A faint smell permeated the secret passage. Enough so that, combined with the sound of water audible through cracks in the old walls, Cinna could determine the passage ran parallel to Storrhamarr’s sewer system. She’d been around enough latrines on campaign that she could cope with the stench. Lilia, meanwhile, had her nose firmly pinched between two fingers and seemed to be doing her best to breath through her mouth as little as possible.
For her part, Cinna mostly just felt thankful that the old lords of Storrhamarr hadn’t been so lazy as to install a secret exit into the sewers themselves and leave it at that. It might have done the job just as well in some ways, but it would have made navigating the way to the castle far more difficult. As things stood she only had to make a few turns. There weren’t even any intersections. It took only a few minutes for she and Lilia to reach the area below Storrhamarr Castle.
“That should do it…” Cinna murmured while pulling a lever on the wall near what appeared to be a dead end. Nothing happened. “…or not. We do this the hard way, then.”
“What’s the hard way?” Lilia asked, her voice coming out congested due to her plugged nose.
“Hold this,” Cinna instructed, handing the other woman her lantern rather than answering. Lilia would understand soon enough. Once her hand was freed Cinna drew her hammer, wound back, and swung. The first swing knocked several bricks loose. She’d expected it to be more difficult than that but it seemed Count Keller and his ancestors hadn’t put much effort into maintaining the castle’s sublevels. Still, she had to strike a good dozen more times before the hole grew large enough to step through.
“That didn’t look very hard,” Lilia observed.
“It’s a figure of speech, Lilia,” Cinna said with a sigh while stepping through the breech. The first thing she noticed was that she could hear fighting already. “Tch. The undead have already made it inside. We need to hurry. Leave your friends here to watch the door, please.”
Cinna looked around, determining they’d entered the castle through a basement storage room much like the one they’d found the entrance to the secret passage in. Darkness filled the room, but the light from the lantern showed that most of the boxes still appeared to be sealed. By this stage in a siege they’d normally have been emptied out, but clearly the undead assaulting the castle hadn’t felt the need to starve the defenders before launching an all-out attack.
But that wasn’t what she was looking for. The storeroom was large enough that the lantern only just barely reached the far wall, but Cinna’s eyes were adjusted to the darkness by now and she spotted the outline of a doorframe quickly. In just a few strides she reached the door and slammed it open.
“Who’s there!?” someone yelled out, accompanied by the sound of a sword being unsheathed. The sound caused Cinna to raise her hammer in response but no attack came. She found herself face to face with a soldier in Count Keller’s livery, stopped halfway down the stairs after witnessing her burst into the hall. “Wait…Princess Cinna?”
“How did you…I see. You’re the one that gave us the map,” Cinna concluded quickly. In the dim light the man wouldn’t have been able to see the heraldry on her armor or her face, but if he’d been expecting her than that was another story. “I would ask how you knew to expect me, but we don’t have the time to talk. Take me to Count Keller.”
“At once.” The man saluted, then started back up the stairs. Cinna checked that Lilia was still following her before going after him. Despite what Cinna had said, the man apparently decided to answer her question anyway. “I’m an agent of the crown. His Majesty informed me you were coming. I’ll admit I was skeptical, but I’m glad you were able to spot my, ah, signal.”
“Signal. You mean the crudely arranged skins on a rooftop?” Cinna questioned. As she followed the man through the halls of Storrhamarr Castle the sounds of battle grew and fell in intensity. On a few occasions she caught a glimpse of soldiers desperately holding back greater numbers of undead in the hallways or at the doors, but she didn’t have time to lend them her aid as much as it pained her.
“Um, Cinna, should I…?” Lilia asked delicately. She didn’t so much trail off as the rest of her words were lost beneath the sound of a door somewhere nearby breaking apart.
“Not now,” Cinna replied, guessing that Lilia had been asking if she should use her magic to interfere. But doing so would draw far too much attention.
“I had only limited notice and we were already under attack by that point. I…did what I could,” the spy said awkwardly, not noticing the exchange. “You saw it, though, so it seems everything worked out.”
“Normally I wouldn’t have,” Cinna stated, refusing to elaborate. “But that’s not important now. Tell me what you know of the situation. Why did Count Keller not evacuate while he had the chance?”
As they spoke, the royal spy led Cinna and Lilia into a large room dominated by a wide staircase. It appeared to be one of the central hub rooms of the castle, with the main doors across from the stairs leading out into the courtyard. Those doors had already been beaten down. Four or five dozen figures in armor stood shoulder to shoulder before the doors. When Cinna looked back on her way up the stairs, she saw that the entire courtyard was filled with draugr.
That space looked large enough to fit hundreds.
“I don’t know. I’ve only been embedded within his household troops for a few months; my senior disappeared just before the order was supposed to have arrived,” the spy explained, beginning to sound nervous. He must have glanced back at the fighting at least ten times during their short trip through that room, though, so Cinna found it hard to determine if he was lying or merely terrified for his life.
“You know the order was sent, but you say that as if you shouldn’t,” Cinna observed. She wished she could have taken the time to interrogate this self-proclaimed spy before following him through the castle.
“I only learned of it a few days ago. His Majesty…he contacted me personally. Asked me about the situation, then told me to help you get inside. Your Highness, if you’ll permit my asking, do you have a plan to save Storrhamarr? Are reinforcements on the way?”
By now they’d reached the inner core of the castle. They passed by the hall leading to the throne room, which appeared to be abandoned. Most of the garrison seemed to be occupied fighting off the undead, which had left the halls empty so far, but she would have expected the throne room to be the location of any final stand—rooms that large, open, and with few entrances or exits were ideal for that.
Despite concentrating his forces in the castle, though, Count Keller didn’t seem to have put much thought into how he would actually defend it. His surviving soldiers were spread out and trying to defend every hall and door instead of gathering together to fight for only the most defensible locations. Cinna found herself wondering where he’d sent the civilians she expected to find here, as well. The basement would have been an ideal shelter for a number of reasons, and yet it had been empty.
“…I’m sorry. Storrhamarr is lost, along with everything north of the Stryk River. My friend and I are only here in the hopes of securing a map that depicts the northern entrance to the Warm Roads,” Cinna explained gently. She knew better than to stop there, though. She needed to secure this man’s allegiance by giving him a reason to continue helping her. “If nothing else, though, I can ensure you make it out with us. Tell me, what’s your name?”
“Bjorn. It’s Bjorn.” Cinna’s heart caught in her throat at that. Bjorn being an extremely common name in Selkarc, she wasn’t precisely surprised to hear it. Many men were named after Bjorn the Lesser, who, following the disastrous end to the until-then golden reign of his cousin Bjorn the Greater, had reversed the splintering of Selkarc and prevented a coalition of nobles from reclaiming their ancestral independence. It was like encountering a woman named Ingrid; once could expect half a dozen in every company’s worth of soldiers.
Still. It brought to mind memories of a friend only recently lost.
“Halt! Why have you left your post, soldier?”
Hearing the spy’s name had delayed Cinna’s response just long enough that another matter took her attention, though. Before she could reply, they turned a corner that led into an isolated tower on the castle grounds. From the thin windows in the previous hallway Cinna had been able to see the tower but not the hall leading to it. Now that she could, she found it filled to the brim with people.
First were rank upon rank of men-at-arms in plate armor. These must have been Count Keller’s finest and best equipped soldiers. They stood five across, shoulder to shoulder, filling the hallway from one wall to the other. From the end of the hall Cinna couldn’t see how many there were in total, but the sounds coming from behind them told her they weren’t the only people here.
Because behind this last wall of soldiers, Cinna could here the crying of children. Not a single adult seemed to be attempting to comfort them. It was then that Cinna realized why she’d never seen a single civilian in the castle. Count Keller hadn’t just collected the families of his forces in order to secure their loyalty; no, he’d conscripted them all. Likely along with his own servants.
This scattered and uncoordinated defense hadn’t been the result of poor planning or organization. He just hadn’t had time to ensure all the fighting men and women here were trained. They couldn’t operate like a proper army. He must have just placed a weapon in the hands of every adult and had them assigned a location to defend. Without the proper training or leadership needed to react to the changing situation as the defenses collapsed those levies had resorted to guarding their current positions to the death, knowing their children were behind them and the enemy would show no quarter.
“Hear me, men and women of Storrhamarr!” Cinna shouted, stepping past Bjorn. “I am Crown Princess Cinna of Selkarc. I have fought long and hard to reach this point. Clear the way and allow me to speak to your lord while there is still time to do so. I do not believe I should need to impress upon you the urgency of the current situation.”
If Cinna could have seen these soldiers’ faces she would surely have seen them dumbfounded. The last thing they would have possibly expected was to find the princess herself arriving at the heart of Storrhamarr Castle in the midst of a siege. Her battered armor and slung arm likely aided the image instead of diminishing it.
“Are you all fools!? This is clearly a trick! Shields up!” someone yelled. Returning to their senses, Keller’s men-at-arms raised their shields and readied their weapons. “Get back to your post, coward!”
“Your Highness, these men serve the count’s knights directly. They will not disobey their orders lightly. But by the same token, they are well-connected and educated. They should recognize any proof you possess of your identity,” Bjorn advised.
“I see.” Cinna slung her hammer and then reached under the chainmail protecting her neck. She pulled out the pendant she and every other member of Selkarcian royalty wore; a symbol both the nobility and their servants should be familiar with. “Will this do?”
“Wait…”
“It can’t be.”
“Is she really…?”
“Lower your shields.”
A man nudged aside the soldiers in front of him and stepped out of the crowd, taking a closer look at the pendant hanging from Cinna’s fist. After a few seconds of examination he sighed and turned back to the others.
“It’s legitimate. Clear the way for the Crown Princess!”
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