Chapter 7 – Blood Upon the Battlements
The horns of war shattered the night. Torches flared along Hawk Keep's walls as men poured from barracks and towers, buckling belts, lifting shields, snatching spears. From the watchtowers came the cry:
"Veylan banners on the plain! Serpent standards—many!"
Lord Arion strode into the courtyard in full plate, hawk-crest bright on his breast. Lysandra kept pace at his shoulder, braid tight, mail fitted cleanly. Captains clustered, receiving orders in clipped barks.
"Infantry to the east curtain. Archers, firepots up—count your ranks. Pitch to the crenels. I want the gatehouse garrison doubled. Move."
The keep answered with motion: boots thudded on stone stairways, braziers roared, the portcullis groaned as chains tested their weight.
Aric came down the steps from the inner hall. He paused only when Arion cut across his path and halted close.
"You will not take the wall," Arion said. His voice was even, his eyes unblinking. "You are unblooded. This is a siege, not a tourney ground. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Aric answered.
"Good." Arion turned his head. "Lysandra—gatehouse with me. You'll command the relief to the east curtain."
"Yes, Father," Lysandra said.
They moved off in a storm of orders and iron. The first black volley hissed from the dark beyond the walls, a wind of arrows that rattled against stone and shields. Men shouted. Archers answered with streaks of fire.
Aric crossed the yard at a steady walk. Helm. Shield. A plain spear from the rack. He climbed the inner stair into the furnace of the battlements.
The wall was a tangle of flame and bodies. Firepots smoked. Archers loosed by rank, their cheeks streaked black. Below, ladders slammed against stone, iron hooks screeching. Serpent shields lifted; helms rose; the first Veylan hands reached for the parapet.
"Push that ladder!" a lieutenant roared. "Heave—heave!"
Aric slid into the line at a gap. The first Veylan over the lip lunged. Aric's spear struck beneath the jaw and drove through. A second man vaulted up; the spear flicked and the point found collarbone, ribs, heart. The third took the boss of a shield full in the face and went down. Aric wrenched the spear, felt it splinter against iron, let it go, and stooped for a fallen sword.
"Who is that?" someone gasped. "Hold with him! Hold!"
More ladders thumped home. Pitch poured. Men screamed and fell. A serpent wedge formed where the defenders thinned, and into that wedge came a Veylan knight commander in heavy mail with a serpent-crest helm and a mace big as a door hammer.
"Break them!" he bellowed, and brought the mace down.
A Hawk shield fractured. The man behind it stumbled. The wedge pressed. Aric stepped into it, blade up. The mace crashed against steel; the ring leapt across the wall. Aric's boot bit stone. He shoved inside the arc and cut—armpit, hip seam, throat seam—three swift strokes. The knight folded and toppled.
For a heartbeat there was a silence that felt like a held breath. Then the Hawks roared as if the sound itself were a weapon.
"The young hawk! Hold! Hold—drive!"
Aric moved like a metronome. A blade rose; he cut the wrist and the throat behind it. A shield shoved; he struck the knee and put its owner down and ended him through the gap under the rim. A ladder tilted; he hammered hands until the rungs emptied and the whole thing pitched backward into the dark.
Down the wall, Lysandra fought with her unit, clean and exact. She looked once toward the center and froze for half a heartbeat, seeing her brother soaked, steady, and merciless, then snapped her attention back to the men in front of her and kept the line from breaking.
"Cavalry to the gate!" Arion's shout carried along the stone. "Ride and break them when they fall!"
The sally gate opened like a wound. Thirty Hawk riders thundered out, lances set, hooves throwing sparks. They hit the retreating serpents where the line wavered and broke a hole clean through.
On the wall, the push-and-pull turned one step at a time. Ladders burned. Bodies fell. The serpent wedge collapsed when its hinge died. Aric carved forward, and the men around him found their feet and their throats again and went with him.
Dawn bruised the east. Smoke smeared sky and field. By full light, the plain below the keep was stippled with the black of fallen men and charred ladders. The serpent standards reeled and dwindled into mist.
Aric stood at the parapet with his sword down by his thigh and blood drying in hard lines across his jaw and mail. Bodies lay around him in a rough arc, as if he had been a fixed point and the night had turned.
Lysandra came first. She halted three paces away.
"You disobeyed," she said.
"The ladder would have taken the wall," he said.
She worked her jaw and nodded once.
Arion arrived with helm under arm, hair damp, face smoked. He looked at the dead, at the living, at the banners, at the blade in Aric's hand, and last at Aric himself.
"You disobeyed me," Arion said.
"I did," Aric replied.
Arion held his gaze, then inclined his head a fraction. "You fought as a Hawk. Remember your next lesson: strength without mastery turns inward. Control it."
"Yes, Father."
Around them, the whispers multiplied and stuck.
"The young hawk…"
"He split the commander—saw it with my own eyes."
"Not a boy. Not tonight."
Lady Serenya climbed from the stair, hair threaded with ash, calm as ever. She took in the scene and came to her family's side.
"If he rises this quickly in the open," she said, quiet, "the light will draw eyes. So will the shade."
Arion acknowledged with the smallest movement.
A horn blew from the haze beyond the field. Hooves drummed. A rider burst from the thinning smoke and hauled up below the gatehouse, horse lathered, cloak torn.
"My lord!" he shouted, hands cupped to his mouth. "Scouts from the river road! A second column—Veylan steel—marching hard. They'll reach us by noon!"
The wall's hum died at once.
Arion turned on the captains. "Dress the wounded. Water the living. Count arrows and replace every shaft. Archers to the north tower, infantry to the east and north curtains. Standard-bearers, lift them high; I want the serpent to see we stand."
He faced Aric, decided something in the space of a breath, and spoke for all to hear. "You will hold the north tower with Lysandra. No ladder touches that stone."
"Yes, Father," Aric said.
Lysandra's mouth eased. "With me," she said.
They moved at once. Squires and soldiers fell in. A grizzled archer with pitch-blackened hands staggered to Aric's side, half-bowing without meaning to.
"Water, bind, and back to your places," Aric said to the cluster nearest him. "You've seen worse than noon will bring."
"Aye, my lord," the archer answered, surprised to hear the honorific in his own mouth.
The keep shifted into its second stance. Buckles tugged, straps re-knotted, fresh bundles of arrows thumped into hand's reach. The champions of the night melted into their companies and became anchors.
By midmorning, the smoke had lifted enough to show a wide line unfurling along the river road—a dark ribbon pricked with spearpoints, the serpent banners climbing their poles as if they meant to seize the wind itself. Drums rolled. The ground began to tremble again.
Arion walked the wall with his captains and set his formation like a smith sets teeth:
— Archers massed on the north tower and along the adjacent curtains, firepots banked, sand ready for spills.
— Shieldmen two ranks deep behind the crenels, reliefs rotated every dozen minutes.
— Reserve pikes at the stairheads, ready to surge where a ladder bit and men thinned.
— Cavalry held tight within the yard, mounts watered, lances re-headed, their gate crew under orders to open on a single signal.
"Signals are two—two—one," the gate-captain repeated. "No mistake."
"No mistake," Arion said.
The second Veylan host advanced without hurry, as if confident the first had softened the keep enough that time would do the rest. When they came into bowshot, the Hawk archers lifted, waited through three counts, and loosed. The sky filled with knives. Men went down. The serpents closed ranks and came on.
"Ladders!" a voice called from the far bastion. The word flew along the parapet.
Sand hissed, pitch smoked, arrows thumped into meat and wood. The first ladder bit stone beside the north tower. Lysandra was already there; her unit heaved, broke fingers, stamped faces, shoved until boots slipped and the ladder tore free. A second ladder slammed home two crenels down. Aric crossed the space in four efficient steps and met the first helms as they rose. Iron rang. Shields thudded. Another ladder found the stone; he shouldered across again. His strokes were quick, spare, accurate, nothing wasted.
Men around him settled as if a stake had been driven in the ground and they could tie to it. Orders went out and were obeyed. Where the press thickened, reserves surged. Where a gap opened, it was stuffed. Where pitch spilled, sand fell. The wall became a single instrument played by steady hands.
Below, the Veylans tried the old trick—two ladders to draw, a third in the blind. A boy on the inner walk piped the pattern to the tower hornist; one blast turned to two, and the reserve pikes boiled down the steps and boiled up again where needed. The third ladder rose and fell before the third helm appeared.
"North gate!" a runner shouted from the stair. "Lord, messengers—two—under flag!"
"Hold your fire," Arion ordered, hand up. The archers lowered, lines of flame quivering. Two riders in Veylan colors edged forward beneath a white rag and lifted their voices.
"Lord Arion! Our lord demands terms! Lay down arms, pay levy, yield men to the muster, and keep your lives and titles!"
Arion let the silence sit long enough that the wall could hear the words ripen and rot.
"You brought terms under a truce after you threw men at our ladders all morning," he called back. "You'll leave the river road, and you'll carry our answer to your lord."
"And what answer is that?" came the reply.
Arion lifted his sword and pointed it to the serpent standard. "No."
The wall shouted the same word until the sound became weather.
The truce riders wheeled away. The serpent line tightened. Drums pounded. Ladders came again, and with them, the men who carried them because someone behind held a blade at their backs.
"Archers—fire at will!" Lysandra cried. "Left crenel—ready! Heave—now!"
Flame poured. Wood crackled. Screams braided with the drum.
At Arion's signal—two—two—one—the sally gate opened, and Hawk cavalry surged out for the second time that day. They did not drive deep; they slashed and withdrew, breaking rhythm, forcing the Veylans to glance sideways and backward when all their eyes should have been up. On the parapet, that glance was all Aric needed to end three climbs in three strokes and kick three ladders back into the press.
By noon, the serpent line frayed. By mid-afternoon, it buckled. Toward evening, it ran.
The last ladder fell from the north tower with a clatter that sounded like lids closing on coffins. The archers slumped and grinned ash-gray grins. Men gripped forearms and laughed once, hoarse, and took water like pilgrims.
Arion stood at the corner of the tower and looked down the long face of his wall—banners up, men on their feet, the yard below already filling with litters and lines at the cistern and whispers that would drift into songs by night.
He faced his children. "Well fought," he said. "Both of you. See your units watered, counted, and relieved." He lifted his chin to Aric. "Report to me at dusk."
"Yes, Father," Aric said.
Lysandra nodded, breath steady, blade nicked, mail spattered. "North tower holds," she told the nearest captain. "Mount a double night watch. No one sleeps at the crenels."
"Yes, lady," the captain answered.
As the sun slid and turned the field bronzed and ugly, the story took on legs. The young hawk had stood on the battlements, they said, hacking through wave after wave as if the wall itself had put arms in a boy and sent him forward. The knight commander had fallen with three quick cuts. The cavalry had ridden at the right breath. The ladders had risen and fallen like tides, and still the towers stood.
By full dark, the keep was quiet enough to hear the wind in the banners again. The wounded slept. The dead lay in tidy rows. Down in the plain, the last serpent torch vanished beyond the rise.
On the north tower, Aric stood with helm under his arm. A dozen soldiers nearby ate in silence, stealing looks at him when they thought he wasn't watching. One of them, the black-handed archer, finished his crust and saluted with it.
"My lord," he said simply.
Aric returned the nod.
A sentry on the far bastion raised a horn and sounded two long notes. Heads turned. Far off along the river road, a prickle of lights moved in a deliberate line and stopped where the ground climbed into a low ridge. The lights settled and steadied.
"Campfires," Lysandra said, joining him, eyes on the glow. "They'll come again."
"They will," Aric said.
The wind pulled the hawk banner straight and held it there, a silver shape against a moon-silver sky.
Men along the wall fell quiet and watched the ridge. Word ran soft as breath from post to post.
"The young hawk," someone said.
"The hawk holds," another answered.
The night carried both phrases outward, toward the waiting dark.