An Ending of Oaths - Chapter 19

Selwyn, Barony of Fairshore, River Mark

Baron Quentin Blout rode at the head of his knights, the flat farmlands stretching out before him, golden and rich from the summer rains. They were behind schedule. Today was Pride's Fall, the day that marked the end of the time of magic, when their powers went awry and split their content apart, creating the shattered lands. He'd hoped to mark the occasion by riding into Kenna and taking the Duke's ancestral seat.

It wouldn't mark the end of River Mark as a threat, but it would be a good first start and put his name in the running to be elevated to be Duke of this region once Aldric's head was on the block.

That part of the plan was at least still working, even if behind schedule. His scouts had reported the Duke's forces only a few miles ahead. Technically, they outnumbered Blout's forces, but where Blout had three hundred sworn knights, fifty archers, and five hundred men at arms, his scouts reported that the enemy force of almost fifteen hundred men was made up of less than two dozen knights, a mere hundred professional spearmen, and double the number of archers to his own forces. The rest were apparently conscripts, largely armed with clubs and farming instruments.

Neither side had enough archers to cause any significant damage on either side, which meant it was going to come to foot soldiers and cavalry, of which he had much more.

"Flat land favors cavalry," Quentin muttered, more to himself than to the captain riding beside him.

"Indeed, my lord," the captain replied anyway.

"Get the knights upfront. They have hardly any spearmen. We'll punch right through them. Three ranks, spread wide. We'll sweep across their line."

"Yes, Baro…"

The man's words were cut off by a shout of warning off to the left, which quickly became echoed, spreading along the line. To the west, coming down the harbor road, was a cloud of dust.

Horsemen. Did Aldric think he had enough men to overwhelm him, or that they would be able to be surprised. This was open farmland, not the forested area they'd had to march through to get here. They could see for miles in every direction.

"Mounted knights, My lord!" A scout who came running up hard ahead of the enemy formation said, reining in his horse as he rode up to the command group. "Maybe twenty total.

"They mean to hit our back line!" Sir Malcolm said.

"A foolish gesture," Quentin replied calmly. "Position the spearmen to receive their charge. Two hundred should suffice. Chase them down and finish them off."

Malcolm saluted and rode to the footman marching with long spears. Experienced and trained men-at-arms, all of them.

"Send word to quicken our advance," Quentin ordered. "While they waste strength on this diversion, we'll smash through their center."

It wouldn't be long now. Aldric would be dead, and he would be wreathed in glory.

***

"The diversion worked, Your Grace," the farm boy said, panting hard.

"Do you have your numbers? Can you tell me how many went after them?" Aldric asked.

"I... a lot, my lord."

Aldric smiled down at the boy. "More than half. Less?"

"More than half, Your Grace."

"Excellent. Good job. Now run to the far rear and stay safe. Tell your father how proud I am of you," Aldric said, patting the boy on the shoulder.

The boy gave a large smile before mounting the pony that Aldric had given him for his job. It was probably worth more than his family made in a year and would be good for the entire family. Normally, Aldric would never have used a child like this if he had a choice, but he'd been scraping the bottom of the barrel putting together this force. Most of their professionals had already been sent to Twyver and were now fighting a guerrilla war near the Thunderhorn, leaving him with less than two dozen knights and just over a hundred trained men-at-arms, leaving him with just farmers and laborers to make up the rest of his army.

And not enough of those.

Aldric looked out across the wheat field at the clouds of dust slowly coming his way. The enemy was technically a smaller force, but they were all armored and all trained warriors. Any commander would see that his peasant army would not last five minutes in an open field battle. His knights, the few he had, had argued for a guerrilla war themselves, much like the peasants that had defeated the crown last spring.

Conventionally, they were right, but Aldric couldn't let them scour his duchy. Already they had killed many civilians, razed fields, and put storehouses to the torch. His people would starve the coming winter if he didn't stop them. If he didn't make a stand here.

"Signal the archers, make sure they remember, aim for the spearmen, past the cavalry," the young man he'd picked as one of his runners. "Tell them to watch for my signal."

He'd shown himself to be smart, have a good memory, and a hard worker, which is what Aldric needed. If they survived this, he would have to talk to the young man's family, see to it he got a position more fitting of his abilities than feeding horses in a small stable.

The enemy was confident. They were marching steadily forward. He could see the banner of Langmere in the center of their line. Blout was a good commander, having served under Gavric in several campaigns. He knew to keep the charge until it was close enough to be effective, to not let his cavalry get too far ahead.

He was also plodding, preferring the direct approach to scheming. It made him short-sighted. To him, everything was a nail waiting on a hammer. Exactly what made Aldric think this could work.

"Now," Aldric said, and a man next to him began waving a large flag.

A simple signal, but it worked. Moments later, arrows began to arch into the sky. Not many. He only had about a hundred men who had any skill with a bow. The flight of arrows was not as... controlled as he would have liked. A good portion landed short, a few hitting among the knights, although it looked to injure only one of their horses. More landed beyond the men-at-arms, in between their own archers and spearmen. Half, however, landed among the spearmen themselves. It wasn't going to be enough to stop them, but it caused some casualties, and every dead attacker was one less man they had to face.

The arrows also seemed to work as a signal for Blout's forces, their knights surging forward, beginning their charge, while their archers let loose their own smaller, but much more accurate flight of arrows, falling mostly among the mass of commoners.

Men screamed as shafts punched soft, unarmored flesh, going down grasping at the wounds. Aldric felt badly for the men who'd volunteered, in most cases, to defend their homes. Felt badly, but did nothing. Men died in battle and none of them deserved it. The enemy did not have enough archers to change the course of this battle, and enough of the commoners lived in the city behind him or were in the path of this army that they would not run. Not with their loved ones on the line.

"They're not slowing," Sir Malvan said, one of the handful of knights he'd held behind for this.

Alyssa had insisted he keep some men as protection. Besides, even if this worked, they would have the remaining spearmen behind to deal with.

"They don't have to," he said, not taking his eyes off the mass of horses and men charging toward them.

Hundreds of armored knights. It was a terrifying sight. The distance closed. Fifty yards. Twenty yards. Ten yards.

And then complete chaos as the first row of knights hit the wide covered trench hastily dug in the tilled earth, the soil with the wheat lifted out and then placed woven sticks to make it seem, from a distance, as if the field were still intact, a solid row of wheat.

As hooves hit the thin covering of woven sticks and reeds, covered in dirt, the earth opened up and swallowed them whole, horses and armored men crashing into a pit filled with wood and metal stacks driven deep into the ground. Screams filled the air, drowning out those of the men injured by arrows, as horses and knights died.

It didn't stop with the first line. Horses can't stop suddenly. There was too much weight and too much momentum, and they were riding tight-packed, as traditionally doctrine proscribed. The second line, and then the third, plunged into the pit. A handful managed to stop in time, but that was it. Three hundred knights had become six.

A devastating loss.

"Torches," Aldric yelled.

The spikes were only the first part of the trap. The ground around the torches wasn't just dirty. Layer after layer of canfast sacks had been laid on the ground, soaked for a day in the rendered fat of Nettle-Fish. The large, carnivorous fish were found in the frozen sea and waters around Alchmara and the Icelands, and one of their major imports.

All but the stubborn northmen found the fish nearly inedible and hunting them could be dangerous, with their rows of razor-sharp teeth, but they had other uses. To survive the frigid temperatures of those northern waters, they had a thick, oily fat layer that, when rendered down, could burn for hours and was used for lighting and even heating across the shattered lands because of how hot it burned.

Two of his men-at-arms tossed torches into either end of the trench. The highly flammable oil caught instantly in a great whooshing sound. All those standing closest to the trench had to take several steps back as an inferno that felt as if it emanated from the depths of the underworld itself leapt from the pit, the screams becoming screechings as horses and men in heavy armor burned alive.

A few managed to climb out, burned but alive, only to find dozens of commoners with spears and heavy hammers began to beat the burned knights to death.

None made it out of the charnel house.

As soon as the fire lit, Aldric screamed, "CHARGE!"

Aside from the hundred men tasked with keeping anyone from escaping the pit, his assembled army screamed as one and split in two, one half running around the left side of the pit and the other running around the right side, swarming toward the now backpedaling and terrified men-at-arms who'd just seen the large assembly of knights killed in a matter of minutes.

The commoners avoided the four armored men on horseback who'd avoided the pit, charging the men-at-arms and archers, as they'd been instructed. Blout's distinctive plumed helm was one of the four armored men, and Aldric spurred his horse forward, around the pit and toward him.

Aldric had never liked Blout. A cruel, vindictive man who saw his people as nothing more than one more resource to be used up and disposed of than people he served. He had led the attack on Twyver, and the atrocities that had followed there. Only a handful of accounts had come back from the city once it had fallen to the crown's forces, but word of mass executions and deportation of women and children over the river and who knows where had come out.

Now that he had the man in front of him, Aldric did not plan on allowing him to escape the field.

Aldric spurred his horse toward him, cutting through the one knight that tried to get between them. Quite literally cutting through him, the Sword of the Whittons tearing through breastplate, flesh, and bone all the same, barely giving any resistance, the man's torso sliding off the rest of him above the navel, and falling off the horse, his face locked in a silent scream.

The sword was one of the few true magical weapons found outside the control of the Acolytes, rescued by Aldmore Whitton from the clutches of the purifiers during the Second Alliance of the Ancients, as part of their failed attempt to keep the Alliance holdings on Thay from falling to the growing purifier threat. When Aldmore returned home, instead of turning the stolen artifact back over to the Acolytes, he kept it, claiming the ancients had come to him in a dream and told him to keep it, as one of the symbols of House Whitton, passed down with the throne, but used by the youngest of the heirs.

Which was convenient seeing as how Aldmore was the youngest of his four brothers.

Aldric had always doubted the truth of that story. It seemed much more reasonable that Aldmore had been captivated by the weapon and decided to keep it for his own, and concocted the story to justify it. As far as Aldric could tell, there were others who doubted it too, which might explain why Aldmore was found poisoned only a year after returning from the Alliance.

The sword, however, stayed, and passed from generation to generation, ending up in Aldric's hands when he came of age. He had to admit, it was a fantastic weapon. It never scratched, never tarnished, was completely unbreakable, and the blade had never found a substance it couldn't cut through.

Not that it was easy to use. The blade had to hit just right to cut through. It was possible for a glancing blow to deflect it. It took training and experience, but with that, it was a powerful weapon.

Aldric planned to prove that again as he pushed his horse toward Baron Blout. Blout recognized it, after seeing his man cut in half. His eyes were wide with fright as Aldric bore down on him.

He swung at Aldric in a wild arc, desperate to push him back, maybe in hopes he could get Aldric to slow or stop, give him time to get away. It was never going to work. The ancient sword cleaved through Blout’s weapon, shattering the steel as if it were nothing. Blout staggered, his eyes wide with disbelief.

Aldric didn't hesitate. He thrust the sword forward, the blade piercing through Blout's chest, sliding easily through the breastplate. The baron gasped, his breath rattling in his throat as he collapsed, sliding off his horse.

The other surviving knights fell almost as quickly, swarmed by Aldric's other knights and stabbed with spears by men-at-arms who followed quickly behind the horses.

"Finish their line!" Aldric shouted, raising his sword and the few hundred spearmen and archers left behind.

He didn't even have to reach their lines. Seeing three hundred knights burn to death and their baron skewered, the soldiers had had enough. They turned and ran before the commoners even got to them, the archers joining the route.

"Chase them down," Aldric commanded his remaining knights.

Some would be caught and cut down by the peasants, the remainder chased by the knights. A few would make it back to what forces remained at Twyver, but Aldric wanted to keep that to a bare handful.

This was not their only force south of the Thunderhorn and would not be the last battle they had. He needed to cut down what soldiers they retained from this as much as possible.

***

The Village of Tarnwick, Barony of Fairshore, River Mark

Caldean cursed his luck. His two hundred men-at-arms, burdened by their mail and spear, trudged back through yet another tiny village. This was a wasted effort of his men, instead of being part of the force that got the glory of destroying the rebel forces. Instead, they'd been on a wild wyvern chase, as if his men would ever catch up to the dozen or so mounted knights who'd tried to … he didn't know what. Flank the baron's army?

Not that a dozen men could have killed three hundred mounted knights, even if they had taken by surprise. Better to just fight them off and let them run, rather than try and chase them down.

But the Baron had been specific. Capture and kill them. So that is what Caldean had tried to do.

He'd finally called the chase off as a wasted effort after they found the body of what, by his count, was the last of the few crown knights who'd been sent with them to catch the rebel knights. They had found the bodies of their knights scattered for the past two hours, waylaid. In return he'd only seen two of the enemy knights.

Not a good exchange.

He would be happy when he was back with the army and had seen the last of these poor villages, which seemed all but empty, the peasants probably hiding or run off. He'd been worried during the first two villages they'd passed through, during the chase after the rebel knights, but this was the second on the way back, and it seemed as abandoned as the rest.

"Ser, can we look around, maybe find some food?" One of his sergeants asked.

"No. I want to get back to the army. Besides, look around. Do you think this place has anything worthwhile to find?"

"They might have some…"

Caldean held up a hand. He didn't know what, but there was … something.

"On guard…"

His words to his men were cut off by a sudden crashing noise as every door around them smashed open, making warning redundant. Peasants poured from every doorway and alley brandishing clubs and farming tools, dozens from every building, surrounding his men from every direction, clubbing and stabbing his men.

Caldean got his sword out just in time to block a man with a pitchfork, slashing him across the chest. Many of his men, carrying long spears unusable in these tight quarters, didn't have the same chance, dying before they could react. The rest dropped their spears and desperately grasped for the swords at their sides.

It wasn't all peasants. Ahead of him were three men in chain and armor. Caldean would have thought them the knights he chased, except he recognized the man in the middle of their lot, who had not been among the riders they pursued.

Baron Ulrich Braithwaite. Any soldier in Sidor knew who the giant River Markian was. He'd fought with King Garis on numerous campaigns and was known by the massive hammer he carried into battle. So large that most men couldn't even lift it. There were tales of his completely pulverizing Tador the Younger's head to paste on Winterfang Isle during the Iceland Uprising.

Caldean had never put much stock in those stories but, seeing him now in person, towering above everyone around him, holding the hammer that was as large as Caldean's own head, perhaps he had been too hasty.

"Close Ranks! Death to the rebels!" Caldean yelled, charging toward the baron, another man at his side.

His massive two-headed hammer swung, and Caldean barely managed to duck in time, the end connecting with the man to his right, sending his body flying into a nearby hut, smashed aside like a doll.

Caldean stabbed up, trying to catch the baron, but the man was fast, bringing the hilt of his weapon up to parry the block and kicking out, catching Caldean in the chest, causing him to stumble back.

Caldean tried to regain himself, taking a step back, sucking in wind. Surprisingly, Braithwaite did the same, swinging the hammer around, letting it finish its rotation and continuing the momentum.

He charged in again, now that the handle was in motion, but then the baron did something Caldean didn't expect. As he ducked to get under the swinging weapon, the baron twisted, pulling down on the shaft, causing it to change its direction, instead of across, the large, flat end went up over the baron's head and came crashing down, right where Caldean was charging straight toward the man, staying low.

Caldean looked up, just in time to see the massive iron hammerhead block out the sun. And then he saw nothing.

***

Selwyn, Barony of Fairshore, River Mark

Aldric watched his men bind the wrists of the few soldiers who'd survived both the slaughter. Not that there were many. He wore a cloth over his face, not that it kept out the horrid smell. The stench of burned flesh and rendered fat hung over the field like a shroud. In the pit, men worked to recover what they could - weapons and armor mostly, not that they would find much. Most had been warped and twisted in the extreme heat as the bodies added fuel to the oil fire.

It was a putrid sight.

"Your Grace," Sir Malvan said, walking up to him. Blood stained the knight's armor and a fresh cut marked his cheek. "We've secured the prisoners. One knight and thirty-two men-at-arms surrendered."

"Place the knight under close guard. Separate him from the men-at-arms." Aldric sheathed the Sword of the Whittons. Even after all these years, the blade remained pristine, untouched by blood or rust. "Any word from Baron Braithwaite?"

"None yet, Your Grace. Though if his trap worked as planned, he should be safe enough."

Aldric nodded. Ulrich had always been reliable, if unorthodox in his methods. The Baron of Stonevale preferred hammers to swords and peasant militias to knights, but he got results.

A group of conscripts dragged another body from the smoldering trench, adding it to the growing line of the dead.

"We lost two knights," Sir Malvan continued. "Another wounded badly enough he won't fight again soon. Twenty-three men-at-arms dead, thirty-some injured. The peasant levy..." He hesitated.

"How many?"

"Over a hundred dead. Maybe two hundred wounded."

Aldric's jaw tightened. The numbers were better than a straight fight would have yielded, but still too high. These weren't professional soldiers - they were farmers and craftsmen who'd answered his call. Each death left a family without a provider, children without fathers.

"See that the wounded are tended to first," Aldric ordered. "And get word to the nearby villages. We'll need wagons to transport them to the temples."

"The Disciples of Healing are already setting up in that farmhouse." Malvan pointed to a stone building a quarter-mile away.

Between them - hung limply in the still air.

"Good. What of our stores?"

"Low, Your Grace. We used most of our arrows in the first volley, and the spears..." Malvan gestured to the broken weapons littering the field. "Many shattered in the fighting."

This was the real problem. They'd won today, but at a cost they couldn't sustain. Edmund had more men, more weapons, more gold. He could replace his losses. Aldric couldn't. Baron Blackwood still had not responded to his Wyverns. Shadowhold was not a rich duchy, but they would need all the support they could manage if they were to take the fight to Edmund directly and end his tyranny.

"And the prisoners?" Malvan asked when Aldric did not answer right away.

Aldric considered for a moment. The knight is valuable. He could be ransomed to his family, bring in some valuable coin to help supply the armies. The men-at-arms were another matter.

"Offer the men-at-arms a choice. They can swear allegiance to River Mark or be released on their word not to take up arms against us again."

"You trust their word?"

"No. But we can't feed them, and killing surrendered men will only make more enemies. Have the knight brought to me once this is all secured. I want to know what Edmund's planning."

As he walked across the battlefield, Aldric looked to their dead. Too many. Far too many. They'd won today through cunning and sacrifice, but they couldn't win a war of attrition. Edmund would keep sending armies, wearing them down bit by bit until nothing remained. He could retake the River Mark, but he could not win the war.

Not without help.