Slaves to the Sword Read online

  “Yes, Father!” Stuart stood and swiftly left the room to do his father’s bidding.

  King Phillip had many thoughts in his mind. He pondered on the stability of the outer reaches of the kingdom. He also thought about the loss of taxes Hainsbridge afforded him. The villagers on the outer reaches refusing to pay their taxes would be substantial with the addition of the losses from Hainsbridge.

  There were many things that King Phillip needed to address, and orders for actions needed to be given. He was in distress and without a wife to ease his tension. This thought turned his distress to anger, and he flung his chalice across the room.

  The advisory council arrived in the king’s chambers with Stuart entering the room last. “Your Majesty, we are sorry to hear of Hainsbridge,” said one of the council members. Phillip nodded his appreciation.

  “We need to ensure the safety and stability of the Midland villages,” declared Stuart as the group of men looked upon the large map of the kingdom that hung on the wall of the king’s chamber.

  “Order the cavalry to split, and go to the remaining three cities: Derron in the east, Neally in the southwest, and Aveston to the north,” Phillip said.

  “Father, the cavalry will be vulnerable to attack if their ranks are split between the cities.”

  “I am aware of that, Son, but we do not have a choice. If we send the Red Guard to aid the cavalry we may be falling into a trap by leaving Harkstead Castle insufficiently guarded and prime for attacking. Send word to the North and South regions to prepare to receive the cavalry.

  I will prepare an announcement and send it today by way of riders to alert the kingdom of the potential dangers, and give our people a chance to arm themselves,” King Phillip said.

  Many days had passed, and throughout the Midland Kingdom word of the Carpenter’s Army and their destruction of Hainsbridge sent waves of fear amongst the villagers. What began as quiet whispers about the king’s inability to keep them safe, soon turned to genuine public fear.

  King Phillip was not short of ego but was known to be very fair with his people, so he tolerated the reports of public meetings and criticism of his actions. He knew he had to make a statement to his people soon, or he would lose the love, and most importantly to him, the taxes of his people.

  Deep inside Harkstead Castle, the brown and silver bearded king paced as he spoke with his advisors. His long red robe with golden accents flowed on the floor softly, and made it seem as if Phillip was walking on air. It was truly a grand form of attire, fitting for a king of his stature. “The Midlanders are growing weary of our leadership,” Phillip declared.

  “Yes, Your Majesty, but we have not yet heard from the cavalry replied one of his advisors.

  “It does not matter!” Phillip snorted with saliva leaving his lips. “I have to respond to the Carpenter’s attack with one of my own.”

  “We can do so, Your Majesty.” Stuart asserted as he entered the room wearing a brown jacket with red accent, similar to his father’s attire.

  “Father, allow me to lead the Red Guard on a mission to attack one of the Carpenter’s estates,” he said as he poured some wine into a medium-sized chalice.

  “Such actions would assuredly lead us into war, my son. We must look at all of the potential outcomes before making such a strike,” Phillip responded, then continued to say, “However, we cannot allow what happened to Hainsbridge to go unpunished. We will respond with a show of force of our own.” The king looked up to map of his kingdom. “We must strike the Carpenter’s army on their grounds.”

  “Father, I have been informed by some of our scouts that several groups of men rode into Tawny overnight,” Stuart reported.

  “Then that is where we will avenge the fallen of Hainesbridge.” said Phillip with a familiar frown on his face. “We will remove every memory of Thomas the Carpenter’s men from the world. Send word to your sisters in Tawny. Tell them to be swift with their work and report back to Harkstead Castle. Send a battalion of the Red Guard to the border of Aveston to retrieve them in the morning, and ensure their safe passage back to the castle.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, I will see to it myself,” Stuart responded.

  8

  T awny, a small village on the outer boarders of Aveston, was the furthest northern village of the Midlands, and well known for its women, wine, and abundance of lancemen mercenaries. Thomas the Carpenter’s men, led by Lord Calvin, were still in the village—drunken and overstimulated by the riches of the flesh that Tawny was famous for.

  Night had fallen over the village when a scout from the Midland kingdom approached one of the cottages along the tree line. In a crouch, he whistled a series of sounds only a soldier of the Red Guard would know. Immediately, several women stopped what they were doing to confirm they had indeed heard the faint call of their army. When they heard a fellow female warrior’s sensual response—disguised as a moan, they responded in kind, and the men they were servicing became greatly excited—unaware their pleasurable muses were in fact Red Guard soldiers now called into action.

  The Midland scout replied with another instructional whistle, and again, the same woman responded with her sensual warrior call. The women that could not respond understood the message, and could now hear it clearly throughout the small village.

  Lord Calvin was one of the men confidently pleased by the female warrior’s sensual bellow, thinking it was of his own doing. However, he was gravely mistaken—that bellow meant that his death, and the death of all of his men, was eminent.

  Deep inside a fire-warmed room, Lord Calvin lay with a maiden, exuding drunken confidence after making love.

  “I have been with many women, but you are special. You are a dirty whore, and the way you yell is like that of a banshee,” he slurred to the maiden, then downed another swig of mead.

  “Indeed, my love. I am a dirty whore,” said the maiden.

  “Where are you from? Are you from the north?” Calvin asked.

  “No, I am not.” She mounted Calvin and presented him with a deep kiss.

  “Are you from Aveston?”

  “No…” She arched her back in a display of pleasure. Slowly, the maiden ran her fingers through her hair and removed two, small, pointed barbs from her long, flowing, brown hair and drove them violently into Calvin’s neck. “I am from Harkstead, and you will die for what you did to my people in Hainsbridge.” She whispered into Lord Calvin’s ear. Blood gurgled up through the puncture wounds and began filling his throat quickly—he could not talk. He threw the maiden off, and stumbled across the room, his flailing movements sent blood spewing across the room. He attempted to get to his sword but was unsuccessful as his body failed him, and within seconds, he fell to the ground. His naked body laid still, his eyes still showed a look of betrayal. Or maybe it was fear? The Red Guard maiden wondered if it was the same look he saw in the eyes of the villagers of Hainesbridge.

  While Lord Calvin was dying in his cottage, he could not understand how the maiden that pleased him so well could kill him with such ease. It did not matter anymore. Throughout that night in Tawny, all of the Carpenter’s men were killed.

  Some were poisoned, some decapitated, and some, the Red Guard women saw fit to castrate, as well.

  It was a legendary attack that was quiet, extremely violent, and cunningly executed, all at the same time. As instructed, the sisters of the Red Guard were collected by Stuart and his men in Aveston the following morning.

  Lord Calvin had not known Tawny was a village occupied by the women of the Red Guard. It was essentially a trap within a trap for the enemies of the Midlands. The remaining mercenaries that survived fled the village upon seeing the artistic display of death the Red Guard maidens made when they carved the mark of King Phillip upon the flesh of Lord Calvin. This was not done by chance; it was a message to the Carpenter that war indeed was upon both groups.

  When Carpenter received word of Lord Calvin’s demise, he ordered an immediate attack on Aveston. The war for the Midl
ands was about to start, and it would be fifty years before the region would see peace again.

  Remington House was a seven-day ride from Tawny, and inside the house, the stench of masculine chemistry wafted throughout; sticking to the displays of false royalty in the way of poorly executed self-portraits of the owner of the estate, Thomas Earl Carpenter. The man was in his library virtually vibrating with anger, making it nearly impossible to carve the finishing touches on his miniature wooden horse.

  “How could Calvin and his men perish by the hands of those Midland whores?” he bellowed. Carpenter had assembled his small group of associates: John Hammish, Royce Pennington, and Seth Murray to discuss strategy—and none were eager to speak. They remembered all too well Keymus’ death by his blade two weeks earlier.

  “Does anyone want to share a reason why Tawny, a wretched, filthy village full of the most desperate lancemen mercenaries, would be filled with Red Guard whores?” Thomas screamed as he threw the dagger in his hand across the room, narrowly missing Hammish’s head.

  “At least poor Keymus put up some form of fight against Phillip’s whore warriors! I am growing weary of him and his bloody tricks!” said Carpenter.

  He paced from one point of the room to the next while his advisors stood at the table, awkwardly waiting for permission to sit down. Finally, noticing the group, he bellowed, “And why are you all just standing there?” They promptly sat down awkwardly and kept their silence. Carpenter was starting to sweat visibly; his skin was flush, and his heart was beating as if he was running a race while standing still. His anger made it hard for him to maintain his thoughts. He remembered saying Keymus’ name moments earlier. “Oh, you poor children. You thought I was going to kill you like I did Keymus?” he said, referring to them as children as a slight to show his dominance over them.

  He considered himself to be like a father, as well as king to them; demanding they title him “Sire” and “Your Majesty,” even though none of his blood was royal.

  “No, Sire. We were merely waiting for you to calm down,” said Pennington, summoning all the courage he could at the moment.

  “I brought you here to discuss Phillip’s Red Guard whores and revenge for Calvin,” said Carpenter.

  “Well, Sire, we do not have much information on the specifics of King Phillip’s most elite army,” said Murray.

  “What we do know is that they are a part of a specialized fighting force comprised of orphans from throughout the Midland Kingdom,” said Pennington.

  “They appear to be highly trained given the two instances we have engaged with them,” said Hammish.

  “I don’t care how well trained they are, they fight a coward's fight with their whores doing all of the work. I want to explore the true might of Phillip’s cavalry, and maybe then we will see if he sends his Red Guard whores to rescue his men,” said Carpenter, before taking a large gulp of wine from his tarnished cup.

  “Sire, are you suggesting we attack the Midlands?” asked Murray.

  “Indeed. I shall take Aveston and make it my own.” As a dribble of wine ran down the corner of his mouth. “For years we have been watching Phillip go about with his wretched orphan army, acting as if he has complete authority over every living thing! But now we have the chance to exercise our will on his bloody Midland Kingdom. We will soon cleanse the land of the stench of King Phillip Miles and his precious Prince Stuart.

  His band of crimson orphans will be no match for my army,” said Carpenter as he looked through a cloudy window overlooking the manor grounds. “Prepare the army. We will march to Tawny and stage there.”

  “Yes, my Lord we will make the arrangements immediately,” said Pennington.

  Over the next few days, the Carpenter’s Army grew to battle strength—two hundred soldiers in all.

  Some of the ranks were made of men that either owed the Carpenter money or were prisoner soldiers of villages he conquered in the past and forced them to fight for him or perish. The remaining ranks were made up of lancemen mercenaries, some of whom escaped the Red Guard slaughter back in Tawny.

  King Phillip was alerted to the growing swell of soldiers staging on the outskirts of Tawny. He understood that he was going to be fighting for Aveston. What he did not know was how fiercely the Carpenter’s Army would fight or what to do if Aveston fell to the Carpenter’s swords.

  9

  H is eyes were blurred, and his hearing was muted. The Midland soldier was fighting not only for his freedom, but his life, as well. He was only down for a moment, but knew he only had seconds to recover from the concussive blow to the head from the Carpenter soldier wielding a flanged mace. His body armor minimalized the damage from strike moments before, but his body couldn’t handle another. The Midland soldier rose to his feet, and quickly raised his shield just in time to block the next downward blow from his enemy.

  His own flanged mace was a heavy weapon in his left hand. The handle was of solid oak, and tipped with a steel orb that, when used properly, could kill or severely injure its intended target. The Midland soldier countered the enemy’s strike with one of his own, aiming for his shoulder.

  The Carpenter soldier screamed in pain as the war hammer found its way into his flesh through the chink in his armor where the shoulder plate and breastplates meet.

  Sensing the advantage, the Midlander screamed as he rammed his weapon down sharply into his enemy’s now semi-detached shoulder, driving the opposing soldier to the ground. He screamed aloud as he sensed the imminent death of his opponent coming.

  Standing over the Carpenter’s soldier, he pinned the mace to the ground with his shield and simultaneously dislodged his war hammer from the shoulder.

  He followed with a deadly blow to the Carpenter soldier’s neck between his bascinet and breastplate, killing him instantly.

  Straddled over his fresh kill, between several heaving breaths, he roared like a beast. He looked up, ready for another opponent nearby, but there wasn’t. Exhausted, his body requested more air for his battle-fatigued lungs. With his immediate safety confirmed, he breathed in mightily. A blinding amount of sweat ran into his eyes as he tried to look into the distance—assessing the current status of the Midland Army.

  He saw a friend a few feet away, and time seemed to stand still for a moment. He was yelling toward his direction, “Archers!” he hears suddenly as his ears cleared. The Midland soldier quickly rose to his feet, and turned as he lifted his shield to cover his face. However, he was not quick enough, and before he could raise his sturdy shield, a perfectly crafted arrow—hand carved by Thomas the Carpenter himself—flew into his helmet, piercing his eye. What seemed a victory for this Midland soldier was fleeting, as it only took moments for his own life to end shortly after.

  The violent sounds of men screaming in pain echoed throughout the valley. More than four hundred men waged war on this day. Two hundred of the Carpenter’s best and most expensive soldiers fought tirelessly against as many members of King Phillip’s Midland Army. The incessant clanging of shields, swords, and the corresponding grunts and groans filled the land.

  The Carpenter’s Army continued their strong push through Tawny only to be met, as the day faded to night, by the small contingent of Red Guard Calvary who had made their stand at the border of Aveston.

  Far behind the battlegrounds, Carpenter was bathing in satisfaction as he watched his men advance forward on the battlefield. His expansive, but costly fighting force was slowly pushing the Red Guard and Midland Armies back toward Aveston.

  “Archers, fire again!” he yelled. Fifty archers fired into the Midland ranks causing men to run and scatter or fall to their death.

  The Carpenter was not one for strategy; he was only focusing on taking Aveston with a massive amount of brute force. He urged his commanders to have the soldiers push toward the Southeast. His commanders tried to inform him that he would suffer more losses if he continued to fight at the current pace. “I don’t care about the losses! I want Aveston burnt to ashes. That is th
e only thing that matters!” Carpenter bellowed. “I will see my victory to the end. King Phillip’s armies cannot stop our advances toward Aveston!”

  ***

  The sun surrendered its hold of the horizon, and night fell upon the battlefield. King Phillip’s forces were severely weakened. They had to retreat and regroup on the outskirts of Aveston to make their final stand. A rider was inbound to the city of Aveston with a message for Stuart Miles.

  “Your Highness, I bring word from the battlefield,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” Stuart responded.

  “The Carpenter’s army is pushing toward the Aveston border. The cavalry is holding them back for the moment.”

  “We have to ready the villagers. They need to know the battle is coming to Aveston,” said Earl Baker, a Midland Cavalry Commander, and a trusted advisor to King Phillip and Stuart.

  “Indeed. We shall hold a meeting in the town plaza immediately,” Stuart said while looking out of the window and into the distance. This was the first major battle Stuart had to oversee. He knew if he lost Aveston to the Carpenter he would lose some of his father’s respect, and that meant more to him than the lives lost protecting not only the city but his father’s reverence for him as well.

  Shortly thereafter, the town plaza was filled with Avestonians awaiting Stuart Miles’ words. “Let me be first to tell you, we are in a dire place today. A few miles from here the Carpenter’s Army is fighting our soldiers and pushing toward Aveston. However, I can promise you—as your prince and on behalf of your King, Phillip Miles—we will fight the Carpenter’s soldiers to the death to protect Aveston. We ask all women and children ride immediately to Harkstead Castle where you will be safe. The remaining men will be needed to fortify the outer walls of Aveston, we need men that can handle a bow, tend to the tar making, and swordsmen,” Stuart said, while looking throughout the crowd for any visible signs of fear. “I sense some of you are afraid, and you should be. The men we will be fighting will tend little mercy on you, and you should not allow them any mercy in return,” Stuart said.