Legacy

by Daniel Pierce

  “Take a look,” I said.

  They did, Gurdon and then Lanni. Both muttered curses as they peered through it.

  “What’s wrong?” Reyna asked me.

  “There are two trails of smoke and dust, now. Osterway forces have split. They must’ve pushed a smaller, faster force across that river that was holding them up, so it’s heading to pass south of us.”

  “Means the way south ain’t safe anymore,” Lanni said, handing the spyglass to Reyna.

  Gurdon said, “Well, maybe they won’t be interested in us, you know? We got no Hightec to speak of.” Even he didn’t look convinced, though.

  “You got that spyglass,” I said, “and that’d be enough for them right there. Oh, and then there are your fifteen ogres. They’d probably love to take those off your hands, too, unless you’ve got some way of hiding them in that wagon of yours.”

  “Guess we’re going to Watermanse,” Lanni said.

  Gurdon looked at her, opened his mouth, then closed it again and just nodded.

  We rattled and squeaked our way back north. The ogres kept up a brisk pace, plodding along with strides that were three of mine. They probably could have moved a lot faster, but the wagon—fortunately—limited their speed to something that wasn’t going to break wheels or axles, or shake the teeth right out Lanni’s and Gurdon’s mouths. Reyna and I were able to walk along with them, while Flint prowled mostly ahead, sometimes to the flanks.

  Later in the afternoon, we took a break near a sluggish stream that wound among some trees. The ogres seemed glad of it, slurping water from the stream, then muttering grumbling noises and slumping to their knees, or even sitting down. Lanni and Gurdon pulled hunks of crudely salted meat out of the wagon to feed them.

  “That’s pretty much the last of it,” Lanni said, tossing a slab of meat to an ogre, who jammed it into its mouth with a flurry of slobbering and chewing. “Probably just as well we’re going to Watermanse, so we can provision back up. We usually just let ‘em graze on whatever they can find, but that takes time. Meat’s faster and fills them up better, but hunting it takes even more time.”

  “Lotta overhead in these ogres,” Gurdon said. “We should probably thin ‘em out some. Don’t think we really need fifteen.”

  I sensed an old argument between him and Lanni, so I headed it off. “Watermanse can take care of whatever you need, especially if they’ll eat fish.”

  Lanni snorted. “Haven’t found anything they won’t eat yet.”

  I looked around, focusing on the trees leaning over the water upstream of us. Pulling the blanket from my bedroll out of my pack, I said, “That’s good. Reyna, how’d you like to give me a hand with something?”

  She gave me a bemused look but said, “Of course.”

  “Be back in a bit,” I said to Lanni, and I led Reyna away, toward the trees I’d spied.

  “We taking some alone time?” Reyna asked me, a teasing look on her face, and I smiled back.

  “I’m tempted, believe me. But no, I actually need your help with something.” I pointed ahead. “We’re going to pick some apples.”

  Reyna raised her eyebrows but just nodded.

  I’d noticed these apple trees as Reyna and I had headed south, making note of them so we could pick some on our way back. Their lower branches had been stripped by whatever wildlife could reach them, but the branches above still hung heavy with apples, and more were scattered on the ground, recently fallen. I climbed the first tree and shook branches, sending more apples cascading into the grass. Reyna piled them into the blanket and, when we had a full load, we bundled it up and took it back to the wagon.

  We dumped the apples where the ogres could reach them, trying to spread them out so they each got a share. Lanni and Gurdon watched with bemused expressions, then Gurdon said, “They don’t really need apples, you know. That meat’ll be enough for them ‘til we get to Watermanse.”

  I shrugged, and Reyna and I set off for another batch of apples. As we dumped the next load, Lanni said, “We can just move the herd over to those trees, you know? Let them get apples for themselves.”

  “Nope,” I said, “we’re good,” and we set off on another trip.

  Another two trips to the trees, and we’d stripped them as much as we could. And that was fine, because by the time we dumped the last load, some of the ogres were just looking at the apples, apparently full.

  Afterward, once we’d gotten moving again, Gurdon said, “You didn’t have to go fetch all those apples---” he repeated, but I cut him off with a wave.

  “Not about being enough,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those ogres work hard, they deserve to eat their fill.”

  “Yeah, okay, so we could’ve just let the ogres pick their own, like Lanni said.”

  “It was important for Reyna and me to fetch the apples for them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because free people work together. We collaborate. We have leaders, sure, but it’s important those following them are doing it because they want to—because they believe in them, believe it’s the right thing to do.”

  Gurdon exchanged a look with Lanni. “They’re just ogres.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “They might be a little different than regular humans, but they’re close enough they deserve respect.”

  “Hey, we respect them. We treat them good.”

  “Yeah, I know you do,” I cut in, raising a hand. “None of that was about you. I think you’re good people. And it wasn’t really even about the ogres. I wanted to do it for me as much as for them.”

  Reyna gave me a sidelong look, then smiled and nodded. We rumbled on in silence for a while. Then, out of the blue, Gurdon said, “Yeah, okay . . . I get it.”

  Lanni nodded. “So do I.”

  I nodded back. I knew they would get it sooner or later. It was like I’d said to Aldebar: free men—or ogres—make good allies. Slaves don’t.

  Like I said, Lanni and Gurdon-- they were good people. But even good people need to see examples of what’s right sometimes.

  10

  We caused quite the stir when we came back in sight of Watermanse.

  As the ogres crested the last rise before the long downslope approach to the town, I heard a distant bell start clanging. My tech showed me people rushing about, armed, taking up defensive positions. A few of them, I noticed, hadn’t been there the day before when we left. That was good and gratifying; they’d been busy here while we were gone. But it wouldn’t do to start taking fire because the townsfolk were startled by a bunch of ogres approaching through the growing twilight, so I asked Gurdon and Lanni to hold up while Reyna and I went forward and explained what was going on.

  Lanni just shrugged, but Gurdon said, “Don’t take too long. Galls me to get this close to drink and hot food and maybe even a real bed, and just stop.”

  I chuckled. “Just keep an eye on us with your spyglass and wait for a wave.”

  Reyna, Flint, and I walked until we could see the townspeople in their defensive positions, and they could see us. As soon as they recognized Flint—because everyone recognized Flint by now—I saw them relax and go from wary defender to curious gawker. I turned back, waved, and waited as the ogres and wagon trundled their way downhill toward us.

  By the time they reached us, we had a whole group waiting that included Aldebar, Lorna, and Kai. Kai and Reyna exchanged a look and I thought something—a signal of some sort, maybe—might have passed between them. I didn’t entirely get what it was, but I could tell it involved a sort of understanding. I’d bedded both of them, and they’d managed to share that fact with that look . . . and they were okay with it.

  Fine by me. I didn’t want to have to choose between them. Now, it seemed I wouldn’t need to.

  The ogres came shuffling up, the wagon creaking along behind them. I turned to Lorna. “They followed us home. Can we keep ‘em?”

  Aldebar gave a chuckle. “When you say you’re going to fi
nd a way to help defend this place, you really mean it, don’t you?”

  Lanni and Gurdon dismounted, and I introduced them all around. It wasn’t long before they were maneuvering their ogres to an open space just beside the main trail leading into town. “They’ll spend the night here,” Gurdon said. “They’re pretty much immune to weather, and they’ll be tired after a full day pulling.”

  Lorna eyed the massive creatures warily. “You sure they’ll stay put?”

  “Don’t worry,” Lanni said, a twinkle in her eye. “If they break free, they’ll probably only eat one person each. That’s usually enough to fill ‘em up.”

  Lorna gave her a quick, hard glance that made Lanni almost double over in laughter.

  While Gurdon made the arrangements he needed to make for their ogres, we all retired to The Drowned Man. I was gratified to see townsfolk still on alert, apparently set up to keep sentries on watch through the night. I complemented Lorna on it, but she just shook her head.

  “Thank Kai, here. This has mostly been her doing. She seems to have a knack for this sort of thing.”

  I looked at Kai and she shrugged. “Just all seems like common sense—where to put people so they got good fields of view, organize them into shifts, all that.”

  “Eh,” I replied, “you’d be surprised how many people don’t get how to do that.” I gestured at a new, partly-dug defensive pit. “This is good work, Kai, really.”

  She shrugged again, but I caught the smile she tried to hide.

  Inside The Drowned Man, we sat in a round table and, along with Reyna, recounted what we’d discovered to the south.

  “So the Osterway has split into two forces,” I said. “The one further south is probably smaller and faster. The one to the north and east is likely their main body.”

  “So if they’re passing south of us,” Lorna said, “it looks like they are going to push right on by, right?”

  I shook my head. “No. What I expect is that the smaller force will push by south, then swing north toward here. That’ll bring them here from the southwest. That way, they can ensure Watermanse is isolated from the south, and any real chance of help coming from that direction . . . and also make sure no one from here escapes that way.”

  “You’d think they’d want to let people leave,” Garet, the elder, said. “Encourage us to retreat and leave the way open for them.”

  I gave him a hard look. “They’re fucking slavers, remember?”

  His face paled a shade, and he gave a grim nod.

  “We can evacuate people by boat, though,” Lorna put in. “Unless they got boats we don’t know about, they can’t really stop it.”

  “That’s probably why they seized them in the first place,” Aldebar said. “So we don’t have ‘em to use, but they do, for a blockade.”

  “But we got them back,” Lorna went on. “So we’re not entirely trapped.”

  It was Kai who spoke up. “So you load, what, maybe a hundred people onto every boat you’ve got? That’s about all they’ll take, right? And where do they go then?”

  “There are other places along Le’kemeshaw,” Lorna said.

  “Sure,” Aldebar said, “and they’ll be thrilled to have a hundred refugees land on their doorstep right at the end of glory season with winter coming on.”

  I held up a hand. “We can’t evacuate the town. What we can do, though, is evacuate those that don’t have to stay to defend it. Children, the elderly, anyone who’s sick or disabled—that’d be, what, one or two boat’s worth?”

  Lorna thought about it, then nodded. “The ketch and one sloop could take them, along with a good cargo of supplies, fish and the like. Ought to be enough to mollify whoever takes them in, as long as we make it clear it’s temporary.”

  “If it is temporary,” Garet muttered, earning a sharp look from Aldebar.

  “It’ll either be temporary because we defeat these Osterway assholes,” he said, “or permanent because there’s nothing left here to come back to.”

  That led to glum silence, which I wasn’t going to let just hang. “It’ll be temporary, because we’re going to fucking stop Venari and her Osterway thugs.”

  “And fifteen ogres are going to help really well with that,” Reyna said.

  Lanni shifted in her seat. “Gotta admit, I’m wishing now we’d never come up north and gotten ourselves mixed up in this.” She sighed. “But, we’re here now, so we’ll do what we can to help out.”

  That perked up the room. Fifteen ogres would help a lot.

  “Even with Lanni, Gurdon, and their ogres helping out,” I said, “we can’t just sit here and wait for the Osterway to attack and hope to defeat them. If we just surrender the initiative, we let them decide where, when, and how to attack.”

  Lorna gave me a frown. “So what are you proposing, Cus?”

  “Gimme a day,” I said, “and I’ll let you know.”

  I spent that night sleeping only fitfully, and taking a couple of tours around the town perimeter. I knew there was no way any Osterway forces could have even got close to Watermanse yet, but I also knew these were mostly peaceful people, who’d ever only envisioned themselves having to fend off packs of raiders, not dig in and hold off what could amount to a large, well-equipped and determined army. Still, they were taking it all very seriously. Where I’d expected to find people sleeping at their posts, or at best staring off into the dark, bored and inattentive, I instead found diligent, determined—and, yes, anxious, and even frightened—people manning the positions they’d been given, their full focus on the grim job at hand. I was impressed, and said so when our ad hoc defense council met the next morning at what had become our headquarters, The Drowned Man.

  “I think it was the ogres,” Aldebar said. “When those things came stomping over that crestline, it scared people shitless. They thought the real thing was about to come crashing down on ‘em. Think they realized after that that this ain’t a game, or a false alarm.”

  Lorna gave me a keen look. “You meant to do that, didn’t you?”

  I laughed. “I wish I could say I was that clever, but no. But if that’s the effect it had, then so much the better.”

  Lanni was taking a turn watching over the ogres, so it was Gurdon at the meeting today. “If scaring the shit out of you folks was useful, then glad to have been of help,” he said, giving a lopsided grin.

  We moved on, talking defenses. “We need them to be flexible, redundant, and in-depth,” I said, arranging cups and mugs and utensils on a table to illustrate what I meant. It wasn’t that I was an expert in this sort of thing, but I’d been around well-defended settlements before, and my tech seemed to give me a better eye for, and understanding of it. I laid out a layered defense for the town, with hardened firing positions arranged to interlock their shooting, so any one of them could be fired on by at least one and preferably two more, in case it was in danger of being overrun. With knives and forks, I suggested locations for ditches and spear-walls, obstacles that would tend to force our attackers into killing zones where our people would be able to bring them under maximum fire. Finally, I suggested locations for the lone mortar, and how to use it—if any attackers took cover against our direct fire, then we could arc mortar rounds over their cover and down on top of them, giving them no respite.

  By the time I was done, and the others had had their say, we had three defensive rings planned that incorporated all these ideas. If the outermost fell, we could pull back to the next, and then to the third. That last one was right among the buildings, so I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but everyone seemed determined to do whatever needed to be done to defend Watermanse.

  “How about them ogres?” Aldebar asked.

  Gurdon stared at the impromptu map made of cups and knives, pulled at his lower lip for a moment, then said, “They can work hard. Carry stuff. And dig.” He smirked. “You gotta keep any eye on them when they dig, because they’re a lot faster at it than you’d think, and they’ll dig way too deep if you let ‘
em.”

  “Can they fight?” Garet asked.

  Gurdon’s answer was another smirk. “Once they catch the scent of a fight, it’s keeping them out of it that’s the problem.”

  Kai frowned. “That sounds like a problem in itself. They able to tell who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy?”

  “Eh, they’re dumb as trees, but smart trees. They’ve actually got a kind of . . . cunning, you know? Lanni and I have been making sure to point out every townsperson to ‘em. If we make sure they know who the good guys are, then anyone who ain’t one of them is in for a world of hurt.”

  “Okay,” Kai said, “note to self: make sure I introduce myself to the ogres.”

  But Lorna was shaking her head. “Just a few days back, Cus,” she said to me, “you told us if we try just to stand and fight, we’d last for just a few hours and then be overrun. Now, we didn’t have the ogres then, but still.” She gestured at the table. “Isn’t that what this is? Just the details of how we’re going to stand and fight?”

  “I meant what I said.” I nodded back at her. “We have to assume Osterway is coming in force. All this might very well not be enough to stop them.”

  “Might bloody their nose enough to make them reconsider, though,” Aldebar said, but now it was my turn to shake my head.

  “I don’t know this Venari, but if she thinks there’s Hightec being made new and they can take it, I’m pretty sure they won’t hold back. I’d say Venari will probably bleed her army dry, if it means she can get what she’s after.”

  “So, what,” Lorna said. “After all this, it’s pointless anyway? We’re screwed no matter what we do?”

  “I didn’t say that. What I said is if we just hold and defend, we’ll probably be overrun. So we’re not going to do that. Long before Venari and her army get here, we’re going to take the fight to them.”

  That led to a moment of heavy silence, then everyone started talking at once. I waved them all off, though, saying I needed to do a little more thinking and planning, and we’d meet again that night.