“Why? Why not take them up into the wall? Why risk them against us?”
Neil considered his reply for a few minutes, hoping to find an answer that wouldn’t frighten Edhmon too much.
“Thornrath has never been taken,” he said at last. “From the sea, it’s probably impossible. It’s too thick, too tall, and ships are completely vulnerable to bombardment from above. Likewise, the cliffs of the cape aren’t easily scaled from the seaside. A few defenders can keep any number of men from climbing up there, especially if the attackers are trying to bring up horses and siege engines. And without engines, they face the waerd, which can’t be taken without them.”
He pointed south down the spit of land that separated them from the wall, a ridge just ten kingsyards wide that plunged in cliffs to Foam-breaker Bay on the right and the Ensae on the left. It went that way for forty kingsyards and then widened enough for the waerd, a wedgeshaped fortress with its sharp end pointed at them and gates hidden around behind it. It had three towers and stood separated from the great wall behind it by about ten yards.
“We can’t just ride around the waerd, or they’d pelt us right off the cliffs with whatever they’ve got: stones, boiling oil, molten lead, all of that sort of thing. We’d never make it around to even give the gate a go. So we have to break the waerd from this side, and preferably from a distance. Out here we have a never-ending supply of missiles, though we don’t have a flat wall to hit. More often than not, our stones just skip right off.”
“I can see all of that,” Sir Edhmon said. “But I still don’t see what that’s got to do with the cavalry.”
“Well, when the wall comes down, we still have to cross this causeway and get through the breach before we can capture the castle. And we can only go a few at a time, about six or seven abreast. Then the horse will come to meet us before the ridge widens there.
“Meanwhile, they’ve been saving their missiles for when we come into their shorter range, about ten paces down the causeway. While their cavalry hold us, they’ll keep launching rocks or whatnot into those of us who are queued up behind. And if they do it right, four or five of us will die for every one of them. Maybe more. If the knights stayed in the waerd, they wouldn’t be much more use than any footman. Riding against us, they can do real damage.
“We’ll lose some men to the engines while we’re rushing the breach, but we’ll get in, move our own artillery up, and start battering the gates of Thornrath itself. Before that happens, though, they might kill enough of us to make us think twice about the whole endeavor. At worst they will have cut our numbers greatly.” He slapped the young knight on the shoulder. “Besides, they’re knights. Knights ride into battle. How do you think they’d feel on the wall, throwing rocks at us?”
“But there must be an easier way in,” Edhmon said.
“This is the easy way in,” Neil said. “To get to this approach, an army invading Crotheny would have to either land fifty leagues north of here and fight their way past the sea fortresses or cross the border with Hansa and make their way through Newland, which as you’ve seen can be flooded. According to Duke Artwair, this is the first time Thornrath has had to be defended from land. The southern approach, I’m told, makes this look easy.”
“But you make it sound so hopeless,” Edhmon said. “We might as well be riding off a cliff, and those of us in front will surely die.”
“Only if things go the way they want,” Neil said, nodding at the waerd.
“How else can things go?”
“Our way. Our first charge hits them so hard, we cut right through their horse and plunge into the breach. If they don’t hold us, they can’t bombard us, at least not for long.”
“But that would take a miracle, wouldn’t it?”
Neil shook his head. “When I first saw Thornrath, I thought it must be the work of giants or demons. But it was built by men, men like us. It didn’t take a miracle to build it; it won’t take one to capture it. But it will take men. Do you understand?”
“That’s it, Sir Neil. You tell ’im how it is!” Neil was startled by the shout and found that it was Sir Fell Hemmington who had spoken. “You hear that, lads? One charge or nothing!”
Suddenly, to Neil’s utter surprise, the whole column took up that refrain.
“One charge or nothing!”
He’d been talking to Edhmon without realizing that anyone else had been listening. But he was the leader, wasn’t he? He probably was supposed to have given some sort of speech, anyway.
The shouting doubled in fury as another stone struck the waerd and with a low rumble the wall finally collapsed, leaving a gap some five kingsyards in width. At the same moment, the enemy cavalry began to appear around either side of the fortification.
“Lances!” Neil shouted, couching his own long spear. All along the front rank, the others dropped level on both sides of him.
“One charge!” he shouted, spurring his mount, still feeling calm as the horse broke into a dead run.
The sea, as always, was beautiful.
5
Witchhorn
“What’s that look?” Zemlé asked from the back of her kalbok, a few kingsyards away. “It’s not guilt starting to gnaw you, is it?”
Stephen glanced at her. In the buttery light of the morning sun her face was fresh and very young, and for an instant Stephen imagined her as a little girl wandering the highland meadows, fussing at goats and combing through clover in search of a lucky one.
“Should I be?” Stephen asked. “Even if you consider what we did to be, ah—”
Her arched brows stopped him in the middle of his sophistry.
He scratched his chin and began again. “I never took a vow of chastity,” he said, “and I’m not a follower of Saint Elspeth.”
“But you were planning on being a Decmanian,” she reminded him. “You would have taken the vow.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” Stephen asked.
She smiled. “It wouldn’t be the first one.”
He felt his face go warm.
“Come on,” she prompted.
“It was never my idea to enter the priesthood. It was my father who wanted that. Now, don’t get me wrong; you know my interests. I could never have followed them without some attachment to z’Irbina, so I was willing. But I wasn’t much looking forward to that vow of chastity. I suppose I comforted myself with the thought that I was likely to remain mostly chaste whether I took the vow or not.”
“That’s silly,” she said. “You’re not what I would call ugly. A little inept, perhaps…”
“Oh,” Stephen said. “Sorry about that.”
“But perfectly trainable,” she finished. “A tafleis anscrifteis.”
Now his ears were burning.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I suppose I had vaguely hoped I might somehow move on to one of the less… stringent orders. And as things are, there’s not much chance of me taking the Decmanian vows now. Or even of living much longer, really. We should have gotten up earlier.”
“This pass is too dangerous without daylight,” she replied. “We started as soon as made sense. As for the other, I’m sure you feel you could die happy right now. But I promise you, there’s still plenty to live for.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Stephen replied. “But Hespero is still back there, and then there’s the woorm. Of course, we haven’t seen it lately. Maybe it’s given up the chase.”
“I doubt that,” Zemlé said.
“Why?”
“I told you—because the prophecy says it’s the waurm will drive you to the Alq,” she replied.
“But what if I’m not the one spoken of in the prophecy? Aren’t we making a rather large assumption?”
“It followed you to d’Ef, and from d’Ef at least as far as the Then River. Why would you begin to doubt now that it’s following you?”