Sorceress of the Second Sphere

5. Bleufontaine - Peyton

Bleufontaine was the citadel of the southeastern province of the Isovine Empire. Since its construction some five hundred winters ago, it had been heavily contested by Isovine and Ruvia. In every war between the two empires, one thing was certain, the bulk of the fighting would be centred around the castle, for whoever controlled Bleufontaine, controlled several thousand acres of land around it.

It had withstood several bombardments and endured several sieges, yet had it always stood tall watching over the flat plains between the Isovine and Ruvia border, eager to be a staging point for any army that stationed itself within it.

Walking on the road alongside the rushing Fléur river, Sir Peyton Whitehill knew that he and his rag-tag crew of loyal soldiers had been spotted several miles from Bleufontaine with the supplies gathered from the ambush a few moons ago.

The pain in his tired legs seemed to fade as he watched the huge red-tinted walls of the fearsome fortress appear over the horizon. As the menacing central keep reached up to the sky, surrounded by its eight daunting turrets, Peyton remembered the feeling of anxiety he first felt when entering its octagonal walls. He recalled the stories that his peers had bombarded him with, about the death and destruction that came within its blood-tinted stone. Words that were normally exaggerated by those who had heard tales of the true events, yet those same words were all authentic. Several tormented souls roamed anxiously within the walls, snatched away from the living through unspeakable means, doomed to an eternity of restlessness.

Even now, after needing to mature well beyond his years, Peyton feared this castle and the spirits within it. When he was offered the chance to have a room within the keep, fit for his stature, he respectfully declined. Instead, he was happy to sleep with the men that he respected and protected in equal measure.

Reaching the top of the nearest hill and preparing for the long trek toward the castle, he watched as the thousands of tents littered themselves around the dark citadel. Over thirty thousand men had stationed themselves here. The second Isovine army preparing, initially, for the next stage of the war. Now they were preparing for the rigorous and tortuous cold and winds of the approaching winter.

A roar bellowed its way up the hill toward the caravan led by the tired Sir Peyton. A cheer of gratitude for the much-needed supplies for the winter. A wave of satisfaction filled his heart as he continued to escort the convoy towards the thousands of eagerly awaiting men. He had seen his men successfully strengthen their position at Bleufontaine while drastically weakening the enemy over the coming winter.

However, it was not without loss. He could feel the cart further down the caravan with the bodies of the few that fell within the ambush, and the ones that subsequently died from their wounds on the return to the castle. In a few hours, they would dine with their fallen brothers in the afterlife, and be laid to rest on a pyre for Peyton's men to celebrate their life and their death.

Ever since he had become Sir Vermund of Oakfort's page at six winters, he had seen plenty of men die, but it had never prepared him for losing men under his command. Hours of chastising himself on how he could have commanded them better to avoid their deaths did not help his conscience. Even when confiding with Jeffords, a man who was greatly feared by all until coming under Sir Peyton's charge, he realised that his men would follow him to hell and back if he commanded them to.

He watched as Jeffords escorted the Ruvian Chevalier alongside the front of the convoy. The Chevalier had been stripped of his weaponry and armour but still escorted with the dignity that his station deserved. Peyton knew he would be reprimanded for his actions, but with all the violence and death that surrounded them every day, he was determined that the chivalric code demanded by the gods would remain paramount for his dignity and his men's actions.