The Line of Illeniel

Chapter 36

The day wore slowly on. I had expected Dorian and his men to return within a short span of hours but he failed to appear on time. As each hour passed beyond the time he should have returned I grew more anxious. He wouldn’t have delayed unless something prevented him… or he was dead.

Joe stood beside me on the rampart, watching for their return. “Something bad has happened,” he stated.

While I admired the man’s tenacity, his penchant for stating the obvious was annoying sometimes. “He’ll be back,” I replied.

“How do you know?” he asked me.

“Because he has to be,” I said darkly. In spite of my optimistic words I felt in my heart that something had gone terribly wrong. Another hour dragged by and the sun was beginning to set. I was about to give up my fruitless watch and go inside when I spotted riders coming up the road.

They were too far to make out with my eyes but with my mind I found Dorian among them and breathed a sigh of relief. They were riding hard, as if the army of Gododdin was racing behind them but I saw no others on the road.

A few minutes later I met him in the yard. “What happened?” I asked impatiently.

“They’re heading for Lancaster!” Dorian shouted before I finished my question.

“What? How many?”

“All of them as far as I can tell,” he replied.

“But the other scouts report they’ve made camp in the valley,” I told him.

“It must be only their wounded. We came across nearly five thousand soldiers on the road. Barely escaped once they caught sight of us. They sent a cavalry detachment after us; chased us halfway back here. I don’t think they wanted us to know where they were headed. There’s no one but women and children there! We have to send out the men, all of them, try to draw them back.” Dorian’s tone was full of stress. I had never seen him so close to outright panic.

“Wait, let me think,” I replied.

“There’s no time to think! We have to respond immediately! Every second brings them closer to Lancaster. There are no defenders there and we’ll never lift the siege if they close around them. Not that they could keep them out anyway. They’re hauling siege engines behind them Mort!” he was shouting now.

Siege engines? Where in the hell had they gotten those? None had been spotted before now. I suspected they might have had the parts in the supply train, which had largely survived intact, but I couldn’t imagine how they had moved them so quickly. I closed my eyes, struggling to think and suppress my own panic.

“Mort! We have to move now!” Dorian shouted again.

“Shut up! Give me a moment!” I yelled back, and then an idea occurred to me. It would be a desperate gamble but the enemy clearly had an idea of my plans already. Knowing that we might be able to fool them into thinking we had more traps ready than we actually did. “How long before they reach the duke’s castle?” I asked quickly.

Dorian frowned for a moment; obviously his own mental machinery was also clouded by emotion. Finally he spoke, “From the point we left them… they should get there within an hour, possibly two. The wagons and onagers were slowing them down.”

That might be enough time, barely. “Get the men inside and make room, we’ll have a lot more people here soon. I need twenty men ready to travel with me, now!” I ran to find Penny. “Have them meet me over here!” I shouted back at him. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I found the large circle that we had used to transport the non-combatants to Lancaster and stood inside it. A second later I was in a similar barn at Lancaster Castle. I left quickly, looking for Genevieve. I shouted at the first person I saw, a woman hauling water in the yard, “You! Get everyone out here now. Tell everyone you see to come here quickly.”

She stared at me blankly for a moment until at last she recognized me, “Yes your lordship.” She resumed walking toward the keep, carrying her heavy bucket.

“Now damnit! Drop the bucket and run! There’s no time!” I shouted. She let out a startled yelp and dropped the bucket. I watched her run for the keep while I frowned. I found a second woman at work in the stables nearby. A similar tirade sent her running as well.

Within a few minutes people had begun to gather in the yard but Genevieve had yet to appear. “Get the children over here! I’m taking everyone back to Washbrook now. The enemy will be here soon,” I told them. Penny and I took the first group of children we could find and transported them back to Cameron Castle. Dorian and the twenty men I had requested were waiting there for me.

I left the children and returned with Dorian and his fighters. Genevieve had emerged when we got back and met me at the barn door. “What’s this about the enemy coming?” she asked me anxiously.

“They’ll be here within an hour, two at the most. I’m taking everyone back to Washbrook with me,” I informed her.

“But what of the food? Half our stores are here! There’s not enough room for everyone there,” she said urgently.

“That will have to wait. There won’t be anyone to starve if we don’t get them to Washbrook quickly.” I told her.

“Calm down Mordecai, we can close the gates. We’ll have hours to move then, even without soldiers to guard the walls. Let me organize things, we can save most of our supplies that way,” she replied calmly.

“We’re not closing the gates,” I informed her.

“What?” she said in dismay.

“Just trust me, help me get these people organized. I need them all back in Washbrook within the hour. Leave everything behind.” I turned to Dorian without waiting for her response, “Take your men and make sure the gates are wide open, make it look inviting. Then I need you to help herd everyone over here. Also make sure no one is visible on the walls, the castle needs to look empty if they get here before we’re done.”

“But Mort…,” he started to protest.

“Just do it Dorian! Goddamn, I don’t have time to explain everything,” I told him sharply. His face flinched for a moment but he took his men and headed for the gates.

“Mort, it might help if you told us what you’re trying to accomplish,” Penny told me as we guided the next group toward the circle.

“I’ll explain as we go,” I replied and a moment later we were back in Washbrook. “Vendraccus… or Mal’goroth… whoever is running that army out there… they know I have a trap planned for them.” The people with us had cleared the circle so we teleported back to Lancaster. We began gathering another group while I talked, “They must think the next trap is at Cameron Castle, so they’re heading here… to bypass us.” We continued moving people and I spoke between jumps.

“If they besiege Lancaster we’ll be forced to react, in a way that will put us at a serious disadvantage. The only thing we have going for us is that they don’t know exactly what or where our next trap is,” I said.

“But you only have one more trap,” Penny reminded me, “the dam.”

“I have two actually, but your point is still valid,” I replied.

“How do you know they haven’t figured out where they are? They obviously know about the dam,” Penny responded.

“No I don’t think they do. They left their wounded in the valley, to distract us. It might be a decoy but I don’t think they would waste that many people just to fool me.”

Penny frowned, “So how does abandoning Lancaster and throwing the gates open help us?”

I gave her a wicked grin, “Arundel.”

“What?” she snapped. She had never been a big fan of mysterious explanations.

“I blew Arundel up when they used it for a base camp. Who’s to say Lancaster isn’t a giant bomb as well?” I transported us again, still smiling.

Penny gave me a strange look, “But there aren’t any of your magical traps at Lancaster… are there?”

“Nope,” I replied smugly, “but they don’t know that.”

It took us slightly over an hour to get everyone back to Washbrook, nearly four hundred women and children in total. Once we had them all safely back we returned to Lancaster. I left Marcus and Cyhan to manage the huge crowd of people and took Dorian and Penny with me. The three of us waited in the barn in Lancaster, watching the castle yard from the partly open door.

It was an hour more before the first riders appeared, cautiously passing through the main gates. Their posture made it clear they expected to be attacked at any moment. I didn’t envy them their mission. The strange nature of Lancaster’s open gate and empty castle must have left them fearing a trap, which of course was my plan.

“What do we do if they search the barn?” Dorian asked in a nervous whisper.

“Then we teleport back before they see us,” I replied. I was hoping they wouldn’t search the castle extensively, if we were forced to teleport back I would have to destroy the circle in Washbrook. That might make things more difficult later.

The riders made a slow circuit of the yard, one of them was sent back to report while the others dismounted and entered the now vacant main keep. Another went to check the gate house. Through it all we watched silently, hardly daring to breathe although they never came within fifty yards of the building we were in. Eventually they left.

“What now?” Penny asked.

“Next comes the hard part,” I said, “waiting to see if they come back.”

“If we stay in here we’ll never know if they’re gone,” Dorian groused.

His irritation amused me, which was a good thing, little else did lately. “Relax… I can sense them within five hundred yards or so. When they get beyond my range I’ll slip out and see if I can see them from the walls.”

I kept a watch on the men beyond the walls for over an hour. They sent several patrols in various directions, circling the outer walls and exploring the road in both directions. I could imagine their leader’s anxiety. The last abandoned estate they had found had blown up in their faces, literally.

Night fell and still they waited. Given the darkness I guessed they had decided to make camp. We would have to wait for morning to see if my gambit had worked. Eventually I sent Dorian back to report on the situation. I knew Marc and Cyhan would be biting their nails back in Washbrook wondering what was going on.

Penny and I spent the night curled up companionably. By companionably I mean she used me for a pillow while I got the dubious comfort of a rolled up cloth sack to cushion my head. We had found it in a corner and it smelled of dust and oats. While we rested I stretched my mind out to its fullest, but I learned little else about the enemy.

The night was black and draped the dead men along the valley road in a cloak of darkness. Most were dead but scattered among the corpses were a few survivors, men broken and maimed, unable to move. Even those, few as they were, would have died soon, but for the scavengers that came to claim them. Creatures that walked on two legs like men, but were empty inside.

The shiggreth searched easily among the dead, the spark of life in those that still lived drew them like moths to a flame. Their numbers swelled as the night drew on, for though most of the soldiers were dead hundreds still clung to life. They were in no position to protect themselves from the things that came to feed upon them in the night.

Morning sunlight filtered through cracks in the wooden walls when we awoke. I sat up with a start, dislodging Penelope and causing her head to hit the floor with an audible thump.

“Ow!” she said, sitting up herself. “What time is it?”

“It’s late,” I answered. “Judging by the sunlight coming in I’d say it might be after nine.”

“Are they still there?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” I replied. “There’s a small group, maybe twenty men, camped outside. I don’t sense any others. It should be safe to go outside; maybe we can see more from the wall.”

“I can’t believe we slept so long,” she said as we quietly climbed the stairs leading up to the top of the curtain wall around Lancaster Castle.

“I haven’t slept well in several days, although it’s ironic we would catch up on our sleep while hiding from an army,” I replied. “Oh look!” I added. We had reached the top and were carefully peeking between the merlons. In the distance we could see the slower parts of the remaining invaders, traveling back toward Cameron Castle.

“They’re not all gone,” Penny reminded me. “I see those twenty you mentioned. They must want to make sure we don’t sneak back in.”

I nodded in agreement. “Most likely they have orders to report as soon as they see anyone returning, they may worry we have another surprise of some sort in store for them.”

“The women and children can’t come back then,” said Penny.

“Not yet, if we kill those men it may alert the enemy. I don’t know if they have some sort of scheduled message arrangement but I would expect them to. Let’s go back to Washbrook. We’ll need to prepare.”

Soon enough we were there, in the midst of chaos. Washbrook and Cameron Castle were crowded, and people filled the castle yard in every direction the eye could see. I couldn’t imagine what their night must have been like; many of them had probably slept on the ground. We made our way carefully through the crowd, hoping to find news within the castle itself. Genevieve found us first.

“Mordecai!” she shouted to get my attention through the crowded press. People automatically made room for her as she approached me. “This won’t do. There are too many here. Last night was a horror.”

“I’m sorry your grace,” I replied as politely as I could. “I hope we can send everyone back soon, but you’ll have to bear with it for a bit longer. How is James doing?”

Her husband had developed a slight limp after the arrow wound he received in the capital. Apparently even Marc’s goddess didn’t always heal things perfectly. Genevieve frowned at me. “He’s fine, as you should know. He went out with Cyhan on that last patrol,” she told me.

Actually I was surprised. I had been so busy with other matters I hadn’t noticed his presence. Nor did I realize he was taking turns on the patrols. Knowing the man I should have guessed though. James was never one to sit idle. “The enemy is returning here. When they arrive and start their siege I will have these people returned to Lancaster. I want you to take James with you when you go back,” I informed her.

“That stubborn man won’t leave a battle,” she laughed. “There’s no way you’ll get him to return.”

“There is a small guard left, watching Lancaster. Someone will have to remove them before the people can safely return. I’ll make sure to send him for the job,” I replied smiling.

“Just make sure it’s soon nephew. These people can’t live like this for long before they start to sicken,” she told me.

I thought for a moment. “Tonight I hope. I don’t want to send anyone to Lancaster until I’m sure that Vendraccus has committed himself against us here.”