Eric the Elding adjusted his grip upon his sword and shifted his shield arm against the stiffness as he waited. Another attack was forming. The enemy had indulged itself in digging a shallow trench at the limit of bow-shot. There those about to be thrown against the outer wall could await the signal that would send them into the jaws of all the Hells. It was all but dark this deep in the Vale, but he could mark them by their torches. He saw also the occasional glint of arms and helms in torchlight, or as they reflected the fires set in the town or, occasionally, in the pale light of the cloud-wracked moon.
Eric, born long after the Kings’ Wars, had nevertheless seen war. He was no stay-at-home tourney knight. He had hunted down brigands occasionally foolish enough to plague his father’s lands, lent his sword to Western Marcher Lords against the fierce Wallacha, and even had a stint in the knightly wars that flared periodically in the Great Lands beyond the Narrow Sea.
This first night’s activity was not a serious effort, Eric thought. There were no siege towers. There had not yet been time to attempt a mine. No ram had approached the gates. He was aware that this outer bailey wall, too far forward to be supported by the town walls or the castle, was not a barrier to a siege-equipped foe. For now, though, the large engines necessary to breach it with heavy stones were not in evidence, so perhaps had yet to be brought up and sited. Perhaps they had arrived with too little light for that. Smaller engines had cast many incendiary missiles over their heads and set fire to the town. Those that fell short, on the plain between this and the town’s inner wall, had burned such tents of their party as were not struck in time. Thus, it was deemed unsafe to stand amid the debris of their former encampment. Rather, they stood behind the outer wall, sheltered in its lee. His father’s men and those of the Vale garrison were safe enough there while the wall held.
The attacks, of which he feared he had by now lost count, had no real chance of success in Eric’s opinion. Unsupported by any more effective means to get them through or over the wall, the attackers had to rely upon ladders. Assault by escalade, in Eric’s experience, could only succeed by surprise or where there were simply too few defenders to man the walls and cast them down. This was not the case here. If anything, the defenders had more men than they needed. His father, as an earnest of good faith in the negotiations, had insisted upon the honour of defending the walls. The King could not in all honour allow his guest to bear the brunt of the attack while he stood safe on his lofty walls and, so, had sent many more garrison troops out of the castle to add to those few whose duty had found them at the wall at the time of the attack. They stood now, shoulder to shoulder, on the wall, the golden phoenix of the House of Elding, rising against the blue of Trenisslia, and the gryphon of the House of Daegan rearing in defiance against a field of red and green, signifying the King-in-the-Vale. Below them, in serried ranks behind the wall, ample reserves of both Houses stood ready to reinforce them as needed, or to relieve by turns those who had defied the last attack.
The purpose of these ceaseless attacks, it seemed to Eric, was to boast the strength of the enemy, and to tire and deplete the defenders. They were certainly doing both, but not to an extent that would win them the wall. Daylight, then, must bring the rain of stone and the ram that would allow this overwhelming force through the wall. He hoped someone up in the Gryphonhold had thought about what to do then.
Should the wall be scaled or breached, or the gate broken, there needs must be a fighting retreat in stages across the field of their camp to the town wall. With bodies of men alternatively standing in defence as rearguard, and withdrawing, this, Eric thought, could be accomplished before the enemy were through the wall in numbers sufficient to overwhelm them. It would be a close-run thing at best, though, and if discipline was not maintained, and any one party of the withdrawing defenders routed, it would become a massacre. He hoped his men would stand the test, brave as he knew them to be, and he hoped the men of the Gryphonhold would prove as staunch.
And then the enemy came upon them again. Brazen horn calls and shouts from the trench ahead and the bobbing of torches as they ran for the wall. Either side of him Eric heard the twang of bow strings as the archers took aim amid the torches in the hope that many a chance shot would find a mark in the press of enemy coming against them.
And before, it seemed, he could draw breath again, he heard the slap of ladders against the wall and was calling his men. He went first to his right, but saw a ladder ahead suddenly illuminated by fire, the man near the top, his back arched in pain and his hands flailing uselessly before the whole collapsed, red flame plummeting through a roiling column of acrid black smoke. Eric smelt the horror of burnt flesh and tasted the tang of burning oil. An expensive, if nastily effective trick, the oil, thought Eric. This King evidently meant business and was unsentimental when it came to his enemies. He turned to his left. There his men, and men of the garrison, were struggling over the parapet to throw off a ladder, but even as they did so, one enemy footman, and then another, came over the battlements. They saw Eric. Eric snarled and leapt forward.
The fight was a brief one. Eric crouched and swung his sword upward, under the enemy swordsman’s over-extended guard. Eric’s sword point bit, its edge sliced the man up his torso from belly to chest. The blade went clean through the rib cage and the man fell away. Another came on, a billman brandishing a wicked blade. Eric feinted; as the soldier thrust home, Eric was not there. He had sprung to side and was past the point of his enemy’s weapon with his sword running through the billman’s neck. Dragging his blade clear, Eric looked round in search of further enemies. Seeing none, he ranged along the length of wall under his direct command. He passed a ladder where he lent in, providing the decisive push to send it spiralling into ruin. He received the thud of a spent quarrel on his pauldron for his pains. It seemed that there were no more enemies to hand and he saw them moving off, another flight of arrows from the wall sent after them. He waited for his knights and sergeants to make their report, of casualties and arrow stocks and any other matter or concern. Fiery missiles, thrown from the enemy once more began to arc through the dark sky toward them. He waited for them to whoomph over his head before he stooped to tend to an exhausted soldier sitting with his back to the wall in a daze. Eric helped him to a drink of water from his flask and made what he hoped might prove encouraging remarks. After the reports came in, he paused and took a drink himself, and then another matter claimed his attention; a message calling him to attend his father below.
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Lord Daw, Earl Elding, looked grim as he stood among his retinue a little distance inside the outer wall. This alliance was proving costly before it was even concluded, but, it seemed to him, this assault proved the wisdom of seeking it. A great change that he could not understand, had been sweeping through the Kingdoms in the south and had lately reached the skirts of his demesne in the south of the old Sixth Kingdom. The Red Shepherd and his bloody crusade to restore the Chirche to purity was an open threat to order, yet there was something more. The untimely death of Bonomio and the endless manoeuvring of athelings vying for the paramount kingship had left more sinister shadows to grow in the unwatched corners of the realm. Old friends and allies had become distant or turned their backs and Lord Daw feared that they had been drawn under some influence he could not perceive or understand. Yet even while the lords and prelates plotted and armed, an unnamed power arose that might eclipse them all, and in their neglected shires the common folk saw the return of evil times, strange threats, murrains and blights, and deaths and disappearances; old enemies walking once more among them, kine barren, milk found sour in the pail, dogs running mad, cots found empty. Against all this there was no strength of unity in the Fallen Kingdoms of the north. And no king unless he was to be found here in this shadowy fief. The Sixth and Seventh Kingdoms were otherwise crownless and divided. No power there to resist the lengthening shadow to the south. Lord Daw had grown uneasy and feared for the freedom of Trenisslia, He had reached forth to his old friend Durwyn. Durwyn was rumoured to hold kingship, albeit of some outlandish realm in the far north hard by the fabled gates of perilous Elvenholme. Small states like Trenisslia were wary of kings, lest they become mere fiefs and tributaries. Yet now Lord Elding wished he had extended his hand long ago, for Durwyn treated him fair. There was no expectation of fealty to this King, and no homage or tribute demanded in return for his friendship and strength of aid. Rather, Durwyn treated with him as an equal. And, at least today at this place, they were near equal, for it was Trenisslia that gave aid to the Vale. Yet, if he knew Durwyn at all, the old warrior would not stand at bay for long, and whoever this enemy was, it would rue the day it came upon the Marchlands, killing and burning.
Like Eric, Lord Elding knew that the outer wall would not hold a determined assault. It was too long, for one thing. Penetration at any point and the defenders on the wall could be rolled up and the defenders behind it outflanked with a great stretch of open ground between them and the safety of the town wall. And the outer wall was not so high or so stout as the town and castle walls. Like Eric, he expected the coming of daylight to bring great engines to bear. Once they were in play, a breach in the gate or the wall was only a matter of time. After that there must be fighting in the open ground before the safety of the town walls was won, and there the Enemy’s vast strength would tell. A messenger lately arrived from Gryphonhold said that the King would ride forth on the morrow in strength to cover the withdrawal once the wall could no longer be held. Daw was urged to have his mounted men in readiness. That was welcome news; cavalry would be a boon in covering the withdrawal. Yet, considered Lord Elding, it would take careful timing to get his men away unscathed.
He saw his son approach him, “Eric, you are come,” he greeted, “the King has sent to me. He understands that I cannot come to him. He will, he says, and thank the Powers for it, come to me on the morrow when he will put forth his strength to cover us. He asks, then, if I might spare you, for he esteems your counsel and would hear the state of things and discuss with you a plan for the withdrawal.”
“As the King wishes, Lord Father,” replied Eric, “My post is here, but I see the need for such counsel. Withdrawal must not be haphazard tomorrow and cannot be left to chance. You know this King, father, will he do what he says on the morrow, the lives of our army depend upon it?”
“I knew him as a brave and good man,” replied Lord Elding, “Long ago I saw him sacrifice his good name and position because his honour demanded it. King in a strange land he may now be, yet he once lost far more than he has gained. Men change, of course. The cruelties of fate make them bitter, and ambition or expediency bury the fine feelings of their youth. There has been great change and travail in my friend’s life, and I knew not if I would find him the same after so many years. Yet I believe he is unchanged, though he bears great grief. He will come as he has said.”
“Come,” said his father, “before you go up to the castle, you have seen more of them than I, tell me what you think they are who we face.” He had guided Eric to a row of corpses, some few of the enemy who had gained the wall, only to die there. They mainly wore grey quilted gambesons or jacks, cut long down to the thigh, but some were men-at-arms and captains who wore long mail hauberks, covered in cloth coats. These were of a dark grey colour. All wore a common sigil, on the breasts of surcoats, and on grey cloth patches sewn to the breasts of the quilted jacks, and also on the slate grey shields the men had borne, A yellow maneless lion, known as a leopard, reared proudly there. Unlike any device he had before seen, the head of this beast was not in profile, but turned to face him in challenge. This was not something recognised in the sigildry of the Kingdoms, which was strange. The image itself was audacious and disturbing. Even on the crude cloth patches, those leopards had eyes that seemed present, and which seemed to see him. They drew his gaze and seemed to hold it against his will. As he stared, the black cloth of those empty sockets seemed alive with malignant intelligence. With panic he felt them striving at him. Then those abysmal eyes seemed to bore into his very soul, flaying aside his hopes and certainties, leaving him the powerless prey of this beast. Finally, with what seemed like great effort, he tore his gaze away.
“I think,” said Eric, “they are death.”