PROLOGUE Year 502 opened the way these years always seem to: with a map, and bad news drawn all over it. The knights of Salisbury had spent 501 tidying up a fairy forest and thought they had earned a quiet spell. Fortune, who reads these chronicles for entertainment, had drawn her own conclusions. This year the walls were closing in, and everyone in the room could feel it. ⁃ SECTION THE FIRST: THE CLOSING WALLS The map came out, and the room went quiet. King Nanteliod of Escavalon had eaten most of southern Wales, beaten three brothers in the mountains, and now held the largest single kingdom in the land from the old Roman city of Carleon. To the east, Anglia had swallowed Huntington. To the south, a Saxon called Port had founded Portchester and wedged himself neatly between Sussex and Wessex. Kent and Anglia were both grabbing for the title of High King of the Saxons, which at least kept them tearing at each other rather than at Salisbury. The knights looked at all of it and arrived, together, at the least comfortable word in strategy: buffer. ⁃ SECTION THE SECOND: COIN, TRIBUTE AND EIGHTY SPEARS Countess Ellen wanted answers, and the council gave her a plan built entirely out of not dying this year. They would pay cash tribute to Wessex for a season's peace, patrol the southern rivers, send an envoy west to learn whether Nanteliod was a friend or merely a bigger problem, and finally end the last de Wallingford at Ryderchan. Then came the unglamorous arithmetic of war. Household knights were counted and found wanting; everyone was stretched thin. Emma coaxed funds from the market town of Brennicote, Arianrhod talked five more liberum out of the Countess, and the ten liberum bought eighty mercenary foot. Mounted archers were floated and quietly buried: you cannot shoot a wall into surrender. ⁃ SECTION THE THIRD: THE COLOSSEUM AND THE PACT They rode to Silchester, where Duke Ulfius had turned a Roman colosseum into a great round castle and, years ago, a cold shoulder toward them. Arianrhod stepped up first, wrapping the whole grubby business in the language of rightful order, and out-argued the Wallingford man murmuring poison at the Duke's ear. Ulfius agreed the brothers were rebels but offered nothing for free. So they swung harder. Arianrhod declared, hand on heart, that the Wessex alliance was already dead, and meant every word of it. Then Sir Aur, who has failed at diplomacy in roughly every room he has entered, found the one speech he was born to give: a furious tirade against the Saxon pestilence that needed lancing. It landed. Ulfius pledged a defensive pact against the Saxons, and Aur got to be, just this once, the hero of a conversation. ⁃ SECTION THE FOURTH: EIGHTY FLOWERS AND A WHITE FLAG At Oxford, Euric came to court Countess Eloise with eighty foot soldiers each dropping a flower at her feet, which is either romance or logistics depending on your mood. It worked; her troops doubled the knightly force. At Wallingford they outnumbered the garrison three to one, though the walls still stood. Euric rode to the gate on his fairy horse under a white flag and invited the defenders to abandon their pretenders. Basile de Wallingford climbed the gatehouse to answer and discovered he was no Bellius; his rally fell flat, and the garrison's nerve visibly frayed. Drusilla built a covered ram and ladders, the assault was carved into four wings and a reserve of horse, and Emma began measuring the wall for a night climb. ⁃ ENVOI So closed the season of planning: a pact won, a courtship advanced, a garrison rattled, and a siege coiled and ready but not yet sprung. The eighty spears are in place. The ladders are built. The gate has heard its warning and stayed shut.
