A quiet night stole upon the venerable sprawling city of Maegwyn like a thief, its twisting alleys and narrow defiles of aged and decrepit houses, long past their golden days of yore, becoming enshrouded by cold darkness. Far from the sleeping heart of the city, beyond even the outermost of the city’s ancient battle scarred walls or the more recently erected earthworks, almost entirely eaten by the surrounding forest stood a manse, within which a lonely flickering light shone deep into the night. With proud, straight walls hewn of fine white stone, unblemished by the test of time with an aura of youthful vitality, the manse stood in stark contrast to the inevitable, creeping decay found in the rest of the city, the indifferent populace of the old elite long having squandered both coin and power.
Inside that house a man sat, hunched over an array of reports, lists, and letters, bathing under the glow of a lamp. Off to the side lay a detailed map, withered by time but clean and well cared for, covered in wooden tokens of various shapes and colors. The man was tall and well built, with solid muscle visible even under the cover of his thick woolen shirt. Rich in neither looks nor dress, he cut an odd figure living in such an opulent house, but it was only natural as this was no mere downtrodden noble, but the newly enfeoffed Lord Protector of the Empire, Nathaniel Pembroke.
His eyes scoured the materials laid before him, brow crinkling and eyes narrowing as he read. The situation was an unmitigated disaster, he swore, the light cast by the solitary lantern fluttering wildly as his fist came down upon the desk with a loud bang, scattering papers and wooden tokens alike. It was bad enough that those brigands from Aachenwald had started raising a vast army, tens of thousands strong. While this was a threat to the empire, and an army far larger than any raised by the King of Aachenwald in recent memory, if that was all that had transpired most would have seen it as the King once more attempting to instill order and quell the internecine fighting ever present in his chaotic, fractious land. However this time, the King had decided to muster this army, not in the capital of his domain in Aachen a thousand miles away, but a mere dozen miles from the border of Albion.
While possibly preempted by a recent peasant’s revolt in that province, nonetheless that particular action had sparked outcry amongst the members of the Empress’s privy council. Fearing the worst, a decision had been made to make a show of the Empire’s power with a series of military exercises in the Duchy of Brackenweir, the stalwart defender of the Empire’s border with Aachenwald. Two armies had been mustered for the exercises. The imperial first legion, normally headquartered in the capital of Brackenweir, Hundswick, and numbering ten thousand men, had safely made its way to the designated rendezvous point in Davenport. Thereafter they had paraded through the city and encamped outside its walls awaiting the other. However, the army of the Duke of Brackenweir himself, representing the pride of the Duchy, with knights and men at arms marching under the banners of the Duke’s sworn vassals, numbering almost twenty thousand men in all, had vanished without a trace.
It was a travesty, nearly twenty thousand men gone, presumably destroyed by a superior enemy force so thoroughly that not a trace of either survivors or of the battlefield itself had been found. Couriers and scouts from the capital of Brackenweir had travelled along the planned route of the Duke’s army and confirmed a complete lack of evidence that an army had been present on the route at all after it had departed the town of Glenn’s Hollow near the Aachenwald border. These men hadn’t been some hastily conscripted, ill disciplined band of peasants either, but the last survivors of the old ways, the Duke of Brackenweir and his vassals having survived the Empress’s purges of the aristocracy some years prior with their legal right to maintain their large retinues of professional soldiers intact as a reward for siding with the Empress during the civil war to place her on the throne. The Duke’s forces had, previously at least, been a stalwart shield against the ever present chaos threatening to overflow across the border from the tumultuous land of Aachenwald. Any force capable of so completely destroying such a large and capable army must be considerable, and the complete lack of any trace of battle hinted at something far worse, witchcraft.
The empire of Albion itself had little need for witchcraft, its legion of well equipped and trained troops, well blooded during the civil war, enforced the Empress’s will far more ably than any hermetic mystic or petty wandering conjurer, that made up the vast majority of the practitioners of the esoteric arts. Few were those capable of so completely removing all traces of a massive battle, and even fewer were those who would wield those powers in service to mere mortal men and their feeble ambitions. Any such beings would naturally demand high prices for their services, not those of mortal treasure or lands, but of precious reagents, rare and exotic imports, or for those of particularly dark inclination, human sacrifices ready for the slaughter.
While the Empire of Albion may balk at the costs demanded by such creatures, and rest easily behind the assured security of its legions knowing it would never need their services, the fractious land of Aachenwald was another matter. In a vast land divided between thousands of bellicose princes in a perpetual struggle for power and security of their position, the practitioners of the esoteric arts could often find an eager patron no matter how detestable they might seem, although even then few amongst the princes possessed means enough to pay the price for their fell services.
If the King Aachenwald truly had crossed the border, with armies reinforced with powerful magic no less, then the empire was truly in a state of crisis. Nathaniel thought of his last conversation with the Empress a week prior, recalling how he had watched her normally austere and indomitable expression break down after receiving the reports that her uncle had never reached his destination.
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In a quiet, and more importantly private, palace chamber, bereft of windows and far from prying eyes stood the Empress. She was slender of build but tall of stature, with an exquisite face so fine that even the thick black veins radiating from her inhuman black eyes could not be considered to mar her body. Wise beyond mortal ken, with life experience of not less than fifty winters wizened by years of study and toil, her normally austere expression was fractured by grief revealing the youthful features of a woman of a mere twenty years. Her long, ashen hair hung low, half concealing her tear streaked face as she addressed the man kneeling before her, her voice barely kept level as she relayed her commands.
“Nathaniel, as you may have heard my uncle has vanished en route to Davenport along with his entire army. Given that he was dispatched with the intent to intimidate the King of Aachenwald into standing down, I can only assume that his army was waylaid by an invasion. However, there is some hope! No trace remains of either battle of army, so he must be alive, my uncle could never be laid so low by an ambush by those Aachish louts.” Her expression lightened as she spoke, almost convincing herself with her wild hopes.
“You must make haste if we are to find my uncle alive, take command of as many men as you can and scour Brackenweir end to end until you find him!” The Empress demanded, her face downcast and lips trembling with emotion.
Nathaniel lay kneeling, not willing to meet the Empress’s hopeful eyes, his expression conflicted and his heart full of sorrow as he pondered the task at hand, returning her to her senses.
“Your Majesty, we cannot send men out looking for your uncle, it is too dangerous! If no trace has been found of him, that could only mean there were no survivors of his battle. If I chase after the Duke I would need at least double his number to ensure the same tragedy does not befall my own men. The fifth and sixth legions combined number only forty thousand men, if I withdraw them both then the capital will be defenseless!” I countered, trying to restore her to reason as I reminded her of our grave situation.
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“There has been no sign of conflict in Brackenweir itself, Your Majesty. If an Aachenish incursion had destroyed the Duke’s forces and not gone on to pillage the Duchy, then their goal could only be to move towards Maegwyn. If you deprive this city of its only defenders, it won’t be just the Duke that will perish, but you as well. We must wait for the arrival of the eastern legions before committing an army large enough to counter this invasion. I can’t risk your safety for a dead man, please Your Majesty!” I begged her, pleading for her to put aside her attachments.
The Empire could not afford to lose her, the only thing standing between the common people and a return to the old times where nothing could stop the depredations of the aristocracy. I became crestfallen as I saw my appeal to her reason had failed, her eyes growing colder as she peered down at me, the very air between us seeming to chill. A creeping frost spread on the ground beneath me, my breath showing as mist in the air between us and I knew I had incurred her displeasure.
“He. Is. Not. Dead!” The Empress screeched, abandoning her formerly even tone as she enunciated each word slowly and precisely, as if the arrogance of her defiant words could convince even the gods to bend reality to her will and ensure her uncle’s survival.
“Forgive me Your Majesty, but even if by some miracle he is alive, if we send out the fifth and sixth legions to gallivant in the west, then you won’t be! You are a scholar and a witch, not a general. There is no guarantee that the fifth and sixth legions will be able to meet this enemy in the field if you order them west, and if they don’t and this enemy reaches Maegwyn, then we lack the means to hold the walls! I cannot in good conscience order the abandonment of the capital, not when it will mean death for you and the endangerment of every soul in this blighted city!” Struggling to maintain my subservient posture in the face of her crazed raving, my raised voice betrayed my anger at her short sightedness.
“How dare you ignore my orders you wretch! My uncle is invincible! He has stood at my side as steadfast general in the darkest of times, faced indomitable odds, and won for me my crown over the bodies of my insidious siblings in a war in which you were a mere captain. He will not have been destroyed by those lowly Aachish bandits no matter what you think.” She spat out venomously, entirely disregarding both my pleading and concern for her safety in her desire to see her uncle found safe. Her ire at my allegations of her unsuitability to be making these decisions undeniable as her formerly grieving expansion gave way to a mask of anger, the creeping frost on the ground beginning to sap the heat from my knee as I knelt.
For the sake of your hitherto leal service you will not be punished, and if you are so worried about my safety then I permit you to personally stay behind and protect me. However, I will be finding someone else to command my legions in this search, and they will find my uncle, alive, no matter how many men it takes.” Her tone took on a chillier, detached tone as she expressed her will with finality. She would brook no argument, expecting total obedience despite my reservations.
“If that is your will, Your Majesty.” I graciously bowed low, low enough so that she could not see my shameful face, ashen at my failure to bring her to her senses. She would only be roused to even more anger at my unrepentant look of ungracious defeat. I hastily departed, backing up to the door before shutting it behind me, keeping my head laid low all the while. I tried to ignore the loud sobs that emanated from the now shut door as I walked away, a faint echo of the phrase ‘He can’t be dead…’ faintly audible in my head seemingly no matter how far away from the door I strode.
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Her obstinance may have doomed them all, Nathaniel cursed as his eyes flicked to the reports from his last ditch effort to save the capital from an assuredly swift and brutal destruction. Seemingly endless rosters of names greeted his eyes as he picked up a page, listing names, age, occupation, and town of birth. It was a writ of conscription, every able bodied young man in the capital region having been deemed worthy of service in the Empress’s Home Guard in the Empire’s time of need. At tremendous expense, for the first time since the civil war, young men were compelled into service, equipped and trained for the sole purpose of defending the capital against sudden attack.
It would take months for the eastern legions to be withdrawn from that far off frontier, and the cream of the Home Guard had been deployed to the likely hopeless search for the Duke of Brackenweir. For the foreseeable future, these hastily assembled peasants were all that stood between the capital and an almost inevitable assault by marauding Aachish bands.
While equipment was relatively easy to secure, having looted the armories of the departing legions for surplus, their training was proceeding at a much more sedate pace. The peasants being farmers and the sons of artisans were neither skilled in the use of weapons nor disciplined and used to following commands. They were not the blooded veterans from the civil wars that formed the core of the current imperial legions, and they numbered no experienced hunters or other practitioners of the bow, for the forests of the capital region had long been tamed leaving naught but small stands and copses. They were the weak and soft hearted urbanites or small time farmers that had known only safety and security from the day they were born.
To make matters worse, only a handful of drill masters remained, those few remaining having been hastily taken from the departing legions before they had reached the city walls. With the training proceeding so slowly only a few thousand peasants could be trained at a time, and even then could only be trained in the such simple weapons as the crossbow or spear. Even then, by the time of any future attack upon the capital, these peasants would never be more than rank amateurs, unworthy of the repossessed arms and armor that they now bore. They would never be able to take to the open field in conflict, and could only ever hope to stand atop the city walls, firing on an amassed enemy below them.
Nathaniel’s scattered thoughts were interrupted by a loud clattering from the knocker on the front door. Opening it, he squinted his eyes in the shadow of the night before spying a young man at his doorstep, nervously shifting his feet with eyes downcast, clad in the green livery of the Empress’s courier service.
“I-I-I have a message for you sir, s-s-straight from the palace. S-s-sorry for waking you, m’lord!” The young man stuttered out, terrified of having to interrupt a man of such high status as the Lord Protector in the middle of the night. Especially when the Lord Protector bore such a gaunt and haunted expression, eyes squinted and wrinkled from his activity at that late hour. His arms shook as he presented a scroll of parchment, sealed in wax pressed by the fiery crown of the Empress’s own seal.
“Be at ease boy, I was already awake.” Nathaniel replied with a lazy wave of his hand, taking the parchment. Breaking the seal with a flick of his wrist, he read the message.
Your presence is required. Immediately. The scroll had scrawled upon it, the crimson of its ink reinforcing the urgency of the summons. It was unlikely to be regarding any good news, not after how disastrously his last conversation with her had gone. Marshalling his courage to face her displeasure once more, he turned to the courier.
“I’m going to need your horse.” Nathaniel demanded of the courier. Time was of the essence and his own carriage horses were much more suited for endurance than the swiftness endemic in the imperial courier breeds.
“Ah… Of course sir, anything you need.” The courier said obediently, his face falling as he realized he would not be able to rest for some time yet. Stifling his concerns over having to walk back the long miles to the palace on foot at that late hour, he handed the reins to Nathaniel, daring not to get in the way of an order from the palace.
“Thank you boy, and here, for your troubles.” Nathaniel replied graciously with a smile of gratitude, pressing a gold coin into the courier’s hand as he took the reins, much to the youth’s delight. Stepping into the stirrups and climbing into the horse’s saddle with some difficulty, being unaccustomed to riding as a mere veteran infantryman, he took off into the night towards the palace, ready to face whatever grave news had prompted the summons.