She focussed on the tree.
While her body remained motionless, her consciousness started to peel itself out from her eyes in the direction of the target. She felt an immense rush, and dizziness rose up as she felt her thoughts leave her head. At ten paces from her body, she paused to orientate herself. She looked around at the forest, down at the steep cliff bank to the dark river, then back at the palisade walls. She saw her own body standing at the parapet, blurry and indistinct, though everything else was picked out in precise detail. She could see the individual leaves on trees a hundred paces away, and could sense the motion from dozens of birds and small forest animals. A brown and red striped monkey clambered through the broad branches of a low and sturdy tree, up on the far bank of the river.
Controlling the surge of energy coursing through her, she began to systematically search the forest to the west. The tree she had chosen as her target lay along a line roughly parallel to the river, which flowed east to west, running swiftly by the north-western wall of the fort. She flew her line-vision out a hundred paces to a point between the river and the east tower, then wheeled around, to check the fort as it would look to anyone attacking, searching for weaknesses. The north-western wall was secure, with sheer cliffs along its entire length that fell down to the river. The south-western wall was more vulnerable. It was the longest wall of the fort, and the land in front of it sloped down a gentle incline for two hundred paces through the cleared zone, until it reached the line of forest. The wall was book-ended by towers, and protected by two deep, parallel ditches. She could see three helmeted heads above the parapet, keeping watch, and others atop the towers. Satisfied, she turned her vision back toward the tree and the river and soared ahead another hundred paces. Turn, search, soar, she repeated the pattern, heading further and further out to her target, which jumped up in size each time she got a step closer. Within a few minutes, she had reached the tree. She gazed out from its topmost branch, feeling a sense of contentment and a vitality of life she never experienced in her body. Focussing her mind back onto the task, she peered out to the west, following the line of the river and straining her vision to its furthest limit.
Then she saw it.
Movement in the trees. It was at the very periphery of her abilities, and hazy, but under a large, covering canopy, it seemed the forest floor was alive with movement. She could feel her physical body weakening, but held on, determined not to return without a clear message.
Just as she felt her body start to collapse, dozens of figures surged forwards, where there was a slight gap in the tree cover, and she was able to steal a good look. Warriors. Lightly dressed, the only metal any of them wore appeared to be pieces of stolen Holdings kit: the odd breastplate, helm or greaves. A few men held steel swords, also Holdings-made, while others had wooden and stone weapons: spears, axes and clubs. They seemed to be about the same range of heights as the Holdings soldiers, though broader, and their arms were longer and thicker. They were also paler than the dark-skinned Holdings. Judging by the area where she could see movement, there were hundreds of them, hurtling through the forest towards the fort. A last thought occurred to her as her body fell, and her consciousness snapped back to her head. None of the warriors were women.
A gentle whistling pierced her senses and she came to with a cough and a start. Blinking her eyes open, she saw she was sitting propped up against the parapet. Jaimes had put a blanket over her legs, and was attending to the boiling kettle at his side. He poured tea, spooned in a few sugars, and passed her the cup. She sipped, as a headache pounded behind her temples. She coughed again, sending a spasm of pain up her spine. Her toothache and earache felt even worse than they usually did after using her mage powers.
Jaimes lit two cigarettes, placed the end of one in his own mouth, then held out the other for Daphne.
‘That was the longest I’ve ever seen you manage, Captain,’ he said, balancing the cigarette on his lips. ‘You see anything?’
She gazed back, her thoughts dislocated and numb, her head pounding.
Her eyes narrowed for a split second, then grew wide.
She tried to stand, and failed. Jaimes held her shoulder, easing her back down to a sitting position. ‘Take it slow,’ he said, knowing not to rush her when she came out of a vision trance.
‘Sergeant,’ she croaked, cursing the weakness the use of her powers entailed.
‘Is something wrong?’
She waited a few more moments, drinking the hot tea, urging her voice to return.
She tried again.
‘Assemble the officers,’ she gasped. ‘Bring them here, be quick.’
He got up at once and she watched as he sprinted down the stairs. Right, get a hold of yourself. Her lieutenants would be arriving soon, and would expect her to know what to do. It was fine to be weak for a moment in front of loyal Sergeant Jaimes, but she needed to think through what she had seen and come up with a plan.
Damn, she thought. No plan was going to get them out of this.
A tear formed in the corner of her left eye, and she sobbed for a quiet moment, regret filling her. She wished she were back home, wished she had never revealed the vision powers that had got her enrolled in the army and, above all, wished she had given the command to leave days before.
She heard feet on the steps in the tower below and, with an effort, donned her mask again. She wiped her face, now calm, serious and stern, and forced herself upright. She gripped the side of the parapet as she gained her footing. Just as the first head appeared in the roof opening, she moved her hand to the hilt of her sword and, after a brief wobble, stood unaided.
It was Jaimes.
He half cocked an eyebrow in surprise at the sight of her on her feet, and gave a low chuckle.
The four lieutenants were next, Chane and Mink, followed by Dex and Wilkom. The latter pair were chatting as they came up the steps, but fell silent when they saw the look on Daphne’s face.
She waited until she had their full attention.
‘Eight and a half miles west of here,’ she began, each word emerging heavy as lead from her mouth, ‘approximately six hundred Sanang warriors are fast approaching along the south bank of the river.’ She pointed downstream, and the eyes of her officers were pulled in the same direction, as if they half expected to see the enemy appear on the treeline at that moment.
‘The scouts, Captain!’ cried Dex. ‘We would have had word from the scouts!’
‘I know what I saw, Lieutenant,’ she said. ‘At the rate they were travelling, they will be here in little over two hours, three at the most. We must be ready to defend this fort and hold it against them.’
‘But, Captain,’ said Mink, ‘shouldn’t we evacuate?’
‘A little late for that,’ muttered Chane.
‘Quite,’ said Daphne. ‘Retreat now, and we’d have to drop everything and flee as fast as we could, with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the swords in our hands. It would be a slaughter.’
Mink said nothing, his hands screwed tightly into fists.
‘Should I order battle stations, Captain?’ asked Wilkom.
‘No,’ replied Daphne. ‘We’ll get battle ready, but quietly. The only advantage we have is that they don’t know we’ve seen them coming. We’ll bring in everything from outside and get the fort locked up nice and tight. Move the crossbow bolts and slingstones to the walls, and break out whatever armour we’ve got that hasn’t yet rusted. Get the forge working flat out; sharpen every damn thing in sight. Each of you, talk to your squads, steel them for the struggle to come. We will not be surrendering this fortress to the Sanang. We are Holdings cavalry, the Queen’s Own Fifth, we do not run, and we do not surrender. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘We’re going to take up the standard defence, nothing fancy. All of you, send your battlers to the armoury to get kitted up. Chane, you’re on south tower; Dex, the gates. Mink, you take north and west. Wilkom, you’re
on east. And Wilkom, find your two fastest runners, and send them back to the assembly point. Get them armed and supplied, but make sure they leave within the next twenty minutes. You all know your orders, dismissed.’
As soon as they had departed down the stairs, she slumped against the parapet, grimacing.
Jaimes lit another pair of cigarettes.
‘Thanks, sergeant,’ she said, taking one. They leaned side by side against the parapet while they smoked, gazing out over the peaceful forest.
‘Did you always want to be a soldier, sergeant?’ she asked, starting to feel a little better.
Jaimes thought for a moment. ‘Always wanted to be near horses.’ He looked around at the fort’s distinct lack of any equine beast, and shrugged. ‘Seemed a good idea at the time. Would have been better off getting a job on your father’s estate, Captain.’
‘It’s not too late,’ she smiled. ‘I could put in a word for you when we get back.’
Jaimes frowned.
She thought of home. Her family’s Holding had by far the largest herds in the country, and she had been around horses every day of her youth. She probably missed them more than she did her family.
‘What about you, Captain?’ Jaimes said after a while. ‘Why did you volunteer?’
She turned to him. ‘For the honour of serving the queen, of course.’
Jaimes frowned again.
‘It was the only job I ever wanted,’ she said. ‘To be an officer in the cavalry.’
She wondered if that was true. Her father had always insisted it was.
Daphne walked to the opposite wall of the parapet and looked down over the fort. There had been an increase in the bustle of the soldiers, gradual at first, but now unmistakeable, as they rushed to get the fort prepared. Several squads were beyond the walls, carrying out a series of quick repairs to ditches and palisades, while others were gathering in anything that had been stored outside. By the riverbank a squad was filling buckets with smooth riverbed slingstones, while others reinforced the picket fence that snaked down the cliffside, protecting their access to fresh water.
Inside the fort, the forge was reeking smoke and sparks, and a great clanging of metal came from within. A large basket filled with notched and bent swords sat by the entrance for repair. Over by the armoury on the main road, which stretched from the gates to the front door of her command tent, soldiers were breaking open crates of armour that had been wrapped against the damp and humidity, and in the front row to receive it, Daphne saw the soldiers under her command who possessed battle-vision. There were fifteen battlers in all, excluding her, which matched the proportion in the rest of the army: about one in ten soldiers had the ability. She knew they would be getting the best of the armour, and their pick of weapons. Daphne’s battlers were normally distributed among the four squadrons, but for this engagement she was going to hold them together centrally, ready to respond to any threatened breach in their perimeter. It was in close combat where they would be most useful, rather than shooting down from the walls.
Further along the main road, stood those who would be doing the shooting. The company had a supply of crossbows, but not nearly enough to repel any serious attack. The dearth of trees in their country had naturally led to a lack of wooden weapons. This deficiency had cost them dearly in their long wars with the Rahain Republic, which had finally ended over twenty years before. The Rahain had used crossbows, catapults, mangonels, and a whole range of projectile weaponry that was completely alien to the Holdings military, who instead held to heavy cavalry charges. And since those days, the Holdings had been slow to learn and adapt. The aristocratic traditionalists in charge of the army claimed that using a bow was cowardly, and that shooting people from a distance would sap the martial vigour of the Holdings. Despite this, since the start of the war with the Sanang, a few shipments of crossbows had been purchased from the Rahain, with whom they were now ostensibly allied. Daphne had been present at the frontier wall when such a shipment had been delivered, not long after she had been posted there the previous year. The merchants who had accompanied the crossbows were not the first Rahain that she had seen, there being several exorbitantly paid carpenters camped near the fort, there to pass on their skills in woodcraft to the ignorant Holdings.
Behind their backs, the soldiers called them snakes, and, though it made her feel a little ashamed to admit it, she could see why the appellation had stuck. While their eyes were the same size as Holdings folk, those belonging to the Rahain were generally yellow or green, with vertical black slits for pupils, while on their silvery grey skin a faint and delicate tracing of scales could be discerned in a certain light. What struck Daphne the most, however, was that their pink tongues still held the vestiges of a cleft. Forked, like the snakes from the great plains of her homeland. After she had dealt with the crossbow delivery, it had become one of her jobs to liaise with the Rahain carpenters, and any other merchants who arrived. They had taken the trouble to learn the Holdings language, and so Daphne had thought it only fair that she make an effort to learn their tongue, and she had found a friendly and willing Rahain woman who had tutored her over the season she was posted there.
This year, now that timber was being taken in great quantities from the Sanang forest, there had been some tentative attempts by the Holdings army to replicate the simplest Rahain designs, and it was thirty of these new Holdings-made crossbows that the company had to fend off the imminent Sanang attack. Down by the fort’s main road, she could see them being handed out to the troopers who had received training in how to use them. The crossbowmen and women took their weapons and sleeves of bolts from the quartermaster’s armourers and returned to their squadrons.
All across the fort, she could see squads assemble under the shadows of the towers, staying out of sight. Once all of her soldiers were back inside, she would put just a few on the walls, to make it look like they were unprepared, while the others would each be given a sling and a bag of stones, to go with their cavalry-issue sword and shield, and would join the others waiting by the tower stairs.
She rolled her shoulders and straightened. Almost ready.
There was a noise behind her, and she turned to see three of Mink’s troopers come up onto the roof, carrying signal flags. They paused when they saw her.
‘Carry on, troopers,’ she said, giving them a small nod. ‘Sergeant, time to go.’
Back on the ground, Daphne and Jaimes made their way between the command tent and a long, low timber building containing the fort’s workshops and stores. They came to the dusty crossroads at the heart of the fort. Ahead was engineering and the forge, the command tent was to their right, and to their left stretched the long road that led to the main gate in the south-eastern wall.
‘South tower, via the gate first, I think, Jaimes,’ she said, taking in the scene of bustle surrounding her. She saw the group of armoured battlers stand hulking by the forge, getting their weapons straightened out and sharpened.
They walked at pace towards the gate, passing the armoury on their left, and then the troopers’ barracks on both left and right.
The gates were wide open as they approached. Lieutenant Dex was directing the traffic coming in, as soldiers returned from their errands.
He saw her, and turned.
‘Good morning Captain,’ he said. Daphne could see anxiety shot through his eyes, but he was doing his best to master it. ‘The troops are almost all back, we’ll have the bridge in and these gates locked up shortly.’
‘No, Lieutenant,’ she said, an idea forming in her mind. ‘I think we’ll be leaving them as they are for now.’
He glanced at her, eyebrows raised.
‘We want them to think we’ve been caught like an old nag in a knacker’s yard,’ Daphne said. ‘Keep one of the gates open, and leave the bridge in place, but lay its pull ropes out so the handles are inside. The Sanang will see the open gate and run straight for it. I want you to have five troopers here behind the door, ready to haul in the bri
dge and lock up the gate as soon as the enemy get within ten paces of the inner ditch. Find a sergeant to lead them.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Are all of your crossbows in the gatehouse?’
‘No, I have some up on the wall.’
‘Move them all into the gatehouse, upper storeys,’ she said. ‘I’ll have Chane and Wilkom’s crossbows cover the wall.’
Dex nodded.
She looked through the open gate towards the east. The south-eastern wall was the narrowest, and the ground before it was more level than on any other side. The forest had been cleared back, and there was a double ditch, just as on the south-western flank. The narrow, three-storey gatehouse stood in the middle of the wall, and the palisades connecting it to the east and south towers had been built with a parapeted walkway along the full length.
‘One last thing. Send a runner to my aides in the command tent, have them prepare my armour and bring it to the south tower in ten minutes. And summon Wilkom.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Very good, Lieutenant, carry on.’
Daphne turned to her right, and walked towards the south tower, passing the barracks of Chane’s squadron.
They found Chane at the base of the tower, talking to a runner. Standing tall in her polished armour, giving orders while her troopers got ready, she looked to be in her element. ‘Captain,’ she said, as she saw Daphne approach.
What a change in her, Daphne thought. Her attitude had been consistently dour and borderline sullen for the entire campaign, and now she was smiling? Was it the proximity of violence? Whatever it was, it made a pleasant surprise.
The Magelands Origins Page 3
