Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 110: Battle of Eagle City (Part 1)

The morning fog was still lifting when Timothy Wimbledon rode to the front of the column and looked at Eagle City’s walls.

Three banners. He read them at a distance with the unhurried attention of a man accounting for debts.

The largest: green field, crowned sailboat. Garcia’s. The flag of the Queen of Clearwater, a title she had declared for herself in a move whose audacity Timothy had not quite anticipated, though he should have. He had not underestimated her ability; he had underestimated her speed.

The second banner: white ground, a snake coiling around a tower. The Bayer family crest. Timothy let the contempt surface briefly and then controlled it. Earl Toman Bayer had pledged loyalty to Garcia before Timothy had even consolidated King’s City — had ridden south the moment the winds shifted, calculating that the new king would be occupied with the north. The calculation was not wrong. It was merely shortsighted.

The third: Red Lion. The Sheet family. Earl Elin Sheet, who had added to the insult by still flying his personal banner alongside Garcia’s, as if defection were a thing a man could do and still retain his dignity.

Both of those men will eat their own flags, Timothy thought, with a precision that did not feel like rage. It felt like a list.

“Sir Linden — raise mine.”

The knight relayed the order and it ran back through the column: Long live the King, raise the flag. Timothy turned to watch it go up. The grey field, the black tower, the two crossed spears. The emblem of the kingdom had been worn by his father for thirty years, and now it flew under his name. He had not yet decided how he felt about that, so he did not feel anything about it. Later, when there was time.

He faced Eagle City again.

The intelligence had been consistent: Garcia’s force was under three thousand, drawn mostly from Clearwater Port’s population — fishermen, dockworkers, minor merchants who had reached for whatever was at hand when she called. Against his own six thousand, with a thousand knights among them, the arithmetic was not a battle. It was a formality.

The Months of Demons had helped him, for once. The south had no winter blockade — the roads had hardened rather than become impassable, and his columns had moved faster than usual. He had needed a month to assemble his vassals and their forces, a week to march east to the Duke’s territory, another two weeks moving south. But Garcia had had only slightly more time than he had, and she had spent part of it consolidating a position that was, he now saw, strategically untenable.

Eagle City had grown from a market town. Its previous lord had chosen to invest in commerce rather than fortification, which had made the city prosperous and made it worthless as a defensive position. The walls were earthen slopes — one man’s height, one man’s width at the crest. The slope required no siege ladder; you could walk up it. Timothy had taken the information in when his scouts first reported it and filed it away as good news without examining it too closely. This morning, seeing the reality of it, he allowed himself a moment of straightforward satisfaction.

“Your Majesty.” Linden pulled up beside him. “The cavalry sent to observe the south gate has returned. They report movement — men and horses, heading out.”

Timothy looked toward Frances.

The Duke of the Eastern Border had fought alongside Timothy’s father in two campaigns and had the specific confidence of a man who had never lost a battle he’d designed himself. He was reading the south gate with the practiced eye of experience. After a moment he nodded. “She’s retreating. The sensible decision, given the walls. If she tried to hold Eagle City with her numbers, we’d have it in three hours and her troops in the street.”

“She didn’t expect us this fast,” Timothy said.

“She could not have.” Frances allowed himself a small satisfaction of his own. “She would have received word of our approach two or three days ago at most. That’s not enough time to prepare an orderly withdrawal from a city with no real fortifications. What she has is a hasty retreat — which is the worst kind.”

Timothy had planned for this.

He had sent a slow-moving diversionary column by the main road, visibly, with flags and all the theatrical weight of a royal army making its deliberate approach. Simultaneously, he had ridden hard with the cavalry, bypassed the main route, cut east through the Duke’s territory to pick up Frances’s riders, and circled to come at Eagle City from the direction Garcia would least expect him. The first mission of the cavalry screen had been to seal the courier routes — to make it as difficult as possible for her intelligence to reach her ahead of him.

She had found out anyway, two or three days ago. Not soon enough.

From Eagle City to Clearwater Port was a day’s march on foot. A day’s march with three thousand underprepared civilians who had been told twenty minutes ago to run. Timothy’s cavalry could intercept them before they cleared the first ridge if he moved within the hour.

And if they scatter, he thought, they seldom reassemble. Disintegration was the real weapon. An army that broke on a road ceased to be an army. If he could turn Garcia’s retreat into a rout, she might reach Clearwater Port with a fraction of her force and no coherent ability to resist what followed.

Garcia herself was a separate problem. If she had any clarity about her situation — and she did, she always had clarity — she would already have understood that her personal survival depended on leaving Eagle City on horseback before the infantry trapped her inside it. She would be gone by now, or nearly gone. He had made peace with this. Catching Garcia in the open with cavalry was one battle; reducing her to a refugee in her own port city and then laying siege to the port was another battle, and slower, but winnable.

He could not allow the symbolic defeat here to become her long-term survival.

“Frances,” he said. “We separate as planned. You take the north approach; I’ll bring the knights southwest and come in through the western quarter. If you meet serious resistance or find the streets blocked, take the detour. Don’t fix yourself into a dead end.”

“Understood.” Frances settled himself in the saddle. “I’ll hold for you in the inner city.”

“One more thing.” Timothy held his voice even. “Assume she has left people behind. Stragglers, rear-guard volunteers, civilians who have taken positions in the buildings. The streets will be narrow — the kind of terrain that rewards ambush. Do not leave threats at your back.”

Frances nodded.

Timothy met his eye. “Everyone.”

“Ha.” Frances did not smile exactly, but something moved in his face that served the same purpose. “Your father would have said the same thing. I have cut off more heads than I can count and never taken a wound from a man I thought was finished.” He raised his hand to the guard at his flank. “Forward — move!”

The column broke. Freedmen leading, armored mercenaries behind them as the main assault force, Frances’s knights at the rear holding formation for the streets. The whole arrangement flowing toward Eagle City’s earthen slopes with the methodical ease of a force that had done this before and expected to do it again.

Timothy wheeled his horse and led the remaining knights southwest, toward the far wall of the city, toward the angle where Garcia’s men would be thinnest, toward the road that ran south to Clearwater Port and the retreating army that was, even now, learning what it felt like to be caught in the open by a faster force.

He did not look back at the banners.

Bayer. Sheet. The list could wait.

First: close the gap. Everything else followed from that.

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