The Battle of Crestley, part 3

This is a continuation of The Battle of Crestley part 1 and part 2.

Thelius stayed in Calthisport. That was where the heaviest stroke would fall—besides, Tarquin seemed almost frantic when he suggested that he might withdraw to Crestmont. The emissary was fretful and nervous and spent a good deal of his days talking with the other imperial wizards. Thelius, for his part, instead paced the defensive works and made certain the thousands of soldiers squirreled in the city were not visible from the sea. Each night he dined at the Fleethaven Inn, a huge taphouse that had been built to serve the imperial naval fortress outside the town. It's owner, Harloman Bamburh, had no intention of leaving even with the elvish reavers growing ever closer. He had agreed, for nominal reimbursement by the throne, to allow the knights, escurae, and triarchs to quarter there and use the massive common hall as a war room. The tiny little map chamber in the fortress was inadequate for the task, designed in a time when Miles had no care for Crestley or reason to suspect it might be the sight of a great battle.

Out in the port, the castle of Sparstone was being garrisoned with imperial troops and local sailors. Scorpions peeked from its crenels, hidden by canvas bags that would be ripped away when the elves presented themselves. On the night before the attack, as though anticipating it, a lone silver elf took anchorage at Crestmont. Thelius was eating dinner at Fleethaven when he heard: a magus of considerable power, dispatched from Oronia to help make up for the sins of his kin. That made him feel a little better—but only a little.

The following afternoon, the elves came. The sky was leaden grey and the nine wizards had long since taken their stations. The nuncio had holed himself up in the belly of the brick fortress on the cliffs, intent that he not be seen. Thelius' stomach felt sour though whether it was from Tarquin's cowardice or some evil premonition, he could not say.

He himself took up a position at the forefront of his men. The closest to the dock were stationed in the old Red Dog Tavern. It's wooden posts were swollen with age, the jettied upper floor spilling drunkenly out over the road. He and eight crossbowmen from some imperial barque sat crouched in the hall of its owner, a waddling squint-eyed little merchant named Corporus. He'd left behind his two gnomish servants, undoubtedly to keep the marines from breaking or stealing anything. So far Thelius had seen one unchary marine knock over a jug full of beer and another foul his blade in a tapestry, ripping its fringes to shreds. Corporus'll be lucky if that's all the damage that happens up here. When the reavers came, there would be spellwork afoot. Spells always meant pain and suffering for peasant and townsman alike. Only wizards could boast a benefit from them, and often not even they.

A few fat droplets of rain splattered the muddy street. There was a chill and smoke from the mainland could clearly be seen in the slate colored sky. Let the fleet not mistake that for the signal, Thelius prayed. Good Halor, give us some luck today. On the horizon there was a sudden bloom of light: reavers were taking the opportunity presented by the undefended channel to raid the southern shores. Thelius was suddenly afraid that they had done all this for naught: that the reavers wouldn't take the bait and would instead strike deep inland into Paix and slaughter the defenseless shore folk. There, isn't that Ternport burning? His heart sank and that churning sour feeling in his stomach forced him to pull his head back inside and sit in one of Corporus' chairs, gasping for breath.

"Sieur Thelius?" one of the marines asked. He waved at the man, trying to tell him that everything was alright, that he just needed a moment. The fear was strong, though, and the wave only brought more concern. "Are you feeling alright, sieur?" He heard the marine start to stamp across the floor when another hissed, "Shut yer filthy fucking mouth, the ships come!"

Thelius rose to his feet at once and struggled to the open window. He thrust his head from it, nearly banging his brow on one of the wooden shutters. DOOM. DOOM. DOOM. DOOM. Drums. There were war drums in the channel. DOOM. hisssss. DOOM. hisssss. The slithering sound of the elvish oars provided counterpoint. Forty—no fifty!—ships were drawing near to the island. They were white or gray and long. Sinuous and slender, sculpted from lightning-blasted wood and carved into all manner of snakes, worms, and dragons, they broke the water with their prows.

A chill went through the marines. Thelius felt it too. There was something evil, something sinister about those bone white ships. He had seen them before, seen them up close, but this was different. This was a whole fleet of them, maneuvering through the Channel Profunda as though it belonged to them. Never before had the marauders gathered in such numbers to strike at one spot. Never, at least, as far as he knew. What lurked in ancient histories was beyond him. I deal with the here and now, not the past.

DOOM. The drums grew closer as the ships rounded Sparstone Castle. DOOM. The water was thrumming with their passage. DOOM. They shook the shutters. DOOM. They shook his bones. DOOM. DOOM. DOOM. And then they stopped. The streets of Calthisport where ghostly silent save for the slither and slap of oars upon the waves. There was a smell in the air like magic, and Thelius watched the hairs on the back of his hand come and stand on end.

When the first ships beached, he had his men quietly winch their crossbows. The tak tak tak sound seemed to stand out as incredibly loud to Thelius' ear. Halor, don't let them hear this. He kept his eyes squeezed shut and tried to still his breath. He knew that in other houses, taverns, and halls across the town the other marines were winding their shots.

The quiet (waves lapping, breath held in the dark hall, the cry of a distant sea bird) was split by the clatter of one of the elvish ships driving straight up onto the sandy shore off to the left. They weren't used to bump-docking, Thelius realized with a start. They were avoiding the Stone Harbor altogether. That damn harbor is why I chose the Red Dog! He pulled his head inside. "They're docking at the fisherman's market!" he said in a low hiss. "We need to draw them here!"

The gold, he realized. The gold will bring them deeper into the knot. He had stashed it here, in the Dog, in the cellar below. It would have been better if he could have paraded the nuncio around with it, but Tarquin was safely squirreled away in the naval outpost. Don't let anyone start the fighting before it's time. They needed to draw the elves deep into the town, where they would be surrounded. Otherwise, there was nothing to stop them from taking to their ships in flight.

Each step that Thelius took down the staircase to the common room was like thunder to him. Carefully, carefully. When he reached the landing he paused, caught his breath, and quietly slunk even lower. Like most buildings in the empire, the Red Dog was elevated on a stone undercroft, and it was there he needed to go. A hatch in the broad beams of the wooden floor gave him access and down in the darkness he fumbled around and filled his arms with sacred gold.

There was a door out to the street down here, if only he could find it. It turned out to be easier than he thought, as the thin planks let beams of light in through their slats. When he couldn't find the latch he grumbled and simply put his shoulder to the door. His enameled armor crunched against the wood as the leather thong that held the door ripped in twain and let him stumbling out into the street.

Two or three gold bars dropped into the mud, splattering his boots. There, at the left end of the winding street, was a contingent of three elves. They were hunting, he saw, looking for the gold most like. They wore heavy shirts of silvered chain and chausses of the same stuff. Over their shoulders were thrown cloaks of seal and otter. Their faces were chalk white, painted with ash, their eyes turned into deep and evil pits filled with droplets of glowing amber, venom, or tar. Silver studs had been driven through their ears, noses, tongues, lips. Reavers.

Thelius dropped the gold. I must hold them here until the rest come for the treasury. He struggled to draw his sword. His pollaxe was above, in the hall. The elves saw him, smiled to one another, spoke in their musical tongue of hisses that sounded like a hearthfire trying to sing. They broke into a trot, each baring two weapons: a long slender sword and a knife. Thelius finally drew his own blade seconds before they tumbled into him. Before they could make contact the mud boiled to life with thumping quarrels. One of the elves jerked and dancing like a mouse being dangled over a fire. A quarrel ripped out his throat, punched into stomach, and another pierced his leg. The other two came on.

CLANG! The first sounds of combat would surely draw the rest. Thelius pushed a blade away with his own, shifting his feet to get more traction on the slippery wet earth. As the second elf ran up, he planted his boot on the reaver's shin and pushed. He watched as the elf twisted and fell hard to one knee, but he didn't have time to deliver a killing blow—his helmet rang with a stroke from his other foe and he winced at what would have otherwise been a slice to cut open his skull. He felt the elvish knife punch his armor, but it did little more than bruise him.

Whirling, he closed his mailed fist on his hilt tightly. He prepared himself for the pain by wincing, and then his hand connected with the reaver's jaw. It didn't hurt half as much as he thought it might, but there were still blossoms of angry throbbing in his hand and wrist. The elf got the worst of it, for he stumbled and went down.

Thelius turned to face his second foe again, but a pair of marines had emerged from a nearby house and where taking turns stabbing him beneath his mail. Thelius did the same with the elf moaning in the mud before him, and then the street was silent again.

A dull sort of roar was echoing from the buildings on every side. The fighting is joined, he knew. The elves must have begun to spread out across the city. Over the roofs of straw, of turf, and of slate he saw the battlements at Sparstone where now alive with men. Canvas covers had been drawn aside to reveal small mangonels, scorpions, and ballistae. They thrummed and thunked and flung, battering the elvish ships on the sandy shore with more or less accuracy even as marines loaded into slips to come sailing over. They'll sink them and strand the elvish force here, Thelius thought triumphantly. We're going to win.

Then the potent thunder of a voice speaking magical tones, words that had not been heard by human years in a millennia, crackled across the rooftops. Dragon magic. Thelius shivered. As their echo died out, the ground was rocked with a distant blast. Tongues of flame leapt into the sky. The bloody work has just begun.

The Battle of Crestley, Part 2

This is the second part of the short story The Battle of Crestley, which begins here.

The ruse was well underway by the time Thelius arrived at Calthisport. The towers lining the southern coast of the island had been dismantled and burned and the fleet was already sweeping out to sea. The oars of the last transport triremes were flashing in the Channel Profunda, sending flecks of spray high into the air. They would withdraw to the open ocean and wait for the signal to return: a column of smoke, lit from Crestmont Castle's bailey. Thelius had seen the bonfire built before he left for the port. He raised his wine cup to his lips and sipped at it. It tasted like salt and ash.

He stood upon the brick ramparts of the imperial naval commandery that overlooked the town. Calthisport was a protected harbor, hidden on the northern shore of the island, the main embarkation point for ships headed to the mainland. Ternport, its sister on the sandy shores of the Tern Hills across the bay, had been burned a few nights ago. The smoke was still smudged across the sky and Thelius fancied he could see the black ruin where Ternport had once stood. Thousands of farmers and fishermen had been taken across the channel before the reaver attack to bolster the imperial marines that had disembarked from their ships. There were some five or six thousand men, two thirds of that made up of poor bastards pressed into the levees, swarming on the isle.

Calthisport herself was a built on a shallow hillside and a stony gully. An ancient castle choked the bay with its slimy stones, the seat of the port's baron. Across from it, atop the cliffs on the eastern side of the town, was the commandery. The imperial navy, unlike her armies, was not filled by knights and feudal obligation; most of the marines were common folk who had taken the Oath back when their emperor was a king and vowed to serve twenty years upon the boards. It was a road little-trod, but those who advanced amongst their peers on the sea could become Triarchs, knights, and lords in time. The commandery was one of the stations where imperial Triarchs could put up and receive orders from the Masters of the Fleet—who were, Thelius noted, all noblemen as far back as he could remember.

The port had been evacuated. Lord Crestley wanted no chances taken with the citizenry, so they had been huddled and herded to the little interior towns, hidden behind breaks of shield pine. The houses were now staffed with marines in boiled leather and red sashes, with leveefolk wearing no armor at all and carrying not baldes but tridents, flails, sickles, pitch-forks, and whatever else they could find on their farms and in the bellies of their fishing ships. Interspersed throughout, Thelius knew, were Crestley's knights all clad in padded gambesons, shirts of mail, and heavy pot-helms. The ships had deposited all these folk on the island before they left.

The last galley rounded the island and left them alone. A sorrowful wind tugged at Thelius' cloak and whistled amongst the crenels of the commandery wall. There was naught now but the salt, the sea, and the distant line of the mainland from which plumes of fire were still rising. The reavers had sailed unopposed for days. How many monasteries have burned? Thelius wondered. How many men, women, halflings, have been taken to sea as slaves? Hundreds or thousands, no doubt. The slave trade was alive and well in the north, beyond the empire's borders.

He turned away from the wall at last. The wine tasted no better as he descended into the yard. He could hear a team of engineers arguing over how best to position the ballistae and scorpions so they couldn't be seen from the sea. "Worry that they will take the bait, first," Thelius muttered under his breath. The treasury ship had come and gone, offloading bars and bars of gold bullion from the Noranian supply vaults right there at the Calthisport docks. He hadn't been in the town to see it himself, but the great swaying purple tent set up along the water would ensure that any scrying eyes would be able to see that an imperial envoy was present and loaded to the gills with gold.

In the yard he paced nervously and listened to the sound of his iron soles clicking against the flagstones. The plan was set, so there was nothing to be done, and it ground on his spirit. The commandery was humming with activity as marines rushed to and fro with bolts and stones to fling down below. The same scene was undoubtedly playing out on the castle in the bay, its little stony island secretly bristling with weapons. Part of the plan included hiding their siege machinery until the reavers were already entangled in the narrow streets and alleyways. Marines in the upper windows would pour crossbow fire down on them and funnel their attack towards the switchback path that led up to the edge of town. There, some knight Epistene had been stationed. If all they say about those pilgrims is true, he will be able to hold the line... or at least tend those who are near slain by elvish blades. Paladins were an unknown element to Thelius—he had seen only a few of them in his life, and those at great distance in the imperial court.

When he had nearly paced a rut in the courtyard he decided to go down and check on the imperial nuncio. He hadn't seen the man yet, but he heard the fellow was sweating buckets and shitting water in fear. Downwards he went, following the steep stair-lined road from the commandery to the channel's edge. Overhead marines leaned out of windows to watch him go, houses and merchant's halls and workshops all filled with crossbowmen. Thelius smiled and saluted when he noticed them, though he wondered if they would feel any better at his forced good humor. I am grinning like a skull, he thought.

He forced himself to don a more sober appearance when he arrived at the envoy's tent. It was a huge purple pavilion with gilded wooden posts hammered into the soft mud of the embankment's edge. Thelius noted that they were each carved in the likeness of the Pillar of Miles. Figures—imperial power flows from imperial signs. The envoy was a nervous looking man with a foxy beard and twitchy hands. He was clad all in imperial red and purple, robes of such ornate ornamentation that he might be mistaken for a wizard. It occurred to Thelius that he might be a mage in truth, for sometimes the emperor dispatched minor magicians as his nuncios. Best to be cautious with this one, he reminded himself. You can never tell how a man will fare until he's in a battle, and even then he may surprise you.

"My lord," Thelius said as he approached, bowing briefly at the waist and touching his heart in a salute. "I am the captain of the escurae stationed on Crestley. I came to see if you needed anything."

The purple-clad envoy shook his head and his robes, mantle, and sash all quaked as though the ground were bucking beneath him. "No, no, and I am no lord. The proper title is—"

"Excellency," he interrupted. "Yes, I'm sorry. I knew that." And he did; the titles and duties of imperial officers of the civil service had been drilled into him by years of training. Only the nobility could take up service for the emperor, though few barons were fool enough to go themselves and most sent second or third sons. Dread of the attack must be getting to me. "Well, you needn't stay and submit yourself to danger."

"The gold... the gold is chained to my life. The vaultmaster at Noranos made sure to tell me that." He looked positively terrified, his foxy face all ashudder with twitches and tics.

Thelius couldn't help but chuckle. "If we lose the gold, we lose the island and then your life won't be worth much more than it will fetch on a slaver's block. Come, no one will steal the gold while the harbor throngs with imperial marines." He clapped the envoy on the back and startled the man almost to death. "May I ask for your name, excellency?"

"Tarquin," the envoy said nervously. So with Tarquin the envoy in tow, Thelius went back up to the commandery to find something to eat. His stomach was roiling uncontrollably and he felt he would barely be able to choke down a bite of bread, but once the board was set for them he found that he couldn't stop shoveling olive oil and fish down his gullet.

For two days he wandered the battlements, made certain Tarquin felt safe, and checked the men. On the third, the reavers came.

The Battle of Crestley, part 1

This story is a sequel to The Storm Breaks, and follows the imperial escurus Thelius through his trials and tribulations during the Autumn of the Reavers in X.502.

Part barracks, part infirmarium, Crestley castle was crawling with the wounded. Triarchs from the imperial fleet lounged in her upper halls, growling about the massing refuser attacks. The entire coast was burning, from the tip of Mermarche to the shores of Rûn. Villages had been sacked, monasteries turned to smoldering ruins, and fortresses harried until the knights and barons had near lost their minds. Thelius and the other escurae were stationed in the castle, but hordes of imperial marines were stuck down in the town. There was simply no room for them all, and the numbers of wounded were growing. For each ship they sent down to Vodei the toll on their side was enormous. Reaver-sorcerers with hideous wyrmish magic worked their spells against marine, ship, and escurus alike. The Blessed Emperor had been hulled by blasting-magic just a week before and now clogged the channel between Crestley and the mainland along with four sleek refuser vessels.

For his part, Thelius had seen three small scale battles since the sinking of the Emperor. Refusers were starting to learn that Crestley was not a place where they could land, strike, and disappear again. Triarch Velmus of the imperial galley Blacksword had built a crude series of wooden towers on the coast and in the event of an attack, local garrisons were summoned at once by the booming of bells borrowed from the local temples.

They had wizards of their own now, more and more filtering down from the great cities. Sea battles would erupt not far from the coast. If you were out beyond the castle walls or high up enough you could see the flashing lights of opposing magecraft flaring out on the channel. The escurae would, from time to time, limp up to the wallwalk and cheer on the triremes and galleys of the empire. Sometimes the galleys and triremes came home unharmed—but often, at least one of them was destroyed. Thelius tried not to think about all the years of training those wizards were taking down into the deeps with them. More than his whole unit combined, he mused.

Eighty escurae had come south, out of the emperor's thousand and twelve. Fewer than forty were left, and of those only seventeen unharmed. Many of the survivors had been drawn back northwards, called to Miles. In their place, the emperor raised new fleet levies, called ships from the Mermarche, and sent knights from the capital. Rumors persisted that he was going to dispatch the imperial tagmata as well. Thelius wasn't certain what a land army could hope to do against these sea-going elves. He prayed every day to the soldier-god Halor that the elves of Oronia would sail forth to oppose their murdering kin, but he knew there was no help from that quarter.

Stonemark must be rejoicing, he thought. The imperial fleet was run ragged, and the winds of trade had shifted. Ninfite ships couldn't count on making it safely into port through imperial waters; the emperor had to increase the grain payments he made to Khewed and send galleys to guard their ships. Stonemarchers must be dancing in their swoop-bellied ships, happy to finally see the imperials humbled, the Thyrnessan ships tied up with foes.

Castle life had begun to grate on him. He had never thought of himself as pampered—he! an escurus! hours of training with steel and wood!—but he missed the comforts of the court. Crestley Castle, at the remotest tip of the long Isle, was a cold hard place. Sea winds found their way everywhere, and there was no sheltering from the taste of salt on your lips. These lords were sailors, not soldiers, and old Sereus Crestley himself was the king of all shipmen. Dour and grim as the profound depths, he dressed always in sea-greens and blues. His three leaping fish of silver were cut into every archway and above all the unleaded windows of his castle. He wore a fish at his throat to keep his ragged leather cloak in place, and his gray beard was forked like a merman's tail. The few times the escurae had been invited to the high table in the Leviathan Hall Thelius had felt Lord Sereus' cold eyes on him like spears sliding between his guts.

The barracks were little better than a stable, all covered in straw and sweepings. Spring on Crestley would bring new rushes, but for now they stank of death and blood. The stink was pervasive. The Avaunite priests were forced to carry pomanders wherever they went, muttering about bad humors and ill winds. Even outside the barracks, the castle was awash in the scent of fish and spume, of sea-kelps and oysters.

The town was somewhat better. It was built on good soft earth, and the creaking shield pines and junipers gave it a fragrance not unlike home. In the palace, of course, incense was burned at every state event and in every great hall. There was not a place that had not been perfumed, censed, and daubed with sweet-smelling oils. Bad smells were evil on one's health, and played havoc with manly vigor, or so the surgeons and physicians said.

There were a few things to make up for it though. The first was Alia, a scullery maid with nimble hands and a playful mind. The second was his duty. Thelius knew he could not abandon the people of Crestley, nor would he have been happy about being recalled. The other escurae might fight for the body of the emperor, but Thelius knew that the people were his body. If the empire bled, the emperor bled too. It had been one of the clerics who'd taught him that—a peaceward that attended on the court as a scribe. Those words had always stuck with him. As a bodyman of the emperor, his duty was not only to his lord, but to everyone within the borders.

It pained him to see the lights of fires along the coast where he knew reavers were striking. Sometimes the air was acrid with smoke rolling off of the mainland. The south hamlets were burning, the ancient orchards and olive groves watered in blood. Worse still, the reavers were taking prisoners to sell as slaves. Many would buy them abroad: Essadi, Solothens, Khewedi, and leagues of other cruel lands. Some would till the vast spice plantations of Ralashar before the year was out, and others would die in freezing holds as the betrayer elves sailed ever northwards to Kallatha and Shelterwind Bay.

His black mood began to lift one evening at dinner. He had been called to the Leviathan Hall to dine with the castle and its lord, and his remaining men came with him. They were seated at the high table, on a platform above the press. The hall was large enough to fit five hundred men, and most of the castle was there. The bones of great sea-beasts were pinned to the walls with iron hooks and pegs, high above the diners. Centuries of tallow-smoke had blackened them, giving them the appearance of grasping skeletal hands and fingers, clawing their way up from the grave.

Lord Sereus seated Thelius near at hand Triarch Velmus and the mage called Alanus the Abstemious. Velmus was a loud southerner from Regan's Crown, prone to much back-slapping and joke-telling of the off-color variety. Alanus was his polar opposite: thin as a rail, white as milk, and picky. Thelius was clad in his ornamental garb of purple and gold with the ancient Varan sword that lent its name to his position, the escurus, hanging at his hip. He waved away the cupbearer who came to refill his wine—it was a Rhûnish vintage, which were all unbearably bitter.

It was when Lord Sereus stated his intentions that Thelius' dark state began to fade. The old man gestured with a pheasant-bone, "We're of little effect the way we fight now. We must draw the elves into a decisive battle, else we'll watch as the emperor's fleet is whittled away. A man can bleed to death from scrapes and bruises."

Velmus agreed at once, pounding his fist on the table. The silver goblets at the high table jumped. "And so? We must strike back, at one of their islands! Raid a camp and draw our their ships! All this hiding and defending grows tiresome."

"And risk the wrath of their sorcerers on the open sea?" Alanus asked glumly. "That would be the height of folly."

The Lord of Crestley fell silent then, brooding over the pheasant stew on his trencher. He seemed to be mulling something over in the way that old men had, deciding whether or not to foray it. Thelius could see the battle plans behind his eyes, the way he moved the cubes of onion as though they were ships. "We could entice them to land on Crestley," he said at last, "but have a reserve force waiting here that they don't suspect."

"Yes," Thelius nodded at once. "I see it plain. The fleet will draw off from Crestley, and we shall pretend to be loaded upon it, leaving a skeleton garrison at the castle."

Sereus nodded. "A few well-placed rumors... perhaps an official transfer of a fleet treasury-ship to the castle..." He could see that Velmus was getting it now, and even Alanus appeared to be won over. Yes, they could surprise the elves and force a battle that would turn the tide: lure them onto dry land and make an assault against them that would break their strength. Thelius was elated. That night he sought out Alia in the servants rooms, drew her out by the hand, and they were one as Raya behind the wood pile in the bailey. He smiled at her afterwards, wondering if her fair eyes would shine so brightly for the next soldier boy who came along, the next knight who was stationed on this lonesome isle.