Prologue: The Battle of Isvitar Castle

Author’s Note: This doesn’t fit with the rest of my story so I’m having to cut it, but I wanted to post it anyway. So, without further ado: enjoy!

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Detzân, Maktran 18, 4549 (4549-04-18 CR) | 🌘🌒🌕🌕🌗

The civvies—my friends and neighbors—held their weapons uncomfortably, carrying them gripped in their hands like wallflowers holding cups at the worst party. My eyes were watering watching them with the light of the rising sun boring straight into my skull, but I saw them moving.

One of them shuffled over the castle boulevard’s blazing white stone to a compatriot and started muttering. Shuffle, shuffle. Moved back to their spot. Did they have assigned positioning? Had they bothered to plan that much? Hard to say with their locations shielded by the glowing expanse of the courtyard between them and me.

All of us royal guards were staring at the horizon, everyone holding the same posture with our right hands on our primary weapons. If you had asked me at that moment why we were ruining our eyesight and tiring our arms out, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It wasn’t like bravado and shows of force were going to save us from getting killed. It was a simple game of numbers: there were about thirty of us, and nearly five times as many of them. At least, that had been the estimate the last time our sergeants had decided to update us. I gather the climbing numbers were bad for morale, so I think they stopped counting.

The hard knot of fear in the middle of my chest twinged while I watched them. The knot had been there since morning muster, like stage fright multiplied by a million, and nothing I did would ease it. I’d been thinking about ways to de-escalate this situation since I’d woken up—though I’d long before concluded there was nothing further or different to be done. An archmage couldn’t fix this. Ruminating was the kind of thing you did, like running your tongue over a sore in your mouth.

I’d asked our general what we needed to do—hoping for some guidance or comfort—and he had looked me in the eye and said, “Die like men.” Thanks, sir. Even when we were about to face down a civilian mob, he had to get that little dig in, let me know I was less than him for being a woman.

You know what, I bet dying like a woman is way better. I bet it involves less brooding. I could go for some dying like a woman right now.

From my right, where Baker was doing his own impression of a mannequin, a murmur: “You ready, Cooper?”

“Sure,” I murmured back, carefully so my voice wouldn’t shake. “Never more.”

I knew he could tell I was giving him a brave front, not that we weren’t all pretending not to be scared. Nick Baker can read me like an open book. It’s pretty mortifying. I have no idea why we’re friends; probably because he doesn’t give me shit for what he sees.

“I figure,” he continued, like I hadn’t spoken. “We should hit a corner and get back to back, once the ranks break. Less chance of bad luck that way.”

It was a solid strategy, one everyone would be trying to employ. We were junior guardsmembers, kids who knew our way around a rapier and a whip (or axes and a glaive, in Baker’s case), but not much else. We were proper fucked. “You never know, it might not come to fighting.”

I felt rather than saw him glance at me, since I was still doing the Horizon Stare. He didn’t call me on my bullshit. I didn’t call him on his.

We glared into the light for ten minutes more, with the sun shining on my leather armor making me sweat all the while, and not a breath of air to relieve the feeling stirring. Mid-Maktran isn’t the most cool part of spring. But there was usually at least a breeze or something.

Finally the Guard-Captain ordered the gate lowered and started towards the middle of the two sides to parley, her boots thumping against the white stone. Talking to the townsfolk alone hadn’t been her suggestion, and she’d told the nobleman who had suggested it where he could stick his ideas; but later we’d found out she’d been overridden by the King himself.

Let them air their grievances, he’d said. Let us try to listen and understand, he’d said. This is why nobody should let nobles be in charge of anything. Anybody who knew Isvitarans and had argued with us before knew there was no getting through to us when we were mad like this.

No, if you had an angry Isvitaran in front of you, you had to fight back—not let them ride roughshod all over you—and once they’d gone off and licked their wounds, then you tried to hear them out. You had to let them get it out of their system first. None of us will listen for shit when we’re seeing red.

These folks hadn’t gotten it out of their system. And the Guard-Captain was heading straight for them, clutching a pretty speech some spoiled Count or whatever had written up. The outcome of this was inevitable, and watching it happen in front of me, in real time, was going to haunt me for the few minutes I’d live past it.

Small mercies, I guess.

The Guard-Captain stopped barely out of range of the ballistae, making my gut twist. Yeah, she also wasn’t expecting this to go well, and she was telling us to stay back in as clear a way she could manage without being able to talk to us.

“I’ve a message from the King for you all.” The Guard-Captain’s voice was calm. It sounded like she was giving orders on the parade grounds, or something equally matter-of-fact. “‘Citizens of Isvitar City, let me first begin by apologizing for the failures of leadership that have led you to this juncture. There have been many mistakes, most of them mine, and I regret them keenly.’”

For about a minute more she went on, detailing the King’s self-identified sins. The actual problem—that it had been a hungry winter which had been followed by a lean spring—remained unnamed. I wondered if he knew the true reason why there was a peasant revolt at his door. Probably not.

Because it didn’t identify any of their actual grievances, just a long list of other reasons why he shouldn’t be King, people started getting antsy. Someone—a huge man with a prominent belly and a white beard—stepped forward, put his hands around his mouth, and called out, “What about the rations?”

I had to admit I was surprised at his calm. I didn’t recognize him, and that combined with the fact that he was both a leader and had an accent I couldn’t quite place gave me pause. Something was pinging at the back of my brain.

The Guard-Captain stopped reading. “I’ve brought your concerns to the King. This, however regrettable it is, is his response.”

A wave of grumbling rolled over the gathered citizenry. There were some sounds of people readying their weapons, clacking them against the cobbles to test their strength, that sort of thing.

The man put his hands back around his mouth. “Is there anything at all in that dross that talks about what he’s going to do about the rations?”

The Guard-Captain shook her head. “Nothing.”

Now there were really a lot of people raising weapons. The ringleader also drew his; he had a falchion, a soldier’s sword, and it looked like it’d seen plenty of combat. I suddenly placed his accent as from Obrescion, our neighbor. The pinging in my head got louder, and the twisting in my gut got stronger. Surely this wasn’t what it looked like. But even if it wasn’t, guardsmembers were muttering about ‘Bresckies and gullible townies.

To her credit, the Guard-Captain didn’t take a step back or draw her weapon. Instead, she gazed at the ringleader, waiting for his move.

“Are you going to stand aside?” he pressed.

She shook her head. “No. I have my duty, and I will do it even to my death.”

And that, as they say, was that. The ringleader looked back at the people behind him, twitching his head towards the Guard-Captain. Four townies with forge hammers and a sickle flanked him, and they all spread out around her. In a five-versus-one fight, regardless of relative skill of the combatants, you’re going to go down unless you’ve got some kind of magic on your side.

Not only did she not have magic, she didn’t draw her sword. Avoiding shedding civilian blood. All of us knew why, and all of us knew running out there wouldn’t do anything but throw away our lives, too. So all we could do was watch—not turn away, though we all wanted to, because it would mean only her enemies saw her when she died.

The end was inevitable. After she went down, the ringleader stepped back, letting the civvies do the rest of the dirty work. They finished it with brutal efficiency, the blows smacking into the Guard-Captain the only sound in the sweltering expanse between us and the rest of the mob.

It was the silence of the crowd that was getting to me. They weren’t burning mad, they were cold. That was scarier to me than if they had been in a rage. At least with a berserker you’d be killed quickly.

Once they were sure the Guard-Captain was dead, the ringleader sheathed his falchion, picked up the royal proclamation, and tore it in half from the top down. “This is what I think of your King.”

Then he swung his arm forward, telling the citizens to advance. And they did. Walking.

At least at first. They weren’t trained as soldiers, obviously—or rather, most of them weren’t. I was keeping an eye on the Obrescionite soldier, but he was soon swallowed up by the crowd once they started running, since he kept walking.

With the civilians not knowing how to maintain ranks or keep their cool in battle, soon the ones that were more anxious to fight started jogging, then running, then sprinting for the gate.

Now there was noise, people hollering in excitement or fear or both, boot steps clacking against the cobbles and thumping on stone, the Lieutenant screaming for us to turn about-face. We all did at the same time, the maneuver having been burned into our legs with endless drilling. We drew our weapons on command.

By that time the combatants—they were all combatants now, whether they were townies or no—were on us.

Step one: get off the wall. Baker and I had discussed this, about how we’d be pulled off the second someone got a chance to do it. We both jumped down right into a couple of people. No time to apologize. I almost lost my rapier to somebody grabbing my arm, but I elbowed whoever it was in the face and they let go, having never been trained to take a blow and keep fighting. I shoved another person coming at me out of the way, trying not to hurt them, because civilian deaths would make everything worse.

I should just let them kill me, a detached part of me said. I acknowledged this was sensible, even as I fought like an animal for my life. Someone shoved me upwards from behind and I rammed my heel into their guts. Someone else grabbed at my mouth and hair and I bit them while they pulled out one brown tuft. There wasn’t any conscious thought that went through my head about this. It was just written into every part of my body: I didn’t want to die.

There started to be some breathing room amongst the mass of people. But I was being buffeted further and further away from where I’d started—away from Baker—and that got me panicked. I couldn’t lose Baker in all this. If he got killed because I wasn’t with him…

I stopped playing around when the first person with a weapon started swinging at me. It’s fine if some untrained townie hits me with a fist, I can take that. Weapons make people dangerous. So I took my rapier and, once he swung past me, I stabbed his hand like it was a piece of jerky I needed to cure. He screamed and clutched it in close to his gut, stepping backwards, and got trampled by the people behind him, who didn’t see him coming.

I didn’t have time to regret my first kill. Off to the side, I heard Baker yelling like he was getting thrown around by a bear. I started shoving my rapier at people, and that convinced them to get out of my way, although there was someone who decided I was a target and started stalking behind me.

That was fine. As long as I could reach Baker. That was the only thing on my mind.

I was almost to him when I heard a smack that cut his yelling short. It reminded me of when they’d hit the Guard-Captain with the first hammer strike, and I thought, Oh gods, he’s gonna die. My throat closed up and I started killing people because they were in my way. I don’t know how many I must have went through. My body had taken over because my mind had gone.

Then, there he was. Parrying someone that had a club from his spot on the ground, using the butt of his axe like it was the blade of a sword. There was one good thing: he’d found a wall and gotten his back to it. His arm was giving out, though, and there were two people swinging at him.

I saw the other one winding up for the blow that would kill him, and then I saw red. Next thing I knew I had stabbed my blade deep into his attacker’s gut. I guess the other guy got the impression I meant business, because he fucked off in a hurry.

“Holy fuck, Cooper!” Baker complained.

“Shut up,” I growled, trying to pull him to his feet. There was a corner right there, if we could make it to it. But he wasn’t getting up. “How bad?” I asked him, turning to face the people stalking me, the Obrescionite soldier among them.

“Eh—pretty bad,” he said, wincing. “Hard to sit up straight, feels like the ground’s spinning. You know. Normal stuff.”

I scrambled to draw my whip, letting my blade drop to my feet. I needed range more than I needed force. Maybe later I’d regret having dropped my rapier, but I was immediately thankful I’d hustled, because I barely managed to snap my whip to keep the Obrescionite at bay. He’d have overrun me, if I hadn’t gotten my weapon ready. Likely he still would, eventually. But I wasn’t letting the group take Baker without a fight.

So I fought. And fought. I couldn’t give you the blow by blow if a mage sharpened my memory for me and told me to repeat it back. I just knew my technique needed to be on point, each snap and pull of the whip perfection. And it was. I don’t know for how long. I had never dueled like that before; I had never tapped into the reserves I was delving into then.

I started to get tired. I made little mistakes at first—I kept thinking my body would continue to be in peak shape for me for as long as I needed it to be, and then it wasn’t. When I started slowing down, I panicked and had a hard time adapting.

The Obrescionite pressed his advantage, too, stepping in and cutting me all over in places where my guard wasn’t firm enough, then jumping away. The whip’s range was the only thing keeping him from butchering me. But it wouldn’t protect me for long.

He was going to be on me at any moment. But then, a reprieve: the sharp blast of a horn startled us out of the battle haze. Maybe the Obrescionite was getting tired too, because he stepped back.

I held my posture somehow, but every muscle started screaming at once. I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my body. I started shaking. Some figure I must have cut, all of five and a half feet tall, barely standing up, gasping like a chain smoker and trembling so hard I almost dropped my whip.

“Royal guards of Isvitar Castle,” called a voice. It took a second, but I placed it: the Major General—the big boss. “Lower your weapons. Everyone, lower your weapons.”

If he’d have waited ten seconds, I’d have done what he’d told me without being asked. But as it was, a jolt of adrenaline flooded through my body and I thought: the hell I will!

The Obrescionite smiled at me and sheathed his falchion and I thought, Whatever the plan is, this is part of it.

I’ve always been a good soldier. I’ve managed to follow orders that were outright stupid or cruel before, but I’d never been told to lower my weapon in the middle of a battle. Everyone around me was calming down, but I couldn’t make myself relax. Every single instinct I had said I shouldn’t do this. It would be quietly surrendering to my death.

From my ankle, Baker whispered, “Cooper. Cooper, it’s gonna be fine.”

I took another huge breath and let my arms lower. I even opened up my hands and let my whip drag the ground, though it terrified me more than anything I’d been asked to do before.

And just like that: the Battle of Isvitar Castle was over.

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