Chapter XXXI

Sarahi and Milo arrived at Marquise Zoe's castle, and in an instant the guards recognized Sarahi as the Marquise's daughter and let both of them in. Sarahi was surprised to be greeted not by her mother, but by her eldest sister, Estelle. The name Estelle had been given when she was a child was actually “Esther,” but when she was fourteen there was a young poet who was constantly courting her who said that her name didn't fit her because she was beautiful and her name was ugly, so he came up with a new name for her by combining her name with the old-speak word for “star.” In spite of how unflattering it would normally be to be told one's name was ugly, Estelle loved this poet very much, and had a brief affair with him, all the while calling herself by the name that he had given her. When she turned seventeen and was forced to marry the third-born son of the Count of Mt. Orson, Jesse, she said a tearful goodbye to the man she loved, but kept calling herself by the name he'd given her. This split turned out to be all for the better, though, for it turned out that the poet she so loved had his fair share of lovers, both women and the occasional man, and was said to be biologically incapable of fidelity. Not that Estelle or her husband were so loyal to each other anyway. Estelle and Jesse made an agreement that since they hadn't married for love they would turn a blind eye to each other's affairs, so long as Estelle did everything she could to make sure the only children she conceived were his.

Estelle looked a lot like Sarahi, only a few years older, and with much shorter hair. She kept her dark hair cut just below her ears, and it curled under her jaw. She wore a very regal dress, with big sleeves that, when she held her hands down at her side, almost dragged on the floor. She lifted those hands up, though, to wrap her arms around the sister she'd not seen in many years. “Sarahi! It's good to see you again.”

“I wish it could have been in better times,” Sarahi said.

“And who is this?”

“This is Milo, my bodyguard.”

“And lover, I take it?”

“What? NO!”

For a moment Milo almost felt hurt by the quick and forceful “NO!” that Sarahi gave, but his instincts gave way to his better judgment and he remembered all the reasons why they needed to keep their love affair and marriage a secret.

“Then you won't mind if I have a go at him?” Estelle asked.

“You have a husband!”

“And nobles are always committing adultery, haven't you heard?” Estelle said. “We marry for political reasons and seek love on the side.”

“Milo and I are both paladins, so engaging in adultery is out of the question, for both of us!”

“Aye, aye,” Estelle sighed. “In all seriousness, though, how have you been?”

“I've been well, until I heard news of Nihilus' invasion. Where's mother?”

“Out looking for the Nihilite army,” Estelle replied. “If it were up to me it would be me out there instead of her, or I'd send Jesse out.” Jesse had a great reputation as both a strategist and a warrior.

“And how has Jesse been?” Sarahi asked. “I've not seen him since the wedding.”

“He's been a fine husband. Takes care of me, is sometimes fun to talk to, and sometimes, when we try to conceive his heirs, it's actually enjoyable.”

“I mean how's he been? his health, his mood?”

“Oh. Well, other than being quite upset about the whole war and all that business he's in good health.”

“Good,” Sarahi said. “So, tell me which way mother went.”

“Why? You're going after her so soon?”

“Yes! I want to be there when she engages the Nihilites! I want to fight beside her! I want to help!”

“Fine place for the Queen of Arx to be, especially since you're pregnant.”

“What?”

“Word reached this place, King Hadar sent you to hide in the countryside because you're with child, isn't that right? he wants you and the heir to be safe.”

Sarahi just then remembered the entire reason she'd been sent away from the capital city. Well, rather the fake reason. The true reason was so that she and Milo could have their honeymoon and consummate their marriage, but the reason Hadar had given his people was that she was pregnant with his child. With how often she and Milo had been intimate during the honeymoon she thought that odds were fairly likely she might very well be pregnant, so she realized that both for the sake of keeping their cover and for the sake of protecting the child who would be heir to the throne maybe it wasn't such a good idea for her to run off into battle after all. She felt like a fool for not thinking of this sooner.

“But she needs paladins to fight beside her!” Sarahi said. “That's why she sent me to Caelum all those years ago!”

“And she has paladins by her side,” Estelle said. “Listen, I'm glad you came, but mother can handle herself. She's fought in skirmishes with rebel forces, Shadian barbarians, and bandits before. She's spent the last several years sharpening her skills for this sort of thing, she'll be fine. You worry about yourself, and about the kingdom's future.”

Sarahi resented the idea of sitting out of any battle against demon-worshipers, especially when her mother was fighting in it, but she realized that it would be the wisest, most prudent thing to do right now. Riding out into such a battle would put the entire kingdom's future in jeopardy.

“So...Milo,” Estelle said. “Does it still count as adultery if my husband says it's okay?”

“ESTELLE!” Sarahi yelled.

“Fine!”

“Flattering, m'lady, but I'm afraid I must decline. The Law makes no special considerations, that I know of, for allowed adultery. I would lose my powers as a paladin, and therefore be useless in defending my homeland.”

“With those muscles? Doubt you'd be useless, really, but fair point.”

A philosopher from long ago once said that every crown was made of lead and every throne was made of iron and sitting directly over a furnace. Having any kind of power was torture, really, because of the burden of having to decide what to do with it. Marquise Zoe had figured out the pattern the Nihilite army was moving in, and she was forced to make the hardest decision of her long career. The next village the Nihilite army was going to attack was the village of Fitra, which they would undoubtedly destroy. After they'd finished with Fitra they'd move on to the village of Pike's Eye, which was south-east of Fitra. Marquise Zoe knew that she could go directly to Pike's eye and cut them off, stop them before they could attack that village, but that would mean allowing them to destroy Fitra. On the other hand she could keep chasing after them and hope to catch up to them before they reached Fitra, but if she failed to catch up with them before they got there they might very well not only destroy Fitra, but also escape Zoe's reach for another few days yet and continue to destroy several more villages. If Zoe tried to save everyone she risked losing everyone, but if she was willing to sacrifice a few she could save much more people with much less risk.

There was, however, a third option, but it was far riskier than the other two. She could send half of her cavalry forces to chase the Nihilite army, attempt to catch them from behind, while the other half moved on to Pike's Eye. This was risky because it meant that if one force caught up with them, or managed to cut them off, they'd have far fewer soldiers with which to face the Nihilites. At the same time, this also meant that there was a small chance of catching the Nihilite army from both sides. Zoe cursed Magdiel for putting her in this position in the first place. If he'd only managed to stop them at Ten-Red Pass, which should have been far easier than he made it, she wouldn't be in this position, having to make such a hard call.

Eventually she decided on the third option, she'd split the forces, one to follow the Nihilites and one to cut them off. Much to her dismay, this meant passing control of one of the two halves of the cavalry to the next in command, who in this case was Magdiel. “I'm counting on you,” she said just before leaving. She wanted to tell him “Don't feck this up!” but being a Marquise she was expected to show more class than that. Besides, treating him like she thought he was a colossal screw-up wasn't exactly good for morale.

Magdiel took his cavaliers to follow the Nihilites while the Marquise took hers to cut them off. Both sides were spurring on their horses harder than they ever should have. Horses knew nothing about war, religion, politics, so what stock had they in these battles? They didn't know that the entire world could come to an end if the Nihilites succeeded in their goal, that demons would pour forth into the world and destroy everything. All they knew was that their masters were much crueler to them as of late. They kept forcing them to gallop as fast as they could everywhere they went, they rode them into dangerous situations, and they'd seen other horses get killed because of it. What drove them on to keep carrying their masters into battle? Instinct? Loyalty? Hope? Or perhaps some odd combination of the three? Perhaps all of the horses had their own reasons for not bucking off their masters and running as far away from all of this madness as possible.

The Nihilite army had reached the hills surrounding the village of Fitra, a nice little rural village with a river running straight through it. The river was the same one that provided water for the Marquise's castle. In fact the castle was built straddling the river, and some of its waters had been re-directed around the castle to create a flowing moat. Fitra was up-stream from the castle. Lorna saw a golden opportunity in capturing the river, once the village had been destroyed.

Normally, it didn't take long at all for the Nihilites to destroy a village. They ran in, massacred everyone, mutilated the bodies in horrific ways, and then left. The battle of Berknot had made the Nihilite generals far more cautions now, and so they set up their siege weapons to do the work for them. On the tops of the hills over-looking Fitra, they placed their many trebuchet. Down low they set up their ballistae, which appeared like giant crossbows capable of launching spears great distances. Between the village and the siege weaponry they had their thralls, standing in a phalanx. In back they had their own infantry guarding the flanks. Then, out in the fields nearby, constantly moving and split into four units, was the Nihilite cavalry, ready to launch a counter-attack on any ambushers.

The people of Fitra had longer than most villages to flee.

“Don't take anything, just run!” one of the villagers cried out.

“Come on, hurry! They'll attack at any second now!”

“Where are my children? Have you seen them?

Most of the villagers managed to get out long before the bombardment began. There were a few, though, who didn't make it out for some reason or another. Some because they were too greedy and tried to take too many possessions with them. Some didn't make it out because they were sick or injured, and couldn't leave in time. Others were caught up looking for their loved ones, in some cases after those loved ones had already fled. The casualties would be nowhere near as great as they were in previous villages the Nihilites had attacked, meaning that the villagers of Berknot had saved more lives than they'd imagined they would, but perhaps the sheer destruction would still send a powerful enough message and drive the Marquise to do something rash.

This time the twelve trebuchet launched not boulders or small rocks, but barrels of alcohol, hay, and oil that had been lit aflame. Not stones, but fire rained from the sky on the village of Fitra. Normally ballistae launched only a single spear at a time, but one of Lorna's engineers back in Nihilus had come up with the idea of tying many small spears to the big one with a rope that could easily come undone. When the weapon was launched not one spear would strike the target area, but many. Lorna had thirteen ballistae launching spears at Fitra, tearing through everything. Meriel had decided that this particular attack would serve to strike fear into the hearts of the Arxians not because of the number of people who died, but because of the sheer power of their siege weapons when they destroyed the town, and thus, when her soldiers would go in to finish the job after the fires had burned out, they would not collect the spears launched by the ballistae.

Fitra was soon nothing more than a ruin. It was hard to imagine that an actual village stood there within the past few years by the time the destruction was done. The bodies that Meriel's soldiers found in the ruin were so charred that there was nothing left for them to mutilate and make displays out of.

Lorna stopped Meriel before it was time to move on, “The river runs straight to the Marquise's castle. This gives me an idea.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We use the river to deliver certain...gifts to the castle. First of all, I'll have one of my warlocks infect one of these bodies with Gidim, and the body will be cast into the water, carried right into the castle. Second of all, I'll attach several Blackstar Talismans to pieces of wood that we'll send floating down the river, bringing daemons right into the castle as well.”

“Do you already have Blackstar Talismans enchanted to go off when they reach the castle?”

“No, but it won't take long for my warlocks to make some.”

“Good idea,” Meriel smiled at the thought of the Marquise's castle being torn apart from the inside out. Laying siege to such a fortress would be far too costly, but perhaps they could cause enough casualties to those inside that they wouldn't have to lay siege to it.

A few hours were spent in the village, looting what food and supplies had survived the bombardment, sending a few infected bodies downstream towards the Marquise's castle, and fashioning the Blackstar Talismans to be sent along that way as well. They'd created enough Blackstar Talismans to conjure a small army of daemons inside the castle's walls. Meriel and Lorna were content with the effects this would have, happy just thinking about all the Arxians who would fall when the river carried death to them.

But all the time spent on this allowed Magdiel and the cavaliers he'd taken with him to arrive. One of the Nihilite cavalry units spotted them riding in fast and rode out to meet them. They blew their horns to warn their comrades of the attack.

Magdiel himself was not truly trained as a cavalier. He wasn't good at wielding a lance from horseback, nor at using a cavalry saber, but he did know how to steer a horse with his legs while he fired arrows from his bow with both hands. As soon as the enemy cavaliers were in range Magdiel began firing arrows at them, aiming just ahead of them so that they'd unwittingly ride right into the traveling arrow. Arrows struck the Nihilite soldiers with such force that some of them were thrown off of their horses. If the weight of their own armor wasn't enough to crush them when they hit the ground the horses that then proceeded to trample them over and over certainly were. It was a common tactic in cavalry warfare, the wounds themselves didn't need to be lethal, the blow just needed to be strong enough to knock the enemies off of their horses. Falling off one's horse during a cavalry charge was lethal enough.

As the riders got closer, a few of the cavaliers on both sides produced crossbows, which had been loaded ahead of time to be used in this very situation. Wielding these crossbows with one hand while holding the reins with the other, both sides fired bolts at each other. The bolts pierced through the armor, but did not carry quite the force that Magdiel's long-bow had carried. This was only a brief volley, and both sides soon dropped their crossbows and switched them out in favor of lances, sabers, and war-hammers.

Meriel's infantry soldiers gathered together to form a strong phalanx to defend themselves against the enemy cavalry, should they intend to attack the main body of the Nihilite army. They held up their long-spears with one hand, fixing the end into the ground, as they held up their tower-shields with the other arm.

The Arxian and Nihilite cavalries closed the gap between them and collided with a terrible, thunderous, sound of clashing and smashing, followed by yells and screams. Lances struck their targets or their target's shields and shattered on impact, sending thousands of sharp splinters everywhere. Swords glanced off their targets' armor, having little more impact than a scratch. War-hammers hit men full in the chest, toppling them backward off of their horses and onto the ground below. Some blades found their way to the horses themselves, wounding them so badly that they crashed face-first into the ground, throwing their riders forward at such speed that there was a terrible crunch that followed them hitting the rocky ground.

Both sides had passed through each other's ranks, with some survivors, but many casualties, and both sides circled round again for a second strike, this time all of them far more prepared for what the other side had to offer. This time blades found weak points in armor much easier, and cavaliers were forced to leave their swords embedded in their enemies' flesh. Hammers caught men in the head and sent their heads flying off into the distance. Lances took men full in the chest, first piercing them and then throwing them back. Even those lances that had struck shields did so with enough force to send the riders falling back to where they'd be dragged with their spurs caught in the stirrups. One of the four Nihilite cavalry units was all but completely destroyed, but at great cost to the Arxian cavaliers, the remainder of which rode off into the distance. They fled the battle, at Magdiel's command.

“Damn them all!” Meriel shouted. “I thought that paladin was utterly incompetent! That attack was too well executed!”

“Send half a unit in pursuit!” Lorna commanded immediately.

One of the other cavalry units patrolling around the main body of the Nihilite army split into two, with one half pursuing Magdiel and the Arxians with him and the other half staying with the Nihilite legions.

Magdiel had anticipated that some of the Nihilite forces would be sent in pursuit, it seemed only natural that the Nihilites wouldn't want their assailants to get away with such a successful attack, so he had some archers waiting at the other end of the route through which he and his cavaliers would be riding. Magdiel and his cavaliers rode by the archers waiting in the trees and bushes, and Magdiel gave them the signal that they were being followed. The archers readied their bows, and as soon as the Nihilite cavaliers rode in the archers let loose their arrows and massacred the pursuing Nihilite cavaliers. Magdiel gave the signal for his cavaliers to split, and they did, splitting off what was left of their force into two groups that rode around and struck the Nihilite cavaliers from both sides. Even though Magdiel's remaining force was outnumbered, they managed to hit the enemy so fast and so hard that they all but crushed that half of that unit. The few remaining survivors from that last rush either surrendered or fled as quickly as they could.

With the battle finally over the men were glad to relax. Each said a quick prayer for the departed, but in spite of the heavy casualties they considered the battle to be, overall, a success. It was Magdiel's first success of the campaign. The horses, too, enjoyed the chance to finally relax. They rested their tired muscles that had been pushed to the limit for days, glad that their masters had finally stopped forcing them to run as fast as they could into harm's way, at least for the time being.

Lorna cursed loudly when only a small portion of the cavaliers she'd sent after the Arxians came back. The ambush they described was almost too well-planned to have been put together by the same fool who had so easily lost Ten-Red Pass to them, and Lorna could hardly believe it.

“Even a fool can have his clever moments,” Cory told her.

“Apparently,” Lorna said, looking at Cory, and leaving her cryptic statement at that.

“We need to move on,” Meriel said, “If he caught up to us like that it means he's been tracking us, and if he attacked with such a small force you know what that means.”

Lorna gave a knowing grin and nodded.

Cory shook his head. “Care to clarify?”

“His cavalry force was so small because it was split from the main force, the rest of it is elsewhere. They were not waiting to ambush the cavaliers the paladin lured into a trap. Archers were at the ready for that. This means that the rest of the cavaliers are somewhere else, waiting to ambush the rest of us.”

“And?” Cory said, finding this information obvious, and less than useful.

“The cavaliers were not paladins, meaning that they were not his forces exclusively, and they bore coats of arms that our spies report mark them as some of the highest ranking families of knights in Arx. Only one person would be fit to lead units of knights from such illustrious families, only one person would be able to command them to follow the orders of a paladin in her absence. The Marquise is waiting for us in Pike's Eye Village, I'm sure of it.”

“What if she just ordered her units to follow two paladins?” Cory asked.

“Unlikely, she'd want to see to this sort of thing herself. Besides, I've just got this feeling in my bones that it's her. I know it!”

“So what do we do?”

“We kill the Marquise.”