The Grail Knights were veterans of long wars. They did not waste themselves on forlorn hopes. Two encounters convinced them they could not overcome Krepnight, the Elect, hand-to-hand.
They stopped fighting. Gurethens who were quick retreated into Stranglhorm. Laggards fled across the bridges to the south bank of the Turuel. The city militias held the bridges. The invaders tried to flank them by crossing over in captured boats.
Krepnight, the Elect, stalked the Grail Knights to their fortress. Archers and crossbowmen kept the accompanying savages at a distance. They were a mob, not an army. What drove them? They were starving, yet seldom allowed themselves to be distracted by food or loot.
The Grail Knights withdrew, over the great drawbridge spanning the dry moat in front of the fortress gate. Engines atop the wall laid missile fires on the attackers. Krepnight, the Elect, suffered several hits. The savages yanked the offending shafts out of him. He forged ahead, undeterred.
Fierce, panicky shouting broke out inside the gate. The drawbridge had risen but a foot when its chains jammed. Then the outer portcullis fell five feet and refused to descend any farther.
Shrieked, frightened orders rattled around inside Stranglhorm. Get the inner portcullis down! But the backup refused to budge.
Decades had passed since the machinery had been asked to do anything but sit and rust.
The attackers cried praises to the Windwalker. They wanted to swarm across that drawbridge. But they would not move ahead of Krepnight, the Elect.
Krepnight, the Elect, would open the way.
The weird thing stepped up onto the drawbridge and crossed, sharp teeth betrayed in triumph. A Grail Knight in full battle gear, astride a huge charger, appeared behind the partially descended portcullis. He bellowed an order that it be raised so he could couch his lance and dispose of the monster. But the portcullis would not rise, either. The Grail Knight turned away, swearing by the body parts of the Founders that he would slay the monster once it came into the forecourt.
Krepnight, the Elect, advanced like confident doom. Today would see the end of Stranglhorm, Guretha, and these faint champions of a spineless southron god.
Krepnight, the Elect, ducked the portcullis and strode forward, charmed sword tasting the darkness of the passage.
Came a roar like all the thunders of a vast storm unleashed at once. Pale, eye-watering smoke billowed out of the gateway. Savages fell by the score, slashed into chopped meat.
The Grail Knights and their hardy foot swept beneath portcullises miraculously healed, then across a drawbridge suddenly fallen into place. The butchery began. Man and boy, mother and child, no mercy was shown. The heathen had shown none themselves. Few escaped. Only a boy named Boogha lived to carry news of an inexplicable defeat. And he died cruelly for having disappointed the Windwalker.
5. Lucidia, Tel Moussa: Sorrowful Truth
Nassim Alizarin faced the visitor across a low table. The meal was the best he could provide. That it was a sad failure would tell this boy too much. Would give him something to carry away with him.
The Mountain remained carefully composed. His age and former status left him unschooled for accepting a boy of sixteen as his superior. Birth meant little among Sha-lug. The slave warriors began as equals and established status by deeds. But this was Azim al-Adil ed-Din, grandnephew of Indala al-Sul Halaladin, upon whose sufferance the Mountain depended. The great Indala’s not so secret ambition was the unification of all al-Prama into a single kaifate that could concentrate fully on the liberation of the Holy Lands.
Amenities complete, it was time to approach the point. But the boy demonstrated a decorum beyond his years. “The Arnhanders of Gherig. How do they behave?”
“The current crop are pirates, not holy warriors. They extort bribes from every caravan coming through from Dreanger or the coast. And call it taxation.”
The boy laughed. “We do the same. And charge every Chaldarean a head tax simply for being Chaldarean.”
Nassim missed the point. That was a “So what?” That was as God Willed it. “Mark me. One day Rogert du Tancret will overstep. He has no respect for God or al-Prama.” In this Nassim said nothing that even the Crusader lords did not whisper among themselves.
Rogert du Tancret was a powerful warrior but not a man given to considering the consequences of his actions. He was lord of a crucial border bastion, in continuous contact with the enemies of his religion. Having not one diplomatic bone in his body, he was not the man to occupy so delicate a post. The Crusader lords all agreed.
But they would do nothing to move Rogert out of the crucible. It mattered not if he was a dangerous fool or a drooling idiot. His patrimony could not be denied. Further, Rogert had blood connections with most of the grand families of the Crusader states and many in Arnhand. Not to mention, he stood high in the affection of the Brotherhood of War, for title to Gherig and its dependencies would pass to the fighting priesthood on Rogert’s death.
By right, of course, the way those people saw things. The Brotherhood had chosen the site for Gherig, had designed the fortress, and had provided the captive artisans to build it.
Nassim shook off his reflections. Rogert would face his hour in time. It was Written. He needed to attend this pup from the warlord’s clan.
The boy said, “It doesn’t look like there’ll be a significant threat from the Unbeliever anytime soon. My granduncle’s agents in Rh?n and the west say the Patriarchy is too fluid and confused to get up to any mischief here. And the Grail Empire is ruled by a woman.”
“A good time, then, to push the interloper out of the Holy Lands.”
“True. On its bald face. But God, in His Infinite Mercy, may offer us a different test of faith.”
“The Hu’n-tai At.” The Mountain had heard that the horse peoples were not satisfied with the destruction they had wrought in the Ghargarlicean Empire. Far outposts of the kaifate had suffered their attention of late. Several scouting forces had roamed through the northeastern dependencies. The mountains and deserts up that way had served to protect better than had the local armies. But now the Hu’n-tai At could strike directly west out of conquered Ghargarlicea.
“Tsistimed the Golden. He’ll come. And he’s never been stopped once he decides to add a city to his empire.”
The Hu’n-tai At did not “add cities” to their empire. They looted them, then destroyed them, leaving only ash, ruins, and starvation.
The boy added, “The nomads are suffering from the changing climate. Snow and ice claim more pastureland every year.”
Old news. “Which we’ve heard all my life. A Hu’n-tai At scouting force was caught inside the Holy Lands a few years ago. Near Esther’s Wood.” And crusaders, Lucidians, and Dreangereans alike had combined to exterminate them.
The boy inclined his head. “Someday it will be a reconnaissance in force. Tsistimed is considering sending one of his grandsons with ten thousand veterans.”
Nassim was impressed with the quality of the warlord’s intelligence. He said as much.
“There are Faithful among the caravaneers who travel the east road. They talk to Faithful among the Hu’n-tai At. And Tsistimed does little to conceal his ambitions. It matters not if his enemies know his plans. They’ll be crushed anyway.”
The Mountain knew that kind of arrogance well. His erstwhile friend Gordimer the Lion had it in plenty.
It would be interesting to see the Lion and the Golden butt heads. Though neither was in his prime, now.
The great terror of the east had become an armchair warrior, they said.
He was ancient.
No one living remembered a time when Tsistimed the Golden and the Hu’n-tai At were not a storm beyond
