Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1)

by George Hatt

  “And what do you think happens to all those excellent whores and wives and squalling brats on the losing side of a battle?” asked Sergeant Drake in what approximated a normal tone of voice. “You’re a smart lot. What do you think happens to all that sweet, easy pussy?”

  “They get raped is what, Sergeant!” one of the recruits yelled. His name was Delton, and was supposedly a young knight. He and Barryn got along, but the heathen saw nothing to indicate Delton’s putative nobility.

  “Exactly,” Drake said. “While your brains are leaking out of your split skull and your comrades are running like scared rabbits, the enemy is charging through your spilled guts to rape your field wife. Think on that the next time you break ranks. Again!”

  The score of recruits under Drake’s command took up their wooden arms and closed ranks, blunt swords hidden behind their heavy shields. The other half of their platoon, under the critical eye of Sergeant Otaraz, had broken through their line and was now reformed 30 yards away. They advanced behind a wicked hail of obscenities from their lead recruit that rivaled even the sergeants’ blue cursing.

  “Stand fast!” Barryn yelled. He had been chosen lead recruit that day for his group. The men to his left and right passed the order down the rank.

  “Fuck them. Do it!” Delton muttered.

  It was against the sergeants’ instructions—“One side stands fast, the other advances! It’s a fucking drill, recruits! You hold your fucking ground when it’s your turn to stand fast!”—but Barryn and Delton had reasoned that actual battle called for initiative.

  When the two opposing ranks were 10 yards apart, Barryn raised his wooden sword and howled, “Charge!”

  That battlefield improvisation gained a lopsided victory for Barryn’s team and earned him five lashes for insubordination. It had been a valuable lesson in military discipline for him, and good training for the medic who had cleaned, sutured and dressed the wounds on his back.

  The next day, Barryn reported to Zgard Ad-Din, the company’s executive officer, at Falgren Keep. He stood rigidly at attention in the sparse office and waited for the man sitting behind the desk to address him. A stack of parchments sat in front of the company’s second-in-command, and he methodically signed each one and placed it in another stack at the corner of the desk as Barryn tensely waited.

  Zgard Ad-Din was even darker than the rest of the castle dwellers Barryn had met since his flight from Clan Riverstar. The man’s features were ruled by predatory eyes above an aquiline nose and a prodigious, drooping mustache. This he twisted before finally putting his quill down and breaking the uncomfortable silence.

  “Every recruit who perseveres beyond a certain point in his training meets the commander in person,” he said in a measured tone. His voice was seasoned with the hint of an exotic accent Barryn did not recognize. “Our captain is away, so the task falls to me to me this day.”

  The executive officer lightly tapped the sheaf of parchments stacked neatly on the otherwise bare desk. “You perhaps will be interested to know that Sergeant Drake expressed admiration for your decision to charge during sword and shield drills. Your team broke the opposing line and set them to rout, according to the report.”

  “Sir?”

  “Speak.”

  “Sir, I was still lashed for that decision.”

  “Indeed,” the executive officer said. “And rightly so. To break ranks is to kill your comrades. I do not speak in abstractions, nor do I exaggerate. A competent enemy would have exploited the gap you created in your lines and divided the army. And your comrades would have died. This is important to understand, recruit, for we occasionally face competent enemies on the battlefield.”

  Zgard Ad-Din folded his hands on the desk. “But you are not here for a lecture on tactics. You are here to speak. Every recruit must tell the commander why he persists in the miserable business of marching, digging, fighting, and submitting to stern discipline. Why stay, when one can easily ring the bell and go in peace from the wretched life of a sellsword?”

  “I’ve learned too much to quit now, sir. I think I can be a good mercenary.”

  “But why do you wish to be a good mercenary? My sergeants try their very best to shatter the illusions of glamor and romance surrounding this foul business. Why do you persist?”

  The constant fatigue, pain and slight but chronic intoxication had finally broken his distrust of the castle dwellers. At least this one.

  “A goddess wills it, sir,” he said, keeping Ashara’s name to himself. “She told me it is my wyrd—my destiny.”

  The executive officer regarded the young recruit for several moments in a neutral and quietly scrutinizing silence, but did not pry. “It is a cruel goddess who wishes this life on those in her thrall.”

  “She will protect me, sir.”

  “Ah,” Zgard Ad-Din said. He changed the subject. “A moment ago, you told me you had learned too much to quit your training. What have you learned?”

  Barryn paused. Nothing came to mind that didn’t sound like sarcasm. I’ve learned how to dig a latrine. And take an ass kicking. And how to stay awake on guard duty.

  “Well?”

  “I’ve learned to trust my comrades,” Barryn said.

  “Good,” the executive officer said. “It is they who may keep you alive. Until, of course, Ad-Gallah—the All Compassionate—appoints the time of your death and grants you final peace.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Marek

  “It is beyond my understanding,” said Governor Torune of Relfast, “how the two of you were unable to provoke Brynn into attacking us. You, Duchess Betina, are my realm’s most caustic diplomat and yet were unable to nettle Duke Grantham half as much as you torment me. And Lord Marek, my most vicious warrior…you were sent to harry their frontier and return with an invading army nipping at your heels. And yet here you are, and no war to show for it. I simply do not understand how we got ourselves in this position.”

  There is much you do not understand, you tiresome shit, Marek thought. “Duke Grantham is conservative with his armies, my lord.”

  Marek and Duchess Betina stood quietly before the Governor in his lavish apartment. He paced back and forth behind a table covered with a map of the two provinces’ border reaches. Marek noted the Governor had not bothered to mark any troop positions, or any other useful information for that matter, on the expensive map.

  “Your grace,” Duchess Betina hazarded, “our position is nevertheless favorable. Lord Marek has assembled a formidable invasion force, and our Dear Emperor is sinking too deeply into his newfound mysticism to pay attention to our business with our ancient enemies in Brynn.”

  “All due preparations are made, your grace,” Marek said. “The very flower of our chivalry awaits my command to attack.”

  “Augmented significantly with mercenary forces,” Torune said. “And I find it telling that you were unable to negotiate a single contract with a Guild company.”

  “The free companies are loyal enough as long as they are in receipt of timely payment,” Marek said. “Besides, your grace, I do not trust the Mercenaries Guild. Imperial stink hangs too heavily around them all for my liking.”

  Torune stopped pacing and shook his head. “But Duke Grantham has inked a five-year contract with the Black Swan Company. The stink of the Empire does not seem to bother your adversary so much as it does you. And do you find it odd that, on the eve of such a glorious conflict, only one Guild company is taking part? Where are the rest of the carrion birds who normally circle the battlefield?”

  That very fact, Marek hated to admit, had vexed him mightily over the past few months as he assembled his forces. The Mercenaries Guild, like all of the guilds, were chartered under Imperial authority. Marek had no idea how much the Emperor’s influence corresponded with the legal fiction under which the Guilds operated, but he had his suspicions.

  “When money is involved, anything is possible,” the Duchess said, interrupting Marek’s thought. “
Even the corruption of the Black Swans’ professional ethics. I have reserved a not inconsiderable amount of coin to buy their contract when the time is right—and I have a direct channel to them through certain members of the Courtesan’s Guild. Semen-befouled harlots that they are, they do have their usefulness.”

  Marek tried to suppress the thought that it takes one to know one. Damn it. I thought it anyway. He kept his face impassive and changed the subject.

  “I believe Duke Grantham’s scheme to use the Templars as a stick to thresh gold out of the heathen fields is having unintended consequences,” Marek said. “Every stronghold in Brynn is manned and fortified to some extent, and their levies are called into service. But they seem to be evenly distributed throughout the province…”

  “Dominion, Lord Marek. We are provinces only by dint of a fragile legal edifice that shall one day be overturned,” Torune said.

  “Throughout the dominion, your grace,” Marek corrected himself. “But virtually nothing is known about how the Templars are faring in the heathen wilderness to Grantham’s back, and he refuses to mass forces to his front where we openly threaten him. I think the Duke is just as worried about the Caeldrynn as he is about us. Perhaps the Templars are not covering themselves in glory to the extent that the bishops would have us believe.”

  “All the more reason to strike now, your grace,” Duchess Betina said.

  “But what of the Mercenaries Guild? Their absence from the coming affair still disquiets me. Are all of the Guild companies accounted for?” Torune resumed his pacing.

  “They are,” Betina said. “All of them have signed or renewed contracts with your peers, Lord Torune, and are busying themselves chasing bandits and patrolling each realms’ borders.”

  “And none could be found who would take our banner?” Torune pressed.

  “Duchess Betina offered to hire me XXIII Legion when they were available, but I would not have them,” Marek said. “We agreed to save the money for her plan to buy the Black Swans out when the time comes. But I intend to crush the Swans myself and save her the gold.”

  “Your distrust of the Mercenaries Guild runs very deep, I see,” the Governor said.

  “My distrust of all the guilds is deep, your grace, as well as the damned Imperial roads,” Marek said. “Our nobles grow rich and fat from the trade they facilitate, but I fear we are swallowing a nasty hook that is hidden in the savory bait.”

  “They are useful, Lord Marek,” Duchess Betina said curtly. “Mind the military operation, and leave the high politics and the intricacies of economics to your betters.”

  “You shall ride to your coronation in Brynn on a road paved with the skulls of our enemies, my Duchess,” Marek said almost too unctuously.

  “You must gain our victory with utmost speed,” Lord Torune said. “And yet it must be thorough if this is to work as you plan.”

  “Yes, Lord Torune,” Marek said. “I will scorch the ground between castle and stronghold until Grantham’s men come out to fight or they starve behind their walls. I can best them in the field, even if Grantham sends his men from the heathen frontiers. I shall leave the castles strictly alone and keep them intact for Duchess Betina’s later use.”

  Torune frowned. “Betina, my dear cousin, I am afraid that you will find ruling half of a dominion to be more burdensome than you expect.”

  “And I am willing to take on that burden to rule Brynn as it was meant to be ruled—under your banner, Lord Torune,” the Duchess said.

  Marek wished Duchess Betina would just poison Torune and engineer a takeover of their own province. It would be easier than trying to wrest Brynn away from Lady Drucilla and her loyal hound Grantham. But he shared the old fool Torune’s misgivings to a certain extent. Why the hell are the Guild mercenaries sitting this one out? What is really transpiring in the heathen woods and fens? When we take Brynn, will we then bleed defending our new territories from a barbarian invasion those Knob Heads have provoked?

  He walked silently beside Duchess Betina as they left Torune’s chamber. Marek reluctantly admired Betina for her ability to cajole Torune into a war that he would never have had the stomach to instigate himself. And, for that matter, she was very effectively dragooning Marek himself into this scheme as well.

  If I didn’t enjoy fighting so much, and if the bitch weren’t offering me a dukedom, I would almost resent being manipulated like this.

  Marek decided he couldn’t complain about the situation. He had been the one assuring the Duchess that he could defeat Brynn if given the resources. And she had delivered in spades, giving him cash outright to hire sellswords and working for the better part of a year establishing a parallel supply chain to the guilds in case they suddenly embargoed Relfast.

  Marek bid the Duchess a polite farewell and strode toward the grand stables where his men and horses awaited. He felt amusement at Betina’s naked ambition, frustration at Torune’s doddering, a tinge of worry about the multiple unknowns waiting to meet him and his army. But Torune had given the final order to launch the invasion, and the time for dithering was at an end.

  The nobleman swung onto his horse and smiled. The grand city of Relfast lay before him, the impenetrable citadel of Torune behind him, the blue sky arched above him. He was soon to carve himself a dukedom from the flesh of his province’s old enemy Brynn, and he felt grand.

  “Onward,” he ordered his retinue. “We’re about to make history, my lads!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Marek

  Marek divided his forces into three battalions and launched the invasion of Brynn during the Midsummer celebrations.

  Several miles to Marek’s left, Lord Rufus and 50 lances of trusted retainers led the hired free companies, a motley collection of 2,000 men-at-arms and mounted infantry. Their orders were simple: cut a swath of destruction through the countryside and report daily.

  Lord Gaston with 1,500 knights rode five miles to Marek’s right, also burning and looting in their path. Marek trusted his brother-in-law far more than that fool Rufus and the sellswords, and thus would rely on them to support him when they finally met formidable resistance.

  Marek himself rode at the head of 3,000 mounted knights, men-at-arms, free mercenaries and commoners pressed into service as infantry to fulfill their feudal obligations.

  No siege engines or sappers accompanied Marek’s forces, for there would be no need. Marek had given strict orders to Rufus and Gaston to hit the soft spots between the castles and walled towns on the frontier. The invasion would be fought like the previous winter’s campaign, but on a much larger and bloodier scale.

  “If you allow a few chickens to escape unharmed, I’ll understand,” he had told his commanders the week before. “But do take care not to let anything larger than a goat survive.”

  Chevauchee. They would burn and rape and pillage their way through Brynn until they reached the capital of the province or Duke Grantham met them on the battlefield—the open battlefield.

  Siege warfare is for imbeciles. Who has time for such nonsense?

  Marek reflected on the campaign before him as he rode at the head of his battalion. The route he had chosen was almost identical to that which his great uncle Maharzath had ridden almost 50 years ago during the Just War. His ancestor had conquered the lands Marek rode through, only to have them ceded back to the Lord of Brynn after peace was concluded.

  But the campaign had established Maharzath as a hero of Relfast and secured his family a place in the upper nobility of the province.

  This land made my great uncle a lord, Marek thought as he rode through the whispering grasslands. If I hold up my end of the bargain, it will make me a duke.

  The first night of the campaign, Marek received word from Rufus and his mercenaries that they had taken minor losses assaulting a village that day. The peasants, Rufus said in his dispatch, were standing up their local guardsmen and fortifying their villages as best they could under the leadership of their reeves.

  �
�Sacked village, set fire to same. Killed 325 men, 145 women, unknown number of children. Took 45 head of cattle, 125 chickens…” the dispatch detailed the plunder in great detail.

  Rufus missed his calling. He would have made an excellent clerk if our family’s social position would have allowed it.

  “Splendid work. Divide the plunder as you see fit. Ensure just and contractually stipulated compensation for hired companies. Continue to march,” Marek scratched on a parchment. He sealed the document and handed it to the messenger awaiting him in his command tent.

  Similar news came from Gaston, but in less detail. Merciless slaughter, thorough plunder. Excellent, Marek thought.

  Marek’s column had done well just foraging enough to keep up with the day’s food and fodder consumption, but this was a sparsely populated area. Tomorrow would bring more opportunity, he assured his lieutenants. They were half a day’s ride from a prosperous village called Bell Haven.

  “Rest your sword arms tonight, gentlemen,” he said before dismissing them. “We’ll all break a healthy sweat tomorrow.”

  Marek and his lieutenants sat upon their horses under the midday sun sizing up the densely arrayed phalanx of 1,500 pikemen blocking the only direct approach to Bell Haven. The village defenders had taken a very strong position, Marek admitted to himself, placing themselves in a triangle formed by a small brook running into a larger stream behind them. The open end of the triangle was heavily wooded, as was the point where the two streams converged. The pikemen would be almost impossible to flank, and they guarded the single bridge that led to the side road into Bell Haven.

  To get to them, Marek’s soldiers would have to cross the marshy land on either side of the brook, ford the thing, and reform their ranks for battle. Then, of course, they would need hack through the pikes to get to the men.