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As summer ended, the Earl of Hyrne assured everyone that the Gramiren army didn’t have the resources to keep up the siege for more than a month or two. Alfred had no idea where the captain general got this idea, and as autumn began, it became clear the enemy were far better equipped than the Sigor forces in the city.
At that moment, the earl changed tack entirely and—pretending he had always known this would be necessary—he asked Alfred and his other commanders to start raiding the nearest Gramiren siege camps. “In the first place,” he explained, “this will allow us to steal their supplies. In the second place, this will open up a hole in their lines so we can flank the rest of them and defeat them in detail.”
In general, this wasn’t a bad idea. But the earl insisted on doing it in the most pointless and wasteful manner possible. He told Alfred and the other commanders to attack along the riverbanks, where the enemy were most thickly concentrated and reinforced. And he never permitted Alfred and the others to attack in a single, concentrated push. Instead, he told them to “probe” the Gramiren defenses repeatedly with small groups of men.
So, one day Alfred would take a few companies east along the north bank. Then, after being thrown back and losing a dozen men or so, he would have to attack west on the southern bank the next day. Then west on the opposite bank the day after that, and so on.
In mid-October, the council agreed to raise three new militia regiments from the city, and with these reinforcements, the Earl of Hyrne finally had a small degree of success. Attacking east along the southern bank of the Trahern, with Alfred’s best cavalry in the vanguard, they succeeded in chasing Gramiren troops out of the town of Presport, about six miles upstream. Unfortunately, when Alfred begged for authorization to push on to the town of Cleve-on-Trahern, a further seven miles away, the earl insisted that he wait “so we can consolidate our gains.”
Alfred’s scouts told him the way was open. If they had taken Cleve-on-Trahern, they would have had a route open for supplies. But instead, they waited and dithered, and Broderick’s commanders were able to bring reinforcements around through Rowhurst and the Alfgar Wood. The Gramirens retook the river road on the south bank, and Alfred and his men had to make a hurried retreat to the safety of Leornian on dangerously overloaded barges hastily arranged by Sir Presley Kemp with some former business contacts from when he served old Duke Brandon.
When his barge arrived, Alfred was in a truly foul mood, and he was about ready to give the Earl of Hyrne a large and vivid piece of his mind. Once he had seen his men back to their camp and checked on the wounded, he went up to the Bocburg, only to learn the earl was away at some garden party with his wife.
“Marvelous,” thought Alfred. “Simply marvelous. We lose Presport and we come a hair’s breadth from losing more than two thousand men, and the Earl of fucking Hyrne is having tea after leaving the retreat to someone else.”
As he stood on the front steps of the Bocburg palace, trying to decide whether to chase down the earl or go back to camp, he heard a burst of giggles, and he turned to see Princess Elwyn and Melanie Searle go sprinting from the chapel door and across the lawn, hand in hand, toward the Strathport Tower. No doubt they were throwing another wild, exclusive party there. Or maybe the two of them were hoping to find somewhere to be alone together.
Halfway across the courtyard, the princess happened to look back, and she saw Alfred. Their eyes met, and her face turned pale. She almost stumbled over her own feet as Melanie kept dragging her onward. Twice more before they disappeared into the tower, Elwyn looked back at Alfred, eyes wide with shock as if he were the ghost of someone she had known long ago.
Surely they had to know their affair couldn’t stay secret forever. With all the people coming and going from the Bocburg at all hours of the day or night, they would be caught eventually. And then the king and the queen regent would have to deal with a sex scandal in the family, in addition to everything else.
He hadn’t seen a lot of the princess recently. She still said “hello” and acted as if she were thrilled to see him, but he always gave her some excuse related to the army and left as quickly as he could. In the past few weeks, these excuses weren’t even lies—he really had been very busy with the Earl of Hyrne’s stupid “probing” attacks along the river roads.
“Does the king know that some of his worst enemies are in his own family?” thought Alfred. “And I don’t just mean his Cousin Broderick.”
Someone said Alfred’s name, and he turned to see Miles Richards, the ever-efficient servant, at his side. “If you have a moment, Sir Alfred, her majesty was wondering if she might have a word.”
Alfred nearly said, “no.” He felt as if he had been troubled enough by the royal family for one blasted day. But his politeness got the better of him, and he followed Miles to the queen’s study.
Three men were already seated before the queen’s desk—Sir Roland Stark of the university, Sir Presley Kemp, and Lord Caedmon Aldred. Alfred bowed to the queen and shook hands all around before settling into another chair with a glass of fortified wine that Sir Roland poured for him.
“I understand we have lost Presport,” began the queen, tapping a long quill against a ledger on her desk.
Alfred confirmed that they had, in fact, lost the town, along with any hope of opening up a lifeline to the outside world in that direction.
“Can I tell you something in complete candor?” said the queen. “Something that is not to go beyond this room?”
“Of course, your majesty.”
“My brother, the captain general, is making a complete mess of everything. He seems to be making up his plans as he goes along, and none of them ever seem to work.”
Alfred bowed his head. “I regret to say...that is true, your majesty.”
Sir Roland said, “We think it might be time for someone else to take a look at the problem and perhaps apply fresh thinking.”
“We need to get supplies into the city,” said Sir Presley. “It’s harvest time now, and we need grain and beef and everything else if we want to get through the winter. I can talk with Mr. Finch and the other rivermen again about supporting the cause with their barges and boats, but they need military protection and passage to the supplies.”
“You have commanded troops at war for years, Sir Alfred,” said Caedmon Aldred, tapping his fingertips together. “You studied military science in Annenstruk. If you had an independent command, and were assigned to break the siege and open a route for supplies, how would you do it?”
Alfred was surprised to be asked, but it took him almost no time at all to come up with an answer. He had been thinking a lot about that very subject over the past few weeks.
“I would hit the enemy where they’re weakest,” he said. “Not where it seems to make sense when you’re looking at a map. I would follow up quickly with reinforcements to hold open the gap in their lines. And I would have a feint—a distraction or false attack somewhere else to draw the enemy’s attention away from where I mean to break through.”
“What sort of a distraction did you have in mind?” asked Sir Roland.
This was one part of the plan Alfred hadn’t given much thought to, but as he sat there, drink in hand, looking around at the other four, an idea popped into his mind.
“Lord Aldred, do you think I could...borrow you for a day or two? You could make some explosions or fireballs or illusions. That would draw the enemy’s attention pretty well, I think.”
The hillichmagnar nodded. “I know precisely the sort of thing you mean, Sir Alfred, and since this would be merely a ruse, and not an assault, I would be happy to help.”
“Good,” said the queen. “Come up with a plan, Sir Alfred. I will take care of my brother and the council. You figure out how we can save this city.”
***
TWO DAYS AND TWO NEARLY-sleepless nights later, Alfred had everything prepared for his grand breakout plan. Around midday on Monday, October 20, Caedmon Aldred left the city by the west gate along the river road, accompanied by the captain general, Duke Robert of Leornian, a hundred mounted knights, two regiments of pikemen, and a regiment of archers, with all their banners flying. Alfred watched them go from the top of the Leofe Tower with the queen at his side.
Caedmon Aldred’s little army marched to the town of Escomb, barely four miles away, where the hillichmagnar put on a show of lightning and fire and thunder, and the knights made a grand charge for practice.
Only about fifty or sixty Gramiren troops were stationed in Escomb, and most of them got away, which was the whole point, after all.
The queen wished Alfred well, and he went down from the tower to join the real attack—the one going north, away from the river. He had fifty knights, two hundred light cavalrymen, two regiments of archers, and four regiments of infantry. None of his men had banners to fly, and they kept as quiet as they possibly could as they crossed the Redwald Bridge and passed through the village of Hutton an hour after sunset.
He had his men spread out as they entered the dense woods of the Bishop’s Forest. They surrounded the town of Chickwell and took the Gramiren garrison there entirely by surprise, with hardly any casualties at all. He left Sir Walter Davies and a company of archers to defend the town, plus a few dozen townsmen who had risen from their beds to volunteer.
As he was leaving Chickwell and heading deeper into the forest, a messenger arrived from the queen. Her majesty reported that according to her scouts, his plan was working. Broderick Gramiren was gathering reinforcements to meet the expected attack by Lord Aldred and the captain general. That meant Gramiren troops were being pulled out of towns in the north like Whalley, Stretton, Bullsley, and Tunbury. They were being taken away from the place where Alfred wanted to attack, and sent to places where they would have nothing to do. By the time the usurper realized his mistake, it would be far, far too late.
Alfred pressed on through the forest with most of his force, but he left several companies of infantry behind at regular intervals. Commanded by engineers chosen by Sir Roland and Professor Grigory Sobol, these men would dig earthworks and cut down trees to make little forts every mile or so along the forest road. Tomorrow, more reinforcements would arrive, and the road would be nearly as well-fortified as the Bocburg itself.
Several hours before dawn, Alfred and his men came to Redlingham on the northeastern edge of the woods. It was a big market town, with a handsome old church and several large guildhalls. Alfred’s whole plan nearly came to a crashing, ignominious end there, as he quickly discovered far more enemy soldiers camped in and around the town than his scouting reports had indicated. There were two companies of cavalry and two regiments of infantry—more than enough men to put up a strong and prolonged resistance. They could have held out, in fact, long enough for Broderick to figure out he had been duped, and bring reinforcements.
Fortunately, the Gramiren commander—an Odelandic knight named von Hauffenstein—didn’t know how many men Alfred had, either. He seemed to think he’d been surrounded by the entire Sigor army, and Alfred did nothing to disabuse him of this notion. Von Hauffenstein surrendered after a brief skirmish, handing over a beautiful old ivory-handled kurvensabel, which he said had been in his family for six generations.
Alfred left several of his experienced sergeants and lieutenants in Redlingham, along with a regiment of infantry and two squads of archers. Then he pressed on again. He left his remaining infantry and archers at farmhouses and little hamlets along the road, and hurried the last few miles with only his cavalry.
He left the road south of the town of Bullsley and circled around through the wheatfields to the east, so that when he and his horsemen attacked, the rising sun was directly behind them. The Gramiren garrison there had been depleted so that Broderick could bring reinforcements to meet Caedmon Aldred’s fake attack. The demoralized men who remained barely managed to form a line to meet Alfred’s charge, and those who survived threw down their weapons immediately.
Only half an hour after the fighting ended, the Duke of Keelshire arrived with six hundred men, all looking a bit put out to have missed the battle. Alfred left his grace in command and rode back the twenty miles to Leornian, along the heavily fortified route that he had established. The Sigors had their lifeline now, and no one would be starving over the winter.
When he finally got back to the Bocburg that evening, he was ready to fall asleep on his feet, but everyone wanted to shake his hand. The Bishop of Pinshire had a “service of thanksgiving” planned at the castle chapel, and the queen wanted him to come dine with her and the privy council so he could tell them the whole story of the battle. Even the Earl of Hyrne seemed pleased, although he kept talking about how “we” had won a great victory and how “we” had “really shown those Gramiren bastards for once!” Alfred was too tired to quibble.
He drank several large cups of strong coffee at supper, so he was still awake later, when the queen invited him to her office again with Sir Roland Stark, Caedmon Aldred, and Sir Presley Kemp.
“I think we can all agree this was remarkably successful,” said the queen. “So, we were thinking, Sir Alfred, that we ought to find better use for your talents.”
“Ma’am?”
“I’m going to ask the council to name you chief of staff of the army tomorrow. I’ve got Miles Richards looking for some place in this castle that you can use as an office. Hopefully with space for a bunk or a bed so you can stay over when you need to.”
Alfred wasn’t sure what to say, but he understood that gratitude was expected. He stood and bowed. “Thank you, your majesty.”
“You’ll be working a lot with Sir Presley now, since I’m putting him in charge of building up our grain reserves for the winter.”
Alfred and Sir Presley made an appointment to meet the next day for breakfast. They sat in the library with Professor Grigory Sobol, poring over old maps and eating cinnamon rolls from Crane’s Bakery in town. Sobol had some ideas about widening and reinforcing the road to allow twice as much traffic, and Alfred wrote out the orders on the spot so the engineers could start work immediately.
With that finished, Alfred had to stop in at a meeting of the privy council, in order to receive his official appointment as chief of staff. The captain general shook his hand again and made indiscriminate use of the first person plural when talking about the army’s future. They all had a drink, and then Miles Richards showed Alfred up to his new office, which happened to be the Silver Parlor on the third floor. The last time he had been in the room had been during the princess’s scandalous birthday party, but it looked as if the servants had done a very good job of cleaning the place up.
His first order of business was to make sure they had enough reserves to keep the road to Bullsley open, while also defending Leornian itself. He was starting to think there might need to be another levy to raise militia companies in the city, and he knew that wouldn’t be popular. Once he had all that figured out, he had some ideas about reorganizing the structure of the army, and he feared those wouldn’t be popular, either, especially with the nobles who commanded the various brigades and divisions.
He threw himself into the work, and he lost track of time so completely that he didn’t even realize it was lunchtime until someone knocked at the door, and he noticed how the shafts of sunlight through his tall, narrow windows had shifted position.
The person knocked again, and he called out for them to enter. He was expecting Miles, or maybe Sir Presley. Instead, it was Princess Elwyn. She had on a light blue riding dress, a black fur hat, and long black leather riding gloves.
“You look very cozy in here,” she said, grinning.
The way she said it—warm, breathy, with a hint of suppressed desire—set his teeth on edge.
“It is a lovely office, thank you,” he said curtly, rising to give her a quick bow. “Can I help you with something, your royal highness?”
“Well...I haven’t seen much of you recently, Sir Alfred.”
“I’ve been very busy, ma’am.”
“Yes, but I think I may have offended you. I think I offended a lot of people recently.” She came up to the desk and ran her hand along the carvings at the edge. “I’ve behaved like a bit of an idiot, in fact.”
“It’s not my place to say so, ma’am.”
She sighed. “True, but maybe it ought to be. I need people who tell me the truth.”
“Surely, ma’am, the queen—”
“The queen tells me her opinion, which is not the same as the truth. I need people who will stop me when I’m doing something wrong, not when they think I’m being ‘unladylike.’ I need people who will tell me to my face when I’m being insufferable. I would like us to be friends, Sir Alfred.”
He left the desk and walked slowly to the window, arms crossed. “I would happily be your friend, your royal highness. I will not be your alibi for someone else, however.”
“Ah. That.” She clenched her fists and tapped the toe of one tiny, black boot. “That was a mistake. A failure to distinguish my needs from my wants, you might say. In any case, it’s over. I’ve ended it with...that person.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s no reason to be sorry. You should be happy for me. Assuming, of course, that we are still friends, Sir Alfred.”
He couldn’t withstand a frontal assault by those big, blue eyes.
“Yes, your royal highness. We are still friends.”
“Oh, good. Then come have lunch with me. You can tell me all about your heroism in battle, and I promise to sit and quietly admire you.”
In spite of himself, he was sorely tempted. But he managed to pull himself together and say, “Perhaps some other time, your royal highness. I really do have a lot of work I need to get done today.”