The heron kings flight, p.23
The Heron Kings' Flight, page 23
Eyvind grinned. “General, you’re still thinking militarily. We don’t have to defeat them all, just make the place too much of a hassle to be worth it. Like you said, there’s little plunder there. They’ll look for easier pickings down in the valley.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. But it would give us some breathing room. I’ve got to do something.”
Davenga nodded again, more confidently this time. “Very well, I’ll ready my saddle.”
“No. It’s my home, I’ll go.”
* * *
Just as the sun was dipping over the Sellinacs and laying a blanket of twilight over the mountainside, Eyvind led a host of forty mounted soldiers out of Phenidra. Mounted soldiers maybe, but not proper trained cavalry, and they rode poorly even though they were the self-proclaimed best riders from all present within the walls. Even a few volunteers from Edrastead were keen to retake their village and exact some payback. The horses were, on the other hand, surefooted and glad to be free of the cramped stables. The company skirted rocky hillocks and gravel paths to approach Edrastead in as much secrecy as was possible, and the memory of Eyvind’s first desperate flight to and from there came flooding back. I won’t be running away this time, he vowed. He hoped.
Edrastead was an unremarkable little settlement laid out in a jagged line leading from a slate mine and surrounded by a few modest patches of farmland. Gardens, really. But except for those the land rose and fell with each step, like drunken waves of stone. Knowing from lifelong experience which parts of the village were visible from where, Eyvind led them almost to the main path that served as a street without being noticed by the small horde of women riding, walking or just lounging amid the central stretch of buildings. They seemed to be gathered mostly in the small taphouse, draining away the village’s cider stores while laughing and jeering as the stiff and horse-trampled bodies of slaughtered villagers clogged the way. Enough light remained for Eyvind to snarl at that sight.
“Those bitches! So drunk and smug they didn’t even post any lookouts. Good.” He waved the four riders he’d appointed as captains close to him. “I say we ride right into town at a walk and kill as many as we can without raising the alarm. When that’s blown, draw them out with noise to make us sound like more than we are, and when they gather to come at us hit ’em with the Vrril. Yeah?” They nodded grimly.
Tess, whose husband now lay dead not fifty paces away, held up one of the precious, terrible phials. “Just try and fucking stop me,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Wait ’til they get close to us, get as many as you can. Okay, send the order down.”
When all in the raiding party were ready, they crept around slopes and boulders, converging on the buildings in the gloom, the stomping of hooves blending with those of the enemy. It was almost too easy. Eyvind rode up behind one mounted woman riding slowly down the gravelly thoroughfare, raised a spear, and with shocking ease drove it straight through her back. She jerked, tried to scream but her pierced lung wouldn’t allow it. She exhaled sharply and fell from the saddle.
All along the line of the village the same absurd scene played out, the silent attack begun but not even known. Eventually screams did ring out, and then shouts in some foreign tongue. Then there was panic and pandemonium.
“Now!” Eyvind ordered. “Now! Make some noise!” He kicked his horse into a trot to charge another warrior woman across the way. She raised a bow to shoot him down but he threw the spear at her. A lance is no throwing weapon and did little damage, but it knocked the bow off balance long enough for Eyvind to barrel into her and swipe a borrowed sword before him. His horse shied away at the last second, though he managed to slice several of her fingers off, and she howled in the dark. More screams, not just of surprise but of agony, from both sides of the fight. Some of the villagers shouted an old mining song as they rode, hoping to frighten their enemy into thinking an entire army was attacking.
At last the greater part of the women managed to stagger out of the taphouse and mount up to make a counterattack. Eyvind gave a loud, shrill whistle, and his raiding party gathered to him at the crest of a slope at the far end of the village. Glad to be given a single target, the women grouped together to advance on them. Already arrows were flying, mostly missing in the dark but not all. One lodged in the gaps in Eyvind’s armor, penetrating just deep enough to be an annoyance, but no more. A savage command was given, and the women charged.
“Now!” Eyvind said, waving to Tess. She rode out in front holding a burning makeshift torch, the Vrril phial tied just below the flames. She gathered up all her strength, drew back an arm, and flung the device. Just as she did an arrow lanced out and grazed her in the armpit, and she fell with a hiss of pain.
But it was too late. The Vrril torch sailed down the slope to land right in front of the advancing warrior women.
BOOM!
Horse and human flesh were once again thrown everywhere in tattered masses, the night briefly made into a sickly greenish day. Cries and neighs of anguish. The villagers and soldiers who’d not been present at Phynagoras’s attack on Phenidra stared in shock, while Eyvind wasted no time in gathering up Tess onto his horse. “Don’t wait around! Back to Phenidra!”
The host turned and fled. Running again after all, Eyvind thought, but this time it was no defeat. The warrior women not dead, maimed or in shock attempted to give chase but neither they nor their animals were accustomed to the uneven ground, and they were soon lost in the night. The few to follow their quarry all the way back to Phenidra were driven off by arrow shot.
“Make a hole!” Davenga shouted into the courtyard when Eyvind’s party clamored through the gate, almost knocking soldiers and refugees out of the way. When it was shut again Eyvind wrenched his horse around. “Is everyone here? Did we lose anyone?”
The count came up five short: two Pelonans, two Northmarch soldiers and one villager, with six more wounded. “Too many,” Eyvind growled as the wounded were carried through the crushing throng toward the infirmary.
* * *
“I’m amazed any of you came back at all,” said Davenga the next morning when they rode out again to Edrastead in the light of day. Though they found a stomach-turning orgy of mangled flesh and burned houses, there were no enemies left alive. “You were right. But was it worth it?”
“I think so. I doubt they’ll come back here in much of a hurry, and we’ll have the good sense to post watchtowers in case they do. We have somewhere to put the refugees, and maybe most important, we showed that we can hurt ’em.”
What Eyvind couldn’t know was that the village, little though the victory had been, also marked the first patch of ground that had ever been retaken from Phynagoras, Emperor of Kings.
* * *
Downhill was a rustic hamlet even smaller than Edrastead. As its name implied, it lay halfway down the mountainside, nestled in the uppermost crop of pines on a slope about a day’s ride south of Phenidra. Of course, it could just as accurately have been called Uphill, but few from the valley ever visited it. It had once been a Marchman place, but the interminable tide of civilization had diffused the tribesmen either into Argovani society or even further into the mountains. It now boasted a lumber mill and trading post. Or it had.
After Eyvind and his raiders liberated Edrastead and erected a hasty watchtower in case Phynagoras decided it indeed was worth the hassle, the place remained in need of provisions and rebuilding, so Eyvind took an emboldened forage party out to refill kegs with fresh water running down out of the mountains. They came slowly upon Downhill, not sure what they’d find. Seeing no enemy activity but hearing the hum of human habitation from afar, the party rode into the wooded vale that traced the path of the stream, hopeful of finding one place at least to escape destruction.
With a smile, his first in many days, Eyvind sidled up to the nearest building of the hamlet, hand raised in greeting to any who might see. “Ho! Are any goodfolk about?” He purposely exaggerated his upland accent to seem less threatening, for who knew what horrors they’d been through?
Two figures came out of the thatch hut to face him, then froze.
“What the fuck—?”
Bhasans. A man and woman. Ruddy, hair black and arrow-straight, no doubt of it. Invaders. Eyvind’s smile melted into a furious scowl.
The pair turned and fled back into the hut, shouting something unintelligible. Eyvind looked out across the hamlet, now spotting more foreigners scattering to find somewhere to hide.
“Bastards,” growled Tess. “They done turned out the whole village and took up residence ’emselfs! Or else killed everyone. What should we do?”
“Round ’em up,” Eyvind said without hesitation, “all of them. I want some answers!”
It took mere minutes, the settlement was so small. There seemed to be no weapons among them more dangerous than eating knives, and the forage party went from house to house, driving every person at spear point into the clearing at the middle of the hamlet. They whined and pleaded in their own languages, and not just Bhasan. As far as Eyvind could tell there were Porontans, Thazovi, Ghreshi, and some from nations he couldn’t name at all.
At last every invader was corralled within a ring of horses, their riders stabbing inward with little inclination to mercy. Eyvind fought through the barrier atop his own mount, frowning. “All right, you bloody trespassing fucks, any of you speak a civil tongue?” He glanced across the tens of faces, many holding frightened children, most ill-nourished, all uncomprehending.
Finally, a woman holding a toddler raised her hand. “I speak some of you Barghii,” she said in a thick accent. “Why are you here?”
“Why are we here?!” Eyvind raged. “Why are you? What’d you do to the rightful folk of this place? Answer quick, cause my patience is exactly fucking zero right now and more than one of this lot’s thirsty for payback and not too particular who pays it.”
“We do nothing! We follow the emperor here, he say the lord of this land welcome us, say there is land for us all.”
Eyvind gave a bitter laugh. “That lord was a traitor, and he had no right to give it away to anyone.”
The woman shook her head, terrified and frustrated. “We know nothing of this. We find this place, all people gone. We do not know where. So we stay. What harm?”
Eyvind jammed his weapon into the ground and jumped down from his horse quickly enough to send a stab of pain through the remains of his old wound. He ignored it as he stomped forward to grab the woman by the shoulders. “Harm? Harm! Your precious emperor’s butchering whole cities to make room for you savages to worship him! You are not welcome here!”
The woman began to quake with fury as much as fear, to weep, as did the child she held. “What can we do? What can we do? In Bhasa there is nothing! No green land, no water, no farm, no food, no job, only sand and death. You have everything!”
“Tell that to my husband, you mud-skinned bitch.” Tess nudged her horse forward, raising her spear a bit.
The woman had grown almost hysterical. “I follow the emperor for my child. We are not army, we kill no one, just look for better life. Any life! Not there, not here, not anywhere! Just kill us and make done!”
“Good enough for me,” Tess sneered, raising her spear even more. A terrified moan rippled through the crowd.
Eyvind held up a staying hand, though it galled him to do it. “Wait. We kill this lot another will just come along to replace ’em, and who knows how tough they’ll be? No shortage there.” His other hand wavered near the dagger at his belt, drawn to it oh so seductively. He looked again across the faces. Strange-looking, certainly. Scared, ragged, so much like the refugees that still crowded Phenidra. “Shite,” he sighed. What would Linet do? “Shite! Fuck it, I won’t let these wretches turn me into a little Phynagoras m’self.”
“You’re gonna let ’em go?” Tess asked, angry.
Ignoring her, Eyvind inched closer to the woman who spoke for them. “You know where we come from?”
She nodded. “That fortress. With the evil magic fire. We see the battle.”
“That’s right. And we have a lot more of it,” he lied, “and not with ten years and ten times the men could your precious savior take it. He’s far, we’re near. And I don’t think he cares much for you at all. So how badly do you really want another life?”
Tess looked at Eyvind in shocked disbelief. “You…you’re not going to let them bloody stay?”
Eyvind pointed toward the abandoned sawmill perched along the stream. “You know what that’s for?”
“To cut the trees.”
“We need timber for rebuilding the village your army attacked, firewood, watchtowers. And warm pelts for the winter. And fresh water and cider. You will provide whatever we need, and in return I’ll conveniently forget to spit you all on pikes, as I’m told your emperor did for the citizens of Vin Gannoni. If the people you displaced ever come back, you’ll deal with them on your own. And there’s your better life. Agree to it. Now!”
Barely an hour later the forage party rode back to Edrastead, making a slow going of it only because they had six carts of timber in tow, some of it cut previously, some there and then. As Eyvind’s temper cooled, he mused, “How easily people jump from one savior to another.”
“Aye,” said Tess, refusing to look him in the eye. “You’re a right proper lord now, seems. Just remember not everyone’s quite so keen to forget the past.”
Chapter Twenty
A River Bleeds Through It
“This isn’t going to work,” Thanis said as he fidgeted, hunched uncomfortably on his ankles at the edge of the cliff near the bridge. A chill autumn wind blew up out of the forty-yard-deep gorge to smack him in the face.
“It will work,” Aerrus answered. “Just be patient.”
“Patience has nothing to do with it. We could wait here ’til winter freezes the bridge in place and it wouldn’t come down. We should just attack them straight on and—”
“Pipe down. They’re getting close.” Linet stood with folded arms, eyeing their handiwork with almost as much skepticism as Thanis. Their target was one of Boras’s foraging expeditions, about fifty soldiers with some migrants along to help. The aristocrats of Wengeddy had absconded with what food stores they could carry, and to everyone’s surprise had the good sense to destroy what was left in order to deny it to the enemy. Boras’s expeditions had come this way before, ranging ever further afield from the occupied town as they picked the lands west of the Kingsmarch clean. Undermining the bridge over the Carsa would stop them for a while, at least. Assuming this works, she thought nervously.
“Okay, nothing to do now but wait,” said Aerrus just above a whisper, shrinking back into the concealing hollow carved by a small stream that trickled into the river far below. “You checked those struts again like I asked?”
Thanis rolled his eyes. “I checked ’em, for the ninetieth time! I just hope that engineer who came up with the idea knew what she was about. She was a bridge builder before all this, not a wrecker.”
“Then we’ve invented a new profession.” The flow of refugees away from Phynagoras’s genocidal depredations had tossed all manner of folk their way. Most were of little practical use, but in this case one had been instrumental in teaching them how to weaken the structure so it failed at exactly the right time. They’d had to cut almost but not completely through the supporting struts, cut from the bottom so the sabotage wouldn’t be noticed and so the wood would break in the right direction. Hopefully.
“Some profession,” spat Thanis. “Won’t be able to cross the river until spring. Not that there’s anyone left to cross it. None we want alive, anyway.”
Linet cast a worried glance at the lad as she rubbed the arms of her bow to keep it limber and her aim true. That’s a bit dark for him, she thought. But it was dark business, and she feared it would make brutes of them all before long.
The foragers approached, looking as hungry and bedraggled as the refugees they drove before them or slaughtered. Thanis counted at a whisper. “Looks like…five horses, three wagons. Will they be heavy enough?”
“They will,” Linet answered with all the confidence of a market-fair grifter. “Just remember to pull the chain when their front crosses the two-thirds point and not before.”
“And pull hard,” Aerrus added.
The party came at last to the bridge, across from where they hid. Close enough to see their faces. They heard the hollow clop-clop of hooves on the wood. Thanis visibly shivered, and Linet felt a pang of sympathy for what must be going through his mind. For many of them none of this had been real until now, just an exercise in thought. But it was too late to call off now.
The foragers crossed the halfway point, the beams groaning in mild protest, as bridges did. Linet, Thanis and Aerrus all gripped the end of the chain that ran from the underside of the bridge and snaked along the cliff under concealing brush. The wind died down completely and all was quiet but for the footsteps and low rumble of the wagons. The whole world, it seemed, held its breath in anticipation.
Two-thirds. Linet nodded and as one they pulled. The chain snapped up taut from out of the ground.
Nothing happened.
One narrow beam under the near end of the bridge snapped back and fell away, but that was all. Thanis drew a sharp gasp. “We’re dead,” he whispered. The mounted officers leading the party halted, looked from the end of the bridge to the struts, to the chain, and followed it straight to them. Realizing what had happened, what had almost happened, they waved and yelled in their unintelligible foreign speech, probably ordering the others to get back to the other side.
But the wagons and the foragers on foot, carried on by momentum, couldn’t be halted quite so easily and trundled forward toward the officers. This resulted in concentrating the greatest weight directly in the center of the bridge. The beams’ groans grew louder. The company only had time to begin a mad dash to one side or the other when the supports finally gave way with loud snaps.
