The Cerberus Rebellion (A Griffins & Gunpowder Novel) (18 page)

“When we return to the castle, I want to meet with Lord Kershaw and his staff,” Magnus said as the group made their way back toward the rail lines. “He has some experience with Fort Williams; perhaps it will be an asset.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Rorik said.

The group plodded through the mud and snow for another hour as it made its way through the thin, winding paths between camps. They stopped another three times to greet lesser lords that had called up a particularly high number of soldiers or had contributed weapons to the cause from their own armories. When they finally arrived at the makeshift train station, Magnus was tired and the sun was well on its way to the western horizon.

Roland stood on the platform beside Magnus’ passenger car, scraps of paper clutched in one hand and a look on his face that Magnus thought was a mixture of surprise and excitement. James Dietrich and Alger Greenbow stood behind him, their eyes bright with enthusiasm.

“Some news?” Magnus asked as he dismounted his massive draft horse and stepped onto the platform.

Greenbow’s excitement got the better of him. “That would be an understatement,” he said.

“Best to be discussed inside, Father,” Roland said. His expression had settled into something more serious than before, but his eyes still glowed.

“Very well.” Magnus stepped past the small cluster and into the luxurious passenger car.

The car had been designed and built to serve as both a luxury parlor and a war room for Magnus. The carpets were a plush black, the furniture was cut from rich brown leather with gold studs, and the walls were painted a deep red. Two large tables were pressed against each side of the car and smaller side tables were spread throughout.

Magnus threw his greatcoat onto a hook as he swept into the car, kicked his muddy boots into a corner, and plopped onto one of the thick leather couches. “Someone get me a whiskey.”

“For all of us,” Roland added as he sat in a chair near his father.

A steward scurried through the door at the back of the car.

“How did your inspection of the camps go?” Roland asked. Magnus noted the change of subject and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you see the garish tent set up by that knight from Harristown?”

“How could we have missed it?” Magnus asked. “It’s almost as large as my own pavilion.”

“He said that it was the only pavilion that was ready for travel when the call to arms came,” Roland said. “Why would anyone even bother making something like that?”

Magnus shrugged. “I suppose that when your town makes its fame from something, you have to pay homage to it.”

The steward returned with a bottle of dark whiskey and a tray of glasses. When each man had been served, Roland waved the man out of the room.

As soon as the door was closed, Magnus spoke. “Now that we have drinks, will you tell me what is on that paper?”

“Proclamations from Aetheston,” Roland said and then tested the whiskey.

“Another one?” Magnus’ eyebrows lowered and he pursed his lips. “What does it say?”

“A demand that all nobles make their best speed to Aetheston to immediately declare their allegiance to the Crown and their loyalty to King Eadric,” Roland read from the first letter.

“And to what occasion do we owe this summons?”

“The letter does not say, in itself,” Roland said and shrugged. “But we have come to learn that the western nobles have…” He cut himself off as an excited smile tried to grace his lips.

“Have what, Roland?” A hint of irritation crept in Magnus’ voice.

“They have declared an open rebellion against Aetheston,” Roland said at last. Magnus heard the words but for a long moment he didn’t understand them. Then the realization hit him and his jaw fell.

All of the planning that his family had laid down for nearly a century had been based on the assumption that Ansgar would stand united against the Kerberosi rebellion. Magnus had secured promises from Franta to cause enough trouble for the western nobles that they could not commit their full strength to returning his people to the fold. He had made secret trade pacts that would cut off the distribution of vital industrial supplies to Central Ansgar and would leave their production lacking.

And in the blink of an eye not only had all of that planning been made unnecessary, but the western nobles had provided him with more help than he could have ever hoped for from Beldane or Steimor.

Yes, Eadric would now be forced to call up his full armies, but they would have to split their attention on two sides. And, if the gods smiled, Eadric would drop his claim to Kerberos entirely and focus on dragging his western nobles back under his heel.

“How many?”

“Every noble west of the Hart River,” Roland answered. Magnus closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to count the number of soldiers that could be levied out of those territories. “Their dukes had already called up their full levies when Eadric dispatched his messengers. They are currently entrenched on the far side of the Hart.”

“This is monumental,” Magnus said as he stood. “But we must act quickly.”

“I have already dispatched orders to cut off all communication between Aetheston and the forts in Ansgar. But these letters came via telegraph; it’s possible the armories and fortresses have already been warned,” Roland said.

The possibility that the Ansgari forces in Kerberos would be on the alert was a situation that Magnus and his generals had discussed but his forces were not in a position to put their plans into motion.

“Then we must strike now.” Magnus grabbed a map and unrolled it on a table. “Our cavalry has already been assembled at three points along our border with Ansgar. They can sweep over the Ansgari fortresses at Warster, Lindholm and Vahr and take the armories there.”

“Father, there was the second letter,” Roland reminded him. “When the King learned of the rebellion, he seized our representatives in Aetheston.”

“Damn it,” Magnus swore. He intertwined his fingers and bent them with a satisfactory series of pops.

He had sent Bannen Mallory with the levies because he was fiercely loyal to Kerberos and had the tactical and strategic skill to extract his forces from the press when the time came. Magnus had planned to make the man his Minister of War when their forces returned from across the Straits of Steimor.

Now Mallory, and the other noble representatives that had accompanied him to Aetheston, were hostages. They were safe, as long as Magnus and the rest of Kerberos remained complacent, but Magnus could not waste the opportunity presented to him by the rebellion of the western nobles.

“We will have to try to negotiate with the King to get them released,” James Dietrich interjected. “They are members of noble houses; surely a ransom can be paid.”

“If Eadric doesn’t know what he has in using Mallory as a hostage, then someone else in his council will. If we don’t bow to his will and pledge our allegiance, it’s in his best interest to hold Bannen as a hostage,” Magnus said.

“What about the other nobles? They have no strategic value,” Alger said, his voice urgent.

“Gentlemen, I understand that you sent family members to Aetheston as representatives, but this is not a point that will be argued. When we make our declaration to Eadric, we will request that our people are returned to us. If he refuses, we will take our own hostages and somewhere along the line we will exchange them,” Magnus said. The tone in his voice made it clear that there would be no further debate.

Everyone in the room knew that there was a serious possibility that the representatives in Aetheston would be executed by Eadric. Execution was not a common punishment in Ansgar, but the King had been known to pass the sentence for crimes less than High Treason. And with rebellions on either side, he would be desperate to send a message to the lords and nobles that opposed him.

Magnus sipped from his glass as he thought; the whiskey helped. He focused on the burn as the amber liquid found its way into his stomach.

“My Lords, if you would excuse us for a moment. I want to have a private word with my son,” Magnus said.

“Of course, Your Grace,” James said. He, Alger and Rorik departed, locking the door behind them.

“This troubles me,” Magnus said after another drink. “The timing is too perfect.”

“It is a gift,” Roland argued. “The gods have smiled on our quest for freedom and have given us this opportunity.”

“What if it is a lie?”

He was looking too deeply into this opportunity, but he and the Dukes of Agilard before him had not hidden their plans from the King of Ansgar for nearly one hundred years by being careless and not looking at everything from every possible angle. The situation was just too perfect: the timing of the western rebellion right when he was on the brink of launching his own attack on Ansgar.

If it were a lie, and he took the bait before he was fully ready, Eadric would roll down on him with the full force of his armies and there would be nothing that could stand in his way. Eadric would have his full levies to form the core of his attack and the support of the western nobles to overpower the Kerberosi defenses.

If, however, the letters were not a lie and Magnus decided to hold back his attacks, he would never recover. Eadric would have the time to sweep down on the western nobles and get back to Aetheston before Magnus’ forces were ready.

“If it is a lie, then we risk little more than we were going to risk anyways,” Roland said. “We are already committed to this course, Father. If this is a lie, then Eadric will have his levies to serve as the core of his attack. What does that give him? One hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who are trained and armed. We have more than that minutes away from us. Once we have seized the armories, there will be no difference between Eadric’s levies and our armies. But what if we don’t take this gift for what it is? The loss of this opportunity will crush our efforts to ever regain freedom. Your nobles will be disheartened and I doubt we will ever be able to convince them to attempt this again.”

Magnus nodded in agreement. His son was right: this was the opportunity that Kerberos needed to break free from Ansgar’s grasp.

Chapter 12 - Eadric

Spring had finally started to show itself along the southern coast of Ansgar. The melted snows and constant rainstorms had left an incessant mire of mud and muck in their wake. Tens of thousands of horses and men camped on the slopes surrounding Cutler Keep had only added to the mess.

The castle was a massive structure cut from the local granite and built on a low slope near the ocean. The oval-shaped outer walls stood one hundred feet high and forty feet thick with entrances at either end. The inner wall stood only eighty feet tall but it too was forty feet thick. Heavy cannons looked out onto the coast from massive round towers; the interior approaches were protected by smaller artillery poured in the Earldom’s local foundries.

Lord Rayner Capel, the Earl of Cutler, was descended from a long line of weapons makers. Once, his family’s foundries were the most respected in Ansgar, but in the last two centuries they had been surpassed by the gunsmiths at Black Mountain. The wealth that had come from centuries of producing weapons for the Ansgari throne gave the Earl more leverage than one would otherwise expect.

In addition to owning the only functional armories still in control of loyalist forces, Rayner held the contracts to a pair of foreign mercenary regiments. He had pledged one of the regiments as a part of his levies and had offered to bring another pair of regiments from across the Vast Sea. Eadric had refused, initially, but the ability to so cavalierly summon mercenary groups from other nations was an influence that Eadric could not ignore.

He had inherited his father’s distrust of the earl’s power and had kept the noble at arm’s length for most of his reign. With the western half of Ansgar in rebellion, that was a stance that Eadric could no longer afford to maintain.

The Earl commanded a levy of nearly five thousand soldiers without counting the mercenary regiment, which accounted for another fifteen hundred armed and trained men. Rayner also maintained armories that held tens of thousands of muskets and it was those guns that would arm the great majority of the soldiers that he would need if the western nobles did not submit to him.

Eadric paced in front of the massive window in the keep’s grand tower, looking out over the camps of his growing army. More arrived each hour from Aetheston, while others filtered out through the nearby station, bound for the next camp at Hart Earldom.

Lightning flashed from thick black clouds to the west; Eadric took a moment to enjoy the symbolism of the event.

“Your Highness.” Kendall’s voice broke the silence. “Lord Richards has arrived from Aetheston and would like a word.”

“Send him in,” Eadric ordered.

He poured himself a glass of brandy and sat behind the desk that occupied one corner of the room, then dropped a pinch of dragonsalt in the glass from the tin that he hid in his inner jacket pocket.

William Richards shuffled through the door. His blue eyes were dark and his mouth was twisted into a grimace. His black boots and the bottom of his thick black greatcoat were caked with mud.

“Would you care for a drink?” Eadric asked as his advisor bowed.