Antiagon Fire (59 page)

If not so far back as the roads of the Naedarans
, thought Quaeryt.
Had some of the Naedarans fled to Antiago? Or had Aliaro’s imagers come from elsewhere?

While it was hard to determine, given their distance from the main road, most of the imposing structures appeared shuttered, and not a single wisp of smoke rose from any chimney, as if most inhabitants had either fled or were hiding within. Nor had Quaeryt seen any individual even on more distant lanes or fields. In fact, he had seen no livestock, not even a dog.

Just ahead of first company, the road curved gently to the north around the base of another hill, one planted at the top with oil nut trees. Some hundred yards to the south of the road was a depression not quite deep enough to be a gorge or a canyon but too narrow to be a valley and too deep to be a mere swale, at the bottom of which was a small stream. Quaeryt judged that the miniature canyon/valley was perhaps two hundred yards across and fifteen to twenty yards deep.
Just deep enough and steep enough to make it a barrier to any sort of maneuver.

Even before the outriders reached the point where the road began to curve to the west-northwest, Skarpa rode up and ordered a halt, then eased his mount over beside Quaeryt. “About a mille ahead, at the top of a slight rise, between that hill and that valley to the south, there’s a wall right across the road. The wall looks to be a half mille long. The stonework on each side of the road towers looks old. The wall between the towers looks new. The scouts report that there might be at least several regiments there.”

“So they imaged a short section of wall between the towers?”

“Or they built it quickly,” replied Skarpa sardonically.

“Is there any way to go around the wall?” asked Quaeryt.

“Either down through the valley or uphill through the oil nut trees. I imagine that they’re ready to fire the trees themselves if we tried that.”

“So why don’t we fire the trees … and wait?”

“I’d thought about that, but … unless you or your imagers could do that, we’d likely lose a lot of men even trying to get close.”

“I assume that there’s no other easy or short way to get around the wall.”

“I’ve had the scouts searching, but there’s another gorge to the north…”

“So we’d have to retrace our way up the gorge that holds the main road and then find another road down to Liantiago?”

“If there is one,” said Skarpa. “We didn’t see any signs of main roads. There are likely farm roads or lanes, but they’ll be narrow.”

“And we might face another force if we attempted riding back up into the gorge. Or some other kind of trap.”

“Even if we didn’t, trying to reach Liantiago on back roads gives them more of an advantage.”

“But not more than the advantage of fortifications,” Quaeryt pointed out.

“I was hoping you and the imagers…”

“I’d have to look to see what might be possible.”

“I thought you might. That’s why I called a halt,” said Skarpa. “You’re not to do it by yourself with just a squad.”

“I’ll take Khalis and Horan.”

“Not Voltyr?”

“You’ll need him if anything happens while we’re gone.” Quaeryt turned to Zhelan. “Major … I’ll need a squad to accompany me and two undercaptains on a scouting mission.”

“Yes, sir. Third squad is ready.”

“Thank you.” Quaeryt looked back. “Undercaptains Khalis and Horan, forward!”

As Horan reined up beside Quaeryt, his face held a slightly puzzled expression, while Khalis offered a tentative smile.

Quaeryt ignored both expressions. “Once we near the curve in the road, Khalis, I want a concealment shield over the squad. If at any time you think you can’t maintain it, let me know before that happens. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Horan … I want you to study the hill to the north and the valley to the south. I need to know whether you can remove a section of the hill wide enough for a battalion to ride along such a cut around the end of the wall. I’d also like your thoughts on a bridge across the valley short of the wall and another one back across farther west and behind the wall.”

The older undercaptain nodded, thoughtfully, as if his unspoken question had been answered.

Quaeryt turned his mount slightly, in order to address all the imager undercaptains. “The Antiagons have imagers. We don’t know how many, and we don’t know how strong they are. We also don’t know how they will deploy those imagers after what we did in the gorge. They’ll doubtless have Antiagon Fire and catapults. They will have cannon as well.” He ignored the sarcastic expression on Threkhyl’s face. “Until we do know what else they may use, when we first move into range of muskets, arrows, or imaging, you need to hold your shields. It’s more than likely that the stone wall ahead is only the first barrier we’ll encounter as we near the outskirts of the city.”

By the time Quaeryt had finished speaking, third squad had ridden forward, ready to escort Quaeryt and the two undercaptains. Quaeryt turned the mare and eased her over to the squad leader. “I’d like two outriders, but only five yards in front of us.” That was to make sure that they stayed within the limits of Khalis’s concealment shield. “We’ll take this at a fast walk. The two undercaptains will flank me, and you’ll be immediately behind.”

“Yes, sir.”

In moments, the two rankers were leading the group out along the road.

After the first hundred or so yards, Quaeryt ordered, “Concealment shield now, Khalis. Third squad, quiet riding.”

“Yes, sir.”

Almost half a mille later, they came to the end of the curve in the road, and to a point almost even with the highest part of the low hill to the right. Some four hundred yards ahead was the stone wall that extended from the rear of the hill across the road and to the valley to the southwest. Even at that distance, Quaeryt could see that behind the stonework waited troopers in maroon uniforms. Some ten yards behind the stonework were catapults, spaced ten yards or so apart, with more than twenty of them in all.

Quaeryt didn’t see any cannon, but he had no doubt that there must have been some, possibly in the trees on the upper slopes of the hill, trained down onto the open fields on each side of the road and ready to rake the approaches to the wall.
Another reason to fire the trees before we start any sort of attack.

He held up his hand. “Squad, halt.” Then he added, “Undercaptains, take a good look at all that.”

The towers immediately flanking the road were square, some ten yards high, and clearly dated back many years, possibly more than a century, as did the two sections of the wall on each side of the towers, a wall that looked to be some five yards thick. The wall between the towers had no gates, and not even embrasures below the crenellations that topped the stonework, and the white stone was definitely much newer.

“Could you flatten that stonework for a width of thirty or forty yards?” Quaeryt asked Horan.

“Be easier to move some of the hill to make a ramp up and around the end of the wall, sir,” Horan finally said.

“How wide do you think you could make it?”

“Wide enough for four horses, I’d think. If they stayed close together.”

“What about bridges over the valley?”

“No, sir. I saw what all of you did at Ferravyl, and it’d take a lot more than that.”

Quaeryt had thought the same, but had his reasons for asking. “And a ramp over the south end of the wall?”

“I could do the north end, and Threkhyl could do the south. He might be able to flatten the wall. He’s still stronger than I am for that.”

But not for shields, I’d wager
. “Khalis … could you remove that center section of wall?”

“Yes, sir. That’s less than twenty yards across. Well … less than thirty, anyway.”

Quaeryt couldn’t help but smile slightly, if ironically. A year and a half earlier, he couldn’t have removed one of the wall stones. Now, that was nothing to all but one of the imagers he commanded. He nodded. “Time to head back, outriders, undercaptains, squad leader. Please keep holding that concealment, Khalis.” He turned his mare.

“If I might ask,” ventured Khalis, after they had covered about a hundred yards of the return to Southern Army, “what you have in mind, sir…”

“Anything where we don’t have to attack a walled fortification directly. Do you have any suggestions, Undercaptain?” asked Quaeryt gently.

“If we just removed the front of the entire wall at the base, it wouldn’t take as much effort…”

Quaeryt thought for a moment, then shook his head. “That would just leave a jumble of stone that would be a barrier to us, especially to a mounted regiment…” He let the words drift off for a moment, as something struck him. “Keep that thought in mind, though. It might be a very good tactic if we have to deal with manned high walls in Liantiago.”

“What about toppling their catapults just before we get in range?” asked Horan. “We wouldn’t need shields as much.”

“It’s a good idea, especially if it spreads Antiagon Fire across their ranks, but we’d still need shields against arrows and musket fire.”

As they rode back around the curve, Quaeryt began to image burning hunks of wax into the leaves of the oil nut trees on the hill to the north of the road, concentrating on the southern side, overlooking the approach to the wall and towers. Wax was easier than iron fragments, and he also had no idea exactly where any Antiagons might be … if there were any at all, but he couldn’t believe that there were none on such a strategic position. He might be destroying the grove and the crop of some Shahib, but he didn’t wish to risk Southern Army having to deal with either a concealed Antiagon force or a cannon position that could rake any advance. He kept looking up at the tree-covered crest of the hill as he rode back toward where Skarpa and Southern Army waited—out of sight of the wall and its towers, but certainly obvious to any scouts or troopers on the hill.

Initially, even a half a quint after Quaeryt’s fire-imaging, there were only puffs of smoke here and there, and in many places, the smoke just vanished. In more than a handful, though, perhaps in as many as a double handful, the thin trails of smoke thickened, followed by tongues of flame that expanded rapidly. By the time that the scouting squad was back in sight of Southern Army, patches of the trees were in full flame. Quaeryt didn’t see anyone fleeing the fire.
But you wouldn’t. They’d run back toward the wall on the side of the hill away from us.

Before long, the entire hilltop was aflame. Then, abruptly, a geyser of dirt and vegetation erupted from the upper southern side of the hill, accompanied by one large explosion and followed by several others.

For a moment Quaeryt just watched, although he kept riding.

“Why didn’t they fire on us earlier?” asked Khalis. “We were certainly in range even before we went to scout.”

“They weren’t positioned to fire on where Southern Army halted, and I’d guess that because cannon are heavy and hard to move, they worried that they wouldn’t have time to reposition them to cover the approach to the wall. That’s where they could do the most damage because that’s where our forces would be the closest together.”

Skarpa was waiting at the front of first company and gestured for Quaeryt to join him. Quaeryt rode over and reined up.

“I appreciate your taking out that cannon emplacement. It did warn them about some of our capabilities, but they probably know those already.” Skarpa’s smile was rueful. “I don’t see much point in waiting until tomorrow. They might just decide to bring up cannon or something else unpleasant.” Skarpa coughed and cleared his throat. “And most of Southern Army hasn’t fought today. Can your imagers handle it?”

“Here’s what I’d suggest,” said Quaeryt. He began to explain.

When he finished, Skarpa nodded slowly, then said, “That’s fine if they don’t immediately turn cannon and catapults on the attack points.”

“We can’t do much against cannon, except use concealment shields until we begin the attack, but some of the imagers can cripple the catapult towers.” Quaeryt paused. “I don’t know that we can take them all out. They must have twenty of them along the wall.”

“I’d think they’d have more. It is what they do best.”

“They likely do in Liantiago, but here … there’s no protected storage for the fire grenades, and you wouldn’t want them too close together.”
Not if you value your troopers.

“That might be why they had the cannon on the hill. Some of the cannon, anyway,” said Skarpa. “If I were their commander, I’d have more set back and ranged to fire over the walls into the approaches to the wall.”

“Then they probably do, and we’ll need to use concealment shields as long as we can and try to advance without raising enough dust that it lingers behind the regiments.”

Skarpa gestured to a junior squad leader. “Commander Quaeryt and I would like to see all the regimental commanders immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

Skarpa turned back to Quaeryt. “You can’t do anything like you did at Ferravyl or Variana?”

Quaeryt shook his head. “It’s not that warm. There’s no rain and no water that near.”

“I don’t pretend to understand why that’s important, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Massive imaging takes heat.”

“That’s why all the ice and snow?”

Quaeryt nodded. “Without that…” He shook his head.

“The more I learn, the more I wouldn’t want to be in your boots.”

For those reasons, and for others Quaeryt wasn’t about to mention, he was getting more and more uncomfortable in his own boots.

Once the seven commanders arrived, Skarpa laid out the plan of attack, looking around the senior officers when he had finished.

“You realize that coordinating the attack will be difficult using hand signals instead of horn signals,” offered Kharllon.

“I do understand that, Commander,” replied Skarpa, “but it is not necessary for the attacks to be perfectly coordinated. A surprise attack on three points that is not exactly timed is far better than a perfectly timed assault that is anticipated and expected. Would you not agree?”

“Do we have any idea what defenses they have besides the wall?” asked Kharllon, his question making clear the fact that he didn’t intend to reply to Skarpa’s gentle question.