The Dame

TWENTY-FOUR

Prince Milwellis grabbed the man by the front of his threadbare tunic with one hand and hoisted him up to tiptoes. “And where did you find this food?” he demanded.

The man’s eyes darted all about as if he was searching for an escape route. But the whimpering sounds that came from him showed that he realized there was no way and nowhere to run. A former soldier in Milwellis’s ranks, he and a pair of his companions had been caught in the forest, settled around a substantial stash of food they had procured from area villages. Caught so completely by surprise, the poor fellow’s companions were still sitting, soldiers towering over them.

“We didn’t… we didn’t know what we was to do,” he finally blurted.

“You are a soldier of Palmaristown. I am your prince. What more do you need to know?”

“Please, lord,” the man gasped as Milwellis pulled the tunic up a bit more, tight against the bottom of his chin. “When the demons came north-”

“The demons?”

“Ethelbert’s demon warriors!” one of the other two blurted. The soldier standing over him kicked him hard in the ribs for daring to interrupt.

“Aye, them demons,” the man in Milwellis’s grasp quickly added. “We saw them come down from the hill. They killed the knights, and we were next. And we tried to fight-” His response was cut off into indecipherable garbles as Milwellis, outraged by the reminder of the loss of his elite warriors, tugged him up even harder, and growled as he did.

“Please, lord!” he gasped.

“You battled them?”

“Tried, lord.”

“Tried?”

The man whimpered and Milwellis threw him to the ground, turning on the other two, particularly the one who had interrupted earlier.

“We couldn’t fight them,” the man stammered. “We couldn’t see them. Just men dying. Screaming and then dying. And they were above us in the trees! All about us-as if there were ten thousand of them!”

“Ten thousand? How many were there?”

“Just a few,” the man he had thrown to the ground squeaked in response. Milwellis turned back on him, hands out in confusion.

“Demon warriors,” the other one added.

Prince Milwellis took a deep breath. “Pull the lines in tight and strengthen the flanks,” he instructed his commanders.

“Back to the north?” Harcourt asked quietly, moving by his leader’s side.

Milwellis shook his head. “Back to Ethelbert dos Entel,” he said. “Back to Ethelbert’s lair.”

“We’ve no support from King Yeslnik,” Harcourt reminded. “He has left the field.”

“More the glory for us, then.”

“You don’t fear Ethelbert’s demon warriors?”

Prince Milwellis looked at him hard, and Harcourt chuckled.

“Do you disagree?” Milwellis asked honestly.

“Keep the lines tight,” Harcourt recommended. “Laird Ethelbert has a few tricks, but in the end, the weight of the army will win out. It’d be a great thing for your father to put our enemy back in his box.”

“And better for Palmaristown since Yeslnik fled the field,” said Milwellis.

“King Yeslnik, my prince,” Harcourt teased, and both men laughed.

Strong Prince Milwellis stroked the growing beard on his face and looked to the south where lay, five days’ march away, Ethelbert dos Entel.

Nothing,” Bannagran assured Reandu one warm morning in Pryd Town. “Not an Ethelbert soldier to be found.”

“And not a Yeslnik one, either,” Master Reandu replied.

Bannagran gave him a look of mock anger.

“And that is a good thing,” Reandu pressed on anyway. “The folk of Pryd have time to get their gardens and fields in, perhaps. It would do my heart good to see an easier summer this year than last.”

“You’re glad to have your young brothers home at Chapel Pryd,” Bannagran said.

“And our laird, who is needed at this troubling time,” Reandu replied.

Bannagran nodded, knowing well that Reandu’s compliment was heartfelt.

“King Yeslnik was truly unsettled by the Behr assassins and their efforts against Milwellis’s force?” Reandu asked.

“Terrified. And I’m not certain that I blame him.”

“You said the field was won.”

Bannagran shrugged. “It seemed as if the sides were closing in on Ethelbert. The outlaw laird had no escape, save the sea at his back. I believe that if we had come to his walls, both forces, Yeslnik and Milwellis, Ethelbert would have boarded his private ship and fled his city, leaving it an easy victory and an end to the war.”

“And how much better that would have been for everyone,” Reandu remarked, watching Bannagran closely as he did, suspecting a rather curious undertone here.

“Yes,” the Bear of Honce replied more than a little unconvincingly.

“Would you measure King Yeslnik against your old friend, Laird Prydae?” Reandu asked. “Or against Prydae’s father, Laird Pryd before him?”

Bannagran’s expression became an open scowl then, and Reandu was quick to back off the explosive question. He knew that Bannagran was not enamored of young King Yeslnik, of course, particularly since Bannagran had offered Chapel Pryd a dodge to avoid Yeslnik’s awful order that all Ethelbert men and women held prisoner were to be put to death.

“Compared with King Delaval, then?” Reandu pressed.

Bannagran’s face remained very tight.

“What will Honce be like when King Yeslnik takes full control?” Reandu asked. “What will life in Pryd be like?”

Again Bannagran shrugged. “I cannot predict what will someday be, other than to tell you that I believe the war nears its end and that the forces of Delaval will prevail. You, too, have heard the news from Chapel Abelle…”

“The edict said St. Mere Abelle,” Reandu corrected.

Bannagran nodded. “They have thrown in with Dame Gwydre, who, I am told, opposes Laird Panlamaris of Palmaristown and King Yeslnik.”

“Will Bannagran lead the folk of Pryd on a campaign through the wilds of Vanguard, then?”

The question made the big man visibly shrink. The Laird of Pryd did not say that he would do as his king asked, as would be appropriate. “Let us hope for a peaceful summer, that the folk of Pryd Town can heal their wounds,” was all he said.

Too many,” Harcourt said to Milwellis as the reports came in one after another regarding the strength of their opponents. “We will sweep the field of them, perhaps, but will not have enough might left to tear down Ethelbert dos Entel’s tall walls. The city is well fortified, with many engines of war lying in wait behind her stone barriers.”

Prince Milwellis rubbed his face. He knew that Harcourt was responding not only to the reports regarding Ethelbert but also to those concerning his own force. His men were growing tired and increasingly glancing back to the northwest. Attrition was already beginning to work against him, with men simply disappearing from his ranks, and the whispers said that it was from more than confrontations with Ethelbert’s soldiers.

“Have the runners returned from King Yeslnik?”

“King Yeslnik is long gone from the field, my prince,” Harcourt replied. “He is almost directly south of Delaval City by some reports. Others say that he and his private guards have gone back to Castle Pryd.”

“We have Ethelbert in a trap from which there is no escape,” Milwellis protested. “We have turned his desperate attempt to break out. It was a showy and dramatic response by Ethelbert, to be sure, but without the numbers to back up any change in the course of the battle!”

“All true,” said Harcourt. “But King Yeslnik is not to be found, and I doubt we’ll get him and his warriors back to the field in time to finish this grim business.”

Milwellis blew a frustrated sigh.

“And Yeslnik’s tactics work against him, and us, regarding such an event,” Harcourt went on. Milwellis looked at him curiously.

“His retreat was marked by the scorching of the world,” Harcourt explained. “Every village, every field of crops, every garden, and most every animal was trampled under boot. So fearful was he that Ethelbert and his assassins would pursue, he destroyed the ability of Ethelbert’s army-of any army-to follow his route back to the west.”

“He intended to put Ethelbert in a box of barren ground?”

Harcourt shrugged. “Likely he means to send the fleets of Delaval and Palmaristown to assault Ethelbert from the sea. Or perhaps he hopes to keep Ethelbert in his city while he solidifies his grasp on the rest of Honce, and by sheer weight of support force Ethelbert into a truce.”

“A truce that would include no assassins from Behr, no doubt,” Milwellis remarked with a knowing chuckle.

“Let us hope that he is wiser than he is brave,” Harcourt dared to say, knowing that some levity was needed here, since Milwellis’s dream of finishing off Ethelbert seemed suddenly an unlikely thing.

“Sweep the field,” Milwellis ordered.

“My prince?”

“Chase Ethelbert’s ragged band back into the city,” Milwellis explained. “Let us see if the walls of Ethelbert dos Entel are as solid as you fear.”

“And if they are?”

“Then we will turn back to the north.”

“How far?”

“Let us follow Yeslnik’s lead.” He grinned as he added, “Around Felidan Bay to the Mantis Arm? A few fortresses under the flag of Palmaristown scattered about the Mantis Arm would serve my father’s seaborne designs well.”

Harcourt smiled and nodded his approval. “A wise leader has more than one road before him and keeps both trails open for as long as he can.”

“And has wise advisors to help guide his course,” said Milwellis.

The regrouping and advance was on in full that very day, Milwellis’s army, promised a swift victory or a swift return to Palmaristown, marching with eagerness once more. They crashed through two of the villages they had already flattened on their first pass, and all the people of those hamlets fled before them.

They found only meager resistance from a couple of small Ethelbert encampments that were not fast enough in flight before them.

They arrived in Yansinchester yet again, the last sizable town before Ethelbert dos Entel itself, the high-water mark of Milwellis’s advance. This time they found the town itself deserted; they knew the survivors to be in the one structure in Yansinchester that had escaped the first march intact, Chapel Yansin.

“Bring the wounded to be tended by the brothers,” Milwellis ordered his commanders. “And harm no one in the chapel. Allow these peasants some manner of peace. Perhaps they will think Laird Panlamaris beneficent when our pennants snap in the strong coastal breezes above this land.”

He and Harcourt got a laugh out of that order.

They were not laughing a short while later, however, when the first couriers from Laird Panlamaris’s force arrived with news that Milwellis’s father had marched and been met with a magical barrage outside Chapel Abelle and was besieging the monks of the mother chapel.

Milwellis’s face twisted in anger at yet another dire turn in this unfolding drama.

“Trust in your father,” Harcourt said to calm him. “He is as fine a general as has ever ridden the ways of Honce.”

Milwellis chewed his lip, his dark eyes flashing dangerously, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.

“My prince?” Harcourt asked.

“Are we to battle for useless land in the name of a king who had not the courage to stand and fight on his own behalf while our brethren and my father and laird battle treachery near to our own home?” Milwellis blurted, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

Harcourt put a hand to his shoulder to calm him.

“Advise me,” Milwellis demanded, pleaded.

“Do as our king,” Harcourt said. “Turn and burn the land behind your march.”

Milwellis began to nod. “To Chapel Abelle,” he whispered, as if he couldn’t put anything more behind his voice.

“Most of Ethelbert’s minions are back in his city now,” Harcourt offered hopefully. “We can run to the gates of Ethelbert dos Entel within a matter of hours.”

“Tomorrow,” Milwellis decided, his voice suddenly strong once more. “A fresh march. Let us get close enough to shoot our arrows at them and turn quickly enough to persuade them that we leave of our own choice. Perhaps we can even send a message to Laird Ethelbert, a warning that if he comes forth we will destroy him.”

Harcourt nodded, glad to see that his prince was continuing to think on his feet, adapting, and wisely, to every new twist.

“Tomorrow,” he echoed. “And today we camp here in Yansinchester?”

“We have unfinished business here,” said Milwellis, turning his angry stare right at Chapel Yansin. “For here we discover enemies of Palmaristown.”

They came within sight of Ethelbert dos Entel’s northern reaches the following afternoon, staring down from the same hills where Milwellis had lost his knights. The carnage of the battle remained all too clear. Milwellis trembled with rage.

Harcourt did not miss that reaction. “My prince,” he said comfortingly, drawing the volatile young man out of his fuming contemplations.

“Would that I had Ethelbert’s head on the ground before me,” Milwellis growled.

“But you do not, though take heart in that you have surely wounded him more profoundly than he you.”

Milwellis looked up from the body of a Palmaristown knight-Erolis, he recalled, though the carrion birds had done too much to disfigure it for him to be sure-and offered a thankful nod to his honest companion.

“What can we do to sting Ethelbert one last time before we turn?” he asked. “What can we do to make him know that we are here, right before his wall, and that he daren’t come forth?”

Harcourt grinned and nodded.

Under the cover of darkness, on that cloudy and moonless night, every archer in Milwellis’s force crept down from the hill to the field before Ethelbert dos Entel’s north wall.

They couldn’t see their target any better than any defenders might see them, of course, but then, their target was the size of a city.

A hundred bows lifted to the sky and let fly. Then again and again and many more times after that until at last cries came from the city as Ethelbert’s people realized they were under attack. The last volley was flaming arrows, five score streaking through the night sky to cross over the wall and seek further fuel within.

A response finally came, but by then the Palmaristown archers had turned and fled.

Several fires erupted within the city wall, Milwellis and Harcourt saw from the hilltop. Perhaps a few people had been injured or even killed, perhaps those fires, though surely quickly attended, would cause some damage. But none of that was the point, after all. Milwellis had just told Ethelbert that he was here in the dark within striking distance of the desperate laird’s last refuge.

The next morning Milwellis’s army moved back to the north, driving livestock and villagers before them, destroying the gardens and the fields.

And dragging with them the twenty-three brothers of Chapel Yansin bound for Chapel Abelle.