Frostborn: The False King (4 page)

Ridmark was too angry to do otherwise.

“Burn with me,” he whispered, fingers tightening against his staff.

“What?” said Third.

Ridmark blinked and looked back at her. “I didn’t say anything.”

Her black eyes narrowed. “I am certain that you did.”

Ridmark shrugged. “My mind wandered. Perhaps Caius is right, and we could all use some rest.”

Third stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged.

“Perhaps,” she said.

Chapter 2: The Siege of Castra Carhaine

Only two of the thirteen moons rose, which meant it was a dark night. Saginus, the moon of blood with its harsh crimson light, and Nihilus, the moon of the void with a dull purple glow bathed the hills of southern Caerdracon in a pale red glow as if the ground had been dipped in blood.

They also painted the looming walls of Castra Carhaine, seat and stronghold of the Dux Tarrabus Carhaine, the color of fresh blood.

It was a grim look, Calliande thought, but a nonetheless appropriate one. 

Her hand tightened against the ancient staff of the Keeper in her right hand. Her left hand strayed to her belt, to the sheathed dagger she wore there, her fingers curling around its handle. Her face remained a calm mask, wearing the serene expression of the Keeper of Andomhaim, but her hand gripped the dagger’s handle. 

One way or another, many things would be decided tonight. Either Arandar’s army would win its biggest victory since they had sworn to follow him at Dun Calpurnia, or they would suffer a serious defeat, perhaps even a crippling defeat. 

And for now, it was out of Calliande’s hands.

She stood near the horses of Prince Regent Arandar and the other high lords and waited, watching the walls and towers of Castra Carhaine for any sign that their plan had been discovered. 

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Gavin sat in the boat and listened to the quiet splash of the waters of the River Moradel against the hull. His eyes scanned the walls of Tarrabus Carhaine’s ancestral stronghold, watching for any sign of movement. His ears strained to hear any shouts of alarm, though he heard only the creak of the boats and the gentle lapping of the water. 

He rolled his left shoulder, tensing the muscles and releasing them. 

He shouldn’t have been able to do that. 

A week ago a crossbow bolt fired from the curtain wall of Castra Carhaine had slammed into his shoulder and burst out his back. His soulblade Truthseeker granted him a measure of healing, but it couldn’t heal a wound like that before he bled out. Even if he had survived, the wound ought to have left him unable to use his left arm. 

Instead, Calliande had healed him, her magic repairing a wound that should have killed him.

Just as she had done half-dozen time in the last year. 

It had only been a year and a half since he had left Aranaeus with Ridmark and Calliande and the others…but it felt like a decade. Perhaps longer. 

Perhaps this was how Antenora felt all the time. 

The boat swayed in the current of the River Moradel, and Gavin rebuked himself. This was not the time to indulge in doubts and fears. He was a Swordbearer, a Knight of the Order of the Soulblade, and even though all the men-at-arms in the boat were older than he was, they still looked to him for leadership. Such was the burden of a Swordbearer. 

As ever, Gavin intended to follow Ridmark’s example. When leading men in battle, Ridmark never showed doubt or fear or even hesitation. Gavin wondered if the Gray Knight even felt such emotions at all. 

He looked to the left. In the gloom of the pale, bloody light, he saw the shadows that marked the second boat. Like Gavin’s boat, it held twenty veteran men-at-arms, four of the men pulling the oars in silence. Sir Constantine Licinius sat at the boat’s prow, a profile in the darkness, his soulblade sheathed lest its fire draw the gaze of the guards upon the battlements. 

So far they had remained unnoticed.

Gavin watched as Castra Carhaine drew closer. He had seen stronger fortresses – the eerie bone-white walls of Urd Morlemoch, for instance, or the solemn ruins of Khald Azalar as they sank into the bones of the earth. Yet Castra Carhaine was the strongest human-built castra he had ever seen. A peninsula of land jutted into the water where the River Mourning met the larger River Moradel, and Castra Carhaine filled the entirety of that peninsula. Water surrounded the castra on three sides. The great curtain wall, nearly fifty feet high and twenty feet thick, came right to the edge of the waters. Octagonal watch towers stood at intervals along the wall, topped with ballistae and catapults, and a single shot from one of those war engines would rip Gavin’s boat to kindling. Within the curtain wall stood three massive keeps, each one topped with war engines. Castra Carhaine was a strong fortress, and according to Calliande, during the long history of Andomhaim it had only fallen to treachery, never to attack. 

Today, perhaps, Gavin and the others would change history. 

Because Tarrabus Carhaine had made a mistake. He had taken most of his men and his vassals to Tarlion, leaving only light garrisons to hold the castras and towns of Caerdracon. The campaign had taken several months, but one by one the Prince Regent’s army had seized the bulk of Caerdracon. Castra Carhaine itself had held fast, and the loyalists had to take the stronghold. With it, they had a secure hold upon all of Caerdracon, and would use Tarrabus’s own lands to launch further campaigns against him. Without it, Tarrabus could take Tarlion at his leisure, and then launch his own attack against the loyalists, pinning them between his forces and the Frostborn in the Northerland. 

Arandar was running out of time. 

Tarlion held against Tarrabus, and the Anathgrimm against the Frostborn, but neither situation could last forever. They had to take Castra Carhaine, and they had to do it now. 

Which was why Gavin was in a boat with twenty men-at-arms and an ancient sorceress from Old Earth.

Antenora sat next to him, a silent shadow in her hooded black coat, her gloved hands grasping her black staff. It was a hot night, and Gavin felt the sweat trickling down his back, but he had never seen Antenora sweat. She glanced at him for a moment, her yellow eyes glinting beneath her hood, and for a brief moment her gaunt, gray face almost smiled. 

He smiled back. They had fought alongside each other for nearly a year, ever since she had followed Morigna and Mara from the threshold to the Vale of Stone Death. Once Gavin would have thought it odd to fight alongside a woman, but Mara and Morigna had both fought next to him. Calliande was something else entirely – the Keeper of Andomhaim, a figure from the distant past returned to battle the Frostborn in the present. 

Come to think of it, so was Antenora. 

She looked away first, which he thought was odd. She was fifteen centuries old and had wielded magic since before Malahan Pendragon had founded the citadel of Tarlion. He was barely eighteen, a boy from a village in the Wilderland, and he had only become a Swordbearer because they had needed someone to wield Truthseeker. When men-at-arms and landed knights and minor lords heeded his commands, Gavin wanted to explain to them that he had only become a Knight of the Soulblade out of desperate necessity, that it was no reason for them to listen to him. 

But they listened anyway. Old Master Marhand said that many men became Swordbearers in an hour of desperate necessity, just as Gavin had. 

The boats glided closer to the base of the curtain wall, the oars sliding in and out of the waters. Gavin held his breath, his right hand itching to grasp Truthseeker’s hilt. One of the men-at-arms shifted upon his bench, the wood creaking. The decurion in charge of the men-at-arms, a grizzled, gray-bearded veteran named Kadius, glared at the errant soldier. Gavin looked at the outer wall, but nothing moved atop the battlements. 

Unnoticed, the two boats glided into the river gate of Castra Carhaine.

The gate was a half-circle, a tunnel sinking into the side of the fortress. Ten yards in, the water ended and stone floor began, a flight of broad steps ascending to the courtyard above. A huge iron portcullis, the bars as thick as Gavin’s thigh, sealed the gate. The gate was unguarded, since it could not be opened without tremendous noise, and any sound would carry up the echoing tunnel to the courtyard. Additionally, while Arandar had the forces of the Northerland, Durandis, Cintarra, Taliand, Caertigris, and the three allied orcish kingdoms under his command, he had no boats, and the defenders of Castra Carhaine knew it. Their limited forces were arrayed along the northern wall. 

They did not know, however, that Sir Tormark Arban of Taliand was familiar with the smugglers of the River Moradel, and that he had hired several of their boats in exchange for leniency. The defenders also did not know that Antenora had a way of passing the portcullis without sound.

If the spell worked. 

The boat bumped against the stone quay, and Gavin got out first, trying to keep his boots from making any noise against the damp rock. He raised his shield of dwarven steel upon his left arm, but kept Truthseeker in its scabbard, fearing that its light would draw notice. Yet the landing, the gate, the tunnel, and the stairs beyond seemed deserted. 

That surprised Gavin, but perhaps it should not have. Prince Cadwall’s spies thought only five or six hundred men remained behind to defend Castra Carhaine. Every one of those men would be needed on the walls if the loyalist army attacked. 

The men-at-arms filed out of the two boats in silence, Sir Constantine and Kadius leading them. Constantine Licinius was not much older than Gavin, only a little older than Morigna had been, yet he looked the part of a noble Swordbearer with his stern, olive-skinned face and his thick black hair. He wielded his soulblade Brightherald with skill and confidence and had even survived the final fight with Shadowbearer and Mournacht at Black Mountain. 

At least, at the time, Gavin thought it had been the final fight.

How wrong he had been. 

“Mistress Antenora,” whispered Constantine. “It is time.” 

“As you say, silver knight,” rasped Antenora. She stepped forward, raising her black staff with one hand. Symbols of fiery light blazed to life upon the length of the staff, and Gavin looked up the stairs to the courtyard, fearing the light would draw notice. 

The light was unavoidable, but so far no one hand noticed.

A ball of fire spun into existence atop Antenora’s staff, and the men-at-arms edged away from her. They had seen the kind of havoc she could unleash. Yet Antenora had also spent the last year studying under Calliande as the Keeper’s apprentice, learning some of the magical control she had once possessed upon Old Earth. She gestured, and the ball of flame flattened and lengthened, growing brighter and hotter as it did. The heat of it beat against Gavin’s face, and Antenora shaped the fire, lengthening it.

The spell transformed her staff into a spear with a three-foot long blade of magical fire.

“Stand back,” said Antenora. 

She moved forward, her face tight with concentration, and thrust the glowing blade into a gap between the bars. She moved the staff in a slow circle, the blade of arcane fire slicing through the iron bars as if they had been made of butter. With a few cuts, she carved a man-sized opening in the portcullis, and the damaged section wavered and started to fall towards her. 

“Now!” hissed Kadius as Antenora took a hasty step back, the fire winking out. Four men-at-arms with thick leather gauntlets caught the heavy section of the portcullis, its severed ends glowing white-hot, and eased it to the floor. Gavin went through the opening first, looking around, but still saw no sign that they had been noticed. 

They were inside Castra Carhaine…and so far, the defenders had not realized their danger.

Antenora followed him, and Gavin grinned at her.

“It worked,” he whispered. “That was clever.”

She blinked her yellow eyes, and for a moment, something almost like a genuine smile went over her gaunt face. Then she nodded, drawing herself up as the symbols upon her staff began to flicker again.

“Well done, Lady Antenora,” said Constantine. “Decurion, are we ready?”

“Aye, Sir Constantine,” said Kadius, looking at the men-at-arms. Every one of them wore blue tabards adorned with the black dragon sigil of the House of the Carhainii, the personal symbol of Tarrabus Carhaine. At a distance, they looked like the defenders of Castra Carhaine, though every man also wore a red armband. In the chaos of battle, hopefully, that would let them distinguish friend from foe.

“You know what we must do,” said Constantine. “The fate of Andomhaim may rest upon our deeds tonight. We shall take the gatehouse, and we shall hold it until the horsemen arrive. Sir Gavin and I will aid you, and Lady Antenora will bring her magic to bear, but it is in your courage and your steel that we must trust. Take the gatehouse, open the gate, and in the name of God and the true High King, hold the gate to the last man.” 

That was another thing Gavin could not do. He could not give speeches like Constantine Licinius and the other nobles of Andomhaim, and they seemed able to produce flights of soaring rhetoric at will. For that matter, the speech seemed to have its desired effect. The men-at-arms straightened up, bracing themselves for the fight ahead. 

“Follow me,” said Constantine. “Sir Gavin, with me, if you please. Men, keep your weapons in their scabbards until I give the word. The further we can go without raising the alarm, the better.”

Gavin nodded and moved to Constantine’s side, Antenora trailing him like a dark shadow. They walked up the stairs into the vast courtyard of Castra Carhaine. Gavin looked around, his right hand twitching toward Truthseeker’s hilt. The courtyard was earth, hard-packed into something like rock from generations of booted feet. Gavin spotted the usual buildings for the courtyard of a nobleman’s castra – a smithy, a large stable, a guest house, and a small chapel, though the chapel had been desecrated, its windows smashed and its roof burned. The three massive keeps stood in a line, towering over Gavin like silent stone giants. Lights burned in the narrow windows of the keep closest to the castra’s northern gate, but the others were dark. Likely the Constable of Castra Carhaine did not have enough men to hold them all. Rows of tents had been raised below the northern wall, allowing the defenders to rest near the ramparts in the event of an attack.