by David Weber
The Graywillow was scarcely two hundred miles long, but it had a lot of small, winding tributaries which drained an extensive, often marshy floodplain, and the main stream was close to seventy yards across where it joined the Hangnysti. That made it a significant water barrier, and the terrain along its course—especially as it neared the Hangnysti—was rough, its banks lined with thick, tangled thickets of the willows from which it took its name. Farther upstream the willows gave way to dense stretches of mixed evergreens and hardwoods which could provide dangerously effective cover for troops as irregular as ghouls...and which would break up the formation of any infantry which tried to go in after them. Taken all together, it was an unfortunately good defensive position. On the other hand, with all the rain which had beset the Ghoul Moor in the last month or two, the Graywillow had to be running high and deep—probably deep enough to be a barrier even for ghouls, if they could catch them between their own advance and the stream.
Beyond the riverline, between the Graywillow and the Spear, a rolling expanse of grasslands stretched east and south almost to the border of the Kingdom of the River Brigands, offering grazing space for enough meat animals to supply an enormous horde of ghouls, assuming any imaginable power could force the ghouls in question into some sort of cooperative effort. Which was a sobering thought, given what appeared to have been happening.
With the information available to him, Trianal had seen no choice but to move down the southern bank of the Hangnysti to the Graywillow. If that was where the enemy was, then that was where they had to go to find him. At the same time, however, he’d stayed within sight of the Hangnysti the entire way, using barges to carry food and fodder. And, with Tharanal’s enthusiastic assistance, he’d turned a score of barges into heavily armored missile platforms, with stout wooden bulwarks pierced by firing slits for arbalesteers and raised firing platforms mounting the much more powerful sort of crew-served ballistae Axeman cruisers mounted. Those “arbalests” threw “quarrels” up to five feet long for as much as four hundred yards, with steel heads capable of driving through a foot and more of solid, seasoned oak. Not even a ghoul would enjoy meeting one of them. And there were even a dozen barges fitted with catapults capable of hurling banefire, the dreadful incendiary compound of the Royal and Imperial Navy. With them to cover his riverward flank—and, for that matter, to provide supporting fire if they had to close with the mouth of the Graywillow—Trianal could afford to concentrate his army’s attention on threats away from the Hangnysti as they moved through the empty, deserted spaces between them and the ghouls’ suspected position.
And it’s no complaint they’d hear out of me if the bastards were never after coming back here, Bahzell thought grimly as he settled back down in the saddle. If they’d sense enough to stay clear of the river and leave us be, then it’s happy enough I’d be to leave them be, in return. But as soon as ever we’ve sent these lads home...
Very few of the men in the expedition would have shared his willingness to let the ghouls alone, and he knew it. For that matter, he had no illusions about the creatures’ willingness to live in peace with any set of neighbors, and he knew it would be no more than a matter of time—and not much of it—before the hradani or the Sothōii would be forced to invade these same lands again to prune back the threat to their borders and their people. Yet however this year’s incursion ultimately worked out, all too many of the men marching and riding about him would be dead or crippled by its close. No number of dead ghouls could truly be an equitable trade for that, and his nerve-eating certainty that something as dark as it was powerful lurked behind the rain and the ghouls’ bizarre activities and tactics made him fear how high the final cost might be.
“Did you ever think that perhaps the smart thing for us to do would be to just go home for the rest of the summer?” Brandark asked lightly from beside him. Bahzell looked at him, and the Horse Stealer shrugged. “I know we have it to do eventually, Bahzell, but do we really have a deadline? We’re not going to be barging anything through here before next year, anyway. Maybe whatever’s been behind all this Phrobus-taken rain would get bored and go away over the winter? I know I’d go away rather than face a Ghoul Moor winter!”
“I’m thinking it’s a mite late to be suggesting such as that, my lad,” Bahzell observed mildly. “And if that’s the way your thought is setting, why, there’s naught to be keeping you here. I’m sure as how Tharanal’s bargemasters would be happy enough to be giving you space aboard, if it should happen you’re so inclined.”
“I was simply pointing out that it would be the smart thing to do,” Brandark replied. “The problem, though, is that doing the smart thing requires the person doing it to be smart.” He shook his head mournfully. “And I, unfortunately, seem to’ve been associating with Horse Stealers too long.” He heaved a vast sigh. “Who would’ve thought that I, of all people, could find myself swept away into foolishness like this by the childlike enthusiasm of a batch of hradani—oh, and let’s not forget the Sothōii!—too stupid to come in out of the rain and the mud?”
“Is that the way of it, then?” Bahzell cocked his ears at his friend, and Brandark shrugged.
“One way to explain it, anyway. And another way”—his tone darkened and his hand dropped to the hilt of his sword—“is to point out that whatever’s out there isn’t likely to go away whatever we do. I’d just as soon deal with it here before we find it moving up the Hangnysti towards Navahk and Hurgrum.” The Bloody Sword smiled grimly. “Call me silly, but I’d rather fight it somewhere none of our women and children are likely to get caught in the slaughter.”
“Aye, there’s something to be said for that,” Bahzell agreed.
He started to add something more, then broke off as a five-man section of Sothōii cavalry swept over the crest of a low ridge perhaps two miles ahead of them and headed towards their main body in a mud-spattering gallop. Hradani had excellent vision, and his ears came up and his eyes narrowed as he peered at them. Then his jaw tightened, Walsharno wheeled under him, and Brandark blinked in astonishment as the courser disappeared in a shower of mud all his own.
* * *
“What is it, Bahzell?” Trianal Bowmaster asked sharply as the huge roan half-slid to a halt beside his command group.
“There’s a scouting party coming in yonder,” Bahzell replied tersely, jabbing a thumb to the south-southeast. “They’re coming fast, like all Sharnā’s demons were at their heels, and there’s the stink of something else coming on behind them.” He bared his teeth. “It’s in my mind it won’t be so very long before we’ve proof enough of whatever it is as has been playing with the weather.”
“Bahzell’s right, Milord,” Vaijon said. He was gazing off to the southeast, his eyes focused on something no one else could see.
“And whatever it is wouldn’t be heading this way if it didn’t figure it could take us head-on,” Sir Yarran Battlecrow said flatly.
“My very own thought,” Bahzell agreed, and his expression was grim. “More than that, it’s the very stink of evil that’s coming behind them.” His ears flattened in frustration. “It’s an arm I’d give to know just what it is I’m feeling, but I’ve still no better idea than I had this morning. Except that whatever it is, it’s closer than it was then.”
“It’s not just closer, Bahzell,” Vaijon said. The others looked at him, and the younger champion shrugged. “It’s not just of the Dark—it is the Dark,” he said harshly. “And there’s more than one of it, whatever it is.”
Bahzell’s jaw clenched as he recalled their encounter with Krahana’s servant. Jerghar Sholdan had been quite strong
enough for his taste. Indeed, it had taken all the power he and Walsharno together could channel to defeat him, and they might not have even then if he’d realized in time that he faced not one champion of Tomanāk, but two.
“Walsharno’s after agreeing with you, Vaijon,” Bahzell told the others. “He’s the scent of at least two. It’s powerful they are, he says, and it won’t be so very much longer before they’re up with us.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Trianal’s voice was like iron, and turned to his personal bugler. “Sound ‘Stand and form,’” he said.
“Yes, Milord!” the bugler replied, and the urgent notes flared across the muddy grassland as he sounded the prearranged signal.
Trianal’s augmented force had been moving in the reverse of a typical mixed formation of horse and foot. The standard clouds of mounted scouts had been thrown out, but instead of stationing formed cavalry on the flanks away from the river to protect the infantry from surprise attacks, the footmen had been formed on the army’s right in column of battalions, with the cavalry between them and the river. Hradani infantry was simply better suited to taking the shock of a charge of blood-crazed ghouls, and it was important to protect the horses which provided the Sothōii’s mobility. The mounted archers would be able to fire over the heads of even Horse Stealer footsoldiers, supporting the hradani while they held their shield wall; there’d be time enough for cavalry charges once the ghouls recoiled.
The supply wagons, pack train, and—especially—the mules loaded with additional arrows for the Sothōii moved along the very bank of the Hangnysti, covered by infantry and cavalry alike. There’d been some—not many, but a few—among Trianal’s men who’d felt his youth had made him overly cautious, even timid, to adopt such a cumbersome formation, especially now that he had almost twenty thousand men, horse and foot, under his command. None of his senior officers or battalion commanders had been among those critics, however, and orders rang out as the bugler sounded the signal for which they’d been waiting half impatiently and half anxiously for the last two days.
The infantry stopped in place and two thirds of its battalions faced right, and advanced two hundred yards further inland from the Hangnysti. The front ranks went to one knee, bracing their shields before them, and a triple line of arbalesteers formed in open ranks at their backs. Half the arbalesteers would double as pikemen once the melee was joined, and the wagons assigned to each battalion drew up behind them, unloading thickets of pikes and stacking them where they’d be ready to hand when needed. Each arbalesteer had three feet of clear space on either side of him; another man in the next line stood directly behind each of those clear spaces; and a metallic clicking rose above them as thousands of Dwarvenhame-built arbalests were spanned and quarrels were fitted to the strings.
The two infantry battalions forming the rear of the column wheeled in place, facing northwest, back the way they’d come, and deployed into a line covering the newly formed battleline’s right flank with their left while their own right was anchored firmly on the Hangnysti. The pair of battalions leading the column did the same, except that they anchored themselves to the battleline’s left flank and faced southeast, covering the main formation’s left. The remaining infantry battalions formed into solid, compact squares, half of them spaced evenly behind the battleline to simultaneously cover the supply wagons and form an infantry reserve at the middle of the three-sided rectangle.
Not all the infantry faced west, away from the river, however. The Hangnysti provided less protection against ghouls than it might have against most other foes, given how well the creatures swam. The river could still be counted upon to break them up, especially as they struggled ashore through the soft mud and sand along the banks, but it couldn’t be counted on to stop them. That was why the other half of Yurghaz’s infantry faced the river, not inland...and also the real reason for those heavily armed barges pacing Trianal’s army on the Hangnysti itself.
The cavalry moved just as quickly, coordinating with their footbound fellows with the precision and polish of long practice and mutual confidence. They knew exactly where they were supposed to be, and they went there. Four thousand spread themselves along the rear of the battleline, where they could support the infantry with arrow fire, and three thousand more formed in the spaces between the blocks of reserve infantry, ready to pounce on any ghouls which might swim the river and get past the infantry or to intercept any enemy penetrations of the battleline. A thousand more were held back in a reserve position under Trianal’s personal command, ready to be dispatched to wherever they might be most needed, They were also earmarked for quick exploitation if the enemy should break, of course...not that anyone expected the ghouls to be breaking anytime soon. And even as the infantry and cavalry formed, the missile-armed barges which had been pacing them on the Hangnysti began shifting position. Many moved downstream, towards the Spear, placing themselves to sweep the front of the short, heavy line protecting the army’s left, but most anchored a few yards offshore, where there missile troops could cover the bank against swimming ghouls as well as forming as a final reserve for their land-bound fellows.
The catapult-armed barges positioned themselves with special care, farther out into midstream, and the catapult crews had loaded their practice rounds even before their barges anchored. As soon as those anchors splashed down into the Hangnysti’s mud, the catapults thumped, hurling their inert rounds far over the heads of the infantry and cavalry. Those practice rounds had exactly the same weight and ballistic characteristics as the banefire rounds waiting to follow them, and Bahzell smiled with grim satisfaction as they thudded into the mud a hundred yards and more beyond the infantry’s front ranks. The gunners aboard the barges launched a second wave of rounds, making certain of their range and firing bearings. Then they loaded with banefire and stood ready.
The speed with which the entire formation shifted would have astonished anyone who hadn’t seen Trianal’s “expedition” turning into an “army.” This was a tightly integrated, smoothly articulated force, one with confidence in itself and in its commanders but no illusions that it faced an easy task because its opponents were “only” ghouls, and Bahzell felt a surge of pride not just in Trianal, but also in Vaijon and Yurgazh, for making it so.
Their march formation had been planned to make it as fast and straightforward as possible to shift into battle formation, and the fact that the river covered their backs simplified things immensely. But all the planning in the world wouldn’t have produced this result without the merciless, unremitting drill to which they’d subjected their men for just this moment. Even the Sothōii levy Trianal had brought down from the Escarpment had been slotted efficiently into their overall organization, taking its lead from the armsmen who’d been part of the expedition from the beginning. The newcomers weren’t as well drilled and disciplined as they might have been, but if all went well their primary function would be as missile troops, and any Sothōii armsman had literally grown up with a bow in his hands.
The same bugle calls which had shifted the army’s formation had recalled the troops of cavalry who’d been scouting beyond its right flank on the march, and individually designated companies of infantry opened access points in the battleline to admit them. They trotted quickly across to their own assigned positions, joining their fellows, and the scouting party Bahzell had seen galloping back passed through an opening of its own to reach the command group.
“Thousands of them, Milord,” the senior man said harshly, his face white as he reined his weary horse to a halt and slapped his breastplate in salute to Trianal
. “Never seen so many of them in one place! Phrobus, I never thought there were so many of ’em!”
“How many thousands?” Trianal asked calmly, and gave the scout a crooked smile when the man stared at him. “I realize you didn’t have time to actually count the number of legs and divide by two, Sergeant. A rough estimate will do.”
Two or three of his officers chuckled, and even the scout smiled. But he also shook his head.
“Milord, we couldn’t get close enough to tell how many. I’d say there had to be—what? Six or seven thousand?—this side of the Graywillow.” He looked at the other members of his section of scouts with an eyebrow raised, and heads nodded. “Problem is, they were already throwing those nasty javelins of theirs at us. They were pushing us back—pushing hard—and more of ’em were boiling out of the woods along the river like maggots. I’d be lying if I said I could tell you any more than that, but it seemed to me I’d best be getting the lads back here to tell you what we’d already seen.”
Without trying to see more and getting them all killed, he didn’t say, but Trianal nodded.
“Information’s a hell of a lot more valuable than dead troopers, Sergeant,” he agreed, and the scout’s shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly.
