Two Kingdoms 37: Homecoming

[DoctorM]

TWO KINGDOMS 37: HOMECOMING

This is the thirty-fifth part of an AU construction about a Gwynedd where the duel at Kelson Haldane's coronation went very differently indeed. We are now almost three years into the Gwynedd Wars-- Charissa's new kingdom at Valoret against the Haldanes in the south and the kingdom of Torenth in the east. This episode follows immediately after "Dinner". As always, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated.

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The Duke of Carthmoor looks over the city and remembers the old saying: Nothing save a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

Like broken teeth in a ruined jaw, Duke Nigel thinks. 

The duke is there on his horse early on the morning of his victory. He's riding up the great high street of Rhemuth to Rhemuth Castle. He's still in chainmail and leather, and there's drying blood on the longsword at his side. None of it is Tolan or Marluk blood, and this isn't a triumphal entry, but it still counts as a victory. So he reminds himself.

There's still smoke drifting up over the city, and the streets are mostly empty. Somewhere out there in the distance he can hear the sounds of horses and metal— fighting of some kind still going on.

Up the high street from the main city gate to Rhemuth Castle, the street is lined with ruined buildings. Not every building— some are standing untouched, though their neighbors are in shambles. Whole houses have fallen into pits, and pieces of walls and roofs lie scattered in the street. The horses crunch across pieces of broken stone and bits of furniture.

Lord Aberdaron is there next to Duke Nigel with the ducal staff. He leans over to the duke. "They didn't burn them," he says. "They undermined them all— brought in tin miners from up in the far north. It would've taken months. This was all planned long ago. Any body important who left the city, this happened to them. All these houses, the ones they took down, these all belonged to great lords and King Brion's officials."

Duke Nigel nods. "I know who they belonged to. A couple of them were mine."  The duke looks back at Aberdaron and the others. "What am I going to find up at the castle?"

Aberdaron shrugs.  "Nothing burnt. At least they didn't do that. But there's almost nothing there. It's all still standing, but it's empty. They stripped it mostly bare. I mean, the wine cellars, the archives, the royal library, they took all that when the Shadow Queen left months ago. The stables are all empty, too. What they've been doing these last couple of weeks is just taking everything else. I think they were even dumping things in the river at some point. There's barely a chair left in the castle."

The duke looks back at his captains— Aberdaron and Lanherne, Trevanion and Tredegar. "Where are the rest of the Llannedders? Do we have them all?"

"Most disarmed by now," Tredegar says. "We rounded most of them up. Some put up a fight. Those we're dealing with."

"The city mob, too— we're dealing with them as well." That's Lord Lanherne. He's the duke's new provost marshal for the city, and it's been a very long night. 

Aberdaron pushes his horse closer to Duke Nigel. "Our losses," he said. "Not many to the Witch Queen's troops. It's those effing Llannedders and the city rabble. Fighting in a city's no joke. Especially when you can't trust the people you've hired."

Duke Nigel reaches for a water flask at his saddle. "Get me numbers," he says. "How many did we lose? Did we take any prisoners? If we did, are there any important ones— any high-born ones, anyone who betrayed Kelson? The Llannedder dead I don't care about, but let's get a count of how many city dead. Those are our people, even if they were rioters. Where are we still fighting?"

Lanherne and Trevanion both point off north and east, away from Rhemuth Castle.  "Up there," Trevanion says. "Llannedders who're still trying to loot. City mob fighting them over the pickings. They're fighting each other up there. Fighting our people, too. We'll have it shut down by late this afternoon. At least it's daylight, so they aren't starting more fires."

"We'll get Kelson up from Desse," Duke Nigel says. "I'm not looking forward to showing him this, though. This was supposed to end with my nephew riding back to his throne and the crowds cheering."

"It's still a victory," Aberdaron says. "We get Rhemuth back. Kelson's home again, and the Witch Queen's gone. That's a victory."

Nigel is staring at the fallen houses. "It doesn't feel like one."

Desse, Duke Nigel thinks. He'd fed the Llannedd mercenaries loot at Desse. Hired men plundered; that was the way the world worked. He'd wanted their appetites blunted for the final push to re-capture Rhemuth. But they'd been greedier than he thought.

The Witch Queen's Rhemuth garrison had mostly withdrawn before Duke Nigel had arrived. The Carthmoor forces hadn't needed to deploy for a siege. The duke had sent the Llannedd mercenaries to storm the main city gates, and he'd kept his own men behind them as a blocking force, just in case the Llannedders lost their nerve. 

The Tolan and Marluk troops had put up a fight for the gates and the outer city wall. By the time the Llannedders had gotten through into the city just after dusk, they'd been taking hard losses from archers and at a couple of barricades just inside the gates. Their blood was up and they'd slipped the leash.

The Llannedders were a long way from home, and Rhemuth, even as an occupied city, was wealthy enough. They'd started to break away and loot, and they'd started to lash out at anyone they could find. The Witch Queen's men had mostly made their escapes, and the Llannedd men took their anger out on any locals they found.

After that, everything had gone bad. Llannedd mercenaries ranged through the city, looking for plunder. The local mobs had come out of the poorer quarters to do the same, and to defend their own territory from the Llannedders. Duke Nigel had ordered Carthmoor troops into Rhemuth city, and he'd given Lanherne and Trevanion carte blanche to restore order.  Mailed fist, he'd told them. Teach them a lesson.

Some of the Llannedd men had submitted and allowed themselves to be disarmed and marched off outside the city under heavy guard. Others had fought back. There were dead Carthmoor troops out there in the streets, and there was a story (unverified, so far) that a dozen Royal Haldane Archers had been killed down by the cathedral and their bodies strung up from a footbridge. Duke Nigel had come in himself with his aides, and he'd led charges down city streets, hacking from the saddle at drunken Llannedd axemen.

There had been fires in the city. Of course there'd been fires. There were wineshops and moneylenders' buildings, and no hired soldier ever turned down the chance to loot places like that and torch them afterwards. There was another story that thirty of the Witch Queen's archers had been run down into a house and burned there— no one knew if that was true, but the story was all over the city. Nothing like the great fires from the night of the Witch Queen's coup, but the fires had spread into the poorer quarters. Some were still smoldering now.

And just before midnight the whole of the western city skyline had gone alight, like lightning on a summer's dusk.

The castle's still here, Duke Nigel thinks. Rhemuth Castle and St.-George's are both still there. The secretariat buildings are still there, too. The streets filled with the houses of lords and courtiers and officials were lined with ruins like broken teeth, but the castle and the cathedral still stood. Rhemuth-the-no-longer-Beautiful still stood. At least he could give Kelson that.

"Your Grace." Aberdaron is pointing. Horsemen are coming up, a long trail of exhausted men-at-arms following a Carthmoor banner. That's Lords Denevore and Lisburne, and the duke's son is with them. The two lords lift off their helmets and bow from the saddle.

The duke nods back. "My lords. Conall."

Denevore's face is grim. "We've been down to the river, Your Grace. You'll need to see it. It's...all gone. The docks, the warehouses, everything."

"Not just burnt," Lisburne adds. "Everything's burnt to the waterline. The pilings for the wharves are all destroyed."

His son gestures back west. "Not just set alight, father. They covered the docks with something, and the pilings, too. Poured it in the warehouses. They used something to make it all burn down to nothing."

Duke Nigel frowns. "Pitch? That's what you're saying?"

Conall shakes his head. "No, father. It's not that. It was something else. Pale green, and thick-- like a sauce. Something that sticks to everything when it burns. My lord Lisburne says it'll burn floating on water. You have to pour dirt over it to smother it out. It's something Deryni."

"That Tolan bitch," Denevore says. "She had some kind of black magic done. Whatever it was, it was Deryni. The whole waterfront's gone. All the warehouses, all the docks, all the boatyards. Everything will have to be re-built from nothing. Everything in the warehouses is gone— the second time since the coup. If you look over the river, they wrecked everything at the west bank docks, too. Rhemuth's done as a trading city for...I don't even know how long."

"Christ in Heaven." Duke Nigel lets out a long breath. "Something Deryni. Some kind of Deryni thing." He shakes his head. "Don't spread that. Don't. Just say it all burned. Say the silk warehouses started it. The last thing I effing want is anti-Deryni riots. This is bad enough as it is."

"There's more, too." That's Lisburne. "You look out in the river and you can see the tops of masts. They dragged boats out into the river, loaded them with ballast, and let them sink. The Eirian's shallow here. They must've evacuated on barges and sunk things behind them as they went. What they did was block the river behind them. I don't think you can get anything past the wrecks for a while, 'til we clear the river."

Aberdaron pushes his horse in next to the duke. "That's the same kind of thing they've been doing all along. Every bridge between here and Desse broken, every ferry sunk, cattle run off, village wells caved in. They're doing it north of Rhemuth, too.  The Witch Queen and her people are trying to keep us from supplying Rhemuth or provisioning an army that could go to Valoret. She wants a wasteland between here and Valoret, and she's working hard at that."

"It's her husband," Tredegar says. "He's Deryni, too, and he's a hired soldier from out East, they say. God alone knows what kind of black arts they do out there."

Nigel nods. "I've met him. Years ago, down in Fallon. I was down there with a few hundred men— supporting one side in a city coup. He was a hired light-horse captain, worked for one of the other contenders. I hadn't remembered his name or his face 'til the coup at Kelson's coronation. I played chess with him once. I remember that. Beat him pretty quickly. Played backgammon with him, too. Lost some money on that, though. He's smart. He'd know about whatever this green Deryni fire sauce is. That's what she must keep him for. Her husband's the one she goes to for black arts. We'll deal with Charissa the Cruel and with her husband too, soon enough. I do promise you that."

The duke looks over at his son. "You're pale enough this morning, Conall. Not from the fighting, I'm thinking. I taught you better than that." He puts his hand on his son's arm. "They burned everything. You didn't see burned bodies, did you?"

Conall shakes his head. "No, and I'm glad. I don't want to see that. Not someone burned alive."

"What, then?"

"We caught a pack of looters on the way back. We surrounded them and ran them down. My lord Denevore had them hanged on the spot. I'd never seen that before. It's...not what you expect."

"No," Nigel says. "It isn't what you'd expect."

"We rode here past some other places where there were men hanging.  It's not like seeing dead men at a skirmish or a siege. I can look at what happens at a fight. That's one thing. I'm knighted; that's part of what you taught me. Hanged men aren't the same."

Duke Nigel squeezes his son's arm. "No, it's not the same. It's necessary, but it's ugly. Burned is a lot worse, though.  These kinds of things— riots and looters and hired men off the leash —aren't what we're knighted for. But we have to do them anyway."

Conall rests a hand on his longsword hilt. "I keep hearing our song. Forth in glory, you know? This doesn't feel like it. Fighting the Witch Queen and her people, sure. Putting down the Llannedders, sure. Not hanging our own."

"We're the king's men," Duke Nigel says. "We do what we have to do to defend Kelson and the crown. Sometimes it comes to this. I won't say it gets easier, and it shouldn't get easier. But you start understanding more why it has to be done."

Conall nods to his father and tries not to grimace. 

Duke Nigel gestures at Aberdaron. "Go take some men and get north of the city. Find out what's happening up there. Are they re-grouping? Are they abandoning the villages north of here? Find out who they have up there— Tolan and Marluk men or their own hired men? Light horse or men-at-arms? Do they mean to fight for anything between here and the bend in  the  river?"

There's still smoke drifting in from the riverside. Nigel watches it move east and south on the morning breeze. "My lord Trevanion— get gallopers headed south to Desse. Tell my nephew that we have Rhemuth back." 

He looks at the broken timbers and stones of one of the houses. "Tell King Kelson that we're bringing him home to be crowned again. Tell him we've won a victory. Tell him he's king in his own city again. Tell him that."

[Jerusha]

Brilliant!  Both the writing and the strategy - well done!

But the revenge could be brutal.  Sigh...

[DoctorM]

Brilliant!  Both the writing and the strategy - well done!

But the revenge could be brutal.  Sigh...

Thank you, Jerusha! Both the writing *and* the strategy! I feel very honored!

The Gwynedd Wars are likely to become brutal and complicated. I think we're far past the point where either Kelson or Charissa would be willing to settle the war on terms. And there are an awful lot of people on both sides who are starting to think of how to leverage the wars for their own interests.

Thanks again for enjoying the writing!

[DerynifanK]

As always your writing is well done. Destruction for destruction's sake is never a good strategy (for Charissa, not the author). I agree that the revenge will indeed be brutal and sadly there will be many deaths before it ends. I do hope the main characters survive but I cannot say I want Charissa to win. Too prone to cruelty for cruelty's sake.

[DoctorM]

As always your writing is well done. Destruction for destruction's sake is never a good strategy (for Charissa, not the author). I agree that the revenge will indeed be brutal and sadly there will be many deaths before it ends. I do hope the main characters survive but I cannot say I want Charissa to win. Too prone to cruelty for cruelty's sake.

We'll see what happens. It's going to be a grim next couple of years all across the Eleven Kingdoms.

I am glad you like the writing. I enjoy writing these episodes.