Chapter 35 To Parley
To Parley
He woke in the pre-dawn dark, as suddenly as if he’d been roused by a call, and lay there with his heart pounding, listening to the silence of the castle. He could hear the wind outside, and a distant jangling bell that hung around the neck of one of the castle’s cats.
And, beside him, the soft breathing of a woman.
It wasn’t the first time they had spent the night with each other, nor the second or the third; they’d done so all through the grippe.
But it was the first time they had shared a bed.
Nothing more had happened beyond the kiss, but after supper she had started to fall asleep against him, and in the easy logic of night it had seemed simpler that she stay in the already fire-warmed room rather than going back alone to her own cold chamber.
He wondered if it was the first time he’d ever shared a bed through the night, but a memory he hadn’t recalled in years slipped in, of him and Corin as young children, bunking together overnight at a traveler’s wayhouse on the way to visiting their uncle and older cousin Hark at Ironcliff City.
Long before their father had started talking treason.
Even before Niel had come to hate his brother and fear his violence.
It was a stupid thing to remember, of a time that felt like a different life.
Niel turned his head slowly to the side, and made out the dim outlines of Ayla’s shape, barely visible in the dark to his eyes.
His mouth felt dry, and suddenly he was too conscious of the sound of his own breathing.
He did not fully understand how they had reached this point, where his heart ached at just the thought of her.
It seemed as though it must be happening to some other man, one he shared a body with.
Surely this type of happiness was not meant for him.
Or perhaps this time his curse was not to be miserable from the start, but instead to know misery was coming for him, a doom that stalked him through the cold winter.
Because this was going to end, and it was not going to end well.
He resisted the urge to reach a hand across the bed and trace the outline of her body.
Moving slowly so he wouldn’t wake Ayla, he slid silently from the blankets.
Cold flooded his body as he left the bed.
She stirred, turning over with a soft mumble.
He waited, watching her until she quieted, then changed his clothes and left her to finish her sleep.
He ate, exercised, and stood morning sentry.
In afternoon he took a turn in the laundry, churning clothes through herb-infused water and scrubbing at them until his fingers ached from the icy water.
Footsteps clattered downstairs at what he thought was mid-afternoon, though in the lantern lit room there was no good measure of time.
“There you are, my lord,” the soldier on the stair said, sounding slightly breathless. It was Toved, who’d helped move the woodpile with him during the last attack. “You’re wanted on the wall.”
Two other soldiers were down there doing washing with him, and Niel felt their eyes on him as they all looked up.
“Trouble?” Niel asked, straightening his back as he dried his hands on the damp rag beside him.
“Mayhap. They started doing something out there.”
He did not like the thought of his brother ‘doing something.’ Niel grunted and made for the stairs, taking them two at a time and passing Toved, who followed him back up all the way to the wall.
It was quiet outside, a few sparse snowflakes dancing on the breeze as they fell, and his sentries remained spread out at their posts.
He and Kerr had impressed on them the importance of not letting any distractions pull them away: even if the Queen’s army rushed the castle, Corin might send a smaller number of men to sneak around the other side with ladders.
But a small group of off-duty soldiers, Kerr among them, were clustered in one spot and squinting past the army encampment.
Niel shouldered through them and peered at the small, distant figures. As far as he could tell, his brother’s men were busily stripping a pile of firs of their branches.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“They’re building something,” Kerr told him. He stood beside Niel’s left, his arms crossed and his expression grim.
“They look like they’re chopping firewood,” Niel said flatly, and wondered if this was what happened to men who’d been cooped inside a single castle for too long, waiting for an attack to reach them.
“No. They’ve been measuring the logs and comparing them,” Kerr said. “Look. That fellow, over there.” Niel followed the point of Kerr’s finger, to the small figure moving back and forth, movements indistinct over the distance.
“What?”
“Cutting planks, I think. Not firewood.”
Niel considered this grimly.
Months. He was supposed to have months.
“Maybe they got tired of the tents and want better shelter,” Niel heard one of the men suggest behind him. Nobody bothered answering that foolish notion.
One of the men on Kerr’s other side asked a question quietly. Niel thought he heard the word trebuchet and forced himself to take a deep breath. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if they came with catapults.
“Doubt they want to break the castle,” Kerr said to the soldier. “Blackfell won’t want that much destruction unless there’s no other option. I’d guess a tower. Some kind of siege engine.”
Rather than a ladder that could be leaned against a wall and climbed hand-over-hand while the men above fired arrows or even dropped stones on the intruder’s heads, a siege tower was an entire structure that could be moved up against the wall.
A siege tower’s walls would provide cover for the men inside it, allowing them to climb their own stairs and exit a door onto the castle wall.
If they were seeing the beginnings of a siege tower, Niel’s best odds were to get it set on fire before it reached the wall.
Of course, Corin would have his own defenses, like covering its approaching side in animal hides that would catch less easily than wood.
“They won’t be done anytime soon, if they’re starting from raw logs,” Niel said, practically growling.
“In a few days, they might be,” Kerr said flatly. “Shame the moat’s frozen solid, and we don’t have a catapult of our own. We’ll want fire arrows at the ready when they try to come.”
He’d spent the last months learning that Kerr often had the right of things. There was no sense letting his own noble-born pride get in the way of good tactics.
“See that they are,” Niel said. “Whatever preparations you recommend, have carried out.”
Kerr nodded.
If they got a tower or two pressed up against the wall, the fighting would be fierce.
Losses would be heavy. Niel couldn’t afford to lose dozens of men in close combat.
The castle’s walls were their only real advantage right now.
If Corin, with his thousands-strong army, managed to breach the walls, there would be very little Niel could do.
In the snow-fight, Ayla had made her own advantages.
She’d been outmatched, and surprise and subterfuge had leveled their combat to leave Niel off-balance.
But that was different. Wasn’t it? He didn’t have the lady’s charms. Were there other ways to knock his brother off-balance?
Or at least, other ways to make sure everybody in the castle wasn’t put to death?
Once Corin had siege towers in place, Niel might lose the opportunity to surrender. The Queen’s general would have little reason to barter with Niel, once victory was in Corin’s sights.
“Signal to them. I want to parley with my brother. And have one of the horses readied,” he said.
“You’re going out there?” Kerr asked, surprised.
“If he agrees to treat with me.”
“Surely that is an unnecessary risk.”
Niel hesitated, then admitted gruffly: “he’s an ass, but he’s an honorable ass.”
The codes of war allowed for a pause in hostilities, for the two sides to meet and negotiate terms. With Ditmar, he’d done it simply by passing messages through the wall.
But with his brother… if Niel proposed terms of surrender, he needed Corin’s sworn word that they’d be honored.
Not just whatever a messenger might say.
And even if Corin refused to accept Niel’s terms, Niel mostly trusted that Corin would let him retreat back inside the castle before fighting resumed.
His brother might have become the crown’s lapdog, but Corin would sooner eat his shield than break his own knight’s oaths.
Niel turned away from the wall’s rail, deep in thought, and found himself face-to-face with the castle’s lady. Ayla stood just behind him, clasping her cloak around her shoulders with her fists, her breath coming out in clouds.
His heart stuttered.
“Good morning,” Niel managed, feeling his cheeks flame. He could hardly chide her for coming out without his escort when the wall was full of Niel’s soldiers.
“It's afternoon,” Ayla answered, looking a good deal less awkward than he felt, as if their kiss the night before had not rewritten her entire soul. “There’s trouble?”
“Not yet,” he answered. “In a few days, maybe, but we’ll manage it.”
“I see,” Ayla said, her eyes leaving his face to look past him, at the distant wood-working happening past the enemy camp.
With a clumsy nod, he stepped around her and strode back into the castle.
He couldn’t die in an attack and leave Lord Blackfell standing.
Nor did he want to see his men cut down in front of him.
He couldn’t even consider what the Enarian troops might do to Ayla if they had branded her a traitor.
Oh, he trusted that his brother was honorable now, for all Niel still hated him.
But Corin could not be everywhere at once, and men who felt wronged by weeks of camping in the northern cold might decide to take their payment from her.