The realization did not greatly worry Brind’Amour. He understood his foe better now, the man’s strengths and limitations, and he was confident that his forces could strike hard and decisively, and that he, along with his fellow wizards, Deanna and Ashannon, would effectively neutralize the overburdened Avon king.
As he had proclaimed to Deanna on the second morning of the siege, this would be a battle of swords, not of magic.
“He cannot come at us across the river when our ships hold the waterway,” Brind’Amour explained at a strategy meeting early the next morning. “And with us so close to his walls, he would not dare open the city’s gates and try to break out to the north.”
“We would be in Carlisle in a matter of minutes,” Katerin reasoned, and though her estimate seemed overly optimistic, the point was well-taken.
“Time favors us,” Siobhan thought it would be prudent to add.
“Does it?” asked Deanna Wellworth.
“The seeds of rebellion are being sown within Carlisle,” Luthien answered before Siobhan could respond. “Oliver and I found many folk willing to hear of Avon’s rightful queen, and of the treachery of Greensparrow.”
“Of course, that might be only because I am so convincing,” added the halfling.
That brought a chuckle—from all but surly Asmund, who was fast growing weary of this siege.
“I will not sit on the field and wait for the first snows of winter,” the Huegoth said. Indeed, Asmund and his forces could not wait much longer. They had a long way to sail to get home, in waters that would grow more inhospitable with the changing season. Soon the winds would shift to the north, blowing in the face of Huegoth longships trying to make their return to Isenland and Colonsey, where a fair number of their women and children waited.
Brind’Amour sat back and let the chatter continue around him. Asmund wanted action; so did Kayryn Kulthwain and especially Bellick, who assured the others that at least twenty openings would be burrowed into Carlisle that very night, and that the substructure of several key points along the eastern and southern walls had already been compromised.
“They’re thinking that we’ll come from the north and east,” the dwarf king remarked with a wink at Brind’Amour. “But they’ll be only half-right. Mannington’s and Luthien’s riders will fake the attack from the north, while our ships put an army in the shallows of the river delta south of the city. We’ll be in so fast, the one-eyes will still be standing at the north wall, wondering when your folk will attack,” he said to Deanna. “And the rest of us will poke them from behind!”
It wouldn’t be quite that easy, Brind’Amour knew, but it was a good point. Carlisle was ripe for plucking, and if they attacked and were not successful, they could always retreat to their current position and take up the siege once more, this time against a city weakened by battle. The coordination would be tricky, though, since so many various factions were together on the field, but the old wizard, the king of Eriador, decided then and there that the time for action had come at last.
“With the dawn,” Brind’Amour said unexpectedly, silencing conversation and turning all eyes upon him. “Even before the dawn,” he corrected, then paused to better sort out the plan, and the emotions of all of those staring at him.
And so it began, an hour before the eighth dawn of the siege, when Shuglin the dwarf came out of a tunnel into a quiet house just east of the plaza of Carlisle Abbey. All throughout the silent city, Bellick’s forces slipped into position, while on the plain north of Carlisle, Deanna Wellworth’s five thousand, along with the first army of Eriador, including Luthien, Siobhan, Katerin, Oliver, and the Cutter cavalry, formed a long and deep line. South of Carlisle, Huegoths crowded into their longships, ready to storm the river fork, and in the east, Kayryn prepared her gallant riders for the mighty charge across the bridges.
The dawn was heralded by the blowing of a thousand horns—Eriadoran horns, Huegoth horns, Mannington horns—and by the thunder of cavalry in the north and on the stone of the eastern bridges, and by the roars of charging armies.
Luthien led the rush from the north, a feigned attack that kept the massive cyclopian force along Carlisle’s northern wall distracted until the dwarfs within the city could organize. Then Carlisle’s south wall crumbled in several places and on came the Huegoth charge, the army of Baranduine rolling in behind them. Kayryn herself led the thunder across the fortified bridges.
For more than an hour, little ground was gained, with Luthien and his forces stuck out on the northern fields, unable to find a breach in the intact and well-defended northern wall. In the south, Asmund’s Huegoths met stiff resistance just inside the wall, and the Riders of Eradoch took brutal casualties on those narrow bridges. The waters of the Stratton ran red; the white walls of Carlisle were splattered with the blood of defender and invader alike.
Five of the leaders, Brind’Amour, Bellick, Deanna, and Ashannon, along with Proctor Byllewyn of Gybi, stood watching from the captured eastern region throughout that terrible hour, wondering if they had erred. “Did I underestimate Greensparrow?” Brind’Amour asked many, many times.
But then came the turning point, as Bellick’s dwarfs, led by mighty Shuglin, gained the main courtyard and threw wide Carlisle’s massive northern gates. Now Luthien’s charge was on for real, the young Bedwyr and his forces pouring into the city, spreading wide in every direction like the finger flames of a wildfire.
Greensparrow, too, watched it all, from a high chamber in Carlisle Abbey. Duke Cresis came to him many times over the first hour, assuring him that the city was holding strong.
Then the cyclopian came in to report that the northern gate had fallen, and Greensparrow knew that the time had come for him to act. He dismissed Cresis (and the one-eye was glad to be away from the dangerous and unpredictable tyrant!) and went alone up the stairs of the Abbey’s main tower.
From that rooftop, King Greensparrow saw the ruin of his life. There was fighting in every section of the city. The north was lost, and the dwarfs were sweeping east to open the bridges, while the cavalry was thundering along the streets, winding its way to join in the fierce fighting at the south wall.
“Fools, all,” the wizard-king sneered.
Greensparrow spotted a curious group of riders, noted particularly a man on a shining white stallion, a crimson cape billowing out behind him.
“At least, this,” the king remarked, and his hands began weaving semicircles in the air, touching thumb to thumb, then little finger to little finger, the tempo gradually increasing as Greensparrow gathered his magical energies that he might strike dead the troublesome Crimson Shadow once and for all.
But before he could execute the spell, Greensparrow found his feet knocked right out from under him as the tower trembled under a tremendous magical assault.
Looking to the east, Greensparrow noted three forms: an old wizard in blue robes and holding an oaken staff, the duke of Baranduine, and the woman who would be queen. Brind’Amour struck repeatedly at the tower, lightning bolts reaching out from his staff to slam at the foundations beneath Greensparrow. Deanna and Ashannon were not so powerful, but still they threw every ounce of their strength at the king.
The tower swayed dangerously.