Gav Thorpe - The Crown of the Conqueror

"Ten! That one of them is stupid enough to try!" Hemmin countered from the left.

It was the one who had spoken that broke first, snatching his sword from his belt.

"I'll cut your fucking head off, you son of a whore," he shouted, taking three quick steps.

Ullsaard judged the man carefully. He was still quick and supple, despite his age, but having one eye could only be a disadvantage. The king took a couple of steps to his right and saw that the man had to turn his head to keep him in view.

"My mother was indeed a whore," Ullsaard called back. He raised his spear high and looked at his warriors. "But my father was a king!"

There were roars of approval and clapping. The legionnaires started a beat, thumping the butts of their spears on the ground and uttering a wordless chant.

The chieftain edged closer by another two steps. Ullsaard held his ground, slightly crouched, spear held to the front, sword held back ready to be swung. He sidestepped again, forcing the other man to turn on his heel.

He looked at his opponent's face, seeing the tension in the tightness around his eyes and the clench of his jaw. Ullsaard stood up straight and looked at his men.

"I can't be bothered with this," he declared sheathing his sword. "These piss-drinking dog-fuckers are not worth a drop of our sweat. Shoot them!"

He turned his back and walked away as the slap of bow strings sounded around him. There were screams from the Salphors mixed with the thud of arrows into wood and flesh. Ullsaard stopped after a dozen paces and looked at Hemmin.

"Save the heads of those four," he said, pointing his spear at the bodies of the chieftains, each pierced by a dozen bolts. Around the cart, the other warriors lay in heaps, some of them still alive, moaning and crawling. "Finish off the rest. Send everything else back to the city."

Confident that his First Captains had matters well in hand, Ullsaard retired to his pavilion.

At first, sleep did not come. He fretted over his decision to send Allenya away so quickly. He had been away from her for years at a time before, but it seemed different now. She was vulnerable, a target for his enemies in a way that she had never been before.

Ullsaard tossed restlessly and wondered if he would have been happier if Aalun had not entangled him in the succession of the Crown; he had never set out to become king. His mother would argue that the Blood had its own demands, and after meeting Lakhyri and the abomination that was now Erlaan, Ullsaard was tempted to think it a curse more than a blessing.

Despite being unsettled by these thoughts, Ullsaard relaxed, realising that there was no point thinking about such things. He was king, he did have the Blood and he was waging a war to become the ruler of all the lands from sea to sea. Most importantly, Allenya was safe. Nothing mattered more. If her security caused him unhappiness, he would willingly pay the price.

Such thoughts focussed his mind on the immediate future. It was a simple plan, when he thought about it. Once Salphoria was conquered, he could return to Askh and leave the problems of the empire to the Brotherhood. He smiled as he fell asleep, wondering what he would do with his time when he no longer had to wield a sword.

When he awoke, Ullsaard was unsurprised to find that preparations for the attack were well underway. Engineers had worked through the night assembling the war engines, constructing revetments to protect them and distributing ladders amongst the companies chosen for the assault. Two huge wheeled rams had been fashioned from felled trees and wagons, pulled by teams of abada. Armourers were fitting the fuel casks to the lava-throwers and preparing braziers for the war machine crews.

Up before Dawnwatch, Ullsaard wandered from his camp to the lines, a mile or so away. By the time he arrived, some of the legionnaires were already being woken by their third captains and sergeants. Expectant muttering greeted the dawn, and the soldiers joked with each other and their king as he made a round of the temporary fortifications.

His inspection took several hours, during which the army was roused, fed and set to work reinforcing the embankments and clearing the road of any debris so that the rams could move freely. A second line of earth-and-wood walls was rising from the fields a quarter of a mile ahead, from which the war engines would be in range. Unfortunately, this also put them in range of the catapults Anglhan had mounted on the walls of the city.

As he left the safety of the siege line to survey the forward work, he saw bodies strewn along either side of the road. There were several hundred as far as he could tell, some in scattered groups, most in a swathe of corpses about half a mile from the city. Men, women and children lay dead together.

"What's this?" he asked the second captain of a company digging a ditch alongside the road. The captain glanced at the piles of bodies.

"A bunch of 'em tried to flee the city after midnight," said the officer. "Orders was to let nobody escape."

"They'll be rotten within days, we can't just leave them here," said the king.

"That's why we're digging," the captain said with a cruel laugh. "Can't waste fuel on burning 'em, so the First Captain said to bury 'em."

"Very wise," said Ullsaard. "Hope you're getting double beer for your troubles."

"From Captain Hemmin?" The captain laughed again. "Even you'd be parched of thirst before he offered a drop of wine or beer."

"I'll have a word," said Ullsaard with a grin. "We'll see if we can loosen his fingers on the barrel tap."

Whoever was in charge of the city's defenders — Ullsaard doubted even Anglhan was so conceited he would consider himself a keen military man — knew a little about sieges. Magilnada's catapults began bombarding the closer siegeworks as Low Watch began. Rocks rained down from eight machines on the walls, sending up fountains of earth, turning braces and wooden walkways into storms of deadly splinters. The barrage was not quick, but it was steady and accurate.

Teams dashed forwards to drag the dead and wounded back to the main line while fresh companies were sent in to continue the labouring. Ullsaard knew this would be a tough time for the men, dying at the hands of the enemy before they could strike back. Most of them already knew where their duties in the assault would put them; those carrying ammunition or manning the machines knowing they took their chances early on while those in the attack companies would face even greater danger when they stormed the walls.

Ullsaard walked slowly back to his camp. Sieges were drawnout affairs, even if an early assault was planned. It was one thing to smash into a wooden-walled Salphorian village or fort; it was an entirely different prospect to storm a city like Magilnada. Ullsaard contented himself with the thought that it was all good practice for when they reached Carantathi, which if rumour and legend were to be believed would present even more of an obstacle than Magilnada. It was claimed the capital of Salphoria, though not large, sat atop a mountain and could only be reached by a single causeway. Rather than dreading such a task, Ullsaard was looking forward to overcoming the challenge.

On arriving at his tent, the king summoned his First Captains, reviewed their orders and the dispositions of the legions and then dismissed them to concentrate on other matters. Ullsaard had avoided some of the more onerous duties of his position whilst chasing the Mekhani, but his responsibilities had caught up with him in Ersua and there was a chest full of documents, letters and petitions to read through.

He applied himself to the task as he would any other campaign, dividing the work by type. Trade proposals went in one pile, with reports from the governors in another. Marriage, death and birth announcements he set aside for the time being. Invitations to galas, openings, fairs, ship launches, feasts and celebrations were tossed on to a growing heap under the map table.