The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  Wilful Murder was unbelievably smug as they trotted into the first morning light, six miles almost due south of Gilson’s Hole.

  The whole company—green in front, then the household, then the red and then the white—jogged along at a fast walk by fours down the road in the first grey light.

  “Fuck, I hate rain,” muttered Tippit.

  Then something changed, and the rhythm of movement changed. Birds were waking up, and the colour of the sky was lightening.

  They turned. They were suddenly moving north, on a narrow road in deep woods. Some of the veterans of the spring march knew it as the West Road to Ticondaga.

  “Gonna rain for sure,” Tom Lantorn said at his side. “Look—woods is full o’ men.”

  It was true. There were men with axes and shovels all along the road’s edge.

  By the time the sun was well up, they halted in a clearing that had firepits already dug. The Ticondaga road continued off to the north, towards Big Rock Lake. But a new road was opening, headed back north and east.

  There was firewood stacked by each pit—good hardwood twigs and branches, carefully broken up and neatly piled. Men swung down, pages collected the horses, and women appeared out of the forest.

  Sukey was there with twenty baggage wagons. “Don’t get fresh,” she said to Cuddy. “They ain’t our girls, they’re farm girls. Got me?”

  The farm girls cooked—an enormous breakfast of fatback and eggs and spiced tea, a company favourite since Morea.

  Cuddy paused at Wilful’s fire. “We’re fightin’ today,” he said.

  Wilful ate the excellent eggs and nodded. “Guess so.” Good food was a traditional sign of a dust-up ahead.

  Cuddy nodded. “Don’t forget to duck,” he said. He moved on down the line, checking fires.

  A little behind him came the captain and Sauce and Ser Bescanon.

  “Just a little trick to save some time,” he said at every fire. “I thought you’d all be pleased if we could just win, and be done.”

  Men would laugh, and women, too.

  “I thought we all needed out of the swamp,” he said at one fire.

  “I needed a morning ride,” he laughed at another.

  “I brought my falcon—didn’t you bring yours?” he said to Wilful Murder.

  “I’m looking for the Loathly Lady,” he cracked to Tippit, who shook his head.

  All the while, they could hear the axes sounding in the woods.

  North and East of Gilson’s Hole

  Thorn and Ser Hartmut

  Hartmut had made a model. He’d crawled through muck once and sent other men during each of the attacks and he had a fair idea of the full extent of the entrenchments covering the maze of pathways around and through the Hole.

  “This is the centre of their defence,” Hartmut said. His audience included two daemon-mothers, as he’d called them, and all his own captains, and Thorn. One old wyvern—Sylch, the leader of one of the wings of wyverns—attended, but paid no attention, instead picking constantly at something between the spread talons of its right foot. The two useful warlords of the Huran were present, Black Blanket and Shag-an-ho, both keen men who he could almost like.

  And Orley.

  Orley held too much ops. It was clear that something had been done to him, and it made men shy of him. He now had black antlers growing from his head. He didn’t even seem to know.

  Hartmut tried to ignore whatever was wrong with Orley. He spoke directly to Thorn.

  “They’ve cleared all this—hundreds of paces of woods and bog, knocked flat. This entire ridge is one fortified line.” He shrugged. “Behind it, the camp is itself a fortress, with walls fifteen feet thick and ten feet high.” He couldn’t keep the tone from his voice. “We gave them a week, and they used what they had. Farmers, and wood, and earth.”

  Thorn swayed.

  “None of my warlocks has had any effect on the old witch’s defence,” he said. “I must deal with her myself.”

  His hesitation showed. The mighty sorcerer lord hesitated…

  Hartmut shrugged despite the weight of his armour and the overwhelming clouds of black flies.

  “It is impregnable, unless we bring up trebuchets or build them new. Or unless you can simply unleash the hounds of hell to smash the earthworks.”

  Thorn nodded. “This is not the battle my master wanted,” he said. “What other choices have we?”

  Hartmut looked around at the captains. “We can fall back on Ticondaga and make it a base. We can fill the frontiers with blood all summer, keep these peasants from their fields, and strike where we wish until every cabin is burned and this captain has no reserve of manpower to fell his trees. We can keep his forces in the field until the cost breaks his King. We can butcher the little people with our monsters until they know their King cannot protect them.”

  “Their King is dead.”

  Hartmut nodded. “They do not seem to miss him.”

  Thorn swayed. “This strategy of yours—it is not what my master wants.”

  Hartmut, who had served several princes, nodded. “It never is. But I always offer it.”

  “Give me another choice,” Thorn said.

  “You can always fling your army recklessly at this rock of earth and wood,” Hartmut said. His contempt was obvious. “Unless your unseelie powers give you some absolute dominance, your army will die here.”

  Thorn nodded. “I understand. Give me another choice.”

  Hartmut frowned. “We could move north, around the position. On a wide front, so that we could overwhelm any opposition, surround and crush it in the mountains. Bypass any other strong points.” He shrugged. “Try to cut the road off further along. Then our problem becomes their problem: supply.”

  “We can feast on the dead, and they cannot.” Thorn’s voice was hollow.

  “They can bake and eat bread,” Hartmut said. “Of the two, I’d rather eat bread.”

  “What of the east?” Thorn asked.

  “He has another force in the east, but it’s on the other side of the river and too small to affect us.” Hartmut shrugged yet again. “I think he wants us to go east. Instead, with our latest ascession of your little monsters, I’d put three or four legions of them here and around the Hole, and fling them into the entrenchments all day. They can die slowly, and we’ll win along the road and push the battle back to here.”

  “You are reckless in expending them,” Thorn said.

  “That’s what they are for, surely?” Hartmut shrugged. “They are fodder. But in mass waves, they will tie down any force left here—while we turn his flank.”

  “His flank,” Thorn said. “The Dark Sun.”

  Unnecessarily, Hartmut said, “He beat you before.”

  Thorn rustled, stone on stone. “I am aware.”

  Hartmut shook his head. “I need a private word, my Lord Sorcerer.”

  The Outwallers and the others drew back.

  “Retreat, and fight another day,” Hartmut said. “That is my advice.”

  “No,” said Thorn.

  “Then north, around them. As soon as we can.” Hartmut took a breath. “Into the woods. Leave most of the boglins—they will only slow us. And in a mass—we have what, fifteen, twenty thousand of them? Let them go forward against the ridge.”

  Thorn seemed relieved. “And will there be a great battle?” he asked.

  Hartmut paused. “We have odds of four or even five to one or better,” he said. “If we are very lucky and we move fast, there will be no great battle. They’ll simply fold away and be massacred as we turn their positions—or stand and starve. If the boglins break through—then we win a massive victory and the whole enemy force is massacred.”

  Thorn seemed for a moment to whisper to someone else.

  “Massacre will do. It is essential that as many of them be together as can be arranged.” Thorn swayed again. “And if we are not lucky?”

  “It will be a terrible battle in the wilderness.” Hartmut pursed his lips. “A
fight unlike any I have ever seen. No possible way to predict the result.”

  “Perfect,” Thorn said.

  Hartmut nodded. “As you command,” he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Battle of Gilson’s Hole

  The skies opened just after breakfast. Old archers put their bowstrings in waxed linen bags and then put the bags under their hats. Young ones copied them.

  The sound of axes never stopped.

  A little after nine, the order came to mount.

  Cully mounted slowly, all the aches in all his joints fuelled by tension and pure fear.

  They rode east through beech trees, forest giants widely spaced with almost no underbrush—here and there, a wicked patch of hobblebush, and occasional openings, sometimes of grass but more often a thicket of raspberry and bramble. Cully rode at the captain’s elbow, and they moved at an astounding speed through the woods, on a road just wide enough for two fully armoured men on big horses to pass—quickly. The road went on and on; one mile, and then another.

  In the second mile, they came to the woodcutters—terrified men from the valleys to the south and east. And their guardians.

  Golden Bears.

  The column flinched, almost to a man and woman. And beyond the bears were irks—hundreds of them, tall and lanky and evil-looking, with mouths full of teeth and hands full of weapons.

  Cully made himself ride on. The great Golden Bear to his left—whose yellow eyes were level with his own—on horseback—grinned. It said something that almost sounded like Alban.

  Cully grinned back.

  Behind him, Flarch grunted. “Fuck me,” he said. “Did you hear the bear?”

  Cully shook his head, still shaken.

  “It said, ‘Get some.’”

  Cully’s nerves got the better of him and he laughed, a little too high and loud. Men looked at him.

  Off further to the left, a white stag broke cover. On its back was the most beautifully equipped knight Cully had ever seen.

  “The Faery Knight!” men called. Some of the company men cheered—and many of the farmers.

  The Faery Knight—who looked more poised and magnificent than the captain had ever managed—trotted his enormous stag to where Ser Gabriel waited on his riding horse. They clasped hands.

  “Well met,” said Ser Tapio. “Now what do we do?”

  “Push east as fast as we can until we can see the Unicorn,” the captain said. The Unicorn was a towering spire of white rock that rose alongside Buck Pond Mountain. “Then, if all goes well…”

  Ser Tapio smiled a knowing smile, and they rode on together, their households staying as separate bodies for the first mile of broken ground, and then gradually intermingling. The faery knights were irks—most of them were slighter than men, and their armour far more old-fashioned. Most had bronze byrnies instead of steel habergeons and many wore leather defences where the men had steel plate, more cunningly formed. But the irks had their own breed of horses and a few stags and massive caribou that seemed to take the woods in easier strides, and they were festooned in charms and runes that few of the men and women could emulate.

  They passed along the south shore of Big Rock Lake. From time to time the captain checked a wax tablet, and Cully saw, at a brief halt, that writing appeared in the wax, and he shook his head.

  “They have started to attack the fort line,” the captain admitted to the Faery Knight.

  “Ahh,” Ser Tapio replied. “Better than I feared. I worried we were hunters beating for a stag long since run away.”

  The captain shrugged. “Every mile we do this, our forces will be better at cooperating.”

  Indeed, along the front of the long, long column, bears and irks shared the skirmish line with Gelfred’s men. To the north and west of the road, once the lake was passed, the column was paralleled by the movement of a long line of boglins who crossed the Wild the way ants cross a difficult area of pebbles, all touching. It was chilling and inhuman to watch, and most of the company stopped watching. But it did make them feel protected.

  The woodcutters extending the road shuddered, and some had to control trembling and actual terror as the boglins passed, or when a pair of fell hastenoch clomped by, their squid-like mouths writhing horribly.

  Many flinched when a troop of Outwallers ran along the new road for a few hundred yards—all moving in their endless war-lope, a near-silent flash of red paint and jingle of silver hawk’s bells in the light rain.

  Noon came. The scouts of all races pushed out, and the men dismounted, and the pages took the horses.

  Nell held a hand for the Faery Knight’s stag. It didn’t even have reins.

  “Go with the nissse young woman,” Ser Tapio said. He smiled at her, showing his fangs. He rolled neatly off his saddle, a stunning display of acrobatics.

  “Show-off,” Ser Gabriel said. He dismounted with an ordinary turn and slide on his breastplate.

  Morgon Mortirmir appeared from the white banda, and Toby passed him forward. Toby was the captain’s field chamberlain—he decided who got into the inner circle and who could wait. Mortirmir looked excited.

  “My lord,” he said. He grinned, and stared openly at the Faery Knight, and the beautiful—horrifying—irk woman in brazen armour who stood at his shoulder.

  “Oh!” she said. She put a brass hand to Morgon’s cheek. “The power!”

  “Handsss off, Lilith!” Ser Tapio said. There was some laughter from the irks.

  “Yes?” the captain asked. He had a garlic sausage in his mouth and another in his hand.

  “My lord.” Morgon shrugged. “It’s difficult to know where to begin… I’ve solved the horse plague.”

  Toby’s face suggested he was regretting allowing the young man to interrupt the captain’s lunch.

  “Really?” Ser Gabriel asked.

  “Yes. It was under my nose all along. Brutally simple.” He shrugged. “In fact, I was right from the first—all a problem of magnification. You see—”

  “Morgon.” The captain’s eyes were kind. “I’m about to face a major battle. I need to prepare. You have the ability to stop the horse plague?”

  “Instantly.”

  “Bravo. Share it with me and every other hermeticist.” He smiled softly. “Then leave me alone, please.”

  Morgon looked shame-faced. Nonetheless, both men’s faces became slack for a few seconds.

  The captain returned first. “You really do learn something every day,” he said. “Tapio?”

  Again he vanished into his palace, and Toby fetched water—the captain always returned from the aethereal hungry and thirsty.

  The Faery Knight shook his head.

  “Interesssting,” he said. “Leave it to men to make sssomething of nothing. Sssomething horrible.”

  “I don’t really see men as to blame for all the ills of the world.” Ser Gabriel shook his head. “But come—let’s right them, e’er we quarrel about them.”

  Ser Tapio smiled. “You are a wight after my own heart,” he said.

  The rain fell steadily—not a heavy storm, but a long, soaking spring day. The air was cold enough the men’s breath could be seen and that of horses, and bears, and other things. When they started again, they soon passed the last of the road, a hundred men all cutting together.

  A young, bearded man loped from the woodcutters and stood in the captain’s way.

  “Sorry—my lord, but my da and a whole lot of our folk—they went south, like, and we’ve lost ’em.” The young man shook his head. “Da said somewhat of cutting the path back to we. An’ I said—”

  “Gelfred?” the captain said. “Lad, we’ll do our best to find your da. You and yours are the furthest forward. Keep cutting! The Prince of Occitan is somewhere behind us. I need this path to be his signpost. What’s your name?”

  “Will, my lord.”

  “Will, keep your people together and keep cutting.” He glanced up—he and the Faery Knight exchanged a look.

  “The Unico
rn is almost due north,” the Faery Knight said. “I don’t need to see it, to see it.” He smiled and showed his fangs.

  The captain turned back to young Will. “Turn the path south now, Will. You’ll be safe enough behind us, then.”

  “Aye, my lord. But find me da?” the young man asked.

  Will Starling, tall and stark in forester green, clapped the man on the shoulder. “We’ll find him,” he said.

  As soon as the column turned south, the way became much more difficult. It took them an hour to pass south of a single overgrown beaver meadow, and only when they emerged back into a country of big trees and open spaces did Cully realize they were now riding south. The rain was lighter.

  There was a long peal of thunder in the south. Then another.

  Then Gelfred burst out of cover to the front. He waved both arms to the east and south.

  The captain reined in, pulled out his ivory slate and wrote quickly.

  Horns blew to the front.

  Ser Tapio paused his stag.

  Gelfred cantered up. “Just past the edge of the ridge—thousands of them.”

  “How far—exactly?” the captain snapped.

  “Long bowshot,” Gelfred said. He was spanning his crossbow as he turned his horse.

  The captain sat back in his saddle. His eyes went three places—to Ser Michael, by his side; to Gelfred; and then, for a longer time, to Ser Tapio.

  “Ganfroy!” he said, without further consultation. “Sound ‘form your front.’” He paused and listened to the flawless call. “Sound ‘change horses.’”

  Ser Michael turned and began to pick his way rapidly to the north. Ser Milus was doing the same to the south, after he’d mounted his new charger.

  “I want to attack,” the captain said. His face said he was in agony. It was all taking too long. “We need the ridge top, or we should retire to the last ridge.” Indeed, they were going downhill—the terrain descended in a series of gentle and steep ridges like ocean waves, all the way to the Albin River six miles away. “But we can do this, right here.”

  “This, too, we share,” Ser Tapio said. “I agree.”