TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

If their fair avatar might have preferred to attack after the return of his first Lord Commander, high seas off the Cildein stalled all inbound galleys. Quarrels rode the disparate contingents of garrison troops, until their hag-ridden captains sweated the hours and cursed, awaiting a break in the weather.

  And the day came, when the shrouding mist lifted.

  The sharp winds backed and changed, shredding the cloud cover to racing scud, then tatters. Sunlight sheared like spilled brass through the rifts, and the puddles steamed and dried to pocked dirt. The last scaling towers nosed up to the wall, with the furtive squads of Mearn's saboteurs forced to dash in last-minute retreat. They left the lower town emptied behind them; bolted at a breathless, single-file sprint across the span bridge at the Wyntok Gate. Once the stragglers crossed, a distant s'Brydion cousin, and three older veterans with war injuries removed the board treads that planked the stone gap. They oiled the steep cobbles and unshackled the massive chains that secured the narrow, wood causeway. A sparkling flash, their mirror-sent signal leaped across the rock chasm that funnelled the tidal race.

  The duty watch at the Mathiell Gate returned a horn blast in salute. The traditional flourish, repeated three times, that denoted full honours for heroes.

  Then dreadful, uneasy quiet descended, filled by the croaks of the wheeling ravens, and the rattle of chain, as the drum winches were turned to draw in the span bridge. More men dismantled the cross-links that supported the boardwalk. When its length wrapped the drum, and the slender thread of the stay-chain was left rocking over the chasm, the stalwart volunteers at the Wyntok Gate sawed the anchor pin at the stanchion.

  The chain fell with a mournful whistle of air; splashed into the white flood in the channel under the cliff.

  The town was cut off from the ancient keeps that crowned the island promontory. Four men, now alone, made the last preparations: lowered the grilles and barred the armoured gates at the Wyntok gap. A rushed word of parting, a wrist shake for luck: split into pairs, they retired atop the flanking towers to stare down the face of death.

  For the mournful clang of the steel grilles that secured the Mathiell towers was no longer the only sound of men's industry. Above the cutting rush of the wind, the war-drums of the Alliance infantry boomed out the rhythm to march. The din rolled upslope, shattering echoes off the deserted house-fronts. A roar like surf answered: shouts from poised ranks, shaved by the throaty bray of bronze horns to signal the fleet in the estuary. More trumpets blared. The quavering note hung on the tissue of air, until a bass roar welled up from beneath: a crescendo wrung from the throats of tens of thousands of armoured men, as a thin line of gold creased the sky.

  Lysaer engaged the Light's signal, calling his front-line officers to engage the advance.

  The seething blocks of troops charged in step. No arrows sleeted to meet them; no burning wads of oil-soaked rags, bound over rocks hurled from mangonels. The arbalests of the attackers spoke first, launching the grapples with their unreeling tails of rope. The positioned siege towers shuddered beneath their layers of soaked hide, and lowered their wooden traps. Hobnailed wood clanged and bit glass-studded stone; snagged and lodged fast, while the yelling, steel figures streamed forth in storming assault. They poured over the unmanned, outer battlements. From the heights' vantage, they came on, a teeming wave flecked with glittering steel, and the stainless flash of white surcoats.

  The land-based attack on Alestron's defences began as a triumph, unopposed by a murmur of aggressive response from her s'Brydion defenders.

  Autumn 5671

  Vantages

  As the ram manned by the Alliance attackers reduces the triple gate of Alestron's outer wall to burst wreckage, a Sorcerer in the form of a golden eagle turns from its circling flight and wings steadily southward . . .

  Sequestered in Selkwood, and recovering mazed wits from the healing bestowed by the Paravian presence, Arithon traces the left scar from the light-bolt that subjected him to Desh-thiere's curse; and awareness brings thought, that the mark stayed untouched to remind of the horrors of suborning enslavement, an experience he must bear throughout life . . .

  In port at Vhalzein to off-load the prized wines from Carithwyr, and accept a shipment of lacquer furnishings bound in trade for the silk guild in Atchaz, Captain Feylind of the merchant brig, Evenstar, first hears of Lysaer s'Ilessid's whirlwind campaign to destroy the s'Brydion seat at Alestron . . .

  Autumn 5671

  VI. Counterstrokes

  The eagle who was the live construct of a Sorcerer soared over the plain of Orvandir. Each flap of broad wings engaged powerful spellcraft that shifted both air and earth. Gliding on thermals, the bird passed over the town of Six Towers. His flight flickered a shadow across the beaten track of the trade-road, where the creeping industry of commerce goaded the caravans southbound towards Atchaz.

  He skimmed by that town's baked, saffron walls, then the angular sprawl of its compounds and silk sheds to a hiss of knifed wind, parted by razor-edged primaries. The eagle banked into a lazy circle. His lofty presence scattered the mayor's outbound messenger pigeons into fluttering panic, before his yellow beak turned to the east. His course bent to follow the watercourse that gleamed like kinked ribbon, and whose stepped, silver waterfalls snagged the shaded channel of the River Lienriel, which crossed into the free wilds of Alland.

  The raised wardings of the Paravian marker stones acknowledged the eagle's request. His presence crossed their ranging protections and ignited a brief shimmer of golden light. The display passed unseen by the party of scouts hunting for game on the river-bank. Unchallenged, the avian predator swooped inside the guarded borders of Selkwood.

  His strafing descent set him down in a clearing, a stone's throw from the secluded encampment surrounding Lord Erlien's lodge tent. There, the black-haired subject he sought did not fail to mark the intrusion.

  Arithon Teir'sTfalenn laid down the strap leather his lock-stitches were fashioning into a shoulder sling for Alithiel's scabbard. 'You don't need to perch in a tree to intimidate. Why not converse from the ground? Let Kyrialt adjust to unannounced harbingers without thinking I talk to myself for no reason.'

  To the liegeman, whose scout's instincts were already ruffled, and whose hand had snapped to his sword-hilt, Arithon explained, 'The day Davien alighted upon the Evenstar's taffrail, his surprise visit stunned the wits out of Feylind's deck-hands.'

  That statement as warning, the eagle unfolded its majestic wing-span and glided down from the limb overhead.

  Unsmiling, Arithon watched the descent, still musing in piquant afterthought. 'You haven't come here to recoup your loaned cloak?'

  'Which won't be found where Feylind's ship's steward last stored it!' came the acerbic reply. 'You are criminally careless with gifts, Teir's'Ffalenn.'

  What alighted was no longer a bird, but two-legged. The Sorcerer's trim height wore a tailored jerkin and hose, flame-coloured in orange and russet. He had a narrow, intelligent face, with greying, fox hair tumbled over straight shoulders. One tapered hand bore a citrine ring, and the boots fitted over his elegant calves were cuffed in costly black lynx. His striking mantle was loomed from jet wool, bordered with chased-silver bosses and gleaming embroidery: unmistakably the same garment just mentioned to open a sparring exchange.

  'You wanted news?' Davien the Betrayer provoked. 'Your siege has begun, at Alestron.'

  Unlike Kyrialt, blanched by startled shock, the Sorcerer regarded the crown prince before him with avid, dark eyes and flushed interest.

  'My siege?' Arithon's lifted eyebrows shrugged off that hurled challenge. Seated with what had been cross-legged indolence, he showed no concern, despite the shadow his visitor cast over him.

  Kyrialt stayed on guarded edge, helpless to warn off a maverick Sorcerer whose unsavoury reputation and long exile had done nothing to reconcile a past fraught with murderous acts.

  Neither was Arithon back in trim form, since return from his trial in the King's Grove. Ten days after
his unshielded encounter, the mark of Paravian presence rode him still. A haunting, near sorrow, distanced his manner - as though yearning change left his spirit bereft. Former high kings had wasted and died of such loss. The histories recounted their trials: the searing experience of an unworldly grace that could not be retained, or reconciled. Yet where other crown forebears had languished from that relentless, invisible wounding, this s'Ffalenn prince fought his way back. As the after-shock of tranced vision and dreams brought intervals of silenced weeping, he turned the adamance of initiate discipline to rebuild his shocked equilibrium.

  For this morning's fresh onslaught, to Kyrialt's relief, the royal wits seemed resharpened.

  'What tedious news can you bring, if Alestron's inner citadel is secure?'

  Arithon pressed the rogue Sorcerer. 'More to the point, I'd planned to call you. But not within the next fortnight, and only concerning a favour to balance the uncivilized service I was just asked to render.'

  "The affray with the Kralovir at Etarra?' Davien's grin would have shamed a weasel. 'A pit fight that you were well suited to win. Are you bitter?' His riposte turned sardonic. 'It was Traithe who delivered your bleak course of training. Not my frank invitation to unlock the black grimoires stored within Kewar's library.'

  'Ciladis's notes were too riveting,' said Arithon.

  And Kyrialt, watching, sucked back a stunned breath, as the Sorcerer recoiled from the hidden barb within that nettled rejoinder.

  Dangerous in recovery, Davien rebounded to delight. 'Nai ffiosh e'elen sliet-th'i, my wild falcon! Wings such as yours are more suited for soaring. Strike and snap as you will, the hot nerves of your ancestry have never ruled your decisions. You are wise enough not to slaughter your messengers?'

  'Over Alestron's debacle?' Arithon shrugged.

  Kyrialt endured the unpleasant, stretched interval. While the breeze through the pines kissed a sun-mote across his liege's too carefully expressionless face, he realized: there would be more than one resource at play. If Lysaer's war host assaulted the s'Brydion citadel, his Grace's on-going link with Elaira would deliver the tensioned gist. Behind the mask, Arithon would be aware of the Alliance engagement already.

  Outwardly unruffled, the sitting prince qualified, 'I could as easily scry the particular event on the lane tide.'

  Yet the nuance was evident before Davien pounced: the Master of Shadow did not resume his lapsed handiwork.

  'But the news won't be vivid at second hand!' Volatile flame poised for who knew what purpose, the renegade Sorcerer bowed to his quarry.

  Arithon did not rise.

  Therefore Davien presumed, and retrieved the dropped awl. Too direct to gainsay, or else moved by gadding caprice, he scribed a circle into the ground beside the abandoned strap work. 'See for yourselves?'

  And his mortal observers became drawn in: by the flash of his ring, or perhaps snatched into rapport by the flourish that demarked his spellcrafted figure.

  Enthralled past resistance, too gently surrounded, Kyrialt experienced the shift in perception that also claimed Arithon s'Ffalenn. All grounded awareness of the forest dissolved, replaced by an eagle's preternatural focus, from the wheeling vantage of flight. Kyrialt shared the panoramic view as the Light's forces breached Alestron's first wall and invaded the lower town . . .

  * * *

  The citadel's outer defences were decisively overrun. Alliance captains from fifteen allied garrisons strutted on the high ramparts. Already, they prepared to extend their advance into the trade precinct, laid open before them. The triple gates with their steel grilles were smashed down, the flanking keeps stormed and occupied. If the Sunwheel standard did not yet acknowledge their easy conquest, the oversight was being remedied. The duke's empty flagstaff had been abandoned with the halyard cut down. An eager boy now shinnied up to thread a replacement line.

  The contest had yielded no other resistance. Men stood on their hollow victory. No drawn sword was blooded. The handful of injuries had been caused by falls, the penalty of a careless ascent, or raw luck, when an ill-set grapple had failed to support an over-zealous campaigner. Troops milled on the ramparts with no task at hand. The absence of crowing triumph all but stung, while the taintless sunlight rinsed barren stone, and mild winds fanned sweaty faces.

  The flush that expected a battle held on: a froth that was granted no action to dissipate, upon tempers unfit to be tamed.

  The Alliance captains needed direction to muzzle their manic troops. Handed a town that seemed emptied before them, they knew little of value would be left to loot. If their green recruits swaggered, the veterans viewed the tranquillity with foreboding. The houses with their locked shutters and doors, and the barred gates on the idle craft yards, yet posed them an unknown risk.

  Alestron's aggressive resistance was legend. The vindictive citizen who might have stayed mewed up inside; the hidden squad of defiant archers; or the sharp probability that enemy snipers might lurk in sly cunning with cross-bows could not be discounted. Against such surprises, the attackers had profligate numbers to spare: too many restive troops to keep penned without laying claim to their due reward.

  Lysaer s'Ilessid sat his splendid white horse before the mounted lancers holding rear-guard on the field outside. He raised his right arm. His sent beacon speared the heavens and signalled the horns of the priests. The readied columns of mailed infantry tramped forward and funnelled in columns through the flattened gate. Smart companies re-formed atop the secured battlement. Yelling, they poured into the lightless stone stairwells that accessed the ward-rooms and barracks. Other squads formed up at the crenels and lowered their scaling ladders to storm into the vacated streets.

  The second wave of the advance surged in to occupy their breached prize.

  Pikemen charged down the thoroughfares and flooded the shaded byways. The roar of their incursion echoed off the shop-fronts and emptied houses. Sloped lanes split their forces into small groups and isolated their wary commanders. The eager, dense packs of front-running skirmishers plunged ahead, and the narrow streets hemmed them. They could not swerve when the first mishaps struck; as the waiting, cocked trip-wires unleashed concealed deadfalls, or the crudely set barrier that blocked a steep lane, trampled down, freed a rumbling avalanche of propped barrels. Such rolling bludgeons mowed through screaming troops. Staves struck and burst disgorging chipped stone that smashed bones, and clubbed armoured men senseless.

  High over the roof peaks, the eagle's eye view exposed the unravelling disaster: the snares that erupted one after the next in diabolical timing. The ropes that dropped nooses and snapped men by the neck, or spilled hammering cascades of loose tiles; the hammering falls of knife-edged slate that sliced through boiled leather and stabbed flesh, or else viciously blinded. The darkened houses provided no haven. Plank floors caved into root-cellars planted with stakes. Sawn beams in the attics became jerked awry by blocks and tackles nailed to the forced doors. Invaders were crushed under lintels that fell. They died without screaming as cleavers whumped down from rigged traps in the overhead balconies. Wounds took them as quarrels hissed from cocked crossbows, set off as barred shutters were bashed open.

  The boisterous shouts changed to a wounded roar as the Alliance forces jammed into bloodied recoil. Rank chaos, and the sprawl of the maimed fouled their efforts to stage a retreat. Reverse movement snarled into the press of the rear-guard, who came on, unaware of disaster. While the gutters ran red, the deadly havoc continued. Horns wailed. Captains harangued to rally their men and dispatch help for the injured, when a revetted wall tumbled into collapse. Rolling logs scythed down parties of rescuers, and pummelled the already prostrate. Screams shrilled over men's furious shouts. Frantic sergeants snatched bugles off their fallen officers and struggled to withdraw their lacerated ranks and regroup in the deserted markets.

  The harried troops lifted their groaning casualties. They bunched into knots, driven into a wary rout by trapped ground and treacherous mishap.

  Even in
escape, they found themselves beset. In the sills of the dormers, nestled amid oiled thatch and board kindling, the clay pots with their crafted witcheries sparked vicious explosions. Flame and clouds of unnatural smoke hazed the soldiers to panicked flight.

  Pelting downhill, the confused lost their way. They stumbled and crashed on oiled cobbles, or blundered, yelling, into blind alleys, where Sidir's ugly handiwork waited. Victims died disembowelled, or stabbed through the viscera. They fell, choking on their spilled brains, with shattered skulls crushed to fragments.

  In shocked disarray, the Light's war host pulled back, without a s'Brydion casualty.

  There would be redress. No life-dedicate officer in his sullied white surcoat harboured doubt. While the survivors consoled their dazed comrades, and bound up the lucklessly broken, that sullen promise sustained them. Their blessed avatar would unleash his god-sent gift. Grim-faced, the troops kept their pride in defeat. For the cold-blooded slaughter laced through the craft quarter, Lysaer could raise a cleansing by Light fit to scour Alestron to the foundations.

  Yet by righteous mercy, not before every live soldier marched out, and the litter-borne wounded were packed off to safety beyond the trampled front gate.

  A semblance of efficient handling returned as the sea-wind cleared off the thick smoke. Midday glare unveiled horror's wake. Every man limping, every man bloodied, and every one of the prostrate too mangled to walk passed beneath the Blessed Lord's view. His steadfast gaze did not flinch from their suffering. His calm acknowledged, but did not deride their shamed tears. The dead, by strict orders, would stay where they fell. A shattered city would become their monument.

  The living who filed by walked assured of Lysaer's punitive judgement. Their suffering would be answered measure for measure, to the last atrocity served upon their hapless flesh by vile tricks fit to snare wild animals. When the rear ranks had passed, and the last, moaning casualty, the avatar sat his white horse. He regarded the rammed maw of Alestron's front gate. Then he spurred his mount face about. His raised fist was offered in lordly salute to honour his standing war host.