The Court of Ghosts Chapter 13

· Stephen Wormwood here. Thank you for clicking. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com. As always hope you enjoy reading this and please consider donating to Nifty if you can (https://donate.nifty.org/), it's more than merited.

· You can find a map of the fictionalized setting of this novel here: https://imgur.com/JtpD8WU (this is my first time using Inkarnate so it might be a little rough!)

· If you end up enjoying this, please read some of my other stories on Nifty: The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).

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Chapter Thirteen: The March of the Wretched, Part 2

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To The Last of the Blood – Under Siege – The Battle of Brookweald – Vengeance – "Long Live This Realm and All Her People"

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Brookweald, The Midburghs, Kingdom of Morland

40^th of Autumn, 801

Maps. Markers. Complots. War frights not in the strategizing of it, nor when its authors gathered about the table to speak of soldiers and provisions and positions. War frights in the doing, the living, the breathing. Men may speak of Tunsford Hill and all its defensive qualities, but it is not the same as seeing it with one's own eyes – seeing the tent tops amassed beyond the ridge by the hundreds, seeing the enemy infantrymen arrayed at its peak by the thousands.

War frights not in the abstract.

But this... this was no longer the abstract. This was the field. And Edward Bardshaw found himself square in its centre. All was as Owayne's scouts had it. Behind them, to the north, swept the dense presence of Oxwood Forest, split in half by the dirt road verging into the fallowed fields known to the locals as Brookweald, 300 acres of open field. To the south loomed that daunting presence of Tunsford Hill; a long, shallow slope rising into a clouded grey sky where the banners of the ducal army now flocked – where armed Morishmen now stood in their thousands. To his right, to the west, the Oxwood thinned into a scattered patchwork of copses and thickets. To his left, to the east, the Brookweald proceeded into a swampy marshland buzzing with hoppers and green drakes, and beyond that, the River Tun.

It was only as Edward beheld the land for himself that he realized how carefully chosen it was. Oxwood Forest clustered their retreat path. The patchy western woodlands made a rightward encirclement of the hill difficult, and the boggy eastern marshland made a leftward encirclement nigh on impossible. The only path was forward across the field and up a hill into the van of an army with superior numbers and a downslope advantage. This was not to be a battlefield.

It was to be a chopping block.

"But..." began Owayne mac Garrach. "I have a plan."

Edith eyed the parchment map at the centre of her table by flickering wisps of candlelight. Most of the camp lay abed in anticipation of the morrow and all it promised – death or glory – but not she. Not Owayne. Not Edward. "It had better be a damned good one to surmount these disadvantages..."

One of the markers at tableside was a lacquered oaken token carved into the shape of a saker. Owayne mac Garrach moved it to a spot beyond the River Tun. "Taking that hill is an impossibility, that much is certain. But we might force Huxton to surrender it."

Edward eyed the mercenary, sceptically. "How, exactly?"

A grin. "Leave that part to me. I've already sent men and wagons to take up position. Our problem comes in after the fact. Huxton must be lured as well as coaxed off that hill, he must have something to target to draw him down."

Edith frowned. "You mean bait."

"I mean good Morishmen willing to fight and to die for a better realm. I am not proposing a sacrifice. They would not be defenceless... and we would not abandon them. But we need something."

Edward sighed. "How many men is enough?"

"10 companies should do it."

"Fine, let me lead."

Edith's eyes sharpened. "I assigned you to my guard, Ed."

"And I don't mean to defy you. But if I'm understanding Master Owayne's plan correctly, our goal is to lure our hunter into his own trap. The men will have to hold their nerve. And they would under your command, or Owayne's, but your life is too important to risk in the van and Owayne's instruction is required for the White Ravens. Me? I've no such import. But I've trained with these men, drilled with them. Let me lead them."

The Red Princess had a frown as baleful as her bloodthirsty temper. She cast it at Edward for a moment, as if to shrink him back into the shadows of the command tent, as if to scorn him for his temerity. And then she smiled. A prideful one.

"Are you certain you wish to do this?" She asked. "There can be no turning back."

A second sigh. Edward's eyes drifted back to the map. Back to Brookweald, to the highway beyond it that led to Greyford, and to the Grey Road which led all the way south to Dragonspur. "We've no right to Morland's future... if we aren't ready to bleed for its present. My mind is made. Master Owayne? What's the plan?"

Kenrick Thopswood, who sat ahorse and armour-less in his simple riding leathers at Edith's left flank, eyed the soldiers at the ridge with growing alarm. "The saints above have levelled us with discouraging odds."

Edward Bardshaw, who sat ahorse and lightly armoured at Edith's right flank, shook his head at the notion. "Mayhap the saints wish for men to make their own luck."

Edith the Exile, who sat ahorse and fully armoured in painted plate, looked out across the open fields as a small flock of horsemen galloped towards the centre; two heavily-armoured men, four outriders, and two standard bearers – one bearing the royal sigil and the other bearing the sigil of House Drakewell.

"There's enough clucking you hens," said Edith. "Here comes our man."

The Red Princess whipped at her reigns and dug her spurs. The barded destrier beneath her burst forth, galloping across the soft, muddy soils towards the Earl of Huxton's retinue. Edward, Thopswood and her standard bearer did the same. The two parties rode to a stop as they came before each other at the centre of the field.

A thick fog rolled across the eastern marshes. Hungry crows wheeled the grey skies. Solemnity draped the field like a mourner's shroud. An ugly day was set to proceed – a day that would live on throughout Morish history no matter which side stood victorious.

Edith and Huxton's horses pulled ahead slightly where the others held position until nary a few feet of land lay between them. The plate-armoured and half-cloaked Earl of Huxton, glistening and bouncing from his studded saddle, pushed up his helmet's visor to reveal a little strip of wrinkled pink flesh surrounding a beady pair of rheumy eyes.

"The Bloody Maid!" A chuckle. "So, here we are. What erring governess tore the doll from your hand and replaced it with a wooden sword? Give me her name. I shall chide her as I ferry your severed head back to Dragonspur."

Ed could not see beneath Edith's visor – but he knew she was smiling. "My dear Lord Earl, what erring governess tore the doll from your daughter's hand and replaced it with an ebon phallus?"

That little strip of pink flesh inside Huxton's helm flashed a cherry shade of red.

"Give me her name," said Edith. "I shall chide her as I ferry your porcine carcass down to Dragonspur."

Huxton's steel gauntlets rattled with rage at his horse's reins. "You are your mother's daughter, rotten to the core, saturated with vice and falsehoods! I knew you when you were nothing more than a bump in that harlot's belly, and now here you stand! I should be glad to tear your cursed ambition to the ground! But his grace the Duke of Greyford is a man more gracious than I."

"Oh? How so?"

Huxton threw a glance at Edward and Thopswood. "You will, right here and now, offer me your abject surrender! All your misguided followers must lay down their arms, swear fealty to the regent and the unborn heir, and return to their homes with no further delay. Do so, and full pardons for this treasonous conduct will be issued to all but its ringleaders. What say you?"

They, Bardshaw and Thopswood, responded with silence.

Edith spoke instead. "My men are a loyal lot. They have the Will of the Stars and the love of the saints at their back. And they have naught to fear from your piggish personhood, snout deep inside Greyford's trough. Hear my demands instead. I am to be installed as regent, the Guard Tax is to be repealed, the Duke must abdicate, Wrothsby must abdicate, a burghal council must be established, the persecutions of Odoists must formally end, a general council of Morish Shepherdry must canonize Sage Odo, my mother must be exonerated, all bondsmen manumitted, and all Imperials driven from all four corners of the realm. Take those terms and your army back to Dragonspur, and I might consider sparing you the headsman's axe."

A chortle. "...You jest. Surely! Ha! I jape with a jester! For only a jester or an absolute madwoman would seek to hold the realm hostage to such ridiculous demands!"

"So, you refuse?" Said Edith

"Of course I refuse!"

The Red Princess stroked her horse's mane. "Ah. Then it's blood for these sombre Morish fields. On your conscience be it."

"My conscience?" Spat Huxton. "You raise arms against your own country and blame we who defend it?"

Edith sneered. "On the contrary, my Lord Earl, it is your country that raises arms against you for you fail to defend it. Go back to your men and tell them that Edith Oswyke begrudges them not. Tell them she thirsts not for their blood but for their freedom. Tell them that she will author a realm their children shall be proud of. And tell them that their fattened ham of a commander is unworthy of their courage."

"I SHALL TELL THEM TO SLAUGHTER YOU WHERE YOU STAND!" Roared the Earl, gathering up his horse's reigns and wheeling her about into a rearward gallop. His men followed suit. And Edith watched them all prance away. "Ed?"

He cantered up to her side. She rested a steel hand upon his shoulder.

"The fate of the realm could hinge on this battle's outcome," said she. "And this battle's outcome could hinge on you. Remember my words and help me liberate this fucking country before its rulers destroy it."

An outside observer might think he had nothing to fight for. His love was gone. His parents were gone. His best friend was gone. His master was gone. Gead was a distant memory he might never return to. All that was left was the soil upon which he walked. Morland. And Morland deserved better than Huxton and his ilk. In a world without Francis Gray what was there to fight for `sides the world itself?

A nod. A smile. A resolved heart. "I am with you, Edith. To the last of the blood."

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Manse de Foy, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

40^th of Autumn, 801

"BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN! BRING OUT THE ALIEN!"

"Are you certain of this?" Asked Lothar, flanking him as they stalked through colonnaded shadows of the portico. Its air was still rich with lavender from the herb beds and the scent calmed Francis Gray as he went. He dressed down to meet the rebels – a simple lockram shirt, woad-blue hose, leather boots – craftsmen's clothes. And he carried nothing about his person. No weapons and nothing to shield himself with. He had no ready money to barter with and no assets to trade. But none of that was required for this. He only needed a body.

"I am as certain as I could be given the circumstances," said Fran. "If things go wrong, are our horses secure?"

A grunt of affirmation. "The mares are watered and saddled. I also have Perrin's keys to unlock the gates."

"Good. But with any luck it will not come to that."

Fran and Lothar turned the corner together into the main corridor, the rebels' shouts drowning out their footsteps as they echoed off the chequered marble.

"What is your plan?" Said Lothar. "You must know that you cannot reason with them."

Ambassador Ludolf was safely hidden away in the cellars with Inga and the chambermaids. All forty-nine halberdiers were scattered about the manse grounds to fend off the swelling rebels, leaving Gustave upstairs, alone, without an armed guard... or witnesses.

"I know," said the clerk. "I do not intend to."

When they came to the entranceway, Fran stopped Lothar where he was. "I will go the rest of the way alone. Wait here for me, Lothar."

To others the espial's face was a mask of expressionlessness. But those same others had never known him as a friend. They could not see the tell-tale wisps of emotion that struck him in moments like this. But Fran could. Lothar's eyes – slightly wider. Lothar's mouth – its corners slightly downturned. Lothar's brows – slightly upturned.

Lothar was afraid for him.

It almost broke his resolve.

But Fran smiled softly, wrapping his arms around the still-hearted man who had done so much for him. If he couldn't win back Edward, then Lothar and Luther were all Fran had left in the world. This was for them as much as it was for anyone else.

"I'm going to provoke them," said Fran. "All we need is a body. Once we have that then we do as we planned. One way or another, today is the day."

Lothar nodded and stood aside.

Francis Gray swallowed a deep breath, calmed himself, then stepped out into the forecourt. Missiles lay scattered about the ground. Arrows protruded from red brickwork. Glass fragments from the shot windows littered the rose beds. Over by the outer walls Edrick and the halberdiers held their ground, formed up into columns of five along the bulwark, polearms at the ready, eyes fixed on the wall tops.

Fran felt Gustave's gaze bearing down upon him from the second floor. He was alone now, Ludolf having being sent to the cellars with the women. The time was ripe.

Fran pressed on.

Edrick spotted him. "Francis? What are you doing out here?"

"Gustave wishes me to speak with the rebels, Morish to Morish. Can you fix me a table by the wall? I also need a halberd if you can spare it?"

The Wallish guardsman blinked, unconvinced and frustrated at these requests, but orders were orders, and he was an obedient man. The Captain of the Guard summoned two of his men and had them draw one of the scrolled mahogany tables from their erected barricade and position it against the eight-foot-high wall. One of the others gave Fran his halberd (heavier than he would've thought) which he took with thanks. The clerk took a white cloth from his pocket and tied it just beneath the halberd's blade, then made his way to the table, climbed on top of it, and slowly waved the halberd over the wall's edge – like a flag of surrender.

Within a few moments the chants of BRING OUT THE ALIEN ebbed. There were laughs. There were jeers. There were insults. But the angry throng cooled – at least enough to see what was happening. Someone amongst them yelled for his compatriots to cease their missile fire. The rain of projectiles – bricks, bottles, planks, barrel rings, etc – came to a stop.

So Fran took his moment and stood upright, the table beneath his feet putting him just high enough to bring his head and shoulders over the wall. Now he could see the rebels and the rebels could see him.

They were a motley lot.

None were paupers or beggars or vagrants. None were field hands or bondsmen. These men wore blacksmith's smocks and falconer's gloves. They carried tinkerer's hammers and woodsman's axes. These men were not the destitute of society. And yet look at them. Frothing at the lips, flushed pink with rage, eyes agape, weapons punching into the air. Their amassed fury reminded him of what the Duke once said to the late king in the council chamber.

The commonfolk are better served with the whip-hand.

"Peace, brothers!" Cried Fran. "Peace! I am a Morishman, a trueborn son of this soil, much as the rest of you! Peace! Let your rancour lie and let me speak with your captain!"

They muttered amongst themselves. Faces and lips nattering by the hundreds. Those closest to Fran's position backed away slightly, forging a small semi-circle of space for their leader to walk into. And into it he strode, a grizzled and broad-shouldered guildsman jacketed in leather. He had a bloodstained bludgeon tucked into his belt. Crown-balding yet big-bearded, as though he hadn't seen a barber's chair in seasons. And he looked familiar. Fran's eyes thinned as he flicked through his memories trying to place it. He thought back to the summer, to that night he and Edward first made love, to Harvenny Heath. He was there... with Stillingford and the upper members of the Crow's Club.

"Hail, friend." Said Fran. "Have we not met? How might I mark you?"

Their leader sneered. "Aye. That we have. Basil Smeadon's my name if you don't remember it."

He didn't. "Apologies, friend. The saints served us a rough autumn this year. Much has happened. Let me tell you my name. I am-"

"I know who you are," barked Smeadon. "You're the Lost Lord, Francis Gray. The boy the Duke sold off to the Wallish. Ed Bardshaw spoke of you. Spoke highly of you."

Something beautiful and torturous tugged at Fran's heart, but he could not focus on it. Not now. "Yes, Edward is... very dear to me. He also spoke highly of the Crow's Club and his master, Theopold Stillingford. He was a great man."

Fran watched Smeadon's face darken. "Spare me your false sympathies. Let's both speak plainly. I don't care much for these high-nosed fucking Wallish, boy, and I never liked your master, neither. But I'll grant him this and only this. He made good on his promise to appeal to the king on our behalf. That's the only reason we aren't burning this chapel of vice to the ground. No blood need be shed. Just surrender the Imperial and we'll leave this place be."

There was a calculation in his face. Wallenheim bearing the Empire little love might mean Gustave surrendering Ludolf without issue, perhaps. But Fran saw that this man was not the brightest of Stillingford's acolytes.

Wallish `new men' and the Imperial nobility still shared one commonality of thought – the lower orders must know their place. Gustave might feign otherwise to flatter his sense of worldliness and utilitarianism, but a Georg Ludolf would always come before a Basil Smeadon in his mind. The ethos was clear. Highborns do not parley with rabble. When King Oswald tried what became of it?

Fran had seen why, twice. "My friends, the man you seek is long departed. He made for Staunton Castle. We cannot give what we do not have."

Jeers.

"Do you take us for fools?" Smeadon threw a thumb over his shoulder at the arrow-shot horse by the river. "My men watched you spirit him away! This is your last chance! HAND OVER THAT FUCKING IMPERIAL NOW!"

`We need a body,' thought Fran. `Goad them!' "Masters, calm yourselves! We do not have the ambassador! Go about your business lest his grace the Duke hears of this..."

Placing the Duke of Greyford's name into the conversation was all it took to re-incite the crowd. The rebels booed and hissed at it. Basil Smeadon eyed the boy, furiously, shaking his head in utter derision. He snatched the bloody club from his belt and doubled back, pointing at the walls and crying out to his followers, "TAKE THE FUCKING MANSE!"

An explosion of violence ensued.

The missiles came flying overhead again. Fran watched rocks and bricks whistle above as Edrick snatched him down from the wall. They landed into the gravel together, skidding through its pebbles until two other halberdiers scrambled to help them up. A coin struck Fran in the face. The guard that helped him up and pulled him out of the way, instantly took a red brick to the face that crushed his nose to bloody pulp and felled him where he stood.

The rebels scrambled to the walls and scaled it. Screams of agony followed as the first wave of them dug their hands and knees onto the glass fragments scattered atop it, some of them falling backward into the crowd, as the second wave readied to scale next. The halberdier ranks pushed forward and met the climbers with a thrust of their polearms, punching open ribcages and gouging out windpipes and piercing bowels until the slopping entrails plopped into the gravel.

Screams and howls. Curses and shouts. Arrow volleys loosed anew and harrowed the manse windows and roofing. As the halberdiers hacked down the rebels scaling the south-facing wall, others beyond it dispersed from the front gates to encircle the eastern and western walls. They crawled up the stonework like spider monkeys, sweeping off the shards of broken glass with their makeshift weapons and jumping down into the garden.

Edrick turned to Fran. "Get inside now and bar the doors!"

Fran turned heel and broke for the double doors whilst Edrick took up his fallen compatriot's halberd and raced across the gravel to engage the wall climbers flooding into the grounds.

Lothar waited for Fran at the entranceway, waving for him to hurry, until he leapt over the threshold and dived onto the chequered floor.

He did not realize he was being chased.

Not until a hand grabbed his ankle.

Gasping, Fran quickly rolled onto his back and saw a yellow-toothed poulterer grinning devilishly at him as he yanked the boy back by his thin little ankle and raised up his glinting meat cleaver. Fran shut his eyes, screaming.

A vase exploded. A cry of rage. A whistle of steel. A splutter of blood. A dying gurgle. A clatter of iron. A weighty slump.

"Fran!" Cried Lothar. "On your feet!"

The clerk opened his eyes.

The grip around his ankle slipped away. His attacker had fallen, lying limply across the tiles, bleeding out from the inch deep slash across his throat. Lothar stood nearby with both kidney spikes drawn, one dripping with blood, his eyes sharp and darting before fixing on the open doorway as more rebels poured through spoiling for the fight.

"Keep behind me!"

Fran suppressed his fright and scrambled to his feet as the Catspaw, Lothar von Roschewald, sprinted across the marble towards their assailants.

There was no contest.

It was like a dance. Lothar in his sleek boiled leathers darting effortlessly beneath the clumsy swing of a woodsman's axe to counter with a backhanded upswing of smooth steel that sliced through the woodsman's jaw, lip, and nose, bisecting his face until the second dagger punched deep into his breastbone and twisted the viscera.

Lothar kicked the axeman off his daggers. The woodsman was already a corpse when the second man came screaming at the espial with an angry thrust of his long knife, a butcher, weeping at the eyes with the death of his brother, the poulterer.

The Catspaw shuffled himself side-long, and the butcher stumbled as his ill-timed thrust missed its mark by inches. A leathered boot caught him by his shoes and planted him on his belly. Fran watched him land with an ugly thud, the knife spinning out of his hand, his eyes glazed over with fright – until Lothar sunk Bullyfoot straight through his nape until the very tip of its steel jutted out of his neck.

A fresh gout of blood splattered the tiles.

Two more men rushed through the doors, utterly ignorant of what they were walking into. Fran's eyes barely kept up with the slaughter. Lothar swung into motion with flashing steel, darting in front of them, dodging their attacks, and slicing through their throats at the first opening until the fallen dead lay inert at his feet.

No more rebels followed them.

Lothar's bloody daggers fell still. His shoulders pumped up and down as his lungs raced to draw air. He lowered his battle stance.

"Fran..." The espial spoke between breaths. "...The doors."

"Right!"

Quick as he could the clerk picked his steps through the litter of corpses splayed out along the corridor until he pushed the heavy doors closed with all his strength. Next came the furniture. Fran shoved first the tables then the chairs afront the doors to bar them from within before stumbling back to catch his breath.

Lothar sheathed his weapons and gestured to the dead men cast about the ground. "Are these sufficient?"

A smile.

Then a whistle bleared out – and not Edrick's. The sound of hoofbeats followed, hoofbeats by dozens, pounding the pavement amidst a pall of whickering and battle cries. And then shots of harquebus fire rang out. Cries. Screams. Shouts of fright.

Lothar and Fran, sensing each other's sheer confusion, ran together up the nearest stairwell and stopped at the first windowed hallway they came to, glass shards and splintered arrows scattered across its crimson carpets.

Outside a host of breastplated horseman rode down the length of the New King's Way charging at the rebels with arquebuses and crossbows in hand, scattering them at the gates with volleys of bolt-fire and powder-shot.

Lothar blinked. "The King's Eyes?"

At their van rode Thomas Wolner, falchion outstretched and whirling, chopping through the rebellious rank and file as cries of RETREAT broke out and the assembled rebels fled west back towards Dogford Bridge. Fran watched them all run away, leaving a litter of weapons and dead compatriots in their wake. Lothar marvelled at their luck until he recalled the messenger that Gustave sent to Staunton Castle yesterday.

This was no act of luck.

It was just as Fran predicted.

The Constable of Dragonspur stilled his horse. Forty of his riders pressed on to harry the fleeing rebels whilst ten more remained with him as he dismounted and plucked the red feathered morion from his head. Edrick and the halberdiers around the manse grounds burst into cheer.

`Now,' thought Fran. `Now is the time!'

He turned to Lothar. "Help me carry one of those dead men upstairs. This is our only chance."

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Brookweald, The Midburghs, Kingdom of Morland

40^th of Summer, 801

Edward Bardshaw could not extricate his sight from that hill. Tunsford. For up its sodden slopes stood the ducal army, an armed collective of thousands, good Morishmen all, densely packed into tight formation abroad the summit. What little light cut through to earth from the dense grey clouds lulling about the sky lit the silvery edges of their bill blades and spearpoints. From his position you could hear them jeering and chanting together, praising the saints for a swift victory soon to come, like the expectant and slavering pants of some famished beast.

And here was Edward, glaring up at the beast's maw.

He shivered. Felt the breast and back plates of his harness, its riveted tassets shake – his bare hand trembling at his polearm's blackened shaft. And he could not stop thinking about Francis; his sweet boyhood self as well as the dubious man he'd grown to be. Images of Francis Gray flashed through his mind unbidden – memories of his broad pink smile, so impish and infantile, his emerald eyes shimmering with delight. Images of that face flushed and breathless beneath him, speckled with beads of sweat, lip bitten, imploring him not to stop. His soft touch. His sweet kiss.

Lost.

The guardsman blinked and shook his head. `Why am I thinking of this now? Francis made his choice. I have made mine. Focus, Ed! Focus!'

Edward tore his gaze from Tunsford Hill and threw it over his armoured shoulder to the men at his back. His men. Boys of four-and-ten to men of five-and-fifty bearing bills and sheathed short swords, eyes shrouded by the rims of their kettle-helms, Edith's proud sigil stitched into the shoulders of their padded jacks.

They looked good.

`Ready,' thought Edward. They stood with him now at the very frontier of oblivion – it was his duty to remain strong for them. `Rejoice in the saints, lay their enemies low...'

It was time.

Edward Bardshaw raised his pennoned bill into the air and exclaimed: "FORWARD!"

Cries of FORWARD echoed back across the line as it lurched ahead in response, two thousand boots trudging along a rain-dampened field as if to the tune of some slow-steady drumbeat, pounding the fallowed land into mud as they went. Their weapons jittered in their hands. A single line of one thousand men marching along the muddy fields of Brookweald.

They felt strong together, Ed thought, holding the line well, keeping abreast of one and other, but then again he looked to Tunsford Hill where their opponent had height to their advantage. How humble his sixth of Edith's Army must have looked from up there where ten times that number stood poised for battle.

...Just as Owayne planned.

Edward looked ahead to the base of the hill. The scouts had it right. Overnight Huxton's forces had dug a shallow ditch there that ran its circumference to the copse-filled clearing rightward of their advance. Ed could tell by the rows of sharpened stakes driven deep into the earth along its banks.

`When the stake pit comes into view,' said Owayne mac Garrach the night prior, `you are just outside of bowshot. And there you will hold.'

300 yards from the incline of Tunsford Hill.

That was where Edward cried out: "HOLD!"

The roar went up. Its echo fluttered through the line. Two thousand sodden boots now came to a stop. Edward glanced to his left and right. The line was still tight. They had had less than the span of two tendays to run their drills, but the discipline was there.

"WITH ME!" Shouted Ed. "DOWN WITH GREYFORD!"

His men cried back with him, swiftly, stamping their bills to the ground as they did, "DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD! DOWN WITH GREYFORD!"

They rose a tremendous clamour together. It spread out across the fields of Brookweald back to Oxwood Forest, to the copse fields, to the River Tun and up to the heights of Tunsford Hill where that black wall of Morish death stood amassed. The ducal army bellowed back with its own chants, scattered and discordant – THE SAINTS ARE WITH US and BUGGER THE BLOODY MAID and FOR THE KING GONE AND THE KING SOON TO COME! Some simply jeered. Others hurled curses. Their captains yelled for calm.

None realized it was a signal.

What followed, what that great tumult presumed to herald, was a thunderous sound that few on that field knew, but one that had haunted Edward's dreams since his homeland fell to the Imperials.

From the east, beyond the marshes sprawling out of the River Tun, rumbled the first shot of cannon fire.

Edward and his men looked on, heard its discharge whistle through the air, drawing closer and closer to the battlefield until it crashed brutally into the enemy line, the bone-chattering boom of it paring down to the marrow. Atop Tunsford Hill the earth broke open like a black fountain, spitting out clumps of churned up soil and the shorn limbs of its victims. Screams abounded. The shot buckled the dense enemy lines as it threw men off their feet, some of whom tumbled down the hill mutilated, armless from the elbow down, faceless from the neck up. Enemy captains, ahorse and armoured, galloped along the rank-and-file ordering them to hold their positions and maintain order.

Then came the second shot. Then a third. Then a fourth. Then a fifth. Then a sixth. Then a seventh. Edward's men, agog, whooped and cheered as explosions undulated across the breadth of Tunsford Hill, thundercracks cratering the ground and tearing men to shreds in the doing, earth punted heavenward before returning to the sodden grass like hailstones.

With hundreds hooting and hollering astride him, Edward held his focus, recalling Owayne mac Garrach's candlelit frown as he articulated his plans; how he'd sent ahead his cannoneers to take position across the River Tun, with his master gunner Desbrond at the helm of the operation. With two companies of demi-hakes as their protective escort, Desbrond and his matrosses drove a team of oxen to pull their two mighty bombards across the River Tun bearing southbound until within cannon shot of Tunsford Hill. There would be no time to practice their distance or fortify their position. But Desbrond, as Owayne would have it, was an old hand at this.

`We've only two cannons to our army but according to our scouts they have none,' he'd said, `Four shots per minute. That is what Desbrond can give us. It will not thin their ranks much, but it will cause panic. To keep a grip of his men Huxton has two choices – either retreat from the hillside back to his camp or press the attack downhill using his greater numbers to his advantage.'

Edward looked up.

And sure enough, as the trumpeters blared, the ducal army used a lull in the cannon fire to sound for an advance. That was when Ed's men stopped cheering. Up ahead of them capered thousands of whetstone-sharpened bill-blades, glittering together by the bone-pale sunlight as their bearers pressed ahead, explosions and death-screams bursting out behind them as they went.

Ed gripped his bill tight. Beneath his boots he felt the vibration of thousands of armed Morish infantrymen bleeding over the ridge and slowly making their way down the shallow slope of Tunsford Hill.

"HOLD!" Ed yelled. "HOLD YOUR FORMATION!"

His men steadied themselves. Planted their knees. Fell silent. They knew the plan. Edward and Owayne made it clear to them that morning. Desbrond's fire was nigh on blind with naught to guide it but his own estimations and instinct. There would be no covering fire to scupper their advance.

`The priority is to get them off that hill,' Owayne had said. `After that comes my part. Edward? You know what to do?'

A bead of sweat trickled down his face. The pennon lashed to his bill billowed in the muggy breeze. The men about him exhaled, coughed, sneezed, and farted; everything except break formation as now half of Tunsford Hill's breadth was swallowed up by the black cloud of Huxton's advancing army.

A black cloud of thousands.

Now Edward could see their true formation - split into three battles of infantrymen – one to the left, one to the right, one at the centre. Behind the centre battle marched a smaller contingent that Edward surmised were their archers, and behind them cantered a smaller host of armoured horsemen – a heavy cavalry – with Huxton's standard flapping at its centre. Behind them raged the shockwaves of Edith's sakers. They hit at nothing now save empty cratered ground – once the ducal army was in position Huxton would no doubt send demi-lancers into the marshes to locate the cannoneer's position, forcing Desbrond and his team to abandon the cannons for a retreat, but their work was done. Owayne's plan was a success. Now came the hard part – seeing it through.

"HOLD!" Yelled Edward, keeping steady.

By now the ducal army's van had stumbled its way down to the base of Tunsford Hill. They lowered into the shallow ditch there and picked their way around the driven stakes and caltrops nestled in its muck. Some men fell and impaled themselves. Some got caught in the boggy mire left of the churned earth, others not pausing to help. Yet slowly but surely, bands of billmen in the particoloured navy and yellow liveries of the Earl of Huxton's house, House Ashwick, formed up ahead of the stake pits – dozens slowly became hundreds and hundreds slowly became thousands until the brunt of Huxton's 11,000 men now formed up at the base of Tunsford Hill. Now all that stood between them, and Edward's 1,000 men was the open grass of Brookweald.

A pause.

Then came the enemy cry, "ATTACK!"

A collection of angry roars burst out across the fields as the enemy van broke ahead and charged. Now was the time, now was the moment!

"FALL BACK!" Screamed Edward.

The call spread out by the captains and petty captains of all ten companies as Edward launched up, turned on his heels and dashed back towards Oxwood Forest.

`We've only one chance at this,' Owayne had said. `When Huxton's men charge, feign a retreat. Make for the clearing at the forest's mouth as quickly as you can and draw that lumbering behemoth into the shade...'

Edward panted for breath as he and his men broke for the Oxwood, and in turn, the ducal army broke for them. Then, at some palpable distance behind them, loosed the collective bowstrings of a thousand well-seasoned Morish archers. The sound was unmistakable. As he ran Edward threw a glance up at the grey skies. He watched them darken over with a rain of death and terror, one that fell upon them mere seconds afterwards. Arrows thumped into the earth. Shrieks of agony broke out along the retreating line as shafts flew through their necks, punched into their skulls, skewered the meat of their thighs, tore ears from their faces. Edward flinched as a shaft sliced through his hose and cut him open, two more punting off his back-plate, a few more snapping beneath his boots as the shadows of the forest canopy drew closer and closer.

"ALMOST THERE!" He shouted. "KEEP UP THE PACE!"

The man next to him, a fisherman by trade called Dudley, caught an arrow in the nape and fell, buckling against his own feet, dropping his bill and collapsing to the ground.

Ed couldn't stop to help.

The first wave of arrow fire ceased as Edward's harried men escaped the enemy longbow's general range. Up ahead laid the forest opening, the 50-yard-wide highway and hunting trail that cleaved its way through Oxwood Forest.

Edward and his men raced inside of it then dispersed, rightward men breaking right, leftward men breaking left, as all the while the liveried billmen chasing them flooded into that same clearing... not realizing what awaited them there. Not their ragtag, hastily assembled countrymen, but a seasoned flower of the bloody and endless civil wars of the Gasque Kingdom.

The White Ravens.

They emerged from bushes and brambles and spike-erected pavises bearing the image of St. Odo as the van of the main ducal battle flooded into the forest clearing, mailed arquebusiers and crossbowmen ready loaded. Edward dove behind a bush and took cover as Owayne, protected by an amassed pike block deep inside the forest path, screamed out his command.

"FIRE!"

Bolts loosed and gun cracks rattled off. The charging van was brought to a sudden and steady halt as the White Raven mercenary company fired upon them by the hundreds. Ed caught his breath, hearing only the screams of the struck and the wails of the dying and the shrieks of the injured as Huxton's men ran blind into a maelstrom of crossbow bolts and powder shot, cracking and whizzing through the moist air, harrying their lines, felling them by the dozens. And those who escaped the volley had only Owayne's pikes to skewer themselves upon.

Edward, now safe behind the White Raven's lines, waited for his lungs to catch up with him. A tin canteen dangled from his belt. The guardsman's fingers fumbled it loose and uncorked it, drinking half its contents (water), then pouring the rest into the weeping slash cleaving down his left shinbone to wash away the blood. He tore off the lower part of his hose, grit his teeth, then tied the cloth around his wound lest it bleed out any further. And there he sat. Bringing himself to calm as a death storm unfolded not twenty feet behind him. He did not move until Owayne's call broke through the foliage.

"CEASE FIRE!" He cried. "CEASE FIRE!"

The cracks of arquebus fire thinned into silence. As did the whistle of the crossbow bolts. All was panting, and murmurs, and disbelieving chuckles, and the bloody coughs and croaks of the wounded.

`When Huxton's men pursue you,' Owayne had said. `Lead them into the forest clearing then break for cover behind my ranks. When the enemy advances they will be hit from both sides by my missile fire, any who escape it will have only my pikes to crash into. With any luck Huxton will overreach himself and send his calvary into the slaughter. If not...'

A stillness descended unto the battlefield. A lull. Ed slowly rose to his feet. Some of his men found their way to him. Three of his petty captains. Twenty more billmen. More kept their guard up behind thick bushes or wooden palisades or spare pavises. "Are you alright, captain?" They asked. "Do you need more water, Cap'n? I've got some spare." "Captain, let me look at that leg for you."

"Stay alert and leave me." He patted their shoulders. "Go find the rest of the men."

Dirty smiles nodded in concurrence and at his command they scattered throughout the forest to gather the others. Ed took up his pennoned bill and moved on. It was only as he explored the thicket that he realized how well the Ravens had fortified it. Palisades and pavises at key spots. Trenches dug and stakes planted all along the breadth of the forest wall from the marshes to the copses. Owayne's pioneers had even cut down two new trails from Brookweald to camp. But nothing drew his attention more than the killing field that was once the highway.

Men lay dead along the path by the hundreds. Their jacks riddled with bolts and shot wounds, their clothes torn, their faces mutilated. Blood soaked the mud. At Owayne's command a team of auxiliaries, field-badged with sprigs of heather, formed up to drag the bodies out of the path. Ed made his way to the edge – noticing then that no armed man dare step in it – and looked ahead to the ducal army.

With barely half its van dead or scattered.

Thousands more amassed in Brookweald at the very edge of bowshot, all of them howling for blood, for their turn. Ed shifted his glance down the forest path, to the north, where Owayne mac Garrach, his deputy Charl Brance, and the bulk of his White Ravens stood, pikes at the ready.

`We might hope to thin their numbers,' said Owayne that night. `But an ambush can only do so much. The true test is when we have all of Huxton's forces amassed at the mouth of the Oxwood.'

Edward's thoughts passed when the sky blackened over for the second time that morning. Cries of ARROWFIRE rang through the woods as a dark cloud of motion loomed over the ducal army and hurtled in, thumping through the dense oaken canopy, striking the boughs, riddling the grass, punching through thickets.

Those White Ravens in range took cover behind the pavises, Edward's men (those roused together) dove behind the many plywood palisades dotting the detritus. Ed followed suit. The thick ironwood shielding, banded by iron, staved off six successive shafts before the volley ceased.

A lull.

A hundred paces behind Edward, Owayne mac Garrach did not hesitate. "LONGBOWMEN!" He bellowed. "TAKE YOUR POSITIONS!"

Further behind the White Ravens, deep within the bushes and brambles speckling the Oxwood, the archers of Edith's army rose from their hiding spots by the thousands. It was as if the whole forest around them rose up rustling by the cold morning air, shadows prancing through the greenery, rushing from tree to tree, racing towards the bulwark of ironwood palisades arrayed there, ducking into position. Ed watched them form up into rows of two, two archers to each shielding.

"NOCK!" Cried their captains.

The archers fetched for their first arrows, each of them tipped with bodkin points, slipping the shafts' notch against their bowstrings.

"DRAW!"

Thousands of bowstrings were pulled in quick succession, stretching taut, the sound rippling around them.

"LOOSE!"

A chorus of jettying whistles tore through the din as the first row of bowmen leapt out of cover and launched a single massive volley into enemy lines. Even from his distant position Edward heard plain the shrill cries of shock and agony as the ducal army was pelted by the torrent, arrowheads punching into breastplates and greaves, delving into bloody sockets, tearing through muscle and cracking into bone.

The first row of archers knelt down, nocked and drew as the second row of archers stood upright and fired the second volley. As the second row knelt, so rose the first to repeat the sequence, over and over, in rapid succession, one wave after another hammering Huxton's battles. And all the while Owayne's pikemen began to march.

The mud beneath Edward's feet shook with boot-fall. Those few birds still roosting amongst the treetops flapped away at the sound, at the shadows of the pikes as they passed amongst the tree trunks. The pikemen pressed past Edward and kept on down the length of the highway out the forest's mouth where the first row of those massive polearms fell into charging position.

"Edward!"

It was Owayne mac Garrach who called out to him, ahorse with Charl Brance and surrounded by a few dozen of his closest guardsmen, all of them particoloured by the light and shadow bleeding in through the leafy forest canopy. They all looked so calm, so stolid, as if taking out their horses for some air. "You did well. You remember the plan, yes?"

Edward thought back to the roundtable the night prior, to Owayne's recitation of his plan. `Oxwood Forest shall be our fortress. Once Huxton's men are drawn to it, my White Ravens pikemen will lead the charge. This is where we turn the tide in our favour...'

"I remember," said Ed. "How can I aid?"

Owayne frowned, sympathetically. "I cannot ask you to-"

"I want to! Put me where you need me!"

His eyes swept the fortress his engineers made of the Oxwood. At its muddy ramparts the compiled longbowmen rained volley after volley of arrow fire into the enemy, whilst the auxiliaries ran through its grassed bailey with fresh quivers and spare bracers, carrying off the wounded back to their `keep', to camp, where word now spread of the White Ravens' push against the ducal army. That was the rallying cry for the remaining infantrymen, 20 companies of billmen mustered into two armies, one for the rightward foot trail and one for the left. As wounded allies and prisoners flooded into camp, both contingents sallied out, marching into the wooded colonnades carved out of the thicket by Owayne's pioneers, their bootsteps shaking the woodland floor. This was it then. The fulcrum of Owayne's plan.

The Maul eyed Edward. "Gather your men. Hold the rear. We go!"

Owayne mac Garrach and his captains snapped their reins and rode off along the highway to join their great mercenary band's advance. As their barked orders carried across the air with the wails of the dying, Edward's scattered men returned to him by half. Some had absconded. Some made for camp to treat their wounds. Many fell in the retreat only to be crushed or captured in the pursuit. But the bulk of them picked their way through the brush to find him. Ed turned about his heels to behold them all, dirty and sweaty and bloodied. Tired. Holding themselves up by their bills. But all of them ready to fight and die for their realm.

"We fight!" Yelled Ed, lofting his pennoned bill, smudged by clod. "Not for ourselves and not for glory, but for our realm and a future too long denied! We fight! Now, lads! WITH ME!"

His men replied with a chorus of spittle-flecked roaring and the collective clatter of nearly 500 bills shaking inside their pumping fists. They thumped their padded chests, they cheered, hooting and barking their resolve as Edward led the way up the mottled highway, stray arrows snapping beneath their boots like twigs.

Up ahead the song of war grew louder, harsher, forming into ugly shape. Up ahead the pikemen of the White Ravens marched forth, emerging from the shadows of their forest fortress in columns, their weapons at charge as Huxton's men blackened the fields. Trumpets sounded. Standards flickered through the air. Arrows whistled overhead. Blood soaked the soil. As Huxton's heavy calvary stood back at the fringes of the battleground, a crush of enemy infantrymen swarmed upon the advancing pikemen to shouts of CEDE NO MORE GROUND!

The White Ravens' advancing column girded at the attack, bill-strokes flailing down at their pike-shafts by thousands, a whipping clatter of ash shaft against oak, but the front rank of the pike square held firm as the second and third lowered their polearms into charge and thrust at the raring billmen, punching through their padded jacks and skewering them to the langets, hollowing their gaping throats, plucking the beshitten entrails from their bellies, gouging the jelly out of their eye sockets. Wave after wave of ducal soldiers fell to their pikes even as enemy orders sounded to FLANK and to SURROUND THEM WHERE THEY STAND!

But every attempt came to naught as Edith's longbowmen and Owayne's arquebusiers fired upon them from the safety of the forest palisades, arrow and shot splitting the enemy like scythes through wheat. The ducal army's van ground to a halt, unable to advance against Owayne's men.

`My pikemen will advance with the longbows to protect their flanks from encirclement by the van,' Owayne had said. `If the van buckles so will the whole army – so Huxton will have no choice but to send in the flanking battles. All his men will flood in to crush us...'

Edward's pennoned bill flapped in the breeze as he and his 500 emerged from the forest's mouth. Up ahead Owayne's pike squares smashed through the advancing infantry, churning up corpse-heaps like sandbags, until the thunder broke. And then he saw. They were surrounded.

It was not the sky that thundered, but the earth, and the thousands of raging Morishmen who charged across its fields with sword and bill upraised to fell their rebel foes once and for all.

Owayne shouted to his captains and the captains shouted to their companies to BRACE FOR CHARGE! Each pikeman dug his pike butt into the trampled grass and set it in place with their right boot, kneeling down to entrench themselves as the bulk of Huxton's forces converged around them. It was as if the loop of a noose was tightening by the inch, slow and sure around their collective neck, until the rope finally went taut.

The brunt of the ducal army crashed against the White Raven pike formations. The screaming and thrusting and hacking and severing and staking was almost deafening. The air stank with steel and blood and gunpowder. And as the White Ravens desperately fought to stem that vast tide, that throng of ducal soldiers crashing against their pikes, the supporting arrow volleys strained to hold off the swarming hordes that poured in towards the lower flank.

Throngs of Huxton's billmen raced towards the forest wall, their compatriots hacked down by arrow and shot, only for a few to leap past the fray and dive into the bushes, rolling up behind enemy lines and hacking at the defenceless archers from the rear, knocking down palisades and pavises.

And as pockets of longbowmen buckled to the pressure, the consistency of their volleys ebbed, and growing numbers of the ducal forces broke through the haze of missile fire to charge at the White Ravens' rear – Edward's position.

"FORM UP!" Screamed Ed. "FORM UP NOW!"

He felt the ground beneath his boots tremble again as his men clustered together, shoulder to shoulder, shaping themselves into a ring of flesh and steel around the exposed throat of the pike charge. As increasing numbers of enemy soldiers slipped through the defensive arrow volleys, they slowly clustered into bands of ten or twelve and threw themselves headlong at the protective circle – and the two forces collided amidst a pall of screams and war cries.

All about him Edward heard nothing except battle roars and clattering wood, steel clashes and the thump of the fallen into the mud.

An infantryman came at him from ahead with his sword outstretched, his toothless mouth gaping with rage, spittle flying from it. Ed's fists gripped tight about his bill's shaft and stepped forward, thrusting its spearpoint into his enemy's thigh, stopping him cold, wrenching it free of the suppurating wound belching out its bloods and bile before sweeping its axe-blade hard into his exposed neck, the pulpy resistance of bone and sinew tremoring through the pole up to his gloved grip.

There was a moment, a heartbeat's breadth of a moment between instances of fury, from the charging man to the falling man, where time itself seemed to slow, seemed to stop. And Edward saw him then – this Morish stranger half-beheaded by his hand – his eyes bulging, his cheeks muddied, his lips bubbling and spitting forth his dying croaks as the hot sword fell from gloved grasp. Who was he? A miller? A tanner? A husbandman?

And then time, that fickle harlot, time finally caught up with him. The war screams returned to his ears. He remembered where he was. Growling, Edward wrenched his bill-blade free of the half-decapitated corpse that collapsed to the ground afore him.

A second man came at him, a billman, charging across the mud at spearpoint as if to gore him where he stood. Ed's boots shuffled along the grass as he smacked the bill out of its path with his own, wood against wood, the impact juddering them both until Edward's boot found his assailant's muddied jack and punted him off his feet.

The enemy fell backwards into the dirty grass, his skull bouncing off the ground only to slip back, bloodied at the lips, as the point of Edward's bill sank through apple and windpipe, piercing the limp neck until the enemy infantryman slipped gargling into silence.

A sudden shove took Edward off his feet.

The battle whirled around him; the flying arrows, the clashes of steel, the grey skies bloated with unfallen rain, the sudden thump of the ground those two armies fought so violently to hold. Edward's face landed in a puddle of viscera, the beshitten entrails slopping out of a dead Morishman's bisected belly. The smell was foul. He rolled onto his back. Saw a war pick falling at him. It was only instinct and the rote mastery of his training, Ser Martyn Morrogh's diligences, that saw him block the blow with his bill's shaft, a blow strong enough to shatter it in two. Edward rolled to his left. A second hammer swing flew past him into the ground, lodging there. The blacksmith's boy rose up, his attacker blinked, until Edward split his skull with the steel end of his broken bill.

Dull eyes rolled inside the sockets like the goggled orbs of a puppet severed from its strings, and so the ducal billman fell, the Ed's broken weapon still lodged inside his cracked cranium, its muddy pennon flapping in the wind as he lay dead.

Edward caught his breath.

One of his men lay grounded to his right, wrestling with an armoured officer of Huxton's infantry. A slurp of steel rang out, a sword, Ed Bardshaw unsheathing his favoured weapon, his shoulders and chest pumping as he bounded across the corpse heaps and shot his boot into the captain's armet, knocking him off his compatriot and tumbling his plated weight into the grass.

Ed's man rolled up and mounted the ducal captain by his waist and slipped a knife through the slit of his steaming visor, punching through his eye until the blade breeched his brains and severed the frightened screams from his lips.

"STAND YOUR GROUND!" Screamed Ed. An enemy blade swung for his head, he repulsed it with his own, and hacked the man down by his unarmoured throat. "...KEEP YOUR FORMATION!"

It was all he could do now to bolster them, his men, fighting tooth and nail against men they aught regard as brothers. And so Edward Bardshaw soldiered on, clash after clash, death after death, carving his path through Brookweald as it quaked with hoofbeats and ringing steel, sounding horns and dying growls, the slop of mud and whistling arrows, the cracks of arquebus fire, the whinnying, the war screams. All Edward Bardshaw could do was fight as the very battlefield around him shifted with the tides of fate.

He could not see wave after wave of ducal infantrymen crash and shatter against the White Raven's defences. He could not see the two columns of ally infantrymen finally pour out of the Oxwood and surround Huxton's forces, squeezing the enemy between their bills and the White Raven's pikes. He could not see what the Earl of Huxton saw as he drew his sword to sound the charge of his heavy cavalry.

The Earl's camp atop Tunsford Hill now burned.

Crimson tongues of lashing flame broached the horizon and sent tent and supply up to the heavens in ashes. And over the hill charged armed men, burghal levies mustered for service to the ducal army by the thousands, held in reserve by Huxton's command... and now they came rushing into the fields screaming DOWN WITH GREYFORD!

The Earl of Huxton and his son Ser Humphrey sounded the charge – not into the rebel army or the White Ravens, but into the ranks of his mutinous levies seeping down the beaten slopes of Tunsford Hill, lest they join forces with the rebels. His 800 barded destriers surged forth and galloped towards the charging miscreants, drawing the heavy cavalry away from the battlefield.

And then it was that Edith the Exile's shimmering presence came galloping out of the western copses, crying out in proud and defiant exultation, "REJOICE IN THE SAINTS AND LAY THEIR ENEMIES LOW!"

And behind her flocking standard rode 500 mounted lancers who charged with her into the fray, galloping around the melee and smashing into the ducal army's rear-guard, buckling their ranks, slaughtering its captains. And the ducal army, split into two and surrounded on all sides, finally collapsed on itself.

The horns of surrender soon followed.

**********

Manse de Foy, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

40^th of Autumn, 801

Francis Gray found Gustave right where he expected him to be, safely tucked away in his own personal chambers. He'd seen fit to bar entry from within. When Fran knocked the door, Gustave cleared away the furniture to open it, and swept the boy up into his arms that same instant.

Fran did not return the embrace.

"Thank Jehanne herself in all her glory for your safety," said Gustave. He pulled back and kissed his clerk. "That was a stupid risk you took. But you are brave, Fran. No one can say otherwise. I would've had those bastards slaughtered like cattle thrice over had anyone of them dared to hurt you."

Fran feigned a smile. "Your love is my sole joy in this world, master. I had to try. I had to."

Gustave stole another kiss from Fran's unresponsive lips. He had wine upon his breath. "Come see." Said he. He took his aide by the hand and led him to the arrow-shattered windows, clearing the glass away with his slippered foot, and pointed down to the lower grounds.

The rebels were long since chased off by the King's Eye horsemen. All that remained of them were those they felled. As the halberdiers worked to clear the barricades erected at the front gates, Wolner commanded his men to confiscate the abandoned weapons and load them into the mule-drawn supply wagons freshly arrived from Staunton Castle. The remaining wagons were probably for the rebel corpses.

Gustave pulled a smirk. "Thomas Wolner himself was sent to our aid. Hm! I am stunned Greyford took my request for help seriously."

Fran wasn't. "The Duke will want something in return."

"Doubtless," Gustave drew away from the window and took a seat in one of his cushioned armchairs. "But this can only be a good thing. If what Georg said is true..."

Fran did not wait to be asked to pour Gustave some wine. He went straight to the lacquered side cabinet and fetched forth an ewer, a cup, and a stoppered cask of Wallish white. He removed its cork, poured some into the ewer with which he filled the brass cup and then, very discreetly, dosed the cup with a few drops of a small, bottled draught hidden in his workman's sleeves.

Fran handed the cup to Gustave. "You have a point, master. Perhaps you could spin Ludolf's failure to pledge troops as a violation of the Treaty of Grace? Turn the regent's eye from the Empire to Wallenheim?"

Gustave took the cup and grinned. "No matter how I try to dissuade you from politicking, you always show me your talent for it. But you are right. Perhaps this chaos may yet serve us well."

Fran watched blankly as Gustave set the cup to his lips.

"Aren't you joining me?" Asked Roschewald. "No quick drink to settle your nerves?"

SAINTS DAMN YOU DRINK THE FUCKING WINE YOU FUCKING CHILD BUGGERER! The Fiend raged down Fran's ear, but the boy held himself so still he shivered, his eyes fixed upon the rim of the wine cup as though the fate of the world hinged upon it.

Gustave lowered the cup. "...Perhaps I should keep a clear head. Wolner is outside. He might wish to speak with me before he regroups with his men."

This was taking too long.

So he smiled.

Seductively.

"Master," whispered Fran. "Finish your wine. You deserve it after so graciously providing shelter to Ludolf, despite all his insults. You have a winning hand now. Celebrate it. Let me see to Wolner and the repairs. And then later, when matters have calmed, and the bodies are cleared... could we not... lie together again? Haven't I earned it?"

The Wallish ambassador's lips pulled a long perverse smile at the mere thought. Suddenly he could not wait. Suddenly Gustave set down the cup and charged over to Fran and wrapped his muscled arms around the boy. The clerk reared back but Gustave's grip was too strong.

"M-Master...!" Fran wriggled inside his grasp, cringing at the thick lips nuzzling into his neck, at the gross probing hand that slipped inside his hose and kneaded his buttocks like dough. "...Master, finish your wine first...!"

"Fuck the wine," muttered Gustave. "It is you I desire, above all else..."

The door burst open.

Upon whispered steps a single exasperated espial stalked up to Gustave's back and snatched him by the hair, hauling his neck back and driving the contents of that brass cup down his throat by force. Gustave's eyes shot open, choking at the glut until trails of it streamed down his lips. A shove threw both boys away. Gustave stumbled back, coughing and hacking for breath, as the espial drew back his hood.

"Lothar?! What is-" A rough cough stopped the sentence.

The Catspaw frowned. "Hello, father."

Gustave's eyes shot open. He turned to Fran and found the same cold glare staring back at him. He parted his lips to speak but nothing emerged except coughs and wheezes. He made for the armchair to steady himself, but he stumbled in the attempt, and his great six feet of height folded at the knee until it brought him down, flat on his back.

Fran and Lothar stood over him. They watched his eyes flash with horror, with shock, with realization – and not one word of protest or anger could he voice.

Blood pounded in Fran's ears as he crouched down to his hosed haunches. He watched Gustave's face grow pale and sprout over with blue-tinted veins. His weakened fingers clawed at his throat as he struggled to breathe.

"You..." Fran spat at him. "You have no idea how long I have awaited this day. Remember these two faces. The face of your whore and the son you had whored – and pray to your saints for forgiveness... for we have none."

Gustave's struggle was not swift. It was slow and harrowing. Organs breaking down one after one like some crumbling fane. Fran took pleasure in that. But then, eventually, those thick, gnashing fingers fell still. That bobbing, breathless chest came to a stop. Those horrified eyes glassed over. And then he was gone.

This night was but one of many heretofore gone. And yet, for all the nights spent in that bed, for all the seed spilt, and all the cries muffled, that same knot of fear still curdled Fran's stomach since the first. That same knot. Ever since his first night in Wallenheim. Ever since The Fiend first found him...

"Take it off," ordered Gustave.

Lothar, emotionless, left the room. Fran, equally as silent, did not notice. Not until he returned with one of the rebel corpses he'd cleaved up. Lother lugged its heavy, sweaty, sticking frame over to Gustave's cooling body, dumping it over his knees. Then he unsheathed his father's dagger, smearing it with the dead rebel's blood before placing it inside Gustave's inert right hand.

Fran's thoughts stopped – but not of his own volition. It was because Gustave's meaty hand had slid down his torso, from neck to chest to stomach, right down to his privy parts – and squeezed them like fruit. The boy winced.

"Turn around," breathed the Wallishman.

Fran turned upon his bare feet to face him. He looked up and saw Gustave smiling down at him, face saturated with lust, twisting into a cruel smile as he set his hands at the boy's shoulders and pushed him down to his knees.

"Take care of me," said he.

"Give me the other knife," said Fran, blankly.

Gustave shoved their lips together, muffling Fran's startled moan. The boy tried to pull away (more out of startlement than anything else) but the taller man snatched him back, hand firmly set against the small of his back until it slipped down and cupped that `pert little arse' he'd been fucking these long ten years.

The Fiend snickered. HE, HE, HE, HE...

A thought.

Somewhere in the fog of his mind, it dawned upon Fran that Lothar von Roschewald was more deserving of this moment than he. But now his father was dead, Lothar had only one concern – his brother, Luther. They looked to each other and the espial said as much. This last act of vengeance he quietly ceded to Fran.

They'd returned from the banqueting hall in the early hours too drunk to do ought except slump into bed, but when Fran woke the following morning, unkempt and half-dressed at the edge of Gustave's bed, he found the ambassador at its edge, wide awake and furious. Fran, realizing he'd fallen asleep in his master's room (and how that might look) apologized and offered to fetch him some wine. Gustave said nothing. But when Fran stood up to tidy himself and call for one of the servants, an angry hand snatched his shoulder and threw him back onto the bed, face down, stomach flat. His clothes were torn from his body and thrown about the room – and then Gustave fucked him.

There were none of the usual pretences: no compliments, no kisses, no feigned intimacy. Just a dollop of spit and a sudden thrust in the morning light...

Lothar opened his russet cloak. He pulled out the butcher's knife, spun from the hand of a fallen rebel. He gave it over to Fran.

Gustave was drunk.

"Get into the bed," he said slovenly, shunting down his hose.

Fran did as he was bid.

Gustave had at him twice that night. When the moon was high, he spread Fran flat across the bed and rutted him until his swollen balls painted the boy's bowels white – then promptly collapsed into a drunken slumber. When the moon was low, he awoke with a shivering Fran still trapped beneath his great weight, his woollen chest pulsing against his back.

The Wallishman's manhood grew yet again. Clumsy hands reached for a seed-smattered arse and pried them open until his bell-headed girth aligned with that pink puckered hole it so cravenly sought. Fran snatched at the sheets and bit down into the pillow to steel himself for a second round of his master's dog-like humping, but its veined cock was only halfway through before he dropped asleep again, and that time, he would not rise again until morning...

A pause.

The butcher's blade, smeared with chicken grease by the light of the arrow-shot windows, slipped between the buttons and folds of a silken doublet until it nipped the woollen breast below. Stillness. Then Fran slowly sank the knife into Gustave's beatless black heart, inch by delicious inch, and left it there.

Gustave shoved Fran onto his feathered bed, stinking of wood rot after being caught in the rain at Edwulf's Verge. The taller man tore off his livery collar, unbelted his tunic, and kicked off his shoes...

"Take off your clothes," he said. "I like you better naked..."

"Wait," said he. "Gustave, please, someone might-"

But he would not hear it. He was in that mood. That hot rutting mood. That mood that said, `I care not a whit for what you think, for what you think is not my pleasure'.

His pleasure was the bared breast, the pink nipple stiffened with cold that he longed to suck, the smooth neck that his teeth so longed to bite and mark, the little bellybutton with which his tongue was so fond of playing, the flaccid cock his rough hands tugged free from its golden codpiece, and that tight pink rosebud of a hole his stone-hard manhood could not begin to resist.

And resistance floated away...

A rose of blood bloomed from the bored chest of the Wallish Ambassador, dripping its salt-iron dew onto the carpeted floorboards. And in all his young years, Francis Gray had never seen a flower so beautiful. He beheld it for a moment, in all its glory, then released a breath he'd held for an entire torturous decade.

Gustavius von Roschewald was truly dead.

"Go and tell the men, Lothar," The words left Fran's lips dispassionately, as his cold eyes watched the lifeblood drain out of his tormentor. "Tell them of this evil Morish thug who broke into our master's chambers and murdered him. And tell Constable Wolner that I shall come to him shortly, for until such time as Chairman Neidhart sends a replacement, I am the effective head of the Wallenheim Delegation."

**********

Brookweald, The Midburghs, Kingdom of Morland

40^th of Autumn, 801

Edward Bardshaw, breathless, scrubbed the bloody dirt from his eyes. He raised his head to the clouds above. The skies were dark with wheeling crows, lured by the glut of carrion strewn about Brookweald's fields. Heaps and heaps of the dead lay everywhere he looked. Some skewered by pikes. Some hacked with swords. Some cracked by axes. Some riddled with arrows. Some pocked from powder shot. Friend and foe alike. Dead. And yet good Morishman all. Heroes all. Martyrs all. And to the saints they go.

Those yet dying, lying abroad the mud in bloody puddles of themselves, the rebel captains put to the swift mercy of a daggers' thrust. The victory was won. There was little point in prolonging their suffering. And for that, Edward was glad.

As he strode about the ravaged battlefield, one slow step after the other, mud sloshing at his boots, weakened right arm gripped by the left; Ed watched the auxiliaries file into the fields with mule-drawn wagons to fetch what serviceable weapons and armour they could salvage. He spotted camp followers bringing along skins of water and beer for the standing and the wounded, the latter ferried onto carts where their legs could not carry them. Boys (or at least those with the stomach for it) lulled about the fringes of the battlefield chasing away hungry dogs with sharpened sticks.

To the east – where Brookweald's sodden expanse neared the marshes of the bloating River Tun – the surrendered forces of the ducal army huddled together by the thousands, stripped of their armour and weapons. A few hundred men stood guard as they were lashed with rope around the wrists and ankles. When the time came for Edith's army to join forces with Lord Bacon's men, it was their intention that the prisoners be escorted in train to Fort Silvermere, to be held there until such time as Edith the Exile was installed as regent.

And it was Edith who Edward searched for.

He found her at the southern side of the battlefield, helm off and head down to receive benediction from Shepherd Godwyn and his flock of disciples. The mutilated monk lifted up her chin with his stubbed thumb and said softly, "The saints have smiled upon ye."

Edith smiled back.

That was when she noticed Edward hobbling over to her. The Red Princess excused herself from the good shepherd and made her way over to him, her attendant Larkyn and six men of her personal guard following close behind.

She took his shoulder with her armoured hand, its steel plating soiled with mud and blood, yet never more glorious had she looked.

"Ed Bardshaw!" Edith grinned from ear to ear as she called his name. "By the saints I knew you'd survive! This is as much your victory as it is anyone else's. I am proud of you, friend."

`Friend...' he thought, blankly. "...Thank you."

She clapped his shoulders with both gauntlets. "You shall sit by me when we feast tonight, hm? I'll have the cooks roast you a pullet. With some good beer to wash it down."

Ed's mind clouded. He forgot why he was looking for her. He meant to ask her something, something personal but important, yet the thought flew from his mind...

...as did Edith as she marched past him into the trampled heart of the fields where her victorious army now clustered. Some sang songs of victory. Some scavenged. Others wept for their fallen allies. But all stood to attention as Edith passed them by. She took her standard from its bearer and planted it where she stood.

All eyes were upon her.

Edward's, half-dazed from combat.

Godwyn's, brimming with saintly devotion.

Owayne's, weak yet attentive as his followers cleansed his wounds.

And the Earl of Huxton's too, shaking with rage as he stood in train with his son and captains, all of them bound and muzzled by rope. By Edith's orders they were held separate from the others, for these prisoners were too valuable to leave languishing in the damp dungeons of Fort Silvermere.

Yes, all eyes were on Edith the Exile, Edith Oswyke, Edith the Red Princess. How could they not be? The ducal army lay in tatters. The road to Greyford ran afore them utterly defenceless. And from there... Dragonspur would follow.

Everything was in Edith's hands now.

The victors gathered around her as Edward saw what they too could see; a new annal slowly etching itself into existence upon the pages of Morish history. Edith the Exile drew her sword and pointed it toward the heavens.

Her men broke out in cheer.

"Long live this realm and all her people!" She cried.

"LONG LIVE THIS REALM AND ALL HER PEOPLE!" They cried back.

She lowered her sword and snatched a fist in the air. "This is but ONE victory! Our work is only NOW begun! We cannot, we WILL not stop until this blessed land is free from the rot that corrupts it! All of you, hands to your hearts, now!"

A great racket of noise clattered up as the assembled victors drew gauntlets to breastplate, gloves to padded jack, bare hand to torn shirt, palms to beating hearts.

"Swear this oath!" Yelled Edith. "Not to me, not to this army, but to the very earth upon which we tread, this glorious land of Morland we all hold so dear! I swear...!"

"I SWEAR..."

"To defend this land...!"

"TO DEFEND THIS LAND..."

"To protect its people...!"

"TO PROTECT ITS PEOPLE..."

"Regardless of birth or saint...!"

"REGARDLESS OF BIRTH OR SAINT..."

"In keeping with its virtues...!"

"IN KEEPING WITH ITS VIRTUES..."

"Until my mortal flesh demises!"

"UNTIL MY MORTAL FLESH DEMISES!" They cried.

Edward's hand, shaking with tiredness and wet with blood and knuckled tears, fell from his breast.

And ahead of him Edith the Exile stood, re-writing fate with every breath, sheathing her sword and wrenching her standard from the soil, flocking it through the air to the roars of her men. "I swear by St. Hildes! I swear by St. Odo soon to be! THIS LAND WE LOVE WILL BE FREE!"

**********

· Thanks again for reading everybody! Stay tuned for more. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com .

· Please read some of my other stories on Nifty: The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).