In contrast to what happened here in Narvonne, the Kimmerians rebelled against the 3rd Legion as soon as it became clear the Great Cataclysm had broken the strength of the Etalan Empire. Their Bogatyrs drew General Gaius out in the dead of winter, and then broke his supply lines. The 3rd Legion died to a man of either hunger, or exposure. That was the end of the Provincia Kimerria, and the beginning of the Grand Duchy of Kimerria.
* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne
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9th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
From the look of the Kimmerians, Trist guessed them to be more raiders than scouts. He counted ten, as he and the other knights approached at a gallop. They wore conical or onion shaped helms of steel, and beneath that long shirts of chain mail that were belted at the waist and hung down, divided, to protect the thighs. Their shields were shaped like upside down teardrops, pointed at the bottom and round at the top, with the device of a black wolf’s head painted on the wood. Some had bows, some swords, and nearly all hand axes, which they now lifted, shouting in their own language and rallying to ride against Trist and his companions.
If the Kimmerians had seen them sooner, the mercenaries could have pulled back and used their horsebows; but the Narvonnian knights were upon them with hardly any time to react. Trist couched his lance, lifted a shield he’d brought for just such a charge with his left hand, and leaned forward, focusing his attention on the particular Kimmerian warrior opposite him at the center of the enemy countercharge. The man had a sort of veil of chain hanging from his steel helmet, to protect his face, but Trist didn’t think it likely to be as effective as a steel visor and gorget.
The world shaded orange, and Trist’s muscles tensed like a cat about to pounce. Everyone else seemed to slow down around him, even the two groups of horses pounding toward each other at a full gallop. He kept the tip of his lance pointed at his chosen target’s center of mass until the last breath, then raised it up over the top of the Kimmerian’s shield, as easily as pulling a fish from the shallows of the Rea.
The tip of Trist’s lance took the Kimmerian in the throat, as near as he could tell: it punched through the rings meant to protect the man’s face which were, after all, not reinforced or secured by much of anything. The lance practically took the man’s head off, leaving only a bit of bone and flesh connecting it with the torso that tumbled off the back of his steed. The advantage of reach granted by the lance was so great, Trist didn’t even need to take an axe-blow on his shield, and he dropped both it and the lance as soon as he saw that he’d killed his man. There was no Tithe, using the lance, but that was what his sword was for.
With a whisper of metal on leather, Trist’s longsword cleared his sheath even before all the blows of that first charge had been struck. He swung to his right, in an arc at just the level of a man’s neck, and took the head of the Kimmerian who’d deflected Sir Florent’s lance with a shield. A shock ran up his arm: the first Tithe since the Battle of the Passe de Mûre. It was a cruel thing, but Trist had every intention of using these men to strengthen himself for the fighting to come. They were his whetstone, and each one he killed would see him more likely to survive the next daemon he faced.
When the knights had finished their pass through the mercenaries, Trist led them in a wheel to the left, away from the sea coast. The Kimmerians, he saw as they came around, had the same thought: not to chance getting pinned against the water, without room to maneuver. A quick count told Trist that he and his companions had come out the better of the exchange - mostly due to the advantage in reach their lances gave them over the swords and axes of the mercenaries.
Besides the two men that Trist himself had dealt with, another three had been unhorsed by lances, leaving only five Kimmerians still riding. In the meantime, Trist could see that among his own knights, Sir Erek had not drawn a weapon to replace his lance, and was clutching a gauntleted hand to his side, where the steel of his cuirass was smeared with wet blood. Sir Florent, in the meanwhile, had thrown off his helm, and was bleeding from somewhere near his left eye, but had drawn his arming sword and otherwise seemed to be fine.
“One more pass!” Trist shouted, and the wedge loosened as they galloped forward. Now that they’d all used their lances, the knights needed room to swing their weapons, and remaining so tightly packed could actually work against them. An arrow flew over Trist’s shoulder, taking a Kimmerian’s horse in the throat, and causing it to stumble. The horse tumbled in a summersault like a child, crushing the man who’d been riding it under its massive body, and that left only four.
Trist aimed Caz’ head between two of the oncoming men. Against Adrammelech, he’d learned just how dangerous it could be to rely on a horse’s speed against a monster with inhuman reflexes: now, he was on the other side of the situation. His blade lashed out at the man on his left, who was just a hair ahead, then swept around into the man on his right, before either of them could even complete their swings at him. The Tithes jolted up his arm in such quick succession that he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. That was three; one each for the King of Shadows, for Acrasia, and for himself. The remaining enemies were outnumbered two to one, and that was before the squires got involved. The Kimmerians were mobbed, surrounded by horses on every side, and hacked down shortly. Trist scanned over his people; Sir Erek was slumping in the saddle, but everyone else seemed to be more or less in one piece.
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Clarisant’s eyes were wide, and Trist didn’t even realize he was still holding his gore-streaked blade until her stare fixed on it. Even Yaél seemed to have gotten a thrust in, for Trist could see that the last handspan of her blade glistened with dark blood.
“To the gates!” Trist called. “Lucan, help Erek!” He grabbed Clarisant’s reins in his left hand, pressed his knees to Cazador’s flanks, and got them both moving toward the city walls. They’d been close enough for the guards atop the parapets to watch the skirmish, and as they rode up to the gate the men above them were cheering. The portcullis was rising even as they approached, and Trist only had to slow Caz and his wife’s palfrey to a walk just as they reached the wall. The moment everyone was inside the gate, Baron Urien’s men began lowering it again behind them, securing the city.
“We need a surgeon!” Sir Florent called. The older knight slipped down out of his saddle, and between he and Lucan managed to get the wounded Sir Erek off his horse and down onto the cobbled street.
“Here,” Trist said, handing his longsword to Yaél. He pulled the wineskin slung to his saddle off, opened it, and half closed his eyes, concentrating on the one particular red thread that he needed, carefully uncoiling it from where it was wound in his heart, and teasing it out to touch the watered-wine inside the skin. A wave of exhaustion swept over him, as if he’d just run up a mountain and back down the other side, and he swayed for a moment. “Make him drink this,” Trist gasped, shoving the wineskin toward the fallen knight.
Henry understood exactly what he meant, took the skin, and pressed it to the wounded man’s lips. “You’ll be fine, Sir Knight,” Henry assured the man with a grin. “Drink up, now. Better than your mother’s milk.”
After a few gulps, Sir Erek coughed, sputtered, and lurched forward, half sitting up. Sir Florent, in the meanwhile, had been unstrapping the other knight’s steel cuirass, and now pulled it away, then sliced open his gambeson to get at the wound beneath.
“It’s closed!” Sir Florent gasped. “It doesn’t even look like a fresh wound - it’s scabbed over, as if it were days old!”
Trist nodded his head, heavily. “Make sure he keeps drinking,” he instructed Sir Florent. “And have a mouthful yourself. How is your eye?”
“Splinter from my lance,” Florent said, brushing a finger to his cheek, right beneath the eye. “But I will be well.”
“Trist,” Clarisant said, and her tone was that of a frightened child. It reminded him of Yaél, that night in Havre de Paix, when Trist had rescued her.
“All is well now,” Trist assured his wife, reaching up to lift her down from her horse. “First time you have seen men fighting and dying,” he guessed, easily enough. Clarisant nodded and laid her face against his chest, against the steel of his cuirass, and he wrapped his arms around her carefully. For all the good it did him in battle, the armor only got in the way at moments like these.
“Is that my sister?” A man’s voice rose above the murmuring of the crowd. Trist turned his head, to see a picture of Baron Urien, only half the man’s age. Like the rest of his family, Clarisant’s brother wore their arms proudly: in this case, a blue tabard over his mail, with the white sea shell of Rocher de la Garde displayed prominently.
“Gareth!” Clarisant cried, and Trist gave the man credit for, if nothing else, the smile that brought a glow to his wife’s face. However excited she was to see her brother again, however, she seemed to have been shaken enough by the violence to continue clutching Trist, only turning to address the current ruler of the city over her shoulder, from the protection of her husband’s embrace. “Gareth, this is my husband, Sir Trist,” she said. “We were sent by the father and the King.”
“Sir Gareth,” Trist greeted the older man, “We met once many years ago, when I was but a boy. It is good to see you well, and the city not yet invested. I am Sir Trist du Camaret-à-Arden, Exarch of the Lady Acrasia. You know my cousin Lucan, of course, as well as Sir Erek and Dame Etoile. Sir Florent is here, from the Barony du Rive Ouest, with two of his knights. And this is my squire, Yaél du Havre de Paix. As your sister says, we bring messages from King Lionel and Baron Urien, and we are here to reinforce the city.”
At that, murmurs passed through the gathering crowd like leaves swirling through the rapids of a fast moving stream. Trist caught only fragments, but the word ‘Exarch’ was repeated multiple times, by men and women whose eyes lit with newfound hope.
“The King sends us an Exarch to hold the city, does he?” Gareth du Rocher de la Garde said, then raised his voice so that it would carry. “We are honored by his protection, and by your service, Sir Trist. With an Exarch to hold the line, Rocher de la Garde will never fall!” The young man raised his fist in the air, and got a cheer from the crowd.
The sky was just turning colors with the beginning of sunset when they reconvened in the castle, in a rooftop garden with a view out across the city to the harbor and the ocean beyond. The trip through the city streets to the keep had brought out a swelling crowd of people to cheer the arrival of a troop of knights, and while that had slowed them down, Trist judged it good for the city, and tried not to resent the delay.
The horses had been seen to by stable hands, and the various knights and squires given rooms. Trist, as Clarisant’s husband, had followed her to her old chambers, with Yaél permitted to accompany them. While he and his squire got their armor off, Clarisant had bustled around half in a panic, opening the windows to air out rooms that had not been used in months.
His wife found old clothes to change into, and even some for Yaél to wear, while Trist had been sent a clean set of breeches and tunic dug up from his cousin Lucan’s things. The blue and white of Rocher de la Garde featured prominently in the fabrics, and it made quite a change from the green and black of Camaret-à-Arden. Now, finally, with the blood washed off, Sir Gareth convened something of a family meeting.
Gareth himself was there, with his wife Lenomie, and Urien’s wife Blasine; and Sir Lucan, his wife Miriam, and their youngest, a sleeping infant in her arms; and finally, Trist and Clarisant. The sea-breeze tussled the leaves of the potted trees, and played with the long hair of the ladies, as the seven found seats and glasses of wine.
“You will want to read these,” Trist said, passing two letters to Sir Gareth. “And I must ask you whether my father’s lands in Camaret-à-Arden have fallen.” He swallowed a gulp of white wine to calm himself.
“I fear you will not care for my answer,” Sir Gareth said, with a sigh, breaking the seal on the first letter. “The enemy army is only a day’s ride north of us, two at most. They’ve cut off the road to the Ardenwood, and I have not the slightest idea whether anyone there has survived.”