Guy IV: The Savior of Micheltaigne
Oh, how glorious it is to be the hero. Guy sat tall atop his horse as he rode through the streets of Salhaute, clad in gleaming armor of blue and gold. A spring breeze blew through his hair as he basked in the warm glow of Micheltine gratitude, the unequaled appreciation of the huddled masses for their knightly liberators. From the cheers of adulation from the liberated Salhautiens, it seemed his days of ignominy and flight had come to an end.
To be sure, they were a ragged bunch, ripped and dirtied from the occupation and the siege, but when they threw bundles of moonflowers his way and cheered the name ‘Valvert’, none of that seemed to matter. Never in his life had he received such adulation, though he’d come close many a time, only to have his victory snatched away at the last moment.
It had all begun with the Foxtrap, when Duke Fouchand had stayed in Guerron rather than march off to war, leaving Guy trapped helpless in the duchy as his mother and father rode to their deaths. Rosette Debray had simply vanished, never turning up in Guerron nor among the hostages Avalon took in the wake of the battle. Even that fate was better than Sébastian Valvert’s, breaking his neck in a fall from his horse before the battle had begun. So dire was his father’s legacy, it was perhaps a blessing that few spoke of him anymore, for their japes had been anything but complimentary.
The day had not been without heroes cementing their legend, of course. The Fox-King had earned a glorious death for himself, fatally wounding King Harold in single combat, but that sort of veneration was not worth the cost. Little point in earning fame and glory without being alive to appreciate it.
Uncle Fouchand had cared for Guy, plainly, knighting him when he came of age and inviting him into his councils, but he had never trusted him. Guy’s duties had largely consisted of the trivial and the useless, the sort of busywork that earned no acclaim from the Council or the masses. The Festival of the Sun had seemed an opportunity to turn that around, commanding the watch guarding every gate of the city and playing a crucial role in a tournament that the entire duchy would cherish. Instead, the new Fox-King had dashed that plan to ruins when he set the beach afire rather than respect the results of Aurelian’s duel.
When the time had come to assume his seat in Dorseille as its Count, Guy’s celebrations had been wildly overshadowed by the Summer of Darkness, festivities turned to ash as the city was forced to scrape and huddle just to remain alive. Those had been hard times, and Guy had faced them with his usual steel resolve, making the tough call to close his gates to thousands of starving refugees from the hinterlands who were seeking shelter and warmth within the walls. They wouldn’t have been able to feed them for three days, let alone the indefinite weeks or months the darkness might have persisted, so Guy hadn’t had any choice but to protect the people he could and leave the rest to die.
None had praised him for it, of course, but it had needed to be done. That had earned him some small acclaim among the people of Dorseille, but no sooner had he announced the decision than the Battle of White Night had captured everyone’s attention, the brave Fox-King and his company of heroes fighting off the darkness itself. With the sun’s return, Guy had stopped outside the walls of Dorseille on his way south and fed such sickly and starving as remained, but they’d been remarkably ungrateful to their Count for saving their lives.
His wedding, of course, had led to the greatest humiliation of all. Intended to unite the Guerron Duchy and bring House Bougitte back into the fold after all that sorry business with Flammare, the marriage contract had instead been perhaps the worst deal a Valvert had ever made. Valentine had seemed appealing at first, more temperate and closer to his own age than her sister, and the first sage of the earth in known history. But she couldn’t let go of what Montaigne did to Laura, and both of us paid the price for it. The communards would take Valentine’s head now, most likely, if Montaigne hadn’t killed her already.
Despite himself, Guy couldn’t escape a sense of melancholy at the thought. She deserves better than a coal-miner’s axe through her neck, whatever her follies. Reflecting, Guy resolved to hand a bag of gold to anyone who produced her sister’s remains, that they might be buried side by side. It seemed the decent thing to do, and Laura had supposedly died not far from here, trying to take on Avalon’s Aerial Armada all on her own.
I might call both sisters fools, yet this assault wasn’t so very different. Perhaps all three of us are alike in that regard, and I just happened to be the only one to escape with my life. If so, there was still more to it than luck. Guy had a keen sense of when it was time to place his bets and when it was best to go home—it had saved him from the need to weather Queen Glaciel’s assault, from a ball of lead through his head from a peasant pistol, from recapture alongside Valentine, and from enduring the icy hospitality of Valentine’s family in Torpierre. Being rescued from Guerron had led him into the arms of the Blue Knights, and from there, to victory.
But it hadn’t been a cautious retreat that had won this day; far from it.
The risks had come before the battle was ever joined, writing the Prince Regent of Avalon with begging bowl in hand, seeking arms and equipment to fight their mutual foes. His letter had been as persuasive as they’d hoped, for Prince Harold had supplied them with guns and cannon both, alongside three ships to deliver them to their destination.
In the Lyrion Sea, right under Avalon’s nose, they had seized the captains and redirected the ships towards Volartre. Carrying a hundred knights each, the crew hadn’t had any choice but to keep their mouths shut and chart the new course.
They’d gotten over it in time, once the knights landed in Volartre and sacked the garrison Avalon had left to keep an eye on it under Hermeline’s auspices. Divided three hundred ways, the treasure wouldn’t amount to much, but as a means to keep their ships loyal, it served well enough. It helped that they wouldn’t be able to return to Avalon without punishment, now that they’d capitulated. After the battle at Salhaute, if their part in it were known, it was unlikely they’d be spared the noose. And when the punishment for treason is the same as the punishment for the mistakes you’ve already made, why wouldn’t you join the rebels handing you a bag of mandala coins. It wasn’t as if the knights would have had much use for them anyway.
Better still, sacking Volartre had won more knights to their cause as they made their way up the Martyr’s Path into the mountains, starting with Sire Reglàce Hauvent, who’d surrendered his castle in the foothills without a fight and pledged his sword to theirs.
“It’s about time someone stood up to Avalon,” he’d said, clapping Guy on the back with enough force to move the mountains. “Leclaire might have seduced the Prince of Darkness into handing Malin back over to her, and the Lyrion colonists seem to have managed the same, but you lot are the only ones taking the fight to them since the Foxtrap, giving them what they deserve.” Later, in private, he’d confessed a more personal motive as well. “My brother disgraced our house and turned his cloak; he fell in love with an Avaline cloth merchant. He died before he could come to his senses, and now my nephew simpers at the feet of the Prince of Darkness, begging for scraps from a people who will never respect him.”
However disgraceful the betrayal, his connections to Avalon had given Hauvent a keen familiarity with their clamorous arms. “Before Grimoire, it was that pirate catcher, Stewart. They stopped in Volartre in pursuit of Robin Verrou, and Sidney tried to convince me to compound our family’s disgrace by turning my own cloak.” Guy had withheld any judgement, instead offering him the chance to wipe that stain clean forever. Reglàce wasn’t the only knight with something to prove about their bloodline either, since their third day there had seen Sire Miro Mesnil arrive to join them, on leave from the Fox-King’s guard.
“He doesn’t need all hundred of us to sit around Serpichon while he haggles with Volobrin,” Miro had explained, though he gave no indication that the Fox-King approved of their actions. “Ever since my brother joined the communards, I’ve searched for a way to restore honor to the name Mesnil. Lucien would understand, I think.” Perhaps, but since you didn’t see fit to tell him, we might never know.
Guy was of two minds about involving the Fox-King, now that they knew he was just to the south. Lucien had always stood with his wife, but she’d never transgressed quite like this before. It was no secret that the two spent as much time apart as together, these days, one diplomatic mission or another pulling him away and leaving Leclaire to rule in Malin alone. Lucien Renart would never countenance any harm befalling her, of that Guy was certain, but might he be persuaded to remove her from power if the argument were uncontestable? They were certainly in a better position to convince him now than when they’d been holed up in Torpierre.
The week they’d spent in Volartre had been more than worth it, with Hauvent writing secret letters to rouse other local allies and helping to drill in the use of the Avaline arms. “It’s a coward’s weapon, no doubt,” he’d conceded to Guy. “But it’s better to be a living coward than a dead hero.” Guy hadn’t hesitated to agree.
The weapons themselves had been a point of contention, a compromise on their knightly honor, whatever their utility. Sire Alexandre had proposed arming their peasant retinues and leaving the knights on horseback to their swords and lances, but Guy had dissuaded him of that folly with the lessons from the Montaignards. Giving them that kind of military power was the beginning of the end, though Lucien couldn’t have known it at the time. They’d tried to collect them all back, only for Montaigne to lie to their faces and save the lord’s portion of the weapons for his own usurpation of Guerron.
That would not happen again. Aurelian had learned to use the pistol when he needed to, honor or no, and Guy could do the same. Once he set the example, the others had followed. First, in learning and drilling, then in riding up the Martyr’s Path towards Salhaute.
Their journey had been smooth enough, though the fires burning across the mountains filled the air with enough smoke that it was hard to breathe without a cloth over your mouth, hard to scout the road ahead without your eyes watering. The first Avaline patrol had put an end to that ease, though the field test of the weapons had been absolutely invaluable.
Cavalry had once been the uncontested pinnacle of warfare, exemplified by none better than the Fox-Queen, who’d held her horses in reserve to reinforce her lines wherever they needed it most, turning the tide of every battle in favor before her foes could react. Even Avalon, for all their bluster about technology, had fielded thousands of horse in the Foxtrap campaign.
High mobility and volley fire worked well in concert, evidently. The Restoration of Salhaute had proven it beyond all doubt. How quickly the disappointment over Volartre’s meager treasure faded now that an entire kingdom is in our debt.
Princess Mars couldn’t have reclaimed her kingdom without their help, and Avalon had left behind the lord’s portion of their treasure, so hurried was their flight. The spoils today would go a long way to soothe the wounds of attaintment, exile, and flight.
Mars’ soldiers were an eclectic bunch themselves, a mixture of the royal guard who’d escaped alongside her, Chalice Mercenaries, and eastern mountainfolk. She’d best see that they don’t get any ideas the way ours did, or she won’t hold Salhaute any longer than I ruled in Guerron. Neither sages nor pistol-wielders numbered amongst them, though, which would go a long way to keep them from forgetting their position.
In the parade, the Princess and her retinue wore crisp uniforms plundered from the Avaline barracks, dyed a deep blue and modified to better resemble the classic Micheltine style, with ruffled épaulettes and a flowing cravat. But in battle, they’d worn vestments scarcely better than rags, mishmashed armor and old uniforms of Micheltaigne, stained and torn.
The mercenaries fared slightly better, though their short, gaudy clothes and endless gold bangles, necklaces, and earrings went far past the point of taste. Guy had asked Fouchand once about the uniformly terrible dress sense of the common mercenary, and his uncle’s response had been telling: “A soldier of fortune wants to keep that fortune, though it may be years before they ever seek any kind of home. They must keep their wealth about their person, lest it be stolen by a thief not so very different from themselves.”
Whatever the practical benefits, it made them stand out on parade and battlefield both. But then, perhaps that common skulduggery had been crucial to this victory. After all, the Micheltine never would have made it inside the gates of Salhaute without trickery.
Princess Mars had flown her pegasus into the docks in the dead of night, hiding the beast under a tarp before beginning her work. The Avaline had repurposed the landing platform meant for elite pegasus knights and royalty to common moorage for their ghastly airships, a loading space for the supplies they delivered. Mars had wasted no time in setting the crates afire, distracting the guard as she crept towards the city gates and cracked them open. The rest of them had crept up to the city walls in the night, lying in wait until the Princess herself opened the gates.
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That was the story she told, at any rate. It seemed passing suspicious to Guy that the Princess had ostensibly snuck her way through the entire city as it roused itself in alarm, then come upon gates still lightly defended enough that she could crack them open herself. When the peasants had burrowed their way into the Chateau d’Oran to seize control, by contrast, they’d left the rioters at the gates a diversion, and placed Montaigne in the trial chamber to keep Valentine distracted. Mars’ feats didn’t seem possible without at least two people sneaking in, but if she’d been aided by another, it wasn’t someone she was willing to share the credit with.
Probably some eager-eyed peasant, staying anonymous to honor their princess.
Either way, it had been enough to secure the loyalists a toehold in Salhaute, but the Avaline had made them fight fiercely for every inch they encroached into the city. Pinned up against the gate, it would only have been a matter of time before the relentless fire of Avaline guns forced them back out, or to oblivion.
Guy had ridden past the stone pier in the midst of the battle, a maelstrom of crumbling stone and flame. By then, Avalon’s cannons had already torn through much of the masonry in an attempt to deny the Micheltine any cover, but a man and women were still hanging off the side, a warning for all there to see it.
Since the battle, they’d been taken down, but the pier remained a jagged ruin, the rest of the city scarcely any better. It was hard to tell what damage dated to Avalon’s initial assault and what had been newly hewn from the ancient stone in their hasty defense, but either way, a few days wasn’t nearly sufficient to pretty it up for the parade. A few years wouldn’t be enough to restore Salhaute to its former glory. But now the rebuilding could begin, and everyone in the city knew it.
Mars’ forces had been on the ropes, pinned against the stone as a hail of Avaline bullets slowly ground their numbers down. At best, their only hope was breaking through into a retreat, dealing further damage to the occupation force and living to fight another day, as they had apparently done so many times before. But the chance of even that had been thin in the dark of that night, the element of surprise lost.
Instead, the Blue Knights had saved the day, riding up the road and charging straight through the opened gates to trample over a thousand Avaline gunners. Emboldened by the sudden reinforcement, Mars had rallied her troops to storm the walls from the inside and take command of the gates while the Blue Knights continued their incursion into Salhaute. Before long, the Princess’ flying white pegasus joined the battle alongside them, showering a carpet of arrows down on any Avaline soldiers who thought to avoid Guy’s guns by hiding behind the inner walls. That had forced them inside as the cannons were rolled into place; once the inner walls crumbled, Salhaute was lost to them.
Clearly, the Avaline command knew it too, since they’d shifted focus to loading up as many airships as possible to quit the city. In the smoky chaos and confusion of the battle, a surprisingly high number of them had escaped, using every airship that hadn’t been burned to cinders. And despite all the treasures they left behind, they managed to strip the Salhaute larders bare.
Still, a victory was a victory, and such considerations seemed beneath concern next to the triumphant narrative of the loyalist knights liberating Micheltaigne as Camille and Lucien declined to lift a finger, locked into their humiliating treaty with Avalon.
Though, little did we know, a certain Red Knight had slipped into our column alongside us. In the aftermath, that had been perhaps the greatest surprise. Mars had claimed it was all part of the plan, with a woefully outnumbered Red Knight filling the same role as his blue counterparts, but it seemed obvious that it was merely a cover for her own reckless planning.
No one had seen the Red Knight, after all, until the Blue patriots had joined the battle. The so-called ‘Demon of Lorraine’ had scarcely said a word since then, either, though Guy certainly knew him well enough by reputation. This man makes sport of slaughter, an honorless scourge who burns men and women alive, locked in the cabins of their ships. He was on their side, or so it seemed, but that was no reason not to watch him carefully.
Once the parade crossed the entire span of Salhaute, Mars tacked the procession west, up the road towards the High Basin. Legend had it that Horseti, the East Wind, had worn the depression down into the stone across countless millennia, though the Rhanoir claimed it had been their own spirit to cleave through the mountainside in one fell swoop.
Either way, it was an unparalleled spectacle, the highest point in a kingdom abundant with sheer vistas and desolate beauty. This whole kingdom makes anthills of the Guerron Mountains, Guy had no choice but to admit. You could fire an arrow from the top of the Basin towards the Rhan and it would probably hit the river before it touched the ground.
And they have. Until Avalon’s airships, none save the Fox Queen had ever been able to conquer the High Kingdom from without, though their long history of civil wars proved that they were more than capable of destroying themselves from within. The Winter War should have been their low point, but Avalon had managed to drag them into an even deeper hole.
And Alvis and I managed to drag them out.
The chariot-racer rode to Guy’s left, one spot closer to the Princess, with his red hair flying majestically behind him in the wind. There was a time when that would have bothered Guy, the highest-ranked of the Blue Knights being displaced by a nobleman fallen so deep into genteel poverty that he’d been forced to ply a trade amusing the masses. I know better now; we are all of one purpose, and there is no shortage of glory to go around. It helped that this had been Alvis’ plan in truth, but Guy’s early support and letter to Avalon had won him about as much credit for it.
The traditional Micheltine funerary rite involved preparing the body with perfumes from moonflowers, pine bark, and red tansy, all the better to ward off scavengers until several days after the ceremony concluded. Then the body was given to the sky. Each prominent family had their own plot in the basin, filled with stone markers and flowers and bones, but Avalon had not seen fit to honor the dead in the traditional fashion.
With the sheer quantity of the dead, Mars had no choice but to abandon tradition as well, instead trading on the pauper’s tradition: a mass pyre. Up in the mountains, fertile ground was hard enough to come by that apparently they didn’t want to waste it on burials, but Guy was unsettled by the thoughts of reducing all these bodies to ash. When I go, I want to rest in my tomb, surrounded by testaments to my great deeds. In that respect, the one Micheltine funeral was no better than the other.
The path stretched all the way up the rest of the Martyr’s Path, ending with a massive bier that took up most of the High Basin. Generously, the twelve knights who’d died in the battle were granted a place of honor alongside Mars’ own captain Nerio and her other highborn losses, somewhat diminished by the presence of other peasants and mercenaries that the Princess had insisted be laid to rest in the High Basin.
But it’s not my burial in this cloud of ash and flame, nor is it the sacred resting place for generations of my family. If Mars wanted it this way, Guy knew better than to raise too much of an objection about it. Sire Alexendre Varennes had felt differently, at one point threatening to bury the dead blue knights beneath the royal palace, that they might haunt Mars evermore, but Alvis and Guy had managed to calm him down before he’d roused any kind of ruckus.
“Laura was probably burned,” Guy muttered with a frown, realizing that it might well be impossible to do his soon-to-be-dead wife even that small favor before seeking out new marriage prospects. “Or else carried off in a mountain cat’s jaws, if Mars granted her that honor four years ago.”
“Laura Bougitte?” asked a retainer at Mars’ side, stepping around Alvis to hear Guy’s response. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth made her look roughly forty, as did her coarse grey and white hair, but she had the posture of a woman twice that age. Stooped and halting in her step, she leaned heavily on a cane carved into the shape of a tower. “Who was she to you?”
“My sister by law,” he answered, “though I knew her better as my friend Aurelian’s apprentice. He was burned up by his own fire, but poor Laura was driven out by Fernan Montaigne’s lies.” Guy swatted away a pyrefly hovering irritatingly in front of his face, only for two more to immediately take its place. “And to you, my lady?”
The vieillarde laughed. “She struck the first blow against Avalon. Exiled and disgraced for a crime she did not commit, she still found it in her to take to the skies and rain fire down on those Avaline bastards. Mars told me that Laura was the reason she stayed to fight, rather than fleeing to some comfortable exile abroad.”
“Camille would have taken her, I don’t doubt. She did the same with Her Verdance.” And if she had, we might have had no choice but to try our luck in the Arboreum, where Avalon is far more deeply entrenched. Or else take the fight to Guerron directly, before winning the hearts and minds we’d need to make it feasible. “We are all fortunate that she didn’t give up. If Laura made that possible, then I salute her for it.”
“She’d be honored by such a grand gesture, I’m sure.” The crone shook her head, nostrils flared. “Do you often salute women whose sisters you’ve murdered?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lord Guy Valvert, Count of Dorseille, Steward of Guerron, husband to Valentine Bougitte, the only good person in that whole wretched family.” She tilted her head, mocking him. “We heard the news last week—an escape from the communard’s dungeons, stealing an airship, facing down Montaigne himself. You abandoned your wife, without whom you’d never have been freed.”
“Well, hold on a moment.” Guy blinked, bewildered. I was just thinking of how to help her, you nitwit. “First of all, who on Terramonde’s shining earth do you think you are to make such accusations against the Duke of Guerron?”
“Oh, it’s ‘Duke’ now, is it?” She scoffed. “You’re stealing from your cousin too.”
“I am defending our family’s claim to Guerron, which she has utterly failed to do. Leclaire signed it away in a treaty and Annette stood meekly at her side. When our plan for restoration came to light, she wasted no time in washing her hands of me. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t her who leaked it in the first place, that she might be rid of a cousin she always hated.” He paused, noticing the scars running down her neck. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
The pyreflies were thick in the air now, drawn towards the flame to lay their eggs and bring forth their young. There was a spectacle to it, certainly, a chorus of yellow and orange and red weaving through the air on their way to and from the pyre, stretching all the way down the Martyr’s Path.
“I can see you haven’t changed, Guy.” She shouldered past him, surprisingly forceful with her small, crooked frame. Her abrupt exit earned him a glare from one of the mercenaries, the dark-haired sage of wind. Mars didn’t miss it either, using it as an opportunity to close out the ceremony.
I suppose they all value the vieillarde more than I thought. Guy would have to set that to rights at some point, lest it cast him out of favor with the new sovereign of Micheltaigne. He was trying to find where she’d hobbled off to when someone shouted, “Blinking death!”, causing Guy to abruptly shut his eyes. The Blue Knights were all doing the same, he knew.
Children would survive the sickness that the flashing pyreflies spread, Sire Réglace had warned them, though in rare cases it might leave them blind. For adults, blindness was generally the best they could hope for. It killed seven in ten, their eyes flashing in turn, spreading the Blinking Death further still. “Ever since Avalon’s bombing, nearly five years ago now, the pyreflies have been out of control. Wet winters lead to green summers and dry autumns, but the years with scant rainfall are worse, and we’ve had two of them in the last five years. It ran through me when I was seven, so if we see any blinkers, close your eyes and let me watch the road.”
Sire Réglace was with them now, though as a lesser knight, he was further towards the back of the parade. Guy heard a gust of wind whistle past his ears, but he dared not open his eyes to see where it had come from. The wings of the Princess’ pegasus, perhaps? It was only another moment after that before Mars shouted that the infected pyrefly was dead.
Guy’s eyes flicked open just in time to see the nasty-eyed wind sage tucking a jar into a bag, though neither Mars nor the other mercenaries seemed to find it remarkable. Guy fixed his mask, which had slipped down his face, and rose to a standing posture in as dignified a manner as he could manage.
“You look as if you’ve seen an apparition,” the Red Knight’s booming voice thundered out of his armor as he offered Guy his hand. “Never dealt with the Blinking Death before?”
“No,” Guy admitted, still thinking about the old woman who’d wormed her way into Mars’ council. “Have you known many sages, Red Knight?”
“Many,” he repeated, pointedly refusing to elaborate.
“Then you must know of their last resort, drawing on their own life instead of their spirit’s magic. Minutes, hours, days, or years of their life. Aurelian gave up two years to win his duel, and it left him weakened for a short time. Lady Sarille of Onès sacrificed everything she had left to crush the Avaline navy. But what happens in between? Have you ever seen it?”
“I...” Beneath the armor, it was impossible to see his expression change, but Guy would have guessed he looked pensive, actually considering the question. “Deprived of life, you’d be deprived of time. Aging earlier and more harshly, once the end is near...”
“That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
The Red Knight glanced down the road where the vieillarde had fled him. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you’re chasing specters of the fallen. Best to let it lie.”
“No doubt you’re right,” Guy said, though in truth he wasn’t so sure. If it really is Laura Bougitte, I have a target on my back. The crone had all but confirmed that, whatever her true identity, and she obviously had the Princess’ ear. The alliance they’d sailed halfway around the world to build, deceiving Avalon and carving a blood path through their occupation, might all come to nothing over some petty conflicts in Guerron.
Unacceptable, Guy resolved. If freeing Valentine is what it takes to keep favor at the court, it’s worth making the attempt. In time, they would break for Guerron in any case. And if it proves impossible, well, it would be wise to seek another patron. It was always best to have a backup plan, after all.
“Sire Miro,” Guy greeted the knight in his chambers once all of the festivities had settled down. “I have a message for His Grace, King Lucien.”
