Theodosius Valkorion's Arc

Chapter 8 of 22

Theodosius spread a map of the keep across the war table. Serett had drawn it from memory. Thick walls. One gate. A dry moat on the north face. Four days to break it, and no siege train close enough to matter. "Legions can't march here in time," Heinrich said. "Not in fighting order." "How many can?" "Two hundred. Mounted. Light packs." "Two hundred won't take a keep." "No." Theodosius stared at the north wall on the map. The dry moat there ran under the powder store. He tapped the mark twice. "Then we don't take it with men. We break the wall and ride through what's left." Heinrich frowned. "With what?" "The long gun in the palace yard. The white one my mother commissioned and never fired." "It weighs as much as a wagon team can pull in a week. You have four days." "Then we move it in three." Theodosius drew his finger along a river line. "Barge to the ford. Oxen from there. Serett's grooms clear the road ahead of us." Heinrich set both hands on the table. "If the barge slips, you lose the gun and the pass." "I know." Heinrich looked at him a long moment. Then he nodded once and left to give the orders. They moved the cannon that night. Twelve oxen on the ropes, legionaries in white enamel walking beside the wheels, four-pointed stars turned toward the dark. The barge held. The ford held. On the third night the gun sat in a stand of pines nine hundred paces from the keep's north wall, wrapped in wet canvas to kill the shine. They fired at dawn. The first shot cracked the outer face. The second opened it. The third found the powder store behind the wall and the north tower came down in a sheet of stone and smoke. Theodosius rode through the gap with Heinrich and two hundred horse. The Stormblade hummed white in his hand, lightning crawling the flat of the blade. The absent lord's men were still coughing dust when the legionaries reached the inner yard. It was over in an hour. They found the lord in his solar with a signed page half-burned in the grate. Theodosius pulled the page free with the tip of the sword. Enough of the seal remained to read. "Names," he said. The lord said nothing. Theodosius handed the page to Heinrich. Three provincial signatures. Two from lords who had pledged spears in the audience hall. Heinrich read it twice. "Your own pledged men." "How many spears did they promise?" "Between them, two thousand." Theodosius closed the page in his fist. The pass was safe. The road behind his army would stay shut. And two of the seven lords who had knelt to him were selling him from inside his own line. "Ride tonight," he said. "Before they hear the keep fell."