When Heroes Die

“There isn’t a problem so large that it cannot be solved with plenty of lies and violence.”

— Catherine Foundling

Jacques’s watch was almost at its end. Soon, he could retire to the land of dreams and let another poor fool take a turn on the walls. And for what? It wasn’t as if the northern savages were going to breach the defences. Fools, the lot of them. Only they were mad enough to make war during the heart of winter. Prince Arnaud didn’t even need to give battle. The city had more than enough supplies to last out the season.

They only needed to wait.

Wait and laugh, while the Lycaonese froze and starved outside the walls.

Then, when the season ended or the stragglers surrendered, they could raise the gates and search the corpses.

His patrol of the battlements brought him to one of the midway towers along the northern wall. He turned and started to make his way back towards the gatehouse.

Nothing happened.

There was nought to see, and still he was damned to guard the walls before the sun had even seen fit to rise.

Not even the Lycaonese were mad enough to sally forth during a night like this one. The wind howled, screamed like the lost souls of those who were sacrificed on the altars to the east. Snow piled thick below the battlements. The moat had frozen over. Even the warmth of the torch in his hand offered little relief against the cold. It flickered like a lazy candle. Every serious gust threatened to snuff it out.

A horn bellowed from somewhere further along the walls.

One of the other guards had given the alarm.

Jacques came to a halt and stared through the arrow loops. Torches, as far as the eye could see, some thirty feet below and over a mile out. The muted glow was doubled over as it reflected off the frozen waters. The enemy soldiers were forming up under dawn’s light on the left of their camp. Just past the neat rows of tents nestled behind a ditch and a stockade, in the gap between their fortifications and the shores of Lake Louvant.

The northern savages were forming up.

They were outside their defences.

It appeared that not even winter’s bite deterred them.

Were they insane? He could just make out the shape of an odd curved reflective surface in the distance. The Lycaonese engineers had been working on some manner of esoteric piece of siege equipment for the past few days.

It wasn’t a machine that any of their own engineers recognized. It looked more like the work of a Praesi sorcerer than anything that belonged in the Proceran heartlands.

Jacques turned away from the savages and started to march across the top of the wall towards the spiral staircase leading down into the gatehouse.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

His boots against the snow.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

His boots against the smooth stone stairs.

He squinted in the dim light. The door to the gatehouse creaked as he opened it.

The hearth crackled heartily, casting off shadows that danced throughout the room. Over the chairs and tables, along the bedrolls on the floor and across the bleeding out bodies of his comrades.

Betrayal.

It had to be.

But what was their goal? The gate mechanism, it had to be. Open the gate, then jam the mechanism. Only a few small steps, and then the traitor would allow the northern savages within the sanctity of their walls.

What should he do? He owed Prince Arnaud nothing. There was no reason for Jacques to bleed and die for a fancy ass on a throne. The prince was unpleasant and there were rumours about him. Rumours about girls who would visit, then disappear soon after. Why the fuck should he care about what someone like Prince Arnaud would order?

Men like Jacques were expected to just die obediently for their owners, while the princes traded a few inches of land back and forth from one season to the next. Jacques was sick of it all. He was tired of seeing friends, kin and distant acquaintances die from season to season in this utterly pointless war.

He hesitated for a moment as he considered what to do.

Jacques was certain he would die if he decided not to act and his inaction was ever discovered. If Jacques had to choose between his current master and the northern savages, then… there was only one real answer, wasn’t there?

At least his current master was civilized.

The metallic cry of his sword rang out as Jacques prepared for a fight. The flame of his torch came next. He snuffed it, dropped it to the ground. It would do him no good below. He proceeded with caution, made his way past the bodies, then down the wooden staircase towards the room housing the gate mechanism.

Jacques wasn’t sure which was louder.

The creaking of the stairs or the thumping of his own heart.

The clanking of the mechanism muffled his own steps. He picked up his pace. Jacques couldn’t allow the savages even this small victory. Four figures were focused on turning the rusted iron crank.

They were so invested in what their current activity that they didn’t even notice as he approached.

Jacques dashed forward. He brought up his sword, then brought it down on the neck of the first. They let out a shriek and shoved him back. He stumbled, came to a stop against one of the room’s supporting pillars.

Need to even the odds.

“Have you no pride? Why betray us to the Hasenbach?” he called out.

His enemy’s blades rang out as they cleared their scabbards. The three of them started to approach. The forth whimpered and clasped at their own neck. They tried to rise, then collapsed onto the ground.

“Better the north holds the crown than allow this farce to drag on further,” the middle figure replied. It was familiar. Somebody he knew. Bertrand? Was that Bertrand?

Jacques righted himself. His foot hooked into the legs of a brazier. He pushed against it. It tumbled over, spilling hot coals onto the ground between him and his foes. One of them yelped and shied away. He started to peddle backwards, keeping his eye on his foes and his blade raised. They spread out.

“Traitor,” Jacques spat out.

“We need to hurry. Get rid of him and return to opening the gate,” the woman on the left urged.

She feinted forward.

Jacques refused the bait. His back struck another wall. He was cornered.

He let out a cry. Better to make sure the bastards perished, even if they did him in first. Fool. He should have called for support first. The man on the right darted forward. Jacques raised his blade, parried, only to be taken by another blade in the arm. He snarled, grabbed at his opponent and pulled them forward, impaling his blade in their gut. They thrashed, tried to pull away.

It did them no good.

“We’re making a mess of this. Work quicker, we only have so much time,” the woman hissed.

Jacques held his victim tight against himself, even as he felt more cuts nicking at his sides. The man leaned in. Took a bite out of his neck. Jacques’s hands were slick with blood and his head was woozy, but he persevered.

Better Prince Amadis or Princess Aenor than the Hasenbach.

He let out another cry and then ambled forward, falling against one of the other assailants. It was Bertrand. The man stumbled, dropped his sword. Jacques grabbed it, panted, he was short of breath.

“Damn you, stop fighting, Jacques,” Bertrand exclaimed.

A glint out of the corner of his eyes. He raised the blade. Met the oncoming sword. There was a loud clang. He trembled from the impact. It was hard to maintain his grip. Dizzy. Light-headed. He needed to… to. To what?

I’m going to die, aren’t I?

The words in his mind were muted, distant, as if they echoed out from across the lake.

Then it was best that he take as many of them with him as possible. Give his last moments some meaning. Make them matter.

The woman struck again. This time, her blade buried itself in his gut. Jacques leaned into it. Her eyes widened as he grabbed her and pulled her close.

“What are you. No, no, no. Let go of me!” She protested, shaking her short crop of crimson hair from side to side.

Jacques felt the sweet sting of her blade as he welcomed it inside himself. Felt it, then let it pass. He brought his own blade up, buried it inside of her. Bertrand watched from a few feet away, his own eyes open wide.

Jacques heard the clang of metal boots on the bricks above. Reinforcements. The traitors wouldn’t be opening the gate. He smiled. Smiled as the world became a wash of colours, then finally slipped away.

At least the northern savages wouldn’t be breaching the city after all.

A green eagle perched atop a crescent fluttered on the flag dangling from atop the gatehouse.

Klaus Papenheim lowered the looking glass from his eye. The drawbridge remained closed. He cursed, then spat at his right into a bank of snow. That plan had always had long odds. His niece had informed him of the presence of supporters within the walls who could lower the gates. Klaus hadn’t counted on that scheme for success, but it would have made the entire affair a whole god-damned less messy to clean up.

Sabotage would have made breaching the walls a lot less bloody. If the second plan failed as well, then out came the ladders. Then it would be a conventional siege and well… then, even if they scraped through to the other side, it would cost them dearly.

He will win. On every path he wins.

The words that had damned him to this southern slog haunted him. Mornings this far away from Hannoven had been indolent before winter had set in. It was easy to see how the Alamans had become so soft. Now the biting mist and howling winds dug deep into his men, keeping them awake and spry even at the earliest hours of the morning.

His niece was a cast iron bitch. Tough as nails and harder than steel. She did what she believed was necessary, but nobody would ever love her for it. Forced marches through the harshest season had taken its toll on his troops. They had replenished supplies as they captured enemy fortresses along the way, then supplemented them even further with goods purchased from the dwarves at exorbitant rates.

It did little to boost morale.

The hourglass had been turned from the moment they began their southern campaign, and the sands had almost run out. All of them felt the foetid caress of death breathing down their necks from the north.

The Empress has turned her gaze inwards. The lands to the east are riddled with strife and turmoil. She will interfere no further at this stage of the war.

At least they would not need to contend with the Praesi breed of cloak and dagger nonsense on top of the Proceran variant of the same stupidity.

“Is the weapon ready?” He shouted out to the pale man toiling above on the scaffolds beside him.

Klaus hadn’t counted on having one of his siege engineers chosen by the heavens when he prepared for this campaign, but he was not above taking advantage of any windfalls that came his way. Godsdamnit, he’d need them.

He didn’t pretend to understand the intricacies of the device the man had constructed, he’d only observed the trial demonstrations of the smaller model. The ten-foot wide contraption was shaped like a dish with a section of elaborate paraphernalia in front of it. It was pointed towards the gates of Cantal.

Klaus did not place much hope on the success of this venture, but was willing to gamble on the device if it spared the lives of his men.

“Almost, your grace. Just need a few more moments to calibrate it, and then — there!” The Gifted Maker exclaimed.

“All right, then. Everyone, move your asses out of the way, it’s time to see if the lad’s weapon works as advertised,” Klaus called out.

The Gifted Maker scaled his way down the scaffold like a spider descending its web. A hundred white robes drew close. The priests. The hints his niece had dropped regarding the possibility of a future crusade had set his thoughts ablaze. Different tactics would be needed to wage war against the Praesi than the ones which were used to match wits with the evils to the north.

The Praesi had their own special breeds of nastiness.

Klaus had taken it upon himself to revise the Proceran doctrine on combined arms, attempting to integrate priests and wizards into the painfully outdated Proceran school of warfare. Convincing priests to do anything other than heal others had been like picking at a loose tooth, but he had found them surprisingly creative once they found the motivation to be.

Barriers, infused projectiles and other forms of indirect wartime contributions were all deemed to be acceptable. Direct attacks were not. The device that had been invented by the Gifted Maker straddled the line between both.

“Ready, fire!”

The priests finished uttering their prayers. A heartbeat later and a multitude of continuous beams of liquid Light slammed into the polished dish. The beams were redirected, channelled into another, much smaller artefact.

The world held its breath.

There was a flash, an ominous thrum.

A concentrated actinic beam shot forward from the invention and slammed into the city wards.

The wards shrieked, then the city gate detonated.

Everything went white.

For a moment, nobody could see anything. Klaus blinked the spots out of his vision.

A hundred-foot segment of the Cantal city walls had been demolished. The hole in the fortifications stood out like a gaping wound.

It seems the Gods decided to spare us some nastiness for once.

“I asked you to take out the gate, not the whole damn wall.”

“The blast should have been smaller, your grace.” The Gifted Maker gulped. “I suspect that the wards were destabilized by the weapon. Their… interference must have intensified the final result.”

“How did you say this works, boy?” he turned towards Sébastien.

“The city wards are intended to redirect any sorcery across the entire structure, but they’re not calibrated to handle quantities of the Light beyond a certain threshold. Priests play such a minor role in siege warfare that it’s not deemed worth the effort to shield against them. I theorized that if we overloaded the ward at a single point and then infused the structure behind it with the Light, it would cause a detonation. I didn’t expect it to be quite so dramatic, your grace.”

“Fine work. Dismissed.”

Klaus Papenheim marched over towards the lines of his infantry. He passed many other pieces of siege equipment in the process of being constructed. Ladders, towers, bridges, and the like.

At long last, he reached his troops.

Lines of torches flickered in dawn’s light, doing little to push back the cold. He donned his helmet, drew his sword and seized the standard of Hannoven. Then — at last ready — he raised it in the air beside him.

“All right, boys and girls,” he shouted. “It seems fucking all those other princes up the arse didn’t get our message across. These three princes and princesses think they’re clever hiding behind their walls and are going to need a repeat performance before it sinks in. So let's raise our banners once more and ride to war. I want this mess to be cleaned up before the year ends, you hear me?”

Their call back was deafening. Feeling twenty years younger, Klaus Papenheim brought up his shield and charged.

Prince Arnaud paced back and forth inside the dining hall in irritation. He passed beneath a tapestry detailing his family line back ten generations, stopped beside the entrance, then returned to the head of the table.

He had woken to the call of the horn, only to discover the threat had already been contained. Traitors within the ranks of his guard. They had sought to guide the Lycaonese into the city walls by compromising the city gate.

The scheme had come dangerously close to succeeding. Prince Arnaud had nonetheless ordered more of his mean to the walls. Better to be prepared for conflict, then caught with his pants down.

Had it been any other season, then Prince Arnaud would have long since ridden out to give battle to his foes. It would not do to risk having his capital put to torch. Despite how brutal the civil war had become with the passage of years, some etiquette remained. The Princes fought on the fields, they did not hide away behind their walls.

Winter’s bite gave Prince Arnaud the confidence to cool his heels. He was well supplied and hidden behind strong fortifications. Not even his enemies among the Cantal nobility would dare call his decision anything other than pragmatism. Furthermore, he was not alone.

Princess Aenor and Prince Amadis were both in residence. They had come to an uneasy alliance. Prince Amadis would throw in his lot behind Princess Aenor in exchange for absolute amnesty after the end of the civil war. The other two princes had arrived at Cantal to hammer out the final details of their agreement.

They were only a day from departure back to their own lands, before the northerners had sealed them in.

All three of them were united in purpose. They sought to oppose their foes to the north.

However, Prince Arnaud was not so much a fool as to allow them to garrison their troops within his own walls. Doing so would be akin to suicide through loss of reputation among his own nest of snakes. Instead, their armies had been garrisoned and supplied elsewhere. Some were near to Cantal and had assisted in harrying the forces of Klaus Papenheim, the rest were garrisoned further south in a fortress near a town called Saudant.

The princes themselves, however, were still forced to take shelter under his roof.

Truth be told, Prince Arnaud cared not one whit about whether it was a northern or southern head that bore the crown of the First Prince. However, Cantal shared a border with Iserre and both him and Prince Amadis were on amiable terms. After several favourable trade agreements and a few hands traded back and forth, he had been willing to throw in his support behind their faction, rather than sit out the remainder of the war.

He would benefit from this campaign, regardless of how it came to an end.

Prince Arnaud was not worried about the outcome of the siege. The string of grisly killings within the city walls was a far more pressing concern. The murderer had yet to be apprehended, and all the deaths were both creative and bloody. The nobility was clamouring for the murderer’s head, ever since one of their own had been reaped. It was likely that the Lycaonese would starve long before the defences fell in comparison.

His erstwhile allies of circumstances had returned to bed once they had discovered the alert had served no purpose.

And so Prince Arnaud found himself pacing alone.

Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.

The sound of bare flesh on stone.

Prince Arnaud turned towards the arched doorway.

A message girl passed through the arched doorway. Short, blonde, young. The shape of her breasts hinted through her tunic. His gaze lingered for a few moments, before rising to meet the brown of her eyes.

“Word from the walls, your grace.”

The girl did her best to keep her voice level, but Prince Arnaud could hear the slightest tremble. He savoured it for a few moments. Rumours of his predilections had made their way down to the peasantry. The fear they expressed in his presence always sent a shiver of delight down his spine.

“Come now,” he purred, before walking towards the table and pouring himself a glass of wine. He smiled at her, “why don’t you share what you have to say.”

The girl flinched.

Prince Arnaud’s pulse quickened. The call of the horn had put him in a foul mood. An early morning tryst was exactly what was called for to cool his blood. His guards were outside the room. They knew better than to disturb him once the screaming started, or to avert their eyes as he dragged her off to the bed chamber.

“The Lycaonese are still readying themselves for battle. Lines are-”

There was a flash of white, then a tremor. The girl stumbled. Prince Arnaud steadied himself by leaning against a chair.

What manner of weapon was that?

The tremor came from the north.

“Send for the captain of my guard,” he barked out. “Have Princess Aenor and Prince Amadis woken up once more. Tell them to make their way to the war room. I’ll join them once I have appraised myself of the situation.” The girl was frozen like a rabbit under the gaze of a lion. “Listen to your betters. Move, you idiot girl,” he snapped out.

She nodded frightfully, then broke into a sprint.

Prince Arnaud dismissed the girl from his mind and strolled out of the dining hall. Down several corridors, up a spiral staircase and into a room above. There, an open window with a view. He looked out over his city towards the northern defences.

A large, gaping chunk was missing from the walls.

He observed for a few moments as the Lycaonese forces marched to exploit the opening. Projectiles rained down from above, only to bounce harmlessly off golden barriers that had been summoned forth by priests. Wizards and crossbowmen returned fire. Men hunkered down and advanced slowly behind the cover of shields.

His mind started to race. He had cultivated a reputation among the nobility for being nothing but a blustering buffoon. He preferred to be underestimated than given his proper due. It lowered his enemy’s guard, made it far easier to slide in the knife when the time came to strike. It was a reputation that he was willing to cast aside if it allowed him to maintain his position as Prince of Cantal.

Prince Arnaud could hole up behind the walls of his fort and likely sustain a protracted siege, but there were enough granaries within the city walls to supply the Lycaonese all winter. Cantal was one of the breadbaskets of the Principate. His people were well-fed, even during times as troubled as these were. It was also unclear how many more times that new weapon of theirs could be wielded. Was it a one-off trick, or was it something that the Lycaonese could repeat?

Allowing the Lycaonese free rein of the capital would see him removed from his position, even should they eventually be forced to retreat.

It did not even matter if the weapon could be wielded again.

That realization was enough to help him make up his mind.

If he wished to retain the seat of his power, then he needed to make peace with the northerners. Make peace, and convince them to leave.

He departed from the tower and called out for one of the servants. Asked them to bring up a specific vintage of wine from the cellars. It was a bottle he had set aside for occasions such as this one. Then, he asked another to find him the antidote.

It was fortunate that he had two other crowns to bargain with.