by Kyle West
“So, we could be working with far less men than we thought.”
“We need to be prepared for that outcome,” Arminius admitted.
“How do we prepare for that?” Shara asked. “Who will be in command of the army?”
Everyone looked to me for direction. There was only one man I knew who was qualified to lead.
“Lord Harrow will command,” I said. “I don’t know anyone else who has his level of experience.”
“No one has experience for what we’re about to face,” Isaru said. “But if there is any man who can lead effectively, it’s him.”
“Guardian Mian will remain in charge of the Shen forces, of course,” I said. “And if he wishes, Captain Dailyn will command the Dragonguard as he sees fit.”
Arminius gave me a questioning look, but he didn’t challenge my decision.
“So, the only question is how the troops are to be arrayed,” Isaru said.
“I’ll want Lord Harrow’s input on that,” I said.
Elder Arminius nodded. “His chief aim today is getting the refugees north of the canyon and as far from the battle as possible. Already, we are beginning to place some of the ballistae. About one hundred of them in Haven’s armories are in working order.”
“The Shen will have cannons, too,” I said. “Assuming they get here on time.”
“So, until the Shen arrive,” Fiona said, “we have about forty thousand men for the city’s defense.”
“Any more news of the Radaskim’s movements?” I asked.
“Still approaching, albeit slowly,” Arminius said.
It was much the same as I’d heard from Harrow.
“So, what do we do now?” Shara asked. “Just wait?”
Everyone sat quietly, considering this question.
“We prepare,” I said. “We set up the best defense we can.”
Because in just a few days, we’re going to need it.
Chapter 24
When Lord Harrow showed up an hour later, the planning began in earnest. He began by laying out his base strategy, using a map of Haven and its environs to get his point across.
“There are two main passes to access Haven from the south side of the canyon,” he began. “The Southern Pass, and the Selvan Pass. The Southern Pass will be the only way to directly assault Haven, so that is where I will deploy most of the men. The pikes will be in contingents of three hundred men each, and the length of their weapons, when arrayed in mass, will be most ideal in holding back the crawlers on the ground. In the few skirmishes we’ve had with the monsters, this tactic has proven effective, so long as there is no break in the line to allow the enemy in at the flanks.”
“All right,” I said. “What about the Selvan Pass?”
“That is where the Shen reinforcements are going to arrive to reinforce us. I expect this to come under assault as well but deciding just how many men to commit there is the hard part. Too few, and we risk having the Selvan Pass fall and a flood of crawlers unleashed upon the canyon. Though it is twenty miles downriver, it won’t take long for crawlers to close that distance.” Harrow paused here, to allow us time to absorb this information. “On the other hand, if we commit too many soldiers to the Selvan Pass, then that only makes the main defense here weaker. Of course, the two passes are too far apart for men to be sent back and forth easily.”
“So, what’s your suggestion?” I asked.
Harrow pointed at the Selvan pass. “I usually don’t like middle of the road strategies; it’s better to be strong on one front than to be weak everywhere. But the risks are too great to leave the Selvan Pass entirely undefended. The men would need to hold for several hours before reinforcements can arrive from Haven.”
“We must decide the right number, then,” I said.
Harrow nodded. “Just so. We have twenty thousand men at our disposal, and that will become sixty when the Shen and Colonians reinforce us.” Harrow cleared his throat. “As such, I suggest twenty-five hundred, or thereabouts. It should prove enough to hold, and if reinforcements are needed, they can be brought in time to bolster their ranks.”
That left about seventeen thousand five hundred soldiers to guard the Southern Pass, which led directly into Haven.
“And what if the crawlers break through the Selvan Pass?” Shara asked.
Harrow looked at her gravely. “Then the battle would be much shorter than it would be otherwise.”
This pronouncement was met with an uncomfortable silence.
“Perhaps we should commit more to the Selvan Pass,” I said. “If the Shen don’t arrive quickly enough, then they would have to fight their way into the canyon.”
“That is also a consideration,” Harrow said. “You can be sure Odium will know the deployment of our forces beforehand. He has dragons, just as we do, and enough of them to spare losing a few for the sake of information. In my opinion, we have no choice but to deploy at least twenty-five hundred men at the Selvan Pass, but more would be leaving the main pass too weak.”
“What if Odium directs most of his assault there, and not the main pass?” I asked. “That seems to be something we’re not considering.”
“It’s not likely,” Isaru said. “The road there goes through thick forests and would be difficult for a large army of crawlers to traverse. He can get some crawlers through, but nowhere near the size of most of his army. On the other hand, the land before the Southern Pass is a wide, open plain.” He paused to look at the map. “My estimate is we’ll see a sizeable chunk attack the Selvan Pass, but the pass itself is also less developed and little-used. There isn’t much traffic between the Red Wild and the rest of the Colorado Basin, and very few people live out that way. Mostly just guard outposts in the Selvan, most of which aren’t even manned.”
“I see,” I said. “Makes sense when you explain it like that.”
“Also,” Isaru said, “the Selvan Pass is very narrow. There’s probably only enough space for two crawlers to come down at a time. Our men could likely hold out there for a very long time, even with only twenty-five hundred men.”
“But too few,” Harrow reminded, “and the men won’t be able to defend themselves effectively from the air. Remember that the pikes will not only be pointed outward toward the enemy, but upward, and if need be, in any direction dragons might be assaulting from. The formation needs a certain number of bodies to remain solid. If there are too few pikes, there won’t be enough force to push back against the enemy.”
That made sense as well. I nodded for Harrow to continue sharing his plans.
“And now, for the Southern Pass. The overall formation here will be like the one at the Selvan Pass,” Harrow continued. “Ten contingents of pikemen will roughly form a semicircle at the entrance, at the bottom of the canyon, creating a space I’m calling, somewhat unpoetically, a crawler kill zone.”
“Crawler kill zone,” I said. “I like the sound of that.”
“We’ve seen the way crawlers attack,” Harrow continued. “They charge blindly, but with overwhelming force. The pike formation should be ideal in holding them back and keeping them at a distance, while the pikes themselves can stab and find gaps in the crawler’s armor. If there are enough crawlers killed, they will form a wall of their own dead, slowing the momentum of their attack even more.”
“And if they are slowed,” Shara finished, “They’ll be mincemeat for our cannons and dragons.”
Harrow nodded in the affirmative. It sounded good so far. That was, if it all worked according to plan.
“Ten contingents of pikemen is three thousand men,” I said. “Is that all that’s needed to hold the pass?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Harrow said. “The others will be kept in reserve. This battle will be going on for a long time. Days, even. The men cannot be expected to fight indefinitely and will have to be switched out as they exhaust themselves. The crawlers, I fear, will not tire in the same way. Our reserves will serve another purpose. If there’s ever a hole that opens i
n the main formation, they’ll be there to quickly reinforce.”
“What about dragons?” Fiona asked. “We are clearly outnumbered there. How do we plan to defend against them?”
“Two main ways,” Harrow said. “First, we have Haventree itself, which will be outfitted with static defenses. Cannons and ballistae in the hundreds. Second, we have the Shen airships, which according to Mian, have proven effective against the Radaskim already.” Harrow smiled grimly. “Guardian Mian has, in very clear terms, stated that if the dragons draw too near his ships, they shall, as he put it, be torn utterly asunder.”
It sounded too good to be true. “And what if the Radaskim recognize this, and attack the airships and artillery?”
“That is what we have our own dragons for,” Harrow said. “Though far less numerous than the enemy, they should be more than enough to deal with whatever makes it through the barrage of artillery fire. And of course, the pikemen not yet engaged in the melee will be on the lookout above.”
Again, it sounded good on paper. But I still had an uneasy feeling, like there was something missing.
“We’ll form the same killing zone formation at the Selvan Pass,” Harrow continued, “only on a smaller scale.”
Fiona frowned. “Seems that the men at the Selvan Pass will not be numerous enough to have reserves. If the fight goes badly there, it could prove problematic.”
“Therein lies our gamble,” Harrow said. “The Shen must arrive on time.”
“The stakes are too high to be gambling,” I said.
Harrow looked at me seriously. “On the contrary. Such gambles must be made to win an unwinnable war.”
I watched Harrow carefully. Had he read my thoughts? Had any of the others told him what Tiamat said? I couldn’t believe it. He was just a seasoned commander, and one experienced enough to know bad odds when he saw them.
I nodded, letting go of the breath I’d been holding. “You’re right. Of course.”
“The reserves will shelter in the Roots,” Harrow said. “From there, it’s only a short distance to reinforce the main line. In the Roots, they’ll be safe from air attacks, should they pierce through the fire of our artillery.” He looked at us all. “Remember. The goal is to hold the crawlers at a single point, the crawler death zone, while all fire is concentrated there.” Harrow pointed back to Haventree on the map. “The main job of the dragons and airships will be to protect our artillery from the Radaskim dragons, not to lead the attack. Losing our ability to defend by air would prove disastrous. We would be quickly overwhelmed as soon as our reserves dried up.”
“Will there be enough time to set everything up?” I asked. “The swarm is about a week away.”
“Assuming the Radaskim keep up the same pace, then yes,” Harrow said. “There will be more than enough time to prepare. Arminius has informed me that all available smiths are forging hundreds upon hundreds of bolts for the ballistae. We will need thousands of them, as most will likely not find a dragon as they are loosed. In mass, however, they should prove effective.”
Harrow finished, staring down at the map, his brown eyes looking as if they could see the battle happening already. That was the plan, then. More or less.
“I think it’s as good a plan as any,” I said.
“Better than what I could come up with,” Shara said.
Harrow nodded graciously, though I could tell that even the best plans could fail against overwhelming odds.
“Now, for the part that none of us want to talk about,” I said. “There is the possibility of defeat. What will we do in that situation?”
The silence following this question was the longest one so far. Thus far, all members of the Elder Council had been quiet. Judge Lian now broke their silence.
“Any retreat would be a bloody affair,” Judge Lian said. “The Northern Pass would become a death trap. There would be panic as many try to escape. We are forcing the relocation of anyone not vital to the war effort, but even so, we cannot force anyone to leave who truly doesn’t want to. A massive camp has formed at the northern rim, which we can’t spare the men to protect.”
“These people were fairly warned,” Harrow said. “But let it be spoken each day that they must move on.”
“Most have nowhere to go,” Fiona said. “If they had anywhere to be, they’d be there already. And because of the Novans, we haven’t even food to give them.”
It was a terrible situation to be sure, and one I didn’t see a solution to, other than a resounding victory over Odium.
Harrow continued with his plan, in the case of a defeat. “It would be necessary to leave some men behind to guard the Southern Pass,” Harrow said. “To give the rest of the army time to regroup elsewhere.”
“To fight to the death?” Isa asked, her eyes going wide.
Harrow nodded. “Some die so that the many might escape to fight another day. It’s the price we pay by fighting in the canyon.” He paused thoughtfully. “Whether the men, in utter panic, would obey those orders is another question entirely.”
“Where would we fall back to?” Shara asked.
“Ragnarok Crater,” I said. All of them watched me, Harrow’s normally neutral features taking on an expression of surprise. “That’s where Odium is trying to go. So, that’s where we must stop him from going. I imagine we’ll take our next fight at Mongar. It’s the most fortified city in the Red Mountains, and the one most directly on the way to the Crater. It’ll form something of a roadblock to him.”
“If we can get there in the first place,” Shara said. “That’s not an easy march.”
“If Odium is trying to reach the Crater, then yes, he has to pass through Mongar, or else go through the Northern Wild,” Harrow conceded. “If he elects to go through the Northern Wild, we have less of a distance to close than him to arrive at Ragnarok Crater.” Harrow looked at me questioningly. “But why does he want to reach Ragnarok Crater?”
“Tiamat told us that the Sea of Creation is weak and vulnerable due to the long reign of the Hyperfold,” I said. “It’s the main reason the Elder Dragons are not joining us in this fight.”
That, I thought, and they don’t believe there can be victory here.
“The Sea of Creation,” Harrow said. “I’d never imagined it truly existed.” Harrow looked back at the map, seeming to bend all his concentration upon it. “If the unthinkable happens . . . I don’t see how an orderly retreat is possible. Though the Radaskim swarm is moving slowly now, I’m afraid it can go much faster than our retreating men, if it comes down to it.”
“But there must be a reason they are moving so slowly,” I said. “If Odium could be here by now, he would be. Why isn’t he?”
It was a question no one seemed to know the answer to. Indeed, from their perplexed expressions, it was a question no one had even thought to ask yet.
“You’re right,” Lord Harrow said. “It does seem rather strange. My men and I have seen how those crawlers move. We’ve seen their dragons in the night, scouting, but other than that there has been nothing but minor skirmishes along the road.”
“Perhaps it’s a matter of energy,” Shara ventured. “An army like that would need to consume all in its path to have enough energy to keep moving. We know that dragons eat xen, so maybe crawlers are the same way. Bodies that size, with that much power, need a lot of energy to keep going.”
It was an interesting theory, but we had no way of verifying its truth. The reason for the swarm’s slow movement could be something else.
“If the army moves as slowly as it has these past few days, then escape should not be a problem, assuming we can get our men safely outside the canyon,” Harrow said. “However, we should not assume the swarm would move at the same slow pace.”
“So how would we retreat?” Shara asked.
“Though it pains me to say, I feel our only option is to scorch the earth behind us,” Lord Harrow said. “Burn everything we can. If they truly are sustaining themselves on the xen, then it is what
we should have been doing all along.”
“That would weaken the Xenofold,” I said. “All the xen taken together is like its mind.”
“If it’s to be devoured by the swarm anyway . . .” Harrow said.
He had a point there. But I hoped it never came to that. “I’ll keep the option in mind.”
And like that, we continued the discussion. Where fortifications would be set up, artillery emplacements, food rations. We shared the news of the Novans’ plans to march on Highgrove, while the Elders updated Harrow on the Plains Peoples’ movements.
The pieces on the board were moving. Only time would tell what would happen once they started meeting.
* * *
By the time we called it a day, it was well into evening and I was exhausted. Harrow returned to his soldiers while the rest of us ate and attempted to speak of lighter subjects. Dinner was interrupted when a messenger from Lord Harrow’s troops arrived, bearing a message for Isa.
“A lady calling herself Arnor was asking after you,” he said.
When Isa responded, her voice was quavering. “That has to be my mother. Where is she?”
“At the Roots,” the messenger said. “She was quite insistent that you were her daughter, so I was sent here to inquire.”
Isa stood, looking to me for permission.
“Of course you can see her, Isa,” I said.
Isa’s cheeks colored. “Thank you. I won’t be long.” She turned back to the soldier. “Take me to her.”
Isa left with the guard, but before leaving the interior courtyard, she motioned for Isaru to join her. He looked at me, shrugged, and bounded to catch up.
“So, I guess they’re a thing now?” Shara asked once they had left.
Fiona looked at her, in disbelief. “You’re just now noticing?”
“I don’t know,” Shara said, taking another bite of the beef she had been eating. “Most of that stuff goes over my head.”