Chapter 55 ： Night Raid
Robin and Cecilia were on horseback in the forest when the scout reported. Robin was on the nightmare — a magical beast that resembled a horse except for the horn and the dark fire that seemed to live in its coat, significantly more capable than any trained horse.
"Normandy's column has halted."
Robin's expression didn't change much. He sent the scout back. A few minutes later, another report: the army was withdrawing westward.
"The left column is retreating cleanly. The right column hesitated before following."
Robin turned to Cecilia. "What do you think that means?"
"You already know what it means," she said. "Bonarpan didn't want to withdraw. He was overruled."
"Bonarpan is worth watching. He's been competent throughout this. Pity he serves Normandy." Robin considered for a moment. "We follow at a distance. Quietly."
Three li from Lion's Roar Fortress, the siege had taken on the character of a ritual. Trebuchets stood in a row, operated by the young men of Laiwater under supervision, throwing rocks and packed clay at the fortress walls. The magical array deflected everything without difficulty, but the psychological effect of sustained bombardment — noise, dust, the constant reminder of being watched — had its own value. Scouts on horseback circled the fortress at irregular intervals. Enchanted wind-element arrows met anyone who tried to slip out at night.
Richard, the garrison commander, had understood by the second day that he had been deceived on the first day. The overwhelming magical attack that had terrified his garrison and sent his messengers running had not been repeated. The force outside wasn't actually trying to take the fortress. It was holding them in place. He had tried two cavalry breakouts and both had dissolved under arrow fire before reaching effective distance. He could only wait.
Evan spent his days at the camp with the comfortable manner of someone who has arranged things to run themselves. The townspeople's men were kept working, their women and children held separately but visibly, the arrangement carefully calibrated to keep the men cooperative through concern rather than despair. Each evening he went over the day's results against his expected timeline.
On the fourth evening, a bat arrived — one of Hell's Projection's creatures, retained as a messenger through instinct more than intent, carrying an impression of movement in the western darkness. Normandy had turned around. The direction and urgency suggested he was coming fast.
Evan called the commanders together and gave the orders. At midnight, the cavalry mounted quietly. The camp was left in place: tents standing, torch arrangements on the watchtowers creating the impression of movement, the townspeople asleep and unaware inside. The prohibition against entering the cavalry's section of camp had kept them from understanding how few soldiers had actually been present for most of the siege.
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By the time the townspeople woke and found the camp quiet, Evan's riders were long gone. Richard, watching from the walls, sent a cavalry probe mid-morning when the silence continued. They broke through the gate and found Evan's parting gift — a magical trap laid the night before in the entrance, which triggered when hooves crossed it and produced enough chaos that it took until noon to sort out what had actually happened.
Five hundred townspeople, alive, intact, and bewildered. Two hundred enemy soldiers, gone without a trace.
Richard stared at his wall. He had been held in place by two hundred men and five hundred conscripted civilians for five days, and the entire thing had been theater from beginning to end.
He had a long list of requisition requests to draft when this was over.
Meanwhile, Evan's column had ridden through the night and into the following day, covering enough distance that Normandy's returning army was still a comfortable margin behind them. When the scouts confirmed the army's encampment, he called a rest.
"Half night. We move at midnight."
The riders ate dried rations, lay down on the ground, and slept. Evan sat in the light rain and planned.
Two hundred against fifteen hundred. One to seven and a half. The commanders had received this with visible discomfort, including Andrea. But he had made the argument: the mission was already complete, Normandy's advance had already been broken, and if Robin was following the army as Evan believed he was, a coordinated night attack would collapse the camp before the enemy could organize. Surprise and chaos were force multipliers that didn't require equivalent numbers.
He hadn't mentioned that he had no way to confirm Robin's position or to coordinate timing in advance. He had sent a letter by the last available scout. Whether it arrived, whether Robin was close enough, whether the timing would actually work — none of that was within his control.
He sat with the uncertainty and let it be what it was.
At midnight he woke the riders, found them already awake and ready, and raised his hand.
The column dissolved into the rain and the dark.
Normandy's camp was quiet except for the patrol routes. The army was comfortable here — familiar territory, the difficult forest work behind them, the plan now being to drive back to Lion's Roar and deal with Robin on ground that favored cavalry. No one had considered that someone might be following them.
The enchanted arrows came first — red and pale-blue streaks arcing into the tent lines from multiple directions simultaneously. Before the first alarm was fully voiced, the throwing spears followed. The detonations were small individually but overlapping, and a fire-element arrow found a powder storage and produced a secondary explosion that turned the center of the camp into a column of light and sound.
Two hundred riders came out of the rain screaming.
The sound and light and the encircling movement did the work before the swords did. Normandy's soldiers had been asleep, were wet, were confused about the direction and scale of what was attacking them. Some fought, many fled, the ones who fled ran into other fleeing soldiers, and the camp became the kind of self-generating chaos that military planners called a rout and common soldiers called a disaster.
Evan moved at a walk through it, unhurried, using the sword-cane when something came at him and otherwise reading the situation. Andrea was not at a walk. The sword had sword-aura now, the light extending several cubits past the blade, and she moved through the camp like something from a very old story, the boomerangs spinning out and returning between sword strokes. A knight came at her from a distance; the boomerang took him at the waist before the sword needed to be involved.
Then, from somewhere in the camp, a voice rose above the noise: "Robin! If you're any kind of man, face me!"