Heir to the Raven (The Pierced Veil, #1)

by J. Wesley Bush

  “Though in this case, the buffalo win by waiting. Nineacre Castle is in the middle of their herd.”

  “Buffalo require a lot of fodder. With our advantage in horse, we can slaughter any raiders or foragers Leax sends out,” Selwyn said. “Nineacre is well-stocked with supplies, and can hold out, but he only has what’s left on those barges.”

  “That’s double-edged. If his men get hungry enough, he may just storm the place.”

  “That’s a risk,” Selwyn admitted. “But Leax is known to be impetuous, so there’s always a chance he’ll storm. Starving him is the only option we have, other than sitting and hoping the Swans come save us. And the Jandari do not wait to be rescued.”

  “What if he just sends more barges?”

  A shining, lovely idea emerged from the black melancholy clouding Selwyn’s mind. “He will. The supplies he has won’t last forever. It will likely be one large convoy with a strong escort.” For the first time since his father died, Selwyn truly laughed. “Taking it would be risky, but can you imagine what a blow it would be?”

  Reyhan raised his mug in salute. “If supplies run low and we take away any hope of more, that’s when men start to desert. A common soldier doesn’t think about the next battle – he thinks about his next wine ration.”

  “Then it’s agreed. We send scouts to watch the river and prepare for the next convoy. And in the meantime, we kill anything that dares leave his camp.”

  CHAPTER 41

  T imble pressed close to the Garrison Tower battlements, watching as Belgorshan soldiers tightened the noose around Nineacre Castle. He cursed the lasra fever that had put him down long enough for Leax to surround the castle.

  After the magus’s trial, he had hurried back to Nineacre to get payment from the Harlowes, but fever struck along the way. Barely making it to the castle, he had awoken from his delirium to find the damned place surrounded.

  Peasants were digging trench lines with shovels or filthy hands, unearthing rocks that others added to the dam. Dweorg taskmasters supervised the work, hurrying them along with three-tailed whips. Just that morning the enemy had diverted the rest of the Green Lady, and now the mighty river wandered off into the plains to the east, forming a wide, shallow lake that shone like a mirror in the midday sun. Aside from scattered pools, the riverbed was drying. A few hardy fish still flopped among the stones, but most had already given up and birds and scavengers were gorging on the unexpected feast.

  Just beyond the trench line were blinds made of sailcloth, twenty feet high and extending perhaps forty paces in each direction. They swayed in the wind, but never enough for Timble to get a peek behind them. Death came from inside. Whether from mechanics or sorcery, the dweorg siege engines were like nothing else he had seen, able to hurl stone or pyrophor with force and accuracy no human rock-thrower could match. Already the Garrison Tower had lost three merlons, its battlements gaping with missing teeth. Only one triggerfish remained on the tower, the others shattered or burned.

  The wind carried sounds from Harlowe Ford, mostly the hollow retort of hammer and ax. Straining his eyes, he could see workers crawling over ruined houses like ants on a dead beetle, stripping out the roof beams. Those would go to making siege ladders.

  The trapdoor at the center of the tower opened and Castellan Chegatay emerged, followed by a lithe figure wearing a hauberk and helm over her silken dress. It took Timble a moment to realize it was the Young Dowager. If the dweorgs recognized her, they were apt to start shooting again and Timble was standing right next to the woman. “Lady Alethea, it isn’t safe.”

  “I told her the same thing,” Chegatay said chidingly.

  “Your concern is noted,” Alethea waved Timble aside and took his vantage point. “Anything to report?”

  “Leax is planning to storm the castle soon.”

  “That’s absurd.” Chegatay joined them at the battlements. “The footing is still muddy and the dweorgs have just started reducing our walls.”

  “That’s Leax for you. The man is pure appetite. Give him a fingernail and he’ll ask for the hand. Don’t matter if it’s wine, quim, or castle, he wants it now.”

  Alethea transfixed him with a look. “Mind your tongue, or I’ll shorten it. You believe he’ll storm soon?”

  “Likely, milady. Mayhaps tomorrow morning.”

  “Leax did change the flags about an hour ago,” Chegatay admitted, motioning toward the enormous royal tent on the outskirts of Harlowe Ford. Just in front of the entrance, Timble could see a red flag hanging limply in the still air. It had been yellow that morning. Yellow meant amnesty for any who surrendered; red was death to all but women and children. It might as well have been black, signifying a general slaughter, as no children and only two women remained in the castle. The others had gone south at the first sign of Leax’s army, leaving plenty of supplies for the four hundred household guards, town militia, and frontier refugees manning the walls.

  A ruckus drew their attention to the dweorg’s sailcloth enclosure. A column of rock men trouped out through a flap in the wall, prodding along one of their own at weapon point. He was big for a stone man, at least half a head taller than the others. Dweorgs had always fascinated Timble. He watched them raptly, committing everything to memory: colorful runes skirling across their stony shells; angular, piecemeal armor; shouts like boulders clattering down a hillside.

  “The one holding a mace is the chieftain,” Timble said, standing on tiptoes to get a better view.

  The chieftain pointed his mace at the lone dweorg and two others struck the loner behind the legs with their weapons, dropping him to his knees. He seemed to be pleading with the others, but they shouted him down.

  Then the chieftain traded out his mace for a pickax from one of the others. The loner shook his head vigorously, the green runes on his skull flashing in the sun.

  “Is this an execution?” Alethea asked.

  “A purging,” Timble answered eagerly.

  The chief raised his pickax high overhead and brought it crashing down on the kneeling dweorg’s shoulder. A crack resounded through the air, echoing from the castle wall. The pickax must have lodged in his shoulder, because the chieftain levered the ax handle up and down before freeing it. He struck the loner again and again. The dweorg moaned, an awful sound like grinding millstones. Even from a distance, Timble could see chips flying from the shoulders. When this was done, the chief took up a chisel and driving hammer and finished the job. Whatever runes the prisoner had on his shoulders, were surely destroyed.

  “What am I seeing, fool?” Alethea asked impatiently. “You seem to know something.”

  “Poor bastard,” Timble said. “I’ve heard of this. Dweorgs sometimes get a sickness of the mind. The others will deface his runes and then kill him.”

  Dweorgs began to chant, though Timble could discern no melody or tones in their voices. While chanting, they stood in a line, beating their chests with picks and hammers. It reminded Timble of frightening a bear away from a campsite. Or a desert shaman exorcising a spirit. The loner seemed to try and reason with the others, but the chief struck at him with the driving hammer.

  Swiftly, he blocked the strike and wrestled the hammer away. Timble watched in surprise as he smashed it into the chief’s knee. Then the big dweorg was on his feet and sprinting along the riverbed, faster than Timble imagined possible. Belgorshan peasants scattered from his path. The other stone men dogged his steps.

  He followed the riverbed, looking neither to the right nor the left until he was parallel with Nineacre. To Timble’s astonishment, the loner turned and entered the riverbed, slogging determinedly toward the gates, his heavy feet plunging into the mud with each step. Once they realized what was happening, Belgorshan mercenaries began firing arrows at the stone man. They might as well have been pebbles against his rocky hide. The pursuing dweorgs stopped at the muddy bank of the river, beating their chests and chanting again, but a cluster of mercenaries gave chase.

  “Drive them back
!” Alethea shouted from the tower. “Don’t let them reach him!”

  A serjeant on the curtain wall peered up in confusion at them. He stared for a moment before recognizing the Young Dowager. “Milady?”

  “Drive back the Belgorshans. I wish to see how this plays out.”

  The thunk of heavy crossbows and the twang of horsebows sounded as a swarm of bolts and arrows flew to greet the mercenaries. Two fell immediately, while the others scrambled back out of range.

  Seeming to pay no mind to any of it, the dweorg trod steadily on, picking his way over slimy river stones until he reached the gates. Timble leaned out, straining to see him. A rocky fist went back and then pounded on the iron portcullis. “Open. I help!”

  “My Lady,” Castellan Chegatay said, “we can’t possibly.”

  “No, of course not. The gates stay closed. Lower him a rope.”

  “Lady Alethea, please. You heard the fool — this dweorg is mad.”

  Timble desperately wanted to meet a dweorg, lunatic or not, and Lady Alethea decided the matter before he could even object.

  “We cannot afford to turn away help. Drag him over the side. If he’s dangerous, we’ll throw him back.”

  Chegatay shouted to the men below. “Drop a line! Haul him up.”

  Soldiers hurried to obey. A boulder had smashed the winch early in the siege, but a sturdy rope remained. Two villagers looped the end and tossed it to the waiting dweorg. Six men strained at the rope, dragging him up the wall one grunting pull at a time.

  “Fetch some manacles,” Chegatay ordered the serjeant, sparing a glance at Alethea. “We can at least keep him bound.”

  They hauled him over the side and Chegatay and Alethea climbed down to the curtain wall, Timble at their heels. Approaching cautiously, he was struck by how powerfully unnatural the stone man was, a living, breathing creature entombed in rock. It had to be magical, he thought, but everyone knew that dweorgs shed magic like water from a seagull’s wing. Up close, he was fascinated to see it wasn’t just bright runes covering the stone, but also delicate engravings on nearly every inch of him not shattered by the driving hammer.

  Once the dweorg’s hands were secured, Alethea knelt beside him, removing her helm. “Sir Dweorg,” she said gently, “I am Lady Alethea. You have the hospitality of this castle. What should we call you?”

  “Targe.” As they manacled his wrists, he shook his head and grumbled. “Not needed. I come to help.” The words sounded thick and unfamiliar on his tongue.

  “These men tell me you must be mad. Is that why your people sent you away?”

  He laughed, the sound putting Timble’s teeth on edge. “Not human mad. Dweorg mad. Cursed. I am not danger for you.”

  Timble itched to ask him what that meant. What was this curse?

  “Sir Chegatay, escort Targe to the Lord’s Tower and find him accommodations. You and I will speak with him there. Alone.” This last was delivered with a look at Timble.

  Probably best to find a dice game and leave them to it. Descending the steps, he looked over the empty courtyard for a telltale cluster of troops. Sometimes men played in the shadow of the main gate, safe from the dweorg’s wicked siege engines. Sargoshi flame had devoured the barracks, stables, kitchens, baths. and worst of all, the little tavern. The courtyard was now as barren as the savanna.

  The gatehouse was quiet, so he wandered to the back of the keep, where Cook had established makeshift kitchens. Just beyond the kitchens he spotted a clump of men huddled by the wall, mostly town militia and refugee horsemen from the savanna, with a lanky townsman as the banker.

  The group was smaller than in days before. Many were running short on coin, while others feared catching the palsy sickness spreading through the castle. A serjeant called out in a strained, high-pitched voice, “Sweet Cauladra guide my dice!” The bones left his hands and men alternately cheered or groaned.

  “The number is four. Declare next bets,” the banker said.

  As Timble approached, he saw the serjeant’s brow was covered in sweat despite the cool weather. He shook the dice and threw them against the stone wall. Timble couldn’t see them for the crowd but heard laughter. “Default!”

  The serjeant scooped up the bones and shoved them into his waist pouch. “To the Abyss with all of y—” His jaw locked in place and Timble watched as he struggled to finish the word. Then his eyes rolled up as if trying to see his brain. The next moment he was on the ground and flopping like one of those fish out in the riverbed.

  “Call the clark!” Timble yelled, and the others quickly took up the cry. It took four men to hold the serjeant down while they waited. Clark Istvan finally emerged from the Dowager Tower infirmary, trailed by his assistant, whom everyone just called Hands.

  The clark peered at the fallen serjeant through age-clouded eyes. “The sixth one so far. Tell me, was he acting strangely in the moments before the fit?” Timble and the others nodded. “Hands, check his toes. Are they blued?”

  Hands tugged off a boot. “Blue as a baboon’s arse.”

  “Some sort of plague, Clark?” one of the villagers asked. “Are we likely to catch it?”

  “It’s odd, but only knights and serjeants have fallen to this illness thus far.”

  “Something in the food then?” Timble offered. “They may not be eating much more than the rest of us, but the men-at-arms must eat finer.”

  “I think that may well be it.” The clark pointed a bony finger at his assistant. “Hands, fetch me Amalburga’s Physick.”

  The kitchen staff, meanwhile, had stopped working to watch the excitement. “Second Cook,” Timble called over, “how are the knights and serjeants eating differently than the common soldiers?”

  “Everyone gets the same. It’s the dowager’s command. Even her own ladyship.”

  “Yes, the same amount. But are they eating all the same foods?”

  Second Cook’s enormous infant face deflated thoughtfully and then expanded in sudden realization. “Pilgur bread! Everyone else eats wheat or teff, but gentleborns like pilgur bread. Can’t understand why. Gives me the rumbling winds.”

  “Yes, we have discoursed on your flatus many times,” the clark said, falling silent until Hands returned with a thick, wood-bound volume. “Turn to the chapter on gangrenes and putrescences.” Hands thumbed through the book, and then held it for the clark, who leaned in and irritably flipped through a few more pages. Shorter than the rest, Timble could only catch a glimpse of crabbed letters and horrifying sketches.

  “There! Blue rot.” The clark read silently, his toothless mouth forming the words. He turned toward the kitchens. “It’s terribly rare but fits the symptoms. A pestilence that strikes through pilgur. Amalburga reports that blue rot spread like fire through the silos near Lenburg. They lost a year’s harvest. Second Cook, burn the pilgur bread! Burn what’s left in stores as well. It must all be tainted by now.”

  Timble slipped away from the group, his mind already working. A rare disease that took away the best of the castle’s defenders was no coincidence. He made straight for the castle stores. Other than the well, they were the most critical part of a siege and were carefully guarded beneath the central keep.

  A castle guard watched the stairs leading to the undercroft. “You have business here, Timble?”

  “Chegatay said you had a rat problem. I spent some time as a ratter back in Sigga and said I’d try to help.”

  The guard shrugged. “Best of luck. We hear the buggers all the time, but never can find them.” He shouted to his fellows below. “Ayi! Timble’s coming down. Castellan Chegatay sent him to catch rats.”

  Timble descended the long stairway into the depths of the undercroft, pausing at the bottom to let his eyes adjust. At the end of a long corridor lined with doors, two guardsmen and a knight sat around a table, faces lit by flickering tapers. The household knight motioned Timble over. “How do you plan to catch them without an animal?”

  “Snares and poison. Mind showing me the stores
room?”

  The knight handed him one of the tapers. “Follow me.”

  The darkened stores room took Timble back to his ratcatching days, prowling the filthy wharves and hulks of Isedon Quay. Back then his companions had been a trained mongoose and a little ratter bitch he’d named for his mother. It had been a happy time.

  The stores room was wide, but with a low ceiling. Grain bins lined the walls, while casks and barrels littered the center. The castle was well stocked for a siege, if they could keep from being poisoned. He held the taper down near the closest grain bin. Sure enough, the corner was jagged with gnaw marks and passing rats had left black streaks along the boards. “You have brown rats out west here, I think. They have a fondness for pilgur. Do you have any? That would be the best place for snares.”

  “This way.”

  “Surprised to see a knight moldering in the dark. Chegatay must be taking security quite seriously.”

  “Sir Chegatay does. No one may enter the stores room without close watch by a knight of the house. It’s the same with the well. Betrayal has taken more castles than storms.”

  That narrowed things down to a little over a dozen suspects. Something tickled at Timble’s mind. “Makes sense. I think Hornbill mentioned he’s been pulling watches down here.”

  “Sir Bartram has command of the west wall, so that is unlikely. Here is the pilgur.” He smacked the roof of a grain crib.

  Timble noted it had no lock. Anyone with access to the room could have added the blue rot. He knelt down, part of his mind actually looking for the best spots for rat snares. “Are you sure? I could have sworn Sir Hornbill mentioned being down here.”

  The knight sighed. “I believe he did recently serve a shift when Sir Guthrum had a malarial fever. Now, can you do anything about the rat infestation?”

  Timble nodded. “I’ve some dried goatsbane in my things. Just need to mix it with rotting meat.”

  “Very well. I won’t ask why you’re carrying goatsbane. Just kill the vermin.”