by RW Krpoun
His assailant dropped his knife and crashed to the gravel, clutching his wounded side, allowing a bemused Philip to end the struggle with a strong chop to the blubbering man’s neck. He stood ready until Tonya accepted a hooded lantern from Veda Sligh and advanced into the garden, the bright yellow oil-light filling the small enclosure. It was a moment’s work to ensure that there was no one else lurking in any of the atrium’s corners; kneeling by the second man, Philip expertly rifled his body, finishing by cutting open the corpse’s left sleeve. “Aha, a Markan-Fet, which explains the bodyguard.” He studied the lines which flanked the downward-pointing triangle that enclosed a point-down dagger embroidered on the tunic breast. “Third Orbit, fairly high but not too much so. Certainly not high enough to warrant a bodyguard under ordinary circumstances.”
“Enough with the mysteries, we’ve a battle to fight,” Tonya motioned with the lantern, making the shadows dance. “Come on.”
“Just a moment,” Philip demurred, taking the lantern from her. He glanced under the bench the intelligence officer had been hiding under, and then carefully rooted in the lower branches of a dwarf tree. “Yes, here were are.” He dragged a leather-covered case not much more than a foot square into the lantern’s glow.
“What is it?”
“Two jeweled mirrors made out of black onyx, from the looks of it,” Philip closed the case and stuffed it into his pack along with the papers and other loot he had taken from the Hand priest. “Whatever they are, I bet the guard was for them, and not the priest.”
“All right, nice work, now let’s get back to our platoon.”
Celot sat and stared at the polished surface of the table before her, ignoring the babble and bustle that swirled around her as bad news followed worse. The sun was a full hour over the horizon and there were decisions to be made, hard ones that would determine her future career and perhaps even her own life. She had been of the Fifth Orbit when she crossed the Wall last spring, commanding a pair of Horcs in Bohca Ileri. She had won a promotion and the command of the garrison during the storming the city, and had begun to hope for a promotion to the ranks of the -Hern before the campaign was finished. Now all that was gone; it would take considerable effort to come out of this fiasco with her current rank intact, or perhaps even with her life.
The commander of the Sacred Band had rallied the remnants of his troops and broken out of the encircling Dwarves, retreating back to the palace complex, arriving with sixty warriors still capable of fighting and the Dwarves hot on his heels. The Second Band of the Thirty-Second Holding, which had had the duty of securing the palace this evening, had managed to consolidate and drive the intruders from the communications area, but not before the bastards had wrecked virtually every device. Notes and sketches recovered from the corpses indicated that that had been their primary mission. Only a handful escaped, too few to worry about, and the battered companies of the Second Band had been shifted to the south to face the intruders who had crossed nearly half of the palace, and to the east to join the survivors of the Sacred Band in repelling the Dwarves, with fighting raging in both areas.
Desmond had armed and armored every clerk and staffer he could lay his hands on and was fighting in the southern regions of the palace; runners from him indicated that there had been around two hundred support staff killed in the initial onset of the raid and losses were still mounting. No messengers were coming from the Holdings’ main bodies, but wall-guards reported that the streets were swarming with rioting locals. The First Band of the Sixth Holding had had patrol duty and the security of the two other support complexes; wall guards reported that the Band had withdrawn to the two complexes without serious loss, and were facing only local rioters.
All three Holding barracks apparently had been infiltrated by large bodies of regular troops who had wreaked bloody havoc amongst the sleeping Hand troops before order could be restored. The Eleventh Holding had quit its barracks and was fighting its way to the wall, pressed on all sides by rioters and the enemy foot, while the other two Holdings were trying to eject the foe from their barracks and fort up in the buildings until help could come.
Four companies of the Fourth Band of the Eleventh Holding had formed up on the wall (that Band having had wall duty), and was fighting its way through clouds of rioters towards the palace while the three remaining companies secured the key wall positions.
It was more than that her garrison was fragmented, heavy losses had been taken, and the city was in full-scale revolt, the salient fact was that Apartia stood on the brink of being retaken by the enemy, thus cutting Bohca Tatbik off from further replacements and bulk supplies, and her communications devices had been lost. That loss alone was enough to inspire real fear: there had only been four devices assigned to this vital garrison, such was the value of enchantments of that caliber.
Stacked on a gold tea tray near to hand were a number of hollow glass cylinders an inch thick, grouped in hues of green, yellow, and red. A note inserted into such a cylinder would appear at a predetermined point when the tube was smashed; they called these devices Orbs of Sending, simple, single use communications devices. Reserved for emergencies, they were attuned to the main supply base on the Plains, back to the central headquarters in the Hand’s lands, and to Bohca Tatbik. With leaden fingers she picked up a piece of vellum cut to fit within the tubes and dipped a pen into ink.
Taking a deep breath she began her report. How well she worded it, she knew, would determine whether she lived or died.
Chapter Thirty-One
Staring at the maps did him no good at all, his head still buzzed and the entire world seemed a dim and far-off place. Descente sighed tiredly and tried again to focus upon the facts as they had been presented to him. Communicating via enchanted devices the commander of the main supply depot out on the Plains had reported that he had received an emergency message from the commander of the Apartia garrison. The message had informed all parties that Laffery had somehow inserted several thousand regular troops, both Humans and Dwarves, into the city, into the very barracks of the garrison, without disturbing the units on wall duty. The garrison was being bled white while the streets rang with the locals in full riot. The Sacred Band stationed in the capitol had lost nine out of ten warriors so far and all regular communications devices had been lost. According to the commander, the fate of the city was hanging in the balance.
Moments after the first message had been received an identical one had been sent by the command back in the homelands, with the note that the Grand Council was meeting to examine this change in the Hand’s fortunes.
The Grand Commander raised his eyes and stared out across the boot-torn sod to the dark line of Heartland troops, the mounds of dead in the ditch and the carpet of corpses before it mute testimony of Laffery’s cunning. The Grand Marshal had finally stood and fought, knowing fully well that his troops were storming Apartia even as the two armies squared off, Apartia which sat like a granite-walled plug along Descente’s line of communications. Except for the Direbreed, every warrior lost this day represented a gap in the ranks which would not be closed until Aparita was secured. Of course, there was a chance that the city garrison would hold, but Descente dismissed it as too optimistic: Laffery would have seen to it that enough troops were sent, and in any case once the battle was joined it was inevitable that the population would rise against the Hand
No, it was best just to write off the city as lost and base all future operations around that fact. Somehow he was to hold the siege around Sagenhoft, defeat the Heartland Army, and re-take both the Royal Bridge and Apartia, all without any reinforcement other than replacement Breedstones and perhaps a few Humans for his Holdings. He stared at the lines of enemy troops and wondered what his next step should be: hammer at Laffery here and finish the bastard once and for all? Grind the Army of the Heartland into dust, leaving him room to maneuver? But if the attack failed, if Laffery held his army together against the Hand’s best efforts, then it could leave Bohca Tatbik
too weak to continue with the siege. Take Sagenhoft, and he could use the city as a base until the road back to the Plains could be reopened.
He was still pondering the matter when Kansa walked up twenty minutes later. “Sir, we have a message from the Council of Seven.”
“What does it say?”
“We are to focus upon the reduction of Sagenhoft and the recapture of the Royal Bridge; the destruction of the Heartland Army is to be given a priority based on your estimate of the situation. Bohca Ortak will be ordered to abandon its campaign in the south and march to Apartia at once to retake the city and secure our lines of communication.”
“I see.” So the Council had come to the conclusion that the city was lost, good, they were still thinking clearly back there.
“Bohca Tatbik awaits your orders, sir.”
Descente nodded absently. “Order the troops to rest in ranks; order the mess wagons forward to feed them. We’ll rest for two hours and then try again-we must finish what we’ve begun. With Bohca Ortak marching north the Army of the South will move to join Laffery, and unless we wreck the Army of the Heartland first their combined strength will prove too near our own to allow for victory.”
As he sat and stared into the distance, he wondered what Laffery wanted him to do.
Gauging the sources of the noise carefully, Bridget spun her sling and hurled the bullet into the wall, the lead sphere blasting through the white-washed plaster and lath and continuing into the next room; the shouts that followed its appearance were of surprise and anger, not pain, and the advocate shrugged as she reloaded: wrong again.
The Badgers’ advance had been halted and even reversed as the opposition before them changed from ad hoc bands of hastily armed support personnel to troops of the Thirty-Seventh Holding. Durek had ordered the Company to fall back as their primary mission (to distract the Hand garrison from the raid on the communications devices until it was too late for the raiders to be stopped) had succeeded, and now the mercenaries were tasked with simply tying down as many Hand troops as possible. They had moved back the way they had come until they crossed an east-west corridor which they then used as a defensive terrain feature, spreading out on line while a few Badgers roved around stripping the areas they had already over-run of all portable loot.
The Hand troops had proved willing to spend lives to lever the Badgers back, and so the Company gave ground a room or hallway at a time, seeking to make the enemy pay in blood while avoiding losses themselves, a practice they had been moderately successful at so far. It was extremely close-quarter fighting, literally room to room, and the Thirty-Seventh was well armored and primarily made up of veterans of the street-fighting to take Apartia.
“Withdraw,” Bridget called to the members of her platoon in the adjoining room and darted down a side-passage, repeating her order at each doorway she passed. Marks chalked on door frames and intersections by Durek indicated the next set of positions her platoon was to hold, and she watched as her people moved back into place, Kroh and Rolf hovering about counting heads and checking on stocks of missile weapons.
A small atrium boasted a still-functioning fountain; Bridget took the opportunity to refill her water flask and wash her feet, dusting on foot powder before donning clean socks, treating one foot at a time so that a surprise attack would not catch her completely bare-footed, ignoring the four stiffening corpses sprawled on the bloody flagstones around the fountain, Hand staff officers cut down in their night clothes.
She was tired, battered, and sick of fighting, although she had to admit that it was good to be back on the offensive for a change, assaulting Hand positions rather than patrolling Sagenhoft’s streets. She had not heard how the battle was going elsewhere in the city, but since the sun was drawing towards noon she assumed it was going fairly well.
A whistle echoing back down the side passage brought her to her feet: the Hand was pressing forward again.
Commander Celot massaged her aching temples as she listened to the reports coming in, and none of the news she was receiving was making her headache any better: Desmond had the survivors of the staff and support personnel organized into guard posts securing the perimeter of the palace except the two contested portions; the Second Band of the Thirty-Seventh Holding had been joined by four companies of the Fourth Band, Eleventh Holding in holding off the assaults by the Dwarves and the elusive enemy in the south of the palace, while the thirty-odd Sevenguard who remained had been pulled back to act as a reserve. The Second of the Thirty-Seventh was in poor shape after the various battles it had fought, with some companies down to twenty effectives, and the Fourth of the Eleventh was rapidly taking losses as well.
The rest of the Eleventh Holding had made it to the wall and were clearing the local resistance members out of the major strong points the Fourth Band had abandoned when it went to aid the palace, less the city’s South Gate and flanking towers, and the towers flanking the great breach which had allowed the Hand to storm the city; Dwarves had seized those points immediately after the Hand garrisons had been pulled out, and the Eleventh lacked the strength to retake them. The three companies the Fourth Band had left behind were being sent to rejoin their parent unit, along with the First Band, which was fairly intact, while the very battered Second and Third Bands secured the wall, or at least most of it. The enemy troops which had assaulted the Eleventh Holding in its barracks had broken off pursuit halfway to the wall and had moved to the Sixth Holding’s barracks; from reports by observers on the walls, the fight there was almost over, the three Bands of the Sixth that had been caught in the barracks being all but wiped out. The First of the Sixth was still holding the two secondary complexes without much difficulty while the rest of the Thirty-Seventh was preparing to quit its barracks and make a rush to the wall, a chancy business in that it had taken over eight hundred causalities, was still engaged by the attackers, and would have to traverse streets thronged with angry mobs laced with armed members of the resistance, but the Holding commander reported he had no other choice, and Celot was forced to agree.
Before the attack had begun she had had thirteen Bands and around fifteen hundred support troops under her command; now she mustered nine on paper (the entirety of the Eleventh and Thirty-Seventh Holdings, and the First of the Sixth), but the Thirty-Seventh was being bled to death and two of the Eleventh’s weren’t in very good shape either.
Her plan was simple: hold on to what she now held of the wall positions, secure the palace complex, concentrate her forces, and then assault out into the city and re-establish control. If the Thirty-Seventh could survive the gauntlet it would put six of her remaining Bands at the palace under her direct command, with the other three devoted to holding vital areas. Once the palace was secure, she could begin regaining control of the city.
Assuming everything went well, which she secretly doubted would happen.
“We’re pulling back, job’s done,” Starr called into the room and trotted on down the hallway. “Rally at the green room.”
“About time,” Milo observed to Jepson. “I’ve used every arrow at least twice, those that I haven't lost or need fixing.”
“Tell me about it,” the interpreter agreed. “I haven't had a decent meal, a whole night’s sleep, or a woman in far too long.”
“That’s soldiering for you,” Milo nodded sympathetically as he critically examined his bow string. “Still, it beats herding turnips, which was my alternative career choice.”
“Or watching wheat grow,” Jepson nodded. “My father’s never been more than thirty miles from the room he was born in, and doesn’t ever want to be.”
Milo slung his heavy pack onto his back and shrugged to settle the weight. “At least this raid has been profitable: I bet I’m carrying fifty Mark’s worth of loot, and there’s others with a lot more. We’d better check the side passages, there were loot details and stretcher parties combing the rooms. I’ll go left, you go right.” As a Senior Badger, Milo was Starr’s second-in-command.
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nbsp; The first room Milo looked into was in disarray but unoccupied; the second had likewise been stripped, and contained four dead. The furnishing of the sitting room turned sleeping quarters clearly showed the signs of fighting as the chamber had changed hands during the course of the day. Milo glanced indifferently at the corpses and slipped through the room, pausing when he heard a muffled noise from behind a partially-closed door to his left. He frowned and cocked his head; the door led outward from the region the Badgers currently considered under their control, which ought to indicate that whoever was making that noise was hostile, but it occurred the scout that it was possible that a Badger might have gotten turned around in the maze-like palace complex.
Nocking a broadhead arrow he slipped to the door and peered out into a corridor littered with a half-dozen dead clerks of the Hand reaction forces. There were living bodies there as well: two Hand soldiers were wrestling with Brandywine Stebbs, one of the Company’s new Healers. Stebbs, a lovely young woman in her early twenties whose blue eyes were, by common male consensus, of an especially electric hue that gave her a gaze of startling intensity, had been grabbed from behind by one Hand soldier who had flung a blanket over her head and shoulders, probably while the Healer was checking the corpses to ensure that none were Badgers. The other soldier had apparently planned to stab the Badger once pinioned, but had obviously hesitated when a closer look revealed that their captive was a nicely-built woman armed only with a knife. He was currently engaged in trying to catch Stebbs’ wildly thrashing legs, his occasional grunts of pain as errant kicks found a mark being what Milo had heard.
