James Silke - Prisoner of the Horned helmet

The Kitzakk column stretched for miles back up into the narrow pass. The front third consisted of the surviving Skull regiments, the Hammer and Spear regiments, and their supply train. The middle third was made up of commercial companies of Chainmen, Cagemen and a train of huge wagons stacked with empty cages. The rear third was composed of Engineer regiments and a long wagon train bearing precut timbers for a base fort. Each group was separated by a wide interval. Well behind the last group a Wenchmaster led a wagon train of camp followers, a rowdy group of hardy whores, tinkers, magicians dealing in cheap love potions, cooks, gamblers and healers.

Earlier, when the Wenchmaster had seen the tail of the column stop far down the pass ahead of him, he had halted his wagon train. He was now barking orders, organizing a hasty retreat. The horses were unhitched. Both wagons and horses were turned around in place. Then the horses were hitched to the wagons they had formerly followed. This left one wagon without horses. It was unceremoniously shoved into the pass. The Wenchmaster then started his wagon train back up the pass toward the desert.

Several miles down the pass from the retreating camp followers, General Kayat, tire commander of the invading column, still sat his horse at the head of the rear third. He had sent orderlies forward at five-minute intervals to investigate the delay, but none had returned. He had also ordered himself some hot tea. As an aide arrived with it, he dismounted and took the steaming cup. He walked casually to the edge of the gorge and raised it to his lips, glancing uneasily over the rim.

He was standing on the section of the pass after which The Narrows was named, a thin stretch of road barely wide enough for the passage of one wagon. The open mouth of the gorge beside the road was no wider. Both road and gorge were walled by sheer rock cliffs rising toward the watching sun.

The road ahead descended gently as it twisted down through the pass. General Kayat could see the entire middle third of the column with its large wagons of cages and chains, but only the rear end of the front third, a regiment of Spears in bright fuchsia armor positioned at a sharp turn. The soldiers were shouting and arguing. He watched several run back across the gap separating them from the middle of the column and gesture wildly to the commanders of the Chainmen and Cagemen. An argument began to roar loudly up the pass.

Kayat tilted an ear toward these uncharacteristic sounds and carefully returned the half-empty cup to the waiting aide. Behind him, mounted and at attention, waited the three successful old campaigners who had advised General Yat-Feng on the raids against Coin, Bone Camp and the village of the Barhacha. Their eyes were fixed on the road ahead. Dedicated Kitzakk invaders in blood, bone and mind.

Kayat remounted and turned his eyes to the front. His head was shadowed under the wide brim of his helmet, a place of grim resolve. For ten minutes he did not move or speak, then suddenly he stiffened with shock.

At the sharp turn in the road ahead, the regiment of Spears had started moving back up the pass. Behind them a Black Hand regiment appeared around the sharp turn and ran wildly in among the retreating Spears. Both regiments promptly panicked, plunged across the wide interval of empty road separating them from the wagon train of cages, and pushed into and over the wedged wagons. Their drivers, showing no skill at backing up, panicked the horses. Several threw themselves, their drivers and the wagons they pulled off the edge of the road into the gorge. As they fell, they ricocheted off the narrow rock walls again and again. Before they had fallen halfway, there was little left of them for the sun to shine on.

The remaining wagons backed up into each other, and into the side of the road. Wheels broke and wagons collapsed, causing a huge roadblock. It continued to grow as more and more soldiers retreated around the sharp turn, propelled by still unseen regiments retreating down the gorge. It was a formation the sun had never seen the Kitzakks use before, but which it knew well. It was designed by panic.

Blocked by the broken crowd of wagons and cages, the soldiers quickly jammed up all the way back to the sharp turn. There they collided with the surging crowd behind them. Fighting broke out, and bodies began to drop away from the bunch like overripe grapes to fall into the gorge. Others dangled from the road edge, clinging to one another. Suddenly the bunch buckled, burst apart and fell in clusters into the gorge.

At that moment the huge Barbarian and his strongmen began to heave rocks down from the cliffs above.

General Kayat, seeing the shadows cast by the descending rocks, stared up in horror as the young commander of the wagon train of cages reached him. The commander, sweating and shaking, saluted, then started to speak, but stopped as he heard the falling rocks arrive and looked back at his wagon train. His cages and wagons were being smashed by huge boulders. His drivers were being crushed and knocked into the gorge. He turned to General Kayat for instructions.

General Kayat’s saddle was empty. The general was half buried in the road under a large boulder. A bigger boulder hit the general’s boulder and sent it rolling toward the edge of the road taking the Kitzakk with it. Bits of the general’s bloody armor were crushed and wedged in cracks of the boulder. He pounded the rock incessantly as it fell into the gorge.

The young commander, aghast, turned in desperation to the old greybeards. The expressions on their faces made it clear that they would not, could not, consider retreating. The commander could only stare in bafflement, but the sun understood. The golden orb had seen and admired such men before, men who had made the Kitzakk Horde strong, who had built the empire. A Kitzakk never panics. Never turns back.

The young commander groaned with despair and fled past the old men. As he did, a boulder flattened him. A moment later an avalanche swept the greybeards out of their saddles and all four sailed resolutely into the gorge.

As they fell the expressions of the old soldiers did not change. Not until they met the rocks far below. But this was not their decision. It was made by the rocks.

In the late afternoon, a team of four hauled an olive green wagon up The Narrows. It was well above the section of the pass where the Kitzakk column had panicked. The road was empty except for a cloud of brown dust chasing the wagon. Cool shade now filled the gorge giving it a savage unity and size. The wagon was infinitesimal against the sheer rock cliff, like a roach skittering over the wall of a great hall. Nevertheless there was a plunging vitality to it, as if the same forces of nature which had conspired to wrench open the earth to create the gorge had been brought into play for the single purpose of providing the wagon with a road.

The wagon caromed and skidded around a sharp turn, and pulled up short of Bone, Dirken and the Grillard strongmen who blocked the road with their weapons leveled. The dust billowed over the wagon, concealing it and the driver as he roared with delight within its dusty embrace. The hard faces of the Grillards broke with smiles and chuckles, and they crowded forward as Brown John rose up out of the dust with widespread arms, shouting. “Victory! The pass is ours! From here all the way to the forests!”

He bowed, and they, knowing a cue when they saw one, cheered wildly and began hugging, dancing and throwing caps and weapons into the air. The celebration had begun.

Brown John, in a soaring voice, pronounced over the joyous din, “My brave, brave, brave Grillards, this is a day of days! The world has been turned upside down and we, you, and our champion, have done the work of it.”