The Cerberus Rebellion (A Griffins & Gunpowder Novel) (23 page)

The second volley was hurried and only half of the soldiers had been able to reload their weapons before it was ordered; the men began to fire whenever they could.

While most of the mounted vanguard rode through the enemy lines, Raedan vaulted down from his horse and drew his revolvers. The loyalist lines were in ruins and more western troops were dismounting to fight hand-to-hand with their enemies. Hadrian led most of the riders on to chase after the fleeing wagons, leaving Raedan and a thousand men to deal with this rabble.

A sergeant thrust his musket at Raedan; the gleaming bayonet cut through his sleeve but missed the flesh. Raedan danced away from the burly man, took aim and fired both of his revolvers into the soldier's chest. His pistols barked in rapid succession as he worked his way through the enemy ranks.

When his revolvers were spent, he found a sword laying next to the mangled body of a loyalist officer and started hacking his way through the enemies. Suddenly he found himself deeper in the lines than he expected, and surrounded by loyalists.

They must have recognized his status from the clean cut uniform and well-trained fighting style because no one moved to fire at him. A dozen men circled around him and he turned quickly so that he could see if any of them tried to take him from the back.

“
Surrender, milord,” a corporal said in a heavy eastern accent.

Raedan's eyes narrowed. He could feel the fear flowing from the men; fear of dying at the hands of the rampaging cavalry, fear of killing him and forfeiting a ransom, fear of fleeing and being called a coward. It flowed from every man around him, each a different reason to be afraid.

His sword held in his right hand, he pressed his left to the onyx amulet. He could feel the energy welling up inside of him and began to whisper the spell from the book he had taken from Fort Ewan. It was a short spell, meant to be recited quickly in the heat of the moment. He felt the fear around him grow and he fed off of it.

The energy flowed from him in waves with each saying of the spell and returned to him through the flow of emotions emanated by each man. His voice grew louder each time he spoke until, at last, he shouted the spell and pushed every bit of energy out of himself.

The men around him went pale. Several of them dropped their muskets; all of them turned and fled. Others, further away, began to flee as well and he could sense the waves of terror flowing from the loyalist forces.

He took his hand away from the onyx and exhaustion hit him so terribly that he stumbled. The deed was done, however, and he watched as his troops began to round up prisoners and pursue the fleeing loyalists.

Chapter 16 - Raedan

Raedan stood on the last hill in Hampton, his black hair dirty and tangled from days of hard riding and battle. He leaned on his ornately carved staff and whistled as his emerald eyes swept over Fort Hart. Perched on a mound of dirt overlooking the roaring Hart River and the massive Hampton Bridge that spanned it, the fort was one of the largest that he had ever seen.

At the edge of the fortress was a wooden palisade, broken only by a pair of wooden blockhouses and a gatehouse. Inside of the palisade was a twisting network of trenches cut through by a causeway from the palisade to another gatehouse. A dirt berm and extensive earthworks provided further protection from artillery.

Beyond the earthworks and a thick cut of ground stood the keep’s outer walls. They were one hundred feet tall, fifty feet thick, had towers at each of the eight cardinal directions that stood one hundred and fifty feet tall, and were crowned by gun decks. The walls and towers were cut from thick gray stone and had been standing for nearly a thousand years.

The keep itself stood one hundred and twenty feet tall with walls forty feet thick. Enormous square towers stood another fifty feet tall at each of the corners and were cut with musket slits on nearly every level. Above the keep, whipping defiantly in the brisk breeze, was the flag of King Eadric of Ansgar. The golden man at the center of the flag was too small to be seen at such a distance, but the thick green and white checkered field was not.

Fort Hart was the last bastion of loyalist holdings on the western side of the Hart River and would prove to be the greatest undertaking yet for the Western Armies.

They had struck a solid blow to the fort’s defenses when they had crushed the two divisions that had ventured too far from the protection of the fortress. The First Corps of the Northern Army, under the command of Duke Arndell, had decimated the much smaller force and captured supplies and weapons. Tens of thousands of loyalists had been killed and another ten thousand captured.

Those troops had been nearly two-thirds of the infantry assigned to defend Fort Hart and the loyalists’ northern reaches. Without them, the trenches surrounding the fortress would be largely empty. The defenders’ greatest loss would be the supplies: the Western forces had captured twenty thousand pounds of powder, ten thousand pounds of shot and forty thousand pounds of food.

The supply advantage would be short-lived, however, because Fort Hart could protect the approaches to the bridge that spanned the Hart River and supplies could be moved from the rest of the Hart Earldom. Lord Croutcher had assigned several regiments of skirmishers and light cavalry to ford the river at various points in the north and seek out enemy wagons and supply depots. In the south, railroad junctions on the eastern side of the river had been targeted and the western raiders were returning everyday with liberated supplies, ammunition and weapons.

The advance element of Duke Croutcher’s army had already surrounded the fortress and the first trenches were dug. Artillery batteries were being moved into place but they would not be able to stay out of the range of the garrison guns on the tower gun decks. Further trenches would have to be cut into the hard-packed earth until the fifteen-pound heavy cannons could be brought to fire directly on the keep’s stone walls.

Raedan, his cavalry command absorbed by Hadrian until additional troops could be brought forward from the reserves encamped between Tirrell and Mantyre, had been assigned as a member of Duke Croutcher’s advisors. For once he had not argued against the undeserved position; doing so against both his brother and his liege lord would be pointless.

“
It’s quite daunting,” a familiar voice said from behind him.

“
The largest fortress this side of the Black Mountain, surrounded by miles of trenches, protected by no less than two dozen twenty-five-pound garrison cannons mounted on towers one hundred and fifty feet high, and twenty thousand trained soldiers,” Raedan said as he turned to face Damon Kor.

The elf leaned on his staff as he walked and the ruby clutched in the iron setting glimmered in the late afternoon sunlight. His silver hair fell off of his shoulder in a thick braid and despite his smile, his almond-shaped sapphire eyes were cold.

Raedan had not told his advisor and mentor about the terror spell he had unleashed on the loyalists in the heat of battle. He had told no one of that. The spell had been different from any other that he had used. The spells that Damon had taught him drained energy from him until he could use the magic no more. Before he had forced the matter, the terror spell had been returning more energy than it had been draining from him.

The possibilities excited and scared Raedan at the same time. If there were other spells like it, he would be able to use them without fear of exhaustion. An unlimited source of magic.

“
Our scouts on the other side of the river have reported that there isn’t another division of loyalist troops within six days’ march,” Damon announced. “But there’s three more ten days behind them, so our window is small.”

“
Lord Croutcher plans to bring barges up from Hammerbourne, loaded with coastal guns,” Raedan revealed. “It will be almost twelve days before the barges will be in place, and I doubt a mere two days of bombardment will convince them of the error of their ways.”

“
Are we not trying to maintain the appearance of a peaceful separation with the King?” Damon asked.

The Assembly, as they had taken to calling the gathering of nobles, had decreed that unless they were attacked, the Western forces were not to engage organized loyalist forces. Dalton Croutcher had been the most vocal opponent of that policy. He had argued that if the Western armies crushed the loyalists before they had a time to assemble, more fighting down the road could be avoided.

The overwhelming sentiment had been to avoid fighting where possible and attempt to minimalize deaths on both sides of the battlefield. Dalton had been able to justify the siege of Fort Hart, and the deployment of the barges from the river city of Hammerbourne, by pointing out that the fortress was on soil claimed by the Western Nobles. Their claim became tenuous when it was pointed out that they were trying to claim lands that belonged to the Crown of Ansgar, but no one had dared mention that when the Assembly met.

“
We are merely securing the territory that we have claimed as our own. Dalton has passed down an order to hold fire until the barges arrive. Perhaps we can convince the loyalists holed up in the fort that it’s in their best interest to surrender the fortress to us.” Raedan and Damon began walking down the backside of the hill toward the camp. “I think this restraint is a farce. We’ve made our intentions clear; why do we need to be concerned with what Eadric and his nobles think of us?”

“
There are some nobles that have remained loyal to Eadric, thus far, that may be persuaded to join our cause if the conditions are right,” Damon said. “Once we have a response from King Eadric, one way or the other, we can decide on our course of action.”

“
The nobles on the other side of the river are some of Eadric’s strongest supporters,” Raedan pointed out.

“
There are nobles further east that do not stand behind the King as strongly as Baron Saxon and Earl Hart,” Damon said. “I have heard the whispers from merchants and messengers that many lesser lords have remained loyal to their lieges only because they are too far from our armies to declare their independence. Should things go poorly for their liege, I’m sure that we could convince these lesser lords to swear their lands to our cause.”

“
Do you think that new nobles will be raised up to take the lands that we claim in the course of our fight for independence?” Raedan asked.

“
I would think that it depends on how far into loyalist lands we are forced to go before Eadric accepts our independence, and whether or not we decide to cede those lands back to the nobles to whom they have belonged for so many years. If we take a healthy amount of land and decide that holding them will be better than giving them back, I’m sure that new nobles will be appointed from the ranks of knights and lesser lords. Why do you ask?”

“
There are lesser lords that have been particularly helpful to me. I think that if they were to find themselves as nobles, and I was the one who made that happen, I could extend my reach beyond my own lands.”

“
You’re starting to sound like your brother,” Damon said with a smile. “And your father before him.”

“
Do you think my father would have sided with Lord Croutcher in this rebellion?”

“
Your father did not know this Duke Arndell, except that he was the son of his liege lord,” Damon said. “He was close friends with the late Duke Arndell, like Hadrian is with Dalton. I think that your father would have been more hesitant than most about rebelling against his lawful lord, but your father didn’t have to pry the Broken Plains out of the hands of a Frantan clan-lord without the help of his king. I think that, in the end, your father would have followed the same path that you have. He would have done what he thought best for his people.”

“
I hope that when the fires from this rebellion settle, this is what is best for my people,” Raedan said as they approached the edge of the camp.

A wooden palisade had been erected around the sprawling encampment. Guards paced outside of the walls and stood at the gates. Pillars of smoke rose from cook-fires in the late afternoon sun. The smell of roasting beef and pork was thick in the air and Raedan’s stomach rumbled as they passed through the gates.

Outside of the palisade, two regiments of Arndell soldiers were drilling. Officers shouted commands and sergeants relayed them to the rank and file soldiers. They fired their muskets at a set of targets set up against the hill, reloaded and fired again. Clouds of gray and black smoke had formed around the companies and the acrid stench of burnt gunpowder hung thick in the air.

Inside the palisade, rows and columns of tents stretched as far as the eye could see. Nearly one hundred thousand Western soldiers, their officers, knights, lesser lords and nobles were encamped in a small valley. At the outer edge of the camp, only simple soldiers wandered the makeshift streets between the tents. Many were clustered around small fires, brewing coffee or cooking small animals that they had killed.

“
You, of all people, will be able to see how history looks back on this rebellion,” Damon said, and Raedan gave a humorless bark of laughter. “Have you and the Earl Garroway set a date for your wedding yet?”

“
This rebellion has postponed that event, for the time being,” Raedan answered, thankful for the change of subject. As they moved closer to the center of the camp, the tents became larger and more guards were evident. Squires and pages dashed between pavilions carrying satchels and messenger bags to their knights and nobles. “He has mentioned that we should still proceed with the planning, however. Perhaps in a year, when we’ve secured our borders and thrown back the King.”