Weight of the Crown

by A. C. Cobble

  “If this fails,” said Ben, “we’re all in trouble.”

  15

  Standoff

  Throughout the day, the mages worked to steal heat from the fires that were burning in the city below. They couldn’t safely call rain from the skies, but pulling the heat from an individual blaze would snuff it out. The problem was that there were hundreds of fires, and they didn’t have hundreds of mages. It was exhausting to channel so much energy.

  While the mages worked, Ben, Lloyd, and Rhys all rested fitfully in an empty guard barracks near the wall. They’d fought all night, and they had dangerous days ahead of them. Besides, as Amelie had succinctly pointed out, there was nothing they could do during the calm of the day.

  In various parts of the city, they could see the Alliance and Coalition men gathered, but it appeared both sides had decided to wait for the rest of their armies before engaging in another major conflict.

  Adrick remained awake, claiming he did not need rest, and when Ben woke, he offered a quick report.

  “Both the Alliance and the Coalition are still in the city, but they’ve retreated to opposite quarters. Elle says their armies are drawing closer, and both will be in sight of the city by midday tomorrow. Our assumption is that when they arrive, the conflict will be engaged fully. They’ll have no reason to hold back then.”

  “The groups they used to conduct the sneak attack are nervous about what we’re capable of,” speculated Ben. “Whatever magic users they have are like children compared to Elle, Earnest John, and yourself. They witnessed that strength last night with John’s crossbow bolts and whoever stopped the arrows from falling on us. They can see it now when our mages extinguish the fires from afar.”

  They made their way into a mess line that had been set up at the base of the wall so defenders could come and get a quick meal. Roasted legs of turkey, boiled beans, bread rolls, and water. Ben yearned for an ale, but he supposed that would set a bad example for the men. They shouldn’t be intoxicated if they had to leap into battle, even if he wanted to be.

  “Perhaps,” agreed Adrick. “That will only delay matters for so long, though. Our mages are near their limits, and the power they are displaying is minimal. At some point, one of those armies will guess that we’ve expended most of the will we’re capable of marshalling.”

  “Elle and John still have strength, don’t they?”

  Adrick shrugged. “The girl has been healing the wounded since we returned. I do not know how much more she is capable of. John looks strong, but he’s reluctant to use his power on men. If he spotted Jason or Saala, he’d make an exception, but he has not struck at any of the troops we’ve been watching.”

  “And Amelie?” inquired Ben.

  “She’s working to put out the fires. This is her city, after all,” said Adrick, tearing a big bite out of his turkey leg. After he was done chewing, he added, “Even if our mages had strength and the willingness to use it in battle, there is little they can do to affect the main armies. Exerting your will becomes progressively more difficult the further away the energy is. Two bells walk is a large distance to overcome and effectively act. They’d lose precision. I doubt they’d have the skill to target an individual or small group in those armies.”

  “So anything they did would be wild, unfocused.”

  Adrick nodded. “Indiscriminate. The type of wholesale destruction we’re trying to avoid.”

  Ben scooped a pile of beans into his mouth and ate without tasting them. Finally, he said, “It’s on us, then.”

  “It’s on you,” replied Adrick.

  “You’ll watch Amelie for me?” asked Ben.

  Adrick nodded. “For all of my life I’ve had a purpose. One I believed in above all other concerns. We meant to protect the world from power that could be used for evil, but now, I see it does not take great power to conduct great evil. Evil is in the world, and by hiding in our forest, we only allowed it to flourish. We need to change that.”

  “I think most of the people out there are good people,” said Ben, setting his plate between his feet. “They’re following orders or doing what they honestly believe is right. Even the leaders are not necessarily evil. They believe in what they are doing. At least, both Jason and the Veil told me as much. I’ve realized it’s not the individual men and women who are the problem. It’s the system we have governing this world. It steers people into conflict, into darkness.”

  Adrick frowned. “You have a lot of wisdom for someone who is a small fraction of my age.”

  Ben grinned. “I’ve seen a lot in a short time.”

  “So, wise one, what do you do when a system of governance is perpetuating evil?”

  “You break it.”

  “You are sure about this?” asked Amelie.

  “No,” admitted Ben. “I can’t think of a better idea, though.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  Ben shrugged. “It’s been true before.”

  “This is risky, Ben,” said Amelie, glancing between the crenellations in the battlement and looking straight down. “There are so many things that could go wrong. If Lloyd or Rhys doesn’t make it through, if Jason or Saala doesn’t listen, if they listen to the messengers but have no intention of listening to you… And when you do meet, Ben, how do you know you can defeat them? They’re amongst the best swordsmen in the world. While you’re getting better and better, you cannot count on your skill to win the day.”

  “I’m not, Amelie,” assured Ben. “I have a plan.”

  “Really?” asked Amelie, skepticism and curiosity warring on her face. “Tell me what it is.”

  Ben shook his head. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Skepticism began to win, and Ben averted his eyes, certain she could see in them his own doubt. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have anything other than desperate hope.

  The armies were in the field, only separated by a day of marching. The next day, they’d see each other, and the war would be unstoppable. The opportunity to avoid incredible loss of life would be gone. If they didn’t act, hundreds of thousands would die. Who knew how many children would go hungry because their father fell in Issen. Who knew how many fields would go fallow, leaving villages to starve. Historians would try to assess the damage, as they always did, but they were merely making up numbers on a page. Whether they said it was worse than the Blood Bay War, worse than the dark times, was irrelevant. It would be the worst catastrophe anyone in Ben’s lifetime had ever faced. Generations after would feel the impact.

  With a plan or without one, he couldn’t stand by and watch it happen. He had to act.

  “You’ll be careful?” asked Amelie. She put her hand on his cheek and turned his head to face her. “You won’t sacrifice yourself doing something stupid?”

  “As my lady instructs,” said Ben, proffering a quick bow.

  Amelie’s gentle hand pulled him up and gave him a small slap on the cheek. She then curled her fingers in his hair and jerked him close, bringing his mouth to hers. They kissed, and Ben lost himself in her lips, in her embrace, until the cranking of chains underneath his feet jolted him out of the dream.

  The gate was opening a crack, and Rhys and Lloyd would be slipping out, going to find the leaders of the opposing armies to try and negotiate a parley. If all went well, at dawn, Ben would meet the Kings of the Alliance and the Coalition. He would try to end the war.

  Ben and Amelie, shoulder to shoulder, leaned over and peered down the wall of the castle. Two squads of men emerged, and behind them came two figures. The squads stopped a dozen paces from the gate, and the two figures shook hands and then departed in opposite directions.

  “You’re sure we shouldn’t have sent men with them?” asked Amelie. “If this works, we have plenty of soldiers to man the walls. If it doesn’t, a few more squads won’t make a difference.”

  “They didn’t want company,” reminded Ben. He watched until both Rhys and Lloyd disappeared down streets and vanished into the city. “
Besides, Rhys knows more about sneaking out of places than the rest of us combined.”

  Amelie laughed, and the momentary glimmer of joy brought a smile to Ben’s face. There had been too little of that in the last several weeks.

  “If you mean to get to the palace before dawn, you’ll need to leave here three, maybe four bells earlier,” advised Amelie.

  “I thought you said it was only a bell and a half walk?” questioned Ben.

  “A bell and a half on a nice day surrounded by my father’s guards,” explained Amelie. “The summer palace is an easy walk, but we never had to dodge between scouts from two opposing armies. They’ll have patrols in the city below, even in the dark of night.”

  “Right,” muttered Ben, eyeing the streets he’d have to move through to make it out of town. At night, under the cloud of soot that still hung in the air from the fires, it would be pitch black. Helpful for sneaking, not as helpful for figuring out which way to go.

  “You’ll need to wake at midnight,” continued Amelie.

  “Uh huh,” said Ben, still looking over the city.

  “You should probably get to bed early,” suggested Amelie, wrapping an arm around his waist.

  “Of course,” mumbled Ben, lost in thought. “I was going to meet with Adrick first. We can discuss options to defend the castle depending on the outcome of the—”

  “Ben,” said Amelie. “Do you want to go to bed with me right now or not?”

  Ben crept out of the towering gates of the castle. They rose four times his height, and the iron-banded wood was ten times his width. In the quiet of the night, the rumble of chains opening the portals would be audible for a dozen blocks. Briefly, he regretted the decision to flood the tunnel they’d originally entered through, but the risk had been too great. Better to slip out the gate in the middle of the night than wake up to an army of Coalition soldiers storming into the east gardens, but since he was using the gate, any Alliance or Coalition soldiers nearby would be very curious as to who was entering or exiting the castle shortly after midnight.

  Which is why Ben’s first action once he stepped outside was to sprint across the open space that surrounded the gate. He had to get into the streets before any patrols came to investigate. Only then would he have a chance to duck out of sight or lose them in the twists and turns of Issen’s alleys and boulevards. With the city under siege and the moon obscured by smoke, it’d be easy to stay hidden as long as he made it to cover.

  His heart pounding from the run and from fear, he held his longsword against his side with one hand and pumped with the other. Feet fueled by fright, he crossed the space in no time, but the moment he made it into the mouth of one of the streets, his foot caught on something.

  Ben went hurtling forward and sprawled out on the cobblestones. His hand, his elbow, his knee, and then his face impacted the cold stone of the street. A jolt of agony shot through him as he skidded to a stop. He lay on the cobbles, feeling sharp twinges of pain pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

  Groaning, he barely heard the thump of running feet on stone.

  He looked around but could see nothing in the dark except the shadowy silhouette of nearby buildings. Hoping that whoever was coming was approaching from a different street, Ben dragged himself to the building then levered himself up.

  His elbow and knee throbbed, and he had to touch his forehead to convince himself it wasn’t bleeding, but nothing felt broken. He glanced up at the castle walls, hoping that no one had seen him trip. It wasn’t befitting a general to fall on his face like that.

  Limping slightly, Ben walked down the street, still eager to distance himself from the castle gates. The sounds of footfalls spurred him on, but he forced himself to move slow, to not give himself away like the approaching patrols were.

  Lights atop the castle wall and dozens of still-smoldering fires were the only sources of illumination as Ben scampered through the alleys and avenues of Issen. They were empty at night except for when he stumbled across the site of a battle. Then, discarded arms, armor, and bodies fouled the path. Neither side had enough control of the area to remove the corpses, so they lay there, rotting.

  The fires from the day before had damaged the city, but with the help of the mages, they had extinguished the worst of the blazes. They’d saved the bulk of the structures and, Ben hoped, the people inside of them. For the moment, at least. If no one was able to come clear the dead, then pestilence would do what fire could not.

  Block after block, Ben scurried along quietly. There were a number of things that could go wrong with their plan, from Rhys or Lloyd not making it, to Jason or Saala cutting Ben down before the other one had time to arrive. In fact, Ben admitted ruefully to himself, getting killed was the most likely outcome. He couldn’t stand against either man one to one, and if the timing was off, if either man acted quickly, if either one decided Ben was a big enough threat to attack him instead of each other…

  Ben put his odds of success at one in ten. He’d told Amelie differently, but alone in the night, he had to be honest. The other bitter part of the truth was that while his plan wasn’t a good one, it was the best he could come up with. If he died, the war would continue. If he didn’t do anything, the war would continue. The meeting was a desperate gamble, but it was the only one they had to prevent large-scale, catastrophic damage and loss of life that would be felt for a hundred years.

  In that context, his life was a small wager.

  He was determined he wasn’t going to lose the wager by doing something stupid, though, like getting caught in the city by a random patrol. Pausing at every intersection, he looked down the silent streets. He watched for motion, listened for the tell-tale sound of marching feet.

  Periodically, he could hear movement in the distance, but after half a bell, he hadn’t seen anyone. The citizens of Issen were barricaded in their homes, terrified of any sound outside. The patrols from the Alliance and Coalition were out there, but neither side had enough men in town to properly cover the city. They were planning to defeat each other, but they knew after the sneak attacks had failed, it wasn’t going to be settled until the full armies arrived.

  The men on patrol were merely looking for opportunities and showing force so as not to concede the city. They were defensive patrols, and therefore, Ben had a chance to avoid them.

  He stopped, peering down a broad avenue. Flickering flames from a ravaged building cast an orange glow across the street. He wouldn’t be able to pass without stepping through the light. The street had the look of a prosperous one, or at least it had been, before it had been looted and burned. Half the structures he could see in the dim glow were destroyed. The others were empty faces with broken windows and doors like shattered teeth in a ruined mouth.

  The odds were that whichever side had done the looting was long gone. No one would have any reason to be nearby as any valuables would have been taken during daylight. It should be safe. Or, Ben could turn around and circle several blocks to avoid the light. His plan had been to stick to the dark streets and shadows. Under the cloud of soot that hung over Issen, he’d be invisible away from the light of the fires.

  He couldn’t see the moon, and he didn’t know how long he’d been stalking through the darkness. He didn’t know how long he had left to travel across the countryside to Amelie’s summer palace. If he wasn’t there by dawn, the plan was almost certain to fail.

  There was no motion Ben could detect, and the only sound was the occasional pop and wheeze from the dying fire. It was almost out of fuel. Only a few stubborn beams, large enough they could have supported the roof of a giant warehouse, remained clinging to life. Within a few bells, Ben guessed they’d sputter out and the ash would go cold.

  He would pass through the light, he decided. The risk appeared minimal, and it would add a quarter bell to find a darker path, if he even could. This area of the city had been hit hard with fire, so there was no guarantee the next street would be any better.

  Ben drew his longsword an
d stepped cautiously forward, his eyes darting from side to side, prepared to leap at any motion or to run. All remained quiet, and his breath was the only accompaniment to the soft crackle of burning wood. He hovered on the edge of the light and then stepped in, walking quickly but not rushing, not allowing his feet to slap on the stone, to give himself away.

  Halfway through the light, he heard a low scrape like fingernails across parchment. His heart jumped into his throat. He spun, his longsword raised in front of him, but no one was there. He was looking into the ruins of a mansion, he thought. The low flames illuminated the charred wreckage of a broad staircase, and he saw a twisted pile of metal which could have been a grand chandelier, the type he’d seen in lord’s keeps.

  He saw something else and frowned.

  A yellow sparkle, shimmering in the firelight, sat in the middle of what must have been an impressive entryway. Involuntarily, he drew closer, moving around a fallen jumble of stone and stepping over a smoking, charred roof beam.

  There, in the open and unmolested, was a large trunk. It was filled to overflowing with shimmering yellow discs. Gold coins. Hundreds of them. Just sitting there.

  “What the—”

  Click.

  Ben spun.

  A man was standing a dozen paces behind him, holding a crossbow in trembling hands. At his feet, Ben saw a pickaxe and a shovel. Even in the darkness, he could see the man’s pudgy face was streaked with soot and sweat. The man’s body shook with fear, but his expression contained only deadly certainty.

  “I don’t want your gold,” hissed Ben.

  The man raised his crossbow and settled it on his shoulder, aiming at Ben.

  “I’ll walk away,” said Ben, his voice rising in pitch and tone. “If you shoot me, I’ll scream as I die. Every patrol within five blocks of here will come running.”