Two Heirs (The Marmoros Trilogy Book 1) (45 page)

“But surely we could bring the people into the town?” Bardsley asked.

“We could. And that would allow me to concentrate my men on defending the walls. But it does mean that your wagons would be undefended. Kraxis would only have to send a dozen riders with torches across the ford and he could reduce your entire caravan to ashes; wagons, possessions, wealth.”

The level of muttering around the table was a little louder at that until Grekan stood up to speak.

“If we accept your plan, Lord Held, how can you defend the town and the ford? I assume you don’t intend to simply surrender High Falls again.”

“I calculate that we have seven days. Three days for Yuris to get to Marmoros, a day for Kraxis to gather his forces and three days back. Unless he brings siege equipment with him, he cannot attack the walls with any chance of success. If he does bring siege equipment, it will take him longer than three days to get here.

“The soft target is the column of wagons with non-combatants, women and children. If he can destroy that, he will rip the heart out of your people, the whole venture will collapse and he can simply starve out the remaining fighters in High Falls. He will go for the wagons; he has no choice. But in seven days, making use of all the manpower we have available, we can defend the ford with earthen ramparts and ditches, stakes, wicker screens to protect the archers. And if we keep our
horsemen here in the town, we have a mobile force to attack his rear, once he is engaged at the ford.”

“And you think this plan will work?”

“There was a very famous general back in my… country, who said ‘No plan survives the first contact with the enemy’ but we have to have a plan and yes, I think it has a good chance of success.”

The background level of murmuring rose again as councillors formed themselves into small groups. He glanced at Falaise and was rewarded with a weak smile.

“Can we really do this, David?” she whispered.

“This is what we came to do, Falaise. It was never going to be easy but there is no way we can retake Marmoros with Kraxis and all his men inside. We have to entice them out.”

“Lord Held.” The room fell silent as Grekan spoke. “Do we know how many men Kraxis will bring with him?”

David smiled as he looked down and shook his head. “No, my lord, we do not. Estimates vary between three and five hundred. I’m hoping it will be towards the lower end of that range but we have no accurate information.”

“And how many men do you have under arms?”

“Two hundred and seven, my lord.”

“So even if Kraxis has only three hundred men, you will be outnumbered one and a half times.”

David spread his hands wide. “That was always going to be probable. But numbers are not everything. Kraxis has not had to fight anyone for a long time now, but I have a core of men who are veterans of several skirmishes on the way out of Paelis. And we have weapons and tactics that the enemy is not going to be expecting. I believe we can even the odds.”

“Hm.” Grekan turned back into a consultation with the other councillors. David waited patiently until the huddle reached a decision and Grekan turned back to face the head of the table.

“Lord Jeren…
Prince
Jeren. We have followed you thus far out of belief in your vision and a burning desire to avenge the wrong that was done to our people. We are not warriors but, if you ask us to do so, we will fight for you in this battle even though we know that some of us will die. We have only two requests to make of you.”

Jeren stood forward to the edge of the table and drew himself up to his full height as he faced his war council. “Name them, my lords.”

“The men, women and the older children who can fight, will fight but we ask that the elderly and the very young be moved into the safety of the town.”

“Agreed. And your second request?”

“If we are victorious in this battle, we ask that the bodies of those who die in this cause, be taken with you and buried in the Neverwinter valley.”

“To come home,” Jeren nodded. “My lords, I thank you for your belief in my vision and I promise you that everybody who has followed me on this journey, will come with us on the final stage to Marmoros.”

“Then, Lord Held. What is it you want us to do?”

***

Ash’s scouts reported late in the afternoon of the sixth day, one full day earlier than expected but bringing two prisoners with them. Kraxis would arrive the next morning with just over three hundred men. According to the prisoners, Yuris and the captain had run into a patrol, two days out of Marmoros. The officer leading the patrol had sent fast riders back to report and Kraxis had left that same day, bringing with him every man who could ride. The prisoners also said that there were
other patrols out on the plains. Riders had been despatched to find them but Kraxis was in such a fury that he had not waited for them to return.

David had the prisoners brought into the council chamber for questioning. “How many men are in these other patrols?”

Neither man replied, their faces already showing evidence of a reluctance to answer previous questions.

“Look,” David said. “It’s really very simple. Talk and you’ll live. We’ll lock you in one of the cells overnight. If we win tomorrow, you have my word that you’ll be released. If we lose tomorrow, I’m sure Kraxis will release you. But if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you will most certainly die tonight.”

The men looked at David and then quickly glanced at each other before one of them replied. “A patrol is normally twelve men if it’s just scouting but those patrols are foraging. They’ll have between twenty and twenty five men, taking wagons to the outlying farms to collect supplies for the winter.”

“I thought Marmoros was supposed to be self-sufficient for food?”

“We’re not farmers,” the other man spat. “There are peasants to do that sort of work.”

“And how many men has Kraxis left behind?”

“None who can still ride to battle. Only the old-timers were left to open the gates when we return victorious.”

“Okay, take these two below and secure them,” David ordered. “And no
mis-treatment. I’ve given my word.”

When they had gone, he spoke to the officers. “Well there’s two pieces of good news; first Kraxis is furious which may affect his judgment tomorrow and second, he’s short of forty to fifty men. On the other hand, we have to consider what those patrols will do. Will they drop everything and follow Kraxis down here or will they pull back into Marmoros?

“It’s that second option we have to prevent. If they head down this way, they’ll be too late to join the action tomorrow but if they return to Marmoros, they will have enough men to defend the gates. Ash, Feynor, I want you to take fifty men and leave tonight down the trail towards Aryx. Tomorrow you can circle round behind Kraxis to attack his rear. Most importantly you have to prevent any of his men from retreating back towards Marmoros. Take a spare horse for every rider and three days rations. When the battle is over, take every man who can still ride and head for Marmoros. You must prevent those patrols from re-entering the city.”

The rest of the night passed in a rush of activity. The wagons had already been drawn up into a double walled circle with the wagons in the inner wall, blocking the gaps between the wagons in the outer wall. The herds were left unattended and all the children brought back into the safety of either the town or the circle of wagons. Men, women and children armed themselves with the weapons and tools they had prepared and tried to snatch a few moments of sleep.

The dawn when it came, was mired in a mist that rose from the river and flowed out across the land on either side. From his vantage point on top of one of the gatehouse towers, David could hear the approaching horsemen for several long minutes before the first of them came into view. They paused when they saw the walls and then spread out to form a line, four deep, facing the gates and just out of range of the short bows that many of the horsemen carried and with which they were obviously familiar.

“First mistake,”
David thought. He had placed all of his own short bows at the ford, mixed in with Jorgen’s spearmen but every man who could handle a longbow, with its greater range, was crouched out of sight on the wall below him, with a small brazier between every two archers. The gatehouse with its twin towers, was the main defensive fortification but the whole length of the wall was crenelated with stone
merlons to provide cover for the defenders and open embrasures for them to fire through.

As well as the archers, there was a mixture of families and townsfolk on the walls under the command of the innkeeper, Grimes. The townspeople had erected a tall scaffold on the battlements and now marched the hated Yanus out to balance precariously in one of the embrasures with a noose around his neck. The sight of Yanus wobbling there caused some excitement among the horsemen and orders were passed up and down the line before three riders edged their mounts forward.

The three men passed through the entrance to the caravanserai and were about half way across when David stepped into view and called them to halt. The officer in the centre was wearing a decent suit of chain mail and a tall helm with a red plume. He was clearly somebody of importance but David doubted that he was Kraxis. The two men flanking him were archers, sitting there impassively with arrows nocked and guiding their horses with their knees.

“What do you want?” David called down.

“You have our cousin,” the officer replied. “We want him back.”

“Well I can’t just give him to you. He’s too valuable as a hostage. What do you offer in exchange?”

“We offer you mercy. If you release our cousin and surrender the town, you will be permitted to ride out of here. You have our word.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t think your word is worth as much as our hostage. I think we’ll keep him.”

“So you think our cousin is valuable to you?” The officer barked an order and the two archers raised their bows and fired as one. Both arrows took Yanus in the chest, causing him to stagger back a step before pitching forward over the edge of the wall. He was dead before he reached the end of the rope. The three men wheeled their horses and started to canter back towards the entrance as David gave a signal to Bern.

The officer’s horse had barely turned before Bern’s arrow took him full in the back, the steel bodkin easily penetrating the chain mail at that range. Shouts of anger went up from the watching horsemen as the man crashed to the ground and lay still. The two archers dug their heels in and threw their horses into a gallop as a volley of flaming arrows arced overhead and dived into the lines of their comrades.

The result was utter pandemonium as the front line of horsemen who thought they were safely out of range, tried to turn their mounts only to be blocked by the lines behind them. The two archers who had accompanied the officer were heading through the gates of the caravanserai when Bern took one of them down and a second volley of fire arrows flew into the massed target. The grass was starting to smoulder now both from arrows that missed a target and bodies who crashed to the ground in flames. The horses were panicking from the smell of the fire and riders were struggling to control them as the rearmost lines began to pull back.

A third volley of fire arrows struck home but this time caused fewer casualties as gaps opened up in the target ranks. Bern released one more aimed shot at the horsemen fleeing into the mist before giving the order to cease fire. David turned to Jeren who was standing at his shoulder.

“Your eyes are keener than mine. How did we do?”

“I can count twenty three bodies outside, some of them still twitching, plus the two in the caravanserai. That’s given them a bloody nose.”

David shook his head. “Twenty five casualties out of more than three hundred. It might irritate them but it hasn’t weakened them. And now we’ve lost the element of surprise.”

“What do you think they will do now?”

“That is the big question, my prince. This mist is not helpful to us at the moment. Kraxis is not going to want to attack the walls but, in this mist, he can’t see any other target. I think we had better look to our defences.”

The attack was not long in coming. Kraxis split his force to assault the walls to both left and right of the gates. The mounted bowmen formed a Cantabrian circle along the face of the walls, shouting insults and firing into the embrasures as they passed, forcing the defenders to stay hidden. Under cover of the hail of arrows, other riders approached the walls with grappling irons which they threw up to hook over the battlements.

The defenders frantically tried to unhook the grapples or hack through the attached ropes but that exposed them to the arrows coming through the openings and several fell back with cries of pain, to be hastily pulled out of the way by the others. The women were using the braziers now to heat small cooking pots of oil or sand and these were poured on the heads of the climbers, adding screams of agony to the general tumult.

A few warriors made it to the top of the walls but not in sufficient numbers to form a fighting unit and the individuals were swiftly dealt with by the defenders. And then suddenly the attack was over. The circling bowmen broke off and galloped away leaving the remnants of the assault force underneath the walls trying desperately to catch their horses and follow them. Most of the stragglers did not make it to safety as, without the hail of incoming arrows, the archers on the walls could take time to aim their shots.

David and Jeren climbed back to the top of the tower to better see the wider battlefield. Kraxis had lost many more men in that attack but the defenders had suffered casualties as well. They could see wounded being treated up and down the length of the wall and several who were obviously past receiving any treatment.

The sun was finally starting to burn through the mist and the circle of wagons on the far side of the river was now visible to Kraxis. The mist was still thick on the actual river, however, and Jorgen’s fortifications could not be made out, even from the top of the tower. Kraxis kept most of his force back, facing the town but sent a group of fifty riders to investigate the wagons. They trotted down the trail to the ford and stopped at the water’s edge as the defences on the far side came into view.