Down styphon, p.10
Down Styphon!, page 10
part #8 of Kalvan Series
I want you to go through the battle-spoils we have accumulated during the last few years and find the guns we need. Make sure that all of them are the old-style bombards. I see no reason to be overly generous. As to the cannon makers, founders and fireseed crafters, accept volunteers only. They will be heavily rewarded; not only will High King Roldolf pay them a generous salary, but that salary will be matched with Royal funds upon their return to Thagnor Town. When you have gathered the guns and assembled the necessary guildsmen, send them on barges down to Kythar Town, where they will stay until our departure for Xiphlon. Be sure to send sufficient warships along with the barges to ensure they are not captured by the Dorgi ships or any others along the way down the Great River.
It is my suspicion that Roldolf will try to “buy” off as many of our guildsmen as he can, and his terms will be most generous. See that Captain-General Klestreus includes several of his intelligencers among the crews; he can teach them how to respond to bribes and ferret out secrets. I see no reason to trust Roldolf, and it will be to our long-term advantage to have some of our agents working in Xiphlon under High King Roldolf’s protection.
I expect this siege to continue on for at least another two moons, maybe longer—
There was a heavy knock at his oak door. Halgoth must be back, Kalvan decided. No one else he knew could make that much racket pounding on oak without busting his hand, or using a mace.
“Come in!” he shouted, so as to be heard over the crashing cannon.
Halgoth came in with a sheepish look on his face. He shrugged, then said, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but Warlord Sargos will not be attacking the Black Knights....”
“What happened?” Kalvan asked.
“The other chiefs and sachems refuse to go to war this summer. They are still counting the loot from last year’s raids against Dorg and their attack on Wulfula City. Chief Sargos ordered me to beg your forgiveness, but his power is limited in time of peace. He wishes you great luck in your attack on the Great Fortress and will pray to the War Gods for your success.”
Halgoth looked so distressed at having to give this bad news that Kalvan felt sorry for him. “It’s all right, Halgoth. We are not dependent upon Warlord Sargos’ help.”
The Captain of his bodyguard made a wide smile that left him looking like a jack-o-lantern. At moments like this it was easy to forget that Halgoth was basically at heart a killing machine, much like a wolf pack leader, instead of the friendly shaggy dog he so often resembled.
“There is still plenty of fighting to come,” Kalvan added.
Halgoth let out a deep breath. “Good, Your Majesty. I was afraid I might have missed the real battle.”
Kalvan shook his head. “No, it’ll be at least another two moons before this castle is destroyed and the surviving Knights are forced into a fight. You’ll get your fill of fighting then, I guarantee it!”
TWELVE
I
Great Queen Rylla watched as a red flare bloomed overhead in the night air, illuminating the broken walls and the armored men waiting in case of a sortie by the inhabitants. The ground shuddered and she covered her ears as another ear-splitting salvo of gunfire went off. Chunks of rock and splinters of stone sprayed downwards from the walls. One of the high towers that flanked the gate finally toppled, the big old gun rolling out and striking the ground with an audible thud. It rolled a few times and came to a rest, its hulk reminiscent of a dead bison.
Her husband’s orders were to bombard the walls day and night; he was hoping to shatter the morale of the Knights huddling inside the massive fort as well as the ramparts.
“Darling, why don’t the Knights have better guns?”
Kalvan smiled, his teeth glowing in the flickering red and yellow light of a big bonfire some two rods away. “First, the Order never needed better guns; most of their fights were against lightly armed nomads from the Sastragath or the Sea of Grass. Secondly, before the Fireseed Wars, cast cannons were made from brass and prohibitively expensive; they were only available in Grefftscharr and Hos-Zygros; both areas well-known for casting brass bells. Lastly, Styphon’s House went to a lot of effort to ensure that no one bought them, since the old bombards used a lot more fire-seed to less effect. No one was molding guns in quantity until we built the Royal Foundry in Hostigos.”
“Aha,” she said in reply. That was another one of the many innovations her husband had brought with him from the Cold Lands. Another reason that his life must be protected at all costs. If only he realized how much he meant, not only to me, but to the future of our children and our people. “How much longer before we breach this section of Wall-4?”
“It’s holding up pretty well. The tunneling is proceeding, another reason were now attacking at night as well as during the day. Our tunnelers ran into some old tunnels underneath the walls, but they were filled with rocks. I can't imagine what it’s like inside the citadel with all this noise and constant bombardment. The Knights have been putting up with this for over two moons.”
“How much longer will the siege go on?” Rylla asked.
Kalvan shook his head back and forth. “Another moon, maybe more. It’s hard to tell. If the rest of the walls are as thick as Wall-4, it’s going to take some time. Then, we’ll have to bombard the old fort itself; and it’s very well made. Fortunately, we’ll be able to use our shells and they will rain Regwarn itself down upon the Styphoni!”
Rylla shrugged. The ground shook again as another concentrated salvo sounded off. She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder to keep from falling down. She wished there was another route to Hostigos; she was tired of being an exile. She wanted to return to her home, even if her father and so many other friends were no longer among the living. Hostigos might be in ruins now, but it would be repaired. Maybe not in her lifetime, but certainly in her children’s. Was it so wrong to want them to grow up in their homeland...?
Another mortar shell went up and exploded prematurely, bathing the front of the wall in fiery red.
“I just wish they’d surrender,” Kalvan postulated.
“Why? We’d only have to fight them again at a later date.”
Kalvan shrugged. “I admire the Order; they’re among the best troops in the Great Kingdoms. They’ve done a great job of protecting the march lands from the nomads for centuries. It’s a shame to see them dying to protect the old order.”
“Darling, you sent them reasonable terms. It wasn’t your fault that Grand Master Soton rejected them out of hand.”
“I know, I know. I just keep wondering if I couldn’t have presented them in a manner that wouldn’t have sparked outright rejection.”
Rylla shook her head. “Soton is a true believer. You can't reason with such men. Do you remember Xentos and how he deserted us for his god shortly after he arrived in Agrys City?”
Kalvan nodded. “Yes, I never realized how stubborn and ambitious he was. Well, he paid with his life for his error.”
Rylla felt her eyes burn. Even though he turned on them, she still had fond childhood memories of Xentos, the former Hostigos highpriest of Dralm. Like Hostigos itself, her father, Harmakros, and so many others, they had all been lost in the war against Styphon’s House. She felt her grief turn into anger. “Then, let them all die! The Knights made their beds when they did Styphon’s dirty work!”
II
Grand Master Soton thought he heard the sound of someone knocking on his door. It was hard to tell as the very walls and foundation creaked and groaned from the weight of iron the Hostigi were throwing against the castle walls.
“Come in!” he shouted.
His adjutant, Knight Commander Sarmoth, came bursting into his inner chamber. “Sir, we’ve finally located one of the spots where the Hostigi are tunneling underneath the wall.”
Finally, they could take action rather than sit passively as the walls of Tarr-Ceros came tumbling down about their ears. “Good. Send a tunneling party to locate their tunnel and kill the lot of them!”
“I already have men waiting, sir,” Sarmoth said with a smile.
“Good. I suppose you’ll want to command the tunnel party.” He tried not to grin; he remembered a time when he was as anxious for action as his adjutant. By Galzar’s Mace, he’d love to lead them himself instead of sitting here in his chair impotently while the Hostigi battered down the walls of his fortress one wall at a time. Well, at least, someone would be doing something.
“Thank you, sir!”
Sarmoth all but ran down the corridor leading to the western stairwell. The time had come to turn the tables on the Hostigi and he was the man to do it. He quickly made his way down the stairs to the armory where he removed his black tunic and put on a back-and-breast and the rest of his armor. From the armory he went down a ramp to the upper dungeon where several hundred Order foot were gathered and a score of miners, their tunics smeared with dirt and soot.
The head miner, a graybeard wearing a dirty canvas hat, said, “Sir, we stopped digging just less than a joint-length from the enemy’s tunnel. We could hear them talking and the sound of their shovels. One of them mentioned fireseed barrels...so we should be careful that we don’t use any open lamps.”
He handed Sarmoth a large candle inside a circular brass-wire gauze screen with a wide metal base. “The screens keep the candle flame from setting off any gas in the tunnels. They should do the same for the Hostigi fireseed.”
“How many of these candles do you have?” Sarmoth asked.
“About four hands worth,” the miner replied.
“Bring them here and hand them out to my men.”
The miner turned and left with his companions to bring back the lamps. While they were gone, Sarmoth gave his men orders about their mission. He finished with, “Leave your muskets and pistols here. Most importantly, do not let your candles near any fireseed barrels. And kill as many of the Hostigi swine as you can!”
They all nodded in concert. He didn’t have to remind them how deadly an explosion could be inside such a confined area.
It wasn’t long before the miner and his men returned with the lamps. He let the head miner lead the way down to a tunnel leading to the western sally port. When they ran across another passage going north/south, the miner turned right, saying, “This is the right passage. The sally port is about twenty rods from here.”
As they walked down this smaller and more confined tunnel, Sarmoth discovered that his wide shoulders barely fit through the passageway. His breastplate squealed when it rubbed against the limestone walls. He felt his heart starting to beat faster. He didn’t like being confined down here deep in the earth; it reminded him of childhood tales of Ormaz’s Caverns of the Dead.
The only benefit of being below in the tunnels was that the pounding of Kalvan’s guns was now reduced to a distant murmur. He had grown so accustomed to the sound of their thunder it was as if his ears had been reborn.
The miners came to a sudden halt at the place where they had been digging earlier. The head man held up a finger to his lips to quiet some of the soldiers, several of whom were complaining about the dark and how small the tunnel was. “Sir, if you put your ear to the wall, you can hear the Hostigi talking.”
Sarmoth pressed his ear against the limestone wall. He heard the muffled sound of picks striking stone and some spoken words, but was unable to discern what the enemy soldiers were saying. Turning to the miners, he said, “When I give the word, break through this section of the wall.”
Those miners encumbered with lamps handed them off to the nearest soldiers.
When they all had their picks raised, Sarmoth said, “Strike now!”
Soon the small passageway was filled with the sound of metal striking stone. The noise was so loud that Sarmoth was certain it would alert the Hostigi that they were coming. When he voiced his concern to the head miner, he shook his head. “They’re making too much noise digging themselves to hear us, unless one of ’em’s right up against the wall. It was Lystris’ own luck that one of my men picked up their voices before they heard us.”
Sarmoth nodded, sword in hand. It seemed to take forever before the wall was breached and they could hear the Hostigi talking amongst themselves. It took several dozen heartbeats before the hole was widened enough to allow a man passage. Sarmoth pushed his way through the gap, leading the way and slashing the first man he ran into in the face with his blade.
The Hostigi reared back, howling and then crumpling when Sarmoth’s sword entered his eye socket. In an eye-blink the small chamber was filled with the clanging of swords amid the cries of desperate and dying men.
After his easy victory, Sarmoth became engaged with a Hostigi captain, with gold inlay on his morion helmet, who knew how to use his blade in a manner Sarmoth had never encountered before. He found himself, despite his bigger size and longer arms, being pushed back against one of the stone walls. He was parrying the enemy’s blade when the man pricked his cheek with a knife. He reared back and fought with renewed vigor. During the fight, they knocked over a fireseed barrel which broke open, splashing fire-seed powder all over the floor.
“Watch out!” he cried.
One of the lamp holders took a sword blow to the head and fell, his lamp upending amidst the fireseed.
Both Sarmoth and his opponent lowered their swords, and looked at each other with wide eyes. Neither could see an escape route.
A breath later, there was a bright flash—as though the sun had broken through the walls in all its majesty—then utter darkness and the thunder of falling rocks....
III
Archpriest Danthor stepped warily up to Styphon’s Voice’s private audience room where the Captain of the Guard silently motioned him to wait. Which reminded him that all of the Sephrax Guard, that is those who personally attended Anaxthenes, had their tongues removed so they would be unable to gossip or reveal his private conversations. He understood that the pay was good, but the price seemed awfully high to him.
These were tumultuous times and all of Balph was in an uproar over Kalvan’s attack upon the Order’s greatest fortress. Many of the archpriests were fearful that his next stop, after Tarr-Ceros, would be the Holy City. He knew better; Kalvan had too good of a military mind to get bogged down in a fall or winter attack. He would wait until next spring, then all of Regwarn would break loose in Hos-Ktemnos. Besides, it would be months before the last of the Order’s forts fell.
Danthor knew from the briefings by the Blethan Town Study Team that Kalvan had orchestrated the “Orphan Prince scam” that had put Democriphon forward as a claimant to the Ivory Throne. It was possible that Kalvan planned to link up with Duke Skranga and Democriphon in Hos-Bletha, put Great King Niclophon out of his misery and then, with his combined force, invade Hos-Ktemnos.
He wondered what Anaxthenes had in mind to stop Kalvan. Or was he planning to bug out himself, as so many of the upperpriests were planning to do. The biggest problem the upperpriests faced was that all their possessions were owned by Styphon’s House, which made it difficult to cash in their bonds at Styphon’s Banking Houses or remove their treasures from their manors or, in the archpriests’ cases, palaces. Anyone caught transporting gold, silver, jewels or other treasure was subject to beheading. Stealing from the Temple was Styphon’s House’s worst offense and demanded the death penalty—with no exceptions, regardless of rank. Many in Balph were wondering whether they had more to fear from Styphon’s Own Guard or Great King Kalvan’s cannons, since he was believed to have a penchant for shooting Styphon’s priests out of big guns.
After about a quarter-candle wait before Anaxthenes’ private chamber, a captain of the Sephrax Guard escorted him into Styphon’s Voice’s presence. He nodded to the big man as he passed by.
Styphon’s Voice was seated before a long table filled to overflowing with parchments and scrolls. He had his head buried in a large scroll as Danthor entered his private chamber, but still managed to motion Danthor to sit down.
When Anaxthenes finished reading, he looked up—his eyes pinning Danthor to his seat. He reminded Danthor of a bird of prey about to strike with its talons or sharp beak. “You’re one of the smart ones, so I don’t have to remind you of the threat we face from the Daemon Kalvan.”
Danthor nodded his head in agreement.
“While the Daemon methodically destroys the walls of Tarr-Ceros, most of our priesthood concerns itself with how much gold they can smuggle out of Balph before he tackles our walls, which as you know are old and not as strong as I’d like. The price for the Temple’s three hundred years of peace and success. I, however, am not going to sit idly by and watch as Kalvan destroys our work.”
“What is your plan, Your Divinity?” he asked.
Anaxthenes smiled. “Good, you came right to the point. My plan is to bring Great King Geblon of Hos-Harphax to our defense. What do you think of that?”
Danthor stroked his chin. He knew that Geblon was a former general under Great King Phidestros, who had recently cleaned his house of all of Styphon’s priests, beheading most of them. The question was: Would Geblon go against his former boss’s will? Rumor also had it that Geblon was firmly under the thumb of his wife, Queen Lavena, who spent money like water. So it all came down to a question of loyalties.
“Your Divinity, it all depends upon whether or not Great King Geblon is more beholden to Great King Phidestros or his wife.”
Anaxthenes smiled predatorily. “Good answer. From the size of his recent loans from our Banking Houses, I would suspect the latter. It will be up to you to convince him where his true loyalties lie. You will be my personal envoy to the Court of Great King Geblon. I will give you five hundred thousand ounces of gold to convince him of our sincerity. All of it to be spent on bringing the Harphaxi army up to fighting trim. You can also inform him that if he brings his army in support of Balph, we will forgive all his debts.”
