A Time of War and Demons

by S E Wendel

  Reaching across the table, Adren pushed the plate closer to Morn. The scrape of metal against wood was deafening in the silent hall. It was only the two of them now, the others of the war council either on duty or catching a few hours of sleep.

  “Eat,” Adren said, his voice husky from disuse.

  “Is that an order?”

  “If you like.”

  Morn still didn’t eat, but his eyes finally flicked away from the plate to the slit window over Adren’s right shoulder.

  “There are so many fires tonight,” Morn said in barely more than a whisper.

  Adren nodded. They had watched the rumor of Midland reinforcements become a reality just that afternoon, a neat column of men emerging from the Gray Hills to the south.

  “Four thousand,” Morn said, repeating the figure Gowan had estimated after taking a long look from the ramparts.

  “What I wouldn’t give for four thousand men,” said Adren, picking at his thumb. In spring, they’d had triple that number, proud men from across the Highlands. Ten years ago, such a thing would have been a fantasy. He’d never been prouder, looking upon those men, gleaming in their armor with the Highland five-star sigil emblazoned across the breastplate.

  Morn’s eyes, no longer reflecting any light, fell to the mutton again. “We couldn’t feed four thousand more.”

  Ah. There was the truth of it. Feeling the growing hollow void in his chest opening further, Adren was loath to think how this Larn of the Midlands had figured out a way to destroy two ancient Highland cities in two very different ways. Highcrest was a ruin, Dannawey a shell.

  In early summer, with the army still healthy and the peoples’ morale still high, there had been proposals to march out and meet the Midlanders, to drive them away and slaughter as many as they could lay hands on. Many had wanted this, Colm especially. Isla too had written him, urging him to push their advantage. That had been one of her last notes, and Adren missed hearing her advice.

  Despite Isla’s support for riding out, it was because of Colm’s urgency that Adren sided with Morn to wait, to let the plague running rampant in the Midland camps ravage as many as possible. They had only to sit and watch, and Adren thought it a good lesson for Colm, that sometimes patience was worth its weight.

  A different weight pushed on Adren’s chest now. Guilt felt like an iron band round his chest, cold and hard.

  The easy strategy of watching and waiting had done well enough, until supply lines were intercepted and cut. Completely surrounded, they received reports by bird that Midland contingents had been dispatched across the De’lan to stop any attempt to bring aid to Dannawey. It’d been sennights since Adren’s last note from Isla in Ells, the carrier birds shot down. It had been longer still since the last caravan of supplies had broken through the Midland blockade.

  All this Dannawey could have weathered, had weathered before, but the city had never seen an invader like Larn of the Midlands. Adren had only ever read about plague victims being hurled into besieged cities. Whenever it was recounted in song, ballad, or epic, such scenes warranted hissing and boos from the audience. It was not done. But Larn of the Midlands had hell at his back and Dea in his heart.

  What had been an army worthy of the songs sung about times before the Highland Wars was reduced to half its numbers, those remaining weak, disheartened, and commonly mad with grief. Such a force couldn’t march out and meet the Midlanders outside the city, not with their heads and swords held high. Not with four thousand reinforcements.

  But the army’s suffering was nothing to the people of Dannawey. Quarantine had been loosely imposed in the beginning, but this accursed plague beat them at every turn, defying reason. A city of seventy thousand had been cleaved to fifty thousand, and that was the optimistic estimate. People died faster than they could be buried with rites said properly, and Adren doubted if anything was being done properly now. He doubted the bodies were even getting buried.

  Those left faced the steadier, slower plague of hunger. Men with wasted eyes, women with sunken faces, children with bloated bellies, all begging for it to end. They banged their gnarled hands against the castle gate, begging, begging. Sometimes they cried out for surrender, to let the gates be flung open and Larn allowed to do what he would, be it slaughter or banishment.

  “Let them die in their homes,” Morn had said, “rather than along the Iron Road.”

  Their only hope—if there was one, and Adren nearly choked on the word itself—was Galen Aric. One of the last birds they received carried a note confirming Aric had successfully evaded the blockade and made it back to Aldann. If Themin saw fit to allow them hope, it would come with Aric, breaking through Midland lines, reinforcements behind him. Whether they would come, and in time, and in great enough number would be up to their first and last strategy: waiting.

  But now the strategy favored Larn. Adren suspected he hadn’t long to wait. The only question that remained was, how would Dannawey bow in defeat—in surrender, or in blood?

  “They’ll attack,” Morn said, echoing one of his only statements during the war council earlier.

  Adren took a long breath, his chest feeling creaky as it expanded. The air was stale in the hall, tinged with smoke and unwashed bodies. “They’ve no reason to,” he said.

  “They will.” Morn’s eerily distant gaze swung to meet Adren’s. “He wants to take this city now, not have it surrendered to him.”

  “He’ll lose many men doing it.”

  A shadow passed over Morn’s face. “If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that the Murderer of the Highlands doesn’t give a rat’s ass about men lost.”

  “Then Dannawey must stand tall,” Adren said, not mustering enough energy to add fire or assurance to his words. “We’ll drive them back as we always have.”

  “We haven’t the strength to fight them long,” he said, his voice falling.

  Adren wasn’t surprised by his words, but he did grimace to hear them. Morn had kept such morbid tidings to himself through the war council, but Adren had seen the sentiment in the downward angle of Morn’s shoulders.

  “I think it’s time,” Morn said, “to begin planning for your departure.”

  This surprised Adren, and he frowned, Morn’s suggestion washing over him slowly. “What?”

  “It must be soon—before an attack. I can’t promise I’ll get you and the crown prince back to Ells safely, but I feel I must try.”

  Already anticipating the argument from his son, Adren finally nodded. “I’d appreciate seeing my son away from here. He may do more good in Ells. As for me, I refuse.”

  Morn looked at him, blinking once, twice, before he said, his jaw tight, “I can’t stomach also being responsible for the death of the king.”

  “You wouldn’t be responsible. It is my choice and I’m proud to stand with you. With Dannawey. My place is here. How else should the king die but to defend his people?”

  Thirty-Nine

  Though his wide face more resembled a boulder than a man, Ma’an found kindness in his heart for the mortals. When they came to his mountains, they marveled at the nexus between land and sky and proclaimed the mountains the worthiest of Mithria’s creations. The mortals took Ma’an into their hearts and in return for their devotion, Ma’an showed them how to mine the mountains for precious metals, how to smelt and forge. But he saved his most important gift for last. Cutting stone into blocks, he built the first wall for the mortals, sheltering them from the dangers Dea had brought into the world. “This wall and all those you build in my name afterwards shall keep you safe, as will I,” the god said, and those of the Highlands never forgot.

  —Ma’an’s Gift

  At first Manek didn’t recognize Taryn, the bear of a man hunched over, his face drawn with tears and pain. He rocked back and forth, one white-knuckled hand clenching a fist of hair, the other clutching at the limp body spread across his lap. The air escaped Manek’s lungs when, through the ravages of plague, he finally realized who Taryn held so
close.

  Marc’s lifeless face was wan, his eyes only half closed. His hair, usually floppy and golden, lay in matted clumps, flies buzzing about his ears.

  They’d had the audacity to hope these past sennights. Larn was in fine spirits since his reinforcements arrived, and what was more, the plague seemed to have peaked, its diseased fingers retreating from the camps slowly, fewer dying with each passing day.

  Manek hadn’t known Marc was sick; it must have been quick—he’d seen the lad running at his father’s heels into battle just three days ago. He hoped it was swift.

  Taryn’s sobs made his knees weak, and he took another step towards his seneschal. The movement caught Taryn’s attention, and the man looked up, his eyes teary and bloodshot.

  “Tell her to take me instead,” Taryn wept. “She’s here—she has to be. Tell her to trade me for him.”

  Manek swallowed hard. Retrieving a threadbare blanket close by, he carefully laid it over Marc, gently moving Taryn’s hand so he could cover the boy’s blank face. The youthful curve of Marc’s face, his beardless lip, pained Manek, and he was relieved to hide it beneath the blanket.

  He nearly jumped when Taryn gripped his shoulder, filling his fist with the leather of Manek’s jerkin.

  “Don’t send him into the city—don’t put him in the catapults.”

  Manek shook his head. Tamea take him, Marc wouldn’t suffer that horror. Manek had nearly lost his stomach the first time he watched the plague corpses being flung over the walls of Dannawey. Often, when the bodies wouldn’t fit nicely, they were hacked up to accommodate.

  “Take him out of camp,” he said, putting his hand on Taryn’s shoulder. “A south-facing grave will have to do. It’s better than the pits.” There wasn’t firewood enough for a pyre, but at least Marc’s would be discernable from the masses of graves already littering the scorched earth.

  Taryn nodded, his hand falling down to his side. The fire had gone out of him, and he stared down at the blanket covering Marc’s face.

  “Go soon,” Manek said, “before they take him from you.”

  He nodded again.

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “His mother should be…” Taryn’s sobs started again.

  Manek was reaching for Marc when he heard someone shout his name. Straightening, he turned to find Waurin jumping from his horse. Manek walked to meet him with long strides, putting himself between Taryn and anything that would disturb his grief.

  Waurin was breathless, his brow a knot of anxiety.

  “What’s happened?” Manek asked.

  “He’s mad,” Waurin began.

  “I already knew that.”

  Plowing a hand through his hair, Waurin said, “He’s tired of waiting—he thinks with these numbers, we should be able to take the city.”

  “Again, I already knew that.”

  Waurin glared at him. “And you already know we haven’t come up with a way into the city. So he’s going to try the gate. Again.”

  “Gods,” Manek swore. Three days ago, they attacked Dannawey’s southern gate, driving right up to its great iron portcullis, trying to leverage it open. They’d managed to raise it by a hand before hot tar rained down on them. Still Larn had pushed on through the afternoon, sending fresh men to relieve the sticky, tar-covered vanguard until finally, with the portcullis, lever, and invaders suitably drenched, the tar was set aflame with arrows from the adjoining guard towers.

  “He’s going to try the same damn thing?”

  “They’ve made a larger lever,” Waurin said dryly.

  “At this rate, he’ll have us taking the wall down stone by stone.” By now Manek was pacing agitatedly in front of Waurin, rubbing his prickled chin. “When does he mean to attack?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Damn. Ride back and tell him to delay as long as he can.”

  “Why?”

  “He can’t just attack the gate again and expect a different result. I’ll try and find a way in.”

  Waurin looked dubious at best. “How?”

  “I’ll…” He paced again, thinking. “There must be a way in that we haven’t found. Their supply lines had to get in somehow.”

  “Now you’re mad. You know we haven’t been able to find them.”

  “We have to try.”

  “And expect a different result?”

  Manek scowled at his own words thrown back him. “It might be the only way. I’d rather not be tarred, if it’s all the same to you.”

  With a sigh, Waurin swung back up into the saddle. “He won’t like it.”

  “I don’t care. Tell him to delay until I can find a way in. When I do, I’ll take a small band and raise the gate from the inside.” And with that he slapped the horse’s flank, sending Waurin flying towards the Midland camp.

  When he turned back, Taryn had disappeared with Marc. He would have liked Taryn with him for this, but he wouldn’t disturb him now for the world. Instead, Manek set about finding other men. By the time he’d selected a group of twenty and had them preparing to depart, Waurin returned.

  “We’ve got until tomorrow night,” he said, not bothering to dismount again. “He’ll attack then, whether or not the gate’s open.”

  “Then he’s a fool,” Manek said, not caring who heard.

  Manek gave the order for the men to don armor and weapons as if they were headed to battle, suspecting they wouldn’t have time to find this illusive hidden entrance and return to outfit themselves before the attack. His men complied, safely within the Lowland camp where Larn’s dismissal of Manek meant nothing.

  When arms and rations were gathered, they mounted, riding west, out of sight of Dannawey before swinging north. Where the De’lan ran shallow, they met a scout post. Fifteen Midlanders sat leisurely, watching out for but not expecting any Highland contingent. The scouts soured at the sight of the Lowland outfit.

  “It’s a fool’s errand,” said one of the scouts. “Whatever way there was into the city, they’ve surely sealed it up tight.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Manek said, turning Oren into the river.

  The Midlanders called other encouragements after them, but soon they were headed east again, back towards the city.

  “It is a fool’s errand, you know,” Waurin said when they slowed their horses along the banks of the De’lan, the city’s north face cast in long shadows from the setting sun.

  “Yes, thank you for that.” He pointed at the water. “Start looking.”

  “For what?”

  “Anything. All the supply caravans came from the north and must’ve entered this side of the city; they never came further south. We know some even came by barge from Ells. It stands to reason there might be a waterway.”

  “There is. The canal,” Waurin pointed out. “And they won’t let us get anywhere near where it runs into the city.”

  Manek’s eyes traced the canal where it jutted out from the De’lan to the west of them, running straight as an arrow towards the city. Large grates were cut into the wall where the canal hit, the water sinking down into what Manek could only assume were vast cisterns below Dannawey. It would explain why the city hadn’t run out of water despite being cut off from other supplies. And Waurin was right; though the grates might prove just large enough for the smallest of them to squeeze through, the Highland guards, no doubt observing them even now, wouldn’t let them anywhere near.

  “Then look for something else.”

  “But what?”

  “Anything,” Manek repeated with a glare.

  The men fanned out, some riding further up- and downriver. For himself, Manek jumped off Oren, his boots sloshing into the cold river, and began searching. When the daylight waned, torches were lit, fractures of orange light reflecting in the dark water. The men slept in shifts, someone always looking along the riverbank.

  But Manek couldn’t rest and walked up and down the bank, his boots waterlogged, with Oren following dutifully behind, all through the nigh
t. He scowled at the dawn, nothing to show for his sleepless night of searching. The men obliged him, continuing to walk up and down the slim beaches, and when these ran out, stepping into the shallow river edge and searching from there. When they’d humored him long enough to safely say there was nothing on this side of the river, they crossed back over, and Manek tried to ignore the Midland scouts’ smirks.

  His men began all over again, and Manek begged Themin to rein in the sun. By late afternoon, he was riding up and down the river’s edge, looking for anything, a grate, a hidden passage, something. The sun was disappearing into the High Mountains to the west when Waurin found him standing beside Oren atop a grassy berm, the De’lan swirling beneath him.

  “Still nothing upriver,” he said. “I’m going to check on them downriver.”

  “Tell them to check the other side again.”

  “They didn’t find anything.”

  “Have them check again,” Manek said, casting a dark look in Waurin’s direction.

  Waurin set his jaw, nodded, and headed off. Perhaps it was a fool’s errand; perhaps whatever passage there was had been sealed up and hidden. But what was the alternative? Planning an assault that wouldn’t work, waiting to send men to die for nothing.

  Manek leaned down, balancing on the balls of his feet. Beside him, Oren snuffed at a clump of grass, tearing it up with his square teeth. Feeling the need to tear something too, Manek filled his fist with grass and dirt, ripping up a hunk of earth and scattering it into the river.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  The clump of earth bobbed back to the surface—then disappeared. Manek’s eyes swung from where the dirt should have been drifting downriver to where it had vanished. Taking up another fistful, he tossed more in, and the dirt disappeared under the berm.

  “Tamea take me,” he murmured.

  Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called Waurin back.