Brother Stimson of Chapel Aubeard had been handpicked by Marcalo De'Unnero to lead the contingent of monks accompanying the Ursal fleet because of his absolute loyalty to De'Unnero's cause and his strong proficiency with the gemstones. The young brother, barely into his forties, was one of the few of his generation who rejected the teachings of Brother Avelyn outright. Stimson's peers, after all, had come to their full power as Abellicans during the time of the rosy plague and the Miracle of Avelyn at Mount Aida. Brother Stimson, too, had partaken of that miracle, and he could not deny that God had touched the world through Avelyn to defeat the rosy plague. Still, to Stimson, the magical gemstones were the gift of God reserved for the chosen of God - the Abellican brothers. The notion of using these stones among the populace so readily, as was espoused by the followers of Avelyn, seemed absolutely abhorrent to the man.
And thus, Stimson was all in favor of the current revolt within the Abellican Church, where Brother De'Unnero and Abbot Olin were reshaping the chapels and abbeys in the image of the Order before the days of Avelyn. By extension, Stimson had become a loyal supporter of Aydrian Wyndon, as well. Without Aydrian, there could be no revolution within the Church, so went the thinking, and thus, though he had always been loyal to King Danube and though he had always understood the successor to Danube's throne to be Prince Midalis, Stimson would forgo the desire for that logical ascension.
The Abellican Church, after all, was paramount.
To Marcalo De'Unnero, brothers like Stimson were the most valuable of resources as he moved along with Aydrian to bring the kingdom into the proper fold. Thus, he had rewarded Stimson with this most important of missions. Seven brothers had sailed with the fifteen ships of Earl DePaunch out of the Masur Delaval and into the Gulf of Corona. They had shadowed the land for many days before turning straight north, taking a direct line to the target: the island fortress of Pireth Dancard. The weather had cooperated, with no early-winter storms blowing across the waters, but with a cold westerly wind that the great ships had tacked into a fine, water-raising speed. Right on schedule that cold sunny morning, the dark tower of Pireth Dancard came into view.
Brother Stimson was among the first on the deck to spot it after the lookout's call came down. Standing at the front rail of Assant Tigre - the Behrenese words for Attacking Tiger, DePaunch's flagship named by Aydrian in honor of Marcalo De'Unnero - Stimson gripped the rail tightly at the sight. He heard the commotion behind him, many footsteps shuffling forward.
"We have the gemstones held ready," an excited Brother Meepause said to Stimson, and he held forth his hand with the graphite and hematite De'Unnero had given him. A couple of other brothers behind Meepause did likewise, though Stimson hardly seemed interested at that moment. It would be hours before any battle was joined, after all.
And Stimson secretly hoped that the gemstones, and all other firepower, would be unnecessary. Pireth Dancard and the Coastpoint Guards who manned it had not formally declared themselves for either Aydrian or Prince Midalis, after all. It was quite likely that Earl DePaunch and the Allheart escorts would be welcomed by the soldiers. That would be for the best, Stimson knew. The less battling that Aydrian had to do to stabilize the kingdom would allow for more concentration in securing the contentious Abellican Church.
"The bear rampant!" came the cry from the crow's nest, and Stimson gritted his teeth as the man finished, "No tiger!"
Pireth Dancard was flying the pennant of the Ursals, not the new flag of Honce-the-Bear, the bear and tiger rampant, facing off above the evergreen of the Abellican Church. The island fortress should have known about the change in flags by this time, though Stimson recognized that the Coastpoint Guards stationed out here would have no appropriate pennant for King Aydrian available to them.
"There will be a fight!" one of the younger brothers behind Stimson remarked eagerly. "They ally with Prince Midalis!"
That seemed to be the feeling all about the ship and those ships nearby, Stimson could tell in glancing around at the sudden commotion, at the eager faces and sparkling eyes. He held quiet his argument that perhaps the soldiers out here were flying the only flag they possessed.
Signalmen flagged each other across the waters and the ships moved from their fairly straight-triple line formation, with the vessels port and starboard of Assant Tigre bowing out wide and tacking to slow, and those behind sliding up into the vacated areas. In mere minutes, with the black speck of Dancard on the horizon barely larger than it had been at first sighting, the ships had moved into an approach formation that created two rows, seven up front and eight off center spaced right behind, instead of in three columns of five in a front-to-back line. Assant Tigre centered that front line. These were the "kill" ships, heavily armored and manned with regiments of archers and the seven gemstone-wielding brothers. The eight smaller craft behind, swifter and more maneuverable, each housed a pair of long-range catapults and soldiers trained in ship-to-ship combat.
"Each of you knows your duty," Brother Stimson said to his six fellow Abellican monks. "Since Earl DePaunch has chosen to concentrate us all on one vessel, we must be even more efficient and coordinated in our attacks. If resistance is discovered onshore, a catapult or a contingent of archers, then we must destroy that resistance quickly, before any real damage can be offered to this ship. Do you understand?"
Enthusiastic cries came back at him. Too eager, thought the older brother, who had seen a great riot in the days of the plague, a wild battle in the square of his small town northeast of Ursal. Stimson had heard men dying by the score, and despite his belief in De'Unnero and Olin and his acceptance that the Church and kingdom would not be secured without a fight, the man had little desire to hear those echoing screams ever again.
"Go and eat, if you have not, and make your peace with God before you find your positions," Stimson told the brothers. "Brothers, relax and understand that we still have hours at least before any battle will be joined."
With that, the commanding monk took his leave, moving to the center of the ship and the war room, to join in the discussion with Earl DePaunch and the other leaders.
He found DePaunch in nearly as agitated a state as had been the young brothers, and that he did not view as a good sign! "I will move to within three hundred yards before I turn right and sail about the island," DePaunch explained.
"Three hundred is within the reach of some of their greater catapults, those set up high on the rocks, my lord," remarked one of the other commanders, Guilio Jannet, an Allheart Knight who had served for many years under Duke Bretherford.
DePaunch nodded. "But hardly could they prove accurate at such a range,"
he explained. "The back eight will be split, four escorting us and four swinging left about the island. No enemy ships will sail beyond our reach."
"I would suggest you allow four to continue to sail past Dancard," said Giulio. "In case some have already fled - or soon will now that we have likely been spotted."
Earl DePaunch thought on it a moment, then nodded his agreement.
"Pardon, good Earl, but are we not presuming much here?" Brother Stimson interjected. "We do not even know if these folk of Dancard are friends or enemies."
"They fly the flag of the Ursal line, not that of Aydrian," said one of the other commanders.
"Do they even possess the bear and tiger rampant?" the reasonable monk replied. "Do they even fully understand King Aydrian and the legions he commands? These are Coastpoint Guards, after all. Will they not be persuaded that ours is the proper cause when they see Allheart Knights among us?"
"Are we to sail into the shadows of their deadly catapults?" Earl DePaunch retorted. "When four or five of these great ships King Aydrian has entrusted to me flounder in the waves, am I to then assume it would be proper to attack?"
"I only meant - "
"Their first response is the pennant they fly," Giulio added. "If a bear and tiger greeted us from above Pireth Dancard, then we would have sailed in as allies."
Brother Stimson recognized what was going on, and in truth, he had expected nothing different. Earl DePaunch was the most eager of young men, as was Giulio Jannet. Accepting Dancard as an ally to the throne would be a great gain for King Aydrian; defeating a hostile Dancard and forcing it under the flag of Aydrian would be a great gain for the careers of DePaunch and Giulio.
The ambitious earl was spoiling for a fight.
When Stimson moved back out on the deck, he found that the ship sailing beside Assant Tigre had brought down their colors and the crew were now running up the more traditional flag of Honce-the-Bear, the bear rampant that had served as Ursal's banner for more than a hundred years. The monk moved to the fore, beside his brethren, all of whom were watching the changing of the colors beside them.
"What does it mean, brother? " one asked Stimson.
The monk wanted to reply that it meant they would use that ship as a front in order to get close to the docks. He wanted to reply that it meant that they were going to get their fight, whether Pireth Dancard wanted it or not.
Instead, the monk just shrugged noncommittally. Marcalo De'Unnero had chosen him for a reason, he reminded himself. While he might not agree with the methods of Earl DePaunch, he surely agreed with the outcome of Aydrian's rule, especially as it pertained to the Abellican Church - the wayward Abellican Church, by Master Stimson's estimation.
The wind remained strong, filling the sails, and the fifteen ships remained under full sail, speeding for the island. Stimson and the others watched it grow and grow, until the tower set on the high rocks came into clear view, the pennant visible even without use of a spyglass. The island's southern docks were set right below it, down a rocky slope that housed a few buildings, including one long warehouse right on the water level. That hill was sparse of growth, with only a few patches of grasses and a couple of small trees, but it was well fortified, with crisscrossing walls of piled rocks leading up from the docks to the tower. Off to the right-hand side of the island, the eastern slopes, was a small settlement of stone houses, and there, as on the docks, a commotion was brewing, with many people staring out at the fast- approaching fleet.
Barely a thousand yards out, ten of the eleven ships dropped to half sail, battle sail, and as one, ten prows dipped lower in the water. The one remaining at full sail - the one to Assant Tigre's right, flying the pennant of Ursal - sped on toward the long wharf.
"Be ready, Master Stimson," came Earl DePaunch's voice from behind. "When Assant Tigre makes her run, I expect you and your brothers to trace our glorious path."
Stimson looked at the man, and at Giulio Jannet beside him, both grinning and nodding, obviously eager.
Into his early fifties now, Warder Constantine Presso was among the oldest and most experienced leaders of the Coastpoint Guards. And among the most proper, with his neatly trimmed moustache and goatee and traditional blue, red-trimmed overcoat, complete with a black leather baldric running right shoulder to left hip. He was a tall man, and stood impeccably straight, shoulders wide and back, eyes never down. He had served at all of the major outposts of the rugged outfit, from Pireth Tulme to Dancard to Pireth Vanguard in the north. The man was well aware of the politics of Honce-the-Bear, and of the games that were often played by eager young commanders seeking a quick road to promotion.
Presso had been told immediately when the fleet had sailed into view, and had arrived at the tower's top in time to watch their precision and training in action as they moved from an open sailing line to battle formation.
And now he watched them in this latest ruse, or whatever it was.
"She flies the Ursal bear!" cried a man from somewhere below.
It was true enough, Constantine Presso could see; the lone approaching ship was not flying the strange pennant that seemed to verify the rumors of a change in power in Ursal, but rather the more customary flag of King Danube and his predecessors. But, the warder noted, the ship was even then running a second pennant up her mainmast, the white flag of truce.
Presso wandered about his tower top, studying the catapult emplacements set among the stones left and right and the great swiveling ballista upon the tower top itself. He moved back to the lip overlooking the docks soon enough and called for his men to "stand ready."
Then he again looked out at the fast-approaching ship, and the ten others gliding in behind it - and glanced west at the four others who had broken off from the back line and were moving at full speed about Pireth Dancard. Presso even offered a glance toward the north, where the two Dancard scout ships had long ago sailed, departing at the first sight of the approaching fleet as per their standing orders whenever a potentially hostile vessel approached the fortress. For Dancard was not built to hold out against a great foe, but rather to serve as sentinel to the mainland on the south and Vanguard on the north.
"What king do they serve?" came a confused cry from one of the Coastpoint Guards in position along the defending wall below the tower.
Warder Presso looked back at the leading ship, to see that both the pennant of Ursal and the white flag had been cut away from the fast- approaching warship. In their stead, the ship had run up the same flag the others were flying, along with a second fast-climbing the guide ropes: a white flag bordered in black and with a red X over the field.
In mariners' terms in Honce-the-Bear at that time, that flag was one demanding surrender.
Presso noted that the ship's catapult was set and ready to fire, pitch smoldering in its basket. He watched in disbelief as a great contingent of archers crowded the deck, all wearing the uniforms of Kingsmen. They dipped their arrows into unseen buckets below the rails and brought them up, tips aflame, and bent back their great bows.
Behind Presso, the ballista crew broke into action.
"Hold!" the warder ordered them.
Unfortunately for Presso and for Dancard, few on the island had been hardened by actual battle. Presso recognized the ship's movements as a goad and ploy - the full sail and continued course gave her away - but some of the younger and more frightened Coastpoint Guards did not.
A few arrows arced out at the ship; one Dancard catapult fired, then the second.
A ball of pitch hissed as it fell into the cold water at the ship's side, but the second found the mark, splashing across the unfurled sails and setting them ablaze. From that fiery deck came the response, fifty flaming arrows knifing across the docks of Dancard, followed by a returning ball of pitch that splattered across the lowest levels of the wall.
The wounded ship tacked and steered hard, bending low into a direct turn for the island's docks.
Up on the tower, Warder Presso closed his eyes and shook his head, understanding more fully the tactic. Momentum would carry the wounded ship to crash into the docks, where her crack crew would be fast ashore.
He looked past that vessel to the other ten, and to the ten fiery balls arcing gracefully into the sky.
Master Stimson, too, watched those responding catapults, taking note that of the ten shots, only six had been aimed at the dock areas. The four longer-ranged shots from the trailing vessels climbed out to the east to land among the stone buildings, ignited all flammable material within their splash zones.
Including people.
Stimson closed his eyes as he heard the screams again, just as in the riots of his youth. Not the roars of battle lust that turned to grunts of pain, as with combatants; these were the shrieks of surprise and terror that arose from the confusion of innocents caught up in a fight they could not comprehend. Even the pitch was different, for among the cries coming from the small village were intermingled the screams of women and children.
The Abellican master glanced back at Earl DePaunch and saw that the man was not alarmed by the apparently errant shots. Stimson understood; DePaunch was goading Pireth Dancard on to a larger fight. He was leaving little room for common sense and a possible compromise here, little room for diplomacy. For now, suddenly, Dancard was fighting for her very existence. The soldiers were fighting not only to hold their docks, but to keep their families alive. Perhaps four hundred people lived on this island, but no more than a quarter of that number were soldiers, with the rest working as dockworkers and farmers and fishermen. And among those three-quarters of the folk were the family members, the wives and the children.
Stimson turned his attention back to the docks just in time to see the leading, wounded ship slide into the wooden pier. Great beams groaned in protest, on both ship and dock, and a section of the pier crumbled into the wash. Finally, the ship settled against the broken wood, burning and listing, but the crew didn't immediately debark. They lined the deck behind the blocking high rails and continued their barrage of arrows, great volleys sweeping across the docks.
Responding fire came at them from the rock walls, with a number of bowmen at least equal to the fifty archers on the wounded ship. The Coastpoint Guardsmen were well drilled, obviously, sending in volleys continuously, a third of them firing, then the second group, then the last, and back around in perfect timing. Many of those arrows coming out carried flaming tips, only adding to the confusion and devastation on the wounded ship.
A thrumming from above turned Stimson's eyes to the tower top, to see a dark sliver flash out, a great ballista bolt diving down not at the wounded ship, but at one of the other approaching six. The shot was true, nearly, for the bolt skimmed the front of the boat to Assant Tigre's far left, but glanced off the angled prow to splash harmlessly into the water.
Then came the second volley from the ships' light catapults, this time with all ten flaming balls splashing about the area just beyond the docks and lower rocks walls. The defenses were solid there, and the effect of the shot was minimal at best in terms of casualties. But the spreading bits of fire served the invaders well, for the defenders - slapping out smoldering pieces of splashing pitch or scrambling to find new positions away from the obscuring smoke - were clearly and necessarily distracted.
Some of the sailors on the wounded ship used the opportunity to continue their barrage, while others cut away the burning sails and worked to secure the craft more fully to the crushed dock area.
And the other six leading warships sailed in. The island catapults fired again, one scoring a hit high atop the mainsail of the ship immediately to Assant Tigre's left. The fires hardly slowed the vessel, though, and the crew, intent on getting ashore, hardly paid the small flames high above any heed. Many rowboats hit the water all about the ships, soldiers scrambling down with practiced efficiency and taking up the stroke immediately to get ashore.
Only Assant Tigre kept its course, straight in to the docks, maneuvering directly opposite the wounded sister ship.
"Master Stimson!" came Earl DePaunch's prompt.
"Focus your energies, brethren," Stimson told his six Abellican companions. "The catapult left of the tower."
Warder Presso rubbed his face as he watched the continuing approach and battle below him. He had known from the start that holding the island against such a fleet, bearing so many warriors, would not be possible. He had hoped to thin the enemy ranks enough initially to slow down the progress until parley could be pursued, however, and fully expected that his well-trained men would do so.
Perhaps a catapult could put another two ships out of commission. Perhaps his archers would ward the docks for the remainder of the day - there was really only one safe approach to the island, and the long wharf would only accommodate two ships at a time. If he could win these first moments of battle, he would force his enemy to come ashore wholly by rowboat, a much more difficult and time-consuming proposition.
Despite the movements and the minimal effects of the second catapult volley, Warder Presso believed that he and his men were doing exactly that. The wounded ship would prove a difficult debarkation, given its angle against the broken dock, and the second ship moving in would have only a narrow channel upon which to gain access to the crushed wharf. A well-placed catapult shot would lock down the wharf altogether, he believed.
Warder Presso held his breath, knowing that his artillerymen would now attempt to do just that, using the second docking ship as a backstop for their bombs.
But then Presso's breath came out in a burst, and his eyes popped open wide in both shock and horror as seven distinct lightning bolts leaped forth from that ship, each reaching up to blast the area about the catapult below the tower on the right. The warder leaned over the wall to see a couple of artillerymen scrambling weirdly, limbs flailing, hair dancing, while several others lay about on the ground, some moving, some not. Wisps of smoke drifted up from the war engine itself at several locations, and as Presso watched in dismay, one of the support legs of the catapult buckled beneath it, toppling the engine to its side.
"Abellican monks!" cried the commander standing beside the devastated warder.
"Allheart Knights!" cried another man, drawing Presso's attention back to the wounded ship, to see warriors armored in the garb of the famed Allhearts moving across the planks to the dock.
A second volley of lightning bolts shot forth from the ship, wreaking similar destruction on the lone remaining catapult.
The only formidable magic-wielders in all the world, as far as Warder Presso knew, were the Abellicans who served the King of Honce-the-Bear.
Pireth Dancard, an outpost of the same king, had little defense against such a magical assault.
Presso heard the ballista swiveling behind him, and he turned fiercely.
"Hold fire!" he cried. "And put up your bows!" he screamed over the edge of the tower, to the archers set about the defensive wall. He turned to his stunned commander and bade the man to run the white flag up at once.
"We must trust in the Allhearts and the Abellicans," he said to the group on that tower top. "They are the heart and soul of Honce-the-Bear; we must ask them for mercy."
"They serve the usurper king!" came the commander's reply, for indeed, the Saudi Jacintha had stopped through Pireth Dancard on her way to Vanguard weeks before with just such a report. "What of Prince Midalis?"
"We shall see," Warder Presso replied as he headed for the stairwell to take him down to the scene. "Without artillery, we cannot hold them off.
We are outnumbered five to one, I would estimate."
"We have defensible positions!" the commander argued, and indeed, Pireth Dancard was networked with many winding tunnels set with numerous bottlenecks and traps.
"Defensible against our own people?" Presso retorted. "Defensible against gemstone-wielding Abellican monks? Those tunnels were built for last desperate use against powries, Commander, or against any other foe who would not give quarter. Are we to expect such treatment from our brothers of Honce-the-Bear?"
The commander tightened his lips, obviously biting back a sharp retort.
But he held it to himself.
A thin voice from the tower top was not going to suffice in making the surrender general, and many more, attacker and defender alike, were killed or wounded on the docks and lower battlements. More volleys of flaming pitch came soaring in from the warships, striking the rocky hill higher and higher in succession until they reached right up to the gates of the sturdy tower. On came the Allheart Knights, covered by archery fire and more devastating volleys by the gemstone-wielding priests. By the time Warder Presso made it to the gates and flung them wide, the battle had nearly reached the fortress, with many more invaders coming ashore from the rowboats all about the dock area. Presso could hear cries from the east, as well, and he realized that the four trailing warships had sailed about the island, likely lobbing their catapult bombs intermittently.
Warder Presso took the white flag of surrender from the man beside him and waded out into the melee. Or at least, he tried to, for a sudden jolt of lightning, and then a second and third, perhaps even a fourth, jolted him and hurled him backward, where he lay helpless on the ground, his limbs twitching.
He took some relief when he noted another of his soldiers scoop up the flag and stubbornly run past, and then he knew no more.
"A glorious day," Earl DePaunch said to Master Stimson and Giulio Jannet.
The three walked the lower reaches of Dancard's fortified southern expanse, the smell of burned pitch heavy in the air. About them, bodies were still being removed - twoscore of the defending Coastpoint Guardsmen had been killed, as well as more than sixty of DePaunch's men, many of them the brave souls on the sacrificial boat that was still jammed up against the damaged long wharf. Other noncombatants had been killed in the village area, but no count had yet been formulated.
"Warder Presso will survive," Master Stimson informed the earl. Stimson had worked on the man with hematite personally, and now the other six Abellicans were out among the islanders, helping to heal their wounds.
"Only to be hanged, likely," Earl DePaunch replied, and he gave a coarse chuckle, which Giulio Jannet quickly joined.
"Take care of such an act," Master Stimson warned. "Presso has served Dancard for many years and is much loved by his men and the townsfolk."
"You would have me ignore his act of treason?" Earl DePaunch asked with feigned incredulity, for they all knew that the actions of Warder Constantine Presso were hardly treasonous, and were, in effect, more self-defense than anything else. "Good brother, we cannot have renegade commanders opposing the rule of King Aydrian."
"Does the man even know our king's name?"
"He will," DePaunch assured Stimson, "right before the noose tightens about his neck."
That brought another laugh from Giulio Jannet, which DePaunch summarily joined.
Master Stimson looked away, considering his own duties. There was one Abellican priest out on Dancard, a Master Coiyusade. He was a fairly distinguished member of the Church, and had been heard at the last College of Abbots, in which Fio Bou-raiy had been elected Father Abbot.
As his name indicated, Coiyusade was of Behrenese descent, though his family had lived in Entel for more than a century, and had intermarried with folk of Honce-the-Bear so frequently in the past that the master's skin was more the complexion of a man of Honce-the-Bear than that of a Behrenese. Despite his southern heritage, Coiyusade had voted for Fio Bou-raiy and not Abbot Olin at that College. The man had served most of his time in St. Rontlemore, the sister abbey and rival of Olin's St.
Bondabruce in Entel.
He had wavered in his vote at that last college, though, Stimson remembered, and had nearly been persuaded over to Abbot Olin's side.
Perhaps he could be moved toward the new reality of the Abellican Church.
A cry to the side turned the attention of all three toward a woman, running and screaming for her husband. She almost got to the flat rock off to the side of the wall where the dead were being piled before a pair of Kingsmen intercepted her, one shoving her hard to the ground and ordering her away.
Stimson realized that his task concerning Coiyusade would be much more difficult if such actions became common. He looked to Earl DePaunch, expecting a scolding of the soldier, who continued his harsh treatment of the woman, even kicking her a couple of times.
But Earl DePaunch just laughed again, and Giulio Jannet joined him.