Autumn 5671

      Strike

      The first blow unleashed by the white rider exploded, an eruption of light that burst like a scream from the eye of a malevolent sunrise. The conflagration roared forth as a wave, storming across the hedged pastures, and breaking the outlying farm-steads under a blast of annihilating heat. The flash-point lasted but a fleeting instant. Yet amid the booming report of shocked air, the fields and hayricks surrounding the s’Brydion citadel were engulfed by scouring flame. The scourge destroyed everything: devoured all in its path without any breath of resistance.

      No hamlet escaped the sweeping assault. No farm-wife or miller or child was spared, no matter that they were innocents. The thatch and timber over their heads became torched at one hammering stroke. Chimney stones were reduced to slag, tumbled over the carbon scorched earth, where all life was stripped of animal industry and autumn-rich foliage.

      Smoke drifted, stinking, where moments before, crofters had scythed the last cutting of straw and raked the cured stalks into windrows. The drays and ox teams were immolated also, bone and carcasses scattered to ash; undone alongside them, the steadfast, armed guard of Keldmar’s veteran troops. No man in the open lived to report. Lumped metal remained of wrought weapons and wheel rims, glowing dull cherry upon the sere ground.

      Inside the burst barns, where the bulwarks of revetted stone had been melted, the shrieks of a handful of light-scalded sentries shattered the morning quiet. They were the misfortunate few, roasted to agony until death could relieve their wracked suffering.

      Vhandon and his picked company of scouts witnessed the horrific flare of the assault while set on the run. Half a league to the north, miserably huddled in a marshy covert that verged the enemy camp, they had never dispatched the warning to spare their commander. In flight for their lives, they had hoped to swing wide and cross the far side of the lines.

      As the rumbling report shook the earth, and pummelled wind through the frost-killed hummocks, Vhandon needed force to restrain his young men.

      ‘Hold fast where we stand!’ While an unhinged scout surged to avenge his dead family, Vhandon tripped the man’s rush, then clouted his nape and dropped him sprawling. ‘D’you think you’re the only one that’s bereaved?’ A stiff swallow, to jam back the upsurge of grief none could afford at the battle-front. Vhandon snapped, emptied, ‘I just lost a son! His wife bore my grandchildren, four of them, gone! By Ath, you’ll keep courage, if I can!’

      He helped the weeping man to his feet. ‘Steady on. Bear this! Believe what I know of the wars fought before! None of us can outface Lysaer’s powers. Nor can we salvage what’s wrecked, or snatch back one life delivered to Daelion’s judgement!’

      ‘If the field troop’s razed down, we’re now cut off, here!’ a rattled veteran argued, afraid. Parching gusts raked from the blast site in back-lash, hard enough to suck tears from dry eyes, and wilt the brush that provided inadequate cover.

      ‘Down!’ Vhandon ordered. ‘Smear your faces with mud!’

      But no skulking tactic allayed his dread: that no defence at arms might mount a counter-strike against the baleful fires of the s’Ilessid gift. With Keldmar’s field troops lost, the cruel fact wrecked morale: that the citadel’s lower walls lacked the shielding grace of the ancient Paravian craftwork. Every man nursed the horrific pain. Caught in hiding, they seethed to act before abject destruction should slaughter their fellows on guard at the trade gate.

      As a second fool moved to draw steel, Vhandon clamped a harsh fist. ‘No! Stay your hand! You’d bring death upon us, and for what? A martyr’s end here will serve nothing!’

      ‘Merciful Ath!’ The man shook with rage. ‘My wife and kinsfolk are still alive inside the lower citadel.’ Over dry coughs, as another man vomited, he vented his raging despair. ‘This false avatar can destroy us all on a whim. I can’t skulk here and suffer the ruin of all I hold dear in this life!’

      ‘You’ve forgotten!’ Vhandon slashed back. By ice-water nerves, he would pull these men clear, wrestle their poisoned stew of emotions until they could be steered from lethal danger. ‘Keldmar s’Brydion had the savagery to murder an accredited ambassador!’ Feet braced, his callused fist locked in restraint, the field-captain crushed sapping distress; forced reason above shock and heart-break. ‘We can’t measure the toll of destruction from here! Can’t know the full story, until we make our way beyond the direct line of fire.’

      While the screaming winds lashed the turned leaves from scrub maples, and whipped smoke hazed the pristine morning, the ranked sergeant among them responded. ‘Our innermost walls were designed to stop drakefire. Surely the heart of the citadel stands secure!’

      Yet even if their duke’s banner still flew, the experienced eye must acknowledge that their straits had gone from dire to desperate. Fellowship intervention might preserve Atwood’s timber inside of East Halla’s free wilds. But the shipworks at Kalesh and Adruin stayed supplied by the zeal of the Sunwheel Alliance. Their galleys would import cut lumber from elsewhere. Cordwainers and craftsmen pressed by the campaign would labour to erect siege engines. With Alestron stripped at one stroke of her field troops, the duke’s superbly trained men-at-arms were left in no position to stop the advance.

      Construction could start within range of the outside walls. Lysaer’s ruthless gift could burn down the defensive board hoardings. Clearly, the first line of fortifications was useless.

      ‘Depend on this much!’ Vhandon cracked with brute honesty. ‘We’ll see sappers mining our last unbreached wall before the full onset of winter.’

      Thrown back on resolve, he jammed on his helm. ‘Talk will not save us! Nor can retreat serve a thing but add our hungry mouths to the strapped needs of our countrymen.’ Grim as carved oak, Vhandon turned his back on the smoke-hazed wrack of the farm-steads. ‘Stand firm with me! Use our loyalty wisely. Outside, as free agents, we can best serve our duke through covert raids and harassment.’

      The blast that scorched Alestron’s pastures and fields outstripped any word for destruction. Inside the s’Brydion citadel, the explosion enacted stunned shock, an inbreath before pandemonium: the painstaking lists with the garrison’s scribes were no longer going to matter; detailed inventories of food stocks and barrels of preserved rations were thrown into eclipse by the staring shadow of crisis.

      Panic struck every man, woman, and child as the city’s craft quarter was confronted by the stark scope of the wreckage. The false avatar’s ultimatum had been served upon the ashes of competent troops, loyal officers, and by-standing innocents. The act shattered morale. Unless every member of the duke’s family should be delivered to Lysaer’s justice in chains, today’s rain of fire and light would not end. Not before the Fatemaster’s Wheel had turned, and the last life was reaped out of havoc. Hold fast to their own, and the folk of Alestron were foredoomed, with all ties to diplomacy forfeit.

      The crushing aftermath fell hardest of all on the defending companies posted at the outer walls. Mearn s’Brydion suffered the brunt, as their commander at arms.

      The cocky dandy in him was no longer recognizable. Ripped haggard, his neat surcoat singed by the cinders that swirled as the scorched air recoiled, he retched on his knees, gagged by the reek of singed meat. His equerry, his officers, and the fleet-footed boy who ran his messages were wrung just as wretched beside him. They all fought to breathe, as the poisonous pall of hot smoke rolled off the surrounding, raped acres.

      Mearn dared not languish. He choked down rank nausea and his cry of grief, for the death of a feckless brother. Though loss savaged his heart, and his sword-arm was burned,