Beltran Routed
A hired army with nobody left to hire it is due to stand down at dawn, its commander would rather talk than let it, and the only real fighting of the day happens where nobody is looking
TL;DR
On the last night before Beltran’s leaderless army was due to disband, the party crossed the river to Leon Yaegar’s camp, and at dawn watched Councilor Asiya Azrak dissolve the bridge guard at swordpoint. At the parley Nadier Veilen stalled while a flanking force marched on Haudh-Gwenn from the north, until Leon read the plan off the shape of the man’s own tents. Mikhail kept Asiya from striking first and she bought Nadier’s riders out from under him at quadruple pay. The three of them rode north into the only real fighting of the day, Koa charging behind a lit greatsword and a roar that was not his. One man died in the whole battle.
First seen
- Nadier Veilen: the sellsword left commanding Beltran’s private army.
- Veren’s horse barons: a breeding aristocracy that gives thoroughbreds away to buy a reputation.
- The alchemist’s accelerant: a granular powder that turns a flame light blue and screaming hot.
- The Old Lion: Leon Yaegar’s name on a battlefield, and older than the party knew.
What changed
- Beltran’s army is disbanded, and Nadier Veilen is in the hands of his own riders.
- Haudh-Gwenn has no army camped against it, and no bridge guard either.
- Ashanti’s burn has what it was missing, and wants a week and an assistant.
- Koa is the Roaring Lion in the streets, and Aldo is Edrick’s guardian angel.
Left open
- Whether Asiya’s quadruple pay comes out of the council’s coffers or her own.
- Whether the Grayeras let Beltran’s captured lieutenants stand trial.
- Where Aldo has put the black book, which he would not say.
Synopsis
On the last evening before the two armies were due to stand down, the party crossed the river to see Leon Yaegar, meaning to own up to how the business with the mercenaries had been handled. The bridge guards had been sent no new orders and would not take anyone’s word that the war was over, until one of them let them by on the fig leaf that his orders concerned the bridge and not the river. Koa swam it, and Mikhail talked a crossbowman off a shot at him before the current carried him a long way downriver.
Leon would not toast. Victory would be had once the field was cleared one way or the other. He would not tell his own soldiers the battle was off either, because months of preparation had put a mindset in them that he wanted intact in the morning. Veren had sent light cavalry and remounts, and a gift besides. Bug Bear had been telling a Veren tavern that he taught Koa everything he knew and that the boy was turning sixteen, and on the strength of it a horse baron offered Koa his pick of four Idirian thoroughbreds. Koa laughed, put the count right at nineteen in five days, and took the unbroken fifth horse instead, a Khalid filly, because a horse he trained himself would carry his mark and not another man’s.
Back at the keep they dumped the day’s loot on Ashanti’s worktable mid-experiment. She ignored nearly all of it until she found a granular accelerant in a dead alchemist’s satchel, and a pinch turned her burner light blue and screaming hot. She tore through the man’s recipe book correcting his arithmetic, said it closed the gap in her burn, and asked for a week and one competent pair of hands.
At dawn Councilor Asiya Azrak rode up to the bridge with six guards, put her sword to the guard leader’s chest, told him the army answered to her now the captain of the guard had fallen, and dissolved the post. Koa rode ahead of the parley as herald and told the men who came out that Beltran had been dead for some time and the order to disband was theirs to take that morning. One of them hung back to say quietly that there was talk of trickery in the camp.
Nadier Veilen came out with twelve riders, opened on mock courtesy, talked over Asiya, and worked at Leon about his retirement. Leon gave him nothing, told him he was stalling, and then read him. The camp stood in a formation Leon had taught decades before, and he said aloud what it meant: soldiers had marched wide two nights ago to come at Haudh-Gwenn from the north while everyone watched east.
Mikhail caught what nobody else did. Asiya had angled her sheath and walked her horse a step in, about to open Nadier with a drawing cut. The party could not afford to be the side that drew first, so he slapped a violent discordant note out of his lute, killed the argument dead, and handed her the floor. The noise spooked eight of the twelve horses. She took the opening: the council would pay every man who stood down, and she would triple the salary of anyone who took Nadier for her. A pause. Quadruple. Eleven of his own riders turned on him, and he was beaten off his horse and run into his camp.
Leon looked north-northwest and sent the three of them to the true battlefield, telling them to break the enemy’s morale. They found Edrick and thirteen men in the open against about forty. Mikhail asked the others to pull up, costing hundreds of feet of gallop, and spent the pause casting light on Koa’s raised greatsword; Koa spurred to make the ground back and screamed going in, and Mikhail threw a roaring lion out ahead of him and above him, a sound that carried half a mile. Aldo never slowed, came off the back of a draft horse thirteen feet into the air, and put a thunder bolt into the middle of the line. It broke. Between Mikhail’s healing and two potions, nobody on their side died and exactly one man died on the other.
Hanza told them afterward what the enemy camp believed it had heard. Leon’s name on a field is the Lion, lately the Old Lion, and the roar had carried right across it. Neither Mikhail nor Koa corrected her. Edrick told the story to everyone he met, badly and constantly, and out of the telling Koa became the Roaring Lion and Aldo became, always in the first person, his guardian angel. Only three councilors could be got into a room afterward, which is no quorum, so nothing was ratified. Koa packed Beltran’s boots away rather than walk onto Grayeras ground wearing them.