Chapter 14 – War Beneath
At first light the scouts came back with mud to their knees and clay up to their elbows.
"They're digging," the lead said. "Near the willow cut. Earth's being hauled under hides. Short shifts. They stop a lot to listen."
Arion didn't waste time. "Undermining. Engineer, mark me counter shafts. Two north of the cut, one south. Wren, you take the first team."
"I'm going," Aric said.
Arion's eyes narrowed. "If the tunnel collapses—"
"Then I hold it until our men are out," Aric said. "If the wall falls, names won't matter."
Lysandra looked at him once, then nodded. "We'll keep the line above your heads."
By dusk, three narrow holes opened inside the wall walk. Braces went in. Bowls of water were set at the mouths to read the tremble in the surface. Every time the water quivered, the listeners tapped the beam and counted. When the ripple steadied, Wren tied his scarf and moved.
They went in belly-down: Aric in front with hatchet and short blade, two miners with picks, Wren, four Hawk soldiers with knives, and three Valeor volunteers who had thrown off their blue surcoats. Resin torches smoked and burned hot. The air turned wet and close after three body lengths.
No one spoke. Sound carried through earth better than through air. They dug by feel until the dirt in front of Aric felt lighter under his hand. Then they all heard it—soft thumps, wood on soil, the scrape of a shovel. Close.
Wren touched Aric's ankle twice. Aric set his shoulder, wriggled forward, and knocked the packed dirt ahead of him with the butt of his hatchet. Hollow. He signaled with two fingers.
Three quick strikes opened a hole the size of a fist. Enemy torchlight flickered through. Someone on the other side swore.
Aric smashed the rest of the thin wall with his shoulder and rolled through.
The enemy miner closest to the gap barely had time to lift his mattock. Aric caught the haft, yanked him forward, and buried the hatchet beneath his collarbone. A second man lunged with a short sword. Aric slammed him against a brace hard enough to crack the beam. The tunnel groaned. Dirt sifted.
"Short and mean!" Wren snapped behind him.
Knives flashed. There wasn't room to swing long blades. It was elbows, throats, knees. One Veylan tried to scramble past Aric; Aric grabbed his belt, hurled him down the side passage, and stepped in to block the two behind him. They hit him together. He didn't move. He slammed foreheads together with both hands and let them slide.
More boots thudded in the enemy shaft. The torch behind them smoked. Air got worse. Someone coughed and choked on it.
"Break the brace," Wren said, low.
Aric shoved his shoulder under the nearest prop and drove up. The beam creaked and lifted. He held it there while a Valeor knife-man hacked through the rope binding with three fast cuts. The brace slipped. Aric let it down slow, then shifted under the next. His forearms burned. He kept going.
"Back!" a Veylan voice cracked in the dark. They started to pull out.
Aric didn't let them. He pushed forward two steps, seized the main upright, and lifted again. Everything shook. A shower of soil came down. Someone screamed. "Out! Out!"
"Go!" Wren barked. Hawk and Valeor men dragged wounded backward. Aric released the brace and hauled a groaning Hawk soldier up by his cuirass with one arm, then shoved him into hands. The roof gave behind them with a heavy sigh and then a roar. Air punched at their backs as the enemy tunnel folded.
They came out of the counter shaft filthy and squinting. Healers pulled two men away. The others gulped night air as if it were wine.
"How many?" Arion asked.
"Two dead," Wren said. "Seven cut up. Their tunnel's gone."
Aric set the wounded man down carefully. "They were braced thin. They'll dig again."
"They will," Sir Malrec said from the wall-walk, voice flat. "And angrier."
They did. By noon another bowl showed fresh ripples. By evening, Aric was belly-down again, this time from the south shaft. They broke through to a side gallery and met three men and a brace frame. Aric took the first two by sheer weight. The third slashed his arm; Aric didn't even look at the cut. He grabbed the man's wrist, bent it until the knife dropped, and hammered him into the dirt. They pulled back and set an oil pot in the gap. The fire ate the brace rope; the gallery collapsed on its own men with a heavy cough.
On the third day, the enemy set a deeper mine. The listeners couldn't find it exactly, only a wide tremble. The engineer frowned, chewed his thumb, and drew a rough circle in chalk. "Too far to meet clean. They're trying to pull the ground out in one bite."
Wren spat dust. "They'll fire the props."
That night, the ridge shook. A low roll went through the earth, then a crack. A section of ditch slumped inward. Half an hour later, dark smoke boiled up from a hole on the enemy's side. The wind pushed it into their own camp. Torches scattered. Shouts turned to coughing.
"They fired it wrong," Lysandra said on the wall. "Too deep."
"And their air went back on them," the engineer said. "Let them choke."
Two more shafts tried to creep in over the next day. Aric broke one with rope and leverage—he jammed the enemy brace with a crow's-foot, then held a crossbeam up while Wren's man sawed clean through the tie. The ceiling gave in a slither. The last was a knife pit—narrow and fast, meant for surprise. Aric met it with surprise of his own: he tore the frontal plug with his hands, crushed the first man through the hole, and used the body to block the hole while a Valeor volunteer shoved a pot and lit it. That one smothered itself in its own smoke.
After three failed drives, the ridge quieted again, but not with the soft quiet of rest. It was the drawn breath before a shout.
At dusk, scouts came in with faces set hard. "The serpent-pin commander is at the front," one said. "They're massing. Drums run in chains from the ridge to the river. Siege towers are on the move. They'll hit everything."
Arion looked along the wall at men with black dust in the lines of their faces and red eyes that would not close. "Eat," he said. "Drink. Change shifts. At moonrise, no one leaves his post."
He stopped in front of Lady Nyra and her men. "You fought in the dark with mine," he said. "Valeor has our thanks."
"Save it for the end," Nyra said. "You still have a wall to hold."
Arion didn't smile. "We will."
Aric flexed his hands. The cut on his forearm had closed to a hard pink line. His shoulders felt heavier, solid as the stone under his boots. Every day, more. He didn't talk about it. He didn't have to. Even in the tunnels, where men suffocated and clawed the dirt, he had stood and held and lifted until the others were clear. Word had already gone around the barracks: the heir didn't break.
Lysandra came up beside him and bumped his arm with the back of her hand. "Try to let the rest of us fight this time," she said.
"Try to stop me," he said, and she snorted once.
The night rolled in fast. Torches pricked the enemy ridge, hundreds of them. Drums started, a low endless thunder. Ladders moved. Carts creaked. Squares of wood on wheels—towers—rolled into view like blunt-headed beasts.
Arion raised his voice on the wall. "No shouting. No wasted arrows. Hit what climbs, burn what touches stone, and pull what can be pulled. Pikes ready. Hooks ready. Archers wait."
Sir Malrec stood with the royal engineer near the north tower. "He'll come," the legate said, watching the ridge. "Men like that mercenary don't send others to the last step. They take it."
Aric didn't answer. He had eyes on the towers. He measured the distance, the slope, the ditch. He had already chosen where he would stand when the wheels hit the earthwork.
The enemy came in a wave that showed the whole army at once. Torches on poles. Shields overlapping. Drums beating men forward. Ladders at the willow cut, at the dead elm, at the tower base. Towers groaning toward the ditch. And behind it all, a low line of skirmishers drifting for the river—just enough to tie up the ford while the wall burned.
Arion's command ran the parapet like a steel bar. "Lift, brace, breathe, lower! Hooks, now! Sand! Hold!"
The first ladders hit and were torn away. The first tower bogged at the ditch, then men with planks raced up and built it a bridge under arrows. The tower crawled again. A jar of pitch burst and ran black along the base. The engineer's buckets killed it before fire could take.
At the willow cut, three ladders slammed together and men swarmed. Lysandra's voice cut. "Second rank, step! Third rank, hooks!" Bodies fell. Another ladder rose to replace what fell. The line bent and straightened, bent and straightened.
Aric looked down at the nearest tower's wheel. He dropped off the parapet into the inner yard, grabbed two coils of rope, and ran for the sally port at the base of the wall. Three men followed him without asking why.
"Gate," he said, and the porter opened just enough to let a body slide through. The four of them went out low under the walk in shadow. The tower ground closer, two wheels on their side up on planks, two still mired. Enemy archers in the tower's top sent arrows skimming, but the angle was bad and the wall's merlons shielded them.
Aric slid on his belly, looped a rope around the nearest wheel, and heaved the knot tight. He threw the rope to the second man. "Around the stump," he whispered. The man ran the line around the cut willow trunk and back. Aric took the end himself, wrapped it twice around his forearm, and set his feet.
"Pull," he said.
The tower lurched. Men inside shouted, thinking it was their push. Aric leaned back and dragged. His feet carved trenches in the dirt. The wheel bit the plank, jumped, then slipped off the edge. The tower groaned and went crooked. A plank cracked. The rope burned lines in Aric's forearm. He pulled until the wheel dropped into the ditch with a slam that shook the frame.
"Back in," he said, breathing hard.
They slid through the sally port. On the wall, the tower's top leaned just shy of the crenels. Archers on the wall rose and shot into the slits. The tower's return fire went wild.
At the willow cut, a man in black mail with a serpent pin on his cloak stepped onto a ladder and started to climb. The men above him howled when they saw him and pressed forward harder to clear him space.
"There," Sir Malrec said, calm. "That's him."
Lysandra's hooks tore another ladder away and threw it into the bodies below. The serpent-pin commander reached the top rung and swung a sword with a hooked tip meant to catch a shield rim. He caught one and ripped it down. The man behind it yelled and dropped.
Aric was already moving toward that spot. He didn't think about it. He went until he stood three stones down from the ladder lip and looked into the man's fogged left eye.
"Come up," Aric said.
The commander smiled, all teeth and no joy. He came.
He was fast for a big man. His hooked blade flicked for Aric's wrist, then turned for the throat. Aric leaned aside and took the strike on the boss of his forearm, then stepped in and hammered his hatchet down. Sparks snapped. The commander slid his blade around and tried to take Aric's knee. Aric checked it with the flat of his boot and answered with a short left straight into the man's chest. Mail rang. The man took it and didn't fall. He grinned again, pleased to have found something solid.
"Good," he said.
They traded three quick cuts in a space that should have fit one. The hook missed twice and bit stone once. Aric's hatchet scored a groove across the man's gorget. The third exchange wasn't clever. Aric shoved him. The man didn't move. The man shoved back. Aric didn't move. Then Aric hit him with the pommel, twice, and kneed him in the thigh hard enough to deaden the leg.
The commander's foot slipped. He windmilled once to keep balance. Aric took his sword hand by the wrist, turned it outward, and levered the man's arm against the crenel. Bone cracked. The hooked blade fell. The commander head-butted Aric and made his nose bleed. Aric didn't blink. He took the man by the gorget with one hand and the belt with the other and turned his body sideways over the merlon. For a heartbeat the commander hung there, boots scrabbling at nothing.
"Go tell them," Aric said, and threw him.
He went end over end into the press of his own men and vanished.
The line at the willow cut broke in a blink. Ladders went light. Men let go of wood and ran into one another. Hooks tore three frames down in a clatter. The tower that had nearly kissed the wall shuddered on one tilted wheel and then stopped for good.
"Push!" Lysandra shouted, and the wall moved like one body. Pikes drove down. Arrows took backs. Sand killed an oil jar. Somewhere along the parapet a man laughed once, too hard, and then stopped and breathed.
On the far end, Valeor men under Nyra's banner drove their hooks like they'd been born on this wall. A Hawk boy fumbled a bucket, and Nyra took it from his hands and dumped it herself without looking at him. "Next," she said, and he moved.
The drums on the ridge stuttered and lost their beat. A horn tried to rally; another answered late and wrong. Across the field, the Veylan line hesitated in a way an army shouldn't. Then it bent. Then it went.
The ladders came off the stone. The towers pulled back with broken wheels screaming. Men ran, not in formation now, but in knots.
Arion didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "Hold the wall," he said. "No pursuit. Count our dead. Water and bread. We'll speak in the hall."
Men sagged where they stood, then straightened again because there was still work. The ditch was full of wood and bodies. The wall bore new scars. But it was still a wall.
Aric wiped his nose with the back of his hand and looked down to see if the serpent-pin commander moved in that mess. He did not. If he lived, he crawled. Either way, he would not be climbing again tonight.
In the hall, they met with dust still in their hair.
"Undermines broken," Wren said. "Towers driven off. Ladders beaten. The ridge is a mess. They'll have to choose between staying and being eaten by what they've built, or leaving before we take their camp."
"They'll leave," Sir Malrec said. "Or they'll die tired."
Nyra looked at Arion, then at Aric. "We fly our banners together again tomorrow."
Arion nodded once. "We do. And when they go, we burn what they leave and keep what moves."
Aric said nothing. He was listening to his own breath and the space between beats. Each day, heavier. Each day, steadier. In the tunnels he had held up the earth. On the wall he had thrown a man bigger than most and made an army step back to watch him fall.
He didn't smile. He felt the shape of what had to come next. The enemy wouldn't wait to be hunted. They'd run if they were smart. If they stayed another dawn, it would be to buy their retreat with blood.
At dawn, the answer came by smoke. The ridge showed thin columns from burned wagons. Carts rolled away on the river road. Farther back, a knot of men in better armor clustered around a banner that tried not to droop.
"They're pulling out," Lysandra said.
Arion's jaw set. "Not far enough."
He looked at Wren. "Choose men who can run without tripping on their own feet. Valeor with us. We take their camp at first light tomorrow. Burn the timber yards. Break the last tower frames. If we catch their rearguard, we take heads."
Sir Malrec didn't argue. "I'll write the crown that Hawk Keep held through undermines, fire, ladders, and towers," he said. "I'll also write that the alliance with Valeor held under it. Expect questions. Expect eyes."
Arion's eyes went to his son. "Let them look."
Night fell soft and thin. Men slept sitting up against the inner wall with bread in their hands and helms by their knees. Aric walked the parapet once. He passed the willow cut and the dead elm and the spot where he had thrown a man into a dark full of sharp things. When he came to the stair, he went down.
In the yard, he lifted a beam with two men on the other end and set it where the engineer wanted it. He didn't feel the tremor in his arms until he set it down and the weight left him. He looked at his burned forearms. The skin had already closed, pink and tough. Tomorrow they'd be new again, like nothing had touched them.
He slept without dreaming. He woke to frost on the rope rings and the taste of iron in the air.