R. Salvatore - The Dame

“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.