Lord of the North

by Michael Tinker Pearce

  The riders shifted, some nodding. Most people would have thought them surprisingly calm at the prospect of facing nearly three times their number, but every dwarf among them was a veteran. They had learned to trust their training and commanders long before volunteering for this assignment. The details of their equipment and how they would be fighting were new to them but that was almost incidental to these dwarves.

  “So,” Engvyr continued, “We’re going to ride through that saddle fat and happy and see if they won’t come out to play.”

  Unlike the cavalry, the rangers and their mounts were virtually unarmored. They wore only their issue breastplates and heavy, quilted coats and their ponies didn’t have even that much protection. He looked at them and said, “Sorry boys; that’s going to put you two at some risk, especially at the start. If you aren’t out front the way you have been all morning they’re likely to realize something is amiss.”

  Engvyr quickly outlined the plan. He checked the position of the sun and took a last look around the surrounding hills. “We’ve partners waiting. Let’s not be late to the dance.”

  ###

  The rangers coursed back and forth across the baasgarta’s trail, followed by Engvyr with the cavalry riding two-by-two behind him. Engvyr had a pretty good idea that their enemies had doubled back into the woods and were waiting for them.

  The dwarven cavalry were heavily cloaked against the early spring drizzle, largely concealing their full-body armor. Likewise, the horse barding was covered by a linen caparison, and it was Engvyr’s hope that the baasgarta would mistake them for a squad of mounted infantry and think them easy prey. Apparently they did, for when the dwarves were a third of the way across the hollow, the goblins charged from the forest in a compact mass.

  The two Rangers immediately bolted to their left and Engvyr wheeled his mount to the right, lowered his nine-foot lance, and charged. The other riders fell in behind him in a wedge, also couching their lances as bolts from the goblins’ repeating crossbows began to land among them. The distance closed in seconds and the goblins, nonplussed by their quarries’ actions, quickly abandoned their crossbows to draw swords.

  Engvyr clamped the butt of the lance against his side, his hand relaxed on the haft as he allowed the point to track despite the motion of his mount. As they approached the enemy he picked his target, stood in the stirrups, and thrust, twisting at the hips and shoulders to bring the full strength of his body to bear. He felt a jolt as the point slammed into the chest of the lead ulvgaed.

  In a normal engagement, he would aim for the rider, but the goblins’ mounts were carnivorous and surly; taking their rider out did not take the beast out of the fight. Having your ulvgaed suddenly taken out from under you, however…

  Around him the dwarven lances struck home as he dropped back into the saddle and immediately released the lance. Then it was ten-pins-on-the-lawn as he reached for his saber. With the combined velocity of the charging forces, the goblins’ mounts were not just shouldered aside, they were knocked flying. Ulvgaeds were quick and agile, with surprising stamina, but they were perhaps half the weight of the armored ponies. By the time they had drawn their sabers the dwarves had passed through the ranks of the enemy. Wheeling about with their blades raised high, they closed on the shocked and disorganized baasgarta.

  They slammed into the goblins again, hacking them from their saddles or cutting them down as they tried to rise from the ground. Wounded ulvgaeds thrashed wildly, snapping indiscriminately at the combatants. In seconds it was over, with the few baasgarta still mounted breaking off to flee.

  “Carbines in pursuit!” Engvyr bellowed, and suited action to words as he launched his pony after the retreating goblins. Casting aside his saber, he drew the short rifle scabbarded on his saddle. The weapon’s stock was cut off a few inches behind the handgrip as there was no good way to shoulder the weapon while wearing full armor.

  Firing a carbine from the back of a charging horse is no mean feat, and Engvyr waited until he was a mere ten paces behind a fleeing ulvgaed before he angled to the side to put a ball through its guts. He’d been aiming for the chest, but considered himself lucky to have hit it at all. The beast stumbled and went down, spilling its rider. Engvyr pulled up, dropped the butt of the carbine to his hip and grunted as he pulled the long cocking lever to recharge the weapon. The baasgarta had landed well when his mount went down and was rising to his feet when Engvyr shot him through the chest. The round holed the goblin’s breastplate but most of the soft lead ball splashed away rather than penetrating. The rider staggered back and Engvyr charged his weapon again as the baasgarta coughed blood, then raised his sword to charge the dwarf. This time Engvyr put the ball through the goblin’s skull, dropping him in his tracks.

  Looking around, he realized he was effectively out of the chase; having stopped, he would not get within range of the enemy again. He scabbarded the carbine and trotted his horse back to where the rangers were finishing off their downed enemies. He had to dismount to recover his saber, and after a quick inspection wiped it dry with an oily rag from his saddle-pouch before sheathing it. He led his pony over to the rangers on foot because he was not sure he could remount at the moment. Amazing how much even a short fight takes out of you. Engvyr took the water bottle offered by one of the rangers with gratitude and drank deeply. He noted that with exception of a bandaged arm they seemed to have weathered the fight well.

  The other cavalrymen returned over the course of the next half-hour, and Engvyr’s armor bound up as he tried to wave to them with his left arm. Looking down in surprise, he saw his paldron had been deeply creased by a blow from a baasgarta falchion. I didn’t even feel it, he thought with surprise. Only then did he realize that his shoulder ached. Well, if that’s the worst we’ve gotten from a three-on-one engagement I’m pleased enough.

  It was the worst they’d gotten as it turned out, and he reported this fact to Gedric that evening. They were sitting by the fire in the great hall sipping mugs of unfiltered beer while Engvyr briefed the afmaeltinn on the day’s events.

  “In the end four of them got away clean,” Engvyr said, “and I expect we’ll not see them again.”

  Gedric tipped his mug to him. “What you’d best expect is that it’ll not be so easy next time. These baasgarta boys learn pretty quickly from all I’ve heard of your little spat up north.”

  Engvyr sighed. “That’s true enough. But we learn too; witness our brand-new cavalry, and its first victory!”

  They toasted, and after taking a swig Gedric said, “It sounds to me like we’re ready for the first lot of recruits. The men have blood on their spurs now, and teaching what they know to others will put the gloss on their training.”

  Engvyr nodded. “I’ll check on the barracks tomorrow. If it will be finished this month, I’ll send word that we’re ready for the trainees. The sooner we can build some proper units the better.”

  Gedric took a sip of his drink. “How did the carbines work out?”

  “Well, shortening the stocks worked just fine; at a gallop it’s actually easier to fire them, but the accuracy is about what we expected,” Engvyr said, then made a face. “Unfortunately you were right. They’re just not powerful enough for the ball to reliably pierce the baasgarta’s breastplates, and with the problem of shooting accurately from one mount to another your best chance of a hit is to aim at the middle of the body…”

  “Which is why the breastplate is there,” Gedric said, nodding. “Well, we’ll just have to make do as best we can for the nonce. At least they aren’t armoring their mounts, and a ball from a carbine will do for one a’ them just fine.”

  The dwarf nodded agreement, but he was already wondering what the next unanticipated problem would be….

  Engvyr sat back from his desk and rubbed his eyes, fighting against the growing headache. His body ached from the cavalry engagement the day before, and his left shoulder was stiff and sore. The days were growing longer as winter turned to spring and reports from
the North arrived almost daily. As it turned out, he was supposed to have been receiving copies of those reports all winter, and when the oversight was realized he was deluged with the work of months in one fell swoop. He’d spent nigh every moment of the last week at this desk—every moment not devoted to practicing cavalry skills anyway. Thank the Lord and Lady for that… Without that daily activity I’d have turned into a potato by now.

  He stretched to ease the kinks in his shoulders and frowned. The news from the north was about what you’d expect and far from good. Call it what you will we’re still at war, he reminded himself. True as that was it was also a war unlike any the dwarves had fought before. Normally when the leaders of one of the nearby nations had decided to have a go with them it was a simple enough matter. The dwarves dealt with the military forces as needed while doing their best to minimize damage to the largely innocent population. They did not loot or plunder as they had in ancient times; they’d found that inspired resentment on the part of their enemy’s general populace and personalized the conflict, which was a bad thing in the long-term. Sooner or later their enemies would realize that they couldn’t defeat the dwarves or that doing so would be ruinously expensive, and they negotiated a cease-fire or surrender.

  But in this conflict the people were every bit as much their enemies as their leaders were; they were adherents to a fanatical religion that told them keeping the braell as slaves was their god’s will. Negotiation or surrender were not things they were likely to offer. This was further complicated by the fact that the baasgarta had tens of thousands of potential hostages in the braell, their dwarven slaves. Curiously, this possibility did not seem to have occurred to them. Thank the Lord and Lady for small favors, he thought. If they ever did think of it things could get very messy indeed, given that the entire war had been launched to free the braell from captivity.

  Word of the fall of the baasgarta Capitol had spread among them across the winter. Scouts had found most of the goblins had fled with their slaves. Others had simply killed their slaves and made suicidal attacks on the dwarven forces. Almost none surrendered quietly. Engvyr was horrified by the growing tallies of the dead, both braell and baasgarta, in the goblin’s former country. He had seen for himself the lengths that their fanaticism drove them to before being sent back to his estate at Eastgrove, so with regard to the baasgarta, his sympathy was tempered by a sense of justice.

  Then there were the reports of the braell that had already been freed by the army. There was no universal method for dealing with them and the issues were complicated. The braell as a whole were several inches shorter than their cousins in the south, likely due to the poor quality and meager quantities of food. At roughly thirteen years of age—sometimes as late as fifteen—the braell “coming of age” was marked by tattoos of ownership on the left cheek and the back of the right shoulder. Worse yet, every adult braell was crippled by a deliberate ritual injury to the great tendon of the right leg to hinder escape. All of these elements distinguished them from the southern dwarves, and this made it difficult for some to treat them as equals.

  Which is a whole other crock of worms, he thought. The braell did not even possess the concept of equality, let alone freedom. All of their lives they had been told that the world was limited to their various workplaces and that they deserved their lot because they were doing penance for sins against God in their past lives. The idea that there was a whole broad world beyond those constraints, that the religion that they were raised with from birth was false and that they could be masters of their own destiny, was problematic. According to the reports that Engvyr was reading now, a small percentage of them simply couldn’t handle it and were insisting on remaining in their condition of slavery, which meant the army had to devote logistics to taking care of them.

  Engvyr’s headache was winning, and he pushed back from his desk and went to see about a little willow-bark tea….

  Chapter Four

  “With the onset of war against the baasgarta and the North, the patterns of trade shifted, and a canny dwarf that saw the way of things stood to make a good bit of coin. That’s not to say that there weren’t risks involved… “

  From the Diaries of Engvyr Gunnarson

  Hannes Guttmann blinked blearily as he woke to the sound of someone knocking at his door. Glancing at the small clock built into the shelf above his bed, barely readable in the pre-dawn light, he could see that it was well before time for him to rise and start his day.

  “I hear you!” he bellowed in response to the insistent knocking. Rolling from the narrow bunk he padded across the carpeted floor on bare feet, opened the small trap in the door and peered out into the dimness. Korrel, one of the guards, was standing at the foot of the steps looking a bit nervous.

  “Well, what is it?” Hannes demanded.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir, but two Rangers have just come into camp.”

  Hannes snorted impatiently. “So? Give ‘em some coffee and a place by the fire and put some food on for ‘em.”

  Korrel looked unhappy. “Of course sir, done and done. But I really think that you need to talk to these boys; they come in on foot and seem a bit worse for wear.”

  Hannes swore quietly to himself. He’d once seen a ranger mount his pony to cross a street; if they were dismounted this far along the road from civilization…. It surely doesn’t mean something good, he thought.

  “Right enough,” he said, “I’ll be along promptly”

  The guard nodded and turned to go as Hannes slammed the trap. He crossed the wagon’s interior to the tiny wardrobe and began to dress. Having his own wagon in the caravan was a luxury and cut into profits a bit, but they were his profits after all. Besides, Hannes had been plying the roads in and around Dvargatil Baeg for a century and a half and reckoned he was entitled to a bit of luxury at this point.

  Donning a long woolen greatcote against the early-morning chill he belted on his sax-knife and ammunition pouch, then took down his rifle from its hooks above the door. The weapon was his pride and joy, a 16-Bore/300 made by Ulfbehrt & Bueller in Ironhame. The beautifully crafted rifle was a symbol, a message to one and all that it’s bearer had ‘made it’ in the world. It was a testament to his taste and wealth, but Hannes cared little for that. In reality, he had bought the rifle decades before because it was the absolute best that he could afford. If it also impressed folks and caused the rich and powerful to take him more seriously, well, that was merely a fringe-benefit.

  Hannes was no stranger to weapons of all kinds. A man that made his living on the road had best be prepared to see to his own defense. More than that, however, for Hannes, weapons had marked the beginning of adult life. Eager to escape his childhood home among the crowded streets, poverty, and crime of Ironhame’s Upper Ward, he’d enlisted as soon as the army would have him. He spent five decades in the mounted infantry before transferring to the 1st Rifles for another decade-long hitch. His military experience was evident in both the cleanliness and order of the camp—encircled neatly by laagered wagons—and in the discipline of his guards and drovers.

  The two Rangers were huddled near the fire where the cook was already laying out breakfast for the caravan. They were wolfing down reheated stew from the previous night, and they did indeed look like they had been through the wringer. One was sporting a black eye that was nearly swollen shut. Blood speckled their torn clothes and their boots were scuffed by hard travel. The older of the two had a hasty bandage wrapped around his thigh.

  Hannes gestured to the guard accompanying him and said, “Get Gert over here to see to this man’s leg.”

  “One step ahead of ya’, chief,” Korrel reported, “I woke her before you and she’s on her way.”

  Even as Hannes settled himself by the fire, the woman bustled up, her simples-bag in one hand and crossbow in the other. Gertrune was one of the caravan-guards that also doubled as their medic. The Ranger lifted his bowl and continued eating as she unwrapped the bandage and clucked over the wound, t
hen dug into her bag.

  “Hannes Gutmann, master of this caravan,” he said, “You boys look to have trouble on your back-trail. Any chance that trouble is headed our way?”

  “Rangers Horrek and Garrel,” the injured one said as Gert began to cut away his pants to expose the injury. “I believe we’re clear of it, but it might pay to keep your eyes open.”

  Hannes gave Korrel a look and the younger dwarf nodded and went to alert the other guards.

  Turning back to the ranger the caravan-master said, “Best you tell me about it, then.”

  The ranger nodded and explained. “Were up in the north-country and cut across the trail of some baasgarta herding a group of braell into the hills. We took out after them, but before too long we found the baasgarta dead and the braell gone, taken away southwest. By the tracks it looked to be afmaeltinn, and them headed for the coast with the braell.”

  Hannes frowned. The Tall Folk had stayed out of the recent war and as a rule left the dwarves to themselves. What a group of them was doing this far inland was a question, and what they intended to do with the braell slaves was another. Though only recently found, the braell were dwarves, and their people took a dim view of them being enslaved. The war with the baasgarta had in fact kicked off full-force when it was discovered that the goblin tribe had been keeping dwarven slaves for centuries.

  He almost asked what the afmaeltinn would possibly do with the braell, but the answer was obvious, and wars had been fought over it. Every now and again down the years one group or another of the Tall Folk took it into their heads to enslave dwarves to work their mines or foundries. The fact that that particular decision always proved to be a lethal mistake didn’t seem to prevent them from trying it again.

  “Naturally we followed them,” the ranger continued, wincing as the woman cleaned out the nasty slash on his leg, “and about a day south of here they jumped us. We’d be lying cold on the ground if’n they hadn’t tried to take us alive. As it was, we managed to fight clear, but lost our ponies and gear in the process. They chased us for a while, but come full dark they gave it up and we lit out for the Taerneal Road hoping to run into the Mountain Guard or some folks like you.”