Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

So sudden, complete and—to the rebels—unexpected was the victory of the High Lord’s force that the suicide garrison had no time either to seal or even to conceal the huge oval chamber thoroughly undermining the fortifications, the runnel through which they had been garrisoned and supplied, and the oil- and pitch-soaked timbers supporting all.

“It’s a stratagem which can be hellishly effective, Bili,” the High Lord urgently mindspoke. “Something similar once cost me most of two regiments when we were conquering the Kingdom of Karaleenos, more than a century ago. Since this hill is mined, it stands to reason that that one you’re all on is, too. For some reason, I’ve been unable to lock onto the minds of Ahrtos or any of his senior officers, so you must get word to him that all troops are to quit that hilltop, immediately!”

Bili was blunt. “Strahteegos Ahrtos is dead, along with most of the other officers of the first wave. A sub-strahteegos called Kahzos Kahlinz presently commands the few infantrymen who survived the actual fighting, as well as his own slow-footed companies. He thought that he commanded me and my Freefighters, as well, until we had some… ahhh, words on the matter.”

“All right, Bill Everything will be set aright once this danger is past. For now, I’ll mindspeak Kahlinz. You see to getting your own company off that hilltop. Down as far as the abattis, you should be safe. Get your wounded off, but don’t bother with your dead; there may not be time.”

Sab-strahteegos Kahzos—the thirty-five-year-old third son of Thoheeks Hwilkz Kahlinz of Kahlinz—whose twenty years under the cat banners had earned him the command of a line regiment and a second-class silver cat, was coldly furious. First, that old arsehole Ahrtos bad relegated him to the inferior and honorless command of the second wave, while taking his two best battalions away from him for the initial assault and “replacing” them with two understrength units of irregular light infantry from some godforsaken backwater in the northwestern mountains.

Then a noble bumpkin—and it was difficult, despite his title and his powerful mindspeak, to credit that the young swine was even Kindred, what with his damned harsh, nasal Middle Kingdoms accent and his scalp shaven like some barbarian mercenary—had defied him, had denied the authority of a Confederation sub-strahteegos, obscenely and loud enough for every regular on the hill to hear.

Blatantly lacking respect for either Kahzos’ rank or his age, the young savage had not only profanely and flatly refused to place himself and his mercenary scum under Kahzos’ rightful authority, but he had insisted that his outlaw company of northern barbarians be given leave to loot the salient before the Confederation gatherers were allowed to set about their accustomed task of scavenging valuable or usable items.

And Kahzos had seen scant choice but to accede to the most unreasonable demands, despite the flagrant breach of the sacrosanct regulations of the Army of the Confederation. For the arrogant young cur had made it abundantly clear that, should the sub-strahteegos demur, he and his mercenaries would assuredly fight—turn their swords on Confederation troops—to achieve their larcenous ends. At that juncture, Kahzos could only think of that wholly disgraceful business some years back, of the ruined career and public cashiering of an officer who had set his battalion on mercenary “allies” when they had refused to fight. Of course, the man in question had been a damned kathahrohs Ehleen—which automatically, in Kahzos’ opinion, meant a stubborn fool and a bom thief and liar—and had hoped that by butchering the mercenaries, he could conceal the fact that he had embezzled their wages.

But, still, with such an unsettling precedent and with his honorable retirement not too far distant, Kahzos had stuck at issuing the order that might ensure an armed and all-round disastrous confrontation between him and his regulars and that puling pup of a thoheeks and the mercenaries.

However, his innate prejudice, towering ego and hidebound insistence on rules and regulations aside, Kahzos Kahlinz was basically a good officer and an intelligent man. When the High Lord mindspoke him, he immediately grasped the dire possibilities, the deadly danger to every living man within the new-conquered salient.

After snapping a spoken order to his staff drummer, he beamed his reply to his sovereign. “My lord, because of some unforeseen difficulties with the barbari… ahh, with Thoheeks Bili and his company, the gather squads have but just dispersed about the area. The musicians and the company drummers are all handling litters, of course, but I have ordered my own drummer to roll the ‘Recall’ and I will immediately dispatch a runner to warn the thoheeks and the mercena… ahh, the Freefighters.”

“Never miad Thoheeks Bili, Kahlinz,” beamed Milo. “He was warned before you were. Just get your units from off that damned hill as rapidly as may be. We’ve taken much loss for damned little gain this day as it is.”

Bili supervised the lowering of the wounded Freefighters down the outer face of the stone wall before he allowed himself to be eased down to the ground below, leaving Pawl Raikuh and a few men still on the wall to see to the dead and the bundles of loot and equipment.

Unless they were noble-born, deceased Freefighters were usually just stripped of any armor, weapons or other usable effects and left wherever they fell on the field; so, after getting the hard-won loot down, Raikuh simply had the near-nude, stiffening corpses shoved off the inner edge of the wallwalk to join the hacked husks of their recent opponents on the pavement of the inner court. As the captain set his feet to the first rung of the rope ladder his men had jury-rigged, mostly from battlefield debris, he could but grunt his disgust at the foolhardy idiocy of that supercilious turd of a sub-strahteegos who should have been shooing his troops out of the elaborate deathtrap, but was instead ordering them into painfully dressed formations as fast as they reported to the roll of the drum.

Sergeant Geros and his detail returned just as Bili hobbled down to the place where the wounded had been gently laid. The young thoheeks took the opportunity to appropriate the sergeant’s mare but found, to his chagrin, that he had to be helped into her saddle.

Increasingly thick and dense tendrils of smoke were arising from between the paving stones of the inner court before the rearguard of the infantry column gained to the top of the stone wall and dropped down its outer face, and that company still were trotting toward the perimeter defenses of the doomed salient when a flame-shot pillar of smoke and dust mounted high into the air from behind the walls of the fort To those on the slope below, it was as if some gigantic monster out of legend had roared with hellish din and fiery breath; the doomed infantrymen on the quaking ramparts were half obscured, and their terrified screams, curses and prayers were heard only by themselves.

First, a wedge of rampart collapsed into itself, but few saw it, for just then and with an even more awesome noise, the entire stone fort and much of the hillside between it and the ramparts simply dropped straight down, its place taken by high-leaping flames so hot that even those down near the abattis felt uncomfortable heat.

“Then another and wider slice of rampart gave way, and suddenly the entire remaining stretches of rampart slid, roaring and crashing, into the huge, blazing pit, sending an unbelievable shower of scintillating sparks up and through and even high above the solid-looking entity compounded alike of dust and roiling smoke.

Bili urged the mare, Ahnah, as close as he dared to the still-crumbling verges of the deep crater; other men crowded up in his wake, despite the waves of enervating heat, the clouds of choking smoke and the nauseating stench of burning flesh which assailed them all.