An Angel Called Eternity

To Bet on Losing Dogs - Lykourgos VII: One by One the Branches Burn

Lykourgos VII: One by One the Branches Burn

The Twelfth Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.
Copseshield, Western Owkrestos, Klironomea.

He'd been driving himself hard recently, his men even more so, but his strength was now back. For three moons he had campaigned, and already the speed at which he had progressed startled even himself. A 'lightening strike', men were calling this campaign, and it was not hard to see why. In three months he had routed the forces of Lieutenant Isen and swept the Owkrestans out of Klironomea. Not alone of course, for his brother had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, but even so it was impressive.

In that time he had also marched his forces into Owkrestos itself, and although the siege train was still weeks behind him his army had been able to take the seats of two cadet branches of house Blackoak. Blossom Grove had fallen in less than a week, the result of five days of relentless assaults on the walls, and though all his men had were battering rams and scaling ladders they were still able to storm Kindling's Ash and open up new avenues of attack.

Now, sat in his tent in a siege camp outside the walls of Copseshield, he was almost certain in his victory over house Blackoak. When Copseshield fell, and it would fall soon, then Blacktree Hall itself would be completely open and exposed from the north. Perhaps more importantly than that, though he was in a state of peace with King Aleksandar of Owkrestos at the moment, the capital city of this kingdom would lay open to Lykourgos from the west. Owkrestos would fall to him, and within the year if all went as he willed it.

Though he had maintained complete confidence in his brother, it was still a relief when he heard of his victory over Ser Aerna. Originally the plan was that Lykourgos would reel around and help his brother after defeating Lieutenant Isen, but that had been completely unnecessary. Rhema had retreated into a local fort, not particularly big but certainly with enough room for four-thousand men to effectively garrison it. Ser Aerna had been bored by the siege and, instead of attempting to storm the walls which could have been risky, had instead taken to personally leading his knights on horseback to chase down any of Rhema's mounted bands who would harry the warcamp. Rhema had, somehow, managed to get out of the fort and lead one of these bands himself, which had led to the capture of Ser Aerna and the disintegration of command in the attacker's siege camp.

One drawn out shouting match over who held seniority between the various cadet branches of house Blackoak later and the camp was in flames, a messenger informing him that Marshal Crowe and Symon Symondson had led the garrisoned forces to burn and kill anything and everyone in that camp. With two tactical blunders the forces of house Blackoak had been reduced to a fraction of what they were.

Oh, how the Old Oak must be raging.

Ser Aerna had apparently slipped his bonds and escaped in the night, killing more than one of his guards before melting away into the night on horseback, but that mattered very little at the moment. The Owkrestan army, or at least the portion under the command of house Blackoak, was little more than a collection of tattered bands making their way back to Blacktree Hall to try and regroup into a cohesive force once more. It didn't matter; there simply weren't enough of them left to pose a true threat. Besides, a good portion of Lord Blackoak's assembled host had been formed of sellsword bands, and there was little hope of them making good on their promises to fight to the death. If he had to place a bet he'd say that they were already halfway back to their home territories to try and mitigate the disaster that their hiring had been.

Thinking on this for a little had given him two main lessons; the first lesson to be gleaned was that, no matter how much he appreciated the help of Symon and the Starlings, there was a reason he wasn't going out of his way to hire sellsword bands. Any ruler who relied on mercenaries for their operations, be they offensive or defensive, was destined to flag and fail. The second lesson was that, although he'd been pretty good at this already, he needed to re-establish the chain of command properly. If something were to happen to him he needed to know that there was a clear leader to take his place.