‘The Bloody Blades!’ someone muttered in the ranks of the Second Low Town Regiment. ‘They got us into this and, by Earth and Sky, let’s hope they can get us out!’
This time the company sergeant said nothing.
Beyond the Bloody Blades was a second, and then a third, great column of goblins – the Hammerhead and Flathead Guard, their sky-blue coats half camouflaged by the drenching rain, and their narrow-topped funnel helmets rising and falling in unison as they strode resolutely on.
From all sides, the various regiments of the Hive Militia were converging through the thinning trees. The view on both sides was unbroken now, with the forest all but behind them and only a few sickly-looking lufwoods or stunted ironwoodpines remaining on the forest fringe.
To their left, the buoyant sumpwood limbers glided effortlessly above the mud as the prowlgrins that pulled them trudged on. The phraxcannon mounted upon the limbers were now in plain sight. They were truly vast weapons, each one at least as large as the Thunderer, the mighty cannon Nate had seen being ceremonially fired in the Old Forest district of Great Glade. Their phraxchambers were as large as those of any phraxlighter, and the barrel of the cannon jutted out some twenty strides in front.
To Nate’s right, the other two companies of the Second Low Town Regiment had fallen into step with them, followed by the three companies of the First Low Town Regiment marching close behind. And far off to their right, but rapidly converging, were the High Town Regiments – servants, scriveners, cooks and cleaners who, like their comrades from Low Town, had been forced into military service in the great call up.
Nate looked away from the growing swell of infantry and artillery, and concentrated on not losing a boot to the sucking mud. He staggered on, eyes fixed on the ground as, to the growing noise of whinnying prowlgrins and squelching feet, the mighty Hive army streamed out of the forest all around him.
‘Nate!’ Eudoxia gasped, suddenly grabbing at his arm. ‘Nate, I think we’re here!’
• CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT •
‘Form column!’ the company sergeant bellowed, a thin strand of drool trickling from the corner of his mouth and his lips flecked with foam.
He was clearly as exhausted as the rest of the company by the march between the marsh lakes, tramping in single file through the claggy cloying mud. But now, out on the flat featureless marshland beyond, with the settlement of Midwood in the distance and the rest of the regiments of the Hive Militia forming up for battle all around, the flathead sergeant’s blood was up.
‘Form column, I said, you Low Town dawdlers, not stop to admire the view!’ he barked, his small eyes bulging beneath his low brow.
Any moment now, Nate thought miserably, the sergeant would start lashing out with the vicious woodwillow switch cane he carried clamped under one arm. Next to him, in the front rank, the same thought had obviously occurred to Eudoxia, for she now straightened up from her crouching position, where she’d been gulping down lungfuls of air, and shouldered her phraxmusket. Nate did the same, cursing the oversized copperwood helmet that slipped down over his eyes as he did so.
The company sergeant strode through the ranks, the switch twitching under his arm.
‘Drop your packs!’ he ordered in a low growl. ‘Ammunition and waterflasks only, and check those phraxchambers. I want no misfires!’
Nate undid the straps to the sumpwood backpack and allowed it to float to the ground behind him. He patted the leather pouch of leadwood bullets that hung from his waistcoat and shook the flask strapped to his belt. Half full, but it would have to do. Glancing down, he checked that the lamp in the phraxchamber of his musket was glowing, and that the steam duct wasn’t blocked by mud. The rain had eased off, but the ground was still saturated. From all around him, there came the squelching sound of falling packs and the clinking of phraxmuskets as the rest of the company did the same.
‘Company, prepare to advance!’
Nate peered out of the corner of his eye along the line. The Hive Militia had formed up for battle and now stretched out across the sodden turf and gladegrass tuffets of the Midwood marshes in columns, three companies wide. Nate and Eudoxia’s company was on the extreme left, alongside the other two companies of the Second Low Town Regiment, their light grey topcoats and dark grey breeches as mud-spattered and dishevelled as their comrades’.
Looking past them, Nate could see the Hemtuft Battleaxe Legion – the Bloody Blades – standing proudly at the centre of the line, their polished silver helmets and crisp black topcoats now revealed from underneath discarded muddy cloaks and helmet covers. Beyond them, just visible, were the Hammerhead and Flathead Guard in sky-blue and, at the end of the line, on the extreme right, the First and Second High Town Regiments, their topcoats a smudge of light grey in the distance.
Nate had to admit that it was a magnificent sight. Behind them, to the right, came the sounds of whinnying and barking prowlgrins as the phraxcannon arrived and started to unlimber. Around the great gleaming brass guns, the black-uniformed figures of the Bloody Blades artillery swarmed, preparing the cannon for action. Ahead of them, across the marshes, the Midwood Decks nestled behind the stockade wall, seemingly oblivious to the mighty army facing it.
‘The phraxcannon will turn that wall of theirs to splinters,’ whispered Twill the treegoblin from behind Nate. ‘Then the Bloody Blades and the Guards will go in and teach them a lesson … They’ll only need us and the High Town lads to clear up, I reckon.’
Eudoxia stared ahead at the familiar settlement, the great circular decks swaying in the humid air. ‘Who’d have thought we’d be back here like this?’ she murmured beside Nate, her green eyes dulled by a mixture of sadness and exhaustion. ‘Fighting on the wrong side …’
‘No talking in the ranks!’ the company sergeant bellowed from the front of the column.
Just then, Eudoxia gave a little gasp. ‘Nate, look!’ she whispered urgently.
Nate pushed back the helmet on his head and followed Eudoxia’s gaze. There, flying high over the sumpwood stands, appeared first one, then two, then dozens of phraxships. They were in full steam and making for the Midwood Decks.
‘It’s the phraxfleet from Great Glade,’ she said, her voice low and excited as the phraxships started coming in to dock.
As they did so, Nate could see that they were packed full of uniformed figures, who poured off the ships and across the decks the instant they landed. A low murmuring spread through the company.
‘I said, “no talking!” ’ barked the sergeant, hitting out with his woodwillow cane.
Just then, a prowlgrin came bounding along the line, ridden by the colonel of the Second Low Town Regiment, a long-hair goblin by the name of Henten Boltrage. He leaned down low in the saddle and muttered a few words to the sergeant, before spurring his prowlgrin on and galloping back towards the centre of the line.
‘Colonels!’ muttered Twill the treegoblin. ‘Always at the back when there’s fighting to be done …’
‘Listen up, lads!’ shouted the sergeant, plainly disappointed by his orders. ‘Stand at ease. We’ll not be wanted just yet.’
Along with the rest of the company, Nate sank gratefully to his knees, cradling his phraxmusket under one arm – though, under the steely gaze of the sergeant, he was careful not to break formation. Glancing back along the line, he could see the barrels of the phraxcannon being cranked up until they pointed skywards. Clearly, their target was no longer the stockade wall in front of the Midwood settlement, but the decks above the town.
Beside him, Eudoxia shook her head in disbelief. ‘Knocking down the wall is one thing,’ she muttered to Nate, not wanting to be overheard, ‘but firing on the town itself … Think of all the poor innocent young’uns living there.’ Her green eyes blazed. ‘It’s – it’s madness, Nate! They risk destroying the entire settlement …’
Nate nodded sadly. ‘I don’t think the clan chiefs care,’ he said, ‘so long as it means victory over Great Glade.’
As if
in answer, there was an earsplitting roar as first one, then another, of the huge cannon opened fire. It spread down the line as all twenty phraxcannon discharged their phraxshells in a huge cloud of steam. The shells whistled overhead, wispy vapour trails marking the progress of their arcing flight. In the ranks of the Hive Militia, all eyes gazed skywards after them.
Down they came, closer and closer to the mass of phraxships and jostling figures on the distant decks …
‘I can’t bear to look,’ said Eudoxia quietly, hunching over and staring down at her mud-caked boots.
In the distance, there was a series of white flashes, followed by the sound of explosions: short, sharp cracks, one after the other, like a sap-rich log crackling in the heart of a brazier. Plumes of black smoke began to rise from the decks, and the timber towers and bobbing cabins beneath. Nate peered at the town in the distance. Phraxships, he could see, were still arriving, some circling the decks while others, obviously hit, were shooting off into the surrounding forest, trailing smoke and steam as they went.
At the centre of the line, the phraxcannon were being reloaded. Nate counted down the seconds, willing the phraxships in the distance to land, unload and take off as quickly as possible. The heavy phraxshells were hefted up into the brass barrels.
Several phraxbarges landed and figures leaped from their sides. The phraxcannon’s muzzles were cranked up to maximum elevation. The phraxbarges began to rise up in the air from the burning decks. The gunnery corporals set the sights; the bombardiers pulled on the firing pins. Two of the phraxbarges rose clear.
With a colossal roar, the phraxcannon fired. The decks disappeared in a white flash of explosions. When the smoke cleared, both phraxbarges had disappeared, their wreckage scattered across the sumpwood stands behind the town.
Nate looked away.
The bombardment of the Midwood Decks continued for the next half hour until, amidst the smoke and fires and white flashing explosions, the last phraxship of the Great Glade had run the gauntlet and delivered its cargo of militia – or been destroyed in the attempt.
As the Midwood Decks blazed in the distance, the company sergeant was in high spirits. He marched up the line, the woodwillow switch slashing at the air ahead.
‘Now, lads, we move in for the kill! Form column!’ he roared.
Nate, Eudoxia and the rest of the second company rose to their feet.
‘Advance!’
• CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE •
They set off at a slow trot across the spongy moss-covered ground, their feet squelching deep into the waterlogged earth with every step. It was, Nate thought, like walking across a vast snowbird down quilt that had been left out in the rain – soft and damp and hugging tenaciously at his boots. Overhead, large grey clouds closed in, and before long a warm drizzle was falling steadily. To their right, the First Low Town Regiment was keeping pace with them, while in the centre of the line, the disciplined ranks of the Bloody Blades and the Hammerhead and Flathead Guard had forged on ahead.
Nate glanced over at the tree ridge to the left of the company, and Eudoxia nudged him with her elbow and nodded in unspoken agreement. As soon as they got the opportunity, they would slip out from under the watchful eye of the company sergeant and make a dash for the forest. Although there had been no such opportunity in the whole of the long march from Hive, Nate hoped that once the shooting got under way, the sergeant’s ever-vigilant gaze would be elsewhere.
One thing was for certain, he told himself, whatever happened, he would never open fire on a fellow Great Glader.
Half an hour later, Nate’s boots were caked in claggy marsh mud, and from the ranks around him came the sound of heavy gasping breaths and grunts of exertion as the Second Low Town Regiment tried to stay in formation. Behind them, in the distance, he heard the whinnying of prowlgrins and the bark of commands as the phraxcannon limbered up and moved forward in support.
As they neared the centre of the marshes, the rain grew steadily heavier. Nate looked up to see that the stockade gates of the now smouldering town had been thrown open, and a steady stream of Great Glade Militia were pouring out.
‘Keep in formation!’ roared the company sergeant as they continued to march forward, phraxmuskets now clasped across their chests.
Ahead, advancing to meet them in three great columns, several thousand strong, came the dark green–topcoated Great Glade Militia. In the centre marched the Great Glade Guard, their funnel hats garlanded with sprigs of lullabee leaves; on the right, the phraxmarines, in short topcoats and tall black funnels; and on the left, the Old Forest Scouts, in distinctive caps of grey frompskin. Rapidly, the columns spread out in long lines, six deep, blocking the advance of the Hive Militia.
To his right, Nate saw the ranks of the Bloody Blades shoulder their phraxmuskets, draw their battleaxes and, with a heart-stopping roar of battle rage, break into a disciplined run.
‘The Bloody Blades are going in with their axes!’ Twill the treegoblin murmured in admiration. ‘Just like the olden days …’
Some way ahead of them, the front rank of the Great Glade Guard fell to the ground. The second rank went down on one knee behind them, and the third rank stepped crisply forward.
‘Fire!’ came a distant command, and the three ranks disappeared in clouds of steam as they discharged their phraxmuskets simultaneously.
Like buzzing woodwasps, white-hot leadwood bullets cut through the air, and smashed into the Hemtuft Battleaxe Legion, punching holes in the ranks of the black-coated Bloody Blades. The three ranks of the Great Glade Guard fell flat in the soft marsh mud, to reveal three more behind, and again the phraxmuskets fired in a deadly volley.
With a low groan, the Legion staggered, no longer in ordered company columns of a hundred strong, but now thinned out by their losses into ragged groups of twenty or thirty. To their right, the Hammerhead and Flathead Guard were also attacking, pressing on into the withering fire of the phraxmarines, while the grey ranks of the High Town Regiment broke up in confusion beside them as they suffered appalling casualties of their own.
Pushing back his helmet, Nate saw that the Second Low Town Regiment was advancing towards the ranks of the Old Forest Scouts, who now knelt in a long green line ahead of them and levelled their phraxmuskets. As the grey-topcoated ranks continued to trot forward over the heavy marsh, Nate gripped his phraxmusket tightly, both fists clenched, his stomach knotting and churning with awful anticipation. The terrible screams and cries of the wounded sounded to the right, where the bloody battle was raging.
‘Fix spikes!’ roared the company sergeant, and Nate, along with the rest of the regiment, unsheathed the long knife from his belt and thrust it into the muzzle of his phraxmusket.
‘We’re going in the old way,’ breathed Twill the treegoblin, fear and excitement mingling in his voice, ‘in a phalanx of spear spikes!’
‘Charge!’ yelled the company sergeant, unable to contain his battle rage a moment longer.
He sprang forward, phraxpistol in one hand, woodwillow cane in the other, and with a throaty roar the regiment surged after him. They hadn’t gone more than half a dozen steps when the command sounded in the Forest Scouts ahead.
‘Fire!’
A great cloud of steam billowed across the ranks of green in front of Nate, like a storm rolling over the Deepwoods, out of which spat leadwood bullets with the now familiar whine of angry woodwasps whose nest was under attack. Just ahead of him, the company sergeant staggered and fell, the back of his grey topcoat blossoming with four crimson stains. Around Nate, trogs, goblins and fourthlings reeled back, flinging phraxmuskets in the air as they tumbled to the marshy earth.
Nate reached out, grabbed Eudoxia and hauled her down to the ground as another swarm of leadwood bullets flew overhead. In the face of the musket fire, the Second Low Town Regiment melted away like hailstones in front of a forge fire.
Suddenly, there was a huge explosion just ahead of them. Looking up, Nate saw the ranks of the Old Forest Scouts sp
lit apart, with green-topcoated figures being hurled high in the air, only to come tumbling down again into a vast steaming crater, rapidly filling with clear water.
From where he lay, Nate glanced over his shoulder. The phraxcannon of the Bloody Blades had advanced and unlimbered, and now, instead of firing skyward into the Midwood Decks, they were trained on the dark green ranks of the Great Glade Militia. As they roared again in a deafening cannonade, Nate saw great holes appear in the lines of the scouts, guards and phraxmarines all along the front.
Encouraged by this carnage, the Bloody Blades and the Hammerhead and Flathead Guard renewed their attack, and the Midwood marshes broke up into a seething mass of bloody hand-to-hand fights, sprawling across the muddy ground. Grey, black, blue and dark green ranks now merged and separated in great mêlées of savage carnage as the militias of Hive and Great Glade fought to the death.
‘The sergeant’s dead, Eudoxia,’ said Nate, throwing away his phraxmusket and gratefully tearing the oversized helmet from his head. ‘Let’s make for the tree ridges!’ He climbed to his feet, the shrieks and cries of the wounded mingling all round with the crash of phraxmuskets and clash of blades. Great clouds of steam drifted across the marshes, billowing up from the craters made by the phraxshells and covering the battlefield in an eerie swirling mist. He glanced around him, dazed and trembling, at the terrible battle raging across the Midwood marshes.
The Second Low Town Regiment was in disarray. There were bodies lying all about him on the ground, writhing in the mud like stranded oozefish, their low groans and echoing cries seemingly disembodied – or more terrible still, motionless and silent. Nate stared down mutely at the appalling injuries inflicted upon his fallen comrades.
Before him was a tufted goblin, face down in the mud, the shell that had struck him leaving a gaping hole through his chest so large that a pool of water had collected where he lay. Next to him, a cloddertrog was recognizable only from his size and stature, for his head was no more than a mangled pulp of bloody flesh and splintered bone. And beside him, already half buried in the thick mud, lay an arm ripped from a long-hair guard. The battleaxe it had been brandishing was still gripped tightly in its bloodless fingers, while its owner staggered off blindly into the coiling mist, tripping over his fallen comrades and bellowing with pain.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 33
