The King's Blood

Four hundred men to whatever lurked behind those arrow slits.

Jorey rode up beside him. The boy’s face was pale and closed. He had a wife at home now. Dawson remembered the first fight he’d ridden into when he knew he’d be leaving a widow behind. It changed things.

“They’re split,” Jorey said. “Why are they split?”

“In hopes of holding both sides,” Dawson said. “If they put all their men on our soil and we beat them back, they come to the far keep in disarray. If they put all their men in the far keep, they lose safe passage over the river.”

“They’ll pull back now, though,” Jorey said. “They’re fortified, but we’ve numbers. They have to know that. If they make a stand together on the farther side, they stand a chance, at least. Splitting their own forces is madness.”

“It’s bravery,” Dawson said. “Those three banners? They’re not there to win the battle. They’re there to hold us back until reinforcements come.”

“We can overrun the far keep,” Jorey said. “With the men we have, we will take it.”

“Perhaps not with the men we have after the white keep’s ours, though. And if their reinforcements come, not at all.” Dawson turned in his saddle, his eyes on his squire. “Sound formation. We haven’t got time.”

They took the field, archers and swordsmen, pikemen and the small siege tower, its ram a log with its head dipped in bronze and long enough for three men to take each side. Dawson had seen midwinter festivals that had put more wood in the grate. But these were not castles, only river keeps, and the small ram was what they had to work with.

His army took formation. There was only one task left before the world turned to steel and blood. He called for Fallon Broot. The man trotted over, his comic mustache flopping up and down with the gait of his mount.

“Lord Broot,” Dawson said. “Will you take the honors?”

“Pleased to, Lord Marshal,” he said, and to his credit, he sounded as though he actually was. Broot took the caller’s horn from Dawson’s squire and rode out toward the pale brick keep. When he judged himself just out of arrow’s range, Broot stopped and lifted the horn to his mouth. Dawson strained to hear.

“In the name of King Aster, and of Lord Regent Palliako, and in the name of the Severed Throne, do you yield?”

It seemed for a moment the day held its breath. An answer came, but too faint to make out. Then a flight of arrows flashing silver in the morning sun and falling just short of Broot and his mount. The knight lifted the horn to his mouth again.

“Remember that I offered, y’cocksuckers!”

Broot rode back hard, his face ruddy and his weak chin jutting forward. He surrendered the caller’s horn.

“I say we split their asses, Lord Marshal.”

“Noted, sir. And my thanks,” Dawson said. “Call the foot attack.”

As Dawson watched, the attack surged forward like water after a dam has given way. Arrows flew from the white keep’s slits and archers appeared on the merlons. Over the shouting of the attack, Dawson could make out no individual screaming, but he’d seen enough of war to know it was there. At the distance of command, it looked almost calm, but within that flow of bodies, it was the loudest, most joyful and frightening feeling in the world. They had committed, and now there was no turning back.

Thin ladders rose into the air with barbed hooks at the end to make them more difficult to shove back. The dull thud of the battering ram came, and again, and again. The soldiers of Antea who had shields had them raised over their heads, but there were few. Two of the ladders took hold and men swarmed up them. Dawson watched, his teeth worrying at his lips. There was movement to the north. At the edge of the river. Men, wearing the colors of Asterilhold. A hundred of them at least. They had hidden in the muck and cold by the river’s edge, preparing to fall on the enemy from behind. “Call danger in the north,” Dawson said, and his squire lifted the trumpet. Three short blasts for danger, two long for north. The ambush looked to be swordsmen for the greatest part. Only a few pikes seemed to waver in the air. The battering ram’s dull thud carried over everything, but the shouting changed. Dawson’s men shifted toward the new enemy.

“The charge,” Dawson shouted, drawing his blade. “Sound the charge.”

Dawson and the knights of Antea flew down toward the river and the waiting foe. There were more pikes than it had seemed, but not enough. A horse screamed and fell somewhere behind Dawson and to the left, but by the time he heard it he was already in the press, hewing at men’s heads and shoulders. To his right, Makarian Vey, Baron of Corren-hall, was swinging a battle hammer and shouting out an old taproom song. To his left, Jorey was chasing down an enemy soldier whose nerve had broken. Dawson’s fingers ached pleasantly and there was blood on his sword. The steady rhythm of the battering ram changed and a shout rose from the south. The white keep’s door, giving way.

“The keep!” he shouted. “Finish them, and to the keep! Push these bastards back! Antea and Simeon!”

A ragged shout answered him, and the knights of Antea turned with him, riding fast to the white keep.

The bodies of Antean soldiers and farmers, men and boys, lay on the soft ground outside the keep, fallen from the ladders or arrow-pierced. Not all were dead. Within, the sounds of combat and murder rang. Dawson didn’t dismount, but rode through the keep’s yard, leaning hard toward the far gate. His knights rode behind him. The jade bridge reached across the river. Old rails had been built at its sides, worn planks bound to the jade top and bottom and nailed together. The wood was faded and splintering, a broken and decayed human work over the eternal and uncaring artifact of the dragons.

Somewhere between thirty and forty men stood on the bridge. Behind them at the far side of the river the round keep stood. It looked taller from here, its wide wall leaning slightly out to make scaling it more difficult. Its gate was closed, shutting out both enemy and ally.

But when they opened it to bring their men in, there would be a chance.

“To me!” Dawson shouted. “All men to me!”

His squire was long left behind, but the knights and the soldiers took up the call. To the Lord Marshal tolled through the keep like a bell. Six men took up the fallen battering ram, trotting up with it to just within the gate. One of them was a mess of blood, his right ear gone. On the bridge, the defeated men wailed and clamored to the round keep for shelter or steeled themselves for the charge.

And then, above them, a new banner rose. And another. A third. A fourth.

The reinforcements had come. Dawson looked over his shoulder at the assembled men. Of his knights, almost all remained with him. Of his foot, less. Much less. But there was a chance.

“Archers fore!” he shouted.

A dozen men, not more, ran to the gate, bows in their hands.

“Don’t go all at once, boys,” Dawson said over the roar of the river and the laments of the bridge-trapped men. “We’re moving the bastards on the far side to pity. So take this slow.”

One at a time, Dawson’s archers loosed arrows. The men on the bridge had nowhere to flee. They screamed and they wept and they shouted rage. Once, they charged Dawson’s line and were pushed back. The crowd of them grew smaller. Twenty men. Eighteen. Fourteen. Ten. The green of the jade and the red of the blood were like a thing from a painter’s brush, too beautiful to be wholly real. In despair, one man leaped into the churning water. Nine. Dawson kept his attention on the gate against which the doomed men were beating. It didn’t open.

It wouldn’t.

“End them all and close the gate,” Dawson said at last. “We’ll send word to the Lord Regent that the invasion is pushed back and the border secured.”

And that we were too late, he didn’t say. He raised his sword and pulled it down, making his duelist’s salute to the opposing command as the white keep’s gate closed before him. The first battle of the war was a standoff, and if his experience told him anything, this was a sign of things to come.

Marcus

I’ll kill you,” the Kurtadam man shouted. His fists were balled at his sides. His furred cheeks and forehead softened the anguish in his face, leaving him looking less like a man whose hopes of a better life were being crushed and more like a disappointed puppy. “You can’t do this, I’ll kill you.”