The most effective commander aims to disrupt his enemy's plans; failing that, to prevent the enemy's ability to join or muster their forces, isolating them from their allies. Only if both these fail should we consider an attack on the enemy's army in the field, when they are already at full strength.
The worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
* The Campaign Journals of General Aurelius, volume I
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11th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
For the first time since they’d left the marching army, three days before, Trist was able to rise with the dawn and resume his regular sword practice. He left Claire cocooned in blankets in her childhood bed, with only a kiss on her forehead that did not wake her. In breeches, boots, and a clean linen shirt, Trist descended to the courtyard between the keep and the gatehouse, where he found most of the other knights who had journeyed east with him.
“No trouble over the night?” Trist asked Sir Florent, after they’d both finished cutting the clock from all of the major guards. He took a drink from his wine-skin out of habit, but in truth the exercise was not nearly as tiring as he had once found it. His body felt loose, limber, and ready to continue.
The older knight shook his head. “You would have heard if there was. What I don’t understand is this - Rocher de la Garde is a port city. The largest port city in Narvonne.” Trist nodded. “Well,” Florent continued, “They have us surrounded on land, sure enough, and that will prevent the fields from being worked. But without blockading the harbor, they can’t truly starve the city out. The fishermen still go out at dawn, and merchant ships can still come into port. All the docks are behind the walls. Unless they’re planning to use siege engines to try to break the quays...” He shrugged. “Something isn’t adding up.”
Trist frowned. “If the king were here, he would be able to explain it, or at least to make a good guess,” he said confidently. “But the army won’t arrive for several days yet, and then they’ll have to break through the enemy camp. Which is another thing that does not make sense - they can’t hope to starve us out when we only need to wait a few days for the siege to be lifted. If I do not understand what my enemy is doing, it makes me suspicious.”
“Aye,” Sir Florent agreed. “It usually means an unpleasant surprise is coming. Let’s get something for our bellies; they’re liable to try the walls today, I should think.”
“I will wake my wife first, I think,” Trist decided. “And get most of my armor on, at least.”
By the time he’d made it back up to Clarisant’s rooms, he found that she was awake, and had pressed an unfamiliar girl into service as an emergency lady’s maid. “Got your morning swings in?” Claire asked him with a grin as she sat still, letting the girl pin her hair into place with a circlet and a veil.
“Morning cuts,” Trist corrected her, with an answering smile. “I thought I would come up and walk you down to breakfast. Sir Florent thinks they’ll try the city walls today, and I’m inclined to agree, though there are a few things we don’t understand.”
“You can tell me over breakfast,” she decided. “You know you’ve started to speak differently to me, my lord husband?” The maid stepped away, and Claire rose, accepting Trist’s offered arm.
“Have my armor brought down to the great hall,” Trist instructed the girl. “What do you mean?” he asked his wife, as they left her chambers and made their way down the hall toward the stair.
“You only use contractions with the people you are most comfortable with,” Clarisant pointed out. “With anyone else, or in public, you never do. You tend to speak very formally. But now you’re using contractions with me.”
Trist grinned. “My mother drilled it into me,” he admitted. “A knight should be courteous, well spoken and polite. But yes, I do feel like I can be comfortable when it is only you and I.”
At the bottom of the stairs, his cousin, Sir Lucan, and Miriam, his wife, waited for them. “Good morning to you,” Lucan called up, as Trist and Clarisant descended. “I have to say, we are both feeling a good bit more optimistic now that you’ve returned to the city.”
Miriam nodded. “I think a lot of people were worried that the daemons would come, and no Exarch would be here to fight them off,” she added.
“Well, Trist is here now,” Clarisant assured her, releasing Trist’s arm so that she could greet the other woman with a kiss on her cheek.
“Hopefully Sir Gareth will be in a better mood now,” Lucan commented to Trist, with lowered voice.
“I fear you may be disappointed,” Trist said, then offered his arm to Clarisant again, and the four of them entered the great hall, where a large breakfast had been laid out. Trist couldn’t help but frown, considering how little food would be coming into the city during a siege. It was clear that Sir Gareth was working off the same assumptions that Trist and Sir Florent had discussed in the courtyard, and he couldn’t help but feel that was a mistake.
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In any event, Claire’s brother must have decided to try to begin again on better terms - or perhaps their mother really had put her foot down. Gareth rose, along with his wife, Lenomie, and the Baroness, Blasine. Sir Florent was there, as well, and both Sir Erec and Dame Etoile. It did not escape Trist that, with Sir Lucan, this meant that Gareth was surrounded by every knight sworn to his father, the Baron, who had ridden east with Trist. Perhaps it would make the man less defensive, but Trist didn’t have high hopes.
“Good morning, Sir Trist, Sister,” Gareth greeted them. “Please, join us.” He motioned to the platters that filled the high table: freshly baked loaves of long, thin bread, served with creamy butter for spreading; sweet raspberry, fig and peach tarts; a wheel of soft cheese, wrapped in chestnut leaves and tied with string; oranges, imported from over the sea; and a sort of light, fluffy egg-pie, baked with crab meat, chopped onions, and cheese atop a half-crust.
The Baroness sat first, and then the knights and their ladies, filling their plates with food. Servants and squires waited against the wall, ready to fill a goblet with watered wine or beer, and even a pitcher of freshly squeezed juice from the oranges. “I trust you are well rested?” Blasine asked, looking to her daughter for an answer.
“We are, mother,” Claire responded.
“Good. And the child?”
“Still there,” she answered, with a smile. “No problems, Mother, save a bit of an upset stomach some mornings, and perhaps that I sleep a bit later.”
“Excellent,” the Baroness said, with a satisfied nod. “You must take care of yourself. No more riding off to Angelus knows where.”
“I cannot stand simply waiting for my husband to return,” Claire shot back.
“That is what a wife does,” her mother chastised her, and Trist felt the need to step in before the meal descended into an argument.
“In any event, we will both be here in the city for the duration of the siege,” Trist said, as diplomatically as he could. “And that is what we should turn our thoughts towards. Sir Florent and I were speaking this morning, and we are both concerned there is something we are not seeing.”
“Oh?” Gareth asked, setting aside his wine. “What would that be? I think it all lines up rather well. The usurpers’ plans did not come off like they thought at Falais, and their movements since then have been desperate. They know that if they do not win quickly, they have no hope of success.”
Trist blinked. “We thwarted them at Falais by the barest margin, and they achieved everything they hoped for at Lutetia. They have the breadbasket of the kingdom behind them, and if they take Rocher de la Garde they will cut us off from foreign trade entirely.”
“You forget, Sir Trist,” Gareth said, confidently, “That the new King’s army is only a few days ride away. This siege will be lifted when he arrives, and we catch them between the hammer and the anvil. In the meantime, they have no ships to blockade the port. Our fishermen went out this morning before dawn, just as they always do, to not even an attempt at resistance. They have no hope of starving us out; time is on our side.”
“That is precisely what makes no sense,” Trist insisted. “Only a fool would besiege Rocher de la Garde without some way to blockade the harbor, and I do not like assuming that our enemies are fools.”
The doors to the great hall opened, and a squire ran up to the table before taking a knee. “Word from the wall, m’lord,” the boy said, then waited for permission to speak.
“Go on, then,” Gareth said, impatiently. “Have they begun the assault?”
“No, m’lord,” the messenger answered. “They seek a parley, Sir Gareth. A party has ridden out from their camp with a white banner.”
“This should be interesting,” Gareth said, rising. “Sir Trist, I want you with me. Sir Erec as well. Let us see to our armor.”
Trist pushed aside his unfinished food, and rose. He could not help feeling that things were not going to proceed as Sir Gareth expected.
By the time the church bells had rung terce, the entire group had assembled atop the parapet of the city’s northern wall, with the harbor to the south, and the fields that surrounded the city stretching out to the left. Far to the north, the smudge of the Ardenwood could be seen on the horizon, but between that great forest and the besieged city lay the enemy camp, which stretched to the Rhea, then circled all the way around the walls. As Trist and Clarisant had found the night before, they had spent yesterday entrenching and raising palisades, with the whole just beyond the range of a good Iebara-wood longbow.
Now that the enemy had settled into their camp, the siege would commence in earnest. The construction projects of the enemy’s engineers could be seen from atop the wall: trebuchets, rams, and siege towers, which had been carted to the field in wagons, disassembled, were now being reconstructed piece by piece. In the meanwhile, halfway across the empty field between the northern gate and the enemy camp, a small group on horseback waited, with a white banner lofted on a pole, waving in the summer breeze.
“I don’t see the daemons,” Sir Gareth remarked, gazing out with one hand shading his eyes from the sun.
“They will be down there,” Trist assured him. “Somewhere.” He might even be able to pick them out at a distance, if he allowed himself to settle into the way of seeing which revealed threads to him. If his brother-in-law had been willing to wait, and give him the time.
“Come along then,” Gareth said, instead. “Let’s see what they have to say. Perhaps they’ve realized the futility of their siege, and seek to negotiate favorable terms of submission.” Trist caught his wife’s eye, and shook his head.
As Gareth and Sir Erec set off down the stone steps to the gate and their waiting horses, Clarisant drew near Trist, and under the guise of kissing his cheek, whispered into his ear. “Take care. My brother has always been too confident.”
“I will bring him back in one piece,” Trist assured her, then set off down the stairs as well. All three of them were armed and armored, and set their helms on before swinging up into the saddles of the waiting horses. Trist would have preferred riding Caz, but the destrier needed time to recover from his arrow wound, and forcing him to carry an armored knight’s weight at the moment would only slow the process. Once in his saddle, Trist loosened his longsword in its sheath, to be certain it wouldn’t stick if and when he needed to draw. Sir Erec was given a long pole with a white banner attached to the top, and it streamed out behind them as they rode beneath the gate.
“Keep it raised,” Trist called to Sir Florent as he rode past. “In case we need to return in a hurry.” The older knight nodded, and Trist left the safety of the walls behind for the no man's land between two armies.