Gold Throne in Shadow (28 page)

12

DOGFIGHT

A
fter two weeks, the challenges seemed over. On the open marsh, the cavalry could destroy the dinosaurs with little danger. The smell of horseflesh would lure the predators out of the scrubby woods, where the range of the rifles could tear them apart before they could run a horse to ground. Christopher knew that sooner or later somebody would stumble and fall, and then he would be sending another barrel to the Cathedral, but after six more of the huge beasts the supply seemed to dry up.

Building a road through the swampland gave the men plenty of physical exercise and kept them too tired to complain. D'Kan and the scouts crept through the marsh and brought home alligator tails and odd bits of edible plants, bright-blue beans, and fiery red peppers. The camp was stuffed with supplies of oats and gunpowder. The walls were finished and seemingly impenetrable. Tael from the predators of the swamp trickled in slowly, even ordinary—although exceedingly large—alligators yielding a tiny speck. No women haunted his steps or his bed. Disa called him Brother and argued only with Gregor.

The present was a paradise, but the future promised only violence once the scouts found ulvenmen, the druids found Cannan, or Lord Nordland found Christopher. He stood next to a cannon and waited for misery.

Karl came up to hurry it along. “I do not think we should splinter our strength anymore. From now on the supply wagons must be guarded only by common soldiers.”

“You'd send them through the Wild alone?” Christopher remembered when Karl had asked very much the same question of D'Arcy.

“We can afford to lose men. We cannot afford to lose you.” Now Karl sounded like the gentry he hated. But Christopher didn't point that out. They both knew it was true.

He thought the conversation was over, but as he turned to leave, Karl spoke again.

“They are not afraid to walk in the Wild with no tael, as I was. They are proud to do so.”

Now Christopher found himself speaking as cynically as Karl usually did.

“Only because they don't know what you do.”

Karl acknowledged the reversal of their standard roles with a brief grimace. Christopher began to appreciate Vicar Rana's warning. His army could not back up; it couldn't even back down. Once infected with pride, these men could never again live as helpless dependents. If rifles and discipline were not enough to defeat monsters, then the men would die. Either in the maw of unspeakable horror or of simple broken hearts.

Their test came two weeks later. In the height of summer, the air muggy and sleepy, the sun merciless and heavy, a cavalry patrol thundered across the plain with all speed. Within sight of the fort, they fired a single gunshot into the air, and men leapt into action.

Purposeless action, since they did not know what the news was, but they reacted as if the legions of Hell were hot on the horsemen's heels.

For all Christopher knew, they were. He went to his command tent and waited for the report.

Kennet strode in, filthy from the ride and drenched in sweat. He snapped a crisp salute and a single word.

“Ulvenmen.”

“Fire the signal rocket,” Christopher said. Charles ducked outside, relayed the order, and returned instantly.

Seconds later the rocket boomed in the air. This would alert all the patrols, and the men attempting to create a road through the swamp, to come back to the fort in haste.

“You might as well save your report until Karl and Gregor return,” Christopher said. “Unless we are about to be overrun in the next thirty minutes.”

Distressingly, Kennet looked like he was calculating. “Not in thirty minutes, sir.”

“Go see to your horse and get something to drink for yourself.” Christopher sent him out of the tent.

Then he let Charles help him into the clanking plate armor.

“We saw only a dozen,” Kennet reported to the staff meeting of ranked nobles and mercenary officers. “However, they moved with organization and purpose, and I felt they had to be scouts, not raiders.”

“Did you bag any?” Gregor asked.

“No, Ser. Because the situation was so fluid, I decided not to reveal our full capabilities. When they fired on us with bows, we retreated.” One man had taken an arrow to the thigh and had lost a lot of blood on the ride home. But once inside the fort's walls, Disa had healed him before he even dismounted.

“Saving all the tael for us, are you?” Gregor grinned, while Christopher gaped in awe. Where had this military wisdom come from? Somebody had been training his army very well.

“Sir,” Kennet said, “I request permission to return to scouting.”

“Why?” Christopher asked. “Does it matter how many are out there? Will it change what we do? I'd rather make use of the fort, if we can.”

“We need to make sure they don't bypass us and simply head for Carrhill. If they are only raiders, such will be their goal.” Karl never hesitated to point out any weakness in Christopher's plans.

“I don't want to risk horses,” Christopher argued. “Let them pass us, and we'll cut them off from the rear. It's still miles before they can reach any peasants.”

“Sir, I could fly.”

Kennet was volunteering to face an unknown danger, completely alone. But Christopher was even less willing to risk men.

“What if they have shrikes?” He remembered the black wings that had torn apart Lady Nordland's giant owl and hawk.

“Ulvenmen don't use shrikes,” D'Kan said. “It is more likely their shamans would just shape-shift into eagles.”

“Right,” Christopher said. “Flying's out. Now we wait.”

It was hours before anything showed itself on the plain. The men spent that time preparing for a siege, bringing firewood into the fort, carrying out refuse, taking the protective covers off the cannons, topping off the fire buckets with water, dismantling the wagons and stacking them neatly in a corner, and counting their ammunition. Karl kept them too busy to think about why they were busy.

Gregor stared at the dozen figures to the south. Christopher and Karl joined him on the wall. Once again Christopher wished he'd invented telescopes, but he never seemed to have the time.

“I think they're baiting us,” Gregor said. “It's just the dozen, still.”

“Then we won't fall for it,” Christopher said.

Karl shook his head. “We need to go out there and kill them. Otherwise they will ignore us and simply march north.”

“If we go out there, we'll be walking right into their trap.”

“Not likely, Christopher. They do not think as you do. The ulvenmen will gladly throw away a dozen no-ranks to test your strength. Certainly most lords would not hesitate to do the same.”

“He's right,” Gregor agreed. “Any ordinary lord would take this bait, dash out there and claim those easy heads for his purse. The ulvenmen know that. But that doesn't mean their high-ranks are ready to commit themselves without seeing us in action first.”

“How can they convince the low-ranks to take such a terrible risk?”

Both men looked at Christopher with curious expressions, perhaps envious of his naïveté. Karl answered. “Because any low-rank who survives will likely be promoted. This is the blade of the thresher in action.”

“At this point we want to give them what they expect,” Gregor continued. “The later you spring your surprise, the better.”

“Are you suggesting we ride out there and fight them with swords?” Christopher wanted to be outraged at the stupidity of the idea, but sheer logic prevented him.

“Indeed I am,” Gregor grinned. “Assuming you thought to bring any of the old-fashioned things along.”

They could mount nine swordsmen. His original mercenary officers, minus two who had stayed behind in Burseberry to handle training of the next batch of recruits. Karl with Black Bart's huge magic sword, and Gregor with his own glowing blue blade. Despite the shortness of his swords, D'Kan was already in the saddle, so apparently he considered himself adequately armed. And Christopher and Torme had their katanas, the latter's having finally shown up in a supply shipment from Knockford.

Armor was more problematic. D'Kan had his leather, and Christopher had the monstrous plate he'd been lugging around because everyone made him hang on to it. Gregor had his own plate-mail and the only shield in the entire camp. The rest of the men had nothing but their helmets and coats.

They did have two hundred useless pikes, which Christopher, having paid so dearly for, had hauled out of the city in the last supply run. Cutting down half a dozen of them into light lances gave the unarmored horsemen a way to attack from a safer distance. As they formed up at the gate, Disa joined them with a terrified but determined face.

“Absolutely not,” Christopher said. “Your job is here, inside the walls. If we all die in a trap, you will be the only healing magic these men have. They will need you.”

“How can one first-rank priestess matter to them then?” she asked plaintively.

Christopher shrugged, unsympathetic. No one had given him any sympathy when he had been the only healing magic in a wooden fort, facing a thousand goblins. “Ask the men,” he told her, and rode out.

Their gate faced north, so they had to ride around the hill to reach the plain. Along the way Christopher tried to marshal his emotions. There was a pit of unaccustomed fear in his stomach. In all his previous battles, he had been following someone else's lead; now he was the high-rank. He would be the prime target of the enemy.

Responsibility sat squarely on his shoulders, as well. His decisions would be obeyed without hesitation. If they were the wrong ones, then they would all die.

And finally, under all the turmoil, whispered a voice of disquiet. What crime had these creatures committed? They had fired on his men, true, but had caused no real harm. And it seemed entirely reasonable that Christopher might be the trespasser here. If he had strayed into their lands, weren't they entitled to shoot first and ask questions later? But now he came to meet them, arrayed for war. No questions would be asked, no negotiations would be engaged. Only violence and death could result, and he could see no way to prevent it.

Karl, with his preternatural leadership skills, assessed the morale of his companions and found only Christopher's flagging. Riding in close and pitching his voice so only Christopher could hear, he said the words that would put Christopher's mind on the task at hand, stowing away all doubts and fears until they sat at campfires with ale in their mugs and no more than the long, dark night to face.

“Think of a little girl, frightened of carts,” he said, calmly invoking Helga's terrible childhood nightmare, when she and hundreds of others had been captured by the last ulvenman horde and spared only because the King's cavalry outran the monsters' appetite.

Then Karl dropped back to his place in the cavalcade, behind the ranked men.

Christopher was angry at Karl, angry that the man would so casually manipulate his emotions, and angry at himself that it worked so well. Angry that he had to do this to himself, angrier still that he fell into the righteous wrath with so much relief.