The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [188]
“We’ll lose some men to the engines while we’re rushing the breach, but we’ll get in, move our own artillery up, and start battering the gates of Thornrath itself. Before that happens, though, they might kill enough of us to make us think twice about the whole endeavor. At worst they will have cut our numbers greatly.” He slapped the young knight on the shoulder. “Besides, they’re knights. Knights ride into battle. How do you think they’d feel on the wall, throwing rocks at us?”
“But there must be an easier way in,” Edhmon said.
“This is the easy way in,” Neil said. “To get to this approach, an army invading Crotheny would have to either land fifty leagues north of here and fight their way past the sea fortresses or cross the border with Hansa and make their way through Newland, which as you’ve seen can be flooded. According to Duke Artwair, this is the first time Thornrath has had to be defended from land. The southern approach, I’m told, makes this look easy.”
“But you make it sound so hopeless,” Edhmon said. “We might as well be riding off a cliff, and those of us in front will surely die.”
“Only if things go the way they want,” Neil said, nodding at the waerd.
“How else can things go?”
“Our way. Our first charge hits them so hard, we cut right through their horse and plunge into the breach. If they don’t hold us, they can’t bombard us, at least not for long.”
“But that would take a miracle, wouldn’t it?”
Neil shook his head. “When I first saw Thornrath, I thought it must be the work of giants or demons. But it was built by men, men like us. It didn’t take a miracle to build it; it won’t take one to capture it. But it will take men. Do you understand?”
“That’s it, Sir Neil. You tell ’im how it is!” Neil was startled by the shout and found that it was Sir Fell Hemmington who had spoken. “You hear that, lads? One charge or nothing!”
Suddenly, to Neil’s utter surprise, the whole column took up that refrain.
“One charge or nothing!”
He’d been talking to Edhmon without realizing that anyone else had been listening. But he was the leader, wasn’t he? He probably was supposed to have given some sort of speech, anyway.
The shouting doubled in fury as another stone struck the waerd and with a low rumble the wall finally collapsed, leaving a gap some five kingsyards in width. At the same moment, the enemy cavalry began to appear around either side of the fortification.
“Lances!” Neil shouted, couching his own long spear. All along the front rank, the others dropped level on both sides of him.
“One charge!” he shouted, spurring his mount, still feeling calm as the horse broke into a dead run.
The sea, as always, was beautiful.
“WHAT’S THAT LOOK?” Zemlé asked from the back of her kalbok, a few kingsyards away. “It’s not guilt starting to gnaw you, is it?”
Stephen glanced at her. In the buttery light of the morning sun her face was fresh and very young, and for an instant Stephen imagined her as a little girl wandering the highland meadows, fussing at goats and combing through clover in search of a lucky one.
“Should I be?” Stephen asked. “Even if you consider what we did to be, ah—”
Her arched brows stopped him in the middle of his sophistry.
He scratched his chin and began again. “I never took a vow of chastity,” he said, “and I’m not a follower of Saint Elspeth.”
“But you were planning on being a Decmanian,” she reminded him. “You would have taken the vow.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” Stephen asked.
She smiled. “It wouldn’t be the first one.”
He felt his face go warm.
“Come on,” she prompted.
“It was never my idea to enter the priesthood. It was my father who wanted that.