We have indeed confirmed the effect of the Scarlet Daemon upon fertile women, though General Aurelius has not yet agreed to the experimental trials I consider necessary to gauge the precise range of the effect. Nonetheless, of the forty two surviving women of childbearing age present for Zepar’s assault on the village of Coriovallum, we can verify that not a single one has carried a child to term in the two years since.
* The Marian Codex
☀
11th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
By the time Trist had arrived at the Tower of Tears, the Caliphate siege had already been broken. The arrival of the daemon Adrammelech had thrown the battlefield into utter chaos. As a result, this was the first time that Trist had ever found himself in the position of looking down from a parapet, atop the walls of a city as an army’s siege engines began their work.
King Lionel had warned him that Sir Moriaen was skilled in the use of such weapons, and now Trist was witness to the truth of that statement. The enemy camp, equal parts native Narvonnians from the Barony of Champs d'Or, mixed with Kimmerian mercenaries brought over the Inner Sea from the north, had been well positioned. The men were just out of bowshot, behind ditches and palisades, and thus from relative safety they began to load and fire a variety of catapults, mangonels, and trebuchets. No doubt Sir Moriaen could have expounded on the differences in great detail, but for Trist’s purposes it was enough to see that all the machines threw rocks a great distance.
The first volley seemed to be about finding range, more than anything else. Some of the missiles landed short, hitting no man’s land just before the base of the city walls, spraying dirt a dozen feet high and leaving impact craters. Others hit the walls square with a great crash, and a few even cleared the fortifications entirely and slammed into Rocher de la Garde proper. Trist watched a boulder the size of a man’s torso sail directly over the position above the gate where he, Sir Gareth, cousin Lucan, Sir Erec and Sir Florent looked out from between the crenelations. He had to turn to watch the descent and the landing: the projectile crashed into the roof of a two-story home, as large as the Chapmans’ had been in Camaret-à-Arden. The roof caved in, bringing most of the second story down with it in a cloud of dust, and Trist could only hope that no one had been inside.
“The third volley is when it will get bad,” Sir Florent remarked to the four younger knights. “He’ll make adjustments now, and try our range again. Once they have it, Moriaen will go right to fire.”
“How do you know?” Erec asked. He seemed entirely healed from the wound he’d suffered on the way into the city, and Trist marveled again at the power of the Graal Boon.
“Fought with him against the Caliphate, near twenty-five years ago now,” Florent explained. “The man is a terror with siege engines. If anyone can breach our walls in only three days, it is Moriaen du Arsenault.”
Trist, in the meanwhile, let the conversation flow over and past him, and took a breath to center himself. He let his eyes slide into that other state of focus, when he could see the strands and cores of otherworldly beings, and with that sight he scanned the enemy camp.
“Two daemons in the camp,” Trist said, finding what he’d been looking for. “One is Zepar, I recognize the look of it. Yellow. The other must be Bathin, the daemon that makes the portals. Orange and yellow.”
“The colors,” Sir Gareth asked, his tone no longer concerned with whatever grudges might have developed between he and Trist. “What do they mean?”
“It means they are both stronger than me,” Trist explained. “But I am better than Zepar with a blade, and faster. I can beat him. Bathin is weaker than the scarlet daemon.”
“And key to Sir Moriaen’s strategy, no doubt,” Florent remarked. “I suspect that one will stay back, and only make use of those gateways you described.”
“What about the sea, Trist?” Gareth asked. “Can you get a look at that monstrosity outside the harbor?”
“It is no longer outside the harbor,” Trist said, immediately picking out the bright colors of the thing beneath the waves. “Forneus is almost at the docks. I can see its core, it is…” He sighed; no worse than he’d feared, but it would have been nice to be wrong. “Yellow with a hint of white.”
“That’s worse, is it?” Lucan asked, with a grin.
“Worse,” Trist confirmed. “The only other things I have seen with shades of white were the Sun Eater and the King of Shadows. But they were both shaded with blue, as well.”
“So, worse than the Prince of Plagues, not as bad as the Sun Eater,” Sir Florent said, with a grim nod. “That’s going to be you, and you alone, Sir Trist.”
“I know it.” Trist turned back to the army, finding the burning colors of Zepar. “That is the one I am watching for,” he said, stretching out one gauntleted hand to indicate a portion of the camp between two mangonels.
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Gareth, in the meanwhile, had grabbed a squire. “Run to the docks!” He instructed the boy. “Tell them to abandon the ships and flee. Anyone left there when the monster arrives is a corpse.” The boy ran off down the stairs just as Sir Moriaen’s siege engines loosed again.
This time, not a single one of the flung rocks missed the city. Trist noticed that the larger projectiles hit the city walls square on, while the smaller arced overhead and into the city. He frowned, and risked a glance into the interior, where the tower of the Cathedral of Rahab stretched to the skies halfway between their position above the gate, and the keep at the center of the city. None of the projectiles reached that far. Claire was safe, so long as Etoile had gotten her there.
“Fire, next, then,” Gareth said, agreeing with Sir Florent. “The heavier rocks against the walls, and it’ll be pitch and oil and fat into the city. Sir Erec, my messenger won't return for a while yet. Grab someone and have them send word to the fire brigades.”
“Yes, m’lord.” Erec inclined his head, then rushed off.
Trist, in the meanwhile, had returned to watching the camp. The two sources of daemonic light had come together, he saw. “Here it comes,” he breathed, and the other three knights focused on him. “I can see the gate forming. Now, the question is…”
He turned around, leaving his observation of the camp to look for a corresponding gathering of strands somewhere in the city itself. A crashing roar came from the docks, but he couldn’t deal with that right now. “West gate,” Trist shouted, as soon as he saw it. “I need a horse.”
“You’ll have one,” Gareth said. “Give them my name, below, and good hunting.”
Trist ran down the stairs, pell-mell, one hand on the hilt of his sword to keep the sheathe from getting caught up in his legs. As soon as he came around the last curve, he shouted, “A horse! By the order of Sir Gareth, a saddled horse!”
“Here, m’lord,” a boy called, leading over a courser by the reins.
“Good lad,” Trist told him, set a foot in the stirrup and hauled himself up into the saddle in a single motion.
“Luck be with you, Exarch,” the boy said with wide eyes, handing over the reins. He couldn’t have been older than twelve.
“And with you,” Trist said, then kicked the courser into motion. “Ha!” He leaned forward in the saddle, rising up in the stirrups with practiced ease, and unspooled the burning orange thread of the Hunter’s Boon. “Zepar,” he growled as he rode. “I am coming for you.” Servant to his will, the thread rooted in the steed running beneath him, and shot forward, latching onto something near the western gate, just as Trist had expected. The courser’s speed increased.
Sir Moriaen was proving every bit the capable commander the king had told Trist about days before. An assault of siege engines on the north wall, a daemon to destroy the docks that made up the southern portion of the city, and then a sneak attack to open the western gate, all at the same time. The only direction he hadn’t attacked from was the east, but the brackish mouth of the River Rea there would have complicated such an attack immensely.
“Make way!” Trist shouted as he rode down the cobbled city streets, leaning low and forward over the powerful shoulders and stretched neck of the courser. He wished he knew the horse’s name, but there was no time. He wished he was riding Caz. Most of the city-folk had retreated as far from the walls as they could get, but Trist had to ride south and then west, which took him through the heart of Rocher de la Garde. Men and women scrambled out of his way, the courser picking up speed until it was moving faster than any mortal horse had a right to run, pulled by an inexorable force toward his prey.
By the time Trist came into sight of the west gate, things were already bad.
A score of Kimmerian mercenaries were through and in formation around the yawning portal, shields and pikes in the front, archers behind. To their rear, more soldiers poured out, two at a time, falling into formation and filling in the gaps when the city’s defenders managed to kill someone.
Those defenders, in the meanwhile, had split themselves between defending the winches that moved the west gate, and attacking the Kimmerians. Trist recognized Sir Carados, who had come with Sir Florent from the Barony du Rive Ouest, leading the attempt to dislodge the mercenaries from their position. As Trist barreled down the road toward the gate, the western knight waded into the fray with a spiked ball on a chain, called a flail, in his right hand, and a shield on his left arm. A wicked swing of the flail sent the ball into a Kimmerian soldier’s onion-shaped helm, crushing it as easily as an overripe fruit. Carados took a pike-thrust with his shield, and when he yanked the flail out of the falling corpse, a spray of blood, bone, and brains came with it. “Forward!” Carados shouted. “With me, men of Narvonne!”
“On your right!” Trist shouted ahead, and to his satisfaction Carados’ helm turned just enough that Trist was confident the man had heard him. He wove the courser between Narvonnian men at arms and charged the Kimmerian line at a full gallop, drawing his sword and rising in his stirrups.
Men who had never seen a mounted charge for themselves sometimes had a difficult time understanding just how effective it was, and why. The courser Trist was riding at full gallop weighed about a thousand pounds, and he himself, with his battle harness and gear, nearly two hundred and fifty. Together, they hit the Kimmerian’s line like a boulder from a catapult.
The Kimmerian front line braced their shields, and the second line behind them tried to aim their pikes, but Trist and the courser were moving faster than any horse and rider they’d ever seen before. The pikes shattered and the shield wall collapsed, the horse screamed, and Trist leapt free of the injured courser, rolling on his shoulder and coming up with his longsword in Plow Guard. He lashed out with quick cuts to either side, rotating on his left foot, and two Kimmerian archers died. With the Tithe of each soul, a serpent of fire writhed up his arm, one for himself and one for Auberon.
“Good to have you, Sir Trist!” Carados called, caving a man’s chest in with his flail, then bashing an archer in the face with his shield. The Kimmerian line collapsed, and for a moment it looked as if they might actually have a chance to hold the shining gate. Then, a sabaton enameled blood red stepped through the rift hanging in the air.
“Fall back!” Trist shouted. “Protect the winch at all costs! Leave this to me!”
Zepar the Scarlet rolled its shoulders and stretched as it came through the portal into Rocher de la Garde. “Exarch,” it said, drawing the word out nearly into a hiss through its gritted teeth. “We were interrupted when last we fought.”
“To your salvation,” Trist answered the monster, raising his sword up into the Ox Guard, above his right shoulder, tip of the blade aimed directly at its enameled cuirass. “You will find no such reprieve today.”
A thunderous roar and crash came from the docks, and from the north, Trist smelled the first hints of smoke. Sir Moriaen must have begun his engines at throwing fire into the city.
“Your city, and everyone in it, dies today,” Zepar gloated. “Beginning with you.”