Sayri's Whisper: The Great Link Book 1

by Daniel J. Rothery

  The smoke tended to be lighter in the dense jungle; heavier in the clearings. The wiser man would keep to the jungle for cover, but most soldiers would naturally gravitate to the open areas, feeling safer under the concealment of the grayish cloud, and able to move more quickly. He was gambling that their leaders would be too slow to tell them otherwise, or their messengers too disoriented by the smoke—or enough of both—that the enemy would mostly select the latter.

  He wasn’t disappointed this time. The smoke swirled around their bodies as Somrian soldiers emerged from it. Gallord-Smit let out a pair of short, sharp whistles and the bowmen let loose.

  Arrows flew into the cloud and struck home. The archers fired again, then again as the Somrian leaders tried to take stock of what was happening. The front line of men fell back into the fog in confusion.

  But Gallord-Smit had chosen this spot because the clearing narrowed at its end. A few moments later he heard two more abrupt whistles from the opposite side, and more bow strings hum. Screams.

  He counted one, two, three volleys, then lunged forward, letting out a single cry. It was supposed to sound like the wail of a sea bird, but Gallord-Smit wasn’t much for bird calls—it sounded more like a frightened swine. It did the job, though; men sprung from the foliage all around him, and they charged.

  He led the shock troops into the smoke. It was thick and viscous, and when a body emerged from it he nearly stumbled over it. One dead; two, three—one standing. The man had a weapon up, and a shield, but he was facing the wrong way. Gallord-Smit brought his hand up in a cross-body cut across the neck, and kept running. The man didn’t scream.

  Good, the next one won’t hear me coming. He pounded forward, a small group at his side. He didn’t know their names, but wouldn’t have recognized them with their masks anyway. It didn’t matter; in this battle, they were an undefined, shapeless mass of death.

  He came upon two men fighting; one had a mask, the other had a shield. He came in low and took out the enemy’s knee from behind. A wail of pain, this time suddenly ended as his compatriot finished the job. Keep moving.

  He found several more of his men, fighting a larger group of Somrians that had managed to form up. He bellowed the order to draw back, but yelled a little louder than he needed to. He and the others fell to the rear slowly, fighting defensively, but maintaining contact.

  After a few dozen heartbeats—beats that came and went quickly in a mixture of fear, exertion, and exhilaration—his ploy paid off. More of his skirmishers, hearing his call for retreat, had come out from the opposite side of the clearing; they flew upon the Somrians without a sound, and butchered them.

  Gallord-Smit smiled and let out three short, thrill whistles. He and his men fell back, and the others drew away opposite. One of them raised a weapon in salute, and he returned it before backing away.

  It was the second strike they had made on the same area; the smoke was thick enough that the enemy hadn’t caught on to their ambush. He would watch carefully how they approached the next time; if it didn’t feel right, he’d call off the ambush and retreat to set one up somewhere else.

  He hoped the other groups were having as much success as he was. Once he’d realized that the enemy was splitting and shifting laterally—a clever move than he would not have thought likely from an inexperienced commander—his own adjustment had been fairly simple. Instead of attacking along clearings that ran toward the mountain, they had found some that ran the other way, parallel to the shore. The tactic worked equally as well; at least, it had on his end.

  There had been some concern about the smoke not lasting long enough, but that worry had been unfounded; it was, if anything, thickening, leading him to wonder if the fire had somehow caught on in the bush near the wood stacks they’d made. A happy development. If it continued, they might have a chance.

  Troops emerged from the smoke again—faster this time. He watched them carefully; they were spread out, to reduce casualties from missile fire, but were in formation.

  It was getting dark anyway; he let out one quick whistle. The Somrians stopped, ready for the attack; his men faded back into the jungle.

  ・

  “Murder zones,” Josel said. “Good plan. Tough to counter.”

  Arad shook his head, blinking his sore eyes against the burning sensation. “What is that?”

  Josel kept his eyes forward. He had his sword out, as did Arad, even though none of the attacks had reached far enough to threaten them directly as of yet. “It works best in darkness or concealment, Master Arad,” he explained. “You find an area that is nicely set up for troops to move through easily, with obstacles to channel them.” He stooped and drew a line in the dirt before him with his sword, following a path between two roots. “Then you position archers here and here,” he added, indicating two spots wide at the end of the channel formed, “where they have crossfire, as close to a square angle as you can get. They have cover and surprise. We can’t advance or move to the side, because either way we are in their fire. Retreat is the best option, but difficult in the smoke; you lost track of direction easily. Very effective.”

  “Then why don’t we just stop moving through these areas?” Arad asked. “They are costing us men.”

  “Indeed they are. Like I said, an effective strategy. But,” he continued, pointing at the two likely ambush points he had shown, “the most effective counter is a spread advance, straight at them. We have advantage of numbers, and we know what they’re doing. If their archers can’t soften us up effectively, they’ll back off. Besides, soon they’ll lose light, and in this smoke the archers will be useless. A good ploy, but it’s done now.”

  Arad was about to ask how he could be sure when a runner trotted up; a young Somrian lad of heavyset proportions, and an unlikely long-distance sprinter. He seemed, however, unfatigued.

  “Execs,” he said, displaying a rudimentary moving bow. “The enemy hasn’t attacked us this time. We have captured the forest to fifty paces on three sides of a natural clearing.”

  Josel glanced at Arad, who shrugged. “Order Elsano to hold the starside, we’ll take the portside. Orders to come,” he told the messenger. “And return to me with confirmation.”

  The runner bowed again to Josel, and Arad, then dashed off, vanishing almost immediately into the smoke.

  “They’ll try it again, and again. I hope Kollivar figures it out, or they’ll suffer some nasty casualties,” Josel said.

  “Can’t we send word to him?”

  “Well,” the Captain-General answered somberly. “He should know what to do; its elementary strategy. Besides, the messenger would likely get lost, or worse. Still—we can try,” he put in.

  “No,” Arad said after a moment’s thought. “I’m sure he’ll figure it out, then. Besides, we don’t want to lose men unnecessarily—like you said, it’s all about the numbers. Does war always come down to this? Who has more left alive?”

  Josel chuckled, starting forward again. “For the most part, Master Arad. If you’ve no army left, you generally lose.”

  Arad followed. It made sense, but he didn’t like the sound of it. Surely there was a way to convince the enemy to surrender without massacring them? But even as he considering it, he realized that it was not the case . . . they needed to do enough damage to the enemy—kill so many of them, there was no avoiding the truth of it—that the remainder would see futility in going on. If they were fighting to keep an invader off their soil, perhaps it would be different, but these people . . .

  They are defending their own land, he told himself depressingly. They are fighting the good fight. We are the invaders.

  Of course his father didn’t see it that way, nor did the Commander-General wish the Overlord to, but it was the truth. If only Arad could speak to the Yalcin Rex himself, he might be able to convince him of that.

  If only his father didn’t have Sayri.

  As if reacting to the turbulence in his heart at the thought, the ground trembled.

&nb
sp; Arad froze; the vibration stopped. “Did you feel that?”

  Josel nodded. He had stopped for a moment as well, now he began moving again, urging Arad on. “Yes, Master Arad. It must be the mountain.”

  Arad looked up, but he could see only smoke. The mountain had disappeared, as had the rest of the island and the army with it; they were alone in a sea of smoke, grass, and the occasional tree. “You don’t think—surely, Captain-General, the island isn’t going to collapse into the sea?”

  Josel laughed out loud. “Master Arad, you’ve read too many children’s tales. Such things do not occur in true life. It is only a tremor, nothing more. I have felt them in the mountains of western Somria, beyond the endless plains.” He slapped the younger man’s shoulder lightly. “We must remain focused on the battle.”

  Nodding slowly, Arad followed him into the smoke. Somehow, however, he couldn’t clear his mind of the thought that the island, too, had once been no more than a children’s story.

  ・ ・

  Charese was with the messenger; Gallord-Smit hadn’t expected to see her so quickly. Even in the fading light, her tangle of red hair stood out atop a grubby face half-covered in equally filthy cloth; she would have been indistinguishable from anyone else were it not for it. “Front-Captain, I have word from the other teams. The enemy was moving fast, and they made it a lot further around the island than we’d guessed. Three says they’ve had incredible success; the enemy just kept coming at them in the same ravine they’d set up overtop of. They’ve inflicted heavy casualties—if you can believe their numbers, they’re saying over four companies!”

  Gallord-Smit’s eyebrows went up; two hundred men? If it were even half true, it would mean a huge swing in their favour—the plan was working to perfection. “What about Four?”

  Charese sagged a bit at his question. “Not good, Front-Captain. The survivors I located said they were caught between two enemy groups. I couldn’t find Wikkard,” she added sadly.

  Wikkard was the man Gallord-Smit had selected as leader of the fourth group; he was middle-aged, and seemed cool-headed. He wondered if he had misjudged the man. “Any idea of losses? Where are those you’re spoken to?”

  “On their way here, my lord. I’d be surprised if they’ve got a dozen left.”

  Gallord-Smit took a deep breath, then let out a sigh. He’d expected this; in the mayhem of combat, especially in a smoke-filled jungle, chaos reigned supreme. Still, they’d lost thirty or so men—plus perhaps fifteen more from his two groups—and eliminated what, a hundred fifty? Two hundred? A sizeable chunk of the enemy, at any rate, and he could add at least another fifty to that.

  He had merged teams One and Two when it became evident that the enemy wasn’t going to spread out at all; their commander was too smart to give up his numerical superiority in poor visibility. He had known his battles would be brief skirmishes thereafter, engaging the enemy scouts as opposed to the main force.

  The other side of the island, he learned, was another matter; the Somrians had broken into at least three smaller groups, and were sweeping around the island in a wide curve to prevent the Lordslanders from slipping past. That had meant the chance of dealing a more decisive blow, and with it, the danger of being caught out; it appeared both had occurred.

  All considered, a win so far for the Lords’ Lands; but he feared the leader of this group—for some reason he had it in his mind that Arad was in this one, despite their clever tactics—would not make similar mistakes, and the rest of the battle would be more gruelling for his own men.

  “Order a pullback of Three; tell them to keep their backs to the mountain, but take what the enemy gives them. If they have a chance to kill another hundred, jump at it, but head back here otherwise,” he clarified.

  Charese nodded and ran off, the messenger with her. He knew that she would take up a position of vantage, if she could find one in this smoke and growing darkness, and send the runner on to make contact. If she lost him, she would go in herself. He hoped that would not occur; she had proved far too valuable to risk.

  Gallord-Smit pondered. The leader of this enemy force wasn’t going to give him any more easy targets; should he consider abandoning them, and joining up with Three to hammer their target even harder? If he did, he would need to find some way to convince the nearby Somrians that—

  The ground shook; Gallord-Smit had to take hold of a tree branch to avoid stumbling. At first he thought the dirt beneath him was collapsing, that he had stepped into a sinkhole, but then he saw men all around him struggling to remain standing. What was going on?

  After a few moments, it ended. Smoke continued to drift past; somewhere above them, the currents were carrying it high to the mountain’s summit, and expelling it into the sky. He wondered how that would look; no doubt extraordinary, even otherworldly. A sight that no one from his land could ever claim to have seen, and he was in the middle of it. Not that he’d see it, either, deep in the smoke he’d summoned.

  He made a decision. Four short whistles, and his men closed in. “Gather everyone up,” he commanded, “and pass word to Two. We’re breaking contact and rendezvousing with Three.”

  A half-dozen “yes, Front-Captains” came back from the dim shapes around him; he realized he didn’t know any of their names. If they survived this, he would have to meet more of these people. They were, he noted to himself, heroes, and deserved recognition.

  Those that survived.

  ・ ・ ・

  “It’s not good, Captain-General, Master Arad,” the scout was telling them, his face barely visible in the darkness. “Vatinyu’s team was wiped out. About a company have regrouped on the opposite side of the island.”

  “That asinine fool!” Josel shouted; his voice didn’t carry, being quickly muted by the smoke that they could no longer see, but knew hung around them. “Splitting their force in two was stupid enough, but separating again? Did the man not go to officer’s training?” He strode several paces away, then pivoted on a heel and stalked back. “Master Arad, we must regroup immediately. The entire army. They will certainly strike at the remnants of Vatinyu’s division, and may well bring their entire force to bear on Kollivar. I would,” he added definitively.

  “Do you know the whereabouts of Captain Kollivar’s division?” Arad asked the scout, but the man shook his head.

  “I came directly here with word, exec,” he replied. “It was all I could do to stay clear of the enemy; they have scouts all over the island.”

  “You did well to make it.” Josel bellowed for an aide, and rattled off commands to the man who came for his own and Elsano’s group. “Tell Kollivar we’re coming, and that he is to locate the survivor’s from Vatinyu’s division and stay put,” he said. “I’m sorry; I know it’ll be a tough run.”

  “Understood, exec,” the scout said, and ran off into the darkness.

  Josel turned to Arad. “We should move fast. They won’t expect it in this,” he said, motioning at the darkness and smoke around them, barely visible in the poor light, “and we need to get there as quickly as possible. If we’re lucky,” he added, “we might stumble upon some enemies rushing in to take advantage of Vatinyu’s defeat. We can hope.”

  Arad wasn’t hoping for a battle, but he saw Josel’s point; the enemy had struck quickly, and effectively, inflicting serious damage on his army. If they could execute a similar strike in response—well, what had hurt them would wipe of the Lordslanders. They were one mistake away from annihilation.

  If Gallord-Smit made a mistake.

  Arad was impressed by how quickly the men were ready to move; he only saw those nearest him, but he could hear many more nearby. Packs shouldered and weapons free, they began jogging through the jungle. Josel warned Arad that in the darkness it would be easy to fall, and to keep his knees bent and his centre of gravity low. That way, if he stumbled on a root or tripped in a hole, he wouldn’t injure himself.

  Running through the darkness, drenched in sweat, surrounded by hundreds of puff
ing men who were, like him, nearly stumbling at every step; it all became dreamlike. It was, he wondered to himself, the most bizarre situation he could ever have imagined himself being in. As a boy he had dreamed of traveling the world, but the last few years had been so much more full of wonder, excitement, and fear than he would have fantasized. He had sailed the sea, taken on another land’s finest in the ring, met an extraordinary girl by amazing chance—and most of all, fallen in love—then sailed back again. Now he was at war on a far off tropical isle, at the foot of a legendary mountain that spat fire? It was a bewildering life he was living, to be certain.

  He had lost concentration, his mind drifting off in thought, when his foot found a root, and his men found the enemy. Or rather, the enemy found them.

  At first he wasn’t even certain he had fallen; it was so sudden that he didn’t even feel it. His foot just stopped, then he was in the dirt, spitting it from his mouth. There were yells all around him; he conjectured for a brief moment, nonsensically, that everyone had fallen.

  Then he heard screams and the clash of metal, and he realized what was happening. Josel was hauling him to his feet; he had his helmet on, and Arad seized his from where it hung at his belt and shoved in on. There were men all around them, some already fighting, but Josel paused to attach his chin strap for him. “Stay near me, Master Arad. It’s an ambush; we’ll get through it!”

  Arad was on his feet, his sika drawn, though he didn’t remember pulling it out. He rolled his shoulder forward, but his shield didn’t drop into place. Josel had his on, and was surveying the area immediately around them. Arad checked, and discovered he had dropped the shield when he fell; he went to pick it up, but discovered the strap was broken. He tossed it aside.