Michael Pearce - Diaries of a Dwarven Rifleman

He woke when Taarven lifted his head to pour hot willow-bark tea into his mouth. His first reflex was to spit the bitter brew out but Taarven was persistent. This was repeated several times before he woke, lucid and soaked in sweat. He was lying so close to their tiny fire that it was a wonder that he hadn't rolled into it in the grip of the fever.

“Easy now,” Taarven said when he tried to sit up. His partner helped him, leaning him back against the boulder that had been reflecting the heat of the fire. His back stabbed a couple of times in the process but didn't spasm. Be grateful for small favors, he told himself. Taarven gave him some coffee and let him sip it enough to clear his throat.

“How are you feeling?”

Engvyr considered it a moment before replying, “Like my pony dragged me across a few leagues of rough country.”

“Well, at least your fever seems to have broken,” Taarven said.

“How long?” Engvyr asked, checking the position of the sun, which was about to drop behind the peaks.

“All day yesterday and today,” Taarven told him, “Let's get some food and coffee into you.”

“Since we seem to have gone as far as we can we should check in with the army,” Engvyr said, “Maybe someone else has had better luck.”

“Engvyr, you need your rest! That fever could come back as quick as it went.”

“Well,” Engvyr said, “In case you hadn't noticed there's a war on. I'll bundle up good, and if need be I'll sleep in the saddle. But we need to report in.”

“We'll argue about it while you eat,” Taarven said as he began heating up a pan of beef and beans. They did argue too, but Engvyr was inflexible and after eating they saddled up and got moving. Engvyr was weak but he could sit in a saddle well enough. After all, he thought, the pony is doing the hard part…

They avoided the trail as much as possible and sometime after midnight Taarven called a halt. By that point Engvyr was done-in and willing to admit that he needed the break. They made a cold camp and he wrapped up in his bedroll and slept like a stone until dawn. They broke their fast with biscuits and some dry sausages before setting out again.

They had no difficulty locating the regiments. By midday it was obvious where they were; ten thousand dwarves cannot camp inconspicuously. They worked their way towards the columns of smoke rising from the camp.

Engvyr was exhausted by the time they were challenged by the army's sentries. They were passed through the lines and directed to the field headquarters of the Mountain Guard contingent. They made their way through the vast camp past row upon row of tents and secondary defensive works. Engvyr was not too beat-up to appreciate the intelligence of the arrangements. It looked to him as if they could probably fend off five times their number of Baasgarta.

Headquarters was set up in a converted mess-tent borrowed from one of the regiments. Engvyr was surprised to find Captain Gauer inside, obviously in charge. He was poring over a hand-drawn map with another pair of rangers and a cartographer when they arrived. They were filling in details based on the report he was receiving. He looked up and greeted them with a nod, exchanged a word with the map-maker and moved to meet them.

“Taarven, Engvyr,” he said, giving Engvyr a sharp, assessing glance, “Sit down, Ranger. Looks like you've had a rough time of it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Engvyr said gratefully, hooking a stool over with one foot and half-collapsing onto it. He set the long-rifle aside and gingerly unslung his satchel, water bottle and other gear with a sigh of relief.

Taarven looked at the captain as he was setting his own gear down and asked, “Not that it isn't good to see you, sir, but where's Berryc?”

“Oh, he's fine- I sent him back to take command at Ghost Creek when I came forward,” He told them, “The King has signed the council's Declaration of War against the Baasgarta. Command sent me to take charge.”

Unasked one of the staff brought them bowls of stew and mugs of coffee while they made their report. After they ate they joined the Captain at the map, filling in more details from memory. This was merely a rough campaign map; detailed maps would be made as the armies advanced, which Engvyr gathered they would be doing shortly.

“We don't want to be fighting a winter campaign if we can avoid it,” Captain Gauer said, “Others have reported fortifications similar to the gate that you found, so I imagine that the first stage of the offensive will be to take those for our own.”

The captain indicated a spot on the map to their northeast and said, “There is a garrison here. Our group, the 3rd Rifles, the 1st Mounted Infantry and the 4th Heavy Infantry, will take and man the gates and lesser forts, then join up with the 2nd Rifles and the 3rd Heavy Infantry to take the garrison. Fortunately it is only lightly fortified; I doubt the Baasgarta ever expected they would face a full-on assault. Worse come to, we can besiege them over the winter, but the Army boys think that we can take them down easily enough given our advantage in numbers. It looks like we will be able to secure our own supply-lines pretty well, as the territory south of the target is completely uninhabited.”

Taarven frowned thoughtfully and asked, “What will our part of this be?”

“Initially you two will guide a company of skirmishers to take the gate that you found. We'll have you coordinate with them on methods,” he said, then frowned at Engvyr, “After you've seen a healer and had a good night's rest. You look like ten leagues of bad road, Ranger.”

“I wish I felt that well, sir!” Engvyr told him with a weak grin.

He felt better after he let the healers fuss over him. He dutifully took his medicine then bathed, changed into a clean clothes and racked out on one of the cots behind a canvas curtain at the back of the headquarters.

It took the army regiments a couple of days to prepare for the offensive and Engvyr needed every moment of them to recover. He was still bruised and stiff but he was at least past the need to worry about the fever coming back.

Taarven and Engvyr set out at the head of a full company of skirmishers. Since the attack on the dig site in the Makepeace Valley these units had focused on training to work in larger groups. The dwarven army was not immune to the dictum that 'leaders always prepare to fight the last war, not the next.' They had been structured to fight in the relatively flat, open terrain of Dvargatil Baeg's southern valleys or adjacent Afmaeltinn lands, so skirmishers were well practiced at small-unit operations like attacks on supply-lines, sniping attacks and lightning raids. But now that the army was forced to fight in the closed and often difficult terrain of the deep mountains their mission had changed; they needed to operate in company-sized or even larger units. In the future the army would doubtless train dedicated mountain troops, but for now the skirmishers were the best that they had for the job.

The pair of rangers led the force up to the narrow valley before the canyon entrance then proceeded on foot. They needed to establish another route that would take them to the ridges above the gate without being seen by the sentry above the entrance to the canyon.

Their route took them far out of their way, through a neighboring valley and across two ridges before they were in position. Several times they had to scale nearly vertical slopes and drop ropes for the skirmishers to follow. It was nearing sunset before they found themselves on the edge of the canyon with the top of the wall perhaps ten paces below them.

Seen from this perspective the 'wall' was actually a building about twenty-five paces across the top and spanned the width of the canyon, about forty paces wide at that point. The center was a roof, slightly peaked for drainage. There was a walkway a couple of paces wide along the edge at either side behind a flat parapet. There was a doorway into the canyon wall directly ahead of them, likely leading to stairs that would lead to the interior of the building. It was probably very effective against fleeing slaves and wild animals, but it was in no way designed to stand up to a military assault.