Chapter 498: Morning and Next Phase (3)
"Hold," he called, and like shutters slamming in high wind, the violence stopped.
No time for celebration. Varzadian banners were hauled from storage and raised anew atop the gatehouses. Belle inspected placements, ensuring angles looked natural to distant spyglasses. She added a faint shimmer over the ramparts—illusory torches, silhouettes pacing. From beyond, it would appear business as usual.
Alicia, pale and trembling, used her mind to lift debris, stacking broken crates into makeshift embrasures. She nudged a loose stone here, a toppled ladder there, every inch selling the story that defenders still worked.
Josephine’s riders took to the roads. They galloped past crossroads, pausing just long enough for pickets to glimpse Varzadian cloaks before charging onward, hooves hammering fear into any witness.
Inside, Wilhelmina reorganized squads, rotated watch shifts, and posted double sentries at every postern gate. Anyone approaching would see a fortress bristling with readiness.
Lyan scribbled his cipher: hawk-seal pressed firm. He selected a courier with fresh horse and cool nerves. "Ride. If the bridge is blocked, swim. Do not open the seal for any soul but William." The courier saluted, wheeled, and vanished into the fog.
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Smoke drifted in lazy ribbons beneath the hammer-beamed ceiling, catching the lamplight in thin gold sheets before bleeding into the higher dark. Eboncliff’s great hall had once been a place of feast—there were carvings of harvest garlands along the rafters, half-hidden under soot—but now the floor was a map-room, a sickbay, and an armory all at once.
A splintered trestle served as a surgeon’s bench. A sergeant with a bandaged thigh propped himself there, trying to look invisible while two chirurgeons argued in whispers over the best stitch. Nearby, a toppled wine cask became an impromptu stool for a courier who had ridden all night; his eyes kept drooping shut until another runner nudged him awake. The mingled tang of pitch smoke, blood, and boiled barley filled every breath.
Belle slipped through the door and shut it behind her with a theatrical sweep, the hinges protesting. The emerald of her cloak was smudged black at the hem, a smear across her cheek like war-paint, yet her grin was bright enough to outshine the torches. "Shadows report in," she announced, voice lilting. "Two enemy outriders reached the ridge, saw our banners, and decided discretion was holy. They’re riding the wrong direction as we speak."
Josephine leaned back against an overturned table, crossing her arms over the dent in her cuirass. A single feather from a stolen Varzadian plume still perched behind her ear. "And their reinforcements?" she asked, eyebrow cocked.