Shards of a Broken Crown (32 page)

Quegan sailors
were often pressed into service, and none were known particularly for
deep loyalty to their Emperor. Suddenly the activity above increased
to a frenzied pace as Roo shouted orders. The Captain realized he was
in the presence of a man who knew his way around a ship and said, “We
can heel hard to port in a few moments and if we hold tight into the
wind, make it clear of rocks, Mr. Avery.”

Roo looked at
the Captain and said, “Switching sides?”

“For
twelve years I’ve sailed for my Lord Vasarius, and if I’ve
made a thousand gold pieces in that time, it was barely.”

“Good,”
said Roo. “For the Captain, two thousand. Now get us out of
here.”

The Captain
shouted orders, and turned to take the tiller away from the man Roo
had assigned to the job. Valari said, “What about me?”

Roo said, “Can
you swim?”

“Yes,
but—”

Roo nodded to
the powerful-looking smuggler who had just released the tiller, and
the man grabbed Valari by the collar and the seat of the pants, and
with two steps pitched him over the side of the ship. As the man came
to the surface, Roo called down, “Perhaps your employer will
stop and pick you up!”

The galley bore
down on them, and Roo stood on the quarterdeck, watching as it came
straight at them, then to the side, and then to the stern, as the
Captain turned southward. The men on the bow of the galley could be
clearly seen, astonished expressions on their faces as the ship they
were sent to escort seemed to be turning in the wrong direction.

A few moments
later, the galley turned to pursue. “Can we lose her?”
asked Roo.

The Captain
said, “If we run out of wind before they run out of slaves, no.
If they run out of slaves first, yes.”

Roo said, “I
hate to do it to the slaves, but let’s pray for wind.”

The Captain
nodded.

“What’s
your name?”

“Nardini,”
said the Captain.

“Well,
Captain Nardini, I used to have a fleet, and I expect to have one
again. If we live through this, not only will you get your gold, I’ll
give you a job.”

“That
would be nice,” said the Captain, a balding man of middle
years. “I’ve never been farther into Krondor than the
docks. I was last there about three years ago.”

“It’s
changed since you were there,” said Roo.

“So I
hear,” replied the Captain.

Roo looked
rearward and saw the galley was holding steady about two hundred
yards off their stern. They had come around the thumb, as Roo thought
of it, and the coast fell away to the east, leaving them in
relatively open water.

Roo knew that a
support fleet was due to hit Sarth at noon, and hoped they reached it
before Vasarius’s war galley reached them.

Arutha
whispered, “Try the latch.”

The soldier
nearest him quietly moved the latch up and the door opened. There was
a faint squeak, but no one inside the room seemed to notice. He
followed the first man into the room and pianced around in the dim
light. A single candle burned on a table halfway across the long
wall, opposite the stairway leading upward to the next level. The
floor was littered with a dozen empty sleeping pallets, while another
six were occupied. With a hand signal, Captain Subai indicated they
were to be subdued and they were. Solders entered from the second
door and Arutha smiled as he whispered, “Well, it seems I owe
those soldiers an apology; that was a lot of stair climbing for no
good reason.”

Subai said,
“They understand.”

Arutha turned to
locate Brother Dominic. The cleric wore a helm and breastplate, but
carried no sword. He only sported a dull cudgel. He had said that his
order would not permit him to spill blood. Breaking heads, Arutha had
observed dryly, was permitted, however.

“What
now?”

Dominic said,
“There is something . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t
know. A presence . . .”

Arutha said, “A
presence?”

“It’s
something I’ve felt before, but fainter, more distant.”

“What?”
urged Arutha.

“I don’t
know,” whispered the cleric. “But whatever it is, it is
not good. I should lead the soldiers up the stairs. If it is magical
or mystic, I may be able to protect us.”

Arutha nodded,
frowning. Since the death of the Pantathian Serpent Priests and Pug’s
destruction of the demon Jakan, there had been no reports of any
magical activity among the enemy. The possibility that some agency of
darkness had hidden among them and was now about to manifest itself
bothered him. But there was no turning back.

Dominic mounted
the stairs and Arutha, Subai, and the soldiers followed. They entered
a long hallway with doorways on either side, each leading into a
large storage room, used to house books just a year earlier. Each
doorway was open, and through the portals they could see more
sleeping men. Arutha did a quick estimation and judged a hundred men
between the two rooms. He signaled, and Subai placed archers at each
end of the hall.

He then set
about waking the invaders, quietly and one at a time, so that each
man awoke to the sight of a naked blade before his face and archers
behind drawing a bead. In less than a half hour, all one hundred
mercenaries were herded down to the lowest chamber, to join the first
six men captured.

“This
can’t last,” said Subai quietly.

As if his words
were prophetic, at the top of the next flight of stairs they were
spied by two men walking down the corridor. As soon as they saw the
black uniforms, the mercenaries knew there were Kingdom soldiers in
the building. They raised alarm, and Arutha shouted, “Every man
to his position!”

Each man knew
his assignment. There were a dozen key positions throughout the
abbey, and if the Kingdom forces could secure them, the invaders
would be isolated from the town below. While Arutha and his men might
be forced to eventually withdraw back down the stairs into the lower
chambers of the abbey, they could keep the garrison up here from
mounting a counterattack down the mountain to relieve the garrison at
Sarth.

Sleepy
mercenaries came stumbling through doors on both sides of the hall,
and Arutha found himself fighting for his life. He had never fought
in combat before, and until this moment had harbored a deep fear he
would not be up to the task. He anticipated shame that he could not
serve his King the way his father and sons already had. Yet now,
without hesitation, he was coolly engaging a man intent on killing
him. He had no time to think about his previous doubts, and without
conscious effort, years of practice and drill took over and he began
laying about him, using the sword once carried by his namesake,
Prince Arutha.

Slowly they
moved along the corridor, driving the forces of General Nordan before
them. At the end of the corridor, another flight of stairs led
upward. By the time Arutha reached them, the hall was littered with
bodies, most of them invaders, and a trio of men stood at the bottom
of the stairs. Fighting up the stairs would be difficult, as the
advantage of height would make this a difficult contest.

From behind a
voice shouted, “Down!”

Without
hesitation, Arutha fell to the floor, ignoring the pool of blood in
which he lay. A flight of arrows sped by overhead, and the three men
upon the first step of the stairway fell. Before Arutha could rise to
his feet, men were racing past him, their boots pounding on the
stones of the steps as they hurried up to engage the enemy on the
next level.

Arutha knew he
was one flight below ground level. Above them stood the abbey, the
stable, the outbuilding, and the walls. If they could get to the
tower above the abbey, and command positions atop the walls, they
could win the day.

Arutha took a
deep breath and charged after the soldiers in front of him.

Erik charged.

His company was
second through the barricade, following hard on the heels of a unit
of the Royal Krondorian Lancers led by Owen Greylock. The heavy
cavalry rolled through the defenders effortlessly, driving a wedge
through the invaders’ line. Erik’s unit was on Owen’s
right, following a hundred yards behind, and struck a deeply dug-in
series of trenches supported by bow-fire from a clump of trees a
dozen yards behind the last trench.

Erik had chosen
this particular spot for himself and his men, for it was the sort of
emplacement that was better attacked by mounted infantry rather than
cavalry. As his men reached a point just beyond the enemy’s
bow-fire, Erik ordered a halt. The men reined in and dismounted, one
man in five taking the horses to the rear. The rest formed up on
Erik’s command and ran the last hundred yards to attack the
enemy lines.

Erik knew the
key to taking this side of the line was to strike hard and fast at
the upper portion that abutted the hillside. It was a series of
shallow trenches and offered little protection for the defenders.
Once they were in those trenches it would be easy to get behind the
rest of the enemy line, root out the bowmen in the trees, and
surround the men in the other trench locations.

As he had
anticipated, it took his men less than an hour to completely subdue
the defenders on the right flank. Seeing things were in hand, Erik
returned to get his mount and ordered the rest of his men forward
while a handful remained behind to escort prisoners back to the
stockades being erected for holding captives.

Everywhere the
first phase of battle was moving along without a hitch. Erik had
expected stronger resistance on the left flank, the section of the
defensive line between the road and the sea cliffs, but the rapidily
advancing Kingdom forces had totally demoralized the advance position
of Fadawah’s army.

Realizing that
things were in hand, Erik sent word back to bring up the second
elements of Greylock’s army, the heavy infantry that had been
hiding in Krondor for the last week. They were a half-day down the
coast and would be needed tomorrow morning if they had to dig out
defenders at the gap or the southern boundary of Sarth.

As he motioned
for his mounted infantry to form up to advance, Erik gave thanks that
Sarth wasn’t a walled town like some of the others in the
Kingdom. He impatiently waited for his command to re-form, as the
standing order was to move as fast into Sarth as possible. When they
were mounted, he gave the order and they advanced.

Units of archers
were hurrying along on either flank, their orders to flush out
snipers in the woods. They were supported by squads of swordsmen.

Heavy pikemen,
who would be critical to break any counterattacks, were hurrying
along the road, and Erik had to order them to halt, so that his
horsemen wouldn’t be stuck behind the slower-moving footmen.
When everyone was assembled, Erik signaled the advance, and the men
moved out. The pikemen fell in behind the horses, and the march was
resumed.

The hillsides
echoed with the sounds of shouts and screams, the hum of arrows
through the air and the sound of steel clashing. But it was obviously
a mopping-up action here, and the heavy fighting would be ahead.

Erik motioned
for his men to advance at a canter, and they began leaving the
infantry behind.

Erik had reached
Krondor without incident, he and John Vinci having slipped through
the gap to the smuggler’s cove, then by boat to a fast ship
heading down to Krondor. They had reached the city in time to give
Greylock the detailed layout he had needed.

The next morning
advance scouting and infiltration units had been sent out to destroy
Nordan’s forward positions. The units Greylock had brought into
Krondor under cover of darkness the previous night left two hours
after and rode throughout the day, taking up positions a half-day’s
ride south of Sarth.

At dawn they had
advanced on the city.

Erik glanced to
where the sun hung in the sky and considered they were possibly an
hour ahead of schedule. Any time gained in the first stage of the
assault would be to their benefit. They would need as many men as
possible in the town should Lord Arutha’s infiltration of the
abbey fail and Nordan launch a counteroffensive from up that road.

Glancing toward
the sea, Erik saw sails in the distance, two ships heading south. He
wondered if they might be invaders’ ships or Quegans. Either
way, they were about to run headlong into a fleet of ships from Port
Vykor heading to Sarth to support the land advance.

Erik returned
his attention to the matter at hand.

Roo said,
“They’re gaining.”

Captain Nardini
said, “Morning breeze is freshening, but whoever’s in
command of that galley is willing to kill slaves, that’s the
truth.”

Roo said, “Any
weapons aboard this ship?”

“Only what
you brought with you. The plan always was to just look harmless and
slip out of the harbor without anyone suspecting we had all that gold
aboard.” The Captain glanced backward and then returned his
attention to the sails above. “We certainly have no ballistae
or other war engines, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s
what I was asking,” said Roo.

Slowly the
galley pulled nearer Roo’s ship.

“Sails
ahead!” shouted the lookout.

“Where
away?” questioned the Captain.

“Two
quarters! Dead ahead and five points off the starboard bow!”

Roo hurried
forward and squinted against the glare from the mist burning off in
the morning light. Directly ahead he saw a dozen tiny dots of white,
the sails of the fleet heading north from Port Vykor, while off to
the right larger sails showed a fleet closer still.

Roo hurried back
to the Captain. “We’ve got trouble.”

“I know,”
said Nardini. “We need a much stronger wind, or that galley’s
going to catch us in less than an hour.”