Dark Path: Book Three of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  The line itself was a surging mass of desperately fighting Men and Goblins; beyond Axel could see the spider and dog handlers rallying their charges, and the small troop of bear-mounted Goblins closing with the left wing of the Ravenmist. The reserve Serao nowhere to be seen, nor were the Trolls, for which the wizard breathed a mighty sigh of relief.

  Leaning down, he motioned for Eclipse. “Climb up onto one of the onagers and fire on the war dogs and spiders,” he howled over the crash of battle. The dark girl gestured agreement and trotted off, leaving the Wizard with a strong sense of guilt over involving a youth in such a fight, but as always, necessity overcame all reservations.

  Axel scribbled a note warning of the bears, wrote Hann’s name on the outside, and tossed it to a runner. Straightening, he gestured, muttering; two war dogs and a handler died, coated in frost. A beam of light cut down a Titan spider, and another pocket of cold forced the Goblin command group to shift position.

  The noise diminished somewhat as the first frantic attempts to break through died down and the participants settled in to resolve the battle. It was quickly apparent that the jugata had no intention of withdrawing through the stake belt under Ravenmist fire to reform for another try, preferring to try to smash the Humans on the first go. Axel spent his energy in beams of light, picking off dogs and spiders, aided by archery from Eclipse and Halabarian, although for the life of him he could not see where the minstrel had chosen his position despite the fact that the Lanthrell’s arrows flew thick and accurate, dropping no less than two bears before they could reach the line.

  Axel dispatched three of his runners to reinforce the left before the bears hit, and struck at the little troop with a brace of hail flurries that reduced him to plying his sling. The bear-cavalry drove a deep dent in the left, forcing Hanns to have his entire troop back-step a half-dozen paces to keep from being broken in half, a risky maneuver with veteran troops and one that courted disaster with green militia. But Blue troop managed to hold together despite savage Goblin pressure; if the Spider had had five more bears, or another unit to hit the left, they would have broken through, but the Trolls were still nowhere to be seen and the reserve Serao straggled out of the south brush line even as Blue troop was withdrawing.

  The Goblin commander sent a dozen jugata, no doubt drawn from his picket line and personal guard, against the left, but by the time they arrived the remaining bears were dead and Blue Troop had gotten their second wind. Axel sent his last runner to the left to strengthen the line and pressed a stretcher-bearer as a runner, although there were few messages to carry.

  The center was holding well: Axel had put Gray troop there so he could keep an eye on the thick-witted Gottri, but the Dwarf was performing well, roving behind his troops, offering words of encouragement and heaving his hammer-wielding, mail-clad bulk into any potential breach. Hanns, a buckler strapped to his ruined hand, was prowling behind Blue troop performing the same function; Axel hadn’t seen Helmuth in a while, but Silver troop was holding firm despite having given up a few yards.

  The fighting in the line was typical battle-action: two rough lines of combatants facing each other and hammering away without much skill, and quite often, without much enthusiasm. Men or jugata would yell incoherently, flail at a foe with their weapon held for maximum reach, and then hop back as the enemy did the same; occasionally a lucky blow would kill someone, but for the most part the rank and file merely made noise and wild attacks. Nine out of ten of the casualties inflicted by either side would be done by veterans and leaders, Men or jugata who had seen other actions and who knew how to overcome the disorientation caused by the sight and sound of battle, while the rest of the force did their best to stay in the ranks and come out of the mess alive.

  The Lieutenant sent another lead ball hissing into the Goblin ranks and wished for ten more men or another decent spell. The fighting had been going on for only a handful of minutes, but it seemed like an eternity; from experience he knew that both forces were reaching the breaking point, and that at any moment one or another would give way. The Goblin’s veteran reserve Serao had reformed now, and Axel kept a sharp eye on it, for if the Goblin commander threw it in the Ravenmist would not hold. But working in the Human’s favor was the fact that the Purple Spider were a long march from home, and that battered bunch of veterans was the last reserves left to the Spider commander, the last organized unit; apparently the Trolls were out of the game. Axel gripped the rough wood of his perch, watching anxiously. Would the Goblin commander bet everything on one roll of the dice, sending his last organized unit against the Ravenmist, or would he keep them to ensure that no matter how badly his units were beaten, he could get himself and his supply wagons back across the Southline? Could the Ravenmist hold in either case?

  The Badger officer cast another lead sphere and thought of the last Orb in pouch. The Ravenmist were too intermingled with the Goblins to use it now; he would have to save it for the reserve Serao. Up and down the line the stretcher-bearers raced, hauling off the injured, while wounded jugata staggered or crawled back to their own lines. Here and there the Ravenmist was giving, backing up a step at a time, but they were fighting as they did so; none of the officers were in view anymore, and Axel realized that Eclipse was gone, too. There was a smear of blood on the frame of the catapult she had been perched on, and a bow that might have been hers on the ground, but of the dark-skinned girl there was no sign. She might have been wounded and hauled back, or ran out of arrows and joined the fighting, but he hoped there was a third option. Rosemary would cut off his head with a cleaver if anything happened to the girl, and Durek would have some strong questions to pose as to why Axel had allowed a fifteen-year-old girl to get mixed up in a full-scale battle.

  A flurry of movement on the right caught his eye; straining, he saw Rolf, a slow-moving Kroh, and the two men he had positioned in the trees watching the right flank clamber over the fence and charge into the rear of the Goblins while a flurry of arrows rained onto the Spider troops. “By the Eight,” he breathed, and turned to check the Goblin reserve, absently drawing the Orb out of its resting place. “This could do it.”

  “Badgers, forward,” Rolf howled, sidestepping a wild spear-thrust, spinning Moonblade to decapitate his foe. “Green Section, advance.” Both the woodsmen were yelling various orders as well, and over the battle din he could hear both Halabarian and Starr whistling and yelling. The idea was to surprise the jugata, who were on their last legs, and convince them that they were being flanked by a bigger force than four warriors and two archers.

  The big half-Orc parried a club and kicked the Goblin in the shin; hopping back, he glanced around for Kroh, a bit worried: the Waybrother’s blood-rages gave him greatly enhanced endurance and keened his senses, but once battle was ended the Dwarf was stricken with an exhaustion that went far beyond his actual exertions. Rolf had suggested that the bedraggled Badger remain with the archers and ply his crossbow, but Kroh would have none of it. Although to his trained eye he could see that his friend was fighting at perhaps half his normal skill and vigor, it still made hard going for the jugata who had to face him.

  Rolf deflected another club and ripped a chunk of the wielder’s arm. There was no more breath for yelling; if the Goblins hadn’t bought the larger unit idea by now, they wouldn’t ever.

  “YES!” Axel roared, throwing both arms into the air and very nearly falling off his perch. The Goblin left (facing the Ravenmist right and Rolf’s attack) was falling back in twos and threes, going slow, weapons ready as they backed off, but they were going back. Within a couple heartbeats the center was pulling back, and then the Goblin right flank fell back in good order, still under the control of their surviving officers. The Lieutenant replaced his Orb and sent a couple sling bullets into the retreating jugata, glad that his troops were too tired and shaken to try and pursue.

  Digging out his whistle, he blew the officer’s call and the recall for the runners; a trained musician was going to be a luxury he was
going to beat out of Durek at the first opportunity. Hanns was the first to arrive, followed close by Nowotney, then Gottri, and finally by Halabarian and the assault team.

  “Where’s Helmuth?” Axel tried to fight off a sinking feeling.

  “Dead, sir,” Nowotney offered tiredly. The Corporal, a lean, sun-beaten man of indeterminate years, was liberally coated with dirt and blood. “Took a spear in the throat while pulling a wounded man back. Bled to death before they got him to the Healer.”

  “Who led Silver troop?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Good work, then. Rolf, take Silver troop; I need Nowotney on his onagers. Starr, take command of Hawk section, the archers; I saw their Corporal carried off. Halabarian, I want you to make a thorough circuit of the Goblins, see what they’re up to, and pick off a couple if the opportunity presents itself. Now, I want an exact count of the dead and wounded. Get the dead moved back to the place we chose, make sure that broken gear is replaced, and get details patching up the damage to the stake belts in front of your positions. Nowotney, I want some stone laid on the Goblins to encourage them to pack it in. Rolf, how did it go with the Trolls?”

  “We chewed them up a bit; they won’t be fighting today, anyway. Starr got the reserve Serao’s commander and a couple more besides.”

  “Good. Hanns?”

  “The lads did well,” the Serjeant shrugged, wiping his mouth and capping his flask. “Better than I expected, in truth. I think the Goblins have had a bellyful: there’s at least a dozen dead in front of my troop, plus the bears, and that many dead on the field getting here; figure two or three wounded for every dead, and that guts their fighting line.”

  “Gottri?”

  “We chewed ‘em up good.” The Dwarf’s hard, unblinking gaze stared off into a distance that only he could see. “They’ll go home.”

  “Good. Did any bears get away?”

  “None,” Halabarian shook his head. “And less than a quarter of the dogs and Titans. I don’t believe they’ll try again. The Goblins put everything they had into that charge; there isn’t anything else.”

  “Let’s hope so. Anyone else? All right, you have your orders.” Axel waited until they had departed before climbing down to the ground and his crutches. Helmuth was dead, a veteran of a score of deadly actions killed by a damned Goblin in a skirmish in a potato patch. It was absurd, in a mind-numbing way. Cursing in a blurred monotone, Axel propelled himself towards the sounds of suffering at the Healer’s station. He needed to check on Eclipse, and on the wounded as a whole. They may have won the battle, or at least the first round, but there were those, like Helmuth, for whom the difference between winning and losing was negligible.

  Rolf, Kroh, and Starr sat on the back of a wagon, idly tossing stones into a leather Goblin helmet as the twilight grew around them. As everyone had hoped and predicted, the Goblins had had enough. After an hour of sorting out their battered units and tending to their wounded, the Purple Spider force crossed the Southline for a second time and made camp two miles outside of Badger territory. Axel had sent the dead and badly wounded back to Badgerhof, and held the rest of the company in place while Starr and Halabarian kept a watchful eye on the enemy.

  But there had been no attempts at trickery; by sundown on the day after the battle the Purple Spider were nineteen miles south of the Southline, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Axel had arranged for food to be brought up for another day just to be safe, and had sent Halabarian out on another sweep of the area.

  It had been a rough contest, all agreed: the Goblins had withdrawn having lost thirty-three dead, plus eleven Titan spiders, nine dogs, four bears, and one Troll, Kroh’s foe having died of its wounds shortly before the Goblin force withdrew, a fact which gave the Dwarf no end of satisfaction. Besides Helmuth, the Ravenmist had lost eleven killed in battle, one of whom was a newly hired lumberjack, and one more militiaman whose heart had given out while the Healer was working on his wounds. Twenty-one had been too severely wounded to remain in the field, including Eclipse, who had three ribs broken by a sling bullet, and her nose and left arm by the fall off the onager.

  The Ravenmist was jubilant about the victory, and the tales of heroism were rapidly growing with the telling; in the traditions of the Imperial military, the company could now have a unit standard, and plans were afoot to strike a medal to commemorate the battle. Axel had promoted Nowotney to Serjeant to replace Hanns, who had been promoted to Lieutenant of the Ravenmist and appointed acting-Mayor. The acting Corporal appointed before the battle was confirmed in his rank, another promoted to replace Nowotney, and a third to replace the Corporal killed while leading Hawk section.

  The trio of Badgers, however, were largely unaffected by the exuberant militiamen; they had seen rougher fights and more impressive victories, and in any case felt it beneath their dignity to make too much fuss. Now they sat and waited with the patience of professionals, tossing stones and talking amongst themselves.

  “So they’re going to make us Corporals next year?” Kroh snorted. “Just how big is the Company going to be?”

  “Well, there’s over forty now, and with a good year, it should reach fifty next year,” Rolf commented. “The wall-barracks at Oramere can hold a hundred comfortably, plus those we house in the Tower; that would be the limit, I guess, a hundred rank and file.”

  “I don’t know if I like this promotion business,” Starr observed mournfully. “I mean, I thought that we could all still be in the same squad, like always.”

  “We’ll still be together,” Rolf assured the somber little Lanthrell, uneasy himself despite his words. “I’m sure Durek would keep us close together, and Corporals will stick together since you’re not supposed to be too familiar with the men.”

  “We’ll lead line sections, and you’ll lead scouts or archers,” Kroh mused. “Just like now, except there’ll be more around to carry the load. I wonder how much more pay the Corporals will make?”

  “Besides, when there’s tough missions, they’ll call for the hard core of the Company, us, just like always,” Rolf shrugged. “Rank or no, we’re still the best, the inner circle, I mean.”

  “Which reminds me, I wonder how the group is doing,” Starr lowered her voice.

  “Butt-deep in the Northern Wastes,” Kroh chuckled. “Miles and miles of grass and sky. I bet seeing a gopher mound is a big deal.”

  “At least they’ve probably had an easier time of it than us, what with spiders and two tribes of Goblins taking their turns.” Rolf fingered the dents in his breastplate. “At least it should be fairly quiet for the rest of the summer, Eight willing. I don’t imagine anybody else is all that interested in Oramere or the Phantom Badgers.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kustar Pravas closed the book and set about compiling her notes into a more organized form. Since she had made the dangerous decision to contact the White Necromancer itself, she had immersed herself in preparations, working through the information with care and attention and solving each problem with all the skill she could muster. Everything was on the line here, not merely the future of her career, but very likely her life itself, as Hold-Master Peria would deal severely with an officer who so exceeded her bounds of authority, and failed.

  The first order of business had been to formally review the information on the necromancer and its dealings with the outside world, especially in its treaties with other dark agencies. Fortunately, the White Necromancer was well-documented in her mass of background data; using the same ploy as she had for the material on mercenary companies, she had secreted the volumes into her office and began the research.

  The White Necromancer was an enigma, an unknown even to an agency that prided itself on its files on everyone of import. The White Necromancer, whose sex, age, and national origin were unconfirmed although heavily speculated upon, had first surfaced in the Pargaie’s notice in the sixth century of the Second Age, the year 685, to be specific. The spellcaster was still Human (the race was conf
irmed) at the time, albeit very old; apparently the necromancer had spent virtually all its life in remote places under false or assumed identities while learning and refining the dark arts, although there were hints obtained in later years that the White Necromancer had spent some time prior to 685 SA in the service of Cave Goblin forces in Sufland, and another series of probable facts that suggested that it had been, in 642 SA, a young female spellcaster in the employ of a Golden Serpent Den. In any case, the necromancer had been discovered to have taken control of a pirate-colony in Tiria ,the remains of an ancient city on the northwest coast of the Northern Wastes, and established itself with a (very small) cadre of servitors. Indeed, the initial report on the newcomer had been two paragraphs in a lengthy routine update sent back to Arbmante that did not even accurately identify the spellcaster’s area of specialty.

  From that humble beginning, the documentation and official interest in the White Necromancer grew proportionately. When the spellcaster successfully transcended death and became a liche with its powers intact (no minor magical feat in and of itself) in 694 SA, a file was opened on the creature, and its movements and activities were given a specific, if low, priority. Over the years Pargaie’s attempts to contact the liche had been politely rebuffed except when the spellcaster had specific needs; all attempts to infiltrate the enclave at Tiria had resulted in the loss of the agents involved. Eventually the commanders in Arbmante gave orders to field operatives to restrict themselves to simply watching the White Necromancer.

  The liche, unless provoked, kept to its own pursuits and caused no real problems to the other inhabitants of the area so long as they stayed out of Tiria. In fact, its servants often did mundane business with the local Orc tribes, and had even employed troops of their warriors as mercenaries on occasion over the years. What did occupy the liche was a dedicated effort to obtain various artifacts and written works pertaining to its dark brand of magic; it was said to have the definitive collection of such works and items in the world. At the same time the liche involved itself in various endeavors which, at least to the watching Pargaie agents, defied logical explanation. In no pattern or method the liche would fund raids into Human nations, arrange assassinations, order thefts of items which had nothing to do with necromancy, bankroll bandit groups, and even dispatch skilled underlings on missions into inhabited lands. How these operations, in part or as a whole, tied into a central plan was completely unknown; speculation on this subject ran into scores of pages without offering a concrete explanation. More mystifying, it could be said with certainty that while its acquisitions of books and artifacts had resulted in a huge gathering of power, the liche’s other endeavors had resulted in no obvious advantage, and in fact had entailed considerable expenditures of wealth, magic, and trusted followers.