The Fall of Erlon Read online

  “How many were after you?” Lauriston said.

  “Not sure.” Mon looked towards the horses on their perimeter. “Only saw two, but there must be more.”

  “They were spread out. Making sure you couldn’t slip away from them. But they didn’t expect us to be here.” Lauriston smiled, but his eyes were focused on his men around them. “Come, we’ll get away from here.”

  “They have a hawk, Lar,” Mon said.

  “I know, we shot it down.”

  “Shot it down?”

  “Yes, just winged it, I think, but he’ll be down a while.”

  Lauriston whistled and the horses returned to formation. Elisa was pulled up behind a soldier who smelled of gunpowder. Elisa heard a few more distant musket shots behind her as they pushed up the hill to the east.

  Her adrenaline was gone. Her eyelids felt heavy.

  She was saved. Somehow she was saved by one of her father’s marshals and his soldiers.

  Elisa let out a long breath and held on tight to the soldier, letting her new escort carry them off into the woods and away from the horrible beasts and the enemy chasing her.

  Chapter 9

  The marshals of Erlon were the top generals under Emperor Lannes. Of these select few, the greatest was Alexandre Lauriston, Lannes’s most trusted commander.

  Tome of the Emperor

  Nelson Wellesley

  Nelson

  “You created the rank of marshal soon after taking power.” Nelson flipped open his notebook and dipped his quill in ink. The firelight of the emperor’s study flicked over the pages.

  “Yes.” Lannes looked up and met Nelson’s eyes across the hearth.

  “Why?”

  “To give the men something higher to strive for. Even the generals. I wanted them to be mythic, I wanted stories told about the rank to rival the Ascended One.”

  “I’d say they succeeded in that.”

  “Most of them.” Lannes shrugged.

  “Lauriston especially,” Nelson said.

  Lannes nodded.

  They’d made a routine of their talks about history and the news coming from the present war. Most mornings after breakfast they would walk along the outer walls of the keep and discuss various topics. Nelson would take a break for lunch and meet with his aides and the handful of advisors who’d accompanied him to Taul and then he would resume talks with the emperor in the afternoon.

  They were slowly progressing through the emperor’s past, starting with his rise to power. Nelson had taken to jotting down notes from their talks. The emperor’s life would make a fascinating history tome someday if Nelson survived this war.

  Their discussions were enjoyable and the conversations were light. Nelson could tell Lannes enjoyed it too, but they hadn’t reached the harder parts of his reign yet. They would eventually need to discuss Three Bridges and the southern campaigns and the slow decline of the empire.

  Today, a gale had blown in from the south and frigid rain lashed the outside of the keep as thunder rolled overhead. There would be no outside strolls this morning.

  “Like I’ve said before, Lauriston was the best of them.” Lannes shifted in his seat and returned to staring at the flames within the hearth. The seat back still dwarfed him and made the once great man look frail. “Is there official news on any of the others? I’d imagine they haven’t fared well against this invasion.”

  Nelson nodded to confirm the emperor’s assumption. “I’m afraid they haven’t.”

  He took a breath and thought through what he remembered from the reports over the last few months.

  “Jerome Levou fell in the south, with Beauhar. He’s reported to have been in a Kurakin prisoner camp ever since.” Nelson noted that this appeared to be new information for the emperor. “Moreau and Beaumont were captured early in the north. They are in a Brunian camp near Vendome, the last I heard. Yalstoy—”

  “I know what happened to Yalstoy,” Lannes said quickly.

  Nelson looked up, taken aback by the emperor’s tone. It was a rare betrayal of emotion from the stoic man. But Nelson could understand, given the stories of Yalstoy’s defeat while protecting the retreat of the main army in the north at the beginning of the invasion.

  “Durand was killed at Clermont,” Nelson continued. “Mercier hasn’t been confirmed killed but has been missing since the siege of Mere.”

  “I see,” Lannes said.

  Nelson let the emperor think through the information. Silence seemed good for the conversation at this moment. He tried to imagine about how he would feel if his own country were falling.

  His mind went back to the lead up to Three Bridges. To the despair felt among the people at the threat of the emperor invading the island of Brun.

  The Brunians had been close to the current Erlonian fate. Nelson had only been a prince then, but he’d tasted part of what the emperor was going through now along with his people. It had felt like the world was ending.

  “We have other leaders besides the marshals,” Lannes said. He picked up his pipe from his side table and set about lighting it.

  “You do. Which generals would Lauriston have with him in the central region?”

  Lannes puffed on the pipe to stoke the small flame within the bowl and blew smoke up towards the ceiling. “Men who would’ve been marshals eventually had I stayed in power. They still could reach the rank, if they somehow save Erlon.”

  “Lauriston would promote them?”

  “Or my daughter.”

  Nelson nodded and watched the haze grow around Lannes’s head. “Which generals exactly?”

  Lannes thought for a second. “I would guess he has Lodi with him.”

  “The Lakmian master.”

  Lannes pointed his pipe stem at Nelson and nodded. “Him, along with Desaix for cavalry, and Quatre probably too.” Lannes paused and looked up in thought. “Murat as well, if Lar didn’t split his forces at any time.”

  “I see.” Nelson knew the names. “All veterans.”

  “I wish I could make them marshals. Wish I could be fighting with them now.” Lannes put his pipe back in his mouth and looked back to the fire.

  The thought of Emperor Lannes returning to a battlefield on the Continent sent a brief tremor of terror along Nelson’s spine. He shook off the brief feeling quickly.

  “But Lauriston still fights on. It doesn’t matter where I am, he’ll do his duty.” Lannes spoke out of the side of his mouth around the pipe stem.

  “Which duty is that?” Nelson said.

  Emperor Lannes’s eyes closed. “He won’t be captured. He’ll find some way to keep on fighting. He’ll die for the country. He’ll give his last breath trying to free her and protect the people. He won’t be exiled or put in prison. He’ll fight for Erlon until the very end.”

  Elisa

  “Princess, sit if you want.” Lauriston held out his hand to an open seat on a log.

  Elisa looked at the gesture. The scene around her felt like one of her dreams. There was a small fire in the middle of a makeshift camp, with the soldiers who’d saved her moving about between their tents.

  Saved.

  Elisa got stuck on that word. It didn’t seem possible. She and Mon had been finished. The wolverines had been right on top of them.

  But this famous marshal from her father’s army had appeared and turned the Scythes away.

  And Mon knew the marshal.

  “We winged the hawk, but it’ll be back up.” Marshal Lauriston still had his arm outstretched towards the proposed seat, but he now addressed Mon. “You were lucky only a few of the Scythes were able to converge once they spotted you.”

  “I know.” Mon sat on the far side of the fire with his brow in shadows. He took a pull from a new bottle of wine the soldiers had given him.

  “They’ll be slowed down, but only for a few days.” Lauriston dropped his arm and stared into the fire. He still had his marshal’s jacket on and held his hat in one hand. His hair was cut short and was a deep and dark
brown. Two silver pistols not unlike Elisa’s hung from the belt around his waist.

  Elisa finally took the seat offered her. Her legs were starting to shake and her head spun. Resting on the log would be better.

  She glanced around at the camp in twilight. She counted the soldiers again. Fifteen plus Lauriston and now Mon and herself. The others were setting up tents or on watch duty or tending to the horses on the outskirts of the group’s space.

  “Elisa, do you need anything? Water?”

  It took Elisa a second to realize Lauriston was speaking to her again.

  The informal address from the marshal didn’t bother her. This was her father’s best friend. The man she’d seen with him around the palace the most, especially during wartime. Lauriston was the general he’d fought with for over a decade at the height of the empire and the man he trusted the most.

  Elisa shook her head at his question. “No, sir. Thank you.”

  “She’s tough, Lar.” Mon’s voice was gruff and weary from the shadows on the other side of the fire.

  “I know. Surviving a Scythe attack is no small feat.” Lauriston smiled at Elisa and took his own seat on another log and stretched out his legs. “But we could tell you had a fire in you even as a toddler, Elisa. Your father was proud of that. Thought you were just like him. We’d be in the middle of a campaign planning meeting and he’d stop and go off on a tangent about your latest adventure as a child.”

  The marshal stared into the fire. Elisa felt a swell of pride that appeared in her gut any time her father was mentioned, especially if the story involved his thoughts on her.

  Lauriston didn’t say anything else. The camp and the soldiers shifted around them and Mon’s face was a shadow over the bright flames opposite Elisa. He gripped his bottle tightly with both fists.

  Most of the other soldiers continued about their tasks outside the fire circle, but some of them broke off and joined Elisa’s group one by one. The first few who joined the circle had general stripes sewn on their shoulders. One of them clapped Mon on the shoulder and the old farmer gave a smile and nod in return.

  “Our army is north of here.” Lauriston looked at Elisa while the rest of his men gathered. “We’re going to have a meeting here in a second. My generals are going to discuss what we do next.”

  Elisa nodded to show she understood.

  Lauriston smiled at her. “I want your opinion on that as well.”

  “Okay.” The discussion would help keep Elisa’s mind off her memories of the Scythe attack, although she didn’t know what Lauriston hoped for Elisa to contribute to a military discussion.

  Lauriston turned and pointed at the man who’d clapped Mon on the shoulder earlier. “This is General Desaix of the First Cavalry.”

  “Evening, Princess.” Desaix removed his cavalry hat and bowed low. “We met a long time ago, but you were just a girl.”

  Elisa nodded in reply. She vaguely remembered the man. He’d often been a part of the cavalry guard that escorted her and her family north for holidays at Papelotte.

  The Lakmian who’d thrown the spear during the fight with the Scythes was next to arrive. He took a seat on the same log as Mon and shook the farmer’s hand and nodded at everyone else. Elisa received a wink over the fire.

  “This is Master Lodi, of the Lakmian regiments,” Lauriston said.

  “How are the crops?” Lodi turned to Mon.

  “Probably burned or in the belly of the enemy now.”

  Lodi shrugged. “Probably true.”

  Lauriston pointed to the final figure to arrive at the fire. “Our late arriver is General Quatre. He’s the reliable one, if you couldn’t tell.”

  “Thank you, Lauriston, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Quatre took a seat next to Lodi. “I was finishing up a particularly important game of bisset, if you must know.”

  Lauriston ignored the last comment and moved to start the meeting. He pointed at Elisa and she felt the eyes of the circle swing back to her.

  “Everyone knows our princess, our reason for this slight detour. Now the question becomes, what is our direction from here?”

  Lauriston looked at his men and Elisa followed the gaze and took in the new faces, but a question jumped from the back of Elisa’s mind. She knew of Lauriston. He’d introduced the other generals, but he’d left one important detail out.

  “What’s Mon’s title?” she said.

  The heads of the generals rotated from Elisa over to Mon. The old farmer finished his latest pull from his bottle and set it back down between his feet. He didn’t offer an answer.

  Lauriston raised his eyebrows. “General. Previously General of the Imperial Guard. Although I would hazard to say he’s been pressed back into service from retirement.”

  A general? Elisa couldn’t believe it. The old drunken farmer she’d lived with for months was one of her father’s generals?

  And of the Imperial Guard?

  Impossible.

  Elisa looked at Lauriston and didn’t see a hint of a joke. No one else around the circle laughed or contradicted him

  “Looks like I’m back, I guess.” Mon raised his bottle in a toast motion and drank again.

  “Welcome back, Mon.” Lodi reached over and slapped Mon on the back, causing wine to spill down his chin.

  “Any other questions, Elisa?” Lauriston looked at her and she saw the surprise behind his eyes at her lack of knowledge about Mon’s title.

  Elisa shook her head and Lauriston turned back to his men. “Now, to my original question.” The group quieted down immediately. All eyes were on the marshal. “I know we’re happy to be reunited, but we have a long way to go before we’re safe. Those were Scythes out there today, in case anyone missed the wolverines.” There were some chuckles from the crowd. “They’ll fall back and regroup but then come back at us hard. We hit their hawk, but it’ll be back up in the air soon enough. We must put as much ground between us and them as we can before that happens.”

  “Back to the army?” Quatre asked.

  “Yes, we’ll have to find them in the Dune Forest.”

  “We can do that,” the cavalryman Desaix said.

  “I hope we can.” Lauriston’s eyes moved to each of the generals as he talked. “We’ll go back on the path we came down and then press east and try to catch them. The Dune Forest should make it easy for us to hide from the Scythes. The army will move northeast through the forest, towards Lake Brodeur. Hopefully we’ll find them before then, but it may be hard.”

  The men around the circle nodded. Elisa thought on her knowledge of this part of Erlon. Lake Brodeau was a small lake just south of the Branch. It was well south of Vendome and on the northern outskirts of the forest. It seemed an incredibly long way from their current location.

  “Desaix, we’ll need some good eyes out there. We must move fast, but we can’t go blindly through the woods.”

  Desaix nodded.

  “Quatre, keep the men focused on the trail. We should be ready for a fight at all times.”

  Quatre nodded as well.

  Lauriston paused and looked around at his officers. “Onward,” he said in a soft voice that somehow carried over the group.

  “Onward.” The men responded and the word echoed out to the rest of the camp. Elisa heard a few more responses from the soldiers on watch in the trees as well.

  “Lodi.” Lauriston turned to the Lakmian. “Do we have a tent for the princess? Help her set it up, please.”

  Lodi nodded. The meeting ended and the soldiers got up and broke off into separate conversations. Lodi came over to Elisa.

  “Come, Princess, I’ll show you your tent.”

  The men had already cleared a space in the middle of their own tents for Elisa. The horses were tethered and being fed off in the thicker trees to her right. Crackles from the fire came behind her, along with the drone of various conversations among the men all around.

  Elisa felt like she could barely lift her arms and was grateful fo
r Lodi’s help with her things. Her mind felt overwhelmed, but she feared sleep would still be hard to find after this day.

  Too much had happened. Too much had changed.

  She thought on Lauriston’s words. This company of her father’s soldiers had come south to save her. There was more of the Erlonian army out there and the marshal’s goal was now to get her to it.

  All while the Kurakin Scythes still chased her.

  Elisa let out a sigh and looked at the men around the camp while Lodi stuck stakes in the ground for the tent. Most sat on logs around fires and talked with each other. Some were already asleep where others were on watch duty.

  Elisa recognized the names that’d been introduced to her from stories and legends of her father’s conquests. For the other soldiers, she recognized the uniforms of their units.

  There were a handful of Lakmian Jinetes that would be under Lodi’s command. These soldiers all carried the famous spears of the Lakmians and wore coats of a dark green that would blend in well with the forest.

  The Erlonian units she recognized as well. There were a few cavalry guard soldiers now sitting with the one introduced as Desaix and two sharpshooters talking with Quatre.

  And then there was Montholon.

  Elisa’s eyes found him still sitting by the fire with a few soldiers wearing the uniform of the Imperial Guard. A few days ago, Mon had been only a drunk farmer. Now he was a general in her father’s army.

  He wasn’t just a normal general, leading a division of regular infantry. Montholon, with his weathered skin and shaking hands and ever-present bottle, was the former commander of the Imperial Guard. The elite of her father’s army.

  Elisa watched the three guardsmen that now sat with Mon. They were talking easily, no laughter or jokes, but calm and comfortable looks on their faces. They seemed happy to be reunited as longtime friends.

  The Imperial Guard was famous for many reasons. They carried two bayoneted muskets each, strapped across their backs like the Lakmian spears. They trained with the weapons in the mountains east of Plancenoit at the famous Guard Academy. Only the most decorated and brave soldiers gained acceptance.