The Drammune came on, and kept coming. They crushed all the troops they encountered. The Nochtram Eyn held the southward exits, picking off all the Vast troops that fled that way, dropping them in their tracks.
An hour after dawn, it was over.
An hour and ten minutes after dawn, Supreme Commander Tuth wandered through an abandoned farmhouse. His men, searching it upstairs and down, reported back to him what was obvious. It was empty. It had been left in perfect order. Beds were made with clean linens, dishes were done and put up in cupboards; even the table was set with napkins and spoons and forks. All the knives, however, as one officer noted, were gone.
Tuth walked out onto the front porch, stood beside a worn rocking chair and looked out over the picket fence. He frowned at it. It was broken down in several places. The house was left pristine, but the fence was in disarray. Why? Beyond it, his men patrolled the camp of the Vast, finding the occasional misplaced shoe or hat, but nothing of any significance. It was all wrong. Tuth knew it; the men knew it. It had been too easy, once again.
“I want a body count,” Tuth said aloud. When his generals just nodded, he shouted the order. “I want a body count now!”
They bolted into action.
An hour and twenty minutes after dawn, Huk Tuth had his number. He knew how many Vast had died at the hands of his army.
“Three hundred and forty-three,” he said, looking at his generals, one by one. “Three hundred and forty-three Vast dead.”
The generals were mortified. Each had assumed that the real fighting had taken place on someone else’s front. Now it was obvious they had been outwitted once again. There had been no real Vast resistance. They had faced only feints and delaying actions. They had destroyed only the rear guard of the Vast armies, while the main body had already disappeared. Somewhere. Somehow.
The Vast had vanished once again.
The Army of Nearing Vast, ghostly flickers in the darkness, had in fact disappeared into the thick brush. They had been on the move since long before dawn. Troops that had bivouacked in a state of readiness had been rousted at three in the morning and given simple orders—march south in a column four abreast, and keep marching. None but the generals, the king and queen, and a few handpicked officers had known this order was coming. No spies could have reported it, unless they had been within the farmhouse as the plans were laid out to a few carefully chosen guides well after midnight. As the Vast column reached the heavily wooded area, they had followed four divergent paths, each one led by a guide, a man familiar with the territory. Between midnight and three the guides had marked these paths, strung ropes for handrails, positioned lanterns at the darkest spots; all routes carefully shielded by miles of thick growth, trees, and rocky hillsides. The Vast army slowed, but it never stopped. Thousand of troops disappeared into the woods. By dawn the Hollow Forest had lived up to its name, leaving only the rear guard behind, with orders to resist as best they could, and block pursuit by the main Drammune troops with their lives.
The rear guard were true Vast soldiers. They knew their duty. They understood their role. They recognized that obedience meant, in all likelihood, death. They were committed to their country, and their king. They fought, and they died. With honor.
A red-helmeted lieutenant ran up to the porch and bowed deeply.
“Speak,” Tuth ordered.
“They went south. The road diverges quickly into various paths, which can be traveled only in single file. It looks as if they have divided their forces in order to escape. Shall we give chase?”
“Give chase?” Tuth was incredulous. His drawn face was dour and cold. “A bold idea. Don’t you think so, General Harkow?” He turned on the man standing to his right. Harkow turned beet-red. “Your troops were in perfect position today. What was lacking was boldness. So tell me now, should we follow the Vast armies single file through unfamiliar woods?” Tuth goaded him, his eyes slit, as though daring the taller man to answer.
But the general knew he must speak. “I…would not recommend it, sir.”
“ ‘I would not recommend it, sir,’ ” Tuth repeated. “Yes, General Harkow, the opportunity for boldness has come and gone. We might as well shoot ourselves right here as follow them in there. At least, if we shot ourselves, we’d be given a decent funeral pyre.” Harkow’s face now emptied of blood, and took on the pallor of death. The others stepped away. Tuth nodded once, then turned his back.
Behind him he heard the telltale scrape of metal against leather, a pistol being unholstered. He heard a hammer click. He did not turn to face his general, but kept his back to him, and waited.
“I freely give my life,” the general said, his voice a rasp, “to save and protect one more Worthy than myself. By the Law of Transfer, I offer my life to my supreme commander, Huk Tuth.” There was a pause. Tuth crossed his arms and waited.
A single pistol shot cracked through the woods. It was a satisfying sound in Huk Tuth’s ears. He turned to find the corpse of his general sprawled in the dirt, blood from a head wound pouring into the Vast soil. Tuth’s mind went immediately to the glories of General Harkow’s past, the medals of honor, the successful strategies of campaigns won. He was a good man, Tuth thought. It was a harsh reality that good men fell in battle.
“Put him on the porch, and speak the words of the Law over him. He is Worthy,” Tuth announced. “Then torch the house.” He pointed to the outbuilding. “Burn that shack as well.” He looked around him. “Then set fire to the woods. We’re pulling out.”
Tuth was in a hurry now. He sent his scouts on horseback to the edge of the forest, what had been the eastern front of the Vast defenses. He ordered them to skirt the forest heading south, and to look for signs of an exit. The Vast were headed back to Mann, he knew. They would come out of these woods on this side somewhere. He ordered half his troops to trail the scouts, and sent the other half straight back into the city, in case the cowards had already found a way through tunnels back to fight at the Rampart.
In spite of what he had said to the late General Harkow, Tuth sent four of his best assassins into the woods, one on each of the paths found there. They were not to engage an army, but to scout and spy.
The situation was maddening, angering, like a thorn pressed up through his foot. The miserable Pawns had disappeared again, and this time they had lured fully two-thirds of his troops almost twenty miles from the Rampart. This morning, he’d had them outnumbered. But with his troops split…He hated these salamanders. And he had no idea where they were.
He now needed information about the tunnels, desperately. But there was none to be had. His men had soon enough discovered the secret doorway within the prison, through which the Vast dregs had disappeared from the Green. But the Drammune had to get through that door if they were to map the passages. And at this very moment his best Drammune military engineers stood before it, within the prison’s torture chamber, scratching their heads. The façade had been torn away, revealing a block of solid steel as strong as the blade of any sword, set in solid bedrock. Picks, hammers, and even the small explosives they had dared to use underground had so far managed only to mar the surface and chip the granite.
Supreme Commander Tuth controlled a burning rage. He had not yet even fought them, army against army. The Drammune would win any forthright battle, he knew, on any ground, under any circumstances. Huk Tuth yearned, he lusted for a straight fight. He wanted to see the strength of his troops rushing across a field, banners flying, headed toward the strength of theirs. He wanted to watch his men cut their troops to ribbons, and then stand victorious as Vast blood drained into Vast soil. His men were Worthy. He wanted to give them the victory they deserved.
But while he thought these things, his scouts scouted and his generals pulled out, backtracking. It was humiliating; it felt like retreat. He cursed the Vast and their cowardice, their ignoble tactics that were made all the more vile by their success. Schemes without courage. They had made the yellow-haired warrior their king? Tha
t was fitting. He was the chief of the shrewd cowards, the bumblebee on the decks of the Trophy Chase, a man who would stab other men in the back again and again, man after man. And the Vast called it heroism.
Now he imagined Packer Throme leading their entire Army through some secret passageway to stab Huk Tuth’s entire army in the back. The Supreme Commander of the Glorious Drammune Expeditionary Force climbed up onto his horse. He proudly wore the armor of the Drammune, the tunic and the helmet, crimson and shining in the sun. It was the best armor in the world, and proof in his mind of his nation’s superiority. But still he felt vulnerable.
He spurred his horse toward the Rampart. He could not let the Old City be retaken by the Vast.
But the Vast soldiers were not underground. Nor were they advancing on the Rampart. Nor were they lying in wait along the way, to ambush Tuth and his divided troops. They were streaming toward Varlotsville, looking for a hot meal.
As they arrived, they found their quartermaster’s wagons and fell on them with the single-minded purpose of an attacking horde. Their quarry: huge kettles of seasoned meat and potatoes boiling over open flames, buckboards loaded with bread and butter, and covered wagons filled with barrels of ale. Soldiers attacked the grub until their hunger was sated, until each had a belly full of such glorious battle. They praised their quartermaster profusely, granting him honor second only to Packer Throme. But Major Bustian Harmey, Quartermaster, shaken by the plunder of his provisions, took each compliment like it was a round of live ammunition fired over his head. He responded in his accustomed fashion, with an artillery barrage of invective.
A solitary scout found Huk Tuth deep inside the city, marching with the contingent of men whose goal was to protect the Rampart. He clattered up to the supreme commander on horseback. “My lord, we’ve found their army,” he told the commander breathlessly.
“The whole of it?”
He nodded. “Tens of thousands. They’re gathered in a small town at the edge of the forest south of here, just over ten miles away.” He dismounted, stood beside Commander Tuth’s horse and showed him the enemy position on an extraordinarily detailed map.
“Tens of thousands, here?” Tuth asked incredulously. It was an indefensible protrusion, a finger of civilization reaching out to touch the forest, a space of meadow or farmland surrounding it. They were inviting attack. “What are they doing now?”
“Taking food and rest.”
Resting from what? Tuth wanted to ask. But he knew it was not what they rested from, but what they rested for that should concern him. What was their plan? They could have flanked the Drammune, if they had but seized the opportunity. They could have beaten Tuth back to the Rampart. Instead, they gathered together in an unprotected village to dine? His first instinct was to order an attack, now, while his own army was on the move and ready to fight. But these cagey cowards had him off his guard, and he second-guessed himself. Was this another Vast ploy?
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps they didn’t even know the position of the Drammune army. Perhaps it was not a feint at all, but simply hungry soldiers feeding themselves. No, then why leave in the dead of night? Perhaps, he thought again, they gathered at the mouth of that infernal secret passage, ready to escape at any moment.
And with that thought, his decision was made. He had to move, instantly. His generals could get their men into position as they arrived. He would use the troops who had been skirting the forest to begin the assault.
He would catch the Vast this time. He would fight them army to army. He would finally and forever crush them.
At this obscure little spot on the map labeled Varlotsville.
Gathered were all the king’s counselors, or almost all, around a worn table in a small, dark tavern that had become the Army’s Varlotsville headquarters. The council consisted of a queen, a priest, two generals, and a prince. The latest addition, the old fisherman, was gone to visit the surgeon after having fallen twice on his trek through the woods, reopening wounds that required more stitches and fresh gauze. This time, he would receive them from someone other than Father Mooring, who rightly assumed Dog would be pleased for once to have surgery without a sermon.
“The soldiers are ready, sir, to enter the tunnels.” General Jameson spoke the words to General Millian.
“Are you prepared to lead them in?” Millian asked Ward Sennett.
“Ready and willing,” the prince replied.
“Excellent. Order them in, General.”
“No, not yet.”
Both generals reacted to Packer Throme’s words as though small-arms fire had broken out in the next room. They pivoted toward their king. Ward squinted and cocked his head, trying to recall some conversation that might explain why the king countermanded the general at this late moment. But there had been no such conversation, not at this table.
“Sir,” General Millian said to Packer carefully, “we have delayed all we can already, just feeding the troops.”
“I understand,” Packer answered. “But I want to speak to them.”
“But…now, sir?” Jameson asked, something akin to both pain and panic in his voice.
“Yes. Immediately.”
The room went silent, all eyes boring into Packer. Until this moment the mood had been focused but serene, even light, with the unusual exception of a rather melancholy Ward Sennett.
Ward had dismissed all attempts to determine the source of his discomfort, but it was no mystery. Just being here made Ward feel like the lone teetotaler at a Queen’s Day celebration. The place smelled of ale. It reeked of strong drink and good smoke and endless nights of laughter and camaraderie. He inhaled its atmosphere, tasted its character. He absorbed its entire history through his pores, taking in everything except the one substance his mind and body craved most. But with a simple statement, the king had driven the prince’s inner turmoil from every mind but the prince’s.
Panna was watching her husband’s eyes and the distant fire burning there. “What will you say to them?” she asked softly. She already knew the answer, but it was still a fair question. The others needed to know.
Packer didn’t respond to her. Instead he asked, “Have we heard any reports from the rear guard?”
“No, Your Highness,” General Millian answered slowly, leaning forward and choosing his words carefully. His hands shook visibly. “But regardless, the Drammune must know we are here by now. We are outnumbered, indefensible, in broad daylight. We must enter those tunnels.” He saw no change in Packer’s determination. Millian cleared his throat. “Sir, with all respect and honor for your absolute authority, luring them here was only a wise move if we are not actually found here when they arrive.”
The silence was now palpable. Packer looked down at his own scarred palm. “It’s time to tell our people the truth.”
Millian’s voice turned to a plea. “Let us trust God, Your Highness. But let us do it with wisdom. Let us not put Him to the test, so that He must undo our own foolishness.”
The others held their breaths. Had the general just called the king a fool?
But Packer had been called that before, and worse, and he didn’t resent it. He stood and walked away, toward a greasy window half-covered with a stained and discolored curtain. His resolve wavered. He had prayed. He had been completely assured of the goodness, the rightness of this decision. To address the troops, that was required. The people must know. They must be given a choice. He had agreed to this on his knees. But now the act of presenting to them their choices seemed to be dooming them, giving them no choice at all.
Could he have been mistaken? Should he have gathered the troops last night, in the dark? That did not seem reasonable then. Or should he have spoken to them over their dinner? They were famished, and gorging themselves. They would not have listened. Perhaps the time had not yet come—maybe there would be another, better time to speak to them. But once they entered the tunnels, they could not be gathered.
Perhaps Millian was right, and the opportunity
was past. He had missed it. Perhaps they should just get underground now, stream into the Old City, and fight for their lives and their king and their kingdom. Let God choose the outcome. But Packer knew that sending them to fight would mean taking the usual path, trusting God to bless the sword.
He turned to face the group. When he spoke, he sounded as pained as he felt. “I…believe I was made king for a reason, and I know it wasn’t because I have the best mind for military strategy.” He lowered his eyes. “I just know I need to speak to the troops.”
Still, no one moved. The question suddenly formed in Panna’s mind, and then in Packer’s, as to whether the generals would obey him. Packer stared at the floor, but Panna watched the generals as they cut their eyes to Prince Ward. She knew what was happening. Do something, their eyes said. And the new queen had the distinct impression they would be glad, at this moment, if the prince simply asked Packer to hand over the ring.
“I remember once, I chose to take the long way home,” Father Mooring said quietly, as though continuing a conversation no one else had heard, “because it wound through a part of the city I hadn’t seen in some time. I stepped in a hole. Twisted my ankle badly, which kept me from traveling to Oster the next day.” Packer and Panna listened carefully. The other men glanced around the table at one another impatiently. But no one spoke. Father Mooring continued. “Then I remember another time when I agonized over a decision, prayed for days and nights, fasted, and finally determined the will of God. I asked the young woman to marry me.”
“We’ve all made difficult decisions,” Ward said without his usual cheer, but with no trace of condescension. He was more accustomed to dealing with fools than anyone else at the table, though in his experience such fools were generally inebriated. “But I believe the decision on the table—”
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 90
