Upturned, desecrated graveyards weren’t much to look at. They weren’t pretty before the undead hordes trampled them, and after the abuse they had come to complete ruin.
Black soil lay scattered everywhere, spread by undead and soldiers alike. Damaged and mud-stained tombstones marked the burial sites, some tilted at crooked angles. Stephan never found them pleasant places, but now they were worse.
Still, they were easier to look at than the sobbing or disgusted people collecting the dead all around the city. The work was so gruesome that, other than the Priests and volunteers amongst the soldiers and the guards, Cliffort was employing convicts at spearpoint, filling carts upon carts with the dead. On the streets, everyone’s boots kept slipping against the slick and sticky clay the rain failed to wash away.
As for the bodies, the council had agreed they should burn the former undead on mass pyres in the tannery district. After the cremation, the remains would be deposited into the charnel houses to rest with the righteous dead. Finally, Priests would consecrate the ashes and spread them around the cemeteries. Hopefully, such action should counter any attempts to raise undead in the following weeks or months.
I’m so tired of this. Stephan thought and headed for the castle.
***
He was overlooking Cliffort from his study. The day was horrible, his mood worse, and the rain wasn’t helping.
You could at least have the decency to wash the mud. He stared at the scarce raindrops streaking the closed window, too few to fulfill his wish, yet plenty enough to soak the men struggling to solve the city’s problems.
“How are you?” Lacy asked.
“Exhausted. Groping in the dark,” Stephan didn’t turn to face her right away. “I’m not sure how to feel about everything going on today. The rest of the council was certainly efficient about things.”
The way Silas, Hardy, and Bradley thought of using the ashes was ingenious; much better than what the representative of the merchants suggested. Making lye from what was basically a mass funeral pyre seemed insane to Stephan. But other than the Priests, everyone else was at least a bit interested to hear about how tanners could use the waste.
Our resources are limited, but not that limited. He shook his head and turned towards his fiancée.
“How was your day?”
“Could’ve been better,” she offered a weak but genuine smile, and Stephan accepted it with gratitude, the sight improving his mood slightly.
The chat and lunch with Lacy helped center him. Otherwise, the afternoon passed in a sleepy haze during which he walked the walls one more time. People cheered for him in the streets, numerous cityfolk having seen the Paladin fight undead in the alleys as he moved from graveyard to graveyard, suppressing the creatures of the darkness.
The regular uniform no longer offered anonymity, and Stephan waved back but didn’t smile. He kept a stern expression matched by a straight, unyielding bearing. Anything else would have been a lie, not to mention an insult to the fallen in the previous night’s clash. If they could give their lives to protect others, he could stomp his fatigue and carry on, giving hope and courage to those who needed it.
He found himself on the wall, looking into the second city born outside the walls, the enemy encampment sprawling and splitting into districts of various factions, small and large. It bustled, people swarming, all of them carrying a lot of timber and hauling it from the forest where they were industriously hacking and sawing. The piles of the thing littered the open ground in front of the camp.
They probably suffered desertions after the debacle last night. Keeping conscripts working and too tired to flee afterwards is one of the most basic strategies when leading troops of questionable morale.
Another, equally fundamental strategy was to send raiders to acquire food. The war council and Lord Harrington’s preparations should have mostly denied the enemy easy provisions, but if they were determined enough, it was only a matter of effort before Highglen’s forces secured more supplies.
I can’t believe people can be so resourceful and persistent with what they are pursuing. And yet, they are so mind-numbingly dumb about other, more vital matters.
After concluding there was no way the enemy would attempt a nighttime raid with the amount of manpower they were spending on construction and entrenchment, Stephan returned to the castle.
That evening he retired before sundown, preparing for an early start the next day. There were no councils; no petitions; Queen Eleanor handled those, growing steadily. No, what Stephan had dedicated the day to was reading on history, as soon as Lacy was satisfied with the breakfast he ate.
In terms of his current life, it was a wasted time, but both Silas and the late Lord Harrington had mentioned how history repeats itself and that there was nothing new under the sun. What Stephan was searching for was a way to defuse the situation. To prevent the war before it happened. Avoiding the senseless bloodshed was the ultimate victory in his mind.
His second priority was figuring out who the warlock was, but in Stephan’s mind, that was a problem for the future him. The one who would stake out the graves of those who had died since he had become the Paladin. The ones who rose to fight the living.
By noon, Stephan was deep in the books, embraced by the room he found a shelter in the besieged city which in turn besieged and strangled him. He was busy, despairing over the fact that Queen Eleanor didn’t have a dozen daughters of marrying age to soothe the political waters, when Lacy knocked.
“A messenger awaits.”
Stephan held back a sigh, rubbed his eyes, and stood. Of the Reign of Queen Marie remained behind, open on the desk, awaiting his return.
“What is it?” Stephan asked after chaining the door and leaving the private wing. The matter was certainly urgent if they had come to fetch him from the library.
“Sir, there is movement in the enemy camp.” Instead of a scout, a Knight delivered the report. A Knight who didn’t seem worried one bit. And for a good reason.
“They can’t be so mad to attack us?” Stephan said, and the Knight shrugged.
“What I’ve seen looks like preparing a mass of troops for an assault.”
Highglen can’t be that dumb. An open charge on walls in broad daylight is gonna be a slaughter; their morale will break before they make it halfway through the bow range.
“Do they have ladders? Have they erected siege towers without us noticing?”
“No, Sir, they are just lining the peasants up on the field with very long lances.” The Knight had no decency to show a bit of compassion for what was about to happen. “The only way for them to attack us would be to scale the walls barehanded.”
Stephan gazed at him as if the Knight was speaking in tongues. “They are doing what?”
“They plan to send them at us with really long lances. I can’t even imagine what’s going through the enemy commander’s head. Should the conscripts try to poke at us from the ground?”
The Knight laughed. Stephan found nothing funny about the situation. If anything, any unusual troop movements filled him with unease. Lord Harrington had pulled more than one strange stratagem that had decimated his troops in The Art of War.
“Let’s go.”
The stumped Knight stared while Stephan rushed past him, then hurried to catch up.
“Sir, they are just Commoners with long lances. They can’t carry them when they scale the walls, and we’re not sending a cavalry sortie against them. Nobody’s crazy enough to order that.”
“And nobody’s crazy enough to order thousands of their tax-paying subjects to run at the wall with pikes and without ladders if they don’t have a plan of some kind.”
The Knight opened his mouth to argue, but couldn’t. “What plan could they possibly have?”
“I don’t know, and I fear we’re going to find out. You’ll help me don my armor,” he told the Knight, then turned to Lacy. “Lacy, please ask someone at the stable to prepare my horse.”
There was no way he would go into combat once again without proper armor. Especially a battle as chaotic as close-quarters fighting on the walls.
“Sir, don’t you think you’re overreacting?” The Knight asked as Lacy hurried away.
Stephan could detect something in the man’s voice. Snideness? Overconfidence? He couldn’t tell what, but it was a bad trait in a man who might be fighting with his life on the line in a matter of minutes.
“Let me ask you, if I were to send you on a mission against a force of unknown number and power, would you prefer going in a tunic or wearing armor?”
Stephan thought his question would shut the man up, but it didn’t.
“Sir, there’s nothing unknown about them. They number twenty-five to thirty thousand, and they are untrained, ill-equipped militia.”
Stephan didn’t want to argue further, and he donned his armor in silence. Its weight settled on his shoulder, the cold steel comforting for some reason. The ornate suit was as impressive as when he had first seen it, and putting on the gilded helmet made him feel like a different person.
He walked out of the citadel to find two dozen Knights waiting. He wanted to make a spectacle of it. To shout, “We ride,” and rouse the soldiers like Lord Harrington had, but it made no sense. They wouldn’t fight mounted, and while the walls were technically wide enough to allow horses, exposing the animals to enemy archers was folly.
“Let us protect our people,” he said instead, in what he hoped was a calm and dignified manner.
The Knights thumped their chests, then Stephan and his retinue left for the walls at a brisk trot.
Hooves rang through the empty streets; what few faces lined the windows seemed worried. Pale and silent, they stared, wondering what would happen next.
Why didn’t they ring the alarm bells? I hope it’s because they sent runners to the barracks near the walls to call for reinforcements.
As they approached, Stephan saw the walls were properly manned, and discarded the question. If his men could work efficiently without raising a fuss, all the better.
“Report,” he said to Ernest as he dismounted.
“The enemy is still gathering in the field. I can’t guess what’s on their minds right now, but I organized the defenses and sent word to you, Sir.”
Stephan nodded and climbed the stairs. From up top, he could see the enemy clearly; they really were mustering on the plain, each holding a comically long pike.
“Only the conscripts are gathered in the field.” He squinted to get a better look, but at almost a mile away there was precious little to see.
Better armored men stood a distance behind the pikemen, with about a hundred yards between the two groups.
“What am I missing?” Stephan muttered, his brow furrowed as he tried to work the puzzle before him.