Chapter 1224: One’s own choices(1)
Chapter 1224: One’s own choices(1)
"The food will last us for a month, no more," Ser Arys muttered, his gaze fixed on the floor rather than the Prince he was sworn to protect.
Arys was a capable man, loyal, steady with a blade, and possessing enough of a head for command to keep the peace. Yet, in the silent spaces of the Prince’s mind, the knight was a pale shadow of the man who had come before him.
He found himself aching for his old master-at-arms more than he had ever mourned his own father. Ser Eldmur would have found a way out of this labyrinth. The old knight hadn’t just been a shield; he had been the ear the Prince’s father leaned into when the world grew loud.
But Eldmur was long since cold, one of the countless names added to the butcher’s bill at Aracina. He had led a desperate wedge of sworn knights into the thick of the slaughter, a final, bloody prayer to deliver the Prince’s father from the fray. Whether the old knight had found his master alive or arrived only to guard a corpse was a mystery lost to the mud. The Prince couldn’t afford to dwell on it. Ghost stories would allow them little quarter.
"One month," the Prince spat, the words tasting like life had been for him since had taken the throne.
One month was a death sentence. They were bracing for a siege, and they were expected to hold a city on thirty days of grain. It was a joke without a punchline.
Worse than that, he had no one to blame but the man in his own mirror; he had been the one to authorize the emptying of the royal warehouses. At the time, the Bastion had looked to be on its last legs, and he had gambled everything on the belief that one final push would break the enemy.
If he had done it would have been complete victory. But it had not been so, they had stacked the deck, thrown the dice, and lost.
He had truly believed their luck had turned when Nibadur announced a massive shipment of food was en route from Shaza. A miracle in a crate. But miracles burn as easily as anything else. The Fox had fallen upon the supply lines, turning the shipment into a pyre. Now, the ashes of that old salvation were mingling with the charred remains of the rearguard he had left.
He had thought a thousand men were an impenetrable wall for his supply lines. The Fox had proven him a fool, carving a path through the rear and making a bloody sport of every village they could touch.
At the time, emptying the capital’s warehouses hadn’t seemed like that bad of an idea.
The front lines were hungry, the war was still a thing to be won, and the rot had not yet fully set in. He had placed his chips on Nibadur’s promises and acts of forced requisitions. If the villages in the countryside had to tighten their belts until they choked, it was a price he was willing to pay. A victory would wash away the blood of a few peasant uprisings that it would have inetivably caused; success has a way of making lords forget the cost of the grain.
But victory had not just eluded him, it had vanished over the horizon. Now, instead of a triumphal march, he was bracing for a siege that the more he led the more sounded like a funeral. His funeral, that is.
The despair must have bled through his mask, for Arys was quick to step into the silence with a solution that tasted of ash. "We could stretch the stores for another half-month," the knight muttered. "If we cut the rations of those who do not carry a blade. It is a hard move, my Prince, but a necessary one."
"Those below are the families of the men on the walls, Arys," Sorza replied, his voice flat. "Though I suppose you’re right, if we followed your path, we wouldn’t need to worry about the enemy outside for long."
Arys gave him a puzzled, wary look.
"We would already be dead from the inside," the Prince clarified. "The city would tear itself apart before the first ladder touched the stone. We make do with a month."
It wasn’t a choice; he had none of that in a long time.
His only hope now lay in the turning of the seasons. Alpheo was many things and his ally....well even a "Mad Bull" had to respect the bite of winter. The Kakunian levies and the Yarzat farmers would be itching to return to their hearths, their pockets heavy with loot and their minds on the winter planting.
Without the Kakunians, Alpheo’s chances of taking a city with two sets of walls were negligible. Sorza knew the "Peasant Prince" had no stomach for the kind of catastrophic casualties they had endured at the Bastion.
He just had to resist. He still had pigeons; he could send word to his cousin to raise a fresh host and harry the Yarzat supply lines, turning the hunter into the hunted.
The cold wind whipped through his hair, a sharp, sudden gust that felt like a nod of icy assent. Yes, it could work. I can still win this one. Winter would be his ally, and the Yarzat would starve in the snow.
Yes. I can do it.
I....I...
The thought withered as he exhaled, just like any hope of warmth one may held in winter, the suffocating reality of his station crashing down on him.
I am a failure.
In the seven years since he had taken the seat of power, he had harvested nothing but defeat. He looked out over his city, watching the frantic, hollow preparations for the end. Men were manning the walls with whatever rusted scrap they could find. Pots were being lined up to hold oil that hadn’t even been heated yet. They lacked bowmen, and those they had possessed more hope than arrows.Which wasn’t as much to begin with.
The capital under siege. His father would be wrought with him if he was here.
His mind drifted then to the ghosts of Herculia, wondering if the same fate was written in the stars for them. He could list his meager advantages until his voice failed him, but he knew the truth of his enemy. The Peasant Prince could wake up in the deepest pit of the five hells, surrounded by demons screaming for his soul, and he would still find a way to snap victory from the jaws of damnation.
He had done so at the Bastion and at the Ford, didn’t he?
Sorza had no such gift. He was a man who looked at a miracle and saw only the shadow it cast.
And speaking of shadows, the one currently stretching across the fields of Oizen at that moment was so vast it threatened to devour half the south, adn then some more.
"They are here..." Arys muttered, his voice thin and utterly useless.
Sorza looked at his commander and saw the tremor in the man’s hands. Arys was terrified. Eldmur would never have shamed himself so. All men live with fear, but it is only weakness to show it, the old master-at-arms had told him one fateful morning, their sweat cooling in the dawn air after a grueling bout. But as Sorza looked toward the horizon, he found himself a victim of that same weakness.
Like the nightmares of his youth made flesh and bone, the army rose from the earth. At first, they were thin as needles against the skyline, but they grew larger, stronger, and colder with every rhythmic step. They moved like a storm under command, a tornado of steel that turned the air brittle at their passing.
The wind rose to meet them, laying a carpet of light frost for the eater of thrones. Four months of grueling war and a catastrophic slaughter at the Ford had passed, yet this host looked as though it were ready to chew through anything in its path and spit out the gristle.
However, the cold fear pooling in Sorza’s stomach was suddenly eclipsed by a rising tide of confusion and horror. As the army drew closer, close enough for the details of the vanguard to sharpen, the banners began to rise.
For a long time, Sorza had racked his brain, wondering how the Yarzat had bypassed so many cities and fortresses, one of the many like that of Duresa, Aragustaven, and Sevariorarii. He had wondered how they could reach the capital so quickly without being slowed by a dozen sieges.
The wind carried the answer forth with the cold, flapping the heavy silks of houses Sorza would have recognized even if he were blind.
For beneath the soaring Falcon of Alpheo and the stark White and Black of the Yarzat legions, four other banners danced in the chill air. They were not the colors of an invader. They were the sigils of some of the great houses sworn to Oizen, the very men who were supposed to be the shield of his principality.
There, amidst the monsters , foreigners and the mercenaries, marched the spears of his own vassals, their banners snapping in the wind as they turned their steel toward the city they were sworn to protect.
It was betrayal.
Just like in Herculia.
It was written in the star it seemed, by the very hand of the monster himself.
Woe to those that heard its paw. Oizen would be next.