Two Kingdoms 59 - Maison-Fort

[DoctorM]

This is the fifty-ninth part of an ongoing AU construction about a Gwynedd where the duel at Kelson Haldane's coronation went very differently indeed. We are now almost four years into the Gwynedd Wars-- Charissa's new kingdom at Valoret against the Haldanes in the south and the kingdom of Torenth in the east. This episode is set just after "Sources" and "Dukes". As always, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated.

*****

TWO KINGDOMS 59 - MAISON-FORT

*****

It's cold here this morning, and the season is turning early. There's a smell of charred wood all along the lane, and there are dead men hanging in the trees.

*****

There's a house at the end of a broad and well-groomed alley of pines. It's a fortified farmhouse, a maison-fort, big enough by local standards, and whoever had it before the Gwynedd wars had been working on rebuilding it as a villa. Until a couple of days ago it had been filled with Torenthi royal guards and the Padishah-King and his courtiers. There'd been pavilions, too— the vast royal campaign tents with a crowned Torenthi hart on their banners. Whoever had the house before King Wencit came had had money enough to throw around. There was glass in at least two of the upper windows and crushed stone spread on the path from the main road.  Cardosa city money, Graff decides, or maybe some  lord from Carchashale.

Graff is running a practiced eye over the buildings. The farmhouse itself was still mostly intact. The Torenthi had been here once before, back just after Brion Haldane died, and the king's provisioners and camp marshals had known what they were doing when they put the king here. Graff wonders if one of the royal favourites had been looking forward to the house as a gift.

Well, Graff thinks, some Marley-and-Eastmarch lord probably had an eye on the house and its land now, but maybe the Shadow Queen's newest general could do something about that. He'd been sent out to Cardosa with a new general's silver chain of rank and a brand-new knighthood conferred by the Shadow Queen herself and told to make sure the city stayed in the Queen's hands. Wencit was on his way back to Beldour, the new Festil Leopards were flying over the city gates, and here was a house that could use a new owner.

****

Start as you mean to go on.

Graff had come down to Cardosa with an escort of both Tolan Horse and Falcon Horse troopers. He'd joined up with Murdo FitzEwan and the Dragons for the last two days of the ride. He'd had the Queen's orders in his saddlebags. Graff didn't read Latin, but he had copies in the Gwynedd tongue, and the Shadow Queen had been clear enough on what she wanted.

You're my general for this. Go down to Cardosa. Take command of the defense. Teach Wencit a lesson. Kill every Torenthi you can find. Keep Marley's garrison and Burchard de Varlan's men from killing each other. You have full authority. Anything you need to do, you do it. You have my full backing.

Charissa had been standing there in front of him while he knelt in the great hall of the old ducal palace in Tolan-by-Sea. He'd seen the expressions on the faces of the Marluk and Tolan commanders and the courtiers, and he knew what they thought. He was a sell-sword from nowhere, but it was the Shadow Queen's favor that mattered. You're a jumped-up cutthroat, she'd said. And that's exactly what I need.

She'd been all in dark red that morning, and she'd highlighted the scar on her face in a flat white. The Queen's husband and the Grey Death both had been there, and the Shadow Queen had used Christian's kinzhal to knight him.

He'd seen the Shadow Queen first when she'd just been the girl— tall, gaunt, scary —who was Christian's leman. He'd had no idea why a duchess from some northern place he'd barely heard of would be in a sell-sword camp sharing a bed with someone like Christian de Falkenberg. He'd thought nothing good was ever going to come of that, but they were all still alive almost a dozen years later. Charissa was a queen, Christian was a prince, and as of today he was a knight and a general.

"Here's the way it works," Charissa had said. "I don't care what you have to do, or who you have to do it to. Break any siege at Cardosa, and I'll put Lord in front of your name. Lose Cardosa and you know what happens next."

Graff had nodded. "I know how it works if I lose: head, spike, wall."

Charissa had given him a bright, cool smile. "That's exactly how it works."

*****

Start as you mean to go on.

He'd arrived at Cardosa and the first thing he'd done was rein in just outside the main city gate and take note of the two Marley blue eagle standards flying above the gatehouse. When he'd ridden inside he'd ignored the city militia officers and the bowing city councillors. He'd halted in front of the waiting Marley garrison commander and his officers and pointed up at the flags with his riding whip.

"I want those effing things off the gatehouse," he said. "You can fly them someplace else. Not over the effing gates. Move them now. This is the Queen's city, and I want the Leopards flying. It's the Queen's city, and it stays that way."

****

He grins at the house and its walls. Light-horse all these years, and now it was time to start being a landed gentleman. The place had been good enough for some rich local and good enough for the Padishah-King to sleep in on campaign. Why wouldn't it be good enough for one of the Shadow Queen's generals? 

Graff turns back to where the others are standing. He jerks his head at the bodies hanging in the trees. "Are they all northlanders?"

Murdo FitzEwan nods back over at Graff. "All the burnt ones are, anyway. The northlanders were the first to run. That's Wencit making examples."

Murdo is here commanding the Rheljan Dragons, and he's the younger brother of the new Count of Rheljan. The Dragons are mounted crossbowmen, and they're very good at their trade. Murdo's become Graff's right hand during the siege, and that expensive new riding cloak he's wearing with a dragon embroidered in silver thread on one shoulder? That's a gift sent down by the Queen herself from Tolan-by-Sea. Sir Murdo's coming up in the world, and there'll be land and houses for him, too.

Graff rests a hand on the hilt of the Moorish flyssa on his belt. "Afraid of the blue fire, so Wencit burns them alive. Let's see how many more northlanders Wencit gets for his army." 

He looks at the dangling corpses. Like effing wind chimes, he thinks. "Fine, then. Get these effing things cut down, get some peasants to bury them."

*****

Cardosa was a much-disputed city, and it was sheltered behind impressive walls on its plateau above the Eastmarch plain. Its guild militia was as well-armed as anything in the Eleven Kingdoms. Graff had conscripted every peasant within three days' ride and set them to digging ditches around the city, and he'd sent out Falcon Horse detachments to scour the countryside for grain and cattle. You want foraging done right, he'd told Murdo, you send the sell-swords. Falcon Horse troopers had swept up every quarter of grain and every cow, pig, ox, and sheep hidden away by the locals in caves and woods down on the plain. However high and thick the city walls were, it was the foraging that mattered. If you didn't have six months of grain and salted meat stored, you might as well leave the city unwalled.

In the end, though, it hadn't much mattered. It hadn't been a long siege, and there hadn't been much drama until the end. Graff couldn't decide whether to feel disappointed or not.

****

They're walking up the crushed-stone path to the house. Murdo passes Graff over a clay bottle. The beer is Marley Dark, and it's rich and heavy enough for a chill morning. He nods at the Falcon and Tolan Horse troopers picketing their mounts in the yard. "You're keeping the house?"

Graff shrugs. "Why not?"

"You're not worried that some local's going to show up with deeds and a lawyer or two?"

"I'm the Queen's general. I have a surcoat the with royal leopards on it and I'm wearing this bloody chain. Won a siege for the Queen, too. The Prince and the Grey Death both like me. I ask for a house, it's mine. I'll start collecting them. Don't try to tell me you didn't come out of this with something, too."

Murdo raises the bottle in a toast. "You put me in charge of requisitions and purveyances. There's something for both of us there. Cardosa is showing it's grateful. Which they bloody well should be. We're not Wencit. We're not even Marley."

"This one's mine," Graff says. "My house. I've been doing this forty years and more, man and boy. Started out holding horses for sell-swords at taverns. Mucked stables and dug graves. Fought in pretty much every place you can name. Got to be a captain with Christian before he ever married the Queen. And  so here we are. I'm light horse, I like to keep on the move. But land matters. This is a start."

Murdo takes the bottle back and drinks. "Nice little place, sure. You'll be keeping both your pretty things here?"

Graff grins at that. "They'll love it. I mean, it's a maison-fort and nobody's proper castle, but it's still a lot effing fancier than their father's keep. I'll get them out of Cardosa city. I can keep an eye on them here. You and me, we're out riding sweeps into the mountains, and the Nault girls are back in the city on their own? Let's just say I think they're too easy to persuade."

Murdo laughs. "If they're that easy, maybe I'll have a talk with them."

"Maybe you really shouldn't." He gives Murdo a hard sidelong look about that."Besides, you couldn't afford them. Trust me on that. Any luck, we'll both be lords this time next year. But you still couldn't afford them."

****

The siege had been the Padishah-King's to lose, and the whole Torenthi campaign through Kulnán and Gwernach had been poorly planned. King Wencit had been called the Red Fox since his earliest days, and no one doubted his cunning at war. But this strike into the Queen's territory had begun to come apart from the beginning.

Too late and too soon both, Graff thought. Wencit had started late. Campaigning season was drawing to an end before the Torenthi army had ever left Beldour. Wencit had needed to get to Cardosa and take the city before winter arrived. His  final goal was Valoret, and he needed to put his men into winter quarters at Cardosa. He'd been late to start, but he'd also started too soon. Too impatient— not enough scouting done, not enough attention to his supply train. Too angry as well, too committed to punishing the Shadow Queen to stop and re-think strategy. After a dozen years with Christian and Aurelian, doing scouting and reconnaissance with the Falcon Horse, Graff knew that maps were at least as important as swords and that a good set of purveyancers was worth as much as a whole troop of horse-soldiers.

There had been Torenthi deserters that Graff's people had snapped up. The old rule for captives was simple and universal— high-born prisoners were ransomed, low-born prisoners were lucky not to be hanged...or worse. Graff's prisoners had been more than willing to recount what had gone wrong with the Red Fox's campaign.

Wencit had left Beldour with four and a half thousand men and a long train of siege equipment intended to be used mostly at Valoret. The Torenthi army had harried in Kulnán and forced its way across the northern part of the county of Gwernach. But each day spent laying waste to towns in Kulnán or fighting for mountain bridges in Gwernach was a day closer to winter. The host of northlander and Seven Tribes auxiliary horsemen that made up much of the Padishah-King's forces had been thinned out. The army's baggage train found itself dealing with near-impassable switchback roads in the Gwernach mountains. At least one big trebuchet and most of its dozen supply wagons had been swept away by rockslides. Kulnán Horse bands were following behind the Torenthi, slaughtering anyone they could catch. Mountain villagers in bands that hated Deryni and outsiders both were laying ambushes for any Torenthi or northlanders found away from the main column.

The deserters' stories matched with the reports from Graff's patrols. By the time the Torenthi had come out of Cardosa Defile, they were clearly short of men. They hadn't been able to properly invest the city, and Graff's horsemen had been able to sortie out to attack Wencit's supply lines almost at will. Every night outside Cardosa seemed colder, and the Torenthi camp marshals had detected the first signs of camp fever— the bloody flux —among the shivering foot soldiers.

****

The Padishah-King hadn't bothered summoning the city to surrender. This wasn't a campaign where the niceties were observed. The Torenthi had set up their siege lines outside the city ditches and set their stone-throwers to lobbing stone balls at any point on the walls that looked like there might be a weakness. They'd made a first try at two of the gatehouses with covered battering rams, and they'd rushed to assemble three big wheeled assault towers— called belfries —and get them to the walls.

The defenders had dumped cauldrons of heated sand onto the battering rams and heaved heavy stones off the walls onto them. Arrows and crossbow bolts came down on Wencit's infantry. Stone-throwers inside the walls had launched their own balls at pre-sighted points along the ditches, and one of the belfries had been struck while trying to get over a newly-filled part of the outer ditch. The tower had overturned, spilling out Torenthi soldiers and ending on its side with a smashed wheel and axle.

There'd been efforts over the next ten days to bring assault ladders to the walls that had been thwarted by archers and crossbowmen on the walls. Wencit and his engineers had responded with fireballs— pitch-slathered stones set alight and launched over the walls. Marley's men and the city garrison had spent time pulling down houses just inside the walls, and the fireballs— those that had stayed aflame in flight —had mostly fallen into the cleared firebreak space. A handful of houses  had had their roofs smashed in, and two had burned.

On the fifteenth day of the siege, Graff called up his own engineers.

There were carts that had come in from Tolan-by-Sea before ever the Red Fox had appeared out of the Defile. The carts were filled with sand, and something that looked like great clay jars barely protruded from the sand. Cardosa militia  and the Marley officers who'd had the nerve to get close to the grim-faced R'Kassan archers guarding the carts claimed that the under the sand the Queen had hidden jars of silver coins to bribe the Torenthi captains to overthrow King Wencit and change sides. Another rumor ran that the Shadow Queen had sent some kind of Deryni creatures that would crawl or fly out of the jars to the Torenthi lines and devour the Padishah-King's men.

The second guess had been the better one.

Graff was on the walls with Master Valentin, the chief of the Queen's R'Kassan engineers. He'd swept a hand at the Torenthi lines out past the ditches. "It's time," he'd said.

****

Dragon's spit, it's called. Or dragon's piss. It's a bright blue and less thick than you'd imagine. No thicker than milk, really. It's meant to spatter, and it's not anything you want to touch. It's expensive and hard to make, but there are almost four hundred Torenthi gallons in the jars in the forecourt of the city cathedral and the engineers have spent the day with the stone-throwers working out distance and elevation. It's quiet here by the siege engines. This is all about the mathematics the engineers and their observers on the walls are working out, and the R'Kassans are listening like harpers to the creaking of the  launch ropes, tuning the tension on their instruments.

They'd done it just at dusk. Horns had been sounding in the Torenthi camp. Men  are being called to dinner, and the Red Fox and his generals have ridden back to the royal pavilions. No one knows what's in the jars, and no one in the garrison wants to stand too close. Graff looks at Murdo FitzEwan and then back at Master Valentin. The engineer nods. "By your command," he says.

The first four jars soar up over the walls and arc towards the impact points the Raks have plotted. At the top of their arcs, there's a shimmer beginning around the jars.  Behind the walls, the engineers are already working on levers to shift the stone-throwers. More jars are being loaded.

Two of the jars come down among the tents just beyond the second ditch. They trail something blue and flickering behind them. A third comes down by one of the wheeled assault towers and blue fire showers over the belfry. The fourth falls among tethered horses and Torenthi grooms. Shouts begin, and then screams— men and horses both. Blue stars are falling out of the dusk onto the Torenthi.

The northlanders are the first to flee. They aren't the last.

****

Murdo is looking at the wall above the fireplace of the maison-fort. "You could put it there," he says. "Your coat of arms, when you get to be a lord."

"I'm not a lord yet," Graff says. "And this place wouldn't be my castle, anyway."

"Doesn't matter. Paint it on the wall, maybe. Or get one in wood, get it painted and hang it here. Put one in every house you end up with. I would. Impress your two pretty things with it. Impress the locals, too."

Graff shrugs. "Wencit's gone off east. He has an army to put back together. Maybe he'll be back one day. Do I want him to know my name?"

"He already knows your name. You can count on that. You're the hired cutthroat who ruined his campaign. He knows your name. Marley knows it, too. He knows you're the Queen's general and he knows you've been standing up to his men over who holds Cardosa."

"He knows your name, too."

Murdo shrugs. "I'm a FitzEwan. I've been fighting Wencit for three years. And Marley, well, I'm marriage kin, but he wouldn't mind if my brother and I dropped dead tomorrow." He looks back at Graff. "When the Queen sends you to the heralds, tell them you know what you want. Marley has that blue eagle. Get yourself a blue flame quartered with something."

"So I end up with a king and a duke both holding a grudge. That's what I need."

There's more Marley Dark on the table, and Murdo reaches for it. "Wencit's gone for now. We'll be fighting down on the Molling next. If Alaric Morgan doesn't kill you and you stay away from Marley, you'll be fine. We'll both be fine. We'll be lords. Get yourself a blue flame on your banner and help me think about what I'll be flying."

[tmcd]

"Too angry as well, too committed to punishing the Shadow Queen to stop and re-think strategy." It's been a while: what is Wencit angry about?

[DoctorM]

"Too angry as well, too committed to punishing the Shadow Queen to stop and re-think strategy." It's been a while: what is Wencit angry about?

I think Wencit's reasons for anger run something like this:

1. Charissa has taken the duchies of Tolan and Marluk plus the county of Gwernach out of the kingdom of Torenth and is using them as the core of her new Kingdom of Tolan and the West.

2. She supports Duke Lionel in his war against Wencit.

3. She supports Rheljan against Wencit.

4. Kulnan has turned against Wencit and is supporting Charissa.

5. Charissa's creation of her new kingdom is interfering with Wencit's own plans to seize Gwynedd (or at least much of the Gwynedd east and north).

6. Charissa is claiming a throne while being willfully and persistently female.

[Evie]

6. Charissa is claiming a throne while being willfully and persistently female.

OK, this one made me snort-laugh my coffee!  And I am currently writing a story from the POV of a Queen who can sympathise with having to deal with this sentiment, if not with Charissa's ambitions to take the throne of Gwynedd from the Haldanes.

[DoctorM]

6. Charissa is claiming a throne while being willfully and persistently female.

I'd like to read your story!

OK, this one made me snort-laugh my coffee!  And I am currently writing a story from the POV of a Queen who can sympathise with having to deal with this sentiment, if not with Charissa's ambitions to take the throne of Gwynedd from the Haldanes.

[Evie]

6. Charissa is claiming a throne while being willfully and persistently female.

I'd like to read your story!

OK, this one made me snort-laugh my coffee!  And I am currently writing a story from the POV of a Queen who can sympathise with having to deal with this sentiment, if not with Charissa's ambitions to take the throne of Gwynedd from the Haldanes.

It's the upcoming sequel to "Pawns and Queens." Alixa and Camber are the central characters in that one, although we will revisit Nicholas and Catalina, Joss Morgan, and others from that original story as well. It starts off just days after the end of "Pawns and Queens" and ends up...well, I can't say exactly when yet, but the events I am writing at the moment are happening concurrently with the events from "Queen of Sorrows" and should hopefully wrap up soon, if I can just get my act together long enough to finish the final chapters!

But I suppose it's not too much of a spoiler to say that despite the passage of three centuries between Charissa's time period and Alixa's, the Jouvians are also still puzzling over the odd phenomenon of a woman claiming a throne (and as a sovereign Queen, no less, not just as an heiress who plans to make a husband the de facto King by right of his wife) while being willfully and persistently female. The audacity! 

[Jerusha]

Well done!  I do hope Graff and Murdo don't become over confident, though I think Graff is too well seasoned for that.

[DoctorM]

Well done!  I do hope Graff and Murdo don't become over confident, though I think Graff is too well seasoned for that.

Graff has forty years of experience behind him. I think he's someone who very carefully weighs what he's doing.

I do want to use some episodes to look at the side characters-- Graff, Murdo, Michael Gordon, even young Conall. I want to take a look at how the Gwynedd Wars and Charissa's regime look from some POVs outside the Queen and her intimates.