The King's Blood

Asterilhold flew over both keeps, but they were few. Three stood on the white keep, limp and dark with dew and damp. Two others claimed the farther side. Behind Dawson, twenty knights from fifteen houses. Bannien and Broot, Corenhall and Osterling Fells, the houses and holdings of Antea. Fifteen banners to their five. Four hundred men to whatever lurked behind those arrow slits.
    Jorey rode up beside him. The boy’s face was pale and closed. He had a wife at home now. Dawson remembered the first fight he’d ridden into when he knew he’d be leaving a widow behind. It changed things.
    “They’re split,” Jorey said. “Why are they split?”
    “In hopes of holding both sides,” Dawson said. “If they put all their men on our soil and we beat them back, they come to the far keep in disarray. If they put all their men in the far keep, they lose safe passage over the river.”
    “They’ll pull back now, though,” Jorey said. “They’re fortified, but we’ve numbers. They have to know that. If they make a stand together on the farther side, they stand a chance, at least. Splitting their own forces is madness.”
    “It’s bravery,” Dawson said. “Those three banners? They’re not there to win the battle. They’re there to hold us back until reinforcements come.”
    “We can overrun the far keep,” Jorey said. “With the men we have, we will take it.”
    “Perhaps not with the men we have after the white keep’s ours, though. And if their reinforcements come, not at all.” Dawson turned in his saddle, his eyes on his squire. “Sound formation. We haven’t got time.”
    They took the field, archers and swordsmen, pikemen and the small siege tower, its ram a log with its head dipped in bronze and long enough for three men to take each side. Dawson had seen midwinter festivals that had put more wood in the grate. But these were not castles, only river keeps, and the small ram was what they had to work with.
    His army took formation. There was only one task left before the world turned to steel and blood. He called for Fallon Broot. The man trotted over, his comic mustache flopping up and down with the gait of his mount.
    “Lord Broot,” Dawson said. “Will you take the honors?”
    “Pleased to, Lord Marshal,” he said, and to his credit, he sounded as though he actually was. Broot took the caller’s horn from Dawson’s squire and rode out toward the pale brick keep. When he judged himself just out of arrow’s range, Broot stopped and lifted the horn to his mouth. Dawson strained to hear.
    “In the name of King Aster, and of Lord Regent Palliako, and in the name of the Severed Throne, do you yield?”
    It seemed for a moment the day held its breath. An answer came, but too faint to make out. Then a flight of arrows flashing silver in the morning sun and falling just short of Broot and his mount. The knight lifted the horn to his mouth again.
    “Remember that I offered, y’cocksuckers!”
    Broot rode back hard, his face ruddy and his weak chin jutting forward. He surrendered the caller’s horn.
    “I say we split their asses, Lord Marshal.”
    “Noted, sir. And my thanks,” Dawson said. “Call the foot attack.”
    As Dawson watched, the attack surged forward like water after a dam has given way. Arrows flew from the white keep’s slits and archers appeared on the merlons. Over the shouting of the attack, Dawson could make out no individual screaming, but he’d seen enough of war to know it was there. At the distance of command, it looked almost calm, but within that flow of bodies, it was the loudest, most joyful and frightening feeling in the world. They had committed, and now there was no turning back.
    Thin ladders rose into the air with barbed hooks at the end to make them more difficult to shove back. The dull thud of the battering ram came, and again, and again. The soldiers of Antea who had shields had them raised over their heads, but there were few. Two of the ladders took hold and men swarmed up them. Dawson watched, his teeth worrying at his lips. There was movement to the north. At the edge of the river. Men, wearing the colors of Asterilhold. A hundred of them at least. They had hidden in the muck and cold by the river’s edge, preparing to fall on the enemy from behind. “Call danger in the north,” Dawson said, and his squire lifted the trumpet. Three short blasts for danger, two long for north. The ambush looked to be swordsmen for the greatest part. Only a few