Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (34 page)

“Had you seen what we were offered to defect, even you might have been tempted to break contract,” Alcuin said.
 

“Nobody will ever hire your company again,” she said.

“As long as we are speaking freely,” Alcuin said and looked over to Marek, “that fits perfectly into my business model. I’ve grown weary of living from contract to contract. There comes a time when one must pick a winner and stay with him.”
 

“And the gold Duchess Betina offered?” the Morgane shot back. “That had nothing to do with your choice?”
 

“The gold made the logistics possible,” Alcuin said. “But I will be defending the land grants and titles she gave me long after your contract expires.”
 

Rufus spoke up. “As long as we are airing grievances, let me ask why I was never ransomed from the Black Swan Company until after they joined us?”
 

“I think,” Gaston said, “that Lord Marek has already answered that question. Let me elaborate on it. You are a ninny on the battlefield. You are worse than useless—you’re a liability. Since we are speaking freely, of course.”
 

Marek looked to Aramand. “You have said nothing. What are your thoughts?”
 

Aramand sighed and looked down at his horse’s mane. “They are right, Lord Marek. You are half insane. More than half.”
 

“But?” Marek asked, sensing more to come.

“But that half of you that is lucid is also the half that is competent at war, at leading men to the gates of death and beyond to victory,” he said. “I think we can defeat Duke Grantham and capture Lady Drucilla of the Rivers. We must strike immediately, before Grantham talks some sense into her and she returns to her walled palace beyond our reach.”

Marek nodded. “As do I. We are indeed at a rare crossroads where our military strength matches the opportunity that is before us. Whatever little schemes, ambitions or moral weaknesses you have, set them aside or else harness them for this task. We are vipers, all of us, filled with poison and deceit. But there is more fat on the sheep in front of us than on each other, so we must save our venom for what lies ahead. If anyone disagrees with me, speak now.”
 

Marek looked each of his generals in the eye. “Good. Rufus, you are worthless in combat, but this will be the last time I ask you to go. I am placing the Black Swan Company under your command. You, of course, will ride along with Alcuin Darkwood in silence and let him give the orders. Afterwards, you will be given credit for the victory and will never be asked to ride beyond whatever castle walls you choose to make your home.”

Marek turned to the Morgane. “Your Battle Hags are reputed to be the best horse archers in the Dominions. You will lead them in deep reconnaissance, then transition to a screening force for the main army once we have fixed Duke Grantham’s forces.”

To Gaston, he said, “You have done well conserving your strength thus far. We will need it for this battle. Be ready to either open up with a heavy charge or be held in reserve, depending on what I decide when we get there.”
 

Marek stared beyond his generals and at the sprawling camp below. “Aramand, the core of the army is yours. March them toward the Oak Ridge at first light.”
 

Duke Grantham and Governor Drucilla stood on the upper works of a massive timber fortress crowning the Oak Ridge, observing as the forces of Relfast marched toward them through the valley below. The banners of the duke and the governor fluttered defiantly in the morning breeze, flapping and popping as if the fabric was ready to fly off the poles and rush at the enemy. Staff officers waited at a respectful distance next to them; foot soldiers and artillery crews stood at attention along the battlements. All held their silence in deference to their governor and the duke.
 

In the valley below, Lord Marek’s army formed itself into a living weapon aimed at the weakest spot in the defenses, the line of timber fortresses bolstering the low gap in the middle of the ridge.

Grantham’s scouts had been correct. He peered through the precious and hideously expensive spyglass mounted at the wall and counted the opposing army’s banners. All of the forces Marek had mustered for invasion—and those acquired through treachery—were now gathered in one place. The Battle Hags were deployed as a screening force ahead of the main body and led the army between two wooded arms of the ridge.
 

The Black Swan Company formed the center of the army, and infantry levies from various houses of Relfast took position to either side and behind them. Squadrons of heavy horse were positioned at the wings. To the rear, rudely constructed siege towers and trebuchets labored across the grassy plain, followed by the supply wagons and a sparse rear guard.

Grantham stepped back from the finely decorated instrument and offered Drucilla a look. She shook her head, and her beaded locks clicked gently on her armor.
 

“I can see that the enemy is scrupulously avoiding the traps and obstacles you so carefully set,” she said. “I do not require the field glass to discern that much.”
 

“As you wish, my lady,” Grantham said, and laid a gentle hand on the telescope. “Of all the knowledge that has been lost, regained and lost again during our calamitous history, I am grateful that mankind has retained some command of optics. That, and knowledge of germ theory.”
 

“I have thus far honored your wish that I remain aloof of the mundanities of your military planning,” Drucilla said. “But now that I stand with you upon the most dangerous piece of terrain in the Dominions, I wonder if you would deign to share some that knowledge with me?”

“Certainly, Your Grace,” the Duke said. “I gave very clear instructions to our engineers to harvest timber for these fortresses from the lee of the ridge and leave the woods facing the valley intact as far as possible. Anyone below can see that we have obstacles and fortresses tucked in the woods flanking the valley, and that the forest itself is intended to serve as part of the fortification.”

“You would pave a way for the enemy directly into our weakest point, and position yourself and your Governor directly in harm’s way,” Drucilla said. “The only things missing are water for the enemy’s horses and barrels of wine for the men. It will be thirsty work massacring us here, and you seem to want Relfast to have every comfort available to them as they do it.”
 

“It is a primrose path to doom I have built for them,” Grantham said. “What the enemy does not see are the trails I had cut through the woods at their flanks for the men I have falsely called our reserves. They are, in fact, our primary force.”
 

Grantham peered through the telescope again, allowed himself a faint smile, and turned to his staff. “Now.”
 

Trumpeters blared their signal, and Brynn knights poured out of the woods flanking the valley and fell on both flanks of Marek’s army. Below Grantham and Drucilla, the wooden gates of the fortress spanning the gap opened, and battalions of infantry marched out into the valley.
 

Drucilla smiled as rank after rank of infantrymen marched out the gate below her. “If Marek had more brains than balls, he would have begun with a parley and sniffed out this trap you set. You know your enemy well, Duke Grantham.”
 

 
“Not well enough for my comfort, I must admit,” Grantham said. “I half expected him to set the woods on fire to prevent us from using them to our advantage.”
 

“Ah, but that could have ruined the stand up fight Marek was spoiling for,” Drucilla said.
 

Grantham nodded. “I regret only that they are out of the range of our artillery. But we are also out of range of theirs. Ah, see! They load their trebuchets and prepare to hurl fire into the woods. Now you understand the trap you’ve been lured into, Lord Marek!”
 

“But our men in the woods will burn!” Drucilla said.

“We have no men in the woods, my lady,” Grantham answered. “They are down in the valley below. Those fortresses I built were purely sacrificial.”
 

They watched the battle unfold in silence. The screams of men and horses drifted across the valley toward them.
 

Marek’s cavalry charged toward the assailants coming at their flanks, but were soon overwhelmed and fell back. The Battle Hags harried the advancing infantry mercilessly, but they too were forced to withdraw after Grantham’s archers took up position and let fly their volleys of arrows.
 

Grantham hid a swirling tempest of anxiety behind a bland face he had perfected over years of moving about the ranks of the high nobility. The battle appeared to be going well, but Grantham’s trap was designed to obliterate a smaller, weakened force—a force that was supposed to have been attrited by the Black Swan Company, not bolstered by it. The outcome of the battle was far from certain, and Grantham knew the fate of Brynn hung in the balance.
 

This was an awful gamble.

“Do you appreciate the irony,” Drucilla asked, “that the most significant battle in the recent history of the so-called Empire is commencing below us? And not an Imperial banner to be seen.”

“Mithrandrates can defend his realms and his roads, but he cannot exert military dominance over us. Yet,” Grantham said. “Your Grace speaks of irony. I see irony elsewhere, in the fact that you and Governor Torune both seek to unify Brynn and Relfast and thus repudiate Imperial rule. Our people and our armies kill each other to realize a goal we share, and yet constantly undermine.”
 

The Governor and the Duke were silent for several moments and watched the battle rage in the valley. Black smoke followed the wind across the battlefield from the growing wildfires on the ridge. The peaceful, ordered terrain was transforming into a scene from the Eighth Hell before Grantham’s eyes. Drucilla broke the silence and placed a delicate, gauntleted hand on Grantham’s forearm.
 

“My astrologers tell me that we are entering a new time of calamity and upheaval, and I need you by my side more than ever before, my sage duke,” Drucilla said.
 

“Even though you rarely listen to my advice?”
 

“I am about to disregard it now, and you have not yet uttered it,” she said. “My helm!”

A page helped Drucilla thread her braids through a hole in the top her her winged helm and bound them up like a plume. Her dark face contrasted with the polished steel and gold of her now complete armor.
 

“No, Lady Drucilla, you must not…” Grantham protested.
 

“Duke Grantham, you underestimate my ambition,” she said. “If I am to be an Empress worthy of the title—and you my Black Rod—I must bloody my sword in this revolt!”
 

Through breaks in the smoke rolling in from the burning hills above, Barryn watched the fearsome Battle Hags break off their attack under a rain of arrows. The female horse archers retreated in good order, but many of their number remained, scattered on the ground among the arrows and detritus of the battlefield.
   

“Forward!” Corporal Jarvik repeated the order signaled by the drums and bugles. “Crossbows forward!”
 

Barryn and his squad mates marched forward as the rest of the infantry paused to allow a gap to form between them and the crossbows before continuing their advance. Across the littered field, the Brynn soldiers resumed their march.
 

We could lose this one.

He tried to banish the thought, but it persisted like a stone held fast in a mass of ancient tree roots. For the first time since he joined the Black Swan Company, Barryn felt vulnerable. All of the training, all of the superior equipment—all of the annoying, crude, racist, professional, valiant sons-of-bitches he marched with—had thus far been clearly overmatched to their opposition.
 

But not this day.
 

Another stony thought came to him: the Swans would be in range of the enemy’s longbows before they were in crossbow range.
 

I could die here today, trying to conquer a land that is not my own.
 

Barryn lost the feeling in his limbs, but his body marched on with the squad. The smoke cleared, and the mid-afternoon sky turned instantly to a deep midnight blue set ablaze with stars, moons, and multicolored ribbons of light dancing and meandering above.
 

The fabulous lights above illuminated the fairy-field, and tiny luminous spheres drifted among the grass and flowers like bugs on a summer day.
 

A rough-hewn stone arch appeared, 20 feet tall and 10 wide. Beneath the lichen and moss encrusting its surface, Barryn descried the spirals and runic glyphs of the Ancients. As he drew closer to the arch, two weapons appeared beneath it, struck into he ground. To the left was a druid’s staff formed of living wood and sprouting tender leaves and vines. To the right, a cruciform longsword such as the Castle Dwellers’ nobility would carry into battle.
 

Barryn felt both weapons beckon to him with their energy—the staff’s that of the living earth, the cool breezes over a river in the forest, the darkness of the cavern, the knowledge of the stones.
 

The sword radiated pure light, suffusing Barryn’s inner self with the fire of the sun.
 

Neither his druidic studies nor the myths taught weekly in the Temple of Mahurin referenced this strange place.
 

Is this a choice I have to make? Or have I just died? Weapons guarding a gate I must pass through, but the weapons are stuck in the ground. Piss poor guards. But why am I here?