An Ending of Oaths - Chapter 3

Talabot, Lynesse

William crouched in the dark, his eyes fixed on the walls of the city in the distance, trying not to let the cold that was seeping deep into his bones from getting to him. The defenders were doing a good job of moving along the wall, making it seem as if the city was still fully manned. It was the smart thing to do.

When they’d received notice of a Sidorian advance on Valedmond, they had to respond, and they had to do it in enough force to ensure their capital did not get overrun. It was their whole purpose of being in Talabot in the first place. The sally, however, had left the city with the bad position of defending itself in case it was a trick, but responding to the Sidorian advance in case it wasn’t.

Of course, Sir Alistair’s feint toward Valemond was, in fact, a feint, but William had discussed the situation at length with Baron Pembroke and come up with a solution for it. They had opted to give Sir Alistair a small contingent of infantry and knights, and sent the bulk of the knights as a screen to hunt down every single Lynessian scout they could find.

It left William very light in the scouting department, but for the ruse to work, they had to convince the enemy the threat was real and prevent them from seeing nearly all of the Sidorian infantry, critical for taking a walled city, was elsewhere.

And it seemed to work. The few scouts William had shadowed the Lynsian force that had sallied out from Talabot two days previous, and confirmed they were still on the move toward Sir Alistair, moving slow and cautious. Unless Pembroke’s information was wrong, and William doubted it was, the numbers that had marched out left the city very weakly defended.

Taking a walled city, even with that difference in manpower, was a dangerous prospect, and William tried to stack as much as possible in his favor, which is why he was hiding in the dark, waiting for an hour after the guard changeover when possible reinforcements would be half asleep and the night shift would be just getting into their nightly routine, with distractions of men-at-arms checking and evaluating their people and supplies being brought up. He’d had men watching the city for days, even before Sir Alistair marched out, to get their schedules down.

“Are your men ready?” William whispered to Sir Drummond, who’d come crawling forward to join him.

“As they’ll ever be.”

“Don’t press too hard. Make sure they’re paying attention and rely on your archers. Don’t waste men if you don’t have to.”

“I understand, your highness. I’ll keep them busy.”

“Good. Get going. We will give you ten minutes for your attack and then launch. Keep the pressure up until then.”

Drummond nodded and then moved away, heading back to his command. William wished he could have two of the stalwart knights. With Pembroke protecting their base and Sir Alistair left with the bait forces, William had been left with scant options for leading the diversionary force and the reinforcements, which had most of the knights, who wouldn’t accept men-at-arms such as Commanders Haverhill or Baldwin at their fronts. That left William with only Sir Cedrick and Sir Drummond to lead the two forces. Cedrick was a good man, but he was more lax in combat than William would have liked, more focused on personal glory than ensuring his men achieved their goals.

Which would not do for the diversionary force or the main body. In the end, he’d assigned Drummond to the diversionary force and taken the main body himself, a detail he had not discussed with Pembroke ahead of time, knowing the overprotective baron would have done everything he could to prevent William from leading the main assault on the walls.

Drummond’s diversionary force had begun their assault right on schedule. It wasn’t hard to see, between the fiery arrows starting to set some section of the wall to the left of the gatehouse on fire.

William counted. He needed the enemy to be engaged and pulling men on duty from other sections of the wall, but the reinforcements not yet rallied fully from the city. It was precise timing, which is why he wanted to lead the main element. He had to stay far enough back from the wall that the enemy wouldn’t see his men, which meant that William couldn’t see the men on the wall either, to know when they pulled off.

But he’d spent a lot of time with the city guard in Starhaven. Serwyn had gotten the fancy tutors and weapons masters for his training while William had to rely on city guards for his weapon training. Thankfully, they’d taken to him, and in between learning proper personal combat tactics and sword techniques, William listened to them complain. They complained about rotation schedules about lax soldiers, about who was late to guard changes, and just about anything else that upset their day. William would never say he was an expert in what it took to guard a city from the wall, but he had a feeling for it. For how long it would take them to respond to an attack, to call up reinforcements, and to begin moving additional units to the point of an assault.

No city could afford to keep all of its walls highly manned, even without sending out most of their forces to accompany an enemy five days’ ride to the south. They would end up with more guards to feed than they could afford. It was a balancing act, where small numbers of guards were trained to hold a section of wall while the rest rallied to wherever the point of assault was the heaviest. This training would remain true even on reduced forces, except the reduced force would have to shift more men and leave a smaller force to hold the wall.

Or so he’d understood.

“Now!” he whispered harshly to the men closest to him as he felt the moment cross over. “Ladders up, hooks out. We take the walls.”

Without hesitation, the Sidorians sprung into action. The foot soldiers, and all of the men William had with him were foot soldiers, formed into sections, each lined behind a ladder. At William’s command, they began running forward, as quickly as they could.

It didn’t take long for the men on the wall to notice them. They were on alert after all, what with the assault already ongoing. It’s why William had been forced to hold his men so far away.

Shouts came down to them from above, followed quickly by arrows. Even though they’d seen his men, they were still mostly running for the wall in darkness, and there were too few archers, since the bulk had been sent to counter Sir Drummond’s assault. Men fell here and there, but not enough to change the tide.

When a ladder fell, the men behind picked it up and continued on. It took only less than three minutes for his men to reach the wall. It could have been run faster, but not in full armor, or at least not without the men being too exhausted to fight when they arrived. It was fast enough, and didn’t give the enemy much time to respond, but it still felt like an eternity before the first ladder slapped against stone, the metal hooks snapping down and digging into the stone walls, holding them in place.

The defenders tried to unlatch the hooks and push them back down, but there were too few of them and William had dozens of ladders go up across this section of the wall.

Arrows whistled down and spears stabbed over the ledge as his men began to make their way up the ladders.

“Up!” William shouted, pushing men toward the closest ladder. “Don’t stop! Keep moving.”

About five men had started their ascent when the defenders above managed to get the hooks out and push the ladder back, sending it, and the defenders, crashing to the ground in a tangle of limbs and metal.

Men grabbed the ladder and pushed it back up in place, but hesitated. They were good boys, but it was hard watching your friends die and then charging forward in their place.

“With me!” William yelled, stepping onto the ladder, sword in hand, as he started to climb.

That shook his men out of their stupor, as they surged forward to follow him up the ladder. As before, the enemy leaned over, stabbing down with a spear, trying to dislodge him as he got near the top. William battered the weapon away with his sword and then countered, lunging up high and stabbing the attacker through the center of his visor. The man’s body toppled over the parapet, sailing past William and toward the men on the ground below.

Two ladders down, the enemy lifted a cauldron of some kind and turned it over, pouring hot oil down, sizzling against armor, drawing agonized screams from the men it touched.

William ignored it. The only thing he could do for his men was get to the top, and push his men to join him. Another man reached over the side, but William was faster, stabbing him in the shoulder, his sword finding purchase between chestplate and pauldron. Not deep, it was hard to have leverage in a situation like this, but enough to send the man reeling back.

And then William was up and over the walls. A small part of his brain told him he was the first up, but he ignored it. Two men were coming up a stair right next to where his ladder left off carrying another pot of oil, almost certainly destined for the ladder he’d just ascended. William kicked out at the surprised man in front, sending him and the pot of oil tumbling over backward, back down the stairs.

William could hear screams of horror as the men and their deadly payload fell on their friends, and ignored it. All around him, men tried to repulse the invader in their midst.

His sword flashed out, stabbing one man in the thigh and sending him stumbling backward before blocking an overhand attack with an axe that seemed to want to cleave him in two.

And then he wasn’t alone any longer, as another soldier and then another came up the ladder behind him. As William fought, more of his men made it up their ladders, the enemy just too few in number to stop the assault.

“Push forward! Clear the ladders!” William yelled as he parried another man’s thrust before countering, taking the man in the side and sending his body toppling over the edge.

The worst thing his men could do was cluster at the ladders. They needed to push forward to make room for more of his men, so they could get enough to overpower the defenders and push them off the wall. For several minutes, they were in a precarious position with less than a dozen men on top, outnumbered and fighting to maintain a foothold.

But his men did well. They pushed in both directions, clearing the wall, and some even began fighting down the stairs, to prevent an enemy rally, allowing more and more of his men to make it to the top safely. The trickle of men became a flood, as the men coming up no longer had to fight their way up the ladder and could just climb.

William stayed on the wall, directing his men as they cleared, sending in reinforcements where needed. Part of him still wanted to be in the front, leading as his uncle Gavric had been, but this wasn’t the moment for that. Standing where he was, at the moment, he could see the wall and the gatehouse, and had a clear view of the battlefield.

He was sending the bulk of his men down the stairs, to push along the base of the wall.

“Take those men and secure the guardhouse!” he said to Commander Haverhill, who’d just come over the wall. “Get the gate up.”

Haverhill nodded and began yelling for the footmen to follow him, pushing behind the soldiers who were already headed down the stairs nearest William. The tempo of the battle was slowing and William saw groups of enemy soldiers running for the center of town. It was the smart thing for them to do, since they’d already lost the wall. For William, it was a problem.

If they could fortify in the city center, it would be like starting the fight all over again, this time without the benefit of surprise.

Which is why he needed to get the gate open.

Commander Haverhill and his men surged down the stairs toward the gatehouse, encircling the small group that was trying to defend it.

“Your Highness,” a soldier called out, “more enemy troops are gathering near the keep!”

William nodded, “Send word to Sir Cedrick. Tell him to bring his cavalry around to the main gate. We’ll need them once we breach it. Also, signal Sir Drummond to pull back from his attack and bring his men in. The ruse is up anyway.”

As the messenger darted off, William turned his attention back to the gatehouse. Haverhill’s men had pushed the defenders back, but progress was slow. The narrow confines of the gatehouse made it difficult to bring their superior numbers to bear.

There was nothing William could do to speed that up, but he could at least take care of the men at the other side of the gatehouse, where the bulk of the enemy on the wall had gathered, when they thought Drummond’s was the primary problem.

“Sergeant, gather those men and follow me,” William said to Eskild, who’d stayed by his side through out the attack, pointing at a group of men starting to clump up.

They charged along the wall... and found it already almost cleared. The few men that had remained there ran down, or jumped off, the wall to try and avoid the mass of screaming Sidorians charging toward them.

The keep wasn’t walled, but it was fortified, and the last thing he wanted to have to do was put it under siege with gods knew how many men holed up in it. William sent a few men to chase down what stragglers he could and turned the rest back around, down the stairs and toward the gate, running toward the gate. It was questionable if just throwing more men at the gatehouse would have solved the problem, since Haverhill had already been stymied by the inability to get all the men he’d taken with him into action.

Thankfully, by the time William had gotten back, the Commander had managed to overwhelm and kill or capture the majority of the guards on the gate and was already raising the gates.

“Your Highness! We’ve secured the gatehouse!”

“Well done, Commander. Raise the gate. We need our cavalry and reserves inside these walls. As soon as it’s down, take every man you can and head to the keep. I want it surrounded.”

Flags had already gone up, the signal for the infantry reserves, cavalry, and Drummond’s men to rally inside the fort.

“How many casualties?” William asked, looking at the bodies strewn about as the gate started to slowly creep upward.

“Fewer than expected, Your Highness,” Haverhill replied. “They had already broken by the time we got down here, and only a handful stood strong.”

William grabbed Haverhill’s arm and led him out of the doorway, waving the Commander’s men to follow, as horses and infantry began to pour through the gate and into the city.

“To the keep!” William yelled at Sir Cedrick as the broad-shouldered man rode through the gateway. “Surround the keep, cut off any forces on the way there from getting inside its walls.”

Cedrick nodded and spurred his horse, taking off down the main road, his men following after him.

“Follow him with the Infantry,” William ordered Haverhill. “Try and isolate them into pockets. Have one of your men stay here and direct Drummond and his men when they arrive.”

Haverhill slapped fist to chest and began shouting orders.

“Come on. We need to secure the barracks,” William said to the Eskild. “We can’t let them rearm or regroup.”

While the city had a central keep, it was small and mostly used by the lord who managed the city and his retainers. The soldiers had their own building where they slept and maintained their weapons, and where some resistance might hold up.”

He and the men with him ran through the streets. Pembroke had managed to secure several maps of Talabot, both from before the war and through interviews with captured soldiers, that he confirmed through multiple interviews, and they had gone over the layout thoroughly in preparation for the attack.

They’d gone through and assigned secondary objectives to the commanders, but it hadn’t occurred to William in his wildest dreams that the Lyesians would collapse as quickly and completely as they did, which threw pretty much all of the assignments out the window as they rushed to try and keep the enemy from forming a new defensive line.

Once again, William found himself charging headlong at the front of his men, into battle. To William, though, this felt like the right thing to do. It was what his uncle Gavric had done.

The Cavalry and even the men under Haverhill had rushed to block the keep that whole pockets of Lynessian soldiers had been bypassed, leaving many pockets for William to handle. He knew even he was bypassing many of those pockets, but that was what happened when taking a city. They’d clean out the major resistance and most of those they missed would dissolve into the populace, as conscripts do once the people keeping them under arms are removed.

They would go a street or two toward the center of town and run into soldiers either trying to get to the keep or trying to get to the wall. The enemy seemed in chaos, which was good. It meant they’d face uncoordinated resistance.

A small group of men had held up around the barracks, using it as a defensive position, but Sir Cedrick had clearly been ahead of him, and ten knights were pushing a few injured out of the building and corralling them together. His men were slowly spreading throughout the city, which meant it would fall soon, especially as he saw the first banners of the men that had been with Sir Drummond run past, signaling his entry into the fight.

A messenger, breathing heavily, rushed up to William. “Your Highness! There are a large group of Lynisian soldiers held up inside the Hall of Antiquity. The commander was unsure of how to deal with the situation.”

An understandable conundrum, and a clever place to hide. Every Sidorian grew up knowing the halls as places of revered study and worship of the ancients, and any sort of violence was absolutely forbidden in them. They were sanctuaries. It would be the rare person willing to assault one and clear it out.

But it also needed to be done.

William gathered what men he could and headed to the long ornate building. It wasn’t one of the constructions of the ancients that cities often based themselves around, buildings of fantastical construction that had survived the millennia since their fall, such as the Grand Hall in Sidor. This was a modern construction, which eased William’s conscience a bit, knowing he wouldn’t have to break down the doors of one of those revered places.

In front stood an elder, holding up his hands.

“The halls are inviolate. You cannot enter.”

“You’ve allowed armed soldiers to enter its walls armed and remain inside. If they throw down their arms and come out now, I can promise they will not be harmed, but I cannot allow them to remain inside, prepared to attack my men.”

“I have granted them sanctuary,” he said, looking nervously back to the building. “They cannot be…”

“Sanctuary is for the innocent and the unarmed. The ancients’ trust has already been violated, and this building is no longer one of their halls. This is no longer a place of peace and contemplation; your own men have seen to that. I will give them a chance to leave, unharmed, but only if they surrender their weapons.”

The man looked nervously back and forth between William and the hall, the building he’d been charged with preserving. William had the distinct impression that the soldiers had not given him much of a choice in granting them sanctuary, and he knew they weren’t going to come out easily.

“Stand aside,” William said, waving his men forward.

The elder shouted at them, cursed them with the retribution of the ancients, but William ignored him. The man had already failed in his duty and was looking to shift the blame to someone else.

The soldiers must have known being trapped inside the hallowed hall would be a death sentence for them, allowing william to press them into a corner and wipe them out, because as he and his men got near the front of the building, the doors suddenly burst open and a group of world eyed Lynesian soldiers came charging out.

The first man to reach him swung wildly, all technique abandoned in his frenzy. William sidestepped, letting the blade whistle past. His counterstroke opened the man’s throat. Hot blood sprayed, and William blinked it from his eyes.

His men charged in, pressing them toward the front of the hall. A spearman thrust at William’s midsection. He knocked the point aside, closing the distance. His pommel crunched against the man’s nose. As the spearman reeled back, William’s blade found the gap between gorget and breastplate.

All around him, men fought and died. The Lynesians were desperate but outnumbered. Their fate had been sealed the moment they came out of the door.

A young Lynesian, close to William’s own age, lunged at him, terror etched into his face. His attack was clumsy. Weak. William caught the boy’s wrist, twisting until the sword clattered to the ground.

“Yield,” William said.

The boy’s eyes darted wildly, seeking escape, before he slumped in defeat.

William shoved him toward a nearby Sidorian. “Bind him.”

He turned back to the fight, assessing. The initial Lynesian surge had broken against his men like waves on rocks. Now, only isolated pockets of resistance remained, as a man here or there tried desperately for one last moment.

The skirmish died as suddenly as it had begun. Prisoners were being bound, the wounded tended to. William wiped his face, smearing sweat and grime.

“Word from Sir Cedrick,” a messenger said, running up to them. “The keep has surrendered.”

“Good. Give him my compliments and tell him to begin sweeping the city for remnants. And put someone on the gate.”

The messenger saluted and ran off.

“Check the hall,” William said to Eskild, who had stayed with him through the entire siege. “Make sure no one’s hiding inside.”

Eskild motioned for a few men to follow him, all of whom disappeared into the ornate building, weapons ready.

“You’ve defiled this sacred place!” The elder screamed at William. “The Ancients will curse you for this sacrilege!”

“You’re the one who wronged the Ancients. You let armed men turn a place of peace into a fortress. Get yourself right with them.”

The elder’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. William left the man to his fish on land routine as Sir Drummond rode up with a collection of other knights.

“Your Highness, the keep is secure. What are your orders?”

“Sweep the rest of the city for any remaining resistance. Once that’s done, begin preparing our defenses. I’ll be returning to Castrallion by tomorrow, and I’m leaving you here in charge for now with a contingent of men. Hold the city and patrol the western routes out of the Blackcrag Mountains. You’re the westernmost point of our line, and we need the flank secure for our final push to Valemonde.”

“Understood, Your Highness.” Drummond saluted, then wheeled his horse around, barking orders to his men.

William called over two messengers. To the first, he said, “Ride to Baron Pembroke at Castrellion. Inform him of our success here and request further instructions.”

The man nodded and took off at a run.

To the second messenger, William said, “Find Sir Alistair. Take a swift horse, because you’re going to have to ride around both armies. Tell him to pull his forces back to the Lynese river and hold for orders. The ruse is no longer necessary.”

As the messenger departed, Eskild emerged from the hall. “All clear, Your Highness. No one hiding inside.”

“Good,” William said. “Talabot is ours, which means the war is almost over.”