Chapter 14

This morning I rode east. If King Kemmou found out right away that we had captured Port Zamfara and left immediately, he could have arrived with troops as early as eight days ago. Father estimated that two days ago would be the earliest he’d get here. So far, our sentries hadn’t reported anything in any direction. Yesterday, I rode south until the sun was directly overhead, not stopping to explore. With two horses, I alternated so they wouldn’t get overly tired. I estimate that I rode three-quarters of a day’s normal ride, spotting nothing. I was happy that my shoulder no longer hurt.

Today, I did the same thing to the east, also riding with two horses. Our defensive preparations were complete. Racks filled with sheaves of poison-tipped arrows and bolts lined the north and east walls. Every man had at least a dozen extra bowstrings.

Two hundred ceramic pots full of flammable oil were stored in each crèche-like trough filled with straw and rabbit pelts along the north, east, and southern walls. More were available, ready for delivery where they were needed. Stations to hold hot coals were in place, as was a covered supply of kindling to start fires to light the oil-soaked cloth plugging each ceramic pot.

Larger, sealed, oil-filled vases were hidden in the Nordlinger’s hideouts to the east and north. The Nordlingers only had to get the lamp oil to the edge of the grain field and ignite it with a hot coal. They had a good supply of coal in each hideout, along with plenty of food and water in case it was a few days before the attack started.

Just when I was debating whether to turn back or continue east for a little longer, I noticed a cloud of dust in the distance. Making sure that my crossbow was strung and ready to use in case I met an enemy scout, I continued east, accompanied by my trusty wolf scouts. Not even two miles later, I heard screaming from just beyond the rise of the next hill.

When I got there, King Kemmou’s scout wouldn’t be able to report to anyone. One of the wolves was chasing his horse and seemed to be herding it towards town. Once the wolves cleared the top of the next hill, I rode up as far as I could and hiked the last hundred feet.

The column of troops looked impressive. It was hard to count the troops from so far away and with them moving, but it looked like three hundred mounted troops with the rest on foot. Roughly half of the infantry troops looked to be poorly dressed with no armor and only carried spears or pikes for weapons. The rest of the troops were a mix of archers and swordsmen wearing the same uniforms that the Baron’s troops wore when they caught up with us at the deserted fishing town. The infantry was walking four-abreast, and the procession stretched for about a mile.

Whistling for the wolves, I turned back to Port Zamfara and spurred my horse. When I reached the area where our first layer of sentries were hidden about ten miles from town, I waved my arm in a circle over my head and then pointed at the town in a pre-arranged signal to let them know that I had spotted enemy troops. Ram’s horns immediately began sounding the warning call. I heard each successive layer of sentries closer to town repeat the warning.

Father was at the east wall when I neared town and met me just inside the gate near sundown. “They were about thirty miles away when I saw them just after midday,” I reported. “I saw about three hundred cavalry and the infantry were four abreast for about a mile. Half of them wore peasant clothing with no armor and only carried spears or pikes. The other half wore the Bajasanian uniform. Half were archers and half were swordsmen,” I finished my report.

“Excellent, only about twenty-five hundred trained soldiers. The cavalry won’t do them much good here, though,” Father chuckled. “Neither will spears, pikes, or swords. That means only a thousand or so of the troops are any threat to us. Kemmou plans to send the peasants first so that we use up our arrows or reveal our defenses before he sends the trained troops. He’ll send archers right behind the peasants hoping to pick off our archers while we concentrate on the attacking peasants,” he mused. “They’ll have a difficult time carrying scaling ladders tall enough to reach the top of the walls,” he added.

Next, I reported to the scouts Father would send out to follow the progress of the army. I sent three wolves with them, including Karako. Everyone laughed later that evening when the enemy scout’s horse from this morning showed up at the gate with one of the new female wolves herding it. More scouts headed to the north and to the south to make sure there were no surprises approaching from the south or the north.

For two days, we tracked the army as it approached. Each day I went back out with three wolves to help. Between my three wolves and the three with the other scouts, King Kemmou lost ten scouts. Eight of the ten horses were shepherded to our East Gate. As the number of missing scouts grew, the pace of the army slowed. They finally arrived late in the afternoon. Just before their arrival, the assigned Nordlingers had gone into their hideouts.

The other scouts, the wolves, and I picked off another ten Bajasanian scouts before the army got too close for comfort. We took their horses and weapons and left the bodies for the army to find. Only four of the scouts died from arrows; the wolves left the rest pretty torn up. I could only imagine how nervous their pickets would be tonight, thinking that there were dozens of vicious predators in the area.

I slept in a tent with the rest of the troops tonight, wearing the army uniform again. Father woke me when the moon was barely a quarter of the way up, the narrow sliver barely providing any light. “The swordsmen are heading for the secret tunnel,” he said quietly. “It looks as if they plan to spend the night in there and attack from inside the town when the main attack starts in the morning.

“The Nordlingers won’t be able to start the fire, and it really won’t do any good now,” I replied.

“I know, and we’ve got to jam that secret entrance closed tonight now that their troops are inside,” he said.

“Let me send the wolves out the North Gate. They’ll find anyone hiding out there. I’ll sneak out shortly afterwards and crawl through the grain fields to the secret entrance. A steel arrowhead wedged in the crack should prevent the door from opening,” I suggested.

“Too dangerous,” Father replied.

“The wolves will find anyone close enough to be a problem. They might even draw attention away from where I am if they find someone who makes a lot of noise. Otherwise, the grain is tall enough and the night dark enough that they won’t see me crawling to the tunnel entrance. I’d never see them, either, but the wolves will smell them,” I protested.

“Fine but be careful. Your mothers might not let me back in the house if you get hurt doing this,” he warned.

“You’re assuming that you’d make it past my wives,” I chuckled.

“Be careful,” he repeated more forcefully, but I saw the beginning of a smile on his face.

The gate was barely open enough for a single wolf to squeeze through, but they darted through the gate and into the tall grain. I’d barely exited the gate and made it to the grain when a scream knifed through the night, followed by a loud growl.

Six more screams followed that one by the time I made it to the secret entrance. Using a piece of cloth to muffle the noise, I used a rock to hammer the arrowhead into the narrow joint at the bottom of the door, and then brushed dirt over it to help hide it.

“Who’s there?” a male voice whispered. Knowing that I was the only person from town out here, I slowly took my crossbow from my back, cocked it, and aimed towards the voice. A shout of pain rewarded my shot, followed moments later by a louder shriek and wolves growling. The moon had traversed just over half the night sky by the time I got back to the gate. I was worried about the wolves, but they all ran out of the field and through the gate right behind me.

“Well done,” Father said proudly as he hugged me.

Shortly after breakfast, the Bajasanian army formed up to attack the east wall. The three hundred cavalry rode toward the North Gate as if threatening it. Only ten archers were assigned to the north wall to shoot at the cavalry if they got close enough. Five covered the South Gate to warn us if anything happened there.

Once we had learned the makeup of the Bajasanian army, Father had started men working to erect a wooden palisade and stockade of sorts inside the walls. The palisade ran from the East Gate to a large holding pen they built, one taking up nearly the entire courtyard area inside the castle walls. The ground for the entire length of the stockade and inside the large pen was covered with straw and dry grass. Men who weren’t good with a bow stood guard outside the palisade with pikes, spears, and dozens of the clay pots filled with the flammable lamp oil.

Just like Father predicted, the peasant troops were forced to attack first. Kemmou’s archers fell in behind them. As the peasant troops neared the gates, our archers ignored them and began targeting Kemmou’s archers. Men swung our gates wide open, and we started shouting for the peasants to hurry through the gates. To encourage them and to discourage the archers, we threw dozens of lighted clay pots and shot numerous fire arrows, starting the grain fields on fire.

With the wind blowing from the east, the last of the peasants had to hurry to escape the flames. The enemy archers were kept at bay as the fire continued to spread slowly to the east, despite the wind. Then the Nordlingers in the underground hideouts joined the fracas, pouring their oil and starting the eastern edge of the grain fields on fire. The men hiding in the north did the same. Then, our archers shot fire arrows as far as they could, setting the fields south of the town ablaze, completely surrounding the archers with flames.

Their only hope of escape was to brave the flames approaching slowly from the west. As they made it to safety through the flames, they found themselves in range of our archers. Those who survived the first wave of arrows quickly dropped their weapons and surrendered. They were ordered inside the walls, too.

We’d warned the peasant conscripts to throw their weapons out of the stockade or we’d set fire to the straw beneath their feet. Our archers dealt with the handful that refused, although they only wounded the men, letting the poison incapacitate them so we could shackle them. We began shackling the rest of the men and told them they would be safe as long as they cooperated.

Most of them were grateful just to be alive. They attacked because Kemmou threatened to have his archers start shooting them if they didn’t. Their own archers killed several of them even before the attack even began because the peasant troops were reluctant to attack, afraid of the wild animals that had already killed so many sentries.

“That’s why we opened the gates and let you inside,” Father addressed them. “Kemmou is now down to less than five hundred troops. If they’re still alive, the swordsmen are trapped in the secret tunnel he thought would give them surprise access to us.” I was surprised when the peasant conscripts started cheering.

We immediately shackled the now unarmed archers as they entered the city walls. That left only a handful of stragglers and the three hundred cavalry, less about fifty that got too close to the walls because they didn’t know the range of our crossbows. A hundred of our archers exited the East Gate and headed towards the cavalry.

Father glared at me when I jumped on a horse and headed for the east gate with five wolves in hot pursuit. The fire had quickly burned itself out once it ran out of dry grain to burn. The grass and weeds in the unplowed fields weren’t dry enough to catch fire easily and only the edges of those fields burned.

With help from the wolves, I found Kemmou’s body inside the remnants of his burnt tent. Unable to run fast enough to escape the flames, he desperately sought refuge in his tent where the advancing flames caught him. Having already explored this area, I knew that the closest trees I could find to use for a travois were along the river. Unwilling to go that far, I tied a rope around Kemmou’s feet and slowly dragged him back to town.

When the men on the walls saw what I had, a cheer went up. It grew much louder when I rode through the gate and the peasant conscripts saw what I had. Shortly afterwards, our archers returned with about fifty cavalry as their prisoners. “Most of the rest forded the Mazagan River and turned east. They’re probably planning to use the old bridge and think they’re halfway home by now,” Lieutenant Anzekko reported to Father.

With that news, our soldiers hurried back outside. One hundred of our archers formed a half-circle around the entrance to the secret tunnel, unblocked the door, and opened it. Less than half the men from the tunnel survived, mostly the ones inside the walls where the airways weren’t blocked. Other men spread out, checking fallen cavalry and archers to see if they were dead or just paralyzed. Well over half were still alive and we carried them into town in carts and wagons.

Father released the peasant conscripts, giving each man two silver coins and enough food to make it home. The shackled, uninjured troops were put to work gathering the grain. Most of it survived the fire, although slightly singed, and was now lying on the ground.

The Nordlingers in the hidden underground shelters north of the Mazagan River brought in six of the escaped cavalry the next day. Those six had been wounded and fallen from their horses, paralyzed. They also returned two more bodies. One died when he fell off his horse, paralyzed. The other got his foot caught in his stirrup when he fell from his horse and his horse dragged him nearly a mile before it stopped to graze.

They reported that most of the rest of the cavalry forded the Mazagan River as far to the east as they could. Another twenty-five of them banded together and headed north. They were sure that the lookout for Mithra Bhu would see them in plenty of time to warn everyone in and around Mokoko if they continued north.

Four ships, each filled with two hundred-fifty mercenaries from Ravinia arrived in port four days later. They were dispirited to learn that the Baron who contracted their services was dead. While their country was large geographically, much of it was mountainous and rocky and little of it was arable, much like the Nordlinger’s homeland. They had accepted the job as mercenaries because the Baron promised each man a large enough plot of arable land to support a family.

Father suggested that they rebuild the two Bajasanian towns razed after the last war if they swore allegiance to King Kugiar. They agreed excitedly, having heard how fertile the soil here was. Several Nordlingers from Mithra Bhu accompanied the men to each of the two potential sites while a handful of the mercenaries sailed home with a skeleton crew aboard their ships to collect the families they had left behind.

Fifty of the Ravinian men went to the old Bajasanian farming village in the hills, half a day’s ride north of the Mazagan River. In anticipation of even more of their former countrymen joining them, they began clearing the debris inside the twenty-foot rock wall so they could start re-building. Fifty of the men stayed at the abandoned fishing town to do the same thing. The remainder headed north. Father sent a rider home to tell the sawmills to send wagons loaded with lumber south to both towns.

The majority of the Ravinians would work for us mining copper and salt to earn money. In the meantime, Father agreed to send mules, plows, and seed to both towns so they could prepare and plant fields. He would also provide tools and lumber to rebuild the towns, and food to last them until their crops were ready to harvest. He even sent two of our new fishing boats and several of the woven fish traps to the fishing village.

Once they had coops, corrals, and pens built, he would send cows for milk, pigs, chickens, and goats. Whatever the men working in the mines earned would help to pay for what he sent.

Word arrived four days later that the twenty-five escaped cavalry who rode north ran afoul of the mercenaries from Ravinia at the ruins of the fishing town where we confronted the Bajasanian cavalry. Now the Ravinians had more than the ten horses Father had loaned them so they could get messages to us quickly if necessary.

With the last of the rogue cavalry gone, I sent the Baroness and her two daughters, the Baron’s five slave girls, and Natoia north to Mokoko. I figured that it would give them a chance to talk to my wives, and would get them out of my hair. As much as I enjoyed waking up amidst them, they were starting to get insistent about not waiting any longer. I wasn’t about to choose any of them, preferring to let my wives deal with the issue.

With banners snapping loudly in the stiff afternoon breeze, a column of two hundred Morilian troops arrived from Koshlokki to wild cheering from our troops. The messengers Father sent after the defeat of King Kemmou took a week to find King Kugiar. I learned later that King Kugiar and his troops had arrived in Koshlokki to find chaos and anarchy. In the short time since the few remaining escaped cavalry reported King Kemmou’s demise, four different Bajasanian nobles had died vying for the throne.