A Stolen Crown, page 12
Now, they had a sizeable force and thankfully the dark forest was thick with game even in winter else they would have had a difficult time just feeding themselves. But with their added numbers came added chances for infiltration by spies and greater risk of detection by Manfred’s own scouts, especially not that the snows made it all but impossible to travel without leaving some sort of tracks.
All had heartily agreed when Kaleb had finally proposed making an attack to retake his own castle at White Falls, from which he had been driven by the baron. Many of the men and women had been perfectly happy to live in the Border stations as makeshift soldiers but their numbers had grown considerably and everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before Manfred figured out where his attackers were hiding. Kaleb’s commanders also agreed that if they pushed too hard, Manfred would lose control of the region and they would have to deal with full contingents of the Maramyrian regular forces, who were well armed, well equipped, well organized, and could commit to the field in numbers. White Falls was the key to the region, the main, defensible stronghold from which they could coordinate the defence of most of the Borderlands from attack from any direction. Kaleb knew they would have to take back his former home sooner rather than later.
Kaleb went with Brian to survey Manfred’s defences at the fortified castle. As much as he disliked Manfred, he was impressed that at least the Baron knew how to organize defences and had set up a strong perimeter to detect and defend against any intruders. Of course, Manfred and his men did not know the landscape around White Falls as well as Kaleb did so they were able to sneak in very close to the castle walls themselves to get a better look at the preparations.
“He’s expecting a siege,” Kaleb muttered. Brian nodded. He had heard about the giant vats of oil that could be poured onto attackers as they attempted to scale walls and about the catapults that could be mounted atop the parapets and loaded with rocks that could crush handfuls of men at a time. Now that he saw them, he realized just how difficult it could be to conquer a well-defended fortress. He wondered whether he and the rest of Kaleb’s rag-tag army would soon be splitting trees for their own siege engines and praying to the gods that the oil and rocks would not be dropped upon them.
What discouraged the entire group beyond the obvious conventional fortifications was the natural geography around the castle. White Falls was well named, for the fortress was situated on a kind of island set where the White River forked in two before it joined back together again and dropped into a high waterfall. More than just a natural moat, the White River was named for the fact that it consisted almost entirely rapids and fast-moving water. Anyone who was lucky enough to survive the thrashing current of the river itself would be quickly washed over the long drop of the waterfall to a very unpleasant death. Brian gulped as he thought about being tossed over the falls by the powerful river then shook off his fear and steeled his resolve. If Kaleb wanted to take back his castle, then that was what they would do.
“Do you think we can take it?” Brian asked. Kaleb shook his head. Jax turned to look at his friend.
“Surely you must know the castle’s weaknesses. It’s been in your family for generations,” Jax said. Kaleb half smiled.
“My family built this fort many generations ago and we built it to withstand almost anything. It has no real weaknesses as it stand, except of course for the falls.” Kaleb pointed downstream to where the river disappeared over a sharp precipice. “There’s a way in through there, but there’s no way we could get enough of us in to make any kind of stand inside the castle. With the number of troops they’ve got, we’d get cut down in no time.”
“But there is a way in?” Jax smiled fiendishly. “That’s a start. Now we just have to figure out a way to get them out.”
“Couldn’t we smoke them out?” Brian asked. “I mean, my father and I had a problem with gophers in the fields one year so we lit some smoky fires and with a bellows, we blew smoke into their tunnels. My brothers held traps at the other ends and caught the whole lot of them.”
“Would it work?” Jax asked. Kaleb scratched his chin.
“Maybe. But I think we’ll need more than a little smoke to clear out Manfred and a bunch of Maramyria soldiers.”
“I done seen this trick,” Fergus said. “To get rid of the gopher. But I seen it done with water. It works a whole lot better.”
“Of course!” Kaleb exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that? The river will do it all for us. Good thinking, both of you. We’ve got plenty of work to do but I think we can take the castle within a week.”
Brian was not sure how they were going to flood the entire castle, but he was definitely looking forward to seeing something like that.
*****
It took them several days of scouting around beneath the waterfall but soon they were able to begin work. Kaleb had shown Brian, Jax, and Fergus through the tunnels that exited under the waterfall and led up to the castle above. Most of the passages had been hand-carved by Kaleb’s ancestors and the rock was completely solid in most places. Kaleb figured that if they could plug up the tunnel system and then divert the river to increase the water supply to the city, the pressure of the already fast-moving river would fill the castle in no time. Unfortunately, the sewers would also have to flood which would cause a great deal of mess but the bright side was that it should make things very uncomfortable for Manfred and his men.
They worked in teams, hauling rocks and building makeshift walls in the tunnels, supported by braces that later could be removed so that they could drain the water from the stone fortress. Luckily, it was quite a ways from the castle where Kaleb had directed them to block the tunnels so no one above heard the sounds of their labors. In all, it took three days to completely stop up every drain leaving them only to turn on the water.
The fortress received its water through a system of pipes connected to a kind of stone water vent that had been built out from the castle on one side of the forked river. The water-vent functioned like a kind of dam that allowed the castle’s inhabitants to control the amount of the river’s current it caught. When the river ran slowly, which was rare, the vent would be opened up so it would catch a greater weight of water and put added pressure into the pipes. When the waters were high and already coursing quickly toward the falls, the vent would be left at its normal setting.
Kaleb proposed that they block off the other fork of the river, forcing the river to flow more heavily on the side where the fortress collected its water. Once that had been done, someone would have to sneak into the city and open the water vent. That should cause every well and cistern to flood. The trick would be getting to the vent, causing it to flood without being stopped by Manfred's men, and a task for which Jax was the perfect volunteer.
“I’ll just stay there until the water is too deep for anyone to get at the blasted thing,” Jax told them. He was by far the stealthiest of any of them and he had the added benefit of already knowing his way around the inside of his Kaleb's family castle.
“But that will leave you surrounded by Manfred's men and you could get trapped in the vent room," Kaleb objected. "You run the risk of drowning, not to mention if our theories about the sewers are correct, getting a mouthful of somet very nasty stuff.” Jax shrugged.
“We could destroy the wheel that controls the vents and then make our escape,” Jax told him. “It’s the safest option but it will make an even bigger mess.” The problem was, it would completely flood the place, making it very difficult to repair any damage. Even closing the vent, once it had been completely flooded would likely prove a challenge and a permanently flooded castle was no good to anyone.
“How hard would that be to fix?” Brian asked. Kaleb shook his head.
“Not only would we have to remove the block from the one fork of the river and unplug the tunnels, but to fix the water system as well? Almost impossible, and we don't want to be stuck without the fortress. I have a feeling we are going to need those walls once Cerric catches wind of this.”
“Then it’s decided,” Jax said. “I will go. You let me worry about how to escape.”
“There’s got to be another way,” Kaleb said, visibly frustrated. He ran the plan through his head again, looking for a solution. Every way he looked at it, the water room would have to flood so much that it would make it very difficult for anyone to get at the control wheel. He turned back to Jax. “How good a swimmer are you?”
“Better than most.”
“Do you think you could keep your wits about you in white water?” Kaleb asked him.
“Maybe. What do you have in mind?”
*****
Baron Manfred sat down to enjoy some venison and a bottle of wine from the cellar that had once belonged to his adversary, a man who lurked in the dark forest from White Falls to the edge of the Borderlands. He knew Kaleb was out there somewhere and hoped he was freezing out in the snow. Kaleb had cost him dearly and now it appeared as thought the outlaw lord was planning to lay siege to the fortress. It was proving more and more difficult for Manfred's men to make it safely through the forest and reports were of the attacks happening closer and closer to the fortress.
Cerric had sent some reinforcements but not nearly enough, mostly because Manfred had not told him just how dire things had become. The people from the neighboring towns had turned against him and against their king, conspiring with Kaleb to bring him down. Many had begun refusing to pay their tithes and some had even attacked his men when they had tried to forcibly collect. Now it seemed as though the forests had come alive with rebels and it was no longer safe to even go hunting in the surrounding woods.
Manfred tried to savor his meal, aware that even he might soon have to restrict his diet if Kaleb actually had the gall to lay siege to this fortress, which he, of all people, should know was impregnable. He sipped the wine, impressed at its quality, while he thought about what he would say in his letter to Maramyr, how he would explain this situation. Manfred shook his head. There had to be a way to draw Kaleb out to a real fight. Maybe a siege would be a good thing. At least, for once, he would be able to see his enemy.
He stood from the table and tossed the remains from his ornate silver plate to the floor where the dogs began their growling struggle to greedily steal every scrap from each other. The dogs were in luck. Manfred did not have much of an appetite this night and had barely touched his food. As the dogs lustily chewed the meat from bones and licked the grease from the floor, Manfred caught a whiff of a foul smell and turned to look at them. He had never noticed before how badly they stank and wondered if the man assigned to take clean up after them had neglected his duty. Disgusted, Manfred walked out of the dining hall and wandered his way down the great hall toward the outer rooms of the palace.
He barely halfway there when he heard shouts from outside. Curious, Manfred walked out onto one of the upper walkways that ran above an open courtyard. As he walked out past the oil-soaked torches that lit the upper wall, the men in the courtyard below noticed him and called out.
“Baron. We’ve got a problem with the sewers, sir,” one of them called. Manfred recognized the man as one of the lieutenants, who had been sent to him by Cerric.
“Fix it then. I can smell it, even up here,” he told them, somewhat relieved that his dogs had not been the source of the foul odor.
“That’s just the problem my lord, we don’t know how. It’s coming up everywhere."
Manfred stood for a moment, watching as brackish water pooled in the courtyard then held his hand to his nose as a gust of wind blew the stench of generations of sewage toward him.
“Something is wrong,” he said, realizing that the water system was the castle's only weakness, and if he were in Kaleb's shoes, it would make sense to exploit it. “Sound the alarm! We are under attack!”
Manfred might be a lot of things but he was no fool. He watched the water start to flow more strongly into the courtyard below and knew that somehow Kaleb was behind this. He took out a piece of cloth from his pocket and held it to his nose as further shouting erupted in other parts of the castle.
At the top of the steps that led down to the water room, Jax calmly watched the water rise to the top and begin to fill the floor of the room. Luckily for him, the place was upstream from the sewers and the water that flowed into it was somewhat cleaner than that which he knew had already begun to fill other parts of the castle. Still, Jax could detect the faint smell of sewage and he shook his head thinking of all the beautiful rooms, tapestries and furniture that were going to be covered in foulness. He wondered whether, after this, Kaleb would even want the stinking fortress. The water pooled across the floor and touched Jax’s boot and he slide it back. No point in getting wet until he absolutely had to, especially considering how cold the water was.
As expected, loud banging sounded from the heavy wooden door. Jax smiled. He had been wondering when Manfred’s men would figure out to check the water system. Luckily, he had not only barred the door but there had been some heavy cabinets that he had also been able to push in front of it, keeping the men out. He had also cut two holes in the bottom of the door, too small for a man to get through, but large enough to let the water flow out and into the rest of the fortress. The bodies of the two men who had been guarding the water room lay on top of the cabinets, still alive, but unconscious, and hopefully they would remain thus until Jax could make his escape. Jax looked up the wall to a high window and took a deep breath. All he had to do was wait until the water floated him up high enough to reach the window that, if his estimation was correct, overlooked the river. He laughed to himself thinking how easy things sounded when they discussed the plan by the campfire several nights past. Now, he realized that even though the water was rising fast, by the time it rose high enough, he would probably be frozen from being in the icy river water for even that short amount of time.
The window was set very high on the wall and also looked like it might not even be large enough for him to squeeze through. He had already tried to throw a hook and rope through it, to no avail. Jax heard Manfred’s soldiers begin to chop at the thick wood of the door with an axe. No matter, he thought, at the rate the water was beginning to flow, by the time they could chew through the door, the water would have risen far above it anyway and likely the spray of water coming through the holes they were making would slow them down. He turned his attention back to the window. There had to be a way to get up there, he thought as he looked at the sheer wall, cursing Kaleb’s family for being so particular about their architecture. If only they had left the original building stones exposed, he might have something to hold onto. He was a good climber.
Jax remembered Kaleb telling him once how he had restored much of the castle, replastering so many of the rooms where it had begun to soften and crumble. Kaleb had brought in artists to paint the still wet plaster in many of the more finely appointed rooms but, due to his own feelings of frugality, left much of the palace a more utilitarian greyish white of the plaster. Setting aside his thoughts of aesthetics, Jax started to wonder about the plaster.
He took out one of his long daggers and walked over to the wall. Holding it up in his fist, he stabbed it at the wall. Sure enough, the blade pierced the hard outer layer and sunk into the softer older layers of plaster almost to the hilt. Jax pulled out his other dagger and stabbed it into the wall at a point higher than the other and it went in just as easily. He wondered at how many times the walls would have been plastered over to have been so thick with the stuff, but considering that it was strong enough to hold his daggers, he decided not to bother questioning the decorating choices of Kaleb's ancestors.
Gritting his teeth, Jax started the slow climb, pulling himself up the wall with the strength of his arms alone. He was glad he had spent the last year climbing walls and hanging from window ledges or there would have been no way he could have pulled himself painstakingly up the wall. When he was nearly at the window, he glanced down and was reassured by the fact that, if he fell, he would at least land in a depth of water that had now risen almost to his own height. Still, he thought it would be better to stick to this plan since he was almost there and it looked like the guards he had knocked out were beginning to stir, probably revived by the cold water that now surrounded the cabinets on which they lay. With a few more stabs of his daggers, Jax made it to the top and he pulled himself into the thick rectangular window ledge then rested for a few moments, catching his breath.
Jax could hear Manfred’s soldiers shouting atop the ramparts above him and felt their boots reverberating faintly in the stone behind his back as they ran back and forth on the wall just above him. They were cursing now and he thought he heard them complaining openly about Manfred. He smiled. That would be the perfect end for the Baron, to have his men mutiny on him. Whatever the case, most of them would probably get swept away by the river when they tried to escape. That was his fear now. The climb had left his arms shaking with fatigue and now he was worried that he would have little strength to swim the current. He took a few deep breaths and shook his hands to try to get them moving again.
From his perch in the high window that looked out over the river below, Jax was able to lean out and look to the side at the outer grounds of the fortress and he could see that the plan to flood the place was working far better than he and Kaleb had expected. The fortress grounds were already heavily flooded and most of its soldiers were crowding atop its walls for fear of drowning, especially since the sewers had indeed backed up, making a messy affair of the whole place.
Looking past them, Jax could see trails of smoke and he guessed that the fires that Kaleb's men had set along the land-bridge that led to the fortress were likely impassable by now, which meant that Manfred's men were going to have to jump for it and try to swim for the bank before they were tossed over the falls. It was a frightening thought, but he might as well beat them to it. He just hoped that the lad Brian and the big man Fergus had rigged things up properly. Otherwise, he’d surely get swept away by the current. Jax kicked off the old pair of boots he wore, glad he’d had the presence of mind to leave his own much nicer ones with Kaleb. He made sure his daggers were secure on his belt as he perched on the outer edge of the window and stared for a moment at the river coursing past him and then he took a deep breath, steeled his nerves, and leapt out from the wall.
