The Wolf At War

by Terry Cloutier

  Half an hour later, we sat in the keep, explaining to the king everything that had occurred.

  “But you told me Piths don’t like sieges, Lord Hadrack,” Tyden said. We were sitting around one of the long tables in the hall, eating a meager meal of bread and ale.

  “I said they prefer to strike fast and hard, Highness,” I responded. “Not that they won’t attack a fortress if they have enough motivation.” I tore off a piece of the stale bread and popped it in my mouth, talking around it. “Unfortunately, I would have to say that the Piths are very motivated now.”

  “Yes,” Tyden agreed dryly. “I would say you’re right about that.” The king toyed with his mug. “Can we hold them off until reinforcements arrive?”

  I shrugged. “We’ll have a better idea about that in the morning, Highness. But I don’t see why not. Our walls are stout, and we have plenty of men and arrows. Without siege engines, there’s not much Lorgen can do but shake his fist at us and rattle his sword.”

  “The armory in the garrison is well-stocked, Highness,” Lord Fitzery added. “I’m not sure why, but the Piths left it untouched for the most part.”

  “They prefer to use their own weapons,” Baine explained. “And I imagine they never expected we would end up in here.”

  “What about food?” Tyden asked. “Do we have enough for a long siege if it comes to that?”

  “We can last for months if we are careful, Highness,” Lord Fitzery said. He smiled as he tore off a hunk of bread. “Though I don’t promise the fare will be up to your usual standards, Highness.”

  The king waved away his words. “I’ll eat grubs and dog shit if that’s what it takes to beat that bastard out there.”

  “Well, I’m not partial to dog shit, Highness,” Lord Fitzery said with a laugh. “But I’ve roasted my fair share of mealworms over a fire, so I could live with that if we must.”

  The next morning began cool and cloudy, with a hint of rain in the air. I had risen early from my straw bed in the great hall, wanting to lay eyes on the Pith camp the moment the light allowed for it. Now I stood alone on the eastern parapet in the darkness, clutching my cloak against the wind and wondering what the day would bring. Jebido and Baine came to join me, both still looking half asleep as we stood together, waiting for the sun to rise.

  “This has a very familiar feel to it,” Baine said with a yawn. The Pith camp still lay in shadows, with only a few weak fires burning that we could barely see through a thick mist drifting south from the river.

  “Let’s hope not too familiar,” Jebido replied sourly. He looked up as a light rain started to fall. “Wonderful,” he grunted with a frown.

  Lord Fitzery appeared from the keep, and after he had relieved himself, he climbed to join us, blowing on his hands and stamping his feet. The lord was dressed in a rich mail coat etched with a golden hem and a hanging coif that was much too big for him. He had to pull it back from his eyes constantly. A sword with a serpent head hilt was sheathed across his back, and a matching short sword lay on his hip. “A good day for a battle, I would say,” the lord said with a laugh.

  Jebido turned away and said nothing, though I saw his features had darkened considerably. My friend was usually in a foul mood first thing in the morning from all his aches and pains, and this day appeared to be no different. Cheery people before the sun had risen tended to get a strong rebuke from him, even a young lord, and I was glad that he’d chosen to hold his tongue.

  “You’re right, Lord Fitzery,” I responded with a smile. “The rain will make the ground slick, which will be in our favor.”

  Lord Fitzery waved a hand. “All this stuffy lord nonsense between us has to stop. How about I call you Hadrack, and you call me Fitz? All my friends do. Is it a bargain?”

  I chuckled as we locked forearms. “It’s a deal.”

  “Good,” Fitz said as he looked east. “Now that we have that settled, what have our heathen friends been up to this morning?”

  “Not a damn thing as far as I can tell,” I said. “But it’s early yet.”

  Fitz and I talked for a time about our theories on war and tactics as we waited, while Jebido and Baine listened, offering an occasional opinion. Fitz was only seventeen years old, but even though he was young, he had a keen mind that missed very little. Fitz knew nothing of our time in Gasterny other than vague rumors, and he was curious to know what had actually happened here. I told him how, by clever misdirection, Pernissy had managed to take the fortress by sending men on rafts down the river to climb the walls behind our forces.

  “That was smart,” Fitz said with admiration when I was done. He grinned. “Let’s hope the Piths don’t decide to use the same ploy.”

  “They can’t this time, lord,” Jebido responded. The clouds above us were clearing now as the sky brightened, taking with them my friend’s bad mood. “The walls back then were made of wood and easily scaled,” Jebido said. He slapped the battlements beside him. “Now they are twice as high, twice as thick, and made of solid stone. No one is coming over them from that side.”

  “Hadrack,” Baine warned, nudging my arm.

  The mist was quickly lifting as the wind shifted, sending it back toward the river. I could see the Pith camp now, with many of the collapsed tents still smoldering and sending up tendrils of weak smoke. A long line of horses with bodies draped over them were moving slowly toward the bridge, with purple-robed Pathfinders guiding them along.

  “What are they doing?” Fitz asked.

  “Taking their dead back to the Ascension Grounds would be my guess,” I said. “After last night, I doubt they’re willing to chance Ascending them here again.”

  “That’s too bad,” Fitz said with a chuckle. “I rather enjoyed all those bouncing tits and round bums.”

  Another half an hour went by before the line of horses disappeared across the bridge, heading east toward Victory Pass. The moment they were out of sight, drums began to pound as the remaining Piths mounted their horses.

  “Here we go,” Jebido muttered.

  I signaled the archer in the watchtower above us to ring the bell as the Piths massed along the western side of the ruined campsite. It was hard to tell with all the milling horses, but I guessed they still had at least a thousand men, maybe more. My face fell in disappointment as I shared a look with Jebido. I had been hoping a lot more of the warriors had been killed or injured during the night’s attack. I thought I saw Lorgen Three-Fingers amongst the riders, and perhaps his son as well, but from so far away, it was hard to be certain. I wondered if Saldor had survived the battle and destruction of the camp. A part of me hoped that he had. I’d actually liked the man and wished him no ill.

  We had close to two hundred and fifty men-at-arms left and nearly a hundred archers, with thirty-seven of them my own Wolf’s Teeth boys. Those men were lined along the parapet to my left under Tyris’ command, waiting with their great warbows. Whatever Lorgen Three-Fingers planned for us this day, he was about to find out that getting over these walls would be very frustrating and costly, despite his bold words from last night.

  The Piths came on as the ground shook beneath the hooves of their horses. Each warrior held a bow and had several sheaves of arrows hooked to their saddles, but none were on foot carrying scaling ladders or ramps for the moat, which I found strange. What did they expect to do? I glanced at Jebido and he just shrugged, having seen the question on my face.

  “Wolf’s Teeth!” I heard Tyris shout as the Piths drew closer. “Nock!” The Piths came on in a solid wall of horseflesh, the colorful banners of the Amenti sub-tribes fluttering on lances all along the front line, with Lorgen Three-Fingers’ giant bear banner dominating the center. “Draw!” Tyris commanded as the Piths came within range. “Now, loose!”

  I watched the flight of shafts fill the sky, anticipating seeing Pith riders in the first rank start to crumble and fall as the rest of our archers began to shoot. But then something incredible happened. The Piths broke apart before the lead arrows
fell in amongst them, sweeping both left and right in a breathtaking exhibition of horsemanship and coordination. Then they started to curl like flocks of birds, breaking up into bands of twenty or thirty riders all moving in the same, practiced rhythm as they galloped past our walls. How they didn’t collide into one another was a mystery to me. The Piths were remarkable riders, and they guided their well-trained horses with leg pressure alone as they stood in the stirrups, shooting arrows up at our battlements and towers. I looked up as a man screamed above me, then his body plunged to the ground from the watchtower as dark spinning shafts hissed like hundreds of buzzing flies over the battlements or cracked against hard stone.

  “Everyone, get down!” I shouted as I dropped to my knees. An arrow cracked into the wall above me as several men who had been too slow to take cover twisted and fell.

  “This really does seem familiar,” Jebido grunted from beside me.

  I could hear the triumphant cries of the Piths, and I took a chance and stood, taking a peek over the wall. The mounted warriors had turned and were retreating out of our range, bows raised over their heads. As far as I could tell, we hadn’t gotten even one of the bastards.

  “Well,” Fitz said as he came to stand beside me. “That didn’t go so well.”

  “No,” I muttered, staring at the celebrating Piths as they laughed and jeered on the way back to their camp. “No, it did not.”

  And so began Lorgen Three-Fingers’ patient plan to wear the men of Gasterny down. Days went by, then weeks, with multiple attacks occurring at all hours of the day, even at night. Sometimes the Piths would come with only a few hundred men, sometimes with many more, but come they did in endless waves at least ten times per day. And every day or two, we would lose a man, despite repeated warnings to stay down and not attempt to go bow to bow against them. Sometimes the Piths would throw grappling hooks across the moat to the walls, drawing men from cover only to have them skewered with multiple arrows by the waiting Pith archers. Several times a day, they would send fire-arrows into the garrison, then wait as we hurried to beat out the flames before sending another volley of barbed shafts unerringly to the same area, striking down the men fighting the blaze. The attacks were endless, varied, and coldly determined, requiring an iron will and discipline that I hadn’t believed the Piths possessed as they sought to wear us down. And it was working.

  I’d always had a healthy respect for Pith archers, both male and female, but the astounding skill of the Amenti day after day had surprised even me. Except for Tyris and Baine, our men were horribly outclassed with the bow, even with our longer, more powerful ones, and the mood inside Gasterny had turned bleak and dark by the end of the second week. Our supply of arrows, which had seemed limitless at first, was slowly being depleted, despite our determination not to waste them. And though the Piths had taken losses, there were so many of them that it hardly seemed to matter. But for us, every man we lost was one less we could put on the walls, never knowing for certain if the next attack would be the one where they tried to breach us.

  “It really is quite clever,” Fitz was saying, a theme that he had been hammering away at to anyone who would listen. We were sitting on the Holy House steps—which had once again become my preferred place to think and talk. “I mean, look at you two,” the young lord said, motioning to Baine and me. “You both look like a horse dragged you a mile over sharp rocks.”

  “As if you look any better,” Baine snorted. Fitz gave my friend a dark look. “Lord,” Baine added reluctantly.

  Fitz’s face broke out in a smile, his anger nothing but a sham. I knew the young lord didn’t care much about his title, but for some reason, he seemed to take great pleasure in teasing Baine about it. “Perhaps on the outside, I look no better than you miserable bastards do, but inside I am as fresh as a morning breeze. My constitution is stronger than most men, you see, and while my toilet may not be up to its usual high standard, the current events have done little to discourage me that we will ultimately prevail.”

  “Of course we will prevail,” King Tyden boomed as he strode toward us, his hands behind his back. A tall, gangly youth with an odd overbite and slow way about him trailed the king. The boy’s name was Kacy, and he had become Tyden’s unofficial assistant in Gasterny, running his errands and seeing to his everyday needs. Kacy was clearly a halfwit, but one who was just smart enough to be an assistant to one of our army’s many cooks on the march to free Gasterny. The boy had misunderstood his orders to return to Corwick with his master and had somehow been left behind. Jebido hadn’t had the heart to leave him, fearing he’d get lost or worse, so he’d given him a horse before the charge on the Pith camp and had hoped for the best. Miraculously, the boy had survived and had even acquitted himself quite well according to several men-at-arms that had seen him down a Pith with his horse.

  Baine and I both stood, bowing to the king, while Fitz half-stood and nodded his head before dropping back to his previous position.

  “Any sign of our friends yet, Lord Hadrack?” Tyden asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing since this morning, Highness. This is the longest that I can remember them going between attacks since we got here.”

  “Maybe they’re getting tired,” Fitz said with a smile.

  “Were that only true,” the king said as he paused in front of us. He pursed his lips as he regarded me. “Do you think the man drowned? Should we send another?”

  The king was referring to Bona, who I had sent over the wall a week ago to swim the White Rock yet again and try to locate Tyden’s men. We had expected the King’s Army to have arrived by now, and I knew the king was becoming concerned. We all were.

  I shook my head. “No, Highness. Bona made it. We just need to be patient.”

  Tyden nodded, though I could tell he didn’t fully agree with me. “Very well, Lord Hadrack, we’ll wait.” He paused as he tugged at his growing beard. “But only for two more days. If they haven’t come by then, we send another man.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but was cut off by the watchtower bell ringing. I sighed as I glanced over at Fitz. “So much for them being tired.”

  Fitz nodded in resignation as one of the men in the watchtower leaned over, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Riders approaching!”

  “I would say that’s rather obvious, you imbecile!” Fitz shouted back as he stood.

  “No, lord,” the archer called down. “I mean from the north. Riders are coming from the north! Many of them!”

  The king’s eyes lit up at the news, and he ran to the ramparts with the rest of us following. Tyden was the first to reach the northern wall, and he gasped loudly. A vast army on horseback was approaching from the north and along the riverbank, while I could hear wild cheering coming from the rebuilt Pith camp.

  “Oh shit,” Jebido said under his breath.

  We weren’t looking at the King’s Army coming to save us as we had hoped, but instead, the force riding toward the bridge were Piths—and they were led by Einhard the Unforgiving.

  14: Einhard the Unforgiving

  “It’s not him,” Jebido said with conviction.

  “It is,” Baine insisted.

  “It is not,” Jebido responded heatedly. “It can’t be.”

  “You’re wrong, Jebido,” I said as I watched the lead riders making their way across the bridge. “It’s him.” The Piths were still too far away to make out faces or banners, but I knew instinctively that I was right.

  “Him who?” Fitz asked. If the young lord was dismayed by the sight of so many Piths, he hid it well.

  “Einhard,” I said in a low voice.

  “Oh,” Fitz said as he peered curiously to the north. “That him.”

  A sobering silence had descended on the fortress at the appearance of the Pith army. I could see by the haunted looks on the faces around me that whatever flame of hope we’d had of surviving had effectively just been extinguished.

  “Mother help us,” Tyden muttered, looking shaken. “There
has to be five thousand of the bastards.” He turned away, his eyes bitter. “I thought we would win. I really did.”

  I moved to stand beside the king. “We aren’t dead yet, Highness,” I said, trying to sound confident, though inside, I was reeling just as much as he was. Einhard and I might have been friends years ago, but I knew his hatred of Ganderland far outweighed whatever he might have felt for me once. There would be no rescue for any of the men inside Gasterny now, whether the King’s Army arrived soon or not.

  The lead Pith riders passed through the southern gatehouse, breaking back out into the sunshine. I could see the colors of their banners now, confirming my suspicions of who it was that led them. It was Einhard, just as I had known it would be. Einhard stopped his horse, shielding his eyes as he looked toward the garrison and the parapet where I stood. I remembered watching him leaving Gasterny years ago to return to the land of the Piths. We had both waved to each other then, a silent message of friendship shared between us before he had ridden out of my life. Now, we were together again in the same place, but this time on opposing sides.

  On impulse, I grabbed a lance with my wolf banner tied to it. I jumped to the battlements, staring down at the man who had meant so much to me once. Einhard’s helm was shining like a brilliant golden beacon in the sun, impossible to ignore. What was going through his mind as he looked my way? Was he feeling hatred for a man he believed to be a traitor, or was it sadness and regret, knowing that he would soon have to kill a friend?

  The White Rock rushed and gurgled below me, sweeping along the western wall before curving north in a loop and then flowing east beneath the bridge. Einhard was almost half a mile away, and I could see nothing of his features, but even so, I sensed somehow that he was smiling up at me. I lifted my free hand in the air with my fingers splayed wide, then I waited with the banner twisting and snapping in the breeze over my head.

  Einhard seemed frozen on his horse, locked in that moment in time, until finally, almost reluctantly, he raised a hand to me. Then, the moment broken, he kicked his heels against his horse’s flanks and rode at a gallop with his men toward Lorgen Three-Fingers’ camp.