Dark Tide: Book Five of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  The last nine days had been the worst in his life, and those in his army, he was sure. It had begun with the ambush of the Third Ket by the Lanthrell force. The Lanthrell had sent an Eyade pony back to the main body with a letter declaring that from then on, after the sun rose but before it set each Sacred Band, every Ket, Horc, Holding, Lardina, and Swarc would take at least one casualty, and would do so again between sun set and sun rise, and had lived up to it. For the most part the losses were light, just one or two killed or wounded from each command, but it grated on the nerves and wore on the army’s morale even as the weather and the Human guerrillas continued to make life unpleasant.

  The Threll had worked hard, the commander had to give them that: all day long they skirmished with the Eyade and sniped at the marching infantry, and then when night fell they assassinated sentries, sniped at whoever was gathered around what fires the troops could manage to get going, slew dray beasts, and otherwise got into mischief. They had mounted a sizeable raid on the night of the seventh using a large-scale probe by Human guerrillas as a distraction to get in and set fire to two-thirds of the wagon-loaded siege gear, reducing Bohca Ortak’s siege capacity from pathetic to nonexistent.

  The Eyade, their honor and fighting pride pricked, had done their best to screen the column, mixing it up with the woods-dwellers and local bandits at every opportunity and they had done a credible job, but there were roughly eight hundred less nomads for their efforts, not counting those slain in the ambush of the Third Ket.

  The road-damage had continued to take a toll on the speed and energy of his force, and what advantages his force had gained from the consumption of supplies was off-set by the need to transport the sick and wounded. On the eighth the Markan-Ber, the Hand’s Healers reported the first deaths from sickness, and the numbers of dead had steadily climbed since then, as did the incidence of serious illness as the days passed by and ice began to mix with the rain. Disease had only claimed around a hundred warriors of various races so far but the numbers were increasing even as the daily temperature dropped and the frosts lingered longer and longer past dawn. It didn’t help that they were marching north, either: every day’s march edged them into colder territory. The Seers in his command were confidently predicting the first real snow within the next ten hours, with the ground freezing and lasting snow within ten days. Frozen ground would speed the progress of the march, but just as surely would double the death-toll from illness.

  The news that had reached him was not very good: while Bohca Tatbik had taken the western Bridge forts and was hammering the eastern forts into rubble, Laffery had marched east and surprised two Horcs, a Ket, and some hundreds of individual replacements camped at Dorog waiting to join Bohca Tatbik, and wiped them out, recapturing the town and its commanding ridgeline. Worse, it was discovered that the Hand quartermasters had been using the area to store supplies just as the Heartland had been, so Laffery not only recaptured about a third of his own supplies but a massive amount of the Hand’s as well, giving him enough rations on hand to allow his army to go into winter quarters there at Dorog, smack astride Bohca Tatbik’s line of communications. No doubt once he had retaken Apartia Gichin would be ordered to march west and help Commander Descente retake Dorog.

  Not that taking Apartia was going to be easy: the garrison had lost the last wall positions late in the evening on the tenth, and on the thirteenth both of the lesser compounds had been retaken, the Hand troops there dying to a man. The Eleventh Holding had been ‘withdrawn’ to the homelands while the remaining Hand troops in Apartia, huddled inside the palace compound, were designated as the Thirty-Seventh Holding.

  Not that the remainder of the garrison was large: from last report the commander there had about six hundred troops all told, having been on half rations since the raid’s onset and quarter rations since the tenth, with all food expected to run out on the twenty-ninth. The locals didn’t seem to be interested in spending the lives necessary to dig them out of the palace, but there really wasn’t any reason to do so: the Hand troops were too weak to retake the city and unless Bohca Ortak got there pretty quickly the palace would fall from starvation.

  Hand spies amongst those at the ford had given him accurate reports on who he faced and what the situation was, and he was far less contemptuous than he had been; the mercenaries were battle-tested veterans who had done good work in Sagenhoft and the Apartia raid. Both units of irregulars were likewise better than average for their kind and willing to fight; Gichin had learned that the irregulars might be lacking in arms, armor, and training, but they made up for it with courage and a burning desire for revenge.

  His spies had advised him that a hundred Lanthrell had joined them, while the rest remained south of the river to harass the army; a hundred Lanthrell archers firing from behind cover was a daunting proposition.

  His scouts and local spies had assured him that he could get Eyade across the river provided he was willing to lose one warrior drowned for every warrior that he got across to the north shore, which was too high a price to pay even if he could find a Skuket who would be willing to try. Building ferries would allow him to move enough infantry across the river to flank the ford and force the defenders to withdraw without a fight, but his engineers advised him that the task of building ferries with the materials and tools at hand would take three days, plus a day or two to move the troops across, a delay that was completely unacceptable. Artillery would have softened up the enemy’s earthworks enough to make things much easier but the Threll raid had left him without many engines, and in any case he had only been transporting tools, vital timbers, and iron-work, no carved stone ammunition. Even if he had enough engines left to do the job, it would take three or four days to assemble enough stones.

  A frontal assault was the only solution to his problem of getting to Apartia as quickly as possible. It would be expensive in lives but he was confident he could clear the far bank after a couple attacks; once levered out of their positions the enemy would withdraw. The attack would commence at dawn on the sixteenth, allowing his troops some time to rest and reorganize while not wasting too much time. He would have liked to hurl the Felher or Goblin foot at the enemy as the two forces were the most expendable, but the water across the ford was fast-moving and three feet deep, chest-high on either race. Reluctantly he had decided to send in Orcs, as they were taller than Humans and thus would be less impeded by the water. The new Horc from the Death Hounds Kurvanak, Red Grass Vrapos, was eager for a real fight, having missed out on the summer’s campaign, and had volunteered for the job with only a small amount of manipulation. Two thousand Orcs ought to carry the day, if not in the first attack, then in the second. By dawn on the seventeenth the Bohca would be back on the move, heading to Apartia and even bloodier fighting.

  By instinct he, as any Hand commander, had initially thought to use his Direbreed but after a test of the water’s speed he had ruled against their use: too many of those cut down while crossing the ford would be swept downstream and their ‘Stones lost.

  Starr had, as was her custom when staying in one rural place for more than a single night, established her own quarters, in this case a ground-level lean-to of the type her people usually built while afield on hunting expeditions. Despite her years away from the Forest she was never truly comfortable sleeping within buildings, having built a small Threllian-style tree house for herself back at Oramere, the Badger home base. As the Bohca drew near she (and Rolf and Kroh) had built a second such structure not far from the defensive lines so that when the Company moved forward to their defensive works she would not have to endure living within a tent, something she disliked even more than buildings.

  The combined defense force had spent the fifteenth drilling and putting the finishing touches to their defensive works, confident that battle would be joined on the morrow. Durek had ended the duty day well before sundown so that everyone could get a hot meal and a few hours’ sleep, as no less than half the command would be under arms and in their
positions from sunset until one hour before dawn, with everyone in position thereafter.

  The little Corporal lay in her little lean-to in a tangle of blankets, a ember-pit dug into the ground heating the small structure; Halabarian, somewhat more constricted than the short Badger by the dimensions she had chosen, shared her blankets. It was past midnight from the night noises, and occasionally snowflakes drifted down from the low-hanging clouds overhead.

  “I’m glad you were part of the company who came to assist us,” she murmured into the minstrel’s ear.

  He noted the use of the term ‘assist’; clearly she had considerable confidence in her Company. “I had a good idea of what was waiting for me,” he whispered back, trailing a hand across her bare hip.

  “I guess they won’t be trying a night attack,” Rolf observed absently, his hands busy; over the last two hours he had taken a six-foot length of rope someone had discarded, unraveled it into independent strands, and then woven the strands into cords a quarter-inch thick. He was now engaged in wrapping the cords around the top rail on Ballista Tower Two.

  “Yup,” Kroh’s cigar hissed and glowed as the Waybrother drew on it. “ ‘Course, coming across the ford in the dark would be tricky, and the Threll wouldn’t have any problem seeing ‘em. Orcs may see better at night than Men, but not so much they they’ll have an easy time crossing at night. One slip in full armor and you’re through. I figure they’ll start forming up soon, about the time we stand-to ourselves, and then come across as soon as they’re organized. What surprises me is that they didn’t try fishing with grapnel hooks while they were clearing out the stakes and knee-breaker holes on the south bank yesterday; they might have cleared away some of the barriers in the water that way.”

  “I guess they lost too many Direbreed doing it,” Rolf tied off a length of cord and picked up another. “Even with the mantelets mounted on the wagons we picked off twenty or so, plus some Human engineers; one of the Threll said they don’t have much more’n that many beasts with which to re-Seed them. By now there won’t be a goat, sheep, or dog within fifteen miles of this road between here and Apartia. It may not be dead, but a Breedstone can’t fight until you Seed it.”

  “True enough. Still, if I were in charge over there, I would have given it a try. Better to lose twenty or thirty Direbreed temporarily clearing water hazards today than an extra hundred Orcs tomorrow. Those barriers will make it hard for them to really press the first assault home. I figure the first one’ll be easy enough, the second one will find the irregulars full of confidence after sending the first one back, and the third or fourth will crack our lines bad enough so’s we have to head for winter quarters, wherever that’ll be. Still, figuring they would have rested here yesterday anyway, we’ll cost them a solid day plus a bunch of Orcs.”

  “I’m tired of this war,” Rolf sighed.

  “I’m getting a bit weary of it as well,” Kroh confessed. “Not the fighting so much as all the wandering about living rough and eating poorly, and the worry that some daft sod on your flank will drop you into the soup by making the wrong move. I like the smaller fights, like the raids in Sagenhoft, dust-ups where it’s just the Badgers involved.”

  “There go the runners; time for everyone to stand-to, dawn in an hour,” Rolf observed.

  “Yup. Look, you can see ‘em stirring across the river. They’ll be coming for us soon, count on it.”

  The Death Hounds formed up as the night faded and the Badgers, Lanthrell, and irregulars took up their positions. It had stopped snowing during the night and patches of sky were visible through the cloud cover as dawn arrived. Durek had had work details tending clay-brick stoves and covered kettles all night, and as each defender moved into position he or she received a quart of hot soup and a couple freshly-baked rolls, and kettles of tea were heated all along the line.

  Durek moved from Badger to Badger ensuring that everyone knew the plan should the Orcs carry a charge through the defenses and a sudden withdrawal be necessary.

  Twenty minutes past dawn the order was given and the Death Hounds began their advance, moving at a steady walk across the cleared ground of the south bank, giving their grunting urrr, urrr cry with each step. They had hardly come into view when Kroh’s ballista tumped overhead and a five-foot shaft flashed across the river and slammed into the lead ranks. Rolf waited a minute to let the Waybrother’s crew reload, and then triggered his own engine. From drills every defender knew the distances across the ford by heart, and no one wasted arrows as the Orcs lumbered across the south bank. When the lead Death Hounds were halfway to the water the siege crossbows opened fire, metal-framed weapons with built-in re-cocking winch assemblies which had to be swivel-mounted on posts because of their weight. As they neared the water’s edge the longbowmen amongst the defenders drew and released.

  The ballista fired slowly, but each five-foot javelin could drive through a Orc’s shield and the Orc behind it, emerging from the body with enough force to punch through another shield and seriously wound or kill the wielder; the siege crossbows were somewhat faster to reload, and their steel bolts able to punch through shields and armor without difficultly. The yard-long arrows from the long bows could be fired accurately at three or four times the siege crossbow’s rate of fire, each shaft easily punching through the scale jacks of the attackers.

  The lead ranks of Orcs splashed into the cold, fast-moving water and lumbered forward, slowing as the first attacker stumbled on a stake, ripping open its calf and tripping, the weight of its armor dragging the Orc under even as the current pulled him downstream. Picking their way through the underwater barriers slowed the advance to a cautious walk even as the light crossbows added their missiles to the incoming fire.

  “They’re not using any sort of spell-work,” Axel advised Durek when the Captain came by his position to check on the magical portion of the battle. “I can sense their protective wards, but the Hand spellcasters are staying out of it.”

  “Why?” The Dwarf peered suspiciously at the far bank.

  “I’m guessing that it we don’t start anything, magically speaking, neither will they. The Bohca commander apparently doesn't want to risk losing any of his spellcasters.”

  “Don’t they outnumber you and Henri and those hedge-wizards the irregulars have?”

  “Outnumber and out-power, but as long as they stay silent I’ll be glad to do the same. Let sleeping Void-wizards lie, I would advise.”

  The Captain thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “You’re right, it harms them far more than it ever would us. Send word to me if things change.”

  Getting across the ford was a slow and torturous process that cost the lead elements of the Death Hounds a good number of warriors, but finally the battered front ranks left the water and wove their way through the stake-belts as the Lanthrell opened fire. For long seconds the line of attackers wavered as the intensity and accuracy of the Threll archers tested their will and thinned their ranks, and then the Hounds moved forward. Cursing the wounds opened on their legs by the close-set stakes, trying to keep their shields between themselves and the worst of the fire as comrades fell to the left and right, the Orcs trudged up the bank towards the line of defenses, the sight of javelins arcing out from the defensive positions an almost welcome sight as it meant they were finally getting close.

  “Platoon, advance,” Maxmillian bellowed, and led Gold Platoon to the east ‘wing’ wall as the Death Hounds drew close to the defensive line. The archers and crossbowmen in the fighting positions could hold the Orcs out of their positions, but the stretches of wall between each strong point would have to be secured by the reserve forces. The Hounds directed their blows at the hedges’ lower branches and stalks, hacking away the plant barrier while the Badgers thrust through it at the Orcs. Further back towards the river the advancing Orcs were pausing to rip stakes out of the ground to make their passage easier.

  Gold Platoon had only been sparring with the Hounds for a couple minutes when horns and drums
sounded across the river and the Orcs began to fall back in good order, moving sideways as they headed towards the river, keeping their shields between themselves and the defenders as best they could, gathering up their wounded and trampling down or pulling up stakes as they went.

  “That went better than I thought,” Strolz grinned at the Captain after giving his report. “I only lost two lads killed and a dozen wounded, and look at all that.” ‘All that’ was a carpet of dead Hounds scattered on both sides of the river, perhaps a hundred-fifty all told.

  The Captain glanced up at Kroh, who was sitting on the top rung of the ladder leading up to his tower; the Waybrother puffed out a smoke ring and shook his head. Arian, leaning against one of the tower’s support poles, echoed the Corporal’s gloomy look. “I’m afraid you’re wrong,” Durek advised the enthusiastic irregular. “We lost this first attack; the second’ll carry the day. You had best prepare for an evacuation when the next charge hits home.”

  “But...we drove ‘em off,” Strolz protested. “Killed dozens of them.”

  “We didn’t drive them off, they withdrew,” Durek explained patiently, noting that Bowden wasn’t disagreeing with him. “They ripped up our stake belts, marked the knee-breaker holes with spears driven into the bank, cut the rope-tangles, got an idea where we put barriers in the water, and ruined much of the hedges between the strong points. Then they withdrew because their formations were scattered, and in any case, that’s what they planned to accomplish in the first rush. You’ll note they didn’t commit the entire Horc, just a couple Ularg. The next assault will be made by fresh Orcs who know what to expect, and who won’t have much in the way of barriers between them and our line. Once they breach our lines we wreck the siege crossbows, set fire to the ballista, and retreat; the Hounds won’t pursue, they’ll just secure our line and wait for the Eyade to cross. All the enemy wants is to traverse the Ford and move on north, and all we want to do is delay them. Unfortunately, we haven't done too good of a job.” He slapped the dejected Strolz on the shoulder. “Cheer up, we hurt ‘em a bit and cost them a day. They’ve still got plenty of miles of ruined roads and ambushes ahead of them, not to mention the weather and a hard fight waiting for them at the end of it. Now, let’s get ready for the next rush; the more we chew ‘em up here, the less the garrison at Apartia has to face.”