Lord of the North

by Michael Tinker Pearce

  ***

  Engvyr, Albrekk, and the others had shifted from their temporary headquarters back to the Council chambers. Word had come of the liberation and flight of the braell, and now the baasgarta were gathering in force behind the line of destruction across the great avenue in the north of the city. Apparently, they weren’t pleased with us taking away our people, Engvyr thought. It seemed the stalemate was coming to an end, and Engvyr had little confidence in their defenses if it came to a fight at the barricades.

  A steady stream of refugees was flowing south from the city now. Events of the past day had convinced most of the residents that it was time to move out while they could, and he thought that wise of them. Even though half the enemy force had been peeled drawn away, the baasgarta within the walls still outnumbered the defenders five to one. The standoff at the harbor continued, the Stepchildren unable to come ashore and the combined force of dwarves and city watch unable to attack for fear their enemy would start killing their hostages.

  “M’Lords?”

  He and Albrekk looked up from their discussion to see the head of the city’s battlemages. The Council Chairman gestured, and the mage spoke.

  “Something is happening among the ships at the harbor.”

  Albrekk said sharply, “Something? What sort of something?”

  The mage looked uncomfortable. “We don’t know exactly. We’re not familiar with the sort of spell but it seems to be a major Working. Whatever it is, if they are putting this much effort into it, we’re not going to like the results.”

  Albrekk frowned. “Can you interfere? Disrupt the working?”

  He shook his head. “That’s always a tricky business, and given our unfamiliarity with the magics involved…”

  The Mage’s head suddenly swiveled to the north, as did the head of every other mage in the room. Engvyr felt the ground shake, then there was a flash like lightning through the high windows of the chamber. Conversation stilled, and then glass was blown into the room by an enormous crash like thunder. The council members and officers ducked their heads and tried to shield themselves from the falling shards.

  “What the bloody hell…?” Albrekk exclaimed before a cacophony of excited voices filled the chamber. He gestured for the others and strode out of the room. Engvyr followed him down the hall and around the corner to a high balcony with a northern view. A mushroom cloud of smoke, dust, and fire was rising into the sky over the gap in the hills where the braell had fled. The dwarf pulled his glass from its case and looked toward the distant cataclysm. Individuals couldn’t be made out at that distance and the rolling terrain concealed much, but the baasgarta a few hundred paces from the gap appeared to be running. There was no visible movement closer to the hills.

  “By all the gods!” breathed the mage. “Dwarven stone magic and something else, but the power! I’ve never felt anything like it!”

  Ageyra!

  Engvyr’s face set as he realized the implications. He was no mage, but he was familiar with battlemages and their Workings. Harnessing that much power could not be survived. Seeing his expression Albrekk laid a hand on his shoulder; he knew who had been sent with the rifle company. “I’m sorry, your excellency. She was your friend?”

  “Yes,” he managed.

  “One thing’s for certain,” the mage said, and gestured to the distant destruction. “The baasgarta won’t be following them through that anytime soon!”

  Engvyr gave himself a mental shake. There was time to mourn later, but for now they had problems nearer to hand…

  Chapter Thirty Three

  “In battle, knowing what your enemy wants can be a great advantage— especially if you’re able to prevent them from getting it. But if they are too long denied one objective, they may set their sights on another…”

  From the Diaries of Engvyr Gunnarson

  “Sergeant Fregga!”

  She turned at the shout and the trooper pointed up the street to where a pony was rapidly approaching. The sounds of fighting from the northern parts of the city had died down hours ago, and the situation at the docks had remained static. They watch us, and we watch them watch us, she thought. As entertainment goes, it’s a bit lacking. The most excitement they’d had in the past several days was when the envoy to the city council—a chillingly beautiful woman who nobody felt inclined to cross—had requested safe passage to the Council House. She had not returned.

  Earlier that day, Gedren, the battlemage who relieved Ageyra, had said there was a major working in progress aboard the Stepchildren’s vessels. Unfortunately, he and the rest of the mages had been unable to determine its nature. From the approaching messenger’s haste, however, it now appeared that something might be in the offing. She moved to meet the rider.

  BOOM!

  What in the Maker’s name …? Fregga tensed, but then relaxed fractionally, as the explosion’s echoes placed it at some distance. Still, it was very loud. She guessed it was north of the city, but her view in that direction was blocked by the nearby waterfront warehouses. The rider had stopped and wheeled his pony to look towards the sound, but he could see no more than Fregga, so he turned his mount, crossed the paces that separated them, and touched the rim of his helmet in salute.

  “Sergeant Fregga?” At her nod he continued. “The baasgarta are massing within the city for an attack. If you cannot hold this position—and I can’t see how you could, you are ordered to retreat south to the nearest location that you can establish a reasonable defense. I have written orders for the watch’s lieutenant…?”

  She gestured to the lieutenant, and said “Understood. I don’t suppose you have any idea what that explosion was?”

  “Sorry sergeant, hopefully it was bad news for the baasgarta but I’ve no idea. By your leave?” She waved him on about his business and called her troops to formation. Looking south along the curve of the harbor she wondered where or if they might establish a defense against the goblins with a company of guards and a platoon of dwarves. Might be a short fight, she thought, but it won’t be boring…

  ***

  “Here they come!” The shout came a mere instant before the order to fire. Bulewef shot over the barricade and ducked to reload as the next rank moved up and fired. After they and those behind them had loosed their shots he stood, picked a target and fired again. While he reloaded he processed what he had seen. The baasgarta were trying to pick their way across the rubble-choked river that the other side of the broad avenue had become. Crossbowmen were firing from the windows of some of the structures still standing. The enemy were falling in droves with each volley, but came on nonetheless, heedless of their own casualties.

  Bulewef’s platoon was manning a makeshift barrier between a bake-shop and a hatter’s. He rose, fired, and reloaded like an automaton in a place somewhere beyond exhaustion and despair. Up and down the street dwarves, the watch, and townspeople fired whatever weapons they had or simply hurled cobbles at the approaching enemy. All too soon the water had become choked with so many bodies that the enemy was having an easier time of it. They just keep coming, he thought. Just like before.

  Here though, they had no high stone wall—just a pair of wagons tipped onto their sides, a collection of hastily tied boards and beams, barrels for a catwalk behind, and the last of their caltrops scattered in the street before them. Despite the murderous fire the baasgarta crossed the broad avenue in moments, and began chopping at the barrier with hand axes, bills and swords. Bulewef thrust his bayonet through a gap and it came back bloody. He heard the orders for the other squads to fall back by ranks. Bullets whizzed overhead, with a slug occasionally striking just above his helmet. He thrust through another gap. The goblins were no longer chopping at the barricade; the press of their comrades coming up behind them was pushing them against the defensive bulwark so hard that it began to scrape backward across the cobbles.

  He wanted to bolt, get back into ranks and get the hell out of there but he couldn’t. The baasgarta were coming over the barrier n
ow, and if his platoon let up on their fire to allow him escape they would be overwhelmed. An enemy threw a leg over, practically on top of him. He stabbed upward, burying his bayonet in the goblin’s groin just before a bullet hammered the creature back. He realized that the wagon-bed protecting him was rocking. There were goblins over the barricade and charging the retreating platoon. Somehow, they had overlooked him, being totally focused on closing with the dwarves that were killing them. He repaid their carelessness by putting a ball between a baasgarta’s shoulder blades.

  There was a crash behind him and he tried to turn but something slammed into his head hard enough to break the chin-strap of his kettle helmet and send it skittering down the ally. Light burst behind his eyes as the collapsing barricade buried everything and blackness took him.

  ***

  A lieutenant of the city watch entered the council chamber, approached to confer briefly with the Captain, and then departed. Garvin turned to Albrekk and Engvyr, “The baasgarta have staged a breakout. They overwhelmed the barricades in minutes. Our forces are making a fighting withdrawal through the city. We’ve got a second line of defense, but no reason to believe it will last any longer than the first. We’re moving as many as we can into the keep and courts here—and we’re still evacuating people out the southern gates of the city, of course—but this house is going to get very crowded. I don’t know if we can stand a siege long enough for M’lord Engvyr’s regiments to arrive. ”

  Engvyr frowned. Albrekk said, “I assume the Council members will be moving their families in as well?”

  The captain nodded. “That should give us around a thousand more fighters from their household troops. It’s not a lot, but every bit helps.”

  “If the idiots don’t leave them to try to hold their estates,” Albrekk muttered.

  That would be suicide, of course. If we couldn’t hold the city walls why would they think they could defend their garden walls? Engvyr thought. Still, the members of the Taerneal High Council had not exactly impressed him with their intelligence. If they had any sense we wouldn’t be here…

  If the short-sighted Chairman and his cronies, who we will be dealing with if we survive this mess, hadn’t looked to personal gain above the welfare—not to mention the survival—of their city and people, his men wouldn’t be getting cut apart in the streets. Hundreds dead and more falling every minute, and it might yet all be for nothing. He gave himself a moment to compose himself. This is a well-laid plan; if the idiots of this city hadn’t given in, there doubtless would have been another back up plan that would have been at least as destructive.

  “You have the plans of this council house? Let’s have a look and see what we might manage in the way of defense,” Engvyr said.

  Plans were fetched and rolled out and they began to go over them. Reports on supplies were requested, obtained and examined. Word came that the second line of barricades had fallen, though they had held out longer than the first. The city watch, militia, and dwarves were fighting a brutal retreat to the council house. Lord and Lady only knew how many would be left by the time they slammed the gates in the baasgarta’s faces.

  “Well,” Engvyr said finally. “We’re not so badly off as I had feared; your masons did a good job on this place. If the Baasgarta force stays split between the city and the hills we might hold them for a week, but depending on what your people bring with them, food will be a problem after the third day.”

  Albrekk nodded absently, his eyes focused on the distance as he ran through the figures in his head. “Disease and sanitation will also be issues, but that’s the nature of a siege, isn’t it? We’ll be lucky if we have enough people left to rebuild. If we even survive, of course.”

  Engvyr nodded, “Given your port’s importance to our efforts in the north, I think it’s safe to say that His Majesty is likely to extend aid, but we can’t provide you with more citizens. The trick is going to be to last long enough to need them.”

  “Yes, that is the trick, isn’t it? Let us hope we have the wherewithal to pull it off.”

  Chapter Thirty Four

  “At Taerneal the baasgarta wanted the braell, so we took the braell away. But they knew that we wanted the city too…”

  From the Diaries of Engvyr Gunnarson

  Fregga ducked as a smashed ruin that had been a guardsman flew at her head. “1st Squad,” she bellowed, “Take that big bastard down now!”

  She pointed at the giant—a juutahn—as the armored behemoth swept his enormous mace in another blow that smashed a guardsman’s shield, broke his arm and maybe his shoulder too, and sent him stumbling into his comrades. The creature was already peppered with arrows, and bright streaks of lead on his armor showed where bullets had skidded off rather than penetrating.

  As soon as they had begun the retreat the half-dozen juutahn had strode forth from the Stepchildren’s barricades on the docks and come after them. Heavily armored and twice the height of the afmaeltinn they pursued. The other minions stayed well back to keep clear of the creatures great, looping swings. The giants’ attacks were not fast, but the only defense against their blows was to dodge them. Sooner or later they caught the luckless among the soldiers, and every blow that landed killed or maimed regardless of their armor.

  The dwarves had been getting the better of it so far; with the watch between them and the juutahn they had killed one giant by shooting him through the visor. The slugs had not penetrated, but enough lead had splashed through to blind the creature. It had blundered into one of its fellows, who had impatiently knocked it away and into the harbor. Fregga presumed that it had drowned under the weight of its armor; they had not seen it since.

  At her command the squad leader shouted directions and ten dwarves turned and fired over the heads of the city watch. Infantry slug-guns are not precision weapons, and their target was moving, but at a mere ten paces distant, a half-dozen of the 16-bore slugs struck the creatures visor. It staggered, then threw back its head and screamed in rage at . As it did so, a watchman’s crossbow quarrel entered the gap below its helmet and buried itself to the fletching in the underside of the creature’s chin. It dropped the great mace to claw at its helmet, and as it did so an afmaeltinn stepped forward, slipped his spearpoint under the creature’s fald and rammed the weapon’s long, sharp blade into its groin. It screamed again, and not just in rage this time. It backhanded the soldier with an armored gauntlet. He was knocked aside but kept hold of the spear, and the keen blade sliced its way free, spilling a shower of dark fluids onto the cobbles. The creature tried to lunge after him but slipped in its own blood and went to one knee. The fighter, recovering his balance, rammed the spear through the eye-slit of the monster’s visor, straight into its brain. The creature stiffened and the man yanked the weapon clear.

  As he did, another juutahn, came forward, stove in the man’s breastplate and sent his body crashing into the wall of a nearby warehouse.

  “That’s it, boys! Take it to them, and Maker take them all,” Fregga shouted. Heartened by the example of the heroic watchman others swarmed forward latching onto the creature’s arm as its weapon swung past. Heedless of them it killed another with a backswing. The weight of the soldiers overbalanced it, causing it to turn and a dwarf put a slug, point-blank, through the mailed back of its knee. As it crumpled, more of the defenders piled on and one of them rammed his seax under the edge of the giant’s helmet. It went limp and collapsed under their weight.

  The remaining juutahn backed up in a hail of bullets and quarrels, confused and dismayed at the sudden loss of two more of their number. The afmaeltinn and dwarven soldiers howled in triumph and one of the giant’s looked back to the Stepchildren’s troops behind him. As if that were the signal, their ranks parted and the doglike transformed braell berserkers from the ship’s holds poured between them towards the retreating soldiers.

  Well then, Fregga thought as she grabbed a fallen watchman’s spear, I did say it wouldn’t be boring…

  ***

 
Albrekk, Engvyr, and Captain Gevrell had retreated to the council chairman’s office to consult.

  “The simple fact is, we’re losing,” the captain said. “The wall has fallen, we’ve lost control of the city, and we’re losing soldiers like water poured from a bucket. I’ve ordered a general retreat, and such of our forces as still survive are concentrating here and on the south wall, preparing for a siege. Which we may or may not be able to survive until dwarven regiments arrive.”

  Engvyr reluctantly agreed. Even when they arrived, they would still be heavily outnumbered, not merely in total number of baasgarta but either the force in the hills or the goblins within the city. Communication with the company of dwarves guarding the braell was completely cut off. All they knew was that after the explosion, the enemy in the field did not appear to have forced a path through the gap. He was reasonably confident that those baasgarta could be taken if they didn’t reunite with the ones in the city. But retaking Taerneal might be beyond hope.

  “How many men do we have in the council house?” Albrekk asked.

  “So far? Including the dwarves and militia, about three thousand. Those numbers are likely to swell to about five thousand by the time we’re surrounded.”

  “Against thirty to forty thousand baasgarta,” Albrekk said flatly.

  So few, Engvyr thought. The 12th Infantry has been decimated in their first action, to the point that the unit will need to be reformed again, if any of us survive. The truth was, he could not see a path that led to survival, let alone to victory. He felt a moment of despair, but suppressed it savagely. There was too much at stake. Likewise, he refused to blame himself. Yes, he was responsible, but looking back over the events, he could not see what he might have done differently. People that have never held real power look upon it as a source of freedom. In truth, he was so hemmed about by policy, duty, tradition, and his own sense of right that he was nearly as much a slave as the braell. At every step he had been forced to react as he had, not merely by the responsibilities of his office, but by who and what he was. Well it is as it is, he thought. If history judges me harshly, there’s little I can do about it. It’s not like I’ll be around to bear the weight of that judgement anyway.