Doom's Break

by Christopher Rowley

  They were bereft, fatherless, orphaned, and lost.

  Toshak was the one that all mots had come to respect. Toshak had saved Dronned, then Sulmo. Toshak had driven the army of Man off the Land again and again. And now he was gone.

  With a sad curse, Aeswiren stood back from the corpse of the thing that had once been Pern Treevi.

  "Colonel Gillo, can you take command of the army?" Aeswiren used Shashti deliberately, knowing that only Thru could understand it.

  Thru sighed. This was a burden he would rather not have assumed. Then he slowly nodded. "Yes, I have commanded an army before. But I am not General Toshak."

  "Nor am I," said Aeswiren with a grave shrug. "I knew him only for a short while, but in that time I learned that he was a master of the arts of war."

  A crowd was gathering. The news of Toshak's death was spreading. The army faced its greatest crisis.

  Colonel Bellis, of the Seventh Regiment, voiced the urgent question: "Who is in command now?"

  Thru swallowed and closed his eyes a moment. Was he the only mot that could take on this burden? After a moment's thought he spoke.

  "I must take command, I think. I am not the senior ranking officer, I'm sure. But I have more experience than anyone. I have commanded an army before, and no one else has worked as closely with General Toshak as I have over the past few days. Finally, I speak the tongue of the men of Shasht, and I have the confidence of the Great King."

  The Grys Norvory and several other officers had just arrived at the scene. The Grys heard Thru speak and then jumped forward. "I second the appointment of Colonel Gillo to acting command. He is the obvious choice."

  This prompt endorsement from Norvory, who had more experience than most, was hugely important. The others, still dumbfounded, stared at Thru in silence. Some nodded. Another voice was raised.

  "Yes, Colonel Gillo is the best qualified among us."

  A few others murmured together. Gillo was experienced, but he was very young, and he was not from a noble family.

  Norvory pressed the case firmly. "We cannot equivocate. We have no time for it. Gillo is the mot for the job. I know that Toshak himself would have said this."

  Thru looked across the bloody ground to Aeswiren. The Emperor had a tiny grin on his face, a wintry look, born from sad experience in a harsh world. He spoke in the language of the Land, accented, but quite understandable to every mot there. "Then, General Gillo, I should warn you that our enemy is about to attack. Look!"

  Aeswiren raised an arm, and Thru turned his attention to Shelly Fields. The enemy regiments were massing once more.

  "Watch them carefully," said Aeswiren. "If they raise their shields above their heads, imitate them. It may save all our lives."

  Thru nodded, clasped Aeswiren's hand, then turned to the staff. "We need a new map table."

  This mundane command broke the staffers out of their daze.

  "Yes, sir!" said Captain Blen.

  Thru turned to the assembled crowd.

  "You have your places in the line. You heard the Great King. Watch the enemy carefully. Imitate them if they take measures to protect themselves from sorcery."

  Thru took a breath. The weight of the responsibility he had just taken on was sinking in. He prayed he would not be crushed by it.

  "The crisis is upon us, and we must rise to the challenge or the Land will be laid waste and our kind will be annihilated. We have no choice but to fight and to win."

  His audience took his words in silence, then turned to get on with their tasks.

  Thru looked around. Aeswiren and his guard were trotting away, back along the line of regiments to his own command position. The mot regimental commanders were bunched in front of him, and other officers were attending to the bodies of the fallen.

  A new map table was set up. The staff assembled and were ready to proceed with the business of running the army.

  Thru examined the map, then studied the enemy positions with the spyglass. The regiments were massed into two assault columns. Thru estimated that each column held six thousand men, a dozen regiments each. The enemy was not going to let the initiative pass to the allies. He was going to put everything on this throw of the dice.

  Horns blared, drums began to beat. The enemy was moving.

  "Return to your regiments and hold your lines. If and when movements are required, I will send fresh orders. And, please, keep me informed of changes that you observe on your front. That is particularly important for the right flank."

  The Grys Norvory gave him a crisp salute and departed.

  Thru returned to the task at hand. Fortunately, there was little to do just yet. Toshak had prepared these lines. Every mot knew his role.

  Suddenly, Thru felt another presence. He looked up and saw Melidofulo standing among the group of mots who were tending to the bodies of Toshak, his guards, and Pern Treevi.

  "Pern Treevi's body should be set aside, General," said the Assenzi.

  "Yes, Master, it will be. Such sorcery was in it that we could not save the general."

  "We did not foresee this. We must study the remains. Perhaps we can find a way to sense these threats."

  Thru was reminded of the invisible war going on above their heads as the Assenzi strove with the Old One on the hidden fields of subtle magic.

  "Well, Master, please inform me promptly if you sense a fresh threat."

  "We will do our best, General Gillo."

  The enemy had decided to move promptly. Sensing that his assassination attempt had succeeded and seeking to take advantage of the disorder in the mot army, he drove his pair of assault columns forward, with drums booming and horns braying.

  As they came into range of the catapults, now twelve strong, primed and ready, the machines began to deliver volleys of heavy seven-foot spears straight into the column approaching Thru's front line. The spears had stone heads, but they were enough to pierce shields and armor, cutting a swathe through the ranks.

  The drums never faltered, the organized chants of "He Who Eats!" never stopped, and the men kept on coming.

  For the third time that day, battle was joined. This time the fighting raged all along the northern front of the allied armies. Only Thru's right flank, turned along the contour of the hill to face the pyluk-infested woods, was not engaged. The enemy attacks were fierce, but fighting upslope and against prepared positions, they made little headway. The same result was visible on the left, where Aeswiren's men held their ground and exacted a heavy toll on the attackers.

  After half an hour of this, the enemy had had enough. The drums ceased their thundering and the assault columns fell back and then retreated downslope, pursued by arrows, insults, and more of those huge spears from Toshak's catapults.

  Thru returned to the maps while scouts came in from Lupin Valley with reports of movements by the enemy horsemen. It was almost midday; the enemy had thrown his army three times at the allies and failed each time. Thru considered the situation carefully. They had suffered terrible casualties with the dawn assault due to the blindness induced by the sorcerer's magic, but the enemy had twice been induced to attack them head on and had suffered considerably himself.

  "Well, Captain," he said to Blen, "this day began badly and has produced a tragedy for us all, but we hold our ground."

  "Yes, sir. We can beat him. Everyone knows it. You can feel the confidence in the army."

  The enemy must have been feeling it, too, because the afternoon wore on with no further attacks. Scouts continued to bring in reports concerning movements in Lupin Valley by parties of horsemen, and there were occasional ambushes and pursuits out under the trees, but the fighting of the morning had exhausted the enemy and cost him too many dead and wounded.

  Thru sent a message to Aeswiren, requesting a conference that evening. Neither of the allied armies was strong enough now to dare an attack of their own, but Thru wished to talk with the Emperor, who had such a deep fund of experience, and form a plan of attack together. Toshak had always
emphasised how important initiative was in war.

  As the day came to an end and both armies turned their thoughts to the evening meal, Thru and his staff met with Aeswiren.

  The Emperor greeted Thru with a warm handclasp. "We bloodied him on that last attack. He'll not try that again."

  Thru was less sanguine. "But he hasn't finished with us. He cannot stop now. He knows this is a fight to the death."

  —|—

  After meeting with the Emperor, Thru ate a quick meal of bushpod cakes and fish paste and then busied himself with a letter to Nuza. As he wrote of Toshak's death, he found tears welling in his eyes and cursed his own weakness. This was not the time for tears. He had to rise above that until this business was done.

  Toshak had been their inspiration, and their father figure for the war. Thru felt not only alone but bereft. Self-doubt gnawed at him. Did he really have what it took to command an army in this crisis?

  At length, he finished the note, sealed it, and sent a messenger away with it at once. Nuza would have received official confirmation of the horrible news, but she, of all people, deserved more.

  Now it was time to inspect each regiment, study its position, and recommend improvements if any came to mind. Thru knew that the army's morale was at stake as well. They had held off the enemy's attacks, but they had been hit very hard, and now they had lost their great general.

  Thru began with the left side of the army and found the Eleventh and Thirteenth Regiments in good position. The mots were quiet, absorbing all the losses of the day. Thru's visit seemed to have only a slight effect, but he told himself it was essential that every soldier see his commanding officer at such a time.

  He went on through the positions in the center, where he found the mots digging under torchlight as they continued to improve the various works and trenches. Once again, Thru's presence brought only muted cheers and smiles, but he persisted. This was a sad time for all of them.

  On the right flank, he found Norvory busy improving his lines.

  "We have dug two trenches, and now we are setting stakes in them."

  Thru studied the way the trenches slanted toward one another. "I see, you want to funnel the enemy into that tight space in the middle."

  "And there we kill him."

  "Yes, indeed. Toshak would have approved, I know."

  "I would ask one more thing," said the Grys. "Could we have the services of one or two of those catapults? As you have them placed now, all their fire is directed toward the river."

  "You would like a couple of them set to fire into this killing ground you're making?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I will discuss this with the catapult master at once. Perhaps he can arrange some flexibility in their dispositions. If you are attacked, he can swing his weapons this way and add their fire to that of your archers."

  "That would be excellent."

  After they parted with a crisp exchange of salutes, Thru mused on the strange pathways that life provided. He and Norvory, once enemies, but now bonded as comrades in arms! They had not mentioned Pern Treevi, whose body had been taken away by the Assenzi for examination. Pern had come between them once, to poison their lives with his malice, and yet in the end it was Pern's final act that had promoted their friendship.

  He talked briefly with the catapult master, Major Heeve, who came from Juno village and had played for the Juno team many a time against Warkeen.

  "You asked about flexibility? Well, we have already taken steps to ensure it. General Toshak had requested this yesterday as soon as I reached this spot."

  Thru studied the catapult sites and found that the weapons were set on wheeled limbers and could be turned in any direction in a minute or two. Where the ground had interfered with flexibility, Major Heeve had had his mots remove obstructions, level hillocks, and fill in declivities. When Thru looked eastward, he could see down on Norvory's positions with the V of his trenches faintly visible in the dark.

  Thru returned to his command post, took some tea, and studied the scouting reports. The enemy horsemen were still active in Lupin Valley, but there had been no sign of the pyluk since they had been pulled off the battlefield in the early morning.

  At last, worn to the bone by a day of upheaval, Thru wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep in the small personal tent set up for Toshak. For a while his mind refused to let go, and he continued to fret about the army's positions, but eventually exhaustion overtook him and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

  He was awoken hours later by a hand shaking his shoulder.

  "What is it?"

  "Begging your pardon, sir, but the enemy has started that drumming again."

  Thru scrambled out of the tent and pulled on his cheek fur to wake himself. An orderly handed him a mug of steaming hot tea, which did wonders.

  "What hour is it?"

  "Middle of the night, sir."

  Thru heard a single drum booming steadily on the far side of the river. There was something dreadful and malevolent in the sound, especially as they knew now what such drumming could portend.

  "Any movements?"

  "Some reports, sir. Down by the river, but hard to see from up here."

  Thru took the spyglass and studied the far bank of the river.

  The moon cast a gentle light across the scene, and its illumination was aided by that of a large fire burning in the center of the enemy camp. He saw the familiar tents and piles of materiel that he had seen many times the day before. But there were also companies of men on the move. The bridge over the Shell was darkened with masses of men. No obvious pattern could be seen from all this activity, however.

  "Perhaps he is simply resting some units and moving other units to the front ranks," said Thru, setting down the spyglass. "What about on the right?"

  "No reports for a while."

  "Send a messenger to the right wing. Tell them to redouble their vigilance."

  "Something's happening, sir!" said Captain Blen.

  The enemy's bonfire had grown very bright. The pace of the drumming had increased. Dark shapes could be seen flickering across the firelight. In both allied armies, every spyglass available was studying that fire and the activity on the far bank of the river.

  Thus they missed the Old One's next little surprise.

  Three regiments, his best troops, had been carefully taken from the main body of the army, moved back over the bridge, and then put on boats and ferried around Cormorant Rock to a landing spot on the Rocky Canyon. Mixed in with all the other traffic between the ships and the shore, these boatloads of troops had been missed by Aeswiren's surveillance team.

  The Old One himself had gone with them, and by use of subtle magic had confused and baffled the handful of guards that Aeswiren had set out there to keep an eye on the bay and report any fleet movements.

  Thus, no one saw the enemy regiments climb the cliff paths and form up in the scrub on the crest of Blue Hill. While Thru and everyone else studied that blazing fire for clues to his intentions, the Old One readied a nasty surprise for Aeswiren's left flank.

  When it came, it was devastating. Suddenly, pouring across the top of Blue Hill, the Old One's crack regiments swept over the flank units and raced right into Aeswiren's camp.

  It happened so quickly that no one had any time to react.

  Aeswiren and his staff were studying the huge bonfire blazing on the far side of the river. The distance was more than a mile. Troop movements had been reported closer at hand, too, on the left side of the line. In the moonlight it was hard to see more than that the regiments there were awake and set out in long lines. Aeswiren had immediately warned the Second and Fourth Regiments, which held the left end of the line, to be alert and ready to respond. A night attack was improbable. The risks and casualties of such an effort would be immense, but Aeswiren knew that their enemy would be increasingly desperate after the failures of his sorcery and repeated attacks the previous day.

  And then, from nowhere it seemed, came a
flood of enemy troops, streaming down from the crest of the hill into the rear of the Second and Fourth, and right into Aeswiren's command post.

  For the second time inside a day, the Emperor himself was caught up in the swirling fighting. But this time the effect of surprise was complete. The Second Regiment, at the far end of the line, was under attack from below and from behind. The line contracted as the regiment broke and fled to the rear of the Fourth Regiment.

  Aeswiren had the Third Regiment and a company of remnants from the Blitz Regiment held in reserve, but he had no opportunity to get any orders to them. He and his staff were too busy fighting just to stay alive. Fortunately, these veterans didn't need orders to see what had to be done. They drove into the flank assault and brought it to a halt, at least in the area behind the center of Aeswiren's army.

  Alas, the damage was done, for the enemy had now set off a massive night attack directly at the left side of the Emperor's forces. The Second Regiment, flanked, had broken. Now the Fourth Regiment collapsed under impossible pressure. Together with the Second, they flowed to the rear, and Aeswiren and his staff were forced to go with them.

  The reserve force, led by the Blitzer remnants, formed a line and slowed the enemy advance over the next few critical minutes. Captain Klutz and Sergeant Rukkh, both old-line Blitzers, acted with furious courage during this crucial period. They bought Aeswiren's army a lifeline.

  While they did this, the Emperor and his personal staff were able to fight their way free of the immediate battle. Yet, at this point, after he had survived half an hour of sword and spear fighting at close quarters, Aeswiren was hit. A stray arrow plunged from high above and sank into his shoulder through the gap between his helmet and his shoulder plate.

  The arrow went deep, and though the Emperor tried to carry on, it was impossible. He collapsed and was placed on a litter and carried through the last fifty yards of danger to a new command post.

  He was alive but weakening from a steady loss of blood. The arrow was too deep for anything but a surgical removal.

  His army teetered on the brink of disaster and, with it, the cause of the people of the Land.