But Aidan had spent a lot of time planning his insurgency. He had also dug a lot of tunnels. He wasn’t ready to give up so easily. “We know every nook and cranny of these canyons,” he said, his voice rising. “Do you have any idea of the advantage—”
King Steren raised a finger to his lips for quiet. “What’s that sound?” he asked. All night they had heard the murmur of Pyrthen voices and the jingle of horse tack, the occasional clank of weapons being moved or stacked. But now there were new noises coming from the northern rim—great metallic groans and iron squeaks, the blowing and stamping of horses under strain, the barks of the horse masters.
Maynard had heard these sounds many times before in his travels with the Pyrthen army. “Gun carriages,” he said. “They’re putting gun carriages in place.”
The term was unfamiliar to the Corenwalders. “Remember the thunder-tubes the Pyrthens used at Bonifay?” he said. “The Pyrthens call them cannons. They’re lining them up on the other rim.” The moon hadn’t risen yet, but by starlight the Corenwalders could just make out the silhouettes of men, horses, and thunder-tubes on the canyon rim directly across from them. A peninsula of land jutted out into the canyon, a huge semicircular stage with the canyon for an orchestra pit. Teams of draft horses pulled a dozen guns close to the edge, where the foot lanterns would be if it really were a stage.
“They’ve done a good scouting job,” Percy remarked. “They seem to know our position exactly.”
“We can’t hold this position,” said Maynard.
“We can go deep in the tunnels …” Aidan began, but Maynard just shook his head.
“We could hold these canyons forever against archers, infantry, cavalry—against any fighting force we Corenwalders are used to fighting against. But you haven’t considered what cannons can do to a place like this. Those iron balls will pulverize this canyon wall. These tunnels will collapse at the first impact. Anybody inside will be buried alive. Those who are outside will have one less place to hide. I saw those cannoneers blow a rocky cliff to bits on one of the eastern isles, where pirates were hiding. That was solid granite. You don’t want to see what they could do to this sand and clay.”
Aidan envisioned his own hopes and plans blown away by the Pyrthen guns like the pirates’ granite hideout.
“We’ll split the army,” Steren announced without any preamble.
“We’ll what?” asked Aidan.
“We’ll split the army for a night march. Aidan, you’ll lead half the men and one cavalry unit up the canyon. I’ll lead the rest of the men and the other cavalry unit down the canyon. What is it, a league upstream to the end of the canyon?”
“A league and a half,” said Jasper.
“And a little less than that to the downstream end, if I remember correctly,” said Steren. “Aidan, when you get out of the canyon, you’ll double back along the canyon rim, or as close as you can get without attracting the sentries’ notice. I’ll do the same thing from the other end.
“In the morning, when they open up those thunder-tubes on this spot, you boys will hit them on their right flank, and we’ll hit them on their left.”
“Like a pair of tongs,” said Brennus.
“Exactly,” Steren answered. “This is no time to be playing defense. If we can engage the enemy, they can’t use their thunder-tubes without shooting into their own men. If everything goes well, we can just fold them up, back their right flank into their left flank. Then they’ll have to fight us in front and behind at the same time.”
Aidan shook his head. “You’re talking about some sort of last stand?”
Steren shrugged. “I hope not. No, I’m talking about winning this battle.”
“But, Steren, we’re such a small force already. I just don’t think splitting up is a good idea.”
“Aidan, I have already had your advice, and I thank you for it. Now I need your obedience.” He was every bit a king.
“Yes,” said Aidan. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Battle
The moon rose after midnight to light the way for the Corenwalders as they made their way to either end of the canyon. It was only a quarter moon, but the white walls of the canyon reflected every bit of its light; for the men who knew the canyon, it was more than enough light. The newcomers who didn’t know the canyon followed the men who did.
The Corenwalders were in their positions well before daylight. A little wet-weather creek paralleled the right flank of the sleeping Pyrthens, about fifty strides away. It was lined by scraggly bushes that stood about as high as a man’s chest. Here, behind the bushes, Aidan and his four thousand men waited for daylight to come.
The sun had barely appeared over the lower canyon horizon when the Pyrthen thunder-tubes opened up on what, just a few hours earlier, had been the Corenwalder position. The earth shuddered with the explosions in the cannons’ mouths, and the smoke from the burning powder hung over the canyon. Great chunks of earth fell from the canyon wall to the floor after the first volley. By the second or third volley, the dust thrown up by the cave-ins made it impossible to see the other side of the canyon. Had the Corenwalders stayed in the canyons, any of those who survived the cave-ins would surely have suffocated in the dust.
The Pyrthen soldiers crowded near the canyon’s edge to watch the catastrophe, cheering raucously at what they believed to be the destruction of the last remaining enemy. The sight convinced them they would not be fighting that day.
A few of the Pyrthens saw the Corenwalders coming. A few on the right who had lost interest in the pounding of Sinking Canyons saw Aidan running toward them, his mouth stretched in a primal shout, with four thousand men behind him. A few on the left saw King Steren leading his men across the last few strides before they collided with the outer ring of Pyrthen soldiers. The sentries on both sides called warnings, but nobody heard them over the booming of the cannons. Hundreds of Pyrthens were struck down or hurled from the canyon rim before they had even drawn their swords.
The Corenwalders made remarkable progress in the initial surprise of their attack. For a minute it appeared as if the two halves of the Corenwalder army would snap shut on the two Pyrthen flanks like the jaws of an alligator.
But the Pyrthens were battle hardened, the veterans of many campaigns in many different settings. They soon regained their composure; though by the time they did, their numerical advantage wasn’t quite so overwhelming. The officers finally got the cannoneers to hold their fire, allowing them to better communicate orders to their men.
The Pyrthen cavalry mounted horses and were quite effective at scattering the foot soldiers until the Corenwalder cavalry collided with them. Otherwise, the combat was strictly hand to hand, carried out with sword, ax, and spear. The Corenwalders fought desperately in defense of their homeland; they had more to fight for than the Pyrthens did, and that was an advantage. However, the skill and strength of the Pyrthens soon began to show against the Corenwalders, most of whom were farmers and laborers instead of career soldiers.
Dobro fought in a manner worthy of the feechiefolk. In close combat like this, he was easily worth five civilizer soldiers. Maynard, too, fought like a man possessed, understanding for the first time what it meant to fight for Corenwald.
In the midst of the melee, the cannoneers and their horses turned the great gun carriages around and rolled them to the base of the peninsula, away from the rim. They aimed the guns in the direction of the skirmishers, against the remote possibility they would need to fire them.
The two lines of Pyrthen fighters were soon gaining back the ground they had lost, pushing the Corenwalders backward and opening the jaws of the alligator. More and more Corenwalders fell beneath the skillful swords of the Pyrthens.
The Corenwalders’ only real hope of victory lay in meeting each other in the middle, forcing the Pyrthens to defend themselves from Corenwalders in front of them and Corenwalders in back of them at the same time. That would have multiplied the Coren
walders’ strength. But the farther apart the two skirmish lines got, the more the Corenwalders’ strength was divided. Not having succeeded in the initial attack, the Corenwalder army was in danger of being flanked itself. Should that happen, all would be lost.
That appeared to be exactly what was happening to Aidan and his men when Aidan looked up and saw a horse sweeping down from the north, ridden by Bayard the Truthspeaker. His white hair was blown back against his head, and in his right hand he raised a sword. Behind him charged a whole army of feechiefolk—thousands of them. Gray-skinned, turtle-helmeted, bedecked in their gator-hide breastplates, wolf-paw necklaces, and spoonbill feathers, they looked like the swamp itself, come to life and ready to sweep the invaders into Sinking Canyons. They raised stone-tipped spears and kept coming, yodeling, barking, and screaming like wildcats: “Haaa-wwwweeeeee!”
The feechies funneled down between the two skirmish lines. Seeing that help had come, the Corenwalders fought with renewed vigor.
The Pyrthens’ hearts melted. Many of these same Pyrthens had been at the Battle of Bonifay Plain, when the feechies had routed them in the Eechihoolee Forest. These feechies inspired the same irrational fear that had overwhelmed the Pyrthens six years earlier.
The feechies destroyed those Pyrthens who did not succeed in running away from them. As Pyrthens fell, feechies picked up their curved, cold-shiny swords to use on the next Pyrthen. Some feechies wielded two Pyrthen swords, one in each hand. They were terrifying, the stuff of Pyrthen nightmares.
All of the vaunted Pyrthen discipline broke down completely in the face of the feechies. A few Pyrthens broke through to the open plain, but the great majority of them were funneled down toward the canyon rim. Corenwalders drove them back, back, back against the mouths of the thunder-tubes.
In their desperate panic, Pyrthen officers ordered their cannoneers to fire into the melee. The first round of cannon fire was devastating. The fleeing Pyrthens absorbed much of the damage, but many Corenwalders—both feechie and civilizer—fell in the blasts. The cannon fire didn’t stop the Pyrthens from retreating, as their officers had hoped it would. They were still more terrified of the feechies than the cannons, and they ran straight into the cannons’ mouths.
The cannon fire did have the effect of slowing the Corenwalder pursuit. The fleeing Pyrthens didn’t even notice, but kept streaming onto that big half-moon of land where the guns were placed. Soon all the Pyrthens who didn’t lie dead or wounded in the field were cowering behind the guns on the peninsula. They were packed shoulder to shoulder, thousands of them, and some of the men on the perimeter were jostled off into the canyon, where they fell to their deaths. But behind the guns, they were safe from the feechies.
The earth was shaking with the force of the cannon fire. The feechies had been put to confusion amid the smoke and the noise, and the civilizers were only a little better able to keep their heads. Aidan understood they would have to take the guns if they were to have any hope of winning the battle. But that would come only with great loss of Corenwalder life. He needed to find Steren, but the field was shrouded in smoke. He couldn’t hear himself think amid the chaos of the cannonade. He had no idea how many of his men were still alive. At any moment the barrage could stop and the Pyrthens could come pouring back over whatever shell-shocked Corenwalders remained.
The cannon fire didn’t stop. The earth continued to shake with the force of it. Aidan blundered through the smoke, trying to gather up men to take those guns.
But then came a cannon blast that set off a thunder and shake such as Aidan had never heard before. When the roar began, the sound of the cannons stopped, as if swallowed up by it. The screams of ten thousand men rose above the roar and then they faded, too, as if carried swiftly away. A great rush of air sucked the cannon smoke into the canyon, then belched it back up into a towering billow of dust and smoke.
The Pyrthens were gone. The cannons were gone. The whole peninsula had shaken loose with the vibrations of the thunder-tubes and fallen into the canyon, carrying the Pyrthen army with it.
A hush fell over the battlefield. The men knew they had witnessed a miracle, and their sense of awe did not allow them to speak. Even Dobro had nothing to say. Many Corenwalders were dead and dying on the field—both civilizer and feechie—but not nearly as many as Aidan had feared from the intensity of the cannon fire. That alone would have been miracle enough to make them all fall silent.
“The living God has delivered us this day,” said Aidan. “Praise be to the living God, who has delivered Corenwald.”
All across the field, men were looking for comrades and brothers. There were many joyful reunions, many tearful good-byes. Aidan rejoiced to find all his brothers safe and sound. Dobro was also unhurt. Aidan’s check on his men was interrupted by the feechies who swarmed around him, eager to greet the civilizer hero and feechiefriend.
A messenger pushed his way through the feechies to tell Aidan that King Steren needed to see him immediately. Aidan followed the boy at a gallop across the area that used to be the Pyrthens’ left flank. Aidan could tell at a glance that Steren’s half of the army had suffered greater losses than his had.
The messenger stopped at a spot where men were kneeling in a circle. Some were sobbing loudly, others were praying. In the center of the circle, King Steren lay broken and bleeding, the casualty of a Pyrthen cannonball.
Aidan leaned down over the fallen king. With great effort, Steren raised a hand and held it in front of Aidan’s face as if giving a benediction. “Aidan, you have fulfilled your duty to the House of Darrow,” he rasped. “Now do your duty to Corenwald. They would have you for their king.” The light was ebbing from his eyes. “The living God has been good to me. I have lived to see Corenwald’s deliverance. Hail.” He gave a dying gasp. “Hail to the Wilderking.” Steren’s hand of blessing dropped to his chest, his eyes closed, and the pain on his face melted into an expression of peaceful rest.
Bayard had come running when he heard of King Steren’s injury. He reached through the circle of men and placed two fingers on Steren’s neck, feeling for a pulse. “The king is dead,” he said. “Long live the Wilderking.”
Epilogue
After Bayard the Truthspeaker had left Aidan and Dobro at the gulley on the Western Road, he went straight to the library at Tambluff University. There he consulted some long-forgotten scrolls and pieced together the story of the Vezeyfolk and the first, ill-fated human habitation on the island of Corenwald.
He left immediately for the Feechiefen. There, in the largest swamp counsel ever convened, he told the feechiefolk their story—that they and the civilizers were actually one big tribe, all descended from the Vezeyfolk. They had come to Corenwald in two separate waves of immigration, but they had come for the same reason: to escape the aggression of the Pyrthens, to live in a new land in the way they saw fit to live.
At first, the feechies were troubled by Bayard’s story. They were a clannish people, and their fierce loyalty to tribe and family had always made them deeply suspicious of the civilizers. They had to change their whole way of thinking as the meaning of Bayard’s story became clear to them. Now, rather than separating them from the civilizers, the feechies’ clannishness suddenly bound them to the civilizers as brothers and sisters.
So when Bayard told the feechies about the impending invasion by the Pyrthens, there was really nothing more to talk about. Before night fell, a flotilla of flatboats had put out for the north edge of the swamp—a feechie army coming to the aid of their tribesmen.
The feechie warriors came by the thousands, across the black waters of the Feechiefen, through the scrub swamp, across the great pine savannah. They swam the River Tam, and in the moonlight their helmets looked like a horde of snapping turtles crossing the river into civilizer country. They came up the Overland Trail at a trot, and when they struck the River Road they turned north for Tambluff.
They arrived too late to save the capital city from the Pyrthens. But Bayard led the feechies
on another two-day march to the south and west, toward the Clay Wastes. That was how the feechies came to be the heroes of the Battle of Sinking Canyons. New Vezey rose again that day, and the army of the great empire fell, swallowed up by the same ground that swallowed Corenwald’s first village. That earlier catastrophe at Sinking Canyons sent the feechiefolk to the swamps and forests. Now another catastrophe, three centuries later, brought them back.
After a week of mourning for King Darrow and King Steren, the city of Tambluff devoted itself to a week of celebrations leading up to the crowning of Aidan Errolson as King of Corenwald. For now no one, not even Aidan himself, could deny that Aidan was the fulfillment of the Wilderking prophecy.
Tambluff had never seen such a week as that one. From every village in Corenwald people came to see the Wilderking crowned. That in itself would have filled the capital city beyond its capacity. But to that number the feechiefolk were added. All of them. Every he-feechie, she-feechie, and wee-feechie on the island crowded into Tambluff for the festivities. For the first time in three hundred years, there wasn’t a human soul in the Feechiefen Swamp; it was given over to the alligators and craney-crows and bears and turtles for the week.
During the festival, the usual civilizer entertainments were augmented by such feechie pastimes as fire-jumping, gator-grabbling, and spitting contests. In the wrestling matches, feechies won every weight class except the heavyweights—and that was only because none of the feechies was big enough to qualify for the heavyweight class. The festive atmosphere was dampened somewhat by some grumbling among the civilizer wrestlers, who remarked on the feechie wrestlers’ habit of biting their opponents and occasionally sticking their thumbs in their opponents’ eyes.
Truth to tell, the grumbling wasn’t limited to the civilizer wrestlers. There was more widespread grumbling about the nine alligators that high-spirited weefeechies fetched from the moat of Tambluff Castle and turned loose in the city’s High Street. And there was grumbling (and shrieking) on those unfortunate occasions when exuberant feechies dropped from shade trees into the fine carriages of civilizer ladies.
The Way of the Wilderking Page 16
