Archeologist Warlord: Book 3

by E. M. Hardy

  “Like I said,” added Hobogetur with a nod. “I too would be advocating for some kind of flanking attack behind their lines if I didn’t know that each and every attempt would fail horribly.”

  That little bit of information got 42 to shut up.

  “I’ve managed to explore four different branches of Fate that reach all the way to a month after today. That was all I could take before my mind and my body gave way, nearly popping my head with the effort.”

  He held up his index finger as he started to explain. “The first branch involved opening up multiple fronts deep in the Wastes. The objective was to split the attention of the rogues, pull them away from Al-Taheri. It’s a move that Martin pulled off earlier with his Mud Men, and should have bought more time.

  “Unfortunately, our supply lines won’t be able to keep us fed and watered for long. We don’t have his cow-box-things that can carry enormous loads without needing food or water. By contrast, camels and horses simply can’t transport enough water for both themselves and our troops. We’ll have to halve their already-limited cargo when crossing over open sand, away from the clay roads that Martin laid down.

  “We are eventually forced to retreat closer to civilization, but we’ve given enough time for the rogues to mass up into another huge wave—one that we will not be able to stop once it regains critical mass. I die from thirst when the rogues cut me off from the rest of my riders and I’m forced to flee into the Wastes.”

  Hobogetur grunted, holding up his middle finger along with his index finger. “The second branch was about retreating and holing up in Al-Taheri, making use of the city’s walls to put up a stiff and concentrated defense while our more mobile forces hit their pyramids from behind.

  “That is the worst possible fate of all four branches I managed to walk.

  “We gave the Rogues enough time to reach critical mass. They send in their big andros to break down the walls while the nimble hieracos swarm all over anyone that dares ride into their range. I die from a throng of hieracosphinxes that surround my riders, rip me and Ukum into shreds.”

  He added his ring finger to the other outstretched fingers. “The third branch is an attempt to ride off into the Wastes, see if we can find and hit the source of the rogues. The army forces a breach, sustains heavy casualties so that I and my Horde can break through to the other side.

  “We ride hard and fast, culling our weakened mounts for their blood and flesh while drawing on every trick we could to prolong our lives. We see nothing but pyramids everywhere we look, all covering the sands every dozen miles.

  “I manage to get close enough to reach some sort of jungle before the hieracos finally cut me and my surviving forces off, ending us with their claws and beaks.”

  “And the fourth?” ventured 42, disapproval clear in her tone of voice.

  “It’s the most boring one, to be honest. The fourth branch is one where we continued focusing on wearing the rogues down, culling as many of them as possible while keeping our own casualties low.

  “Your bombers keep hitting their pyramids, hurting their ability to create reinforcements, while my riders and the rest of the army keep poking right outside their control range.”

  42 silently shook her head, crossing her arms. “We have been doing that for months now, Khan Hobogetur, and we are only steadily losing ground. The other soldiers, the generals… they are losing heart against the implacable advance of these Rogues.”

  “And yet it is the only path that works,” Hobogetur responded. “We need to keep thinning the ranks of the rogues, prevent them from building up to the point where they cover these sands once again.

  “Every one of my failed visions involved giving the rogues time to build more pyramids unopposed, build up their numbers to the point where they can just ignore anything we do to them. We need to—”

  Hobogetur keeled over, his body seizing up as he fell forward toward the carpeted floor of his yurt. Agent 42 dove in, supporting him with one hand before he could complete his fall and laying another on his back. He felt her push chi into his body, probing for damage.

  He felt a massive surge of power pass through him—a vaguely familiar one. He allowed 42 to carry his weight for a few more moments before getting on his knees and pushing himself up, waving her away.

  “What happened?” she quietly but firmly demanded, nodding toward her apprentice for aid.

  “It’s… I honestly don’t know.” Hobogetur shook his head, trying to clear the confusion. “It might be the backlash from walking so far into the Branches.” Hobogetur smelled something coppery a split-second before he felt something drip down his nose.

  His vision swam and blurred out, slowly being replaced by a waking vision. “This… this is new,” he said dumbly, numbly, as the voices of 42 and 97 faded into the background.

  Mud Men, as far as the eye could see, marching through the open sand. Him and the allied army marching alongside them.

  Pyramids everywhere he turned—along the sand-swept roads of the Bashri, along the poisoned Yanshi Mountains, along the swamps of the Empire, even on the plains of the Grass Seas.

  Pyramids floating across the sky, hovering over churning waters and powering through raging storms.

  Swarms and swarms of constructs plodding across lands he didn’t recognize, his forces assembled alongside peoples he could not recognize.

  Great tears in the sky, blinding him with their brightness as strangely-armored men and winged-women poured through them.

  Fire, chaos, screams, violence, death, rebirth, mud, flesh, anguish and so much more collided and—

  He regained his senses, gasping for breath, looking wildly this way and that.

  “Easy,” 42 cooed in a calming, placating tone. “Easy does it. Are you back with us, Great Khan?”

  “I,” he swallowed once, licking lips that felt dry and cracked. “I have no idea what just happened to me. I… saw things. Pyramids, Mud Men, different lands, different peoples. Huge rips in the sky that poured people forth from them.”

  He gritted his teeth as the visions began slipping from his memory, fading away into the oblivion of dreams.

  “Great Khan! Did you see heavily armored men riding equally armored horses? Winged women wielding spears of light? Robed priests that could call down disasters upon their victims?”

  “Apprentice!” growled 42, but Hobogetur paid the young woman his full attention as her words pulled his fading visions back into attention.

  “Yes. Yes… I saw the armored riders and the winged women. The priests… I don’t remember seeing them, but you got the riders and the women right.”

  The apprentice gasped at that. “Oh no! How many of them did you see? Where did the portals open? When… what day or year? How much time do we have left!?”

  97 was clearly strained, her voice growing in pitch and volume as she bombarded him with all sorts of questions that made absolutely no sense to him.

  “Enough!” 42 barked out before he could ask the apprentice what in the world she was talking about. “Raise your concerns about the invaders later. Right now, come over here and help me replenish the Khan’s vitality!”

  The harsh reprimand seemed to snap the younger Balancer out from her panicked thoughts, and she sheepishly nodded toward her mentor as she came closer. She inhaled and laid a hand on his shoulder, feeding a slow trickle of healing energy into his battered body.

  “Thanks,” Hobogetur grunted as the two Balancers refilled his depleted energy reserves. “As for your apprentice, I can’t blame her for panicking. Martin warned me that these rogue mud creatures are just a distraction—‘glitched out’ is what he called them, whatever that means.

  “What he’s really preparing for is to deal with these mythical invaders of his, a race of supermen and superwomen that would put even the mightiest of your martial artists to shame.”

  Hobogetur was just about to launch into another explanation when a crackle of pain shot u
p his neck. He clicked his tongue before stretching the muscles of his neck with a grimace.

  “Would you mind hitting me up with some chi again? I think you missed a spot right here.”

  He wasn’t quite sure if 42 snorted out of amusement or derision, but he didn’t quite care at that moment.

  “Great Khan!” shouted someone from beyond the thick skins of his yurt before bursting in, throwing the flap open. “Great Khan! Your presence is urgently required!”

  Hobogetur clicked his tongue, donning a great, big grimace on his face. His grim countenance, however, did nothing to dim the bright expression on the man’s breathless face. He found that strange, for the men and women under him usually cringed and cowered when he glowered at them.

  “Stop grinning like an idiot already and spill it.”

  “The Mud Men… they’re back!”

  Chapter 15

  “Martin? Martin, is that really you!? Honored friend, you really must—”

  “Martin! I… I can’t believe you’re back! How… what… what happened? You need to—”

  “Release that walker, but keep your weapons trained on it. Now… explain yourself. What happened, and how did you—"

  “Pothead! About time you got up! Get your lazy ass up and get your walkers to start securing the roads! Those backstabbing bastards set up raids to—”

  “Oh, thank the ancestors! Martin’s back! Please, we need your help to—”

  Martin groaned with one of his free consciousnesses while thousands of himself handled the questions and demands. His split awareness learned more and more with each passing second, gaining much-needed knowledge from all over the continent.

  He quickly realized that he had been down for nearly a year, and that things had gone to hell with his sudden absence.

  The road networks he built in the Bashri Basin were choked with bandits, which Isin not-so-subtly noted were being supported by disgruntled members of the League of Merchants.

  The same could be said for the Empire, which not only had to deal with brigands infesting the roadways but also had to deal with the aftermath of the Rats launching terror attack after terror attack.

  Even the Sahaasi Dominion was not spared, having to deal with flooding in its own lands. An unusually prolonged monsoon season drowned a large portion of their staple crops, causing famines all across their land. Only their limited imports of Taiyo foodstuffs prevented the country from falling into starvation.

  The Taiyo Sovereignty wasn’t doing so good either. The seaways to the Sahaasi were still open, but a powerful storm blew down sections of the Clay Bridge. If that didn’t hit trade bad enough, the goods that did make it to shore by ship were stuck at the port cities.

  Bandit-infested roads made it practically impossible to quickly transport goods, with caravans having to assemble large numbers of armed escorts to protect them on their journey to the heartlands.

  Without secure roadways guaranteeing the free flow of trade, without the Shogun-Elect and his troops to maintain order, the Isles of Taiyo were slowly choking in their isolation.

  All this would have been manageable if only the rogues weren’t pulling resources away from their home states.

  The only bit of good news was that the nations of the continent recognized the threat of the rogues—including the peoples of the Grass Sea. Hobogetur’s Great Horde provided much-needed manpower to bolster the allied army, helping slow down the advance of the rogues. It still wasn’t enough though, and the rogues were just a hundred miles away from the Emirate of Ma’an.

  “But now I’m back,” Martin said through one of the lonely walkers picking itself up, brushing the sand and dirt from its shoulders. It searched around for its spear, picked it up, and hefted it upright as thousands of walkers all over the continent did the same. “And it’s time to get back to work.”

  ***

  Forty thousand, two hundred, thirty-two walkers. Two thousand, nine hundred, eighty-six dolls. Five hundred sixty-five cow-boxes. Eighty-three eyeballs.

  These were all the constructs buried underneath the shifting sands of the Wastes, quietly biding their time as Martin accounted for his available resources.

  Fortunately for him, the lines of rogue constructs snaked away from most of his buried constructs, completely ignoring them in the process.

  Martin thanked the buggy coding of the rogues for ignoring his depowered obelisks and deactivated constructs. This was the only reason he could think of as to why the rogues didn’t just demolish his units while he was cut off from them.

  Martin took a deep imaginary breath to calm himself down and execute his plan.

  The buried constructs pushed themselves up and made a break for the pyramid that was still hooked up to his network of obelisks, dashing wildly for the entrance. The rogues reacted immediately to the commotion, breaking the neat lines snaking across the sands and swarming toward the newly-awakened threats.

  Only a third of his walkers were able to find maces, mauls, and spears to arm themselves with. He urged his dolls, cow-boxes, and unarmed walkers on toward the pyramid while the armed walkers closed ranks.

  The cow-boxes charged ahead, tangling up the hieracos and pulling them away from the main mass. His walkers presented lines, pikes thrust out and blunt weapons ready to smash any rogue that happened to get through.

  The hieracosphinxes leaped with their usual ferocity, slashing and biting for all they were worth. Martin’s pikers held most of them back, piercing their limbs and bodies with well-timed, well-aimed thrusts.

  The tough ceramic hide of the hieracos would have turned away the points of pikes held by regular men. The strength and discipline of the walkers allowed them to penetrate their targets, finding the cores of their enemies and extinguishing the energies that animated the constructs.

  The hieracos, however, were tenacious and aggressively unyielding opponents.

  They used their fallen comrades as launching pads to jump off from. This would normally not have worked at the very limits of their control radius, where they would slump down as they strayed too far from the range of their pyramids and obelisks.

  Here in the middle of their territory, however, they were free to dash, leap, and pounce as freely as they wanted.

  This is where the walkers with the blunt weapons came into the picture. Those wielding maces smacked the heads of their weapons against the infiltrating hieracos, knocking them off-balance. This opened up a window of attack for those with mauls, who slammed their heavy weapons down and broke their disoriented foes to pieces.

  This formation of pikes, maces, and mauls was able to hold the initial charge of hieracos back. The thin lines of hieracos were dispersed widely enough that they came at the walkers in clumps and bunches instead of tidal waves of claws and beaks. He could still adjust his formations, meet the small groups of hieracos head-on with pikes and follow up with blunt weapons.

  All that changed when the androsphinxes finally crashed into his walkers.

  The big clay cats with human heads loped over their smaller brethren, leaping into action and smashing into the orderly ranks of the walkers. They used their superior mass and strength to bat walkers left and right, which was why Martin was forced to disperse his orderly formations.

  This, of course, opened them up to the hieracos, which took full advantage and jumped into the freshly-opened gaps. They began savaging walkers now that the row of pikes was scattered.

  Martin’s split consciousnesses within the walkers gave a good accounting of themselves, using whatever tools and weapons they had at their disposal.

  The pikers cracked their shafts, turning their weapons into short spears to stab into their opponents. The walkers with maces snapped their weapons left and right, breaking limbs and knocking hieracos down. The maulers slammed their weapons on any target of opportunity they could.

  The walkers screening for their compatriots distracted the rogues for a grand total of seven minutes befor
e they were eventually overwhelmed, crushed and trampled by the rogues that swarmed over them.

  These seven minutes, however, were enough for the rest of his constructs to make their way into the pyramid. Teams of cow-boxes loaded up the smaller dolls, which couldn’t run fast because of their short stubby legs. The unarmed walkers helped as well, scooping up as many dolls as they could and blocking the hieracos that broke through the screening force.

  Once inside, the dolls headed straight for the vats to load up on raw materials. They then headed to the entrances, sealing them off with thick globs of clay. More of the walkers remained outside, buying time for the dolls to finish their work.

  In the end, Martin was only able to bring in four thousand walkers and a thousand dolls into the pyramid; the rest were eventually laid out on the sands, broken and battered beyond recognition.

  The eyeballs kept close watch over the area around the isolated pyramid, noting the slowly-massing swarm of rogues building up around it. The swarm then began battering down the hastily-erected defenses, clawing at it with their beaks and talons.

  The first hieraco to dig out a hole was quickly skewered by a spear thrust through the hole.

  The dolls inside the pyramid were shaping weapons for the walkers, taking clay from the stockpiles beside the production vats. They also began fortifying the tunnels inside the pyramid, building successive layers of walls for the walkers to hide behind.

  The walkers could defend the tunnels indefinitely, as they never tired or required sleep. They would last as long as the pyramid’s clay reserves would, since the ceramic weapons tended to blunt and break after prolonged contact with the hard hides of the hieracosphinxes.

  And as usual, it was the andros that ruined everything.

  The big constructs came lumbering in, slamming their powerful paws upon the walls of the pyramid. But the pyramid itself was a sturdy little structure. It took multiple crystal bombs just to penetrate the pyramid walls, and even more bombs to reach the sensitive crystals that served as a signal relay.