by Rob Preece
He was impossibly good but Ellie had learned from him, knew his moves. And she had her katana where before she'd faced him with a shortsword.
While ninja killed around her, she gave Sullivan a clinic on ken jitsu—the art of the sword in battle.
She secured first blood, scoring a deep cut to his abdomen through the heavy armor he wore.
She again offered to accept his surrender. In this world, unlike her own Earth, mages had a decent chance of staving off the infections that inevitably follow that kind of injury.
Sullivan shook his head. “I'll take you with me."
He charged, then, forgetting his art and relying on his strength to bull her over like the weak woman he thought her to be.
But Ellie knew how to use weakness. She met strength with subtlety, sidestepping his charge and hamstringing him as he roared by.
Sullivan collapsed to one knee. Moving painfully, slowly, he leaned on his sword to regain his feet. His face was the pure picture of surprise and shock.
"It isn't too late to surrender.” She was almost pleading now. In many ways he was an evil man—thoughtless of the suffering of those whom he considered lower than himself. But he was a warrior who battled for what he considered right. He was also one of the few men in this world who had accepted her as a fighter rather than a woman.
"No son of Ranolf will seize the throne while I remain alive,” he growled.
He swung at her, almost hopping to keep the weight off his lamed leg.
She avoided his strike easily, not even parrying.
He looked at her in disappointment. “Give me the death thrust, princess. The church calls it wrong to fall on your sword the way the ancient ones did. Let me die in battle like my ancestors. Give my sword to my son."
He hopped toward her again, using his sword like a cane, then raised it for a blow.
She didn't want to kill him. But she didn't want to go on like this, either.
He swung hard. Despite his injuries, he was a powerful man. He seemed almost indifferent to whether he killed her or she him. A man who has given up fear is at his most dangerous.
This time, she parried, and then riposted hard.
Her katana rang as it met the steel of Sullivan's blade, then flashed as it took him high, the razor-sharp point penetrating his throat and up into his skull.
Sullivan drove forward, trying to kill her as he died, but the sword in his brain ended all of his plans, forever.
Sullivan's face relaxed. He wasn't a young man, but suddenly his expression took on an innocence he'd lost decades earlier.
She thought he'd smiled when he felt the blade slide in.
She closed his eyes with her hands. “Good night, sweet prince,” she murmured, hoping she'd accurately remembered her Hamlet. He'd been evil, but he'd fought her honorably and died for what he believed.
* * * *
With no cavalry threatening them from behind, Mark dispersed their soldiers broadly along the riverbank, Sergius having retreated his musketeers across the river for protection.
"A rifleman controls a wider frontage than a musketeer. We can outflank them even though we're outnumbered,” Mark explained. “We'll pop away at them, thin them out and make them back away from the river, then we'll cross in the night. Ellie's axemen can throw together a lumber pontoon bridge. Sergius will probably think the noise is just throwing more logs in the river to sink his Rissel allies. Once we're across the river, it's a whole new battle."
"With Sullivan gone, we can march back. We might even be able to take Sullivan City. And many of the knights who flocked to him will see me as the logical replacement,” Arnold suggested.
Mark shook his head. “This is the decisive battle. If the Rissel join Sergius, he'll be able to hunt us down before we have a chance at actually holding territory."
"The ninja will lead the attack across the river,” Ellie announced before Arnold could argue further. “We'll clear the landing and hold it so the bridge can be built and until the riflemen can safely cross."
"You've done enough, Ellie,” Mark insisted. “Too many of your ninja have died already."
"Too many of everyone has died. This is the best way to minimize casualties."
"You're risking yourself too much,” Arnold said. “And don't give me any nonsense about being a martyr. What do you think will happen to your Constitution if you're not here to explain it?"
Killing Sullivan had taken something out of her, drained Ellie of any residual desire for revenge. She wanted peace now, for battle to be over. She wanted to teach children the martial arts as her father had taught them—lessons to develop character rather than methods of killing and mutilation. She didn't want to be a martyr, and she didn't want any more killing. But she was prepared to accept whichever came her way.
"The Constitution can take care of itself. And Mark understands it better than I do, anyway. I have to do this, Arnold."
She ordered her ninja to get what sleep they could in preparation for another night battle, then went out with one of the rifle teams.
Sergius had to respond to Mark's tactic. His cannon were dug in, turning the old stone bridge, which was the most logical point of attack, into a trap. Which left his musketeers to guard the flanks.
But there were a lot of them. And they'd learned plenty from their blooding in the morning. Rather than stand and die in fixed formation, they mimicked Mark's riflemen, keeping their heads down, using the ground cover for protection, and digging entrenchments wherever they could.
The marksmen picked off plenty of musketeers, but this wasn't going to win the battle—Arnold needed to win, not tie. Unfortunately, Sergius knew it. He also knew his Rissel allies were getting closer.
Chapter 26
They went upriver past even the extended lines of the two armies. Mark, along with a few engineers who'd enlisted in Harrison City supervised the bridge building while Ellie and her ninja swam across the river.
What had once been an army of over a thousand skilled guerilla fighters was down to fewer than a hundred now. But every single one of these had survived a dozen battles or more.
They crawled naked from the river, silently slit the throats of those enemy soldiers unlucky enough to be on guard duty, and dressed themselves in the black ninja uniforms they'd towed behind them.
Along the river, Mark's riflemen kept up a sporadic fire in the direction of Sergius's sentry fires creating just enough confusion to cover Ellie's incursion and the sound of the engineers and woodcutters.
Two hours after they'd swum across, a troop of fifty of Sergius's soldiers marched up the river to investigate the axe noises—and into Ellie's ambush.
It was sword against musket, but the ninja were hard to spot, hard to hit. And the soldiers were night-blinded by their torches.
Few got shots off at all. Ellie lost four more of her ninja. But they killed or captured the entire mercenary company.
Mark's engineers tied down the end of the pontoon bridge using heavy cables and large trees, pronounced it safe, and let the riflemen start across.
Once riflemen had secured the perimeter, Ellie moved her ninja further into the darkness.
Mark was among the first across. He signed to her—she hadn't even known he'd picked up the ninja hand signals—that he'd brought the grenades she'd demanded for the next phase.
"Still on plan?” she signed back.
He nodded. “First light."
Ellie fought back a yawn. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept. After this battle, win or lose, she promised herself she'd spend a week in bed.
But that was for later. She reached into the river, splashed water in her face, and then reapplied the dark soot she used to blend into the darkness.
Each surviving ninja got four grenades. Ellie passed them out, slapped a few shoulders, gave some hugs, and shared tears with men and women she'd spent most of the last year with—so few survivors from an elite force she'd created from the dregs of a bandit band.
&n
bsp; The grenade cart was still half-full when she armed the last ninja, gave final instructions, and set off.
It was almost make-work. Even in the twentieth century, grenades were hardly the killing weapons of the movies. Only in enclosed settings, trenches, pillboxes, tanks, would their shrapnel turn from inconvenience to deadly threat. But they would create a distraction, battlefield confusion. And Mark had lectured her on how often battles had been won or lost based on how quickly a general recognized the situation and responded.
Her ninja were disposable and had been trained for this kind of mission.
She edged toward Sergius's main camp, slipped over the stockade wall when a guard stepped outside his pattern to relieve himself, and climbed into a supply wagon outside of the main mess tent.
She buried herself deep in tubers, closed her eyes, and let her consciousness drift.
* * * *
Half an hour before dawn, a cook's assistant started grasping at tubers and stopped abruptly when Ellie's katana caught him in the Adam's apple.
"If you're quiet, you'll live,” she breathed.
He nodded, quietly.
"Turn around slowly. And put your hands behind your back."
She tied him, gagged him, and dumped him in the wagon.
It was too early, but Sergius's camp was already beginning to stir as sergeants kicked their soldiers into wakefulness.
Her job would have been a lot easier if Mark had known how to make timed fuses but they simply didn't have that technology.
Ellie made herself wait as soldiers jogged past her on their way to breakfast.
A few minutes before dawn, with the sky noticeably brightening, a hail of gunfire broke the lethargic silence of Sergius's camp.
She dropped the cook's knife about ten feet from where she left him tied, tossed her first grenade into the dining tent, and took off through the camp.
The second grenade went into an officer's tent—after she'd snatched a heavy officer's tunic from a frightened servant.
She'd intended to try for Sergius's tent, but his guards were fully roused before she could get close. Instead, she headed closer to the river—to the artillery redoubts.
The artillerymen were busy turning their weapons toward the sound of fighting and didn't even notice her when she approached from behind, tossed in her two remaining grenades, and followed with her katana.
Her officer's tunic distracted the survivors for a moment, just long enough for her to cut the last of them down.
Sergius would have to find a new crew before he could use this four-gun battery against Mark's attacking riflemen.
Over the next half hour, twenty more ninja joined her in her hiding spot. She hoped there were more elsewhere, but she couldn't really believe it. Even if they won, today was the end for the ninja. They'd been wiped out as an effective unit. If Arnold betrayed his promises, she'd have nobody left to counter him.
Mark's riflemen advanced using the five-man team tactics they'd deployed against Sullivan's cavalry. Teams advanced in spurts. Once in a while, a team ran into a volley of musket fire and was chopped to pieces. But they kept their distance using the extended range of the rifle, retreating when Sullivan managed an attack, always targeting musketeers and especially officers with aimed rifle fire.
When the sun finally edged over the horizon, riflemen from the far side of the river added their fire to the equation, disrupting the musketeers wherever they tried to organize.
Arnold's army was still outnumbered. The thousand or so riflemen Mark had brought across the river were desperately few against ten times that number in Sergius's army, but Sergius’ musketeers couldn't form without being hammered by rifle fire from across the river—and they couldn't remain dispersed without being picked off.
With their officers dying around them, Sergius's mostly mercenary army started to collapse.
It was just a few men at first, throwing down their muskets and heading away from the river, possibly back toward Moray.
But those few spread the panic and in minutes, it seemed like unarmed men were everywhere, running blindly, grabbing what loot and supplies they could and heading anywhere away from where Mark's riflemen continued their slow advance.
As Sergius's army collapsed, Arnold brought the riflemen from across the river to the shores, packing them together now that the danger of counterfire had been eliminated.
Victory seemed complete.
"We're still alive,” Alys signed.
Ellie flexed her wrists and started to shape a reply when a roar of a dozen cannon shook the earth.
"What the devil?"
She peeked over the earth and timber bulwark and ice formed in her veins. The Rissel had arrived.
Several of the warships were heavily scarred. One practically wallowed in the water. Possibly they'd sunk others. But at least half a dozen warships had survived the logs they'd sent downriver.
In earth-history, huge wooden ships of the line were the weapon platform of choice for centuries between the Renaissance and the late nineteenth century. Inch upon inch of solid oak protected the gunners and sailors from musket and rifle fire while they could mount and move guns of far heavier caliber than any field army could maneuver.
Sergius's men rallied at the sight of the warships and the transport ships filled with Rissel soldiers that followed in their wakes. In an instant, a glorious victory was transformed into utter defeat.
* * * *
The Rissel ships fired another broadside into Arnold's tightly packed riflemen, killing dozens and driving the remainder into the dubious protection of shallow trenches they'd dug the previous day.
Around her, Ellie could sense Sergius's soldiers reclaiming their muskets, regaining the energy that so often spells the difference between victory and defeat.
She got mad.
"Start shooting at them,” she shouted. “We've got cannon. Blast them."
Her ninja weren't artillerymen, but they'd been trained in a bit of everything. And the cannon were already loaded.
It took less than a minute to get off the first shot.
A single hole appeared in one of the Rissel sails. Not the most effective firing, but the lead ship swung around. They would protect themselves first and help their allies later.
"Keep shooting,” Ellie shouted.
"Where are you going?"
"I'll explain later.” If there was a later.
Sergius's army was completely disorganized and no one questioned her as she rushed through it, still wearing her officer's coat.
She nearly got nailed by a couple of rifle bullets as she neared Mark's line so she dumped the coat, kept to underbrush, and ran.
The rough log bridge they'd built the previous night was undefended and no more men were trying to cross it.
Which was lucky because Ellie didn't have time to waste.
She yanked out her katana and went to work at the hemp cables that held the huge logs in place.
A couple of engineers saw what she was doing, grabbed axes from where the farmers had left them, and joined her in destroying what they'd worked so hard to build.
The bridge spronged as the last cable parted under the combined blows of her katana and the engineers’ axes.
Speeded by melting snows in the distant mountains, the river grasped at the heavy logs that had formed the pontoons and swept them downriver.
Ellie nearly plunged to her death then. But she maintained her balance on one of the logs, remembering the lumberjack competitions she'd seen on The Outdoor Network in another universe. One of the engineers made it to shore but the other was dragged under. She didn't see him reemerge.
Logs dropped away from the mass of the destroyed pontoon bridge but most of it held together until it reached the permanent stone bridge that Sergius's troops had guarded so successfully the previous day.
She took a few more whacks at the cables as they neared the bridge, then leapt for one of the stone bridge's arches.
The stone bridge w
ithstood the impact. The wooden bridge didn't. It broke into three pieces, each of which swept through the stone arches and smashed into the Rissel fleet.
The Rissel were maneuvering, sailing circles as they blasted away at Alys’ battery, and generally not paying attention to the water near them. As Ellie watched, one of Alys’ cannons jumped its mounting. But black-clad figures aimed a remaining weapon and fired—scoring a hit directly on one of the warship's gunports.
Then the logs smashed through the solid hulls of the warships like a kantana through an eggshell.
The force of the impact sent masts and rigging into the river and, as the Rissel war fleet lost steerage, both the fleet and the logs floated down into the transport ships they protected.
Alys’ battery managed one more shot and the surviving transports headed downriver. They'd had enough.
Chapter 27
All that was left was the mopping up.
Arnold approached the capital from the south while his main army, after its long stay in Varna, moved to join him.
Sergius and his uncle, Duke of Harrison, tried to fall back to the city but met only guarded walls. The Bishop, judging which way the wind was blowing, had prevailed on the city fathers to support the winner.
Sergius's huge mercenary army evaporated, and Sergius himself, along with his uncle, fled to the Rissel, abandoning the country and breaking any ties of magic that still connected him to the land he'd so briefly ruled.
Not that there wasn't plenty of mopping up to do. Unpaid mercenaries look for loot, and Arnold's army had to clean up the mess while his tiny heavy cavalry chased down any bands that started to assemble and try carving themselves a bit of territory.
With the slaughter of Sullivan's knights and the flight of many of the nobles who had supported Sergius, there were plenty of titles left begging. Good news, Ellie supposed, for the financial situation of the incoming king. Sales of patents of nobility were big business back on Earth and it could be bigger business here, where nobility actually meant something.
The Moray city fathers, led by the Bishop, capitulated even before Arnold brought his artillery up.
Ranolf and Arnold's sisters were released from captivity. Ellie watched with inexplicable suspicion when the two young women draped themselves all over Mark.