Siege of Sevendor (Gimbal's Attack)

The campaign popularly known as the Siege of Sevendor was less a siege than a war that Sire Gimbal of West Fleria — the Warbird — opened against Minalan in revenge for the recovery of Brestal Vale. Gimbal was a long-established Riverlords aggressor (he had taken eight domains in his career), backed in this campaign by the Royal Censorate of Magic, who had decided to make a public example of the first Magelord. The Censorate funded Gimbal's mercenaries, oversaw the campaign, and intended Sevendor's destruction as a warning to every other magelord in the new kingdom.

The forces involved

Gimbal raised his banners at high summer. His army was unusually large for a Riverlord private war:

• Roughly a hundred lances from West Fleria's knights and the conscripted yeomanry of every domain sworn to the Warbird.
• Virtually every able-bodied common man in West Fleria, marched out as militia under threat of execution for refusal.
• Several companies of mercenaries — far more than Gimbal could afford from his own treasury — paid for from Censorate gold.
• A retinue of hired warmagi and at least nine Censors under Censor Commander Arlof, who personally took the field.

The total force amounted to over five hundred men. The first sortie reached the Diketower, the new Sevendor frontier fortification at Caolan's Pass, by the time Minalan had finished his Castabriel business and arrived at Sendaria Port on his way home.

The Diketower and the betrayal

Sevendor's defence inside the vale was led by Sir Cei, with three locally-Talented spellcasters — Banamor, Olmeg the Green, and Zagor — doing the scrying and warding while Cei masterminded the actual military defence. Sir Festaran, then technically still Minalan's prisoner-for-ransom, ignored the legal technicality, took up arms, and led two sorties against the mercenaries holding Caolan's Pass.

Caolan's Pass fell on the second day of the siege. Yeoman Railan the Steady, sent with a militia troop to hold it in support of Yeoman Kamen, surrendered the pass without a fight; he had been bribed in advance with a contract for an estate in Sevendor under Gimbal's post-victory regime. Cei's defence of the Diketower itself held; twenty-two Sevendori (most of them Bovali) died on the wall.

The counter-march through West Fleria

Rather than relieve the Diketower frontally, Minalan made the strategic choice to march around the war and into the heart of West Fleria from the north. He brought five hundred mercenaries hired in Sendaria Port (with funds raised through Pentandra and Planus), a Sevendori warmage cohort — Tyndal, Rondal, Mavone, Sarakeem, Pentandra, Planus — and the entire fielded muscle of his Riverlords allies Baron Arathanial of Sendaria and Sire Sigalan of Trestendor, both of whom held their own grievances against Gimbal's career of conquest.

What followed was five days of systematic ducal-scale conquest:

• Bulmont Castle, a motte-and-bailey on a high spur of rock with a narrow causeway, refused to surrender. Rondal spoke to the bedrock at the foot of the cliff and persuaded a few tons of it to move; the castle slid off its perch into a heap of dust at the bottom of the cliff with all defenders inside. Bulmont and its surrounding domain were claimed by Sire Sigalan and folded into Trestendor.
• Jastondor Castle, a square stone keep with a few towers, surrendered after Sarakeem spent ten minutes on the walls picking off its dozen-odd men-at-arms with the great Alka bow. Jastondor and its lands went to Baron Arathanial and expanded the Barony of Sendaria.
• Castle Fleria, Gimbal's own primary keep, fell when Sarakeem and Mavone led an over-the-wall stealth assault that captured Gimbal's wife in the gatehouse. The keep had originally been Lensely land that Gimbal's grandsires had taken from Arathanial's grandsires in the dueling century; the banner of Sendaria was raised over it, restoring it to House Lensely after generations.
• Flerinhall, the Warbird's ancestral seat (now used to keep his bastards and mistresses), was evacuated and then destroyed as a teaching aid: Mavone wrapped the entire keep in a bubble and poured power into the bubble until the temperature inside melted metal and ignited every flammable thing within. The party rode away from a smoking pile of unrecognisable rubble. The Flerinhall domain itself was added to the Sevendor demesne under Minalan's direct rule.

Sevendori losses across the campaign: under twenty men. West Flerian deaths: under one hundred. Castles destroyed: three. Domains added to Sevendor's direct demesne: five (Hosly, Northwood, Flerinhall, and two others bordering the original vale). By the fifth day every territory sworn to Gimbal had a new banner over it: most of West Fleria proper folded into the Sevendor demesne; Sendaria recovered Jastondor, Castle Fleria, and the recovered Lensely lands; Trestendor recovered Bulmont and the village of Ferrendor that Gimbal had razed years before.

The pasture south of the Diketower

With his war-front in chaos behind him and the Diketower still unbreached in front, the Warbird requested a truce. Through the offices of Landbrother Mison — the Huinite priest who had originally negotiated and witnessed the failed truce earlier in the year — Minalan met Gimbal in a pasture three miles south of the Diketower, with Sarakeem in a tree above with the great horn bow trained on the Warbird's honour guard.

So, the Magelord has finally come home to witness the destruction of his domain. Or are you here to beg me to spare it?
Actually, you have a point. With Sevendor under siege . . . with every knight in West Fleria at her gates . . . I couldn't very well just depose you with my own troops. For instance, when I descended with five hundred mercenaries on a completely unprotected West Fleria.

— Sire Gimbal and Minalan

The Warbird's expression as he realised what had happened became one of Minalan's favourite memories of the war. Gimbal's wives and children were brought into view as hostages. Sir Bromul laid down his sword on the spot when his elderly wife was led out. Most of Gimbal's sworn men, who held the Warbird's favouritism in low regard, began crossing the pasture to surrender to Arathanial and Sigalan.

Gimbal then attempted to challenge Minalan to a duel of honour for the estates. Minalan refused on a procedural ground:

I refuse the duel on the grounds that you have no estates left for which to duel. I hold them now, which makes you a landless knight. And by law, I need not entertain a challenge from a landless knight.

— Minalan, declining Gimbal's duel

The Censorate's intervention came next. Censor Commander Arlof stepped forward and pledged to continue paying the mercenaries from Censorate gold. Minalan replied with the news Arlof had not yet received:

The Censorate of Magic no longer exists in the Kingdom of Castalshar. It has been dissolved by writ of the King.

— Minalan to Censor Commander Arlof

Arlof and his nine Censors, recognising the position, doffed nothing but rode away from the field that hour and left Gimbal abandoned. Gimbal's bastard son Sir Ganulan chose the moment to break the truce: he grabbed a battle axe and charged Minalan screaming obscenities. Sarakeem's blue-and-silver fletched arrow took him through the left kneecap before he was within two paces of his target. Sir Ganulan was given to the landbrothers for treatment afterward; he never walked properly again.

The post-war court

Minalan held court for four days afterwards on the Sevendor commons:

• Sire Gimbal: stripped of all lands, reduced to a landless knight, allowed to leave with his wife (who he tried to disclaim publicly), his retainers, and his armour. He went to the court of his hated brother Baron Vulric of East Fleria, where he survived as an embittered dependent.
• Sire Festarlan of Hosly, who had ridden against Sevendor only because Minalan held his son Festaran hostage, was the first new West Flerian vassal to bend the knee. Hosly remained his personal demesne under his new oath to Sevendor.
• Yeoman Railan, the betrayer of Caolan's Pass, refused to defend himself in court. Minalan, after asking Arathanial and Sigalan their counsel and receiving identical advice (a noose), executed him personally with a magical plane of force, beheading him in the silence-bubble where he stood. Five other oath-breakers followed the same afternoon. Sir Erantal, the previous caretaker of Sevendor and a long-time intriguer, was beheaded the same day after a brief tirade against Minalan.
• Mercenaries who chose to switch sides were paid four weeks in advance from Gimbal's captured Castle Fleria treasury and kept on as garrison troops.
• Mage-marked oath-breakers (men who had taken up arms against Minalan while wearing magical sigils) were sentenced to two years of Iron Ring service in the Penumbra.

What it cost everyone

For Sevendor: the Diketower had held, twenty-two men were dead, five new domains had been added to the demesne (Hosly, Northwood, Flerinhall, and two others bordering the original vale), and the precedent had been set that a Magelord could absorb attempted aggression into his own conquest. The famous nine-domain Sevendor of the later books traces from this campaign.

For the Riverlords: Arathanial's Sendaria recovered most of the ancestral Lensely lands his grandfathers had lost (Jastondor, Castle Fleria, and adjacent estates); Sigalan's Trestendor recovered the village of Ferrendor and Bulmont, plus three other domains.

For the Censorate: their secret war had failed publicly. Their funding for it (drawn from their own coffers and now in Sevendor's treasury) had been confiscated. Their commander had ridden off in retreat. The Royal dissolution that had been a parchment fact in Castabriel was now a working political reality across the Bontal Vales. From this campaign onward the Censorate was effectively a Farisi institution only.

For Gimbal: the end. He retained no land, no treasure, and almost no men — the vassals who followed him into exile were thinned by attrition, his bastards turned against him, his wife eventually divorced him. The Warbird died years later in his brother's house in irrelevant penury.