The Water Road (42 page)
Authors: JD Byrne
“Hold steady, boys!” the lieutenant
cried, walking up and down the line. “They’ll be coming!”
Suhs wondered how the lieutenant knew
that, or whether he was simply making it up as he went along. For all they
knew, the ambush on the plateau was the full extent of the Neldathi plan. A
more cunning attack than the regular occasional and uncoordinated attacks on
the fort itself, to be certain, but nothing more. Suhs assumed the line would
hold here for a few moments, long enough to allow everyone to catch their wits,
before they retreated to the fort.
Suhs waited on bended knee for
something to happen as the silent moments ticked on. Waited for anything to
happen.
There was a blast of musket fire
from somewhere out of the woods. It had not come from their line, Suhs was
certain, as no order to fire had been given. Yet he saw neither the telltale
flashes of muzzle fire out in front of them, nor could he see any movement in
the woods. The underbrush was not especially thick, but the lumbering Neldathi
would have difficultly moving through it unnoticed.
A second volley rang out a few
seconds later. This time Suhs could pinpoint the location of the fire. It was
coming from the opposite side of the line, the left flank. This time the first
crack was followed almost immediately by the sound of his comrades returning
fire.
Then came the screams, the cries of
Neldathi warriors throwing themselves into a melee.
Suhs had just enough time to
register the frightening cacophony when another round of musket fire rang out
off towards his right. They were being flanked on both sides, he realized. If
they remained in place, the entire line would be rolled up between two sets of
onrushing barbarians.
Suhs looked around for someone in
command and saw the lieutenant who had taken command lying on the ground, dead
or dying from a musket ball through his throat. Suhs decided this was no time
to worry about the chain of command.
“Company! Right face!” he yelled,
trying his best to sound authoritative and calm. It must have worked, as what
remained of his company wheeled expertly to the right and reformed the firing
line.
“On my command!” he yelled, waiting
until he could at least see something at which they could aim. At the limit of
his vision, he saw multiple flashes of blue. Suhs counted to three, giving just
enough time that a horde of blue-skinned warriors burst through the wood,
wielding muskets as clubs and screaming like a child’s worst nightmare.
“Fire!”
The company did as ordered and
delivered a volley of lead balls into the oncoming Neldathi. A few of them were
hit and felled instantly, like enormous stands of autumn wheat. Others
staggered as they were struck by a musket ball, but they did not stop.
Suhs knew they had no hope of
holding the line. The other flank was in similar chaos, so even if they managed
to hold the Neldathi in front of them, they would swiftly be overrun from the rear.
There was only one further order to give.
“Retreat!” he yelled. “Make for
Dugald, men! Mamur herself is on your heels!” It was hard to tell if the men
actually followed his orders or simply acted on instinct. It was time to run,
to run for their lives. Suhs followed his own order, turned, and sprinted
towards the edge of the woods.
The sight he saw once he cleared
the wood, on the snowy plain leading back to the river, chilled his bones.
There was a mass of uniformed men, some still clutching muskets but many having
thrown them down as excess weight, running raggedly for the safety of Fort
Dugald. Off in the distance, Suhs could see a single rider, accompanied by a
second riderless horse, in a full gallop heading for the fort. It was
impossible for Suhs to tell if it was one of the remaining Sentinels or part of
the regular army. Regardless, he would help get the gates open and sound the
call of attack to all the others in the fort.
Trailing the ragged band was two to
three times their number in Neldathi warriors. Hulking and shrieking their
incomprehensible war cries, they drove the frightened men before them. Their
size and sluggishness meant they were unlikely to catch any of the soldiers,
save for those that stumbled or fell to the frozen ground, but that made them
no less frightening. Suhs looked back over his shoulder and made sure the
Neldathi behind him were not gaining any ground. Then he saw another of his
company trip and flail to the ground just a few yards away from him, only to be
set upon by three Neldathi with bayonets.
Suhs looked back again and what he
saw this time was far worse. Throughout the ordeal on the plateau and in the
woods, there had been no sight of the oddity that drove them to this place
initially, the Neldathi horsemen. Now he saw them, four or five groups of three
riders each, blasting through their brothers chasing on foot. They rode
colossal steeds that bore their weight with ease. Their massive hooves threw
dirt, snow, and muck into the air with each step as they tracked down the
fleeing soldiers.
Suhs turned his head around and
focused on the fort. Focused on the one place that would be safe in all this
carnage. He saw the gate swing open just long enough for the one man on
horseback to slip through, then it closed again behind him. “No,” he said to
himself, “they wouldn’t….”
He kept running even though his
legs and back burned from exhaustion. He kept his eyes fixed on the fort,
except to glance over his shoulder every few moments to see if any of the
horsemen had come for him. They had not, at least not yet.
The fort was only a few hundred
feet away. From inside its walls he heard the first reports of rifle fire,
shouting out raggedly from the gun ports on the second level. They were not
very well coordinated and weren’t having much of an impact. Suhs knew they
could do little except pick a few Neldathi off their pursuit. The riflemen in
the fort were meant to deal with scouts and small raiding parties, not fend off
forces of this size.
He strode for the gate, each footfall
bringing him a few feet closer to safety, but it remained closed. He was not
the first to reach it, and lent his voice to the others already there, pounding
on the heavy wood of the gate with fists and musket butts. “Open up!” he
yelled. “For the love of our families, open this gate!” There was no response.
Suhs began to realize that there
was no problem of communication, no strategic reason to hold the gate shut
until some future time. In his stomach, there was a sinking feeling that those
outside the gate were to be left there. Rather than turn and face whatever
might be behind him, Suhs broke and ran towards the right side of the fort. He
wanted to get out of the chaos in front of the gate to better survey the
situation. He ran until he could see the observation towers rising up out of
the snowy plain.
He turned and saw the man who had
been on the horse that slipped in through the gate while it was open. He was in
the observation tower, in frantic discussions with others, one of whom ran from
the room with great urgency. Suhs could see now.
The man was a Sentinel. He had been
let in because he had valuable information that needed to be broadcast back
north of the Water Road. The rest of them were cover. “They left us here to
die,” Suhs said to himself. “Left us here…”
He stopped when he heard the sound
of galloping hooves behind him. He turned just quickly enough to get a good
look at the Neldathi horseman that took his life.
The Endless Hills
– Book Two of
The Water Road
Trilogy
The Second Great Neldathi Uprising
has begun, setting the world of the Water Road on fire.
United by Antrey Ranbren, the Neldathi clans have attacked across
the great river, laying waste to the metropolis of Innisport. Now they hunt the
Triumvirate army in the Endless Hills of Telebria. Antrey knows a crushing
victory in pitched battle is what they need to win this war. The Neldathi have
swept aside everything in their path, but time is not on their side. That’s why
she’s sent Naath and Goshen on desperate missions to find help.
Trapped in Oberton by the negative reaction to her book exposing
the Triumvirate’s treatment of the Neldathi, Strefer wonders how the Neldathi
have been so successful on the battlefield. She leaves the safety of the city
in the trees to find the truth. Along with Rurek, she traces the evidence back
to the last place she ever expected.
A world torn apart by war and a dwindling sense of hope for the
future - the next chapter in the epic saga of
The Water Road
.
The Bay of Sins
– Book Three of
The Water Road
Trilogy
The explosive conclusion to the epic tale of justice and revenge
changes the world of the Water Road forever.
JD Byrne
lives in West Virginia with his wife and one-eyed dog. He writes fantasy,
science fiction, and other similar stuff when he’s not practicing law.
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The Last Ereph and Other Stories
Kol runs down the corridor, agents of His Eminence hot
on his heels. He needs escape, a way out, but all he sees is a heavy
wooden door. Does salvation or capture lie behind it? In “The Last
Ereph,” he finds the answer and more than he could have ever expected.
That and nine other short stories make up this
collection of science fiction and fantasy.
Ten exciting stories – ten new worlds.
Ben Potter’s life is a shambles. As a
journalist he’s hit rock bottom, writing dreck about monsters and ghouls to
make ends meet after a big story blew up in his face. As a son he’s a
disappointment, unwilling to follow his father, grandfather, and great
grandfather into the family business. As a father, he’s mostly just not there.
Now a new assignment could change all that. All
he has to do is go from London to the hills of West Virginia to investigate the
strangest of stories his great grandfather told. Did a sleazy politician really
raise the dead to try and win an election? And if he did, what happened to the
zombies? Could they still exist? Ben needs to find out, to solve the mystery
and find a way to get his life back on track.
But finding the answer only presents Ben with a
whole new batch of problems. Does he use what he learns to put his life back on
track? Or will he be compelled to do the right thing, even if it leaves his
life a mess?
The hardest part of a mystery is deciding what
to do once you’ve solved it.
From
Moore Hollow
, a novel
of family grudges, corrupt politicians, and the undead, set in West Virginia:
The book said nothing on the outside, its brown
leather binding just barely holding up against years of abuse and neglect. It
was about the size of a trade paperback with an afterimage of rough cowhide on
the cover that had been worn smooth with age. He flipped open the cover and
found the title page. The word “Journal” was printed across the top in barely
legible gothic script. Underneath were a few black lines, spaces for the owner
to write his name and the dates covered. The dates, written in neat, plain
handwriting, were “July, 1905” and “February, 1907.” In the space where the
journal owner’s name was written, it said, “Reginald Benjamin Potter.”
“Bloody hell,” Ben said.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” Artith asked, leaning
back in her chair and looking extremely pleased.
Ben stared at the journal. “It’s my name, all
right. But it’s not me. I’m the fourth poor soul to be saddled with it.” He
closed the book and rubbed the rugged outer covering again. “Is this my
great-grandfather’s?”
“You’ll have to tell me,” she said. I
flipped through it, but I wasn’t really interested in the stuff he said about
England. Did your namesake go to America?”
Ben nodded. “For a couple of years just after he
left school. He went to some backwoods mountain town, coal mining country.” Ben
shot her a dull look. “Only someone in my family would travel halfway around
the world to wind up in a place that was just like home.”
Artith flashed him a confused look.
“Yorkshire,” Ben said, remembering that they
had never really talked about his family before. “My family’s from just outside
of Leeds. Been there for centuries. So leave it to my ancestor to go from
English coal country to American coal country.”
“West Virginia,” she said.
Ben chuckled. “Where the bloody hell is that?”
“Somewhere west of Virginia, I suspect,” she
fired back. “You know anything about what he did while he was over there?”
Ben shook his head. “Something with railroads,
I think. The ones they used to haul coal out of the mines and to wherever it
went before it got shipped off. He only spent a couple of years there before he
came home and started the family business.”
“Which is not paranormal investigation or
journalism, let me guess?” Artith said, chuckling.
“Much to my father’s chagrin,” Ben said,
remaining stoic. “Civil engineering, actually.”
“How come you’re not an engineer then, Ben?”
Artith asked, enjoying this little bit of torment. “Bad at maths?”
“No,” Ben said, more defensively than intended,
“although that didn’t help. It just never did anything for me. To be a good
engineer you have to be curious about how things work and why they sometimes
don’t.”
“And you don’t care?” Artith continued.
Ben shook his head. “So long as whatever the
damned thing is actually works, I’ve got no interest in the details.”
Artith thought for a moment like she had
another prickly question ready but apparently passed on asking it. Instead, she
shifted topics. “Did you know your great-grandfather then?”
“No, no,” Ben said, shaking his head. “He died
before the Second World War. Granddad told me a lot about him, though.”
“He was an engineer too?” she asked.
Ben turned his head to one side, looked at the
wall in thought, then said, “After a fashion.” Looking back to Artith’s
confused face, he added, “He was a bit eccentric.”
She let that pass by unremarked. “Did your
Granddad tell you anything about what his dad did in America then?”
“A little bit,” Ben answered without thinking.
Then something tickled the back of his memory, something he hadn’t thought
about for years. “Why?”
Artith leaned forward in her chair as if she
might pounce. “I told you I skimmed that over the weekend,” she said, pointing
to the book in Ben’s hands. “Your namesake tells quite a tale in there. As he
lays it out, one of the local politicians was in a very tight race for his seat
on whatever their little local council was called.”
Ben whistled. “A hundred-year-old political
squabble is the kind of thing that gets you excited these days, Artith? Better
find a job at Sky.”
She waved the joke away. “No, no, no. What’s
interesting is what this desperate pol did about it. Or rather tried to do
about it. According to your great-grandfather at least.”
“Which was?” Ben asked. The memory was coming
into better focus now. He had some idea where this was going.
“This guy,”—she paused for a moment—“the name
escapes me, but this guy, according to your forefather, actually raised the
dead so that they could vote for him.”
Something clicked in his head. “Ah, yes,” he
said. “The zombie voters.”
“You knew about this?” Artith asked, obviously
hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not as if I was holding out on you,
Artith,” Ben said. “Granddad told me a few stories. They were fun, but I never
thought they were real. Seriously, why should I?”
“And nothing about working for the
Journal
made you think, perhaps, in a moment of reflection, that the time was ripe to
revisit these stories?” she asked. It was clearly a rhetorical question.
Ben answered anyway. “I don’t work for the
Journal
,
Artith, or for you unless some checks have gone missing in the post.”
She put up her hands in mock concession.
“Look, I loved my Granddad,” Ben explained. “But
he was a little, what’s the word? Off, you know? When he’d talk about things
his father saw in America I just took them for what they were—fun stories.
Besides, Artith, you know me at least a bit. Do you think that working for
places like the
Journal
have made me a believer in all this shit?” He
gestured around the room, taking in all the paranormal exotica on display.
She shook her head. “Of course not,” she said,
not altogether convinced. “That’s not why I showed you that, anyway.”
“It’s not?” Ben asked. “Then why? It’s kind of
neat, I guess, but—”
“I want you to check it out,” she said, cutting
him off with a devious look.
Get
the rest of
Moore Hollow
here
!