On the last night of April that year, Gorlon and his free-companies, who now numbered just short of forty thousand, crossed the border under cover of dark, passing in single file through the wooded region lying betwixt the chateaux of Fougeres and Vitre. Even these undisciplined curs were sufficiently cowed by the ominous presence of Gorlon and his murderous lieutenants to maintain a vigilant silence. Only when they were deep inside Brittany was the order given to maraud.
And this was exactly what they did, bringing orgies of death and misery to every town and village they encountered, but always driving headlong towards their main target at Rennes. Once it became plain that Rennes was in their path, it was Emperor Lucius’s expectation that King Hoel would immediately depart the fortress of Nantes, taking the majority of his forces with him — for not only was Rennes the seat of his Treasury, it was held by his beloved niece, the Duchess Miranda. Lucius expected that Hoel would catch up with Gorlon and his free-companies, and that bitter fighting would spill across a landscape now lit by the glare of blazing towns. Reports emerging from the terrorised land would be sketchy, but it would be clear to all that atrocities were being committed on both sides. Emperor Lucius and his forces, seeing the city of Nantes unarmed and Brittany’s southern frontier open, would find it a simple thing to intervene as ‘peace-makers.’ If they, in their turn, were attacked by the army of King Hoel, or any of his allies, they would have no option but to ‘defend themselves.’
It seemed a good plan, but the first fly in Emperor Lucius’s ointment was Gorlon’s efficiency. Lucius had not counted on the mercenary leader reaching Rennes so quickly and striking its walls with a series of devastating assaults. It occurred to Lucius almost too late that, should the freebooting army seize the Treasury of Brittany, Gorlon might be able to set himself up as a new king regardless of New Rome’s agenda. So, those legions camped closest to the Breton border were swiftly mobilised. This, in its turn, stopped King Hoel from abandoning the defence of Nantes. Lucius now found himself having to launch a major attack against a strong, well defended fortress.
At Rennes, the defences were less daunting — the walls were high and thick, but the troops guarding them were inexperienced — but Gorlon’s first two assaults were unsuccessful. He was not easily deterred — he had many ladders and vast numbers of men who, in his eyes, were little more than coffin-fodder. But after these fellows died en masse, pin-cushioned by arrows, broken by stones, or broiled in cascades of boiling oil and molten lead, he realised that he would need to plan more carefully.
While he did this, the free-companies took vengeance on the surrounding villages, burning every house and hovel, dragging the inhabitants out and butchering them in full view of the city’s defenders. If the display was meant to convince the Rennes garrison to surrender, it failed — they saw only the fate that awaited them if they relented. Thus came the second assault, groups of surviving prisoners now herded in front of the free-companies as living shields, though of course when they reached the footing of the walls they had to be discarded. Most were killed on the spot, so yet again a rain of stones, arrows and darts descended. Some hardy attackers scaled the ladders and made it to the battlements, but their numbers were so few that they were slashed to pieces. Again, the assault parties fell back in disorder.
Time was not on Gorlon’s side. His next trick was therefore to approach the city walls under a white flag and offer terms. The lives of all citizens would be spared if the gates were opened. This was not a convincing promise, given the flotsam of severed limbs and sundered torsos which was all that remained of his previous captives, and Gorlon resorted to issuing threats again. If the gates were not opened, the citizens of Rennes would not die by sword or spear — they would be burned; bound hand and foot and flung alive onto cremation pyres. The choice was theirs.
Still the town resisted. Duchess Miranda came to the battlements and peered down alongside her captains. There was no doubt that this mad-eyed monstrosity, stalking back and forth among the slain, was speaking the truth on this occasion at least. All in Rennes would die, he howled, women and children too.
More townsmen were pressed into service — merchants, artisans, labourers, servants — given improvised weapons and hustled up onto the walls, which the duchess said must literally bristle with armaments. The ramshackle army outside needed to be persuaded that further threats and aggression were futile. Sadly, Gorlon had already been persuaded of something else. News had reached him that the armies of New Rome, with Emperor Lucius at their head, had laid siege to Nantes. There was no hiding that this was now a full-scale war — and the tides of war could change quickly. Suddenly any outcome was possible.
Thus came the third and final assault upon the city of Rennes.
By this time, the free-companies had constructed siege engines: towers, trebuchet and mangonel. Storms of missiles — boulders and incendiaries — assailed the city wall, and as so many men, a great number of them untrained lummoxes who hadn’t the sense even to put iron saucepans over their head, crammed the battlements, there was horrendous carnage. For two days and two nights, the bombardment continued. The battlements were crushed to rubble, the gates pounded to splinters. With frenzied shrieks, the freebooter army again attacked. Now the full weakness of the surviving garrison became apparent. At close-quarter most were cut down with ease, or simply fled.
One supercilious captain — a certain Lord Querco — had his command lay down their weapons at the feet of the advancing horde, and announced that they’d never trusted King Hoel, were glad to have been liberated from his tyranny and were entirely at the victors’ disposal. The victors said they also were glad, and this disposal they now undertook. Having already disarmed themselves, Lord Querco and his men were one by one thrown from the highest towers. Querco, shouting until his lips frothed, went last of all.
Rennes was thoroughly ransacked. Its inhabitants were so abused that the narrow cobbled streets soon ran with blood. Duchess Miranda’s residence was taken with ease, her bodyguards hacked down as they defended her. While his dogs ravaged the building, Gorlon himself took the beautiful noblewoman upstairs and there, in her own boudoir, raped her with such energy that the bed collapsed, and once he’d sated himself on her, he strangled her to death. The following morning, with Rennes covered by a pall of acrid smoke, Gorlon went in search of the Treasury. He finally located it in a central keep, windowless and accessible only by a single door made from riveted steel and many times reinforced. The door was undefended, but succumbed neither to battering ram nor grappling hook, and was still intact — much to Gorlon’s fury — when, later that afternoon, a New Roman cavalry force, some ten thousand strong, arrived under the leadership of Consul Gainus, cousin to Emperor Lucius.
Reluctantly, Gorlon reported to Gainus that he was not yet in possession of the Breton Treasury. There had to be a key somewhere, but though his men had searched high and low, they had not found one. They had seized surviving citizens and put them to long hours of torture, but none had offered the information. Consul Gainus received this news calmly. He informed Gorlon that Emperor Lucius had an entire corps of engineers who would have no trouble dismantling the Treasury door. Meanwhile, the mounted troops he had with him were an elite force which he had raised and trained himself. These would now guard the Treasury and the city walls. The freebooter army must pitch its camp outside and form a bulwark against any counter-attack.