Dirk checked the causeway again. The wading orcs were splashing ahead as the tide receded. Then they reached the midpoint. The lead orc broke into a run, reaching the exposed rock on the island side. The rest trotted after.
“Drummer boy,” snapped Dirk. “Sound alert!”
The boy lifted his bodhran and beat a rapped tattoo with the tipper. The fighters surged toward the edge of the plateau. The first line lay prone, lifting their heads to peek over the edge at the incoming horde. The reserves lay or knelt behind them.
Dirk handed the binoculars to his herald. “Secure these. Then report to the medics.” The young man trotted off.
He picked up his helmet and squeezed it onto his head. The chin strap fastened snugly. He checked his sword came easily out of the scabbard. Then he picked up his shield.
He walked the line, looking at the deployment. Some of his squad leaders had arranged their men oddly. Count Dirk made no comment. Delegating meant putting up with how the guy chose to do it.
A few spears flew over the edge and bounced off rock. The civilians who’d edged closer to see the action scooted back a few dozen yards.
A boy ran up and gave Dirk a Cub Scout salute. He gave an Army one in return.
“Sir, Lord Bodkin requests permission to fire back.”
“Denied. Arrows are for emergencies only.”
The messenger boy repeated what he’d said and ran back.
Dirk looked over his reserves. Rapier fighters holding polearms and hoping for a chance to use their blades. A line of new fighters with pikeaxes and spears they barely knew how to use. The archers and their limited supply of arrows. King Ironhelm, his squires, and some dukes past their prime.
Behind them all the mages. Willing, powerful, and of totally unknown effectiveness. He’d told them they’d be saved for when the shock of their magic would have the greatest impact. He hadn’t told them that was when he’d be desperate. The magic he’d seen was too fickle for him to build a plan around it.
When all the plans failed Dirk would add magic to the chaos.
Crawling up to the plateau edge let Dirk see the oncoming orcs. No chaos here. They were as smooth and predictable as water poured from a bucket. The wave spread out from the causeway. Some were already climbing up the center of the wall. Hoots and war cries filled the air. The few orcs still doing group chants were drowned out by the rest.
A spear hissed over his head as Dirk ducked back. He looked back to check for casualties. The troops were staying low enough to be safe. Two civilians cried as they were carried to the healers. Hopefully the rest would learn.
“At ‘em!” ordered a squad leader. Fighters in the center rose to their knees and swung their pikeaxes. Dirk couldn’t see the targets. They were below the edge. But the blades came back up orange with orc blood.
Screeches and screams came from the orcs on the wall. Angry ones. More orcs surged up. More fighters stood to meet them.
Dirk assessed the initial results. His veterans were knocking the orcs back down the wall and drawing blood as they did it. A couple of fighters went down from thrown spears. They were hauled to the healers as second line fighters stepped up to replace them.
Three orcs leapt over the edge, parrying pikeaxes with their spears. The fighters facing them were bodyslammed to the rock.
Count Dirk was in position to face them. He charged the right hand orc, shield held before him. The orc dodged, sending his spear at Dirk’s leg. The other two moved to flank him and Dirk gave way. A swing at his target’s head was blocked by the spear, held two-handed.
Second line men were pressing the other orcs. More green-skins were climbing over the ledge.
Dirk swung again, this time cutting off some fingers as they moved the spear into his way. The sword carried past on momentum. Then he pulled it into a low backswing, ripping open the orc’s gut.
It stumbled. Then a second-line pikeaxe caught the back of its leg. Dirk sliced its neck as it fell. Then he raised his shield to block a spear thrust from the next set of orcs. As the point scraped off the shield he sliced into the orc’s arm just below the shoulder.
It flinched and stepped back.
Dirk rammed his shield into the orc’s face, pushing it over onto another orc clambering over the edge. Both fell down the wall.
Beside him a line of pikeaxes forced the other orcs off the flat. They screeched as they fell.
Sharpedge took charge of sorting the reinforcements into first line, second line, and casualty haulers. Dirk stepped back to leave him to it.
A walk along the line showed him they were holding well. Not as many casualties as he’d feared. The king was keeping the reserves calm. It was a whack a mole battle. Orcs popped up then were knocked down.
One fighter knelt to reach an orc further down the wall. He let out an exultant “Ha!” as his pikeaxe connected. Then he tugged at the shaft. It pulled him down flat onto the rock.
Dirk opened his mouth but before he could utter the words “Let go” the fighter was pulled over the edge.
A flurry of cheerful hoots sounded.
Count Dirk ground his teeth. Damn it, he shouldn’t have to teach people not to play tug of war with monsters.
Squad leaders were swapping in second-stringers for tired fighters. Water bearers moved among them.
The war cries were higher in pitch now. The orcs were stressed and desperate. In humans this would predict a rout. Orcs just threw themselves away even faster.
Troops on the flanks were standing easy, just watching the fight. The orcs had run out of spare spears to throw.
Dirk waved some aside to gain a spot on the edge. He took his first look at the whole battle.
Orcs climbing the wall were scattered enough to be met at the top by two or three fighters at once. Many climbers didn’t make the top. They’d grip rock covered in fresh blood and slide down.
The diagonal path was full of orcs. Some had arm wounds keeping them from climbing. They calmly walked up the path to the top.
Maximus had appointed himself the reception party. He swung his pikeaxe at the orc’s neck as it came into range. “Nine!” chanted his squadmates. The body fell straight down. Another orc tried to parry and took the point in its belly. “Ten!”
Dirk shook his head. He didn’t understand orcs. If they stayed on the beach they’d inflict more casualties as the humans came down to finish them. Or at least they’d force him to use up irreplaceable arrows.
“Eleven!”
Some orcs had sense. He could see them wade back across the causeway as the rising tide covered it.
The rest . . . well, he shouldn’t complain. Their stupidity was saving his men’s lives.
“Twelve!”
The next orc forced Maximus back with rapid thrusts. It took two steps over the edge before a swarm of fighters brought it down. The one behind it died as it stepped over the edge.
Then someone took up the executioner post again.
When no more orcs came up the path Dirk sent men down to finish off the wounded. He followed the second squad.
Poking the bodies with spears found a few orcs playing possum. Most were as dead as they looked. Once everyone was convinced no live orcs remained the fighters laid down their weapons and picked up the bodies.
In groups of three or four they carried dead orcs to the water and tossed them in. Some didn’t disappear under the waves. They lay half submerged on top of corpses from the causeway fight.
The troops didn’t grumble much. The island smelled bad enough already without adding rotting bodies to the spilled blood and open air privies.
Lord Pulpit took charge of the tug-o-war player’s bones.
The loudest complaint was from Lord Badelaire. “I hauled all my fishing gear here and there’s so much blood in the water the fish won’t come near the island.”
***
Goldenrod missed Newman. Her dreams featured awful things happening to him. Her stomach was too tense to handle jerky without complaint. A
nd it was harder to concentrate on her reading.
To keep concentrating she needed privacy. The flat, smooth parts of the island were crowded with people resting or gossiping. Whenever she opened one of the books people moved away, barging into already crowded groups.
And then they whispered.
Ordinary gossip Goldenrod could filter out. “Martha said Beth said Joey is sweet on Angie,” just blurred like the sound of rushing water. Current gossip focused on who was recovering from wounds or being demoted from first line for freezing during a battle but she could still ignore it.
Not the whispers. Those made her paranoid. What were they saying? Were they talking about her? Eavesdropping would consume her attention.
So now she walked away from the crowd to read.
One of the seaward corners of the island was taller than the other. Unanimously nicknamed “the Keep,” it was too jagged for most uses. Goldenrod found a relatively smooth outcrop to sit on. Up there no one minded her reading. Or singing. Or experimenting with what she’d learned.
Today’s experiment used a chip of stone the size of the nail on her pinkie finger. She cupped her hands around it and sang a few syllables of elvish.
Nothing happened.
Goldenrod looked at the book lying open beside her. She sang again, concentrating on sliding smoothly between the notes. The third time she was smooth enough. The stone chip vanished.
The next experiment was on a stone the size of her head. Placing her hands on each side of it and singing perfectly produced a quiver, not a disappearance.
Goldenrod flipped back a few pages and re-read them. Then she left the book and walked down to the crowd. House Applesmile’s bedrolls were abandoned. Searching the crowd was fruitless. She finally found Redinkle watching her husband at drill.
“I thought they knew how to use pikeaxes already,” said Goldenrod.
Redinkle answered, “They keep working at whatever somebody screwed up in the last battle.”
“Okay. Can he do it without your help?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I need a hand with something. Come up to the keep with me?”
Once they were past the crowd Redinkle said, “You know, we shouldn’t call it the keep any more.”
“Oh?”
“It should be the wizard’s tower.”
“Crap.” Goldenrod stepped carefully over the roiled stone. “I don’t own it. Nobody else was here so it was a good spot for privacy.”
“Yep. Especially since moms don’t let their kids play here any more.”
“What the hell? I’m not going to cook and eat them.”
“I think they’re more worried about you exploding.”
Goldenrod had to admit that was a reasonable fear after Rivet’s accident.
They knelt on opposite sides of Goldenrod’s usual seat with the stone between them. Their hands wrapped around, completely surrounding the stone. Goldenrod sang the words of the spell, making the stone quiver.
“Now sing it with me.”
They sang it together. No quiver.
“No, you have to slide the notes exactly.”
Redinkle said, “Give it to me a piece at a time.”
They practiced the individual syllables, then separate halves of the spell. When Redinkle was confident they joined hands again.
The first time through the complete spell wasn’t perfect. The second time the stone vanished.
Goldenrod let out an exultant “Ha!”
Redinkle grinned, thrilled to be doing a new kind of magic. “Where did it go?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Wait, you have no clue where it went?”
“It’s not on this world. I didn’t add a word to tell it where to go. I don’t know if there’s a default world or if it just went some random place in the multiverse.”
“So.” Deep breath. “You’re casting spells without knowing what they do.”
“I’m casting part of a spell to check if it does what I think it does.”
“You don’t know it went to a different world. It could have landed in the camp.”
“That would have a different structure.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Fine. I’ll prove it. Wait here.”
Goldenrod left her sitting by the outcropping. She picked her way through the twists of the keep—or tower—back down to the plateau.
This side of the island didn’t have the handy path of the shoreward side. It was still rough enough to provide plenty of handholds. And it wasn’t nearly as high as the cliff she’d scaled on the way to the elf village.
Once she was on the shore Goldenrod walked up to Lord Badelaire. He was reeling in a fish with his rod.
“Beg pardon, my lord. May I borrow a fish for a moment?”
“Um, okay?” His concentration was still on the line.
“Thank you.”
Goldenrod took a fish from the bucket. She gripped it firmly. The fish flailed so hard she was amazed it hadn’t jumped out of the bucket.
A few precisely sung words left her hands empty.
“There. Do you want me to bring it back down here or send it somewhere up top?”
Badelaire had shuffled a few feet farther away. “Um, you can keep it, Your Excellency.”
“Thanks!”
The fish slime on her hands made it hard to keep a good grip on the way back up but after a few yards it was all gone.
Redinkle no longer wore her concerned expression. She was disgusted and angry. One hand covered an eye.
“See? That was a completely different spell.”
“That damn fish smacked me in the eye.”
The fish was flopping about in a crease in the rock a few yards from Goldenrod’s perch.
Redinkle lifted her hand to show a bright red mark where the fish had bounced into her.
“Oh. Sorry. I thought it would just lie there. Verbena could heal that right up, I bet.”
“She won’t. She’s saving all her juice for the fighters. Civilians have to be dying to get a heal.”
Which Goldenrod would know if she wasn’t in her tower all the time.
“What are you going to do with the fish?”
Goldenrod glanced down as the creature flipped over again. “I don’t know. Badelaire said I could keep it.”
“It’s not that big.”
Mages were still kept in reserve, so they only ate civilian rations instead of the larger portions going to the fighters. Pernach and Pinecone had offered to share but Goldenrod and Redinkle had refused. Which made the fish look very tasty.
Their belt knives were sufficient for gutting it. It was messy but neither woman cared. Redinkle heated the rock under it and sprayed flames across the top until it looked done.
They both burned their lips. They were just too hungry to wait for it to cool.
***
Downstream of the camp they saw bands of orcs. They were on top of the river bluff, following the evacuation trail.
“So much for our mission,” said Whippet.
“No, we did good,” said Newman firmly. “There’s not many there. I expect there’d be three or four times as many if we hadn’t diverted them.”
He hoped the orcs were still spreading out upstream, searching for prey going away from the river. If not—the horde would be late to the siege. Delayed reinforcements had decided more than one battle in his deployments.
The raft outpaced the orc bands. Some greeted the patrol with hostile war cries. None bothered climbing down the bluff to throw spears at them.
The farther downstream they went the faster the current flowed. As the jagged mountains reared up before them Newman watched for the lake on their left.
For all the worrying he did about the current carrying them over the waterfall the actual maneuver was anticlimactic. The port paddles stroked backwards until the raft pivoted ninety degrees. Then they all thrashed the water until they’d pushed into the stagnant water of the lake.
It was swampier than Newman and Joyeuse remembered. They’d only looked hard enough to find their way around.
Now what they’d thought was algae-covered water was a mix of dense floating mats, low trees, and hummocks built from dead piles of one or both. The setting sun sent long shadows through the tangled swamp.
Navigating through that in the dark was hopeless.
“Let’s spend the night on that island,” said Newman. “We’ll cross the rim in the morning.”
Despite the raft’s lack of maneuverability they put it ashore on the smooth green mound, right where they’d aimed for.
Instead of sliding into mud, the front two feet of the raft disappeared into the mound with a sickening squelch. A jello-like wave wobbled across the island. Then the wave wiggled back, making the raft shiver.
Pliers prodded the mound with his paddle and pronounced it “Plant goop.”
“Let’s camp someplace else,” said Deadeye.
Newman laughed. “You want to pull up to Orc Highway One or try to cross the river twice?”
“Well . . . shit.”
“You’ve been in the infantry long enough to sleep anywhere. It’s time you proved it.” Newman unfolded the sawblade from his multitool. He cut off a few of the broken branches at the stern of the raft.
Joyeuse asked, “May I borrow that when you’re done?”
“Sure.” He cut a few more then passed the tool on.
The spot he’d carved out was only big enough to let Newman lie on his side, half curled up. One arm was his pillow.
They’d all brought blankets but abandoned them after the first few days. Cold dirt was restful enough when you were as exhausted as the patrollers.
Joyeuse sawing away was enough of a lullabye for Newman.
***
“Excuse me, Lord Parchment?” asked Goldenrod.
“Yes, Your Excellency?” The grey haired man turned to face her. The crafters he’d been chatting with fell silent.
“Do you have any ink with you?”
He didn’t answer for a few moments. He swallowed a couple of times. “No, I’m sorry, I do not.”
The War Revealed (The Lost War Book 2) Page 17