The foundry, p.45
The Foundry, page 45
“Translating, searching probable languages.”
Waiting, he pondered what he would do if he got his hands on what was in that building. I could pack out enough to be set for life! But what sort of intercept plan does the contracting outfit have if I bolt with it? Does the owner of the seed contract know?.
“Translation confirmed. Name of the town is Wedgewood.”
Chapter 42
Christina
Wedgewood
Dawn brought definition to the eastern foothills. The chatter of birds in the alpine woodland heralded the new day, a day destined for conflict and strife. Christina crouched low, threading her way along the line of Perrin’s mercenary company. They were hidden in the tree line south of the town palisade. She’d ridden in the early evening to rendezvous at Wayland’s Farm with Perrin, two wards from the Plains clans, and the Timberkeep Sixth ward. Refugees were flooding into the farm, the rally point for Wedgewood and Doroman forces dislocated in the fighting. The homeless came with stories of rampaging troglodytes freed from the attack on Wedgewood to wreak havoc in the countryside. Christina suspected the Paleowrights wanted the reptiles out of the way now that their initial shock value was past. They’d be more useful terrorizing the outlying communities and causing disruption and distraction for the Wedgewood leadership. The thought of a growing number of refugees fleeing south at the mercy of the troglodytes chilled her. Hearing that a ward of Rock Doromen was on its way to aid Wedgewood, she asked Perrin to divide his two hundred-merc company. Half to march to Wedgewood and the other half to drive east against the reptiles and scatter them. She left a message for the Rock ward to guard Wayland’s.
Leaving the farm was painful. The farmer’s wife, with two younglings on her hip, pleaded with her to stay. Christina blessed the children and said she would return and then told Wayland, who stood behind his wife, a pained expression on his sun-beaten face, that if Wedgewood fell, his farm would drown in the Paleowright backwash. They had to save the clan before they could recover the countryside. So, they left the steading. Marching through the moonless, star-filled night, Christina led the half-company of mercs and the three wards. She intended to attack the camp of a Church battalion before dawn, but scouts reported that a Timberkeep counterattack at the foundry had kept the churchmen awake and edgy. The news lifted the spirits of the Sixth Ward; their clan was alive and chopping.
Bands of trog routiers foraged in the dark; the further east the column marched, the higher the chance of detection. Christina had changed plans and opted for an ambush rather than a surprise assault. If the churchmen indeed plotted to attack Timber Hall and the gate, as Sedge suspected, then the battalion would march past on the road in front of her. It was a broad track, its verge cleared to offer a field of view for when sentries manned the palisade.
She crouched beside a merc sergeant. Judging by his accent, he hailed from Taldamar far to the west. “Be our turn to attack and take the battle to these knuckle Parrots.” His breath steamed in the chill morning air.
“Attack is a good defense in disguise,” she whispered, her voice husky, kneeling with her armor on, concealed by the verge bushes. She’d heard the talk amongst the mercs as they marched in the night. “Yesterday was no defeat.”
“No,” the sergeant agreed with a heavy voice, “But I hear Barrigal lost twenty good men in the Shield Wall.”
“They fought well and accomplished their purpose. Because of them, we are here today.” She didn’t tell him she had stood in that wall and dragged one of her own, one of their very few Defenders, to a hardpoint. She bid the sergeant good luck and moved on down the line.
“Our scouts report the churchmen are on the move, sir. They’ll be at the Hall Gate in thirty minutes.”
Sedge merely nodded. He’d managed a few hours of fitful sleep in his loft above the command deck. What the hundreds of other soldiers in the treeforts did for rest, he could well imagine. Most of the Ungerngerist redoubts were built purely for fighting and had no accommodations for sleeping, eating, or other bodily functions. “Christina’s in place?”
“Yes, sir, they’re set.”
He stood up, his body stiff from the cold, stiff from bending over the map table, stiff from pouring through field reports in the dim lantern light, and stiff from the constant tension. “Then we shall see if surprise and nerve can make up for the churchmen’s three-to-one advantage.”
Christina, crouching low, darted from tree to tree. Sighting Perrin, she crept up to him, mindful of the churchmen battalion marching past their ambuscade. “Any sign of the Drakans?”
“No, Alon. The last word from the scouts said they were breaking camp. Their skirmishers came out, spied our scouts, and chased them.” He squinted at the rising sun. He and his men were drained from the night’s march, but the sight of the enemy filled them with fresh energy. “To be expected, the Drakans know their business. The Timber scouts are good, especially in the forest, but them hoplites are used to fighting Darnkilden Rangers, so they know all the tricks.”
She took a deep breath, resting her gauntlet on his armored shoulder. She knew she was asking much of the mercs and warders who had hustled through the night from Wayland’s to get here, but much depended on this attack: Timber Hall, the hundred families that sheltered there, the councils, and perhaps even the fate of Wedgewood. Moreover, she did not want the Drakans to spoil her surprise, not now. Without the Drakans to bolster the churchmen, she hoped to land a heavy, surprise blow. Perhaps even rout them. “Prepare your men. I will give the command.”
Perrin passed the hand signal down both sides of the line. He gripped the wire-bound hilt of his long sword but kept it sheathed and snugged his shield tight to his arm.
Christina whistled the call of a blossom bird, high and carrying across the field. At once, the mercenaries lept up and charged through the trees. Ninety men in black tabards, burnished steel shields, and polished steel helms. They ran without a word, brushing aside the bracken. In two lines, they came into the clearing at a dead run charging three hundred Paleowrights.
The nearest ranks of churchmen just gawked, uncomprehending. In the early morning dew, they marched in their ordered rows of pike as if their body as a whole were unassailable. These strange men came from the left, not from Wedgewood, and they were not dressed nor equipped as Timberkeeps, their swords still sheathed. They came without the screams, yells, and insults of attackers.
The Zursh mercenaries covered the open ground swiftly and, at the last moment, drew their pale swords, streaks of grey in the wan light. Only when the first Paleowright, watching as the sword descended, had his helm split in one awesome blow did the others blanch and raise their shields, and yet the battalion continued to march, oblivious.
“Aregen et marinar!” a sergeant uttered the age-old Zursh war cry, and the spell was broken. The blades swept down. As one, the company roared, “Aregen et marinar!”
Christina hit the organized Church ranks and slashed her way through the first two rows of surprised pikemen, slamming a shield here and bashing a pauldron there, running straight for the commander’s standard.
Hoarse cries rose. The Paleowright soldiers nearest the banners stopped their march and turned, alarmed, to face the assault of liveried professionals. The black and silver tabards a stark and ominous contrast against the green and blue tunics. Christina knocked an enemy sergeant flat with the boss of her shield and cut the standard-bearer’s arm in half, severing the staff and dropping the battalion colors into the dirt. The battalion major screamed a challenge and launched himself at her.
A cheer arose from the head of the solidifying Paleowright line. But it was a strange cheer, not one the churchmen understood.
Alex, his Defender’s shield raised above his head, rose out of the ravine the road approached. Behind him came a ward of Plains Doromen. They assaulted the head of the Antiquarian column in a crash of shields, splintering pikes, and the cries of warriors thrown to the turf. Just as the battalion began to adjust to the two-front attack, another cheer carried above the din, and the second Plains ward launched itself to the left of their compatriots in an attempt to swing around the north side of the churchmen.
The major and his command sergeant faced Christina. Behind her, three mercs fought feverishly to keep her from being surrounded. She swung her long sword in a feint at the command sergeant but then spun, battering the major with a series of blows. Every minute he fought her was another minute the churchmen lost cohesion and direction. The Paleowright company captains, without orders, were stricken by indecision.
It started as a trickle at first. The Zursh mercenaries, inflicting a fearful toll on the front rows of surprised pikemen, began to roll up the southern flank of the battalion. Churchmen in ones and twos began to shuffle towards the rear and then run.
A horn sounded, the familiar clarion of a Timberkeep ward. It blew and blew again, and then a ward came charging out of the forest. “The Sixth!” They bellowed. “Meeeeears-biiiirch!” Like crazed dogs long-straining at the leash, the Sixth struck at the Paleowright line right where Christina entered. Exasperated, their clan, their town, and their families assaulted while they were in the southern parks, the axemen vented their frustrations with every cleave and hammer of their weapons.
More churchmen fell back, sensing a trap; others—the faint-hearts—threw down their pikes and shields and ran.
A core company of stalwart pikemen held on defending the battalion colors. The fight was now a brawl, a wild melee with the opposing sides intermingled, and more than one blow struck friend instead of foe.
Christina notched her sword against the fine steel of the major’s heavy cutlass. He’d held her off with help from the command sergeant until she flung her shield up, stamped down hard on his foot, whirled, and caught the sergeant on the temple with her gauntleted fist. The blow staggered him, and a maddened Timber warder bowled him over. Both men sprawled on the trampled, blood-splattered gravel.
The major made to stab Christina in the back, but she kept turning and brought her sword neatly around. His exposed neck lay open to a clean killing stroke. She angled the blow up slightly and caught him on the back of his helmet, ringing his bell as sure as a clapper in an Antiquarian church. The major went down in a heap. He lay there dazed. Christina hooked his leg with her boot and rolled him over. He opened his eyes to find the Ascalon’s sword at his throat. “Yield.” She ordered. “Yield, or we’ll slaughter your men.” He nodded weakly.
“He yields!” roared a Timberkeep. “The major yields!”
“Do you surrender?” asked a merc. It was one thing for a soldier to yield on the battlefield; it was another for a commander to surrender his entire force.
Word of the major’s fall riffled through the ranks. Some dropped their weapons, but others, whole companies fearful of capture, turned and ran. The battalion broke. As a body, they flooded to the east, back the way they’d come.
“Did they surrender?” asked the Warden of the Sixth. “No,” said Christina, heavy in her heart, for she knew what would follow.
The warders and mercs ran after the fleeing Parrots, hacking, slashing, and striking them down from behind.
“That was the horn of the Sixth, sir. They’re on the attack.”
“Aye.” Like everyone else in Wedgewood who heard the horn blow, Sedge looked to the south. Through the telescope from Tall Lofty, he could just see over the palisade, but the fighting was too close to the wall to see much of the action. Instead, he had to rely on reports. That the Paleowrights were stopped and being driven back was plain.
Christina saw the line of round shields marching toward them. Churchmen fled towards the moving wall, and when it refused to open for them, they flowed around either end.
“Back!” she called. “Back!” Seeing the Zursh trumpeter, she grabbed him. “Sound recall.” He looked at her with a quizzical expression. She seized the trumpet hanging on its lanyard and shoved it at his face. “Blow it. Sound recall. Now!”
Startled, the bugler raised it hesitantly, not used to taking orders from anyone but Perrin. He blew tentatively.
“Louder!” she demanded. “And keep blowing it until I tell you to stop.”
A Timberkeep hot in pursuit suddenly found himself faced with the tip of a leveled pike and was cut down with a swift thrust to the throat. Another died with a spear in his belly. The shield wall marched over their bodies, treading them into the gravel track.
“To me!” Christina yelled at the top of her voice, waving her arms while the bugler blew his horn beside her. More warders fell to the advancing barrier, but the mercs were returning and forming their own wall.
The horn of the Sixth and now that of the Plains wards began to blow. The Doromen, like a pack of bounding wolves, skidded to a halt. Appraising the advancing phalanx, they were flummoxed. Then, heedful of the clarion calls, they turned and began to retreat but not before more of their fellows were cut down. And still, the wall of shields marched forward.
“Drakans,” breathed Christina, her blood racing.
Perrin spat. “Bloody hoplites.” He left her to form his ranks. “Right lads. We’ve seen these bastards before. You know what to expect. So square up. Shields tight, blades low.” In an earlier era, the Empire of Lamar and the fledgling Drakan Empire had been at odds. The Lamarans, of which Zursh was the capital, had soundly thumped the upstart Drakans in their many border skirmishes. But since then, the Empire of Lamar had collapsed, and Nak Drakas had risen to ascendency. In place of the Lamaran Empire, a loose federation of city-states attempted to fill the void. Each contributing troops to the eastern frontier to keep the Drakan menace at bay. They fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Rangers of Darnkilden and the Marines of the Sea Haven League. It was in those numerous brushfires that Perrin’s company had faced, fought, won, and lost lonely battles on that bitter frontier. Today was to be another meeting between Lamarans and Drakans, only in a pristine woodland far to the south and west where no Nakish army had reason to be.
Christina watched the last of the warders shuffle into line on either side of the Zursh mercs. “Back!” she called. “Perrin, order the line to fall back to the other side of the ravine.” The two wards of Plains warriors were on Perrin’s left, and the Sixth was on his right. The whole formation executed an about-face and jogged back across the hard-fought ground they’d just won, past scores of blue and green-uniformed dead and wounded. Christina ran past a churchman sitting, holding his eviscerated entrails, glazed eyes seeing death. A Timberkeep from the Sixth was bent over, nursing a bloody stump of an arm. She grasped him under his good arm and dragged him up. “Come.” He struggled to move his feet, his face pale from a loss of blood. She gave him a grim but steady smile. “That’ll have to be your shield arm from here on out. You’ll learn to wield an axe with your other hand before the snows fall.”
“Recall, sir. The horns are sounding recall!” There was a general commotion on the command deck. Woodwern, who’d made the perilous trek from Timber Hall to meet with Sedge, asked, “What does it mean? Have they—have we lost?”
Sedge shook his head. “No. Tis neither rally nor retreat, but a command to gather her troops.” He swiveled the telescope to the left and let the chairman look. Just over the sharpened wooden logs of the palisade, Woodwern could see the end of a line of spearmen marching with precision, a neat double line moving from east to west. He inhaled, not quite a gasp, “Are those...?”
“Drakan hoplites,” Sedge completed for him. “Two centuries. Two hundred foot. We knew they were there. It was a calculated risk.”
“What do we do?” The chairman looked closely at Sedge’s drawn face.
In light of Woodwern’s concern, Sedge forced himself to laugh. “What else, my good Chairman.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “We fight them!”
“Bloody hoplites,” Perrin growled.
Christina studied the advancing line. “How many archers do they have?”
“With two centuries, they’ll have forty. Twenty skirmishers that be the fellows on the ends, with twenty halberdiers. Nasty tough buggers, those are. They’ll be the best he’s got.” Perrin nodded at the decurion, who marched behind the double line of soldiers under a bare guidon. “I see he’s keeping them in the second rank center. Watch for the bastard to try and send them around the right or left flanks once we’re into it.”
“And your archers?”
“Mine? I’ve eighteen.”
She twisted her lips. “So we won’t win an archery duel.”
Perrin scoffed. “No, we won’t. And their soldiers are fresh. We’ve just finished fighting a whole battalion. We’ve maybe a hundred eighty fighters; they have a solid two hundred.” What he didn’t say but was lurking in both their minds was the ability of the wards to face seasoned Drakan professionals. The Timber and Plains warders were effective, they’d acquitted themselves well against the churchmen, but the Warders were primarily farmers, millers, and miners. They hefted an axe and shield as their wards were called upon but did not make their living waging war like the Drakan hoplites. Which was why Sedge and his two merc companies had been hired to help defend Wedgewood. Perrin had no qualms his Zursh mercenaries could stand toe-to-toe with the Nakish and perhaps give better than they got, but that still put Doromen wards on his left and right flanks.
