It wasn’t over.
Myreon raised her staff. “Now!”
Barth picked up his war-hammer and hefted it over his head. “FORWARD!”
With a triumphant cry, the White Army headed up the hill. On foot, disorganized, hurt, and wildly outnumbered, the dismounted knights didn’t stand a chance. Most surrendered at once, but some fought—Myreon didn’t take the time to observe how it all went. Barth knew his job and she left him to do it.
She, Valen, Artus, and the remaining cavalry began their own advance toward the ragged Ayventry lines at the top of the hill. With the destruction of their heavy cavalry in front of their eyes, they seemed hesitant to give up the high ground and join the fray. Arrows began to fall among Myreon’s troops, not in waves but piecemeal; the bow wards she had woven for the front ranks of knights were sufficient to bat them aside. When they were within a few hundred yards, she began to throw some missiles of her own—balls of fire and lightning, designed more to terrify than to kill. It was enough. When the knights of the White Army hit Ayventry’s flank, the men there were disordered and uncertain. The shock of their enchanted lances into the ranks was the last thing the Ayventrymen’s nerves could take. They broke and ran, getting tangled with the blocks of infantry to their right who were trying to organize a push back against the advance from the White Army center. Sheer panic and confusion ensued.
The world got smaller for Myreon. She was in battle now, her Defender training coming back to the fore. She smote to the left and right with her staff, drawing on the sunny weather to blind the enemy with sunblasts. She lost track of exactly who was beside her—at one moment Valen, at another Artus.
And then she wasn’t beside anyone—she took a sharp blow to the back from a polearm. The guard she had woven earlier took most of the impact, but the force of the blow knocked her off balance. For one frightening moment, she felt the world tumble—light and dark, light and dark. The breath was knocked out of her. She had been unhorsed. Her horse, panicked with the battle, had kept running. She stood up.
Ayventry soldiers seemed everywhere, but most of them had the fight already sapped out of them. She worked her sorcery and advanced. They saw her, blazing with power, and fled. And for a moment she was able to pause and survey her surroundings.
The White Army was churning its way uphill, engaged with blocks of Ayventry pikes in several directions, but with superior numbers and morale winning the day. Fawnse’s army—now almost completely comprised of peasant levies and footmen—was falling back toward the town and beneath the protective range of Tor Erdun’s siege engines.
Looking around, she spotted Sir Valen riding, his sword drawn and bloody, the banner of the White Army in his off hand. “Valen!”
He spotted her and pulled up his horse. He snapped his visor back, revealing a face wild with the madness of battle. “General! They’re retreating—not quite a rout, but close enough!”
“Harry them! Chase them right back into the town—spread the word. We don’t let up until that town is ours! Then get inside that door and dig out Fawnse!”
Valen smiled and slapped his visor back down. “Yes ma’am!”
Myreon headed the other direction—toward the blocks of White Army footmen headed her way.
Artus kept riding, arrows plinking off his bow wards, his enchanted shield gleaming in the sunlight. Valen was back on his right again, banner held high. To his left was one of the hedge knights from Hadda—a giant fellow swinging around a huge mace with less-than-expert skill. Behind was the other Hadda knight, who was mostly holding on to his horse for dear life, his head down. Somewhere along the line they’d lost the rest of their escort—to the left and right they heard the crash of steel against steel and the screams of the injured and dying.
Ahead of them, men in red tabards fled in disorganized mobs, their weapons discarded. Sometimes a brave soul would step forth with a halberd or spear and Artus or his companions would ride him down with barely a break in their horses’ stride.
Then they were in the camp. Artus threw a handful of sparkstones as they passed, lighting tents aflame. Valen swung his sword in graceful arcs, striking off heads. The big fellow did something similar with his mace, crushing skulls. He could feel the mood of the men he faced break somehow. For the first time in his life, he witnessed the change from an orderly retreat into a true rout. No one was fighting back now. No one was even looking behind them as they ran. When they had ridden straight through the enemy camp to the side closest to the town, Artus held up his hand and called a halt.
His horse was hot beneath him, its nostrils flared, and he could smell the pungent sweat wafting up from beneath its barding. He’d just pushed the animal at a near gallop uphill for the gods knew how long. It was probably best he give the creature a moment to collect itself. He looked around.
It turned out they were not alone—a dozen or so of Artus’s knights were blazing their way through the camp, too. They were now situated to the rear of the main Ayventry force, which was also retreating from the determined advance of the White Army. He supposed he might have ordered everyone to turn around and charge their rear, but he was skeptical that a dozen knights charging an army of thousands was going to make much difference. Besides, that wasn’t the plan. Valen waved the banner, calling the other knights to him.
Ahead was Erdun town. At another time in another lifetime, the place might have been picturesque—a quaint mountain town with steeply shingled roofs and colorful flowerboxes in every window. Today, though, the town was boarded up and its streets were muddy and packed with panicky Ayventry levies trying to force their way into houses or hide in stables. Above the town, at least two hundred feet up, loomed Tor Erdun itself. Artus could see activity on the battlements—the glint of steel as men rushed from crenel to crenel.
“We’re in range of their siege engines, aren’t we?” Artus asked Valen.
Valen put back his visor and looked up. “I should say so, sire. But I rather doubt they’ll be tossing trebuchet stones into their own army’s camp.”
At that moment, a boulder the size of a large barrel arced over the ramparts and tumbled toward them. Artus froze with terror as he watched it pass just over them and land with a heavy boom in the camp just behind them. Then the projectile exploded, throwing carts and tents and equipment and men twenty feet into the air. A piece of rock struck Artus squarely on the back and knocked him out of the saddle. The big man’s horse went down when its back leg was taken out, and Valen barely managed to keep his seat as his mount reared in terror.
Artus rolled onto his back and sat up. He had to shout over the ringing in his ears. “You were saying?”
Valen pointed up. “Look out!”
Two more enchanted boulders struck the earth nearby. One hit near a trio of Artus’s knights, blowing them into bloody pieces in the blink of an eye. The other struck a barn on the outskirts of the town, reducing it to a cloud of wooden splinters accelerating in all directions. Artus held his enchanted shield up to take most of the blow. Valen cried out—a one-foot spike of wood was wedged between his pauldron and his breastplate; blood spilled down his armor.
The big hedge knight was on his feet. “They’re reloading. To the village! Quick!”
Artus helped Valen out of the saddle and they ran toward the town. Some of his knights, still mounted, rode with them, their eyes fixed on the battlements above.
“They won’t bombard the town,” Valen said through clenched teeth. “They wouldn’t dare.”
No one challenged them as they rushed past the boarded-up houses. Any enemy soldiers they saw fell on their faces at the sight of Artus’s gleaming shield or Valen’s bloody sword, begging for mercy.
The trebuchets released again. Everyone in the streets of Erdun froze, tracking the trajectory of the deadly boulders.
Valen was wrong once again.
The first boulder hit in the middle of a street, blowing the front walls of two houses inward and setting them ablaze. The second crashe
d through the inn with a direct hit, obliterating half the massive building with a deafening explosion. The third landed in an empty pigsty and left a crater of mud deep enough to make a swimming hole.
“Saints,” Artus swore. “What in blazes does that little prick Fawnse think he’s doing?”
The town erupted into pure panic. The fleeing soldiers in the streets scattered like mice. Townspeople shot out of cellars and charged from locked doors to come to the aid of their neighbors. Women were screaming in one of the burning houses.
Artus’s knights formed a defensive perimeter around him, swords drawn, but no one attacked them. Artus was at a loss over what to do—what could he do?
The trebuchets loosed again. Three more houses were crushed. Dozens were killed, all of them either townsfolk or Fawnse’s own levies. Artus could scarcely understand the sheer inhumanity of it.
But he didn’t need to understand. He needed to act. “Valen, get the townspeople out of here.”
Valen had lost his helmet somehow. “Sire?”
“Get them back to our own lines if you have to! See to it!”
Valen flinched as a trebuchet stone exploded on the other side of town. “You have to come with me, sire—we have to get you to safety!”
Artus gestured to the madness around him—burning houses, fear-mad soldiers, boulders raining from the sky. “We’re in the middle of a battlefield, Valen—where the hell would ‘safety’ be, anyway? Go—do your duty!”
Valen nodded and was off, shouting at the closest few men—knights of Davram who had surrendered at Fanning Ford, mostly—and headed off, kicking in doors and trying to pull people out of burning houses.
That left the two Hadda knights, whatever their names were. The big one was staring dumbly at the devastation around them while the broad one was crouched into a ball, holding on to his helm as though it were a hat in the wind. Artus yelled at them both. “We’ve got to stop Fawnse!”
The big one said nothing. The other one squeaked, “We’re . . . we’re gonna die!”
Artus put out his hand. “You’ll only die if you stay here. But come with me, and I’ll make us all heroes.”
The man looked at Artus’s hand. “Are you crazy?”
Artus forced himself to smile and shook his head. “This won’t even be the craziest thing I’ve done this year. C’mon, boys—we’ve got a castle to take.”
The man pointed up the cliff face toward the castle. “But there’s two thousand men in that castle!”
“And I promise to leave some for you—come on!”
The man reached up and took his hand. Artus hauled him to his feet just as another trebuchet stone blew up a stable nearby. Instinctively, Artus pushed the man behind him and held up his shield, warding off the shrapnel that would have torn the two Hadda knights to ribbons. When he turned back around, they were both blinking at him, stunned.
Well, they’ll either follow me, or they won’t. Artus took off running toward the cliff face, still with one eye upward.
The two knights followed.
They didn’t have to fight their way to Tor Erdun’s bolt-hole door. All they had to do was dodge the destruction raining on the village and avoid the screaming people running for their lives. Always keeping an eye on the battlements above, Artus decided the trebuchets on the second siege turret were now throwing boulders at the armies themselves. Given the deployment of his own soldiers, Fawnse had to be dropping explosive ordnance on his own men as often as the enemy, but the boy-count seemed not to care. He had to be stopped, and the bolt-hole was the only way.
The door was small—Artus would have to duck to go through it—and well-concealed behind a bush. Had it not been for the miller’s daughter’s knowledge of the castle, they would never have known where to look. The door was perfectly round and iron-banded, with no doorknob of any kind on this side—a door to escape from, not enter through.
Behind them both, another explosion rocked the town. It made Artus flinch. “Dammit! How are we going to get in?”
The big knight hefted his huge mace. “Stand back.” He slammed the weapon against the door with all his weight. The wood cracked down the middle. Then the other knight was there, a battle-axe in both hands, hacking at the breach. In under a minute, the door was broken open.
The big one was almost the first through, but Artus grabbed him by the shoulder. “Royalty first.”
The giant man refused to budge. “That’s not the plan . . . umm . . . sire.”
Plan? What plan? Artus didn’t have time to argue—he just sighed and shoved the enchanted shield into the big fellow’s hands. “Lead with this, at least.”
In they went. The tunnel beyond was small—almost claustrophobic—and lit with illumite in tiny sconces every twenty paces or so. Artus couldn’t imagine trying to escape a castle this way—fleeing in the dead of night, terrified by what was happening behind you, stumbling and crawling down through the dark. Of course, now that he was thinking about it, stumbling and crawling up through the winding tunnel toward a castle full of people who wanted to kill him sounded little better. He had originally thought this was a clever trick on their part, but now he was realizing that it wasn’t so much a “plan” as a brash course of action.
Story of his life, he guessed.
The giant knight was ahead of him, shield held up in case of ambush. Behind Artus was the other one. It occurred to him suddenly that he knew almost nothing about either man—nothing about their allegiances, their provenance. He couldn’t even tell if they were really knights—he certainly had never seen knights ride as terribly as they had. What if he was wrong about them? It wouldn’t take much for the man behind him to draw a knife and plunge it into a chink in his armor as they climbed. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
After what seemed like forever, the big fellow grunted as he ran into something. “Hold on—it’s a door. I think we’re there!”
“Hurry!” Artus whispered.
The knight fumbled in the dark. “Found the handle. Here we go.”
There was a ray of light and a breath of fresh air. Artus followed the lead knight into a storeroom, probably in the foundations of the castle. It was bare—picked clean. Myreon had been right; the defenders were starving. A woman poked her head into the room, eyes wide with fear. A servant, probably—she must have heard the door open.
The knight behind him drew a knife but Artus caught his arm. Artus smiled at her instead. “It’s all right—we mean you no harm!”
The woman—no, the girl—cocked her head when she looked at Artus. “Are you . . . the prince?”
The big knight pushed past her and peered into the hall beyond. “Nobody coming.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “You are!” She fell to her knees, caught Artus’s hand, and began kissing his knuckles. “Thank Hann! Thank all the gods!”
The two knights exchanged glances. The big one grunted at the other one. “Well, Ham?”
The smaller one—the one named “Ham”—shook his head. “I dunno, Mort. It don’t seem right.”
Mort’s hands tightened around the shaft of his mace. He held “Ham’s” gaze for a good long moment, and then relaxed, nodding.
Artus cocked an eyebrow at them, but before he could ask what it was about, the maid was tugging on his arm. “His Grace has gone batty, sire! You’ve got to stop him!”
“That’s the basic idea, ma’am. Now, where can I find the little louse?”
The girl blushed deeply, which for just a moment obscured the thinness of her face and the bags under her eyes. “I know the best way. Follow me.” She slipped past Mort with a curtsey and led them up the stairs.
Artus caught his eye as he passed. “What was that about, just now?”
Mort’s wide face was impassive. “Nothing. Just a bet we had.”
Artus frowned at the lie. “Did you win?”
The big man shook his head. “Nope.”
Nope? That settled it—these men were no knights. But if they
wanted to kill him, he guessed they would have just done so. For all he knew, that was what the “bet” was about, but he didn’t have time to suss out every plot in the world right now. First things first.
The girl led them through the crowded castle via the corners and back hallways known only to the servants of a great house. The soldiers they saw were too exhausted to put up much of a fight or too unwilling to die for Fawnse—they pretended they didn’t see the three armored men creeping through the castle or surrendered before Mort could smash them into paste with his mace.
Then they were at the base of a long staircase. The girl pointed upward. “He’s up there, at the top of the tall tower. Go quickly, please.”
Artus kissed her hand. “I am in your debt.”
She blushed again and curtsied and then they were running up the stairs, weapons drawn. They heard Fawnse screaming before they were halfway up. “They aren’t stopping! Why aren’t they stopping! Why aren’t they fighting them? Traitors! Cowards!”
When they were at the open trap door, Artus nodded to Ham and Mort. “Quickly now, but leave the count alive.”
They nodded in return and then charged into the room. Fawnse had three men with him—the two that had been his retainers at the parley and an older man tied to a chair. Artus didn’t take the time to make sense of the situation—he swung his sword at the back of one of the men’s knees, cutting through the mail there with the bladecrystal-enchanted edge. Just behind him, Mort’s mace took the other man in the hip, the force of the blow propelling him through the window of the observation tower and into the empty air beyond. Ham tackled Fawnse in short order, before the boy could draw a wand.
“No!” the boy-count shrieked. “NO! Unhand me! Treachery! Treachery!”
Artus finished off his man with a sword thrust under the armpit and drew his broadsword out, crimson with blood. He put the tip of the blade at Fawnse’s nose. “Surrender.”
“Never! You’re no prince! You were supposed to be my prisoner! I was promised!” Fawnse’s fleshy cheeks were purple with rage. They were also wet with tears—he’d been crying. But over what? Artus wondered.
The Far Far Better Thing Page 14
