Chapter 13: War on a Separate Front

Elena and Choran did not get to open hostilities with the rogue priests of Serrat.

That came on the fifth day down the Great River, with the village of Blue Harbor in sight on the horizon. As the four barges floated downstream toward the town, a host of arrows and rocks began to fall from the hills.

The helmsmen did their best to steer the boats clear but the attack was a complete surprise. Five men were struck by arrows and one of the barges capsized when the people shifted the balance to get away from the falling projectiles.

“Take us to the other shore,” Joseph ordered. The captain had turned the boat southward, away from the hills. Now the king was ordering him to move toward them.

“Yes, Your Highness,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Genrico, you’re with me,” Joseph yelled to the boat behind him. “The rest of you start rescue operations and triage the wounded.”

Joseph and Genrico jumped into the water to pull the barges as close the bank as possible.

“Genrico, I want you, Jonathan, Rucar, Victoria and Julia with me,” he instructed. “Lydia, I want you and Amelia to take charge of the rest of the group. When the captain says it’s clear, get them back across the water. Tell the soldiers I want defensive measures if they haven’t started when you get there. You know how to handle things and I have faith in you. Questions?”

The groups exchanged glances but no one spoke.

“We are going to follow this road down the river until we find where those men went into the hills,” he told them as they hurried down the tiny path that lined the river. “Then we will wait for them. Do not kill them unless you have to. I want answers and I will have them before those men die for their treachery.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Victoria answered. Julia and Rucar led the group, stopping every so often to inspect the ground. Genrico and Joseph slipped into the trees periodically to check for interior paths but found none. Jonathan and Victoria kept a rear guard to ensure that no one came out of the woods behind the group.

“Here!” Rucar said. “Men came through here within the past day. See how the plant is broken but isn’t dead yet? I count six distinct prints.”

Everyone in the group except Jonathan was an experienced tracker but they all nodded at the explanation. Joseph surveyed the ground for a moment before turning to the former outlaw.

“If I asked you set up an ambush sight, where would you choose?” he asked.

“In the forest,” Rucar answered without hesitation. “They had to see us heading toward this bank. They will not use stealth for their retreat. They have uneven terrain but they will be moving with haste. I suspect it will not be long until we hear them.”

“Agreed,” Genrico said when Joseph looked at him.

With a nod, Julia headed into the forest and the rest of the group followed. She found a lightly wooded area and she and Victoria scampered up for a better vantage point.

“They will arrive soon,” she yelled down. “They are flushing all the animals this way. Be aware.”

“Stay where you are and let them pass,” Joseph instructed. “You and Victoria will act to make sure they can’t retreat back into the hills. Kill only if necessary.”

The men came down the hill at a dead run – and ran straight into four armed men.

“This is as far as you go,” Joseph told them. “Do you know who I am?”

The man in front, middle aged and panting from his exertion, shook his head.

“I am King Joseph,” he replied. “You have just attacked the sovereign ruler of Azkoval. Do you know the penalty for that?”

A younger man in the back started to head back up the hillside but Julia dropped deftly into his path and kicked his legs from beneath him. The man fell flat on his face and felt her knees on his back and her dagger at his throat.

“You are surrounded,” Genrico informed the assailants. “If you resist, I will torture you for many months before you are executed. If you surrender and cooperate, I will kill you swiftly. Those are your options and you do not have long to consider your choices.”

“Rucar, put an arrow in one of their knees to help them along,” Joseph ordered. Just the sound of Rucar’s name brought panic to the captured men. The sight of him lifting his bow and unleashing a bolt into the leg of one of their compatriots had the remaining men throwing down their weapons and dropping to their knees.

“We didn’t know!” one of them pleaded. “We were told to attack the boats on the river. We didn’t know it was you! Don’t kill us. I have a family.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of your family’s well-being before attacking defenseless ships,” Genrico spat. “Tell me who ordered the attack!”

“The priests,” a young man said quickly. “It was Father Gwinnel.”

“Serratian priests?” Joseph asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the man continued. “He is the head of the Western Enclave.”

“Has he ordered other attacks?” Joseph asked.

“On the convoys coming from Tyrell,” the man continued.

“Did you attack the boats that came through here last month?” Genrico inquired.

“Just this one,” the man insisted. “The order came for us to watch the river for soldiers. There are a couple of hundred men at arms camped outside of Blue Harbor and the priests heard more were on the way.”

“They have not departed for Tyrell?” Jonathan wondered.

“Not as of this morning,” the man said. “They have been there for almost three weeks now and they show no sign of leaving. They are patrolling the coastal road. That’s why we were ordered to the river. I swear, Your Majesty, we did not know we were attacking the king.”

Joseph looked at the men for a long moment.

“Keep that one alive to testify against the priests,” he decided. “We will drag the other five to the river and drown them. They can float the rest of the way to Blue Harbor to herald our arrival to the Serratians.”

Genrico nodded his agreement and grabbed one of the men roughly by his shirt.

Julia, for all her bluster, and Victoria, for all the books she’d read on warfare, were aghast.

“You just plan to kill them?” Victoria asked in a small voice.

“They attacked the king,” Genrico replied. His voice was firm and angry. “We have men and women we traveled with for months dead because of a cowardly ambush. Yes, I plan to kill them. If I hadn’t given my word, I would kill them slowly. Drowning is a terrible death but it is quick if you force yourself to breathe. These men have their fate in their own hands. That is more than can be said for the ones we lost on the barges.”

Genrico prodded the men away with Rucar and Jonathan, leaving Joseph with the two young women.

“Look at their weapons and their boots,” he said in a gentler voice than Genrico had used. He saw the distress on their faces and longed to wrap them in his arms but he didn’t. Instead he simply explained his decision. “Their bows are better than yours and the clothing they wear is better than mine. These are not innocent farmers corrupted by someone more powerful. These are men who have killed for profit before – and who will kill for profit again if we leave them alive. Genrico will kill them because they attacked me. I will permit it because they have attacked others before me. Their fate is the only fate an assassin can expect.”

The deed was done before Joseph and the women arrived back at the river. Joseph had dawdled, gathering the men’s weapons and inspecting them carefully for poisons before handing them to Victoria or Julia to transport down the hillside.

The assailants’ bodies were on the shore, their hands and feet still bound by their own fine leather belts. Genrico and Jonathan were wet to their waists but Rucar was dry. Joseph’s able assistants had seen to the deed (just as Joseph had known they would). The lone survivor was seated beside his dead comrades, crying loudly. He knew that once his usefulness was at an end, he would suffer the same death as those he had joined years before.

The captain of the barge group was still waiting, pointedly looking anywhere but at the drowned men or the men who had drowned them.

“Take us across the river so that I might see to our wounded,” Joseph said softly. “Do you mind if we transport the bodies on your barge or would you prefer we leave them here? I need to take them into Blue Harbor to be identified.”

“I don’t want to touch them,” the captain said. He shook his head quickly. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. It just seemed like murder to me.”

Joseph turned the man and pointed to the shore where people were still jumping into the water and swimming out only to return when they grew tired.

“That was murder,” he said, anger in his voice for the first time. “The men were armed when we confronted them. They had equal numbers and they knew the terrain. We captured them fairly while they had a chance to defend themselves. Our people did not. Look for your men, Captain. There is one I do not see. I can see five of my people on the ground and at least two of them are dead. The activity tells me that at least several more are missing in the water. Should I have wasted my time with a trial?”

The captain’s eyes traced the shoreline and he went pale.

“My son,” he said softly. “I do not see my son on the shore. Oh, Lord, no!”

“I hope he is safe,” Joseph told him. “Let us go across and find out.”

It took a while for the men to be loaded on the barges. Carrying dead weight through the water is not an easy task and the men had to be placed in such a way that the barge didn’t capsize. The rescue mission was completed by the time Joseph arrived on shore. The bodies of three men and one woman lay beside the two men felled by arrows.

The captain dropped beside one of the men and cradled him to his chest.

“My only child has died before me,” he lamented. “All of my marriage is now gone and I am left with nothing.”

“You are left with the fond memories of your wife and son,” Joseph consoled. “It is not much but it helps during the darkest of times.”

Joseph left the man to his grief and went to look at the others who had fallen on his behalf. The woman was another who had stayed behind to act as cook for the small group. She had joined the march in its second month, the third daughter of a family that could ill afford another mouth to feed. The two men were from the original group that Joseph had brought with him to Azkoval two years earlier. They had seen battle in Badenroot and Deseret only to die in the water in Azkoval. All three had drowned when the boat capsized. The men couldn’t swim and the woman hadn’t been strong enough to rescue them. She gave her life rather than leave them behind.

The two men killed in the volley of arrows were farmers. One had left his fields to go fallow to follow Joseph on the march. His wife had died childless and he had nothing to keep him in Tyrell. The other had left his brother’s holding to seek adventure before he settled down for a life of dull drudgery in the fields. He was unmarried but still had family in the Burbridge region.

Joseph felt tears in his eyes but made no move to wipe them away. He felt the rage that he had barely kept at bay for the past two years coming to the front and fought to keep it quelled for just a while longer. There would be time to release his inner demons but it was in the future – the near future, to be certain, but there were other tasks to be performed first.

“I need volunteers for a burial detail,” he said in a voice that almost broke.

“We have it arranged, Your Highness,” Lydia said quietly. “We wanted to find the rest of our group before we began.”

“You did well,” Joseph told her. He looked away and sniffed before wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. The deaths were senseless. He had marched for months and fought a campaign without a single friendly casualty and now six had died because of the cowardly priests.

“We are less than a quarter day from Blue Harbor,” he said. “Once the burial is complete, we rest for the night. At first light, we march on the city and reclaim it for Azkoval.”

Julia had seen the tears on Joseph’s face as he surveyed those who had died in his name. She watched as he knelt before each of the fallen, spoken their name and thanked them for their service to him and to the country. He had leaned forward and kissed each man or woman on the forehead and had personally washed the blood from the faces of two of the men. He put his arm around the captain when he knelt by the man’s son and gave him the same benediction he had offered to those who had served beside him for months or years.

She was certain that Johan the Merciless was gone forever until he arose and took in the men and women who surrounded him. His eyes held a fury that she had never before seen in anything but a rabid animal. She understood that the following day would bring slaughter to any in Blue Harbor who dared defy their king.

“The madness is in all of us,” Rucar said from her shoulder. “But more so in him, because of his childhood. It was more than seeing his father murdered and his mother defiled. It was the guilt he would feel each time he learned something new about Azkoval’s downfall. He had no one to love him – but worse yet, he had no one to love. He transferred all of his affection to Azkoval and its people. It hurts him when he learns that some of those he loves do not return his devotion. It hurts him to understand that there are people who despise him because he loves them so well. This is how it manifests in him.”

Julia gulped and looked away from Rucar’s face to the man Rucar was staring at: the king.

“You seem to have grown to know him well in only a few weeks,” she said dubiously.

“I know him because I know myself,” Rucar replied. “He told me, that day in the forest when you wished to kill me for threatening him, that he and I are not so different. I didn’t believe him then but I do now. I hope you will believe me when I say that you are not so different from him and me either. You would kill to protect him. I know that now just as I knew it in the forest. You would have killed me. Just as I killed the Dunvil family for taking away what I love, you would have killed me for threatening what you love.