PULL ME UNDER - White Witch - Thirty-Three
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White Witch
Thirty-Three
Tanner’s shell seemed changed. He didn’t care at all to examine the world around him, his curiosity permanently squashed from whatever spirit he had. The air wavered around him whenever he walked, and he never smiled. He really was a shell, and three nights passed without him saying a word.
Ddun had to commit to the siege before they moved on, despite his pleading and negotiating with the elders and his officers. It was too much of an ask, for the elected leader of the Dvarri warriors to storm off with a pack of men while the castle was within grasp. Lauren would remind him she needed bedrest anyway, before they could ride, and he had to concede she was the most right of any of them who argued against his desire to storm out to the Stone Thrones. There was no worry about any sortie, and no sign of anything from the east. Supplies arrived from Kaddusk to supplement their oil and food and other odd things. The men were filling every available clay vessel to the brim with flammables, and that castle was going to be burned.
“This is your final chance to surrender. We have been playing at war thus long, and we will wipe you from this earth like shit off a boot if you refuse. Every one of you will die.”
Screams of souls inside the walls begging to surrender went unheeded by the gatemen.
The assault on the walls would begin at daybreak.
***
Shields held above them as studded with arrows as the iron and wood could take, fire-oil ignited the inner grounds of the castle, the reek of burning wood and cloth and flesh, Borga’s men laid waste to the gatehouse and the wall of bodies past the massive wooden gate caused a bottleneck of corpses, not a single scream from those that came for them. Rocks were dropped on Borga’s men. Boiled water from above drenched them, men howling and melting under their armour, steam in the air thick enough to cloud one’s vision, and yet more flowed.
At the base of the keep, the flames licked high. The women and children and servants and merchants, that had been screaming the day before, were dead in the feast hall. Whether they had killed themselves or the charmed soldiers did them in, Borga couldn’t say. In his retelling, his eyes focussed on his hands. A hardened fighter, old enough to be Ddun’s father but with many fighting years left, had a quirk to his voice that choked Ddun to listen. Not just that the hall was filled with innocent dead, but that the soldiers, their ghost-white eyes, as if their men were fighting devils in men’s clothes. When a man made no sound at the strike of a blade… It chilled the soul, and Borga was not immune. Borga was later mumbling, drunk, about the hollowness of the deaths of their own men against such an enemy, and Ddun’s heart grew heavier still.
Grandfather nor Meired could be found, and Ddun himself scoured every inch of the castle and the grounds. The only sign Tanner or Irynna had been there at all was a dropped bow and a palmblade in a withdrawing chamber next to Grandfather’s quarters.
Borga’s men had cleared the way of bodies, picked through to take the masks of their brothers for the parting ritual. Ddun could only think that the entire siege was a sham, an illusion, a diversion, just as he felt the first charge to be. What a tale. The pitched battle that wasn’t, the siege of an empty castle. It was all a cruel joke, and he flayed the elders with scathing words at their waste of time, keeping him from heading to Dol Daruk. But the tale wasn’t over, not until he had Grandfather’s head on his lance.
Returning to the camp to make plans, not wasting a moment after giving his men permission to plunder what they pleased, barring any and all papers or books or scrolls that they came across, that hadn’t burned, those were to be delivered to Ddun and Lauren, or the elders once they were off, and the men were happy it was over.
The fields were for the taking, seeking out any clans that hadn’t united, drawing up tithe agreements with merchant guilds to keep them safe within Kisku’s territory. None of the force left to guard the castle stayed within the walls, and not just because of the destruction. Every soldier felt the place was cursed.
Ddun drew up the potential fighting plans for spring, which was coming fast. The injured returned to their clan camps until called on again, some of the force would return to Kaddusk, some would go east and some west. There were many more clans to unite and feuds to conclude. Ddun declared if any clans under his banner fought another they would both be laying in the womb of the earth. They were united, and it was practically law.
After a lot of talking and planning making throats raw, he was ready to ride on. Lauren in her cart with her maids and Tanner’s shadow, and Irynna’s six brothers—Mikkel, Tennuk, Haun, Ion, Tenma, and Bol—rode alongside, and two hundred men behind him. They didn’t know what to expect. The air was crisp the morning they set off from Kisku, the sun was warm and covered them in a calm blanket of colour. Dol Daruk was south-east, and they followed the ancient path of stone Grandmothers to find their way, while keeping away from the leyline.