Fiedra gave him a surprised, enquiring look.
“Her rooms are practically next door,” he continued, not exactly sure why he was defending Ashra to Fiedra. “People do like familiarity, particularly in uncertain times.”
“Which is why we would all like to see you. It’s so lovely when we all come together now after such a long time without seeing each other.” She continued in a lower tone. “Plus they are all sniping at each other. You really must give them some direction in how to behave. They will follow your lead.” Stepping closer, she picked some lint off his shoulder and then smiled.
Fiedra was subtly making a move on him—a suggestion, perhaps. She would be a valuable choice in a partner—too collected to ever show jealousy, even as she had always been aware of his interest in Ashra. Did Fiedra even feel jealous? Yes, she did, ragingly so, but she was too astute a player to show her cards. It was the long game with Fiedra, and she was playing a card. Right now, she was telling him that he needed to be wise in his choice of partner. In the hardest part of his soul, he agreed, but there was a part of him that had softened. Ashra had done that to him and he couldn’t bring himself to quash it. It was the part that could love a child—love in a more general sense.
Fiedra did not take rejection well, and she took public embarrassment even worse. It was the thing she feared the most, an attack on the seat of her power. It would not do to make an enemy of her—neither was she one to underestimate. It made it a delicate matter dealing with her.
“Then perhaps I will come for a little while, but I must write some letters first. I do have a war to plan.”
“Well, please hurry up and finish this war. You seem to be enjoying it too much.”
Was that true, he wondered. Was he dragging his feet because he liked squaring off like this with Ashra? He didn’t fully have an answer. Maybe because he felt increasingly assured he would win. He had uncovered her raid in the Wierstoke stores. That had been clever, but he had put an end to it. So neither of them could afford to drag their feet too long. Her men would weaken, and so would his regard amongst the people here if he took too long to quash this rebellion.
Sitting down at the desk, he pulled over a clean sheet of parchment.
My dear lady, he wrote.
It seems we must face each other again to settle our differences. In four days’ time, I will wait for you on the battlefield shortly after dawn. We will see who has the strength to remain standing.
Four days would weaken her men, but it gave him a good amount of time to prepare, and he could announce it to the court shortly.
Failure to come would, of course, signify your surrender. I am happy to receive it anytime before then.
Putting the pen down, he smiled, imagining her swearing when she received it, but the smile faded and he grabbed the pen.
Allow me the opportunity to be merciful.
She would hate that statement even more. It was a harsh, but true statement. If she surrendered, he had the opportunity to be merciful. If she didn’t, harsher punishments were expected. She would have to be imprisoned, probably for a substantial amount of time, and she would never be allowed back at court. The problem was that he wanted her here, by his side, but it was a hope that was quickly running out of time. The alternative would be that she was not at his side, and eventually someone else would have to be.
Chapter 24
ASHRA THREW THE parchment down on her desk. “Four days,” she said to Higgins, who had been here when a messenger delivered it. Roisen’s seal had told her what this note would contain even before the opened it.
“We need to put Bryce on raiding supplies,” Higgins suggested. “Now that Wierstoke’s stores have been carted away.”
“Bastard,” Ashra said.
“There is food to be had; we just have to go claim it.”
“I wish we could raid Lorcan’s personal stores.”
“He’s probably taken his stores with him to the citadel to feed his men. He wouldn’t leave such resources behind at a time like this to make it possible for us to retaliate. Also as his troops are growing. The damage we have done is being repaired with Brieton’s arrival. And we now have more mouths to feed.”
“This battle will be bigger than the last.”
“Yes,” Higgins said.
“Can we be ready in four days?”
“We must be. It will be defeat if we do not meet them.”
For a moment Ashra wondered if defeat by walking away was better than defeat after battle, when lives and limbs were lost. “Can we win?”
“With our passion, we can hold our own, but we are meeting a better trained and better-armed enemy.”
“That hasn’t changed from last time.”
“No. We did hold our own. Lorcan will expect us to use the same tactics. That we will be defensive, and he the aggressor.”
“Perhaps we need to be the aggressor.”
“Unfortunately, that plays to his army’s strength with skills, rather than ours.”
Chewing her lip, Ashra turned everything over in her mind. “If we do not suffer defeat in this battle, we must then face another battle, until one of us weakens.”
“The benefits of a longer war would be to him,” Higgins said.
“Militarily perhaps, but he cannot afford to appear weak as his rule is so young. He must have victory, and he wants it in this battle.”
“Then we must withstand his assault.”
Ashra breathed in and out for several minutes, searching her mind for a way to defend against his tactics, a way to give themselves advantage. “And what are his strengths if we lay siege? The citadel isn’t as well protected as it appears. Raufasger built it believing no one would actually lay siege to it.”
“We haven’t the equipment for a siege. It is old warfare.”
“Is anything about war ever old when it comes down to it? We have a way into the citadel. We can simply sneak in and take the battle to them.”
Higgins was silent for a moment. Ashra could feel his disapproval. It was not how wars were fought, where armies lined up against each other and fought within the confined rules of war. Rules that went out the window when Raufasger had gone and ransacked the whole of the land. Why should they go back to the old ways now? Bryce wouldn’t disapprove.
“We’re taking the war to them,” she finally said.
“It will be highly visible if we all march to the citadel in an orderly row. Lorcan will react and we will then be in a siege position with death raining down on us.”
“Not if we prepare.”
Ashra pulled over a piece of parchment and started drawing. “The vast bulk of the citadel is uninhabited. Bryce was operating in there for days without being caught. We can do the same. We have four days to get ourselves into position.”
“And then what? Will we not be chasing each other around like rabbits in there, playing guerrilla warfare with each other?”
“Yes, we will. But there are areas that are more important than others. And even with us simply being in there, we will have claimed the citadel and Lorcan would have lost it without a single life being lost.”
“But he will fight back.”
“Of course he will, but none of his battle tactics will count.”
“His men are better in hand-to-hand combat. They are trained to do so. Our strength is in numbers, not in close quarter fighting.”
This was true. “Most likely we will face defeat if we face Lorcan on the battlefield in four days’ time. The option is to sneak in and meet him in the citadel. He will not get the victory he wants.”
“Guerrilla warfare never provides a definitive victory for either party.”
“It will still undermine his legitimacy.”
Higgins was quiet. He couldn’t disagree. Then he sighed. “Guerilla warfare has never served us in the past. Raufasger quashed it with brutality.”
“We never did it with these numbers, with a whole army. Halstad” she called to the man outside her tent. Th
e man appeared, probably having heard everything about the conversation inside. Luckily, she trusted him to keep quiet. They all knew there were spies amongst them. “Recall Bryce as fast as possible.”
The man nodded and disappeared.
“You will pursue this,” Higgins said.
“Yes,” Ashra said. “It changes the war completely.”
“Not necessarily in our favor.”
“Not in his favor either.”
“Then we must plan,” Higgins said with a guarded smile. “No place for an old man like me.”
The panic that would spread through the citadel would be palpable. Lorcan would be livid, but the damage would be done, even if they could only claim a small piece of the citadel. As long as they could hold it, they were winning. It wasn’t all that different from battle—there were just drawing rooms and salons to conquer instead of fields.
*
Bryce returned the next morning, looking tired. Obviously he’d ridden through the night. There wouldn’t be much time for him to sleep just yet.
“What’s happened?” he said as he appeared in her tent. Ashra had been up all night planning. Parchments were strewn all over the table, where she stood, surveying her work. His eyes traveled over them. “What is all this?”
“We’re taking the citadel,” she said. “We’re not going to battle in the field like we did last time. We’re seizing the citadel, and not by pounding the walls. We are sneaking in en masse. The citadel will be our battleground.”
Bryce eyes sought hers and she could see that he was much more excited about this than Higgins had been. Moving closer, he stood over the table. “We have our ways in. Getting in is not a problem.”
“Getting in a whole army is. We must move decisively and quickly, and most importantly without them knowing. We can’t have our own men know of our plans. There are too many enemy ears around. We must unlock the gates all at once and come from all sides. We have to confuse them and divide their response. They can’t have anywhere to assemble, while we find our place to assemble on the inside. Here,” she said, pointing at the map, down in the bowls of the eastern part of the citadel. “There are stores here, and they will be ours. Sadly, they are dispersed all over the citadel, so we wouldn’t succeed in cutting Lorcan off, but we can claim a chunk of his supplies for our own.”
“Lorcan is gathering supplies,” Bryce said. “But there is no reason our men can’t ride in on those carts and then divert them to our stores. There are people coming in and out of the citadel all day long. It’s like a sieve.”
Ashra looked at him. “We have to get our people in unnoticed in the next two days. Then we throw open the gates and the bulk of us rushes in.”
“We’re preparing to flank,” Ashra said, “while Roisen is preparing to march out of the citadel to face us. Unfortunately, we won’t have the reach to lock him out.”
“That would be brilliant. Lock him out after we sneak in.” That was perhaps a little too unrealistic, but it was a nice fantasy to indulge in.
“For us as for him, the citadel is too large to secure. Neither can lock the other out. It is only the rules of warfare that have us sitting out here patiently waiting for him to form his lines. You are going to get your siege after all, Mr. Bryce.” A glow of pride rosied his cheeks.
“We need an advanced team that will open the gates, but it can’t take us half a day to march over to those gates. We need to be quick. How do we get men over to those places before the event without telling them why they are there?”
“Exercises ahead of the battle? Anyone who knows what they’re doing will see through that,” Ashra said. “Unless we want them to see through it. We tell them we are doing a show of force in the guise of exercises in front of the citadel, trying to make ourselves look bigger than we are.”
“People will see it as a pathetic ruse.”
“We could go so far as to say we’re trying to convince the Naufren that more forces are joining us, that we are going to parade in front of the walls. Lorcan and his people would believe it and will snigger at the feebleness of it. We tell everyone that so the spies will hear it, but we tell no one of the overall plan, only their bits, then send riders to redirect them when we are close enough. We have two days to prepare this. On the third, we storm the castle.”
Chapter 25
REPORTS TOLD HIM THAT Ashra wished to make it appear that reinforcements were joining her. She was going to make a show of it the day before the battle. Clearly there were no vast reinforcements joining her. Surely she wasn’t stupid enough to think he didn’t know that. She knew full well his spies were everywhere, probably as she had spies within the citadel too.
This show wasn’t for him, though. It was for the people at court, who he had to admit, weren’t necessarily of the intelligence to see through her blatant ruse. That was what she was depending on. It was to weaken him in the eyes of the court. Maybe some attempt to rattle his men. Obviously, any doubt she generated would be rectified on the battlefield. He was planning a decisive win—one where he actually captured his enemy.
For a moment, he wondered if he should prime his men to this ruse, tell them about this vain attempt by the enemy to seem bigger than she really was—a tactic borrowed directly from nature.
If she wanted to wear out her men by marching all over the valley the day before a battle, who was he to suggest she shouldn’t. It wasn’t a tactic he would choose, but then maybe this was some attempt to prepare for defeat. Didn’t make sense if it was. Who would pre-counter their defeat by saying their forces were bigger than before—and were still defeated. Unless she was desperate enough to try to rattle his men. That would be a show of sheer desperation, or utter stupidity—and Ashra was anything but stupid.
A niggle in the back of his mind warned him that he wasn’t seeing something, that there was a purpose she was hiding.
“The men are resting,” one of his commanders said. So far, Roisen still hadn’t managed to move his staterooms out of his apartments. “There is a Lord Morice out there seeking an audience.”
Roisen’s eyebrows rose. Morice had been exiled shortly after Amethyst’s demise. Somehow he had simply walked into the citadel, hoping to curry favor. “I don’t have time to see him,” Roisen said. He really didn’t have time to deal with the court and their concerns, including all the ones that Raufasger had chased away and were now looking to re-establish themselves.
Frankly, he wanted nothing to do with Amethyst’s extended family, wishing they could just stay away. Saying that, bringing the man into the fold would mean Roisen owned him. “But tell him I will see him next week.” It equated roughly to a welcome back. Next week, Morice could present what he would pledge for admittance back to court.
It was a vastly different game now that he was the one who doled out favor, as opposed to positioning for it. The courtiers and their demands were simply annoying. Had Raufasger felt the same? Although Raufasger had enjoyed pitting them all against each other. It had been his entertainment.
It was lonely at the top, or so the saying went. Did Ashra feel the same? Luckily for her, she didn’t have courtiers to deal with, only the likes of this man Bryce and other notables of the Solmnite society.
*
Late in the afternoon, Roisen stood at his window and watched as Ashra’s troops marched to start their display. It all unfolded as planned, but it still felt as though there was a piece to the puzzle that didn’t fit, as if the motive for this wasn’t strong enough to truly make him convinced. Ashra didn’t give into sheer desperation.
People milled around behind him, but he didn’t feel like talking to any of them.
It was a paltry show of force, spread too thin, and displaying in front of sparsely populated parts of the citadel. Clearly, Ashra wanted everyone to see her forces, except him, because there was no one parading right in front of him. That simply confirmed that something was very off about this. It had been the same instinct that had made him order a stop to the prepara
tions for battle, and spread them out throughout the castle.
“They look disheveled, don’t they?” a woman said.
How had all these people made it into his apartments? It had to be Fiedra trying to counter the assertion Ashra was making.
“Pathetic,” someone said with a loud chuckle. “They don’t know what they’re doing. We really should run out and trample their camp to the ground while they leave it unmanned. Won’t be feeling so mighty if they all have to sleep in the cold without their tents and blankets.”
And then they started running toward the castle, like a wave rushing in. They looked like ants down there. Almost inconsequential.
“What are they doing?” a man asked.
Roisen smiled. “The enemy is at our gates,” he stated calmly.
“Surely they can’t get in.”
“They’re already in. This was the ruse all along,” Roisen said. He’d known there was something more to this. Ashra was much more clever than some paltry attempt at a ruse. No, she had used the ruse as a cover for her true intentions.
A murmur spread amongst the people behind him and Roisen turned. “Lady Greve is changing the rules of warfare.”
“That’s disgraceful,” Lord Merryvor said with deep disgust.
“What is a bunch of soldiers going to do running down the halls?” a woman said, but was met with silence.
“What indeed,” Roisen replied, looking around at the frightened and frankly useless people around him.
“They’re in the castle,” a man said, his voice betraying panic.
“Lady Greve seeks to make the citadel her battleground. So we will battle.”
“You knew she would do this?” Fiedra said, her eyes large and questioning.
“I suspected this was her intention.”
“We have to keep them out,” Merryvor said.
“No, unfortunately the citadel was never built well for keeping an enemy out. There are more entrances than there are people guarding them. The defenses are more for show and the citadel too large to patrol. But this does provide opportunities.” The only real problem with this was the panic and irrationality of the courtiers.
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