by Glen Cook
Amberchelle growled, no longer as pleased with his associates. Berto Bertrand said, “I’ll spread the word that people who have somewhere else to go should do so.”
Bernardin Amberchelle was not in charge. The consuls of the city, its magnates, and its urban nobility listened only because he was Count Raymone’s cousin. They nodded politely, then did things their own way. Rejecting the presence of a large enemy army as any reason to create a strong central authority.
The sixteenth morning word spread that the enemy was doing something new. Several thousand forty-day men had arrived from Firaldia. The Captain-General meant to take full advantage. Later that same day a messenger from Sheavenalle brought word that the port city had surrendered.
Observing from the wall when he heard, Brother Candle mused, “That’s what they’ve been waiting for.
They can barge supplies up the Laur, now.” He wondered about the fate of the Seekers of Sheavenalle.
And of its Devedian and Dainshau minorities. The Captain-General’s men were not fanatics, but the Society followed right behind them.
The seventeenth morning the invaders assaulted the Burg and the New Town, surprising defenders who had been warned that an attack was coming. The attackers got over the New Town wall and captured a gate immediately. Fighting spread across the suburb. The defense collapsed by nightfall. The Patriarchals immediately began using tall buildings as vantages from which to hurl missiles into the city.
In the northwestern suburb, the Burg, the defenders held the top of the wall but failed to prevent two breaches created by clever masons. The defenders recaptured those and closed the gaps under a hail of missiles from wooden towers the besiegers put up with astonishing speed. Heavy ballistae atop those flung blazing spears deep into the suburb.
Brother Candle told Berto Bertrand, “I’m no soldier, but I don’t think a sally would be wise.” Small raids had been attempted almost daily. None had turned out well.
“We’ll counterattack in the New Town tonight,” Bertrand said. The consuls and magnates had decided.
“And go after the towers bombarding the Burg, too.”
Only light defensive artillery had been mounted on the walls of the suburbs. None of Castreresone’s defensive weaponry had done any good yet. The stone throwers still lacked ammunition. Those who made decisions remained confident in the White City’s wall.
Brother Candle feared Roger Shale’s improvements would go to waste.
Bertrand added, “We’ll hit their main camp tomorrow. They won’t expect that. We’ll push them back across the river and capture the towers they’ve built to control the bridge.”
There was more. It was a grand and complex scheme. The enemy’s unseasoned levees would be trapped this side of the river and destroyed …
Beyond ignoring the certainty that any complicated plan will stumble, those who had created this one had forgotten that voice out of nowhere.
Brother Candle thought chances of surprising this enemy were nil. He did not stay awake to watch the disaster unfold. He did not want to live with the pain.
***
SOCIA COULD NOT CONTAIN HER EXCITEMENT. SHE BURST into Brother Candle’s cell.
She bounced up and down while he collected himself.
“It isn’t seemly for a woman of your station to be here.” Count Raymone had made little provision for her other than to trust her to the wisdom of the Perfect Master. “But you’re here, now. Pull yourself together.
Try to make sense.”
“Everything is going the way they planned! They’ve retaken the New Town. They pulled those towers down that were shooting into the Burg.” Her excitement faded. “They haven’t put all the fires out, though.”
Brother Candle slept on a reed mat. He sat there now, his ragged blanket pulled around him. It had turned cold during the night. ‘There was an actual surprise?”
“Completely!”
He was unprepared to believe that was not an enemy ploy. “Back out of here for a minute. Let me get dressed.” Soda’s life at Caron ande Lette had been rude, simple, and relaxed. That would not do in Castreresone. The Count of Antieux could not have his betrothed acquiring a tail of rumors.
“Come on!” Socia enthused as the old man left his cell. “I want to see!”
He refused to be hurried. He stopped to break his fast: bread smeared with a dark, heavy, almost bitter honey. By the time the girl chivvied him forth from the keep there was light in the east as well as the north, where the Burg continued to burn. “I suppose we should head for the eastern wall.”
The streets were filled with nervous men, all under arms. The arsenals had been emptied out. These men were supposed to capture the Laur bridge and its defenses.
Brother Candle believed he was looking at walking dead men.
The families were out and underfoot as well. Their fear was thick. They knew some of these fathers and husbands would not be coming back.
Would any? Brother Candle dreaded the answer.
He offered a blessing when requested, for anyone who asked, Maysalean or otherwise. Most Episcopals were not unwilling to take what they could get where they could get it. Though priests loyal to Viscesment would be waiting near the gate, to bless the faithful as they streamed past.
Brother Candle doubted that Sublime’s priests would reveal themselves, though devout Episcopals of the Brothen stripe were among those about to fight for their city.
They had their doubts and fears, as men do in the hour before battle. But they had faith in the righteousness of their cause.
Brother Candle suffered the doubts and fears while enjoying none of the confidence of unquestioning faith.
“Socia. Dear girl. Once we’re done here I fear I must leave you.”
“Don’t be … What are you talking about?”
“I’ve forgotten what I am, child. I’m lost. I have to put the world aside and find myself again. I’m losing my soul.”
Socia used his own past remarks to argue with him.
The soldiers began their sally before the pair reached a good vantage. The rush through the gate almost caught them up. Socia’s lack of manners saved them that unexpected adventure.
They did not get a good place among the observers. The best spots had been occupied long since.
The Castreresonese descended the hill to the Inconje works in a roiling mob, tripping over one another.
They were too numerous and disorganized to march. Brother Candle groaned. “What a waste! This city is run by idiots.”
He did not care that several idiots were within earshot — instead of out with the men running to their deaths.
Soon it seemed the consuls and magnates were not fools after all. Something could be said for terrified enthusiasm and overwhelming numbers.
By sheer bodyweight the Castreresonese breached the palisade shielding the Inconje bridgehead. They drove the Patriarchals back. Cut a great many off. Some swam the Laur to get away. The raiders captured the unfinished guard tower at the western end of the bridge: They charged the tower at the eastern end.
That tower held out for two hours. The enemy used the time to bring up artillery and crossbowmen. They laid steady missile fire on the bridge. The artillery included something that made loud noises and belched sulfurous smoke. Despite their losses, though, the Castreresonese captured the second tower and prepared to defend it.
The Patriarchals did not counterattack.
They built wooden towers that, by day’s end, let them lay plunging fire on the lost towers and anyone crossing the bridge.
The watchers on the walls cheered themselves hoarse.
Brother Candle did not join in. Nor did Socia Rault.
The girl understood. The Patriarchals had not suffered crippling reverses.
The day’s work meant little in the long run. Especially if Castreresone’s losses left it unable to defend its entire circumference against surprise attacks.
Only after night fell did the cost become apparent. The wailing inside the
city had to hearten the enemy camp. The fallen numbered more than a thousand, the injured and wounded many times more. Some families had lost all their men. More would do so once sepsis had its way.
Brother Candle would have bet gold that the enemy had not suffered a tenth as badly as the bold fools of the White City.
He wept. And was not ashamed to be seen doing so while the city consuls proclaimed a triumph.
Brother Candle told Bernardin Amberchelle, “They haven’t gone away. And, guaranteed, we’ll hear back from them soon.”
“Soon” came quicker than even the Perfect Master anticipated.
The counterstroke fell before sunrise. The Captain-General had men swim the Laur, and cross over on boats, above and below the bridge. No pickets had been posted to watch for that. The men who crossed upstream joined those already caught on the west bank. The downstream force attacked the Inconje defenses. They routed the poorly armed citizens, excepting those shut up inside the two towers.
Dawn revealed the slope below the new barbican carpeted with newly fallen. No mercy had been shown.
Fugitives from nearby towns and castles all reported the same thing. The Patriarchals were merciless when they encountered resistance. So towns were falling as fast as the Captain-General’s troops could accept surrenders. Few found the backbone to fight.
While the city was distracted by the slaughter on the fore slope, the enemy attacked the New Town again, bursting through the poorly repaired breaches. They drove the defenders out almost as fast as those could run. By midmorning the Patriarchals were undermining the main wall and building artillery towers so they could shoot down onto the ramparts.
Here the confidence and procrastination of the Castreresonese betrayed them again. Shelters had not been set up to protect defenders from plunging fire. Hoardings had not been installed, making it more difficult to counterattack the masons undermining the wall. It was no longer possible to counterattack through the posterns. The enemy knew where they were. He buried them systematically. The main gateway from the city into the New Town got heaped with brush and timber and set afire.
This living history was written under continuously heavy gray skies, often in drizzling rain. With the full attendance of the Night.
Brother Candle was deeply troubled. Even the most fanatic Brothen Episcopals feared the Night, now, as a thousand awful stories circulated. Rook’s slime trails painted the fore slope, where so many had died. Death himself had been seen outside the barbican, tallying in his Book of Hours. A thousand people claimed their cousins or uncles had seen Hilt. Fragments of Kint lurked in every alleyway.
Brother Candle saw nothing. Nor did anyone else he spoke with. The reports were all hearsay. But their cumulative impact was potent.
Socia wanted to know, “Why would the Old Ones help the Brothen Usurper? The Church wants to destroy them.” She asked over a weak noontime meal of hard cheese and harder bread, taken in a small room off the kitchen in the keep of the Counts of Castreresone.
“Only speculation, mind,” Brother Candle replied. “But I’d bet those people out there are asking how come the Old Ones are helping us when nobody over here wants to see them back.”
The girl started to say something but had a thought. She shut her mouth.
“The Night doesn’t take sides. We only think it does because all we know is what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears.” Considering events on the east bank of the Dechear, the Night might, indeed, have a definite preference in the current mortal squabble.
“They have members of the Collegium to help.”
“They do,” Brother Candle conceded. “Possibly some of the best.” The enemy was not hiding that fact.
Some of those Collegium members had no particular reputation. But Muniero Delari came wrapped in dread rumor. And Bronte Doneto, at Antieux, might be the most powerful Principatè of all. Doneto had spent his adult life hiding his real strength.
“We have no way to balance that.”
“No. So all the advantages are on their side of the balance.”
Bernardin Amberchelle showed up. He was depressed. “They’ve recaptured the tower on the far end of the bridge. And they’ve started building a floating bridge. We’ll try to wreck it tonight. But I don’t expect we’ll have much luck. There aren’t many citizens willing to go out there again.”
There was more on Amberchelle’s mind. Brother Candle made a little rolling hand gesture, inviting him to continue.
“The Patriarchals still can’t manage a complete encirclement.” With forty percent of their strength at Antieux or Sheavenalle and half the rest ravaging the countryside, the Patriarchals outside numbered no more than eight thousand. Still the largest concentration of troops seen in the Connec in generations. “We should consider leaving before the situation deteriorates any further.”
“I thought Castreresone was impregnable.” The Perfect was aware, though, that fugitives had been leaving since the Patriarchals appeared. Who were content to let them go. They would become an economic burden elsewhere.
“It could be. If it had leaders determined to defend it. The consuls and magnates aren’t willing to deal with a real siege. Nobody wants his property demolished for stone and lumber. Let the other guy go first.
And, of course, they’ll get help from Khaurene and Navaya before it gets that bad.”
Brother Candle nodded. He knew. He saw it all the time. People could not believe that Tormond IV
could go on being the Great Vacillator, now. Nor that King Peter was unlikely to send more men than were with Isabeth already. If he weakened himself any more the princes of al-Halambra would seize the opportunity to blunt the Reconquest.
Nor would there be direct help from Santerin, despite any wishful thinking. Though King Brill’s transgressions along Arnhand’s borders did now have Charlve the Dim and Anne of Menand distracted.
With invaders just sixty miles away Duke Tormond began, for the first time, rehearsing his military options.
Brother Candle hoped Tormond would defer to Sir Eardale Dunn. “You’re the man Count Raymone put in charge. I’m here to keep an eye on everybody.”
Amberchelle was disappointed. Of course. He had hoped to be told what to do. “We’ll wait and see, then. If the magnates here go on pretending the situation isn’t desperate, we will act. Just be ready to go on short notice.”
Brother Candle went up onto the wall south of the barbican two days later. A hundred fires burned outside, providing light for the Patriarchal artillerists. Their engines worked day and night. The troops manning them worked in shifts. Local people brought the stone and firewood.
Part of the barbican had collapsed a few hours ago. The main wall had begun to creak and groan and shift.
The Patriarchals had begun building floating wharves on the east side of the Laur, below their pontoon bridge. A dozen barges and boats were tied up already, unloading by night. Buildings were being erected to warehouse incoming cargo.
The besiegers were living far better than the besieged.
Though the siege might not go on much longer. The New Town had been lost. Now it looked like the crusaders meant to hit the Burg suburb again, soon.
Despair had found a home in the narrow, shadowed streets. Few people now believed this city, that had not been overcome in five centuries, would remain inviolate. They invested their hopes in Queen Isabeth and Duke Tormond.
Isabeth and her knights were twenty miles away. The Great Vacillator had sent out a call for volunteers to go help the Connec’s second city.
Brother Candle suspected little would come of that. A new, small hope came with news from Viscesment. Immaculate’s supporters had assembled after the departure of the Patriarchals. They had elected a successor to the murdered Anti-Patriarch. An unknown bishop, Rocklin Glas from Sellars in the Grail Empire, had accepted the ermine and assumed the inauspicious reign name Bellicose. He promised a vigorous campaign against the Pretenders of Brothe. Not the traditional resistance but a
n aggressive countercampaign. He had sent out a call for crusaders. Though he was not taken seriously outside Viscesment, the Society in those parts faced savage persecutions already. Reaping what they had sown.
Bellicose promised to execute a member of the Society every time a non-Brothen Episcopal suffered at its hands. He and Sublime were bee-busy excommunicating and publishing Writs of Anathema against one another. More insanity, Brother Candle thought. Maybe the sides could exterminate each other.
Leave the world to the Unbelievers, the Seekers, and those whose harsh old deities had begun slithering in out of muck and shadow.
The Perfect Master grew increasingly dismayed as he watched the besiegers. He realized he was looking at something unseen since the collapse of the Old Empire.
Professional soldiers led by professional officers, chosen for competence rather than noble lineage, veterans all, were going about their business with the dispassionate skill of butchers and bricklayers.
However much the nobility on either side disdained them, they represented sudden, efficient death.
How would they stand up to a massed heavy cavalry charge?
Bernardin Amberchelle found him there, in his pessimism. “Brother? I just left another meeting of the consuls and magnates.”
“Let me guess. They can’t agree on a sensible course of action.”
“You should be a professional gambler, Brother.”
“I am, in a way, nowadays. Risking my soul chasing earthly illusions.”
Amberchelle’s short, wide frame shuddered. “I’ve decided. They won’t do the needful things. The Patriarchals should go after the Burg in the morning. Tonight may be our last chance to get out.”
“I feared as much. I am, of course, ready to go.”
“Good. Good. There’ll be enough moonlight. We should be well away before sunrise.” Amberchelle sounded shaky. Frightened and trying to hide it.
“Something out there worries you?”
“Rumors. Horrible things in the dark.”
Brother Candle nodded, though the horrible things he had heard of were awful mainly on an intellectual level. Rook. Hilt. The other revenants. They were disgusting but nothing he feared. Not at the strength they possessed now.
