Rick Shelley - Son of the Hero

Thanks to Kardeen's efficiency, we had a hot supper, all thirteen hundred and more of us, even though I wouldn't let anyone light fires that might give away the fact that we were around. The kitchen people at four castles did the cooking. Mother and Parthet tended the doorways while the food was carried through. The meal wasn't as plentiful or varied as the repasts at Basil, but it was a decent enough meal, in both quantity and quality.

After supper, we went over the plans for the assault on Thyme again. Lesh, Hambert, and I would be the first through the door-underscore the I. Two men would escort Parthet to safety as soon as he blew the postern open. If he could. More soldiers would pour into the castle as quickly as possible, fanning out to meet the garrison. It was a nice, simple plan-put the spearhead in, then hurry to overwhelm the defenders through sheer numbers-provided it worked. As soon as the postern blew or burned, the rest of our army would surround the castle, first to make sure that none of the defenders escaped and second to put our phony siege in position.

Then there was just the waiting. We didn't want to move until we could expect most of the garrison to be asleep. I tried napping, but I was too keyed up to stay down for long, and anyway, every time I closed my eyes that dream from the night before was ready to jump out at me. I certainly didn't need that.

We didn't have a lot going for us in the coming battle against the Etevar, and if we didn't grab the castle, the odds would be insane… well, more insane. But taking Castle Thyme was no guarantee of success-not by a long shot. There was no way that one man, even a regulation Hero, could make up for all the numbers unless he had a few rabbits in his hat and a lot of luck. The Etevar had a better-trained and much larger army, and a better wizard. Parthet was the first to concede that.

"Let's get started," I said-somewhere around eleven o'clock. Keeping track of time was still a hassle. My watch had started running again after we left Fairy, but it acted strange. Once it had even run backward for an hour.

We walked from the orchard to the castle. Horses would only be a giveaway on this raid, and our army didn't have many horses to start with, only about three hundred. Most of our fighters were foot soldiers, infantry. We moved as quietly as you could expect several dozen men in armor to move. Annick picked our way through the woods. I hadn't included her in my plans for the raid, but she dealt herself in and silently dared me to try to keep her out of the fight. I didn't try.

The castle was also silent. I didn't expect to hear carousing. A drunken debauch would have been asking too much of luck. Lurking in the shadows forty yards from the ditch, we watched one of the sentries walk his post on the parapet, visible only when he passed one of the crenels. The postern faced west, the main gate south. Two of my men scurried across the open stretch with ladders while Annick and several others covered them with bows, just in cast the sentry caught on. He didn't. In twos and threes, the rest of us crossed the clearing, timing our moves with the sentry's tour on the wall, then we jumped down into the dry moat. Dry? There was muck and mud a foot deep in it. The smell left no doubt as to what we were wading through. Castle Thyme didn't have a sewer system.

Getting our people up near the postern wasn't all that easy. There was only a narrow ledge at the base of the wall, not wide enough for safety, let alone for comfort, and no one wanted to fall in the crap below.

Parthet had to go at one side of the door, close enough to work his hocus-pocus. I was at the other side so I could charge in first when the door opened-my "right" as Hero. Annick had wormed her way right behind me, even ahead of Lesh and Hambert. Altogether, there were eight of us up on the ledge. A dozen more soldiers waited in the bottom of the ditch or on the ladders, and about the same number crouched on the other side of the ditch, trying to look invisible. The rest of our strike force was in the trees, forty yards away, with a rough plank bridge to throw across the ditch as soon as we were inside keeping the defenders from dumping their end of the bridge into the crap.

"Okay, Uncle. Your show," I whispered.

He grunted. "You have that flashlight?"

"If you need it."

"I need it. There's not enough starlight to conjure a good fart. Play the light along the hinges, slowly, while I get started."

I had fitted a half-shield of leather to make the light harder to spot from above. I turned the light on and moved the beam the way Parthet directed. The hinges were large metal strips that extended almost the entire width of the door. Smooth rounded boltheads were visible, but there was no way to dismantle the hinges from the outside.

Parthet chanted softly. I couldn't understand a word of it. Either magical formulas were exempt from the translation magic or it was just gibberish Parthet used to psych himself up. As he continued, he got louder, making me worry that the sentry would hear. But before I could work myself up to shushing Parthet, the top hinges started to glow a dull red and I smelled wood burning-like old railway ties. Then the second hinge started to glow and the first got brighter, and hotter. I turned off the flashlight and stuck it in my hip pocket when the metal was light enough to see by. Tiny flames became visible around the metal, then large streaks of the door charred visibly.

"Put your shoulder to it," Parthet said. "A sharp rap." I edged sideways. Bashing into glowing metal didn't seem very smart even though I had leather and chain mail to protect me, but we had to get inside, and the longer I hesitated, the more chance there was that the sentry would see us.

My shoulder scarcely touched the door before it popped inward, hinges and all, so quickly that I almost fell into the castle. I caught my balance against the far wall, getting my hands out before my head could slam into the stone, before I could hit hard enough to jar my bad ribs. I drew Dragon's Death and turned toward the guardroom and great hall of Castle Thyme, where we expected the first challenge. I didn't have much room to swing the elf sword in the hallway, but it would make life problematic for any defenders who tried to get too close to me.

Lesh and Annick were in the corridor with me by the time I got set, before the first defender appeared. He shouted an alert, then charged, even though my sword was twice the length of his and he couldn't get close without opening himself to the bite of Dragon's Death. But I was limited too. All I could do was keep prodding, making short jabs at him, forcing him to back off while I looked for swinging room. The guard tried to stall me long enough for his help to arrive. When he was nearly back to the room behind him, he made a desperate attempt to get past my blade. His maneuver didn't work. I sliced at his head, backhanded, and he went down to stay.

After that, it was one short duel after another until all of our strike force got into the fray. I had to fight two more Dorthinis, but the encounters were nothing to write home about. Against these enemies, Dragon's Death was once more almost weightless. At need, I could handle it with one hand, as easily as I could swing my own smaller sword.

Then the fight was over. The rest of the garrison surrendered when it was obvious that we had the numbers. These Dorthinis were all good soldiers. There was no "fight to the last man" nonsense. Just as well. I had no stomach for a massacre, not even of the men who had ambushed and killed my father. But I didn't waste any grief on the Dorthinis who died before the surrender.

Once we had accounted for every member of the garrison, we lowered the drawbridge so our reserves could come in with the horses to wait for the Dorthini army to arrive and pass. The rest of our troops moved into their phony siege positions. We raised the drawbridge again well before dawn.