Tracks all acknowledged.
The Line will advance.
Meek and Brisket start us marching.
Piper, play us a merry tune.
Second’s Piper starts in on Lass from the Corner. Four bars in, when everybody’s got the step, all the other pipers come in.
March rate picks up a bit, seven metres per second. Bow-wave on the bubble’s four or five metres high, mud, water, fragments of trees, mostly burning; it’s still the red-shot’s burning wind out there, no visibility with eyes. Puddle starts feeding some of the merry tune out through the bubble anyway, the piping and the march beat.
Knives gets a firm locus on who we think blocked that pair of five-red. One-Fierce runs the water purifier on it.
Way more force than necromancy usually gets, behind a thorough way to shout DIE. They’re out in the river, and Knives has their full attention. Didn’t get them all.
Periph, Battalion. Demons inbound. Lolly. Lolly’s got the overall periph, Flinch has the whole assembled close incoming passed to Lolly neatly abstracted, from us and all the banners. Flinch has the enviable knack of not thinking what any of it means. Lolly gets the angles and assignments pushed out to the banners on periph.
I’ve got the take from the distant observers.
Reach up, blink at the armoury.
D-Day, H-Hour Plus 0.15
Year of Peace 547, Messidor, Twelfth Day (Early Summer)
Standard of the Fifth
The view is long, and slanted. The standard can only do so much with that volume of roiled air. The Standard of the Second reports its view; a different slant, and less distance. Schedule One came down as aimed. Schedule Two, mostly.
None of the tubes have reloaded. At the range, with active spotting, with the scheduled shots done, the Fifth has to wait to know what to shoot, and where. There’ll be some time while the Second finds targets.
Two batteries firing together isn’t a grand battery; a battalion firing together is. Hank settled on ‘battalion’ months ago. This doesn’t ask a battalion shoot.
Scarlet, target. Where a ship was in the east-west stretch of the River of Mists, when the Second’s standard saw it. The standard pushes Hank’s imagination of shot order and placement to the artillery tubes in Scarlet battery.
Scarlet, load.
Shot moves, shot for tubes one and six off the special shot-racks. The tubes load. Scarlet One and Scarlet Six load with twitching delicate care.
Scarlet, in your sequence, shoot.
Tube One and Tube Six shoot. Then Two-Three-Four-Five all together.
D-Day, H-Hour Plus 0.30
Year of Peace 547, Messidor, Twelfth Day (Early Summer)
Duckling
First wave of demons splatters on the bubble, no co-ordination, it’s just whoever had something to send.
Steady rate on the demons. Lolly’s of-course-you-would-already gentle reminder voice.
The periph banners start throwing one stick at a time from two of five platoons. Nothing thick enough to get the battalion Colour Party involved.
Steady rate, throw-one-stick-and-wait-for-effect’s bad for your nerves. Saves on sticks. Demon sticks, you always want more later.
One-Fierce, tracking. Meek.
‘One kilometre inland’ does not mean ‘one thousand metres’ inland; you’re supposed to pay attention to the terrain, not stick to the increasingly nominal riverbank absolutely. One-Fierce has been proceeding in a straight line.
The armoury blinks back.
Rot.
Start a timer. Stopping too soon is a hint. Knives wants to get that clump of Sea People up the horizon before trying again. Tap the timer into Knives’ attention. Shift the followup eval for the distant ships off Flinch to Farmer’s observers. Regulation — ought to go through Flinch. Ain’t willing to alter Flinch’s filter of the input.
Puddle gets Prep blank bubble and the shot code and the same timer-tap.
Thirteen, ten, nine, five, and three seconds out from the timer ending, Knives chucks stuff at the locus. None of it’s necromancy. None of it works. No splash, they can’t shrug it, but they can stop it all.
Timer’s done. Battalion check advance. Blank the bubble.
Meek and Brisket check the advance; everybody’s feet stop moving. Puddle blanks the bubble hard and thorough. No view outside. You don’t watch pointy-stick hungry unwinding; it might get you through the eyes. Artillery hungry we’d prefer to know specific Halt made them. Halt’s got precise hungers.
Enough leaks you can be sure something horrible’s happening. Differently vast horrible where the hungry shot unwind into cubic kilometres of starving volume.
“Shot the expletive prototypes.” One of the Second’s pipers. Strange reminder I have a body with ears.
Four three-red light in a tetrahedron around the HUNGRY. Time-on-target to a tenth of a second. A volume containing no sophoncy gets obliterated by the merging shockwaves. Does nothing to the HUNGRY.
Wait. Give the HUNGRY a minute, they’ll both close in on themselves.
Battalion clear the bubble.
The Line will advance.
Duckling, Meek. We going through?
Meek, Duckling. Yeah. Slap a graph together, make sure Meek and Brisket both get it. Gone before we get there. It looks like a transmittance-reflectance curve, there-there-gone, only don’t ask what’s the analog of angle of incidence.
Spool Flinch’s take from the distant observers, agree/disagree about what to use, blink-blink-blink.
D-Day, H-Hour Plus 0.43
Year of Peace 547, Messidor, Twelfth Day (Early Summer)
Standard of the Fifth
Eight minutes before spotting comes up from the Second, in neat east-to-west order.
Battalion, Tubes, targets.
Captain Hank has had much less organized artillery support requests from long-established brigades. They almost smile; they’ve caught themself thinking Old Line, behind the orderly process of distributing the list of targets to the tubes.
Tubes are tipping up; these will be long range shots.
D-Day, H-Hour Plus 0.45
Year of Peace 547, Messidor, Twelfth Day (Early Summer)
Duckling
Two minutes later, blink-blink-blink. Pass that to the distant observers.
There’s some sort of camp on the other side of the river. Knives is grinding it up like road gravel. Dancer’s got a bunch of something. Angle says inland source. Not demons, not material. They make pop noises, imploding.
(Meek, Brisket), Duckling. March rate, quick as we can.
The bow-wave on the bubble gains height and the floor smooths out. Riding up a bit, instead of shoving everything out of our way. Less anchor against a major attack. Faster advance. Want as much westing as we can get before the opposition firms up.
Shot’s going over, way high and spread wide. Anything afloat in the north-south portion of the river. Anything we can see, a hundred kilometres and more out to sea.
D-Day, H-Hour Plus 0.50
Year of Peace 547, Messidor, Twelfth Day (Early Summer)
Duckling
Blink-blink-blink.
The standard’s got a node high; the armoury can talk flat. Lots of dust, even thirty kilometres up. Takes more push. Tangent to the curve of the earth; no matter how far out to sea they are, the Sea People won’t see it.
The armoury’s getting summons chucked at it. The Fifth has specific suspicions about the anchorage.
Fancy, Kittens; check — it’s a volume, six-red alters contour — for active Power.
Check Flinch’s feed. Nothing pressing.
Signals, (Left Front, Right Front, Periph, Movement). My front. Clearing our rear. Hold in place.
Just after everybody’s feet have stopped, Observer, Signals. Five loci, neatly labelled.
North of the customary anchorage. Hundred-fifty, hundred-sixty kilometres away. Obscured visual. Clear targets. Not for long; these’re pre-eminents being brave. Won’t take
long to decide recover-the-plan ain’t working. Return-with-knowledge always works. Get through this working, then run.
Pick the peak-output locus. Centre up, broad-bubble it, set the bubble to leak everything but oxygen. Squeeze. Go slower than you want; sudden pressure shifts are obvious. Nobody summons anything dangerous casually; hardly anyone blocks gas exchange with an extemporized ward. If you take it slow, in thirty seconds there’s twenty times the regular pressure and the sorcerer’s surprised they’re on fire. Then you go BURN DIE BURN DIE BURN DIE DIE DIE at them, and one more BURN for the startled remains with a sharp tight locus on their skull.
Next output’s closer, in the middle of something, can give them a minute. The lowest output’s warding up from the swirl, betcha they’re blocking oxygen. They can’t see well, not any more than the focus can. Six-red in the water means hot fog. Six-red high means everything’s on fire in the hot fog the howling wind is pushing. Some of the fires are out now. Their comrade would have been pretty bright anyway, two hundred metres away. Solid nitrogen’s about as dense as aluminium. The focus makes a five-kilogramme dart a kilometer up along with a whole bunch of loud scattered random sparkles. Flick it down with the press that makes the stuff.
Nothing there but air, and the air’s moving quick just now. It’s through their bubble before they notice or try to stop it. Sibling Narkis’ notable touchy about the Power, goes bang. That point of strong Power splatters into nothing. Must have got it close to their head.
Thank you, Blossom, that you think of such things.
Close decided to go for finishing, or didn’t dare stop, but they’re still at it. Better locus, well done, Flinch, grab and implode their bubble. Check for deformed gates or portals, check for gates or portals, never got that far.
Two left. Distant’s getting vague. Thinking of leaving. Tangle is automatic and extravagant and rarely used. Asks a hard push to get it that far. Not what Distant was expecting; they get caught square. Don’t know anyone who’s gone and asked what ‘unresolved across a diversity of inhospitable possibilities’ means exactly, but Distant’s dead.
Flinch’s flagged some stuff. Slow’s dropped a three-dots on something up ahead. Last one’s pulled something out of storage and chucked it at us.
Signals, Colour Party. Target inbound. Type unknown. Give the locus, not the arc. It’s got volition. There’s a rattle of sticks. Not everybody wants to be holding demon with an unknown coming.
Don’t know if Last’s on mud or not. Sand flows. Sand comes from any stone. Open a pit under their feet and pat them into it, ward and all. CRUNCH. Keep crunching until Last’s gone and the sphere’s hit the limit of compression.
Whatever it is, it’s smart enough to stay off the bubble. Punch hurts it. Three hits kills it.
Signals, (Left Front, Right Front, Periph, Movement). Resume advance.
Dancer does for Slow’s three-dot target. Can’t tell what it was.
Nothing in the river, nothing behind us but the hot mist.
D-Day, H-Hour Plus 0.50
Year of Peace 547, Messidor, Twelfth Day (Early Summer)
Standard of the Fifth
The Sea People who established occupancy of the single working anchorage on the north-south section of the River of Mists did so without specific knowledge of the country or the opposition they expected to face. In regular times, they should not worry very much, especially arrived in such force. Their first landing force had been entirely destroyed, and in ways that indicated they had found a stable empire, something more capable and more organized than the usual territorial overlord.
The Sea People have found stable empires before.
Their doctrine says ‘prepare a response’, and they have had the two days ashore necessary to assemble it.
The entity is worse than demons. Nothing the match of the devourer of Reems; not inherently past the capabilities of a pre-eminent sorcerer. The Sea People response did not send it across some context of geography; the entity is summoned, distantly and abruptly, beside whatever living being commanded attack against the Sea People position.
It manifests inside the Fifth’s ward-bubble, and there is no barrier in the bubble sufficient to prevent it passing outward.
Captain Hank is splattered dead behind it. Some of the Colour Party die, mist and ashes. The material standard of the Fifth falls with the standard-bearer, dead beside the standard-captain.
The Colour Party and the standard-captain stood before and between the shot-racks for the two batteries, nearly enough in the centre of the Fifth’s ward-bubble. The entity has done as it was commanded, then done the Fifth no other harm. Its instructions were strict and it fulfilled them.
Other harm is close, and coming. Kill the commander, and the defences will be less organized. Even should the entity not succeed, failure takes time; the defences will still be less organized.
Scarlet, Battalion. Battery, battalion push. My periphery. Captain Blossom’s voice comes quiet and terrible. Scarlet battery remembers, and looks away from where their commander is walking toward the parapet. It’s a hundred-metre drop to the water from the edge towers; the towers meant to emplace artillery are taller. The fall is every bit as straight.
The focus begins to shift with the whole of Scarlet battery’s output, Scarlet’s Evening teams moved to the standard from the artillery tubes.
Ochre, Battalion. Battery, battalion push. My battalion. Like Scarlet battery, Ochre’s tube-teams detach from their specific tubes to latch directly to the standard. Battalion focus evolution. Ochre’s Gunner has the bubble. Evening teams on the bubble. Morning teams on front. Scarlet’s Gunner recover the Colour Party. My front.
When caisson three-four’s second waggon manages to wedge a wheel between unexpected rocks, when asking for the shot inventory, when inquiring about the perceived quality of breakfast, when the standard-captain is suddenly dead, Captain Eugenia sounds precisely the same. The artillery batteries steady, in a night filled with shrieking.
The Sea People’s set response has gifted them with a dense wave of demons, uncomplicated and numerous.
The battle-standards of the Commonweal maintain a conservative design. They contain more things than anyone compelled to think with a material substrate can hope to remember. They contain operant capacities where the full scope is incomprehensible of its nature to persons obliged to comprehend using a material substrate. As the Wizard Laurel made the first battle-standards, the Commonweal’s battle-standards are carefully made so that the focus-mind is not sophont; a tool that does not approach those thresholds of understanding beyond which the Power compels might to exaltation.
Captain Eugenia is the Second Commonweal’s precedent for the minimum independent, but they do have a metaphysical part. Their prosthetic talent is new and clever, made in a generous spirit by fellow-adherents of the young goddess risen over the dark water of Armoury Pond.
Captain Eugenia has taken lawful command of the Fifth and executive of the Fifth’s focus.
Two batteries and a platoon-sized Colour Party and the lingering dead put the Fifth Battalion’s numbers at just enough to match the focus-multiplier of a Wapentake heavy battalion, and the Fifth is beset with demons. Its focus comes with the harsh push of mortal fear.
Latched by a prosthetic talent in which the focus finds nothing to recognize as mind, Laurel’s ancient caution fails Eugenia.
Ochre, Morning. Steady push, trust your feet. If you looked up from the bubble, you’d see the stars become strange. It should be nearly dawn; the night sky should be fading into day. Over the Armoury, over the Third Clearance of Lost Creek, it is as dark as midnight under unexpected stars. Whatever killed Captain Hank is headed north and east and fast, toward its hungers or its hope of escape. Captain Eugenia has used the standard to dispute its passage, and the thing returns.
Cohered fully sophont with Captain’s Eugenia’s exaltation into something terrible with Power, the focus of the Fifth keens in the several voices of nothing ever alive solem
n words in the liturgical language of the archaic period of the initial rising of the Kingdom of the Spider. Rippling out through the Power from the Fifth’s focus, Captain Eugenia’s will chants audibly and powerfully a prayer for victory.
Over Armoury Pond is a second wave of demons, falling and rising; two more sent things have summoned them as harbingers, and then kept them close in surprise and sudden caution. The sent things do not know they hear a prayer for victory; they know such a concentration of Power exhibiting trappings of ritual demands great and nuanced caution.
Let the first wave of demons, those specifically distractions, find the surprises.
When something’s through. The Dead Gunner, purely certain. The surviving majority of the Colour Party return to composure and steady breathing.
Ochre’s Gunner is a Typical named Joyeuse. They approach the battalion bubble with flair and élan; it switches layers and shifts existing layers for angle and separation. Coming through is like trying to crawl through a turnip mangle, though the first wave of demons are bound to do it. The dynamic bubble spaces the demons out in time and delivers them less structured. You wouldn’t do it under direct assault, but there are only demons, and the Fifth has a platoon, much of a platoon, now, with pointy sticks, where a heavy battalion might have everyone. Steady rate and more time helps. The focus will show you where the demon is coming through; eyes will not see it, distortion against an already distorted sky.
Pointy sticks go up in pairs and demons die. The Fifth Battalion’s Colour Party settles enough to begin stamping their feet in time with their own chants, timing their throws.
Something glitters, moving fast out over the thirty-kilometre length of Armoury Pond. No one inside the battalion bubble notices how the stars shine harsh as the glitter rises up from the south as a rising ripple across the colder light. None of the demons were coming to the Shot Shop proper and then the Goddess of Destruction whistled, resolving Spot’s doubt.
Much higher over the pond the cold light twists and spirals and becomes actinic; hell-white light floods the armoury’s tower-tops. The thing returning, half-harried and half-compelled, is greater than demons; Spot cannot herd it. It makes an attempt to use the rising swirling demon-fight over the pond as distraction, as a thing to duck behind.
A Mist of Grit and Splinters Page 27