Imperial Audience after all.”
D awn bloomed softly, staining the lower edges of the starlit black sky of night with mother-of-pearl at the eastern horizon over the great ancient city of Charonne.
The ethereal first light gathered its riches over the capital city and over the entire Kingdom of Styx. It pooled with broken shards of mirror-clarity in the rapidly moving waters of the dark and wide river that flowed only a mile-and-a-half west of the city walls—the River Styx that never froze, not even now, in the heart of winter.
An invading army camped on the snow-laden distant western shores of the river, from horizon to horizon, as far as the eye could see in the dawning blue twilight. Hundreds of tents had been erected, morning campfires were already smoking, and a hive of soldiers wearing the olive and black colors of the Kingdom of Solemnis moved around the tents. At even intervals all along the shoreline, the great engines of siege were lined up in monolith formations, their dark silhouettes sharp against the paling sky, their wooden towers and catapults pointing across the river at the bulwarks of the city walls where the defending cannon faced them in turn from embrasures, silent for the moment.
This was an army of mortal living men, and thus, they had to eat and sleep, and wage ordinary war. King Frederick Ourin of Solemnis, which was one of the four Kingdoms of the Domain, had sent the entire force of his battalions north, into the enemy territory of the Realm, all upon the orders of the Sovereign. They had been told to wait at the western shore of the river, to block the city from any outside access in the west, but not to engage until further orders, and not to cross Styx. This has been days ago. . . . And as yet, no new orders were forthcoming.
And thus the Domain army sat in readiness, while the defenders of Charonne observed them from the height of the bone-pale walls.
More than fifty feet above ground level, up on the battlements, musketeer and arquebusier marksmen wearing the crimson and black colors of Styx leaned in readiness, manning their long-muzzled firearms through every merlon embrasure and along every crenel. Behind them, amid flickering night torches, paced sergeants-at-arms and various infantrymen with pole weapons at the ready, and suppliers moved small wheelbarrows and loaded carts. At one such point near a sizeable bulwark facing west, several high-ranking officers were gathered, and in their center stood a slim youth dressed in a full suit of battle armor, his plates shining to a high polish and trimmed with gold. His crested helmet sported black and crimson ostrich plumes and his visor was raised, revealing the face of a grave and frightened youngster of no more than fourteen.
His Majesty, Augustus Ixion, the young King of Styx, recently orphaned and recently crowned, was here at dawn, to observe and take stock of his city’s defenses. At his right stood a tall, vigorous man with a handsome face and artfully styled dark hair, bare of helm and heedless of the cold dawn, with filaments of his hair flying in the morning breeze. He was Andre Eldon, the Duke of Plaimes, from the Kingdom of Morphaea. Together with his King, Orphe Geroard, and the ragged remainder of the Morphaea army, the Duke had arrived here in Charonne only two days ago, under the cover of night and in inclement weather, to join forces with Styx against their common enemy. It has been a miracle they managed to enter the city from the eastern side without being intercepted and destroyed by the Solemnis forces. But so far, Solemnis showed no interest in crossing the river. And besides, the Morphaea men were so few in number that their arrival was easily overlooked and their reinforcements were mostly a boost to morale.
“I wonder what it is that makes them wait now . . .” mused the Duke of Plaimes, as he raised a long spyglass to stare at the roiling vista below, across the silvery waters of the River Styx.
E.L. Blaisdell, Nica Curt