by Ari Marmell
“I need to have a word with Gaust about doing that,” Benwynne hissed, once her heart stopped beating at quite the speed of a cycling chain gun. “He—”
She cut off yet again as cracks formed in the packed snow, forming another one-word message.
Flares.
It could have meant half a dozen things, but Benwynne chose to assume that the gunmage wouldn’t have sent a warning save for the worst.
“Master Sergeant, I want the ’jacks up the second you think they can handle it. Corporal, Private, we’re on high alert moving forward. Scouts to rear and both flanks, trenchers and rifles both.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Markham admitted.
“If Gaust spotted flares like the ones we saw earlier,” Roland explained grimly, “it means either the Reds have somehow caught up with us—or there’s another unit waiting ahead.”
***
In the end, their extra wariness and preparation did little good.
They encountered no one on their march toward the woodland; no signs of life at all, in fact, save the occasional small burrow in the snow, the flapping dive of a winter owl ready to feast on whatever made those burrows, and the rapidly fading tracks of Atherton’s unit. The moan of the wind, and the answering whisper of the trees, were the evening’s only voices.
The gunmage and his commandos awaited them at the forest’s edge, smoothly falling into place at the vanguard of the formation. Other than to confirm Benwynne’s interpretation of Atherton’s message—he had, indeed, spotted crimson flashes in the clouds to the north—conversation remained as sparse in the woods as it had been on the plain.
Roughly a mile into the brush, Benwynne called a halt for the night. They could risk no fire, she’d decided, but at least the trees dramatically cut down on the gusts, and the soldiers could glean some warmth from the slowly cooling warjacks. Trenchers and commandos spread out to stand watch, long-gunners found perches in nearby boles, and at least a fifth of the squad remained awake at all times, watching in rotating shifts.
They remained tensely alert, twitching at every shifting branch, starting at every birdcall. And still nothing untoward befell them, no enemy appeared.
Dawn was little more than an abstract notion, a feeble lightening of the drab gray sky visible between the overlapping conifers. Soldiers rose from ragged sleep to a joyless breakfast of cold rations, sullenly broke camp to face another day of frigid shuffling. Wolfhound and Shepherd manhandled (’jackhandled?) the wagons around the trees, sometimes forced dozens of yards out of the way before they could find an opening large enough to accommodate them; and with each such delay, everyone else’s shoulders slumped that little bit further.
They would never complain, never balk, the men and women of Cygnar’s armies, but Benwynne knew their spirits were low, tugging at their heels as stubbornly as had the deep snows back in the lowlands.
The commandos ranged ahead, reported back; ranged ahead, reported back; and detected no sign of danger.
Not until it was too late to matter.
The first shots rang out, so close together that each sounded like an echo of the last. Hartswood, Atherton’s second and most experienced of the commandos, died between words as he spoke to Corporal Cadmoore, his head turning to grit and fine mist. Two mechaniks dropped—only the fact that he’d been twisting back for a glance at the ’jacks saved Wendell from making it three—alongside a trio of trenchers. Even Wolfhound staggered, a well-placed bullet slipping between the armored plates on its leg to mangle portions of the knee joint.
It was a remarkable display of precision fire, nigh inhuman in the dark and cramped confines of the woods, and that alone was enough to tell Benwynne who they faced. Even as she dove for a fallen log, screaming “Cover!” at the top of her lungs, her mind was already shuffling through half a dozen strategies, not for attack but escape.
Widowmakers.
Although relatively few in number, the Khadoran sniper corps was among the most dangerous forces on the battlefield. Through endless training and brutal, methodical cruelties, they were shaped into killing machines, only slightly more human than the warjacks themselves. Only the best of the best, the absolute elite of Cygnar’s long-gunners, could match their skill with the rifle.
And even had they not been lurking in ambush, had squad five been in a position to give as accurately as they got, the truth could not be denied: Markham and the other long-gunners in the squad were good, damn good—but almost surely not that good.
Already several of them were indeed, returning fire, as were many of the trenchers and Atherton himself. The Widowmakers had hidden themselves well, though, spread out amongst the branches and cloaked in shadow. Cygnaran bullets tore through leaves and branches, and possibly the occasional small mammal, but Benwynne had no doubt they’d missed all their targets. Maybe all but one, if blind luck was with them.
Her pessimism was confirmed when the distant rifles barked once more, and four more of her people—her people!—crumpled.
“Gaust!”
He was already on it. If the gunmage still couldn’t pinpoint the shooters, not even enough for his runebullets to seek them out, at least he’d narrowed down the possibilities. The pepperbox barrels surged and crackled, their ensorcelled glow painting the nearby trees a spectral blue. Bullets flew in pairs, carving a crescent into the forest between the squad and the Widowmakers, and where they struck, entire trunks splintered. In a matter of seconds, a veritable wall of timber and fallen foliage shielded the squad from further attack.
Briefly.
“Move out, southeast!” Benwynne called, her orders swiftly repeated up and down the formation. “Bodies in Wolfhound’s cart!” Cold as it sounded, it was all she could do for them at the moment. “Cadmoore, get a chain gun crew riding in Shepherd’s. I want anyone following us to have to climb through a wall of bullets. Do try to make sure they don’t ignite the coal, yeah? Atherton, send your men ahead, but you’re with the rear guard; anything gets through the barrage, put holes in it until it goes away.
“Everyone else, eyes and barrels! Something moves, don’t wait to see what it is. Go!”
If their pace had frustrated Benwynne earlier, it was downright torturous now; she felt like she’d seen molasses run downhill faster than the close-packed trees and the fuel-packed wagons would permit them to go. Fallen twigs and scattered leaves crunched beneath dozens of soles, the cracks and crinkles combining into the muted roar of a slowed, phantasmal fire.
It seemed that every shot the enemy fired scored a hit, but the shots were, at least, sporadic. Even Widowmakers couldn’t shoot through so much foliage with any real hope of accuracy, and since any sign of movement was answered with a burst from Cadmoore’s trenchers, they dared not find themselves too unobstructed a line of fire.
At least the squad was still partly on-course, the sergeant mused. Get far enough southeast, maybe they could circle around the enemy and resume their northeastern track . . .
Ledeson, the dwarf-short member of Gaust’s commandos, materialized at her side like a half-remembered dream. And if his eyes were slightly more raw than the weather alone could explain, well, it didn’t show in his posture or demeanor.
“Forest thins substantially ahead, Sergeant. Too misty to tell if it’s just a large clearing or the actual tree line. Either way, we should be able to put on some speed.”
And lose all our cover, too. Still, it might be the better option; Gaust and Shepherd could cover their flight pretty well, at least for a while . . .
Flight. This was hardly squad five’s first withdrawal, and it likely wouldn’t be their last, but still it tasted of arsenic and charcoal on her tongue. She’d lost soldiers today, not in any meaningful battle, not to an overwhelming force, but to a lurking enemy they couldn’t even see. Just a small contingent of the Khadoran advance, scouting well ahead of the creeping front.
A part of her wanted to burn the whole bloody forest down, leaving a swathe of scorched woodland and
charred Widowmakers behind, and to hell with collateral damage.
She did nothing of the sort, of course; but Morrow knew, her heart thudded and her jaw trembled with the urge to give the order.
The blurry, watercolor horizon shifted from black with gray smudges to gray with black smudges; as Ledeson had reported, the trees were thinning, and dramatically at that. No way was this a clearing; they had, indeed, reached the border of this particular sea of greenery.
Again Benwynne barked orders, this time for the company to follow the tree line north-northeast. It was, at least temporarily, the best of both options: They could move faster here than they could in the deep woods, but the boles stood nearby should they need to take cover. If she had to decide to go one way or the other further on, both options were readily at hand.
It was after roughly half a mile of such travel that Benwynne discovered she’d been outmaneuvered.
She’d truly thought it the best option. North or northwest took them into the teeth of the Widowmakers. West and south were both the absolute wrong direction for their objective. Eastward had been the logical choice.
Unfortunately, when the squad first cut east from the river, the Khadorans must have figured out that Leryn or the city of Rhydden were their most likely destinations—which meant they knew that the Cygnarans would keep moving east.
The squad had emerged from the woods’ eastern edge—and now, mere moments later, found the enemy ready and waiting to meet them.
They poured from the trees and rose from the slush, Winter Guard soldiers in crimson and gray. Some fired bulky rifles, forcing the Cygnarans to duck and cover, while the rest charged, closing so they could bring wide-barreled, flesh-and-steel-shredding blunderbusses to bear.
Most of Benwynne’s soldiers darted left, taking cover behind whatever nearby boles offered themselves. The commandos vanished; the chain gunners, having no better option and hoping to end the battle quickly, dropped to their bellies and opened fire. Atherton’s bullets traced lines overhead, landing like cannonballs, battering the enemy with debris, blinding them with churning snow and soil.
It was a tight spot, but the squad had dealt with worse. Paradoxically, the attack had actually given Benwynne real hope for the first time in hours. If all they had to do was punch through a contingent of Winter Guard . . .
From within the woods echoed the deadly crack of the Widowmakers’ rifles.
“Look on the bright side,” Atherton told her as he appeared from nowhere, dropping flat beside her. “If they were Kossite rangers, we probably wouldn’t have made it out of the forest at all.”
“Oh, thank you so much. Get into those trees and find those bloody snipers!”
As quickly as he’d arrived, the gunmage was gone—presumably alongside his commandos, though Benwynne hadn’t seen any of them in a couple of minutes.
“Chain gun crews, mind your fields! Friendly coming through!” She knew they’d never hear her over the chatter of their weapons, but the order would swiftly pass from soldier to soldier.
Then a last pair of commands—and these, she knew, would be heard.
Wolfhound’s cannon thundered, the powerful shell punching through the gathered Winter Guard. Only a handful died, but the lot of them scattered, diving away from the incoming artillery.
For a few seconds, then, their barrage ceased.
Shepherd pounded through the lines, smoke flowing from its stack, smaller clouds of steam where its furnace-heated armor melted the accumulated frost. Alerted by Benwynne’s warning, the chain guns fell silent as the warjack tromped past, then spoke in far more controlled bursts, carefully aimed to either side.
Once past the forward rank, Shepherd slowed. Dropping into as low a crouch as its chassis allowed, shield raised before its face and torso, it crept toward the enemy. Atop that shield, using it as a stand, the ’jack balanced the body of the massive chain gun that was its own right arm.
Bullets flew in veritable waves, tearing Khadorans apart, fertilizing the soil for seasons to come. And though the occasional shot caught Shepherd in an arm or leg, staggering it, most impacted harmlessly on its massive slab of a shield.
Even over the chaos, Benwynne heard Wolfhound’s breach snapping shut, its cannon reloaded and ready to fire. She saw blue flashes amidst the trees, gleaming off snow and frost-coated bark, and knew that Widowmakers were starting to die. Again, she began to think that, just maybe, her squad might win through with a minimum of further losses.
And again, the gods declared that she was wrong.
It was a declaration that came with a literal tremor of the earth. Not substantial; no earthquake, this, no nearby detonation. Just enough for everyone to feel it, shaking bones, rattling teeth. Again it came, and then again, each time just that slightest bit heavier. Snow shook from leaves; coal sifted and tumbled down the carefully heaped piles in the wagons. Neither side ceased firing, yet Benwynne could have sworn that the guns grew quieter, muffled, more distant.
Perhaps because she knew from past experience, even before it appeared, what she was about to see.
It was, initially, little more than a solid block of deepest red, smeared and distorted by the dancing flurries. Smoke poured from its back like a volcanic eruption, so thick it appeared a trembling column, supporting the unseen sky. The roaring of pistons and the screaming of gears were an out-of-tune orchestra that would have sounded fully at home in a Cryxian torture chamber.
Again the earth shook, and now she could see the massive legs, ready to crush the whole world beneath its tread; the brutal spike that all but hid the grillwork face, and the gaping barrels on each shoulder; shield the size of a rowboat, lance as long as a railroad car.
A full yard taller than Shepherd and five times as heavy, it was an unbelievable sight, a manmade mountain of steel and blades and searing fire.
Benwynne couldn’t imagine what a ’jack like this was doing so far from the front, in the midst of a region where no equivalent enemy could possibly appear. Perhaps Khador had stationed such units throughout Llael, in case Cygnar tried to sneak forces through. Perhaps they were hunting something or someone specific. Hell, perhaps they’d known the squad—or at least someone—was coming, though the sergeant could only begin to guess how. She didn’t know, probably never would.
What she knew was that her people, and her two light warjacks, could never stand successfully against it.
She opened her mouth, drawing breath to shout orders, and two of the tubes bristling from the monster’s shoulders flashed.
“Incoming!”
Again the soldiers scattered, again Benwynne threw herself to the snow, seeking what flimsy safety she could find. Fetching up against a drift which was, in turn, piled against a mass of dead brush, she landed on her shoulder—and so happened to be looking the right way to watch one of her best officers, and best friends, die.
It happened so slowly, with that bizarre combination of fuzziness and almost obscene clarity normally reserved for uncomfortable dreams. She saw the grenade plunge to earth, spin and skip over the ground, leaving a furrow in the carpet of slush and leaves. She saw it come to rest beside a crew of trenchers, whose mad scrambling couldn’t begin to carry them to safety in time.
She saw Corporal Roland Cadmoore, with one final glance at his men who were about to die, dive onto the grenade and start to curl his body around it . . .
And then a quick flash, a geyser of steam and smoke and blood.
The soldiers who should have died stared for long, horrified heartbeats. Then, voice joined in a singular cry, they spun their weapons toward the Khadoran warjack and opened fire. It was all but useless, a mere gesture of defiance, using small arms and a single chain gun against that wall of armor. They blasted away all the same, the act itself of greater importance than any result.
The ’jack’s second grenade had landed some dozen yards further along the line, wiping out a second chain gun crew who hadn’t been so fortunate—if “fortunate” was the proper term—a
s the first. Perhaps if they’d had time to dig in—or had the fury of the blast not suggested that these grenades were rather more potent than standard armament—the crew might have had a chance.
But not as it was.
The remaining trenchers, and Shepherd itself, turned their attentions to this newest threat, allowing the torn and battered Winter Guard to withdraw, melting into the forest whence they’d come.
The monstrosity advanced, each footstep the stomp of an angry god, and the second pair of grenade launchers coughed, followed immediately by the third.
Benwynne swore that the screams were louder than the detonations.
Sparks flew from the armored monstrosity as Markham’s long-gunners joined in—to little effect, for the most part, though occasionally a particularly well aimed shot found a gap and dealt a modicum of actual damage. Ricochets and fragments from carbines and chain guns formed an aura of shrapnel around the thing as it approached, a buzzing swarm of insects far more dangerous to the squad’s own people than the warjack itself. So far, it hadn’t even bothered raising its shield.
Wolfhound stepped from the mass of scattered soldiers and fired. The massive shell punched into the metal mountain like a shooting star, leaving a tunnel of shredded armor in its wake. Again it fired, and again, each time peeling aside layers of reinforced steel. For the first time, the enemy apparatus staggered. A dozen ragged voices cheered as smoke began to drift from the wound.
Those cheered died as abruptly as they’d begun when the thing lunged forward, sweeping its lance in a horizontal arc, shattering Cygnaran bodies and flinging them carelessly aside.
Cannon empty, Wolfhound raised its massive axe and charged the larger ’jack. Mere feet beyond the reach of the thing’s lance, however, the Hunter swerved, circling. Unable to match Wolfhound’s speed, it lumbered in a tight circle, struggling to keep either lance or shield interposed.
“Shepherd!”
The other ’jack was closing even before Benwynne’s command. Not quite so steady as its counterpart on the yielding terrain, still it was swifter than the Khadoran giant. Circling counter to Wolfhound’s arc, Shepherd unleashed short bursts from its chain gun, pelting the enemy, slowly chipping away at its defenses.