by RW Krpoun
The problem was a knotty one: the warriors were not likely to leave the vicinity of the Clefts, and her small force could not face the spellcasting ability the Felher had deployed on this raid. On the other hand, such a raid must not go unpunished or the leaders of the Weehoc (clan-nation) would get the idea that the Badgers’ holdings were easy pickings. “Can you tell if they get into a fight with something in the tombs?”
“No, I’m no Watcher.”
“We’ll give it a try; we’ve stealth and surprise, and both Starr and I have those assassin’s arrows we picked up in Alantarn; at the least we’ll chew up their security element and show ‘em that raiding the Badgers isn’t a free ride. Here’s how we’ll do it...”
Easing forward another six inches, Starr inhaled, sighed out half her breath through her scarf-covered mouth to avoid breath-steam which would betray her position, pulled back to a full draw, aimed with the focused-mindset of a true Threll archer, and released. The arrow leapt from her bow and darted across the twenty feet that separated the diminutive Badger from her target, the broad head shaft striking the Felher sentry in the center of the throat, ripping through the vocal cords and windpipe before slamming into the spinal column with enough force to split a vertebrae horizontally and sever the spinal cord. Only a few mewling cries escaped the madly thrashing sentinel as the little Threll scampered forward to finish it with a dagger-thrust through the heart. Bracing a heel on the corpse’s sloping forehead, Starr worked the arrow free and examined it critically, finally tossing it aside as too damaged to be worth repairing. Slipping back to the main body, she reported her task complete: three sentries were dead, opening a sixty-yard gap in the Felher’s loose perimeter.
The next phase in Janna’s plan came as an under-section-master led four more Felher on a perfunctory patrol of the sentry posts, the trip made as quickly as possible so as to return to the warmth of their fires as soon as practicable. This patrol, which was made every thirty minutes, always followed the same path and order of posts, so that the last three posts checked were those whose sentries had been killed. As the five Felher trudged single-file along the path they had trampled through the snow on previous rounds towards the first sentry Starr had eliminated, they were suddenly set upon on both sides by eight Badgers who had been lying in ambush scant feet off the trail. The attack was swift, brutal, and ultimately silent, the five twisted Void-followers being overpowered and cut down before they were able to get off a good shout.
The first two phases having been accomplished successfully, the Badgers hastened to put the final act in their raid into effect. The five smallest Badgers (Starr, Eclipse, Philip, and two rankers from the heavy patrol who were just barely short enough) disguised themselves using parkas and weapons scavenged from the eight dead rat-men.
“How do I look?” Starr asked, shrugging the quiver of two-foot darts into a more comfortable position, the ankule, or dart throwing stick riding in a separate pocket on the side of the quiver.
“Like a short Threll trying to pass as a Felher,” Janna observed with characteristic bluntness. “Still, all you have to do is pass the first glance, you won’t have to carry on any long conversations or engage in ritual dances. Move your hekka around, though most Felher are right handed.”
The Lanthrell scout shifted the war-adze to her right side. “Hard to remember that, sometimes. I think there are things living in this parka.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” the Silver Eagle nodded absently as she studied the other four ‘Felher’ who were adjusting their outer garments and positioning the hekkas and theebs (stirrup-knives) in their belts. The Felher carried dart throwers or polearms for the most part, usually halberds or glaives, with a good sprinkling of spears, and without shields; this would work to the Badger’s advantage as it would make shedding their disguises much simpler. “Keep your scarves up over your faces and your heads down; remember how the Felher waddle. You’ll come into view of the main body with about thirty yards between yourselves and the campfires, with another ten to the vent; we’ll be close behind. Try to cover ten yards, if you can, before the alarm is raised. When they notice you’re not whom you are pretending to be, take cover and let fly with everything you’ve got; we’ll hit ‘em on the flank as soon as the alarm sounds. Both the Clefts appear to be in the hole, so we should be all right for a bit. We’ll chop them up, and pull out once the going gets too rough. The good thing is that they won’t pursue once we break contact.”
“Or if they do, we’ll turn and chew them up once they’re out of range of the Clefts,” Arian grinned. “We win either way. Let’s not have any heroes this go ‘round: all we want to do is shed some Felher blood and hopefully kill a Cleft, teach ‘em a lesson.”
Starr’s mouth was as dry as a bone as she led the file of ‘Felher’ through the trees into plain view of the main force, trying to imitate the sideways waddle of the rat-men while ignoring the creeping itch of whatever insect life lived in the malodorous parka she had taken as a disguise. Fortunately, the parka was big enough to hide her bow, quiver, and other weapons beneath its stinking folds. With the filthy hood pulled as far forward as it could go and the verminous scarf wrapped loosely around its opening, her features should be invisible, including the amber goggles she still wore as a barrier to snow glare, an advantage her underground- dwelling foes lacked. Twelve yards into the clearing the trampled path they were following crossed a long-dead tree trunk that had fallen over from a combination of wind and rot; that was their goal, to be reached by subterfuge or plain rush as the occasion warranted. Ten yards to go, nine, eight, seven, six, the Felher had seen this patrol return a dozen times since they had arrived here, all were cold and bored, sitting in tight clusters around the dozen small fires they had built, the leg-hobbled slaves huddled off to one side without the benefit of flames, the vent a dark slash against the trampled snow that surrounded it, a dozen of the spellcasters’ retinue clustered around the opening. Five yards to the log, four, three, a voice screeching the unfathomable Felher tongue hailing their patrol sending an icy hand clutching at the Lanthrell’s heart, six feet to go, the cry repeated and heads turning as the trunk, furred with stumps of dead branches, moved another step forward, now Felher were standing up at the fires as the toe of her boot brushed the trunk and she pretended to stumble sideways into unmarked snow, making room for Eclipse behind her.
There was no need to translate the cry that roared out from the Pac-master, even if any of them understood the Felher tongue: their masquerade had been revealed. Sprinting through the snow to her left she tore the filthy scarf from her face with her right hand as she jettisoned the belt supporting the hekka and Felher pouch with her left, Starr dove behind the log far enough from the trail to allow her patrol to have room to deploy, shrugging out of the parka and dart-quiver as she landed and heaving the garment across the log to increase her frontal protection.
A dart whipped past overhead as she nocked and released her first arrow, cutting down a section-master as it rallied its section. Alongside her the rest of her fellow Badgers had taken cover and most were firing on the Felher, although Eclipse had gotten tangled in the sleeves of her parka and the straps of her dart quiver and was a thrashing ball of limbs and equipment down at the other end of the log.
Caught by surprise, the Felher milled around their camp fires while their leaders struggled to restore order to their ranks. Then the main body of Badgers burst from the trees to their right rear as a bolt of lightning incinerated three of the retinue standing at the vent, scattering the others. Janna paused just into the clearing to send two throwing axes whirling into the fray, dropping two Felher warriors with shattered skulls before leaping to close, Rosemist flashing like a black mist before her. The assaulting Badgers were in a wedge formation so that each mercenary had someone watching his back, the vee of armored warriors slamming into the Felher like a battering ram. Those rat-men at the first camp fire were overrun and slaughtered before they could adapt to what was going on; the re
st hastily formed ranks and fell back towards the vent, where members of the Clefts’ retinue were summoning their masters out from the tombs.
“All right, that’s enough, pull back,” Janna called from her position next to point of the wedge. “Time to get away.” The Silver Eagle had no doubts about how the fight would go if the Felher received magical support. A dozen Felher were dead and as many or more were wounded for three lightly wounded Badgers, making the attack a success in anyone’s reckoning.
Starr watched as the first Cleft came out of the vent clad in an otter-hide coat and matching cap, a much better-fed specimen than the scrawny warriors. A lightning bolt leapt for the rat-wizard, only to explode a dozen feet short, killing two warriors but failing to harm the Cleft. Likewise, two arrows from the small patrol at the log exploded into flame an equal distance from the spellcaster. “Run for the trees,” Starr called to her charges. “I’ll cover you.” Drawing an arrow from a separate side pocket of her quiver, she held the head to her eye until the Cleft filled the aperture of the hole in the head. Whispering a command word, she drew and released the shaft, using a full draw but only perfunctory aim.
The shaft, one of a quiver-full looted in Alantarn two years ago, corrected its flight as it whipped in, the fletching flashing sparks as it flashed through the wards and drove into the Felher spellcaster’s breast. Starr rolled to her feet and sprinted for cover as darts and slung bullets rained over her log.
The main force had withdrawn into the edge of the trees, walking backwards to gain the protection of their shields from the darts and slung bullets of the Felher, and to return fire with what missile weapons they carried; as they entered the trees, Henri tried another (and his last, given his limited powers) lightning bolt, this time incinerating two more of the retinue.
This last attack provoked an unexpected response; as Janna looked back at the enemy after checking the main body’s progress she saw a Felher holding aloft a dusty black staff as several of the surviving members of the retinue sprinted madly away. Red and black balls of fire were forming at each end of the ornately carved rod.
“Get down, get into the snow!” Henri howled to her right as the flaming spheres grew. Without hesitation the Silver Eagle did as the wizard commanded, diving straight into a snow drift as the flaming orbs leapt from the staff and shot through the air with incredible speed. One struck a pine near Janna, ripping the tree apart and spraying the burning fragments out in a cone-shaped pattern twenty yards long; the other struck Jean Girard, a heavy-set Arturian who had been a Graeve, or non-noble armored horseman in the service of the King of Arturia before joining the Badgers two years earlier, the resulting eruption of fire and magical force blasting the man to bloody fragments, his mail shirt burning in the snow like a ball of gold links. Another pair of flaming orbs swept in, blasting apart another tree and a snow drift; the Badgers screwed themselves deeper into whatever cover they had landed behind and prayed to the Eight for help..
Risking a glance at the staff wielder, Janna saw the Felher staggering, seeming to struggle with the device he was holding. The next pair of deadly globes exploded harmlessly in the clearing between the vent and the log where Starr’s group had taken cover; as the tempo of discharge speeded up, three pairs of orbs whipped into the ranks of the hobbled slaves, killing or maiming nearly all of them. The Felher warriors were fleeing the vicinity of the vent as the rat-man struggled with the black staff until both suddenly vanished in a massive eruption of fire and a thunderclap of noise that struck Janna, fifty yards away, like a physical slap.
Wasting no time, the Silver Eagle sprang to her feet and ordered the withdrawal; the surviving Badgers obeyed with alacrity.
“What in the world was that staff?” Janna demanded of Henri when the eighteen Badgers had regrouped at the rally point.
“I’m not sure, and neither was the apprentice Cleft that got ahold of it,” Henri shrugged. “Some sort of, well, in layman’s terms both a focus and power repository for a very destructive type of flame magic. I expect they recovered the staff from one of the tomb rooms, and when the apprentice panicked and grabbed it, he figured out how to start using it, but not how to stop.”
“Good thing he wasn’t sure; there wasn’t enough left of Jean to fill a quart mug,” Kroh shook his head. “And did you see his mail shirt? It burned; do you have any idea how hot iron has to get before it burns?”
“I didn’t know iron could burn, and I don’t ever want to see it again,” Starr shuddered. “At least Jean didn’t suffer.”
“Best of all, they lost the staff,” Henri pointed out. “In trained hands that would be an extremely dangerous device.”
“Right, we were lucky,” Janna nodded. “Starr, go see what they’re up to, report back in an hour; Pug and Tonya have first watch, the rest can start fires and relax, we won’t take another run at them for a while, if ever. Eclipse, you’ll be carrying a message back to Oramere as soon as I can write it up.”
In the end no second attack was mounted: the Felher formed a smaller and much tighter ring of sentries around the vent and remained alert while the surviving Cleft oversaw the looting of the tomb rooms. As the short winter day drew to an end the Felher produced torches from their slaves’ packs and set out a ring of burning brands that dispelled the darkness from around their perimeter. As the temperature dropped with the fading of the weak sunlight, Janna led the Badgers back to Oramere, unhappy with the situation but having few options.
Axel tossed a carved bronze rod onto the dining hall table. “They pillaged all the chambers and withdrew via a Gate; we found another egran set up and hidden a mile away for a future raid, no doubt; we tore it down, and Starr’s backtracking their trail for another five or six miles beyond that, just to be safe.”
It was the day after Janna’s force fought the Felher; the Company’s officers, less the little Lanthrell, were receiving Axel’s report on what had found at the tombs. “The good news is that they cleaned the place out, leaving them with no special interest in returning other than the usual sort of raiding, and Eight knows they’ve better targets closer to home. I believe the second Gate was merely a test to see how thorough we are, and to rattle our cage a bit.”
“We ought have left it up, with a couple good Badgers on watch,” Kroh grinned. “Let ten or so come through and wreck it, teach ‘em a lesson”
“If we had an idea of how long they would wait until mounting the next raid, we would,” Durek nodded. “But that’s closed business. Good work Axel; as for this raid, I seriously doubt there would have been anything we could have used in those chambers, so all we lost was Jean. The Black Thunder will think twice before raiding us again after losing a Cleft and as may warriors as they did; that was fine work, Janna.”
The Silver Eagle nodded casually. “I wasn’t alone.”
“No, all of you did well. Now, we’ve other business to attend to: Elonia says we’ll get a couple hours of above-freezing weather tomorrow, with more to come in the next ten days; that means the ice on the Burgen River will be breaking up and we’ll be able to get one of the larger fishing boats through to Hohenfels. The vault downstairs is nearly full with odd bits of loot we’ve acquired in the last couple years, plus what we got from the raid on the Spider, and I want to dispose of it before we begin this year’s campaigning. Starr, Rolf, and Kroh will set off in a week to dispose of the special items, while Janna and Arian can wait a few days beyond that before going to Teasau to sell off the ordinary stuff and take care of some routine transactions. I want everyone back before the Festival; we set out on campaign immediately after that.”
“You worry too much, Captain,” Arian grinned. “How hard can selling off loot be?”
Chapter Three
By noon on the twenty-first day of Marlt the temperature was twelve degrees above freezing in the Imperial city of Teasau, a bustling community of thirty-five thousand souls some one hundred ten miles southwest of Oramere, a lively trade town built at the junction of the Hirsch and B
urgen rivers. River traffic was augmented by two major roads entering the city from the west and south and a lesser route to the north, ensuring that trade and traffic entered the city all year long. Nights still brought freezing temperatures, but with several hours of warm weather nearly every day the accumulated drifts were steadily receding into gray-black reefs of frozen and pitted snow.
The Festive Turnip was an inn popular with the better-paid mercenaries and caravan guards who passed through Teasau, as well as the junior officers of the city garrison and the Navy contingent who patrolled the surrounding rivers. Janna sat at a small table near the center of the room, leaning back in her chair against a varnished support pillar, a mug of ale in her hand and Rosemist’ scabbard lying across her knees. In deference to the laws of the city she left her breast and back armor and studded arm bracers in her room, along with her long bow and throwing axes, as armor and missile weapons of all sorts being forbidden within the city defense works to keep mayhem down to a controllable level. Personal weapons such as her black bastard sword and dirk were allowed, as even in the best cities street crime was a common problem. Dressed in a long wool shirt, flannel leggings, and a lambskin vest worn with the fleece inside and currently hanging open, she cut an attractive picture of a woman well past her youth but still trim and energetic; in the last half hour she had refused several offers of companionship. None of the suitors pushed the issue beyond politeness; the ex-Silver Eagle was clearly the kind of woman who could take care of herself.
She had just ordered a plate of cheese-covered fried dumplings to snack on, unconcerned about her weight as only a woman facing a summer campaign could be, when Arian came through the door knocking water from his wide-brimmed leather hat. Catching sight of her, the monk made his way across the common room, pausing to order a mug of ale from a serving girl and exchanging greetings with a couple Imperial Wardens he knew. Janna watched the gangly man as he approached and wondered at the emphasis of timing on one’s life: she and Arian had been lovers for several years now, a relationship that had quickly advanced past physical attraction and on into a solid mutual affection and respect. Had they met ten years earlier, would they still be footloose mercenaries, or would some sort of stable life and children been a possibility? She mentally shrugged; it was an old topic of internal debate, and a pointless one at this late stage: she was too old for child-bearing, and both of them were too set in their ways to ever change. They would follow the blade and standard until death, age, or battle-wounds ended their careers, and that was the truth of it. Death comes to all, and she would meet hers with few complaints, which was about as good as anyone could ask for.
