by RW Krpoun
"And they do," the Seeress nodded. "Although generally their areas of acquisition are broader than I suggested. Understand that their system is intended more for a balance of power within factions than for efficiency."
"Now, when a Direthrell is born it is taken from its mother and placed in a communal nursery; from there it will go to an infant dorm until it is at a level of development equal to a Human at age six. It is then assigned to a school dorm where it will receive a basic education, which will include weapons handling and warcraft. When it enters the equivalent of its teen years, it is assigned to an academy based on its potential. During its academy training it is indoctrinated into the bloc which it will serve. Thus the Dark Threll have no family life, no personal lineages, and no barriers to gender; they spring from a universal background, have no loyalties save that to self, bloc, and race, and are utterly ruthless. Personal ambition and advancement of the race are the two constants of a Direthrell upbringing."
"Keep in mind that Direthrell communities are made up of only a small percentage of Dark Threll and a majority of other races. Firstly, there are the Nepas, halfbreeds with Direthrell blood who are born and trained into the Direthrell service just as are the full-bloods; secondly are Thanes, voluntary servants of the Direthrell, commonly Black Dwarves or half-Orcs; thirdly there are the Direbreed; fourthly are vassals, usually Goblins; fifth, and last, are the slaves, made up of every race except Direthrell themselves."
"Their military reflects this, as units have type names to reflect their composition. Vassal troops fight in their national or racial structures and under their own officers, although overall command would be under the Dark Threll, Mera are units made up entirely of Direthrell, Remur are units made up of Nepas and Thane troops, and Envear are made up of Direbreed with Temple Guard officers."
"A note on the non-Direthrell: each type, Nepas, Thane, and Direbreed, has a maximum rank it can achieve. There are exceptions but these are very rare. Just as significantly, only Direthrell will be allowed to become Champions, or Anlarc as they call them."
"In summary, the Direthrell are very structured, far more so than any other dark race. Security is a mania for them, which is wise considering that they are a minority in their own lands. We must be doubly alert when dealing with them or their agents."
Bridget briefed them next on the physical defenses of Alantarn. In concise terms, using maps captured at Baydar’s Way to illustrate the defenses, she carefully noted the salient features of the massive fortress.
For a moment the assembly was silent, awed by the strength of the hold, until Kroh made a derisive noise around his cigar. "Walls and war engines will not keep us out, by the Stone! We'll be in amongst them before they know what's what!"
"Stealth is our best weapon," Durek agreed. "Stealth and its cousin, deception."
"What about the Gates?" Maxmillian ventured. "I know they must have an Achgabon there to sense out Gate openings, but do they have ways to detect the unopened egran we’ll be carrying?"
"Yes and no," Henri stood. "Excuse me, Bridget. Yes, at all passages through the walls and major defense points they use enchanted staves to detect if the materials for a Gate are in a cargo. We are avoiding that by covering the components of the Gates in a paste of pure indigo andern, which will hide it from the staves."
"Seems awful easy to beat their staves," Roger pointed out.
"Not really: it takes two pounds of the second-best grade of andern to cloak four Gate egran. Who would pay that price to mount a raid?"
"Us, you damned fool," Kroh burst out, having never been adept at irony.
"Most wouldn't," Henri continued as Starr shushed the Dwarf. "Remember, you aren't going to take a fortress like this with Gates. Most importantly, at the entrances to the area devoted to the anverax (known as the Site) all packages are physically searched and Watchers are on station to take readings on all non-Direthrell visitors, which is why we won't even try to get near that area; our ambition lies in the Inner Keep."
Arian replaced the wizard. "The plan ahead is simple, if dangerous. After careful study of the journal we captured, which is full of terrible secrets of the Direthrell infighting, we chose a suitable person to contact, one who is powerful, ambitious, and not too bright. At dawn Rolf and Dmitri will ride ahead; by pressing hard, they will be at the south Road-fort of the Outer Line by nightfall. They bear a sealed letter to this Era, or Lord, explaining that we are Golden Serpent merchants with goods and andern to sell, and more besides. We will include the details of a half-dozen secrets that he knows the truth of, and a half-dozen more that should interest him. He is to get us into the Inner Keep to negotiate the terms for the entire journal; once there, we survey the grounds, adjust our plans, and act, all done as quickly as we can. At midnight tomorrow the Felher will stand to their Gates, and the next midnight will see us in Direthrell guest quarters. The Eight willing, we'll act before too many more midnights pass."
Durek sat apart, his pipe a blazing pit; Rolf and Kroh played an endless series of draughts matches, Starr seated between them. Bridget, Henri, and Maxmillian diced for coppers and spoke of simple things while Roger, by his own choice, sat apart. Elonia pursued her trade as a Seer for a while, and then joined the dice game with nothing to report. Janna caused a bit of a sensation by gathering up hers and Arian's bedrolls and then leading the monk off into the dark.
"So now it comes into the open," Bridget murmured, half to herself.
"What does?" Kroh asked, flicking ash from the stub of his cigar.
"A bit abrupt, but events have a way for forcing things to that point," Starr offered.
"What things?" Kroh scowled. "What events?"
"As if it had been much of a secret," Elonia shrugged, rattling the dice cup. The other two women nodded.
"WHAT WAS A SECRET?" Kroh bellowed. "WHAT IS GOING..." Starr hastened to quiet the Dwarf, then whispered in his ear.
"Oh, that," the Waybrother muttered, frowning. He contemplated the news for a moment, then shrugged. "Is it my turn?" he enquired of Rolf.
There was a painful desire to avoid sleep, as if the deadly business of the days to come could be held off by staying awake. But events could not be forestalled, and one by one they drifted to their bedrolls as the fire died to banked coals, until only the Captain remained, staring into the fiery bowl of his pipe.
It was not the coming battle itself that kept him awake, but the fears for his Company that nagged at him. The Badgers here represented less than a third of the Company in numbers, but they were its heart in every sense; of the six who had formed the Company with pooled gold over eight years ago, three were here, one was recovering from severe wounds, and two were dead. The surviving veterans of the great battle in the Underdeeps of Gradrek Heleth were all present, as were those who had fought at the Orc fort. Every Badger here save Maxmillian and Starr was a veteran, and other than the Historian a picked member of the inner circle. Suffer too many losses in the days to come, and the Badgers would be years recovering; lose this troop and the Badgers would fade away without the White Necromancer lifting a finger. Let even one fall and he would lose a comrade closer than a sibling.
As the afternoon of the next day eased towards evening they entered the Far Zone, a twenty-mile-wide belt marked by tall poles bearing clusters of skulls and placards bearing warnings in a dozen languages. Soon afterwards they saw their first scouts, tribal Goblin mercenaries mounted on wolves; the Goblins' job was merely to patrol and scout, not engage, and they stayed well out of bowshot. The Badgers knew that by staying on the road they should be safe as the Direthrell forbade banditry within their realm, and none but the greatest fool would violate such an edict.
The Badgers traveled at a measured pace, on what the Direthrell called the South Road (Alantarn being the hub of four roads, each at a primary compass point), alert for trouble. Traffic was almost nonexistent: once they passed a messenger trotting southward on a fast horse, a remount trailing on a lead line, and late in the day they en
countered a pair of wagons, driven and escorted by heavily armed men who bore no insignia and showed no interest in exchanging greetings, but pushed on at a brisk rate, hands close to weapons and ignoring the stares of the Badgers. Janna and Arian, Maxmillian noted, seemed to be carefully marking the traveler’s features in their minds in case of a future encounter.
Minor encounters, but they increased the Badger's faith in their disguises. Besides the cultist gear and replacing their magical arms for ordinary, they had gone to other lengths to change their appearances. Durek had reddened his beard and hair with a dye, Kroh wore gloves to hide his tattooed hands, Henri had shaved off his mustache when they had left the Border Realms to allow his upper lip to darken, Starr wore a studded leather jack, steel cap, a pair of long daggers, and a short bow, the quiver adjusted for a right-handed use, and Elonia had a studded jack, steel cap, short sword, dagger, and buckler, with a crossbow at her saddle.
Their night camp was a subdued one; the danger of spying Goblins meant that no conversation out of cult character could be held, which effectively killed all speech. They turned in early, and rose before the first graying of the east.
Janna slouched in her saddle, her right resting casually on a brace of throwing axes hanging from her saddle horn, watching the country pass by from hooded eyes. To her knowledge she was to be the first Silver Eagle to ever willingly enter Alantarn; she also planned to be the first to leave it alive. Her veteran’s senses caught the sounds of a Goblin wolf-rider patrol long before it was in sight, and her lip curled in an unconscious sneer at the sight of the pony-sized wolf-mounts, products of andern-altered breeding programs centuries past. No true wolves, these, but saddle-broken carnivores who lacked a wolf’s keen senses and field cunning. Their riders, brown-skinned tribal Goblins, were far better armed and armored than any other Goblins she had ever seen, clad in well-made scale armor jacks, with wood and iron shields, iron caps, and short swords-apparently Direthrell service paid well. The riders studied the Badgers with incurious eyes as the two groups passed each other.
She studied the defenses as they appeared with a warrior’s eye and a professional’s attention to detail, aided by Bridget’s exhaustive briefings. By mid-morning they reached the Outer Line, which was a ring of forts ten miles out from Alantarn, each fort roughly two miles apart, depending upon the terrain; the Outer Line was intended to delay an attacking army and to provide bases from which forces could emerge to harry the attacker’s rear. One such fort was visible from their road: a tall glazed-brick tower, wide at the base and tapering to half the width at the top encircled by both a wall and ditch. The garrison was an Arm of the Dark One, Direbreed led by a Temple officer; a catapult was mounted on the fort’s roof, and two timber towers supported ballista.
The fort was a quarter-mile from the road; the scarred Wolf studied the twisted Direbreed patrolling the archer's walk on the wall and shook her head-it was strange to ride past such horrors without a blade being lifted. Even stranger still was the unique Direthrell fortifications: the outer wall, which had been ‘built’ by raising carved posts where the wall was to be, each post the height of the wall and enchanted to resist fire. An archer’s catwalk and thick hawsers linked each post, and a live captive was then hung from each pole to die of exposure. The posts and the hawsers supported the growth of losala, a tough growth whose stiff brown vines were easily four inches thick, fast-growing, and prone to climbing; the thick, intertwined mass of losala was pruned, guided, and trimmed until it was the shape desired, in this case a wall. The losala provided the base for an outer covering of losalet, barrier-vines whose green-black strands were two inches thick, much more flexible, and liberally studded with thorns that reached up to three inches in length; the losalet served to hinder anyone trying to climb the wall. The ditch and the space between the ditch and the wall was covered in ikad vines, thick mats of green ground-hugging vines whose half-inch thick strands sprouted two-inch thorns and served as an impediment to attacker’s feet. An ordinary stake belt was planted in front of the ditch.
The thorn-wall was a solid mass when viewed from a distance, easily two feet thick and as solid as a log palisade with a vastly smaller danger from fire. The springy weave of vines would resist stone-thrower damage better than a stone wall, although there was always the danger of a roofed siege tower getting adjacent to the wall and allowing axe-men to chop through the vines. There were weaknesses to every sort of fortification, the Silver Eagle reminded herself, but the Direthrell’s works were surely the most inexpensive.
Shortly after they passed the fort their road crossed the Line itself, indicated by a Road-fort, one of which corked each of the four road entrances in the Outer Line. The south Road-fort was much larger than the line forts, located a hundred paces off the road to the west; it had the same wall, ditch, and stake belt, but the wall was square, with a tall glazed-brick fighting tower in each corner, and it enclosed a big glazed-brick building whose four corners were fighting towers as well, each topped with a potent war engine. By the road a pole shed provided shelter for a number of tables bearing ledgers and boxes; armed warriors were to hand to ensure that all travelers stopped. Across the road, on the west side, was a campground as no traveler was allowed to leave the Outer Line unless they had enough time to reach the fortress well before dark.
Dmitri and Rolf rode out to meet the Badgers. The burly serjeant reined in alongside Maxmillian, who was once again acting as Tradesmaster Marex, while Rolf rode back, exchanging greetings and passing on the news regarding their mission.
"We got a message by rider two hours ago: Era Ludio, of one of the 'Mana, was very interested. The messenger spent some time at that open shed arranging our clearance. We're in."
Maxmillian nodded and motioned for the little caravan to pull aside while he and Dmitri rode over to the shed. The guards were a section of twelve, Remur-type, he reminded himself from his briefings, made up of Thanes, half-Orcs and Men to be specific, their leader a Human with the rank of Dora. He also noted that they were well-fed, disciplined, and heavily armed, wearing mail tunics and carrying the long, narrow-bladed Direthrell swords, spears, and good strong shields.
In the shed were a number of slave clerks, mostly Human, and two officers, one an obvious Nepas with Human blood, the other a Direthrell. It was the first Dark Threll that he had ever seen, and he found it hard not to stare. In appearance, the male Threll was tall, well over six and a half feet, with skin that would have been pale but for the effects of plenty of outdoor activity. His hair, worn in kind of a horsetail plume on the back of the head, was so blond as to be virtually white; his eyes, looking out at the world above narrow, chiseled features, were the color of glacier ice and just as warm. He was thicker in muscle and bone than the forest Threll that the scholar had seen in the Empire but possessing, even sitting, the same flowing grace and precision of movement. The Direthrell was dressed in a burgundy tunic and trousers of a military cut, with a long, narrow-bladed sword at his hip and a row of badges at his center chest. The latter consisted of a round badge displaying a red and black fortress on a blue background, marking the wearer as one stationed in Alantarn, and beside it was a triangular black pin split by a scarlet lightning bolt, the insignia of a member of the Outer Line garrison; the other two badges were honors or assignment insignia that had not been covered in any of their briefings.
"Good day to you, Lord," Maxmillian began in Pradian. "Ah, I see I am fortunate enough to have chosen a language that you grace with your education. I am Marex, Tradesmaster of the Third Green Den of the Inner Circle, here with a cargo of many goods, including andern. "
The Direthrell stared at him with a gaze that seemed to rip rather than observe. "You will address me as Doralon," he tapped a short, ornately carved baton lying on the table before him. "For that is my rank. Do you have a manifest of your goods? Good. Are there any in your party who is not in your service? Do you bear any arms other than those you carry on your person for defense? Are all in your party in go
od health and free of disease? Very well, go with the Dora of the duty section while he inspects your cargo."
The human officer made a rather simple inspection, being more interested in the arms and armor of the individual Badgers than in the cargo.
The Doralon received the Human's report in a language unknown to Maxmillian but which he guessed to be Nuadh, the Direthrell tongue, then turned to the 'Tradesmaster'. "All is in order. Your cargo is expected so you are to be allowed immediate passage. This is your pass: it is called a peta, and you must show it to any who stop you. This letter is to be given to the watch officer you meet at the Inner Line, do not tamper with the seal, do not stray from the road under any circumstances, halt when ordered to, give way to all military traffic, and have no contact with slaves unless directed to by their overseer. Do you understand?"
The peta was a fired clay disk six inches across; its surface bore a seal and a number. Maxmillian thanked him and returned to the main body, glad to have passed the first test.
Leaving the Road-fort, the Badgers entered the Green Zone, the eight-mile wide belt of land used for farming between in the Outer and Inner Lines. The Zone was not very green at this time of year and largely deserted; the Badgers saw a few slave work parties in the fields, and twice had to show their peta to patrols, one a troop of Centaurs, and the other a mounted Remur section. Both patrols were heavily armed, well-equipped, and surprisingly polite: the patrol leader made contact while the rest of the patrol hung back, weapons ready but not threatening, and once the peta had been produced and checked the ‘Den’ was waved on.
The Zone looked like any other farmland they had passed through in their travels but for the field-markers inscribed in some dark language and an absence of villages or farmer’s homes, but Janna felt that she could feel the dark oppression hanging over the land. How many poor wretches had worked their lives away as slaves on these fields, growing food for the dark lords who had torn them from hearth and home? And even worse was the dark hold they were approaching, where minions of the Dark One labored to open yet another portal into the Void with which to bring more suffering into an already battered world.
