War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  There was a long moment of silence in the common room while the tavern’s patrons digested the warrant, then Raine spoke without thinking, as he sometimes did. “That’s naught but a filthy lie.”

  “It’s the king’s warrant. The word of your sovereign lord.” The tavern keeper replied, and looked significantly at the soldier at the end of the bar, a broad shouldered man in crimson with the royal eagle on his chest.

  “I seen Lanae Brookhouse, and I seen the queen and the prince too.” Raine continued, oblivious to the warning look the tavern keeper was giving him. “They was out on the Diminios Plain, and if she was kidnapped, I’m a sheep man.”

  Fifty different voices asked him a hundred different questions, and Raine had never been so popular. He answered truthfully and thoroughly for about five minutes before the soldier spoke.

  “You’re a damned liar, drover. You didn’t see none of what you say.”

  Raine stopped mid-sentence to stare at the man. “I’ll not take that from any man, king’s livery or no. You take that back.”

  “I will not.” The soldier said. “You’re telling stories to make fools of these people. Who would take the word of a drover for aught anyway?”

  “I’ve sold seventy head of cattle on my word they was fit for market.” Raine replied hotly. “You call me a liar, you’re taking the gold from my hand and the food from my table. You take it back.”

  “Shut your mouth, drover, or I’ll shut it.” The soldier said, putting his hand to his sword hilt, and Raine took a single look at the man and walked through the rear door of the Silver Penny to his horse. “Like I said, he’s a liar.” The soldier said, once he’d gone.

  Raine walked back into the Silver Penny carrying his bullwhip. It was a known and terrifying instrument, the drover’s whip, with a reach of nearly ten paces and a ball of lead at the tip. When he snapped it in the air the exploding sound ripped a hole in every conversation in the Silver Penny, and all eyes turned to look at the young drover with the red face and the yellow hair like broken stalks of corn. “I said you take it back man. No man calls Raine Unhalsen a liar.”

  “That’s weaponmongering, and I care not that ‘tis just a bullwhip.” The soldier said, demonstrating a woeful ignorance of the whip’s potential in the hands of a skilled drover. “I’ll have your hand and I’ll have you in stocks.” The soldier reached for his sword, but the bullwhip’s tip laid raw the flesh across the backs of his knuckles with a splash of blood, tearing through meat and tendon and rendering the hand useless.

  “Go ahead.” Raine said ominously when the soldier crouched and faced him, gripping the wrist of his ruined hand and staring at it. “Reach for it again and I’ll have your eyes out. It’s you who calls me a liar, soldier? I’m sick of your lies scratched on paper and your lying king. First you say t’was Auligs in forest dress that killed the king right there in the King’s Town, and none to say how they got there. That’s a plain lie. Next you say the prince is kilt, and I seen him on the queen’s tit my own self, so that’s a damned lie. Then you say she’s kidnapped when t’was plain as day she were running for her life, another damned lie.” Raine spat on the floor at the soldier’s feet.

  “And an’t we all been told a pack of lies ever since your king took throne?” Raine demanded. “Lies about the war and how it’s going, lies about Maldiver’s army and what it were doing in the King’s Town that day? And two days gone more lies. I seen the post when I come to town, and I had it read to me. Message from the King’s Town saying the Privy Lord is a rebel, building forts against the king, when every mother in this town has a son in his army, and every one of them sending home letters with the truth scratched into them.”

  “Aye.” A heavy-handed drover with a keen eye beneath a broad brimmed hat said into the shocked silence. “Aye, this man is right about that. My own self got a letter from my boy saying what a great captain is the Privy Lord, and how his fortification saved his life.” He looked at the soldier fiercely, his hands clenched into thick fists. “Are you going to call my boy a liar, too?”

  At the Auroch’s Horn next door a traveling bard had been singing the new song ‘Obey and Make no Sound’ for perhaps the fifth time he was asked, and the mood was already sullen and mean when word reached them of the doings in the Silver Penny.

  Raine’s story had been distilled neatly into its purest form, so what came to the door of the Auroch’s Horn was just six words, shouted in haste as the messenger ran on to the other taverns in Silver Run. “Queen Eleinel is alive! Kaelen too!” The patrons stared at each other in wonder for a moment, then ran into the streets to learn what this meant.

  In the Traveler’s Haven, which was just a hostler’s stable removed from the Auroch’s Horn, Nugh Parroum was taking in a well-deserved ale at the bar. He was wearing his king’s colors proudly, for the navy blue tabards of Elderest had finally been replaced for his squad. He heard a slight commotion in the street, and he turned his head to look. A wild-eyed man with a thick and filthy black beard walked in from the night, lifted a flagon from the bar beside Nugh, and smashed him in the face with it. “That for your lying king, you filth!” The man said, while blood poured from Nugh’s nose and he belatedly reached for his broadsword.

  It was too late by then, for other men had come in from the cold, and they knocked Nugh to the floor and disarmed him.

  Like all men who are ruled, Mortentians expected to be lied to by their rulers, for were not kings and princes born liars all? But being Mortentians, they expected also competence, and not just in the work done, but in the lies also. Raine Unhalsen’s angry speech in the Silver Penny had not only exposed the king for a liar, which was to be expected, but also a shabby and incompetent one whose falsehoods were easily disproved. It was more the incompetence that caused their rage to bubble to the surface than it was the lies themselves, an incompetence that revealed the new king’s contempt for the reasoning ability of his subjects.

  All of these things had been coming to a head for several weeks, and Diminios had never more than halfway belonged to the king in the first place.

  Later that night the mothers and fathers of Silver Run stormed the understaffed royal citadel, breaking the wooden gates with axes, ransacking it for weapons and silver and burning it to the ground. Up and down the main street symbols of House D’Cadmouth were thrown down, but some were put back up, for Prince Kaelen was a D’Cadmouth after all. “Long Live King Kaelen!” The people cried. “Save the Prince!” Said others.

  Raine Unhalsen looked out upon the riot in Silver Run’s main street and wondered if he would ever see the rest of the proceeds from his cattle sale in all of this chaos. He decided it was unlikely.

  In the morning Nugh Parroum and Wimm Kandleman, he of the bloody knuckles, stood together with the dozen men of the king who had been in their uniforms the night before, staring down the long and empty king’s road toward Elderest. Wimm’s given name was Wilderianim, for he was from Flana. They had been stripped of their uniforms and weapons, smeared with manure and thrown into the very same stockpen the Privy Lord had once involuntarily bathed in, although this was not widely known. The ferryman had put them off on the Orr side of the king’s road, with a long and empty land all around, and it was a long way back to their homes.

  “Tis rebellion.” Nugh Parroum said through the blood that still dripped into his mouth from his shattered nose. He spat and coughed.

  “Aye.” Wimm Kandleman said grimly, cupping his ruined hand against his chest and looking to the river. “And we’ll bloody the fookers soon enough. Still, ‘tis a long way to the next place, and a cold day. I hope there’s a boat.”

  Chapter 78: Aelfric near Redwater Town, Mid-Leath

  Busker stood alone in the watchtower, feeling terribly exposed, looking out over the broad plain between the Wood Castle and the town of Redwater. He was just behind the treeline, a place where the archers had lain hidden and exacted a toll on the Cthochi less than a week earlier. In the hazy space between the Cthoc
hi’s encircling camp and his own location an army marched, and it was the latest evolution in a series.

  Whoever was commanding the Cthochi here was smart, and he learned fast. He’d never tried the same trick twice, and each Cthochi foray onto the disputed plain between them brought a new Cthochi army, and today’s was the best one yet.

  Just yesterday Aelfric had completed the bridge between the expanded sleeping fort on the other side of the river and the town, effectively breaking the siege, although these Cthochi wouldn’t know that yet, and if Eskeriel’s plan worked, they wouldn’t know it for a while. When they did the butcher’s bill for Redwater was going to come due.

  But today was just another battle in a series of battles, and the objective was to train enemy soldiers to a certain way of thinking. It would be genius if it worked, a disaster if it failed, like all of Aelfric’s mad endeavors.

  Busker had a lot to worry about today, for Aelfric was on the other side of the river, and he was in command of this battle. Not only was Aelfric over there, but so also were seven of the ten thousand fighting men of the Silver Run army, leaving Busker to face an army of perhaps thirty thousand with just three thousand fighting men. That was worrying.

  There was the business with the knights to worry him also. Over half of his force were horsemen, and he’d never much cared for cavalry commands. Sir Celdemer, the one godsknight he thought understood Aelfric’s tactics, had quit the army altogether, riding alone on his warhorse toward Walcox. He’d left the godsknights under the field command of giant named Munith Vanketer, or Sir Munith Vanketer, if you please, or maybe the godsknights had elected the man, Busker wasn’t sure. Despite the pleading ‘orders’ of Bishop Weymort to follow the battle plan, Busker thought the man was looking for any excuse to disobey.

  The godsknights were six hundred of the horsemen Busker commanded in this battle, but where they went the lancers were sure to follow, and that was a prime recipe for disaster, in Busker’s opinion. When he’d expressed his fears to Aelfric the man had simply sat in thought for a long moment, then he’d spoken, and the words had chilled Busker and Faithborn both. “If they hold to the battle plan, they’ll help the overall objective. If they don’t, that helps too.”

  Busker did not think Aelfric was yet twenty, and to see a man his age become almost nonchalant about the survival of six hundred men was somehow terrifying to Busker, but it was his own advice the man was following. “I’ve seen the way you preserve and preserve, Aelfric.” Busker had told him after maybe one too many cups of wine. “You know you can’t beat an army the size of the one we face without getting bloodied, don’t you?”

  So Busker eyed the horsemen warily as they moved out from the hill behind him, leaving the archer-protected shelter of the Wood Castle through the single gate and riding forth to begin today’s dance with the Cthochi. Sir Vanketer had insisted that his knights assume what he called the position of honor, riding in the front of the massive column of horsemen as they took up a position on the left flank of the advancing pike hedgehogs of the Cthochi.

  Sir Brant rode proudly into battle in the front rank behind Sir Munith Vanketer, who was riding point for the godsknights. Fifty-nine more ranks of knights followed, and the steel points of their lances glittered like the hair on a caterpillar as the column rode forth. On his left rode Boden D’Maitlin on his second best horse, and to his right was Angon D’Yast, and seven more knights to the right flank of the column. He carried a lance in his right hand, and his longsword was in its place at his hip. He rode Groundshaker, his largest and best trained warhorse, and the horse’s enormous hooves pounded the ground beneath a full leather barding, like the dancing feet of a woman in a wide skirt. His armor was immaculate and his cornflower cloak freshly laundered.

  The sky was heavy with clouds, but the sun shone through in many places in straight beams that dappled the ground. The grass was still green and it was a beautiful day, one of those days when Lio revealed the true beauty of light in the wonderful dance of shadow and beam, color and haze.

  The Cthochi hedgehogs advanced in three great squares of perhaps a thousand men each, with armor wearing shield men at the front and archers in close ranks behind now, for the Cthochi commander did not make the same mistake twice. Their kilts swirled as they marched in step, legs moving to the command of drummers at the center of each formation.

  The godsknights and the lancers of the Silver Run army began their baiting maneuver, riding in front of the pikes to draw them forward, and the Cthochi archers began loosing arrows at them. But the archers were longbow men, and they could not both march and shoot at the same time, so every time they stopped to shoot a gap opened between them and the fast moving pike formations they followed.

  Following Aelfric’s orders precisely, two hundred lancers broke off from the column of horse and rode swiftly toward those gaps, forcing the Cthochi archers to run forward into the pike formations to avoid being run down. Five or six lancers lost horses to the Cthochi bowmen, but the lancers themselves were in plate and mail, so none of them were killed, although a few were wounded. The Cthochi archery was ineffective while their formations were on the march, which was as predicted.

  Brant had been present when the godsknights had received their instructions from Lord Aelfric, and he had been very particular. “Your job is to draw them all the way to the tree line at the base of the Wood Castle.” The intense young man had said. “Make them feel that their pike formations intimidate you. Make them think they can march them freely wherever they want, without fear of horses. I want you to make them believe those phalanxes are invulnerable. Remember that this is not the main battle, this is the set up.”

  Sir Munith had agreed to the orders, and Brant had heard the Bishop pleading with the big knight to follow them exactly, but he knew Sir Munith was of like mind with Sir D’Maitlin, and he longed to ‘teach these Aulig savages what godsknights are.’

  Still, the maneuver went as planned, and despite a few hits from the archers, the horsemen were able to harass the Cthochi flanks, and a group of several archers who were too slow to catch up with the pikemen were separated by well-directed streams of lancers and run down in the field. Their bodies lay in a long line behind the formation as it continued to advance.

  Perhaps half a league behind the advancing hedgehogs the Cthochi had drawn up their main force, ready to surge forward and seize the territory between their camp and the Wood Castle should the opportunity present itself.

  It was on the second pass that disaster fell, and predictably it was Sir D’Maitlin behind it. As they moved in front of the Auligs, Brant noticed that the space between them and the Cthochi front ranks was much wider than the gap they’d been told to maintain. Several Auligs broke ranks and ran into this open space in front of the godsknights, and it looked to Brant as if they had thrown their front rank into disarray.

  Brant suspected a trap, and it was, but it was a trap designed to play on the hotheaded temperaments of the godsknights, a temperament the Cthochi had observed during the last battle. It was an apparent opportunity at a glorious charge that could have been no better designed for Sir Boden D’Maitlin, and he turned his horse and charged the running men. Sir Rioman D’Stellin, fresh returned to the godsknights from his disciplinary sojourn among the infantry, followed closely behind Sir Boden, and seeing them, Munith called the charge.

  For a moment the disarray in the Cthochi front ranks held, then the ranks following the men who’d been sent forward as bait ran up and stood beside them, grounding their pikes to catch the charge. Groundshaker caught the mood and the movement, and Sir Brant lowered his lance and joined the charge, swept along in a glittering tide of armor and destructive force that seemed irresistible.

  An armored godsknight borne on a horse with full mail barding is a terrible and powerful thing, and the forge hardened steel point of his lance carries all of the momentum and weight of horse, man and armor in its lethal tip, and no known footman’s shield or armor could hope to resis
t it. The knights themselves were born to this work, raised with lance and sword in hand from boyhood. Jousts and tourneys hone skill’s edge, and battles hone the spirit and will, so that the knights riding against the Cthochi represented one of the great military powers of their time. A single armored knight was worth a dozen regular soldiers, they told themselves, and by and large it was true. The Cthochi, only recently introduced to the concept of military formations and only recently introduced to any kind of discipline at all, should have broken at the mere sight of the line of horse and plate bearing down on them, and in fact many did.

  But many did not. Many of the Cthochi, trusting in the wisdom of Kerrick the Sword, grounded the butts of their pikes and leaned them forward. Mechanics is mechanics, and the point of a grounded pike, even if made of pig iron or even just fire-hardened wood, will absolutely penetrate the best horse barding if the horse is charging. A knight with a dead horse is shortly a dead knight.

  The front rank of the godsknights broke on the Cthochi pikes to the screams of dying horses and the laughter of kilted Cthochi who dropped their shields and punched long daggers through the eyeholes of the knights as they tried to rise. The ranks of godsknights that followed Sir Munith Vanketer in his charge soon found piles of dead horses and men obstructing their path, and the ranks behind them pushed forward, until the lances were useless and the knights were forced to grab sword, axe or mace and strike at the Cthochi who surrounded them.

  The Cthochi box of pikes changed form as the warriors surged forward into the milling knights, for this was what they had practiced, hoping against hope that this day would come. The rear lines moved sideways while the front ranks pinned the knights in place, and pikemen singing battle songs encircled the six hundred godsknights. Many of the Cthochi fell, for the knights were highly skilled fighting men, and even on foot they were formidable, but the outcome was never truly in doubt.