A Stolen Crown (14 page)

He stood from the table and tossed the remains from his ornate silver plate to the floor where the dogs began their growling struggle to greedily steal every scrap from each other. The dogs were in luck. Manfred did not have much of an appetite this night and had barely touched his food. As the dogs lustily chewed the meat from bones and licked the grease from the floor, Manfred caught a whiff of a foul smell and turned to look at them. He had never noticed before how badly they stank and wondered if the man assigned to take clean up after them had neglected his duty. Disgusted, Manfred walked out of the dining hall and wandered his way down the great hall toward the outer rooms of the palace.

He barely halfway there when he heard shouts from outside. Curious, Manfred walked out onto one of the upper walkways that ran above an open courtyard. As he walked out past the oil-soaked torches that lit the upper wall, the men in the courtyard below noticed him and called out.

“Baron. We’ve got a problem with the sewers, sir,” one of them called. Manfred recognized the man as one of the lieutenants, who had been sent to him by Cerric.

“Fix it then. I can smell it, even up here,” he told them, somewhat relieved that his dogs had not been the source of the foul odor.

“That’s just the problem my lord, we don’t know how. It’s coming up everywhere."

Manfred stood for a moment, watching as brackish water pooled in the courtyard then held his hand to his nose as a gust of wind blew the stench of generations of sewage toward him.

“Something is wrong,” he said, realizing that the water system was the castle's only weakness, and if he were in Kaleb's shoes, it would make sense to exploit it. “Sound the alarm! We are under attack!”

Manfred might be a lot of things but he was no fool. He watched the water start to flow more strongly into the courtyard below and knew that somehow Kaleb was behind this. He took out a piece of cloth from his pocket and held it to his nose as further shouting erupted in other parts of the castle.

At the top of the steps that led down to the water room, Jax calmly watched the water rise to the top and begin to fill the floor of the room. Luckily for him, the place was upstream from the sewers and the water that flowed into it was somewhat cleaner than that which he knew had already begun to fill other parts of the castle. Still, Jax could detect the faint smell of sewage and he shook his head thinking of all the beautiful rooms, tapestries and furniture that were going to be covered in foulness. He wondered whether, after this, Kaleb would even want the stinking fortress. The water pooled across the floor and touched Jax’s boot and he slide it back. No point in getting wet until he absolutely had to, especially considering how cold the water was.

As expected, loud banging sounded from the heavy wooden door. Jax smiled. He had been wondering when Manfred’s men would figure out to check the water system. Luckily, he had not only barred the door but there had been some heavy cabinets that he had also been able to push in front of it, keeping the men out. He had also cut two holes in the bottom of the door, too small for a man to get through, but large enough to let the water flow out and into the rest of the fortress. The bodies of the two men who had been guarding the water room lay on top of the cabinets, still alive, but unconscious, and hopefully they would remain thus until Jax could make his escape. Jax looked up the wall to a high window and took a deep breath. All he had to do was wait until the water floated him up high enough to reach the window that, if his estimation was correct, overlooked the river. He laughed to himself thinking how easy things sounded when they discussed the plan by the campfire several nights past. Now, he realized that even though the water was rising fast, by the time it rose high enough, he would probably be frozen from being in the icy river water for even that short amount of time.

The window was set very high on the wall and also looked like it might not even be large enough for him to squeeze through. He had already tried to throw a hook and rope through it, to no avail. Jax heard Manfred’s soldiers begin to chop at the thick wood of the door with an axe. No matter, he thought, at the rate the water was beginning to flow, by the time they could chew through the door, the water would have risen far above it anyway and likely the spray of water coming through the holes they were making would slow them down. He turned his attention back to the window. There had to be a way to get up there, he thought as he looked at the sheer wall, cursing Kaleb’s family for being so particular about their architecture. If only they had left the original building stones exposed, he might have something to hold onto. He was a good climber.

Jax remembered Kaleb telling him once how he had restored much of the castle, replastering so many of the rooms where it had begun to soften and crumble. Kaleb had brought in artists to paint the still wet plaster in many of the more finely appointed rooms but, due to his own feelings of frugality, left much of the palace a more utilitarian greyish white of the plaster. Setting aside his thoughts of aesthetics, Jax started to wonder about the plaster.

He took out one of his long daggers and walked over to the wall. Holding it up in his fist, he stabbed it at the wall. Sure enough, the blade pierced the hard outer layer and sunk into the softer older layers of plaster almost to the hilt. Jax pulled out his other dagger and stabbed it into the wall at a point higher than the other and it went in just as easily. He wondered at how many times the walls would have been plastered over to have been so thick with the stuff, but considering that it was strong enough to hold his daggers, he decided not to bother questioning the decorating choices of Kaleb's ancestors.

Gritting his teeth, Jax started the slow climb, pulling himself up the wall with the strength of his arms alone. He was glad he had spent the last year climbing walls and hanging from window ledges or there would have been no way he could have pulled himself painstakingly up the wall. When he was nearly at the window, he glanced down and was reassured by the fact that, if he fell, he would at least land in a depth of water that had now risen almost to his own height. Still, he thought it would be better to stick to this plan since he was almost there and it looked like the guards he had knocked out were beginning to stir, probably revived by the cold water that now surrounded the cabinets on which they lay. With a few more stabs of his daggers, Jax made it to the top and he pulled himself into the thick rectangular window ledge then rested for a few moments, catching his breath.

Jax could hear Manfred’s soldiers shouting atop the ramparts above him and felt their boots reverberating faintly in the stone behind his back as they ran back and forth on the wall just above him. They were cursing now and he thought he heard them complaining openly about Manfred. He smiled. That would be the perfect end for the Baron, to have his men mutiny on him. Whatever the case, most of them would probably get swept away by the river when they tried to escape. That was his fear now. The climb had left his arms shaking with fatigue and now he was worried that he would have little strength to swim the current. He took a few deep breaths and shook his hands to try to get them moving again.

From his perch in the high window that looked out over the river below, Jax was able to lean out and look to the side at the outer grounds of the fortress and he could see that the plan to flood the place was working far better than he and Kaleb had expected. The fortress grounds were already heavily flooded and most of its soldiers were crowding atop its walls for fear of drowning, especially since the sewers had indeed backed up, making a messy affair of the whole place.

Looking past them, Jax could see trails of smoke and he guessed that the fires that Kaleb's men had set along the land-bridge that led to the fortress were likely impassable by now, which meant that Manfred's men were going to have to jump for it and try to swim for the bank before they were tossed over the falls. It was a frightening thought, but he might as well beat them to it. He just hoped that the lad Brian and the big man Fergus had rigged things up properly. Otherwise, he’d surely get swept away by the current. Jax kicked off the old pair of boots he wore, glad he’d had the presence of mind to leave his own much nicer ones with Kaleb. He made sure his daggers were secure on his belt as he perched on the outer edge of the window and stared for a moment at the river coursing past him and then he took a deep breath, steeled his nerves, and leapt out from the wall.

Downstream, Brian and Fergus had felled several trees and, using heavy ropes they had strung across the river, they had rigged a series of logs together on an angle across the rushing water. Brian was amazed that the contraption worked. Fergus had told them that he had seen it done by a fisherman on a fast river near his home. He was about to ask the man where his home was when one of the ropes they had rigged in a loop along the logs now pulled tight as though something had caught on it. He could not see very far out across the river since they had only lit a small lantern so Jax would be able to mark their position.

“Let’s see what fish we’re catching tonight,” Fergus said with a grin and headed down to the edge of the water with an extra length of rope. The river on this side of the fortress was fairly wide so it took a while before they heard the heavy splashing of something, or someone being pulled free of the current. Fergus tossed the shorter length of rope out to the figure that had appeared, clinging to the logs, then he used it to pull the man ashore.

“You made it!” Brian said as Jax's face, pale white with purple lips appeared in the dim lamp light.

“Barely, it’s bloody freezing,” Jax said as he stamped his feet and slapped his hands against his legs, trying to get rid of the numbness. Fergus unwrapped a thick blanket he had been wearing over his shoulder and draped it over the wet, frozen man.

“How’d it go?” Brian asked. Jax looked at him and stopped chattering for a moment.

“Like a charm, except for the cold water part.” He looked around. “Where’s Kaleb?”

“Keeping the homefires lit, you might say,” Fergus said. “You’re wantin' we be heading over to him now?” he asked. Jax nodded.

“First, where are my dry clothes?” he asked. Brian held the lantern so Jax could see where they had laid out his clothes. “Good.” He responded and started tearing off the wet garments. Though frozen and numb, Jax changed clothes faster than Brian thought humanly possible. He thankfully accepted yet a second blanket from Fergus’ warm shoulders and wrapped it around himself even though he was now wearing warm clothes and winter cloak. Jax was not sure whether he could remember what warmth was and would have given anything to be near a fire. Still, there was work to do and he was not about to let Kaleb have all the fun.

They were just about to leave when they heard yelling from the direction of the water, voices calling for help. Fergus held up the lantern and bellowed out across the sound of the rushing river.

“Anyone armed gets a sword in the gut. If we've got yer surrender we'll pull you to shore,” he said. The voices called out that they were unarmed and that they surrendered.

"They won't have any fight in them after being in that water," Jax commented, but Brian kept his axes handy nonetheless as they rescued a bunch of Manfred's soldiers who had ended up in the river, unintentionally saved by the log trap.

*****

All in all, it was a sad victory, for there was little glory in it and many soldiers died needlessly when the water topped the walls of the fortress, sweeping them down the river and over the falls. Manfred was smarter than most and realized that there were a few points that were higher than the rest and that the water would pour over the walls before it could rise up and claim any who stood with him. Kaleb called out to the Baron and asked him whether he would surrender, for certainly no one could for long withstand a siege such as this. From atop the highest wall, Manfred called down across the rushing water that he and his remaining men agreed to surrender.

It took two days to remove the braces and free the stones that had plugged the tunnels below the palace. They had to work carefully because the stones now had mountains of water behind them and Kaleb did not want his men getting killed when the stones let go and came crashing out. When they finally did get the tunnels open, the water made such a deafening noise it was almost as though the ground shook and the fortress might come tumbling down. The ancient structure held firm and, with the water gone, they were able to enter the grounds before long.

Kaleb received Manfred’s surrender in person once the water had drained from the fortress and the Baron was able to walk down from the high wall and give himself up. Only thirteen of his men remained, the rest of them having been flooded into the rapids. Kaleb did not tell him that over a hundred had been saved by Fergus, Jax and Brian. The baron wept openly in shame for he had lost over four hundred men in one night and was not only humiliated but appeared to genuinely feel responsible for the lives of those in his charge. Brian was surprised that the baron, who was the most plain-looking, non-descript person he could think of, acted in such a way since he had pictured the man to be some kind of evil monster who mercilessly ordered women, children, old people and more importantly, his family, killed. He was also surprised to find himself almost feeling sorry for Manfred, and now that the man had been removed from power, Brian's anger left him.

“The enemy looks a lot different close up,” Kaleb commented, guessing at the conflicting feelings going through Brian’s head. Some time ago, Brian had told him of his desire for revenge upon Manfred. “If you still want to kill him, at this point, you would probably be doing him a favor.”