the reigning s’Brydion duke and his family had died in their beds, betrayed by their own merchants’ henchmen. The clan heir who survived to stand off the assault had escaped execution because he had jilted his wife to indulge himself with a mistress. Naked, sprung from bed by a panicked page, he had rallied the Mathiell garrison. Alongside the watch captain, he and the skeleton company on duty had barricaded themselves inside the flanking drumkeeps. They had cocked the catapults. Hurled flaming bladders of oil into the rioters sweeping the streets.
To the screams of the dying, friend, family, and foeman, they had hardened their nerves. In cold desperation, to foil snipers with crossbows, they had loaded the massive arbalests with fire-bolts and torched the wood span to the Wyntok Gate.
Even after six and a half centuries, the echo of horror still lingered: of the hour that the floors in the ducal palace ran wet with the blood of the slain. As the cries of their murdered kinsmen and children shrilled under winter starlight, the trapped guard, who were fathers lashed insane by grief, had forced through a suicidal sortie. Their berserk rage had burst from the barricaded keeps, leading the charge that smashed through the insurgent force holding the palace gate. A few knots of fighting survivors rallied to their initiative. Half-clad, or armed, or bearing the stubs of smashed furnishings, they cleared the streets of the inner citadel by killing all comers who failed to fall in at their side through the melee.
By dawn, the flag with the s’Brydion bull blazon still streamed from the height of Watch Keep. While angry factions denouncing the Paravian presence still ravaged the craft district down-slope, the assault that had murdered the reigning duke was repulsed, and its backing ringleaders faced with a siege …
The legacy inherent in Alestron’s oldest revetments had withstood far more than the savagery of human rebellion: the innermost walls had been crafted by Paravians, centuries before the Fellowship’s compact had granted surety for mankind’s refuge on Athera. History spoke, in sealed stones: the mysteries of centaur masons and the flutes of the Athlien singers had laid down defences against concerted attacks by Khadrim, themselves errant offspring spun into form by the dreams of grief-maddened dragons. The sea-tides that ripped through the sluice from the inlet had flushed the let blood of besiegers, even before the Third Age insurgents cast down the high kings enthroned by the Sorcerers.
Alestron guarded her freedom, this day, by the gift of her forebears’ resiliency.
So the spinners of tales and the bards reassured the frightened mothers and their clinging children. Brave epics were offered to bolster the uprooted families who faced horror, and certain privation …
When the next traitorous assault tried to storm the high citadel from beyond the burned span of the bridge, the attackers had been shattered by archers and sliced to ribbons in routed defeat. Starvation served as the enemy’s weapon, then. The innermost defences were forced to endure a dreadful four months, spent besieged. Children were taught to overset scaling ladders. Grandames boiled oil to flush out the sewers encroached on by enemy sappers. As supplies failed, the populace ate the garrison’s horses, then turned to trapping the rats in the culverts. The hale learned to wield weapons, regardless of age. Dress-makers used their thread to wind fletching and refurbish arrow shafts. Each wave of attack had been broken at harrowing cost, in the tidal chasm under the cliffs of the Mathiell Gate. Names were remembered, and acts of selfless sacrifice, until the town rebels’ resources were mangled, and finally worn to exhaustion …
The duke’s restored banner had never been struck. Men on the embrasures, and grandsires making shift to watch toddlers were told over the fact as a litany.
Yet where yester-year’s brutal rising against charter law had accosted the s’Brydion by stealth, the offensive waged now by Lysaer’s Alliance resumed the ominous massing of troops. From the upper walls and the sea-misted battlements, Alestron’s penned citizens watched their industrious enemy, unlading timbers from galleys. They heard the chants, as the work crews dragged lumber over the blackened earth of their wrecked farm-steads. Wind carried the groaning of the log carriages that fed the insatiable saws of the carpenters. Hammers banged, to the shouts of the engineers’ overseers. Just out of weapons’ range, swarms of conscript labourers constructed the wheeled shelters for sappers; the frame slings for the rams; and the squat, spring-cocked arbalests, that would fire pronged grapples or incendiary arrows over the crenels and walls.
Such activity was not reserved to the ground scorched lifeless by Lysaer’s first overture.
Wooden structures notched the hills, where no timber grew: a leafless framework of scaling towers, the throwing arms of wheeled trebuchets, and the squatter beams that would mount the notched winches that cocked back the mangonels.
The Light’s forces closed by the muscle of ox teams. Their inexorable, creeping pace advanced less than a league, in a day. Soon, only hours remained, before the duke’s stronghold became surrounded.
At the last moment, three furtive, cloaked figures ran the Alliance gauntlet. Their desperate mission aimed to enter the citadel, before the poised war host established position. They skulked by the eyes of the enemy; slipped under the arcane vigilance of Lysaer’s initiate priesthood by crawling through middens. They slunk, heads down, where the rank-and-file recruits sweated in drill with the shock troops.
Petty officers waved the intruders along.
Masked by Dakar’s knowledge of Fellowship wardings, and Elaira’s skilled use of hedge glamouries, the trio traversed the naked acres scorched sterile by Lysaer’s assault. They threaded the gamut of unquiet haunts, disoriented still by the horror of life’s savage ending.
The shut, unmanned gates at the lower wall posed the arrivals a strategic difficulty: the singed timbers and stout grille-work had been left secured, too massive for Dakar’s light fingers. That forced a return visit to raid Lysaer’s encampment, where Sidir’s forest-bred stealth purloined a stout rope, some twine, and a bow. Better prepared, they waited for nightfall, crouched near the stripped bones of dead sentries. Dakar whispered cantrips to settle the shades, while Sidir kept sharp watch. Darkness did not relax their protections, as they poised to slip over the barbican.
‘I don’t fancy being done like a seamstress’s pincushion,’ Dakar grumped, nursing a heel with burst blisters. He distrusted the duke’s archers. Year upon year spent in hair-trigger drills made them shoot at the first sight of movement.
‘The s’Brydion won’t have winched in the span bridge,’ he argued, against Sidir’s doubt. ‘That precaution will be held until the last moment, since they hope to draw in the Prince of Rathain.’
‘Over the stinking meat of my carcass,’ Sidir snapped under his breath. The murderous glint that sparked his pale eyes did not bode well for Jeynsa. ‘I would be done here. Soonest is better, that my liege should never behold this sorrowful place.’
Still thin from captivity, the tall clansman shouldered his work with bow and arrow and unreeled the twine after the shot used to thread their rope through the battlement. Once the knots were secured, Dakar kept his counsel. While Sidir lent his strength to assist Elaira through the arduous effort of scaling the outer grille, they climbed, breathless, and breasted the gate arch.
Then reached the far side, scraped by rough stone, with tough leathers snagged by the slice of embedded glass. No sentry emerged to call challenge.
‘Learned their lesson,’ wheezed Dakar, overcome by exertion, and starting to sicken from excessive use of fine spellcraft.
‘Is that blessing or curse?’ Sidir whispered back, through the sea-mist that curled through the lanes. The full moon was rising, a set-back beyond any forest-bred skill. Since the Mad Prophet looked ready to snooze where he sat, the Companion extended a firm hand and raised him.
‘Why haven’t they burned this place down?’ he snapped, fretful. ‘These houses can only