Fire and Sword

Chapter 25

If Salokan had known beforehand that Daavis was going to be such a tough nut to crack, he might have reconsidered his strategy. His generals continually assured him that the city’s fall was imminent, but as far as he could see the only thing that was imminent was another failed and bloody assault. He was tired of seeing long streams of Haxan wounded making their way to the hospital corner of the camp while the walls of Daavis stood there scorched and battered but still standing. He had no idea what casualties Charion’s forces were suffering, but he was damn sure it was considerably less than those she was inflicting on him. “When I take the city,” Salokan said aloud, “I am going to hang Queen Charion from the main gate. I will hang her by her feet. Alive. And naked.”

Some nearby officers chuckled appreciatively, secretly relieved he was not yet talking about hanging them upside down and naked from the walls of Daavis. If the city did not fall soon, they knew they could expect little in the way of kindness from their king. The problem was no one had expected Charion to be so effective in rallying the defense of her capital.

Salokan studied his officers, accurately reading their minds. I need an advantage, he thought. I need something Charion does not have. He sighed heavily. And, of course, that something was Lynan Rosetheme. Then he could parade the exiled prince up and down the country raising the province against its own diminutive queen now bottled up in Daavis. Symbols were important, he knew, just as he knew his army’s continued lack of success against the city was also a symbol: a symbol of his failing invasion of Grenda Lear.

It was not supposed to turn out like this, he told himself. By now he was supposed to be inside Daavis preparing for the inevitable counterattack, with Lynan in one pocket and Charion in the other.

There was a cry from behind him, and he looked around to see some soldiers pointing to a flock of pigeons coming from the west and heading northeast.

“That’s strange, isn’t it?” he asked allowed but of no one in particular. “There are no pigeons on the Oceans of Grass, are there?”

“No, your Majesty,” said an aide, then cleared his throat. “They could be ours.”

Salokan looked at him, startled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean they could be the pigeons we sent with Thewor for Rendle’s expedition.”

“They couldn’t all be carrying a message, could they?” someone asked.

“I think they are all bearing the same message,” Salokan said bleakly.

Farben shook his head as if to clear his ears. “I’m sorry, your Highness, but I’m not sure I understood you correctly.”

“You understood me, Farben. Don’t lie.”

“But we don’t have enough soldiers.”

“See, I knew you understood me. We do have enough soldiers.”

“But we are safe inside the city walls,” Farben argued, knowing even as he did so that he was arguing for a lost cause. “Salokan’s forces are bleeding to death out there. Why risk such a venture?”

“Because anything we can do to demoralize the enemy increases the chances of them breaking off the siege.”

“But Areava’s army will be here soon! They can do the fighting! Our soldiers are weary, most are injured in one way or another ...”

“Our soldiers would jump at the chance of striking back at the enemy,” Charion declared. “You do not know them as I do.”

“Undoubtedly, your Highness. Is there nothing I can do to dissuade you from this course of action?”

Charion shook her head. “And tell them that I will lead them personally.”

Salokan himself organized the next assault. He planned for the catapults to concentrate their bombardment on the northeast wall, near the camp. The enemy would assume either that wall or its opposite, the southwest wall, would be attacked in force. Two regiments of foot would take scaling ladders and assault the southwest wall to reinforce that impression. Then the main attack, consisting of five regiments of foot, would attack the north wall, with no warning. With luck, they would reach the parapets and clear the walkway to the southwest wall allowing the decoy regiments to join them. With seven regiments in the city, they should be able to open the main gates to let in the rest of Salokan’s force, including his cavalry.

At first it went well. The catapults hurled their stones accurately from the second shot, and a short while later, for the very first time, a part of the wall was seen to crack from parapet to base. Salokan then gave the order for the attack on the southwest wall to start, and that, too, went better than expected. Several ladders managed to stay against the wall long enough for some of the infantry to actually reach the parapets. When Salokan determined Charion would have committed her reserves to the southwest, he ordered the general attack on the north wall. It was then that things started to go wrong.

There were far more defenders atop the north wall than he thought would be possible, unless Charion had double-guessed him. He refused to believe that; too many of his troops already believed she was preternaturally lucky. Scaling ladders were pushed off as soon as they were put up. A hail of arrows and rubble pierced and pelted his troops. Just as he was about to call back his forces to reform and attack again, he heard the great main gate start to creak. His heart leaped with joy! He was certain it could only mean the two regiments attacking the southwest wall had made it over despite the odds against them and were now opening the city to Salokan. He hurriedly shouted new orders and his generals scurried to obey them. The five infantry regiments dropped their ladders and lined up on the causeway in front of the gate while his cavalry eagerly readied their columns behind the infantry.

But instead of his forces being greeted by two friendly regiments inside the walls, they were met by a cavalry charge. Salokan watched in horror as his waiting foot regiments were cut down like wheat before a scythe. His army panicked and started to spill off the causeway, and still the Hume cavalry came on, hewing left and right. What was worse, leading the enemy attack was Charion herself, shining in polished mail, her saber whirling, glittering in the air, seeming twice her size in combat.

Salokan screamed for his own cavalry to engage the enemy, but his infantry was in the way. Between the charging horses in front and the pressing mass behind, a large portion of the foot regiments could not move at all and the soldiers were simply stabbed or slashed or suffocated where they were, the dead left standing because there was no room for them to fall down. And then, just as suddenly as it had come, the attack ended and the enemy retreated, the gates closing behind them before the Haxus cavalry could get through their own infantry to reach them. Salokan sat on his horse in shock, staring at the heap of Haxus dead on the causeway, almost overwhelmed by the cries and groans of the wounded and dying.

It was a small river town, made up of little more than a single street ending in a wharf and with houses on either side. There was a small inn, a ramp near the dock, a stable. A few townspeople were engaged in their business despite the early hour. One stall was open, selling freshly-baked bread. And there were soldiers.

“Infantry?” Magmed asked.

“I think so,” Galen agreed. He pointed to the stable. “It doesn’t look large enough to hold more than a dozen horses, and I see no camp nearby.”

“How many enemy?” he asked eagerly, anticipating a battle, and pleased to be away from the upstart Sendarus. Galen Amptra might not yet own his father’s title, but he was at least a member of the Twenty Houses.

Galen shrugged. “Hard to tell. If what we see now are just the sentries, then they have fifty down there at least.”

“Just a garrison.”

Galen was not so sure. From their position behind a fringe of trees on a nearby hill he could see no other sign of the enemy, but it worried him that there was no cavalry nearby. It made little sense to garrison a town with just infantry, who could be cut off and isolated by any enemy force with even the smallest mounted arm.

“I think we should explore a little more,” Galen said.

“We could take the town in a single charge,” Magmed said. “Give the signal and ...”

“And we could find ourselves engaged in a large-scale battle without hope of reinforcements.”

Magmed waved his hand dismissively. “What of it? The sooner we beat off this Salokan, the sooner the war will be over.”

“We are under instruction,” Galen said. “Our orders are clear.”

“From that Amanite upstart,” Magmed said, his disgust obvious.

“From our queen’s consort,” Galen told him sternly, “and from the holder of the Key of the Sword. Would you go against him?”

Magmed snorted derisively but said nothing. Galen shook his head. Too many of the nobles were nothing but bluster. They had gotten so used to being dominated by the throne, and so used to doing nothing but complain about it, that when they had some freedom of choice they did not know what to do with it. Well, Galen did know what to do with it; he would do everything in his power to work for the good of the kingdom, and that meant reconciling the Twenty Houses with Areava. He wished others saw the situation as he did, including his father, but maybe if he showed through example, he could help change things around.

“I think we should explore a little more,” Galen repeated, and went down the other side of the hill to the waiting knights to put together a scouting party.

They waited, most of them impatiently, for the rest of the day. The scouts returned as evening fell, and the news was as Galen expected. There was a larger enemy force nearby— a large camp not five leagues from the town with at least one regiment of cavalry and two of foot.

“They patrol between the camp and two river towns, including this one,” one of the scouts told Galen. “Destroy the camp, and you can secure both towns.”

“And you saw no other enemy forces?”

“Only patrols from the camp. They were not expecting trouble, and did not see us. They are lazy soldiers.”

Not that lazy, Galen thought. Look how deep into our territory they already are. But overconfident, perhaps.

“So we attack the camp!” Magmed declared. “And then we can attack the towns!”

“No,” Galen said emphatically. “If we attack the camp, we risk being repelled. We have to make sure we destroy the three regiments, not simply damage them. To do that we have to bring them out into the open.”

Magmed, who was not stupid, saw the wisdom in Galen’s words and where they led. “So we attack one of the towns first with only some of our knights.”

“Drawing the regiments out,” Galen said, nodding. “Then when the enemy is clear of the camp, we attack with the main part of our force. Wiping out the regiments should distract Salokan from the siege long enough for Sendarus to catch up with us. Then we can engage in a general battle with the main Haxus force.”

Salokan knew that the actual physical damage done to his army by Charion’s sortie was comparatively light—a few hundred dead, no more—but the damage to his army’s morale was considerably greater. Not only had they not yet breached the walls of Daavis, it seemed that Charion felt so little threatened by the siege that she could storm out of the city any time it took her fancy and wreak havoc.

Salokan knew that something had to be done urgently if Daavis was to be won ... indeed, if the campaign and thus the war was to be won. It seemed obvious to him that Ren-dle had failed in his mission—he should have delivered Lynan by now, and there had been that strange flight of pigeons from the west that bespoke unknown disaster to him—so everything now rested on taking the province’s capital. Subtlety had to be thrown aside and brute force applied to the problem. He ordered the catapults to work on the northeast wall where the crack had appeared. At the same time his sappers mined several tunnels under the same section of the wall, too many for the enemy to detect all of them in less than two days. In the night he mobilized his entire army—including the cavalry, which he dismounted—dividing them into three divisions, and moved them into position. They were given extra rations of wine that night.

His generals complained to him that if the morning’s assault was unsuccessful the entire army would be too exhausted to launch another attack for many days. Salokan told them he understood that, but that he also understood that the army could not be expected to endure continued failure.

“I believe we must win this battle now, or risk losing everything,” he told them, and they could not argue him out of it.

The next morning dawned fine, with the promise of a warm day ahead. Salokan was sure it boded well. Then the rider from the east came with the news that Kendran heavy cavalry had destroyed the best part of three of his regiments and recaptured two river towns. The enemy relief column, it would seem, was less than a day’s hard ride away. Soon after, two boats sailing upriver from the towns carrying the remnants of the garrisons that had managed to escape, brought the same news. Salokan was numb with shock. If the assault on Daavis failed, he would be caught between the city and a comparatively fresh army. If the assault succeeded, he would have less than a day to rebuild the walls and stock up for a long siege. Salokan had no choice, and the realization almost crushed him. His generals came to see why he had not ordered the assault and were sent back with instructions to break the camp and prepare for a retreat.

If they moved fast enough, the army could reach Haxus and some measure of safety in less than a month. But what then? Would the army of Grenda Lear come after Salokan? Almost certainly. He knew Areava would neither forget nor forgive his incursion. The king understood suddenly that he had started a war he might lose.