slammed into the wall, and decided that he had tried as hard as he could. His Lord was determined to do whatever it was that he was about to do.
Lord Ellrich took a parchment and quill, and after clumsily spilling ink all over the stacks of unanswered petitions and reports on his desk, he began writing with furious intensity. He sanded the paper, and burned his hand lighting a wax candle in the torch flaming on the wall sconce. He showed no regard, not even a wince, as the flames licked, and blistered his knuckles. The room filled with the acrid smell of burnt hair. Lord Ellrich didn’t care. He blew the sand from the note, rolled it quickly into a scroll, and then blotted a globule of wax on it to seal it. After pressing his ring into the cooling stuff, he handed the scroll to the boy.
“You are to ride!”
He said it quickly, placing a hand on each of the young man’s shoulders for emphasis. They were eye to eye then, and the Lord’s order took on a deadly weight.
“Ride like the wind to Lakebottom, and give that to either Lady Trella, or my daughter, Lady Zasha. Do you understand? Lady Trella or Lady Zasha only!”
“Yes, milord,” the soldier answered dutifully. The idea that he was being ordered away from the slaughter taking place around him, the hope that he might not die this night, filled him with confidence.
“Stop for no man. Not even for the King himself!” Ellrich said sharply. “And take as many horses as you need to make it through without stopping. Now go!”
The boy didn’t hesitate. He was off in a flash of boot heels and elbows, leaving Lord Ellrich and Sir William alone in the room. A bright, orange blast of light suddenly shone through the shuttered window that overlooked the training yard. It was accompanied by an earth-shaking roar, which chilled both men to their core. There was no time to even think after that. The building shook, and pieces of the ceiling beams splintered downward. A huge piece of stone flooring came down on them from above, crushing both of them to death in an instant. The last sound either of them heard was Claret’s battle roar as she tore Settsted Stronghold to the ground.
Lord Ellrich would never know it, but the young soldier managed to get clear of the stronghold and the Zard army that was closing in around it. The horses he chose were fast, strong, and more importantly, they were rested. There was a good chance that he would manage to escape the two geka that were chasing him.
Chapter 34
The siege of the Redwolf’s mountain castle had lasted a week so far. According to the lists before him, King Jarrek knew that they could go another half a year or more. They had plenty of stores hidden away in the caverns. Considering that they had over three thousand soldiers behind the secondary wall, and nearly eight thousand other people that were waiting.
Women, children, nobles, and dignitaries, as well as the castle staff and personal servants were all inside the castle. It seemed amazing to him. What amazed King Jarrek even more, was that the castle folk spoke of the siege, as if it were an event, a ball, or a concert, or a mummers show. Even the lords and merchants, whose homes were being torched and looted just outside the secondary wall, seemed oblivious to the reality of the situation. They just didn’t understand. They were all certain that they were safe because the castle itself, in all of history, had never been taken. The first, second, and third baileys had fallen a few times during the bloody dark wars of Jarrek’s great, great-grandfather, but the castle’s innermost wall, known as the Gate, had never been breached. The fortress was designed to wait out a siege.
The castle was a city in itself, built into the side of the Wilder Mountains, thus the name Castlemont. Many of the people who lived there had never gone outside the outer walls in all of their lives. Day to day life inside the huge palace seemed almost normal to most of them, as if war wasn’t waiting just beyond the secondary wall, as if an enemy army wasn’t waiting to storm in and ravage them, and then march them into slavery.
King Jarrek shook his head in wonder at the ignorance of his people. The siege would be broken soon, he had no doubt, but someday, an enemy might really threaten to take the whole place. He could only imagine how the castle folk would act if a time like that really came.
He and his advisers were in his conference room, planning. The table where they were sitting was forty feet long. Its eight legs were carved into perfect wolf’s paws, and its oak surface was varnished, and polished so perfectly that it looked wet. The chairs were just as impressive. The crown of each sported a growling wolf’s head above a back thick with padding, and covered in red velvet. The armrests were wolves’ forelegs, and the chairs’ feet matched the table legs in miniature.
All along the walls, on both sides of the table, realistic paintings of heroic battle scenes, and other historical events, were separated by fancy brass oil lanterns hung on ornate sconces on the gray and white swirled marble walls. Like the tabletop, the black marble floor resembled a body of water. The room’s two huge carved oak doors were shut and barred, giving the dozen men inside the room total privacy. They were planning to break the siege.
One of the two wizards in attendance was from Highwander. His name was Targon. He stood a head taller than any other man there. His height, and his plain white robes made him stand out quite dramatically in the rich, colorful council chamber. His long, silver streaked black hair, his dark eyes, and well-trimmed goat’s beard, gave him an almost sinister look.
Willa the Witch Queen had sent him to Wildermont as soon as she had heard the reports of Blacksword impostors flying her banners and firing arrows into crowds. She claimed that, though some of the merchants and traders of her land had surely attended the festival, no one that represented Highwander, or her Blacksword army, in any formal capacity had been there. She and her kingdom held no ill will towards any other in the realm at the moment, and Targon assured King Jarrek that if she did, she would handle the dispute swiftly, and in the open.
Targon had come there to assist in the investigation, and to find out who it was that had impersonated the Blacksword. He got caught up in the Westland surprise attack. Now, acting on his newest orders from Queen Willa, his full services as a War Wizard had been offered to King Jarrek and Wildermont in this time of need.
The other wizard, Keedle was his name, had been born right there in the castle eighty years earlier. The riverside villa he had been raised in was now being used as a Westland Command post, and he was none too pleased about it. His bitter anger at King Glendar was the only thing keeping him from being jealous of Targon’s presence in his kingdom.
Keedle, with his long, white hair and beard flowing over his red and gold trimmed black robe, stood looking out the glassed-in window wall at his city. The audacity of Westland’s new king showed. Placing his pavilion tent right there in front of the main gates, as if inviting them to charge out and take him, was maddening. The fact that, for days now, he had paraded the women of Wildermont in and out of his tent, as if they were his, was infuriating. Keedle had decided that he would show no mercy if he had a choice in the matter. Glendar wasn’t just a bad neighbor or a land-greedy tyrant. He was a menace to humanity.
Others in attendance were: General Coron and two of his captains, all three representing the army of the Redwolf; Lord Marshal Culvert of the Castlemont City guard; one of his deputies, and the King’s Investigator, Lord Greenwich and his page. A few nervous, but busy scribes sat to the side, scribbling away as the orders and suggestions were thrown out on the table for discussion.
“Why would he leave so few men to hold us?” Lord Marshal Culvert asked the room. The “he” he was speaking of, was of course King Glendar of Westland.
“He’s keeping us pinned up, while he gets the bulk of his army through the mountains,” General Coron explained. “Is it possible that once they’re through, he will pack up and follow them?”
“That’s a very optimistic question, General,” King Jarrek commented politely. “If that were his plan though, I doubt he would’ve looted the outer city, and marched all of our women and children south towards Dakahn.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Courtly manner dictated that the King be allowed several moments to add to his own statements before anyone might interrupt his Highness’s thoughts.
“I agree,” Lord Greenwich, the King’s Investigator finally said. “Why give us a hundred reasons for vengeance and retaliation, and then just up and march away?”
“Not to mention the fact that Westland has got to be nearly defenseless,” said General Coron. “Twenty thousand men have marched across that bridge, maybe more. Who’s guarding the henhouse while the young
