by Col Buchanan
The head pains had subsided to a dull throb at last, but he still carried a lingering hangover from the night before. He wandered slowly back to the camp to discover cries of sorrow mingling with the ordinary business of the day. There had been deaths in the night – mostly older camp followers or those already ill. People struggled to cut graves in the hardened earth.
Ash bought himself a breakfast of liver paste and tackbread, and a mug of hot chee from a canteen run by a husband and wife team, their supplies heaped on the back of a wagon supporting an awning under which they cooked. The river had partly frozen over during the night, and people around him were muttered about the sudden change in the weather. They worried that it was more than just a cold spell; that perhaps winter was approaching early.
It took even longer than usual for the army to set forth on the march.
First to leave were the skirmishers and light cavalry, who headed off while the rest of the army pulled itself together. One by one the steaming companies of infantry took to the road that ran along the Cinnamon valley, its passage marked by snow tramped down to mush. The Holy Matriarch and her Acolytes followed after them, protected by more screens of light cavalry. By the time the baggage train finally began to move out, the column was stretched thin and long beneath clouds dark enough to threaten more snow. The price of clothing tripled in the space of an hour.
Following the road, they came down at last into the Silent Valley, which turned them west towards Tume and the floodland of the Reach. The valley was five laqs across at its widest points, and the hills and mountains to the south of it were barely visible beyond the flat plain of tilled fields and deserted homesteads, with the Cinnamon widening and meandering down its middle. It was as quiet as its name suggested, save for the rush of air that ran through it, giving the place a lonely feeling, something oversized about it.
By late afternoon, the procession began to bunch up as those behind came up against those ahead. The van of the army had stopped for some reason. Soon, rumours were filtering back down the line that the Khosian army had been sighted ahead.
The First Expeditionary Force prepared itself for battle.
A group of rancheros were given permission to break off from their herd. They galloped forwards to see what was happening at the front, their hands clamped to their wide-brimmed hats as they whooped for effect and slapped their zels for speed. The rest of the baggage train drew up in a vast circle with the wagons dotted around the perimeter. People armed themselves as best they could. Within half an hour the price of weaponry had risen by a factor of five. The mood grew tense.
The rancheros returned after a short time and came to a stop in the press of bodies seeking news. It was an army, all right, but hardly of a size to concern them.
The gabble of the camp followers rose with excitement.
‘When will the army engage?’ someone wanted to know.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ one of the rancheros replied. They would rest and ready themselves tonight, then attack at first light.
‘What if they attack us first?’ came Ash’s cool voice from the back of the crowd.
They laughed at that, for they thought it was a joke.
The mood lightened after this appraisal of their position. Profit, most people were talking of. A battlefield after the fighting was done could be a place for rich pickings. With hungry eyes, they settled down around their fires to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bearcoat
‘Rather a lot of them,’ Halahan casually remarked, puffing on his pipe beneath the brim of his straw hat.
General Creed showed no sign that he was listening. He stood in the cold twilight on their vantage point above the valley, his long hair hanging in stillness about the shoulders of his fur coat, his eyes fixed on the imperial encampment in the far distance, the campfires already glittering in their hundreds.
Bahn and the rest of the officers waited in silence as the colours of the day slowly faded. Early stars were already pricking through breaks in the clouds, which had thinned in the last hour without dumping further snow.
The imperial army had settled in for the night on a stretch of the road around a hamlet known as Chey-Wes. As far as the eye could see they occupied the road and the valley plain that it followed, bordered on the north by the flow of the Cinnamon and Hermetes Lake, and on the south by a thin ribbon of elevated land, one of several that ran along the spine of the valley like the ridged back of a whale.
‘No earthworks around the main force,’ commented Halahan, hoisting the fallen branch he had been leaning on to jab at the distant camp. Trickles of snow fell from its tip. ‘They reckon themselves safe in their numbers.’
Bahn listened to these remarks in silence. He was trembling, and he didn’t mind admitting to himself that it was more than the mere chill of his armour. He looked away from the awful sight of the invasion force and turned his head to look back at the setting sun, savouring it for long moments as though it was his last. In its diminishing glow the Khosian army was preparing its own camp for the night, small enough to remain hidden behind the rise of ground the officers stood upon. Far beyond it, he could just about discern the sparkles of Tume reflecting off Simmer Lake.
The officers waited for Creed to say something, to lead them, but he was still deep in thought, his jaw muscles working as he ground his teeth in concentration.
Bahn knew all these men in his capacity as Creed’s aide. From the corner of his eye, he studied each of them in turn. General Nidemes of the Hoo, and his old rival General Reveres of the Red Guards, two grey-haired veterans who could have been brothers for all their similarities in features. Colonel Choi of the Free Volunteers, Coraxian by birth. Major Bolt, commander of Special Operations for the field army. Colonel Mandalay of the Lancers, their contingent of cavalry. And Halahan, positioned closer to Creed than the rest of them.
Each wore a pair of Owl goggles about their necks, priceless items of equipment made with lenses cast in the Isles of Sky. Each stood with his cloak wrapped tight about his armour, travel stained with all the days of forced marching. None looked remotely happy to be there, save for Halahan.
‘There are six thousand of us, brothers,’ Creed declared as he turned his back on the imperial army. ‘In all, we face over six times our number. I can tell you now, from what information we have gained from captured scouts, that many are veterans of Lagos and the High Pash campaigns. Two thousand more are Mannian Acolytes. For cavalry, the numbers are unclear; we believe they lost a large number of zels during their voyage. They have a sizeable contingent of archers and riflemen. Added to that, of course, is their artillery. They have ten heavy pieces for every one of ours.
‘Options, if you please.’
General Reveres of the Red Guards cleared his throat and spoke first. ‘We dig in here and fight a holding action. We can hardly defeat them in open battle with so many cannon facing us.’
‘May as well have stayed in Bar-Khos then,’ quipped General Nidemes.
‘You disagree?’ asked Creed.
Nidemes’s gaze was hard and unflinching. ‘Absolutely. We should attack them at first light. It will be the last thing they expect of us. If we’re lucky, we might catch their batteries unprepared.’
‘That still leaves forty thousand fighting men to contend with,’ argued Reveres.
Nidemes was unimpressed. ‘So? We were outnumbered in Coros too.’
General Creed wore his heavy bearskin coat over his armour. He tugged it tighter around himself, then crossed his arms in silence.
‘I agree with Reveres,’ said Choi, the bearded, blond-haired colonel of the Volunteers. ‘We should dig in here and hold them off as long as we can. You said yourself our intention was to buy time.’
‘Colonel Halahan?’ Creed enquired of his old friend.
The colonel replied with a wolfish grin. ‘You know what I would have us do, General.’
Creed fell quiet again, musing.
Bahn watched the gener
al and waited. Even now, he believed the man could save them.
‘You know how I killed this bear?’ Creed asked suddenly to no one in particular, and held his fur coat open for show.
‘It chased me off when I was checking some fish traps my father had placed in a stream. I was a boy, and I had a gutting knife with me, a tiny thing, about twice the size of this one,’ and he looked down at the curved dagger that hung against his chest, the Mannian ceremonial blade, which he had placed there for some reason known only to himself.
‘I needn’t tell you I was scared out of my wits. Couldn’t move for the life of me, in fact. But when my heart started beating again, and I saw how the bear was breaking into the traps, I knew I was even more terrified of what my father would do if I stood there and did nothing. So I charged at it, tried to frighten it away, if you can imagine that. The most foolish thing I’ve probably ever done in my whole life. And that’s when it grabbed my arm in its jaws and tried to rip it off me. Still, I had the knife in my hand. I fought back with it. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with the blood pumping out of me, and the bear was gone.
‘I crawled back to the homestead, where they saved my arm. And the next day, my father tracked the bear through the hills, and found it dead a few laqs from the broken traps. It had bled to death from the stab wounds in its throat. I was sorry to hear that. But proud too.’
Creed tilted his head back and looked at them all. ‘And that’s what we shall do here, with these invaders,’ he declared. ‘We will get in close, and we’ll go for their throats while they try to crush the life from our body.’
‘Sir?’ said Bolt, taken aback.
‘We attack. We attack tonight while they sit huddled in their tents waiting for the sun.’
Around Bahn the officers shifted in their stances. Bahn felt his stomach fall away.
‘Colonel Mandalay!’
The cavalry officer stood to attention. ‘Sir.’
‘Your men are to advance on the enemy position. As soon as they spot you, charge the camp, understood?’
‘General,’ acknowledged Mandalay after a pause.
‘Don’t linger. Head straight through the camp until you’re into the baggage train. Destroy as much as possible while you’re there. Look for powder wagons in particular. The quartermaster will furnish you with some firebombs for the task. And if you can, disperse the remainder of their zels too.’
It was a tall order, thought Bahn. The skin of Mandalay’s face had grown tight.
‘Major Bolt. The Specials will follow closely behind the cavalry charge. The enemy will be alerted by the time you reach the camp. We must hope they will still be in some confusion. Your task is to maintain that confusion, and to stop them from easily forming ranks until the main body of infantry can strike.’
Bolt nodded his head, his face impassive. Cool, thought Bahn, for a man just handed a suicide mission.
‘I’d like to leave my medicos with the main force, general,’ Bolt requested. He did not need to explain why.
Creed consented.
‘Nidemes. Reveres.’
The two generals waited at attention.
‘The main body will move in behind these actions in a warhead formation. General Nidemes – if you would, I’d like the Hoo to take the centre. General Reveres – the Red Guard chartassa will take positions on our flanks. We will break through their lines and proceed directly to the imperial standard, wherever it may be flying. That is the throat we must work upon. We’ll be going for the Matriarch herself.
‘Colonel Halahan – we have reports of a mortar position on the ridge along their southern flank. You and a company of your Grey-jackets will be dropped behind the imperial lines. Overrun that ridge and hold it at all cost. I repeat, at all cost. We must have the high ground for ourselves.’
General Creed, Lord Protector of Khos, faced his officers with a sombre intensity. The story he had offered was as close to a rousing battle speech as he would ever make. He wasn’t a man to spoil it now with some glib words of victory and duty, not when asking men to lay down their lives at his command.
‘Questions?’
Bahn waited to see if anyone else would speak. ‘Our cannon,’ he said at last, his tongue a dry slab in his mouth. ‘What of our cannon?’
‘They’ll be of little use to us once battle is joined. And vulnerable too. Better if we send them to Tume along with the rest of our baggage. Anything else?’
Still no one spoke up. By the general’s side, Halahan observed their uneasy silence with a quiet amusement. He hunched slightly over the stick of wood he leaned upon, using his weight to screw the tip of it deep into the snow, then cocked his head a little to one side. ‘Aye, General,’ he said; and he exhaled a puff of smoke from around his pipe, simple tarweed for once. ‘I was just wondering why you were carrying that damned Mannian knife around your neck, is all.’
‘Why?’ responded Creed with a flash of his eyes. ‘Because, Colonel, if we reach the Matriarch herself, I intend to cut her bloody throat out with it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Clash of Arms
Ash awoke to the ground pounding against his ear, and recognized the sound in an instant.
The old Rōshun leapt up with his sheathed sword in hand and scanned the perimeter of wagons. Riders, tearing in through the night. Shouts of alarm rising in their wake.
A zel vaulted the yoke of a drawn wagon, threw up clods of snow from its hooves as it landed and regained its footing. Its rider yanked hard on the reins and Ash saw something in his hand with a smoking fuse trailing from it. The man tossed the jar into the wagon, which instantly burst into flames.
Someone screamed through the night. More riders were charging into the baggage camp, throwing firebombs at every wagon they could see. People yelled and ran for cover. The riders cut them down as they ran.
This is my chance.
Ash glanced to the north, where the tents of the Matriarch’s encampment stood glowing with inner light.
He started to jog.
It was a damned foolish time to be flying. The air up here was frigid enough to cover everything on the little skyboat with ice. The silk envelop overhead, the sweeping control vanes along its flanks, all shone with a stark whiteness, while frozen diamonds of moisture covered the frozen tiq spars and rigging that fixed the wooden hull to the gas bag. Even worse, the light could not be relied upon, for the snow-covered valley floor below them kept fading into blackness each time a cloud obscured the waning moons, reducing their visibility to almost nothing. For Halahan, it only made the experience more thrilling.
‘A cold night for it!’ he said to his staff sergeant over the sound of the thrusters.
The man was huddling amongst the men at the very centre of the narrow deck, as far from the rails as he could be. Staff Sergeant Jay, a fellow Nathalese veteran, only smiled miserably and closed his eyes again, and continued to chant a prayer beneath his breath.
Halahan casually chewed on his unlit pipe and surveyed his fellow Greyjackets. They held their longrifles upright in their arms and shivered beneath their coats, eyes flashing white in the gloom. A few passed around flasks of spirits, though none of them spoke beyond the odd whisper. Good fighters, all of them, he knew. Men he could rely upon, each one an exile from a conquered land.
Past their heads he spied the distant lights of the imperial army, and he chewed his pipe a little harder.
His own homeland of Nathal had fallen years ago, after he’d spent half his life as a preacher of Erēs teaching the oneness of all. Now, Nathal was nothing more than another colony of Mann, the people exploited and oppressed worse than they ever had been by their own Nathalese nobility.
Halahan massaged his bad leg where it was throbbing from the chill – or perhaps it was from nothing more than old memories. He had gained the wound after the Imperial Fourth Army had invaded his homeland, a calamity that had caused him to set aside his preaching, and in the greatest of ironies to fight alongside Qu
een Hano and her forces. In the penultimate battle of the war along the banks of the Toin, his leg had been crushed by a skipping cannon shot, and he’d been left for dead when the army had been routed. Dragging himself away in the darkness, only the kindness of a local forest woman had saved him.
In the aftermath that followed, with the country set upon by the full force of the Mannian occupation, his faith had been the very last thing he had lost.
Halahan shifted his leg, blinking from the pain of it.
He looked to the pilot behind the wheel, wrapped in leathers and a scarf and ordinary flight goggles. The man pulled on levers next to the wheel to fire short bursts of the thrusters along the sides of the hull, while another crewman clambered through the icy rigging overhead, and struggled to open a frozen valve cap on the envelope itself, needing to release air from one of the ballast bladders to keep their nose low. Two more crewmen worked on this little skyboat commonly known as a skud. One sat behind the swivel-cannon as immobile as stone. Next to him perched the lookout, a woman wearing a pair of Owls, guiding the pilot on his course with silent gestures of loosehand.
The colonel watched her glove glow a ghostly blue in the dimness, impregnated as it was with a dye derived from the lakeweed of Simmer Lake. Each fresh signal was answered with another short puff of the thrusters, or a creak of ropes as one of the manoeuvring sculls was adjusted.
He patted Sergeant Jay on the shoulder and made his way forwards through the press of men. Neither of the two crewmen at the prow acknowledged his presence; both peered over the forward rail with utter attention. They stank of sweat, but then everyone on board did, including Halahan. Worse was the wind from all their loosening bowels.
They’ll smell us before they see us, he thought wryly.
Ahead of the skyboat, the lights of the imperial encampment grew ever closer. Shouts came to his ears, men bawling in surprise or panic. A low rumble announced the Khosian cavalry charging through their camp.
