Cleasby kept an eye on the Clamorgan while the convoy continued past. The woodsman seemed amused by the whole spectacle.
“That one is interesting.” Acosta had appeared next to Cleasby. He’d forgotten the Ordsman had a way of materializing out of nowhere and making you jump. “From how he stands, he is a very accomplished warrior. Only I cannot tell what his fighting style is. It is one I am unfamiliar with.”
“You can tell that by how someone carries themselves?”
“Of course. Can’t you? Perhaps I could learn from him.”
“By ‘learn,’ you mean fight to the death. You think he’s the one your Lady wants you here for?” Cleasby was joking. Mostly.
Acosta shrugged. “If you are concerned, I could go burn down his village.”
Cleasby realized he wasn’t sure if Acosta was serious or not, but it was better to be clear that he didn’t want any accidental massacres. “That won’t be necessary. Being rude isn’t a crime, and regardless of their beliefs, men are free to worship as they see fit in Cygnar.” Provided they didn’t deal with Infernals, gather into dangerous cults, or harm others, but that went without saying. “I’d think that of anyone here, you’d appreciate such a modern philosophy.”
Acosta gave a noncommittal grunt. For some reason, the Clamorgan kept touching the claws on his necklace as he watched the expedition members march past.
“What is he doing?” Acosta asked. “Is that some arcane trickery?”
“No.” Cleasby watched the Clamorgan’s fingers as they tapped out a rhythm on the claws. “He’s counting.” As the final wagon passed by, the Clamorgan’s fingers stopped moving, confirming Cleasby’s suspicion. “He counted our numbers.”
Acosta shouted to the woodsman. “What is your name?”
The Clamorgan took his time answering. “He who speaks for the mountain.”
“Fool. I did not ask your job! I asked your name. I would know the name of any man I might later have the pleasure of killing.”
“That is your custom, to know the name of those whose lives you would take?” The Clamorgan seemed to approve of the idea. “Then I would know his.”
He was looking directly at Cleasby.
It was part challenge, part threat, but Cleasby surprised himself by boldly announcing without hesitation, “Lieutenant Kelvan Cleasby, commanding officer of the 6th Platoon, 47th Storm Knights, and if you know what’s good for you, I’d better not see you again.”
“I am Andras Caradoc, but do not worry.” The Clamorgan gave a savage grin as he stepped back into the forest. “You will never see me coming.” Within seconds, he had disappeared from view, as if he’d been a ghost. Acosta smirked.
“It appears you have made a new friend, Cleasby. That did not go as expected. I must tell you, if you continue to steal my thunder, I will no longer be able to travel with you.”
The others had been hidden, waiting for Caradoc to return. The Cygnar never spotted them. Despite lurking only a whisper away in the forest that had swallowed them, the soldiers’ eyes were too blind and their ears were too deaf to notice the others. That was because the others were no longer real people. That was what happened when you distanced yourself from the world.
“They are marching to the sacred place,” Andras Caradoc announced to his people.
One by one the others appeared until a dozen of his tribe converged on him. Ivor Haul leapt down from where he’d been perched high in a tree. His sister, Betrys, appeared a moment later. The Hauls were as determined as Caradoc was. They would not rest as long as outsiders treaded in the sacred place.
“Tonight?”
“Tonight,” Caradoc agreed. “They’re too stupid to turn back. They’ll die like the others. Eventually enough of them will disappear to make the ones back in their cities give up and leave us alone.”
“The Cygnar do not ever give up.” Lefan Guto was the oldest among them, but he was not their leader. Caradoc had proven himself the strongest, so their ways said that he was to lead; however, Guto was the elder, so it was his place to advise. “Questions, always with questions in their heads. The Cygnar are like dogs that latch on and clamp down with their jaws.”
“They’re puppies,” Ivor spat. “Their leader looks like a child.”
“No,” Caradoc said. “That blue soldier is more than he appears. There are over fifty, but I only saw a few real killers among them. The rest are irrelevant. He may look weak, but the killers all look to him. He has earned their respect somehow.”
“What of their abominable machine?” the ever-cautious Guto asked. He pulled back the furs covering one shoulder, displaying the mass of scars from where he’d once been struck by a warjack.
“Their machine is a clumsy, metal copy of a true beast. It sleeps while they travel. We kill them before it has time to wake up, and then we’ll leave it there to rust.”
It was sundown at the end of their second day’s march when Corporal Pangborn walked up next to Cleasby and warned him, “I think we’re being watched.”
Pangborn was acting nonchalant, so Cleasby tried not to make it too obvious as he checked their surroundings. They should have reached their destination already, but they’d had to stop earlier in the day to clear a rockslide. Normally, they would have already made camp for the night, but according to the map, they were so close to the dig site that the professor had declared they needed to push on the rest of the way, even if it meant an hour or so of marching by lantern light.
Cleasby didn’t see anything suspicious. The road had turned into a rocky trail; it was much steeper and rougher going than before. And the fat evergreens were numerous enough to conceal an army in their shadows.
“Where?”
“Don’t know, lieutenant. Just a feeling, like there’s eyes on us. You hear that?”
Cleasby couldn’t hear anything over the rhythmic creak of the wagon wheels, but being caught in a few explosions during the war hadn’t done any favors to his hearing. The workers had stopped their marching songs because they were climbing high enough that everyone was short of breath. They thought it was a bad hike, but none of them were wearing fifty pounds of metal and insulation as the Storm Knights were. Luckily, heavy infantry trained for such activity. While they’d complain the whole time, his men could even run the rest of the way if they had to.
“What am I listening for?”
“It’s too quiet,” Pangborn said. “Something’s scared the animals. At dusk, something is usually moving. But no birds, no insects even. Everything’s still.”
He’d not noticed that. Cleasby wasn’t enough of a woodsman to know how much noise the local fauna should be making, but the trees and brush were thick, and there were rock formations and ledges above them on both sides. It would be a good place for an ambush, but they weren’t close enough to any unfriendly border for it to be the military of another kingdom, and they were too far off well-traveled paths for it to be bandits.
“What do you think it is?”
“Don’t know, sir. Could be bogrin or mountain trollkin, maybe.”
“We passed that village this morning.” He sincerely hoped it wasn’t the creepy fellow, Caradoc, following them. Cleasby tried to understand other’s viewpoints, and to the clannish Clamorgan anyone from the modern world was seen as a dangerous outsider. Yet Caradoc had been so damned insolent about it. “Maybe some of their hunters are watching us?”
“I don’t think it’s a person,” Pangborn said. “There’s something else out here with us.”
Cleasby still couldn’t see anything, but Pangborn was a country boy who’d grown up stalking game. If he thought there was some sort of beast nearby, then there probably was. Among the possible catalog of things that might be stalking them, Cleasby thought he’d recognize most of them, though he had only seen drawings of dire trolls, but the very idea of one of the giant carnivores blundering across their convoy made him apprehensive. “I trust your gut. How long would it take to get Headhunter moving?”
“
From the wagon and cold, a few minutes to move and a bit longer to reach full power.”
“Charge your storm thrower and spread the word down the line. When you get to Headhunter, get him under steam. It’s not so far, he can walk the rest of the way and not use too much of our coal supply. I’ll go forward.” The big man immediately did as he was told. As Pangborn was lumbering off, Cleasby warned him. “Tell them not to cause a stir. If something intends us harm, I want it surprised that we’re ready.”
Cleasby increased his own pace but was careful not to turn it into a run. The heavily laden wagons were slow over this terrain, so it wasn’t too hard to get to the front of the column. The Storm Knights were spread out across the convoy, and as he passed each one, it only took a few hand signals to let his men know to prepare for trouble. You could strike someone down with an unpowered storm glaive easily enough, but when the devices had time to charge up with electricity, they were far more destructive. He twisted the haft of his own glaive, and the storm chamber began to hum with arcane energy.
Many of the workers were carrying firearms—an understandable precaution in the Wyrmwall—but even the ones who didn’t had access to picks, hammers, axes, or shovels to defend themselves with. It would take a really foolish—or hungry—beast to attack a group this big.
The convoy raised a great deal of dust, enough to choke those at the rear, so naturally, the professor was riding in the back of the lead wagon. Rank had its privileges. He saw Cleasby approaching. “Something wrong, lieutenant?”
“I’m not certain. Remain calm.”
Pickett was on the bench next to the driver. He gave Cleasby a nod of greeting, but his expression changed when he saw the serious look on Cleasby’s face.
“Something’s watching us. Don’t appear alarmed, but tell your laborers to prepare for trouble.”
“What’s—”
“I don’t know yet. Just do as I say,” Cleasby commanded as he kept moving.
Thornbury and Younger were on point. Along with Clemency Horner, the two Storm Knights were ranging a hundred yards ahead of the rest of the convoy. Horner was checking for bad spots in the trail that could harm their wagons. This was not the kind of trail you wanted to run an ox team up after dark, but they’d planned to reach the dig site an hour ago. Yet that rockslide earlier had blocked a narrow part of the trail, causing a delay while the workers had to move enough debris out of their way for the wagons to pass. Otherwise, they’d have been in camp by now.
Now that Pangborn had stirred his concerns, Cleasby had to consider the rockslide in a new light. But what if it hadn’t been an accident? What if somebody had intentionally delayed the expedition? What if someone wanted them caught out here in the dark, strung out in an indefensible line?
Cleasby saw that his Storm Knights had stopped and were looking at something ahead of them. As he got closer, he heard Horner cursing. A large tree had fallen across the trail. It was too big to lift and would need to be sawed into pieces. Cleasby surveyed the terrain. Conveniently, the tree had fallen in a spot where the ground was too steep for the wagons to go around, just as had been the case with the rockslide. It would be fully dark by the time they cleared the trail.
It was the perfect set up for an ambush.
“Thorny! Younger! Get back here!” Cleasby shouted. Then he turned back toward the lead wagon and began waving his arms at Pickett. “Draw the wagons together and prepare to defend.” Credit to his old friend, Pickett immediately repeated the command. It went down the line. Workers and scholars scrambled about as Storm Knights shouted directions at them.
Something moved in the bushes less than ten feet away.
Cleasby spun toward the noise. He couldn’t see what it was, but a branch was still shaking. He lifted his storm glaive. Thornbury, Younger, and Horner were running to join him.
“Movement to the left,” Cleasby warned. A bit farther up the slope, a branch snapped. Cleasby shifted his storm glaive, now shining with a crackling blue glow, and searched for a target. Where are you?
“Status?” Thorny asked.
“Don’t know yet. Can you tell if that tree was cut down?”
Horner shook her head. “It was dead. It looks like it was blown down.” And then she must have realized what he was thinking. “But it could have been pushed.”
“Pushed?” Younger said. “That tree’s as big around as Headhunter. Whoever could push it over would have to be really strong.”
“Or there are several of them. Move back to the wagons,” Cleasby told them. “I’ll cover you.” He walked backward, keeping his glaive pointed in the vague direction he suspected held something suspicious.
They made it back without further incident. The wagons were in more of a clump than a circle, but it was far more defensible than being spread out in a line. Fortunately, he’d halted them in a relatively flat spot. If they’d stopped at the fallen tree, they’d have been in a depression, giving any potential aggressors elevation. Rains was shouting at the workers to get the oxen unhitched and securely tied. Livestock had a tendency to bolt and run when a galvanic weapon was touched off anywhere near them.
Within a few seconds of surveying the scene, Cleasby had a fairly good idea who among the expedition had a clue and who would be utterly useless if anything bad happened. Some of the workers had their weapons ready and were hunkering down behind something solid. They were probably veterans or were at least familiar with danger. The same could be said for a couple of the university staff members. Horner certainly appeared to be competent with her scattergun, and Pickett had drawn his new repeater, but most of the others were wandering around, confused about why they’d suddenly stopped. A few of the workers were even having a laugh. They’d not seen anything more dangerous than a squirrel for miles and didn’t know why the Storm Knights were making such a fuss. In truth, neither did the Storm Knights, but they at least knew to trust Cleasby’s instincts.
“Anyone see anything?”
“Nothing yet,” Rains said.
The sun had sunk beneath the mountain; daylight was fading fast. “Where’s my warjack?”
Pangborn was up on the wagon, twisting valves on Headhunter’s back. Its eye slots were glowing yellow, and a cloud of black coal smoke slowly drifted from its twin stacks. The big man slammed the hatch and picked up his storm thrower. “He’s almost ready.”
The professor had climbed down from his wagon. “What’s the meaning of this, lieutenant?”
“I think we’re about to be attacked.”
“By whom?”
“If I knew that, your Lordship, I’d be shooting at them.” Cleasby scowled. A whole army could sneak up on the expedition with all the noise they were making. The chatter from the civilians was annoying him. “Everyone, quiet down!”
When nobody listened, Rains bellowed, “Shut your stupid mouths!” That got their attention. Nobody could yell quite as well as a non-commissioned officer. Of course, Cleasby knew, whatever was stalking them had heard it, too. Still, he could only work with what he had.
“If you know how to fight, grab a weapon,” he shouted. “If you don’t know how to fight, get under the wagons and hide. I want eyes in every direction. If you see something, call out. Nobody moves past the wagons.” The last thing he wanted was some overeager chap to blunder out past the perimeter and get himself shot or electrocuted in the process. “It feels like something’s out there. It could be waiting for darkness. Stay put, no matter what you see.”
He must have sounded sincere because the attitude of the expedition rapidly changed. This was no longer fun and games. Good. Cleasby didn’t think they had much time. Whoever or whatever was watching them certainly knew by now that they’d lost the element of surprise. Depending on the enemy’s relative strength, they would either fall back or attack anyway.
Rains spoke to Cleasby quietly enough so the others couldn’t hear. “In a few minutes, we’re not going to be able to see a damned thing. I don’t think they’ll strike right away—
we’re too fired up. If they’re coming, they’ll wait until we’ve decided it was a false alarm, and then they’ll swarm us while we sleep.”
As usual, Rains’ assessment was sound. Assuming there actually was a threat and not just a figment of his imagination, that’s how Cleasby would have done it. There wouldn’t be much light from the moons this deep in the trees, and it would be hard to keep watch in the pitch black. Lighting fires near the wagons would only ruin their night vision and make them better targets. “Send men to hang lanterns. Make a circle fifty paces out. I want to make anything coming at us have to cross the light.” Before he was even finished speaking, Rains was already signaling Langston and Bevy to do so. Cleasby added, “Younger, cover them. If anything comes near them, blast it.”
“Yes, sir!” The newest Malcontent snapped to and rushed to that side, his charged storm glaive buzzing with arcane energy.
The Storm Knights pulled lanterns from their pegs on the sides of the wagon, went into the tree line, and started tossing ropes over branches. Within a few minutes, it was so dark his men disappeared if they strayed far from the reach of their lanterns and glowing glaives. It became dark supernaturally quickly in the mountains.
The ogrun in charge of the laborers approached Cleasby. He wasn’t huge by ogrun standards, but he was probably still four hundred pounds of muscle and nearly two feet taller than Cleasby—and Cleasby was by no means a short man. “We can start hanging lanterns on that side. It’ll go faster.”
“Appreciate it, friend.”
“The name is Raus.” The ogrun put two huge sausage fingers to his lips and whistled. It was nearly as loud as the steam whistle on the train they’d rode in on. Several laborers ran up, and Raus began giving them instructions. “See what those soldiers are doing? Do the same thing on that side of the trail. Hang ’em and get back, quick. Move!” Three of the laborers gathered up lanterns and rope, and the group ran into the trees.
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