In the morning, all troops were suitably drilled at dawn, at the ready soon after. However, those positions were not yet those of her plan.
“The bombardiers would take this time to ensure their measurements align with the preparations of the powder,” she said, speaking with the general and the knight.
“What if they chance a breach, My Lady?” Isarau asked.
She smiled. “As I have stated many a time, then I shall entrust the matter to Lord Isarau. However, they will not be aiming for a breach with these shots, so I cannot allow anyone to be stationed behind the castle—and of course, the troops should be on alert that a ricochet may stumble down the hill.”
With no experience on the matter of cannons, Ludwig looked to Isarau, confused, only to see the general nodding. “They shall be at the ready regardless, My Lady.”
“We shall have three volleys at midday, so at ease until then, My Lord,” she said.
Although that matter had concluded, she brought Ludwig along to where the militia awaited orders. “Have a handful of men lead a wagon down the road until they pass the ridge, then scout for any tracks the mercenaries may have left in the woods,” she whispered. “We did not notice any movement from them so far, but that does not mean they have not used the forest to conceal their efforts.”
“Understood, ma’am,” he said.
“Oh and, do you think the troops would appreciate a speech?”
It was a question he did not expect and, before he could give an answer, she had already made herself to the front of the militia, lined up in rows and columns. Discipline, her father had written, was something that could be rushed, but better cultivated. A city needed not an army, only a deterrence. That, if the worst did come to pass, it could maintain order, crushing dissidence if necessary, and resist efforts of sabotage.
However, her hand now reached beyond the city and the fields surrounding it.
Seeing their supposed commander, the captains quieted their columns with a call of, “Attention!” Like a tide, the silence spilled from front to back.
She was not a woman of great height nor masculine build, the adjusted uniform she wore still something suited to men and, while she looked natural with her hand resting on the rapier at her side, it hardly struck an imposing sight. At the least, when she spoke, her voice carried far, clear and with a heat that fed into her speech.
“We are here to bring justice. Those mercenaries are more animal than human, despicable beasts who have cut down many an innocent in these parts—man, woman, even child. They have spent years extorting the merchants and farmers for more than they can eat and now they barricade themselves away to live a life of luxury off the hard work of honest people.
“It is said that evil grows when good men sit idle. So I asked of you to stand, to march, and now to fight, because I know well that our men of Augstadt are not cowards. We have heard from the merchants tales of these mercenaries’ cruelty, the kinds of people who lack loyalty and compassion and all other virtues, that they would even sell their own mother for a few coins.
“Do not spare them, for they will not spare any of us. A quick death is better than they deserve; however, their last moments shall be full of fear, finally tasting that which they so casually inflicted upon others. They shall cry out to God for mercy, and I say let Him give it for what awaits them shall be worse than anything we could imagine. Let their blood and bones fertilise this land, that they finally give back some of what they took, and let those who have lost loved ones find peace at last.
“No quarter!”
She ended with a shout, drawing her rapier and holding it high in the air. A short, but noticeable, moment passed before the captains drew their swords, holding them up, and a rather modest and disjointed chorus of, “No quarter!” sounded out.
Although an ironic smile tugged at her lips, she held her stern expression firm. Now was not the time for smiles. Sheathing her weapon, she took one last look across the militia, then turned around and walked towards her tent. Ludwig strode to catch up before matching her pace.
“I had thought I wrote it rather well,” she said, a hint of disappointment in her voice.
“It was a good speech.”
However, she could hear what he didn’t say, letting out a chuckle. “Please, one cannot say too much in confidence.”
He still hesitated, going so far as to look around, settled by how, this side of the camp, few were present. “They are simple men of simple words. While I appreciate your… appeals, it is the sort of thing for stories and plays.”
“Duly noted.”
Although there was no malice in her voice, he felt a shiver down his spine.
Once at her tent, she dismissed him to carry out the scouting she had set for him earlier, and she simply sat in the hazy shadows, thinking. It had all felt rather anticlimactic thus far to her. To think she had already blundered, failing to secure the castle before the mercenaries did, thus leaning on the King. Her attempts at finding a suitable suitor had also met with hardship. Having met this Isarau, she honestly found it a shame her father had not agreed. What she lacked was this kind of man that other men would follow. Whatever faults her suitor had, she mostly did not mind, this one quality essential to greatness as if the seed from which it could sprout.
That was not to say she thought she needed a man at all. Her ambitions, she believed, could be reached with her own two hands. Regardless of what path she took, it would necessarily be perilous. A man of suitable quality would simply make her less beholden to luck.
Dwelling on such thoughts did little to help, though, so she moved on, mind always turning, considering, planning.
Come midday, she joined the most of the camp in waiting. To the north, the bombardiers set up the two bombards: short and stout things which, while still heavy, could be pulled by just a pair of strong horses and adjusted by a team of six men. To make up for their shortness, their gauge was rather large, wide enough for a man to comfortably fit his arm down. To the south, far from the eventual noise, was the cavalry standing beside their steeds, the relationship between horses and sudden, loud noises well known.
She stood with the general and the knight, along with those others of some station.
At her signal, the flags went up. “Ready,” came the distant shout, followed shortly by another shout of, “Fire!”
Most of the crew had run back at the first shout, and the last two ran at a sprint after the second, diving behind the make-shift bunker of piled dirt, all of them covering their ears with wads of cloth.
At the camp, they saw the cannonballs fly before hearing the double boom of thunder—and many didn’t see, taking that moment to blink. Up and up they flew, barely arcing, looking no different than a pair of thrown stones at this distance, and those stones eventually lost their momentum, all of a sudden plummeting, just in time to smash into the donjon proper, sending up a plume of dust as stonework crumbled. What else the cannonballs accomplished couldn’t be seen from the camp, but there was a heavy feeling in the chests of those who knew. Perhaps, for a moment, even pity.
While the crews prepared the cannons for the next shots, the general leant towards her. “That is, the powder did not make such smoke as is commonplace,” he said, not a whisper, but quiet enough for only her to hear.
“I am perhaps not yet a person worth believing in. However, my father certainly was,” she replied.
Nothing more was said, not even by Ludwig who had realised that the matters of warfare a knight learned had perhaps missed a chapter or two.
After a few minutes of spirited maintenance by the crew, another cry of, “Ready,” and, “Fire!” rang out, followed by another volley. The shots landed lower this time, impossible to tell from the camp whether they smashed into the ground or the large tower’s base, only that another cloud of dust was thrown up into the air. Another few minutes, another pair of cries, another pair of booms, the cannonballs landing in that similar space around the donjon’s base. How close exactly, they couldn’t know.
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With the exercise completed, the rest of the camp stood down while the bombardiers continued their maintenance. However, the merriness of days prior had dwindled to embers, a handful making jokes of being deaf or remarking on how glad they were to not be visiting the castle at this time.
Come the next day, the forces arranged themselves in a more proper formation. In the early hours, the general took a small, but capable, force to the northern ridge, and the knight led a party south and around to the forest, both with heavy hearts.
That left her in charge of the remaining militia, consisting of her bombardiers and some that carried crates more than swords, as well as the bulk of Isarau’s troops. Trained as the latter were, the captains took the general’s command to follow her orders seriously.
So the third morning began.
Not wanting to keep the others unnecessarily idle, she didn’t dally in beginning the bombardment. Approximately when she expected the militia to have taken up position in the woods, she gave the order, flags going up to signal to the bombardiers. With everything set up and measurements taken the day before, the cannons were loaded and fired in short order.
For an hour, the cannons fired, raining metal upon the castle; however, the breach had yet to be made. Sure enough, the wall had crumbled from a few close hits, but such a narrow entrance was not something that could be charged and so not something that could budge the mercenaries from their place.
So the first day’s attempt came to an indecisive end. The general’s troops returned first, whereas the knight took more care. Regardless, she felt a certain frustration, knowing the defender’s had likely been clued in on the general strategy she sought to entrap them within.
That said, she had chosen this strategy precisely because it required the least of such luck. So what if the defender’s knew there was a force awaiting them in the forest? That only served to force them down the hill to their death.
What annoyed her far more was the knight’s attempts at reassuring her, which she could only listen to with a polite smile.
The next morning, everything duly repeated. While the general had suggested the cannons fire until a suitable breach was made, she had insisted on keeping to the plan, that such urgency thought too highly of her bombardiers that had, so far, only known training exercises.
To the north, the general; around the south and into the woods, the knight; at the camp’s edge, her. She waited until such time that she thought the militia were in position, then sent the order, flags rising to signal the bombardiers.
Not long after the crack of dawn, a crack of twin-thunder echoed through the valley. Cast-iron hung in the air for a moment, then dipped, plunging through the loose rubble with a crash, sending dust into the air. When the air cleared, it showed that the hasty repairs to yesterday’s breach had already been rendered moot.
However, this didn’t change that yesterday’s breach hadn’t been enough, so the bombardiers readied another volley and, at her order, fired. Two volleys, three—then the fourth launched with one glancing off the wall and sent flying off to the side, ploughing into the ground, only to launch itself up and carry on, rolling at such speed as it arced down the hill that it eventually buried itself in the road’s gutter.
Its sister, though, had crashed into the wall a few paces down from the breach, setting off a cascade as the stone bricks leaned over into the castle’s compound, unable to support its own weight. Crashing and crumbling, the gap widened into something enough for ten-odd men to push through.
She sent off the order to halt, the bombardiers clearing the cannons, but not loading another volley.
For a while, she simply watched the breach. How the stone had piled up, whether it looked like it would further collapse, observing what glimpses of people she could pick up from beyond.
Until finally she sent off the order to ready up.
In a calm disorder, the lines assembled at the correct point, ready to march up to the breach from the correct angle. Once satisfied, the next order went out and the battle truly began.
Not her place among the soldiers, she watched them go, a small guard for company, along with the signalman. There was no drum of war, no trumpets. However, she found, a well-trained force marching in unison created a kind of drum of their own, felt in the slight trembling of the ground.
For the time being, pieces fell into place. The first point of divergence would of course be if the mercenaries did not flee, in which case Isarau would bring his force over and storm the castle as he saw fit. That did not come to pass, though, the mercenaries piling through the breach long before the marching troops came close to the walls, some taking their chances through the main gate.
Most of the mercenaries, predictably, fled over the hill towards the forest. She doubted they would continue. Swords were very much better for intimidation than combat, especially in the thick forest where one could barely swing. The long reach of her militia’s spears, arranged in such lines that it was if running into a wall of spikes, were a suitable deterrence.
To her relief, it seemed the mercenaries agreed as they soon reappeared along the hill’s crest. A hundred or so of them, she guessed, presumably a part left at the castle out of indecision and injury.
Everything had gone to plan so far. However, the past was not a certain predictor of the future.
A horn cut through the valley and Isarau led out his men, going up from the ridge to block off the hilltop. South, the rest of his troops still marched after the mercenaries, their pace slowed by the hill’s gradient. Farther south, the cavalry still awaited their orders.
The leader of the mercenary, she knew, was not a stupid man. Cynical, Grosburg had said. The sort of person who, when escaping, ignored the open door to crash through a window.
“Charge!”
His cry gave his troops a second-wind, their pace increasing as they aimed, not downhill, but at Isarau’s small force: a hundred men to about forty.
However, the general did not falter nor show any surprise, despite how all their strategising had not considered this. It was not that he hadn’t thought of it or that he thought she hadn’t thought of it, but that, since she had not mentioned it, he knew that this was the crux of the matter.
His grandfather had warned him of those who seemed equally competent as incompetent, that, in their own matters, they were meticulous and, in the matters of others, careless. He had certainly heeded the warning too. However, in life, luck was what he made of what was in front of him—and right now, this battle was in front of him. It would not be a skirmish the likes of which wars were made of. These were cornered animals, predators, and they would fight to the death or die trying.
Then a scream of, “Ready!” rang out, loud despite the distance.
His stomach sank, heart still, and his head jerked to face where he had left her at the edge of the camp, seeing those distant figures. He believed he could see her smirk from here. That, in the end, she had no need to rely on the mercenaries to fulfil whatever machinations she had.
“Fire!”
He closed his eyes, muttering an abridged Hail Mary as he made the cross on his chest, then opened them, that at least his last sight would be of the enemy before him.
Twin booms echoed through the valley, even louder than before, rattling him to the bones, that, for a moment, it was if he had died, without thought nor pulse. However, his opened eyes watched the mercenaries falter, yet no plume of dirt billowed up.
Instinct a powerful force, he raised his sword high and his voice higher, crying out, “Charge!”
The mercenaries slowed, what had been a swollen mass now stretching out in hesitations.
Then, from the forest came, not a cry, but a roar, like a flood the militia spilling out, pounding their chests as they raised their spears high.
Down below, she smiled and gave the order for the cavalry to charge.
It was hours later that the blood finished being spilled. While not without their casualties, a routing force was easily run down and, of those still in the castle, there was little fight left in them. However, she was true to her word and none were spared.
“The King has made clear the price to be paid for treason.”
Wounds were tended to, bodies were buried, and a priest summoned to see to their rites—something, she mentioned, that the mercenaries had not done for their victims. For those of her militia with a troubled conscience, such words brought some relief. They were not the kinds of monsters that would even deny a fellow man God in death.
As evening came, there was not much for the leaders to do, so she sought out the general’s tent, the knight at her side. However, for a change, she asked the general to join her for a walk and the two ended up by the river.
She asked the knight to give them privacy. In that dim light, the two stood in silence for a moment. “My Lord, I believe the matter between us is clear,” she said, saying nothing, saying everything.
A breathless laugh slipped through his lips before he caught himself, smile lingering behind. “Is it, My Lady?” he asked, even now keeping a neutral tone.
“It is. So, in the morning, hurry back to the Marquess with great haste.”
His smile froze, a chill running down his spine.
Dismissed, he left and the knight took that as permission to approach, his reluctant steps bringing him to her side. Although he had questions over what the two had discussed, especially considering the look on the general’s face, he dared not ask them, knowing his place.
Because he knew his place, he began the conversation by going down on one knee in apology. “Ma’am, your soldier disobeyed his orders.”
“Bringing up such a matter now?” she asked lightly. “I know.”
“Pray assign any punishment ma’am sees fit.”
She let out a long sigh, her breath lingering in the spring night’s air. “Sir Ludwig, instead I should be the one offer something of an apology,” she said, little more than a whisper.
He had the urge to argue, but managed to hold his tongue lest he only add to his insubordination.
“That is, for the plan I envisioned, it was necessary to have you hesitate, so I had to give you an outrageous order. Thus, rather than disobeying an order, it is the case that you acted as I predicted. In that light, I am glad to have understood my knight’s character well,” she said, turning to look down at him with a gentle smile—not that he was much lower than her despite kneeling.
Her answer gave him both peace and unease, offering an easy solution that still went against his honour.
However, she had one more card to play, gesturing for him to rise. “I pray that I can rely on you believing in me when the next time comes.”
“Of course, ma’am.”