“You need to get back to the other imagers,” declared Alastar, “and I need to see the marshal immediately. Tell Maitre Cyran that we may need a great deal of pepper far sooner than anticipated.”
“Yes, sir.” Arion turned his mount toward the river.
As Alastar rode toward the command tent, he still wondered why a cart pushed by oxen was moving into position between two of the three masses of attackers. It has to have something to do with the attack. He just couldn’t figure out what, although he had no doubt it would become blindingly obvious at the most inopportune time.
When he reached the command tent, he handed the gelding’s reins to one of the troopers standing guard and hurried inside. Maurek and Wilkorn immediately turned.
“I don’t know if this is going to happen,” said Alastar, “but the rebels are forming up for an all-out attack. That’s not as suicidal as it seems.…” he explained quickly.
“What can your imagers do?” demanded Maurek.
“I don’t know any way of breaking a concealment. We can hamper those being hidden by it, but not until they get closer to our lines, or close enough that we can hear them or determine roughly where they are.”
“Why not earlier?” asked Maurek.
“It wouldn’t do much good, and it would tire the imagers. First, we can’t see where they are, and we don’t have enough imagers to image pepper everywhere. Even if we were fortunate enough to hit some of them, they can move out of the spray, and we wouldn’t know exactly where they were … not until they’re almost on top of the troopers. Once their troopers reach our lines, our men would be inside the concealment as well, and able to see all of the attackers. If the rebels keep the concealment just short of our lines, then their men won’t be able to see if they were supported or left out there all alone. Maintaining such a large concealment for a long time takes great effort. So they might drop it just before their leading troopers reached our lines.”
“Their columns are tight right now,” said Maurek.
“If they go with a concealment, once it’s in place, they’ll likely move to a different location or formation. It might be useful to fire at where the column was immediately after their troopers vanish. That’s if they’re in range. You might get some of them that way, while they’re still close together.”
“What if they don’t use a concealment?” asked Wilkorn.
“Then when they get closer we’ll begin by blanketing them with pepper mist … and we’ll concentrate on dealing with groups or attackers that seem to be giving your troopers trouble. That won’t change from what we discussed before. What I wanted you to know was that the attackers might seem to disappear while they were actually still moving forward to attack.”
“Pass that to your officers immediately,” Wilkorn said to Maurek.
“I’m on my way.”
“So am I,” added Alastar.
Alastar hadn’t even ridden all the way back to the river road, east of which the imagers were mustered, when the two columns of attackers directly west of the defenders vanished from sight. The column to the south, while drawn up and appearing ready to move, remained visible, stationary, and out of accurate rifle range, and just dispersed enough that cannon wouldn’t be that effective.
Now what are you going to do?
Cyran and Akoryt hurried toward him as he reined up.
“They’ve thrown a concealment over the forces moving toward us from the west. I’m guessing they’ll hold it until their troopers are almost on top of ours. The only thing I can think of is to move the imagers forward, also under a concealment, and wait for their troopers to show up. If we space the imagers out, and tell each to deal only with attackers in front of them, that would keep them from targeting the same rebel troopers. Mostly anyway.” When neither responded immediately, Alastar asked, “Any other ideas?”
The two looked at each other.
“No, sir,” Akoryt finally said.
“I knew Bettaur was strong, but…” Cyran shook his head.
“It’s actually a good way of using only a few imagers,” Alastar pointed out. Concealments are easier than shields…” He broke off. “Of course!”
“Of course what?” Cyran didn’t hide his puzzlement.
“I saw a wagon being pushed by a team of oxen. I’d wager that the front of the wagon is armored, and that Bettaur and Ashkyr are inside. The wagon will move with the troopers, and the two imagers won’t have to worry about shields—just about maintaining the concealment.”
“They couldn’t have thought that up on the spur of the moment,” Cyran pointed out, in his always practical manner. “That would take a special yoke and harness arrangement.”
“None of this revolt has been planned as a spur-of-the-moment uprising, no matter how much it seems that way. That includes all the petitions. This has been going on for years. The drought and then the late rains just made it seem that way.” Alastar shook his head. “We need to mount up everyone and space them up behind the revetments, fairly far back, because they won’t be able to do much until they can see the attackers. We can talk about how it all happened later.” If we manage to survive this disaster.
Despite Alastar’s concerns and worries, it still took almost half a quint before he had the other twelve imagers mounted and in position some sixty yards back from the second line of trenched earthworks, with Cyran positioned a third of the way in from the south end of the line, while he had taken a position a third of the way in from the northern end of the imagers. Each imager was separated from the next by ten yards, and, in addition to personal shields, each held a screen concealment, a yard or so in front of his or her mount, which allowed Alastar and Cyran to see them all.
When Alastar looked out to the west, he shivered at the seeming unreality before him, an expanse of grass and harvested fields that appeared empty, but over which marched a good thousand men, if not more, unseen. He could still see about half the number of rebel troopers as before, but all those who remained unconcealed were mounted, while those he couldn’t see, he realized from his much earlier observations, were foot troopers. Again, that made sense, allowing the men on foot to advance at a measured pace without too much fear of being shot, while saving the faster-moving mounted troopers for action when or if the concealment collapsed.
Abruptly, at the sound of a horn, rifle shots rang out from in front of the defenders’ earthworks. The sound suggested to Alastar that the attackers were still perhaps twenty yards or more back from the lower revetments.
“Imagers! Twenty yards beyond the revetments! Red pepper fog!”
Alastar watched, but saw nothing. Even though he’d expected that, it was still slightly unnerving. At the very least, he hoped, the pepper should make it harder for the attackers to see and to aim accurately … and, as if to validate that thought, the volume of shots slackened somewhat.
Then troopers wearing the black and crimson armbands and carrying rifles with knives fastened to them—bayonets—appeared, running toward the revetments. Immediately the defenders opened fire. Attackers began to drop, initially almost as they appeared, but there were more attackers appearing than being shot.
Alastar had ordered the imagers to hold off using wooden darts except in places where it appeared the attackers would overwhelm the second line of revetments. But it was still hard to watch when an attacker bayoneted a defender who was overcome by more attackers than he could shoot at.
The muted thunder of hoofbeats behind the imagers grew as a company of mounted troopers rode forward and past the imagers and down over the low revetments and into the mass of attackers, forcing many of them back or killing them outright.
At least a squad of the riders kept going, cutting through the foot with their sabers … and then disappearing. Two or three riders, or maybe it might have been more, kept coming in and out of sight as they wheeled their mounts to deal with attackers on the other side of the concealment and unseen by Alastar.
One rider went down, clearly
shot by an attacker inside the concealment, and then another. Even so, the combination of troopers firing from behind the low revetments and the mounted company seemed to have blunted the attack.
A set of horn doublets came from the west, and the remaining attackers turned and sprinted back into the cover of the concealment. Five, then another five mounted troopers rode uphill out of the concealment, and joined the rest of the company in withdrawing.
A last rider, moving to join them, shouted, “Wagon-turtle! There’s a wagon-turtle!” Then he slumped forward in the saddle, shot from behind.
A wagon-turtle? Alastar had no idea what that was, unless it referred to the wagon he’d seen earlier and the fact that it was armored somehow, although he only recalled seeing armor on the front of the wagon.
In what seemed like moments, there was no sign of any attackers, except for the fallen, and there looked to be at least a hundred. Alastar surveyed the double line of revetments, going from the north all the way to those on the south that ran all the way up to the river road, but there were no attackers.
Without any warning, and no horn signals, a massive wave of attackers appeared, charging out of the concealment toward the revetments. Then a company of mounted rebels charged from out of nowhere, heading toward the northeast end of the defenders’ lines, clearly aiming to open a passage to the river road … and L’Excelsis. They weren’t within a hundred yards when Fifth Company appeared in force, slamming into the rebels, halting the attack, and turning the northern end of the battlefield into a confused mass of men, mounts, and blades.
Alastar couldn’t afford to watch the mounted conflict, especially since the troopers manning the revetments were clearly outnumbered.
“Imagers! Use your darts! Now!”
Attackers began to fall, one after the other, but the survivors still pressed forward, if slowly. Then another company of foot charged past the imagers, sabers in hand, and began to cut into the advance, pushing the attackers back.
“Imagers! Hold your fire!” Having no doubts that the second wave of attackers was far from the last, Alastar wanted to save the imagers as much as possible. While still watching the melee less than fifty yards away, he took out his water bottle and took a long swallow … and then a second.
Another set of horn doublet echoed across the battlefield, and in moments, the surviving attackers had retreated back into the concealment. Alastar glanced back to the north where the remaining attacking horsemen were breaking off the fight.
He caught a glimpse of Julyan, the youngest of the maitres in the imager force, looking westward, seemingly trying to see past the conflict and into the concealment that hid all too many of the attackers. Behind Julyan and spaced midway between him and Dylert was Cyran, looking as calm and self-possessed as he always did.
Perhaps not the most far-seeing senior imager, but certainly solid. Definitely solid, if slightly prone to wanting to please too much.
At that moment, a very small spear, actually a projectile resembling an ancient crossbow quarrel, slammed into the chest of a trooper who had turned to withdraw with the rest of Fifth Company.
A quarrel? Alastar froze for a moment. A frigging quarrel? That meant at least some imagers from Westisle had thrown in with the rebels, most likely Voltyrn and those he could convince. Alastar could only hope it wasn’t the entire Westisle Collegium. If you’d named him Maitre there … Alastar shook his head. You can’t deal with that now … but you can’t not deal with it … or at least not find out. And since there wasn’t nearly the risk of cannon or massed heavy rifle fire centered on him or the other imagers.…
Alastar looked right to Seliora, posted now slightly less than ten yards to the north, and then to his left, where Arion was stationed. “Arion! Seliora! Close on me! Now!”
Once the two flanked him, he said, “We’re headed into the concealment, carrying our own concealment. There’s at least one imager from Westisle with the rebels.”
“How—” Arion broke off his question.
“They don’t use darts. They use something like a small crossbow quarrel. Fifth Company just lost some troopers to quarrels. We need to do something before they commence another attack.” He urged the gray forward at a fast walk. There would be time enough to hurry once they were inside the rebel concealment … when whatever they were dealing with was done.
The way to the concealment wasn’t exactly straight, not with the horses having to wind around bodies, but when they were inside the concealment was obvious, for two reasons. First, there were only a few bodies lying in the trampled grass, and second, Alastar could see the rebel troopers re-forming—all of them, a force that looked more like four regiments than the two that the rebels were supposed to have. And that force was advancing, although it was more than three hundred yards away.
Alastar did his best to fix the relative positions of the various units in his mind, then turned his attention to the “wagon-turtle,” less than a hundred yards away. The wagon did indeed resemble a giant shelled creature, with the plates of the shell being iron shields that fitted together.
“Your strongest shields,” he said quietly, before imaging his equivalent of a cannon shell inside the wagon.
The explosion that followed was strangely muffled, but the upper shield “plates” of the turtle flew both outward and in some instances upward, and a cloud of white smoke wreathed what remained of the wagon. Alastar felt shaken by the impact on his shields, but not as much as he had expected. The Westisle imagers’ shields blocked some of the force.
He could only hope that the explosion had killed or at least stunned the imagers who had created and maintained the concealment, but there was no way to tell that yet, because he and Seliora and Arion remained within the area the concealment had covered.
“Back to our revetments.” He turned the gray.
Arion and Seliora kept pace.
As soon as the gray carried him back across where he thought the concealment had been, he glanced back over his shoulder … and smiled, if only momentarily, as he saw the entire rebel force moving toward them. “Back into position. Maintain shields and concealments.”
The advancing rebel troopers, carrying their bayoneted heavy rifles, just walked steadily toward the defenders. At that point, Wilkorn’s cannon began to fire. Many of the shots missed, but Alastar did see an entire squad wiped out. Grapeshot!
Despite the occasional devastating effect of the cannon, the rebels kept coming. At some four hundred yards away, they began to spread out, but they did not slow. When they reached a point about three hundred yards from the outermost earthworks of the defenders, Major Rykards’s troopers began to fire, if deliberately and slowly.
Alastar saw more rebels begin to fall.
Then the advance changed. The attackers angled slightly, trotting and then stopping, if only for a moment, but always moving forward, the mass of foot troopers moving inexorably eastward toward the defenders. Few of the attackers actually fired their rifles, even as more of them dropped to the measured fire from Rykards’s troopers.
Alastar waited until the advancing foot troopers were within less than a hundred yards before ordering, “Red pepper across the front ranks.” He wished he’d said “leading attackers,” because there really weren’t any ranks as such, but the imagers laid down a fog of pepper that covered the first three or four yards of those advancing.
That slowed the attackers, and the rifle fire from behind the earthworks picked up. More attackers fell, but the remainder surged forward. Another company of mounted troopers charged past the imagers, past the revetments, slashing into the middle of the attack and cutting a path through the center. The attackers fell back for a time, but then, by force of sheer numbers, began to hem in the mounted troopers.
Another mounted company rode forward, coming from the reserves behind and to the south of Alastar, followed by yet another mounted company. Before long, the rebels and the defenders were so tightly interwoven in the fighting along the lower earthwor
ks that Alastar could see no effective use of the imagers.
Wilkorn’s cannon were picking off attackers farther away, but were useless against those rebels engaging the defenders around the revetments.
Alastar kept looking to the north, fearful that, in the middle of the chaos, the rebels might disengage and make a mass attack there to punch through the defenders and gain control of the river road and thus open their way to L’Excelsis, but Weidyn had moved Fifth Company slightly forward, and the fighting to the north was more scattered.
At that moment, Alastar heard a horn triplet, repeated twice, but he could see no movement anywhere to the west, including from the company or so of rebel troopers surrounding the command group—still almost a mille from the fighting—whose red and black banners drooped in the still air under the midday sun.
Midday? Had the entire morning passed already?
He kept looking, then realized that the southernmost section of the rebel forces was marching up the river road toward the left flank of the defending force, a flank greatly weakened by the use of the mounted troops to repulse and hold the earthen revetments against the massive assault from the west.
“Imagers! On me!” Alastar dropped his concealment and turned the gray to the south and slightly uphill. By the time he reached the river road itself, Cyran was riding beside him and the other imagers were directly behind them. Solid Cyran.
Alastar then re-created a screen concealment in front of himself.
When they reined up behind the thin line of foot that constituted the south defense perimeter holding the road, the leading rank of the rebels was still almost a hundred yards away. Directly behind the first five or six ranks was what appeared to be a moving square of iron some five yards by fifteen, pressing inexorably northward along the river road.
The last thing Alastar wanted to deal with was another set of imagers, but he couldn’t imagine who or what else was inside the second wagon-turtle. He immediately attempted to image another cannon shell into the wagon-turtle … but it was as though he hit a wall. A shield wall. Then he felt something jab at his own shields, a probe followed by an immediate hail of bullets from the rebels’ mounted rifles that passed over the heads of both the attacking and defending foot troopers, with at least four or five bullets slamming into his shields.
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