Damon frowned.‘But—’
‘No.Two days swinging a wooden sword around does not make you a warrior, Damon.If you rush into danger, she’ll follow you, and you’ll both end up dead.This will be a real battle, not a bit of play-acting.’
Siwan and Damon begrudgingly agreed, and for his part, Llewyn seemed relieved.Fola was still surprised that he had bent so easily to Siwan’s desires.Perhaps he feared that forcing the issue might fray the spells that bound the raven fiend to the point of breaking, as they had broken on the festival grounds.
They could only hope, then, that those bonds had not frayed too far to hold against the horror and stress of battle.
Ambush
YC 1189
Only the tyrant reaches easily for the sword, but when war is needed, only the coward baulks.
Wari the Younger, Pedagogue of the Mortal Church,First Declarations,YC768
The battle had begun well before they reached the gates of Glascoed.
It was the fifth day of their journey.The punitive army had camped the last two nights on the First Folk Road.At dawn, staff sergeants moved through the rows of tents, ringing bells and shouting to rouse their men.It had rained overnight, leaving the soldiers stiff from cold and their canvases and bedrolls damp and unwieldy.There was too little dry wood for cooking fires, and Prince Owyn insisted upon haste, so men and women gnawed cold biscuits and cheese while they broke camp, drowsy and grumbling.
Torin had to prod Anwe awake with the toe of his boot.She had spent the better part of the previous evening dicing and drinking with a squad of Forgardian hand-cannoneers, and grumbled a string of curses as she threw off her blankets.Orn’s slowness was more forgivable, though enough time had passed that his injuries should have begun to heal.He was still pale, and winced while he helped Torin break down their tent, which was worrisome.Torin tightened the straps on his saddle and considered what, if anything, he ought to do about the young knight’s condition.
Shouts pierced the air, followed by a sharp scream and the crack of small cannon fire.
The camp exploded into chaos.Drowsy soldiers fumbled to buckle on a few scraps of armour and retrieve their weapons.Arrows darted from both sides of the road.Officers shouted over the screams of horses and wounded men.An acrid mist of gunsmoke wafted, mingling with the growing stink of spilled blood and offal.
A prayer invoking justice fell from Torin’s lips with half a thought.A feeling like steady fire burned through him, then out from his hands.With a thought he shaped it, forming a concave slope between himself and the edge of the road.Not a moment later, an arrow darted from the forest, struck his barrier and spun away.Orn, sword in hand, staggered back a step, realising that the projectile had been meant for his heart.
‘Stay back, Sir Orn,’ Torin ordered.‘Your talents are ill suited for this, and it is hardly our fight.’
‘We’re here, aren’t we?’Anwe snarled, closing the last buckle of her breastplate.‘That makes it our bloody fight.’
Her sword was bright in her hand as she launched herself at the treeline.
‘Reckless fool,’ Torin muttered, sweeping the underbrush for sign of enemies, poised to seize any he saw with a claw of justice—alive, if possible, for questioning.Yet no sooner had Anwe joined the fighting than it ended.She returned some minutes later with a grimace, her sword unbloodied.
It had proven a poor showing for the prince’s little army.A dozen rebels had been killed, most thanks to Forgard’s guns, which shattered trees and logs as easily as flesh and bone.Thirty-seven loyal fighters lay dead or dying and thirty more were too badly wounded to continue the campaign.The captain of Count Cilbran’s housecarls was among the former, struck by a broad-headed arrow in the back of the head while rousing his troops.
Prince Owyn—pale, his jaw set with rage—rode through the bloodied camp.Behind him, Uli Boar-arm demanded with shouts and gestures to know who had been assigned the morning watch.Owyn then made a proclamation that for this, Ifan would pay.There was no more question in anyone’s mind that Glascoed had risen in open rebellion.No mere bandits would attack a royal army on the road.There would be no parley, the prince announced.They would lay siege to Glascoed, break its doors, and capture the city and its castle by nightfall.
A cheer went up from the assembled soldiers, but Torin felt a gnawing dread.He was no master of strategy, but could not help but feel that the prince’s army had been goaded and guided like a boar being driven towards the snare and the spear.
His purpose remained the same, and clear.The battle mattered little to him, in the grand scheme of things.Victory would fall to one side or the other, and it would fall to people like Templar Unwith, of greater rank and import than Torin, to decide how the Church would react.
He reached for the steady thrum that bound him to the cleansing ritual, the nine points of a star that surrounded the kingdom.
His authority enabled him to unleash it, if he so chose.Another man, less compassionate, might have done so already.But only a fool could believe that stripping a kingdom bare of the magics and structures that had defined the rhythms of its people’s lives could be anything but an excess, unless absolutely necessary.He might shatter Parwys, only for its wickedness to resurface in time, crawling out from those shadowed, otherworldly corners like the green tower of Bryngodre.
‘Stay close to me when we reach Glascoed,’ he instructed Orn and Anwe as he returned to the business of packing and preparation.‘Our concern is not for the battle—only for the sorceress Fola and the fae folk.’
The Battle of Glascoed
YC 1189
Nevertheless, my friend, I assure you—and please, do not read into this a warning or a threat; I doubt entirely that Goll will ever be cruel and foolish enough to assault the City—that our thaumaturgic arts, while not designed for violence, are widely adaptable.
Letter from Archivist Tan Semn to Hierophant Adhamha III of Goll,YC1163
‘I did not give that order!’Ifan’s voice roared through the castle, rebounding from the red brick walls.
