Nathaniel rubbed his tired eyes for what felt like the thousandth time that day. He sat ensconced upon a tightly fitting arm chair, pouring over inventory lists for the outer city. Pools of wax flowing out from numerous half melted candles dotted the stained wood of the desk over which he was so transfixed. It had been many hours since the Home Guard had found itself unable to repel the Aachish invaders, and now the dim gloom of a cloud covered moon stood sentinel over a city in frenzy.
With the Aachish having paused their assault for the day, settling down in now abandoned houses for shelter from the continuous rains, the sands of the hourglass had begun to fall for the city’s defenders. Outside, amidst the backdrop of pattering rain falling against the streets, legions of men ran to and from in a decidedly chaotic display, burdened down with armfuls of supplies. The outer city was in the midst of its evacuation, stripped bare of anything of value as the Home Guard worked through the night to ensure there would be no remaining spoils to be had for the Aachish when the morning came. It was exhausting, back breaking work that would see men so devoid of energy the following day so as to be utterly useless atop the wall.
However it was sadly necessary, the Home Guard had been barracked within the outer city for over a month, their camps piled high with food, arms, and ammunition for tens of thousands of men. None had expected the foe to breach the outer city’s defenses in so brief a time, and the city’s defenders had been caught upon the back foot by the enemy’s rapid progress. Supplies were scattered in a haphazard manner intending to last the Home Guard through months of siege, thus far having scarce been touched. While it was increasingly unlikely that the rest of the city would survive the siege for much longer than its outer defenses, it was still of vital importance to deny the Duke’s army of any useful materials that could be scavenged.
Having burnt their way through Albion’s sparsely populated countryside with a rather oversized invasion force, they were sure to be running low on food stuffs, perhaps almost starving if the forces of the Empress were in luck. Furthermore, with their brief and only occasional use of their experienced longbowmen in preference for their much scarcer knights and men at arms, they could not have any reasonable supply of ammunition either. Thus, while it was an odious task that all but crippled the Home Guard’s ability to defend the walls, it was one that must be done to preserve their advantage of supply for as long as possible.
Of course, the simpler and more effective approach would have been to merely burn what needed to be destroyed in lieu of trying to move veritable tons of supplies in one night, more than the city could ever conceivably use. However, under the influence of the Empress’s ensorcelled rains the chill air was damp, and the timbers of the store houses were soaked through from continuous exposure to the deluge. The buildings would not burn, and the previous attempts to do so that night had resulted in nothing more than dense clouds of poisoned smoke and steam. Those clouds clung to the streets surrounding the attempted fires as if a protective shield, driving away every would be arsonist. It took precious hours for every one of those attempts to first be made, and then upon a distinct lack of success, waiting for the toxic clouds so created to be quenched and driven off by the rains. Such delay before the contents of the store houses could be manually removed, imposed an ever worsening urgency upon the soldiers carrying out the evacuation. Therefore, driven both by seemingly endless delays and the momentous pile of supplies that needed to be removed, the Home Guard remained working in the streets long after the stroke of midnight.
For his own part, Nathaniel remained safe and dry beneath the cover of a sturdy roof. It was the house of a carpenter that had been commandeered to serve as his new headquarters earlier that day. His papers, orders, maps, and everything of the like lay in a chaotic mess around his new office, new bundles continuously being added to the piles brought by soldiers clearing out the last of the Home Guard’s organizational documents from the outer city.
“It was just as you said m’lord, dozens of weapons and two suits of mail hidden in the back of a closet. It was all brought back to the armory.” The door to the room opened suddenly and without warning, the niceties of knocking and receiving permission for entry having been waived under such pressing circumstances. In stepped two men, spearmen of the Home Guard dressed neither in armor nor even helm, but in what gray or black cloth and rags that could be found. Even their shoes had been changed for bulky cloth wrappings, so important was silence for their intended task.
“Good, good, were you seen?” Nathaniel asked with a raised eyebrow, appraising the two men.
“No m’lord, those Aachish bastards have done nothing but drink and sing all night long. We could’ve been dressed up in full armor and they still would’ve have heard hide nor tail of our clinking feet over the sound of their own voices.” One of the men rolled his tired eyes in derision for their hated foes as he made his report.
“Then we shall continue, go to this address. There should be stockpiles of food there in heavy crates hidden under the stairs. Take care to bring a dozen or so men along to get all of it in one go.” Nathaniel nodded his head in grateful acceptance of their report of continued secrecy, giving them another excerpt from the master inventory list to retrieve.
The two men left with a silent bow; their mien even more lacking in vitality than Nathaniel’s. This was the thirtieth or so pair of such men that had come into Nathaniel’s command center to receive their orders. It was a great mission he had saddled himself with, one more vital even than that of evacuating the Home Guard’s barracks. For what his men now did was steal supplies out from under the very noses of the enemy as they celebrated their victory.
It was by no means a stretch to state that the Home Guard had been brutally savaged earlier that day. While his plans had worked to much greater effect in the alleyways throughout the city, the defense of Victory Square had barely survived the assault of mercenary inductees let alone the Aachish dogs themselves. All told, over six thousand men of the Home Guard had been cruelly slain amidst the day’s fighting, yielding ground in all quarters of the city regardless of the intervention of the Empress’s Shield. It was an unprecedented loss, especially for one made in defense from a position of strength. He had hoped at least to repel them until the end of the rains, to force the enemy to remain in miserable and ever worsening conditions as they made failed assault after assault. But this was not to be.
A month’s work of planning had been invalidated under the relentless onslaught of the Aachish. Perhaps it was only natural to have so badly underestimated the mercenaries, for though they held a dread reputation, no commander of Albion had ever faced them upon the field of battle. The mercenary companies were but a new innovation from that tumultuous land, one upraised by their king’s need to tighten what grip he had about his people’s throats, and they had never before been seen in Albion.
As a veteran of the civil war fighting under the banner of the Empress, Nathaniel had led his men against the flower of Albion’s nobility. Those had been dark and bitter years, when an entire generation of men schooled from cradle to grave had been lost in mortal combat. Yet these mercenaries fought more fiercely by half than any mere knightly host that had he had been set against in that bloody war. Caring neither for honor nor glory they callously disregarded the lives of both their peers and their lessers, sacrificing anything for even the slightest advantage. Preparations intended to force the knightly hosts of the Duke into grinding battles street by street over the course of days had been overturned in a single day. Carefully positioned caches and scores of arms and rations had been intended to last the city through scores of engagements per the previous plan. Now they lay one and all, hidden though they were for now, well behind the lines now occupied by the enemy.
All throughout that long night, Nathaniel had been identifying targets and sending bands of the Home Guard to retrieve what they could. It was a slow and perilous task, for if even one party of scavengers was discovered, the Aachish would immediately be roused to battle. To repel the pitiful numbers he had sent to retrieve the supplies would be but a simple matter for such skillful men. Once they had secured their own defense, they would inevitably discover the veritable treasure troves of stores lying hidden already within their grasp. It was not something that could be allowed to happen.
Blissfully, whether in particularly good cheer for their victory that day, or just as a part of their culture, the mercenaries were by and large dead drunk. What should have been a mission fraught with danger, requiring the utmost of stealth for success, had been performed all night long with relative ease. But with every creeping hour the chance grew that one of the bands would be discovered, and thus Nathaniel threw his entire being into directing this most vital of tasks. His oversight over the rest of the evacuation fell by the wayside as he pushed this singular goal with intense focus. That was a mistake, an error of judgement that would see all of his carefully laid plans rent asunder.
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“Move, move!” A large, burly man dressed in thick layers of chainmail shouted as he directed a chaotic throng of men as a maestro would an orchestra.
Everywhere men scurried, weighed down by heavy loads as they transported innumerable crates from various store houses lining the plaza to the inner city. Occasionally, a proper cart could be seen, stacked high with crates and flanked by the weary men that had loaded it, but such things were a rarity. By that late hour nearly every horse left in the city was exhausted from its labors, so tired that to push them anymore would cripple them. Thus, the manic hive of activity was nearly entirely driven by the hands of men. These men were so tired and weak, that none worried of such harsh labors merely crippling them, pushing themselves far beyond the normal and rational limits of their strength. Such action was inevitable, for they were like as not to perish should the Aachish catch them upon the wrong side of the curtain wall when the sun rose in the morning.
“I’m losing it!” A bedraggled man, one of several hefting a particularly bulky crate screamed, his arms slackening in their grip as his strength evaporated.
The rest of the men quickly dropped the crate, only able to save their fingers owing to the hapless man’s piercing cry. The crate hit the cobbled street hard, the wood splintering as it caved in. As the men caught their breath, the man that had been giving orders arrived, sparing the laborers nary a glance as he pried open the lid and inspected the contents of the crate. After sighting the dull glimmer of steel beneath his held lantern he sighed, closing the lid and gesturing to the bearers.
“You. Get yourself to the field hospital before you damage something actually valuable.” The sergeant called, pointing at the man that had lost his grip, his hands a bloody mess even through the gloves he had been wearing.
The rest of you, back to the store room and make sure it is food or ammunition this time. Those bastards already have armor aplenty and its food they be needing now, not this dead weight. Now get back to it before I return with a whip!” Shouting menacingly, the sergeant intimidated the others into forgetting their aches and exhaustion, if but for one moment. Similar events played out throughout the plaza for this was the parade grounds of the first company of foot, the site of the main barracks for the Home Guard’s soldiery, and the de facto headquarters of the regiment.
In the shadows, Andross sat coldly observing the crowds of panicked and exhausted men. He had no sympathy for such creatures, for they had naught but their own weakness to blame for their present circumstances. He had seen the reports, heard the roll call of the dead, been present at the meeting of the Home Guard’s captains in the wake of their crippling defeat. Over seven hundred of his brothers in the Empress’s Shield had been slain that day, an all but crippling blow to such an already small and elite force. At the same time, only six thousand of the mere peasants of the Home Guard had joined them in cold finality.
It was an upset, an incredibly skewed figure for the relative losses in such an elite regiment. Each man of the Empress’s Shield was worth two dozen or more of their number in the Home Guard, yet almost three quarters of the vaunted regiment had been slain for a paltry few of the Home Guard. For such anomalous casualties, it could only have been due to that reckless plan of the Lord Protector’s. It was as if, by design, the Empress’s Shield had been offered up as sacrifices to preserve the bulk of the Home Guard. And for what? At the end of the day, for all of the sacrificies of his brothers, and for all of the careful planning of the Lord Protector, the outer city had still fallen.
Had that infuriating man simply listened to him, they could have stopped the mercenaries that day, driven them back to the Duke’s encampment from which they would have to scurry like rats before the might of the city’s cannon if they dared to make an assault. But now they were encamped upon the Empress’s very doorstep! Their refuges hidden from the watchful gaze of the city’s gunners by obscurity, lost as they were in the maze of the city’s buildings. While his sworn brothers lay cold and still upon the ground, those damnable mercenaries were making merry! He could almost hear them as he sat, faint hints of music and frivolity carried upon the air echoing across the stone streets. The defeated Home Guard scurried like rats in the darkness as they toiled, while the hated foe made mirthful laughter with whatever pilfered supplies that could be scrounged from the now abandoned city.
Such sacrifice and nothing had been gained… or yet worse the foe had benefited out of all proportion! It was as if their leader were in league with the enemy, purposefully driving the city’s defenders to their doom through folly after folly. The brooding man sat, reflecting upon the day’s events through gritted teeth. Even inside the depths of Andross’s heart, he could never forgo his pride in himself and in the regiment to which he was sworn. It was unthinkable that his brothers in arms had been matched, or worse yet outmatched, by mere foreign barbarians, and mercenaries at that. While many of the commanding officers of the Aachish held some manner of noble blood, the majority were little better than upjumped serfs, even lowlier than the freeborn commoners that peopled many of the Empire’s cities.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
He had been hopeful once, in the wake of their immense victory against the first wave of the Duke’s army he had placed his trust and hope in the Lord Protector. He had even endured the scornful gazes of the Home Guard as he departed in humiliation, for while the Lord Protector had decided to flee the field a general bombardment would surely do grievous injury to the enemy. But the moment Andross had seen the Lord Protector return in miserable defeat, his earlier hope and consolation of being the one to give the order to commence the bombardment evaporated.
When the man came stumbling back from that field of smoke and death there was only one of the Empress’s Shield left by the man’s side. Furthermore, it was cripple at that, for even at a distance Andross knew that twisted and bleeding arm was beyond any repair. He had avoided the Lord Protector after that, brooding in silence as the men around him scurried like mice, paying the price for their defeat with harsh labor. None dared remonstrate him for his idleness, for to any man of Albion the blackened armor of the hulking man before them could only belong to one of the indomitable Empress’s Shield. So Andross sat and watched, his mind contemplating ever darker possibilities as he pondered the Lord Protector’s motivations.
As the sole member of his storied regiment to have not engaged the real Aachish mercenaries in battle, he had not had his arrogance shattered through experience. He held no frame of reference for how the foe could be as skilled or more so than the greatest of Albion’s knights. He could only assume the worst, his earlier humiliation at the hands of the Lord Protector simmering in the back of his mind as he came to the conclusion that the man must be in league with the treacherous Duke. How else could they, with all the effort and lives that had been thrown into the defense, return in such an ignoble defeat? How fortuitous it was then, that the man in question had vanished, leaving Andross free to his own devices.
He stood up, the scurrying soldiers giving him a wide berth out of both fear and respect. Yes, this was how things should be, Andross thought to himself with pride. The sheer scorn that had been directed his way during his humiliation earlier that day was still fresh in his mind. Such peasants were as far beneath him as mere ants were beneath them, and to be the object of their ridicule was to have his pride in himself and his sworn mistress tarnished beyond reckoning. It was a blessing that so few that had taken part in his humiliation had survived, for he doubted he could long remain calm should such lowly beings dare to once more make him the target of their anger and derision.
Picking his way through the conveniently parting crowd, Andross arrived at a squat wooden building set apart from the barracks around it and entered. The building consisted of only two rooms, the first containing a large table and several chairs knocked over in a haphazard fashion. The wooden floorboards were filthy, coated with mud and scratches from repeated and indelicate entries. This was the Lord Protector’s war room, where he had received the captains of the Home Guard to discuss and implement his strategies over the past month of preparation. The maps and reports that had once littered the table were now gone, their absence keenly felt by Andross. He had been in this room not three hours past for an emergency meeting in the wake of the defeat, and at that time they had seemed to cover every available surface.
“Damnable wretches.” Andross cursed under his breath at the sight of the room stripped bare.
The object of his desire was evidence, something proving beyond all doubt where the Lord Protector’s loyalties truly lay. The man’s battle charts and notes having vanished from the chamber, presumably taken in a hurry by the Home Guard during the evacuation, did not bode well for this mission. He bent down, getting onto his hands and knees as he cast his gaze downwards beneath the table. He had no fortune as his wandering eyes passed over naught but dirty floorboards. He picked up chairs, tipped them over, all but tearing the room apart in his increasingly frantic search for anything, anything at all. However, for all of his efforts they failed to bear fruit, and he became dejected. With the Lord Protector gone and his secrets unguarded, this was the only chance to bring the man’s treachery to light. Andross would not let that chance go to waste.
Suddenly he heard the sound of something heavy scuffling across unprotected timbers in the adjoining room. At last, an opportunity! Seizing the initiative, Andross flung wide the door to the room, revealing its interior. A bare desk and rows of empty bookshelves indicated it had already been cleared out by the Home Guard. Andross almost felt his hopes dashed, but he spotted the familiar visage of the first captain of foot, Ethan Garrow, as the man struggled moving a heavy wooden chest across the floor. The days of the man’s prime were long behind him, and he had been pushed rather close to his limits by the day’s events, wheezing and panting as he struggled with the weighty chest.
“Would you like some help, captain Garrow?” Andross asked imploringly, startling the man with his sudden voice.
“Ack! Who’s there?!” The man turned around in a flash, his face becoming incredibly pale as he beheld Andross, unable to discern the man’s identity through the thick steel plate of his helm other than that he was one of the Empress’s Shield.
“I am Andross, captain Garrow, the bodyguard of the Lord Protector. I have come to retrieve the rest of his documents.” Concocting a worthy lie upon the spot, Andross spun a tale to ensure he could get his hands upon whatever lay within that chest.
“Ah… The Lord Protector sent you himself, did he? Have you already retrieved the rest of the documents? I wouldn’t say that this is the most pressing of matters, it is largely our preparations from the past month…” The usually calm and collected captain Garrow was sweating, his face pallid and eyes switching rapidly between gazing at Andross and at the chest. His attempts to deflect Andross’s focus from the chest were obvious, and not particularly convincing, especially as it was the sole item remaining in the former headquarters.
“Of course, the Home Guard were swifter than any raptor as they retrieved the general documents. I am now here to retrieve the Lord Protector’s personal effects, which it seems you have kindly brought out. That chest looks rather heavy, captain Garrow, would it not be better for me to take it from here? I am a young man you know, and surely on this night of all nights it would not do for a man of your importance to wile away his hours with such burdens?” Andross grinned beneath his helm as the man’s face became paler and paler, almost corpse like as he paused, took one last look at the chest, and then responded in a defeated tone.
“You are most certainly right young man, I’ll leave this to you and be on my way. Make sure the Lord Protector gets this immediately.” With a determined expression, captain Garrow handed over the chest, his fingers sliding idly over the locking mechanism as if to ensure it was still there.
As captain Garrow left, he drew himself up to his full height, strutting out the door with perfect posture and a noble, but grim bearing. It was as if the man were preparing to be martyred in the name of some great cause. It was not the look of one having simply handed off a task of grueling labor to a younger and more fitting man. Now that, was an interesting reaction. Andross had thought all was lost as he found the war room stripped bare, but from the suspicious actions of the first captain it seemed that the secrets he sought to uncover were likely hidden inside that chest. Furthermore, it seemed that not only did the man choose to move the chest himself, likely not trusting even his own men to move it for him, he also seemed to know what was inside.
Worse yet, it seemed whatever was inside was something that he did not trust even one of the Empress’s bodyguards to safeguard, as the man had only seemed to let Andross take the box after he had claimed to be acting under the orders of the Lord Protector. That put Andross into a delicately precarious situation. Should he take too long to return, the Lord Protector would surely learn of his actions. But neither could he afford to open the chest here. It was too close to the frantic activities of the Home Guard, and Andross knew the first captain would have spies aplenty keeping watch over him and the chest. No, he would have to make his way into the inner city, acting just in the manner that he had claimed, only to lose any tails once inside.
His mind set, Andross hauled the heavy chest up, letting it rest upon his torso as he grasped its handles. Slowly and carefully, he made his way out from the war room and into the busy plaza outside. While his heavy armor was still rather eye catching, the slow pace at which he walked and the bulky chest that he carried allowed him to all but disappear into the crowd. Soon, he made his way through the gates to the inner city alongside hundreds of others, before vanishing into a nearby alleyway to ditch any of his pursuers. Walking calmly down a narrow path, boots treading softly to minimize the noise, he eventually reached an inconspicuous dwelling. Kicking the bolted lock upon the door with the grace of an expert, he forced his way inside what was evidently an empty building. Its barren interior ensured there would be no witnesses while Andross set down the heavy chest.
The first captain had stared intently at the lock, as if its paltry craftsmanship could stymie one of the Empress’s Shield. The entire regiment was necessitated by circumstance to possess the skills of an expert picklock. No container within the palace was allowed to be locked, save by the hand of the Empress’s Shield and they checked such things regularly to ensure no assassin lurked hidden. He passed his hand over the outer ridges of the lock, scratching his fingernail against it to gage the pliability of the metal. The lock was sturdy, but not overly brittle. It would not be a difficult lock to pick. While it may have repelled a lowly thief, it was simple as could be for one of his caliber to pry it open. He made sure to work carefully with his tool so as to avoid leaving tell tale marks of forced entry upon the lock’s face.
In what seemed like mere moments his efforts were rewarded with an audible click as the lock disengaged. With bated breath, he placed his hands upon the chest lid, his body trembling in equal measures with anticipation and dread for what was inside. For all of his vanity and simmering resentment towards the Lord Protector, for all of the man’s slights against Andross made during the siege, he could not bring himself to actively wish for the man to be a traitor. Lifting the lid of the chest, the interior covered in a thick layer of documents was revealed.
Andross dug his way through the papers, careful to not leave even a crease or a crinkle out of place upon the many pages that could implicate him in his intrusion upon the Lord Protector’s affairs. Most of the items were mundane, part of a great accumulation of reports and letters from the past month regarding the formation, equipping, and training of the Home Guard. Unfortunately, it was just as the first captain of foot had warned him before he had taken possession of the chest. However, the papers seemed oddly jumped together, with some more recent reports appearing as frequently towards the bottom of the chest as they were at the top. How strange… Andross thought to himself before his probing hand reached the bottom of the chest. Should he be relieved? He had not found one shred of incriminating evidence but… the behavior of the Home Guard’s officers was far from reassuring of the Lord Protector’s innocence. While he would like to believe those chosen to safeguard the capital in its time of crisis were inviolate in integrity, he was also forced to acknowledge that each man had been hand picked by the Lord Protector.
He spread his hands across the bottom panel of the chest. It seemed rather smooth and innocuous but… there were reports dating from the last few days littered across it. How could that be the case unless the Lord Protector regularly removed the entire contents of the chest and then refilled it? Feeling suspicious, he gave the wood a probing rap with his knuckles. His brows creased into a furrow immediately as he felt a faint echo, for the bottom of the chest was hollow.
He brought all of the papers out, papers out, piece by piece. This time his actions lacked care, knowing now that his remaining time to investigate without suspicion was growing short. Furthermore, his confidence was bolstered by his own observation that the Lord Protector treated the contents of the chest with a distinct lack of delicacy. At the bottom of the chest was a wooden board, so perfectly fitted to the interior of the chest that it seemed seamless, save for a small and inconspicuous notch in one corner large enough to fit a single finger. His mind racing, Andross hooked his finger into the notch and withdrew the false bottom, revealing a narrow cavity below. This time it was not reports that met Andross’s prying eyes, but letters, dozens of them. Both letters received from the various captains of the Home Guard were in evidence, as well as drafts that had not been sent penned in the Lord Protector’s own hand. Andross quickly devoured the letters, his eyes rapidly scanning through each one to digest its contents before turning to the next.
“What… is this?” Andross opined as he flipped through at first what he had thought would only be evidence connecting the Lord Protector to his predecessor, the Duke of Brackenweir.
But all of his musings and investigations fueled by petty resentment made over the last few days fell woefully short of the reality staring him in the face. With every new letter read, the intricate pieces of a grand conspiracy that he could not have imagined in his wildest fantasies fell into place. The Lord Protector was… not quite in league with their enemies it seemed. But that he was a traitor, one hell bent upon defying the Empress’s will was proven beyond all doubt. What was worse, was that the man had not acted solely on his own, the rot brought about by this conspiracy had set deep and all but a handful of leadership positions within the city’s defenders were implicated. The man had gathered enough coconspirators that even a coup would not be impossible… especially given how systematically the Empress’s Shield had suffered attrition, with a veritable skeleton garrison being all that remained guarding the Empress.
Andross felt a cold sweat dripping down as his mind raced to consider the implications. Though the Lord Protector was blinded by arrogance, how could he not be, thinking himself wiser than a monarch a full generation the elder? At least he was acting in what he thought was the people’s best interest. Though Andross’s heart burned like a raging inferno at the confirmation that the Lord Protector had willfully sacrificed so many of his sworn brothers to undermine the Empress’s defenses, he could not say that the man was any less committed to the Empress’s defense for the deed. The strategic blunders that had cost the city thousands upon thousands of lives and seen their defenses steadily whittled away were not the work of a malignant insider, but merely that of the Lord Protector being outplayed by a skilled opponent.
While the man seemed to place more impetus upon the lives of his men in the Home Guard than even the will of the Empress herself, he seemed more than capable of making necessary sacrifices in the name of the city’s defense. The use of cannon, fired into the Home Guard’s own ranks to deny the enemy earlier that day was evidence enough that Andross did not need to immediately expose the man’s treachery. That was an unexpected blessing, for ousting the Lord Protector with the entirety of the leadership of the Home Guard as his coconspirators would merely hasten the man’s intended coup. No, the only one who could be allowed to learn of this madness was the Empress herself. Not even his own sworn brothers in the Empress’s Shield could be informed, lest they act rashly without thought and compromise what was left of the city’s defenses.
