by Stephen Hunt
If Paetro’s raiders were flustered by their reception, they hid the signs well. The marksmen calmly extended the barrels of their rifles, slotting range extensions into place that would have been too unwieldy to hold inside a cramped helo cabin. They followed this with the addition of optical sights, long telescope-like affairs that clipped into place across the weapon’s stock. The guardsmen might have been chimney sweeps calmly assembling brushes inside a patron’s salon for all the worry flicking across their faces: total concentration on their rifles. We’ve done it. We’re in position. Duncan’s pounding heart slowed. He reached back to touch his gun, the words Gratch Foundry stamped into its steel, and drew a measure of confidence from his shoulder-slung weapon. Like Paetro, Duncan lugged a semi-automatic gas-piston carbine rather than a sharpshooter’s long gun – the perfect helo legionary’s weapon. Light, accurate and fast-firing. It might not have been one of the legion’s weighty electric guns, able to spit a hail storm of bullets, but comparing it to any rifle Rodal or Weyland could manufacture would have been like comparing a well-honed steel knife to a sharp oak stick. A drum magazine on top carried sixty rounds while a rotating bolt minimized its recoil. One of these in the hands of a Vandian legionary was worth a company of Weyland troops. He’d have to thank the workers of the Gratch Weapons Foundry when he returned to the Imperium.
Mandus Talia was the other soldier sharing Duncan and Paetro’s cover. He was the stick’s radio operator, a heavy aerial-topped slab of a backpack lashed on to his spine as though it was an extension of his body, which it might as well have been. Talia always appeared too high-strung to Duncan for a life of soldiering, although Paetro swore the man was an artist who could conjure a connection to an artillery unit even while buried inside a cave. There are probably a few of those around here. That level of talent might come in useful. Accompanied by a fizzing and popping, Talia cupped the black mouthpiece hanging from a curled rubber cable against his mouth. The man teased the radio into life, ready to relay any orders. No dispatch riders risking life and limb, being shot at on horseback. Commanders able to send orders across the battlefield and see them obeyed almost instantly. As good as magic, here. The black kind that leaves the empire’s enemies floundering to keep up with Vandia’s legions. Duncan squatted on top of the Yarl Heights, a view south over the Yarl Valley. Across the gaping canyon, Duncan could see the Trade Gate. In reality not one gate but many. A series of grey, steel-doored openings atop a stone staircase, carved into the North Rim’s canyon wall and leading deep into the city under the twin mountains. He wasn’t quite far forward enough to watch the Yarl River’s fast-moving green waters winding through the canyon bed, but he could spy what was left of the wooden jetty that had met the river in front of the Trade Gate. Black splintered wood, a trio of hornets pulling out of the canyon where they had raked the gate with rockets and turret guns. Little puffs of rifle smoke came from arrow slits where Rodalian defenders were shooting at the aircraft; firing from buildings carved out of the rock, hanging on to the top of the canyon on either side of the Trade Gate.
Little Aldro came running up on Duncan’s right, a sharpshooters’ rifle cradled in his arms. ‘There’s a crevice sitting between them two keeps. Narrow enough to jump across. It widens out into a pony trail below. I found a staircase leading down to the trail in what’s left of the tower.’
‘Any merchant stupid enough to drive their caravan through a battle deserves a grenade dropped down on their mules,’ said Paetro.
‘The barbarians inside the city will be desperate enough when their gates come tumbling down and we close their burrow,’ said Aldro. ‘Desperate enough to pay traders with silver weight-for-weight for potatoes. You’ll see traders coming here then. Sure as scavengers after a slaughter.’
‘The Rodalians prefer rice,’ said Duncan.
Paetro nodded. ‘So let’s give them a fine serving of lead sauce to wash it down with. Take position, big lad. The miners’ helo will be settling above the city gate any minute. Mark the defenders’ rifle slits well. Our hornets are buzzing in and out down there to draw fire against their armoured skin instead of our miners’ soft arses. Raise The Caller, Mandus. Let them know the Trade Gate is in our sights and we’re ready to cover our lads as they toss lines down.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Mandus, sounding as though he’d just been asked to pick up one of the mountains. The Caller had disappeared behind the rise of the twin mountains, but Duncan could still hear her main batteries. At this distance, it sounded like thunder. A thunderstorm would feel like a blessing compared to what the Rodalians on the mountain are experiencing right now. Skyguard flying wings crisscrossed the air, engaged in aerial combat against the helo squadron. No skyguard had spotted the interlopers on the Yarl Heights yet. Hopefully, the single stick of Vandian guardsmen would stay of negligible interest set against The Caller’s deadly threat. If that situation changed, Duncan might yet find himself sheltering behind boulders as diving flying wings tore chunks out of the heights.
All along the ridge the helo’s hand-picked guardsmen had taken up position, sheltering behind ledges and boulders, their sharpshooting rifles extended at full length, barrels resting on folding legs. A couple of guardsmen had set up on their rear, including Kenem Posda, making sure they weren’t surprised by Rodalians already on the heights.
‘Wind’s fierce,’ called Charia Wyon from behind a rise of rock.
‘I’ll spot for you,’ offered Duncan, having to raise his voice above the howling mountain winds.
‘They train you for observation while you were Princess Helrena’s bodyguard?’
Duncan glanced at Paetro before he ducked down to where the soldier crouched. ‘Don’t think there’s much I haven’t been trained in, of late.’
‘Wise enough. Never know how the house’s enemies are going to come at us. Moment you think you do, that’s the moment you die.’ She set up a tiny wind gauge on a tripod in front of her, three rotating silk sails on a metal sphere with a dial to take readings. The sails were fair flying around with the gale. Charia Wyon passed Duncan a telescope. ‘Feel how you’re shivering with the cold? That’ll make the air denser for shooting. Combined with this gale . . . hell of a day for fighting.’
Duncan extended the leather-lined telescope and stared through its lens. There was a cross-hair reticule at the other end of the scope and it had its own leg mountings to fold out and keep it steady on the ground.
‘I’ll fire a ranging shot,’ said Charia. ‘Aiming for the gargoyle head far left above the Trade Gate. Watch the round’s vapour trail and tell me if I’m high or low on my slant range.’
‘Won’t the Rodalians hear you . . . see your muzzle flash?’
Charia shook her head. ‘They can’t hear our shots at this range and those tin cans mounted at the end of our guns work to suppress flash and smoke. I could be firing at the barbarians all day and they’d only know I was here when one of them drops.’
Duncan found the gargoyle using the telescope, the last of a line of creatures on the ledge above the gate. It protruded from the side of the canyon wall – a fat leering demon’s face: bulbous nose; a strangelooking jowled beard around a hare lip; two distended arms, one clutching a dagger, the other a tome of some sort. No doubt one of the evil spirits of the wind that Hadra-Hareer needs protection from. They should have carved those things as Vandians. That’s who they need to fear more. ‘I have it.’
Charia worked the bolt on the back of her rifle, rested its butt against her shoulder and let loose with a murderous crack. A shower of stone rained down on the gargoyle’s slab-like eyebrows, a slight haze of distortion in the air where the shell had passed.
‘High.’
Charia adjusted the sight mounted above her weapon. ‘Again.’
A second shot split the air. This time the gargoyle’s forehead broke into pieces. ‘Haircut.’
‘I was aiming for laughing boy’s tongue,’ growled Charia. She adjusted the sight again, checked the dial on the wi
nd gauge and pulled the bolt to chamber another round into the weapon. ‘Again.’
Her third shot was the charm. It struck the lip and the whole gargoyle crumpled apart from the violence of the impact, shards of stone tumbling down on to the deserted staircase below the city entrance. ‘Right down its gullet.’
Charia rolled over and loaded a fresh round into her long rifle’s breech. ‘I’ve never shot into a blow like this before. It’s madness. Gyal should have dropped a maniple of cannon-cockers up here, not sharpshooters.’
Duncan grimaced. Yes, but an artillery shell wouldn’t discriminate among defenders and the Imperium’s miners.
‘Well,’ sighed Charia, ‘there’s nobody else here but us. Find me some barbarians whose future I can cut short.’
On the other side of the canyon floor their three hornets had withdrawn. Then Duncan caught sight of a troop helo dipping in above the North Rim, hovering a foot above the surface as soldiers hurled themselves out of the helo’s cabin. Almost as quickly as it had appeared, the helo pulled away, leaving the force of miners on the lip of the canyon’s ledge, scattered directly above the Trade Gate. Each soldier wore a backpack heavy with charges. Probably enough to send the whole company to their deaths if one caught a stray bullet and exploded. The miners moved above the edge, ready to begin their descent; lines unfurled down, secured against the mesa top. Cracks exploded around Duncan as the sharpshooters opened fire, a wood-splintering sound, each bullet sent towards one of the buildings clinging to the North Rim’s canyon wall.
Duncan pointed the telescope toward the city and scanned for defenders at the windows. Windows on the canyon were thin slits with grooves for internal storm shutters to lower inside its walls. Perfect loopholes for defending Hadra-Hareer, as well as keeping its inhabitants warm from freezing cold gales. He could only just make out the occasional rifle barrel jutting out of a loophole, searching for the helos that had been attacking the capital moments ago. There were balconies, wall-walks and terraces on some of the buildings, but these were closed off and just as empty of citizens as the docks and piers below the Trade Gate. Is this how Rodal fights? They hide inside their stone burrows at the first sign of danger while they send up their skyguard to die for them? Duncan was disappointed, despite himself. What had happened to the famous Walls of the League? Defended by the plucky mountain people against every nomad horde who had ever tried to fight their way across the peaks and invade Weyland? Hell if I should complain, given I’m the invader now. Over on the opposite canyon the miners sailed down their lines unopposed. No defenders rushing out on to the ledges to cut lines or shoot at the Vandians. It would only take a couple more minutes for the miners to drill holes for their charges and set fuses, then Hadra-Hareer would be a lot more sealed off and ‘safe’ from the rest of the world than the Rodalians ever wanted. This is too easy. The thought floated into Duncan’s head, unbidden. As easy as the fall of the rebel capital at Midsburg. But the rebels had at least put up some semblance of an opposition, even if it had quickly crumbled under the combined might of the Imperium and their local ally King Marcus.
A yell from Kenem Posda was followed by a report of weapon fire bouncing off the boulders in front of the guardsmen. Someone has flanked us. Duncan turned around. Wafts of gun smoke hung in the cold air from a slope of grey rock to the rear of one of the destroyed towers. Defenders from the tower who had survived, or a patrol from the keep out in the canyon trails? He raised his carbine and squeezed off a handful of shots at the ledge where the Rodalians had taken position, a ratcheting sound from his ammunition drum as it turned, accompanying a painful thump of the butt against his shoulder. Kenem Posda and the other rear guards added their rifles to his fusillade. Duncan couldn’t see the defenders, but a return flurry of shots sounded their defiance. Hollow, dull little thuds. Pistol shots, Duncan realized. Somewhere along the line of Paetro’s harsh training routine, Duncan had become an authority on the weapons he had to protect his charge against. When did that happen?
‘They’re dug in there as tight as ticks,’ shouted Paetro. ‘We need to close with them.’
He waved the flat of his palm to the right, sending Kenem Posda and the other guardsmen half-squatting, half-running towards the rise behind them. Paetro and Duncan opened fire with their carbines, keeping the mountain soldiers’ heads down, then moved to the left as Kenem and his comrade returned the favour. Bullets fleeted off the stone as Duncan sprinted, flecks of rock leaping off the boulders as he avoided their foe’s fire. He nearly slipped on a pile of loose pebbles while sprinting forward, recovering his balance to slide behind a sharp oblong rock shelf.
‘Cover,’ ordered Paetro, and Duncan just had time to raise his carbine and thump three more shots off against the cliffs where the Rodalians were hiding. He still couldn’t see their enemy, only the fume of gun smoke drifting across the rocks. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Kenem Posda advancing at speed, but no sign of the other guardsman. Had the soldier fallen? Duncan cursed this fight. Just the same as the rebel ambush when we marched into Northhaven. How come everyone always seemed able to see Duncan Landor well enough to shoot at him, but his enemies were only ever ghosts, barely visible from gun flash and powder trace? That didn’t seem like any kind of battlefield to him. It’s hardly fair.
‘Get to the shelter of what’s left of the keep,’ ordered Paetro. Duncan could hardly hear the hoary old soldier’s commands. Had the rifle shots left him deafened? No, it was the wind building up around them. The howl slipping into a roar.
Duncan nodded. A flurry of shots from their right, half-heard in the gale, Kenem grabbing the Rodalians’ attention.
‘Move!’
Duncan followed the veteran, dodging right and left as he tried to stay as low as possible while maintaining momentum, the ricochet of rounds against rock indication enough the Rodalians still had him well-marked. Paetro leapt over a round ridge of broken stone wall jutting out, Duncan fast behind him. The keep wall had been two feet-thick of solid rock; Duncan crossed it like it was hardly there. He landed on a paved interior still warm to the touch from the bombardment that had ruined it, the surface littered with fist-sized shards of half melted stone. There was the splintered wooden hatch Little Aldro had reported, exposing a spiral staircase to the caravan trails below. Perhaps this had been a customs post once, helping halt the smugglers’ trade with the capital? That explained why the Rodalians were trying to sting him with pistols rather than rifles. These weren’t soldiers they faced, but whatever the local equivalent of the Northhaven district police was. Shots rang off what was left of the keep’s splintered buttress. But gut-shot by a revenue officer is still gut-shot and every bit as dead.
Paetro crouched behind the keep’s wall and opened a side pouch on his knapsack, removing a pair of ugly-looking stick grenades . . . a spiked cylindrical iron weight atop a wooden handle. He tossed one to Duncan, jerked a thumb towards the slope where the Rodalians had taken cover and raised three fingers. Two. One. Duncan yanked the pull-cord out from the bottom of the handle, knelt up and hurled the heavy thing spinning towards the slope, crossing the path of Paetro’s grenade mid-air. Duncan ducked down and let the intense heat of the two explosions arc over the keep’s remains. He risked a glance over the ruined keep wall and saw a screen of smoke half-hiding the rockfall that had resulted. No more pistol shots. But were the defenders dead or had they moved away before—? Someone called behind the keep. It was Charia, vaulting over the boulders with her rifle.
‘They’re dead and buried,’ barked Paetro. ‘You’re clear. Mark your targets again.’
Charia stopped short of the wall and held up her wind gauge. Two of the sails were missing and the third was ripped to shreds. ‘It was gusting at well over a hundred miles an hour through the canyon when my gauge was torn apart. Might as well be shooting underwater for all the range I have.’
Paetro looked dumbfounded. ‘But the winds weren’t more than thirty when we arrived?’
Duncan thought of th
e empty terraces on the city opposite. Deserted now. What do they know that we don’t?
Kenem Posda crossed warily over to them, keeping his carbine pointed in the direction of the slope sealed by their grenades. ‘Do you hear that noise? What the hell is it? It sounds like a train.’
There was something pounding in the distance. Duncan tried to listen. A thump-thump-thump. Like a train. Or perhaps a distant anvil being worked by the gods’ own hammer.
‘It can’t be cannon fire?’ said Charia. ‘There isn’t artillery large enough to make that noise.’
‘I think that’s wind,’ said Duncan. ‘Pounding against the mountains.’
‘Cannon fire,’ said Paetro. He pointed towards the twin mountains. ‘That’s what’s wrong. There’s no more fire from the city up there. Hadra-Hareer’s silent. They’ve withdrawn their batteries from the slopes.’
Duncan turned. The Caller emerged from behind the peaks of Hadra, but she was flying at a strange angle, struggling, her main engines burning so bright she might have been a foundry furnace, engine pods along her hull at full-burn as they attempted to augment the lift of the vessel’s anti-gravity stones. Suddenly one of the engine pods tore away, flying high into the air as though an invisible entity was pulling legs off a spider and The Caller was the victim in question. The Imperium’s massive battery ship was quickly being reduced to the status of a leaf in a hurricane, even as she was still being buzzed by the skyguard’s flying wings. The enemy fighters rode the whipping gusts, an angry mob of birds emptying their wing guns into the hull of The Caller, carrion crows pecking at a dying corpse. It was as though the Rodalian pilots were joined with the wind, harnessing the hurricane’s flow, using it to rotate and turn at velocities far beyond the power of their simple engines, ripping apart the helos left twisting helplessly in the air. Anything the unnatural hurricane wasn’t killing in the sky the Rodalian pilots picked from the air as their prey. Rodal’s flying wings pressed their attack even as the wind gripped The Caller and rolled her sideways in the air, engine pods snapping off like seeds in a gale before the battery ship’s bulk struck Hadra’s jagged slopes. She was rent by explosions and flashes of light that left Duncan half-blinded for a second. As the smoke was snatched by the cyclone, Duncan saw their vessel had been torn in two. The dragon-nosed bridge spun helplessly detached, spilling crew and sailors into the sky while the half with the engine continued to be wracked by detonations. Shells that should have been destined for her massive turret guns fed the main engine’s explosions. She had become a giant steel firework, spinning in the air, useless and deadly only to herself.