Only after night fell did the cost become apparent. The wailing inside the city had to hearten the enemy camp. The fallen numbered more than a thousand, the injured and wounded many times more. Some families had lost all their men. More would do so once sepsis had its way.
Brother Candle would have bet gold that the enemy had not suffered a tenth as badly as the bold fools of the White City.
He wept. And was not ashamed to be seen doing so while the city consuls proclaimed a triumph.
Brother Candle told Bernardin Amberchelle, 'They haven't gone away. And, guaranteed, we'll hear back from them soon.'
'Soon' came quicker than even the Perfect Master anticipated.
The counterstroke fell before sunrise. The Captain-General had men swim the Laur, and cross over on boats, above and below the bridge. No pickets had been posted to watch for that. The men who crossed upstream joined those already caught on the west bank. The downstream force attacked the Inconje defenses. They routed the poorly armed citizens, excepting those shut up inside the two towers. Dawn revealed the slope below the new barbican carpeted with newly fallen. No mercy had been shown.
Fugitives from nearby towns and castles all reported the same thing. The Patriarchals were merciless when they encountered resistance. So towns were falling as fast as the Captain-General's troops could accept surrenders. Few found the backbone to fight.
While the city was distracted by the slaughter on the fore slope, the enemy attacked the New Town again, bursting through the poorly repaired breaches. They drove the defenders out almost as fast as those could run. By midmorning the Patriarchals were undermining the main wall and building artillery towers so they could shoot down onto the ramparts.
Here the confidence and procrastination of the Castreresonese betrayed them again. Shelters had not been set up to protect defenders from plunging fire. Hoardings had not been installed, making it more difficult to counterattack the masons undermining the wall. It was no longer possible to counterattack through the posterns. The enemy knew where they were. He buried them systematically. The main gateway from the city into the New Town got heaped with brush and timber and set afire.
This living history was written under continuously heavy gray skies, often in drizzling rain. With the full attendance of the Night.
Brother Candle was deeply troubled. Even the most fanatic Brothen Episcopals feared the Night, now, as a thousand awful stories circulated. Rook's slime trails painted the fore slope, where so many had died. Death himself had been seen outside the barbican, tallying in his Book of Hours. A thousand people claimed their cousins or uncles had seen Hilt. Fragments of Kint lurked in every alleyway.
Brother Candle saw nothing. Nor did anyone else he spoke with. The reports were all hearsay. But their cumulative impact was potent.
Socia wanted to know, 'Why would the Old Ones help the Brothen Usurper? The Church wants to destroy them.' She asked over a weak noontime meal of hard cheese and harder bread, taken in a small room off the kitchen in the keep of the Counts of Castreresone.
'Only speculation, mind,' Brother Candle replied. 'But I'd bet those people out there are asking how come the Old Ones are helping us when nobody over here wants to see them back.'
The girl started to say something but had a thought. She shut her mouth.
'The Night doesn't take sides. We only think it does because all we know is what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears.' Considering events on the east bank of the Dechear, the Night might, indeed, have a definite preference in the current mortal squabble.
'They have members of the Collegium to help.'
'They do,' Brother Candle conceded. 'Possibly some of the best.' The enemy was not hiding that fact. Some of those Collegium members had no particular reputation. But Muniero Delari came wrapped in dread rumor. And Bronte Doneto, at Antieux, might be the most powerful Principate of all. Doneto had spent his adult life hiding his real strength.
'We have no way to balance that.'
'No. So all the advantages are on their side of the balance.'
Bernardin Amberchelle showed up. He was depressed. 'They've recaptured the tower on the far end of the bridge. And they've started building a floating bridge. We'll try to wreck it tonight. But I don't expect we'll have much luck. There aren't many citizens willing to go out there again.'
There was more on Amberchelle's mind. Brother Candle made a little rolling hand gesture, inviting him to continue.
'The Patriarchals still can't manage a complete encirclement.' With forty percent of their strength at Antieux or Sheavenalle and half the rest ravaging the countryside, the Patriarchals outside numbered no more than eight thousand. Still the largest concentration of troops seen in the Connec in generations. 'We should consider leaving before the situation deteriorates any further.'
'I thought Castreresone was impregnable.' The Perfect was aware, though, that fugitives had been leaving since the Patriarchals appeared. Who were content to let them go. They would become an economic burden elsewhere.
'It could be. If it had leaders determined to defend it. The consuls and magnates aren't willing to deal with a real siege. Nobody wants his property demolished for stone and lumber. Let the other guy go first. And, of course, they'll get help from Khaurene and Navaya before it gets that bad.'
Brother Candle nodded. He knew. He saw it all the time. People could not believe that Tormond IV could go on being the Great Vacillator, now. Nor that King Peter was unlikely to send more men than were with Isabeth already. If he weakened himself any more the princes of al-Halambra would seize the opportunity to blunt the Reconquest.
Nor would there be direct help from Santerin, despite any wishful thinking. Though King Brill's transgressions along Arnhand's borders did now have Charlve the Dim and Anne of Menand distracted.
With invaders just sixty miles away Duke Tormond began, for the first time, rehearsing his military options.
Brother Candle hoped Tormond would defer to Sir Eardale Dunn. 'You're the man Count Raymone put in charge. I'm here to keep an eye on everybody.'
Amberchelle was disappointed. Of course. He had hoped to be told what to do. 'We'll wait and see, then. If the magnates here go on pretending the situation isn't desperate, we will act. Just be ready to go on short notice.'
Brother Candle went up onto the wall south of the barbican two days later. A hundred fires burned outside, providing light for the Patriarchal artillerists. Their engines worked day and night. The troops manning them worked in shifts. Local people brought the stone and firewood.
Part of the barbican had collapsed a few hours ago. The main wall had begun to creak and groan and shift.
The Patriarchals had begun building floating wharves on the east side of the Laur, below their pontoon bridge. A dozen barges and boats were tied up already, unloading by night. Buildings were being erected to warehouse incoming cargo.
The besiegers were living far better than the besieged.
Though the siege might not go on much longer. The New Town had been lost. Now it looked like the crusaders meant to hit the Burg suburb again, soon.
Despair had found a home in the narrow, shadowed streets. Few people now believed this city, that had not been overcome in five centuries, would remain inviolate. They invested their hopes in Queen Isabeth and Duke Tormond.
Isabeth and her knights were twenty miles away. The Great Vacillator had sent out a call for volunteers to go help the Connec's second city.
Brother Candle suspected little would come of that. A new, small hope came with news from Viscesment. Immaculate's supporters had assembled after the departure of the Patriarchals. They had elected a successor to the murdered Anti-Patriarch. An unknown bishop, Rocklin Glas from Sellars in the Grail Empire, had accepted the ermine and assumed the inauspicious reign name Bellicose. He promised a vigorous campaign against the Pretenders of Brothe. Not the traditional resistance but an aggressive countercampaign. He had sent out a call for
