“Yes…” breathed the Emperor. “We can do this. We can hold.” He looked down the line.
“Men of the Three Clans!” The Emperor bellowed as Abbot Cibu had taught him. It was a man’s voice, heard by a hundred other scared men as they held back the advance.
“Hold the line!”
Chapter Forty-Three
Hold the Line
All around the sloping ridge the heavy infantry of the Syriot Empire began their assault. One of the musket-armed levies stepped up and fired at an armored swordsman at point blank. The swordsman raised his shield, the round passing through and leaving a small hole. The shield dropped, and the Emperor could see a heavy concave dent in the man’s breastplate. The Syriot let out a low, heavily pained exhalation, as the bullet dropped out of the dent. Another musketeer stepped forward, pointing the barrel of his musket directly at the helmet’s eye slits, and fired. The swordsman collapsed, as a third Hangyul musketeer joined them, firing at another advancing soldier.
Banisu flinched as a Syriot in plate mail strode forward with an upraised sword, and Banisu raised his own trembling sword in defense.
This man has walked all this way just to kill me! Me!
The Syriot’s sword brushed the Emperor’s aside as if it were nothing and swung back again to slice at where his face had been a moment before. A hand gripped Banisu’s shoulder from behind and he was pulled back to fall on the ground, looking up as Lin Karatsu stepped forward with a drawn sword jabbing at a gap in the Syriot’s armor.
The Syriot roared, his sword cutting into the young noble’s armor, and then Thane Eigar rushed in roaring from the side, slicing into the swordsman’s unprotected left armpit. The thane wrenched the sword out, kicking the man back stumbling down the slope, as he turned and parried the blow from another Syriot. A small protective ring of Northerners formed around the Emperor, breaking the wave of assaulting troops upon their shield wall, and sending a few of them back with savage strikes.
Lin had fallen to one knee, his breath ragged, as Banisu got to his feet.
“Lin!”
“It’s… nothing,” he said, gritting his teeth and rising.
From behind the shield wall, several nobles fired arrows into the small gaps of the Syriots’ armor, wounding them and forcing them to raise their shields as they advanced up the slope. Coming beside Banisu, a Hangyul soldier grabbed a heavy rock overhead, flinging it at the men below and sending one staggering back with the impact.
“Serves me right for shooting at the fucking balloon,” the soldier grumbled to himself, as he grasped for another rock to throw.
The shield wall of the Northern mercenaries was like a solid rock dividing a stream and in the relative calm Banisu was able to get some sense of the fighting. To the left of the shield wall, a Syriot soldier staggered up the ridge, using both his hands to help him reach the top. He was set upon by two ragged farm boys with hatchets, who pushed him down and pried off his helmet, pulverizing the head within.
To the right of the shield wall three Syriots had scaled the ridge and were butchering some of Lin’s Noble Companions. A bowstring thrummed behind the Emperor, and Lin’s arrow caught the nearest in the side of the neck, sending him staggering to the ground. Seeing the threat, the Thane bowled into two of them with his shield, bashing away with shield rim and sword. The soldiers fought back ferociously, the twisting metal causing indescribable sounds.
Behind them a Hangyul spearman lunged in, stabbing through a Syriot soldier’s thin back-plate. With a grunt, the Hangyul man swiftly withdrew the spear and pushed it through the back of another. As he grasped the spear, a sword sliced through his ankle, and the spearman collapsed. The helmet and pauldrons of another emerging adversary were just visible, as an armored gauntlet extended to the heights, the man pushing himself back up to the top.
It was a moment that lasted a lifetime, an opportunity in that struggling mired chaos of grappling bodies and twisted metal for Banisu to do his own small part.
I will not waste it.
Swallowing his fear, the Emperor dashed forward, impaling his sword through the man’s face plate before the man could right himself. The metal twisted and buckled, almost shaking the sword from the Emperor’s hands. He stood nervously, watching the armored man shudder and fall to the ground, and stared at the armor-clad body even after it had stopped moving.
Is it dead? It must be.
Banisu looked down the slope.
The assaulting unit had not been routed; it had been all but destroyed. A few soldiers were struggling back through the reeds, but the Noble Archer Companions were mercilessly putting arrows into their backs. A number of the armored soldiers were moving unsteadily below the ridge, having fallen down earlier, and were now being rejoined by their fleeing comrades. Some of the more bloodthirsty and vindictive soldiers rushed down the slope to finish them off before they recovered. Next to the Emperor, one of the Northern mercenaries stared at the shattered shield on his arm, feeling at his arm delicately as if it had been both numbed and broken. Around him the moans of the dying could be heard.
“Victory.”
The Thane stated the word grimly, as if sounding it out to see if it suited the situation, and cast a somber eye over his nearby men. In the confusion of the moment Banisu had lost track of the battle along the lines. He looked now, seeing an unbroken line along the ridge both to his left and to his right, a few remaining Syriots fleeing down the ridge.
Had that really been a victory? Banisu looked at the corpses strewn from the ridgeline to the shallows. It was very hard to be sure. I think we lost more men than them. Lin’s face was twisted, tears rushing down without shame as he knelt by one of the dead nobles, likely having the same thoughts. He met the Emperor’s eyes, sniffed, then shifted his gaze back across the river. Lin groaned, a low and weak sound, like that of a cornered animal.
“The north,” he said. “More Syriots.”
They weren’t hard to spot. Banisu could see a distant marching line of Syriots approaching at a steady pace. Not heavily armored ones, but the field blue of Syriot musketeers, and the rattling sounds of drumming carried from across the open field and the moans of the dying.
Now they didn’t even have a small river and a ridge on their side. These men had crossed and put the Kintari army to flight. Now they have broken off pursuit, turned, and come to finish us off.
The Emperor licked his lips. His mouth was desperately dry.
“Form a line,” he muttered. Then he repeated it, louder, coughing and looking about with wild eyes. “Form a line! Facing north!”
The men nearby looked at him. The Emperor turned to face Lin Karatsu. “Lin. Take your archers and grab the men along the southern line. Bring them here.” He pointed directly at his feet. “Grab all of them.”
“Yes sir,” Lin replied in a wooden voice, and staggered off down the ridgeline to the south, trailed by the surviving Noble Archer Companions.
“Thane Eigar.”
“Yes?”
“Take your men and have them form the eastern boundary. Form a shield wall by that copse of trees,” the Emperor pointed unsteadily with his sword.
“You’ll want me by your side,” the Thane said, his words flat as he scanned the approaching Syriots.
“I need you there.”
“I can’t protect you from those trees.”
“It’s an order, thane.”
The Thane looked at him steadily for a moment.
“I will bring my men over to that copse of trees. They will form a shield wall on the eastern boundary. Then I will come back alone to guard you.”
The Emperor didn’t argue the point, turning instead to the soldiers nearby.
“You lot! Everyone who can hear me. Follow me. We’re forming a line against the Syriots.”
He set off northeast, not daring to look back behind him, at somewhere between a frantic walk and a shambling run and all the while hearing the rattling of the Syriot drums. Banisu found a ragged stan
d of trees near an untended plum orchard only a few hundred yards away from both the Northerner shield wall being assembled and the ridge line where they had defending against the western assault.
This will do. It would be a fine place for a cemetery. Maybe a nice memorial…
“Uh, sir? Your majesty?”
Banisu’s thoughts were broken by the sound of a commoner addressing him. He looked at him, confused. Banisu wasn’t sure that he had ever been addressed by a commoner before. Are they always this dirty? The man didn’t look particularly treasonous, face blackened by powder and scraggly with beard, and his fingers fidgeted as he spoke.
“Your majesty. We’re all out of powder. I used my last shot in that fight, and those two there are down to a couple shots each.”
“And my matchcord is out,” added one of the aforementioned soldiers. “Might’ve been when I clubbed one of the Syriots.”
“Here, light it from mine,” the first soldier said, offering his musket to the other soldier, and with fumbling hands the second man got his matchcord lit.
“Anyway, your majesty,” the first soldier continued, “we don’t have much left. The other boys are out as well,” he gestured towards the loose assortment of musket-armed men nearby. “They elected me to speak with you, your majesty,” he added, lowering his eyes.
“I see,” the Emperor replied. “Well, keep your muskets out. We hold the line.”
“We hold the line…” the first soldier echoed.
“We hold the line.”
“Ah. We hold the line. Your majesty.”
The soldier’s voice emanated with skepticism and he glanced at the second man for support. He hemmed and hawed for several moments.
“What does your majesty suggest we hold it with?”
But Banisu had already turned away and stomped off a few paces, hiding his trembling hands in the folds of his robes. The Emperor looked to his left. Lin Karatsu was moving up with his archers, bludgeoning some commoners into position. To his right, the Northern shield wall was anchored against the copse of trees. The Thane was pacing back over towards the Emperor. There was a gap of about twenty paces between the Emperor’s soldiers and the first Northern mercenaries.
Banisu gestured toward it with his sword and scowled at the men around him.
“Fill in that gap. I want one of you holding hands with a Northerner.”
The reserve force of Hangyul levies began to spread out hesitantly. They were conscripts through and through, sporting swords spotted with rust and bamboo spears still as green as they were, and they bumbled to and fro as they clustered together in loose groupings for protection.
“And form a proper line,” Banisu barked. “Stand up straight and try to look like soldiers.”
He blinked. Gods, I sounded like Abbot Cibu just then.
The conscripts positioned themselves into a rough semblance of a line, facing north toward the steady Syriot advance. At the far side of the rank one of the soldiers extended his hand to a Northern mercenary, who glanced at it in confused irritation. The conscript dropped his hand after a moment.
All of a sudden the drumming ceased. The line of bluecoats had halted a distant musket shot away from the Hangyul line. The Syriots just stood there, immobile and silent. Here it comes. Any moment now.We hold the line. Until. Until…
The Thane had made his way over and stood to the Emperor’s right.
The Emperor looked at him. “Why are you following me, really?”
“What do you mean?” The thane continued looking north. “I am a mercenary.”
“It’s more than that. The Prince of the Wastes is a mercenary and he abandoned me. There must be a reason you’re here.”
“I don’t think the Prince of the Wastes abandoned you. This is a war with many fronts.”
“There must be a reason you’re here,” Banisu repeated.
“This is a war with many fronts,” the thane repeated with insufferable calmness.
The two stood there, looking north, as seconds dragged into minutes.
“You want to know why, Emperor?” the thane asked as the stillness dragged on. “There’s a warchief in the north who calls himself Big Raven. You can’t imagine the armies he has. Tamed mammoths, or wild ones brought to heel at least, and troops of soldiers pulled by dog sledges, or even his female reindeer riders. There is only savagery in him. He killed my family, and the families of the ones who follow me. We have nothing left. But, someday perhaps, with a friendly emperor in the warm lands who can give us blades and money… we can take his head.” The thane smiled a cruel smile. “And so here we are. Fighting against those who come from over the great ocean.”
Banisu didn’t know what to say to that. In the time it took to frame a reply the bluecoats began moving back north.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, watching the steady movement of unit by unit. “They’re retreating.”
“I don’t think they’re retreating,” Thane Eigar said. “They’re probably looking for new orders. They already routed the Kintari troops. Maybe that was their only goal.” He scratched at a scar along his head as he watched the procession screen the retreating Syriot swordsmen. “The Syriots probably thought they could take out both wings of the army and then attack us with all their forces. A little more coordination and it would have worked. Might still work. I doubt we’ve seen the last of them. I wonder if the southern flank was attacked as well…”
The Emperor snorted. “I don’t have a southern flank, or a northern one, or even a real army. The Lord Marshal is dead. Abbot Cibu is dead. Half of the men who fought in the shallows must be dead. General Kintari is gone. Lord Shinzen is gone, probably defected to the other side. Prince Sharnipur is gone, probably halfway to the Veldt by now. The fishing village has apparently been taken, and we’ve been shelled by the enemy’s ships. The enemy has overwhelming technological superiority, and here I am standing in an orchard surrounded by slack-jawed farmers with empty muskets.”
“Strange though, isn’t it,” said the thane, considering. “We’re not the ones retreating.”
“Well, there’s still plenty of time for that.” The Emperor looked up to the sky. “Gods, it’s not even noon!”
“Hmm. So it is. Well, Emperor, what now?”
The Emperor watched the Syriots fading into the distance, moving west, uniting with the swordsmen. It seems they intend to cross the river again and report back to their headquarters.
“We’ll move back to the ridgeline,” he decided. “We can salvage some powder and shot there, at least. And give some succor to our wounded.”
The thane nodded. “They’re most likely to assault from that direction. At least from the ridgeline we can see anything that can cross the river and keep an eye to our north.”
He looked to the thickly forested hill south of the position.
“That hill, though… it’s impossible to know what’s going on in there. Whoever’s up there is probably watching us right now.”
The Emperor stared at it grimly. He didn’t particularly care for that prospect, but he found it hard to be bothered by it either. Against the odds, the Emperor had somehow stopped the Syriot assault and removed his most important political rivals at the same time.
It seems a rather pointless feud now. In the end, it really didn’t matter who controlled the Three Clans. He thought back to his discussion with Prince Sharnipur. Bloodthirsty, he called me. And him, the Dread Prince of the Wastes. Maybe he was right.
He looked at one of the nearby soldiers, brandishing a bamboo spear and wearing a loose tunic and rice farmer’s hat. This man, deep down inside, probably does not even care who is emperor. He probably will die for me. And for no particular reason. Whether or not I’m killed, the next emperor will probably have to submit to the Syriots. If they even bother with emperors.
The man glanced up at him, suddenly aware he was the focus of attention. “Uh, yes, your majesty?’
Banisu looked at him a moment longer. “Move out,” h
e said curtly. “We’re moving back to the ridgeline.” The Emperor shook off his thoughts. That damned foreign prince. Where the hell was he, anyway?
Chapter Forty-Four
Charge of the War Elephants
The Prince of the Wastes paced back and forth through the ruins of the Shinzen camp, scanning the lower countryside. The movement on the northern flank was too distant to see clearly, but Prince Sharnipur had watched the furious assault of the armored Syriots break upon the thin Hangyul lines, and, impossibly, dissipate into nothing. But now the Prince clearly saw fresh lines of Syriot troops marshaling in the distance, and he knew that he had waited too long.
“Dammit,” the prince grumbled, and turned to see Dhamdalek, waiting in silence beside him. “Stay behind here and organize a follow-up force. The Elephant Corps will be moving to assist the Emperor. I can’t wait any longer for the rest. When they get here, organize them as you see fit and send them to take the village. When the bronze cannons get here, I want them unlimbered and firing at the Syriot warships.”
“Yes, prince. Then you will be taking the skirmishers here, along with the war elephants?”
The mahout gestured at Abaeze’s weary Veldtlanders, and the recent arrivals, two other skirmisher units who had marched with the war elephants Rotten Tusk, Burnt Ear, Krachaliput, and Red Dragon. They had marched up the hill in the pre-dawn, arriving an hour earlier, and were the vanguard of the Elephant Corps forces.
“Yes. All of them.”
They weren’t enough, but the Emperor didn’t have enough men either. It would simply have to do. Or all of this will have been for nothing.
“Everyone!” The prince’s voice carried throughout the hill. Abaeze had been resting against a tree but stood up now, and as if following his example, the resting Veldtlanders began getting up and stretching their legs.
“Form up with your assigned elephants!”
Landfall Page 28