Chapter 26

Once the forest fire was started, it didn’t take long for a messenger to arrive from King Edward. Thomas was ordered to meet the King and his commanders at the rendezvous point to give an update. Jacob took charge of the men and was tasked with helping Duke Able move his people from the path of the Virdenese army.

During the night, they’d found that not all the vanguard had perished in the fire. The survivors had come to the river’s edge, and Thomas had been taken aback when the Virdenese men had removed all their armor and weapons and surrendered. His men had built a few rafts to make it easier to tear down the bridge, and Thomas had Jacob send those to rescue the Virdenese survivors.

The surviving vanguard told Jacob that they had failed in their mission and would rather surrender than return to Virden. They were convinced that King Doyle would stake them for their failure. They also shared that many wanted to desert. But the Virdenese troops were too afraid because examples were made of those who tried. Getting a stake up your bum was the least of your worries, from what they explained.

At first light, Thomas saddled Tramper. He took the mercenaries with him and left Griffin and his rangers under Jacob’s command.

As they traveled north, they saw a stream of people headed in that direction. When the people spotted Frost leading Thomas’s contingent, they would step off the road to give the direwolf and her companions plenty of room. She was handy to have at times. Then again...

Frost veered off the road, and Leif looked at Thomas quizzically.

“I think she wants us to follow her,” Thomas said as he guided Tramper in her wake.

They traveled a quarter of a mile until they came upon a man in Duke Able’s colors, arguing with a farmer. Off in the distance, Thomas saw a small village.

In this part of Abingdon, small villages were scattered around the landscape, just a few miles apart. Farms surrounded the villages. They were laid out that way because the fields needed to be within walking distance.

The duke’s man looked irritated.

“What’s going on?” Thomas asked.

Both men jumped when they spotted a direwolf not more than ten feet away, staring them down.

“I asked, what is going on?” Thomas repeated himself.

“He’s trying to get us to leave my land. I can’t afford to abandon my farm, let alone burn my crop as he is asking,” the farmer complained.

“Do you understand what’s coming?” Thomas asked the farmer.

“Yes, the Virdenese army is coming. But I have been trying to explain to this man that I have no part in this. If they come looking for food, I will sell it to them like I would anyone.”

The mercenaries laughed at how ridiculous the man sounded, but Thomas understood his sentiment. Being a farmer was hard work. The man looked a little older, which meant he’d been doing this for years. He was right: if he abandoned his farm, it would be destroyed by the Virdenese forces.

The most likely scenario was that their enemy would build rafts to transport their army across the river since Thomas had destroyed the bridge. They would then have to live off the land because hauling supplies by raft was impractical, not that they weren’t supplying themselves by foraging—stealing—anyway. It would be like a horde of locusts as nearly five thousand men figured out how to feed themselves.

“They won’t negotiate. You will likely be put on a stake, along with your family,” Thomas said.

The man paled at the thought but still shook his head.

“Even so. I have to try because we won’t survive the winter if I lose everything. I’ve spent my whole life on this land, and I promised myself that my children would never feel the hunger I did in my youth. I can’t do it.”

“What if I promised you food and help to rebuild if your farm is damaged?” Thomas asked.

It was the farmer’s turn to laugh.

“That sounds like an empty promise to me.”

“I am Lord Wolf. I will talk to King Edward and have him set aside monies from the loot we collect to put toward rebuilding.”

“That would mean you would have to win,” the farmer said.

“Then it would be in your best interest to make sure that happens.”

The two of them gave each other measured looks.

“Have the Virdenese really been putting people to the stake?” the farmer finally asked.

Thomas took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.

“They’ve done so to their own people. They won’t hesitate to do that to you. They’ve even impaled women and children,” Thomas shared. “What they might do to you and your family before putting you on stakes might be even worse.”

“I’m still not sure,” the farmer said.

“I understand. Just do two things for me. First, send your family north to save them,” Thomas said.

“And the second?”

“Wear something distinctive. That way, if you are staked, your family will be able to identify you from afar. Save them from having to see you up close like that,” Thomas said.

Finally, the farmer understood the seriousness of what he faced.

“I’ll make sure we leave. I’ll also help to get others to do the same. We’ll torch our crops and food stores before we leave,” the farmer promised and then gave Thomas a grave look. “I’ll also hold you to your offer of help.”

Thomas nodded, and the farmer departed.

“Thank you,” the duke’s man said. “Can I make the same offer to others?”

“We will do what we can, but I doubt it will be enough,” Thomas admitted.

“You’re right. We have to survive this first,” the duke’s man said and then left.

Thomas looked at Frost.

“Good girl. Now take the lead,” Thomas said.

Leif shook his head as the direwolf trotted back to the main road. He still didn’t quite believe that Thomas could communicate with his wolf, despite the evidence he’d seen repeatedly.

It took them two days to reach King Edward. He’d picked an excellent location to face King Doyle’s army.

Unlike Virden’s roads, the ones north of the border river had come into being organically. They had mostly begun as game trails that hunters had also used until they became wider. Eventually, they became roads. In this area, you were at the mercy of the Barrier Hills. They ran east to west for many days’ ride.

The hills were the last remnant of an ancient plateau that had eroded into rolling countryside all around. That was except for a ridge and its dependent hills, spurs, and knolls that fell away on both sides from a cap rock. The cap surmounted the ridge like a wall for miles to the east and west and protected the softer strata below it.

At one location, though, the wall had collapsed, and the waters of a lake that had accumulated north of the ridge had rushed through the resulting gap. The torrent had carved out a channel featuring steep rapids and hollowed out a bowl in the slope on the south side about a quarter-mile wide and a mile long.

The river had then settled at the lowest part of the bowl along the east side. The wall of water left behind rapids flowing over the boulders, huge and small, tumbled there by the dam’s collapse and the resulting violent flood. The remainder of the bowl sloped toward the river, and the bowl’s mouth to the south was heavily wooded.

The road north from the border with Virden had been carved into the side of the resulting gap and ran down the middle of the bowl. The river flowed close up against the east side of the bowl and eventually continued out of the hills down to the border river. Once it got to level ground and spread out a bit, this stream was not an obstacle like the border river and was crossable at numerous fords.

That was why this road was so crucial to the Virdenese. The gap was the only passage through the ridge for miles in either direction that was large enough for more than a few goats. For the same reason, this was the best place—perhaps the only place—for Abingdon’s defenders to make a stand against the oncoming invaders.

The road had been carved out of the side of the gap made by the river, making it easy to block and hard to pass. If Abingdon became desperate, destroying the road would make it impossible for the Virdenese invasion to proceed until it was rebuilt. But it would also effectively surrender all of Abingdon south of the ridge to the Virdenese.

On the north side of the ridge, a monastery had been built, and later a small town had sprung up. The town was there because of the mines that were close by. It gave the miners a place to sell their minerals and blow off some steam.

Another small town had arisen near where the lake had resided. The former lake bed had created the perfect place for salt mines, one of Abingdon’s most significant sources of wealth.

A Week After Thomas Went South:

When King Edward arrived at the tollhouse that had been installed at the head of the bowl, he called his dukes together to study the site and plan the defenses.

“I thought Abingdon was best served by diplomacy instead of spending what little treasure we have on idle fortifications. But now I curse the day I decided against fortifying this gap,” said King Edward. “Charles, we’ve just sent your son Thomas south with a few men to try to delay the invasion as long as possible. But how much delay can we expect from the efforts of a couple hundred barely trained men against five thousand?”

“I don’t know Thomas as well as I should. You know the reasons why. But I’ve quickly learned not to underestimate him, and you have had opportunity to see that he and his men are not without some skills.

“If the Virdenese army wasn’t delayed at all, it would take them perhaps fifteen days at their fastest marching speed to get here. Keep in mind that most of their men aren’t well trained, either. If Thomas’s force just makes them deploy once or more per day, it could add ten days to that. But we can’t count on it, so we need to push to get the minimum defenses in place in two weeks. After that, we can just make them better,” Duke Charles responded.

“Charles, don’t you have a man in your entourage who went on crusade? I hear that the castles in the Holy Land are quite formidable. We don’t have time to build a stone castle, but he might have seen some ideas we can adapt to a hasty fortification,” Duke Able interjected.