The Broken (The Lost Words: Volume 2) (84 page)

The duke snorted. “You will lose this time, Councillor. I just know it!”

“Stephan, I’m scared,” Lady Silvia jostled into him, hugging his arm fiercely, breaking his duel with the duke. Gently, the councillor pushed her aside. He wasn’t in the mood for gushy games of affection. Not today.

Stephan took a deep breath. He pulled the duke aside. He had kept the nuggets of truth and rumor that Commander Gerald fed him like gold, but now he felt he dared share just a flake, just a sliver. It was risky with the old man, but he had to say the words, to reassure himself as much as to get his spinning mind to slow down from its panic roll.

“Empress Amalia has Prince Vlad locked somewhere. She broke all the Parusite siege weaponry the last time. The city stands, month after month, undefeated, unstarved. I guess we will hear a lot of bloodshed today, but Roalas will not be breached.” It was almost a litany. He hated himself for losing his composure. His estimate was a fool’s guess as any, but he did not relish becoming a Parusite hostage now. He still had plans he had to see through.
If
and when the Parusite ruler decided to act benevolent with his fresh share of Eracian and Caytorean dignitaries.

Stephan wasn’t quite sure what he would do with a flock of potential enemies suddenly landing in his lap. He didn’t relish discovering what King Sergei might do.

“This
empire
,” Vincent said, emphasizing the last word, “was built on a dream, and now the dream must die.”

Stephan did not want to remind the old duke his own son might be fighting on the city walls right now.

Too damn soon. If only they would listen to him.

“Tell me, sir, what happens if the Parusites take this city?” Stephan asked.

Vincent had no answer for him. His face convulsed with what might be deep concern. But he was too old and stubborn to contemplate another political mess right now. All he cared for was besting his Caytorean rival.

“The bet,” he said tenaciously and extended his spotted hand.

Stephan sighed. What could he do? He shook it. “I accept.” Almost a year ago, they had done something similar.

Now we stand back and watch and wait
.

There was nothing else to do, so they stood and watched a square corner of the gray world outside offer its share of halfhidden truths. The horns had stopped crying, and now there was a different sound, a deep thrum, rapid, repeated. Those were catapults firing rocks.

Lady Silvia edged closer, almost casually this time. Stephan looked at her, then at Lady Mildred and Lady Caroline and half a dozen other women who had shared his bed in the past year. He regarded his colleagues and would-be friends. He had grown accustomed to seeing them every day, even if sometimes the sight repulsed him.

He realized that today or maybe tomorrow or sometime soon, they might part ways, go back to their separate camps. He might be freed. Or he might be dead.

So much thinking made his head hurt. He squeezed the thoughts out. He focused on being a spectator, a helpless breath of thrill and drama in a seething cauldron of frenzy.

After a while, he got bored. No, not quite bored. Tired. The anticipation was draining him. The war would happen with or without the hopeful audience, and it would end regardless of what he had planned for this realm and his own ambitions. Stephan disentangled his arm from Lady Silvia’s and walked back to his study, trying to suppress the thud of despair and maybe fear in his chest. If the Parusites became victorious today, he would have a fresh note to write, so he’d better practice making it perfect. Besides, if they did come, he didn’t want to be found standing like another fool in a herd of fools, waiting for their inevitable destiny. He had better things to do.

CHAPTER 53

S
ergei stood in a watchtower in the center of his camp and watched the attack wave swell toward the city.

Midday was not the preferred time of day for siege assaults. Which is why he had ordered his troops to move at midday. Well, it was as much a necessity as it was a surprise.

His campaign was crumbling.

Yuri’s men had cleared a thick wedge toward the city’s gates. The frozen ground was littered with corpses of brave men who had toiled under the hail of arrows and stones. Still, slowly, persistently, day and night, in ankle-deep mud and knife-sharp rains and treacherous black ice and the deep snow, they had hauled charred timber and crumbled rock away, opening a corridor for the upcoming attack.

One of his nobles had somewhat redeemed himself from his failure during the Autumn Festival.

Now, the filthy ground was swarming with olifaunts, moving to tear the gates down. Behind them, almost twenty thousand more Borei and Parusites waited for their chance to storm into Roalas.

The huge animals were armored in thick plate, and they seemed almost impervious to the flight of arrows from the city walls. But they didn’t like fire, and they shied away from the burning balls of pitch that landed in the snow around them.

The defenders had much better range with their catapults, so Sergei had kept his own artillery away. But now, he was moving it forward by two hundred paces. The Athesians would have to choose between firing at his own siege engines or engaging the olifaunts, much closer.

Men were cursing and pushing, and whips cracked as teamsters urged their oxen forward, pulling the giant, frozen arms of trebuchets and mangonels into firing positions. Soon, they came under fire, and curses turned into screams.

Sharing the platform with the king were Genrik and Under-Patriarch Evgeny. The chronicler was there to scribe history as it happened, and knowing him, Sergei expected a brutal, objective account. The priest wanted to witness the destruction of an ungodly enemy.

“Magnificent sight,” the fat man remarked.

Sergei didn’t find anything magnificent in carnage. There was only raw necessity.
Easy victory?
There were no easy victories.

And his war wasn’t just about numbers and storming walls. It wasn’t even about national pride and his family honor. It was about making it more than a duty for those who bled for him. If his men could not believe in his cause, then he was just a sad tyrant.

Despite the mind-numbing cold and blocked roads, some of his nobles were grumbling and threatening to leave for home. Luckily, they were still bound by oath before their one year ran out, but the fact they dared voice their grievances aloud meant Sergei’s grip on their hearts was slipping. They no longer believed in this war. He had to win them back. He had to reignite the love and loyalty that had led them here.

The one-year grace did not extend to common workers and camp followers, many of whom had long forgotten what misfortune had dragged them away from Parus. Instead, they had found new life settling in abandoned villages, ignoring the war altogether. Another blow. Sergei wasn’t sure what he found more disheartening, being disobeyed or being ignored.

He had to instill faith in his camp. He had to make a difference.

Shattering the crust of iced lethargy that covered his siege lines, he had ordered this attack and watched it take place, a steaming, rolling mass of flesh and fickle chance.

Looking around, Sergei could no longer recognize the land he had come to conquer. It wasn’t just snow covering the fields and blunting the shape of things underneath. It wasn’t the smoke that made things hazy. Matching Roalas in size was a whole new city growing around it, houses, inns, barracks, small shops, and markets. The tents were long gone, and so was the order and color that had defined the unity and purpose of the Parusite people. And with so many refugees coming back to bend knee to their new king, he was now ruling over a mongrel race of lost, bewildered, frightened people.

In less than one year, the arrow-shaped purpose that had driven him had become a ladle of gruel, and in it, floating, all bits and pieces, his fate, his fear.

He should count himself lucky, Sergei thought as he watched sappers slither into the uncleared rubble on the west side of the city’s curtain walls, toward the river; their goal was to try to bring the masonry down while the olifaunts charged the gates and kept everyone busy.

The future duchy of Athesia was already his in many ways, in spirit and character. The godless ways of Adam and his daughter had been replaced with faith, and the people didn’t seem to mind at all. It was as if they had awoken from a restless slumber and just went on with their former lives.

He had reports from Bassac and Keron. The occasional skirmishes with the defenders had almost vanished. Amalia’s dispersed legions still roamed the countryside, but they had disappeared as an integral force that opposed his rule. Once Roalas fell, the conquest of Athesia would be over. He would then mop up the last stubborn pockets of resistance and turn his eyes west and east. With a knife of Parusite power cutting deep between Eracia and Caytor, the two nations would be forced to sit down and meekly negotiate their future. He would then take care of Amalia’s half brother. And he would finish the pirates.

It all sounded promising, so true he could taste it. But for the thousandth time, he asked himself, why wasn’t he winning this war yet.

Why were his troops dying from disease and frostbite? Why were there so many desertions? How come Amalia still survived?

Why?

Sergei knew he must never let his doubt show. No one but his sister knew about his fear that none of what he’d planned was turning out as he’d hoped. The pirates still fought and resisted, fleeing deeper into Caytor, forcing him to commit more of his troops in a hunt after them, taking his incursions that much closer to an open war with the other realm. And there was nothing that prevented the Eracians from sweeping into the lightly held northern Athesia and claiming their own foothold in this war. If rumors were true, Emperor-Pretender James was massing armies of his own, poised to strike. But at whom? And where? Would he hunt his half sister’s troops, making sure they never bothered him? Would he try to take all of Caytor, now that he virtually ruled much of its north? Would he unite with Amalia and attack the Parusites?

And then, there was the matter of his son.

Would his son be alive when he conquered the city?

He refocused on the death and destruction unfolding before his eyes. The Borei had almost reached the narrow clearing before the gates. The wedge cut into the Inferno was the narrowest there, and the beasts could wriggle through only in single file. The defenders were firing all they had, fire, boiling oil, stones, crossbow bolts, spit and curses, anything they could throw down on the attackers. The shrieks of panicked olifaunts was unbearable.

His artillery was firing into the city, rocks crashing into towers and rooftops. Everywhere, soldiers of the realm, Red Caps, mercenaries were clawing their way toward the curtain walls. The Athesians were focused on repelling the gate attack; they paid the milling infantry less attention. Which was good. It gave his engineers more time to clear yet more rubble, establish defensive posts in the still-cluttered parts of the Inferno, claim the walls, and start sapping them. Even so, death and fire rained among them, and men fell and died, becoming black-and-red stains on the white snow.

Frontal assaults against impregnated cities and keeps were hugely costly, he knew. But there was just no other way now.

“You are a brave man, Your Highness,” Evgeny said.

Sergei put his looking glass down. “I’m here, safe from danger.”

The patriarch smiled. “But your son is in Roalas.”

The king brushed a line of snow from the tower platform railing. “He’s a soldier of the realm, like the rest of us.”

Genrik wanted to write something down, but Sergei waved at him. This wasn’t meant for the books.

“Tell me, Your Holiness, who do you think should rule this new duchy? To whom should I entrust these lands?”
Our campaign will be a swift and glorious one now, won’t it?

Evgeny wagged his thick fingers. “You could bestow these lands to the faith. People of this region suffered from heresy for many years. They will benefit from the protection and guidance of religion.”

“I will need all your support once this war is over,” the king said. “There is going to be political turmoil. Our neighbors will not like the fact there’s a Parusite foothold this far north. And they will not trust us. They think we are too strict, too old-fashioned.”

The under-patriarch realized the conversation was not going in the direction he had expected. “We serve the gods. We only wish to make humanity better.” When you had no strategy, litany was just as good.

Sergei rubbed his chin. “The Caytoreans remember too vividly the terror of the Feoran scourge. They were grateful a godless man like Adam had come and destroyed the Movement. And when the Territories burned, my father was the only ruler in the realms to come forward to the defense of faith. And he was utterly defeated. Now, nineteen years have gone by”—Yes, another year had passed. Nineteen years ago, in the snowy fields around Roalas, his father had found his demise—“and the Safe Territories are just a shadow of what they stood for. Our men are laboring to restore the holy cities and temples, but anything we do is met with distrust. The Eracians fear we want to cross their southern border. The Caytoreans would rather see some bastard son of Adam the Godless crowned as the emperor of this mockery of an empire than talk to me. They stall. They waver. They do not trust us.”