Heirs of Empire

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lord Marshal Rokas climbed the hill and opened his spyglass with a click. The morning mist had lifted, though tendrils still clung to the line of the Mortan, and his mouth tightened as he studied the terrain. He’d expected—feared—from the start that Tibold would offer battle here, for more than one invading army had been broken against Yortown.

The town stood on the bluffs beyond the river. Its walls had been razed after the Schismatic Wars, but the heretics were building new ones. Not that they were really needed. The Mortan ran all the way to the Eastern Ocean, twisting down the Keldark Valley to escape the Shalokars, and it coiled like a hateful serpent about Yortown’s feet. The river swooped from the northern edge of the valley to the southern cliffs before it turned east once more, and like many a Malagoran before him, Tibold had drawn up beyond that icy natural moat.

Rokas’s glass lingered on the Yortown bridges with wistful longing, but the demolitions had been too thorough. The broken spans had been dropped into water too deep to ford even across their rubble, and he smothered a curse. If the Circle hadn’t hesitated so long, he could have been past Yortown and into Malagor’s heart before the heretics got themselves organized!

He turned further south. No position was impregnable, but his mouth tightened anew as he considered the fords the blown bridges had made the key to this one. They lay southeast of Yortown, where the river broadened, and raw earthworks reared on the western bank. He saw the glint of pikes and gleam of artillery, and his heart sank. Those fords were over a hundred paces wide and more than waist deep; the wounded would be doomed even without armor. With it—

He turned back to the north to glare at the dense forest which sprawled down from the valley wall almost to his hilltop vantage point. It offered his right flank a natural protection—God knew no pikeman could get through that tangle!—but it was a guard against nothing. The river was too deep to bridge, much less ford, north of Yortown, and no captain as ca

He closed his glass. No, Tibold knew what he was about … and so did Rokas. Too many battles had been fought at Yortown; defender and attacker alike knew all the moves, and if the cost would be high, it was one he could pay. It would trouble too many dreams in years to come, but he could pay it.

“I see no need to alter our plans,” he told his officers. “Captain Vrikadan,” he met the high-captain’s eyes, “you will advance.”

“God, look at them!” Tamman muttered over his com implant, and Sean nodded jerkily, forgetting his friend couldn’t see him. No sensor image could have prepared him for seeing that army uncoiling in the flesh, and he braced himself in the tree’s high fork, peering through its leaves while the Host deployed towards the fords. Musketeers screened massive columns of pikes, and nioharq-drawn artillery moved steadily between the columns. Armor flashed, pikeheads were a glittering forest above, and the marching legs below made the columns look like horrible caterpillars of steel.

“I see them,” he replied after a moment, “and I wish to hell we had the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!”

Tamman chuckled at the feeble joke, and Sean’s dry mouth quirked. He wished he—or Tibold, at least—could be at the fords with Tamman. He knew he couldn’t, and he needed Tibold here in case something happened to him, but he’d felt far more confident before he saw the Host with his own eyes.

He sighed, then slithered down the tree. Tibold stood with Folmak, the miller who commanded Sean’s headquarters company, and Sean met their eyes.

“They’re doing it.”

“I see.” Tibold plucked at his lower lip. “And their scouts?”

“You were right about them, too. There’s a screen of dragoons covering their right flank, but they’re not getting too far out.”

“Aye.” Tibold nodded. “Rokas didn’t become Lord Marshal by being careless even of unlikely threats. But—” his teeth flashed in a tight grin “—it seems Lord Tamman did indeed teach his men caution yesterday.”

“So it seems,” Sean agreed, and peered into the green shadows where twenty thousand men lay hidden amid undergrowth as dense as anything Grant had faced at The Wilderness. They wore dull green and brown, their rifle barrels had been browned to prevent any betraying gleam, and they made a sadly scruffy sight beside the crimson and steel of the Guard, but they were also almost totally invisible.

He flicked his neural feed to the stealthed cutter above the valley, exchanging a brief, wordless caress with an anxious Sandy, then plugged into Brashan’s arrays through the cutter’s com. The Host was closing up, packing tighter behind the assault elements. With a little luck…

He shifted his attention to the pontoon bridges north of Yortown, hidden behind the woods. Pontoons were new to Pardal, and they’d been trickier to erect than he’d hoped, but they seemed to be holding. He hoped so. If it all came apart, those bridges were the only way home for a third of his army.

Stomald watched the Angel Harry make another small adjustment on the situation map. She was intent upon her work, yet he saw a tiny tremble in her slender fingers and wanted to slip an arm about her to comfort her. But she was an angel, he reminded himself again, and gripped his starburst, instead, trying to share the army’s mood.

The men were confident, filled with near idolatry for the angels’ champions. Indeed, they were more than confident. They no longer looked to simply defending themselves, but to smashing their enemies, despite the odds, and if they’d prayed dutifully for mercy, their fervor was reserved for prayers for strength, victory, and—especially—Malagoran independence.

Now he listened to the steady cadence of the Guard’s drums and sweat dotted his brow as he prayed silently—not for himself, but for the men he’d led to this. A surgeon began to hone his knives and saws, and he watched the shining steel with appalled eyes, unable to look away.

A hand touched his shoulder, startling despite its lightness, and he looked up with a gasp. The Angel Harry squeezed gently, and her remaining eye was soft and understanding. He reached up and covered her hand with his own, marveling at his own audacity in touching her holy flesh, and she smiled.

High-Captain Vrikadan’s branahlk jibed and fretted as ten thousand voices rose to join the thunder of the drums, and he turned in the saddle to study his men. The mighty hymn swelled around him, strong and deep, but the leading pike companies were tight-faced as they roared the words.

Vrikadan urged the branahlk closer to a battery of arlaks, creaking along between the columns. Even the stolid nioharqs were uneasy, tossing their tusks and lowing, and a gray-bearded artillery captain looked up and met his eye with a grim smile.

Tamman stood on the fighting step and watched the juggernaut of steel and flesh roll towards him. The rumble of its singing was a morale weapon whose potency he hadn’t really appreciated, but at least the Host was performing exactly as Tibold had predicted. So far.

Twenty thousand men marched towards the fords. As many more followed to exploit any success, and he felt very small and young. Worse, he sensed his men’s disquiet. It wasn’t even close to panic, but that hymn-roaring monster was enough to shake anyone, and he turned to his second-in-command.