Before we begin... I know. It's crappy. This one just wouldn't come. Such are the vagaries of being a writer and all that.
Constantine watched the Tyrenean Wall, its white shining limestone expanses stretching away to either side, and beneath it the tiled, Kamarean roofs of the crossing-village of Lestraun. Its houses huddled around the only ingress to Tyrenea in the entire wall.
“I don't think the stealth plan is going to work.” one of his Lanciars said, watching the collection of houses that comprised their objective. Constantine looked around. "You're probably right."
Ninety-odd shimmering Lanciars on twenty-hand Kallipolitan horses can be somewhat tricky to hide, especially on the plains of western Lain. All the forests were in the north.
"Yes, sir."
"Well then – Plan B, ladies and gentlemen. If it's any comfort to you," Constantine barked, "it's only marginally more crazy than our previous one."
"Your previous one, sir." one of his Lanciars told him. "I have the benefit of free speech, and I am using it to tell you that I am not taking the blame for this." Constantine pinched the bridge of his nose and wished fervently for an authoritarian, totalitarian dictatorship. One in which he was in charge.
"Fine. Just do it." The Lanciars slipped – well, fell elegantly; it's somewhat hard to slip in full chainmail – off their horses and unlimbered their gastraphetes – huge, powerful Lanciarial crossbows, capable of propelling bolts through walls. They settled the bows against their midriffs, wrapped the ends of the bolts in oily rags, lit the rags, slid back the sliders -
Whump.
"Onto horses! Onto your horses!" Constantine made as good as his word and vaulted – scrambled – onto the back of his huge animal. Ponderously, the Cataphracts began to trundle towards the chaos-stricken town of Lestraun, where villagers and Lain militias were running around like headless chickens, as one does when one's town has just been bombarded with burning crossbow bolts. As the Lanciars drew closer, their hooves churning up the fertile muck of western Lain, some of the villagers screamed, waved their arms, grabbed the militiamen by the arms, and pointed at the Lanciars.
Like any realistic unpaid soldier, the militiamen ran for their mammies.
Constantine could probably have captured Lestraun in that instant. He had a better idea though.
Well, he thought it was a better idea.
Scabbards rattled. Chain clanked. The grunts of men and horses intermixed. Hooves struck sparks off the cobbles of Lestraun's main street – as in actually struck sparks. Constantine tried to balance his gastraphetes against his stomach, shout – "Aim for the gate!" - and aim for the gate himself. The silvery, fish-like flow of the Cataphracts, belied by their awful thundering, cleared the streets ahead of them like boiling water through ice, as militiamen and villagers conceived of better places to be very fast. Finally, his bow was balanced – against his chest, he didn't want to kill his horse – and he ground the slider back -
The bolt flew out and Constantine flew back. The Lanciar behind him was treated to a surprising view of his commanding officer's mailed backside accelerating towards his face. The first rank of Lanciars craned their heads back in time to see Constantine knock his subordinate off his horse in a spray of splintered gastraphetes.
"A hint, men." Constantine croaked from the ground. "Get off your horse before shooting a gastraphetes."
They did so. As the injured parties helped each other up, the rest of the Lanciars trained their bows on the gate.
Eighty-nine forceful bolts simply caved the gates in. Tyrenea yawned before them.
Constantine clambered onto his horse – there was no grace at all in his movements there – uncrossed his eyes, worked who and where he was, and only then unsheathed his sword and waved it forward.
In the Tyrenean half of Lestraun, two militiamen in conical Tyrenean helmets with spears ran out from the gatehouse. They took one look at the Lanciars.
"Nope." one said.
"Not happening." said the other. They ran.
And that was how the Tyrenean Wall completely failed to keep out ninety men and women on a mission. Such is life.
* * *
Constantine reined his horse to a halt. The rising sun highlighted its sweaty flanks; they had abandoned the horses' heavy armour in an abandoned farmhouse not long after Lestraun. They had ridden all night – not hard, just enough to get them to where they wanted to be with the dawn. Everyone was tired, but Constantine was sure his plan would work.
How could he fail to capture the metropolis of Tyrene after all his hard work?
For that was where he was. In front of him, the temple-studded, upmarket, white-alabaster-stereotype Hieropolis district was dropped into the industrial muck and dirt of Low Tyrene like a diamond into a pig trough. The temple domes and spires jutted whitely above the paleness of Hieropolis' walls, looming brightly over the low-slung squalidity of the Low City. A city of great inequality, Constantine knew, of decadence and privilege paid for by the blood and sweat of the lower castes.
Still, it was a fair prize, and Constantine had the advantage of surprise.
* * *
"The Lanciars are attacking!" the woman shrieked, shaking the fruit-seller by the shoulders. He shook his head, his innumerable chins jiggling terrifiedly, but sure enough, the soot-stained people of Low Tyrene were all scrambling through the dirt-paved streets and between the mock-classical hovels to get out of the path of -
The salesman gasped. The woman legged it.
Cataphract.
The faceless mailed warrior on his enormous horse, cloaked in the trademark Lanciarial silence, dashed down the street, waving his sword in the air. He was followed, shortly after, by no less than twenty screeching Tyrenean soldiers in bleached-white lorica segmentata (Google it), in bronze conical helmets, all waving spears.
In fact, similar detachments of men were chasing nineteen other Cataphracts around Low Tyrene, and the rest of the garrison had been mobilised to combat this sudden and unexpected threat.
Which left Constantine able to waltz relatively unscathed right down Low Tyrene's main street and smash in the main gate with the remaining seventy Lanciars' gastraphetes.
"To the Patriarchal Palace!" Constantine shouted, riding dramatically through the splintered gate, his seventy cataphracts behind him, like some avatar of literary improbability. Domed temples and grey-paved streets opened before him, focusing on the great central plaza and – as it happened – the Patriarchal Palace, right opposite him.
Constantine couldn't believe it. The Patriarchal Palace – the center of Tyrene and Tyrenea. The dawn sun's rays caught the glittering white marble, highlighting the exquisite statuary and architecture.
It also highlighted the hundreds of Tyrenean soldiers pouring into the plaza from all sides.
"I told you this was a bad idea, sir - "
"Shut up, please, and start working out how we're going to explain this to Duke Scalax."
A particularly well-dressed Tyrenean pushed out from the front, strutting peacockishly up to the now obviously defeated Lanciars.
"Well well well. Lanciars!"
"Well spotted."
"I am Patriarch Actuari of Tyrene." the man announced smugly. "And we have much to talk about, you and I."
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