Measure and the Truth tros-3

by Douglas Niles

  The great fire in the plaza was the central feature of the view, still casting a plume of smoke more than a mile into the sky. At the base of the blaze, smoldering rather than flaming, lay the charred ruins of nearly a dozen bombard tubes. So Dram had started manufacturing them after all!

  And Ankhar had destroyed them and so much more. Jaymes took in the blackened warehouses, the splintered tangle that had been a neat lumberyard. The doors of every house he could see had been smashed in, with personal belongings, fabrics, and furniture scattered around in the streets and yards. The emperor’s jaw clenched in fury, and his eyes narrowed to mere slits, glaring with hatred at the damage that had come to the place-to his place!

  For if Dram Feldspar had been the caretaker of New Compound, Jaymes Markham had been its creator. His orders had caused it to be built there, and his steel had funded its operations. It would be his soldiers who avenged its destruction.

  His narrowed eyes took in the military features of the valley. The once-splendid stone bridge-Dram had been inordinately proud of the structure, Jaymes thought-was a blasted ruin. Beside the wrecked span, the ogres had placed log bridges across the stream at several places, obviously readying for a march down the valley. But bridges could work in both directions, Jaymes knew.

  At the moment the ogre army looked more like a disorganized mob. A few of the troops were up on the mountainside, apparently inspecting the rock piles where the dwarves of New Compound had been buried alive. The others were carousing through the ruined town. From where Jaymes was, it appeared as though nearly all were drunk. Certainly they were not expecting battle.

  “We’re going to strike at once,” the emperor declared curtly.

  “Certainly, Excellency,” General Weaver declared. He gestured to the base of the cliff wall to the left, where a dense pine forest concealed the ground. “I suggest we send a flanking force through there, and take them from two sides at once.”

  “No time,” Jaymes retorted after a brief pause. “The ground is too rough for troops; it would take them hours to get into position.”

  “Perhaps a reconnaissance up there, my lord?” Weaver suggested.

  “No, I cannot accept any delay!” snapped the emperor. “They are ripe for attack now-surely you can see that. We strike at once!”

  “Of course, Excellency.”

  The two men quickly made their way back to the legion. The skirmishers had deployed in front, with the ranks of the light infantry arrayed behind. Jaymes was pleased to see the three companies of New City men who had been mauled so badly at Apple Ford claimed positions in the center of the line. They would redeem themselves, he knew. The heavy infantry and cavalry formed a third line, with the archers ready close behind.

  “I want a general advance!” Jaymes ordered, once again climbing into his saddle. “All infantry units, close in on the double! I want the cavalry ready to charge as soon as I give the words. Go in quietly at first, but as soon as they see you coming, I want you to shout your loudest-break their morale from the very start!”

  With a flick of the signalman’s flag, the great lines began to move up and over the moraine, breaking into a trot as they hurried down the smooth, grassy slope on the far side. In a moment they reached the river, the well-drilled units smoothly forming columns to rush across the three log bridges Ankhar had so thoughtfully put in place for them.

  Hundreds of men were across the river by the time one of the ogres in the town raised a howling alarm. His cry was answered by the challenge of five thousand human soldiers as the first ranks of Palanthian Legion hurtled into the attack.

  The ogres were clearly shocked by the sudden appearance of the army of humans. Many turned to fight, while others simply fled through the streets of New Compound, toward the great plaza along the lake.

  “Go!” cried Jaymes, spurring his roan in the lead of the attack. “Cut them down!”

  Giantsmiter was in his hand, and he slashed through the face of a foolish ogre who had turned to gape at the unexpected attackers. Arrows flew over the front rank, plunging among the disorganized barbarians. Men split into companies and platoons, charging into buildings where they saw ogres taking refuge. A dozen bulls, some staggeringly drunk, were trapped in a pigsty, and men with spears stood around the fences and stabbed until all of them were dead or dying.

  There were no dwarves in view, so Jaymes could only hope they were still behind the stone barricades in the mines. He slew ogres wherever he could find them and cut down a few hobgoblins for good measure. The fierce exultation of battle filled his heart once again, and he was startled by the savage delight he felt. It had been a very long time since he had wielded his blade against a foe.

  And where was Ankhar? Reining in just for a moment, allowing the tide of his men to sweep past, the emperor sat his saddle and looked across the melee raging through the town. He would find the enemy commander and make sure he never made war again.

  It was a personal matter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE SECOND BATTLE OF NEW COMPOUND

  Why not send Bloodgutter’s ogres into fight now? Look! We lose battle!” demanded Bullhorn, frightened enough that he dared to challenge Ankhar’s plan with his question.

  The human soldiers were storming through New Compound, and Bullhorn’s ogres-who, as novices to conquest, had been more stupefyingly drunk than most-were being butchered by the score. Half the town already seemed in the attackers’ hands, and yet a whole bunch of Ankhar’s army wasn’t even fighting!

  “Where is Bloodgutter?” Bullhorn wailed, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head. “Make him fight too!”

  “No!” roared the half-giant. “I stick to my plan!” He raised his fist but was satisfied when the ogre chief backed away without further protest.

  The bull was simply too stupid to see the plan was, in fact, working to perfection. Events had begun when Rib Chewer’s scouts had reported, a day earlier, that a fast-marching column of humans was approaching the valley of New Compound. Ankhar had been careful to post those scouts, while cautioning the goblin warg riders to avoid discovery. The speedy gobs on their wolves had observed the approach of the enemy column without being detected.

  Never very smart with numbers, the goblin chief nevertheless had managed to convey the fact that the new force was not as large as the great armies they had faced a few years before. He was also astute enough to deduce that the human war leader himself-he called himself emperor! — was leading the army.

  So Ankhar had made a few stealthy preparations. General Bloodgutter proved himself worthy of his rank as he kicked and cajoled his two thousand veteran warriors away from the booty of the dwarf town. Marching them around the fringe of the valley, he had concealed them in a band of rough forest at the very base of the eastern precipice. Ankhar was pleased and impressed by the fact that, even as the enemy attack unfolded, Bloodgutter’s ogres had remained quietly hidden-just as the half-giant had ordered.

  Rib Chewer and his riders, on their fierce, lupine mounts, he had positioned behind the stocks of wood along the lakeshore, where they could not be observed by anyone coming up the valley. The goblins had not fed their mounts for more than a day, and the huge, shaggy warg wolves were ravenous and ill tempered-just waiting to be unleashed on the unsuspecting foe.

  As a final touch, Ankhar had ordered two of his few remaining sivak draconians-most had perished when the bridge exploded-to wait by his side. They would fly to Bloodgutter when the time was ripe, and Ankhar would spring his trap.

  He snorted in amusement, even as a dozen of Bullhorn’s ogres, bloodshot eyes wide with terror, were cut down by swordsmen not so very far from where he stood. The humans were advancing into the plaza, coming around both sides of the massive, smoldering pile of ashes left over from the great victory fire.

  The enemy general was the one who had led the armies that defeated Ankhar in his earlier war, the half-giant knew. That disgrace was about to be avenged.

  “Silverclaw! Crookfang!�
�� barked the one called the Truth.

  “Aye, great lord!” replied the two sivaks, bowing to the ground, flapping their great wings in readiness.

  “Fly to the woods,” Ankhar ordered. “Tell General Bloodgutter that it is time for him to burst forth!”

  “Now!” Jaymes ordered. “Lancers, charge!”

  The ogres had done exactly as he had expected, falling back across the wide central plaza but forming only an irregular defense on the open ground instead of seeking shelter between the buildings and sheds across the square. Lacking pikes, holding a front that boasted several ragged gaps, they formed a perfect target for a lethal cavalry charge. It was a marvelous situation!

  And in the perfection of the situation, the emperor felt a sudden misgiving.

  Angrily he tried to shake away the nagging feeling. After all, his enemies were drunk, obviously, even staggeringly so. Jaymes himself had slain an ogre who had been too busy puking in the gutter that he could barely raise his head as death rode him down. How could a foe like that be capable of battlefield deviousness?

  But, Jaymes reminded himself, Ankhar had proved during the course of his earlier campaign that he was capable of learning lessons from his failures. After all, he had adopted a reserve; he had learned to array spearmen against cavalry; he had practiced feints and diversions and even, after the siege of Solanthus had been broken, mastered that most difficult of military tactics, the fighting withdrawal.

  Why, then, should he expect the half-giant to behave stupidly when things mattered the most?

  Narrowing his eyes, Jaymes watched the lancers charge across the square. They tore into the ragged line of ogre warriors, slashing and stabbing. Horses reared and kicked, smashing hooves into roaring, tusk-filled mouths. Steadily the invaders were being beaten and pushed back; the disciplined Solamnic riders held their line, refraining from impetuous pursuit-as they had been trained to do.

  The emperor had spotted Ankhar himself. The enemy commander stood upon the stone roof of a low, dwarven house. There were several ogres and a couple of draconians up there with him, and he was watching the fight-which should have been a disaster, from his point of view-with no outward evidence of dismay or consternation.

  This realization sounded the final alarm inside of Jaymes.

  “Trumpeter! Sound the recall!” the emperor shouted.

  Immediately, the brassy notes of the horn rang out. The lancers reined back, reluctantly allowing the stumbling ogres to escape as they looked back in some frustration at their army commander. But they were well-trained Solamnic Knights, so they backed away, keeping their horses-and their keen, bloody lances-trained on the shattered, fleeing enemy before them.

  That was when Jaymes saw the two draconians with Ankhar take flight. He noted with some surprise they were sivaks. Those aloof and fearsome dragon-men had not served the half-giant in his previous campaign, and the emperor wondered at the meaning of their presence. Were they fleeing a lost cause?

  The sivaks flapped their wings and veered away from the legion positions. A few bowmen launched arrows at them, but the draconians were smart enough to stay out of range. Banking and leveling off, they skirted around the edge of the valley. Jaymes continued to watch as they abruptly dived and came to ground just before the fringe of pine forest at the base of the eastern cliff.

  Those were the same woods, he realized, where General Weaver had proposed his flanking maneuver. Jaymes had discounted such a move as impractical, deciding the terrain was too rough for troops and that such a movement would only waste valuable time. Had he been too hasty? Peering at the woods, he saw meadows within the groves, and though much of the ground was rocky, there seemed to be space between the outcrops-most of it concealed by foliage-where troops could hide themselves very effectively indeed.

  “General!” cried the emperor, attracting the attention of Weaver, who was directing the heavy infantry as it cleared the buildings on the eastern side of the town. A company of halberdiers were chopping at the barricaded door of a stout house, while spearmen swarmed around the place, stabbing through the windows and the few cracks that had been chiseled in the doors.

  The commander rode over at a gallop.

  Jaymes, meanwhile, ordered his lancers to redeploy on the near side of the square. “Regroup! Fall back to me! Form a line here!”

  “Excellency?” Weaver asked, raising his eyebrows in mute concern.

  Jaymes pointed at the woods. “Keep an eye on the flank-there might be something happening over there.”

  But the warning came too late. More than a thousand ogres suddenly spilled from the tangled, rocky wood at the slope of the cliff, emerging just where the draconians had landed. They came out like a tidal wave, heading straight for the legion’s unprotected rear. They were fresh veterans, not the drunkards and hangers-on they had thus far battled in the town, and they came roaring and howling.

  At the same time, a surging formation of snarling wolves, each mounted by a shrieking, painted goblin, burst from behind the lumberyards along the lakeshore. The warg riders raced across the plaza, straight toward the lancers, as the horsemen struggled to reform.

  Both enemy reinforcements howled maniacally, closing in on the exhausted legion from the flank and the rear. Jaymes spared one glance back at the enemy commander, standing proudly on that stone roof. He couldn’t be certain, but it looked as if Ankhar the Truth were grinning in cruel triumph.

  “I see a spot of light,” reported Rogard Smashfinger, falling back from the pile of rubble where he had been excavating for the past two hours. His shift was over, but he insisted on going back for a better look, so Dram joined him in crawling forward, over the jagged boulders that had been pulled out of the plug closing off the mine.

  “By Reorx, you’re right,” Dram said. He wriggled around and called over his shoulder, “Send me up a pike!”

  Someone passed him the steel shaft with a sharpened head; the quarters were too tight to swing a pickaxe. The dwarf jabbed and stabbed away at the slowly widening entrance. After almost half an hour of vigorous activity, he had one more rock to clear and used the pike to lever it out of the way. It tumbled down the mountainside and cleared a gap wide enough for Dram to stick his head out.

  Conscious of his safety, the first thing he did was check for ogres in the immediate area. But there seemed to be none around; apparently they had all gone back down to the town. Looking below, where he heard the unmistakable sounds of battle, Dram could see why: a legion of knights were there and had already taken back half the town. But as he stared, a horde of ogres surged out of the woods behind the relief force. At the same time, a furious cavalry battle between human horsemen and goblins mounted on warg wolves began on New Compound’s central square.

  Dram went scrambling back to the huddled dwarves waiting deeper in the mine tunnel.

  “The ogres are under attack!” he shouted, his words echoing loudly, almost painfully, throughout the tunnel. “Get out there! Follow me! Pull more rocks out of the way when you come!”

  He pushed loose rocks before him as he squirmed out the narrow hole, knocked rubble out of the way, and shouldered aside a good-sized boulder that was blocking one side of the narrow tunnel mouth. That rock tumbled free, almost doubling the size of the opening.

  Rogard and Swig Frostmead were close behind him, clearing more of the entrance and emerging in a shower of tumbling stones.

  Two by two, then three by three, then four or five at a time, the formerly trapped dwarves pushed their way out of the mine, each one widening the gap just a little bit more, making it easier for those behind to scramble outside. In a few moments, a hundred dwarves had emerged, and the mine shaft was cleared to its normal width.

  The rest of the residents of New Compound and the mountain dwarves of Kayolin, came spilling out in a rush and, forming in ad hoc ranks, they moved quickly down the slope toward the town. Each dwarf carried a weapon, and each dwarf heart was filled with the race’s traditional hatred of ogres-and the burn
ing desire to avenge the damage done to their once-peaceful town.

  “Hurry up!” cried Dram Feldspar. He pointed at the ogres attacking the rear of the legion, identifying them as the most urgent threat. “Take them in the flank! Let’s roll the bastards right up!”

  “Who’s the slowpoke?” cried Sally Feldspar, sprinting past her husband, hammer raised over her head, short legs pumping like pistons as she rushed down the hill.

  Dram didn’t even try to talk her out of joining the attack.

  Instead, he just did his damnedest to catch up.

  Jaymes watched as General Weaver rallied his rearguard in the face of the ogre menace pouring down from the woods. The legionnaires reacted quickly, and the New City light infantry took the first onslaught of the attack on their shields, battling with short swords and giving ground only reluctantly so that the troops behind them would have a longer time to form a more solid line.

  The men who had routed away from Apple Creek fought with tenacity, courage, and a high cost in blood and lives. Slowly they inched backward, falling by the score during the brutal fighting, but buying precious time for the rest of Weaver’s men to wheel around and better meet the surprise attack.

  Inevitably, the sheer weight and numbers of the ogres drove the lightly armed men out of the way, leaving more than half of them dead or dying on the ground. The ambush was almost perfectly executed, Jaymes realized with a grimace. He had only himself to blame, having been fooled by that damned half-giant he had too easily dismissed as a barbarian. Weaver had his spearmen and halberdiers formed up; only to Jaymes’s eyes they seemed a thin, tenuous line facing a torrent of howling ogres.

  If they had any chance at all, it was a very slim chance. Then Jaymes saw movement on the slopes coming from the direction of the mines. It was a fresh brigade of troops, doughty dwarves racing downhill on stumpy legs, beards flying, axes raised.