by Rob Preece
"Is this supposed to be a just war?” she asked. Sergius had seemed more regal, more responsible after the battle than she'd ever seen him before, but she couldn't forget his panic, his readiness to abandon his soldiers to save his own life. After all, this whole war was about whether one man or one of his uncles would sit on a throne. To the dead, that couldn't matter much.
"We are fighting for the rightful King, united with the land through magic,” Lawgrave said. “What could be more just?"
Ellie shook her head. “I don't know. What I do see is that Sergius and his uncles are fighting over power and it's the ordinary people who are getting killed."
"Is it different in the world you were sent to?” Lawgrave didn't make that a challenge. He wanted to know. As a priest, he probably hoped it was different, that humans could have found a better way.
"I guess not."
He sighed. “I feared as much. Even in the holy Church, there have been bitter disagreements. Even bloodshed. Mankind is a violent beast."
Ellie drew her horse closer to Lawgrave and lowered her voice. “Answer me this one question, Father."
"I'm listening."
"Is it right for me to seek the people who killed my parents? Do I have the right to kill those who get in my way on this quest?"
Lawgrave stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Do you want to be a human or a saint? A leader or a hermit?"
She wanted to scream. “I don't know."
"Then I don't know how to answer your question. But I will say that the people who murdered your parents did wrong. Hunting down those who have sought sanctuary is a great evil."
Ellie nodded. But she wasn't particularly reassured.
* * * *
Two hours later, they emerged from the forest.
Ellie was a city girl and an Angelino, so she wouldn't have recognized good farmland if it stood up and bit her. But this looked like it had been the breadbasket of Lubica. Plowed fields stretched more than a mile on either side of the narrow roadway and substantial outbuildings gave evidence of the region's affluence.
Or rather, the still-smoking ruins of homes, outbuildings, and cornfields did.
Dafed had been ahead with the main body of their small army, but he'd stayed behind to meet her when she and the remnants of the dragoons finally emerged from the forest. “It's ugly here."
"Sullivan did this to his own people?"
"It's what people do in war."
She knew that. She'd seen a T.V. show on the German invasion of Russia and knew that scorched-earth tactics had worked there. But she hadn't really thought about the way that destruction would hurt the locals, probably more than their enemies.
"But—"
Dafed shrugged. “War is the game of nobles. Peasants pay the price."
He was trying to sound nonchalant, but he failed miserably.
If she'd thought about Dafed's background at all, she would have guessed that he'd followed his father into the military. The way he looked at the burned land made her realize she'd misjudged him.
He bent, picked up a clod of plowed earth, and crushed it in his strong hands. The dirt ran through his fingers back to the ground.
"You come from a peasant family, Dafed."
"Once."
"What happened to them?"
"The Rissel, years ago. It was a border raid. Nothing serious. Not even a war. There were a few dozen drunken nobles looking for some loot. They burned the farms they came across."
"Your parents?"
"Both killed. I don't think they raped my mother first."
Ellie hoped so. “How old were you?"
He shrugged. “Six. Old enough to remember but young enough to be adopted into a mercenary company."
"We've got to do something about this, Dafed. There's got to be some way of stopping it."
He looked at her with a look that almost seemed to hold pity. “This is the way it's always been, Ellie. Armies march, nobles loot, and peasants suffer."
He gestured to one of the dragoons who had ridden away from the group and now returned with a chicken flapping at his belt. “If the Duke of Sullivan hadn't burned the fields, our own army would have stolen their livestock, raped their women, and abducted their children into arms."
That wasn't what Ellie had wanted to hear. She wanted a clear moral distinction, a battle between good and evil.
Reality, she was discovering, didn't play fair.
"Where are the people?” she finally asked. “Did they drive them back to Dinan?"
Dafed shook his head. “They would never do that. They wouldn't have trusted the peasants and wouldn't have wanted to feed them."
She noticed he hadn't answered her question.
Ellie let her horse wander across the burned fields.
Dafed watched her, then spurred after her, trying to head her away from the farmhouse. She ignored him. She had a sinking feeling that she was going to find something terrible but she had to know.
When she finally got up the nerve to look into the smoldering ashes of the farmhouses, she found what she'd feared. Human skeletons.
A row of charred skeletons in one farmhouse was a bad sign. Another row in the second house was grim confirmation. But after six farmhouses, she knew she had discovered a crime greater than the murder that had brought her to this world. The King's uncle or his Rissel allies had simply slaughtered the entire peasant population to prevent them from offering assistance to Sergius and his army.
Ellie knew that Sergius was a long way from representing good. But he wouldn't have done this. Or at least, he hadn't. And as long as she had anything to say, he wouldn't.
"We can't let this happen again,” she told Dafed who had ridden up beside her when she'd finally thrown down her reins and stooped over the sixth house.
"What can we do to stop it?"
It was tempting to take responsibility. To believe that if she had only left things alone, this wouldn't have happened. Without her, Sergius would never have been crowned and the uneasy balance of power between the Dukes in the countryside and the bishop in the capital could have continued indefinitely.
Tempting, but wrong. She hadn't done this. Sergius hadn't done this. Sullivan and his allies had made choices and they'd chosen slaughter.
Maybe she would leave Sergius and his army afterwards, but she intended to see that Sullivan paid the price for this cold-blooded massacre.
* * * *
They were still three days’ march from Dinan when they stopped for the night.
It was almost dark when Ellie reached camp but she rode directly to the large tent that had been set aside for Sergius.
A guard started to stop her when she yanked on the tent flap but another guard stopped him. “It's the princess, idiot. Are you that anxious to die?"
A reputation wasn't an altogether bad thing.
"We don't have enough food,” Sergius told her when she pushed her way into their tent. “Or enough wagons to carry it even if we had it. My uncle's plan is putting us in a difficult situation."
Arnold nodded grimly from where he sat at the king's side. Both had been stuffing their faces with a large roast of pork.
"I need you two to come with me."
"We've been riding all day.” Sergius wiped his face with a silk scarf, then tossed the bone he'd been gnawing on the ground. “We need to rest."
"I need you to see something. Now."
Arnold scowled, but he stood. “After the battle yesterday, if she says it's important, I'll take her word for it."
"Bah. And this is the first decent meal I've had since I broke free of the bishop.” The king struggled to his feet, belched, then strapped on a sword.
"Where to?"
"Not far.” She led them to the nearest farmhouse, still smoldering despite the hours since Sullivan's armies had retreated.
Arnold looked around. It was nearly pitch-black and the tiny moon only shed a fraction of the light Ellie was used to. “If you're leading us agai
nst some enemies, I wish we'd brought a few more men."
"This should be safe. For us, anyway. For them, it wasn't."
She used one of the matches from the survival kit she'd bought in the REI back when she'd been shopping the mall and lit the area.
"Magic?"
"It's just chemistry, Arnold. I don't want you paying attention to my match. I want you to look inside.
"Oh. Oh, shit. There've got to be ten corpses in here."
The king pushed his way past Arnold just as Ellie's match reached her fingers. She blew it out and lit another.
"I wondered about that fat pig just wandering around.” Arnold sounded pensive. “Even if they burned the crops, the peasants would herd their swine into the city."
"I don't understand why you're showing this to us,” Sergius said. “We knew Sullivan had brigands working for him. It is terrible that they would slaughter a farm household like this but it shouldn't be a surprise. After all, that is what bandits do."
"It isn't just this one farmhouse, Sergius. It's all of them. Every burned farmhouse we've passed has its victims. Sullivan didn't bring anyone back to Dinan. He probably didn't want to feed them if there's a siege. It was easier to kill them all."
"That's insane,” Arnold said. “Peasants are wealth. Without them, who will pay the taxes? Who will feed the cities? Who will provide labor for the roads and pikemen for the army?"
His was a fairly cold-blooded calculation, but he was right. Even leaving the moral aside, Sullivan had weakened the kingdom he claimed to want to rule for the sake of a short-run advantage. That wasn't the kind of King Ellie would want.
"I'll have Father Lawgrave read a mass for their souls.” Sergius's voice was puzzled. He still wasn't sure why Ellie had shown him these slaughtered peasants. After all, he hadn't killed them.
Ellie was happy to make that clear to him. “I want things like this to stop. No more warring on peasants."
"We haven't done anything like that,” Arnold reminded her.
"When you rode into that trap yesterday, you thought they were just peasants. That's why you were so confident."
"But we thought they were brigands."
By his definition, though, any peasant with arms was a brigand.
"According to Mark's scouts,” Ellie said, “Sullivan burned everything from here to Dinan. They tried to count the number of farmhouses but lost track after a few thousand. We're talking tens of thousands killed."
"We didn't kill them,” Sergius said.
It was a long shot, but Ellie thought she saw a hint of sorrow in his match-lit eyes. She decided to press her advantage. She wasn't after vengeance for her parents any more, but she had a new mission.
"What killed them was the system that defines nobles as the only people who matter. As King, who better to change the system?"
"I'm not exactly in a position to make Kingly commandments."
Fair enough. But if he won, he would be. “I want you to make me a promise,” Ellie said.
Surprise filled the King's eyes. “What?"
"Announce that you'll be King for the peasants and villagers. That you're going to dedicate your reign to controlling the abuses of the power of the nobility and the army. That you'll never allow this to happen again."
Arnold bristled.
Sergius looked at the baronet, then back at Ellie. He shook his head slowly. “I can't do that, Ellie. Right now, only about half of the barons are even staying neutral in this fight. The other half is divided among my uncles. If I make the war about them, I won't have any support at all."
"Darned right,” Arnold agreed.
"You'll have the peasants’ support,” Ellie reminded them.
Arnold laughed. “If this farmhouse represents what happened between here and Dinan, the peasants Sullivan slaughtered outnumbered his army ten to one or more. Yet I doubt they killed a dozen of his soldiers in the entire massacre. The nobility control the armies, Ellie. Sergius needs them. Can't you see that?"
Sergius didn't look happy. What King would like to hear that he had to depend on anyone? But he had been raised with the idea of a social ranking. The King and the nobles, along with a few superior priests, were the only people that mattered in the feudal society Ellie had found herself in.
"What I see is a petty squabble between privileged children of a dead King,” she said. “And this petty squabble has opened our country to invasion, killed tens of thousands of our citizens, and impoverished everyone. Unless we elevate the battle, make it one of the people against the usurpers and invaders, it can drag on indefinitely."
"You're stepping close to treason,” Sergius said. “I am the rightful King. My uncles are traitors. That can hardly be called a petty squabble."
She shrugged. “You may be the rightful King—far be it from me to argue. Yet your great-grandfather usurped the throne. Until he won, he was the traitor. Once he won, the history books were rewritten and he became the champion. Can you think of any reason it will be different this time?"
"That is treason."
"It's the truth,” she lit another match. “I'll make you a deal."
Both Arnold and Sergius leaned forward. “What?"
"If we can win at Dinan, that'll solidify your support among the barons. Then you announce that you fought that battle to gain vengeance for the peasants here and that you're adopting a new government. One that includes a parliament for the common people as well as one for the nobility."
Mark had been telling her about English history and the Magna Carts. She figured that introducing the concept of a House of Commons was as close as she was going to get to a real democracy here.
"If we lose, we have nothing. If we win, we give everything away. Why would I agree to that deal?” Sergius looked puzzled, but also as if he was willing to do the deal if she could convince him.
"Do you really think you have a chance of winning without me and my magic? Without Mark and the way he is transforming the army?"
"You are the rightful King,” Arnold reminded him. “You don't have to agree to this insanity."
Arnold was young. If he was this inflexible, Ellie didn't want to think about how the older nobles would react. But she had one advantage over either of them. She knew that it had worked at least once before, in England. And she knew that attempts to cling to aristocratic privilege and autocratic power would eventually fail.
Sergius sat still, his cheeks puffing in and out as he considered his options.
Ellie didn't need her magic to detect when he'd made his decision. His eyes flicked to her, then to Arnold.
"You've got a bargain,” he announced. “When we take Dinan, I'll announce that Sullivan failed because of his great crime in slaughtering the innocent peasants. And I'll announce two courts of advisors. One from the nobles. A second from the lower classes."
He was lying, unfortunately. He would go back on that bargain as soon as he had the chance. But Ellie knew that rights, once granted, were hard to retract.
She reached for a sheaf of parchment. “We'll put it in writing, then."
Chapter 8
High sandstone walls surrounded Dinan.
Only a few days before, the town had sprawled out past the walls.
No longer.
Sullivan or Rissel soldiers had leveled the homes and shops outside the walls, chopped every tree or bush that obscured the view. They'd created a killing field for a quarter of a mile around the walls.
Dozens of ugly cannons leaned over crenellated walls and the purple haze of magic hung over the city like a shroud.
Here and there, patches of still drying mortar showed that Sullivan had used the last week to shore up aging fortifications. If Sergius's army had any kind of artillery, though, they'd go through the stone wall like a power saw through silk. But they didn't. The only cannon they possessed was the one they'd captured from the fake bandits. And it was still days behind them.
Ellie and Mark studied the city looking for any obvious weaknesses.
The city walls formed a long ‘u’ shape protecting a harbor and the ships inside of it. At least four large ships, each flying the Gryphon of Rissel, were unloading.
"That's insane.” Ellie pointed to a spit of land that formed the south side of the harbor. It was outside the city walls. “We could put our cannon out there and bombard the harbor. I can't understand why they haven't guarded it."
Dafed could, though. He'd been stationed in Dinan years before. “It's swampland. You put a cannon there and it'll just sink into the ground. Never get a single shot off."
"Maybe we could shore it up."
"Swampland all the way down. The engineers tried to build a lighthouse out there once. Thirty feet tall of solid rock with another ten feet of foundation. The whole thing sunk into the ground and vanished. Only took a couple of weeks."
She shook her head. Scratch another plan.
"We can't starve them out with ships able to land.” Dafed didn't mind stating the obvious. “And they outnumber us, outgun us, and outmagic us. I think we're in trouble."
Ellie thought so too, but she was committed. If they failed, Sergius would become a footnote in history and his promises to create even the advisory parliament of commons would become a joke.
Ellie could do magic, but she hadn't really integrated magic into her thinking. Their attack on Dinan had depended on secrecy, on being able to move without being detected. But Sullivan would have been an idiot not to have his mages keep track of Sergius. When Sergius had begun to move toward Dinan, Sullivan had known. In retrospect, she should have done things differently. Now, though, they had to make the best of a bad situation and hope for a miracle.
In the meantime, they needed to survive and make sure that Sullivan didn't wipe them out. The first step was easy. Dafed and Mark laid out a fortified camp blocking the road into Dinan but out of range of the city's cannon. They couldn't do anything about the shipping but they didn't want to make it too easy for Sullivan.
