So the Vast cavalry went next. Surrounded where they bivouacked, none escaped. The Drammune commanders took the mounts for themselves. And then they led the Drammune troops, a crimson flood, moving quickly with small arms but with a very large and visceral desire to avenge their losses at sea.
By six in the morning that flood had reached the outskirts of the City, maps and orders and muskets and swords in hand, waiting for the moment they would overflow the banks, storm over the walls, and top the crumbling levee that was the Vast Army.
Huk Tuth was satisfied. Messages from his Armada told him all was quiet at sea. A contingent of Vast merchant vessels had left the harbor yesterday, a dozen or so ships that had set sail around nightfall, skirting the coast, avoiding the strength of the Drammune as if they knew what lurked over the horizon. Tuth was happy to let them go. He cared about the Vast Navy, not a few ragtag merchant ships. The Fleet, and he still believed there were at least fifty warships remaining to the Vast, was not in the harbor at the Bay of Mann. So far, they had not appeared at sea, either. But they could not be far off.
The commander did receive one report that the great Trophy Chase was among the merchant vessels that had escaped, but this was unconfirmed, and Huk Tuth was loathe to believe it. That particular ship would be leading the entire Vast Fleet in defense of the kingdom, not running for its life with a flotilla of merchant boats.
And besides, Tuth’s troops were safely ashore. The Trophy Chase and all the Devilfish in the sea couldn’t stop the Kingdom of Nearing Vast from falling now.
At the first light of dawn, it began. Trained and disciplined troops began to move, each one wearing an impenetrable hauberk and helmet, each equipped with musket, pistol, short sword, powder, and ammunition, each rested, fed, and focused on a single objective: taking for themselves and their Hezzan the dominion of the Vast.
With scouts and outposts—the outermost defenses that should have sent messages down the line—already destroyed, the Drammune rolled over the Vast forces before most of them even understood they were under attack. Of the five thousand Vast troops stationed on the outer perimeter, less than five hundred were able to fire a single shot in defense. A handful managed two rounds. But not a single placement, not a single battery fought tenaciously enough to slow the onslaught. Not a single Drammune warrior even stopped to take cover. They reloaded on the run.
The career Vast soldiers and the officers were no more proficient than the raw recruits, except in one regard. Many who had seen battle before, however long ago or far away, recognized it in the air; the silence grew thick, the hair on the napes of their necks stood on end, and the smell of the air became tinged with death. And so, thanks to these instincts, many of them survived. They ran sooner and faster than their greener compatriots.
The second line of defense heard gunfire, and were thus more prepared. Twenty thousand men along the second line, the primary defenders of the city, all of whom were ensconced in fortified positions behind sandbag redoubts in narrow streets and broad highways, readied themselves, palms sweaty, breaths coming short. What they saw, however, surprised them as much and left them as defenseless as their counterparts on the perimeter. They saw uniformed Vast regulars, hundreds of them, running toward them, fleeing for their lives. At first, it was all they saw, but very quickly Drammune horsemen appeared among them, cutting them down with flashing swords, and then came Drammune foot soldiers behind them, thousands upon thousands, a solid mass of muskets and swords and blood-red anger.
Though there were more Vast soldiers here, fewer of them in the second line of defense were killed or injured. This was because a far greater number of them turned and ran, and did it far sooner. The few who stayed, who fought bravely, who fired and reloaded and attempted to fire again, did not live to fight another day. While the blood of the ferocious seeped into the soil, the feet of the fearful saved their finely uniformed posteriors.
The inner ring of defense, stationed around the Old City at the Rampart, another ten thousand regular troops, heard little gunfire. What they heard instead was an eerie sound, like a rumble of thunder and a rush of wind combined. Dog looked over at his fellow soldiers, who were just as perplexed as he was.
“What on earth is that?” he asked.
But within minutes, they all knew. It was the sound of men running, the Vast armies fleeing for their lives up cobblestone streets, chased by horsemen and by thousands of roaring, mocking warriors from the Kingdom of Drammun. The sight was shocking, and utterly unnerving. Dog’s mouth dropped open. But when he looked back at his comrades, he was alone. The eight men who had been stationed behind the sandbags with him were simply gone, having joined up with the fearful Vast horde, having without word or vote, unanimously disappeared. Or, almost unanimously.
Dog cursed. He couldn’t run. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he was too old. His feet were bad. If he’d been the first out, maybe he could have gotten somewhere. But now it was too late. The Drammune were within range. He’d be shot in the back, or stabbed from behind.
He swore again. Then he took aim at a horseman, a particularly big, burly one, and fired. The man just kept coming. He didn’t even slow. Dog was stunned. He looked at his musket. Had he forgotten the musket ball? No, he had checked it a dozen times. And it had fired; he felt the kick. But as he looked back up, a Drammune sword slashed him across the chest, from left armpit to right shoulder.
The Drammune horseman had meant to take the gray-haired Vast soldier’s head, but Dog had looked up, straightening at the last moment, and the blow struck low. The warrior kept his horse at a gallop, sure he had taken the dominion of one more salamander. His blade had bitten deep, and the force of the blow had knocked the old man backward to the ground. Surely, he was dead.
Dog lay on his back, putting frantic hands to his chest. Blood pumped from him. He rolled over, groaning, both hands still on the wound, attempting to hold it shut. He didn’t feel pain from the gash yet, only from the bone-jarring blow of the impact. He knew he had to stop the bleeding. He shoved earth, clay, sand, whatever his clumsy, uncooperative hands could sweep up around him, into the gaping wound. Then he lay still, squeezing the wound, fearing it was mortal.
He cursed once more. He was helpless. A helpless old man, unable to defend himself or his country or his king. His countrymen had turned and run, and left him to fight alone. Now he would die alone.
Half the Drammune horde gave chase, keeping the Vast on the run, while the other half, following carefully prepared orders, overwhelmed the defenses at the Rampart gates and streamed into the Old City.
Here, finally, the Vast army displayed its mettle.
There were fewer than twenty-five-hundred dragoons here, but they fought.
They fired from the Rampart; they fired from the redoubts. They fired face-to-face with the Drammune. They stopped only those warriors who took a musket ball to the face, or the neck, or the leg, or a lucky shot to the ribs at the armpit, but these Vast warriors did not pause to wonder why. The dragoons simply went for their swords and pikes and halberds, battle axes and maces. They fought brilliantly, they fought maniacally. They fought in the tradition of their forebears, and they lived up to an ancient standard of martial merit, a standard set high in action and then raised higher in the telling and retelling. Still, they met that standard.
Had their numbers been even, or close to even, the dragoons would have won the day.
But the numbers were far from even.
Prince Mather stood in the shadows of his balcony, watching. He hadn’t seen the cowardice of his main troops, but he knew they had put up little resistance. He had received the breathless reports that they had been overrun quickly, shamefully. The Captain of the Guard had insisted that Mather flee through the tunnels underground, but Mather would not. He dismissed the captain, and then his own bodyguards, sending them out to join the fight.
And the Royal Dragoons fought as he watched. They were cornered badgers, rabid dogs. They fought where t
hey stood, and they fought where they fell, sweeping with their swords as they dropped to their knees, reaching for hidden pistols, the derringer each had tucked into a belt or a boot, the one they liked to call their “grave surprise.” They fired as they lay on their backs with mortal wounds, pikes and swords already driven through them. They showed the prince the true spirit of his Army.
But Mather took no satisfaction in their show of mettle. He was witnessing the end of everything, just as he had feared. The last trace of the glory of Nearing Vast, the extinguishing of the flame. Here was the last paragraph of the last page of a wondrous tale of valor that began long, long ago, with the Brothers Mann. It was ending here, before his eyes. Under his command.
Mann had fallen. And thus the whole of Nearing Vast had fallen. The kingdom was being taken from him, just as the priest had predicted. His rule was vanishing before his eyes. His people would no longer be his people. His power and his authority, gone like a wisp of smoke. He would be remembered, if he was remembered at all, in the same breath as the demise of a great nation. And why? Because of his sins. Because of his father’s sins. That’s what the priest said. It is decided.
Mather Sennett cursed the priest and his prophecy. He had foretold this end. But Panna, whom he had watched from this very porch while she sat in these very gardens, on a lawn now littered with the bodies of his soldiers, by that pool now red with their blood…Yes, the priest had predicted this end, but Panna had revealed to him the reasons for it. You will attack me again, she had promised. You truly do not know your own heart. So who was he? Certainly not the leader, the great king he had envisioned, the next King Fram the Fifth. A bully. That was her view of his character, his power. Now he had to consider that she was right on all counts. And what was left him? One choice. You may choose the manner.
If it was his duty to turn the kingdom over to the Drammune, then he would do it. He took a deep breath, which caught in his throat. He went to his bookshelf, his hands tingling with pinpricks as though they had fallen asleep, and he pulled out a thick, dark volume. His hands shook as he read the words “Rahk-Taa” tooled into its leather cover, in the bold strokes of the Drammune alphabet.
What he felt now, deep in every pore, was fear. The engraved leather radiated it; his fingertips absorbed it; his blood carried it to his heart and to his mind. He was powerless against it, against this book, against this people. And he loathed being afraid.
But in his hands he held the keys to power, raw power, greater than any he had ever wielded or known, the naked, brutal power that ruled the earth by force, that had always ruled the earth by crushing foes and destroying enemies. Mather had never been brutal enough to amass power like that. Mather was a bully, and King Reynard a fool, but Fen Abbaka Mux and his commanders were different, they led from a different level of brutality. They understood domination. The Hezzan was an absolute monarch, a dictator, an emperor who ruled with iron. And here in this book was the power that would rule from this very palace before the sun rose again over the Vast sea.
Mather began reading, refreshing his memory, absorbing. He already knew this book as well as he did his own nation’s Scriptures. In fact he knew it better, since it contained Drammune law and not simply philosophy or belief systems. He had studied it dutifully through his youth, never imagining it might save his life one day.
Nearing Vast might be finished, but Mather Sennett was not.
The fighting Panna heard outside the priest’s little cottage was brutal, cries and shrieks, guttural roars of pain and anger, swords clashing, bodies thudding to the earth or into one another or against the wooden walls, shaking the entire cottage. Father Mooring had brought her back to this cottage after she had said her goodbyes to her father, then he had left her alone. He had not returned. She had slept little, sitting by a cold fireplace, wrung out and defeated. Her mother and father were together. That was good. But she was now alone. She wanted Packer, she wanted to see him, she needed to be with him. The shaft that led down to safety stood open, and it beckoned her. But Panna was not willing to go hide just yet. The fighting had begun, and Packer might be out there.
That there was fighting here, inside the Rampart, on the grounds of the Seminary so near the palace, struck her as a very bad sign. She remembered Packer’s warning, that this war would be short. But still, it was certainly possible that the Drammune would be stopped here, and turned back. Wasn’t it? If the Vast had the better swordsmen? She wondered how she could help. Perhaps there was a role for her.
She had Father Mooring’s largest kitchen knife in her hand as she moved silently to the front window. She put her face close to the curtain, then parted it ever so slightly, one eye peeking out onto the grounds. What she saw shocked her. She had expected to see duels, men paired up evenly, fighting nobly, bleeding sparingly as they sunk to their knees in defeat. But what she saw was quite different. Bodies flew, steel flashed and sang, blood spattered and poured, men rammed heads into walls, skewered one another on fence-posts, gouged and bit and stabbed and cursed, all in a jumble of activity so chaotic and frenetic that it was impossible for her to discern any pattern. Everyone was bloody, everyone was maniacal. She couldn’t determine which side might be winning. She could hardly tell which side was which. It looked to her like a single pack of rabid dogs destroying one another. The image came to her of the Firefish at the feeding waters, as Packer had described it, tearing one another to bits.
Just then a helmetless head slammed against the glass right in front of her, then slid downward, leaving a trail of blood. Panna took a deep breath in, an audible gasp. A Drammune warrior stood before her, not four feet away, his battle axe dripping blood. But then he looked down, grunted once, and kicked the lifeless body at his feet. Apparently satisfied with his handiwork, he turned back to the fray. Panna closed her eyes in a silent prayer of thanks. The darkness inside the house had kept her hidden; he had seen only his own reflection.
Panna decided she needn’t part the curtains again. Instead, she went to the kitchen and found an oil lamp. She lit it, tucked the knife into the braided cord that was the belt of her robe, and climbed down the ladder. Leaving the lantern at the bottom, she climbed back up and, with a great effort, managed to pull the stove over on top of her.
She climbed to the bottom again, twelve feet down, and sat on the cold stone, waiting there among the priest’s stock of onions and potatoes and jars of preserves, for she knew not what.
“I’m joining the Army,” Prince Ward announced. He wasn’t quite in the room, his head and torso only, his right hand flat against the wall as he leaned in. His eyes were alert, afire. Almost merry.
Mather looked up from his book, trying to make sense of the statement. It couldn’t have seemed more ridiculous if his brother had announced he was running off to join the circus. “Where?” he asked, finally.
“Wherever I find them. Do you know where they are?”
“No. You’re assuming there’s an Army left to find.”
“Yes, I am assuming that. Say, where’s your guard?”
“I sent them all down to fight.” Mather didn’t look at Ward as he said it. He controlled the fear within him; he would not let his brother see a trace of it.
“Oh. Pity about that. You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
“I’m not.” Mather said it curtly. Ward was so at ease, it was maddening.
Ward nodded, but did not move. The silence grew. Then a thought occurred to him. “I heard you put the Throme boy in prison.”
Mather’s fear turned to anger. “Yes, what of it?”
“Just wondered on what charge?”
“None whatsoever!” Mather turned to glare at his brother. “I’m holding him there for my own protection.” He turned back, scanned the page in front of him with his finger.
Ward nodded. “Don’t suppose I could get him out? He might be helpful.”
“Drammune are already there, I’m sure. They’ll want their supreme commander back.”
“Oh.
Tough going, then.”
A pause. “Was there something else you wanted?” Mather asked, hardly able to control his irritation.
Ward shrugged, but took no offense. This was hard for Mather. “Do you plan to surrender?”
“Call it what you will. I intend to negotiate the fair treatment of our soldiers and our citizens. And yes, myself to boot.”
“The Drammune aren’t known for any of that.”
Mather turned and stared hard at him. “If you’ll excuse me. I’m busy here.”
Ward nodded, frowning in a knowing way. Mather had always wanted to be a great king. As much animosity as there had been between them, Ward had always believed Mather would become just that. He found it sad now that it would never be. He wanted to be encouraging, but it seemed far too late for that. “Well, good luck to you, big brother.”
Mather looked him in the eye. Ward had never called him that before. He softened a little. “Thank you. And to you.”
And then Prince Ward was gone. Mather looked back down to the book before him, read a line or two, and then put his head in his hands.
Prince Ward could hear them. The booms, the groans of the palace doors under pressure from whatever ramming device the attackers were using. Then he heard the crash of glass, the halberds and swords clearing window frames.
He kept moving. He felt his way along the stonework of the passageway in darkness until he was far enough from the library above him that he could hear nothing. Then he stopped and lit a match. He put it to the small oil lantern in his hand. His position now illuminated, he squinted in the darkness ahead, saw where the walls took a sharp right turn, thirty feet or so in front of him.
He turned the corner, then traveled within the narrow passageway for another hundred yards, through two more iron doors that required the key he had in his pocket, and then past three intersections with other passageways, making turns at two of them. Finally, he came to the end, a heavy iron door that appeared to have been rusting here, unused, for decades. It was covered with cobwebs. Three iron bars as big around as Ward’s forearm served as deadbolts. He felt in his pocket for the key, and inserted the small, tarnished brass thing—not into the rusted padlock that hung there, but rather, into a small, covered opening just at knee level. This hidden lock freed the iron bars. He heard the click and slid the bars away. He pulled on the handle, and the door swung open toward him.
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 77
