A Crown Imperilled

CHAPTER TWELVE

Onslaught

Martin shouted.

‘Damn!’ He slammed his fist against the table.

Brendan shook his head at his brother’s frustration as they sat alone in the kitchen of the mayor’s house.

Martin’s vexation was self-directed, but he managed to get the attention of everyone in the room. Brendan signalled to the two cooks and their three helpers that he needed time alone with his brother. They exchanged glances; then the head cook nodded and they left through the back door.

‘What is it?’ asked Brendan.

After the water demon assault, Martin had been reorganizing the city’s meagre defences, while Miranda and Nakor had been interrogating the rogue magician, Akesh. Brendan had spent that time inventorying the city’s remaining resources and had given Martin the list to read a half-hour ago.

Martin appeared lost in though and didn’t answer his brother’s question.

In the three days since that assault, the Keshian commander had been obviously content to take his time and return to a more mundane approach to siegecraft. He was constructing massive trebuchets on the crest of the western road, and it was obvious he would soon begin pounding at the gates of the city.

Bolton had made a thorough investigation of the old keep above the city and the escape tunnel that led to a short distance behind the Keshians’ position. Martin was desperately trying to concoct a plan to send men through that tunnel and assault the trebuchets, set them ablaze and then escape, but he was convinced there was no way to do that without losing every man on the raid, as well as having no guarantee that the siege engines would be destroyed.

‘What’d I’d give for one company of heavy horse right now,’ he said. In his mind he could see them cutting through the Keshian defences, enabling the raid against the trebuchets to work. Then the absurdity of his position struck him and he said, ‘If I’m wasting wishes, I should wish for the bulk of the King’s Armies of the West to be marching up from the south.’

Brendan pushed away a now-empty lunch plate. Stores were beginning to be a problem, so Martin had ordered rationing. Bethany had successfully argued for full rations for those fighting and half-rations for the rest. When Miranda and Nakor told him about the wagon caravan parked outside the city, he had sent out a detail to bring them in only to discover they had turned back toward Zun when the last attack had begun. He now was questioning his own ability to protect this city.

He had nearly had a stroke from anger when he learned how easily the Keshian demon-summoners had infiltrated the city, and had put Bolton in charge of interrogating every traveller still incarcerated in the inn at the city gate and a nearby store converted to housing. He wasn’t certain how effective the young captain might be in ferreting out more Keshian agents, but it was better than just waiting for one to reveal himself to the detriment of the city.

Martin felt overwhelmed, and was doing his best to hide that, but both Brendan and Bethany knew he was approaching his limit. It was one thing to study tactics, strategy, siegecraft, and the other military subjects, and to command a garrison for a short time as field experience, but it was quite another to bear responsibility for a city at war. Granted, most of the inhabitants had fled, but there were still women and children within these walls and while everything he had studied said the same thing — focus on the military aspects and let the civilians fend for themselves — still he could not bring himself to pretend they were not here, not a responsibility, not his responsibility.

Brendan waited for his brother to relax slightly before he said, ‘We have what we have.’

Martin nodded, pushing aside the list. Food was not critical yet, but it would be. Water was not a problem due to the numerous wells inside the walls. Arrows were becoming important, mostly because the finely fashioned ones had all been spent and now they were relying on those fashioned by boys pressed into acting as fletchers, using whatever feathers could be found for each flight. Weapons were not yet critical, either, but uninjured men to wield them was his most pressing need.

Earlier in the day he had seen the Keshians moving at the ridge line, the first sign the Keshian commander was getting ready for a conventional attack.

At last he said, ‘An attack through the tunnel from the keep to take out those siege engines risks too much. I think we’d lose too many men and might gain nothing tangible from it. Moreover, we’d have to block the tunnel to prevent the Keshians from using it and I’d like it available to us against future need.’

Brendan couldn’t find any reason to disagree so he merely nodded.

Glancing around, Martin realized they were alone in the kitchen. ‘Where is everybody?’

‘Giving us a little privacy.’

Martin grunted. He waved his hand in the general direction of the front gate to the city. ‘The Keshians still mount a superior force, despite that fiasco with the demons. Even with their magician neutralized by Miranda and Nakor, they have the strength to beat down the door eventually and walk right in. We’re beginning to run low on supplies and in another week, we’ll be at less than half-rations.’ His voice lowered. ‘And then the real panic begins. If we’re still here defending. And to defend the city we have an untried boy with delusions of military genius.’

Brendan laughed.

‘What?’ barked Martin, looking annoyed.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Brendan, ‘really, I am, but for a moment you were again the angry brother who couldn’t quite beat Hal at a game. You used to pout like a little girl.’

Martin’s eyes widened. ‘I did not!’

‘You did so,’ said Brendan. ‘And you were doing it again. Look, be kind to yourself a moment, and stop wading in pity. If the King’s Marshall was here, with only what you have to defend with, nothing more, do you think he would have managed any better? What would he do? Gather everyone in the city square and with a rousing speech, get them all fired up so they’d charge out the gate and thrash the Keshians to the last, man and boy?’

Martin started to chuckle. ‘All right, a little pity if you must.’

‘You’re doing as well as any man, I reckon.’

Miranda and Nakor came into the kitchen. Between them was a very obviously beaten Keshian magician. Both of his eyes were swollen, the left completely shut, and he couldn’t manage to put his weight on his left foot without wincing. ‘We have wrung everything from him we could,’ Miranda said to Martin.

Nakor said, ‘It’s not his fault, really. It seems someone put some ideas in his head.’

‘Magic?’ inquired Martin.

Miranda nodded, while Nakor said, ‘It’s a very subtle trick. I think it’s been there in his head a very long time, years perhaps, so that he thinks everything he did was his own idea, but really, someone else made him do it.’

Brendan said, ‘I’m not sure I understand. You’re saying he’s some sort of dupe?’

‘Hard to say,’ replied Nakor. ‘He may have been thinking bad things before this trick, or he might have been thinking good things, and the trick turned him bad.’ He grinned apologetically.

‘Either way he’s a traitor,’ said Miranda.

‘To whom?’ said Martin. ‘He’s Keshian. How is he a traitor?’

Miranda realized that one fault with having dual memories was that she sometimes forgot the context of things, certain nuances. Martin was ignorant of the Conclave so he would have no notion of Akesh’s disloyalty to Pug. Improvising, she went on, ‘I was speaking of the Assembly of Magicians at Stardock. They are pledged to neutrality, no matter where they are born.’

Before another word was spoken, a loud crashing from the direction of the front gate was followed by alarm bells and horns. ‘Damn,’ said Martin. ‘The attack is starting.’

He stood, grabbed his sword belt from where it hung on the back of a chair, and watched in shock as Miranda reached out and seized Akesh by the throat and with a squeeze effortlessly crushed his windpipe. The