Chapter 21

Treweg, Barony of Stourshire, River Mark

From atop the stone walls that surrounded the market town, Aldric looked over the field where a hundred conscripts drilled with spears, their movements still unpolished after days of practice. Sitting at the point where the Horn Road and the East Road merged, becoming the South Road that went all the way through River Mark and deep into Shadowhold, it was a critical piece of land, to be sure.

It also wasn’t where he wanted to be. After taking Selwyn almost two weeks ago, Aldric had wanted to quickly march on Twyver and push Edmund’s forces back across the Thunderhorn. The taking of Treweg had been costly to his already damaged army. Worse, the Crown forces had been aggressively counter-screening, whittling down his already small scouting force, leaving him mostly blind to what he was facing up north.

So he’d held here, trying to put together what forces he could. One of his biggest problems so far had been scouts, and the problem was only getting worse. The bulk of the horse ranches in the kingdom were in Kingsheart, leaving few options to replace the ones lost for new scouts. When they could get their hands on more horses, they were relying more and more on poorly trained locals to act as scouts, which meant they were losing more of them each time they sent men to see what Edmund’s forces were doing.

The only bright spot, so far, was that he’d received word from one of the barons in Shadowhold, who was breaking with Duke Blackwood’s chosen path of neutrality and sending what forces he could to join the fight. It would mean an influx of fighting men, which he desperately needed, but it was a long march from the Kingshold, and as far as Aldric knew, they were still assembling.

So he held and waited, training what conscripts he could gather in the meantime. More to keep his men active and alert for the fight ahead than with any hopes of turning them into a real fighting force in time.

Shouts from out beyond the training field drew Aldric’s attention. A man was running down the East Road in what seemed like extreme panic. Not a scout or a messenger. From what Aldric could see he’d guess a laborer of some sort, lacking armor, shouting something as he ran.

He collapsed in a heap a dozen or so feet from the soldiers who’d been training the conscripts. As the men ran to him, Aldric made his way down the stairs from the battlements to the front gates.

Whatever was happening, it was important. The man had seemed panicked. In a frenzy. There was only one thing Aldric could think of down the East Road that would lead to that response, and it wasn’t good.

They had the man on his feet, dragging him inside to see the healers when Aldric made his way outside.

“Wait. Wait,” the man said as he saw Aldric. “Your grace ... an...”

The man was struggling to get the words out, clearly exhausted from the run, sweat having soaked clean through his tunic and made his hair as wet as if he had jumped in a river.

“NO! It’s a ... a massive force and it’s heading this way. Thousands of men under the banner of the crown.”

“Damn it all,” Aldric muttered, stopping for a moment to look north, imagining what the man saw.

“Thank you, my friend. Let them take you inside, to have water and rest,” he said, squeezing the man’s shoulder gently, before turning to the sergeant who’d come with them from the training field. “Sound the horns. Get everyone behind the walls. Send riders north to bring in as many civilians as they can. They are not to stop here; we’ll be enveloped almost certainly. They are to keep moving.”

“Sir, the man with the report. He was schooled in his numbers by the Disciples. What he described is a force much larger than the one we chased from here two weeks ago, or the one that chased us out of Twyver. They have reinforced.”

“Not a surprise. Edmund can draw from Kingsheart now that the Icelanders occupy Garris. Go. Get the men moving. Every moment counts.”

As the sergeant hurried away, Aldric waved over the gate guards. “Once our people are inside, I want that gate reinforced. Double the bracing. And send for the engineers. I want them to build barricades at every major intersection. If they breach the walls, we’ll make them pay for every foot.”

The waiting proved worse than any battle. Hours crawled past as Aldric worked to get the defenses as strong as he could. Not that he had a lot of options to get ready. Short on men and supplies, all he could do was pull behind the walls and hold out for as long as he could.

Harvests hadn’t started yet, but they pulled in what food and livestock they could, moving them into the city should Edmund try and starve them out, not that Aldric expected that. Edmund was impatient. He would take the wall.

At least they got most of the civilians moving south, toward Selwyn. If his army fell, that city wouldn’t last long either, but it would spare them for a time. And who knows? Maybe they would survive this.

Aldric looked at the men on the walls, and his smile faded. Hardly men. As many grandfathers and young boys as men of fighting age. The odds of them holding were slim for sure.

They saw the dust cloud from it before they ever saw the army. When it came into view, Aldric knew what the farmer had meant. The force was huge, bigger than either of those he’d faced at Selwyn or Twyver. The only good thing about this army was that it was nearly entirely made up of men-at-arms. Edmund had wasted a lot of knights so far, who were much harder to replace, needing extensive training. Calling up veterans of past campaigns and pulling bailiffs, city guards, and whatever other men that had experience with sword or spear would have been faster.

Especially in Kingsheart, which had not drained its fighting men for the war in Lynese like River Mark and Iron Keep had. It was why Aldric wanted Shadowhold to join them so badly, as they were the only remaining neutral duchy with any significant men under arms left, now that the Icelands had committed.

Either way, this was a force large enough to take the walls of the city. Of that, Aldric had no doubt. The only question was what cost they could make Edmund’s forces pay before the city fell.

They were well trained, that much was clear as the Crown forces spread out before Treweg’s walls, their ranks extending well beyond the town’s perimeter. Archers came to the front, preparing to try to soften them up.

“Archers!” came the cry down the wall, as swordsmen crouched down, close to their side of the wall, hoping to avoid being hit. The few archers they had on their side of the wall prepared to return fire.

Far fewer than what the Crown army had. Arrows darkened the sky as they were released, most clattered harmlessly against the walls. Not all, as some men on the wall or waiting below to join the fighting screamed as an unlucky arrow found them.

Before the Crown forces could loose another volley, Aldric’s archers returned fire. Without the protection of the city walls, their forces took more hits, arrow for arrow, but with so few archers available to him, the actual numbers of men hit ended up being about the same.

“Keep shooting!” Aldric ordered as he moved along the wall. “Make every arrow count!”