Why couldn’t they understand? Were they blind?
Jaymes watched impassively as, a few moments later, the great spire leaned, swayed, and ever so slowly smashed down across the walls of the keep, raising a great cloud of dust and provoking screams of fear and dismay audible even from that distance.
Before the dust had settled, Captain Trevor had shifted his wagon, and the bombard began to chisel away at the second tower.
CHAPTER TEN
Smoke and dust churned through the courtyard of Vingaard Keep. The base of the ruined tower stood like a shattered tree trunk, rising barely higher than the castle walls, its jagged, irregular silhouette outlined against the sunset. Tons of stone had rained down. Walls and ceilings, furniture, doorways, and the great curving stairway, all were broken and scattered widely.
For a moment there was silence, an absence of sound rendered all the more eerie for the fact that it followed the loud pounding of the bombardment, and toppling of the spire.
Then a child started to cry, its plaintive sobs piercing the silence and magnifying the terror. A woman ran from the keep, across the courtyard to the storage barn. She knelt over a motionless form just inside the door and also began to wail.
“I’ve got to go across the bridge and talk to him myself!”
Blayne Kerrigan fought against hands that tried to restrain him, struggling against his sister. With a groan, he struck the stone wall.
“This is my doing, my fault!” he insisted. “I have to see the emperor-surrender myself so that the keep can be saved!”
“You can’t!” Marrinys declared, grasping him desperately. She had dark circles beneath her eyes, and tears streaked her cheeks as her body trembled under the fear and strain. “He’ll throw you in chains… or kill you-like he did with Father!”
“I can’t let this continue!” Blayne said, gesturing at the rubble that stretched across the courtyard. Two guards were escorting the wailing woman away from the barn. Limping figures emerged from the swirling smoke along the base of the keep wall, coughing; one fell flat, and his companion lifted him with a bleeding right arm. Everywhere the dust rose in choking clouds.
“I doubt that anything you say or do could stop him now,” Red Wallace declared, supporting Marrinys Kerrigan against her brother. The Red Robe wore an implacable expression. If Blayne was frantic and guilt ridden, he remained stern and aloof.
The trio stood under the shelter of an upper rampart with a clear view of the destruction. After less than two hours of bombardment-some fifteen shots from the massive cannon-the first tower had collapsed on a mostly empty courtyard, with part striking the outer wall, crumbling the stone parapet halfway to the ground.
The garrison had abandoned the wall in time, but there were still a few casualties from stones showering across the keep and breaking through the wooden or thatched roofs of living quarters.
Another shot boomed out, a ball sailing past the second of the great towers. It was a poorly aimed shot, but it wouldn’t take long for the gunners to correct the distance and begin to pummel the second spire. It would start with the next shot, or the one after that. Both of the remaining spires had been evacuated.
Blayne drew a breath and forced himself to speak calmly even as he disengaged his sister’s hands from his arms.
“What else can I do?” he asked bluntly. “He’s doing this because I dared to attack him, I know it.”
“You must escape from here, and attack him again-as soon as you can!” Marrinys urged, showing a steely determination that Blayne hadn’t realized his sister possessed. “Meanwhile I, myself, will go out and talk to the emperor, offer our capitulation-again-and try to persuade him to stop this senseless destruction.”
“You?” Blayne asked, his voice choked by a tangle of gratitude and shame. “I can’t let you-”
“She’s right, yes, it’s the only thing to do,” Wallace interjected, once again taking the young woman’s side. “Let your sister appeal to his mercy. You need to get away from here; you know we’re not the only ones who think to resist the emperor’s rule. Find some of the others, join forces, and forge a resistance.”
“And you should go with him,” Marrinys said, speaking to the wizard. “Your part in all these actions will become known-the emperor will have you arrested, or worse, if you stay.”
“She’s right again,” Blayne said.
But Red Wallace demurred, shaking his head. “I believe, my lord and lady, that I should stay here in the city. I may be able to help if there are matters of occupation or… reprisal.”
“But he’ll be looking for you! Certainly his agents know of your importance to Clan Kerrigan. They’ll-”
“I have means of disguise that are not available to others,” said Red Wallace quietly. He made a quick, furtive gesture and before their eyes seemed to shrink, to age. His red robe faded to an ugly shade of brown, the silver threadwork vanishing entirely. When he peered at them from under his ragged cowl, he was an old man, withered and stooped and certainly no danger to anybody.
“Very well,” Blayne agreed, nodding with satisfaction. “I will ride alone, and I will contact you as soon as I can.” He held his sister close. “But you? How can I leave you to…”
“I will take care of myself. And I will bury Father with every honor he deserves, while you carry on the fight from far beyond here. You can send word to me, secretly, after you get away. Let me know where you are, and we will prepare to act together.”
Another explosion burst from the ridge across the creek. They could spy the ball flying lazily through the air, looking no more dangerous than a child’s toy. Then it struck the second tower thirty feet above the ground, punching through the masonry to smash and rumble through the interior rooms. Pieces of rubble rained down from the outer wall, which was immediately scored by a jagged crack. Many of the windows had been shattered by the concussion of the first shots; those few that remained shattered, adding jagged shards to the lethal chunks of falling stone.
Marrinys sobbed, and Blayne pulled his sister against his chest. It felt as though the weapon were aimed against him, and the missiles were striking his flesh, so deeply did the brutal onslaught against his beloved city wound him. And yet, he knew, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to halt the destruction.
“I’m going,” he said bitterly. “I hate it and it shames me, but you’re right; it would be futile for me to try to speak to the emperor, and stupid to remain here and fall into his hands.”
“Please be careful,” Marrinys said, hugging him one last time.
An hour later, Sir Blayne Kerrigan, dressed in a plain brown tunic and leading a horse unadorned with armor or precious metal, slipped out a narrow door on the north side of the keep. He waited to mount until he was on a country path used by hunters and herdsmen, which extended all the way to the foothills of the Vingaard Mountains. The steed was a loyal animal, one he had trained since it had been a colt, and it knew how to move stealthily.
The young lord rode into the night, hearing the steady boom of the big gun as the miles slipped behind. When the second tower fell, he couldn’t see it in the darkness, but he felt the tremor ripple through the very heart of Krynn.
Jaymes drifted off to sleep some time during the night but was awakened near dawn by a gentle but insistent nudging from Lord Templar, the Clerist. The emperor, who was resting in a chair on the headquarters’ balcony, pushed himself to his feet, shook his head once or twice, and very quickly was wide awake.
“What is it?” he asked before looking to the north. Dawn was pale in the sky, and he could make out the altered silhouette of the citadel. Where the three graceful spires had dominated the view just a day before, only one tower soared above the ancient fortress. There was a pervasive silence over the scene, and the darkness on the ground was given an eerie cast by a crimson glow emanating from deep within the piles of rubble around the castle walls.