Moving Pieces

  Einar Smashednose looked out an arrow slit in his round tower, and the wind that whistled back at him made his face cold. From the tower, the mound and leaning spikes that they had erected when they’d first arrived looked like a pitiful defence. Now with Larker’s troops moving back and forth across the bridge, he wasn’t sure how long these new walls would last either. They were building something on the field before Vannarbar, large wooden pieces being placed out of arrow shot from the walls. A catapult under construction. As long as Einar had known Larker, the man was always moving pieces around.

  He smirked to himself, though, seeing now the clarity of the moves that had been taken to get up to this point. Herik’s army had been securing the middle kingdom by capturing Lynetor, stamping out any chance of the other lords rising up in the name of Philippe. In the southlands, Lord Ignate had been fighting Philippe himself, a conflict that, even with Herik’s army joining the fray, had not been resolved as far as Einar knew. Messengers had been infrequent before they had fallen back to Vannarbar, and now they had stopped altogether. Hopefully, Herik would have begun his march north now, as promised. Larker’s orders had been to march north and beat the army through the Kings Pass. Smashednose had got in his way, but now Larker would do to Vannarbar what he planned to do at Highvale. This little siege would be the man’s practice round.

  A rage sparked in the old warrior, not the first that he had had this morning. He should have his men form up outside the gates, meet Larker and his army on the battlefield. Have it done and over with, the loser dead, the winner not. Fury, blood and death. But it didn’t last long. That would have been giving Larker what he wanted, what perhaps he was baiting Einar into doing. In that, Larker was giving Einar too much credit. He’d become more uncertain in the last couple of months. The almost ruinous battle outside of Telburh, the retreat across the Daun, backing themselves up against Vannarbar, moving the army onto the walls before the city had been cleansed. Smashednose shivered. Moving onto the walls had felt like a sure plan on that dreadful night. There was a graveyard outside the south gate to tell him otherwise. Einar had become more hesitant in his old age. Had Larker become any less shrewd?

  A less competent commander would have been dead three times over, but it was little comfort. The old man closed his eyes, and the rasping of callus on callus resumed as he rubbed long pains and new worries out of the palm of his hand.

  “Commander.” Silker cleared his throat. The man was leaning through the gap between the rusted, iron-banded door and wall. “Are you ready for…”

  “Yes,” Einar said. “Come in.”

  Before Long, the commander’s council was assembled in Smashednose’s tower. They stood around a makeshift table with a map of Baidon rolled open. Though in truth, all anyone cared about was a dead city and one muddy field on the road leading north. There were eight of them, including Einar. Silker by Einar’s side, Borke, Hessen, Fenris, staring grimly on the opposite side of the table, Godrum, and Cutha and Osward, the two commanders of the remaining levies from Lord Jung.

  After a round of reporting on the condition of the men under everyone’s command, the mood didn’t grow any better. Food was in short supply. Thankfully, unlike a normal siege, having eight hundred men gave them more latitude to move and send hunting parties out of the south gate. Larker couldn’t completely surround them. But the deer that had been plentiful before were moving further afield now, away from the army of eight hundred hungry men. If Larker didn’t hurry to build his catapult, they might starve to death before the gates came down. Besides the food, the whole camp was on edge. There had been fights, but it hadn’t yet come to blades.

  Osward gave the last report. He was not originally one of Smashednose’s, but a levy commander from Lord Jung, and the man had a desolate look in his eyes. His first real war. He only had thirty of his levies left, the rest gone between death and desertion. He didn’t need to be at the meeting, but he was a second cousin of Herik or some such, and Einar Smashednose wasn’t going to dissuade him from fighting for honour. If the poor sod found any, he should let Smashednose know.

  The attention of the room turned to Smashednose, and the old warrior had nothing. Nothing yet that would satisfy the hunger for action and the fear of death. There was no good plan, Einar knew, only bad ones and worse ones.

  “What of your killer, Whiteeyes?” Smashednose said. It would buy him some time.

  “Nowhere to be found,” Fenris grunted. He looked down at the map, and there was a lot, Einar thought, going unsaid behind the man’s eyes.

  “Could they have gotten through the gates?” Silker said. “Entered the city?”

  Fenris nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s possible.”

  “Some fine men you’ve got there,” Hessen said, dryly.

  Fenris glared at Hessen. “Watch yourself, Kostian.”

  “It’s your men that should have been on better watch.”

  Einar was suddenly grateful that there was a table separating the two of them. He saw the flash of rage in the archer’s eyes, but Fenris bottled it up. The archer’s knuckles went white as he gripped the table.

  “There are more holes in this city than that bloody gate,” Fenris said. “But I had a man in the right spot to catch anyone sneaking that way, and now he’s dead.”

  Hessen put his weight on the table, leaning towards Fenris to show that he was unperturbed by the man’s anger. “Should have done a better…”

  “Enough,” Einar said. “I’ll have none of that.”

  The men around the table followed Einar’s command, but they looked restless, hungry. Once, Einar had been able to bark at a room and make it quiet and still and his to command. There was no such deference here, just a begrudging obedience formed from old, fraying habits. Even Silker had that calculating look in his eyes, watching Einar’s moves, weighing them.

  Finally, Fenris broke the silence. He looked Einar dead in the eyes. “The killer’s one of ours, I reckon.”

  Godrum stroked his long beard. “That’s dangerous talk. What makes you say that, Whiteeyes?”

  Fenris didn’t take his eyes off Smashednose. “I can’t say.”

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  Hessen swore in Kostian. “You can’t just…”

  “…Shit, Fenris,” Borke said.

  “Saint’s preserve us,” Oswald looked up.

  “…stir up trouble without…”

  “Not one of mine…”

  “…Could be yourself…”

  “Half arsed…”

  “Quiet!” Smashednose pounded his fist on the table. “Shut your fucking mouths before I hang each one of you from the west gate and march out to battle Larker by myself.”

  That shut them up, and all it took was Smashenose hitting the table until his fist ached and screaming until his lungs ran dry. When all eyes were on him, cowed if only for a second, Smashednose sighed and rubbed the stress out of his forehead.

  “Whiteeyes is right not to give anything away,” the old warrior said. “But you’ll report to me on the matter, Fenris.”

  “While Whiteeyes goes on his merry chase,” Silker said. “What is the rest of the army meant to be doing?”

  Was a fair question, but it felt like a bit of a betrayal coming from Silker, pushing Einar closer and closer to the shit predicament that they were in. No good plan, only bad and worse. Einar’s hand ached something furious, and he would in other circumstances massaged the thing. Callus on callus. It was the soothing motion that the old man had used for years, but not now. There was no place for old, worried men here.

  “Nothing has changed,” Einar said it with the immovability of a rock. Nothing’s changed? Nearly a hundred dead in the last ten days. A spy within the camp. A catapult being erected outside the walls while we camp in a city full of ghosts. Nothing has changed. He needed them to believe it.

  “Nothing has changed,” he said again. “We’re to hold the road to the Kings Pass until Lord Herik’s forces arrive. We have the city now, and its walls are ours. We’ll hold them until Lark’s men are ground to pulp.”

  “He’s building a catapult,” someone muttered.

  Smashednose didn’t know who it came from, but he glared at each man evenly. “Let him. If Larker thinks that he’ll be here long enough to bring our walls down with a catapult, then he’ll be here long enough to be crushed between Vannarbar and Lord Herik’s army.”

  “What if Herik doesn’t arrive?” Borke folded his arms across his chest, looked down at the map of Baidon.

  The question struck Einar Smashednose like a cold hammer. It was his worry, his fears of the last endless night summed up into a single question. He knew the questions and the answers they would get from that, knew where the logic would lead. He had no good answer for it, so he let them find it themselves.

  Silker said, “The food will last us what, three weeks between what we have and what we can hunt?”

  “The first frost will be falling soon,” Godrum said. “Harder hunting after it does.”

  “We could fall back to the Kings Pass?” Osward said, “march to Highvale.”

  The man almost liked his lips at that, the thought of getting back to a warm bed in a city where his status would mean something. Cutha, the other noble commander from Lord Jung, nodded in agreement, his weary eyes suddenly becoming eager.

  “We’re meant to be preventing Philippe and his allies from capturing Highvale anyway,” Cutha said. “Could we fall back and reinforce the city?”

  “You haven’t walked from Highvale to the Daun before, have you?” Fenris said. “It wouldn’t be falling back. It would be a two, maybe three-week march back to Highvale. We’d have Larker on our heels the whole time. We’d end up in a pitched battle in a much worse position than this. And if a storm closes the pass before we get through…”

  “What about marching back to Lynetor?” Osward said, his voice becoming higher and higher in pitch.

  Silker raised an eyebrow at that. “If Larker let us across the bridge without killing us, we’d still be leaving Highvale unde…”

  “There must be something!” Spittle flew out of Osward’s mouth, and the man’s face was drained of colour. The middle-aged lord’s hair had become tangled in the previous weeks, and he now had the attitude to match it. “We can’t just rot in this damned city and…”

  Osward was interrupted by Hessen’s laughter. It was an uncontrolled rat-ish squeak that belied the Kostian’s usual deep voice. When the red-faced man finally caught his breath, he said, “My dear Lord Osward, can’t you see, if Lord Herik doesn’t arrive, we’re dead!”

  It was not the first time they had faced the possibility of death measured against life in a more than equal weight. Most had thought that they would be dying as they fought shadows on the walls that damned night. Falling back from Telburh, badly beaten, had been another such harrowing experience. Yet this time was different. The walls of Vannarbar had given them some precious days of peace that they had not experienced since Lynetor. It had made them comfortable, momentarily lessened the stress that hounded them. It was a spiteful truth that it would have been easier for Smashednose to control them if they were still fighting on the mound, no time to faulter, no space to turn and run. There was unity in their suffering then. Will we hold together now? Smashednose didn’t know, but he did know that it wasn’t just Osward and Cutha who would be having second thoughts.

  The door to his tower-room creaked open. A hoarse cough as someone cleared their throat.

  “Einar.”

  “Fenris.”

  Smashednose turned from his seat by the table. It was pushed back against a wall now, by a cracked westward window. His last few hours of staring at the map hadn’t done much but reinforce their position. Waiting for Herik. It was a bad plan, but there were worse. The archer came to the table, looked down at the map.

  “An’ what thinks Fenris Whiteeyes?” Einar said, dryly.

  “Oh,” Fenris said. He tut-tutted under his breath. “I can think of one way to get out of this if Herik doesn’t show up, but it doesn’t involve the whole company getting free.”

  “They’ll be bloodshed in camp before I let anyone break rank.”

  “That’s happened already.” Fenris dropped a talisman onto the table.

  Smashednose picked the thing up, held it close in the light of his candle. “This from the body of your dead sentry?”

  “Found near him,” Fenris said. “One of the boys thought it was a symbol from the Eastern Church.”

  Einar turned it over in his hands, letting the gold reflect the candlelight into his eyes. “Last time I was that far east, I was in Jalkabad. Silker was little more than a brat, and Larker wasn’t trying to kill us all… for the most part.”

  “Could it be Kostian?” Fenris said.

  Einar shrugged. “It’s certainly an eastern design. Silker was paying more attention to religion than I was back then. But I don’t like where you’re going with this, Whiteeyes. We’ve got over a hundred Kostians under Hessen. They’re good fighting men. Stirring up needless trouble amongst our ranks might be exactly what Larker wants out of this.”

  “That’s a hell of an excuse to avoid the fucking obvious,” Fenris said.

  There was a little bite in the man’s voice now. It was the stubbornness and anger that had so often been the cause of Smashednose butting heads with Fenris. Einar was almost too tired to start with the man. Almost…

  “And what would you have me do?” The old man got up from his seat, held the talisman in a fist in front of Fenris’s face. “Sneak around in the night killing Kostians in their beds like you killed Ralke Grey? What if Larker has some Kostian’s in his camp, or anyone that’s travelled east?”

  Fenris stood his ground, a slight smile playing on the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t kill Ralke.”

  “What?”

  “I found his body dead already.” Whiteeyes pointed at the talisman in Smashednose’s fist. “The sentry, Talen, was killed in the same way. A clean cut across the neck from ear to ear.”

  “That doesn’t mean they both had the same killer,” Smashednose said.

  “Does it not?” Fenris said. “We haven’t been able to out manoeuvre Larker since this started. He’s been ahead of us every step, practically walked us down the road till our back was against Vannarbar. If not for the priest, we’d be dead by now. We’ve had the spy in our midst since Lynetor. I reckon that Ralke found out. The bastard wanted to be cut in, but got killed instead.”

  “If you’re right,” Einar paused, a new weight bearing down on him. He sat. “If you’re right, Fenris, that means that the traitor is a member of the commander’s council.”

  “Hessen?”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Smashednose said. “They could be working with one of the Kostians. You’ll need to be careful with this. Accuse the wrong commander, and it all goes bad. Accuse the right one, and the same thing could very well happen. I am trusting you to sort this out, Fenris.”

  The man nodded. “I’ll get it done.”

  “And if it’s you,” Einar said. “Then do me a favour and kill me now.”