by Greg Curtis
And then he looked across to Kyriel and realised something else. The handmaiden was surprisingly similar to Leona in her aspect. Darker of skin perhaps and certainly lighter of hair. A little younger too. But there was a similarity he hadn't noticed before. There was a familiarity between them too he suspected from the way they were both staring at him and echoing each other's words. And that wasn't good. The last thing he needed was the pair of them ganging up on him.
“How are you finding the fort?” It was a crude attempt to change the subject, and she knew it, but still Leona let herself be sidetracked.
“Dirty.” She crinkled up her nose. “But we're working on that. By the time you get back it will be spotless.”
Edouard wondered who she meant by 'we'. Her family? The handmaidens? The remaining guests in his home? Or more likely, all of them? Leona could be incredibly persuasive when she wanted something, and she always wanted things clean.
“I look forward to that.”
“And to the rest I trust. I've already engaged a mason to finish pointing and plastering the walls as soon as the south is free of these rock gnomes, and when this accursed war is over more will be hired to widen the windows and polish the floors. This crumbling old ruin of yours will in time be fit for the House of Barris to call home. At least until our new home is built.”
Edouard tried not to groan but didn't completely succeed. But he didn't protest. In truth he had expected as much. His was the only decent sized home the family had left, and once the war was over he had expected to have guests. He'd also expected that when they came he would no longer be the lord of the castle. But that was as it should be. He had always known that it wasn't truly his home. That it like everything else belonged to the family.
He didn't even object when Leona started telling him of her other plans, which included turning two of the downstairs rooms into bed chambers for the handmaidens, and opening up the servants quarters in the basement. Kyriel though he noticed, was looking away and covering her face with her hand. He guessed she was trying to hide her amusement.
“Just don't turn the library or the workshop upside down please Precious.”
“Turn them upside down?” Leona stared at him, planting her hands on her hips as if he'd said something particularly upsetting. “Just what exactly do you think I'm doing Edouard?”
“Changing things.” He tried to sound strong and assertive, but what came out of his mouth was more like a choked whisper. Then he managed to embarrass himself further by staring at the ground like a naughty child caught by his mother. How could she still have such power over him he wondered? He wasn't a child anymore.
“Change is good when the one being changed is as messy as you!” She snorted dismissively at him but in a pretty way. “Besides, what wife would want a husband who fails to hire enough servants to keep a clean home?”
“Wife?” That was a word that Edouard hadn't heard in a long time. One he hadn't expected to hear. And one that scared him. Alarm bells started ringing in his brain.
“Well of course. With Simon …” She struggled to find the right words. “ … As he is, you've become the second son. A much more prestigious position.”
“But –!”
“Come now. This was only to be expected. The House of Barris has suffered some significant setbacks recently and we need to forge new alliances. Meanwhile Marcus is busy embarrassing the family with a demoness and because of that would be considered unsuitable as a son in law by most houses. I'm already married. That leaves you next in line. Father is already preparing a list of possible names.”
Marriage?! Edouard's jaw dropped in horror. That wasn't something he was prepared for. In fact he was certain he was too young to be married. He would still be too young when he turned a hundred. And he thought it was especially unfair that Leona should be the one telling him what was expected of him when she had run off with a soldier years before. But none of that helped him when he knew she was right. It would be expected of him.
“I'm injured! And there's a war to fight.” He struggled desperately to think of an excuse. But ultimately Edouard knew that there was no excuse that would get him out of marriage. Not if the house needed an alliance.
“You'll heal and the war will end. And father says that if you even think of finding a woman he doesn’t approved of and marrying her instead he will shoot you himself!”
“That's not fair!” Edouard protested, not least because it was genuinely unfair. Leona had eloped. Marcus had refused to wed as had Simon before him. Why did he have to be the one?
And why he wondered, was Leona looking as though she was going to burst into laughter? Was she really enjoying his discomfort? Also why was Kyriel suddenly red faced and studiously staring off into the distance?
They were being manipulative he realised. Playing games with him. And the one thing he knew as he stood there, was that there was no point in arguing. Leona would always win and he would do exactly what she wanted, never even realising it until it was too late. She was simply better than him at these sorts of games.
“I have to go and help with the wounded.” Edouard quickly decided that a quick retreat was his best hope of escaping whatever fate his big sister had planned for him, and grabbed his weapon and rushed for the physicians' tents.
But with every step he took he expected to hear the sound of laughter coming from behind him.
Chapter Fifty
Theria. It seemed like an age since Edouard had last seen the city, though it was in truth only a few months. But still, things had changed enormously.
The walls had been patched, though not perfectly. Not even well. As Edouard stood there staring at it, he could clearly see where the mammoths had torn great holes in them. And where artisans had then rebuilt them with fresh stone. The colours were different and the blocks themselves were a mix of sizes, none of them as large or solid as the originals. It looked as though the workmen had simply grabbed whatever stone they could find and shoved it into the holes. The stones weren't laid straight or evenly, many were broken, more chips than actual blocks and Edouard couldn't imagine the patches were very strong. The work had obviously been rushed and done by unskilled artisans. But as to how tough they were the cannon would be what would tell them.
Beyond the walls though, there were other obvious changes. The skyline was different, with many of the towers and spires missing. Why, he didn't know. Maybe that was the result of Simon's destruction of the temple. He had said that the explosion was big. That it had shaken the ground even in the sewers six or seven hundred paces away. Maybe it had knocked some of them over. Or maybe – and it seemed the most likely explanation – with the city closed off and no new stone arriving the rock gnomes had torn down many of the city's buildings to erect their temple and patch the walls.
But even before he considered the changes in the city there were other obvious changes he could see. And the most obvious of them were the fields. For as far as the eye could see there was evidence of neglect. No one had harvested the wheat and what should have by now been fields of bare earth with fresh plants sewn, instead looked like small forests of grass. The wheat had died away and weeds had grown up through it. In the same way the animals had not been tended to and many of the farms were littered with their bodies. The chances were that the wolves had been at work while no one had been there to stop them.
As for the farm houses, the barns and the mills, not a single one still stood. Someone had burnt them all to the ground. Edouard couldn't think why. These were the homes of the people who brought food into the city. They were where the grain was stored and animals kept. Burning them was madness – unless you wanted to starve.
“Those walls look massive.” Hendon pointed out the obvious.
He had a habit of doing that, and it wasn't one that Edouard was fond of. But the man was right. The walls might be patched, but they were still huge. They had been built initially with the intention of resisting attack by cannon. If the battlements behind t
he walls had been rebuilt as well, they would be tough defensive structures to overcome, with every enemy soldier having a commanding field of fire to rain down death on any attackers. The chances were that that would give them at least a ten to one advantage. Edouard knew that that was a problem.
They now had five thousand men marching with them since the reinforcements had arrived. Lord Ogilvy on the north side of the city had as many men. But Edouard had no idea whether that was enough. Those walls would give a decisive advantage to however many defenders remained inside the city. And the simple fact was that they had no idea how many soldiers and their demon machines might be inside.
That meant that their first order of business when the siege began had to be destroying those walls. They had to take away the rock gnomes' advantages. And from what he understood that would mean days at the least of bombardment. Maybe weeks. If the walls even could be broken. And if the cannon weren't up to the task they might have to do some sapping.
Unless of course the enemy came out from behind their walls to meet them.
That was unlikely according to the established wisdom. Marcus had told him that the enemy simply didn't have the soldiers. Not after that first attack had failed so badly. The rock gnomes knew they were in trouble. That was why he'd been only harrying them as they approached. Expending soldiers to slow them, but not too many. Because he simply couldn't afford to lose too many. But all the time he'd delayed them had given him time to build up his defences in the city. And by the looks of things the time he'd needed to patch the walls.
Now though that time was past and it was time instead to begin the siege.
Edouard had no part in that. None of the sparks did. In fact he had nothing to do but stand there and watch as the cannon were lined up and the supplies laid out for them. He didn't have to help with the digging as the earthen fortifications were raised either. And while he would have been happy helping with the carpentry and metal work for building the barbed wire barriers, he wasn't needed for that either. He had become completely useless – again.
Maybe that wasn't such a terrible thing he decided as the long morning slowly edged into midday and then afternoon. The men were good at what they did and the earth buttresses around the cannon took only hours to complete. Besides, he was still supposed to be avoiding too much bending and stretching. The skin on his back still wasn't good and it was nowhere near as flexible as it should be. The physicians would be angry with him if he tore his back up again too much. Besides, he had destroyed a lot of the war dogs over the previous weeks. He had done his part.
Still, as he sat there with the others, drinking mugs of hot tea and watching, he felt as though he should be doing something.
It occurred to him at one point that it must be just as bad for the enemy. For the rock gnomes standing on the ramparts of the city walls staring back at them it had to be torture. Surely they wanted to come out and fight, instead of watching their enemies slowly fortifying their positions all around them. Because the longer they held back, the harder it would become for them to resist the attack successfully when the time finally came. But if they didn't have the numbers that wasn't an option. They weren't coming out.
“This is peaceful.” Hendon smiled as he sat on the grass and sipped at his tea. “No marching. No worrying where the enemy is. When he's next going to attack.”
“I suppose.”
Edouard was reluctant to agree with him, even though he knew he was right. It was peaceful. It was a sunny day, they were sitting out in the fields doing nothing, and there seemed little to worry about. This didn't seem like war at all. Maybe when night fell things would change.
“You know we could put a few fire balls over the walls just to see what happens.”
“And you know that Marcus gave us specific instructions not to.”
Yet even as he disagreed a part of Edouard was thinking his fellow spark of flame was right. They were too distant from the city for the muskets to have any effect. Not even his. Not even when he added a spark to them. The cannon had the range to reach the walls and slowly smash through them, as long as they used balls and not shot. But their fireballs weren't so limited by distance. They didn't depend for their destructive power on velocity and having no physical mass they weren't slowed by the resistance of the air.
Of course how much damage they would do inside the city he didn't know. He didn't know how much was left inside it that could burn. A fireball would do nothing against stone. And of course they still had the same basic problem. They had been instructed not to. This was siege warfare. There was a plan and everything was done according to that plan. No one could be allowed to upset it.
So they sat and watched and drank their tea. It was all they were allowed to do.
Late afternoon though brought a change. They didn't notice it at first. They were too busy talking about pointless things, like marriage. Hendon had a woman back in Ashbury that he wanted to marry. He was here specifically so he could earn enough coin to return to her and then they could set up a home together. Edouard on the other hand was dreading the very idea of marriage and waiting to find out who would be selected for him. Had the choice been his he might have summoned up his courage and wooed a certain warrior woman. But he wasn’t certain his advances would be accepted or that the match would have been deemed appropriate by his father. After all, they already had an alliance with the Temple. His marriage to one of Tyrel’s handmaidens would not have furthered House Barris’ cause. Especially when his father was already lining up other candidates.
That filled him with dread. The idea of being wed to someone he didn't even know. Yet it was his duty. Sometimes he thought, the commoners had an easier time of things.
But as they were sitting there comparing lives, they both felt something in the world shifting. Something magical – and large.
The others felt it too. They were surrounded by other sparks and while each of them had their own affinity, they were all attuned to the feel of magic. And they felt this. They didn't understand it but they felt it.
Edouard stood up and started scanning the distant city, hunting desperately for the source, and the rest did the same. They all knew it had to be bad. They also quickly realised that since they couldn't see anything it had to be coming from within the city itself. Somewhere hidden behind those walls.
“It's a portal!” Myan yelled it out. He was a spark of light not dimension, but still he was an experienced caster and he was right. Edouard recognised the feel himself. It wasn't that long ago that he'd been studying the traces of another portal. The rock gnomes were bringing something through. Probably an army. It was the logical thing to do when they were surrounded and their walls were weak.
“Myan go tell Marcus!” He shouted it at the spark whether it was his place to give him orders or not. Then he gave another. “Hendon, Bar; fireballs!” And if they didn't understand what he meant he showed them as he launched the first one up into the air and watched it sail towards the city.
Soon they were all busy doing the same and a steady stream of fireballs was sailing over the distant city walls. Others were joining in. Lightning was dancing down somewhere behind the walls and every so often a blaze of brilliant white light turned the sky above the walls into something glorious. It had to be completely blinding the enemy.
But it wasn't having any effect on the portal. They could all feel the magic growing stronger and more certain. It was almost complete. And when it was complete Edouard knew the enemy's new army would come pouring out of it.
Then the cannon started up, their thunder shattering the air, and everyone knew that the battle had been joined. But there were still massive walls in the way, and as they watched they could see how little effect the cannon had on them. The balls would smash into them, crack a few of the stones and raise a little dust. But they just weren't knocking the walls over as he'd dreamed they would. Then again, that had always been a dream.
Edouard kept working, sending fireball after fir
eball into the city, and in time he was rewarded by the sight of black smoke rising above the walls. Obviously there was still something left inside the city to burn. But even as he knew a moment's triumph the moment was stolen from him as he felt the enemy's portal finally snap into existence. It was huge and perfectly ordered; the mark of a master's work. Or as he now realised, a machine.
After that it was just a matter of waiting to find out what was going to come pouring out through the city's gates. More mammoths? Sprigs? Or something else?
For the longest time though, nothing came. The gates didn't open. And while the cannon kept firing and they kept launching their fireballs over the walls, there didn't seem to be a response from the other side. But still, the portal was there. He could feel it so clearly. It was huge and stable and just waiting for something terrible to come through.
Edouard kept working, taking some joy in seeing the ever thickening smoke that was rising above the city as it burnt, but still on edge as he waited to find out what was coming. In some ways it was actually worse not knowing than finding out the worst. Until someone shouted and he saw what the worst was.
