The demands the war put on Chengdea were severe but not crippling, and Cyril maintained enough forces at home to keep a lid on Magdetchoi raids from the Vod Wilds across the river. With Jasmine’s invaluable assistance he was careful to spread the burdens in men and material among his barons and earls as best he could, and willing to dip directly into the Ducal treasury when necessary to pay his own people for what the King could otherwise take from them by right. The revolts and unrest that had flared up in other provinces had not been felt on the Black River, and noblemen with lineages as long as the history of the province had grudgingly warmed to the upstart Duke. His refined wife was invaluable there, as well. Sad to say, after Jasmine’s illness and untimely passing a dozen years ago, the hearts of the common men and women of Chengdea had further opened to the widowed Duke.
That was all before the Ayzants had set siege to Larbonne, closing the Black River to the trade that was the lifeblood of the Duchy. Cyril’s already strained treasury lurched into the red, and that was actually the least of his problems. Of more concern was that with the fall of Larbonne, which all signs said could not be far off, the Ayzants would have an open path north on rivers and roads directly into Chengdea, and the King had as yet given no sign that he apprehended the threat. Hughes had his army in Chevagia, north of Roseille, Larbonne’s sister port to the east which the Ayzants had occupied for decades since early in the war. Roseille could scarcely even be considered a Daulic city any longer, yet there was Hughes perched above it with his massive army like a row of ducklings peering over the lip of a high nest, unwilling to hazard the jump to the water.
Or so it was said in the Ducal throne room of Chengdea, not by Cyril but by any number of his nobles whom he had gathered there to plan the defense of the Duchy. While the walls still bore their rich adornments, the floor had been cleared of carpets replaced with reed mats. Some of the carved benches and chairs remained but they were pushed back against the walls for instead of a grand banquet board smaller tables suitable for maps and stacked ledgers filled the floor. Around these, all day every day, stalked those knights and barons who were not serving this year with the King’s army. Most had already done at least one tour with the King and those men spoke among themselves of Hughes’s unwillingness to move his army anywhere that might leave his capital of Bouree exposed, no matter the result for Larbonne, Chengdea, and the rest of “his” Kingdom.
Every day as the word from downriver grew worse the awareness grew among the noblemen of Chengdea that they were going to be on their own. Many a goblet of wine was emptied and many a bold oath was sworn. Men proclaimed that the Duchy would be stoutly defended from the southern baronies to this very throne room, if need be. Given the size of the mercenary-swollen Ayzant army in Larbonne, most thought it probably would.
Such plans as were generated concentrated mostly on slowing the Ayzants in the south so that winter might close the roads to marching armies. Spring might bring relief from Hughes. Or it might not. But no one in Chengdea countenanced supplication to the bloody crown of Ayzantium.
Though he said no such word, Cyril thought spring would be too late. The Shugak of the Vod Wilds were quiet now, running their operations around Vod’Adia, but with the Opening and Closing of that fell place the hobgoblins and bullywugs might well take advantage of Chengdean concentration in the south to raid across the river anywhere else they liked. Good guardsmen on the banks of the Black were necessary to keep the Magdetchoi in check, and Cyril knew that the northern barons loudly proclaiming their dedication to the greater cause of the Duchy would feel far different when their own people were menaced from another quarter, back in their own lands.
As for those nobles, fewer by the day, who still had confidence that the King would come to their defense… Cyril did not disabuse them of that notion. He let their fellows do it for him. Cyril had begun to lose his own faith in Hughes several years back when the King’s personal correspondence had begun to grow strident, paranoid, and increasingly divorced from reality. Hughes had spent most of last year assuring Cyril that his position in Chevagia would keep the Ayzants from moving troops out of Roseille and the Chirabis for an attack in the west, on Larbonne. Cyril had received few letters from Hughes since that attack had happened. In fact, the only direct orders he had received in the last six months had been brought to Cyril in person by a High Lord Knight of the King’s own household, who had insisted on dispatching a Chengdean force on an ill-conceived reconnaissance south to the siege lines, sending a group that had been at once too large to avoid detection, and too small to engage in serious battle. They had been lost almost to a man, and at a personal cost to Cyril that had been far too high to pay. Hughes’s man had slunk back to Chevagia, and Cyril never received as much as a word of condolence.
That had been three months ago, and it had been something of a tipping point for the Duke, moving him decidedly toward something he had been considering for a few years but only ever spoken of with one other person. On the dark night that the body of Sir Lucas Towsan had returned home to Chengdea in a wagon, the Duke had spoken of his thoughts to a third person, Lucas‘s father. A few more knew of it by now though nothing had yet been done about it, apart from Cyril allowing his nobles to come to the realization in their own time that they, the Chengdeanese, were very much alone.
As evening approached on the Eighth Day of Ninth Month and the nobles began to discuss dinner as much as the defense of the Duchy a servant handed the Duke a folded note, one name and a few words scribbled on embossed castle stationary. Cyril excused himself, clapped a somber baron on the shoulder, and made to leave the chamber. Everyone stood to attention and the Duke gave all a nod, but he met the eyes of one thin old knight in particular and beckoned for the man to join him.
Knight-Baron Gideon Towsan, head of Cyril’s Household Guard, was a foot taller than his Duke and some fifteen years older. Despite having the close-cropped gray hair and tidy triangular beard suitable for the generation of Daulmen leaving their fifties, it was Towsan who had to shorten his long stride to walk beside his Duke, as Cyril was of a broad and slightly bow-legged build that marked his Kantan ancestry by way of Orstaf. The Duke’s brown hair was worn short as well, but he had gamely followed the present Daulic style by wearing a flared moustache and allowing his beard to grow long, but only from his chin, and binding it with silver wire.
“Pagette,” Cyril said a name as the two men marched down the long hall to the portal connecting the throne room to the upper courtyard of Chengdea’s castle, high on the northern-most hills of the city.
“He has found another…possibility?” Towsan asked carefully. The two nobles passed by uniformed spearman at the wide door who briskly saluted their Duke and commander. Cyril nodded to both the guards and the question. Towsan eyed the men to make sure their chain mail was immaculate, their gold and green tabards bright and without wrinkle.
Cyril and Towsan crossed the grass of the open courtyard passing under trees and around a great central dais mounting an enormous bell as old as the realm, the bronze so green it looked like jade. A mallet hung from the crossbar as a striker though the bell was so old the castle staff thought the thing might shatter if it was ever struck.
“Adventurers,” Cyril muttered. “Dunderheads bound for disaster in Vod’Adia. I cannot believe I have countenanced this plan.”
Safely beneath his own brush of moustache, Towsan smiled faintly. The present incarnation of this stage of the plan had not been conceived by Cyril, but rather by the one person the Duke had never been able to deny. Not since her mother had died.
The thought of death took all traces of a smile from Towsan’s face. His wound was too fresh.
The south side of the high courtyard gave down a ramp into another, and the citadel wall separating the two was thick enough that rooms were housed within it. A guard standing at attention next to a plain door saluted smartly. Cyril thanked and dismissed him, and opened the door himself.
The room was used for extra storage, with rolled carpets wedged next to a stack of ale kegs and a rack of spears. A lantern hung from the ceiling and Pagette was examining the ends of the carpet rolls in its light when the Duke and Towsan strode in.
Pagette turned and made a flouncey bow, ruffling the frilled cuffs of a silk shirt worn under an embroidered waistcoat. His hair was slicked down with some sort of pomade Cyril and Towsan could smell in the small room. He referred to the Duke and Knight-Baron properly in impeccable High Daulic as Your Grace and Your Lordship, Sir.
“What are they this time?” Cyril rumbled without preamble. “Green Hill musketmen? Tarthan priests of the Sword Maiden?”
Pagette beamed, his gold tooth catching the light along with the trove of rings glittering his fingers.
“A Miilarkian,” he said. “A young and rather pretty one at that.”
Cyril raised a brown eyebrow and Towsan frowned.
