Fighting that damned leviathan once was enough for me. When General Aurelius comes looking for volunteers to crew those ships, I says right away to him: ‘I’ll be buggered if you put me out to sea with a fire-breathing serpent. Station me and my boys somewhere on solid ground.’

So the bastard sent us north to Skandia, instead. Serves me right.

* The Life and Times of Legionary Titus Nasica

☀

11th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

The bombardment of Rocher de la Garde continued into the night.

Once he’d found the range of his engines to the city walls, Sir Moriaen apparently had no compunctions about simply continuing to hammer away for as long as it took. Trist could see the enemy engineers working in shifts by torchlight, when he had looked out from the walls just after sundown. By that time, everything around that north gate that could burn, had.

In the end, the fire-crews had created a fire break between the northern edge of Rocher de la Garde and the rest of the city. Everything within range of the enemy trebuchets was abandoned, in favor of saving what was left. Now, Moriaen’s men could throw as many pots of burning pitch or oil as they wanted - there was simply nothing left to ignite, only bare cobblestones and blasted earth.

Gareth commanded the siege from the remaining guard tower at the north gate. He’d spread a map of the city out on one of the tables that took up the room on the same level as the parapet, along with a pot of ink and several quills. Beyond that, the table was filled with food and drink for his make-shift command staff: a massive pot of soup had been brought from the keep kitchens, a rich mixture of local fish, shrimp, crab, lobster, mussels, and sea urchins, with garlic, onions, turnips and fresh herbs. To this was added several loaves of fresh bread, perfect for dipping in the soup, creamy butter for spreading, and bottles of white wine.

“The best I’ve ever eaten during a siege,” Sir Florent remarked, having wiped his bowl clean with a hunk of bread.

“Yesterday’s catch,” Gareth explained. “It won’t keep for long, so it has to be used. And with the fishing fleet destroyed, it will be the last of this sort of food we have for some time. Tomorrow will be less luxurious, I can promise you. But we have more than enough food stored to keep the city for some time; they won’t be starving us out, especially not with the king’s army only a few days away.”

“The king said the damage to the road would cost them a day,” Trist recalled. “Call it the sixteenth.”

“Can we truly take another four days of this?” Clarisant asked.

“Four and a half, more like,” Sir Lucan commented. “They won’t get here right at dawn, cousin. They will need time to strike camp, march, and then draw up battle lines to lift the siege.”

“If it was only the siege engines, absolutely,” Florent answered Claire with conviction. “The walls are strong, and Sir Gareth tells me we have enough stored food for a moon or more. They have already burned everything within range of their trebuchets on the north side. On the east, the Rea will keep them from mounting any sort of serious attack. They would need to take boats across, under fire the entire way.” The older knight snorted and shook his head to show what he thought of that.

“They have tried the west gate once already,” Trist pointed out.

“Aye, and they will try it again, you can be certain of that,” Florent said with a nod. “Probably even move some of their engines around to fling their pots of pitch at us on that side.”

“I will have the gangs of fire-fighters moved to the west,” Gareth said, with a sigh. “There isn’t going to be much of the city left by the time they have finished.”

“You said the docks were already destroyed?” Clarisant asked. “And they can’t really attack any more from that direction, unless they want to send the Leviathan ashore.”

Trist shook his head. “No, they will not do that either,” he predicted. “It is far more valuable as a threat and a blockade. If they sent it ashore and I killed it, we could clear the docks and send ships out for supplies. Moriaen seems far too cunning to risk that.”

“Which means their best option is another daemon-gate,” Gareth concluded. “I imagine he will try to catch us by surprise, or when we’ve had to commit all our forces somewhere else.”

“Aye,” Florent agreed, pushing his bowl back and taking a sip of wine from his goblet. “They will try the north wall again in the morning, and that’s when we need to look out for it. What we need is to catch the daemon that opens those gates, and destroy it.”

“That is the last thing they will allow to happen,” Trist pointed out. “With both Zepar and Vinea destroyed, I cannot imagine they will put such an important resource at risk.” He shook his head. A moon before, he would not have understood that. Even when Lionel had explained to him, before the battle of Falais, why Exarchs were a strategic resource, he would not truly have understood. Now he did. War was an effective tutor. “Those portals not only give them the ability to sneak a force behind our walls - but also to pull supplies from the capital, or from the Barony du Champs d'Or. It allows them to evacuate their commanders and best fighters, if this battle turns against them. It allows them to bring in additional daemons, or reinforcements. They are never going to willingly put Bathin anywhere within swords-reach of me.”

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“Additional daemons,” Florent asked. “How many more do they have?”

“Agrat,” Trist said. “And Sammāʾēl, at the very least.”

Clarisant shook her head. “It will be more than that, husband,” she said. “The Leviathan was bound off the coast of Raetia, do you recall?” Trist nodded, frowning. “And do you remember what your father told us? Your mother came from Raetia, as well.”

“As did the Baron du Champs d'Or,” Florent spoke up. “You are all too young to remember, but it was something of a scandal at the time. The previous Baron died without an heir, and some Raetian came in to marry the widow. If she hadn’t been with child practically immediately after the wedding, I doubt old King Lothair would have permitted it to stand.”

“That daughter is Valeria,” Trist said, making the connection. “So both my mother, and this Avitus, had been in Raetia for who knows how long.”

“Long enough to break the bindings on the Leviathan,” Clarisant pointed out. “And I think that we need to assume any other daemon bound in Raetia is also potentially free, and able to be sent against us.”

“How many is that?” Gareth asked.

“Less than I feared, but more than I hoped.” Clarisant pushed her empty bowl aside to make room for the copy of the Marian Codex she’d taken from the Cathedral earlier in the day. “Half the entries I found ended in Exarchs slaying the daemons, but that still leaves another three daemons bound somewhere in the principality.” She opened the wood-bound book and began flipping pages. “Here. My lord husband warns me not to say the names aloud,” Claire began, turning to grin at Trist. He reached out and rested his hand on her thigh. “But I have the titles. The Blackbird of Ashes, The Bull of Stars, and the Gangrenous Archer.”

Trist leaned over, reading the names of the daemons aloud in turn, rolling them over in his mind to learn them. “Caym. Marax. Loray.”

“So,” Florent said. “Assume the worst, and you will never be disappointed, as my father used to say. Let us assume they can send these three daemons behind the walls at any time. That instead of facing one, Sir Trist, when you next go running to an open portal, you are fighting all three. Can you beat them?”

Trist sighed. “I do not know. I have never faced any of them. I can tell you that Tithing Zepar has strengthened me greatly. But as Acrasia would warn me, I have not had time to become accustomed to the increase in power. It makes me clumsy.”

“Is that why you came careening into the alley, wrecking everything in your path?” Claire asked him with raised eyebrows.

“That would be the reason,” Trist confirmed.

“Just how fast are you, now?” Gareth asked, with a furrowed brow.

“I am not even certain, in all honesty,” Trist admitted. “Daemons seem to gain raw physical strength in a greater proportion than anything else, as they Tithe more souls and increase in power,” he explained. “But for me, it is speed. Reflexes. Even before defeating Zepar, sometimes it felt like normal men were almost standing still, when I fought.”

“You have a look I recognize, brother,” Claire said. “You are thinking something, are you not?”

“I am,” Gareth confirmed. “You recall those waterbugs, that skim across the water when the river is still?”

“I recall you running into the surf, convinced that if you could only go fast enough, you wouldn’t sink,” Claire countered. “You always fell on your face and came up spitting sand.”

“Aye,” Gareth agreed. “But I am only mortal. Your husband can run faster than a mortal man ever could.”

One by one, Claire, Gareth, Lucan and Florent turned to look at Trist.

“Is it possible?” Florent said.

Trist could only shrug his shoulders. “I do not know.”

In the distance, the shuddering impacts of siege missiles against the north wall of the city were muted. A bright moon shone above, and at Sir Gareth’s instruction a line of torches had been jammed into the sand, just above the highest water mark. A canvas cloth had been laid out by a young squire, and Trist was filling it with the pieces of his armor, one after the other.

“You really want to fight the damned thing naked?” his cousin, Lucan, asked, hand on the hilt of his sword, scanning the quiet waves. If Trist hadn’t already been aware of the monster lurking in the depths, he might have thought the bay the single quiet, peaceful refuge in the besieged city.

“What I do not want,” Trist said, unstrapping his left sabaton while Claire worked on the other, “is to sink to the bottom of the bay and drown there.”

“No faerie magic to avoid drowning?” Lucan teased.

“None of that.” Trist set the sabaton down, straightened, and pulled off his gambeson. By the time his wife had the other sabaton off, he’d pulled off his linen shirt, as well. Then, he kicked off his boots, leaving only his breeches. “In any event, I would rather fight the thing naked than drown.”

“And I would prefer you did neither,” Claire complained, stepping back to look him over. “Are you really going to indulge my idiot brother in his childhood fantasy?”

“It seems as if I am,” Trist said, rolling his head from side to side to loosen up his neck. He set himself low to the sand, facing the bay, and took a deep breath, then exhaled. He pushed off, sending a spray of sand out behind him, and sprinted down the beach into the water.

For a moment, it almost worked.

The first step didn’t sink, and then the second was unsteady, but he kept going. By the eighth, however, Trist’s legs had sunk into the water, and a wave took him in the chest. He fell headfirst into the warm summer sea, and came up gasping for air. He turned and hauled himself back out of the ocean, leaving bare footprints in the wet sand as he rejoined his wife and his cousin.

“I knew it wasn’t possible,” Claire said, shaking her head.

“It’s too bad, though,” Lucan griped. “To think, we could have watched you run out across the bay like a fool, off to fight a sea monster.”

“Well,” Trist said, considering. “There is one more thing to try.”

“...and that is?”

“The Hunter’s Boon,” Trist explained. “It is not simply for tracking; it also makes it so that I do not tire, and increases the pace at which I run.”

Lucan looked out at the dark sea. “What are you going to track, then? A fish?”

“I was thinking of Forneus,” Trist said, quietly. He cast out an orange thread toward the horizon, and felt it catch on something. Then, he ran back down the beach to the sea.