A Kingdom Besieged

by Raymond E. Feist

  Bethany grabbed his arm from behind. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Back to Crydee.’ He gently pulled away from her and stood up. Kneeling before she could rise, he gave her a quick kiss and said, ‘I have an idea and I need to see what is going on in the town. Now, go with Sergeant Ruther and try not to cause too much trouble.’ Then he was off, darting through the trees.

  With a sigh, Ruther stood and extended his hand down to Bethany. When she slapped it aside he chuckled and turned to the line of men in the woods. He covered his mouth in the sign for ‘no talking’, pointed into the woods then pointed towards them, then back to himself, telling them to fall in behind and follow him.

  ‘Do you—’ began Bethany.

  The sergeant quickly but gently covered her mouth. ‘No talking, Lady Bethany. Now, let’s go.’

  Before she could say another word, he moved into the trees and the other men began to follow.

  Martin ran down the road and then slowed to a trot. He’d have to pace himself or he’d collapse before he even knew exhaustion had hit him. He was young and fit but he had been without sleep for the better part of three days, had hardly eaten, and had endured his first battle. He stopped, put his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. He was feeling dizzy. Certainly not a good sign.

  He slowed his breathing for a moment, then heard voices coming from the west. His fatigue forgotten, he hurried down the side of the road to a stand of trees and moved parallel to the road as best he could.

  He could smell char and smoke and knew the breeze from the harbour was blowing it toward him. At least the Keshians wouldn’t smell him coming.

  He saw a small copse of wild apple trees and grabbed one of the fruits. It was slightly sour, but he needed the nourishment. He chewed slowly, not wanting to give himself a stomach ache.

  It took him nearly an hour to work his way carefully northward, first crossing the main road then moving along a series of game trails through thinning woodlands. He and his brothers had played here as children then later had hunted in this vicinity.

  Crydee Harbour was marked at the southern end by a pinnacle of rock and a rising bluff known as Sailors’ Grief. To the north the circle was suddenly cut off by a massive bluff with a fifty-foot drop to the beach below. From the junction of that bluff and beach a series of stones that jutted above the water even at high tide ran out to a small island. That rocky path and island had been filled in with quarried stones until a man-made jetty with dock had been fashioned, named Longpoint. At the end of it rose up the Longpoint Lighthouse.

  The bluffs to the north of Longpoint had served the first Duke and his son as a makeshift lighthouse and lookout station until a proper lighthouse had been constructed. On top of the bluffs the stones of that old watch post still rested.

  Martin reached that point after an hour of climbing and looked down onto Crydee harbour. ‘Gods!’ he said aloud.

  What looked to be at least two hundred Keshian ships were at anchor. He could see two more sailing out to sea, and another two sailing in while about thirty ships in the harbour were being serviced by a dozen or more ferries, carrying cargo to the docks. The activity was frenzied and so widespread that the Keshians were offloading cargo onto the rocky shore to the south of the town’s docks, and thence to the rickety smaller quay before the fishing community directly below where Martin stood.

  But what astonished him the most was that more and more people were coming ashore. A second wave of men, women, and children were entering Crydee Town, and from their varied skin colour and garb they were obviously from many different places in Kesh. Many of them had animals, oxen pulling wagons, horses on leads – not war horses but dray animals – donkeys, mules, and cages of chickens and geese. Even a brace of spitting angry camels was being led into the town.

  Martin stood in stunned amazement.

  He sat down and took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts. Nothing he saw below him made sense. Out of the three brothers, he was the student of history. More than just studying battles and the lines of nobles, he had delved into the causes of war and the results.

  Kesh had expanded rapidly over the three preceding centuries, its people moving across the Straits of Darkness from Elarial up to what was now Tulan. They had built their first garrison there, then an expedition north from there had found the wonderful harbour at Carse and the smaller harbour below. A fourth harbourage far to the north also was found and at one point Kesh tried to build there, calling it Birka. But that settlement had been the first obliterated by the dark elves, the Brotherhood of the Dark Path as humans came to call them.

  History showed that Kesh had expanded too far and too fast, and could not support the ancient province of Bosania, as Crydee and the Free Cities were called. The coast of the Bitter Sea colonies prospered, so that when Kesh withdrew, they had been strong enough to resist the expansion westward of the Kingdom of the Isles. But it had been Martin’s ancestor who had ridden over the very trail from Ylith that his men were now fleeing down, to arrive here at Crydee.

  The only reason Crydee had become the capital of the duchy was that his ancestor had taken the old Keshian fortification and built upon it, waging a ten-year campaign to conquer Carse and then Tulan. When it was over, Queg was an independent kingdom, the colonies in Natal had become the Free Cities, Ylith had become the southernmost city of Yabon Province, and that had remained the status quo for over two hundred years.

  Now Kesh was back and it was clear they were reclaiming all of ancient Bosania. They were not only bringing their armies, they were bringing in colonists hard on their heels. They were obviously going to be bringing in their own logistical support, peopling farms and pastures, logging camps and cutting mills, mines, and fisheries with Keshians.

  Martin was no expert on such subjects, but it looked to him as if they had brought enough of Kesh with them that they could occupy the entire Duchy of Crydee . . . He stopped.

  Suddenly he knew exactly what Kesh was doing. If he desired one thing in life as much as Bethany’s kiss, it would be word from her father as to what was occurring in Carse. Because if he was to wager everything he had, he would bet that the entire Keshian invasion force had sailed right past Carse and Tulan, perhaps leaving a screen of ships to keep the Kingdom warships bottled up in those two harbours, and then landed here. They weren’t going to occupy all of Crydee, just the north!

  And he knew why.

  Wishing he could just lie down here on the rocks and sleep for a week, Martin pushed aside his exhaustion and started back down the hill. Glancing at the midday sun, he considered that with luck he might be able to overtake his men and Bethany after sunset.

  He ran down the slopes from the bluffs into the woods below.

  As he reached a drop in the road, in darkness, Martin could make out fires ahead and hear the sound of horses. He wondered if it might be those Keshians Ruther called ‘the Leopards’, and if so where were Bethany, Ruther, and the men?

  He crept up to the edge of the clearing and saw men there in the brown tabards of Crydee. Feeling relief flood through him, he shouted, ‘Hello the camp! Coming in!’

  One step later he was surrounded by guards, who took a moment to recognize him. ‘Martin! they greeted him.

  Bethany was sitting near the fire next to Brendan. Martin smiled and walked over as quickly as he could. He smelled food cooking and was suddenly ravenous.

  His brother rose and came around the campfire to embrace him. ‘Martin, I was worried.’

  ‘We all were,’ said Bethany and Martin saw an expression on her face that made his heart sink.

  He looked around and realized something momentous. ‘Where’s Father?’ he asked quietly, knowing the answer before it came.

  Brendan looked to the east along the road. ‘Goblin raiders. They jumped us before they realized how many we were. One wounded Father and he fainted, but when he fell . . . he broke his neck.’

  Sergeant Magwin joined them. ‘We buried him ne
ar the road, Martin, and marked it well. When this is over we’ll fetch him home.’

  Martin felt empty inside. Of all the things he had imagined, his father not being at the head of this column had never been one of them. He sat down next to Bethany and a plate of food and a skin of water was presented to him. ‘Eat, drink,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve no stomach after such news, but you must revive yourself.’

  Martin was numb. Exhaustion, fear, and the stress of battle had worn him to a nub inside. He knew he should be weeping or shouting in rage or something at the news of his father’s death, yet he felt almost nothing, as if the sense of loss was a distant thing. He was silent for a long moment, then just said, ‘Father?’ He let out a long sigh and took the food.

  ‘What of Crydee?’ asked Brendan.

  ‘They’re not simply landing an invasion force. They’re moving a colony in.’

  ‘Colony?’ asked Ruther.

  ‘Those men, women, and children that landed with the first wave were just the beginning. Hundreds, maybe thousands more are sitting in ships off the coast waiting to be offloaded.’

  ‘But why? Of all the places in the Kingdom, why the Far Coast?’ asked Brendan.

  ‘Not the Far Coast,’ answered Martin. He forced himself to chew and swallow a spoonful of tough meat in a thick stew, despite having no stomach for it. ‘Crydee.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Brendan.

  Martin took a dagger from his belt and quickly drew a rough map in the earth. ‘The Bitter Sea,’ he said after he’d drawn a diamond shape. Then he drew another line to the left of the diamond. ‘The Far Coast, and we are about here . . .’ He dug the point of his dagger in. ‘I believe Bethany’s father and Morris down at Tulan are not being attacked, but rather are being bottled up and prevented from moving north to aid us.

  ‘I think there’s a squadron or more of Keshian ships sailing up and down the Far Coast ensuring that no one gets out of either harbour or any of the fishing villages between the Straits and Crydee. I also believe that once they’ve established themselves in Crydee they’ll keep coming east, along this highway to seize Ylith. If they do, they’ll have removed the King’s Fleet from the Far Coast, and prevented Yabon from sending anyone south. Duke Gasson will be bottled up, unable to come any farther south than Zun and with that move Kesh will have trisected the Western Realm.

  ‘They can then move in strength against Krondor from the south, leaving the Kingdom in tatters. I cannot let Krondor be surrounded without support from the north. The only relief from the east is in Salador, and that would take weeks, and who can guess what Kesh is doing in the Sea of Kingdoms? The King may be very ill-disposed to stripping any of his eastern garrisons to come to Krondor’s aid.’

  ‘But how?’ asked Brendan. ‘How could they put so many men in the field at once?’

  ‘That, my brother, is the question,’ Martin said. ‘For the moment, we need rest.’

  ‘You and the others from Crydee sleep,’ said Brendan. ‘We’ll keep watch.’

  ‘What happened to that band of Leopards?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Brendan happened,’ said Bethany, patting him on the arm.

  ‘They rode right into us not knowing we had them by five to one,’ said Martin’s younger brother. ‘They are good, but it was over quickly.’ Then he smiled. ‘But we have their horses so you don’t have to walk to Ylith.’

  Sighing, Martin lay down, putting his head on a pack someone had set down behind him. ‘Ylith.’ After a moment as his eyes grew heavy, he said, ‘If Robert is bottled up in Carse, and Gasson cut off up in Yabon. . . .’

  Bethany came and lay down behind him, snuggling in close as if to keep him warm for the night. Bethany closed her eyes and was quickly asleep as well.

  Brendan saw his brother slip into deep slumber and turned to look at the two sergeants. ‘With Father dead and Hal in Roldem, that puts Martin in command.’

  Ruther looked at Magwin. The two sergeants were the oldest members of the garrison, save for Swordmaster Phillip who was with young Henry in Roldem for the Champions Tournament at the Masters’ Court. Finally Magwin said ‘Title or not, that makes him the King’s Warden of the West.’

  Ruther looked at the sleeping youth and said, ‘Now all he needs is an army.’

  Chapter Twenty Confluence

  JIM GROANED.

  His arms felt as if they were about to fall off, yet he knew he had another half-hour or more of pulling hard on the oars of this boat. He glanced over his shoulder and at once regretted it. Sorcerer’s Isle didn’t look a foot closer than it had the last time he had looked.

  His Keshian guide Nefu had proved as wily a smuggler as he had hoped, and if he had the chance he’d use him himself, if Kaseem would let him. They had run up the coast on a down-wind tack, then turned and run before the wind northward. Twice they had seen sails on the horizon and Nefu had deftly sailed away before they were noticed.

  They had reached an imaginary line between the south-west tip of the island nation of Queg and the distant point of Land’s End over the horizon, and found that it was just as Nefu had feared: heavily patrolled by Keshian warships. He had quickly produced both a Keshian flag and a courier’s pennant and affixed them to the mast. As long as he kept sailing, didn’t get stopped and have to answer questions it would be fine. Though Jim judged it likely that Kaseem abu Hazara-Khan had provided Nefu with a fairly comprehensive set of false papers. There was a likelihood that because Kaseem had been betrayed and his network compromised that many of those patents and passes were no longer valid, but unless those who stopped the smuggler were privy to the most recent changes in the top echelons of government, they might get them through. Jim also knew that had he been in charge, Nefu would have a packet with a lot of impressive-looking seals that were to be opened only by a specific noble, one who wasn’t on whatever boat was stopping them.

  He was relieved they had not had to test those ploys. For Nefu was even more resourceful than Jim had imagined. They sailed along the line of ships, staying to the east and looking as if they were bound on imperial business for some destination behind the lines, until sundown, at which point Nefu sailed around in a lazy circle until he was where he wished to be. He had lowered the sails and sculled the ship silently through the darkness. Sculling was a primitive means of propelling a boat, probably used centuries before sail or oar. Jim was amazed to see the long oar come out of the hold; it was in sections that were quickly fitted together and put over the stern as the rudder was hoisted out of the water by means of a clever winch-and-cable mechanism. Then Nefu and two of his men fixed the twenty-five-foot-long oar in a iron cradle bolted to the stern of the boat, slipping it through a cut-out that Jim had assumed was a common feature to allow water splashing up on the deck to run off.

  Sculling took a lot of power, and this oar was massive, so two men worked it. It was a slow and tedious way to move a boat, but move the boat it did, and silently they crept between two sentry ships anchored along the line Jim had drawn on the imaginary map in his mind.

  By dawn an exhausted crew raised the sails and they set a course for Sorcerers’ Isle. They took down the Keshian pennants and kept a sharp watch for Kingdom warships.

  A day later they came within view of two things simultaneously: a smudge on the north-eastern horizon which Nefu claimed was Sorcerers’ Isle, and a dot of white to the south-east that the lookout claimed was a squadron of Kingdom warships.

  Despite Jim’s assurances that he could convince the commander of any Kingdom squadron they were there on official business, Nefu declined to see if Jim could effectively keep him and his crew out of a Kingdom prison and his boat from being confiscated. The fact that Jim was without identification of any kind, that the Kingdom was in a state of war, and that there was no guarantee that this particular squadron commander had ever met Baron James Jamison all weighed heavily in the smuggler’s decision.

  Hence Jim found himself rowing furiously against the current trying desperately to take him awa
y from his destination. Not for the first time that morning did Jim curse Destan for disabling his Tsurani transport orb.

  Jim’s shoulders ached and his back hurt and he knew that this was the first time in his life he was seriously beginning to feel his age. At forty a man’s body begins to betray him, and it’s only male vanity that makes him not believe it.

  Jim was well past forty.

  He worked hard at staying fit, drinking little and eating well, but the rigours of his trade, both as leader of the Mockers and supervisor of the King’s Intelligence Service, conspired to keep him from taking care of himself as much as he should.

  Never in his life had he regretted that fact more than now.

  As he pulled hard on the oars, he wondered if it might really be time to settle down and start that family. Assuming there was still a Kingdom in which to raise them after this war was over.

  Of course if Kesh was victorious, he could probably find employment in Roldem.

  Then he wondered if Franciezka was honest about her feelings for him. He had been thinking of her a great deal lately, a fact which both did and didn’t surprise him. It did because he had walled off his feelings towards women early in life, a necessity given his career; it didn’t because Lady Franciezka Sorboz was far and away the most interesting and devious woman he had ever encountered. Life with her would never be dull. And it didn’t hurt his little daydream that she was still the most arrestingly beautiful woman he knew. But most of all, she was the most intelligent woman he had ever met, and he had met a lot of intelligent women. They had to be intelligent to put up with the idiots they married. That then raised the question of how they could marry idiots and still be called intelligent, at which point Jim decided to put aside the question and concentrate on something simple, like who had started this war, why, and how he could convince Pug to save the Kingdom.

  Jim kept rowing.

  * * *

  The boat rose and fell and in the distance Jim could hear the sound of surf but he refused to look behind, knowing this to be a cruel joke being played by Kalkin, God of Thieves. He knew if he looked the island would be back where it was when Nefu had first put him over the side into this boat.