by John Dalmas
He had instantaneous communication with the force left at Balralligh. Every headquarters, from battalion on up, had a voitu communication specialist, whose skills enabled him to quickly locate specific information in the hive mind. Thus Kurqosz was quickly informed when the fleet returned. Twelve ships had been lost, and others newly damaged by storm or fire.
There'd been no voitu with the mission, so the events were not recorded in the hive mind. Neither the communications specialist nor Kurqosz had any way to view the events directly. Therefore the crown prince's first response was to order the vice admiral flogged. His second was a query to the high admiral, asking how seaworthy were the ships that had returned.
The answer was, not very, particularly given the continuing bad weather. If a new expedition was sent, he'd recommend that it comprise not more than the best thirty ships.
So Kurqosz contacted Chithqosz directly through their personal subchannel of the hive mind. The younger prince was in excellent spirits. How had the fighting gone? he asked. Chithqosz was delighted with the answer. Briefly they exchanged thoughts and images, including the matter of the aborted rescue.
Chithqosz insisted things were going well on the Scrub Coast, and that the problem of provisions had been handled for the near future. He'd learned that to the people of the Scrub Lands, their cattle were their wealth, their pride, and their reputation. And when word came of the invaders, they'd driven most of their livestock deep into the back country. Now his cavalry had a swarm of platoons out hunting them. Already they'd begun bringing in cattle in quantities. The men might tire of eating mainly beef, especially tough stringy beef, but they would not go seriously hungry.
***
It had been a reassuring exchange, Kurqosz told himself. Chithqosz was handling his command adequately, and was in good spirits. Nor had it hurt that his younger brother had found an attractive woman for his bed, a woman stupid but passionate.
Next he contacted the chief communicator at Balralligh again, and gave him a message for the high admiral. Push hard on refitting ships. As soon as eighty were in thoroughly sound condition, send them south to pick up the remainder of the army.
Meanwhile he'd send patrols west to the Merrawin River. When he had adequate information, he'd march his army there, and with that he'd control a third of the Eastern Empire. The rich and fertile third. Autumn, it seemed, came early there, winter would follow, and provisions were necessary in fertile lands as well as poor. He needed to collect, store, and safeguard food for his troops. And fodder for his cavalry, and for the thousands of draft horses he'd appropriated.
***
"I am told you claim to have been over the road that goes through the mountains," Chithqosz said. He spoke Yuultal-"Vismearcisc"-as well as any of the voitar, and for the most part understood what was said to him in the Scrub Lands dialect.
"Yes, your lordship. Twicet each way."
"For what purpose?"
"Trade, your lordship."
Chithqosz frowned. "Trade?" he asked. Surely these people had nothing to trade.
"Of salt fish, your lordship."
"I've seen no salt fish here. And why would anyone trade for salt fish?"
"There's some prosperous kingdoms acrosst the mountains, your lordship. A market for delicacies."
"Salt fish is a delicacy?"
"A partic'lar land is. Calls 'em smelt. Mighty tasty. They runs up the cricks in the spring of the year, to spawn. Some years folks takes 'em in great muchness, and salts 'em down in barls. And if they's enought, I hauls 'em crosst the mountains soon's they's salted down. They's best if they don't lay in the salt too long. It renches outen 'em better."
Chithqosz didn't ask many more questions. His attention was stuck on two pieces of information. Prosperous kingdoms across the mountains, and twelve or fifteen days by wagon. He had the human given a gold morat for his information.
Fortunately for the trader, the Voitusotar do not see auras.
***
Chithqosz might not have decided as he had, were it not for the weather and the living conditions. During the nearly two weeks since he'd painted a rosy word-picture for Kurqosz, the wind had blown almost constantly. Cold wind. And rained enough-cold drizzles, mainly-that things had gotten wet and not really dried out. Especially in the shelter tents occupied by his troops.
However, after he'd talked to the "fish merchant," the day before, the sun had come out. A good omen. He'd run for an hour on the beach, in the sunshine, and thought about prosperous kingdoms across the mountains.
The next night he dreamed of them. And woke up chilled despite his down quilt and the fire his orderly kept in the fireplace. A newly risen sun shone through the membrane-the lining of a cow's abdomen-that covered his window. But when Chithqosz went outside, he found the surface of the ground frozen. It was then he made his mind up. As soon as he'd eaten, he contacted Kurqosz and made his proposal. The crown prince asked some questions, then exchanged thoughts with General Klugnak, Chithqosz's chief of staff.
Finally he touched minds with his younger brother again, and approved his proposal. Howeyer, Chithqosz was to let his chief of staff make the operational decisions. Klugnak was a good and experienced senior officer.
***
Meanwhile, Kurqosz's own campaign had proceeded without a hitch. And according to his intelligence officers, the kingdoms outside the ylvin empires were human. Except for the rare dwarvish enclave, and the dwarves were interested only in trade.
28 Triple Whammy
A brigade-some six thousand officers and men-were left behind, distributed at various points along the ten miles of coast. They would safeguard the ships, and the crews and engineers refitting them.
The rest marched away, in a column ten miles long-soldiers, cattle, packhorses, and wagons. The cattle-mobile rations-had been distributed to the individual battalions, each battalion responsible for its own. Wagons were relatively few-from two to eight for each battalion, depending on whether the battalion was infantry or cavalry They carried the equipment of the battalion's engineer platoon, and corn and minimal hay for the horses. The troops carried their own gear and cornmeal.
The voitar themselves walked. They'd have run much of the time, but were slowed by the pace of their human infantry. Voitar, of course, carried almost nothing except their swords and daggers. Officers' baggage was carried by packhorses.
It took five days for the lead unit to reach the point where the river left the mountains and entered the swamp. Chithqosz was impressed with the stone wharf there, and the road, what he could see of it. Obviously neither had been built for commerce in salted fish. Meanwhile the weather had held good-cool, but with hazy sunshine. General Klugnak ordered the army to make camp. He'd rest the men and horses a day before starting them up the road.
He did, however, send scouts up the road on horseback. They returned an hour later. The valley, they said, narrowed to a rocky gorge, little more than wide enough to accommodate the river-the Copper River, according to the fish merchant. The road had continued westward, in places carved into the gorge wall. At the mouth of the gorge they'd found a small building of neatly cut and fitted rock, but no one had been there. A toll road, Klugnak guessed aloud to the prince, manned in season by whoever had built the road, but this was not the season.
The next morning at dawn, the army started up the river.
***
The heart of the Great Eastern Mountains-the part that had inspired the "Great" in the name-lay some sixty miles south of the Copper River Gorge, and farther from the sea. The head of the Copper River Pass was only 3,100 feet above sea level, and the shoulders above the pass only 600 feet higher. That far north, the mountain range is particularly broad, an extensive series of north-south ridges, from whose drainages, small mountain streams empty into the Copper River. Mostly from hanging ravines, via falls and cascades.
The army's progress was less than swift. Here and there were rock falls, the source of the innumerable tumbled blocks of ston
e over and around which the Copper River rushed and romped. When the lead unit encountered a rock fall partly blocking the road, trumpets echoed through the gorge, stopping the column. Then men and horses went to work clearing the rock. Even so, at late dusk of the first day, the hindmost battalion had entered the gorge.
There wasn't a hint of rain, which was fortunate, because there was no place to pitch tents. Men and junior officers slept on or beside the road itself, on rock or rubble. Senior officers slept on pallets laid on hay. There was no forage along the road; the horses were skimpily fed from the fodder on the wagons. Klugnak hoped these mountains did not outlast the fodder supply.
At midmorning of the second day, the lead battalion-the command battalion-reached a remarkable bridge. Two massive stone piers arose from each side of the river, anchoring ropes made of steel wire. Ropes the like of which Chithqosz had never seen before. Suspended from them by similar but smaller ropes hung a bridge floored with thick, white-oak planks. The planks, like the cables, were ancient, made immune to decay by dwarven spells. Chithqosz sensed the spells as he crossed, and found them neutral, without threat.
A few hours later, scouts came back to report another suspension bridge, with a manned guard station at its far end. They'd seen it from a little distance, and believed the guards had seen them in turn. It seemed to Klugnak the scouts were uneasy about it, no doubt at the possibility they might be ordered to cross the narrow span in the teeth of crossbow fire.
"Continue the march," the general ordered. Thirty minutes later, the prince and the general could see the bridge ahead, and the guard station at its far end. The building was small, built of stone against a sheer rock face. A wooden barricade arm had been lowered, blocking the road. Even seen from a hundred yards away, the guards were short and broad, with disproportionately long arms. Lines in a book came to the minds of both voitar: "… savage warriors no higher in stature than the nipples of a man." A human man. "Short of leg but long of arm
… and no concept of mercy."
A chill bristled Klugnak's hair, but he rejected it. The warnings of sea dragons and serpents, bees the size of sparrows, great birds that killed and ate men-all had been fantasy. He turned to his aide. "I want the place captured and the guards taken prisoner. Kill them only if they resist."
The voitik major saluted sharply. "As you order, sir."
A squad of the prince's personal guard company-rakutur, voitik halfbloods-approached the guard station. Their sergeant ordered the two guards to put down their weapons. One of the guards skewered the sergeant with his spear. Within half a minute, both guards lay dead. But on the ground before them lay four rakutur-four rakutur!-two dead, one dying, and another whose next shirt would need only one sleeve.
Klugnak himself examined the building's interior. Despite the dwarves' short stature, the door was more than high enough to accommodate the towering voitu nicely, and two human soldiers could pass through it side by side if they chose. He wondered why. Actually it was to permit dwarves to hurry out with their weapons, including spears and poleaxes.
In back, the door leading into the mountain was little more than five feet high. To pass through it, a human would have to bend or crouch, a serious problem if it was defended from the other side. It opened into a large chamber with two rear entrances. One was an upward-slanting tunnel, polished slippery smooth, and too low for even a dwarf to stand in. The other was about six feet high, at the foot of steep stairs that climbed into darkness. All of which should have told Klugnak several things, as should the faint lingering odor of lamp smoke in the room. But his arrogance got in the way, and at any rate the die had been cast.
Outside the guard station, the rakutur destroyed the wooden bar that blocked the road, and the column moved on.
***
An hour later, a short stocky figure emerged from a tunnel eight hundred feet higher, and half a mile south of the gorge. The dwarf carried a trumpet as long as himself, and raising it, blew a single long piercing blast. Then he sat down to wait.
A short while later, a vulture-sized black bird arrived, resembling a large-headed raven with a crimson cap. It settled on a nearby pine.
"Everheart?" the dwarf called.
"Himself," the bird answered.
"How are yer nestlings?"
"Grown, flown, and on their own, I'm grateful to report. I am ready for another twenty-year vacation from parenting." The bird cocked his red-crowned head. "Why have you called on the great ravens?"
Like the dwarves, the great ravens were disinclined to involve themselves in politics. They didn't need enemies. But they had an agreement with the dwarves. The surface of the Silver Mountain kingdom was almost entirely wilderness. And there all the great ravens in that half of the continent built their nests and raised their young, untroubled by human predators.
"I've a report for the King in Silver Mountain," the dwarf said, then described the skirmish at the bridge.
Everheart didn't need to fly it to the king; the great ravens had their own hive mind. He simply needed to get the attention of others. Another of his kind, located near the palace, could deliver it much more quickly than he.
***
By late on the second afternoon, the river, though still boisterous, was smaller than it had been. From that, Klugnak judged that the lead battalion would reach the head of the pass late the next day, and start down the other side. After days of unbroken hazy sunshine, there now were tall clouds in the sky. He hoped it wouldn't rain. He felt a vague anxiety, and wanted to get out of the mountains as soon as possible. Again he did not halt for the day until dusk had thickened nearly into night.
Again they slept in the road, and again it did not rain.
***
A great raven had given the report to the King in Silver Mountain. The king had given him one in return, which the bird relayed to the entrance of the Great Northern Copper Lode. Production there was not what it had been a century earlier. But still there were more than three hundred adult male dwarves within a five-hour speed march of the head of the pass, and as many more within nine hours. The speech of message gongs sounded throughout the networks of drifts, dwelling areas, and utility and connecting tunnels, inspiring swift but organized activity.
***
Shortly after noon the next day, the lead battalion approached a third suspension bridge. There the river was a relatively modest stream. The road was cut into the south side, forty or fifty feet above the river, and the gorge walls, though still precipitous, were not so high as before. Clearly they were near the head of the pass.
The scouts had already crossed the bridge when their trumpeter blew a warning peal: danger!
It was a signal to more than the army's commanders. Within seconds, a swarm of crossbow darts hissed down from the opposite rim. Soldiers fell, along with voitar, horses, cattle. Nor did it seriously abate after the first volley. The dwarf physique is ideal for stirrup-cocked crossbows, providing a rate of fire not so inferior to that of an ordinary bow skillfully used. And their accuracy was excellent. Soldiers and animals panicked, filling the air with screaming, whinnying, bawling, and shouted curses. And trumpet blasts, which stopped the rearward battalions where they were. The panicked cattle were especially dangerous because of their horns. A number of men and horses were crowded off the edge of the road, to fall to the broken rocks along the river's edge.
Until the whole army could stop and turn around, there was no place to go except ahead. The first unit of the command battalion was the prince's company of mounted rakutur. Without conferring with Chithqosz, General Klugnak ordered them to charge, to take and hold the bridge. They charged.
As if the charge were another signal, a barrel-sized stone started down from the gorge top, rolling and bounding to the road, where it killed two men, squashing one of them. It hadn't yet landed when others started down, then still others.
All remaining order dissolved. The men who could, crowded against the gorge wall, hoping the stones would land farther
out, as most did. For two or three minutes the bombardment continued on the lead battalion. Then it stopped, only to begin farther down the column a few minutes later.
Between the assault of boulders and crossbow darts, the only voitik eyes that had followed the charging rakutur were Klugnak's. He watched the lead squads make it across the bridge without drawing fire. Then a swarm of darts slammed into them, and on those jammed up on the bridge behind them. The bridge span began to sway from side to side, as wounded and panicked animals reared, trying to escape. Some got their forelegs over the hand line, and overbalancing, fell to the rocks and water below. On the far side a block of stone-half a ton or more-struck the top of a bridge pier. The upper part of the pier shattered, releasing the great ringbolt that held a suspension cable. The bridge span fell sideways, dumping horses and men into the gorge. A few rakutur held on, dangling from the hand lines and targeted by sharpshooters.
That was the last that Klugnak saw. A block somewhat smaller than most, perhaps a hundredweight, struck and killed him, instantly and messily. Chithqosz stood five feet away, flattened against the cliff, his eyes pinched shut. He saw none of it. Then his communicator gripped his arm and pulled him back down the road.
The lead battalion was a shambles. Although many were dead, a large majority had survived, but their morale had been demolished. More by the crashing rocks than by crossbow bolts, though the latter had caused most of the casualties. And the way ahead was destroyed. The army's only option was to get back downstream, out of the gorge. They'd taken something more than two and a half days to get where they'd gotten. If asked, they'd have said a day and a half would get them back out.
***