Dark Foundations

by Chris Walley

  He saw men beginning to run around with hammers and axes, crushing and hewing the fallen grey forms. Oh, how the generals of old would have loved them, these disposable soldiers with no next of kin, no guilt or fear, only a boundless hate and energy and a perfect allegiance.

  “Better get back to the colonel, sir,” Lloyd said as he mopped sweat off his red face.

  He’s right. There are decisions to be made.

  They walked back to the pine tree where Colonel Lanier was issuing orders for the soldiers to reload and clear the ditches.

  More medical personnel ran past them. Merral looked to the gorge road where ambulances were being loaded.

  God have mercy on them.

  He heard a faint whispering voice and quickly replaced the dislodged earpiece. “D’Avanos here.”

  “My friend, I’m glad to hear you’re okay.”

  “Vero, what’s happening?”

  “We don’t know. They’ve retreated. We think there are about a thousand Krallen disabled or destroyed. Betafor thinks the defense surprised them. They didn’t expect the swords. What’s your estimate of our losses?”

  “Hard to say. We have a lot of injured men. Some are dead.”

  It was a thin defense line, and now it’s even thinner. We have no strength in depth. All they have to do is bring up another thousand Krallen from their vast reserve, launch a new attack, and we are finished. Attrition, Betafor said. Exactly so.

  “Hang on,” Vero said. “New information coming in.”

  There was a pause, long enough for Merral to see another man taken away on a stretcher with a bloody sheet over his face.

  Vero spoke again, his voice was brittle with tension. “Merral, it looks as if they’re going to change their strategy. You’d better come up, quick.”

  26

  Laden by armor and weapons and troubled by the stifling heat, Merral and Lloyd found climbing the path up to the village hard work. As much to get their breath as for any other reason, they stopped at the sniper line where there was hasty reloading going on.

  Karita met them. “We stopped a lot of those beasts, Commander,” she said thoughtfully, “but it’s not easy. They move fast and if the bullet hits their skin at any sort of tangent, it just skids off.”

  “I know.”

  She turned and gazed down the slope at the battlefield. “Well, we won this round,” she said. He heard confidence in her voice. But when she turned back to him, he saw a look in her eyes that seemed to say, “But we won’t next time.”

  “Have faith, Captain,” said Merral, before continuing up the track. It’s easy to say.

  Near the top, while waiting for Lloyd to catch up, Merral called Zak.

  Despite heavy losses on the south side, Zak’s enthusiasm was undiminished. He and his soldiers had “cut and hacked until their arms ached” and “taught the Krallen a lesson they will not forget.” There was, though, one issue that Zak wanted advice on. Two of his men, Latrati and Durrance, had fled in terror at the Krallen charge and had been arrested. What should he do with them?

  Merral hesitated for a second. “Have them stripped of their armor and sent back to Isterrane on the first flight that has space. We will hold disciplinary hearings when this is all over.”

  “Sir, there are precedents for carrying out such discipline in the field.” The disappointment in Zak’s voice was plain.

  “I would rather hold a formal trial later.”

  “Sir, if I may say so—” Zak’s tone was one of annoyance—“it sets a bad precedent. I think a speedy trial and a public punishment here might prevent a repetition. Desertion can be contagious. You mustn’t be too soft on them.”

  “Colonel Larraine, that sounds awfully like an accusation that I am soft on discipline.”

  “Well, sir, the battlefield’s a tough place. Softness can have a price.”

  I refuse to argue this, not here and not now. “Colonel, I have made my decision plain. Have Latrati and Durrance sent to Isterrane. We have other things to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” came the reluctant reply.

  Merral sighed and began climbing again.

  Vero and Azeras were waiting at the top of the path, just in front of the white-walled houses.

  Gasping from the heat and the exertion of the climb, Merral sat heavily on a large rock.

  “My friend,” Vero said with a frown, “you fighting in that battle was reckless. You might have been killed.”

  “A fate we all face. But, Vero, I had no choice. They could have put a hole in our lines there. What are the casualty figures?”

  “So far, we have at least fifty dead and twice that injured. Some serious. That’s just the regulars, of course.”

  “So we have lost well over a tenth of our men.”

  There was a silent, heavy nod in response.

  Merral turned and, suddenly aware of sweat running down his back, gazed at the vast immobile mass of the Dominion force beneath Hereza Crags. They have lost, at most, only a twentieth of their numbers. The implications of those figures are inescapable. We are losing.

  “But what’s happening?”

  Vero and Azeras exchanged anxious looks. “We aren’t sure. Sarudar, can you explain your concern?”

  “First of all, well fought, Commander. There was much done down there that would not have disgraced the elite units of the True Freeborn. But the fighting is not over. My analysis is this—remember, I have fought the Dominion for almost half my life. I think Lezaroth is perplexed and even alarmed. With all the force they had, the crushing of Farholme should have been straightforward. Yet it has gone badly wrong and they have had a series of setbacks. Now they find that your—our—swords and armor have stopped what should have been an easy victory.”

  “So what will they do? Go home?”

  “Bah! They will not retreat. In the past Nezhuala punished losers, and he doesn’t change. There will be a change of plan. They don’t like this gorge. They prefer to sweep around their enemies; here they’re hemmed in. And they don’t know the strength of the opposition they face either; their intelligence is now very limited.”

  “So what do you think they will do?” Merral asked.

  “My guess is that they will try and avoid the gorge. They may choose to climb the Hereza Crags.” Azeras gestured to the rocky ridge. “And from there cross to Mount Adaman behind us.” He turned and traced the route with his hand.

  “Are you serious?” Merral asked, looking at the massif with its cliffs, screes, and stands of dense woodland and undergrowth.

  “True, it would be several days’ journey for men, but for Krallen, especially if they leave their repair facilities behind them, it would be just a few hours. The rules of battle you’ve learned don’t apply to creatures that need neither food, nor water, nor rest.”

  “And from Mount Adaman where would they go? On to the Western Trunk Road?”

  Azeras scowled. “No. They will not leave an enemy in their rear. My guess is that from up there they will race down upon us. With all their forces.”

  As he looked up, Merral followed his gaze and stared at the heights above the village where the air seemed to wobble in the haze.

  “Imagine, nearly twenty thousand Krallen hurtling down the slope in a single overwhelming charge,” Azeras continued. “They will attack on a wide front, and the edges of their attack will swing round any defensive line we can muster. We will be encircled. And that will be that. I had worried about it, but . . .” He shrugged. “They would be unstoppable.”

  Merral squinted at the slopes, feeling his insides writhe. Unstoppable was hardly an overstatement.

  He turned to Vero for reassurance, only to see his friend, hand to his ear, seemingly engrossed by what he heard.

  “You’re sure?” Vero asked, frowning at the ground. “All of them?” In the pause that followed he raised his head and stared in the direction of Mount Adaman. “Thank you.” He sounded wretched.

  Vero turned to Merral. “That was Anya. The main
body of Krallen have turned and are starting to climb the Hereza Crags. Betafor confirms it.”

  Merral stared westward, seeing the first columns of dust rise up from the foot of the crags.

  “How soon?” Vero asked, his expression devoid of hope. He turned to Merral. “The best guess is early afternoon. Two, or at most, three hours.”

  Vero groaned. “I’m sorry; I should have thought of this. I assumed that these cliffs were an impossible barrier. A bad mistake.”

  Merral put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I don’t think blaming yourself is the best thing to do right now. We all underestimated them, and we now need to create some defenses. Let’s go and look at the land.”

  With Lloyd trailing after them, they jogged through the village to a gentle ridge covered with new olive groves. Within minutes, they had agreed on the alignment of two defensive ditches and had summoned earth-moving equipment.

  While the others discussed some of the details of the ditches, Merral stood apart and stared southward through the haze and rising dust at the gray fungus that was spreading over Hereza Crags. He felt sick. Within moments, the status of their defenses had gone from being well fortified to weak. Ten minutes ago, they had had a chance. Now, even that slimmest of hopes had fled.

  Vero walked over to him. “My friend, let’s talk. The irregulars are trying to delay them, but they are too few.” Vero pointed to the open ground beyond the line of the trench. “Oh, if I had only consulted Azeras, we could have had these trenches dug already or put explosives out there.”

  He punched one hand into the other in a gesture of regret. “Something at least. Oh, what a fool I’ve been! I could never have imagined that they would do this.”

  “Vero, what we did—or didn’t—do is past. Do you really think all is lost?”

  “No. I think we have to hope. God has been good to us so far.” He paused, his expression one of deep anxiety.

  “True. But we need another miracle. And I see no sign of one.”

  Vero gave the weariest of smiles. “If you did, it probably wouldn’t be a miracle.”

  “True again. But any hope we have now comes from the Most High.”

  “It only ever did.”

  Merral gestured to the area chosen for the ditches. “I intend to put all our remaining reserves here—any soldiers we can spare from the gorge and any of the irregulars who are left.”

  He paused, and tapped his foot on the thin soil. “Vero, we’ll make our last stand here.”

  The decision made, Merral strode rapidly away to the villa and, during a meeting with a somber Colonel Lanier, agreed on a strategy. Zak would defend the gorge with a handpicked force of a hundred men. The rest of the soldiers—along with any others who could fight—would be sent to the new defenses on the upper olive groves.

  Zak received his orders with ill-disguised irritation.

  Merral then found Anya, who was slumped in her chair looking at imagery that showed the Krallen moving up and over the Hereza Crags. For some moments, Merral stared wordlessly at it, marveling at the relentless determination of the seemingly endless swarm of creatures. Their regulated order had gone, but there was still the sense of directed purpose as they climbed over all but the most severe cliffs, scrambled urgently through the thickets of thorns and junipers, and darted over unstable screes. Nothing stopped them and little slowed them.

  “Anya,” he said, “things are changing. It looks like there is going to be an attack from the mountain—an unstoppable one.”

  “I know,” she said and he saw the tiredness in her sky blue eyes. “There’s a logic to it. They don’t like this slow attrition. They want a sudden and overwhelming victory.”

  “That may be the theory, but that wasn’t what I wanted to discuss. We’re evacuating all the wounded. I don’t want any transports on the ground here when they attack and the Krallen will not spare anyone, least of all the wounded.”

  “I know that.”

  “We have to face the possibility—the probability—that we will be overrun. We are outnumbered twenty to one. And they will take no prisoners.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I think you ought to leave.”

  “No.” There was an almost sullen defiance in her face.

  “Technically, you are now an only child. Anya, I would prefer it if you left—for your family’s sake.”

  Anya looked away for a moment and then turned to Merral with a stony expression. “No.”

  “I can order it. Have Lloyd lock you up and bundle you on the flier.”

  “I wouldn’t try.”

  “I want you to go.”

  “No, again. I will stay here. I use no resources. I am not a burden. I may be able to help. And if it comes to it, I will fight. There is spare armor here that I can use.”

  “But fighting is different.”

  “Merral, I helped Azeras make the training material. I helped design the armor and the swords.”

  For a long second, he stared at her and was met again by a look of unyielding resolve.

  “You praised my sister for her heroism. Now you want me to run away? Be consistent at least!” There was anger in her voice.

  Merral stared at her and then, defeated, shrugged his shoulders. After all, Isterrane will hardly be safe once we fall.

  “Oh, very well,” he said, slowly. “I admire your spirit. But I remind you, your future doesn’t look good.”

  “My sister would have reminded you that God still reigns.”

  “Rebuke accepted.”

  Merral went up to the roof. As he watched the lines of Krallen that were already approaching the serrated summit of the Hereza Crags, he called Jorgio.

  From the juddering image that appeared in the diary, the old man appeared to be seated in Brenito’s rocking chair. His face was unshaven.

  “Mr. Merral,” Jorgio said. “It’s good to hear from you, very good. I was wondering how things were. As I prayed this morning, I sensed that there was a great struggle in the heavens. But I felt the Lord’s servant triumphed and the enemy was frustrated.”

  “That’s true. But we now face a new crisis.”

  “So I have heard. Lots of these things—nasty devices with teeth and claws. Not nice, not nice at all. And I’ve been praying as the King will deliver you—and us.”

  “And?”

  A skewed smile appeared on Jorgio’s face. “The King keeps his counsels to himself. I reckon that’s his privilege. He wouldn’t be the King if it wasn’t.”

  “True. But, Jorgio, the situation looks hopeless. We are heavily outnumbered.”

  “Tut. The Lord can win a battle whether he has many warriors or only a few.”

  “I accept that, Jorgio, but from where I stand it’s hard to be confident.”

  “Mr. Merral, the one way to be sure that there is no hope is to believe that there is none.”

  “True.”

  There was silence between them. Finally, Merral said, “The estimates are that they will attack us sometime between two and three this afternoon.”

  Jorgio nodded. “I will pray much for you. Always do. It’s a battle sometimes. But if I hear anything, I will let you know.”

  “Thank you. I hope we talk again.”

  Jorgio smiled again. “Oh, Mr. Merral, we will. If not here, then in the world to come. So cheer up.”

  “Thanks for the reminder, Jorgio. I need it.”

  Jorgio’s bent smile broadened. “One piece of advice I can offer. When you take your stand against them, fly all the banners and emblems you have.”

  Merral smiled as if he dealt with a child who had made an outrageous suggestion.

  “Indeed, why not? If our end is to be here, then let us make it a defiant one. I will assemble every banner and flag we have.”

  “Very well. May the King be with you.”

  Over the next hour or so, Merral kept busy. He ordered the placement of high poles along the ridge and that every available banner and emblem of the Assembly be hung from
them. Yet the total absence of wind made the flags a sorry spectacle and as Merral gazed at the limp pieces of material the lifeless sheets of fabric seemed to mock any hope. They symbolize our plight.

  He made sure all the seriously wounded were put aboard the transporters and persuaded a number of nonmilitary personnel to leave.

  Down by the strip he met Luke Tenerelt standing by the stretcher of a badly wounded man, who was being loaded on a flier.

  Luke’s uniform and pale face were stained with blood and sweat and he looked as exhausted as if he had been running a race all day. He put his arm on Merral’s shoulder, as much it seemed to gain support as to give comfort.

  “Are you okay, Chaplain?”

  Luke’s sad eyes turned to Merral. “Okay? No. Definitely no. Doing what I am supposed to do? Yes.”

  Merral offered him some water and Luke sat on a rock and drank greedily. He handed the bottle back, wiped his mouth with the back of a blood-streaked hand, frowned at it, and looked at Merral. “And are you okay?”

  Merral, who was trying not to look at a hand-painted sign by a large refrigerated tent that read Morgue # 1: Full, bit his lip and shook his head. The great virtue of Luke is that you can be yourself with him.

  “And it’s not over yet, Luke,” he said, trying hard to choke back fears.

  The chaplain put his head in his hands. “No. It’s not,” he replied in a voice that threatened to break with emotion.

  “You’re staying?” Merral asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks. We are preparing a last stand by the village. I can use you there.”

  Another stretcher team approached and Luke looked up. “I’d heard. And you’ll find me there. But in the meantime . . .” He rose, straightened his stained uniform, and set off toward the wounded man.

  Shortly afterward Merral called Clemant to outline the situation. He felt that Clemant, who apparently knew what was happening, seemed to find giving either sympathy or support very difficult.

  His round face had an almost total lack of expression. “Very well. Thank you for all you’ve done, Commander.” The words were emotionless.