Lord of the Silent Kingdom (54 page)

Helspeth retreated. She found Algres Drear on his feet. “You said your leg was broken.”

“I was insufficiently optimistic, Princess. It’s just a bad bruise. Ouch!”

Helspeth had prodded his calf with her toe. “Be stubborn and manly all you want, Captain. But don’t expect the rest of us to hang back because you can’t keep the pace.”

“In that case, I’ll get a head start now.”

The teamsters had arrived, bringing litters. The Braunsknechts sent the wounded down first. No one rode. Not even the Princess Apparent. Whose attitude scandalized some and made a lot more love her because she did not set herself beyond those who served her.

That news would not set well when it reached Alten Weinberg. “Hilda, my days of independence are definitely numbered. Even if this is a howling success.”

“More probably, especially if this is a success. A girl your age conquers a monster none of the grand old farts of the Empire even dared attack? The daughter of Johannes Blackboots? Not good, Helspeth. Your sister will be afraid of you, now. So will the blackhearts who whisper wickedness in her ear. And her foes will all want to use you. Arguing that you’re the truer daughter of the Ferocious Little Hans.”

Algres Drear, injured leg in a splint despite his protests, observed, “No good deed goes unpunished, Princess. And the loftier your intentions, the worse the unintended consequences.” He took another long drink of distilled painkiller.

Helspeth wanted to argue but was too tired and emotionally spent.

Brilliant light flashed above the pass they had recently deserted. Smoke or dust rose to be painted orange by the setting sun. Pale green threads wormed through it.

The roar of the explosion tumbled down the pass, arriving only after the light faded.

“Can we run?” Drear asked.

Helspeth said, “It’s never come this far down.”

Drear reminded, “It did on the other side of the Knot.”

The teamsters were not too tired to run. And their teams were fed and rested. They loaded up and moved out, all the injured fighters riding.

“He’ll catch up,” Stern promised his fellow falconeers. But Drago Prosek never did.

Neither did the terrible ascendant Instrumentality.

That suited everyone perfectly.

Traffic through the Jagos resumed almost instantly.

16. Castreresone: Siege

“I’m an observer,” Brother Candle told Socia Rault. “I belong here, doing what I’m doing.” The ferocious young woman tried to glower but failed. She was in a good humor, confident the Patriarchals had made a fatal error by coming to besiege Castreresone.

As had become their custom, the two were atop a wall, watching the unfriendly folk outside. This time including the Captain-General of the Patriarchal armies himself. Accompanied by an impressive armed gang.

Impressed, Socia said, “There sure are a lot of them.”

“The Captain-General has strong backing from Sublime and the Collegium.”

“But those are forty-day men. Right? If we hold out for a month, they’ll go away.”

She was whistling in the dark. Wishful thinking. The backbone of Sublime’s crusade were the professional, full-time soldiers raised and trained by the Captain-General. A huge anomaly in an age when army commanders were not professionals. Not in the Chaldarean world, outside the fighting orders.

“Some of them,” Brother Candle said. “I’d guess some forty-day levies have cycled in and out already.

But the majority of those men will stay till they starve or succumb to disease.” Brother Candle was no fierce patriot, yet the notion of successfully besieging Castreresone was outside his Connecten conception. Roger Shale had rendered the White City proof against any attacker.

The Patriarchals arrived in a businesslike manner. They established their camp and saw to its safety before doing anything but put out patrols. No herald came to demand surrender, offer terms, or suggest any other interaction. The invaders began to dismantle the undefended Inconje suburb, using the lumber to build their engines and camp and the stone to erect towers at the ends of the bridge, and as ammunition.

The professionalism of the Patriarchals preyed on the imaginations of the Castreresonese. They went about their work like it was, indeed, just a job. They ignored the city until their first artillery pieces began lobbing stones at the outer wall — concentrating on exactly those points the Castreresonese knew were weakest. And on the carpenters belatedly trying to install hoardings.

Socia opined, “We should’ve kept on going to Khaurene. Or even into the Altai.” She watched a siege engine loft a huge stone almost directly toward them. This crew were not yet expert in their craft. They had not scored a solid hit yet. This stone flew way long. When it landed it shattered like a thrown dirt clod.

Local field stone was soft and broke easily.

“You may be right,” Brother Candle said. The absolute confidence of the besiegers troubled him. This was no mob of Grolsachers, nor an undisciplined mix of fanatics and adventurers like the Arnhanders who had come and gone. These men all had jobs, knew how to do them, and worked hard at them. And their efficiency and competence were being shown deliberately.

“They can’t last,” Socia decided. “There isn’t enough food and fodder. We just need to hang on.”

Food and fodder were likely to be problems inside Castreresone, too. Every refugee from farther east had been allowed into the city, where the Maysalean partiality for sharing was strong. Useless mouths would consume stores better reserved for fighting men.

Uncharitable of him, to think such things.

He should put the world aside and go into retreat. He was no longer Perfect. Not even close. The mundane had insinuated itself too deeply into his being.

The people of the White City mocked the Patriarchals. Their confidence in their walls remained high. And the enemy had not surrounded the city. For all his numbers, he was not that strong. Round to the northwest and southwest, where new suburbs had been added on, people came and went as they pleased. The enemy did not interfere. Both suburbs, the Burg in the northwest and the New Town down south, had their own walls, extending from the older main walls. Theirs were lower and thinner.

“They may not be entirely serious,” the Perfect Master mused one afternoon. “This could be a show of strength meant to awe the city into giving up. They do say this Captain-General is niggardly with the lives of his men.”

“They say he’s pretty clever, too.”

News of the extermination of the god grub on the Ormienden side of the Dechear River had reached Castreresone shortly before the Patriarchal vedettes. People did not want to believe that the Captain-General had faced down and destroyed a major Instrumentality. But he had captured Sonsa easily. Had taken Viscesment and Immaculate II by surprise, so quickly that Immaculate’s bodyguards had offered only a token defense. His subcommanders were at Antieux and Sheavenalle, now, the latter chieftain enjoying unanticipated success.

A week after the Patriarchal army arrived the White City’s mood began to turn. The enemy had begun systematically capturing nearby towns and fortresses. The swiftness of their fall was frightening.

The mood blackened further when news spread that the darkest brethren of the Collegium accompanied the invaders.

Sorcery explained the failure of so many strong points.

Sorcery and treachery.

The Patriarchal Society for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy had people planted everywhere.

Those traitors worked their wickedness.

Bernardin Amberchelle was a crude, cruel man, not without cunning. His agents had penetrated the Society. On the eighth day of the siege one of those betrayed a plan to seize and open a hidden postern.

Amberchelle’s status ballooned after the traitors had been thrown off the taller barbican tower. Seventeen priests and lay brothers. Including an otherwise innocent Brothen Episcopal priest who had the nerve to beg mercy for the captives.

There was no central power in the city. Roger Shale had not been replaced. The magnates could agree on nothing. Isabeth was enroute from Navaya with a hundred of Peter’s knights and all their train. Having planned to land at Sheavenalle, then march up the Laur. But much of Sheavenalle was in the hands of the Patriarchals already. An attempt to land would be risky. So the ships were back at sea. They might put in at Terliaga, two-thirds of the way back to Platadura, whence they had sailed.

Wind and rain returned. The bee-busy Patriarchals had created their own rude city by then, employing local labor. The Captain-General had done the same during the Calziran Crusade.

Though the Patriarchal army had arrived without a tail of camp followers, it was acquiring them now.

People did what they must to survive. And most country folk did not care who occupied the castles and cities. The ruling class were all the same, seen from a charcoal maker’s hut.

Bernardin Amberchelle summoned Socia Rault and Brother Candle on the fifteenth day. Amberchelle seemed pensive. Unusual in a short, wide man best known for smashing his way through puzzles.

Several of Amberchelle’s odd associates were in the background. Likewise, a dozen leading Castreresonese, including Berto Bertrand, Roger Shale’s longtime companion and deputy, now castellan till Isabeth arrived. Brother Candle surveyed the assemblage with a jaundiced eye. There was not a leader among the locals, evidently. Else why defer to half-mad outsider Amberchelle? Simply because the man had the nerve to commit mass murder?

What about those lurking, dusky men with the odd accents, now believed to be Artecipean?

“Thanks for coming,” Amberchelle said, proving he could find manners when he wanted.

“At your command,” the old man replied. “Though I’m baffled. What can I possibly contribute?”

“Advice.”

“If I’m able. Though you have more practical minds here than mine.”

“Back to you in a moment, Master. We have a question for the Count’s betrothed.”

Socia was learning. She had not yet blurted something irrelevant just to establish her presence. She awaited Amberchelle’s question.

“Miss … Did you get any replies to your requests for help?”

Socia sneered. “Not one. Though King Peter is sending Isabeth to assert his rights.”

“We feared as much. Master. The enemy won’t talk. They’ve ignored every proposal for negotiations.”

“Sublime says there’s nothing to negotiate.”

“We have spies moving in and out of their camp. They don’t seem interested in Sublime’s opinions, either.”

The Captain-General would expect his local laborers to include spies. Evidently he did not care what they learned. “And?”

“The enemy are confident that they can stay the winter — if the city refuses to yield. We may have to if they cut off communications completely. And they have started harassing anyone bringing in food or supplies.”

The old man repeated, “And?”

“We’re consuming food much faster than it can be brought in.”

“That happens during a siege.”

Socia said, ‘Turn out the people who don’t contribute. Let the enemy have to deal with them.”

Brother Candle said, “We’d better pack, then, hadn’t we, girl?”

Socia glared.

The old man said, “She does have a point, though. Seeker refugees could slip out and go to Khaurene.

Or into the Altai.”

“Assuming the enemy lets them.”

“Assuming that.” The Captain-General might decide that overcrowding and starvation were useful weapons. Or he might want terrified refugees to carry panic to the rest of the Connec. “But you have something else on your mind, don’t you? You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“The Night,” Amberchelle murmured, like a boy caught doing something he should not. “The Night is …

isn’t … Whatever happened on the Dechear, the Night now seems to be
afraid
of those people. Despite being ten times as active as it was only a year ago.”

Brother Candle frowned. What he knew about that event was limited to exaggerations heard in the street.

Why was Amberchelle concerned? Or was it his odd friends who were? Those friends, he had learned, had taken flight from Viscesment after the surprise appearance of Patriarchal troops.

“I have no intercourse with the Night. I’m a philosopher, not a sorcerer or priest. If the Night shuns the Patriarchals, it stands to reason that they’re afraid they could share the fate of the thing that perished on the Dechear.”

Amberchelle sighed. “I didn’t think you’d tell us much. But I hoped.” He shook his head vigorously. That did no good. “They’ve got Principatès with them.”

That was no secret. “They’re substantially overrated, I suspect,” Brother Candle said.

“He’s right. We are.”

The voice came out of nowhere. Socia squealed. The Connectens gaped and gabbled panicky questions.

Some thought it was a practical joke. But Amberchelle’s dusky friends panicked. Several produced weapons they should not have been carrying. They slashed empty air. Others fled the chamber.

“Master,” Socia said in a scared little-girl voice. “Something just touched me. It put this in my hand.” She held up a ring.

Brother Candle took the ring to the brightest lamp. Two outsiders nearby blanched when they saw it. The shorter staggered as though suddenly faint. “What is it?” the old man asked.

He got no reply. The chief foreigner herded his gang out of there. Berto Bertrand, Bernardin Amberchelle, and Socia crowded Brother Candle.

He said, “It’s a signet ring. Like none I’ve ever seen. Uhn.” That looked like specks of dried blood. “I’ve seen these symbols somewhere before.” In the mountains north of Khaurene, the Altai, come to think.

Back in the dark woods, where Eis, Aaron, and their fellows were come-lately and the Old Gods, though no longer worshiped, were not forgotten.

“Bernardin. Find out why your friends are upset.” He wanted to quiz Socia about how it had come into her possession.

He did not want to accept her claim. Even he might panic if he believed there were invisible men afoot in Castreresone.

Amberchelle growled, no longer as pleased with his associates. Berto Bertrand said, “I’ll spread the word that people who have somewhere else to go should do so.”