A Kingdom Besieged (25 page)

He wished desperately his father or Hal or both were here. Even the sight of Brendan would have cheered him. He was not the man to be in command. He barely considered himself a man, despite having passed six summers since his ‘manhood’ day on his fourteenth Banapis Festival. Yes, he had drawn enemy blood before, but those were rabble: goblins and outlaws. This? This was war, and opposing him was a seasoned Keshian commander with battle-hardened soldiers at his disposal.

When he thought of war he thought of the great battles told of in the archives. When Borric I had charged across the plains north-west of Salador, outnumbered by half again as many soldiers under Jon the Pretender. He had wondered more than once if he had been a member of the Congress of Lords which side he would have chosen. Borric had the claim, as eldest son of the King’s younger brother, but Jon had been Borric’s bastard cousin, and was immensely popular. History was written by the victors, his old teachers had told Martin, so the chronicles were canted in Borric’s favour, but there was enough to tell a careful reader that Jon’s claim was no less a claim.

When he thought of warfare Martin remembered reading the various accounts of the siege of Crydee, during what was commonly known as the Riftwar, the Tsurani invasion. It was all the more vivid because he could walk the walls and visit each location recounted in the narrations. As a youngster he used to take the text and stand where Arutha was when Fannon was felled by an arrow and walk to where the Prince had stood rallying his soldiers to repulse wave after wave of attackers.

Martin had always been Arutha in his imagination, despite his own many great-grandfather and namesake, later Duke Martin, being a significant figure of the battle.

He couldn’t imagine how Arutha would have dealt with this situation, being forced to withdraw in the face of overwhelming odds. He closed his eyes for a moment.

In what seemed to be a second later Bethany was shaking him awake. ‘It’s sundown and the Keshians haven’t come yet,’ she said, softly. ‘The wounded are ready to leave.’

He blinked and shook his head, not entirely awake.

She repeated herself and he stood. ‘Sorry, I fell asleep.’

‘Obviously.’ She slipped her arm through his. ‘You drive yourself too hard.’

‘I was wondering what Prince Arutha would have done in my place, just before I fell asleep.’

‘Exactly what you’re doing: trying to make the best of a terrible situation.’

He smiled tiredly. ‘Let’s get started.’ He disentangled his arm from hers and led her down to the sub-basement, where six litters were being carried by a dozen men.

Sergeant Ruther said, ‘Ready, sir.’

‘Begin,’ said Martin.

The tunnel was low, so the litter-bearers had to bend forward a little, but they managed to get the six men too wounded to walk, through. Then those who could walk began to enter the dark maw of the tunnel.

After the last of them had gone through, Martin turned to Bethany. ‘Now, I want you to round up the few remaining women and I want you out that tunnel within the half-hour.’ When she seemed ready to object he said, ‘It appears the Keshians may wait until first light to begin the assault on the keep itself, so we shall all be far from here when they do.’

‘You’re coming after us?’

He nodded. ‘I will be the last to leave, but I will leave, that is a promise.’

She didn’t appear convinced, but nodded. ‘Just don’t do anything heroic and foolish so that someone writes some damned chronicle about you one day.’

‘That’s unlikely,’ said Martin with a fatigued smile. ‘Now, go.’

She ran up the stairs, and the sergeant said, ‘Sir, if I may?’

‘Sergeant?’

‘Let me be the last to leave, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘Three reasons, sir, if you don’t mind the truth.’

‘I’ll probably mind, but say on anyway, Ruther.’

‘Thank you, sir. First of all, you’re tired beyond thinking, and men that tired do not have the wits the gods gave a turnip. You might make mistakes that will get men killed.

‘Second, you’re young and just might do what Lady Bethany said, try something heroic and get yourself killed, and I do not want to explain to your father how I managed to let that happen.

‘Third, if you’re going to marry that girl you should make sure you both stay alive.’

‘Marry—?’

‘Do you think no one else noticed how you are when she’s around all these years, Martin?’ Ruther gripped the young man’s shoulder. ‘Maybe your father was too busy being Duke to pay attention to his sons as close as he could – heavens know I think of him as a good man and wise ruler, but fathers sometimes miss things about their sons. But no one who’s seen you around Bethany since you were fifteen could mistake how you felt about her, and it seems she feels the same way about you.’

‘Well, her father and mine may have different plans,’ said Martin.

‘That may well be, but you will have no chance to discuss the matter with your father if you’re lying face down on the stones of this keep in a pool of your own blood, now will you?’

Martin couldn’t think. ‘Very well, how will you proceed if I allow you to be last out?’

‘That flying squad you asked for, of brawlers and hooligans. Brilliant. We will hit hard any company that comes through this side of the barbican’s rear door: we’ll barricade the other side door so they will choose this one. We’ll fight as we retreat, and we’ll dump a few traps along the way so we can get to the basement. We’ll fire the hay along the way, and if we’re lucky the tunnel will collapse on a host of them when we’re out the other end.’

‘Sounds like a wonderful plan, Sergeant,’ said Martin. ‘That’s exactly what I plan on doing. Now go get those twenty brawlers to rest a bit, organize some traps for me, and when you have finished, I want you personally to see that Bethany, the other women, and half the garrison leave. It’s your charge to see them safely to my father or Yabon. Understood?’

‘You’re not going to let me talk you out of this are you?’

‘Understood?’ repeated Martin, his eyes narrowing.

‘Understood, sir.’

The sergeant led the way out of the sub-basement and Martin asked as they climbed the stairs, ‘How do you do it, Ruther?’

‘Do what, sir?’

‘Stay awake for four days.’

‘I don’t. You learn to grab sleep when you can, a few minutes here, a half-hour there, sitting in the corner, lying under a table, whenever you can.’

‘I have yet to learn the knack.’

‘Go to your room,’ said Ruther softly. ‘Take at least an hour. I’ll bid the Lady Bethany farewell for you; she’ll know better than anyone you need sleep more than a bittersweet goodbye. I’ll wake you before dawn. If you’re going to survive your delay, young prince, you’ll need your wits about you.’

Martin said nothing, then nodded once and turned towards his room when they reached the top of the stairs. He half-staggered to his quarters, pushed open the door, and fell face first across the bed.

He was deep in sleep when Bethany came in, saw him there, removed his boots for him without waking him, and covered him with a blanket. She bestowed a light kiss on his face, whispered goodbye, then closed the door behind her.

T
HE PORTCULLIS CRASHED LOUDLY TO THE STONE FLOOR.

Martin was ready, his men arrayed outside the unblocked side door. He signalled for them to wait.

The Keshians had brought up the first of two rams at dawn, and it had been a very well-built one. An enormous log suspended from heavy ropes and chains, and a massive iron boot covered the front end of the log. A wooden ‘tent’ roof protected the men pushing it, a dozen crouched over long wooden poles that ran though the frame of the massive war engine.

Horses had been used to pull it up the hill from the town below, but when they came into the courtyard they released the ropes used to pull the device and their riders had peeled off to the right and left, leaving it for the two dozen men under the protective roof to keep it moving forward until it slammed into the outer iron portcullis.

Then the pounding began.

A portcullis’s first grace is that it is heavy. The thick iron bars require a hoist and winch inside the barbican, tantalizingly close but just out of reach. So the portcullis must be knocked down, literally pounded until it folds in on itself and shatters, releasing the attackers into the murder room.

Then the second portcullis must be destroyed, while the defenders above are free to fire arrows or pour boiling oil on the attackers.

The first ram had burned, and it had taken most of a day for the Keshians to clear it away and bring up their second. But the first had done enough damage to the inner portcullis that Martin knew it would not endure until night.

Some time late in the day, Kesh’s Dog Soldiers would be within Crydee Keep.

Martin had expended most of his arrows and a lot of energy convincing the Keshians that the defenders were still inside in numbers. Men had run from position to position firing off the roofs of the keep and barbican at enemy archers on the wall, shouting from various locations, trying to give the impression of being in two places at once. At one point Martin had shouted orders for a sally and a squad of Keshians had actually retreated behind their barricade and waited for nearly half an hour for a counter-attack that never came.

Once the outer portcullis had come down, he had ordered the men off the roof. Two had occasionally shot arrows down into the murder room, and then the fiery oil had been poured down on the first ram.

Once that was ablaze, he had ordered them to stand down and rest. The first portcullis had endured until mid-day, but he knew the Keshians would breach the second before mid-afternoon.

Inside the keep Martin shouted random, meaningless orders while his men rested. Occasionally one of the men would shout a faux reply, trying to make it seem as if men inside the keep were waiting.

Martin made ready, knowing that the second iron portcullis was about to fail. Once it was down, the Keshians would tie ropes to it and drag away the impediment to their attack. Then they would be faced with a massive stone wall with two entrances into the building. The one on their right had been blocked with every piece of furniture, fallen stones, debris that had come to hand to stop that door from opening.

The left door, the one behind which Martin and his twenty men waited, had been blocked just enough for Martin to make it appear the garrison was putting up a last, desperate fight.

The crash of the last gate was accompanied by the shout of Keshian Dog Soldiers outside. They apparently felt as if the day was already theirs, perhaps were even thinking the remaining garrison was holed up inside behind makeshift barricades, waiting for the final slaughter.

Suddenly there was pounding on the door before them and Martin turned. ‘Get ready.’

His twenty men were arrayed in two lines, with their backs to the corridor leading to the kitchen and the sub-basement below. The first ten bore shields and the second bows and arrows, despite few of them being skilled archers.

A rhythmic pounding began on the doors. It would be only a matter of minutes before the one on the attackers’ left, behind which the defenders waited, would begin to buckle.

Martin’s mad plan was about to begin and he prayed for a brief moment to Ruthia, Goddess of Luck, to take pity on him and his men.

The timbers on the heavy wooden doors shook and splintered around the hinges and the large wooden bar cracked. Mortar fragments rained down from the stonework above the supports, filling the air before the door with a fine haze of dust.

‘Easy,’ said Martin. ‘Wait.’

Another thud and the bar cracked more, torquing itself apart. ‘Wait,’ he repeated.

With a loud thud and the protest of iron fittings being ripped out of masonry, the hinges were pulled loose. For a pregnant moment the door hung slightly ajar, the splintering bar holding it against the door on one side.

‘Now!

Crydee bowmen fired into the narrow opening and the Keshian attackers screamed in pain and anger. The bowmen ran to the second position, while the ten men with shields crashed against those Keshians trying to enter the keep.

Martin was behind them, his sword held high as he struck downward over his men’s shields, his only objective, to slow the Keshians down for one more minute.

It was mad chaos at the door, with men grunting, cursing, shouting and bleeding. The brawlers selected by Ruther were skilled at close fighting, and from behind their shields they were content to wait for any sign of exposed Keshian flesh and slice at it with daggers and dirks, not trying to kill, only to make the enemy bleed, and to slow them down.

The Keshian Dog Soldiers all wore iron cuirasses, leaving their arms and shoulders exposed, while the Crydee defenders wore mail coifs over mail shirts with sleeves down to their wrists. No fatal blows resulted from the first two minutes of fighting, but a lot of Keshians would be sporting scars on their arms, shoulders and faces if they survived the day.

There was a moment when the fight seemed to take a breath, as the Keshians collectively pulled back to adjust the crowding at the doorway.

‘Back!’ shouted Martin, and the ten men and he turned, then sped down the hallway toward the kitchen. Martin waited for a moment, allowing the others to pass him. Then the door finally fell to the stones, and the Keshians came boiling through the entrance.

‘Down!’ Martin yelled, and the men before him all knelt while a flight of ten arrows sped overhead, striking the first two Dog Soldiers. The others ducked back inside the shelter of the barbican or crouched low, but it gave Martin and his men another moment. ‘Now!’

Hanging above Martin in a net were three bales of straw soaked in oil. A pair of fire arrows was shot into them, setting the bundles ablaze. The rope holding the bales was cut and the pile came down. When it struck the floor, it exploded into a massive ball of fire, forming a curtain of flames across the hall that would halt the Keshians for another two or three minutes.

Martin crawled furiously forward, having been missed by the falling bales by less than a yard. He felt the heat wash over him as he gained his feet and started to run into the kitchen. The straw would burn out quickly, and soon the Keshians would be kicking the smouldering remnants out of their way.

Martin hurled himself down the stairs to the first basement. The entire room had been filled with more oil-soaked straw with every loose piece of timber, furniture from the rooms above, and kindling they could find stacked on top. A soldier waited for him, torch in hand.

As he reached the man, he said, ‘Now!’ and the soldier threw the torch as far across the basement as he could, and then both of them dived through the portal while two others pulled the heavy wooden door shut behind them.

As they secured the door with a large brace jammed into place they heard the whooshing sound of the flames igniting. ‘We don’t have much time,’ said Martin.

They ran down the steps to the smaller sub-basement where men were already entering the escape tunnel. He motioned for the man before him to enter and waited until he vanished from sight. Shouting after him he cried, ‘Clear the tunnel as fast as you can.’

He could hear the crackle of flames above and knew that it would be close to a half hour before the Keshians could brave the fire in the basement below the kitchen. Martin wasn’t going to give them a half hour.

He waited until he was certain that his men were more than half-way through the tunnel, then went to a large chain in the corner of the room. It led up through a series of pulleys in the wall to the roof of the tower known as the ‘Magicians’ Tower’ because it was where Pug and his mentor, the magician Kulgan, had resided decades before. He hauled down hard on it and as he had suspected was met with resistance as the old mechanism hadn’t been used in almost a century. His grandfather had tested it once, but since then the old valvework at the top of the tower had remained untested. Martin hoped it still worked and that the trap his ancestor had devised would still be effective.

At the very top of the Magicians’ Tower a mechanism released a canister of twenty gallons of what was called ‘Quegan Fire’: a mix of naphthaline, sulphur, limestone and fine coal dust. This would create a massive fireball when dropped into the flames in the keep entrance, two floors above Martin’s head. It had been constructed as a last resort, a means of denying the castle to an invader.

As soon as Martin felt the click of the mechanism engage, he yanked hard, then sprinted for the entrance. He was forced to make his way bent forward, for the tunnel was too low for him to run upright. He reached the first marker, and grabbed the two ropes attached to the supports for the overhead shoring. He hauled on them and felt earth fall on him and heard timbers creaking. A short moment later he felt a compression of the air as the tunnel collapsed behind him. Then there was a dull thud and he knew the Quegan Fire canister had exploded.

It would burn hotter than a blacksmith’s forge. Any man in the keep not able to reach a door would be incinerated or die as the air was sucked from their lungs by the voracious fireball. If, as Martin suspected, the Keshians had pressed hard expecting desperate resistance in the keep, the Keshian commander would just have lost at least two hundred Dog Soldiers in the conflagration.

Martin reached a second set of ropes and pulled them, even though he knew the first fall had worked. More earth fell as he hurried along.

It seemed to take forever to get out of the tunnel and then suddenly he was outside. Instantly a pair of arms wrapped around him and Bethany was hugging the breath out of him.

He hugged her back then held her at arm’s length. ‘I thought I told you to leave with the wounded, again?’

‘You did, again.’ She was dressed in the same hunting clothes she had worn when last she had come to Crydee, when her arrow had taken down the wyvern which he and Brendan had faced.

‘Why are you still here?’

‘Waiting for you,’ she said, as if that was all the explanation needed.

He glanced around and saw that Sergeant Ruther was there as well with an additional ten men along with the twenty who had preceded Martin through the tunnel. ‘Report,’ said Martin.

‘Everyone safely out, sir.’ Ruther smiled. ‘Everyone,’ he repeated.

Martin looked back, but his view of the keep was blocked by the large rise from which the tunnel exited. He climbed up on top of it, over the reinforced door. He could not quite make out the keep through the trees between himself and the castle, but he could see a massive pillar of dark smoke rising overhead.

Bethany came to stand beside him and said, ‘Now?’

‘Now we head east. The Keshian commander needs to regroup and reorganize. We may steal a day on him, no more.’

He took her by the hand and led her down from the rise.

Sergeant Ruther said, ‘That’s a nasty business old Duke Martin built into the keep, isn’t it?’

‘According to the histories, he had some experience with Quegan Fire used to destroy a position so that the enemy couldn’t occupy it,’ said Martin. ‘The retreat from Armengar; I read his notes on why he installed it, how to maintain it, and when to use it.’

With a grin the sergeant said, ‘It’s a lovely thing you’re such a fine student, sir.’

Martin shook his head in self-disgust. ‘Fine student? I lost the keep in less than a week. Even the Tsurani couldn’t take it in months.’

Sergeant Ruther’s expression turned stern. ‘You’re tired, young sir, but that’s no excuse for losing your perspective. You held out for a week with less than a hundred trained soldiers and a handful of boys and old men.

‘Prince Arutha had Swordmaster Fannon and Sergeant Gardan, Martin Longbow himself, and over three hundred trained soldiers, and another three hundred men of the town. You’re not the only one who’s read some history.’ He put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. ‘You got everyone out, sir. From the start of the siege until today you’ve lost two men, both on the wall before the retreat, and three unfortunate town lads who were by them, and suffered less than two dozen wounded. Even some I thought wouldn’t make it did, thanks in great part to Lady Bethany’s tender care.’ His voice became hoarse. ‘Think about it. Two soldiers, no more. Now, put on a stern face and lead this lot. We still have a long way to go to reach safety.’

Martin took a deep breath. ‘Who do we have?’

‘Your twenty, my ten, and the lady.’

Martin glanced at Bethany and grinned. ‘Well, at least we have one decent archer with us.’

‘That we do.’

‘East now, and let’s put as much distance between us and Crydee as possible. That Keshian commander will have to wait a fair bit before that fire cools off enough to inspect the wreckage of the keep.’

‘True enough,’ said Ruther. ‘Never seen anything burn hotter than Quegan Fire.’

‘But once he does he’s going to notice there are only Keshian bodies in the rubble and if he bothers to dig, he’ll find the sub-basement, or even if he doesn’t, he’ll assume there was such a way out and come looking for us. We’ll go east and if we don’t encounter Father and his column before we get to the Jonril cut-off, we’ll head to the garrison there and hunker down until he does show up. We’ll send a lookout up to the cut-off and when he arrives we’ll join him. If he doesn’t . . . That will mean either the fast riders didn’t overtake Father before Ylith or were killed before they reached him. If we don’t hear from Father within ten days, we move on to Ylith.’