“Perhaps Eriador would be wise to guard its coast,” Asmund threatened.
“Is your pledge of honor so fragile that it might be broken by a few words spoken in anger?” Luthien asked, giving Asmund pause.
The king squared against Luthien, came very close to the young man, glaring down at him ominously. Luthien didn’t back away an inch, and didn’t blink.
“Friends do not fear to point out each other’s faults,” Luthien said in all seriousness, and he was taken aback a moment later, when Asmund suddenly bellowed with laughter.
“I do like you, young Luthien Bedwyr!” the king roared, and all his warriors stood more easily.
Luthien started to respond, again with grim confidence, but this time, Brind’Amour’s scowl became an open threat and the young Bedwyr held his tongue.
The alliance was solid, for the time being, and after Asmund extracted a promise from Brind’Amour that the Huegoths could lead the charge against Greensparrow’s fortress—a promise the Eriadoran king was more than happy to give—Brind’Amour and Luthien took their leave.
“When Greensparrow is properly dealt with, we will turn our eyes to the Huegoths,” Luthien said as soon as he and Brind’Amour were back on land and away from Huegoth ears.
“What would you do?” Brind’Amour asked. “Wage war on all the world?”
“Promise me now that you will not let them leave the Stratton on ships rowed by slaves,” Luthien begged.
Brind’Amour looked long and hard at the principled young man, wearing a stern and determined expression that the old wizard could not ignore. That dedication to principle was Luthien’s strength. How could he possibly refuse to follow such an example?
“Asmund will be properly dealt with,” Brind’Amour promised.
29
The Siege of Carlisle
They stood on the forward masts of the warships closest to Carlisle and on the hills outside of the city. Some brave ones rode their horses dangerously close to the white walls, waging a battle of words.
“We have fifty thousand on the field against you,” they all said, as instructed by Brind’Amour and Deanna Wellworth. “Among our ranks is Deanna Wellworth, rightful queen of Avon. Surrender Greensparrow, the murderer of King Anathee Wellworth!”
Every hour of every day, those words were called out to the besieged people of Carlisle. Brind’Amour didn’t really expect the Avonese within the city to rise up against their king, but he was looking for every possible advantage once the fighting did start. And that would take some time, the old wizard understood. An army could not simply charge the walls of a fortified bastion such as Carlisle.
They did wage a few minor battles, with the Eriadorans testing the strength of various points along Carlisle’s perimeter. Asmund’s Huegoths took the lead in most of these, but even the fierce Isenlanders knew when to turn about, and casualties remained light on both sides.
Meanwhile, other, more important preparations were underway, foremost among them the old wizard’s work to keep Greensparrow busy. The Eriadorans could not afford to have the dragon coming out at them every night, or to have the wizard-king launching magical attacks into their ranks. Thus, Brind’Amour took it upon himself to engage Greensparrow, to test his strength, the powers of the ancient brotherhood, against this new-styled wizard. Alone in his tent the first night of the siege, Brind’Amour created a magical tunnel, reaching from his chamber to the tower Deanna had identified as Greensparrow’s. This tunnel was not like the ones the wizard had used to transport Asmund or Katerin and Oliver, but one that would take him in spirit only to face the wizard-king.
Greensparrow was surprised, but not caught off guard, to see the ghostly form of the old wizard hovering before his throne.
“Come to scold?” the Avon king snarled. “To tell me the error of my ways?”
Brind’Amour’s response was straightforward, a burst of crackling red sparks that burned, not into Greensparrow’s physical body, but into his soul. A moment later, Greensparrow stepped from his corporeal form, spirit leaping forward to engage the old wizard. And thus they battled, as Brind’Amour and Paragor had battled, but in spirit form alone. It went on for exhausting hours, neither truly hurting the other, but draining each other, and when Brind’Amour broke the connection the following morn, he was weary indeed, sitting on the edge of his bed, head down and haggard-looking.
Deanna found him in that position. “You met with him,” she reasoned almost immediately.
Brind’Amour nodded. “And he is powerful,” he confirmed. “But not compared to what we wizards once were. Greensparrow came to power through treachery because he could not gain the throne through sheer might. So it is now. He rules, iron-fisted, but that iron fist is not one of magic, nor even one of his dragon alter-form, but of allies, cyclopian mostly.”
“Do not underestimate his power,” Deanna warned.
“Indeed I do not,” Brind’Amour replied. “That is why I went to him, and why I will go to him again this night, and the next, and the next, if need be.”
“Can you defeat him?”
“Not in this manner,” Brind’Amour explained, “for I go to him in spirit only. But I can keep him occupied, and weary! This battle will be one of swords.”
Deanna liked that prospect far greater than the thought of waging a magical battle against Greensparrow. Five armies had joined against Carlisle, and the besieged city had no apparent prospects for reinforcement.
In this situation, the biggest advantage for the Eriadorans was their dwarvish allies. Carlisle had been built to withstand the charge of an army, most likely a straightforward cyclopian force, but the designers had not foreseen the tunneling expertise of an enemy such as the bearded folk of DunDarrow. The dwarfs worked tirelessly, taking shifts so that the digging never stopped. They went down low, right under the river, so that the people within the city would not hear their work. Ashannon worked tirelessly as well, using his magic to shield the dwarvish work from Greensparrow’s prying eyes.
On the sixth day of the siege, the first decisive encounter took place, in the smaller city across the eastern branch of the Stratton from Carlisle proper. Asmund led the Huegoth charge from the north, Siobhan’s cavalry and the Riders of Eradoch in strong support. Several galleons braved the catapult fire from both banks to come in at the city along the river to the west, while Shuglin led two thousand dwarfs through their crafted tunnels, popping up at various strategic points within the fortress. Even more important, the dwarvish burrowing had weakened the substructure of the walls.
The north wall, its bottom carved out, crumbled under the weight of the charge, and in poured the vicious Huegoths and the cavalry. Luthien, Oliver, and Katerin, already within the city through dwarvish tunnels, spent more time sorting out innocents and ushering them out of harm’s way than in fighting, for in truth there wasn’t much fighting to be found. The garrison fled the minor city, along the bridges to Carlisle proper, almost as fast as the invaders entered it. And Greensparrow, who they assumed to be weary from his nightly encounters with Brind’Amour, made no appearance.
The place was conquered within an hour, and fully secured before the day was out.
The noose around Carlisle had tightened.
That same night, Luthien and Oliver, using the crimson cape and Oliver’s magical grapnel, a puckered ball that could stick to any surface, made their stealthy way into Carlisle and walked the streets of Greensparrow’s domain. They ventured into taverns, met with people in alleys, always whispering the name of Deanna Wellworth, planting the rumors that the invading army was, in fact, a force raised by the rightful queen of Avon.
The pair were out of the city again long before the dawn.
Also that night, Brind’Amour went again in spirit to meet the Avon king, but he failed, finding the way blocked by a disenchantment barrier akin to the one he had used on Resmore and again in the castle at Warchester. Up to that point, Greensparrow had been more than willing to battle the old wizard, but now, Brind’Amour realized, the wily Avon king had come to understand their strategy. His engagements with Brind’Amour were in part to blame for the fall of the section across the river; he could no longer afford the distraction of a nightly stand-off with his adversary.