Chương 68: The Black Captain

Freeing the prisoners and killing the trolls left me with four Presence left. I paused on the other side of the prisoner camp, searching for any more enemies instinctively, even if my high Focus meant I hadn't lost track. I knew that we'd dealt with them all.

"Get to the armoury!" I shouted as I cut prisoners free and opened up the gates of their pens. One of the senior sappers jumped up on a barrel and yelled, "Don't run! Stay and fight! Arm yourselves and fight for your city, or you'll soon have nowhere to run!" The civilians gathered in the center of the camp, huddled together, shivering and cold. A young woman draped a blanket over an elderly man's shoulders, a cluster of working boys looked at the sappers with fear and awe. Finally, a man shouted, "What can we do?

There are too many of them! The kingdom has abandoned us!"

"Lord Ceonwin is here to help!" I replied.

"With what? Eight men? You'll be crushed."

"There are more of us. But we need your help!"

"You're the army!" someone else yelled.

"You do it! Why else do we pay our taxes?" I sighed, then pointed at the inner wall.

"There are people in there who need your help, just the same as you did. We're the advanced team, and we can help, but we can't save you if you don't save yourselves. I don't care who you fight for, if it's the king or the Warlord or just for yourself—I care that you get this city back into your own hands!"

"This way!" Brawl shouted, pointing in the direction of the armoury. Despite the scattered protests, most of the civilians rushed after him. The other sappers helped funnel them toward the armoury, and I gave a sigh of relief. Sure, our numbers didn't exactly inspire confidence, but we'd do what we could. When we reached the armoury—a three-storey building made entirely of stone, with a coat of arms hanging above its gateway—I shouted, "Anyone who can hold a weapon, arm yourself.

Fill wagons, and bring extra weapons with you. We need to free everyone that we can. There's more than enough to go around the entire city!"

"Protect the women and children!" Sage called.

"I need a volunteer to get them out of the city and take them west to safer lands!" A different middle-aged woman volunteered for the job, and Sage soon had her running errands, gathering up anyone too young to be useful. I rushed into the armoury, helping light the torches and pass out weapons. There were spears and swords and axes, shields and bows. A man tripped, dropping his armful of weapons as he was loading a wagon, and those around him rushed to help.

A young man pulled on chainmail and a poorly-fitting helmet, and a woman picked up a short sword and gave it a swish.

"That's not for you, lass," an older woman said.

"Come this way, and—""If she can swing a sword, we need her," I said, holding up a hand to the old woman. Then I glanced at the younger woman.

"You're ready to fight for your city?"

"Oh, yes, sir," she said, a gleam in her eyes.

"Not a sir. That's for thegns and Ealdormen." I grinned. I'd always wanted to say that to someone else.

"Now get out there and group up with the others!" Brawl filled a wagon with weapons, and we rushed to the next camp as a squad, darting through the ranks of the orcs. I had to spend another Presence taking down an especially tough troll, and now I was at three points. I vowed not to use any more until we reached the inner wall. We didn't know what else we were going to come up against tonight. The civilians helped, cutting through the ranks of the orcs with far less effectiveness.

I had to remember that the average orc was an Iron, but the rest of the civilians were effectively Coppers. Whenever I could, I used my siphon to gather Presences from the fallen enemies. I used whatever I accumulated, and it was enough to push me to eight total points—or bring me back up to having four points to spare. Shatter had been right about the siphon, though.

Although it didn't wring a Presence out of every dead orc yet, it did gather more of the little white orbs than it would have before, and they seemed slightly larger. It was midnight when we finished liberating all the prisoner camps. Regretfully, I had dropped down to three Presence again, having used my newly gathered point in the last camp (but technically I hadn't broken the vow to myself, so it was fine.) The trolls were still tough enough that, if one caught me at a bad time, I had to use a resonance Skill to get myself out of trouble. One had already shattered my arm with its club, but Sage had healed it before it got too bad. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. But the rest of the squad was low on Presence too. We couldn't keep going like this forever. I shouted, "With me!"

We'd split up from the rest of the senior sappers, but I needed to bring them back to the main thoroughfare, where I was pretty sure I'd find Lord Ceonwin.

"We need to regroup and get orders!" I didn't know what Ceonwin planned, but I couldn't just go running off on my own and do whatever I wanted around the city. We'd already gone off on our own enough tonight. We raced back to the main thoroughfare, then followed it as it wrapped around the inner wall until it reached the main gate. The road was made of old bricks, and it was uneven.

I hadn't even realized how tired I was until I almost tripped over a raised sewer grate, and I slapped my head and concentrated my Focus. Now wasn't the time to lose focus. The road looped around the inner wall until it arrived at the second gate. It had another portcullis, and beyond it, a pair of thick wooden doors that had been shut and barred. Lord Ceonwin and the rest of the sappers—the seniors and the candidates—waited in front of the door, looking up at it.

Orcs rushed to the wall, taking positions and raining arrows down us.

"Get into cover!" I shouted to the civilians. Some of them had shields, but none of them had trained like we had, and the shields were heavy. A lot of them had dropped their shields along the way. They rushed into cover, sheltering behind the buildings. Meanwhile, I rejoined the rest of the sappers. There were about eighty of us left, which wasn't awful, all things considered. But if we took too many losses with this mission, it would be devastating for the future of the SAP. I couldn't worry about that right now.

I joined the shield wall with Brawl, holding up my own shield to defend against the rain of arrows, and to help cover Anchor and Sage. We fitted into the formation beside Lord Ceonwin. He said, "Report, sergeant."

"We emptied the prisoner camps, sir," I replied.

"They're all armed and gathering in the city behind us. There are probably about five hundred of them who could find weapons, and another five hundred with other tools and equipment. The rest are taking cover in the city or trying to flee."

"They're braver than I thought," Ceonwin said.

"Good work."

"What's the plan for the gate—" Before I could finish, a strident horn sounded up atop the wall. It wasn't anywhere near as full as one of our horns, and something about it was just hollow. But the orcs still responded to it. They pulled back from the ramparts and ducked behind the merlons. They stopped firing arrows. After a few seconds, a voice slithered out over the top of the wall.

"Lord Ceonwin…" We all lowered our shields slightly to see what was happening, but we were ready to raise them quickly if it was an ambush. An orc with pale, pasty skin stood on the rampart above the gate. He wore tattered leather armour and carried a crude, curved sword—which, at the moment, he rested on like it was a cane. That couldn't have been good for the blade, but the orc didn't seem to care.

Fungal growths covered the left side of his face and were woven into his hair, and his shoulder pauldron was made of some monster's skull.

"Mugreth," Lord Ceonwin muttered. That had to be the Black Captain everyone was talking about.

"Did you think you could retake this fortress with such a small force, man-lord?" the orc said, then gave a hyena-like cackle.

"You have minutes. As we speak, lesser orcs are gathering behind this wall. When I open the gates, we'll overwhelm you. Surrender now, worm, and we'll let you leave with your eyes intact!"

"An orc giving its enemies a chance to surrender?" I whispered.

"This is Mugreth the Falsetongue," Anchor whispered.

"He's been known to us for a while. Always offers his victims a chance to surrender, then stabs them in the back as they retreat. If they retreat."

"I bet he's called Falsetongue for a reason?"

"Correct." Lord Ceonwin rose up and stepped to the front of our force.

"If you attack now, Mugreth, you will die. The streets are teeming with my men—and quite frankly, a whole lot of civilians that you've made angry. Every street is a chokepoint, and every alleyway is a valley of death." At the moment, it was a bluff. Even when the thegns arrived with the regulars, it would be a bluff. But Mugreth couldn't know. We'd been fast enough and caused enough chaos that Ceonwin could have been telling the truth. Mugreth spat on the ground.

A glob of gray liquid fell on the road, rotting away the bricks and decomposing the stone—which I didn't even think was possible. That was close enough to Mugreth admitting defeat as we could get. The Black Captain hissed, "We know how large your army is. We have… informants."

"If you were so confident in your estimates, why hesitate?" Ceonwin countered. After a few seconds, Mugreth snarled, " Tsk. You won't breach these gates, Ealdorman, and you know it."

"And you can't break free. We have you trapped." I raised my eyebrows. We could wait for a while now, until enough reinforcements arrived to actually take the inner wall. But Mugreth whispered something to an orc nearby. A moment later, a group of orcs marched up to the ramparts, holding three prisoners by their hair. They flailed and thrashed and tried to break free, shouting and pleading for mercy.

"Every hour that you don't flee, we kill more of your countrymen," Mugreth said, a cold grin on his lips.

"Do it, worms." The orcs drew daggers and stabbed the prisoners in the backs. They gasped and choked, and were eerily silent as the orcs threw them from the walls. They hid the ground with a wet thud, and I winced.

"We will not give in," Lord Ceonwin said, then stepped back from the wall. He motioned to the sappers.

"With me. We make camp out of their range. If he wants a stalemate, we'll give him a stalemate."