by RW Krpoun
Chapter Twenty-Five
The first real rains of autumn fell on the nineteenth and twentieth of Zahmteil, long slow showers that thoroughly soaked Sagenhoft and the surrounding areas, cooling the crowded city and washing much of the garbage and filth from the battered streets while it filled the roof-cisterns and rain barrels with clean water. Outside the city the artillery barrage slowed as Hand engineers had their drainage systems, trench supports, and engine foundations put to the test and found that modification and repairs were called for.
The riots and disturbances halted while the rain fell and for a couple days the populace of the city looked out at life with a less bleak outlook.
The audience chamber was occupied by Lord Marshal Pittmann, Lord Commander Fassburg, and a half-dozen senior officers when Lord Regent Chaton entered, Lady Eithne in tow. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” the Regent waved the officers back into their seats.
Pittmann waved to Fassburg, who stood and unrolled a map of the North Town defenses on the table. “As you all know, the Hand’s artillery’s main point of assault is here on the north wall between towers Nine and Ten; we can see siege towers being built, and signs that the assault trenches are about to be begun. Based on the studies made by our experts in artillery and fortification, and careful examination of the area in question, we can expect a breach in this area within four weeks. Once a breach has been made, and by breach I mean that a section of the wall has been battered to the point where it collapses into a pile of rubble that is surmountable by a man in armor, infantry will use the breach to gain access to the city while siege towers are rolled to either side and employed to get still more troops onto the walls. Once the enemy has established a foothold on a section of wall, he will begin driving into the city. Given that we are outnumbered by better than twelve to one, once the enemy gets inside the city the outcome is inevitable, barring outside intervention.”
“Thank you, Lord Commander, my day had not yet been completely ruined,” the Regent observed drily, raising a weak chorus of chuckles. “So, do we wait and pray that Laffery can pull our chestnuts out of the fire, or do we extract as much hedonistic debauchery out of the next four weeks in anticipation of death?”
“I’m too old for debauchery, so we’ll take other steps,” Lord Marshal Pittmann heaved himself to his feet. “Laffery needs time, which we’re to buy him, and any delay works to our advantage. What we do now is begin building a line of defenses behind this prospective breach so that when the Hand establishes their toehold on the wall, they look down into the city and see another line of defenses. It won’t amount to much, just wooden walls, fortified houses, barricades made of barrels, boxes, and bags filled with sand, but it will require hard fighting to clear, and if we build it in an arc like so, far enough back from the wall, their missile troops won’t be able to use the wall’s height against us. Additionally, the wall will prevent the enemy’s heavy artillery being used against such defenses, masking them from sight of the crews. They’ll have to clear the position in melee, fighting street to street, house by house, room to room. The results will be a bloodbath for both sides, but it will take time, perhaps a great deal of it. Time I hope Laffery puts to good use.”
“I see.” Chaton leaned forward and studied the map. “And I suppose I’m here because you need these city blocks evacuated in order to build your line?”
“Exactly, sir.”
The Regent sighed. “That will create problems, and take time, perhaps as much as a week. Still, I see your need, and it shall be done.” He looked up at the grim old soldier. “Can we hold, Hergo? When the wall fails us, can we stop them?”
“For a while, sir. Perhaps long enough.”
The Regent nodded, looking older than he had when he entered the room. “Is there anything else?”
“Yes sir, one more thing,” Fassburg stepped up again. “These new defenses will have to be manned, and by the best troops we’ve got, which means the units will have to be pulled off the walls elsewhere and shifted over here. We plan to move the dismounted Guard Corps into reserve behind the projected breach, and man the improvised line with the First and Third Cohorts, while the Fifth holds the wall itself in the area of the breach. This will weaken the wall in several other places, and in order to fill the gaps we would like to employ some of the Wall Companies.”
The Regent sighed. The Wall Companies were an outgrowth of the city’s overcrowding and the desperate odds they faced: each was two hundred able-bodied young men (and women, if they volunteered) who were organized into a unit and drilled as best they could. Mercenaries were hired to act as leaders, and weapons and armor were provided as fast as the city’s workshops could manufacture them. The longest-serving of the twenty Companies raised had two months’ service, while most had only a couple weeks, and none had anything close to a full complement of weapons. They served as a last-ditch reserve and as a way to keep the rioting down a bit by taking unemployed bodies off the streets, and had remained under the control of the Regent, used mainly to clean up after the riots and fight fires. The Regent was no soldier but he had seen enough of war by now to know that should the Wall Companies end up in melee they would be slaughtered. “Is there any other way?”
“No, sir, we’ve too much wall and too few troops. In the event of a ground attack the Wall Companies can push away ladders and drop stones on attackers as well as anyone.”
“And when the enemy reaches the top of the wall, they will die.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there much chance of them actually seeing action?”
“Possibly, sir. There’s always the chance that the Hand will use the breach as a decoy while the main stroke going in against an undamaged section of the wall, counting on surprise and second-line defenders to carry the day. If we are correct in assuming that the breach will be the site of the main stroke, there will certainly be secondary attacks against other points on the walls in order to keep us from shifting all our forces to a single danger point.”
Chaton nodded unhappily. “I understand. Very well, I shall release the Wall Companies to the garrison.” He studied the map. “Will the breach occur before or after the coronation?”
“Before, sir, of that we’re certain.”
“Very well, make provision to pull the Phantom Badgers off the wall and assign them to a central position in this second line; if the Hand breaks through I shall make my headquarters in this new line, and remain there until the issue is settled; the Badgers are my personal guard.”
“And a good one,” Lord Fassburg nodded, making a note. “Very well, sir. It shall be as you command.”
When they were outside the audience chamber Lady Eithne grabbed the Regent’s arm. “What do you mean, you’ll be in the secondary line? You’re the Regent.”
“I am the Regent,” Chaton shrugged. “I rule; when the fate of Sagenhoft hangs in the balance, I must be where its fate is decided. You will remain on the Dragon Isle with the Lifeguards, so that if I fall nothing is lost. The Fleet-Captain will step up as Regent should I die, until your birthday and coronation.”
The girl stamped a foot, tears shining in her eyes. “You can’t do that, uncle. You can’t fight, you’re not a soldier.”
“I won’t fight,” he smiled tiredly. “But the troops may fight a bit harder if their ruler is amongst them. Your father knew that, which was why he set the example. You’ll understand, when your day comes.”
“How much longer?” Durek asked Kroh as a carefully carved boulder weighing nearly four hundred pounds slammed into the wall and shattered into five sections, the shock of the impact sending jets of powdered mortar spurting from every seam within twenty feet of the point of impact. The two Dwarves were a hundred feet back from the wall, watching the bombardment.
The Waybrother shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth as he thought about it. “Twenty-four, twenty-five days if they keep it up and there’s no flaws in the stonework. Trouble is, the wall’s too thick for external s
horing to help it, not timber shoring, anyway. Now, if we had a company of the Folk and some well-cut stone...”
“True, but all the Dwarven engineers are with the main army.” It was the first of Hoffnungteil, the tenth month of the Imperial Calendar, and the Phantom Badgers were en route from their wall-tower to their new quarters on what was being called the Red Line, the improvised containment defenses being thrown up behind the breach site.
“When they come through the breach Fifth Cohort won’t be able to stop them, and no war engine lasts an hour in the flanking towers before the Hand light engines wreck it.”
“It’ll be street-fighting, and no doubt about it,” Durek nodded. “We’re the only mercenaries in the breach, we can make a name here. Besides, if the Red Line falls, so will the whole city. We’ll fight ‘em someplace so here’s as good a spot as any.”
At the moment the Red Line did not exist other than as markings on a map and chalked signs hung along its length. It was to begin at the city wall well north of the prospective breach, angled into the city, and then paralleled the city wall until it angled back to meet the fortifications well south of the breach. The Guard Corps, three hundred sixty dismounted heavy cavalry, was already in position at act as a primary reserve, while the First and Third Cohorts were moving into position, along with the Badgers.
It was one thing to draw a defensive line on a map, and another to build and man it; not long into the construction of the Red Line the plans were changed and the Second Cohort was committed to the line, while the Sixth Cohort was brought up to bolster the reserve. It left the city stripped bare of troops, and ten more Wall Companies were hastily formed to replace the Seventh Cohort, which would act as a reserve for the rest of North Town, and the Navy ships were docked so that the crews could man Dragon Isle’s defenses.
The effects of the Hand’s arson teams was being keenly felt at this point, as there were far more defenders than weapons or armor, and the surviving workshops and smithies could not produce enough arms in the time available. Durek sold off most of the excess shields they had captured at Dorog for three times their value, along with most of the Company’s stock of extra weapons, while individual Badgers did the same. Even the arms captured from the Hobrec at the Amphitheater raid were issued out to the Wall Companies on the premise that it was better to have an awkward weapon than no weapon at all.
Despite the addition of another cohort the Red Line was thinly manned, and the Badgers quickly found themselves assigned to three strong points in the center. The position itself consisted of three single-story mortared-stone warehouses set just far apart so that a wagon could pass comfortably between them. Unfortunately, the warehouses’ narrow ends faced the wall which diminished their value, but it was an unavoidable situation. A row of run-down house currently stood between the warehouses and the wall, but work parties hired from the ranks of the refugees were rapidly dismantling them and stacking the materials behind the Red Line for the use of the defenders.
While neither Durek nor Kroh were purpose-trained engineers, every Dwarf knows mining, shoring, and the basics of structural mechanics as a matter of upbringing, all the more so if they spent their adolescent years employed in the mines, which both had. Both had defended and assaulted fortified positions before as well, and Durek was quick to poll his Company for others of experience.
The Badgers set about their three buildings with a will; while details cleaned them out (until recently, the warehouses had served as homes for refugees), the main work parties set about shoring up the roofs, adding supports until every square yard of roof had its own post holding it up; the walls were likewise braced and buttressed from within. The dirt floors were raked clean, wet down, and tamped, a process that was repeated a score of times until the dirt was level and as hard as clay. The clay tiles of the roofs were scrubbed and scraped free of moss and then covered with a foot of dirt, the edges of the roofs being built up box-like to keep the dirt from sliding off, with an inch of gravel added on top to prevent the wind from blowing the dirt off. Doorways were bricked up except for one entrance on the narrow ends that faced into the city, and this was narrowed with stone-work until Rolf had to edge through sideways. The windows were bricked up, leaving only arrow slits, while other firing ports were knocked into the walls. Planks were nailed across the rafters to provide footing for archers using the slits cut into the walls just below the eaves.
To keep the enemy from by-passing their positions, plank and stone walls were built connecting the three buildings, as well as linking them to the adjoining positions. As time permitted the ground between their positions and the wall was strewn with sharpened wooden stakes driven in at an angle, rope-tangles strung between posts, and knee-breaker holes
On the fourteenth one of the scores of incoming boulders slammed into Tower Nine as so many had done before; the tower shook from the impact, mortar blasted into sand from the force of the impact jetting from seams and cracks. A second later, as the shattered sections of the boulder were slamming into the dirt below the tower there was a crack and the upper third of the tower shifted an inch or two inwards, towards the city. The tower commander ordered his men out of the structure, which proved to be very wise: twenty minutes later another direct hit collapsed the upper third of the tower, the slow, majestic avalanche of blocks and stones pulling down parts of the wall on either side.
“Yup,” Kroh nodded, as he and the detail he had been commanding stopped planting stakes and watched the stonework fall, leaving a thirty-foot section of wall only half as tall as it had been. “The band is warming up, and the tune will be starting shortly.”
Within the hour every one of the fifteen heavy engines were concentrating on the damaged area, while lighter engines heaved loads of loose rock blindly behind the wall to discourage the defenders from attempting any repairs. Before nightfall the Dayar had come up and two dozen assault trenches were bringing to zig-zag forward from the Hand’s Assault Line, heading for the wall.
“The breach has begun,” Lord Commander Fassburg announced to the assembled officers and officials. “Tower Nine fell yesterday, as I’m sure all of you heard, and the Hand is pounding the wall around it with everything they have; they’ll be coming through in a week, more or less. The Red Line is as ready as we can make it, although we’ll be working on it until the Hand comes through the breach. Word is that there are two regiments of Navian Marines on their way here, and they ought to get here in time; otherwise, we’ll fight with what we’ve got.”
As Fassburg went over various points, the Lord Regent glanced sideways and noted that Lady Eithne, who was sitting bolt upright watching the Lord Commander as if expecting him to pull a live trout from his own ear at any moment, was discretely holding Senior Cornet Colgan von der Strieb’s hand under the table.
Von der Strieb, son of the Lord General commanding the Eastern Field Force, was the Imperial Field Force‘s liaison with the Duchy, a likely enough lad of twenty-three who had spent the last four years in the Legions. He had commanded a company in the Fifth Legion in his last assignment (where, the Regent had been told by men who knew, he was treated like any other officer) until he lost his left hand at the wrist at Dorog. He had been given the liaison job, and since the heiress had decided to be the Regent’s shadow had been spending a great deal of time with Lady Eithne. Like his father von der Strieb was a fairly colorless, humorless man of unprepossessing features who had constantly been close to either the Regent or the Lord Marshal since the siege had begun. This trait was unusual as all the other liaison officers (nephews and younger brothers to good families) were seldom seen on Dragon Isle, preferring to enjoy the bountiful pleasures that a city filled with desperation could bring. Von der Strieb took his duties seriously, as obviously he had taken soldiering seriously, to judge from his scars and stump. Your father might get you medals (Chaton doubted von der Strieb the elder would), but to get wounds in places where Healers treated only the near-dead you had to soldier.
The Lor
d Regent approved of the situation: von der Strieb seemed a level-headed young man, keen and a hard worker, which were qualities lacking in many of the suitors sniffing around the future Duchess, some of whom were Chaton’s age or older. He was older than her, of course, but that was hardly a serious problem, and the ‘von der’ attached to his name qualified him as Imperial nobility. Perhaps it would never be a love match, but few rulers were lucky enough to have one of those; friendship was the best most could hope for, and there were plenty who didn’t even get that. The Empire had strategic interests in Sagenhoft and the Realms, but was sufficiently removed geographically to have no real political ambitions beyond ensuring that the area did not fall under the sway of the Void or worse, the Arturians. For the last few days the Regent had, with meticulous care, been seeing to it that the pair were left alone for suitable lengths of time. Not long, of course, but youthful courtships could progress in leaps and bounds based on a few whispered words, a kiss in an anteroom, notes passed from cuff to cuff.
In troubled times, it was Human nature to cling to some hope, some person, some dream.
“They’ll be hitting the wall soon,” Duna whispered into the dark of her small room. The Badgers had been assigned an inn called The Red Fox as quarters, a spacious place that had held the mercenaries in fair style. The nine females and officers of Corporal and above even had their own rooms. “Ten days, Kroh says.”
“ ‘Hitting’ doesn't mean ‘carrying’,” Jothan murmured beside her, the two comfortably tangled amidst the bedclothes. “We’ll have a word or two to say about that. Carry the breach, which’ll be opposed, and you’ve a couple hundred feet of open ground to cross just to reach the Red Line, and while our positions aren’t stone walls, well, the Hand won’t have heavy artillery to open ‘em up, neither. They’ll have to root the defenders out of the line like diggin’ a Badger out of its hole, and a damned bloody job that’ll be.”