The next assault will begin at dusk while the village was still burning. The fate of this battle will rest on two letters.
I had sent one a month ago and the other today.
As the carrier pigeons came back, we stared at the walls from the charred remains of a small stone house, just outside the range of their parapet guns. The men were all at battle stations.
I remembered now. I, Desmond Canzones, was at the battle of Monvenue during the last days of my life.
My correspondent was the key. He had promised his full support in a letter I held.
The carrier pigeon's new message read I, too, will attack at precisely dusk.
"Darn it, if we keep doing what we did this morning, we'll just take more fucking losses," Colonel Darnsley, born a Nathan Marley, complained. A potbellied veteran of most of Desmond's campaigns, Marley climbed his way up from a foot soldier, earning a high officer's insignia. When commissioned, he used the moniker of Darnsley, bestowed from his men.
"Take your three battalions and put on a show. Now that the villagers are safe, I imagine we'll be more successful." I ordered, staring daggers at Major Melbury. On the table was a bouquet from the villagers, with a card that read: Thank you, Lord Melbury, for coming to our aid. He had rescued villagers this morning instead of committing his two battalions.
On the other hand, at the gates of hell, Melbury would be the only soul forgiven.
Why were we here? Viscount Alehandrian Canzones Gilles of Monvenue, an archdeacon, was known affectionately as Bluebeard after a folk character. He was a distant uncle to the current Duke Canzones of Crescentia, who was already old beyond his years. His opponent today was his undefeated great-grandnephew.
"Is it true, what you said of Viscount Gilles?" Melbury peered over.
"Honestly, I hope it's not. There were things your father and I saw in the colonies five months ago… " I said, nonchalant, hardened. After all, stoicism is only for those too afraid to fear.
***
"ACHKk…" Robett Melbury coughed up blood. My right hand for ten years, he had been shot in the chest.
"Rest well," I said, unsure of what that means. I paced rapidly around the deck of the secret slave ship I commandeered.
I had captured a Lorian shipping vessel, the L.S. Potion, as it had illegally used my sea lane while I was at war with the Courageous Companions. Vice admiral Robett Melbury searched it as his last act.
"Lord Gilles will hear of this. I merely punished piracy." The Captain, dressed in a Monvenue officer's uniform and tied up, sneered.
"Tell me, what was your plan? Kill a few officers, then run my blockade? My cruisers outrange, outgun and outspeed you." I smiled, shooting, narrowly missing, at their feet.
The captured crew let out gasps of panic, but their Captain was unfazed. His complexion and accent seemed paradisian, though he was commanding a Lorian ship.
"As you are about to die, tell me what you're exporting," I snapped.
"Ingredients" The Captain smiled as my men personally returned from searching their ship. Some of the crew hid below deck, and so my men were often ambushed searching the wares.
"It says here that you're transporting silver, spices, and lumber." I read from their official ledger. "Cut the bullshit. Your vessel is modified from a slave transport; one discontinued 50 years when my grandfather outlawed it."
"Ingredients" The Captain smiled again.
The sound of sobbing crawled up the stairs as my soldiers freed the hundred or so chained human beings below deck.
***
"Do you know why Monvenue is known as the place lost people go?" I floated the question.
"It's good land. If I ran away, I'd come here too" Darnsley sighed.
If it weren't for the mud, I would have realized that miles and miles of farmland surrounded us. Surrounded by steep hills and deep cliffs, Monvenue was somehow a prosperous domain.
"It's because Monvenue has the highest rate of disappearances in the country," Melbury grimly replied.
"Look where we are, knocking on Bluebeard's front door! Two divisions against Bluebeard's five! Bring in the maidservant." Darnsley spat at Melbury.
"The 21st calvary and the 33rd infantry, right?" I racked my brain.
"Aye." Darnsley sat down.
"So, I'm outnumbered almost three to one," I replied.
"Well, sir, most of ours are professionals while Gilles's men are levies. You also picked the time when he was most vulnerable, right in the middle of harvest." Melbury stated.
Suddenly, two soldiers dragged in a young serving girl in a dirty plain white dress. With her bruises, gauntness, and thousand-yard stare, she must have been an escapee. She refused to answer our questions. With a single trembling finger pointed at the castle, she mouthed off human names without reprieve.
Iden, Ariane, Horatio, Garn, Imir, Small Ariane, Yolen, and finally, sister
"Earlier, she said she worked at the castle. She begged us to save this list of people that Bluebeard has taken; then she became like this," Darnsley sighed. Darnsley's men dragged her away, letting her go free.
We reviewed the map and layout of the castle for a while. Then footsteps approached again.
"Where might a stranger find the Companion Slayer?" A gloomy, lanky figure walked in, surrounded by a dozen of our men, like a valuable prisoner. He covered himself in black, midnight upon the abyss. Seven swords floated in the air behind him, and a coffin followed him like his shadow.
"I see my reputation precedes me, dear Courageous Companion, to whom am I addressing?" I answered, hand near my revolver belt. Colonel Darnsley looked ready for a brawl.
"You don't have to add me to your list of victories, at least not today." The stranger smiled, and his swords fell to the ground. "I have been paid by a good friend of yours. As I am an artifact, my master, the sleeping one in the coffin, is named Duelist, and he is worth a small army, sir."
"I thought the Companions were on the side of Monvenue?" Melbury blurted.
"Very nominally. There are only two other Armed Companions in the theatre, and one of them is in the castle." The stranger spoke, with eyes of steel and joints of gears.
"So Roswell horse-legs is on the run by one of yours, then?" Darnsley burst out laughing.
"I'm sure your general Roswell has been chased around by Hermit before," The artifact said. Hermit shapeshifted into a great beast at night. Impervious to most forms of damage, he had a boar's tusks, arms of an ape, a lion's mane, and the head and hind of a large wolf. Speaking no human language, he was still worth a thousand men. Robett Melbury had sacrificed horses and livestock when Hermit hunted him.
"Okay, which one of you is guarding Monvenue then?" I spat, irritated.
"It's easier to show you" The artifact smiled as well, and his seven swords soared across the battlefield, destroying seven of the sixteen cannons on the battlements like a meteor. Suddenly, a wave of white silk flooded the battlements, entangling the blades and dragging them inside the castle walls.
"Not my swords… well, Weaver is a master of traps after all." The artifact muttered. He raised a hand, and the coffin sank into the ground, ensuring the safety of the master. Cheers roared across the field. I immediately gave the order to advance.
We rallied our men up the muddy hill with ladders on our backs. Our supporting fire dueled with their's, losing to high ground. The artifact charged ahead, getting blown into the sky by a buried explosive. Seemingly alright, he got up and limped behind me.
"Wait for it!" I yelled, using an older pile of dead bodies as cover.
"On me, you sorry sons of bitches" Darnsley yelled, making it halfway before he got his ladder shot from under him. At that moment, I saw fear and wildness In his eyes, like a rabid dog outsmarted by his prey. He cursed every god from the holy books he could not read.
Once in a while, a soldier became trapped in a cocoon of white silk. It pulsated as if drawing air, then pulled him into the earth. Scarecrows made of twigs and fabric would also pop out behind us, fire their pistols, then disappear.
The artifact left our cover and marched across the no man's land. As if unknown to the surrounding death, while pelted by bullets, it languidly searched for its rival. Its eyes shone bright red. It fired a two-hander out of its mouth, annihilating a guard tower. It grabbed the sword when it flew back and then crossed over the courtyard walls.
The coffin rose from the ground, dragging all the silk cocoons out with iron chains before flying away. Our men burned the white silk with gunpowder, freeing their comrades whenever they could.
Melbury nervously eyed his pocket watch as the only person who knew.
Our correspondent, my closest friend, was a very punctual man.
A massive barrage of artillery from behind the crags on the other side of the ravine began to pound the fortress mercilessly. The castle shook, and loose stones fell where crevices formed. A second volley came, and half the defenders rushed to defend the undefended, cliff-ward southern side of their fortress.
They took their big guns with them.
I immediately rushed up a ladder with Melbury and a platoon, yelling out for a direct general assault. Sharpshooters shot three of my men. Darnsley immediately followed up with a company, though he scrambled up the walls from pilling up corpses, gaining a foothold on the battlements. A Monvenue defender lunged at me with his bayonet. I dodged, threw my hat at his face, and one of my men shot him in the neck. We swarmed across the ramparts, compelling large swaths of the enemy to drop their arms and flee.
As the third volley struck the castle, the defenders managed to reply, weakly firing into the other side of the ravine. The sections of their fortifications began to crumble. As Melbury raised my banners over the walls, Darnsley's men lobbed grenades into the grounds below. They then leaped over the walls and brawled towards the front gates, which they managed to pry open with explosives. Our men poured in by the hundreds.
When the smoke cleared, I, on top of the walls, could see on the other side that though a few flags were ours, most of the banners were foreign, as their soldiers were, with their golden silken coats and green feathered scarves wrapped across their foreheads.
Lazir Farouje Galdinor, lord of Nulmar, stood steadfast at the head of 20,000 soldiers across the ravine. By my request, he had marched across the southern alps between Nulmar and Monvenue, waiting for my order to strike. All his cannons pointed at Viscount Gilles's Monvenue castle.
Galdinor was a poet rather than a warrior. A month ago, he had lost a tenth of his men to disease, exhaustion, and squalor during the march here, only to then to hide as my trump card in these desolate crags. All this for my desperate gamble.
Galdinor's engineers began crafting suspension bridges using cranes, pulleys, and ballista to anchor ropes to our side. Melbury's officers rounded up prisoners and artillery. Below, Darnsley had set off explosive charges on the front door of the keep to no avail.
The artifact had secured its swords. It slashed out a crevice in which it infiltrated the castle, pursuing the retreating silk.
"Darnsley! I'm going in!" I yelled towards him.
An aide of Colonel Darnsley furiously shook him while he was planting more explosives, screamed into his ear, and pointed up at me before a dozen men and I jumped into the darkness of the ruined keep.