From the hidden core of the horde came several hundred of the largest beetles anyone had ever seen. These huge scarabaeids and their cousins stampeded through the gap created by their own troops. The startled wolverines were trampled underfoot. Massive chitin horns pierced soldier after soldier. Each beetle had half a dozen bowmen on its back. From there they picked off those warmlanders who tried to cut at the beetle’s legs.
Now it was the warmlanders who broke, whirling and scrambling in panic for the safety of the distant Gate. They pressed insistently on those behind them. But terror already ruled their supposed reinforcements. Instead of friendly faces those pursued by the relentless beetles found thousands of Plated Folk soldiers who had literally dropped from the sky.
The birds and their riders, mostly small squirrels and their relatives, fought valiantly to break through the aerial Plated Folk. But by the time they had made any headway against the dragonfly forces confronting them the great, lumbering flying beetles had already dropped their cargo. Now they were flying back down the Pass, to gather a second load of impatient insect parachutists.
Glee turned to dismay on the wall as badly demoralized troops streamed back through the open Gate. Behind them was sand and gravel-covered ground so choked with corpses that it was hard to move. The dead actually did more to save the warmlander forces from annihilation than the living.
When the last survivor had limped inside, the great Gate was swung shut. An insectoid wave crested against the barrier.
Now the force of scarabaeids who’d broken the warmlander front turned and retreated. They could not scale the wall and would only hinder its capture.
Strong-armed soldiers carrying dozens, hundreds of ladders took their places. The ladders were thrown up against the wall in such profusion that several defenders, while trying to spear those Plated Folk raising one ladder, were struck and killed by another. The ladders were so close together they sometimes overlapped rungs. A dark tide began to swarm up the wall.
Having no facility with a bow, Jon-Tom was heaving spears as fast as the armsbearers could supply them. Next to him Flor was firing a large longbow with deadly accuracy. Mudge stood next to her, occasionally pausing in his own firing to compliment the giantess on a good shot.
The wall was now crowded with reinforcements. Every time a warmlander fell another took his place. But despite the number of ladders pushed back and broken, the number of climbers killed, the seemingly endless stream of Plated Folk came on.
It was Caz who pulled Jon-Tom aside and directed his attention far, far up the canyon. “Can you see them, my friend? They are there, watching.”
“Where?”
“There… can’t you see the dark spots on that butte that juts out slightly into the Pass?”
Jon-Tom could barely make out the butte. He could not discern individuals standing on it. But he did not doubt Caz’s observation.
“I’ll take your word for it. Can you see who ‘they’ are?”
“Eejakrat I recognize from our sojourn in Cugluch. The giant next to him must be, from the richness of attire and servility of attendants, the Empress Skrritch.”
“Can you see what Eejakrat is doing?” inquired a worried Clothahump.
“He looks behind him at something I cannot see.”
“The dead mind!” Clothahump gazed helplessly at his sheaf of formulae. “It is responsible for this new method of fighting, these ‘tactics’ and ‘parachutes’ and such. It is telling the Plated Folk how to fight. It means they have found a new way to attack the wall.”
“It means rather more than that,” said Aveticus quietly. Everyone turned to look at the marten. “It means they no longer have to breach the Jo-Troom Gate… .”
XVI
“IS IT NOT CLEAR?” he told them when no one responded. “These ‘parachute’ things will enable them to drop thousands of soldiers behind the Gate.” He looked grim and turned to a subordinate.
“Assemble Elasmin, Toer, and Sleastic. Tell them they must gather a large body of mobile troops. No matter how bad the situation here grows these soldiers must remain ready behind the Gate, watching for more of these falling troops. They must watch only the sky, for, if we are not prepared, these monsters will fall all over our own camp and all will be lost.”
The officer rushed away to convey that warning to the warmlander general staff. Overhead, birds and riders were holding their own against the dragonfly folk. But they were fully occupied. If the beetles returned with more airborne Plated Folk troops, the warmlander arboreals would be unable to prevent them from falling on the underdefended camp.
Attacked from the front and from behind, the Jo-Troom Gate would change from impregnable barrier to mass grave.
Once out on the open plains the Plated Folk army would be able to engulf the remnants of the warmlander defenders. In addition to superior numbers, which they’d always possessed, the attackers now had the use of superior tactics. Eejakrat had discovered the flexibility and imagination dozens of their earlier assaults had lacked.
Not that it would matter soon, for the inexorable pressure on the Gate’s defenders was beginning to tell. Now an occasional Plated Folk warrior managed to surmount the ramparts. Isolated pockets of fighting were beginning to appear on the wall itself.
“‘Ere now, wot d’you make o’ that, mate?” Mudge had hold of Jon-Tom’s arm and was pointing northward.
On the plain below the foothills of Zaryt’s Teeth a thin dark line was snaking rapidly toward the Gate.
Then a familiar form was scuttling through the milling soldiers. It wore light chain-mail top and bottom and a strange helmet that left room for multiple eyes. Despite the armor both otter and man identified the wearer instantly.
“Ananthos!” said Jon-Tom.
“yes.” The spider put four limbs on the wall and looked outward. He ducked as a tiny club glanced off his cephalothorax.
“i hope sincerely we are not too late.”
Flor put aside her bow, exhausted. “I never thought I’d ever be glad to greet a spider. Or that to my dying day I’d ever be doing this, compadre.” She walked over and gave the uncertain arachnid a brisk hug.
Disdaining the wall, the modest force of Weavers divided. Then, utilizing multiple limbs, incredible agility, and built-in climbing equipment, they scrambled up the sheer sides of the Pass flanking the Gate. They suspended themselves there, out of arrow range, and began firing down on the Plated Folk clustered before the Gate.
This additional firepower enabled the warmlanders on the wall to concentrate on the ladders. Nets were spun and dropped. Sticky, unbreakable silk cables entangled scores of insect fighters.
Dragonflies and riders broke from the aerial combat to swoop toward the new arrivals clinging to the bare rock. The Weavers spun balls of sticky silk. These were whirled lariatlike over their heads and flung at the diving fliers with incredible accuracy. They glued themselves to wings or legs, and the startled insects found themselves yanked right out of the sky.
Now the birds and bats began to make some progress against their depleted aerial foe. There was a real hope that they could now prevent any returning beetles from dropping troops behind the Gate.
While that specific danger was thus greatly reduced, the most important result of the arrival of the Weaver force was the effect it had on the morale of the Plated Folk. Until now all their new strategies and plans had worked perfectly. The abrupt and utterly unexpected appearance of their solitary ancient enemies and their obvious rapport with the warmlanders was a devastating shock. The Weavers were the last people the Plated Folk expected to find defending the Jo-Troom Gate.
Directing the Weavers’ actions from a position on the wall by relaying orders and information, via tiny sprinting spiders colored bright red, yellow and blue, was a bulbous black form. The Grand Webmistress Oll was decked out in silver armor and hundreds of feet of crimson and orange silk.
Once she waved a limb briskly toward Jon-Tom and his companions. Perhaps she sa
w them, possibly she was only giving a command.
The warmlanders, buoyed by the arrival of a once feared but now welcomed new ally, fought with renewed strength. The Plated Folk forces faltered, then redoubled their attack. Weaver archers and retiarii wrought terrible destruction among them, and the warmlander bowmen had easy targets helplessly ensnared in sticky nets.
A new problem arose. There was a danger that the growing mountain of corpses before the wall would soon be high enough to eliminate the need for ladders.
All that night the battle continued by torchlight, with fatigue-laden warmlanders and Weavers holding off the still endless waves of Plated Folk. The insects fought until they died and were walked on emotionlessly by their replacements.
It was after midnight when Caz woke Jon-Tom from an uneasy sleep.
“Another cloud, my friend,” said the rabbit. His clothing was torn and one ear was bleeding despite a thick bandage.
Wearily Jon-Tom gathered up his staff and a handful of small spears and trotted alongside Caz toward the wall. “So they’re going to try dropping troops behind us at night? I wonder if our aerials have enough strength left to hold them back.”
“I don’t know,” said Caz with concern. “That’s why I was sent to get you. They want every strong spear thrower on the wall to try and pick off any low fliers.”
In truth, the ranks of kilted fighters were badly thinned, while the strength of their dragonfly opponents seemed nearly the same as before. Only the presence of the Weavers kept the arboreal battle equal.
But it was not a swarm of lumbering Plated Folk that flew out of the moon. It was a sea of sulfurous yellow eyes. They fell on the insect fliers with terrible force. Great claws shredded membranous wings, beaks nipped away antennae and skulls, while tiny swords cut with incredible skill.
It took a moment for Jon-Tom and his friends to identify the new combatants, cloaked as they were by the concealing night. It was the size of the great glowing eyes that soon gave the answer.
“The Ironclouders,” Caz finally announced. “Bless my soul but I never thought to see the like. Look at them wheel and bank, will you? It’s no contest.”
The word was passed up and down the ranks. So entranced were the warmlanders by the sight of these fighting legends that some of them temporarily forgot their own defensive tasks and thus were wounded or killed.
The inhabitants of the hematite were better equipped for night fighting than any of the warmlanders save the few bats. The previously unrelenting aerial assault of the Plated Folk was shattered. Fragmented insect bodies began to fall from the sky. The only reaction this grisly rain produced among the warmlanders beneath it was morbid laughter.
By morning the destruction was nearly complete. What remained of the Plated Folk aerial strength had retreated far up the Pass.
A general council was held atop the wall. For the first time in days the warmlanders were filled with optimism. Even the suspicious Clothahump was forced to admit that the tide of battle seemed to have turned.
“Could we not use these newfound friends as did the Plated Folk?” one of the officers suggested. “Could we not employ them to drop our own troops to the rear of the enemy forces?”
“Why stop there?” wondered one of the exhilarated bird officers, a much-decorated hawk in light armor and violet and red kilt. “Why not drop them in Cugluch itself? That would panic them!”
“No,” said Aveticus carefully. “Our people are not prepared for such an adventure, and despite their size I do not think our owlish allies have the ability to carry more than a single rider, even assuming they would consent to such a proposition, which I do not think they would.
“But I do not think they would object to duplicating the actions of the Plated Folk fliers in assailing opposing ground forces. As our own can now do.”
So the orders went out from the staff to their own fliers and thence to those from Ironcloud. It was agreed. Wearing dark goggles to shield their sensitive eyes from the sun, the owls and lemurs led the rejuvenated warmlander arboreals in dive after dive upon the massed, confused ranks of the Plated Folk army. The result was utter disorientation among the insect soldiers. But they still refused to collapse, though the losses they suffered were beginning to affect even so immense an army.
And when victory seemed all but won it was lost in a single heartrending and completely unexpected noise. A sound shocking and new to the warmlanders, who had never heard anything quite like it before. It was equally shocking but not new to Flor and Jon-Tom. Though not personally exposed to it, they recognized quickly enough the devastating thunder of dynamite.
As the dust began to settle among cries of pain and fear, there came a second, deeper, more ominous rumble as the entire left side of the Jo-Troom wall collapsed in a heap of shattered masonry and stone. It brought the great wooden gates down with it, supporting timbers splintering like firecrackers as they crashed to the ground.
“Diversion,” muttered Flor. “The aerial attack, the parachutists, the beetles… all a diversion. Bastardos; I should have remembered my military history classes.”
Jon-Tom moved shakily to the edge of the wall. If they’d been on the other side of the Gate they’d all be dead or maimed now.
Small white shapes were beginning to emerge from the ground in front of the ruined wall. Waving picks and short swords they cut at the legs of startled warmlander soldiers. Like the inhabitants of Ironcloud they too wore dark goggles to protect them from the sunlight.
“Termites,” Jon-Tom murmured aloud, “and other insect burrowers. But where did they get the explosives?”
“Little need to think on that, boy,” Clothahump said sadly. “More of Eejakrat’s work. What did you call the packaged thunder?”
“Explosives. Probably dynamite.”
“Or even gelignite,” added Flor with suppressed anger. “That was an intense explosion.”
Sensing victory, the Plated Folk ignored the depredations of the swooping arboreals overhead and swarmed forward. Nor could the hectic casting of spears and nets by the Weavers hold them back. Not with the wall, the fabled ancient bottleneck, tumbled to the earth like so many child’s blocks.
It must have taken an immense quantity of explosives to undermine that massive wall. It was possible, Jon-Tom mused, that the Plated burrowers had begun excavating their tunnel weeks before the battle began.
Without the wall to hinder them they charged onward. By sheer force of numbers they pushed back those who had desperately rushed to defend the ruined barrier. Then they were across, fighting on the other side of the Jo-Troom Gate for the first time in recorded memory. Warmlander blood stained its own land.
Jon-Tom turned helplessly to Clothahump. The Plated Folk soldiers were ignoring the remaining section of wall and the few arrows and spears that fell from its crest. The wizard stood quietly, his gaze focused on the far end of the Pass and not on the catastrophe below.
“Can’t you do something,” Jon-Tom pleaded with him. “Bring fire and destruction down on them! Bring…”
Clothahump did not seem to be listening. He was looking without eyes. “I almost have it,” he whispered to no one in particular. “Almost can…” He broke off, turned to stare at Jon-Tom.
“Do you think conjuring up lightning and floods and fire is merely a matter of snapping one’s fingers, boy? Haven’t you learned anything about magic since you’ve been here?” He turned his attention away again.
“Can almost… yes,” he said excitedly, “I can. I believe I can see it now!” The enthusiasm faded. “No, I was wrong. Too well screened by distortion spells. Eejakrat leaves nothing to chance. Nothing.”
Jon-Tom turned away from the entranced wizard, swung his duar around in front of him. His fingers played furiously on the strings. But he could not think of a single appropriate song to sing. His favorites were songs of love, of creativity and relationships. He knew a few marches, and though he sang with ample fervor nothing materialized to slow the Plated Folk advance
.
Then Mudge, sweaty and his fur streaked with dried blood, was shaking him and pointing westward. “Wot the bloody ’ell is that?” The otter was staring across the widening field of battle.
“It sounds like…” said Caz confusedly. “I don’t know. A rusty door hinge, perhaps. Or high voices. Many high voices.”
Then they could make out the source of the peculiar noise. It was singing. Undisciplined, but strong, and it rose from a motley horde of marchers nearing the foothills. They were armed with pitchforks and makeshift spears, with scythes and knives tied to broom handles, with woodcutters’ tools and sharpened iron posts. They flowed like a brown-gray wave over the milling combatants, and wherever their numbers appeared the Plated Folk were overwhelmed.
“Mice!” said Mudge, aghast. “Rats an’ shrews in there, too. I don’t believe it. They’re not fighters. Wot be they doin’ ’ere?”
“Fighting,” said Jon-Tom with satisfaction, “and damn well, too, from the look of it.”
The rodent mob attacked with a ferocity that more man compensated for their lack of training. The flow of clicking, gleaming death from the Pass was blunted, then stopped. The rodents fought with astonishing bravery, throwing themselves onto larger opponents while others cut at warriors’ knees and ankles.
Sometimes three and four of the small warmlanders would bring down a powerful insect by weight alone. Their makeshift weapons broke and snapped. They resorted to rocks and bare paws, whatever they could scavenge that would kill.
For a few moments the remnants of the warmlander forces were as stunned by the unexpected assault as the Plated Folk. They stared dumbfounded as the much maligned, oft-abused rodents threw themselves into the fray. Then they resumed fighting themselves, alongside heroic allies once held in servitude and contempt.
The Hour of the Gate: A Spellsinger Adventure (Book Two) (The Spellsinger Saga) Page 24
