It was cold. A bitter wind had started blowing across the lake, and no coat could keep it out, no matter how thick it was. The only thing that did were the mages’ heat domes. They had become Aeolwyn’s most valuable asset in this campaign.

  “Hello, Rako. Hello Forst,” Aeolwyn said has he stepped past a pair of soldiers standing guard at one of the observation posts. They’d been able to erect two dozen of these posts across all the various camps. They were there to watch the castle for any changes, but they almost never had anything interesting to report.

  Mostly, they reported on unimportant drama going on inside the walls. The towers were high enough that they could see over the walls into the city, and frequently spent their time watching the starving populace go about their days. They’d witnessed fistfights over food, romantic trysts, and even murders.

  They’d started giving names to the people they regularly saw, and created elaborate backstories for them, indicating who was married to whom, and which of them had a mistress or lover. Aeolwyn didn’t mind, as long as it kept them focused on their task. He actually started to enjoy the stories.

  “How’s Count Fattooth?” Aeolwyn asked. “Did he get caught by his wife with his mistress?”

  “Not yet, sir,” Rako replied. “But it’s bound to happen soon. Ol’ Fattooth is getting sloppy. He brought Queen Tinydress into his house, and his wife was only two houses away!”

  “He didn’t!” Reiva shouted with glee.

  “He did! His wife came home when she was still in the house, but he snuck her out the back-room door before they were caught.”

  Aeolwyn laughed. These were the most common type of days they’d had over the last six weeks. Now that the siege camps were basically set up like little villages, the day-to-day routines were actually getting quite boring. The soldiers needed something to keep their minds engaged. Not all of their time could be spent constructing siege equipment.

  Besides the towers, each camp had a trebuchet, a ballista, and a few siege towers. The siege towers were shorter than the observation towers and were built on wheels. The idea was that the armored tower could be rolled up against the city walls and allow his men to safely get inside the city.

  Aeolwyn didn’t want to deploy them just yet. Once inside the city, it would be street by street skirmishing, and with so many places to hide, that could be deadly for any attacking army. But he wanted to be ready should the siege go on longer than Aeolwyn expected.

  “Towers are still sturdy, eh, Sir Jom?”

  Sir Jom nodded. They walked the lines of a different camp every day to make sure everything was in order, and nothing needed to be done. Today they were headed to the south wall camp, but always started with an inspection of the main camp, which was set up on the north side of the castle near the lake.

  Just then a horn blast sounded. Aeolwyn didn’t recognize it, neither the tune it played, nor the tone of the horn itself. It wasn’t one of his. It was a high-pitched grating sound, not unlike what he imagined a mouse screaming would sound like. If a mouse could scream loud enough to be heard from two hundred yards away.

  Another horn sounded, followed by the deep thump of hoofbeats. An icy cold washed over him, and it wasn’t from the weather.

  “Battle lines!” he shouted. “Shield walls! We’re under attack!”

  Rako began to ring the tower’s alarm bell. All around the camp below men sprinted into action, grabbing pikes and shields. Archers grabbed bows and mages sprinted to the forming up battle lines. The heat domes blinked out of existence as the mages prepared new spells.

  “Cavalry coming from the north!” Sir Jom shouted. Aeolwyn continued to offer his old mentor the rank of lieutenant general, and he still refused it. The men didn’t care that he didn’t have a rank. They obeyed his orders as though they’d come from Aeolwyn himself.

  Why hadn’t the scouts seen this? They were always out in the field, keeping an eye out for an attacking army. They should have been back days ago with this warning. He was going to have to have a word with Captain Fleiz, the soldier who commanded the scouts.

  That was a question to worry about later. Right now, he had to command the troops as best as he could from this tower. With the oncoming cavalry, the thundering hooves were making it difficult to hear.

  “Mages! Light them up when they’re in range and then get to the back!” he heard Galafar shout. “Let them soften themselves up against the pikes!”

  Galafar raced to the back of the line as it was forming up. The mages worked their way to the front to make sure they were in range of the attack. As Aeolwyn studied the line, he realized that with a fixed position like this, it would be useful to build some small, protected trenches ahead of the lines where the mages could hide. Giving the mages the ability to hit an enemy before they reached the line would be an incredible advantage.

  “Pikes down!” The soldiers with the pikes dipped them down low, almost burying them in the snow. Aeolwyn glanced nervously at Sir Jom.

  “I hope this works,” he said.

  Before the rugged old soldier could reply, the attacking cavalry finally came into view. The first to charge were mounted light cavalry carrying long spears. Following them were knights in ornately carved armor, and marching slowly behind them was a massive infantry.

  Each of the soldiers were thin and tall, with long hair held back with braided cords, leaving their pointed ears exposed. Their smooth skin and angular faces left no question about who owned this army.

  “Elves?” Aeolwyn asked. “Why have they come?”

  “They must have struck some sort of deal with Drahius,” Sir Jom said. “No real surprise there. They’ve hated us ever since your grandfather stole their precious arrowhead.”

  “The A’Lon’co’kal,” Aeolwyn murmured. According to the soothsayer, that arrowhead was a symbol of the elves’ right to rule, and without it, their society had been thrown into chaos. Too bad he’d taken the bird statue and not the arrowhead during his visit with Alfyn. Maybe he could have used it to claim the Daalship.

  The riders shouted “Sa’ A’Lon’co’kal!” and “Sa’ Daal!” as they pointed their spears towards Aeolwyn’s lines. He didn’t know what the words meant, but they were clearly battle cries. They stayed in formation, none creeping ahead of another. Aeolwyn wished Count Wollams had had that kind of discipline. Their elvish faces wore hard expressions of grim determination.

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  As soon as the light cavalry leading the charge got into range, Egne shouted, “Cast!”

  Fireballs burst from the mages hands and set men and horses ablaze. They leapt from their horses hoping that the snow drifts would extinguish the flames. The horses who were caught on fire bucked heavily, knocking their riders to the ground, only to be trampled to death by their former mounts.

  Those that survived the assault turned aside as Aeolwyn’s mages did as ordered and ran to the back of the lines. An order that suddenly turned into a grave mistake, as out of the smoke and flames came the elvish knights, spears ready, and with the mages suddenly out of the fight, the knights had nothing between them and the Camulani line.

  Aeolwyn couldn’t help but wonder if the elvish general had deployed the light cavalry simply as fodder? Were they simply there to soak up damage and leave the knights free to attack? A brutal strategy that might prove disastrously effective.

  Aeolwyn felt a burning rage in the pit of his stomach that Egne didn’t reserve some mages for a case like this. He should have expected a secondary attack alongside the light cavalry’s assault. And now it was going to cost them.

  “Raise!” Galafar shouted as soon as the knights got close. The pikes came up almost as one. Horses and their riders attempted to pull up at the last second, but it was too late. The first dozen knights smashed themselves into the line of pikemen, killing horses and men alike.

  Galafar and Sir Jom had concocted this strategy together. They’d built a series of brackets along the battle lines where the pikes could be braced. Then, they’d lower the pikes out of view so that the charging cavalry couldn’t see them. Then, at the point of no return, the pikemen would raise them up and impale them.

  More knights followed, getting close enough to hurl a spear at some of Aeolwyn’s men. The spears clattered harmlessly off the shields, but the force of the impact was stronger than the pikemen had expected. Many were crushed to death by the charging horses. Still other pikes broke free from their mounts and drove the back end of the weapon into their owners.

  There was no time for them to regroup. As the surviving knights peeled away, another set of mounted men appeared. This time they were mounted archers. Before the survivors could drop their pikes and raise the shield, a close-range volley of arrows pelted them. His men screamed as arrows hit them in their chests, necks, and faces.

  As soon as the round of archers had completed their run, the knights were back into action. The pikes were still stuck inside horses and men, and with no time to recover them, they had to rely on shields and swords to beat back this second assault. More men were crushed between the horses, while others were skewered by spears that, at times, ran through two men.

  “Plug the gap!” Galafar shouted. “Reinforce the line! We need more pikemen!”

  Men from behind the lines ran up to fill the void left by all the dead men. Some brought and set new pikes, while others freed some of the weapons that were still stuck in dying men. A few others ripped the spears out of the bodies of their dying companions and hurled them back at the knights in a futile gesture.

  “Bring the mages back!” Aeolwyn shouted. “Protect the line!”

  The mounted archers came back again after the knights turned away, but this time Aeolwyn was ready. The mages had returned to the front lines, and protected by shield men, cast lightning bolts and other projectile spells at the archers.

  Men fell from their horses before their arrows loosed or fired stray shots into the backs of the other archers, sending the whole group into disarray. Some fired their shots too early or missed wildly. Others panicked and fled, crashing their horses into the other archer’s horses, forcing more of them to cut their attack early.

  The mages weren’t enough. They needed time to focus their concentration and recharge between spells. He needed something that could hit those mounted bowmen from a distance.

  “Where are my archers!?” Aeolwyn cried.

  “Archers!” Sir Jom shouted. More men from behind the line raced up to help, but they weren’t fast enough. The next round of knights were galloping towards them. This time, the pikemen were ready, but the knights knew they were coming.

  The damage wasn’t as bad this time, but the men in the front lines were still dying. Aeolwyn’s heart broke a little bit for every man that was killed by an elvish spear or arrow. He should have planned better, but he hadn’t seen this hit-and-fade strategy before. Not even Sir Jom had tried it on him during their lessons.

  The knights and light cavalry came three more times, each time inflicting casualties on Aeolwyn’s men, but the line held during every assault. Despite the losses, the men kept the shield wall together, freed the pikes, and readied them for the next assault.

  While they took greater losses, they still inflicted heavy damage on the elvish cavalry. The elves strangely didn’t commit the infantry. Perhaps they were hoping for the line to break first. That was what he would have done. Soften up the enemy’s shield wall, then send the infantry in the gap and slaughter the rest.

  After the last charge, the elves decided that they’d had enough of the pikes, arrows, and spells and retreated back to their lines. They shouted out insults and more war cries but made no attempt to charge again.

  This part of the battle was over, for now. Both sides were left to recover their dead and ready themselves for another assault. Not tonight, though. The battle had gone on for hours, and there wasn’t enough daylight left for another attack. A horse could get its foreleg stuck in a hole in the dark that could have been easily avoided in the daytime.

  ***

  After the battle, Aeolwyn went and inspected the lines. The men there were still in good spirits, but their faces bore the scars of what they had witnessed that day. Their losses were significant. It hadn’t been enough to break the siege, but they couldn’t withstand a continued assault.

  “That was rough,” Sir Jom said once he and Aeolwyn were back in his tent.

  “Thank Laryn no one came out from the castle,” Galafar said. “We had enough trouble with the elvish army.”

  “Jor Egnever,” Aeolwyn said. “The mages can’t fire all at once. We need to stagger their attacks so that there’s enough spells to hit several waves of their knights.”

  Egne bowed his head. He’d taken losses today as well. He knew his strategy had failed, and he knew the stakes. “It’s too late for that,” the mage said. “They’ll be expecting this next time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they send in their own mages.”

  King Drahius had certainly noticed how hard the elves had hit Aeolwyn. The next assault would come from both sides. If that happened, Aeolwyn was done for. They could send for reinforcements from the other camps, but that would open gaps in their siege. There had to be another way.

  An idea struck him as he started thinking about the elvish attack. One of their war cries jumped out at him. Sa’ A’Lon’co’kal they had said. A’Lon’co’kal was their name for the golden arrowhead that was the symbol of their power. A symbol that his brother was in possession of.

  But they didn’t know that.

  He fished the golden bird statue from his pocket. He’d almost forgotten that it was there. He tossed it over to Galafar who gave him a strange look before examining it closely.

  “Did you steal that from your father’s study?” Sir Jom asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “And it’s sacred to the elves. Galafar, send a messenger to their camp and ask for a meeting. Show them that statue and tell them it’s theirs to keep.”

  Galafar looked up at him. “What are you planning, general?”

  Aeolwyn grinned. “We can’t hope to beat them on the battlefield as long as we have the castle to worry about. But if they join us…?” He let the thought trail off.

  “Would the elves betray their deal with Drahius?” Egne asked.

  “They will for the A’Lon’co’kal,” Aeolwyn said. At least, he hoped they would. Otherwise, he might as well pack up his army and go home. Wherever that was.

  “The what?” Galafar and Egne asked in unison.

  “The golden arrowhead,” Sir Jom said. “Aeolwyn’s great-grandfather ripped it from the neck of the Daal in their final battle. It’s what forced peace between Camulan and Wickshire.” Sir Jom turned to Aeolwyn. “You didn’t steal the arrowhead too, did you?”

  “No,” Aeolwyn answered. “But they don’t know that.”

  It might be a futile effort. The elves might recognize their position of strength over Aeolwyn, and if they suspected he had the A’Lon’co’kal, they might attack with renewed fervor to get it back. And that would be the end of him and his army.

  He sent a silent prayer to Laryn that they would negotiate.