by RW Krpoun
Durek shrugged. “I told him to stay in camp.”
“You’re writing him off, then.”
“Yes.”
“Blast.” Evarts shook his head slowly. “A tough break for Ames. Right, then, let’s get to it.” The burly man stood and moved off into his camp, issuing orders as Durek led the patrol back into their camp.
Haakon was at the gate counting heads and checking tool-racks as his people filed past. He jerked his chin, or more accurately the base of his beard at the mercenary Captain and kept up with his inventorying. The Dwarf-leader and Durek had long since worked out the details of the Dwarf contingent’s role in the camp’s defense; all that remained was to implement their plans.
The Dwarves were storing their tools and sorting out into defense groups when the first loggers staggered up to the zig-zag path. They trickled in, dragging their personal goods and the tools of their trade, and the narrow path quickly filled up as the ever-dutiful Rolf systematically searched each bundle, pouring out all alcoholic beverages found. Protests were long and bitter, but the leveled crossbows of the half-dozen Badgers backing the big half-Orc’s orders kept it to protests only. Bridget stood by with another detail to explain the rules of the camp to the newcomers, and to indicate where they were to set up their shelters.
Durek watched the loggers enter his camp with considerable unease; the Captain had the highest opinion of Humans as a race, and held the Empire in high regard, but he was keenly aware that the members of the Clean Saw Logging Company represented the worst of both groupings. He was aware that there was a high percentage of the company’s employees who had served their nation by hacking out roads over the years, and nearly every one of them bore the scars of judicial floggings. On the one hand they outnumbered the combined strength of his Company and Haakon’s Dwarves, but on the other they lacked armor and discipline. Holding them in some sort of order would be very difficult, he suspected, but quelling an outright mutiny should present no real problem.
The oxen were the last things in the gate; Durek had debated taking them in, but had decided to go ahead; they could be eaten if nothing else. As soon as the last beast cleared the stake-belt a detail of Badgers began planting stakes in the path, closing it up.
“Going to be tight quarters here,” Evarts commented as Durek checked the logger’s section. “I’ve one hundred ninety-eight souls and twenty oxen, Haakon’s got forty-odd, and your Company adds nearly sixty.”
“Yes, we’re tightly crowded,” the Dwarf agreed. “You can you see why I wanted the women and children evacuated. Now, your able-bodied men will have to be organized into squads of twelve, one of whom will be the squad leader and another who will be his assistant. You will field twelve squads and a command group of ten, armed with your axes, whatever weapons your men have, and spears which my Company will issue. All persons within this camp will be under my authority, and any who disobeys an order will be subject to flogging or hanging. Your loggers will have to fight when the Goblins attack, and fight hard if they want to live. Serjeant Uldo will help you organize your people.”
Evarts shook his head. “I hope the Goblins show up soon; my lads won’t take to too much of this military stuff.”
“The Spider will be here soon enough,” Bridget observed darkly. “And then all this ‘military stuff’ will determine how many of us live to see them go away again.”
They saw the first Goblins, yasama, darting in from the tree line to paw over the logger’s half-dismantled shelters, and immediately the loggers were clamoring to be let out of the camp to go sort out the little bastards, but Durek refused; in any case, the path through the stake belt was completely filled in. The mercenaries tried to tell the drunken tree-cutters that if the scouts were in plain view, then large numbers of jugata were very close to hand, but gave up after a few tries. Nothing but time would clear the logger’s minds of the alcohol fog.
As the day deepened to twilight the size of the Goblin force was becoming evident from the growing numbers of jugata who carefully and thoroughly looted the belongings and tools left behind by the loggers and surveyors, and by the noise of carts and bodies moving through the trees just out of sight; near dusk Axel used another feather and estimated that they faced six hundred jugata, three war engines, and a variety of supporting war creatures. It was equally evident that Sacherval and his men wouldn’t be coming back. The camp began receiving sniper fire, but the Goblin’s bows weren’t accurate firing across the expanse of cleared ground, and the arrows did no real harm. The Spider force set up a camp in the trees just south of the cleared areas surrounding the township, while yasama patrols kept an eye on the west and north sides of the Badger enclave.
Durek walked his perimeter and waited, hoping that the Goblins would stay their hand until after midnight. By now the loggers were sobering up, but the process would still take hours; the Captain wanted every hand ready when the first attack hit. Hurt them bad enough on the first go, and there might not be a second try. The Badger camp was a rectangle, roughly two hundred yards on the long sides (north and south) and seventy-odd on the short (east and west) sides, with the east side being the river. Ditch, stake belt, and abatis lined the landward sides, with fighting positions made from chest-high walls of uprooted stumps and field stone at each corner. Six more such positions were emplaced along each long side, and two more covered the west side for a total of eighteen positions, numbered clockwise beginning at the position at the northeast corner.
Haakon’s Dwarves held positions Seven through Eleven, which were the two west corner positions (Eight and Eleven), plus one north wall position and both west wall positions. Six Badgers were stationed in positions One (northeast corner), Four and Five (north wall), Fourteen and Fifteen (south wall) and Eighteen (southeast corner). Squads of loggers held the other seven positions. Two reaction forces had been assembled, each with nine Badgers and two squads of loggers.
Durek didn’t expect much out of the loggers, but defending a fixed position is the simplest military task there is, and in any case, he had no choice. He had assigned the extra squad of loggers to torch-lighting duty just to keep them out of the way; for the moment he had more than enough bodies to hold his position, but that was a condition that would not last past the first serious attack the Spider mounted.
When darkness had fully descended Durek called together a small patrol he had decided upon some hours before. Henri was charged with leading it, armed with two hawk feathers, three Rods of Bridging, two light rods, and the bundle of fire-javelins; Rolf, Kroh, Milo Denne, and Dayyan Reinert made up the rest of the force, whose job was to destroy the three ballistas the Goblins were erecting at the forest’s edge. Sending three Corporals hadn’t set well with the Captain, but when dirty jobs were called for you needed the best, and each of his Corporals was a specialist and exceptionally trustworthy individual. Milo, a red-haired man with a broad, somewhat foxy face and an evil grin, was one of the scout-archers Starr was training and a steady hand, Dayyan was of average height but looked shorter because of his amazing expanse of shoulders which easily made him the strongest Human in the Company, and but for lacking the length of reach was a physical match for Rolf. Dayyan was like Rolf in another important regard: he obeyed orders without question or hesitation. The burly young man’s moon-face was perpetually split in a grin, and before fights he was seen to shuffle in place, a sort of childish happy-dance at the prospect of action. Durek liked him for another reason: Dayyan used a long axe in the Dwarven izar style, unusual for a Human from the Empire, where swords, either broad swords or Legion-issue short blades were the order of the day, war hammers coming in a close second.
The five represented a compact, dangerous force: a wizard and four very competent warriors, all trusted Badgers. If they could succeed in knocking out the war engines during the confusion of the first attack the odds facing the Badgers would be greatly lessened. It was a risk sending five against hundreds, but daring and skill could carry them in and away if their luc
k held. The Captain had ordered scores of such missions, and led not a few in person over the years; it was a Badger trademark to apply just the right level of force to the foe’s point of greatest weakness, but it still made his stomach churn to send trusted comrades out against such odds.
Near midnight they could hear the Goblins massing, and the five-strong raid force embarked in a small log raft, using poles to push themselves out into the river and then just drifting with the current thereafter, lying flat on the green tree trunks with a cunningly-assembled net of woven branches lying across their backs. In the light of the quarter-moon they looked like a mass of branches floating with the current, a common enough sight since the Clean Saw Logging Company had begun operations.
Once they were underway Henri used one of the feathers to get his bearings and see what they were up against. Finished, he nudged Kroh, who was lying next to him. “We’ll drift past the Goblins and come up from the south on foot,” he whispered. “They’ve fewer sentries on that side. Nearly all the support types are going to the forest’s edge to watch the excitement.”
“Good,” the Waybrother muttered. “In and out before the main bunch knows what’s what, then back to the camp before the real fun begins. The Spider will hold back on the first attack, anyway: they’ll want to get a measure of the defenses before they go all-out.”
The raft drifted past the three piers, the trenches that marked the position where Haakon’s workers would eventually build a stone blockhouse at the southeast corner of the township, the freshly-cleared fields surrounding the township to the south, and then finally the forest that contained the Goblin camp; voices, shouts and orders drifted across the water to them as they bobbed along, all in Ganjon. The five Badgers fingered their weapons and held their breath, waiting for the sentry’s shout that would be followed by a blanket of arrows sweeping out over them like a cloud of death. No outcry was raised, however, and the little raft continued on its slow but certain path downriver.
Bridget stood poised and ready in position Fourteen, a sling bullet loaded in the pouch of her staff sling, her sword-rapier loose in its scabbard. The attack would start any minute now, she was confident; as if to confirm her belief Durek ordered the torches lit. Crude iron holders, just a metal socket on a stake, had been driven into the ground every fifteen feet around the perimeter, each positioned so the bulk of a abatis would block the light from going back into the camp, keeping the defenders shrouded in darkness while the line of torches ruined the Goblins’ normally-keen night vision. After the torches set into the sockets were lit the stake belt was fully illuminated, as was the ground for a few feet beyond. It was far from perfect, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances. Bundles of replacement torches were stored at every defensive position to replenish brands that burned out or were destroyed in an attack.
The Goblins came then, swirling masses of jugata erupting from the tree line on all sides, sorting themselves out into Seraos and charging with thin, high-pitched screeching. Bridget waited until they were close before making her first cast; in poor light it was best not to waste ammunition. It quickly became apparent that this was merely a probing effort, not a determined attack; for one thing, the shamans stayed out of it, and for another none of the Goblins’ war-beasts were involved. The howling jugata didn’t really enter the stake-belt, either, just raced along the edge hurling stones and javelins in at the defenders and taking return fire in kind.
Henri used the second feather as the howling signaled the start of the attack. Tossing the ruined device aside afterwards, he handed javelins to Rolf and Kroh. “They’re a little to our left, close enough together so we won’t have to split up. All the sentries on the south line have left their posts to watch the show, so we’ll have a clear shot going in. Getting out will be a bit more difficult of a proposition.”
“Maybe,” Kroh was unimpressed. “But it takes a bunch of Goblins to stop me, killed dozen of them, I have.”
“I hope so. Everyone ready? Good, and remember, no fighting until we throw the javelins.” Henri led the way through the darkness, a cold chill washing down his spine with each step. He knew how these things could go, either just as planned, a quick nip in and dart out, or they could quickly degenerate into a very brief slaughter.
Soon they were passing Goblin carts and picket-lines of mules; the wizard would have liked to try to free a few slaves, but they had already liberated quite a number from the Spider this year, and would have to be satisfied with that. Five were too few for a slave-rescue anyway, he rationalized, and if they didn’t silence those war engines the Goblins would raise a mess within their camp come daylight. Absently he wondered what bastard renegade had sold the Spider ballistas; such engines were a Human innovation that was rarely saw amongst Goblins.
The yells and din grew louder as the Goblins reached the edge of the stake-belt and began what fighting there was going to be in this attack; the five raiders could see the line of torches ringing their pathetically small camp, and the black shapes of the Goblins dancing back and forth in front of the stake belt howling and yammering in their twisted, high-toned language as they employed missile weapons, hurled rocks, and got a good, close-in view of the defense works. They could see the blocky shapes of the ballistas now as well, the framework war engines looking like solid structures in the inky shadows beneath the trees. Two were rigged to throw stones in the manner as the pair that had fired on the Silly Bitch had been, and the third would fling five-foot-long bolts like javelins with fletching added. Henri paused by a tree to assign targets to the other corporals and then led the group in, easing forward a step at a time, moving to where they would have a clear throw at all three engines. It was slow work: although the Goblins that had stayed behind were watching the battle, all it would take would be for one chance sighting and they would truly be in the soup.
The approaching footsteps set them to hugging trees, using the trunks to break up their outlines as they waited to see who or what was coming towards them; seconds later they could see a Goblin warrior trudging through the darkness with his spear leaning over his shoulder, muttering, a sentry caught away from his post and sent back to it with the sharp edge of his Het’s tongue in the bargain. The jugata was too intent on what he would have liked to tell his officer and too little on his surroundings: he wasn’t aware of the raiders until Kroh’s axe caught him under the chin, lifting his head off his shoulders with one smooth stroke.
The five were up and moving even as the headless corpse toppled to the ground, blood pulsing in great jets from the stump of a neck. A voice called inquiringly as Henri rapped the shaft of his javelin against his sword hilt to warn the others that they had reached the throwing point. The wizard ignored the Goblin Pa who repeated his shouted cry with irritated authority and the figures stirring around them. “On two, lads, one...two.” He spoke the command words and threw, surprised to see that the javelins trailed sparks in flight, faint red flashes that would not show up during the daytime. He had his saber half out of the scabbard as the walls of fire suddenly roared forth, bathing the entire Goblin camp in glaring light and dancing jet-black shadow, making him jump despite himself. All around them Goblin voices were suddenly howling, and in the distance to the east he heard the sudden outraged baying of tethered war dogs sounding their battle cries.
“To the river,” Henri called, dropping the shouting Pa with a brilliant beam of light as Milo shot a nearby Goblin and Dayyan killed another with an ordinary javelin. The five raced through the trees, darting through alternating bands of hot yellow light and inky shadow, covering two-thirds of the way to the river before the walls of fire winked out as abruptly as they had appeared. The trees caught in the fire flickered and glowed about the branches and outer bark, but had not been heated up enough to overcome the living sap; the tarred frames of the ballistas were long dead and burnt brightly, however, clearly beyond extinguishing with the materials their crews had at hand. The sudden eruption of light had stunned the Gobl
ins in the camp, and it was long seconds before they noticed the fleeing raiders and an outcry was raised, sending short, shadowy figures pounding after them.
Henri pulled a light rod from his belt and activated the crystal as the sudden transitions from darkness to light to near-darkness had ruined all five’s night vision; leading the way with the rod held at arm’s length to his left side, he crashed through the scanty brush and in seconds found himself standing on the river bank, scores of Goblins thundering up from behind. Ripping a Rod of Bridging from his belt, he jammed it into the bank and recited the incantation, hastily releasing the rod as the walkway erupted from the ground to arch out over the water. It curved down well short of the far bank, but that was expected; Henri waited a second while the other four raiders charged onto the fresh yellow-white planks and then followed, turning at the height of the arch to hurl an Orb of Warding at the walkway where it joined the bank; instantly a ten-foot-long wall of fire lined the new planks, roaring away for a half-dozen seconds before winking out, leaving the fresh dry planking fully ablaze and the pursuing Goblins, who were just sliding to a halt on the river bank, without the means to pursue. Turning, Henri raced down the back curve of the bridge, arrows flashing past him and tunking into the planks behind him.
Stopping just short of where the river lapped at the end of the bridge, the wizard dug out a second Rod and created a second bridge that linked the first with the west bank. When all five were on the far bank Henri used another Orb to set the center of the second bridge on fire, effectively closing the slender bridges to all pursuit. The fresh, untreated wood of the bridges would burn to the waterline, and the pilings would be washed out of their shallow beds in the soft river mud by morning.
