by Robert Brady
I backed up my stallion. “Back to your hiding hole, clown prince,” I shouted to him, loud enough for anyone near to hear. “I think your diaper needs changing.”
I turned my horse around and trotted back to the army. Some of their warriors chased after me, but Vinkler called them back. He had lost the day, and things weren’t going to get better if I rode down some of the men he needed to keep alive.
It was neither a good nor a clean victory, but I took it.
***
Two days later we had visitors from the north and the south.
From the north, Brenn, Tor and Dregg with Kvitch and two female Dwarves jogged into our city, and informed me that, as suspected, the Men of the North were trying to carve a new path, this time through the mountain that we’d eliminated the overhanging pass from. In the long run, that made a lot more sense. Unless you could drop another mountain on that mountain, it was a lot easier to guard.
I didn’t know what Lee could do to it, actually, but I might let her find out. That could work in my favor.
“There are about one hundred random North Men wandering Volkhydro,” Kvitch told me. “They attack anyone they see, who isn’t them. They’re doing more damage than I would have thought possible.”
Eric nodded and talked to one of his war leaders. They’d dispatch a clean up to hunt them down, and it would be good practice for newly-trained troops.
“We collected the remains of the fallen from the first mission,” Tor said. All of the Dwarves were saddened by their friends’ fate. “We are two fewer because we sent them home.”
“I wish we could have taken care of them,” I said, “but –“
Kvitch just shook his head. “They are of Earth, you left them for Earth – there is no shame. Had you interred them, we couldn’t have moved them, and then their families would always wonder what became of their bones.”
I nodded.
From the south came a caravan with the supplies we wanted from Galnesh Eldador. Raven all but rubbed her hands together when she saw it.
We were careful in unloading the Eldadorian Fire. The stuff was really hard to control, and it could explode just exposing it to air. At this higher elevation, I didn’t know what the effect would be. The air was a little thinner, but it was a lot more pure.
“Seeing as you’re here,” I said to Kvitch.
He shook his head. “When we’re not, can you even wipe your own ass?” he grumbled.
It didn’t take much to get the Dwarves to start working on some counter-balance launchers similar to the French trebuchet. We cut down some mighty trees and carved some heavy stones, and fixed them outside of the city’s crossbow range – a fact they tested more than once. Because I never intended to move them, I could make them bigger, and then they had more range.
That took three days, and then Raven was ready with her fertilizer bombs. She’d packed them in wine casks, set them with fuses, and without my realizing it, infused them with gunpowder.
I did not want to introduce gunpowder to this world, but I didn’t want to lose it, either.
We tested each trebuchet with a boulder. The enemy laughed at us from behind the city walls as the missiles bounced harmlessly through the cities. They’d realized what we were doing and cleared out the first few sets of houses nearest to the eastern wall. If we wanted to destroy empty houses, it didn’t bother them.
Then we loaded all three trebuchet with Raven’s bombs.
“Get them as close to the gate as you’re able,” I told the Dwarves. Tor shot me a sour look and Kvitch just called me a thin-brained Man.
“I wish we’d had time to design an impact trigger,” Raven said, watching and chewing her thumb nail. “This is likely to blow up over the city.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “We compare the weight of these to the boulders, they’ll go farther and higher – I just don’t know.”
“Send the Eldadorian Fire first,” I said.
Brenn sighed. They’d just loaded the explosives.
“If the Eldadorian Fire lights off or not,” I said, “the explosions will make it worse, no matter when it is. I expect that to splatter –“
“Yes, yes,” Kvitch said, and ordered two burly Volkhydrans to unload the wine casks. “More work for Dwarves, when Men can’t think.”
We unloaded the explosive casks and loaded three steel drums of Eldadorian Fire. I inspected them again, personally, to make sure they weren’t leaking. The last thing I wanted to see was them coming apart when we tried to throw them.
We launched all three. They sailed into the city, one hundred yards past the gates. They didn’t explode as I’d expected them to.
People should be approaching the splatter now, wondering what I’d sent.
“Again,” I said.
This time we loaded the casks, and we lit the fuses, and we fired.
The trajectory was a little farther. One of the casks exploded over the city, the other two somewhere in side.
The enormous eruption in flame told us that the Eldadorian Fire was doing what it did. The screaming told me I was right – that they’d gone to inspect the barrels that had burst open.
It would burn a long time, and it would burn a lot. They’d probably try to put it out with water, and that would cost them their reserves, because water wouldn’t put that fire out. You had to bury it.
Which was going to keep them pretty busy.
“Attack?” Eric asked me.
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Why run into a burning city. They want to stay here? I want to let them, especially if we just torched their reserves.”
“They should have moved those as far west as they could,” Karel said.
“They probably did,” I said. “So let’s see how far this fire burns.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Best Laid Plans
The main advantage of Eldadorian Fire is that it’s nearly impossible to put out. If you have a puddle of it, and it’s burning, it will sustain itself for more than a day, and if you bury it and then uncover it a day later, it will still be hot enough to spark itself back on fire. We had some people figure that out the hard way.
It floats, so if it finds it way burning down a well, it will scorch your well, and you’ll have to re-dig it, because the water won’t be fit to drink. The residue it leaves will make you sick.
It will fry the mortar out of a stone wall, it will get hot enough to cause wood to catch fire without contact. If you are on the receiving end of Eldadorian Fire, it’s a nightmare.
We watched Vellock burn from the safety of our camp. It wasn’t long before the whole city was in danger, and I had to think that the Men of the North had to have realized, after a couple of hours, that this wasn’t going to be home for much longer.
The city had two gates, one to the east and one to the west. For the purposes of Volkhydro this made no sense, because a gate that pointed toward Conflu did them no good, and a gate that pointed east just lengthened the walk from the closest cities. For this reason, while I knew this wasn’t an Outpost, I suspected it had Cheyak roots and, in the distant future, I’d planned to obtain this city.
I had other worries now. I’d stationed my Scitai archers in the forest to the west of the city. When the foreign troops broke out, I planned a really bad day for them.
Imagine my surprise when they busted out through the east. Imagine then my even bigger surprise when they didn’t turn north for their other city, but instead turned south to meet my army.
We blew the alarm, not completely unprepared but definitely less ready. I sent runners to get those Scitai over here, but I didn’t have a lot of faith that they would make it, because the Men of the North came out of the gates in a burning swarm, and by burning I saw warriors whose furs were actually on fire.
“To arms!” the generals among the Regulars called. They were the ones nearest the gates. After them were Wolf Soldiers, and the Volkhydrans were actually far
ther out to the plains, where they could train more safely and where they could launch forays into the Volkhydran plains, looking for errant warriors.
Vulpe’s Millennia manned the walls of their jess doonari. They’d practiced this more times than any of us could count – it was our most basic, and our oldest defense, and it had saved us repeatedly.
The Men of the North hit the walls of our little cities like a burning battering ram, first into the teeth of our spears, then into our pickets, then into our pole arms. Our archers emptied quivers of arrows into them, still on they came.
They concentrated on our three most forward positions, and the bastions started to give.
“First and second Millennia, to the fore!” I ordered from atop my stallion. We blew our bugles to alert the other troops – Wolf Soldiers rushed to grab their weapons and their shields, to get onto the field and to save their Eldadorian brothers before it was too late.
On the plains, the Volkhydrans were marshalling, but their track record with the Men of the North wasn’t that great, and they were far.
With three jess doonari to the center under siege, I sent the First Millennia to the east of them and the Second to the west. We broke out in our squads, hoping if anything to draw some of the pressure off of the Eldadorians, allowing them to re-fortify.
At first the Men of the North ignored us. They were feeling their success with the jess doonari – those walls would soon give way.
Actually engaging them changed some minds. I ran squads right at the northerners’ flanks and pulled them back. If that didn’t take effect, I was going to be able to come at them with archers – even more when the Scitai showed up.
Part of the horde broke away and went after the Wolf Soldier squads. We were able to lure some out and hold them, and then attack them from other sides, keeping the northerners running while we could exercise some squads and let others rest. Meanwhile the Volkhydrans were approaching, though I still hadn’t heard from the Scitai.
Without warning, the entire horde broke from the jess doonar offensive and charged the Second Wolf Soldier Millennia. An overwhelming, angry swarm of warriors simply fell away from the small cities’ walls and enveloped my elite warriors.
To their credit, they did the best they could. The northern army did a good job against our pikes, and their warriors clawed and hammered at our enhanced shields. One after another, the foreign Men dragged down my squads when they couldn’t get away fast enough, and I was losing soldiers.
The First came to the rescue of the Second. Our tactic would be to completely surround them, to force them into a tight circle where they were pressed against each other and could only bring a fraction of their forces to bear. Then we would outlast them, drop arrows and spears into their midst, and kill them all.
The Men of the North couldn’t be so-contained. When the First engaged, the whole horde turned on them with a single-mindedness that I couldn’t explain or anticipate. Suddenly it was the First who were back-pedaling as a whole, leaving the Second stunned and panting as I tried to spur them on.
And then, there was Vinkler, on a horse that he’d clearly run through the fire, on the other side of them.
There was another tactic yet to try.
I called to Nantar and his Sarandi. The Scarlet Warrior saw where I was pointing, and started forward with his elite troops. I left command to J’her and circled back around my forward jess doonari to join them.
They were half-way to their goal when I met them, engaged with the northern Men, fighting savagely one-to-one. Nantar was bathed in blood from his hands to his hips, his daughters at his side, armed with light sabers, delivering slashing blows lightning-fast to their enemies. I rode in on my stallion and began to engage lone warriors caught between the groups of northern Men. We pushed on as the Second Millennia collected itself to relieve the First.
Vulpe was preparing another Millennia of Eldadorians to enter the fray when Vinkler saw me and screamed his war cry. His kicked his poor horse screaming through this own troops at me, probably remembering every insult I had dealt him.
He came at me on my right, I veered off to his left, switching sword hands, and put that poor horse out of its considerable misery, removing its head in one blow. The northern warrior actually clutched for my horse as he fell.
I turned for another pass. He struggled to get his feet under him again.
I spurred my war horse forward and, without hesitation, I rode the other man down.
I heard the stallion beneath me scream in pain. Somehow Vinkler had taken the pain and the damage of the giant beast’s steel hooves and struck for its underside.
I rolled off of the horse as it faltered, grunting and in pain. Landing on my feet and taking a few steps to regain my balance, I turned to see the stallion on its side with its gut open, and a blood-soaked Vinkler between he and I.
I had to think that this was the fate meant for Blizzard. This was the event meant to steel my reserve, to drive me. Vinkler knew the horse was in pain, and he wasn’t going to let me put the poor beast down.
I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone berserk. Was it when Glennen died? Had it happened when I was surrounded by the Confluni in the Second Seige of Thera? I simply couldn’t be sure, but I saw red right then, I felt the overwhelming fury, the nostrils filling with mucus, the foam on my lips, the mad-dog hatred of whatever in front of me that was alive.
You would have done that to my horse!
I charged Vinkler with a war scream I myself didn’t recognize. Two of his warriors appeared between us and my new Dwarven sword took the head from one, the leg from another as I passed. Vinkler stood waiting, sword in hands, planning his strike, gauging my speed.
I was on him and he swept for my torso. I met his sword two handed and turned it in an arc, then disengaged and slashed for his face. He stepped back surprised by the speed of the blow and parried, and again, and again, from the hip, from the leg, from the torso – stepping back, trying to take my fury, trying to get me to over-extend, to let me pass and catch me on the side.
I’d opened up his left leg before this. It was probably wrapped beneath his armor. When he stepped back on the left, it wasn’t as fast, or as far. I circled to that side, pressing the left, making him put weight on it, hammering his sword with mine, waiting for it to fail.
Another of his warriors leapt at me from my right – I carved out his guts in mid-flight. Vinkler took that moment to deliver an over-hand chop to my head, to ring my helmet and to slow me.
I caught the top end of his sword with the curve of my crossguard, wrapped his sword up in mine and pulled. The weapon slipped out of his grip and spun away.
He reached for another weapon and I cut him across the upper right arm, then the right thigh, and across his armor. He reached again for the weapon with his left and I cut that, too.
His left leg gave out. In a red haze I chopped down at his face as he fell.
Maree’s blade caught me inches from my target. The woman had the reflexes of a cat.
Her counter blow was right for the throat. She didn’t have the reach, or I’d have been dead.
When her sword passed by me, I pushed it with my own, pushing off her balance as I stepped in, my forward leg between her own, my elbows against her left arm, and head-butted her full-on with my helmet.
Maree dropped like a sack.
The fallen stallion moaned in agony behind me. I turned from both of them, raised my sword, and beheaded the poor, loyal beast.
I miss you, Blizzard. You were the truest friend I ever had. I’m ashamed that another had to suffer this for you, and I’m ashamed for all of the times I put you in pain.
From the North, the bugles sounded three sharp blasts, and then again. The northern army retreated from the battle field, leaving their dead behind, dragging their dying for fear of what we’d do to them. If I could find the Scitai, I’d send their tiny archers after the northerners, to pick them off man-by-man, to maximize their losses.<
br />
I was drained, exhausted – the aftermath of the berserk rage. Nantar and his daughters were binding up Maree and Vinkler. He’d lost half of his Sarandi, I think he said, or something similar. I couldn’t understand him very well when he spoke.
***
Losing the head of their army wasn’t the big deal that I thought it would be for the Great North, if Vinkler or Maree was the head of their army, which I didn’t know for sure.
They marched for three days to their other city, Senta. We stayed and sifted through the rubble of Vellock. Shela and Chesswaya together were able to extinguish the fire we’d created. Raven was a lot of help in that regard, explaining to them the elements that had to be removed for the fire to fail.
I sat alone in the pavilion. Sometimes they made reports to me, but I just didn’t care.
That’s what would have happened to Blizzard.
The Scitai seemed to have disappeared. Thorn felt they’d gone West. I didn’t know.
Vinkler and Maree weren’t affected by laughing gas – at all.
Eric didn’t think we needed to be so hard on his city, until he saw the hacked-apart remains of every male from it, in a pile in the city throne room. When they saw they’d lose Vellock, they’d put the women and the children to the knife, too.
These announcements rained down on me. Shela sat with me for a while and spoke to me in her soft, loving voice. She knew she was reaching me even when I didn’t react. She probably saw the battlefield and knew exactly what had happened. No one knew me like Shela did.
Finally, it was Dagi’s turn. She entered the pavilion with her sword and shield. I was in my armor, my sword sheathed over my back.
She kicked me in the greave.
“They’re in their city,” she told me. “We have to do all of this again.”
I nodded, not making eye contact.
“It’s not a good idea,” she said. “They’ll know what we’re doing and they’ll charge our trebuchet. We’ve got to use that, instead.”
“Fine,” I said. I stood.
