well enough. He wo
uld rather be admired in polished armor carrying a proper tournament lance, but as Boxster said, Trevor was getting an education.
“Get in line,” a Ginsterian soldier said to Trevor and Boxster.
Trevor pursed his lips, wondering how to do less than his best, but better than poorly. He figured he would have to be off on his targeting and slash half-heartedly with his sword.
“Denton.”
“That’s me,” Trevor said as he moved to the front of the line.
“Show us why you shouldn’t be a pikeman.”
Pikemen were the most expendable soldiers in any army, Trevor thought. He dare not fail. He urged his horse forward. The animal was slow to build up speed, but it was enough to allow Trevor to hit a wooden shield that revolved around a pole. The blow was better than glancing, but not full-on. He dropped the lance and drew his saber. Standing in the stirrups, he struck the padded, vaguely-human shape in the chest rather than the head or neck.
Trevor heard the wood of the form crack with his blow. He returned to the scorer’s table.
“You are a strong one. I noticed you’ve had some training. Few of our candidates have learned to stand in the stirrups for a charge. Have you served in the Presidonian army?”
Trevor laughed. “It worked, didn’t it? I was a stable boy for a campaign when I was seventeen,” he said because that was what Win had done before he was assigned to the barracks. “I’ve seen enough passes to know what to emulate.”
“You know you’ve passed, I’m sure.”
“I won’t be a pikeman?” Trevor said with mock surprise.
“Get out of here. You’ll get your unit assignment tomorrow. I will remind you, the yellow panel on the back of your uniform tunic gives any soldier the right to kill you if you choose to try to run off.”
That was the fourth time he had been reminded of the fact that day. Trevor watched Boxster do marginally worse. Trevor learned that it was tough to overcome years of drill.
The army would be leaving for Tarviston at dawn. It would take three days to join the Dorwickians who were already looking at Tarviston’s walls. Trevor and Boxster hadn’t had an opportunity to flee, but they knew their time would come, once the battle started. All they had to do was strip the tunic off a dead Ginsterian soldier or another of Lilith’s allies.
Other impressed soldiers, the pikemen, would be taking down their tent once they left. Lancers were like nobles in the Ginsterian army, Trevor thought. No such hierarchy existed in the Presidonian forces. Trevor rode the same old nag out of the camp in the middle of a Ginsterian lancer formation along with those few locals who could hold a lance and not fall off their horse.
Dryden didn’t like what they were doing and brought rain to make their march miserable. It was nice to think that, but Trevor knew the storm was by chance, and he’d have to lump it. Brother Yvan had told him that early on. The cleric was a pragmatic man, he thought, and he hoped to see him again.
The column shifted to the west, and they ended up on the northwest side of Tarviston. Trevor recognized the standards of western noblemen who had turned their forces over to Lilith. He was sure his father would be apoplectic that so many had turned traitor. What had Lilith promised them? Trevor thought.
“What good are lancers when we fight a siege?” Trevor asked his officer.
“There might be a sally if they see us,” the man said. “It doesn’t matter what you end up doing, you’ll be fighting for Ginster, or you’ll have a sword or an arrow in your back.”
The attack would be at dawn since Lilith had been waiting for the Ginsterians to arrive before taking the fight to King Henry.
The forces slept in the open and were told the plan was to get inside the city so they would be sleeping in beds in confiscated Tarviston households the night after they took the city. Trevor didn’t quite know how to handle fighting against Presidon forces, but he had been forced to do so when his father pitted the Red Forest soldiers against his phony West Moreton brigade. Were his father’s forces running toward the capital at the same time Trevor was entering Tarviston? If they had to muster, there was no way they could reach Tarviston in time, Trevor thought.
“What will we do?” Trevor asked Boxster.
Boxster chuckled. “I was going to ask you that. Do you know of any secret passageway out of the city?”
“Not me,” Trevor said.
“Then we will have to fight. Try not to kill. I think Lilith is level-headed enough not to massacre her new subjects.”
When they woke the next morning, their commanding officer told them to keep the killing down to a minimum. Boxster gave Trevor a satisfied smile.
“That makes it easier,” Trevor said.
“It does until you realize that the citizens of Tarviston will be trying to kill you. You may have to spill some blood, like it or not,” Boxster said.
Trevor took a deep breath and jammed the small loaf of bread he was given for breakfast into his saddlebag. Boxster did the same as they mounted. This time they weren’t in the middle of the formation but the front. If anyone were killed first, it would be them, or so thought the Ginsterians. It also made it impossible to escape before they entered the city.
Trevor and Boxster were assigned the last rank before the regulars. That made their task even harder, but in the heat of battle, Trevor hoped they could get out of the city. He would strip to his bare skin if it helped him leave unscathed.
The column moved into position not far from the northwest gate. Under other circumstances, that would be the gate to take them out of Tarviston and toward the mountain monastery where Win and Brother Yvan waited for them.
All of a sudden, bugles blew, and drums sounded in the air as the gate to the city opened. The defenders on the wall had nothing to do with the betrayal, because they still threw rocks and poured oil followed by fire arrows to the ground below. pikemen and common soldiers were the victims. Trevor felt guilty, but he would rather be a lancer than standing beneath those walls.
He adjusted his helmet one last time and gave a sharp nod to Boxster as their column moved forward. They passed a wagon that handed out wooden shields with a crude representation of the griffin of Ginster painted on the slats. Trevor frowned at how light the shield was, but it would be better than no protection. There was a rope on the back that Trevor quickly used to mount the shield on his back. Boxster nodded and did the same.
The sound of battle became deafening as Trevor quickly removed the shield and put it over his head as they rode under the gate. Pikemen had already gone before them to clear part of the way, and the orderly fight turned into chaos. Their unit finally worked its way past the pikemen, and a clear path lay ahead.
“To the castle!” one of the officers commanded.
“The castle, Presidonians. I’m right behind you,” a lancer said, poking Trevor in the back with his lance.
Trevor did not want to return to Tarviston, but the Ginsterian calvary behind him poked him in the back from time to time to keep him going forward. The streets were amazingly clear, and they picked up speed as the castle became larger.
An arrow bounced off Trevor’s armored shoulder, and the ambush gave him the excuse he needed to veer off down a side street. He looked back to see that Boxster had followed him into the trap. They rode quickly through the streets, turning one way and then another.
Trevor looked down the tunnel of an alley where they had taken refuge for a moment. A unit led by an officer of the royal guard passed in front of them. Trevor saw Win and Brother Yvan, bound and gagged, being wheeled toward the castle. “Our friends,” Boxster said, just behind Trevor.
The fighting began to erupt in the street ahead. They wheeled around in the tight space and returned to where the ambush had started. The fighting had moved in another direction. Tarviston was a battleground consisting of skirmishes, blossoming and dying out all over the city.
They moved toward the castle, seeing Win and Yvan disappearing through the castle gates surrounded by fighting
. The gate finally closed.
Boxster looked up at the castle battlements. “We will be cut down before we make it to the wall, let along over,” Boxster said. “The castle isn’t open to us, but we can escape now.”
“We have to save Win and Brother Yvan.”
Boxster smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. If we can’t get to the castle gate, we can use the secret passage.”
Trevor groaned. “I hoped I would never use that again.”
“I don’t think there is a safer way inside the castle.”
“This is too complicated,” Trevor said.
“If something is too complicated, you just take things as they come. Don’t overthink,” Boxster said.
Trevor nodded. “The passageway, it is.”
They managed to evade most of the fighting but had to battle their way to the orchard at the back of the castle. The hidden door wasn’t ajar, that was a good thing. They tied their horses up in the thickest part of the orchard, but they had to assume that horses wouldn’t be there when they returned, so they took their saddlebags, their swords, and their lances with them into the passageway.
The tinder box was still there. They lit the one remaining torch and began their journey back into Tarviston Castle. Trevor didn’t know precisely what they would do when they got to the chapel.
“They won’t toss Brother Yvan back into the Dryden chapel,” Trevor said.
“But that is the way we know,” Boxster said.
“You forgot I used to live in a different tower.”
“Your ransacked rooms?”
Trevor nodded in the light of the flickering torch. “I don’t want to go down that rod again.”
“I agree with you, for once,” Boxster said.
“You’ve only agreed with me once?” Trevor said.
“Humor, I guess,” Boxster almost smiled. “Lead on.”
In minutes, they stood in Trevor’s old rooms.
“Not much left here,” Boxster said.
“My clothes,” Trevor said. “We can shed our tunics with the yellow backs.”
“We can, at that,” Boxster said.
Trevor found his large closet as disheveled as the rest. His clothes were piled on the floor, but they weren’t destroyed. They took a few precious minutes to find suitable clothing. Boxster had to make a few adjustments since Trevor was taller than him.
