Aubri yanked hard on the reins of his mount and followed his men.
That was the morning of the second day. The rest of the day went no better. The war-teni were able to disperse the spell-storm, but the task exhausted them and they had little energy left for other spells. Behind the storm, the ranks of the Westlanders-warriors with scarred and painted faces-surged forward. The hand-to-hand combat was fierce, but the chevarittai and infantry could match sword for sword. However, for the Westlander spellcasters, wielding sticks from which they cast spells, Aubri had no answer-the war-teni were largely depleted from their earlier efforts, and by late afternoon, Aubri called for the army to return to Villembouchure, behind the walls and stout gates. He was convinced that he could have held the outer defenses, but the price in lives would have been enormous. He did what any Commandant in his position would have done: he had the horns blow “disengage.”
By evening, they were inside and the portcullises were lowered and locked.
That ended the second day.
In any normal battle, that would have signaled the beginning of a siege that might have lasted weeks or months before being broken, and Aubri knew that the Westlanders didn’t have weeks or months-not in a strange land where they were surrounded by enemies. This was why Aubri had found it easy to call for disengagement as soon as it was apparent that victory on the fields before the city would only come at huge cost. Being inside the walls of Villembouchure must lead to eventual victory. Inevitably. And he could wait.
But the siege would last only one day.
Aubri was on the city walls, staring down at the smoldering fires of the main Westlander encampment in the dawn. That was when the arcing balls of smoke rose suddenly, arrowing toward them: a dozen or more of them, all seeming to target the great Western Gate of the city. The war-teni stationed along the walls reacted instantly, as they should, and-trained in the art of holding their spells in their minds for a time (which none of them would have admitted was a Numetodo trait forced on the war-teni by Archigos Ana)-the response of their dispersal spells was swift. But the fireballs continued on their flight. The closest war-teni looked at Aubri with wide, stricken eyes. “Commandant, those aren’t spells -”
He got no further. The thick walls of the city shook impossibly as the fireballs slammed into the gate and the surrounding stones. Where they touched, impossible explosions tore into the stones and steel and wood. Aubri, holding onto the battlement to keep his footing, witnessed huge chunks of granite flying away as if they were pebbles tossed by a child. Fire erupted from directly below him, as white-hot as a smithy’s blaze; he could feel it washing over his skin. He heard screams and cries from below.
“The gate is broken! The walls are sundered!”
The Westlanders were already rushing toward the breach, as archers belatedly cast a rain of arrows down on them. Some of the warriors went down, but many-too many-were still coming, and now Aubri saw more fireballs arcing from the north and south toward those gates.
He ran down from the battlements into bloody, savage chaos.
That was the third day. The day the city was lost. Impossibly.
Now Aubri stared back at Villembouchure from a hilltop along the Avi A’Sele. He gazed at the greasy smoke smearing the sky above the broken walls with the remnants of his army gathered around him and A’Teni ca’Ostheim at his side. Inside the town… Inside were the Westlanders.
“This isn’t possible,” he muttered.
But it was. And now the defense of Nessantico herself must be prepared. Aubri shook his head again at the sight.
He turned his horse and gestured, and he and the army began their limping retreat back toward the capital.
Allesandra ca’Vorl
She remembered Passe a’Fiume all too well. It was there, twenty-five years earlier as her vatarh had besieged the town, that she first learned the hardest lesson of war: that sometimes the ones you love don’t survive. She’d had a crush then on a young offizier who’d been killed in the battle. She had thought at the time that she would never be able to love anyone again, her heart was so shattered by the experience, but time had softened the pain. Now, she couldn’t recall the young man’s face.
The repairs from that decades-old battle were still visible on the city walls, and they brought back the memories and the pain.
This time, there was no siege. The Firenzcian army had passed through the border town Ville Colhelm without any challenge at alclass="underline" the Holdings force stationed there had simply abandoned their post and fled from the far greater Firenzcian host. At Allesandra’s behest, Jan had sent riders-including Sergei ca’Rudka-well ahead of the main force to negotiate with the Comte of Passe a’Fiume. With the garrison of the Garde Civile largely depleted due to the Westlander invasion, the comte chose discretion over valor (and a substantial bribe in gold over his vows of office): in exchange for the vow that the town would not be sacked, he would permit the army to cross the River Clario through the city gates to the Avi a’Firenzcia.
Allesandra rode alongside Jan as they crossed the great stone bridge over the waters of the Clario, more rapid and dangerous than the wider and deeper A’Sele, with which the Clario would join before the A’Sele reached Nessantico. The bridge itself seemed to shudder under the thudding of booted soldiers and horses’ hooves, the vanguard of the army already through the gates and the remainder trailing down the road as far as one could see in the hill-pocked terrain. Jan gazed around them raptly as they passed through the tall arches set with the shields of the Kralji, and into the city itself. Crowds lined the sides of the main avenue through the town, mostly silent, and the chevarittai of the Garde Hirzg stiffened in their saddles as they scanned the throngs for danger.
“You were here with great-vatarh?” Jan asked again, leaning over toward her, and Allesandra nodded.
“I was just a child, and your great-vatarh was in his prime,” she said. “He took Passe a’Fiume in just three days of siege after the peace negotiations failed, but Kraljiki Justi-who still had two legs then-had already made a cowardly escape back to Nessantico. Your great-vatarh was furious. Sergei ca’Rudka was the commandant for the Nessantican forces; he was… brilliant, even though badly outnumbered. Your great-vatarh would have admitted that, however grudgingly.”
Jan glanced back over his shoulder to where ca’Rudka rode alongside the Archigos. The Regent’s metal nose gleamed in the sun. Like the Garde Hirzg, ca’Rudka seemed edgy and nervous, his lips pressed tightly together and his eyes scanning the crowd to either side. “I like the man, but I don’t know that I entirely trust him, Matarh,” Jan said, returning his attention to her.
She smiled at that. “You shouldn’t,” she told him. “His allegiance is to Nessantico, first and foremost. And he is a strange man with strange tastes, if one believes the rumors. That hasn’t changed. He’ll work with us as long as he feels that our interests converge. As soon as they don’t…” She shrugged. “Then he will just as happily be our enemy. Your instincts are right, Jan.”
“He seems to admire you.”
“I knew him when I was Archigos Ana’s hostage. He was kind enough to me then. But right now, he’s more interested in the fact that I’m Kraljica Marguerite’s second cousin and the fact that this relationship gives me as much a claim to the Sun Throne as Sigourney ca’Ludivici. And, for now, we need Sergei and the alliances he may be able to bring us.”
Jan nodded. He pressed his lips together as if considering all this as they rode on into the central square of the city. She wondered what he was thinking.
Here, the Temple a’Passe dominated the architectural landscape. Like many of the structures in the city, it had been heavily damaged in the siege two and a half decades before. Afterward, the town council had made the decision to redesign the main square and the temple complex. Much of the original structure had been demolished. The thin, skeletal lines of scaffolding caged the as-yet unfinished main tower and dome of the revamped temple.