Crusader

Chapter 57

Vara

Day 1 of the Siege of Sanctuary

There were no catapults hurling rock through the air, no siege towers making their way over the plains, no arrows filling the skies above the wall. There was nothing but the sound of an army outside, the raucous cheers, the battle hymns, the shouts and glee of the invaders poised less than a mile from the Sanctuary walls, waiting, as though they would come across the open distance and split the walls wide.

“They sit, they wait,” Thad said, addressing the officers, who were gathered around the Council Chambers. “Of course they stop the flow of convoys along the major roads nearby, but that’s to be expected. We can’t see them, of course, but you know they’ll have taken all the grain that’s being shipped through the crossroad north of here.”

Alaric watched Thad from behind templed hands, as always. This time was different, Vara thought, in that the Ghost’s brow was stitched together like storm clouds on the horizon, as though thunderheads were bound to streak down his face and unleash fury on the first poor bastard to cross before him. “Every day they hold the crossroads is another day they hold the Plains of Perdamun in their grip, another day closer to the harvest, another day closer to the eventual starving of Reikonos.”

“Are we actively rooting for Reikonos now?” Erith said, causing everyone to turn and look at her. “I mean, I know we’re sympathetic to the humans, but the Confederation and the Council of Twelve? Bumbling idiots. They did want this war, after all.”

“The city of Reikonos is the largest in Arkaria with over two million people,” Alaric said. “Should the dark elves take it, they will not be merciful to the occupants-or the human race.”

“Oh, so we are rooting for the Council of Twelve,” Erith said, not chagrined. “Okay, well, that’s good to know.”

“Personally, I’m more worried about me, then the rest of you, then our members, then the applicants, and somewhere down the list, the flower garden,” Vaste said. “I’ll worry about Reikonos and the rest of the human race when the destruction of all of the above is not hanging over my head. Especially the flowers because they’re so pretty.”

“What chance do we have to push them back?” Ryin asked, turning his question to Thad. “A hundred thousand or more, yes? How do we break an army of that size? How many would we need to do it?”

“More than we have,” Alaric said. “I suspect that they will not be driven away as easily as they were the first time now that they have reinforcements. We can defend the walls against that number by keeping them at bay, but by bottling us up, they achieve their directive-they hold total control over the plains. There is no way we can effectively guard against the predations of their soldiers against the farms without being able to move our army to do so.”

“Perhaps we cannot control the Plains of Perdamun while they have us cornered so,” Vara said, speaking at last, “but we can give them pause and keep them from extending that control.”

Alaric’s eyebrow came up behind his hands. “You mean to fight a small war, to distract them, to split their forces.”

“Yes,” she said. “I mean to take a small force and do what they accused us of two years ago-find their convoys of stolen goods and strike them, then teleport back here with the spoils. They’ll be forced to move soldiers off the line of siege to escort the convoys, and as we move closer to harvest time that will be a larger and larger group necessary to keep them safe. With a druid and a wizard we’ll be able to teleport out of trouble before any army can reach us, and we can cause enough trouble and discord north of here to force them to keep splitting their forces.”

“I like it,” Vaste said, nodding his head at a sideways angle. “It almost sounds like something that could really work, as though perhaps it had been done at some point in the recent past.”

“It seems a shame to let our enemies have all the fun,” Vara said archly, “seeing as when Goliath and the goblins tried it, it worked very effectively at keeping all parties concerned fully off balance.”

“Yes, and also prompted every power in the area to send in more troops,” Ryin said. “What’s to stop the Sovereign from doing so again?”

“Just package up another division or five and throw them into the Plains of Perdamun?” Thad asked. “The Sovereign has to be reaching a limit at some point. There are only so many able-bodied dark elven men still living in Saekaj. Sooner or later, the Sovereign will run dry of forces. He can’t maintain any semblance of a line south of Reikonos, keep armies on the eastern frontiers with the Northlands and the Riverlands to keep them from interfering with his siege of Reikonos, and still keep the River Perda buttoned up the way he does while sending fifty or a hundred thousand more troops to the Plains of Perdamun. Something will give.”

“And let us hope it is not our walls, and our forces, and our flowers,” Vaste said.

“So we send a force?” Ryin asked, looking around, as though gauging the response around the table. “We do what the goblins did to us, raid the transports of the dark elves, wreck their convoys and cause them to spread out their forces, pull them from here?”

“It does seem somehow fitting,” Alaric said from behind his hands, “that the war started in that very way, and now we return to the beginning for our own purposes. Vara, since it is your idea, I would ask you to spearhead this attack force. No more than a hundred at any given time are to go with you, and no fewer than three spellcasters with the ability to cast a teleportation spell to return you here. I will not have us lose people to mere accidents. Keep a wary eye around you, even if you travel at night, and be certain to be doubly careful so as to avoid ambushes. The dark elves will not long tolerate us raiding the fruits of their thievery.” Alaric smiled and the hands came down. “I do appreciate the irony, though; they steal from local farmers, and we proceed to steal it back for our own purposes.”

“Yes, it is somewhat delicious, isn’t it?” Vaste asked. “It’s like pounding your enemies as if they were mutton and then licking the tears off of their faces.” There was an uncomfortable silence. “Oh, as though none of you have ever done that.”

“Where are you going to begin?” Erith asked, looking to Vara. “The Plains of Perdamun are huge, and traversing the whole thing, even with all the portals available to you-I mean, the Sovereign will have sent out wagons by the hundreds to collect the bounty of the plains.”

“We start in the north,” Vara said, and she felt her mind harden in resolution. “Near Prehorta, the closest to their home and where they’ll be paying the least attention. Then we’ll move west, toward the river and then …” She felt a thin, malicious smile crease her lips, and she wondered idly if it stole the color from them when she did it. “If we do this right, we’ll keep them rather busy …”