Ghost in the Yew: Volume One of the Vesteal Series

by Blake Hausladen

  Back down the road the enemy’s thousands marched over the top of the hill. The Hessier had wasted no time.

  The general asked, “What mercy can you offer my men in exchange for my surrender?”

  “None until the Hessier have fallen and your brother surrenders to Prince Barok without condition. When these things are done, I promise your men can leave Enhedu alive. No more.”

  “You are a hard man.”

  “Decide it, sir. My men bleed into their boots. Warm meals and our healers await us.”

  “You have healers as well?” General Oklas scoffed and shook his head sadly. “Ours fled after you stole our horses. Very well, sir. It is madness to side against Hessier, but I am left with little else.”

  I took his sword from him, and he waved in his officers. They surrendered their arms, and I got us moving east.

  The Hessier pressed their army behind us as we marched, but could not make up the ground before we reached Urnedi. And fit she looked, too. Her surrounds was a blanket of jagged stumps, sharp stakes, and tall brambles, and a thousand men stood upon the high, embanked walls of the palisade beyond.

  Erd looked ashen. He said to me, “You are not enough, sir. You are not enough.”

  I remembered the count of the days then and lost much of the strength I had left. I had held the enemy back for only a day and a half and had killed or wounded no more than a third of its 14,000 men. We would have to somehow keep the Hessier from our walls the rest of that day and two days more before Dia returned. If Geart did not rise, it was not possible. Without him to push back the black touch, we were doomed.

  I led my weary men toward the practice field and made straight for Geart and Avin.

  87

  Geart Goib

  I lay upon my side on a field of bloodied men. Avin was there, the blue upon his lips—weak, almost teasing.

  heal flesh man

  I could not remember where I was. Not Apped anymore. Is this the third time the magic has stirred me since we arrived?

  The first seemed years ago, in a small gray room, with a man who had a terrible wound on his cheek. The last was also out upon the same wide field. Avin’s song had saved three that time.

  His verse rose and pulled my attention. He crouched above a man who had been laid next to me. The dim blue light was the caress of soft fingers.

  “See, Leger, his eyes opened,” someone said, and I looked above Avin to two officers in green coats. One was the thirty-year man. The touch of the blue did not soften the pair as it did others. They looked hardened, larger somehow.

  Avin’s song evened, and Leger’s captain whispered, “I have the Tracian officers secured in the cellar of your store. Darmia is well. She is at the meeting hall helping Haton and the Dame.”

  Leger ignored him and leaned in over me. He stank of battle. He looked me straight in the eye. “Come on, Hemari. Get up. We have provincials to kill. You look like a five-day man shirking because of the blisters on his feet. Quick order—attention. Up, soldier, up.”

  So terrible was the weakness. I fought its weight, tried to leap up to attention. An angry little exhalation was all I managed.

  Avin faltered and fell forward onto his hands. “I can do no more today.”

  Leger walked away, and Avin laid himself out upon the bloody grass.

  “No,” I whispered desperately. “Keep singing.”

  But he could not, and the darkness wrapped again around me.

  88

  Madam Dia Yentif

  Recruits

  I woke before dawn, nearly numb from my first day’s ride. Six men from the northern garrison slept around me at the crossroads we had reached amidst the monstrous pines. A seventh greencoat was already up, or perhaps had not slept, and was busy burning bacon over a fire. I had picked them up the previous afternoon at Hippoli and continued with them north into the center of Enhedu. The rest of the thirty men commanded by Furstundish the Senior were on their way to Mount Thumb to organize and prepare all the villagers who would arrive throughout the day. My road was still north. The rest would fan out west and east. Each of us had a long way yet to ride.

  “Let me help you,” I insisted. “You’ve made the skillet too hot.”

  The lad was only too willing. “Sorry. We spend all day making bows. There isn’t one cook amongst us.”

  “Aunt Burti?” I smiled.

  “Yeah,” he chuckled. “She cooks all our meals.”

  The smell woke the rest. We wrapped the hot bacon in cabbage leaves and divided up a loaf of oat bread. We ate in silence and got ready to move.

  I had the stronger of Thell’s two Akals with me. He was a very timid animal but would be fast enough for the ride I needed to make. I’d left Clever and the Akal I had used the previous day with Furstundish the Senior so they would be rested for the third and fourth days of the ride. I was anxious to get back to my good horse—anxious to get back to Barok.

  I got moving north and left the greencoats behind. Each of them would be finding his way to a different village. I had three to reach, some of Enhedu’s largest, so I wasted no time.

  I pushed the Akal through the last of the giant pines and over a rocky, spruce-cluttered ridge. The village behind it had grown much larger since I’d ridden through for the census. Its spot at the intersection of three small rivers and within easy range of Enhedu’s largest villages had made it a preferred location for our master craftsmen. Six of them had chosen the spot, and the many buildings they had started were in various states. The place was a mess and crowded from all the construction. It had been the same in each village. I cared only that it made it easy to tell so many so quickly and move on.

  “Gather on me.” I shouted and men ran in from all directions through the wafts of road dust.

  “We are attacked,” I told them. “Kuren has landed an army of many thousands, and it marches on Urnedi. Leger fights them now. Every man, every horse, and every weapon must ride now for Mount Thumb, or we are lost.”

  They reacted with the same stunned silence. I picked the sharpest-looking man in the crowd, a thick-fisted baker by the looks of him, and told him the things they would waste time coming to on their own.

  “You, sir, I leave you in command here. Gather it all to the center of the village: every horse, every weapon, and every man. Bring any woman willing to hold a spear or fire a bow, and no man who makes excuses. We need no cowards upon our walls. Travel light and two to a horse if needed. Leave as a group but do not linger for those who are slow. We rally to the pastures west of Mount Thumb, between it and the lake. A hot meal and extra mounts will be waiting for you. Be there by sundown because we ride for Urnedi at dawn.”

  “Where do you ride to?”

  “Everyone south of here is already assembling. I ride north to rally the rest. I better not catch up to you on the road, either, or you will never live it down.”

  Their reaction to that was the one I had wanted, and I left the bustle of sudden action behind.

  The way north was easy but long. The rocky ground leveled and softened onto a wide spade of grassland. Enhedu’s single herd of sheep grazed there, and further to the north there was a flowing carpet of budding wheat.

  “To arms. To arms,” I yelled to the farmers I passed upon the road but could not slow. In the village, I stopped only long enough to eat two bites of an offered apple before I got them moving south.

  At my final stop the great clamor of the hundreds rushing to horses became an endless rumble of movement south. The rest of the ride was an exercise in patience and pain. My jaw, back, and thighs twinged and throbbed, and my eyes caked with dust. I wanted every moment for us to go faster, but Fells cannot run like Akal—they trot—endlessly and tirelessly, they trot.

  Beneath the tall pines, the air cooled and the road crowded with the men from ten villages. The sound of us made my ears ring and my head pound.

  And then we were there, under a scrawled orange sky, at a lakeshore lined with horses and a wide, high hill
cluttered with cooking fires and sleeping men.

  A familiar voice beckoned, but not until the woman took me by the arm and handed me a cup of hot cider did I recognize Aunt Burti. She led me to a spot beside a warm fire, and, after handing me a bowl of hearty stew and a delicious loaf of rye, she washed my hands, my face, and my feet.

  I woke beneath a warm blanket beside the freshly-rekindled fire. The chilly predawn air was thick with the smell of bacon, apples, and wood smoke.

  “Over here, darling,” Burti said and helped me sit up. I took the bowl she offered and ate while she sat behind me and began to brush my hair. The tug of the heavy brush through the dew-dampened brambles made my meal a comedy.

  “You should have braided your hair,” she laughed.

  “Could you please?” I asked. She gave me a tender hug, and set to it while I stretched and groaned.

  “Up now, dear,” she said far too quickly. “Everyone is getting ready to move.”

  I stood with her help, spotted Thell and the men from the garrison gathering apart from the rest, and after a goodbye hug, I made my way to their tight square of tents. Thell looked ready to cry.

  “Good day, milady,” he said and gestured to a bedraggled greencoat. “A rider has brought word from Barok. Leger could not hold the road. The enemy will have reached Urnedi last night. We will be too late.”

  89

  Arilas Barok Yentif

  The morning was dark and cold when my bodyguards and I reached my spot upon the eastern corner of the keep’s battlements. The blanket of clouds that had rolled in during the night was the cause, but they had done more than dull the view to grays and greens. A thick bank of slowly-swirling fog cloaked the surrounds and hid the enemy from us.

  They had arrived the previous afternoon, but after surrounding us and settling in, nothing else had happened. Not even a messenger was sent forward demanding our surrender. The only sign of them was the smoke of the many campfires rising through the fog east and south of our town.

  It was too quiet.

  I should have slept longer, but the town’s usual clamor of morning activity was disturbingly absent. I could sense the nervousness of the men standing watch and the fear of the women who cared for the remains of my army. Two ordered rows of tents on the west edge of the practice field contained the thin number of greencoats yet fit to fight. My bodyguards were dour.

  The sudden whack of an axe beneath the keep startled me, but I relaxed quickly. It was Leger. The rhythm of its fall was so familiar—I found myself tapping in time while I scanned the fog. The thump of a boot turned my attention. My bodyguards were both doing the same, and in unison we predicted the next whack of the alsman’s axe.

  Our sudden laughter drew the attention of the men standing along the palisade below. They knew our humor, and a hundred men mimicked the next motion of axe in unison. The air filled with laughter.

  That was how a day at Urnedi was supposed to begin. The feel of it spread. The greencoats rose to ready food, and, like Leger, they were equipped for that day. A bit of color stole through the gray clouds, and the fog pulled back far enough that I could see our unbroken barricade. Fit men in green began to relieve the tired men from town who’d stood watch through the darkness.

  But this moment of quiet calm did not last long.

  “Eyes east,” the sudden call sounded. Some of the greencoats rushed toward the palisade gatehouse. From my high vantage, the bank of fog frustrated my effort to see what stirred them. Gern and Sahin were amongst those who climbed up onto the gatehouse’s wide battlement.

  “Rally,” Sahin thundered suddenly toward the town. “Archers, order—rally to me. Rally.”

  I could not stand it. It was like watching a play upon a distant stage—the villain come for the hero. I could not act nor move to help.

  “Order,” he called again and set an arrow into his bow. “Aim for the ram. Fire at will, fire at will.”

  The loud report of his bow was followed by forty more, and the flight stabbed far down the road into the fog. A scream downrange told me the distance. A second flight did better work but closer.

  Leger had ordered the road left free of any barricade, in order to invite the enemy against the strongest of our defenses: the palisade’s strong gatehouse, the two strong towers of the curtain wall, and our tall keep. I was suddenly sick from worry over the decision.

  “Make ready bows,” I told my bodyguards futilely and turned back to see the enemy emerge from the fog with their ram. A thick mass of regulars with shields held high and close surrounded the barkless barrel of a massive tree trunk. Its weight was held up by a hundred-odd timbermen shouldering thick ropes. Their march forward was steady. Our arrows found too few.

  But then Urnedi’s militiamen archers surged around the keep—the 400 who had survived because of Leger’s hard-fought retreat. They raced up onto the walls and towers. Selt moved up the stairs behind me with three score of the same, and they lined the eastern battlements. I was glad to see he had been trusted to command some of the militiamen. The archers were in place quickly, and they transformed the thin rain of greencoat arrows into a great storm. The enemy began to fall in tens and twenties, but others replaced them. The ram continued to march forward, and thousands followed it in.

  “Order—adjust fire,” Sahin called. “Aim down the left side. Make ready ... take aim ...”

  Urnedi’s men were far too calm, and I could not stand it. They moved slowly, took deep breaths, and careful aim.

  “Loose,” our captain said at last, and the jolting report was fierce. The flight stabbed high into the air and fell like the slap of a hand onto the left side of the formation. Thirty men fell, and the ram faltered.

  “Order—ready ... aim ... loose.”

  The second flight landed before new men could move up to replace the fallen, the ram fell and rolled left onto some of those who remained. The ropes they used to lift the trunk were wrapped once around it. With the lift on the right side suddenly so much greater, the trunk could move only one direction—left and over the arrow riddled bodies.

  The third flight claimed as many of the disorganized regulars as timbermen. The men on the right pulled on the rope more and more urgently, but to the worst possible effect. The trunk managed to crest the brief pile of living and dead and tumbled down the far side, catching another dozen men before rolling off the road and almost off its ropes.

  “Order—quick fire. Fire at will,” Sahin called, and I saw at last the pace I was expecting. The relentless hail of arrows pattered the chaotic mass of men who struggled in the open to roll the trunk back into position. Bodies collected around it like flies stuck to a thick spill of honey. The long column of Tracians that followed on faltered. They had no way over or through our wall except for the ram, and the fog was doing less and less to hide them.

  “Order—adjust fire,” Sahin ordered. “Levies on the road. Make ready ... aim ... loose.”

  The flight arched high and descended. Selt and the archers chuckled and grinned, but I did not understand until I watched the results. The arrows fell into the wide patch of unarmored levies stacked further down the road, and if any arrows missed, it was not many. The levies broke and fled as the second flight was on its way toward them.

  Sahin redirected fire back to the ram. The Tracians had redoubled their efforts to right it, but after two more flights, they fled as well. The rout left behind too many dead to be believed.

  But Urnedi did not cheer as I had expected. Sahin called simply, “Order—unstring and reform by troop. Sergeants, order—archers to their posts.”

  I looked to Selt for an explanation.

  “Too many Hessier behind them,” he explained while he unstrung his bow. “They will reform and come again. We don’t have enough arrows for them all. We must rest. Our bows must rest.”

  “Can’t some of the arrows be recovered?”

  “We got away with it most of the first day,” he replied, looked out at the forest, and pointed. “See
there—at the edge of the surrounds? They got wise to us. Their archers are waiting for us to make the attempt. That’s how we lost Merit. His body is still out there on the far side of that damned hill.”

  I stood fixed for a long moment but packed away the dark ball of regret that rose in my throat. I would mourn his loss after. At that moment, all I wanted was those arrows.

  I spun on my bodyguards. “Do you think Hessier plate is proof against Tracian arrows?”

  The eldest smiled, spun his brother around, and lifted up the chainmail cowl attached to his helm to reveal two punctures in the back plate. “Sahin’s longbows can do it one time in five. Everything else we tested bounces off—even arrows fired from the fine ash bows his apprentices made for the town.”

  It was not a difference I had first registered, but Selt and those with him at the top of the keep had hold of yew longbows, and the men forward on the palisade had shorter bows made of ash. The difference in the arrows fired downrange from each was discernible as well, even at that distance.

  I waited for a moment in hopes that the glimpse of Chaukai craftsmanship would summon Kyoden, but the king remained quiet. I was on my own.

  “Get down there,” I ordered the brothers. “Recover every arrow you can.”

  They were to the palisade gate with wheelbarrows by the time the archers had spread out to posts around the palisade wall. Gern challenged the brothers briefly but opened the gates for them after giving each a heavy shield.

  The result was odd—a pair of Hessier out for a stroll to pick flowers. The flowerbed was a bloody carpet of bodies sprouting white-feathered arrows, but this did not dull the comedy.

  The real Hessier beyond the trees did not find it funny. Hundreds of Tracian archers poured out from beneath the last of the fog clinging to the forest and fired upon the brothers while our archers returned the favor. The clatter and ping of Tracian arrows upon the thick steel was alarming but utterly ineffectual. It got so that the pair did not even need to move and the laughter of the greencoats grew louder than the screams of the Tracian archers. They eventually fled but left behind a good quarter of their number. The brothers filled their wheelbarrows to overflowing and returned to applause.