by Guy Antibes
Lotto felt a tug on the line that led to the Moonstone. Restella had just tried to locate him. She must have ended her day somewhere in Ashdown. An idle moment? It must be. Lotto laughed to himself. Why should he feel so tenderly towards her? He knew why. The Moonstone continued to attract them.
What would happen if she lost her sword in battle or the stone cracked? What would happen to the link? What would happen to him? Would he revert back into the village half-wit? Lotto didn’t want to find out, but she was, in any event, a comrade in arms. He wished her well and whispered the words ‘Be Safe’ twice, thinking of her at the end of the link. Could she even hear him?
The book caught his attention again and his thoughts turned to figuring out what spells would be effective during a siege?
~
The people of Prola had divided loyalties. It seemed some had rushed to Mountsea, while others fled from it. More commoners fled and as a result, the army’s ranks swelled with those wanting to take their country back over as it approached the capital. Lessa separated out those could fight from those who would hinder their efforts in battle. He put everyone to work doing something. Those who couldn’t would stay in the army’s permanent camp.
However, as they had passed Lessa’s permanent camp a few leagues from the city, Lessa’s army pulled out siege engines that rolled on squeaking wheels between the Prolan and the Valetan armies. The armies both made up a single long column snaking back out of sight.
They stopped on a rocky plain less than a league from the city. Lotto looked down at Mountsea. The castle stood on an elevated knob of land overlooking a city that surrounded a bay. To Lotto’s eyes the walls wouldn’t stop the army as Lessa told him that most of the defenses were set up to defend against sea raiders.
Lotto looked through a glass, offered by Lessa, and observed ballistae being repositioned on the low walls. Lessa admitted that unseen catapults could be moved to rain rocks and skins of hot oil on the army as they advanced.
“But we are out of range and will set up camp,” Lessa said. “Your Valetan forces will camp back out of sight.”
They had already determined the camping location of the Valetans the night before, but the closer to the capital they came, the more Lessa asserted himself and the less counsel he sought from Lotto. Lotto didn’t mind the switch, for he didn’t have Lessa’s experience in implementing tactics, or the confidence in his own advice. Their plans were to storm the walls and attack the castle.
Later in the day, Captain Applewood joined them and the most senior officers from both forces crowded into Lessa’s tent.
“So what have we got?” Applewood said, peering down at a plan of the bay and the capital.
“The closer to castle, the more protection is going up on the walls,” Lessa said. “We have ladders with more being built by our local craftsmen to invade the city here, here and here.” Lessa pointed to the walls closest to the castle.
Lotto frowned. “Where do the nobles live?”
“They impede our pathway to the king,” Lessa said.
“I don’t see any barriers in the city proper. If you look at the plan, we could easily breech the walls further to the west. If the nobles aren’t spread out, we’ll meet less resistance from the common people and avoid a lot of exposure. See?” Lotto pointed to squares that could act as mustering grounds for invading troops. “We could just bypass the war engines and take them from behind while we assaulted the castle.”
“The castle gate is nearly impregnable. By the time we had enough forces to ram it down, our men would be exposed,” Lessa said, but his gaze kept going to the strip of the city that led down along the bay.
“I can take care of the gate,” Lotto said. “Remember the trees? I can do the same to the gate, I think.” A bit of uncertainly crept into his mind as Lotto hadn’t seen the gate and would have to improvise when he arrived at the front of the castle.
Applewood clapped Lotto on the back. “Good thinking Mistad. How many men can we put in the city?”
“All of my men,” Lessa said. “Captain Applewood. I’d like your scouts to join us inside and ask you to draw fire from the walls, while we Prolans execute our part of Lotto’s plan. I think we will surprise my friends in the castle.” He assumed a wicked grin and ran his finger over the streets. “Lotto is right. If you look at the squares, we can use them as assembly points as we fight northward. We might even pick up a fair number of the city-dwellers. Your scouts can clear the way and detect any surprises. Captain Mistad can lead a detachment of his own scouts and take the gate. If it doesn’t come down, we are still in the city and fighting against King Willom’s picked men. However, I think this plan might well minimize the loss of life on both sides.”
Lotto smiled, just happy he could contribute. “Perhaps we can be ready an hour or two before daybreak? There will be fewer townspeople cluttering the streets.”
“Indeed. I’ll set out my men tonight,” Captain Applewood said.
“One more thing, Lotto said. “Do the troops inside wear red coats?”
“They do, red and black for the castle guard.”
“Then I suggest that your men wear Valetan coats so there won’t be any confusion during your run to the castle.”
All of the officers laughed. “Of course.” Lessa said. “My men can move to deploy the decoy siege weapons first and then we can switch coats during the night.”
Lotto couldn’t sleep and worked along side a few hundred of the soldiers and locals to build more ladders for climbing over the walls. No one noticed who he was in the dark. More ladders meant quicker penetration into Mountsea. Finally, his eyes began to droop and he slept where he worked.
A nudge from the dull end of a staff woke him up. “Lotto, wake up. It’s time to go!” Gully said.
The moon had just risen. He’d worked for a few hours and slept for a few hours. He rose and brushed the shavings of wood and scraps of bark strips that clung to his uniform. He held out his hand and Gully gave him a pull up.
“We have a ways to walk. I’ve got the men assembled just inside the tree line.”
Lotto grunted as Gully thrust his weapons into his hands and a battle pack into his arms. They walked through men still working quietly during the night. “Let’s take a couple of ladders.”
“Already there,” Gully said. Lotto could make out the white grin on his face.
The forces walked in silence along the trees and then headed along a little gully made by a stream. Lessa came up to them. “Are you ready, Captain Mistad?” Lessa said, smiling at the formality.
Lotto nodded. “We do our part, you do yours.”
The darkness and the tension of waiting for action gnawed at him as he drew closer to the wall. Lotto had never fought as an invader. Now he headed for a pitched battle against the king’s men. He let a few doubts creep into his mind. Did he really have the power to destroy the gate at the castle, or was he a victim of his own hubris. Lotto didn’t know and was about to find out. Gully had taught him to cast the doubt aside and concentrate on the job at hand. He would focus on following that advice.
They were only supposed to monitor the border yet, now they had crossed all the way through Prola. He half expected a messenger to ride to them and tell them to withdraw. Thoughts swam around in Lotto’s head making him dizzy with worry. He couldn’t weaken now. Weakness led to worse things.
Putting aside his doubts, Lotto and the rest of the rangers gathered at the base of the wall. He looked towards Gully. “What do we do now, Lieutenant?”
Gully just laughed. “You can’t give command back to me, Captain Mistad. Lead us.”
“I… I” Lotto’s stomach flipped. He swallowed bile and took a deep breath as a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He fought off the nausea and asked for a waterskin. He took a swig and washed out his mouth and then slammed the stopper home.
“Follow me.” He whispered in the darkness of the bare beginnings of dawn.
The ladder went up and Lotto woul
d just have to fight through his nerves. He scampered up, to find the narrow walkway deserted. Why bother with such a short wall anyway? He pulled up another of the ladders and in a few minutes, the band of rangers slipped through the alleys and lanes of the common part of town.
Not a man spoke as they made their way by the light of the moon and then by the light of the early dawn. They paused as they came across a few patrols, but they let them pass and soon they faced the door to the castle across a space fifty feet wide that circled the castle walls. Tents filled the empty space.
Lotto couldn’t help but smile. The tents gave his men the cover that they needed to get to the castle doors. They waited half an hour until a patrolman waved a torch.
“Invasion! The Valetans have taken the lower city! To arms!”
Men clogged the pathways, buckling on their weapons as they emptied the tent city turning it into waking chaos. Men mustered into groups and began to head south. Lotto and his men hid in now-empty tents. The castle door groaned open as mounted men rode out into the night. Now!
Lotto sneaked with his rangers protecting him within twenty feet of the huge heavy doors. Lotto had hoped to melt the hinges so they could force open the closed doors from the middle, or just knock it down, but with the doors flung wide, he could fuse the hinges open. He sat on the ground and went through the spell in his head and whispered the words and pointed towards one of the hinges.
It glowed red and then yellow and then white in the darkness. He then did the three others on the one door and they would have to change positions so he could be in the line of sight of the other. He tried to stand up, but his legs buckled. The power drained out of him. He staggered into a tent that was on the other side of the door and melted one hinge on the second door before he fainted.
When Lotto woke, dawn had broken and he looked down at the tents from the third floor of a house that overlooked the field of tents. He expected the sounds of battle, but could only hear a tense silence.
“Captain, you’ve awakened,” Lessa said. “We’ve taken the city and await the arrival of Captain Applewood’s troops. Mountsea’s war machines now face the castle.”
Lotto stood. His entire body felt used up and his eyes and throat hurt as he staggered to the window and saw rubble filling the gate. Smoking skins of hot oil hung behind the wall over the top of the gate ready to be swung over the entrance. An occasional arrow bounced off of the skins.
“No one wants to be the first. I have men making a cover for us,” Lessa said.
“They can stop,” Lotto said. “Fire is easy compared to what I had to do with the gates.” He pulled out his book and reviewed the spell he sought. He didn’t need a long involved spell to set the skins on fire. He pointed with both hands and said the spell. A tiny flame appeared. Then he fired all of the skins and the cranes that held them.
“Is there a chair?” Lotto could barely talk and hoped someone could understand his request. His knees buckled as someone forced a chair underneath him and handed him a lukewarm mug of tea and as he sipped, the flames began to grow and consume all of the skins. They finally split, presumably sending streams of hot oil on the castle inhabitants unlucky enough to have been standing beneath.
The rubble began to burn and soon the gates, the rubble and the oil sent up a huge plume of greasy black smoke into the air, drifting out over the harbor.
Lotto thought to ask, “How has the fighting gone?”
“As soon as dawn came we shed your blue coats and, for the most part, greeted our brothers. A few pockets of fighting unfortunately caused a few casualties, but it doesn’t compare to the losses of a siege on either side of the fighting. Battle continues on the walls, since the king’s guard mixes it up with your army. It is better that they fight Valetans than their Prolan brothers. Applewood should be with us shortly.
“My rangers?”
“Your rangers?” Gully said. Lotto groaned, not knowing that Gully had been in the room. Lotto’s focus had been so intent on the gate that he hadn’t bothered to look around the large room.
Lotto couldn’t resist a smile. “Our rangers?”
“That’s better, Captain.”
His neck hurt, but he twisted around to see Gully.
“They are helping at the city gate with Captain Lessa’s men,” Gully said.
Lotto no longer felt the nausea that had affected him when the operation began, but he still felt useless and doubted if he could even hold up his sword with the weakness brought on by the conjuring. But he’d rest for a bit until needed.
Shouting men filled up the square below him. Arrows flew from the castle battlements and the men sought cover. That’s what the king should have done last night when he fused the gates open, but the castle defenders weren’t deployed soon enough.
The shouting grew as large wooden roofs began to pour into the area by the gate. Arrows rained down again, but few found a target other than a roof and arrows stood up like bristles on the wood. Archers now ringed the back of the cleared area and, with wooden shields held by other soldiers, returned fire.
The roofs made of doors and the tops of tables snaked towards the open gate. The fire still blazed, but Lotto could see that the wood used for shelter as they got closer to the gate were thicker. Lotto expected rocks to fall on the roofs, but the hot oil on the battlements continued to smoke, keeping defenders off of the walkway above the gate.
Buckets of water were passed underneath the protection until Lotto heard the sizzling of dying embers. He stood up. “Another drink of something.”
Someone put a skin in his hands. He drank and coughed wine out. He laughed thinking he held a waterskin. His energy began to return.
“Let’s find out how dedicated the King’s Guard is. Black uniforms you say?”
“Indeed and all of them right bastards, Captain Mistad,” Lessa said pulling his sword from scabbard a few inches and slamming it home again. “Even if they are my Prolan brothers, I’ll happily fight them.”
Lotto followed Gully out of the room and Lessa walked down behind him happily chattering away at what a wonderful day this would turn out to be. Lotto didn’t contradict him.
Applewood met up with them when they crept halfway under the wooden roof.
“We met with a bit more resistance that I thought, mostly those black buggers,” Applewood said. “But we cut our way through.”
Lessa laughed. “Just less of them between the king and us.”
Men were already clearing out the rubble with rakes and pikes. The debris began to form large piles at the sides of the gate. Arrows began to zip through the opening and the makeshift shields were stood on end as the two armies pushed through and into the courtyard.
Lotto’s strategy had gone as far as it could and now Lessa’s men with a superior knowledge of the castle layout poured in through the gate and fought for the battlements.
“Surrender! Give up your arms!” Lessa’s men, now with red coats back on, yelled out as they fought.
Pockets of the defenders threw down their swords as Lotto ran through the gate and began to fight a newly arrived contingent of black uniformed guards. All of the training with Kenyr took over as Lotto’s swordsmanship became instinct. Lotto still concentrated on his opponents, but their movements slowed up for him and he could tell where to poke and where to parry. He wished he had his battle staff, but to be honest he lacked the strength to whirl the thing around in his present condition. He only gripped his father’s sword tighter and went to work.
The superb balance of his father’s sword and the long knife let him fight longer until his arm began to fatigue. He entered the castle, following a few of Lessa’s soldiers. He fought his way to the throne room along with others. One more guard. He ducked as the man swept his sword to take off Lotto’s head, but then a dagger appeared in the soldier’s hand that Lotto hadn’t seen and Lotto had just enough time to get out of the way of it’s plunge to his stomach, but it ended going through his right hand, closer to his wrist betwee
n his finger bones. The path of the knife was cut short when it reached the sword’s grip. Lotto’s weapon clattered to the stone floor. Lotto yanked his arm and the knife left his opponent’s hand.
Lotto had to keep his eyes open and tried to will away the pain. He retrieved his sword with the knife still waving, embedded in his hand. He backhanded with his blade, catching the slot between the man’s helm and his gorget. It slid through the man’s neck, causing his opponent to crumple to the ground. Lotto backed up to a wall and quickly dropped his sword, sliding down the wall to sit on the cold stone floor. He grit his teeth and pulled out the dagger as straight as he could. The worst of the pain hadn’t hit him yet. He shrugged off his battle pack and pulled out a bandage, hoping he’d be ignored on the ground. While he wrapped the bandage around his hand and wrist, a man in a dark red velvet tunic walked up and stared at him, with a bloody sword in his hand.
Lotto’s sword was on his left side and he couldn’t trust the pain in his right hand, so he grabbed his own weapon in his left hand and held it up, keeping his new opponent away. He pressed his right arm to his chest and slid up the wall, to stand and confront the man.
“You expect to fight me left-handed?” Lotto heard the man laugh. It was filled with condescension and arrogance. “Let me put you out of your misery quickly.” The man’s stance betrayed no lack of fighting skill.
Lotto looked into cruel eyes. “Perhaps it is you who need the practice,” Lotto said. A stab of pain made him gasp, but he had to put that aside as he fought to remember Kenyr’s lessons on fighting when wounded. He grit his teeth and moved away from the wall on his left.
The pair of them circled each other and the man attacked. The man’s technique might have served him well with lesser-trained warriors, but Lotto found he didn’t have to expend too much energy to fend off his moves.
