Refuge: Book 5: Angels & Demons

by Doug Dandridge

  The wedges broke up, men looking for the flags of their units, moving slowly toward whatever was left of their command groups. The heavy infantry, the armored swordsmen who held the front lines, moved first into companies, then were led to their battalions. The pikemen formed up behind them, followed by the bowmen.

  The colonel felt his heart sink as he looked over his troops, climbing up on a small hill to get a good view. One of the heavy infantry battalions, the first, looked pretty much intact, though one of the companies had only half its complement. The other two battalions had been more than decimated. Third looked to be at only half strength, while second was even more devastated. The pike companies had lost between twenty and forty percent of their manpower. The archers were the least hit, though even there about ten percent of the soldiers were missing. Archers fought from behind the lines, not subject to attack by sword and spearmen unless things went very wrong. However, they were the target of the other side's archers, who were the only ones who could respond in most situations.

  There were sure to be some wounded on the field who couldn't join the ranks, but would after some care. Still, his command had been hurt, and badly.

  "Set your security," he yelled through the speaking horn that had been brought to him. "Then give your men a rest."

  The division or army commander might want him to hurry his men after the cavalry. If so, they could be damned. His men were tired, thirsty and hungry. He was not about to hurry them across the field to another fight. He needn't have worried. The first men of the second brigade started forming up into their heavy infantry companies. Within fifteen minutes an entire battalion started marching across the field, heading for the cavalry.

  Colonel Hartz, the commander of the second brigade, walked over. His eyes roamed over the men of first brigade, most sitting on the ground, eating iron rations, guzzling down water, or allowing wounds to be bound.

  "Rough fight?" asked the German.

  "We damned near lost it," said Wainwright, nodding, and then reaching out a hand to grab the forearm of the other brigade commander in greeting. "We got lucky."

  "I doubt that," said Hartz with a smile. "We make our own luck." He looked at the piles of enemy dead laying on the field, at least a division's worth. "And it looks like you did good work. We'll take it from here. But I would like your support as soon as you can."

  "Give us a half an hour and I'll move my unit up to your rear," said Wainwright. "Hopefully, Klein will have brought his brigade across before nightfall.”

  "I think you can count on that," said Hartz. "The general seemed to be very clear that he wanted the entire division across before nightfall makes the river crossing too hazardous."

  And that’s another worry, thought the American. Once night fell, the division would be on its own. The second and third divisions would have to wait until morning, since collisions at night could put a lot of armored men in the water to drown. Fourth division was across the river further downstream, and separated from them by the river to the north. If the enemy attacked them in the dark and broke through their lines, there might be some problems.

  "Gentlemen," called out a human in accented German.

  A man in chainmail, the flag of France on his surcoat, came walking down the slope, with another score of humans and almost a hundred of the Dark Elves following him.

  "Well, that takes care of our nighttime security," said Wainwright, looking at the ebony-skinned elves who had night vision like no other on this world. He felt much better seeing these allies, as he was sure they were happy to see the German and American troops finally across the river.

  Chapter Twenty

  Emperor Ellandra Mashara looked out and down from one of the gate towers of his outer wall at the army that had gathered to take his capital.

  Only two more months, thought the almost undead being, still in the half litch stage. Two more months of work, a couple of hundred more souls to sacrifice to Bothar, the God of Death. He would have absorbed some of that energy, until he had become an immortal, and really all but invulnerable, unless someone happened to find its phylactery. That was something a smart litch would not allow.

  The enemy army was arrayed below, tens of thousands of soldiers, all armored in various ways. The heavy infantry all carried the large rectangular shields that made them so fearsome. The Emperor knew that his own swordsmen were superior when it came to melee. Which was why the humans avoided such combat, and instead used disciplined formations that would slice through his troops like they were children. They also had some melee fighters for when they needed them: other elves, Conyastoya, Ellala and Delkifini. dwarves, the heavy mountain variety with their thick armor and axes, and more cavalry than he had left.

  They had built earthworks just out of arrow shot of the walls, layered with thick posts and sharp stakes. Siege engines, devices with much greater range than the standard bows, were set into casements, along with their infernal new engines they called cannon.

  Behind those earthworks stood their disciplined ranks, looking like thousands of statues. In oblongs ten men thick by twenty wide, with small spaces between groups. Twelve of those groups line up beside each other in the first layer, lines of pikemen and archers behind them. Two more groups of equal size behind them. The three brigades of the tactical unit they called a legion, or sometimes a division. Then, much further back, two more of the same kind of formation, divisions. Showing the emperor their strength of soldiers. Over thirty thousand infantry, more than twice as many as he had in his entire city. And that didn’t count the artillery, the cavalry, the damnable dwarves and his ebony-skinned cousins. There had to be over fifty thousand in that army, and another of their legions on the lands to the north of the city, beyond that river.

  One of the cannon went off as he was thinking, letting out a puff of steam and a hissing boom. The ball hit the gate below to the right of the tower with a loud clang. The humans from the other world had brought this idea with them. They were frighteningly innovative. When their terrible war machines had failed, they had taken a step back and improved on what they had found, and used their own ancient technologies re-imagined. The cannon were powerful, something he wished he had had, but he doubted they would crack the valves of his gates by themselves. So, what else are they thinking?

  A trio of objects moved across the field looking like small, short towers, the bore of a pair of cannon thrusting from the front of each. Steam puffed from the stacks on the rear, some kind of engine powered by that substance. He had thought that the gods of the earth had forbidden the use of those engines, but seeing the glint of sunlight on the forward most wheels, he realized it was Mithril, and it was insulating the vehicles from the earth. It was an expensive workaround, and probably why there were not more than three of the things.

  I should have approached the humans in friendship when they first came, thought the Emperor. Of course, it would have been a ruse, but what if he could have gotten some of them on his side, working for him? Then taken the rest when their guard was down, or their infernal machines stopped working. Nothing he could do about it now, except call on his gods to get him out of this mess, which would cost soul energy he might have been able to use to complete his transformation. Then again, if it saved his Empire, a little delay to his immortality would be worth it.

  "Summon the priests to the balcony of the palace," he ordered, turning away from the view of the enemy and heading for the stairs.

  * * *

  Dieter stood in the front rank of the platoon, which was on the left flank of the company, on the same flank of the battalion. The other battalions of the brigade were lined up to either side, the remaining two brigades behind them in the same formation. He was sure it looked as impressive as hell to the bastards up on that wall. He wasn’t sure if it was doing anything else, or if it was even worth the impression. No one in command had asked his opinion.

  No one talked, no one moved. They were at attention, which meant the same thing in their old armi
es and in this one. All he could do was look straight ahead as he held his shield and spear. The damn gate they were trying to batter in was directly to his front. If that gate fell, they would be going in. He had no illusions as to what that meant. Waves of arrows, rocks, maybe hot oil or sand. He had learned about siege warfare when he was growing up, visiting castles and reading books bought at the fortress bookstores.

  Upon entering the gate they would face the unknown. Murder holes in the ceiling? Another gate to get through? A moat on the inside? Then into melee combat in the city beyond, house to house fighting where they might not be able to utilize the formations that made them so mighty.

  And of course, they’ll throw us in first, thought the sergeant, saying a prayer in the back of his mind. Since mages would be throwing whatever they had into those confined spaces, it made sense to use the people immune to those destructive forces. But they were not immune to so many other dealers of death.

  He could only hope that the dwarves trying to enter from below made it, and they could take the gate. Of course they would also take horrible casualties, and though he had nothing against the short stout people, better them than him, to his way of thinking. Not a very Christian attitude, but he couldn’t help it. A lot of people would die going through that gate and into the city, and he simply didn’t want to be among them.

  Why the hell do we have to stand here? We could be sitting and talking, trying to get our courage up. Because if the command was hoping this intimidating display would get the enemy to open the gates for them and surrender, he had news for the command.

  * * *

  "Well, that doesn't seem to be doing anything, dammit," cursed Lt. General Walter Delgado, examining the heavy gate from which the cannon ball had just ricocheted.

  The massive siege cannon, a one of a kind weapon, stood in its revetment forty meters to his left. It had just hurled a hundred pound ball into the gate, and the crew was busy preparing it for the next shot. An evolution that would take more than five minutes.

  "We may have to storm the walls," said Kurt, standing to one side of the general. "Colonel Jackson?"

  Colonel Cliff Jackson had been a division command sergeant major when they had arrived here, but he had a particular specialty. He had a PhD in history, with a specialization in medieval warfare. Therefore, he had become the army's siege-master, setting up the attacks that had taken fortresses, castles and bridges along the line of advance. He frowned up at the city walls: not a good sign.

  "Well, let's see," said the grizzled warrior. "We have twenty meter tall walls made out of that damned Dwarven stone that's as hard as steel, with towers ten meters higher. I would estimate we're looking at five-meter thick walls at the base, and probably still two or three thick at the top. With all kinds of engines. And gates made of the strongest metal this world can produce that isn't that damned dwarven mithril."

  He stood there shaking his head, then spit on the ground.

  "I'm sorry, sirs. But we will lose half our army if we try to storm that thing. Maybe our whole army. Maybe if we still had some working Abrams, or Leopards. Or, better yet, a nuke."

  "We have those tanks," said Ismael Levine, pointing at the puffing constructs that were moving up to the front lines.

  Kurt looked over at the machines, which he had to admit were an ingenious invention. The former Mercedes engineer who came up with them had definitely earned his pay. However, they weren't even the match of a Panther or Tiger from his military days. Much less, the monsters they had brought with them.

  "Those might do very well on the battlefield," said Jackson with a huff. "But if they get too close to the walls, I think those big catapults on the towers are going to smash them."

  "What about mining?" asked Jackie, her hand on Kurt's shoulder.

  Everyone knew they were lovers, and in the same chain of command, and neither of them really gave a damn who knew. The immortals were a force to themselves, and they did what they would if it suited them, as long as it didn't harm the fighting power of the alliance.

  "We might try that," said the siege-master, looking at the ground. "I'll get our engineers to work on it. But I wouldn't be surprised if those walls went down twenty meters or more, or were welded to the bedrock. If the person who designed that monstrosity was as smart as I think, I don't think we're going to find an easy way in. And forget about a paradrop. Anything we drop in there is going to get swallowed up before we can relieve them. And after we take the walls, we still have that fortress up on the high ground by the river. And I'm willing to bet it's even more heavily fortified than these walls."

  "Amphibious assault?" asked Delgado.

  "Maybe. But we had a hard enough time getting a foothold onto this shore, when all we had were earthworks in front of us. I don't know, General," said the older man. "It's beginning to look like we might have a real siege on our hands. We might have to starve them out, but there's no guarantee we won't starve first. We're already having problems getting everything we need over that logistics pipeline."

  "That should get better when we get more steamships in service," said Kurt. "And if they can get a railroad up and running."

  That was going to be a problem, one that they had not solved. The steam engines worked on the water because the river and ocean gods had nothing against them, or had been convinced by the Queen of the Gods, Arathonia, to cooperate. However, the God of the Earth, Grimmoire, was part of the Pantheon of Law, and that deity wanted nothing to do with the smelly machines of the newcomers.

  The tanks got around the ban by using wheels of Mithril that had been blessed by the Gods of Life. That insulated them from the powers of the God of the Earth. But a railroad needed many more wheels than a tank, or rails, and Mithril was not available in those quantities, not when it was needed for weapons and armor.

  "See what your miners can do," ordered Delgado, taking another look at the walls through his binoculars. "If we can even collapse a part of the wall, we might be able to get an assault force in to open a gate."

  Or we might just be throwing more people away in a forlorn hope, thought Kurt.

  * * *

  Garios na Gonron screamed out his battle cry, which was also a prayer to his god, swinging his heavy hammer into the Orc warrior that opposed him. The hammer struck with a clap of thunder as the holy power of the priest was transmitted through it, and the Orc was flung back into those behind him, a broken body now a projectile weapon.

  Screams and cries went up all through the tunnels the dwarven miners had cut under the wall. It had been planned that they would set up sap that could be burned, collapsing the wall. That had not worked as planned, since they had hit the wall twenty meters down, and bedrock below that. Fortunately, they had found a gap where wall did not meet bedrock. But the wall was so well constructed, of solidified dwarven stone, that there was no way that collapsing the supports, which were supporting nothing, would collapse the wall.

  Thus, the warriors and engineers had pressed on, digging further in, angling the tunnel up, hoping to break through the ground and flood the courtyards of the enemy. It would be a hard fight, but if conducted with swiftness and ferocity, it would save many more.

  Then the enemy had sunk counter mines into the earth, and met them under the ground. Elves did not fight well in these closed quarters. Orcs could, so they were sent down, to fight the premiere underground warriors on the planet, Mountain Dwarves. The dwarves were slaughtering the Orcs, taking them down five to one or more, but they were still taking casualties of their own, and even dead Orcs were an impairment to getting to the surface.

  "Forward," yelled the warrior who was leading the fight, Colion na Gonron, a distant cousin of the priest. The dwarf waved a great ax overhead, lightning flaring from the Mithril of the head. It was a god weapon, one of the great artifacts of a primary deity, one of the most powerful melee weapons on the planet. His Mithril armor reflected the torchlight. Mountain dwarves could see in almost total darkness, and Orcs had night vision
almost as good. But they were still blind in complete darkness, and the battle went on by torchlight.

  Roars of rage, cries of pain, screams of fear echoed through the tunnels, almost drowned out by the clash of metal on metal. The tunnels reeked of blood and released bladders and bowels. Garios gagged on the foul air, knocking aside a mace with his shield before swinging his hammer into the wielder.

  More screams came from down a side tunnel. These were deep, the cries of Dwarves in a panic. That was unusual enough to draw the attention of the priests and the warriors with magical weapons, who fought to disengage so they could make their way to the area where Dwarves were being beat.

  Garios waited until a trio of warriors had pushed past him to engage the Orcs to his front, then turned and pushed through the other dwarves until he could reach a side tunnel and move laterally to the other main way. He wasn't the first priest to make it there, but when he had, and saw the glowing red eyes of the beings they were fighting, he was glad he had gotten there at all.

  Damned vampires, he thought, pushing forward through regular dwarves who were trying to get to safety, away from creatures their weapons couldn't harm. The priest could feel the fear the creatures engendered in his body, despite the holy power running through him. His weapon could kill these undead, but they could also take his life. He said a prayer to his God for the protection of his soul, something that worried him more than losing his life. At moments like this, he envied the people who worshiped the Gods of Earth, whose souls were protected. As he felt the divine power flowing into him, he lost that envy.

  The hammer glowed with a holy light, a pure flame, dispelling all shadows ahead. The vampires recoiled, holding arms over eyes. Garios ran forward as fast as his short legs would bear him, swinging the hammer back, then forward, into the head of a vampire. The creature let out a screeching scream, then crumbled into dust, most falling to the ground, some puffing up into the air to set the dwarf to coughing. He felt an urge to vomit as he thought about the pieces of the creature he was inhaling.