“I can see why you don’t get many visitors,” a shaken Bjorn retorted. “one might think you were trying to discourage visitors, making them walk a deathtrap path like that.”
Dekma snorted with mirth. “Our children trod such pathways as soon as they are able to walk.”
“Your children must be part mountain goat,” Bjorn grumbled. Then, aware of how the dwarves might take such a remark, he waved his arms. “I meant that as a compliment. Is there no path that frightens your people?”
Dekma and Barlen looked at each other. “I’ve been to Linden, years ago,” Barlen stated. “The streets there made me wish I were back home. Your carriage drivers pay no heed to anyone, I was nearly run down a half dozen times on my first day.”
Koren shook his head and grinned ruefully at Barlen’s distress. “The carriage drivers in Linden are renowned for their speed and daring. Especially carriages of the minor royalty. Every baron or squire will run you down just to make the point that they are of royal birth, and you are not.”
Bjorn looked sharply at Koren. “You were in Linden? When?”
“I, I,” Koren realized with fright that he had forgotten not to speak of his past. “I passed through the city. And I was almost run over.” Quickly hoping to change the subject, he asked “Barlen, how much farther to your home?”
The dwarf pointed to a cleft in the mountain peaks, where a thin column of black smoke rose. “Not far. A couple hours, and we’ll be there. I warn you, it’s a steep climb.”
“Everywhere is a steep climb up here,” Bjorn said sourly. “It will be dark soon, I hope your ‘couple hours’ does not turn into many more.”
“That,” Dekma declared as he hitched up the straps of his pack, “depends on how slowly the two of you walk. With long legs like that,” he looked from Bjorn’s feet to the cap on the man’s head, “I would think you people could walk faster.”
Dekma’s unsubtle dig at the slow pace of Koren and Bjorn got results, whether the dwarf had intended it or not. Already, they had taken only three days to climb the mountain; as good as the dwarves had said they could do on their own. Now that the narrow ledge was behind them, the two dwarves set a punishing pace up the steep track that served for a road in the mountains. Huffing and puffing, Koren resorted to placing his hands on his knees to force his legs up the incline. “How,” he gasped, “can they walk so fast?” The climb was not only strenuous, it was awkward. With the slope so steep that his heels did not touch the ground, he was walking on his toes, and the tendons across the bottom of his feet ached with the strain. When the pain of his feet became a sharp, hot needle, he switched to walking partly sideways.
“Never you mind them,” Bjorn advised with ragged breath. “They were born up here. Their legs are shorter, but powerful. Take shorter steps, Kedrun, you’re trying to stride too far. And up here, the air is thinner; we need to breathe harder.”
“How,” Koren gasped, “could the air be more thin?” Air was air, wasn’t it, Koren asked himself. You couldn’t see it, but wasn’t it the same everywhere?
“I don’t know. But the last time I was here, we had people fall sick. Even resting didn’t help; people fell ill while they were asleep. Usually you become accustomed to it after a few days, but some people needed to be brought down off the mountain. The wizards, I think, understand why the air becomes thinner as you climb.”
Koren nodded and did not reply. It must be the wind in the mountains that made the air thin, he told himself. Although, he had experienced strong winds at sea, and the air never seemed to be pulled from his lungs as it did while they climbed. One foot in front of the other, he told himself. He needed to put one foot in front of the other.
Kyre Falco was so exhausted that when a sergeant rode up to report, and saluted to his future duke, Kyre was almost too tired to lift his arm and return the salute. What Kyre wanted to be doing was engaging the enemy directly. Instead, he had been racing back and forth across Demarche, keeping track of the enemy’s advance, and rounding up scattered groups of lost and frightened civilians. It was important, and necessary, and the assignment kept Kyre out of serious danger, and it was also terribly frustrating. While the Demarche army and most of Kyre’s battalion fought the enemy, he rode frantically around the countryside, hiding in one grove of trees to another. After each area had been declared cleared of inhabitants, or the enemy had advanced so far the area had to be abandoned, Kyre pulled his people back. As they retreated, they burned any stores of grain or fields of crops that might provide food and fodder to the enemy. When they retreated across bridges, they set fire to the bridges behind them, to make it more difficult for the enemy’s wagon to supply their troops.
“Sergeant,” Kyre stifled a yawn. He had not slept at all the previous night. None of the battalion had.
Nor had the enemy.
“Your Grace, Captain Jaques reports enemy cavalry has outflanked our position; they are now between us and the base of the Kaltzen.”
That alarming news brought Kyre snapping to full alertness. “We must redeploy to-”
“Yes, Sire, Captain Jaques and General Armistead have already ordered redeployment,” the sergeant boldly interrupted Kyre. “We are ride straight for the pass as fast as possible, and block the enemy’s lead elements, if possible.”
“Not all of us can ride,” Kyre looked around at his men. The army of Demarche had provided horses for about a third of Kyre’s battalion, and more horses had been taken from civilian refugees after they were safely in the mountains. With horses becoming weary from racing about the countryside, still only one out of three Burwyck soldiers had a horse. Kyre had been maintaining a brisk march for the past two hours in order to rest his tired horse.
“Yes, Sire,” the sergeant agreed patiently while glancing over his shoulder. “Captain Jaques suggests the foot soldiers retreat due east, up the mountain.” He pointed to the rugged, thickly-forested slopes which began less than ten miles away. “Cavalry will not be able to follow up there, and we are still comfortably ahead of the enemy infantry.”
Kyre cocked his head at the last remark. “We engaged enemy infantry not three miles from here, a few hours ago. That is not a comfortable distance, Sergeant.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the sergeant nervously scanned the farm fields and woods to the west, the direction from which the enemy would soon appear. “General Armistead believes we have done all we can here, and now we must focus our efforts on preventing the enemy from forcing past the Gates.”
There were only two passes through the mountains in that part of Demarche which were broad enough to allow an army to march through. The Tiper pass lay to the north, and to the south was the Kaltzen. The steep approach up the western side of the Tiper was a wide, V-shaped valley that would be almost impossible to defend, but once over the ridgeline, the road traveled through rough terrain of thick forests and jumbled rocks. Once through the pass, the road went steeply down and up three times, before descending into the gently rolling farmland of eastern Demarche province.
The Kaltzen had an easier approach from the west, but it was more narrow, with the road passing through the Gates of the Mountains. The Gates were high, sheer rock cliffs to the north and south of the road, separated by only two hundred yards at the narrowest point. Beyond the Gates was a shallow, bowl-like valley which ended in a broad canyon that was the actual summit of the pass. Once over the summit, the road lead down an easy slope into farmland that would provide no natural defensive line for the Royal Army.
If he were the enemy commander, Kyre would have chosen to send his force up through the Tiper pass, and Generals Jaques and Armistead agreed. The Tiper was farther from the river crossing where the Fasselle met the Fasse, and the pass itself was longer, steeper, higher and less accommodating to a lengthy column of troops. But Kyre judged those difficulties were preferable to the effort required in forcing past the Gates of the Mountains in the Kaltzen pass. The narrow chokepoint of the Gates made the Kaltzen much easier for the R
oyal Army to defend; any attacking force would suffer substantial losses in fighting its way through the pass. That is why Armistead had originally concentrated her army, and Kyre’s battalion, between the Fasselle river and the Tiper pass.
To the surprise of General Armistead, her plan to conduct a fighting retreat up through the Tiper pass was defeated before it started, by the enemy’s refusal to cooperate. By the end of the second day after the enemy crossed the River Fasse and came ashore, it was clear they were headed straight for the Kaltzen, not the Tiper. Royal Army scouts who came across Armistead’s headquarters reported the Taradoran Royal Army had established a strong defensive line up the Tiper, while the defense of the Kaltzen was thin. As there were not enough soldiers to fully man both defensive lines, Grand General Magrane had been forced to choose where to concentrate his strength, and the enemy again chose not to cooperate. It was likely that enemy wizards gave their army a view of both passes, and their commander decided to attack the weaker of the two forces.
It was also true, Armistead thought sadly, that the enemy cared nothing about how many soldiers were lost in breaking Tarador’s defensive line at the Gates of the Mountains. The enemy did not value lives, only power.
It took all night and half the next day for Armistead to get her army turned around and in position between the vanguard of the enemy and the entrance to the Kaltzen pass. Her army maintained contact with the enemy all the way up through the pass; harassing the enemy when they could, collapsing and burning bridges to slow the enemy’s advance, cutting down trees to block roads. Such was the size and power of the enemy host she faced, that all her efforts barely frustrated the advance of the foul men and orcs. Her own scouts reported that the greatest difficulties faced by the enemy were not the army of Demarche and the lone battalion of troops from Burwyck. The enemy’s problems were that the size of its own force overwhelmed the roads, and the soldiers of the enemy army liked to fight among themselves as much as they desired to fight Tarador. The necessity of keeping men and orcs apart slowed the enemy more than Armistead’s comparatively small army could.
“Sire, we must hurry, if we are to reach the pass before enemy,” Kyre’s guard Falzon urged.
Kyre nodded curtly, and swung up onto his horse. “Sergeant Garner,” he called out, and instructed the trusted man to pass the orders for the Burwyck infantry to retreat directly up into the mountains. “We will meet you at the east base of the Kaltzen pass.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Garner saluted, and hurried off to get his men turned around. It was going to be a long, hard march over rugged mountains, on short rations, for soldiers already exhausted.
Kyre took one last look to the west, where a thin trail of smoke wafted from a bridge unseen behind a treeline. Kyre himself had personally tossed a torch onto the oil-soaked timbers of that bridge less than an hour earlier, the bridge must have already burned down to the water line. “Falzon, Carter, lead the way, we must gather any mounted troops we can find. The Gates must be held.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was a hard ride to the foothills where the road up the Kaltzen pass truly began to climb; the point where the foothills closed in so that the road was hemmed in on both sides by increasingly steep slopes. Unfortunately for the defenders, the sides of the pass were treeless and horses could ride along the slopes almost up to the Gates of the Mountains. Kyre kept his horse to a trot after their initial gallop. Scouts ahead had reported the enemy cavalry was near, but Kyre’s group was still ahead of them. Around him, Kyre had only a hundred and twenty soldiers; all that had horses capable of climbing up the pass before the enemy cavalry arrived. And all that were still alive after endless days of fighting. Most of the battalion’s soldiers were either too far away, or were on foot; they could not help in the coming battle.
Kyre, his guards and a half dozen soldiers lagged in the rear; Kyre had ordered the swiftest riders up the pass, to reinforce the defense at the Gates. Below, in the valley, horsemen of the enemy could be seen galloping across farmland that had not been stripped of valuables, and bridges that had not been burned. The speed of the enemy’s advance had overwhelmed the defenders’ ability to scorch the land of anything that might assist the host of Acedor.
“Sire!” Carter shouted an alarm, pointing down the hill to the southwest. From a treeline, a group of two dozen ragged-looking civilians emerged, running as quickly across a mountain meadow as their wobbly legs could carry them. Whatever possessions they might once have brought from their homes were now abandoned; mothers and fathers and older siblings carried young children and babies, stumbling across the stony and brush-covered field. “Stragglers!”
Kyre pulled out his spyglass, focusing on the trees behind the fleeing civilians. There was movement in the woods, and enemy horsemen were riding across another field to the west, headed for those woods. To the south, below Kyre and closer to the civilians was General Armistead and her headquarters troops. She had only a dozen soldiers with her, and before Kyre could speak, Armistead wheeled her horse and charged for the treeline, coming to the aid of the civilians of Demarche she was pledged to protect.
“To me!” Kyre shouted, spurring his horse to race down the hill.
“Sire! No!” Carter pleaded, obligated to follow the young man he was sworn to protect.
General Armistead’s group reached the fleeing civilians first. With their horses already tired, and keeping in mind that defending the pass was more important than another laggard group of civilians, Armistead ordered her soldiers to take the young children on their horses. She urged the adults to run, for there were not enough horses for everyone. If the civilians could reach the trees at the top of the slope, they would be safe, for the enemy cavalry would not bother to follow. The enemy, even cruel as they were, would not waste time in killing civilians when the prize greater prize of capturing the mountain pass lay in sight.
Killing civilians would not divert the enemy cavalry, but the possibility of killing the commander Demarche army’s commander would. As Kyre raced to help, enemy cavalry burst from the treeline into the meadow. They did not attack the running, stumbling civilians, they did not split right and left to encircle the civilians and their defenders. No, the enemy focused on capturing or killing General Armistead.
The enemy could scarcely have mistaken their target, for Armistead and her personal guard stuck out like a red wine stain on a white tablecloth. At the direction of Duchess Rochambeau, the commander of Demarche’s army wore the colors of the duchy’s crest; gold and blue, with a polished gold-plated helmet. One of her guards carried a large Demarche flag, also blue and gold. The uniform and flag were impressive in a parade or any peacetime military review. In combat, they were a hindrance. To the enemy, they were a beacon.
Kyre’s father required his high-ranking officers to be similarly outfitted, which Kyre thought foolish. One of his first orders to Captain Jaques had been for the man to put away his shiny helmet in favor of the more practical helmet of an ordinary officer. And the Burwyck flag was to be flown only when the battalion was in camp; otherwise it was to be carefully furled and stowed away. Not having to carry a flag gave the battalion one more mounted, and useful, soldier.
As he charged across the meadow, holding the reins with one hand while reaching back for an arrow, Kyre’s heart was in his throat. Armistead was quickly besieged, having seen the danger to herself too late. Thinking the enemy would ride straight for the civilians, Armistead had positioned herself to strike the flanks of the enemy cavalry as they raced by. Instead, a hundred yards before the first enemy riders reached the civilians, they wheeled to the right and charged directly at Armistead.
When her soldiers realized their commander was the target of the enemy, those protecting the civilians broke off to assist Armistead. But they were already too late, for more of the enemy blocked their attempts to reinforce the guards protecting Armistead.
The only chance to save the general was Kyre’s group, coming from the opposite side. Kyre
had time only to fire off two arrows; the first missed entirely while the second struck an enemy in the shoulder, causing the man to drop his sword. Then Kyre had to toss the bow aside and draw his sword, for he was in the midst of the swirling, chaotic battle. What he remembered later was concentrating not on killing the enemy, but of forcing them aside, to get to Armistead before she was overcome. The Demarche general was surrounded by more than a dozen enemy, with only a half dozen of her guards still in the fight. Armistead was personally tangling with two enemy soldiers, hindered by a bloody cut to one arm.
Kyre hacked at the enemy until he was in the middle of the fight, matching swords with an enemy soldier who had a large X-shaped scar on both his cheeks. He was a large man and strong; blocking the man’s sword blows made Kyre’s sword arm ring with pain. Spinning his horse around to gain space, Kyre saw that Armistead was beset. She parried the sword thrust of one enemy, but another was poised to stab her undefended back. The general wore light chainmail as did Kyre; such lightweight protection would not stop the point of a sharp sword. Desperately, Kyre pulled a dagger from his belt and threw it, the poorly-aimed throw struck the enemy across the bridge of his nose with the side of the blade, rather than with the point as Kyre intended. The razor-sharp blade still cut deeply so that blood spurted from the man’s sliced-open nose; blood blocked his vision and his sword thrust fell on empty air as Armistead dodged aside. The momentum of his sword swinging through the air threw the enemy off balance and he fell from his saddle, to be trampled under Armistead’s horse. Her horse stumbled, saving the general’s life because as she fell backwards, a sword cut clanged off the top of her helmet rather than chopping her head off. Her head was jerked backwards and she fell heavily to the ground, her horse bucking and running off in panic.
Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2) Page 35
