Dark Tide: Book Five of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  “I thought he was a hero for saving us at Apartia,” the Dwarf muttered into his ale. “So, what do we do now?”

  “Retreat,” the Chancellor said, some of his enthusiasm fading. “Today’s victory will allow us to fall back without the terrible pressure that was endured on the road from Apartia. Many in the army wish to stay here and fight again, but Grand Marshal Laffery has ordered us to withdraw to the magazines and depots established at the village of Dorog, some sixty miles to the west. There is good defensive terrain there, not to mention a major supply point.”

  “A withdrawal would seem to be in order,” Durek agreed. “When do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow at dawn.”

  “If you will excuse me, then, Lord Chancellor, I will take my leave. Dawn will come early, and I’ve had precious little sleep over the last few days.”

  Pen scratching like a spider trapped in a box, Hebreth Descente signed another order, placed the document in the appropriate box and set his pen down, working his fingers with a sigh. He had had to disband another Holding of Dayar to keep the other two at a useful strength, and for a bit the flow of supplies coming through the Gates would have to cease so that Human troops could come through to make good his losses. The Holdings which garrisoned the homelands were sending trained veterans to the Holdings fighting in the Realms, refilling their ranks with freshly-trained recruits and one veteran of this new war for every five men sent west. It was annoying to have to send men back, even at the rate of one to five, but Descente understood the logic: before the war was over every Holding the Hand possessed would have a cadre of new veterans.

  Breedstones were coming through the Gates as well, over three hundred having been lost in today’s battle, twice the number the enemy had managed to capture in the campaign to date; he had expected Laffery to remain on the defensive and had taken his time moving into position, as the Hand forces were tired after their pursuit.

  But Laffery had surprised him: the mad dog had come out fighting, throwing his whole army into the offensive, smashing Descente’s flank and winning the day. If the odds had been more even, or the Heartland’s cavalry less tired, there might have been a significant victory gained; as it was, all that was gained was a boost in the Heartland’s morale and the disorganization of the Bohca Tatbik.

  And once again Laffery was retreating; his spies told him that the Heartland Army was withdrawing sixty miles to the west to the town of Dorog, where good terrain and supply depots would give the Heartland Army a substantial chance of stopping the Hand forces’ drive on Sagenhoft. Laffery’s superiors would be howling at sixty more miles abandoned after a victory, but Descente cursed him for it. Sixty miles of battered highway and farmlands meant nothing to the Hand commander-only the destruction of the Heartland Army and the capture of Sagenhoft and Apartia mattered; the latter only had meaning as it was necessary to the maintenance of the seized lands. It would be better for the Bohca Tatbik if Laffery would tarry here at Salcie until the Hand forces could reorganize and take the field with the dragon.

  Instead, the Bohca Tatbik was going to have to reform and then march sixty miles along bad roads and burnt bridges with every water source contaminated, moving fast to keep Laffery from having too much time to rest his men and horses and dig in. Bohca Tatbik had been marching fast and fighting hard ever since it had crossed the Wall, and with the exception of the Dayar and to a lesser degree the Direbreed, its forces were tired and worn down. Victory over the Heartland would have to come soon or Descente would have to halt his army for a much-needed rest. The massive quantities of wagons and draft teams captured over the last few days had helped, but the fact remained that his troops had marched or ridden over two hundred miles as the crow flies, with the cavalry covering several times that, and fought three major battles and uncounted skirmishes, all in the space of half a month. They were tired, and that would only get worse.

  Laffery knew that, which was why he was willing to lead them deeper and deeper into the Realms, knowing that distances were as much a foe of the Bohca Tatbik as the Heartland Army. Sixty miles of marching under the summer sun with bad water and ruined roads would weaken the Hand forces, Descente knew; he pulled a map to him and studied the course of the Royal Highway as it led westward from Salcie to Dorog. Laffery was thinking ahead, planning, and using every trick and wile to beat his foe.

  Descente wondered if the Grand Marshal realized that his opponent was doing the same thing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Meagan Tiblin of the Iron Maidens leaned on her glaive and watched the red light of dawn wash across the village of Dorog. It was the thirteenth of Gliechteil, and in a few hours the Maidens and the wain-repair crew they guarded would be heading west to set up in some village near the Royal Bridge, as the Heartland Army was retreating towards them yet again. It never changed: the Maidens set up, guarded their charges from nothing, then pulled back and listened to the tales of how a battle was fought in the exact spot they had been occupying just days before. Half-baked mercenaries were making a name for themselves and picking up loot and weaponry with both hands, while she and her fellows were drawing their basic pay and not a penny more. Even bandits didn’t bother with them, as there was little profit to be had in tools and wood when wains loaded with all manner of food and drink rumbled eastward every day.

  Dorog hadn’t been bad duty, she supposed; it was a nice little town of three hundred souls built on a low ridge that crossed the Royal Highway at right angles, running almost due north and south. The Highway crossed the ridge through a low spot which had been cut deeper by thousands of man-hours of convict labor and worn deeper still by centuries of wagon-passage until there were two ridges flanking the road, with Dorog built on the north bluff overlooking the Highway.

  Besides the inhabitants, who had already fled, the town was occupied by about three hundred quartermaster troops maintaining the huge stocks of rations and war materials that had been established in the area, a company of two hundred Ilthanian foot, and various units dedicated to repairing wagons or treating sick horses, of which only the Sagenhoftian remained, the rest having pulled back.

  She was standing in the town’s square, watching over the repair crew’s loaded wains, boring duty. She was a bit surprised that the repair crews weren’t stirring, as they were meticulous about early starts and careful attention to their dray teams, but the only people she could see were a section of a dozen Ilthanian footmen guarding the entrance into town from the Royal Highway.

  A door closing behind her caught her attention; turning, she saw a pretty young woman named Chaytra coming out of the inn which served the Ilthanian garrison as a headquarters. “Good morning,” she called, and was glad to see Chaytra wave and head for her position, the young blonde looking tired and somewhat rumpled in the early light. Chaytra had been a maid in a wealthy farmer’s household out east, towards the Wall; her patron had abandoned the household staff in Dorog while fleeing the advancing Hand forces, and Chaytra had been making her living as a cook and sometimes prostitute ever since. Meagan liked her, and had offered to help her join the Maidens, but the former maid had declined, saying she was not soldier material.

  “I’m glad to see someone’s finally awake,” Meagan grinned.

  “I’ve been up for hours,” Chaytra rubbed her face tiredly. “Would you like some tea with honey?”

  The mercenary took the proffered mug and drank deeply. “Ahhh, I needed that.”

  “Keep it,” Chaytra waved the mug away. “What a night.”

  “Busy?” Meagan tried not to bring up the woman’s side-line directly, although she was a bit curious about it.

  “More than busy, almost frantic. First the Ilthanian Watcher, than the garrison commander, and so on, and so on.”

  “Really?” Meagan felt a bit giddy; she knew that a woman of the night had to do things that were a bit unusual, but this was something else entirely. “Why so...many?” She blinked and yawned, working her shoulders.

  “That�
�s just the way it works out, sometimes,” Chaytra shrugged. “You have to do what you have to do, when the orders are given.”

  “Huh.” Meagan shook her head, then shook it again when she realized that half a minute had passed without anything being said. She drained the tea to help fight the drowsiness, and passed the mug back to Chaytra, who set it on top of a wagon wheel. “Thanks for the tea; usually I’ve no problem with night-watches, but for some reason I’m not handling this one too well.” She covered her mouth as she yawned. “Why do they have a Watcher here, anyway?”

  “To see if a Gate is opened anywhere nearby; they’re afraid the Hand will use a Gate to bring troops in quickly and seize Dorog.”

  “Oh.” Meagan blinked sleepily.

  “What they should have had was a Seer,” Chaytra observed. “A Watcher just sees the present, while a Seer observes the past and future.”

  “Why yawn would they need a Seer ?”

  “Because perhaps the Hand wouldn’t employ a Gate; maybe they would have forces pre-positioned just outside a second-rate Watcher’s ability to detect, ready to close in once the Watcher had been neutralized,” Chaytra explained.

  Meagan frowned, wondering why her friend, who was usually just a bright-spirited former maid, was talking about such things and in such a manner, but she was having trouble focusing her thoughts. The clatter of wheels and hooves distracted her; turning, she saw a caravan of several large wagons rumbling up to the guard point. “Thass strange,” she muttered, then corrected herself. “That is strange.”

  “What is?”

  “Wagons coming here.”

  “Wagons come here all the time,” Chaytra pointed out patiently, steadying her friend with a hand to her shoulder.

  “Not at dawn they don’t, and anyway, supplies have stopped coming here, they’re stockpiling further west.” Meagan shook her head, but she was still feeling dizzy.

  “Times change,” Chaytra observed. “Here, sit down against this wagon wheel, you look a little pale.”

  “I don’t feel so good,” Meagan agreed as her friend helped her sit down; the former maid leaned the glaive against the wagon-box and unstrapped the dazed mercenary’s iron cap. “Must have been sumthin’ I ate.”

  “Or drank,” Chaytra said, slipping the girl’s club and knife from her belt and laying them on top of the wagon’s canvas-covered load.

  “What’s going on over at the guard point?” Meagan squinted, but the images were blurred and swimming.

  “They’re killing the Ilthanian footmen,” Chaytra explained patiently as she knelt by the mercenary. “The wagons contain what we need to secure the town. Most of the garrison is dead or drugged and unconscious, just as you’ll be in a moment or so.”

  “Bu’ why?” Meagan tried to stand, but the pressure of a single hand on her shoulder held her in place.

  “We take the village because the Hand has need of it,” Chaytra watched as the girl’s eyes fluttered and closed. “And we use drugs because we will need sacrifices for the ceremonies that will be performed.”

  The council of war convened on the evening of the fifteenth was grim. Grand Marshal Laffery came directly to the point. “The Hand has taken Dorog by subterfuge, and is fortifying it against us.” He waited for the expressions of surprise and dismay to subside before proceeding. “We now find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, to put it mildly. Bohca Tatbik follows close behind us, while Dorog is but a mile ahead of us. Like it or not, we have been brought to bay and must do battle.”

  “Sir, if you would, explain to us how our chief supply base was taken,” Duke Radet requested. “Was there no Watcher on hand to detect Gates?”

  “Yes, we had anticipated Gate-use, and the usual precautions had been taken: a Watcher was stationed in the town, the garrison was trained to react to the alarm, nearby cavalry detachments would have swiftly hunted down the Gate, and so on,” the Grand Marshal shook his head. “But the enemy did not use such devices; no doubt every Gate they have is being used to supply the various Hand armies. Instead, they infiltrated Hand agents into the area, probably posing as refugees, and struck from within. When they had gained control of the town, they brought up necromancers and the appropriate devices and raised a force of Dayar, thus creating an enemy force without alerting our Watchers or tying up one or more Gates. We estimate that there is a Holding of Dayar, roughly two thousand of the creatures, which has been laboring day and night to fortify the town and ridge against us. They have been reinforced by the Grass Viper Lardina of wolf-riders, which carried the Goblin foot Lardina with it, two Goblins riding on each wolf. They ruined most of the Viper’s wolves, but by swinging wide around our force, they delivered eighteen hundred Goblins to the town. Add in some dozens of Hand followers and you have a respectable force dug into good terrain.”

  “What must we do, then?” the Baron of Kordia asked.

  “We must delay the Bohca Tatbik while retaking Dorog; if we do otherwise we face the danger of being attacked on two sides. Any delay will mean more Hand troops circling around into Dorog, and further rest for the Hand troops following us.”

  “Who draws the job of storming Dorog?” Baron Noury asked. “Keeping in mind that my health is not what it used to be.” He cough theatrically, raising a weak chorus of laughter.

  Laffery smiled. “I had counted on the valor of the Baron of Kordia, in fact, leading his own footmen, the Lasharian Foot Guards, and the Sagenhoftian cohorts which have fought so well for the Heartland, supported by Imperial artillery.” The Grand Marshal spent another two hours outlining the plan for the defense against the Bohca Tatbik and the withdrawal behind Dorog. When he was finished, he dismissed the officers, asking the Baron and Duke Sorgen to remain behind.

  When they were alone he produced a sheaf of documents from his belt pouch. “Spies and treachery have ever been the Hand’s chief allies, and since assuming command I have come to the conclusion that the only way to keep something secret was to restrict the knowledge of it to an absolute minimum, telling no one until it was absolutely necessary. Thus I would speak with the two of you alone, and bid you to hold this secret close to your hearts until the plan is implemented.” He laid out a map of Dorog and the ridge. “When we reached Apartia I took certain steps to improve upon our contingency planning, not that I slight Grand Marshal Pecheux’s planning in any way. One of these bears upon our current situation. There are two men in Dorog, one in this ration dump here, on the section of ridge across the Highway from the town. Each slipped into the area unseen, and has remained hidden ever since. Each is equipped with an enchanted means of communications, and a Gate egran. The only person who knew about this besides myself and the two men involved was a young woman on my staff; she appears to be nothing more than a maid with whom I have been having an affair; in actuality, she is the sister of both men. She has been maintaining communications with her brothers and tends the two matching egrai.”

  “So, have you been sleeping with her?” Baron Noury grinned.

  “Yes, as a point of fact, but merely to lend credibility to the deception,” Laffery smiled back. “Tomorrow, just after dawn, the Gates will be opened and troops will be sent through to support the frontal assault upon the town.”

  The two noblemen leaned forward and studied the map. “By the Eight, you’re a clever old dog, Xern,” Baron Noury breathed. “Hit ‘em hard from both sides and we could actually carry the place.”

  “I expect a hard day awaiting us, gentlemen,” the Grand Marshal sighed. “I expect to lose Dorog and the supplies, and would be happy to bring my army through the gap reasonably intact and capable of further resistance. I hold little hope that your force will be able to clear the ridge line, but if you can secure the fortifications overlooking the Highway and hold them long enough for the army to pass, you both shall be heroes.”

  “I’m already a hero,” Baron Noury observed. “And all it has gotten me is a bunch of scars. If we lose Dorog, how far west will we have to go?”

&
nbsp; Laffery shrugged. “That will depend upon how much of the army we can save; perhaps all the way to the Royal Bridge, perhaps not, who can say? First you must carry the ridge.”

  “That we’ll do, or die in the attempt.” the Baron promised.

  “Carry it, and live, Nicolas,” the Grand Marshal shook a finger at the nobleman. “I need both of you and the ridge.”

  “So, which unit gets the ‘honor’ of charging through the Gates?” the Baron asked the Duke after the two of them had withdrawn to Noury’s tent. “Whoever goes through will have one bitter fight on their hands.”

  Duke Sorgen took a long drink of wine. “That’s a touchy point. Now, we’re got to clear both sides of the gap. The Dayar, since they can work without rest, have done amazing things in the last two days, although Eight knows they had plenty of supplies to work with. They’ve raised circular redoubts flanking the gap, one on the edge of town to the north of the gap, and one overlooking it from the south. There’re three north of the town, and three south of the one which overlooks the gap, eight in all. Figure four hundred defenders in each, plus an equal amount in the town, plus light artillery overlooking the gap.”

  “Let’s call the redoubt on the north side of the gap Point North, and the one of the south side of the gap Point South,” the Baron suggested. “We’ll number the rest from north to south, so there’s One, Two and Three here north of Dorog, and Four, Five and Six south of Point South.”

  “A good idea. Now, the troops coming through the Gate in town will have to fight its way through the town and take Point North, while those emerging in the ration-dump will have to take Point South,” the Duke mused. “We can figure the garrisons in each will be Dayar, as those are the key points. I would suggest using my men, as our cohort structure is better suited for such a task.”

  “I agree,” Noury nodded. “I’m going to convert to the Imperial standard when time permits, and take a long look at my horse, too; they’ve certainly been less use in this blasted war than I had expected. I’m going to send the Lasharian foot against Point South, and lead my own men against Point North and the town. Whichever of your cohorts isn’t used through the Gates should demonstrate against Point Three to keep the enemy’s attention off of the main show. I wish Laffery could have spared us more men, but such is war.”