by RW Krpoun
She had shared the roomy deck with her four guards, a burly groom sent up to act as her loader, four ladies-in-waiting who had insisted on accompanying their Duchess when she had left the city, five noblemen whose duties within the Army of the Heartlands was uncertain, and six male servants who tended to the latter, serving them tea, wine, and tidbits as the battle unfolded beneath them.
And unfold it had; the tower was an excellent vantage point, easily equal to those occupied by Marshal von der Strieb and King Nicholas, and from it they received an excellent view of the assaults upon the Gap and much of the Black Lines; by climbing upon the eastern bulwark and clinging to the roof’s edge, it was possible to see much of the struggle with Bohca Ortak for the first hour, although the dust of battle and the gradual withdrawal to the east eventually hid the details of that conflict from sight.
Her ladies in waiting had begun with gasps and little cries, and had quickly degenerated into sobs and shrieks until Eithne had ordered them off the tower, advising them to go and assist the Imperial medical staff tending to the Fourth Cohort’s wounded down below.
Her guards took turns cocking and firing one crossbow, while the groom reloaded hers, for even with a built-on windlass for cocking she could only recock the weapon with much un-lady-like grunting and straining, and the half-dozen servants were kept busy at the table upon which they had arranged two small charcoal grills and a travelling drinks bar. The noblemen were even more annoying than the ladies in waiting and quickly wore upon her nerves all the more with their witty comments and droll exhortations.
Eithne watched the battle while Jeramy, her loader, industrially cranked her weapon to full cock and slapped another steel-shafted bolt into the loading slot, a process that took a minute or so each time, which meant she spent most of the battle studying the flow and ebb of the assault. Baronet Qually of Lashar, a tall, dignified man of middle years, was quick to point out the various units to her and frequently explained the significance of some action or another as he scurried about jotting down notes and sketching dispositions; he was a self-proclaimed historian who planned to document the battle and who spoke with authority on the action as it unfolded. His enthusiasm for the action grated on the Duchess as he was of the sort who saw the conflict in broad strokes which took no account of lives and limbs lost. Having spent a battle hiding under a stone bench with wet undergarments and the sight of childhood friends being cut down before her very eyes, Eithne had a much more personal view of war, but the Baronet at least served a function of sorts.
The other four noblemen offended the Duchess immensely: Viscount Mickel, Baron Masteller, Sir Waddell of Ilthan and Sir Iszra of Lashar lounged about the deck on tall stools, sipping wine or tea and nibbling at snacks made of hot beef or ham sliced paper thin and served on fresh-baked bread smothered in mushroom gravy and followed them with cherry tomato halves stuffed with slices of fresh truffle and bits of lettuce. They gossiped about court life, with many a snide remark directed at the new monarch of the freshly-expanded Kingdom of Ilthan, Nicholas I, and largely ignored the desperate fighting going on below them. They offered their repast to the Duchess while smirking at her mode of dress and particularly her sword, but she had rudely declined, breakfasting on issue hard biscuits and cheese just as her troops did, although she did allow herself cups of hot sweet tea brewed by one of the Lifeguards over a converted oil lantern because most of the troops below had this same luxury.
Steadying the heavy weapon, she threw the lever which removed most of the movement from its swivel-mount and eased the sights onto her selected target, an Orc armed with a large two-handed axe in the corpse-choked ditch outside Dorog’s east wall and released, nodding shortly to herself as the steel bolt smashed the hulking humanoid off its feet. Ceding the weapon to the sweating groom she took a piece of chalk from her pouch and drew a slash across four vertical lines under the word ‘Orc’ on the inside of the bulkhead, her fifth; under ‘Direbreed’, there was a completed block of five and three single bars, not a bad contribution to the battle, she felt, all the more so as she only counted hits she could clearly see, frequently having lost sight of her target in the press below after releasing. Still, she could say with all confidence that she had accounted for at least thirteen of the enemy on this endless morning, even if she did lack the strength to cock her own weapon. In deference to this fact she had allowed Jeramy to fire every fifth shot so that he would have actively participated in the battle and have a tale to tell his children.
As was her habit she leaned against the south bulkhead while the groom cranked away at the windlass and watched the fighting in her husband’s section of the Gap. She had given him the command with dread in her heart, fearful that he would be killed as her uncle had been in the fighting at Apartia, but Colgan had wanted the appointment badly. Becoming Duchess had been far harder than she had ever suspected, changing forever nearly every relationship she had ever had; only Bernian Chaton and Colgan had remained unaffected, standing by her like two granite pillars. The loss of the Lord Chancellor scant months later had weighed heavily upon her spirits, and left her feeling alone and vulnerable.
She had insisted on coming out to Dorog to keep Lord Marshal Fassburg in his place, and to give herself greater credibility with the people; for the last few months Fassburg had been champing at the bit, testing her resolve in one area after another, clearly liking the taste of power his promotion had given him and the implied debt his participation in the elimination of a Lord Protector’s House entailed. Eithne had acceded to his demand that the Phantom Badgers be released from the Duchy’s payroll as being too far east to be of any use to Sagenhoft, salving her conscience by personally writing to Nicholas I to ensure that Ilthan picked up their contract. It was only later that she realized that the Lord Marshal disliked the mercenaries for no other reason than the fact that she, the Duchess, both liked and trusted them. She had flatly refused to break with tradition and place the Lifeguards under the conventional military or to agree to draw the next commander of the Lifeguards from the ranks of serving officers, reserving her right to appoint virtually anyone to that key post, or to any position within the Lifeguards.
Coming to Dorog had been done over the Lord Marshal’s protests to prove to him that she was not subject to his demands, and her appointment of her husband to a cohort command in this vital battle was likewise calculated to diminish Fassburg’s power: already a trained and veteran military man, Colgan’s holding a command position in this battle would make him a viable replacement for the Lord Marshal. Certainly his appointment as Lord Chancellor had been a rebuke to Fassburg, who had hinted broadly that he would be willing to shoulder that particular responsibility. She need Fassburg for now; the position of Lord Marshal had changed hands too many times since the war had begun, and he was credited with the successful raid into the Hand entrenchments and the Sagenhoft victory in the raid into Apartia. After the war, when the position of Lord Marshal had again reverted to a much lower status within the Ducal court she would look into his replacement.
Her self-adopted uncle had never mentioned it, but she had discovered in Chaton’s personal papers that Fassburg had made strong and repeated remonstrations to be her future husband, only to be refused in blunt terms by the Regent. After Chaton’s death she had devoted the full resources of the Duchy to an exhaustive inquiry to ensure that the causes were natural, and the Hand was only one avenue she had had explored; among of several others Fassburg had been considered as a potential hirer of assassins. But the proof had been conclusive: Bernian Chaton had died because of over-work and strain.
Lost in her musings as she stared down at the distant figures of her husband’s soldiers, she hadn’t noticed Jeramy take his shot and then laboriously crank the weapon back to a cocked position, only looking up when he touched the little finger on her right hand where it rested on the top of the bulwark; a trained servant, he would never have thought to touch her, but the roar of battle would have made the usual cough go unheard.
Giving the groom an absent smile she stepped up to the weapon and paused to give Baronet Qually a curious glance: the historian was leaning forward over the bulwark staring to west.
Following his glance, the Duchess gasped: halfway up the slope and moving forward at a brisk pace was a solid wave of enemy, a dark tide rolling in to strike the defensive shore.
Captain Grotboer cursed bitterly as the ragged line of Direbreed and Orcs swept up to his defense line and the scattered bands of enemy harrying his wall took heart at the appearance of such aid; he had sent for help and so far nothing had shown up. His Legionaries contained the initial shock well enough, although the stretcher-bearers were quickly swamped; for the first long minute they held, and then for the next three the reserve company being fed into the line stayed the tide. Finally the Captain led his clerks and cooks onto the rampart as the pressure mounted steadily and no help was in the offing.
It was deadly work on the ramparts, desperate men fighting to hold back raging Direbreed and howling Orcs, with the wall of Hand troops looming in the background spelling doom for the defenders should help not arrive. Flashes and eruptions of magical light flickered here and there, but the last of Marshal von der Strieb’s wizards only killed a few, leaving the outcome to be determined by flesh, steel, spirit, training, and discipline.
“Here they come,” Jeremy pointed excitedly at the neat lines of the Thirty-Seventh Legion’s Sixth Cohort, the Legionaries advancing along the ridgeline at the double. “That’ll sort things out.”
Privately Eithne wondered, although she nodded for the groom’s sake; there were thousands of Hand troops coming up the slope towards the village, while the Sixth Cohort, which had seen action several times this morning, had less than seven hundred Legionaries in its ranks. “Yes, however I believe we should withdraw to the Gap for the time being; no doubt the Imperial officers will want to use this tower.” The senior Lifeguard nodded emphatically.
“Yes, precisely,” Sir Iszra agreed, stepping to the rail behind her as the servants began to hastily pack the food and implements.
Eithne started to turn to see if the crossbow was ready to fire when the Lasharian’s left hand clamped cruelly across her jaw while his right laid the sharp edge of a dagger across her throat. “Stay right there,” the nobleman ordered the Lifeguards, who had instinctively stepped forward. “We wouldn’t want to lose the Duchess, now would we?”
“You won’t get off this tower alive unless you let her go,” the senior Lifeguard pointed out, easing his axe free of his belt. “That’s a promise.”
“So you say.” Holding the blade steady on her throat, Sir Iszra released her jaw and reached down to his waistline, his hand reappearing in Eithne’s field of view holding a cylinder of milky red glass. His hand and its strange burden hung suspended in the air for a single frozen second as the Lasharian mumbled a strange word, and then Jeremy lashed out with the steel quarrel he still held, knocking the glass cylinder from Iszra’s grasp, the red crystal flying from his fingers to strike the siege crossbow. The glass shattered and there was a dull, soundless flash which lasted a tenth of a heartbeat; when the flash was gone the post-mount was empty, with no trace of the eighty-pound weapon.
Eithne felt Iszra’s body sag with shock and threw herself back into him, grabbing his right wrist with both hands and pushing away, the dagger's edge nipping a neat crescent of flesh from the point of her chin as it passed. She and the knight staggered back into the south bulwark, and even as Iszra found his feet his dagger hand was seized and jerked away with such force that the Duchess was sent tumbling across the dusty boards. She rolled to her feet, drawing her sword with one hand and feeling at her throat with the other, relived to discover that her cut, while bleeding profusely, was just a minor laceration. Everyone was shouting, drawing weapons, and rushing about; unsure of loyalties the four Lifeguards cut Iszra down and followed it up by killing Viscount Michel and three of the servants. The rest of the noblemen and their servitors took flight before the same fate could befall them.
“Are you all right, your Grace?” the senior Lifeguard asked, bloody axe held at the ready.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, although I’m not sure the Viscount was part of this...never mind, the less said about the matter, the better. We had better go.”
Something flashed past the tower, wringing a scream from Jeremy; Eithne caught a glimpse of wings and a semi-Human face. Seconds later another passed by close, flying at a shallower angle, and all five could see it clearly: a harpy, flying at the tower’s height, hurling darts and clay balls onto the defenders below. There was more than just one, the sky seemed full of the fell beasts and wyvern, too, the great winged snakes sweeping in below the tower to use their spiked tails to wreck the onagers’ winches.
“Eight preserve us!” Jeremy shouted, pointing: Direbreed and Hand troops were pouring over the west wall like water through a crumbling dike, knots of Legionaries mounting a fighting retreat before them.
The senior Lifeguard leaned over the bulwark and gauged the distance. “We had better fort up here, your grace, until help arrives.”
Eithne nodded, dazed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” If help arrives, it occurred to her.
Jeremy had taken up the remaining siege crossbow while the Lifeguards piled the corpses on the stairs to impede any attackers; Eithne busied herself by going through the contents of the hampers and the abandoned belongings, piling everything which she could throw near the now-empty second siege crossbow mount. Of the dead, only Sir Iszra had had useable weapons, having carried a hanger, dagger, and two hidden knives; the Duchess issued these arms to Jeremy as the first Direbreed mounted the stairs.
“Men of Lashar,” Grand Marshal Laffery bellowed, watching the untidy half-moon of dusty, weary men who had gathered around him. “You have fought well and given those whores-get Goblins something they’ll talk about for the rest of their lives. Bohca Ortak has been smashed and victory is within our grasp, but while we have fought and won here the enemy has not been idle to the west. The village of Dorog is threatened, the Hand has broken through and all we have accomplished this day has been placed in peril. I am asking you to follow me into the battle at Dorog, to drive the Hand back from the ridge’s crest and there secure the day’s triumph. You are tired, I know, but there remains work to be done, and you are the only men in position to do this. Are you with me?”
By every facet of logic way there should have been some uncomfortable muttering and shifting of feet as men looked everywhere but at him; after all, there had been eighteen hundred able-bodied men (and a few women) in the ranks less than two hours before, and now only a thousand remained hale enough to stand. Every soldier here knew that Laffery was lying through his teeth when he described their fight with the wolf-riders; if they hadn’t gotten help from the First Legion they wouldn’t have held, and even then had taken a solid drubbing. Of course, they had been outnumbered by better than three to one, but the fact remained that they had paid a terrible price to hold their positions.
But armies seldom are motivated by logic; someone gave a wordless, growling bellow in response to the Grand Marshal’s shouted question, and instantly it was picked up by a hundred more; within a heartbeat the crowd was alive with brandished weapons, most of which were marked with blood.
“To Dorog, and victory!” Laffery pointed with his sword, and the battered soldiers fell into ranks; at route-step, the battered Royal Guards set off for Dorog.
The surviving Legionaries of the Fourth Cohort had fought their way upslope through the disorganized Direbreed to join up with the advancing Sagenhoft Lifeguards while the Sixth Cohort held the north wall of the fort. The Hand had driven the defenders back to the crest and nearly off it when the Navian Marines sent by King Nicholas arrived, along with the Harthrell landing force that had been von der Strieb’s main reserve; with this help, the Lifeguards and the remains of the Fourth Cohort had laboriously pushed the Hand back a bit.
It was hard fighting as the t
roops on both sides knew what was at stake and fought accordingly; both sides were blooded veterans and while the Hand had the numbers the Heartland troops were better equipped. Numbers, however, were beginning to tell and the Hand troops were moving slowly but irresistibly back up the slope, paying a terrible toll but gaining ground.
Eithne heaved a folded stool down into the ranks of the Hand troops passing below and was gratified to see it shatter on a conical helm, the Hand soldier who was wearing the now-dented headpiece crashing to the ground, unconscious. Turning back to choose another missile from her nearly-depleted stock, she saw Jeremy sprawled across the floor, twitching and quivering as if in the midst of some fit. She rushed to his side, wrinkling her nose at the stench of his loosened bowels, but the Orcish throwing club spinning in a corner, the oozing dent in the side of his head, and the blood leaking from the groom’s nose, ears, and mouth told the story.
Gripping his head so she could close his lifeless eyes, she lightly kissed his still-warm forehead as the death-spasms began to fade from his lifeless limbs. “I was going to give you a knighthood when all this was over,” she whispered, blinking back hot tears.
Rising, she picked up the quarrel he had dropped and slotted it into the cocked siege crossbow. The four Lifeguards were fighting fiercely on the steps, helped by the fact that the stairs were narrow and very steep, but still Direbreed and the occasional Orc tried to gain the tower platform. Shouldering the weapon, she worked the swivel lever as she found the only Orc on the steps. Settling the sights on the creature’s chest, she released the bolt and was gratified to see the steel shaft plow through the Talachek’s chest and strike the Direbreed behind it, the Orc’s armored bulk falling backwards creating considerable confusion in the following ranks.
