by J. S. Morin
Chapter 15 - Rook Takes Pawn
Jinzan awoke refreshed. He felt better than he had in a long time. His plan was finally about to start paying back all the work he had put into it.
As he pushed back the flap and exited his tent, he found quite a different attitude among his goblin hosts. The autumn air had grown frosty, and the frail, scrawny creatures had little love for the cold. The camp was filled with bored goblins huddling around sorcerer-warmed stones, bundled up in raccoon furs and trying to keep busy until the remainder of their forces arrived.
They had been camped on the forested hills just outside of Illard’s Glen for two days. The small farming and trade community sat across the Neverthaw River. The Neverthaw was a deep, wide river that would bar any reasonable attempt by the goblins to cross, short of building ships. Illard’s Glen had a wide bridge that would allow the army to cross.
Despite their proximity to the town, they were reasonably secure in their ability to remain undetected. Illard’s Glen was woefully understaffed with sorcerers. The goblins’ own magic-users had been keeping up a constant veil of illusory trees to keep them out of view of the town itself, making the nearby woodlands seem denser to conceal G’thk’s encampment. The few Kadrins who had ventured near enough to notice something amiss had been enspelled to believe they had seen nothing. One of the goblins had even hunted a deer and stuck one of the humans’ arrows in it before sending them on their way with their prize.
Jinzan breathed in the cold morning air and found it invigorating. He wandered over to the cooking area and grabbed two bowls of the goblins’ mush dawn-feast rations. The soggy mixture steamed lightly, the cauldron of it having been warmed over a few stones the sorcerers had heated to a reddish glow. The goblins were not fond of winter, and even the autumn mornings were more than enough to sour them on the weather. Jinzan had spend much of his youth in colder climates, and found the morning unworthy of a heavy cloak. The smaller, thinner bodies of the goblins just did not hold heat well. They typically dwelt underground in the winter, with their communities half above and half below ground in more temperate weather.
[Good morning, sorcerer,] came a voice from behind Jinzan as he searched for a place to sit with his food.
“Good morning yourself, General,” Jinzan replied, recognizing G’thk’s voice. He turned to look at the goblin, not wishing to be any more disrespectful than usual.
[How you are not cold continues amazing me. You humans are either crazy or half bear. Join me over here while you take morning meal.] G’thk gestured to the seat beside him on a cut log.
It always amused the sorcerer that the goblins made furniture for their general whenever they stopped for more than a day or so. They were industrious little creatures even if they were weaklings individually, and he took full advantage. When Jinzan’s secret weapons arrived, he was eager to see just how clever they had been.
“Any word of the assassin?” Jinzan had almost added “that you sent” to the end of his question but did not want to be diverted over an argument of who was to blame for his disappearance.
[It has been too long,] G’thk conceded. He had been insisting for days that the assassin would be back any time. It was the first time he admitted something might be wrong. [We have no choice but to pray he was successful, and continue with the plan. We will not turn back.]
Jinzan had been pressing for details every night since the assassin was sent to dispatch the Kadrin survivors. He knew little about Gkt’Lr’s skills, but G’thk seemed to have every confidence that he would be able to finish off the half-score or so of humans that had been left after the battle at the river.
“Do you think he might have had troubles with that magical sword?” Jinzan suggested. “We expected the ambush to destroy them as well; perhaps we have underestimated them a second time.”
G’thk’s eyes narrowed as he glared at Jinzan. [I dislike you sometimes, sorcerer. You are right too many times when we disagree. I think this time you are only half right, though. For my guess, I say that the sorcerer the humans had was stronger than we reasoned. The scorched spot where there was an aether burn; there was no human body in that spot. Maybe the sorcerer of theirs survived. If he was strong enough to battle three of our own sorcerers, perhaps he was able to thwart Gkt’Lr. A human sword-knight should not have seen Gkt’Lr coming, but maybe a sorcerer did.]
“It is possible, I suppose. I wonder how much use anyone who caused that aether burn would be, though, so soon after. He must have overextended himself severely to do that sort of damage just with excess aether. I would rather think that they just kept his body. The Kadrins think much more of sorcerers than they do of their dead soldiers. But if the assassin was defeated, I could see a sorcerer’s part in that. I know I do not fear him,” Jinzan boasted, not entirely idly. While the assassin might well kill him in his sleep, he was not so easy a mark to sneak up on as most.
Jinzan was adept enough that he could perceive the aether even while using his normal sight. It was a half measure of attention to be sure, like a sort of peripheral vision, but the assassin’s Source was stronger than most, and Jinzan was generally aware of all Sources within a few paces of himself at all times. Most sorcerers, at least among humans, really only saw aether when they blocked out their normal sight. It was yet another reason sorcerers kept out of pitched battles as a rule. Jinzan was not so sure how goblins perceived aether and reality at the same time, though. He suspected that the ability to watch aether and reality at once might be somewhat less rare among their sorcerers, and might possibly be why they were more willing to fight with magic.
[Either way, if the assassin was not able to stop the humans reaching help, we may have to deal with reinforcements. I doubt the humans will be able to rally enough forces to stop us, though, especially if your weapons work as well as you claim.]
“They will. Your artisans are skilled. I think they will be able to follow the plans I gave them. If they build them right, we will have no troubles. Illard’s Glen will be a test. We could take the town with just normal forces, but we want to be certain that the new weapons are working as intended.”
[I am eager to see them in action. You are very certain of their effectiveness for something that has never been made before.]
Jinzan simply smiled.
* * * * * * * *
It was that same afternoon that the rest of the goblins forces arrived. Their presence would be nearly impossible to hide with the number of troops swelling to over one hundred thousand, filling nearly every available part of the forest within a mile of the tree line.
As waves of goblins and entire herds of oxen ambled into the general area of the original campsite, Jinzan searched out the quartermasters of the goblin army. Fortunately for Jinzan, the goblins were a nimble people generally, and Jinzan saw the path before him clear as he moved. To the goblins, he might as well have been an ogre. There was much chattering as he passed, with many of the newcomers never having seen a human before. Jinzan had a hard enough time picking up conversational goblin-speech in small groups, but to his ears, the multitudes might well have been crickets chirping or hens clucking for all the sense he could make of it.
As he passed, he would pick out officers by their uniform and ask a single question in his rudimentary goblin: [Where new weapon?]
[Back, at end,] he kept hearing.
He waded onward, careful lest he step on one of his allies and possibly provoke violence. At the distance of a spear throw, he would take his chances against half an army’s worth of the little runts, but all about him and armed, he wanted to take extra care to avoid any misunderstandings.
After half an hour that seemed like a day, Jinzan made it to the back of the procession. There he found an unusual group. Oxen were the common beast of burden among the goblins, but this was an animal he had never seen before. There were several eight-legged lizards, nearly Jinzan’s height at the shoulder and even broader across, their bellies slung nearly to the ground. They were massive,
powerful creatures who plodded along hauling carts, each bearing a cargo lashed down with tarps.
Jinzan waved his hands over his head as he approached, carefully keeping to the side of the gargantuan lizards’ path.
[Hold!] he shouted, or at least tried. He nearly choked trying to yell in goblin.
The rider of the lead lizard stopped, and the rest followed suit. Had he not been so eager to inspect their cargo, Jinzan would have been fascinated by the lizards and their riders. The riders sat not on the lizards backs, but saddled to their heads. Due to their multitude of legs working in alternating stride, the backs of the lizards weaved side to side as they walked, but the heads held very steady. And despite the cold-blooded nature of lizards and the chill in the air, the lizards seemed plenty warm. In fact, Jinzan could feel the heat radiating off them as he approached; it seemed to come from a harness of tubes crisscrossing the beasts, attached to a large bladder on their backs.
[What, human? What you want?] crackled a wizened old goblin from the head of the lead lizard. [You the one who drew these devices?]
The goblin was wrinkled and his skin had a more greyish color to it rather than the typical green hues the younger goblins showed. From what Jinzan knew of goblins, unless this one knew age-slowing magic like humans used, he was probably well past thirty. The old goblin wore thick spectacles and a wide, flattened conical hat that tied under his chin. He was bundled in raccoon furs like most of the other goblins, but Jinzan noticed a pack on his back that looked similar to the one on the lizard; presumably the tubes went underneath his furs.
[Yes. Me one who make—] but the old goblin waved a hand and cut him off.
[You hurt my old ears. I can understand human speech just fine. Speak your own tongue and leave ours in peace. By the great dragon Ni’Hash’Tk, you shriek like an old lady,] the goblin said, then chuckled.
“Fine, then. Yes, I am the one who drew the plans for these weapons. I wish to see them. Show me,” he demanded.
[Just like a human. No patience,] the old goblin said, cackling in amusement. He yelled to some of the nearby soldiers to unbind the tarps and remove them. [My name is K’k’rt. I am the one who oversaw the making of your weapons. Let me tell you, we are two days late because you make,] and there was a word Jinzan did not know, [like a little child. We had to remake them right and fix a lot of mistakes.]
Jinzan was a little worried now, as the goblins rushed over and climbed onto the cart, scrambling up the sides by the very straps they were about to remove. He was aware that the goblins would have their own way of doing things, but he thought his specifications were unambiguous. He had hoped that they had not made them different enough that they did not work now.
Soon enough, he had his answer. As the last of the goblins got down from the cart, a pair of them pulled off the tarp. K’k’rt swung the lizard’s head around to get a better view, and the creature contorted its body so that it was nearly bent in two. The reins of the lizard’s bridle gave the rider control not only over the lizard’s walking, but over which way it faced its head.
Jinzan’s breath caught in his throat, and he gasped in wonder at the sight before him. He approached and reached out to touch the goblins’ creation: a long cylinder of polished bronze with silvery bands of a metal he did not recognize reinforcing it toward the open end, for indeed one end of the device had a hole that extended down inside.
It was a cannon. Jinzan had never actually seen or felt one before, though it was familiar to him as his own robes were. He had seen them nightly in his dreams for a long time. The craftsmanship was exquisite, the surface gleamed, and the bore was straight as a plumb line. It was better than he had hoped; the goblins had outdone themselves.
[Ha-ha, you like it human?] K’k’rt asked, smiling. [Once we fixed your mistakes, it worked much better].
Jinzan’s head snapped around, and he looked K’k’rt with surprise. “You have tried it?”
[Ha-ha, of course. Silly human, we do not make things and bring them to a battle with no testing. Ha-ha, we had a wonderful time playing with them before we worked out the models you see here. Your burning rope triggering for it was the first thing we got rid of.]
Jinzan looked at the breech end of the cannon. There was no fuse, nor any place he could see to put one. Instead he found a box-like contraption welded onto the outside with a metal handle dangling from a chain. The chain seemed not so much to be attached to the box as attached to somewhere inside the box.
“What is this?” Jinzan asked. “What have you done with the fuse?”
[Bah, your silly rope. Your exploding powder needs fire. You put a burning rope in it? Ha-ha, what a bad way to get fire inside. Too hard to get the timing. We made a mechanism for lighting the blasting powder that is quicker and more reliable. Just pull the chain and it makes sparks inside.] The goblin chuckled as he spoke, clearly enjoying the feeling of superiority over the cannon’s “inventor.”
Jinzan grasped hold of the chain and looked askance of K’k’rt.
[Go ahead and pull. Quick tug. Not too hard, it was made for my kind to use. Do not break it,] K’k’rt instructed, miming a tugging action.
Jinzan pulled the chain and heard a scraping, metal-on-metal snick from within the box. When he let go, the chain pulled itself back to its original length. Jinzan did not perceive any aether at work and was not sure how they had managed that unless they had developed some sort of spring-return mechanism on their own. Jinzan carefully avoided turning to look at K’k’rt, but he was starting to wonder if perhaps he should have taken a slower approach and taught his own people how to make the cannons. It might have been a decade before they got it right, but he was starting to question the wisdom of giving these clever creatures a head start on technology.
“Excellent work,” he said quietly.
Then Jinzan walked over to the other carts. There were twelve cannon in all, and several more carts bearing cannon shot and black powder. He kept a careful distance from the latter, as even in the dream world, the storage and handling of black powder was a twitchy thing. These goblins were new to the stuff and were much more tolerant of risk-taking than most humans were. If they had not had a safer design for the cannon figured out in time, they would have certainly just made do with the initial design. Abandoning the project out of concern for the newly appointed goblin cannoneers would not have occurred to them.
* * * * * * * *
By the following morning, the cannons were in place on the hilltop. The trees that were in the line of fire were half cut, ready to be brought down by the sorcerers when the signal was made to begin the battle.
When G’thk gave that signal, the sorcerers gave a great blast of wind, toppling the trees away from the direction of the camp. In a riot of reds and oranges and yellows, the fall colors of the canopy rushed to the ground in front of them. The powerful aether-driven winds stripped the leaves from the fallen trees as well and sent them swirling off in the direction of Illard’s Glen.
With the view of the city now exposed, Jinzan and the commanders of the army could see the massive goblin force closing on the city. Armed only with spears, the goblin infantry rushed forward toward the walls of the town. It would be several minutes before they covered the prairie between the hilltop and the wall, and they carried no easy means of surmounting the wall. That task would be left to the cannon, and if that failed, the sorcerers—particularly Jinzan—would have to clear up the mess.
The Kadrin forces that defended Illard’s Glen had been oblivious to the goblin presence in the forested hills around their town, but the goblin sorcerers had given up wasting aether on illusions, and the crack of dozens of falling trees could be heard even from town. Within seconds of the toppling of their tree cover, Jinzan and the goblins heard the watch bells ringing frantically from Illard’s Glen, and they saw the north facing gate being closed.
Jinzan moved in directly behind the cannon. All twelve were trained on the city walls, their crews awaiting the order to fire. T
hey were dressed as the common soldiers were, with one exception. Each was fitted with a leather helmet, thickly padded inside where it covered their ears, and a pair of goggles. It had not taken the goblin artisans long to realize the noise and smoke their new creations caused, and to devise methods of protecting their crews.
As their hearing was muffled, the signal G’thk gave was simply to point to the cannoneers, then to the wall. The crews turned from their leader to the chains of the cannon, and in remarkable unison, pulled the chains.
Kthooom! Kthooom! Kthooom! Kthooom!
The concussion was thunderous. All the goblins not wearing protective helmets grabbed for their ears, even those well away from the cannon. The ground hammered on their feet from the shock wave, sending a few stumbling. The cannoneers scrambled as the recoil from their siege engines sent them backward into their midst.
Jinzan just smiled. His ears rang from the blast, but he had stood his ground and barely flinched. The cannon’s report was like music to him. He felt like a young boy, always barred from the tavern on nights when bards were playing, listening to muted notes that the wall allowed through. Now, finally, he was allowed to hear the music in all its glory.
Seconds later, the cannon balls hit. Two plumes of rocky dust exploded from the wall. The rest either overshot or undershot their mark. The disoriented crews had seen the two plumes as well and realized that ten of the cannon had missed their marks. They gestured frantically amongst themselves as they struggled to push the cannon back into position and reload. There was clearly a disagreement over which had been aimed properly.
Jinzan was paying closer attention, though. He strode over to the cannoneers and pointed emphatically to one, then to another, then motioned for the nearest goblin to remove his helmet. The goblin complied hastily.
[That two hit. This one, up three tick.] Jinzan pointed to a third cannon. [That one, up two tick.]
Jinzan ran through the rest of the cannon as best he could estimate how much they were off and giving instruction as to how to adjust the ratcheted mechanism the goblins had added to the cannons to adjust and hold their aim. The aiming device was an excellent idea, but he was unfamiliar with just how much each “tick” actually represented. Since Jinzan had only seen where a few of the shot had impacted, aside from the two that hit the wall, he was largely guessing at the adjustments anyway.
