UNCONQUERED

CHAPTER 6

The hung body of Lord Vane swung from the highest iron gallows of the Eastern Tower for three hours before the Pale Crow made his move.

By three in the morning, the howling blizzard had settled into a thick, suffocating fog that rolled off the frozen riverbed, blinding the watchmen on the parapets. The cold was a living thing—it turned breath into needle-sharp ice, froze the oil in the lamp-housings, and made the steel fittings of Valerya’s brigandine burn against her skin like hot coals.

She stood on the high battlements of the Lower Curtain Wall, a heavy fur mantle wrapped tightly over her shoulders. Beside her, Vance Thorne paced back and forth like a caged wolf, his massive warhammer resting across his shoulder.

"It’s too quiet, Vance," Valerya said, her dark eyes straining to penetrate the wall of white mist choking the valley.

"He knows Vane is dead," Thorne grunted, stopping beside her. His mustache was matted with white frost. "He knows the inner spy is gone and the White Crag is alerted. Whatever he's planning, it won't be a quiet climb up the cliffs."

A sudden, sharp whistle sliced through the quiet air—a sound like a tearing bedsheet, followed instantly by a deep, terrifying THUD that shook the stone ramparts beneath their boots.

Fifty yards to their left, a shower of crushed granite, ice, and powdered mortar exploded into the air. A guard’s scream was cut short as a three-hundred-pound stone projectile smashed through the timber hoarding of the walkway, pulverizing two men before embedding itself six feet deep into the masonry.

"TREBUCHETS!" Thorne roared, his voice cutting through the ringing in Valerya’s ears. "INCOMING! COVER!"

Before the warning could echo across the length of the wall, six more whistles tore through the night sky.

The Pale Crow had not abandoned his siege engines—he had dragged two heavy southern counterweight catapults onto the frozen crust of the marshland, using thick timber sledges to distribute their massive weight across the ice.

The second salvo struck with devastating precision. A giant boulders hit the base of the Iron Gate, cracking the four-hundred-year-old oak timbers with a sound like a thunderclap. Another boulder struck the merlon ten feet from where Valerya stood.

Thorne lunged forward, throwing his armored body over the Queen as stone shrapnel whined through the air, shearing off the top of the watchtower railing.

"Your Grace! You must retreat to the Inner Keep!" Thorne barked, dragging her back into the shelter of the stairwell arch as dust and ice rained down upon them.

"No!" Valerya shot back, shoving his gauntleted hand off her shoulder, her dark eyes flashing through the gloom. "If I run to the Inner Keep now, the garrison will think the wall has broken! Stand fast, Vance!"

She stepped back out onto the slippery stone walkway, drawing her short hunting blade.

Through the mist below, the true shape of the Pale Crow’s assault emerged.

Hundreds of muffled torches flared to life along the edge of the frozen moat. The mercenary commander had not sent a small squad—he had hurled three thousand elite iron-clad skirmishers across the river ice under cover of the artillery barrage. They carried heavy, iron-headed battering rams, scaling ladders hooked with iron claws, and wooden pavise shields lined with wet cowhide.

"Archers to the parapets!" Valerya shouted, her voice ringing out across the panicked wall. "Oil and pitch! Turn the ditch into a furnace!"

The Royal Guard, galvanized by the sight of their Queen standing barefoot in the snow on the open rampart, rallied instantly. Twenty archers stepped into the embrasures, drawing their longbows tight.

"Loose!" Thorne screamed.

A volley of sixty fire-arrows arced into the fog, lighting up the night sky like dying stars. They rained down upon the advancing mercenary column, striking shields, leather coats, and the ice below.

Screams erupted from the darkness as men slipped and fell, pinned to the frozen river by black-shafted arrows. But the mercenary vanguard did not break. They moved with terrifying, mechanical discipline, stepping over their dead, locking their iron shields overhead to form a roof of steel.

CRACK.

Below the rampart, a massive iron-capped battering ram slammed into the small drainage postern at the base of the eastern curtain. The entire wall shuddered.

"They're targeting the old postern!" a sergeant yelled, blood streaming down his face from a flying stone splinter. "The wood is old! It won't hold four strikes!"

"Thorne!" Valerya commanded, her mind operating with cold, lethal clarity amidst the chaos. "Take thirty heavy infantry down to the postern courtyard! Seal the inner archway with iron grates!"

"And leave you on the wall?" Thorne hesitated, his eyes wild with conflict.

"If the postern gives, they are inside the city, Vance! GO!"

Thorne swore aloud, but turned and tore down the spiral stone stairs, shouting for his heavy swordsmen.

Valerya ran along the battlements, stepping over blood-slicked stone and broken masonry. She reached the central cauldron platform, where three guardsmen were frantically trying to tip a massive iron pot of boiling oil over the railing.

"Help them!" Valerya ordered her two remaining shadow-guards.

Together, five bodies threw their weight against the iron lever. The heavy cauldron tipped forward, dumping fifty gallons of screaming, boiling black oil straight down onto the mercenary squad operating the battering ram below.

Horrific, agonizing shrieks tore through the fog as the liquid fire seeped through iron visors and boiled leather. Men threw themselves backward onto the river ice, thrashing in wild agony until their screams were cut short by the cold.

But even as the ram fell silent, a loud CLANG echoed from the merlon beside Valerya.

An iron grappling hook, dragging a thick braided rope, had locked onto the stone lip of the parapet. Before the guards could cut the line, another hook slammed home three feet away, then another.

The fog parted, and a towering figure pulled himself over the stone merlon.

He wore blackened brigandine armor covered in silver frost, his face obscured by an iron visor shaped like the beak of a bird of prey. In his hand, he held a broad, heavy longsword dripping with fresh blood.

The Pale Crow’s elite shock-troops had reached the top of the wall.

Two Royal Guardsmen lunged at the intruder with pikes. The mercenary stepped inside their reach with terrifying speed, sweeping his longsword in a low arc that sheared through the wood of the first pike and severed the throat of the second guard in a single, fluid motion.

He turned his iron visor straight toward Valerya.

"Queen," the mercenary growled, his voice a low, raspy metallic rasp through the visor slits. "Julian sends his regards."

Valerya did not back away. She did not scream for help.

She lowered her center of gravity, gripping her curved hunting blade with her right hand and pulling a short iron dagger from her boot with her left. Her dark eyes locked onto the black slits of his helmet.

"Julian is a dog who sends wolves to do his hunting," Valerya whispered, her voice devoid of fear. "Come then, wolf. See how a Queen dies."

The mercenary lunged.

His broadsword descended in a heavy, overhead executioner’s strike meant to split her from collarbone to hip. Valerya didn't try to block the massive blade—she stepped into his guard, sliding under his outstretched arms as the broadsword buried itself three inches deep into the stone floorboards behind her.

She drove her short iron dagger up into the narrow, unarmored gap beneath his armpit.

The steel struck home, biting deep into meat and muscle. The mercenary grunted, a thick spray of blood bursting through his visor, but his momentum slammed his heavy, iron-clad shoulder straight into Valerya’s chest.

The impact threw her backward onto the slick, icy stones. Her head slammed against the base of a merlon, sending white sparks dancing across her vision.

The mercenary pulled himself free from the stone, blood leaking rapidly from his wounded armpit, but his iron eyes remained fixed on her. He lifted his sword with his good arm, stepping over her fallen dagger.

"Unconquered..." the mercenary spat blood onto the snow. "Not anymore."

He raised the blade high.

Valerya stared up into the descending steel, her teeth grit, her hand scrambling across the icy stone until her fingers brushed against an abandoned iron-headed war-pick lying in the slush.

Before the broadsword could fall, a shadow erupted from the stairwell.

Lady Alyssa surged out of the darkness like a striking adder. Her dark-steel blade flashed twice through the fog. The first strike severed the mercenary’s knee tendons from behind; the second drove six inches of sharpened steel directly through the back of his neck, exiting his throat in a burst of red steam.

The towering mercenary froze, his broadsword slipping from his fingers, before crashing forward onto his face like a felled tree.

Alyssa dropped to her knees beside Valerya, her hands rapidly checking the Queen’s neck and chest for wounds. "Valerya! Are you hit?"

Valerya sat up slowly, wiping blood from a shallow cut on her forehead, her breathing ragged and sharp in the freezing air. She looked down at the dead mercenary, then up at Alyssa, whose dark silks were splashed with crimson.

"I am... whole," Valerya gasped, standing up with Alyssa’s support. "The postern?"

Down in the courtyard below, a tremendous roar echoed through the night—followed by the heavy, metallic THUD of a hundred-ton iron portcullis dropping into stone grooves.

Commander Vance Thorne emerged from the lower stairwell, covered head-to-toe in black blood, his warhammer dripping with gore, but a fierce, triumphant grin split his scarred face.

"The postern is sealed, Your Grace!" Thorne shouted up to the walkway, his voice booming over the sound of the storm. "We stacked twenty dead mercenaries in the archway and dropped the iron gate on 'em! They can batter that door until midsummer—they aren't getting in!"

Along the length of the wall, the mercenary assault was faltering. Without their shock-troops on the battlements and with the postern breached only by a wall of iron and dead flesh, the attacking columns began to pull back into the fog, leaving hundreds of their dead frozen on the river ice.

Valerya walked slowly to the edge of the parapet, leaning against the cold stone merlon.

Below, through the thinning mist, three hundred yards out on the frozen marsh, a single figure on a pale horse sat motionless, watching the retreat.

He wore a dark velvet cloak lined with white fur, a slender silver crown resting atop his dark helm.

Prince Julian.

Valerya wiped the blood from her face, lifted her short blade high into the air, and stared directly into the eyes of her treacherous cousin across the frozen void.

She did not utter a single word. She didn't need to.

Across the distance, Prince Julian slowly pulled his horse around and vanished back into the dark, shivering rows of his freezing army.

Valerya lowered her arm, her chest heaving, the cold wind whipping her hair around her pale face like a banner of silver and dark silk.

"Clean the walls," she commanded softly to Thorne and Alyssa, her voice carrying an absolute, unshakeable power that silenced every man within hearing distance. "Burn their dead on the ice so they can smell their failure from their tents."

She turned back toward the Inner Keep, her heavy mantle dragging across the blood-stained snow.

"The night is over," she whispered into the dawn. "And my city still stands."