Читать онлайн «A Man Rides Through»

Stephen R. Donaldson

A Man Rides Through

To Perry Laura Donaldson:

For sunshine and flowers

whenever you need them

and love

whenever you want it.

“Steeped in the vacuum of her dreams,

A mirror’s empty till

A man rides through it. ”

John Myers Myers, Silverlock

BOOK THREE

TWENTY-SEVEN: THE PRINCE’S SIEGE

Early the next morning, the siege of Orison began.

The huge, rectangular pile of the castle stood on slightly lower ground, surrounded by bare dirt and straggling grass – and surrounded, too, by the Alend army, with its supporting horde of servants and camp followers. From Prince Kragen’s perspective, Orison looked too massive – and the ring of attackers around it too thin – for the siege to succeed. He understood sieges, however. He knew his force was strong enough to take the castle.

Nevertheless the Prince didn’t risk any men. He felt the pressure of time, of course: he could almost taste High King Festten’s army marching out of Cadwal against him, a sensation as disturbing as a stench borne along on the edges of the raw wind. And that army was large – the Prince knew this because he had captured a number of the Perdon’s wounded men on their way to Orison and had taken the information from them. Composed half of mercenaries, half of his own troops, the High King’s troops numbered at least twenty thousand. And of the Alend Monarch’s men there were barely ten thousand.

So Kragen had to hurry. He needed to take Orison and fortify it before those twenty thousand Cadwals crossed the Broadwine into the Demesne. Otherwise when the High King came he would have no choice but to retreat ignominiously.

Unless he was willing to lose his entire force in an effort to help Joyse keep the Congery out of Cadwal’s hands. The lady Elega’s plan to paralyze Orison from within had failed, and now time was not on the Alend Contender’s side.

Still he didn’t risk any men. He was going to need them soon enough.

Instead, he ordered his catapults into position to heave rocks at the scant curtain-wall which protected the hole in the side of the castle.

He had seen that wound from a similar vantage point the day after the Congery’s mad champion had blasted his way to freedom, the day when, as the Alend Monarch’s ambassador, he had formally departed Orison: a smoking breach with a look of death about it torn in one face of the blunt stone. The damage had been impressive then, seen against a background of cold and snow, like a fatal hurt that steamed because the corpse was still warm. The sight of it had simultaneously lifted and chilled Prince Kragen’s heart, promising as it did that Orison could be taken – that a power which had once ruled Mordant and controlled the ancient conflict between Alend and Cadwal was doomed.

In some ways, however, King Joyse’s seat looked more vulnerable now. The inadequacies of the curtain-wall were so simple that a child could measure them. Considering his circumstances, Castellan Lebbick had done well – quite well, in fact. But circumstantial excuses wouldn’t help the wall stand against siege engines. The Prince’s captain of catapults was privately taking bets as to whether the curtain-wall could survive more than one good hit.