The Order War, page 20
Beltar glanced at Zerchas. “You still want me to hold back?”
“What point is there in your throwing fire against earthworks?”
“I could topple the city.”
“Fine…but that would just make the Sarronnese more desperate and cost us more troops. Magic doesn’t win battles,” Zerchas snorted. “Troops do.”
“How about Jehan? He’s using magic to help the Iron Guard turn the flank.”
“The Guard will win the battle, not the magic.” Zerchas turned and walked toward the hillcrest where the marshals awaited him.
Eldiren looked at Beltar. Beltar shrugged. They both watched as the purple banners sallied toward the earthworks of the Sarronnese.
XLII
The smell of smoke and brimstone, and burning grasses, and charred bodies, seared Justen’s nostrils and throat. Still lying on the grass, he coughed, holding back a retching sensation.
Crump…A last, smaller, explosion rumbled behind the hill.
Slowly, the engineer rolled into a sitting position. He rubbed his throbbing forehead. Now all he had to do was to get back to his own side of the field. He reknit his light-shield and began the walk northward.
Past the confusion and screams from the White side, he made it halfway up the long slope holding the Sarronnese forces, using the shallow but dry streambed for cover from wizardly scans. Then he had to stop. His unseeing eyes burned, and the pulsing within his head threatened to split his skull.
The same rustling and muffled thudding he had heard on the way down still appeared to be coming from the ironwood forest. He frowned. Could the Whites be sending troops through the ironwoods? How? The thorn-trunked trees shredded leather like flower petals, and in places there was hardly room for a single man, let alone for any real number of troops, to squeeze through the briars and the thorns.
As he listened, the sound seemed to fade. He shook his head and continued uphill, not releasing his shields until he was well inside the trenches.
“Ser…where’d you come from?”
“The cannons,” Justen answered without thinking, still rubbing his forehead.
“You did that?” The archers’ squad leader jabbed a thumb toward the blackened hillside where the cannons had been. Only smoke twisted up from behind the hill.
Justen shrugged and edged back to where Clerve waited.
“Where did you go?” the apprentice asked.
“I tried a trick with the cannons.” Justen sat down on the damp clay of the trench’s floor.
“That was you?” Clerve looked to the engineer. “The whole order-fabric shivered, like a sour copper note.”
“Thanks. That’s all I need to hear.”
A drum-roll rumbled across the valley.
“Justen! The Whites are charging. Right toward us!”
“They won’t get here, not yet.” Still, Justen levered himself to his knees and peered over the heavy timber brace at the slope below.
A line of purple-clad levies surged uphill toward the lower front line of the trenches where the Sarronnese pikes and halberds waited.
Cruump! The lower hillside and road erupted. Even the timbered clay wall before Justen and Clerve buckled, and the concussion threw them against the rear wall.
Justen staggered up and peered through seared eyes downhill. The sundered earth had flowed uphill and buried the first line of defenders within their earthworks. Another wave of whiteness from the devastation struck him, and he slumped to the bottom of the trench under his own darkness, darkness propelled with a white agony that slammed at his skull.
How long it was before he climbed out of the white agony, Justen did not know, only that his fingers were clutched around a heavy timber.
“Mother of light!” screamed a soldier from the revetment below, a trench above the one that had become a tomb.
Justen squinted his eyes against the pain of the wounded soldiers. Their agony pounded against his senses. His upper arm throbbed. A wooden splinter had ripped through his jacket and tunic. He looked at it dumbly as behind his timbered wall, he struggled against the pain searing through his skull. How had Dorrin stood it?
He swallowed and touched the wooden fragment in his arm gingerly, swallowing with relief at the knowledge that the wound was superficial. Despite the burning in his eyes and the hammering in his skull, he worked out the wood, then glanced at the other side of the trench, where Clerve lay sprawled facedown in the clay. The white hammers beat through his skull so heavily that he could barely concentrate or see beyond a few feet.
In the lull that followed the destruction, Justen bent down and touched Clerve, sensing the ragged breathing, and offered a small touch of order to the striker. The younger man’s breathing steadied, and strangely, the throbbing in Justen’s skull subsided to a duller ache, so regular that it took him a moment to realize that another drum-roll had begun.
He peered downhill to see a wave of troops, both crimson and purple, marching forward.
A flight of black-tipped arrows cascaded into the ranks of the White forces, and puffs of flame flared intermittently. Justen nodded to himself. Not all the White forces were chaos-tinged, probably not even the majority save for the White lancers, who drew directly on chaos.
A low moan caught his attention, and he knelt beside Clerve.
“Ohhh…”
Justen offered Clerve a sip of water as the apprentice pulled himself into a sitting position.
“Hurts…” mumbled Clerve as he swallowed.
Justen touched the heavy red wetness soaking the side and back of the other’s sleeve. How had he missed the bleeding? The engineer looked around the debris of the half-collapsed trench, but could find nothing to bind the wound with. He glanced past the timbers.
A wave of yelling and the intermittent sounds of steel on steel echoed uphill as the Fairhaven troops crashed over the first line and poured into the trenchworks, splitting to follow the trenches to the higher emplacements.
The banners continued to push uphill, reaching halfway to the higher defenses. Arrows—not many, but enough—flew from the trenches beneath the watchtower toward the first ranks, trying to slow the advance.
Justen gnawed on his lower lip as he edged toward Clerve. “…got to move.”
The apprentice squinted, his eyes rolling, before he toppled backwards. The blood kept welling from his arm and shoulder. Justen lifted the youth in his arms and staggered upright. He glanced back. The banners following the troops neared the trenches despite the handfuls of arrows that rained down upon the Whites’ uphill charge.
Justen ignored the words of the soldiers he passed as he struggled through the trench that angled uphill, all the time half-wondering how he could have overlooked Clerve’s wound.
Bent under the youth’s weight, he trudged through the damp, clinging clay in the trench bottom, determined to reach the healers. How long it took, he did not know, only that his head pounded again by the time he laid Clerve on an empty pallet.
“Ugghhh…” A trooper on an adjoining pallet retched.
“This one looks like a pincushion.” A cool voice drifted in from out of his sight.
“There’s Justen! That’s Clerve.”
At the sound of Krytella’s voice, Justen tried to turn his head, but the effort was so great that blackness clouded his vision. He steadied himself.
“Can you—”
But the healer had already begun to strip away ruined fabric. Justen slowly walked back toward the crest of the hill. His feet carried him without thought.
To the left of the watchtower stood Altara, beside the left rocket launcher. The blankness in her eyes showed that her senses were elsewhere, upon the rockets, upon the struggling forces halfway up the hill.
Two trumpet blasts blurted from the watchtower, followed by two more.
Whhhsttt!
“Lower. Crank it down a notch,” ordered Firbek.
One of the marines loaded a rocket, while a second adjusted the launching frame. At the left launcher, another set of marines replicated the actions.
“Strike!”
Whhsttt! Whssstt!
Justen’s eyes followed the smoke of the black projectiles, watching as two fiery impacts scattered Certan and Gallosian levies across the hillside.
“Load and strike!”
Whhhsttt! Whhssstt!
Another impact, and another recoil of whiteness and death drove Justen back a step, almost into the unmoving Altara. He looked down to see that the chief engineer had locked one hand around an earthwork brace so firmly that both hand and arm had bleached into an unhealthy whiteness.
He winced at the pain that spilled from her and stepped back another pace.
“Darkness…”
His eyes turned to the long slope below, then toward the right-hand slope, between the marsh and the edge of the earthworks, where the Sarronnese cavalry charged into the flank of the White forces, driving them down and back.
Three quick trumpet blasts followed, and the blue horse wheeled and retreated, but not before a pair of firebolts turned half a dozen riders and their mounts into charred heaps.
Then the arrows flew—regular arrows, Justen noted absently—and even more of the Gallosians fell.
Justen retreated another few paces and leaned against the cool stones of the tower.
A young man darted up to him and handed him a chunk of cheese. “The lady healer said for you to eat this.” He was gone before Justen could open his mouth.
Whhhssttt!
Another rocket roared down the hillside, followed by another.
The engineer sat on the damp clay and took a bite of the cheese, glancing toward the marines and the launchers.
“Hold it!” Altara broke from her concentration.
“Why?” asked Firbek.
“We’re hitting more of our troops than theirs. Besides, they’re pulling back. Wait…for either the Iron Guard or the White lancers.”
“Stand down.” Firbek’s voice was dull.
Justen mechanically ate the cheese, then sipped lukewarm water from the bottle he had forgotten was on his hip. The worst of the pounding in his head lifted. Almost a hush had fallen across the heat of midday.
Altara came over and sat down beside him. “Might as well rest while we can. They’ll be back. Outside of the rockets, we don’t have much left.”
Justen offered her the water bottle.
The chief engineer took a swallow and handed it back. “Thanks. What did you do to the cannon—or do I really want to know? It felt like you were playing with chaos, but you sure don’t show any signs of it.”
“I figured out how to combine order and powder to make chaos.” Justen took a deep breath. “Is it always this way?”
“What way? You’ve been in more of this than I have.” Altara gave a wry smile.
“So…disorganized. I don’t mean the fighting…but things happen, and I can’t seem to put the pieces together. Clerve was wounded, and I just gave him water and looked at him for a while. Somehow, at first I didn’t even see he was hurt. How does anyone keep track of what’s happening?”
“Most people don’t, I’d bet.” Altara glanced across at the marines, all but Firbek sitting behind the low timbers that braced the back of the hillcrest berm. “Firbek just kept firing those rockets.”
A deep drum-roll echoed.
“Shit. That sounds like the White lancers.” Altara struggled to her feet.
The drum-rolls continued, answered in turn by four short blasts from the Sarronnese signal trumpets.
As in the previous battles, the White lancers rode forward at an even pace. The tips of their white-bronze lances glittered with cold fire. Forming out of bow range, they were almost five deep.
“Ready!” ordered Firbek.
“Hold it,” snapped Altara. “Wait until they’re closer. Aim for the flat just where the slope begins. They’ll have to slow there, and they’ll probably bunch up.”
Another roll of drums, and the White lancers charged.
“Ready!”
A staccato trumpet command warbled from the Sarronnese watchtower, and the remaining pikes lifted on the left side of the third line of trenches. The lower trenches were vacant, nearly leveled by the fighting, the firebolts, the cannon impact, and the earlier mines.
Whhsstt! The first rocket arced over the lancers and flared on the hillside behind the White cavalry.
“There…on the flat. Lower the launcher!” Firbek jabbed toward the White lancers.
Whhssttt…whhsttt! Two more rockets flared off the hillcrest. One exploded harmlessly in midair, far short of the lancers. The second gouted flame across the right end of the charge, and dirty white ashes drifted out among the cattails and swamp grass of the marsh.
Another trumpet blast, and black-tipped arrows began to strike the White lancers as well.
“Strike!”
Whhsttt! Whsstt!
“Strike!”
Whhhsttt!
The screams of men and horses echoed from the Fairhaven side of the field for the first time in the day. Yet the lancers pounded onward, past the flat and to the edge of the Sarronnese trenches—and around them, using the thin wedge of ground between the end of the earthworks and the slope to the marsh as a turning point before riding down the pike-holders from behind.
“Aim at the trench edge! There!” snapped Justen, knowing that Altara was caught with her senses order-smoothing the rockets.
“Strike!” Firbek ignored the engineer.
Justen tapped the marine on the shoulder. “Aim at the trench edge! There!”
Firbek glared but shouted to the marines, “Uphill! A touch to the right. At the end of the trenches.”
Whhhsttt…whsssttt…
The first rocket charred a patch of cattails in the marsh. The second rocket, aimed with a touch of order supplied by Justen, exploded on point: amid a clump of White lancers turning the flank of the Sarronnese forces.
Hssttt! A lone fireball arced over the earthworks and flared across the right launcher.
“Eeee…” The marine aiming the launcher fell forward, burning.
Justen swallowed hard, trying not to retch at the odor of charred meat.
While he fought to control his churning stomach, another marine took the left-hand wheel on the launcher and readjusted the crank. The woman marine slipped another rocket into place.
“Strike it!”
Whhsttt! The rocket exploded in midair.
Whhsttt!
So did the next rocket. Justen frowned. Had the Whites discovered a way to explode powder in black iron?
The heavy roll of drums increased, and the levies from Hydlen and Lydiar began to march forward, following the path of the White lancers.
“Strike!”
Altara continued to concentrate on the rockets.
Whhhsttt!
Despite the huge gaps in the ranks of the lancers—fully two-thirds of them had been killed, fired, or downed—the remainder hacked their way uphill, seemingly ignorant of the damage created by black iron arrowheads and rockets. Behind them, stolidly marched the White levies, their small shields held high against the iron arrows.
The Fairhaven strategy was working, Justen realized. In trying to hold off the lancers, the Sarronnese had failed to target the levies, and now those levies were more than halfway up the hill.
Yet…still the crimson-and-gray banners had not moved.
Why has the Iron Guard not been pressed into the fight? And why are there so few firebolts from the White Wizards? Justen glanced from one end of the field to the other.
Whhhsttt!
Another drum-roll echoed across the valley. Now the gold-and-green banners began to move forward. How many troops do the damned Whites have?
“Strike!”
Whhsttt!
Still…the rockets went off, although now half of them were exploding in midair rather than where they were aimed.
Justen’s head ached, and he did not understand how Altara remained standing.
Hsssttt!
Justen ducked as another wizardly firebolt arced past, splattering on the antique stones of the watchtower. His eyes drifted back to the lower right-hand side of the field, where the Whites surged upward. Below them, it appeared as though the marsh had solidified. Realizing that the dark masses were bodies, Justen forced himself to swallow the bile in his throat. Everywhere he looked there were bodies: burned bodies, ashes, bodies with arrows through them, bodies coated in dull red.
Another drum-roll rumbled across the hillcrest. Justen shivered, then turned. The sound had come from the northeast, from the direction of the ironwood forests.
Not five hundred cubits to the north, formed up at the edge of the ironwoods, were hundreds of dark-clad troops.
“Darkness!” Justen swore. The banners on the field below had been decoys. He should have trusted his feelings!
Another drum-roll and the Iron Guard began to march forward. Arrows arced from behind them toward the Sarronnese. Justen dropped in back of a timber brace, now wondering what he could do.
Suddenly, a familiar figure appeared beside the watchtower. Justen shivered as he felt the webs of order building around Gunnar. He could sense his brother’s call to the great winds and the storms from the Roof of the World.
A cold, whining, whistling wind whipped out of the southeast and across the hillside. The Sarronnese battle ensign flapped wildly.
Behind Justen, Firbek continued to direct the rockets against the remnants of the White lancers, apparently oblivious to the threat from the ironwood forest.
“Strike!”
Whhhsttt!
Justen glanced back toward Gunnar and the oncoming Iron Guard, and he shivered as the wind continued to rise and the sky darkened.
Gunnar stood apart from the tower, like an ancient tree rooted in time.
Scattered ice pellets began to rattle against the stones of the tower. Dark clouds roiled into the once-clear sky, and a rumble of heavy thunder rolled across the valley as the storm swept down upon the White forces.
The drum-rolls faltered for an instant.
Hhhssttt! Another firebolt flared—this time from behind the Iron Guard—and splatted against the watchtower.
