by Tim Stead
Tilian was shocked. Knight of Avilian? Sir Tilian Henn? He hadn’t expected this, but it was obvious that the general had. Cain was grinning at him, and leaned closer to the duke.
“You know they’ve given his unit a name of its own, lord duke?” he said.
Quinnial raised an eyebrow. “Already?”
“After the show they put on in Bas Erinor. It’ll stick after this. They call them Henn’s Ghosts.”
“What do you think of that, Captain Sir Tilian Henn?” the duke asked, smiling.
“It’s embarrassing,” Tilian blurted. The duke laughed now, and Cain laughed too.
“You’ll dine with us tonight,” Quinnial said. “I have to hear more about your exploits and I’m sure the others will, too. At sunset, Sir Tilian. Be here again when the sun goes down.”
Tilian was relieved to be dismissed, and made his way quickly out of the duke’s tent into the general bustle of the camp. Almost at once he ran into Brodan. He suspected that his lieutenant had been waiting outside the tent, off to one side somewhere where he would not be obvious.
“Well?” the young forester asked.
“Well what?”
“Did you get promoted again? What did the duke say? What’s he like?”
Tilian didn’t really want to talk about it. “He seems a decent enough man,” he said. “Younger than you, I should think.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Is it Major Henn? Surely he didn’t just talk to you.”
Tilian gritted his teeth, but he didn’t doubt Brodan’s tenacity. The forester would keep at him until he had his answer. “You should have listened at the tent flap,” he said. “Then you wouldn’t have to ask.”
The lieutenant coloured slightly. He looked down. “They chased me away,” he said.
Tilian laughed. The thought of Brodan trying to sidle past the duke’s guards and being sent off with a flea in his ear was an image he would cherish. He shook his head. “Well, you’ll hear it soon enough, I suppose. He knighted me, not that I deserve it.” He muttered the last five words so that Brodan would not hear.
Brodan’s jaw dropped for a moment, then he clapped his hands like a child. He seemed extraordinarily happy. “We must celebrate,” he said. “The men will want to hear this. It’s better than being promoted.”
In spite of all the words that had passed between Tilian and the general he still didn’t really understand it. He had been given everything, his men little or nothing. They got corporal’s stripes, a veteran’s bar, and he got a knighthood. Yet they had all done the some thing. They had sat and waited, and then lit the fire as they’d been told. Others had killed Seth Yarra patrols, some more than one. Gods and demons, even Brodan’s pair had taken two patrols.
But here they were, overjoyed at his elevation.
He remembered the general’s advice. Don’t try to shrug it off. Let them revel in it. Let them have their fun. It’s the part of the reward that’s truly theirs. It went against the grain, but Brodan seemed delighted, and when they reached the little hollow where his men had camped they seemed just as happy.
Henn’s Ghosts. He looked them over, and they still looked like the same men they’d been when he took them out of Bas Erinor months ago. They still joked around, still drank too much when the opportunity presented itself. Brodan had changed, though. The young forester took himself seriously now, and the men took him seriously, too. He spoke a quiet word and someone went off to check the sentries. Even here Brodan kept them on their toes, made them watch as though they were on hostile ground. The city men had blended well with the Latter Fetch men. Tilian could see friendships forming between men of the different groups.
Perhaps he had done a good job after all. They were a good bunch. He would have been proud to fight alongside them, never mind lead them.
One of the men brought him a drink, and he accepted it. It would be the only one he had before the meal with the duke. He wasn’t looking forwards to it, and he wanted to have a clear head so he didn’t make a fool of himself.
“I have to eat with the duke tonight,” he told Brodan.
“Rather you than me,” Brodan said, and there was genuine sympathy in his voice. Tilian remembered how dumb struck Brodan had been in the general’s company. “Still, we’ll have to find something for you to wear. Can’t shame us, can you?” He left Tilian for a moment and spoke to a couple of the men. They hurried off.
It suddenly struck Tilian. That had been his job. He’d started out running errands for Lord Skal, finding things, making things happen for his lord. Now people were doing it for him. He’d been a boy. Lord Skal had called him a boy. Had that been just a year ago?
“Can’t wait to get home,” Brodan said when he came back. “There’ll be a lot to do in the forest.”
Tilian said nothing. He wasn’t sure that he had a home, really. If he was honest he thought of his home as Lord Skal’s side. That was where he belonged. Latter Fetch was his lord’s estate, and in that way it was home, he supposed. It was his lord’s home at least. Yet the thought of going back to Latter Fetch without Lord Skal wasn’t a warm one. If he went back there he would have to face Lady Sara again, and deal with her advances once more.
Perhaps it would be better to go back, to see her and put her off once and for all. He could make himself unpleasant, show a cold and brutal side, play the hardened man come back from war. He’d seen war change enough men that way, even at his age. But what would be the point? If Lord Skal really intended some sort of liaison with Lady Sara, then he would always be out of favour with half the household. He lacked the subtlety to manage such a complicated thing.
Best not to go back then. He had an excuse already prepared.
“I won’t be going back to Latter Fetch, at least not at once,” he said.
“No?” Brodan seemed shocked, and Tilian could see it from the lieutenant’s point of view. But Tilian was Bas Erinor born. The city held no terrors for him.
“Someone needs to collect your pay,” he said. “Besides, there are things I have to do in the city, people I want to see.”
“Our pay?” Brodan grinned, and well he might. He had a fair amount coming to him as an officer. It was probably as much as he’d see in a year as a forester. “I’d forgot,” he said. How like him to forget that he was to be paid. How like all of them. Brodan and the foresters were still foresters in their own minds, still wedded to their life at Latter Fetch. Tilian was different. He was not one of them. He had begun to think that he was, but Tilian had worked at a job where the only pleasure to be derived was from the money paid at the end of the week, and the idea was etched in his mind. He expected to be paid.
“Well,” he said to Brodan. “It’s a good thing that somebody remembers.”
Seven – The Western Chain
Skal Hebberd sat atop his horse and looked down on the western plain of Telas. It was not the great open spaces of the beast realms, the Great Plain itself, but it was wide enough and flat enough to deserve the name. To be honest he would have called it a moor. It was elevated and cold, and the vegetation was dominated by heathers giving it a brown and purple hue. The hills that stood above it were already brushed with snow, and a chill north wind promised more to come.
In the distance he could see the Western Chain. As Hestia had promised it was a line of seven castles, or forts. They were grim and practical things, all sheer stone and hard edges. They spanned a bend in the River Gayle which marked the border between Telas and Durandar, each end fort being hard on the bank, even overshadowing the grey water. Beyond the forts the river curled away and back again, capturing a few dozen acres of land between the forts and the flow. The forts were no more than a hundred paces apart, and could support each other well enough, apart from those that relied on the river to guard their flanks.
That was the weakness.
“Does the river freeze?” he asked.
Hestia was beside him, and beyond her the usual assortment of lord
s and officers that rode with the queen, all sitting, all looking. “Only in the harshest of years,” she replied.
“Then we must hope for a mild winter,” he said.
There were already men in the forts. He could see the tiny specks of movement on the walls and around the gates, and out on the moors he could see wagons following roads that led to the seven gates. That was they key. That was why they had sent men ahead. They needed at least enough food to last the winter, though the spring promised no particular relief.
Skal’s personal hope was that the Seth Yarra, who were undoubtedly men of the far south, would fail to come to terms with the harshness of a northern winter. He hoped that they would be weakened by sickness, disheartened by snow and ice and the feeling that they would never be warm again. He did not look forward to the winter with any greater hope than that.
They rode down from their vantage point. It was still two hours ride across the bleak moor to the gates, and Skal took the time to think how he would attack the chain. It was an exercise that he had undertaken a hundred times in the classroom, to assess the enemy’s position, to identify his weakness, and devise a plan to take advantage of it.
Their weakness, such as it was, seemed to be two fold. He had already seen that the forts at each end were the most vulnerable. They would be the ones to be assaulted by the Seth Yarra. Their force would be immobile, too. There would be little chance to react to anything the Seth Yarra did. Once locked away inside the forts they would be static, and he didn’t think it was a good thing.
Yet a strong position like this would strengthen their hand. They had six thousand men, give or take, and the Seth Yarra army that pursued them was ten thousand strong. Better to meet them here than on an open field.
He still doubted. They were giving up one advantage for another. They had cavalry, and Seth Yarra didn’t. That alone should level their chances. What he was looking for was a way to use both, the strength of the forts and the power of the cavalry. It was always true that they could sally forth through the gates, but even as he approached the forts he saw that the gates were small. That was good for defence, but if only two men at a time could ride through them then the enemy would have time to respond, and archers alone might be enough to thin the horsemen out as they emerged.
Two hundred paces before the walls Hestia called a halt.
“We have a week before they get here,” she said. “We’ll camp here tonight.”
“Why not camp the other side, Queen Hestia?” Skal asked. “Between the forts and the river. It’s a better position.”
“The ground is firmer here,” she said.
Skal didn’t argue the point. He considered defence a better cause than comfort, but as the queen had said, they had a week. He set his regiment to establishing their camp and rode out alone towards the forts. He was met half way by one of his own officers, a Captain Lissman, sent ahead weeks ago to help with preparations.
“Lord Skal,” the man said. “We are glad to see you.”
Skal nodded towards the forbidding walls. “How do they seem?” he asked.
“Built well enough,” Lissman replied. “They were shaped to face the other way, against Durandar, but they’re strong enough both sides.”
There was a sound of hooves and Skal turned to see Captain Emmar riding towards them. He saw Lissman’s hand move to the hilt of his sword. “A friend,” he said to reassure his own man. “This one I trust.” It was true. He had learned to think of Emmar as reliable since King Terresh’s death, in spite of their poor beginning.
“You’re going to look around the Chain,” Emmar called as he rode up. “My uncle was here during the building, so I may be of some help,” he said.
Skal nodded, accepting his presence. He turned back to Lissman. “How have they disposed you?” he asked.
Lissman pointed. “We have the eastern three, closest to Avilian, I suppose.”
“And supplies?”
“There is food enough for winter if we are careful, but I am worried about the horses. There’s not a lot of hay put aside for them.”
“Can they graze the heath here?”
“It will sustain them,” Emmar interrupted. “They’ll take hay if they have a choice, but we grazed here when the forts were built.”
“Good enough,” Skal said. “Captain Lissman, make arrangements for our horses to be grazed on the acreage behind the forts, and get parties of men cutting the stuff out in front and storing it with the hay.” He turned to Emmar. “I take it the fodder will hold its goodness?”
“It will.”
That was easy enough to solve. Now he just had to find a way to survive beyond the spring. They rode to the easternmost fort, the one Skal had judged the most vulnerable. Before entering the bailey he rode around to the river side to see how well defended that passage might be.
It was more formidable than he had expected. Iron spikes had been embedded in the stonework. He kicked them to test their strength and found them solid. The spikes would force a man to climb out along them over the swift, cold water, well in sight of archers on the wall, a slow and easy target. Someone had even thought to put a slit window above the spikes so that a lamp could be hung to illuminate them, and an archer could shoot from close range if anyone tried to get past that way.
It would be easier to ride between the forts with a hundred archers shooting arrows at you.
“I don’t think anyone will get past that,” Lissman said. Skal nodded. They rode back to the gate and passed into the bailey. The gates were well made. A heavy portcullis could be dropped in front of the heavy, studded gates. There was a ditch before the gate, ten feet deep and forested with sharpened wooden stakes. The ditch was spanned by a wooden bridge. Once the bridge was burned it would be impossible for the enemy to bring a ram against the gate unless they filled the ditch. But it would also be impossible for the defenders to ride out.
Within the bailey walls the simplicity of the fort was revealed. The curtain wall, the height of three men, captured about an acre and a half of land, and in the centre stood a stone tower that was fifty feet high as Skal judged it. Not exactly roomy quarters for a thousand men.
“Is this it?” he asked.
“They built underground,” Emmar said.
“Underground?” He thought of the river and the wet lands all around. “Doesn’t it flood?”
“I’m no engineer,” Emmar replied. “But they did something clever, and the water is kept out, and it’s nigh on impossible to dig under the walls.”
“There’s a lot down there,” Lissman confirmed. “And that’s not the best of it.” He led the way into the tower, but instead of going up they went down a stair into a hallway big enough to house two hundred men on pallets. There were other rooms, too, and several were as large as the first.
“It’s larger than the fort above,” Skal commented. “We must be out beyond the walls by now.”
“We are,” Lissman agreed. He walked to the end of the room they stood in and swung back one more door, revealing a corridor twenty feet wide that stretched away in lamplight to another, similar door about seventy paces away.
Skal tried to get his bearings, but he’d been turned around and didn’t know which way was north.
“Is that what I think it is, Captain?” he asked.
“If you think it’s a passage connecting us to the next fort, then yes,” Lissman said.
So that was the secret of the Western Chain. It was not seven forts, it was one. Men could be moved to defend any fort that came under attack, and moved quickly, judging by the size of this passage. The roof here was high enough for a man on horseback to ride through. Skal was impressed. Their position was not as rigid as he had thought. Such a design would allow them to deceive their enemy mightily, which was always a worthy strategy.
“Clever, eh?” Emmar asked.
Skal took a few steps down the corridor and examined the walls. They were all the same here below ground, and appeared to be made of wood, wh
ich didn’t seem to promise much in the way of strength. He ran his hand along the planks.
“Caulked,” he said. “Like a ship.”
“And stone behind,” Emmar said. “If any water leaks through there’s a drain beneath the floor here that can be pumped.”
Skal didn’t care that much about the mechanics as long as they worked. “Can the corridor be sealed?” he asked.
“It can,” Emmar replied. “By each door there are blocks that can be brought down to choke it for twenty feet, and then it’ll flood, but the doors at either end will hold the water out, and they have their own drain and pump.”
