The Savior - eARC

by David Drake

  For a moment, Abel sat on his mount without speaking. Was that? Yes, it was. A section of the dust cloud had split off.

  It was headed toward him.

  He spun his mount around. “Belay that.” He shouted to Timon. “Up! Get them up, Major!”

  He charged back to the lines, now getting to their feet, to find Timon amid a conclave of captains. He was relaying the order. Abel rode in among them.

  “Listen to me, all of you,” he said. “Those Blaskoye have seen us. I don’t know how…well, I can guess—”

  It was the lack of flitterdaks in the air. They skirted the Rim’s edge to catch flying insectoids. But the passing Guardians had scared them all away.

  “—But that doesn’t matter. We have the Rim to our backs. It’s a bad position.”

  “Then what do we do, sir?”

  “We run,” Abel said. “We make for that northern Escarpment trail and go down to the Valley as fast as we can. Got that, all of you? We have to be fast. Get the men into a jog they can keep up. But as fast as they can.”

  “For a league and a half, sir?”

  “That’s right,” Abel said. “If they catch us against the Rim, it will be the last league any of us ever run.”

  The men were set in motion. Abel glanced worriedly eastward.

  Oh, yes. Still coming.

  He turned and rode up and down the flank of his column, urging the men faster, faster.

  And they almost made it.

  The line of dust became a wavering flicker of silhouettes of men and donts. Then there was color. Solid shapes. The thunder of Blaskoye dont hoofbeats and the sound of battle horns.

  Yet near the front of the column, Abel could see it: the notch in the Rim that might indicate a down trail, maybe a gulley that could be negotiated. The men up front had broken into a run, making for the notch.

  The approaching riders were doing the same.

  It was a race of man and dont on a short track. The donts were bound to win. The Blaskoye riders got to the notch first. They reined up, turned to face the head of the division.

  For a moment, there was confusion, even fear. But these were Goldies. There was little chance that the mere sight of danger would cause them to break.

  “Form them up,” Abel said. “Company lines, four deep.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give me a hollow square to the right to protect the flanks from cavalry charge. We can use the Rim for protection on our left.”

  It was all done quickly. Now the Blaskoye seemed to waver. What was this great animal made of men and guns here in their own lands?

  But the charge was already blown on the bone horns, and on they came, guns blazing.

  Guns blazing much too soon and too often. Goldies fell along the line, but they were quickly replaced, stepped over, sometimes stepped on, by the men behind them. The lines closed up. The Blaskoye came on, their fire lessening now.

  Two fieldmarches away. One. Half a fieldmarch.

  “Fire!” the captains called up and down the line.

  The donts charging toward them curled forward, crashed. Riders were flung from screaming mounts, many never to rise again. Some picked themselves up, stumbled onward.

  To meet a sideways rain of musket balls.

  Another volley. Another line of faltering dontflesh and men.

  A phalanx of riders broke to the side, attempted to circle around for a flank attack. The men squared to the east let them have it with a three-deep volley. It was over in two. The survivors scrambled back toward their line. Those who got too close ran a gauntlet of fire as they moved down the line. More riders fell.

  A final charge was repulsed, and they broke, reined back.

  “Forward!”

  Slowly, inexorably, the Goldies marched, keeping up a riddle of fire as they moved. They were in no hurry now. It was the Blaskoye who began to panic. Their enemy had only one goal in mind: gain that notch and get down. Their task was to hold them and kill them all—a much more difficult undertaking.

  In the end it proved too much for the Redlanders. With curses and shots cast over the shoulder, the Blaskoye riders pulled away. The bullets of the Goldies were too thick. Those who pitted bravery against them paid with their lives.

  The front of the brigade gained the notch, Abel with them. He looked down.

  Blood and Bones.

  It was another elevator.

  “Captain Hoster up!”

  * * *

  “Landry, can your engineers get it started?”

  “If it works the same as the other, I’ll send a couple of my best climbers down and have it going in a few eyeblinks. Those boys come from cliff villages, and they’re fast.”

  “Send them. Do it.”

  True to his word, the engineers descended almost as fast as they might fall. Once down, they quickly got the elevator turning.

  “Get the supply wagons down first, but leave me ten of them empty,” Abel said. He had to shout to be heard over the musket volleys. The Blaskoye may have given way out of brutal necessity, but they had not given up. Now they were dismounted and approaching as infantry, using every bush and rock for cover. There were so many of the enemies spread out over the desert. It was if the Redlands were crawling with man-sized insects. They popped up, fired, sank from sight to reload. And slowly the crescent line of the Goldies began to contract.

  The supply wagons descended, leaving ten remaining, each with a single dak in harness instead of the customary team of two. Then it was time for the men to go. But the more troops went down, the more vulnerable and outnumbered were those who remained. Nevertheless, Abel motioned furiously for platoon after platoon to get onto the elevator platforms. Their force dwindled. The Blaskoye drew in closer with every squad gone down.

  “Now get those wagons we kept up here out front,” Abel shouted to the drovers. The wagon drivers looked grimfaced, but responded quickly. Their blood ran with the Gold and Tan as much as that of any infantryman. They drove into a crescent just within the outside line of Goldie riflemen. Some were cut down from their wagon seats, but these were replaced by subordinates who jumped aboard.

  When the wagons were in place, the drivers leapt off and cut loose the daks. Most of the beasts charged off into the Redlands—anywhere to escape the smoke and noise. One dak, infuriated by a shot in its flank, turned the wrong way and ran at full speed over the edge of the Rim. It plunged out of sight.

  About half of Fowlett’s trusty Wednesday Company remained, along with many of Landry’s engineers. A platoon-sized contingent moved forward and put shoulders to the wagons. With several heaves, the wagons turned over on their sides. When the cordon was complete, the crescent line dropped back behind their cover. Some climbed the undercarriage of the wagons and fired from the top of the makeshift wall, while others leaned around the spaces between the wagons, fired, and ducked back to cover.

  This defense couldn’t last long. But it didn’t have to. Those who had toppled the wagons were now loading onto the elevator. Wednesday Company was trickling away. All that remained were a dozen so men who found themselves making up the front line.

  I will not leave even them to be overrun and slaughtered, Abel thought.

  For you to remain invites ruin. Observe:

  The Blaskoye caught him. He’d run, but it was no use. In the end, the riders had roped him like a dont in a corral. They dragged him over the ground back to the main body of riders. When they arrived, he was cut to ribbons. Nevertheless, he discovered he did have strength left in his flayed muscles. They made him stand. A circle of riders formed around him and the few other men who had survived the dragging.

  One man stepped forward. He wore the double blue-edged robe of a Blaskoye chieftain, a sheik. In his hand was a scimitar. It gleamed impossibly brightly.

  Another piece of chromed metal looted from a desert full of heirlooms of a lost and forgotten civilization.

  A civilization that would stay forgotten now.

  In the Valley, Ab
el’s troops did not arrive and draw off the reinforcing troops. Von Hoff’s worry at his force’s nonarrival turned to dismay. The Progarmen hit von Hoff full force. The Goldies were good, but the numbers against them were overwhelming. They broke. And when they broke, they were hunted down the Valley. Only a tiny remnant made it back to Lindron.

  Not enough to defend when the Blaskoye horde swept across Ingres and stormed a capital that was defended only by previously beaten men.

  The Blood Winds such invasions had been called in history.

  Zentrum’s inhuman method of housekeeping. Of beating down change and keeping the Stasis in place.

  He’d succeeded again.

  Stasis was restored to the Land.

  Nothing ever changed again, would ever change. Not until the asteroid came. Then there was nowhere to go, no escape for anyone. There was no notion that the stars were anything other than spangles placed into the sky by Zentrum. Humanity died on Duisberg without ever knowing what hit it.

  But Abel died much sooner.

  The Blaskoye sheik smiled, motioned to someone outside the ring of men.

  “Give them to Taub,” he said. Abel cursed the fact that he could speak their language and so knew what was coming.

  A detail of Redlanders came through carrying equipment. Spears? Rifles?

  Shovels.

  Abel’s men were made to dig graves.

  Then Abel watched as his men were bound and buried alive. One by one. Each buried by the next man in line.

  Each pleaded for his life as the sand fell. Pleaded for a final breath, as the dust of the Redlands covered eyes, mouths, heads. Muffled screams. Heaving dirt that could not be shaken off. Then nothing but a dirt overlaying and suffocating.

  When Abel wouldn’t lift a shovel to bury the last man, he was clubbed to his knees with a rifle butt. He was made to watch and listen to the screams.

  Finally it was his turn.

  He readied himself as best he could.

  But they didn’t push him in the grave he’d dug. Instead, the leader, the man with the shining weapon of chrome, beat Abel from his knees onto the ground. Again he was trussed. Again he was tied to a Blaskoye dont and dragged across a landscape that was evolved to cut, burn, and hurt.

  He was in too much agony to wonder where they were taking him.

  When it was over, they stood him up. He stumbled, collapsed. They propped him up again. The man with the chrome sword cut his rope bonds. Abel stood swaying, his mind and body a dull throb of agony.

  A stab of pain, sharp. Abel looked down. The chrome scimitar’s point was against his breastbone.

  He looked up at the Blaskoye.

  “Back up, dont shit,” the man said in Redlander.

  Abel did as he was told. The man pushed the point deeper into his flesh and backed him up farther. Farther.

  “Now turn around.”

  Slowly, his joints rebelling against his every movement, Abel turned himself around.

  The edge of the Rim was one step away.

  Below him was a five fieldmarch fall.

  He should have been ready, but was not. The new sharp agony was a surprise. The scimitar thrust through his back and came out just below his chest. A gout of blood and guts oozed from the exit wound.

  He was pushed forward, the blade itself holding him upright.

  Pushed to the edge, his toes hanging over.

  He tried to turn away, but the blade flat inside him would not let him move.

  Then the blade was slowly withdrawn.

  “No,” he mumbled. “I can’t stand if—”

  Nothing held him. Nothing at all. All strength was gone. He slid from the end of the gleaming sword and tumbled forward into the abyss. He fell.

  Fell.

  His throat was ragged and dust-choked. As much as he tried, he could not scream.

  * * *

  I don’t care. I won’t leave them here.

  “We do have one more surprise in store for them,” said Landry, who had come to stand beside him and Timon. “We soaked those wagons with lamp oil. We’re going to be short the rest of the campaign, but maybe it was worth it.”

  They were standing near the elevator loading pier, observing the fighting not twenty paces away. He was no longer commander of anything. Nearly three thousand men had made their escape down the elevator, fighting all the time, their number shrinking. All that remained was the absolute rearguard and his handful of engineers. This was the end, and they were here to roll the last set of bones.

  “You mean those wagons are—”

  “—fire traps,” Landry said. “We’ll set them ablaze, and that should give us a distraction. Tell me when to do it. I have my men standing by with pitch torches and some of those lucifers you Scouts like so much.”

  Abel considered. They were down to a dozen or so men. It had to be now.

  “Burn the wagons,” he said. “Burn them now. Then get yourself and your men onto that elevator. The rest of us will be right behind you.

  The torches were lit, and the flames put to the oil-soaked wagons. It took a moment—a few eyeblinks that seemed like days—but once the fire caught, it spread quickly, and the wagons blazed fiercely within moments. On the other side of the barrier, he could hear donts screaming, shying.

  Landry’s men boarded. The elevator moved up a notch. Another platform was loaded, then another.

  Finally there was only Abel and Timon. At his signal, they sprinted for the elevator. It was the nature of the machine to lift them up and over the apex before bringing them down. This exposed them to the rifle fire of the enemy briefly.

  But not brief enough. Timon let out a grunt and collapsed to the platform beside him. He gasped, cursed, and held his upper arm as it spilt blood from a gashing wound in his right forearm.

  Then they started down. Abel threw off his jacket and tore a strip of cloth from his upper tunic. He used it to bind Timon’s arm. The descent took a while, since each platform needed to be unloaded when it reached the base of the cliff. Some enterprising Blaskoye jumped on a platform above them. Abel aimed his musket and concentrated fire on them from below. The platform bottom stopped most bullets, but not all. A couple of Blaskoye toppled from their platform. It was only when they were near the bottom and in range of half the brigade that the rest of the descending Redlanders were cut to pieces by a swarm of minié balls.

  When Abel and Timon reached the bottom, Landry stopped the elevator. One of the Scouts, a good climber, managed to scale the cliff up to the reservoir that supplied the falling water. With one slice of a knife, he cut the rope that opened the headgate. The water ceased to run, the wheel stopped turning. Without repairs, the elevator might be scaled by a group of determined men, but it was useless for the largescale movement of men and donts.

  Whatever the vast Blaskoye horde he’d seen was up to, it was definitely not heading in the direction of the battle that must now be raging to the west. It could not bring news of his division’s movement any time soon.

  He’d done it.

  The Progarmen should believe that he was on the run, or at most was lurking in Siegan, planning another attack from the south. But he wasn’t there anymore. He was north of them all.

  With barely a pause, he set his men to marching for Isham.

  4

  The most direct route the Third could take would lead to an attack from the northeast, but this would push the militia troops straight west—the exact direction you don’t want to push them, said Raj.

  So we move north of the city along the bypass track. It joins the western road that passes through the gap between Manahatet and the northern hill country.

  Exactly.

  Abel sent a holding force of two hundred down the Gap Road that led between the northern side of Manahatet Mountain and the hills beyond. This was to plug a circuitous route that might still be used for reinforcement. The only retreat would be toward Orash. He would have cut that line of retreat off as well if he had another division. But he
could be facing up to ten thousand militia in Isham. The road to Orash would remain open.

  After days of near constant movement, the men barely complained of the quick-time descent down a rocky, sandal-pounding road. They sensed that a battle was coming, and shook their weariness off one last time to make the final march into position.

  As a bonus, his flankers brought in two Progar scouts. Timon quickly had the enemy’s disposition out of the men. There was a moment of confusion as all realized there was nowhere to put these Progarmen after they’d been milked for information.

  He could have them shot. He could turn every capture into an execution. There was always that way.

  But no.

  They were hobbled to half strides with their hands bound in front and put to work carrying packs for a couple of weary soldiers. When they slowed, these soldiers hurried them on by bayonet point.

  At least it was better than being dead. Probably.

  The Third was in position to the west of the village by nightfall.

  The attack was almost an anticlimax. Surprise was complete. This was the last place in the Land anyone had expected a division to materialize. The rout began when his front lines charged into the works of Isham at dawn, overwhelming the sleepy watch and catching the men in their tents and bivouacs. The Goldies chased them through the town, but a last-stand defense among the village shops and houses, with a few terrified civilians in the crossfire, reined them in. After a halfwatch of hard fighting, Abel ordered the majority of his troops to bypass the village and its hard nut of defenders. They swarmed past and once again caught the militia unprepared. It had been milling, stunned, with officers attempting to regroup. They achieved some semblance of organization and mounted a rearguard action, which was overrun almost as quickly as it got in place. Now there was nothing against the backs of the retreating Progarmen but Goldie bullets.

  They ran like animals trying to escape a fire. There was stumbling, man piling against man, and pandemonium. Again and again the Goldies struck from behind, carving away at the retreating troops.

  Then the Progarmen turned and attempted to cut west. Abel’s ambush party cut down hundreds of men from where they had dug in along the Gap Road. There was no reply possible from the Progar militia. They were completely exposed, and their harassment came from excellent cover.