“Have the elves started moving forward yet? Have they entered Vharkylia?” ‘fang asked with a worried voice.
“Not as of when I left,” Fenther answered, “They were moving towards the border and Lord General…um…”
“Crore,” Sajani supplied.
“Yes,” Fenther continued, “he has declared martial law and ordered the evacuation of Drtithen and all villages and cities south of the jungles.”
“What?” Chass spoke out. “We’re retreating?” He wasn’t alone in his shock, all but Sajani and Ghenis started voicing their remorse and doubt at once. The meeting quickly became a percussive battle of sounds.
“At ease!” Sajani ordered. It was the first time she’d ever issued that command to her crew, but they all quieted immediately. “It’s exactly what I would have done. It’s how our people have survived anciently. They will fade into the mountains and jungles and give the elves hell from there. That way the wolf pack can better protect those who cannot fight.”
Ghenis was nodding in agreement.
“Benayle would not have done that,” Harg said sadly.
“Yes he would,” Sajani returned. “Not only would he trust the advisors he himself has appointed, he would put the safety of our people above all else.”
“Taking out that supply depot would go a long way towards that.” Tess said, her voice dripping with spite.
The others all nodded in agreement and Sajani knew that her first mate was right. “How goes the redeployment of their artillery and behemoths, Ginger?”
The spark sounded a little doubtful. His cat jumped off his lap and rubbed up against his ankles. “All but twenty of the artillery have moved out and their front convoys are near the Rhidayar border. The rear of the line is about two hundred kilometers south of the depot. Most of the behemoths were used as artillery escort. There are twenty paired up on the perimeter and eight more directly in the depot.”
“Are the remaining artillery still at the same perimeter?” Sajani asked.
“No change there,” Tenner replied.
“That’s one about every 15 kilometers,” Chass said. “Makes me think the range on them might be still further than we thought. 20 would mean there’s incomplete coverage.”
There was sense to what the huge vykati was saying. Sajani knew that the standard tactic would provide at least three covering any single point. “If we assume 30 kilometers, which I am very skeptical of—I’m more likely to think that Sestus is just being arrogant—we can take out four to move our people through.” She turned to Fenther. “You delivered the latest of the behemoth killer rockets to the resistance?”
The musician nodded. “Yes.”
“That gives fifteen for their assault on the east side and twenty for us. Are they waiting for our signal?”
Another nod. “Yes.”
“I’d like their convoys a little further out, but maybe this will pull some back from Vharkylia. Get those signals lit. Let’s hope our friends don’t mind us going a little early, shall we?”
The darkness was not a problem for her people, but it was for the Zenachen forces that were approaching from the other side with a handful of vykati privateers. It had been easy to sneak the transports and her crew past the outer perimeter of artillery. She was tempted to try and get close to one, just because she’d never actually seen elven cannons in person. All she knew was what the scouts had reported—they ran on belts like the behemoths did, but the body was much smaller. A single barrel, thinner than would be expected, stuck out from a turret that nearly blended with the body. They carried a crew of three, maybe four, and in the frontal assaults made by the elves, they were always kept back at least five kilometers from the front line.
Upon arriving just outside the supply depot, her crew disembarked from the transports and left only a driver and gunner in each, except the one that was being used as an ambulance. Doc and Ghenis were in that one along with a driver and gunner.
They were to spread out looking for the behemoths and then, once the signal had been given and the rockets fired, they’d regroup for an attack against the remaining forces. They had an hour before the artillery was in range and then they’d use the last of the rockets to blast a hole through the defense.
Sajani ran forward as her crew fanned out and dropped prone about three hundred meters away from the outer line of the depot, which was annoyingly lit by huge lights that scanned, mostly inward. Were they afraid of someone leaving? Their brightness played with her ability to see well in the dark, but not enough to cripple her.
Looking through her spyglass, she could clearly see the coiled wire that had been spread all around the outside of the depot, three high. The wire was interspersed with many tiny razor blades welded into place. Poles every five meters or so held it in position, but the pirates were ready with wire cutters. Ginger was with her group, and had four or five rockets (he called them AB-14s, but no one else did.) strapped to his back.
There were two behemoths in sight inside the perimeter, but their barrels were pointed to either side of where Sajani and the four others with her waited.
They had divided out into five groups, with the two largest groups north of her, where they’d sighted most of the behemoths. Those groups were led by ‘fang and Harg. To the south were two groups smaller than hers, led by Tess and Chass.
“Can you get those coils cut without being noticed?” Sajani asked Ginger.
The spark nodded and quickly low-crawled forward, well hidden under the summer grass, towards the fence formed by the wire.
Sajani nocked an arrow and got ready to take out anyone who might see him. There was no need. Ginger managed to get right up to the base and cut the three coils before anyone noticed. He didn’t pull them apart, so unless someone looked really close, no one would see.
A huge smile across his face, the spark said in a whisper as he came back near her, “Just call me the wire cutter.”
Now they waited.
Unfortunately, it was a very clear night and one waxing gibbous and one waning gibbous moon were above them. To the vykati’s Rhidayan neighbors, this meant it was a time of indecision and it was best not to make new commitments. There might have been other parts of the astrological reading that would affect that one way or another, but Sajani didn’t believe in such things, so not only didn’t she know, she also didn’t care.
The red flare shot into the sky, signaling the start of their attack. It wasn’t the most subtle way to get word between the groups, but once the rockets hit the behemoths, subtlety was no longer important. Less than a heartbeat later, several large explosions lit up the night sky, followed by several more as the vykati crew, Ginger included, fired their rockets at the behemoths in the base.
Elven soldiers poured out of a few of the buildings in the compound and started to take up position near the wire fence. Her troops opened fire before all were settled, but there were a lot of soldiers. Sajani let out a war howl that was echoed down the line and a few of the elves seemed slightly shaken by it, although it was hard to tell with the aqua flames rising off the two behemoths near her.
Sajani put away her bow and took out her rifle to return fire. At some point a bullet had grazed her ear and another the base of her neck, but it wasn’t anything worth worrying about. The grass gave her and her crew some concealment. The elves had none.
A blue canister of a type she recognized fell near her. She’d captured only a few in her raids and Ginger said they were for making smoke. She never felt safe using them, so she hadn’t. The Copper Wolf rolled a few times to her left to get away from it as it started to release a huge volume of gray smoke.
The enemy had placed others around her line and the area was quickly being obscured. Sajani held her breath briefly to make sure that it wasn’t some sort of gaseous poison, but when nothing else seemed to happen, she started breathing normally again. It was apparently, just smoke.
While this had been going on, Ginger had been lopping grenades over the
fence. With each one he was howling and then yelling, “Release the dogs of war!”
Sajani kept firing into the mist until she heard the spark let out a quiet yelp and roll over on his back. The top of his shoulder was bleeding heavily and his eyes were clenched shut in pain. “Get back to Doc,” Sajani shouted at him. “He’s not that far.”
In his panic, Ginger started to stand up and before Sajani could pull him back down, he took a bullet to his upper thigh that knocked him down. She rolled over to be closer to him and then said a small prayer of healing to Indira, touching him lightly on the shoulder. Nothing happened. She said another prayer and attempted to channel energy to heal them both, but there was no light following the spell. Had the Aspects themselves turned against them in this fight?
No, she reassured herself, it has to be the smoke. Sajani knew Indira would never forsake her. Grabbing Ginger by the collar, she began pulling him back to the transport behind them. It was a long crawl for such a short distance. The smoke was everywhere by this point.
Doc and Ghenis must have seen her coming through it all, because she met the two of them just outside the vehicle. The physician tried to cast a spell, but it failed for him too. “Komal and Indira, what is this?”
“I think it’s the smoke, Doc,” Sajani answered. “I couldn’t heal him either. We’ll have to bandage up the wounded as best we can and save our spells for once we’re out of it.”
The old wolf nodded quickly and turned to Ghenis, who had the bandages with him. Very quickly, Ginger’s wounds were bound.
The Copper Wolf had just started back to her position when the first explosion came. At first, she thought it was just a lucky hit with a grenade, but it was followed very quickly by several other explosions in quick succession. The place where she had been, along with the crew members there, was now only a smoking crater.
It was then that it dawned on her, much too late. That was the artillery. Sestus hadn’t left any gaps. They had a range of at least fifty kilometers and at that rate of fire, one hundred was not out of the picture. She let out a howl meant to signal her troops to pull back and then fired a green flare into the night sky. Across the elven compound a blue flare answered it. Planned for the worst, she thought to herself.
Doc and Ghenis were starting to get in the transport. “Leave the vehicles,” Sajani ordered, “they’ll only make easier targets.” She reached down, picked up Ginger and threw him over her shoulders. The captain wanted to pick up Ghenis as well, but there was no way. She turned to the driver and gunner who had just left the transport and said, “Help Ghenis.”
The pair turned to each other and the larger of the two nodded. He reached down and under heavy protest from the former ambassador, cradled him in his arms like a child. They had only taken a few steps when the transport behind them exploded and burst into flames. So, despite the smoke, the elves were guessing that the vykati were retreating.
Sajani made the mistake of turning halfway to look at it, when a second shell hit near them, knocking her off her feet and tossing Ginger from her shoulders. She looked up to see the soldier who had been carrying Ghenis covered in the old wolf’s blood. The blast had hit right in front of them and shrapnel had pierced them both. The elderly vykati had by far taken the worst of it. His bearer was still able to stand and walk.
The captain tried to channel healing but it was no use. She reached down and once again picked up a now slightly bruised Ginger. “We need to move away from here,” she told them. Her ears could hear Ghenis saying her name in a very weak voice. She came as close to him as she could as they continued forward.
“Leave me here, my lady general,” he said. The soldier carrying him shook his head and Sajani agreed with him.
“Never, old wolf. This I will defend.”
They were moving rather slowly and there wasn’t much to guide her. It was hard to keep moving forward. The elven artillery continued to go off in random bursts, but it was soon obvious that there was no real pattern to it—they were firing for effect. And after not far at all, it fell behind them. A little further and it stopped completely.
Sajani realized it could mean that the elves were moving their own troops into the area, but it didn’t change what she needed to do.
In all that confusion, Sajani was never sure at what point Rass “Claw” Ghenis died from his wounds, but she did know exactly what his last words were. “At least I’ll no longer hear the cannons.” He said them long before they were able to reach the rendezvous point.
Tess and Chass, also without their vehicles, met up with them just before they got there. Tess was hunched over Chass’s shoulders and unconscious. Up until that time, she’d tried as hard as possible to keep track of the driver, gunner, and physician who were with her, but at some point, she’d been separated from Doc and didn’t notice until just after Chass greeted her with a sarcastic, “That went well, don’t you think?”
Realizing who she was missing, she began calling out his name. She started to head back the way she’d come and had made it quite a distance when she noticed that Chass was pushing hard against her. Ginger was still on her back. There was no way to tell how long the huge wolf had been trying to stop her.
“You can’t go back there.” Chass was saying.
“But I got separated from him in the dark. I can’t leave him.”
Chass didn’t budge. “We have to,” he said. “Elven soldiers are moving slowly up behind us, but if we keep moving, we’ll stay ahead of them. There are others we can save. I can tell Ginger needs major help and I can’t move him.”
“Of course you can. He’s not that heavy.” Sajani started. She focused in on the face of her second mate and saw the tears that were streaking down his cheeks and the look of pain he wore. She felt her vision shifting to take in more of her surroundings. As her view seemed to pan outwards, she looked closely at the first mate slung over Chass’s shoulders. There was a tourniquet just above her knee and the leg below it was a bloody mess. There was no way to know for sure if she was alive.
Chass perked up once she seemed to come out of her over-focused state. “Maybe you didn’t hear me before, but do you have any healing left? Tess could use some.”
“I do,” Sajani answered quickly, as they all started moving forward again, “but the smoke they threw at us seems to block it. Was she in it at all?”
“Yes,” Chass said. “We didn’t know…”
“None of us knew. I’m just glad that they don’t seem to have many and were saving them for something major.”
“And that artillery…”
“Yes. I might have been a little off on my estimates.” Sajani said wryly. “We lost five. Where’s the rest of your group?”
Chass didn’t answer.
The captain then realized that her first and second mate had not been in the same group originally. “And ‘fang and Harg?”
“Hoping to meet them at phase point two.” Chass said.
Phase point two was the point between the depot and the artillery perimeter where they had split out into five groups. It was also where they were supposed to meet up afterwards. The other two groups met them there with a single transport that they had all climbed on. They had apparently dared to take one and it paid off. It was the one that Ginger usually used and Tenner had been with it.
‘fang approached her and saluted. “We mostly made it here, my lady,” she reported.
“Mostly?” Sajani answered.
“Tenner is in the transport, but he didn’t make it.”
“You fared better than we did,” came the melancholy reply. “We took heavy losses.”
It wasn’t that up until this point, Sajani had been unaware of what was happening. She knew everyone who had been lost by name and she had never pushed it from her mind. But up until this point, there hadn’t been a chance to dwell on it. Now in relative safety (they did have yet to pass the artillery perimeter), it all came crashing down around her.
So this is what it feels lik
e to completely fail at something, she thought. And then she cried. She set down Ginger and soldiers from ‘fang’s group started working on him immediately. Chass had set Tess down, very gently, and a few more soldiers were in the process of binding up some of her wounds and cleaning what they could.
And then, relieved of their burdens, the three of them, Sajani, Chass and ‘fang held onto each other and wept some more. No one said anything. Ginger’s cat had come out of the transport and was rubbing its head against its master and meowing incessantly. They cried for only a couple of moments and then Sajani regained some of her composure and, remembering what Chass had told her earlier said, “We need to move on before their soldiers come across us. I’m sure they’re still out looking.”
Her only answer was the twitter of a group of birds, but the others started getting ready to move immediately. Chass and ‘fang were moving Ginger and Tess to the transport, where there were more wounded, when something nagged briefly at the back of the Copper Wolf’s mind. “Birds?” she said aloud.
At that moment a gnome with white hair stepped from the shadows and said with more cheerfulness than any of them wanted to hear, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find you people?”
Another voice broke the silence as a female vykati in brown robes appeared next to the gnome and said in a rather shocked voice. “My word, tin head, you really did need me.”
Chapter Twelve:
Redemption
Anyone but Benayle, Sajani was thinking. She had barely gotten some composure as they were hoisting her up to the airship that the gnome and Westa had come from (very few of her people had been able to climb up on their own power). At the top, as she clamored over the guard rail, there stood the vykati leader. He was not usually one for posturing, but he was now. He stood boldly on the deck of the amazing craft with his hands on his hips. He was even, totally unlike him, wearing a gray and red scarf that was blowing in the breeze. It made her almost think it had to be dream, but reality was too close to her face at the moment and she knew it really was him.
Wolf's Pawn (Sajani Tails Book 1) Page 26