Chapter 22 Faron
FARON
W hen the celebrations were done and the alliance with Armane announced, Queen Isabelle led her people on a march straight for Argylle’s capital.
They were joined by King Allan’s own soldiers, one thousand well-trained footmen to swell the ranks as they crossed gently sloping valleys into miles upon miles of flat farmland on their way to besiege the city of Vendom.
“How long do you think they will hold out?” Bart asked Faron as they set up tents. Behind them, soldiers dug latrine trenches, while to the west, a dozen more worked at the creation of a proper battering ram.
“I fear it may be weeks,” Faron said, hammering in the final stake. “King Bentley has been pulling all his resources and soldiers into the capital in preparation for this siege. He may hope to wait us out and let hunger and disease take the lives his own fighters cannot.”
The young man stood, his hands pushing against his lower back as he stretched.
“Can it really be that bad for us?” he asked. “I thought sieges were worse for the cities.”
Faron held back a grimace. He’d seen more than a few, and from both sides.
“They are,” he said. “But that doesn’t make it pleasant for us, either. A lot of tedium. A lot of boredom. Scarce water, close quarters, and opportune chances for sickness to spread.” He gestured to the battering ram being constructed. “I hope our queen decides to assault the walls instead.”
It would not be a pleasant attack, but Faron had succeeded against worse.
Vendom lacked a true castle, relying on the thick brick walls that surrounded the city to keep it safe.
There were three entrances, one to the east, the west, and the south, with all three heavily fortified with soldiers, archers, and if the rumors Faron had heard were true, murder holes and boiling oil.
In an age predating the Anaon Kingdom, it had once been capital of a magnificent nation.
That glory had long since passed, the city having been razed in the earliest age of the Heartless King’s rule and forced to rebuild from nothing.
Faron’s tent finished, he opened up the little flap; Iris was already inside, having rested since it was only halfway secure.
“Stealing my bed already?” he asked the coyote. Iris yawned at him. “You know this is how I get fleas, right?”
That wasn’t true, of course. A little flex of radiance kept Iris clean of all parasites, but she didn’t know that.
“Faron,” his brother called, and so he withdrew from the tent. Sariel approached, Redemption twirling in his fingers.
“Something the matter?”
Sariel gestured for Bart to join them.
“Orders coming in from Sir Tristan,” he said. “Each squadron is to gather come nightfall for new orders, and prepare our weapons and armor beforehand.”
Faron glanced at the distant city.
“A nighttime assault?” he asked. “Sure, we’d have surprise, but it’s just as likely to end in disaster.”
Sariel shrugged.
“I guess that will keep it interesting, won’t it?”
Faron sat with Bart at his right and Iris at his feet, enjoying the warmth of the bonfire.
Dozens of similar fires burned throughout the encamped army, filling the night sky with their smoke.
The men and women muttered quietly to themselves as they waited.
Once the night was deep and the sky full of stars, Sir Tristan arrived from his meeting with Queen Isabelle.
“I pray all of you are ready for a fight,” he said.
“Gonna be hard to fight when we can’t see,” Derek said, and a few with him laughed. “I pity the fools pushing the battering ram in the dark.”
“We won’t need it,” Tristan said. He pointed to the city.
“Bentley was a fool to ally with the Church of Stars. He’s made a lot of enemies, and they’ve been in contact with us since Isabelle’s coronation.
A group of men and women loyal to Leliel will overpower the guards at the southern entrance and open it for us.
When we march tonight, we will enter the city unopposed. ”
Faron rubbed his chin as he thought. The numbers were significantly in their favor, and if they could bypass the walls? It would be a massacre.
“How trustworthy are these traitors to Vendom?” he asked.
“As trustworthy as traitors can be,” Tristan said. “But if they fail, then we retreat, and at worst suffer the sting of a few arrows. If they do not? The city is ours, captured less than a day after our arrival.”
“And what a victorious tale that would be,” Faron said, and clapped his hands. Risky it might be, but it sounded infinitely better than waiting out a lengthy siege as the innocent people within the city walls starved. “When do we move out?”
“When the signal is given,” Sir Tristan answered. “They will set fire to several buildings throughout the city to let us know when the way is open. So extinguish that bonfire, and prepare. We may stumble and trip over our own feet, but we’ve a city to capture and a king to behead.”
Faron and Sariel stood at the head of their group, several thousand yards of trodden earth between them and the southern entrance into Vendom.
They were still within the limits of the camp, hoping their gathering went unseen by the city soldiers.
Iris slowly circled the pair, filled with anxious energy.
The many soldiers around them fared little better.
“Have you a plan?” Sariel asked, keeping his voice low so no one would overhear.
“My plan is to cause as much chaos as I can,” Faron said. Every squadron had soldiers assigned to them to light torches once they were inside the city. Sir Tristan was to guide them once inside, but Faron suspected his brother would break away to do his own thing if he so desired.
“If we separate, we could find and slay King Bentley,” Sariel suggested. “He will be frightened and confused. It would not be difficult.”
“I don’t think stealing Isabelle’s glory is the best way to go about this,” Faron said, shrugging. “I’ll stick with the rest of our soldiers. Someone needs to anchor our formation, especially someone who won’t need a torch to see.”
“As you wish,” Sariel said, ending the debate.
“There!” Bart said behind Faron. He was the assigned torch holder of their group, and he pointed to the sky. “I see the smoke!”
Faron drew his sword and readied his shield.
“All right,” he said, and looked to Sir Tristan for the order. “Are we good to go?”
The knight was staring to the side, looking for his own signal. Many of the camp’s bonfires had been left to burn, and all at once, they were extinguished.
“We go,” he said.
Faron and Sariel took point, having argued truthfully that they had good eyes for the night.
Sir Tristan reluctantly agreed, likely thinking it just bluster.
For the brothers, though, a field lit with stars was as clear as day, and they easily reached the road leading into the city and followed it.
Iris trotted alongside them, careful to keep as silent as if she were hunting prey.
A glance over Faron’s shoulder saw the rest of Isabelle’s army awkwardly approaching the city.
The formations were uneven and ragged, and plenty were bumping into one another.
Isabelle waited near the back, uncharacteristic of her, but he trusted her to take to the front once they were inside the city and any pretense at stealth was abandoned.
The entrance was two thick oak doors, twice the height of a man and reinforced with iron.
When Faron was some fifty feet away, they cracked open.
Wood groaned as they swiveled outward, widening until two people could enter abreast. A woman with her face and hair covered in dark cloth stepped out, and she gestured for them to hurry.
“Praise be the goddess,” she whispered as Faron and Sariel passed through.
“Praise be,” Sariel whispered back, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Four soldiers lay dead on the ground on the other side.
When Faron glanced to the walls, he saw more than twenty men and women wielding swords, knives, and axes, all of them garbed in dark cloth.
Blood dripped from the stones like a macabre rain over the city entrance.
In the distance, a faint glow lit the rooftops from the fires Leliel’s followers had set.
“The king grasped for power, and in doing so rotted from within,” Sariel said.
“It’s been a while since I heard your poetry.”
“This is not poetry. It is the obvious. King Bentley is a damned fool.”
Faron grinned. “Then it’s good we’re removing him from his throne.”
Isabelle’s army flooded through the gates as alarm bells rang, the city slowly awakening to both fires and the realization it was under attack. Along the walls, Argylle soldiers on patrol rushed to seal the entrance from both sides.
“Galag, get your soldiers up there to hold the gate,” Marshal Oscar shouted as he led his own group through, Queen Isabelle in tow. “Pira, seal off the main road from the west. Don’t let any reinforcements reach the Royal Manse.”
Chaos spread in the dark, the army splintering as the first of many battles began along the walls.
The Argylle soldiers were quickly outnumbered but pressed onward nonetheless, knowing that sealing the doors was their only hope of saving the city.
Meanwhile squads rushed in all directions, some obeying shouted orders, some moving on their own.
Screams followed, frightened and panicked as the populace hunkered down in their homes or fled for the outer walls.
We are here to liberate, not conquer , had been Isabelle’s orders repeated throughout the camp leading up to the assault. A na?ve hope, Faron suspected.