Divided Nation

The Return

Ship Sinker was in ruins when we arrived there. The Regime army that had occupied the castle had put it to the torch when they had left. All that remained was a dark, blackened shell of the once mighty castle, so brittle that it looked like it would collapse under the winter wind.

     Still, looking upon the carcass, I still saw that Ship Sinker had been a mighty castle. It wasn't perched on a cliff like the Serpent had, but had made their own cliff. Thousands of tons of cement were poured along the coast, making a mighty seawall that had refused to go up in flames.

     There was a tiny port, no doubt the reconstructed one that the States had rebuilt, perching on the side of the seawall. The castle itself was well stationed, with no naval entrance except a river through the Watergate, which was located near the center of the seawall.

     The land part looked almost identical to the Serpent. Strong stone walls, with watchtowers and about 10 gates in all. All 10 were smashed, and most of the walls had been knocked down, most likely from dragon flame, not siege machines.

     "This was probably our second strongest castle," Harman muttered as we came within sight of it, "And look at it now."

     Like everything else, the snow had covered the ruins in a white blanket, giving an eerie feeling to it. There were fresh Sea State banners flying from the ruined walls and men hard at work rebuilding it, but it was hard in the freezing weather and I knew we wouldn't be able to get it back up before spring came.

     Our company of men trotted towards the gates, which stood over a dry moat. The horns sounded and we raised our State banners for the soldiers on top of the ruined walls to see. They quickly lowered a fresh plank across the moat once they saw Harman and we were soon in State territory again.

     "How you doing sir?" One soldier said, taking our horses as other soldiers came over to take our belongings, "Heard there was a rough battle up in GoldRidge."

     "Still walked away with a win," Harman replied, handing the boy his sea blue cloak,  "Too many casualties though. We won't win at this rate."

     I looked around the ruined castle to find that repairs were still going quite well. The States had good engineers, second only to the Yellow Kingdom, and they seemed to be doing their jobs well. 

     There were new towers being raised all around with fresh stone from quarries in the islands. The walls were being patched up quickly as well, with wooden framework tracing the areas where stone would soon be.

     The pavilion at the center was still intact, with tents springing up all around as the buildings were still burnt. As we walked across the castle, I saw 10 more iron cross gates, similar to the ones we had in our old castle, back in the Jaws.

      "Down here's the new docks," A soldier leading us said, "Just follow the stairs down and someone should be on the other side."

     "Thank you lad," Harman said, flipping a coin to him, which the soldier inevitably failed to catch, " Get yourself back to your post."

     The soldier nodded and walked back. I looked forwards into the stairs. It was a dark spiral staircase, leading into the seawall, most likely. It was made from white stone, probably imported from the Yellow Kingdom. They always had the best materials there.

     Our escort followed us down as Harman took a torch from the wall and walked down, casting ghost like shadows on the white walls. 

     "What are we going to do now?" I asked Harman, seeing the descent down was going to take some time, "I mean for the winter. What's our plan."