A Stolen Crown (13 page)

Kaleb was an able commander and with his good friend Jax to help organize the men, the band of outlaws had taken on a real semblance of order. They had also dubbed themselves Bordermen after the original inhabitants of the watch stations that now served as their homes.

As much as Brian was looked upon by Kaleb and Jax as still being fairly young, he had distinguished himself as a fighter and woodsman as well as being an honest and forthright person. He had rightly won himself a reputation that inspired the other men and it was for such reasons that Kaleb decided to give Brian a command. Brian had demonstrated both stealth and bravery in numerous attacks on Manfred’s patrols and he always considered the well being of the other men so Kaleb assigned Brian to lead scouting missions into the forests.

While Fergus organized and trained the men for heavier battle, Brian trained them to move silently through heavy brush and to sneak up on enemies so they could strike unannounced. It was a perfect system and Brian excelled at his work leading his men well on reconnaisance and raids throughout Baron Manfred’s territory.

The problems in the Borderlands had already attracted the attention of Maramyr and Cerric had been sending additional troops to assist Manfred in consolidating the region. Not that it had helped. Every soldier that Manfred put in the field was merely another target for Kaleb’s archers and Brian’s raids were proving so effective that word had filtered from one of the towns that Manfred was beginning to have discipline problems among his men and was quickly losing favor with the king.

Brian was pleased when he heard such things. Let Manfred sweat, he thought. It would make things that much more satisfying when Brian finally got a chance to kill the Baron to know that the man would have had to watch everything he knew and loved slowly slip from his fingers. Brian was patient with his revenge and, as much as it fueled him during the cold dark nights on patrol in the winter forest, or buried in snow while laying in wait to ambush caravans bound for Manfred's lands, it had come to play a second part in his life. Now that he had met so many other men and women, common people, who had been chased from their villages for resisting the harsh measures imposed upon them by the heartless and greedy lord, he knew his cause was just.

The many small towns and villages that were scattered throughout the region had for generations been self sufficient and able to pay their yearly tithes to their lord or to the local crown magistrate. But now Cerric demanded that they foot the bill for the massive army he was raising to attack Kandara and it the amounts they were required to give to the crown were bleeding them dry. As much as the common people who lived in places like Ashford were angered by the story that Kandarans had killed the royal princess Ariana, they were uniformly disinterested in a war that was going to take food from their tables. Not only that, but there were rumors that the Xallan queen was using the negotiations with Cerric as a way to lure Maramyr into complacency so she could annex the long coveted Borderlands. As unfortunate as it was that these things were happening, it meant that the more upset and dissatisfied the villagers became, the more of them who joined Kaleb’s ranks.

Now, they had a sizeable force and thankfully the dark forest was thick with game even in winter else they would have had a difficult time just feeding themselves. But with their added numbers came added chances for infiltration by spies and greater risk of detection by Manfred’s own scouts, especially not that the snows made it all but impossible to travel without leaving some sort of tracks.

All had heartily agreed when Kaleb had finally proposed making an attack to retake his own castle at White Falls, from which he had been driven by the baron. Many of the men and women had been perfectly happy to live in the Border stations as makeshift soldiers but their numbers had grown considerably and everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before Manfred figured out where his attackers were hiding.  Kaleb’s commanders also agreed that if they pushed too hard, Manfred would lose control of the region and they would have to deal with full contingents of the Maramyrian regular forces, who were well armed, well equipped, well organized, and could commit to the field in numbers. White Falls was the key to the region, the main, defensible stronghold from which they could coordinate the defence of most of the Borderlands from attack from any direction. Kaleb knew they would have to take back his former home sooner rather than later.

Kaleb went with Brian to survey Manfred’s defences at the fortified castle. As much as he disliked Manfred, he was impressed that at least the Baron knew how to organize defences and had set up a strong perimeter to detect and defend against any intruders. Of course, Manfred and his men did not know the landscape around White Falls as well as Kaleb did so they were able to sneak in very close to the castle walls themselves to get a better look at the preparations.

“He’s expecting a siege,” Kaleb muttered. Brian nodded. He had heard about the giant vats of oil that could be poured onto attackers as they attempted to scale walls and about the catapults that could be mounted atop the parapets and loaded with rocks that could crush handfuls of men at a time. Now that he saw them, he realized just how difficult it could be to conquer a well-defended fortress. He wondered whether he and the rest of Kaleb’s rag-tag army would soon be splitting trees for their own siege engines and praying to the gods that the oil and rocks would not be dropped upon them.

What discouraged the entire group beyond the obvious conventional fortifications was the natural geography around the castle. White Falls was well named, for the fortress was situated on a kind of island set where the White River forked in two before it joined back together again and dropped into a high waterfall. More than just a natural moat, the White River was named for the fact that it consisted almost entirely rapids and fast-moving water. Anyone who was lucky enough to survive the thrashing current of the river itself would be quickly washed over the long drop of the waterfall to a very unpleasant death. Brian gulped as he thought about being tossed over the falls by the powerful river then shook off his fear and steeled his resolve. If Kaleb wanted to take back his castle, then that was what they would do.

“Do you think we can take it?” Brian asked. Kaleb shook his head. Jax turned to look at his friend.

“Surely you must know the castle’s weaknesses. It’s been in your family for generations,” Jax said. Kaleb half smiled.

“My family built this fort many generations ago and we built it to withstand almost anything. It has no real weaknesses as it stand, except of course for the falls.” Kaleb pointed downstream to where the river disappeared over a sharp precipice. “There’s a way in through there, but there’s no way we could get enough of us in to make any kind of stand inside the castle. With the number of troops they’ve got, we’d get cut down in no time.”

“But there is a way in?” Jax smiled fiendishly. “That’s a start. Now we just have to figure out a way to get them out.”

“Couldn’t we smoke them out?” Brian asked. “I mean, my father and I had a problem with gophers in the fields one year so we lit some smoky fires and with a bellows, we blew smoke into their tunnels. My brothers held traps at the other ends and caught the whole lot of them.”

“Would it work?” Jax asked. Kaleb scratched his chin.

“Maybe. But I think we’ll need more than a little smoke to clear out Manfred and a bunch of Maramyria soldiers.”

“I done seen this trick,” Fergus said. “To get rid of the gopher. But I seen it done with water. It works a whole lot better.”

“Of course!” Kaleb exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that? The river will do it all for us. Good thinking, both of you. We’ve got plenty of work to do but I think we can take the castle within a week.”

Brian was not sure how they were going to flood the entire castle, but he was definitely looking forward to seeing something like that.

*****

It took them several days of scouting around beneath the waterfall but soon they were able to begin work. Kaleb had shown Brian, Jax, and Fergus through the tunnels that exited under the waterfall and led up to the castle above. Most of the passages had been hand-carved by Kaleb’s ancestors and the rock was completely solid in most places. Kaleb figured that if they could plug up the tunnel system and then divert the river to increase the water supply to the city, the pressure of the already fast-moving river would fill the castle in no time. Unfortunately, the sewers would also have to flood which would cause a great deal of mess but the bright side was that it should make things very uncomfortable for Manfred and his men.

They worked in teams, hauling rocks and building makeshift walls in the tunnels, supported by braces that later could be removed so that they could drain the water from the stone fortress. Luckily, it was quite a ways from the castle where Kaleb had directed them to block the tunnels so no one above heard the sounds of their labors. In all, it took three days to completely stop up every drain leaving them only to turn on the water.

The fortress received its water through a system of pipes connected to a kind of stone water vent that had been built out from the castle on one side of the forked river. The water-vent functioned like a kind of dam that allowed the castle’s inhabitants to control the amount of the river’s current it caught. When the river ran slowly, which was rare, the vent would be opened up so it would catch a greater weight of water and put added pressure into the pipes. When the waters were high and already coursing quickly toward the falls, the vent would be left at its normal setting.

Kaleb proposed that they block off the other fork of the river, forcing the river to flow more heavily on the side where the fortress collected its water. Once that had been done, someone would have to sneak into the city and open the water vent. That should cause every well and cistern to flood. The trick would be getting to the vent, causing it to flood without being stopped by Manfred's men, and a task for which Jax was the perfect volunteer.

“I’ll just stay there until the water is too deep for anyone to get at the blasted thing,” Jax told them. He was by far the stealthiest of any of them and he had the added benefit of already knowing his way around the inside of his Kaleb's family castle.

“But that will leave you surrounded by Manfred's men and you could get trapped in the vent room," Kaleb objected. "You run the risk of drowning, not to mention if our theories about the sewers are correct, getting a mouthful of somet very nasty stuff.” Jax shrugged.

“We could destroy the wheel that controls the vents and then make our escape,” Jax told him. “It’s the safest option but it will make an even bigger mess.” The problem was, it would completely flood the place, making it very difficult to repair any damage. Even closing the vent, once it had been completely flooded would likely prove a challenge and a permanently flooded castle was no good to anyone.

“How hard would that be to fix?” Brian asked. Kaleb shook his head.

“Not only would we have to remove the block from the one fork of the river and unplug the tunnels, but to fix the water system as well? Almost impossible, and we don't want to be stuck without the fortress. I have a feeling we are going to need those walls once Cerric catches wind of this.”

“Then it’s decided,” Jax said. “I will go. You let me worry about how to escape.”

“There’s got to be another way,” Kaleb said, visibly frustrated. He ran the plan through his head again, looking for a solution. Every way he looked at it, the water room would have to flood so much that it would make it very difficult for anyone to get at the control wheel. He turned back to Jax. “How good a swimmer are you?”

“Better than most.”

“Do you think you could keep your wits about you in white water?” Kaleb asked him.

“Maybe. What do you have in mind?”

*****

Baron Manfred sat down to enjoy some venison and a bottle of wine from the cellar that had once belonged to his adversary, a man who lurked in the dark forest from White Falls to the edge of the Borderlands. He knew Kaleb was out there somewhere and hoped he was freezing out in the snow. Kaleb had cost him dearly and now it appeared as thought the outlaw lord was planning to lay siege to the fortress. It was proving more and more difficult for Manfred's men to make it safely through the forest and reports were of the attacks happening closer and closer to the fortress.

Cerric had sent some reinforcements but not nearly enough, mostly because Manfred had not told him just how dire things had become. The people from the neighboring towns had turned against him and against their king, conspiring with Kaleb to bring him down. Many had begun refusing to pay their tithes and some had even attacked his men when they had tried to forcibly collect. Now it seemed as though the forests had come alive with rebels and it was no longer safe to even go hunting in the surrounding woods.

Manfred tried to savor his meal, aware that even he might soon have to restrict his diet if Kaleb actually had the gall to lay siege to this fortress, which he, of all people, should know was impregnable. He sipped the wine, impressed at its quality, while he thought about what he would say in his letter to Maramyr, how he would explain this situation. Manfred shook his head. There had to be a way to draw Kaleb out to a real fight. Maybe a siege would be a good thing. At least, for once, he would be able to see his enemy.