John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

Over subsequent days, the horses recovered slowly. There was little grain on the Scrub Coast, and the forage was poor. Searching for food and fodder was systematized and intensified.

Two mounted reconnaissance patrols were sent to explore to the west. They found that the sandy plain, with its open scrub forest, extended sixty miles or so inland. Beyond that lay a band of hills and heavier forest which the patrols did not explore. Beyond the hills a mountain range could be seen, not particularly high, but rugged looking.

Neither patrol had seen so much as a village.

A cavalry platoon had been sent off northward, to check the claim that there was no land route to the ylvin empire. It was gone for nine days. Two days' ride northward, it had come to a vast uncrossable swamp of black water, with great flare-bottomed trees, and mosquitoes beyond belief. The patrol had turned westward then, looking for a way around it. It ended at a steep and forested ridge, difficult for men and worse for horses.

And at any rate a river, the source of the swamp, was in the way. It flowed out of the mountains, paralleled by a good wagon road. There was a stone wharf at its outlet into the swamp, but no sign of recent activity. Brief exploration up the road found the valley quickly narrowing to a gorge, with rapids unsuited to boating.

After getting the platoon's report, the crown prince brooded all one night. The hive mind provided no help. When morning came, he gave new orders.

Four weeks later-four weeks of beautiful weather-repair crews had 147 ships serviceable. Patched, jury-rigged, with stubby masts of local pine, but serviceable. They were adequate to transport seventeen regiments of infantry and five of cavalry-more than half the army-northward up the coast to attack the ylvin empire. They'd be badly crowded, but the voyage was expected to take a few days at most. Over a period of several days, the ragged fleet assembled at sea off the mouth of the river that drained the great swamp.

Then it set off northward, pushed by light southwesterly winds, and carrying with it far less than half the available food: it would conquer or starve. Crown Prince Kurqosz felt no misgivings. In his mind, to attack was to conquer.

The fleet left not because the crown prince was impatient, though he was, but because the rations wouldn't last till enough ships were ready to take the entire army.

Kurqosz had left his younger brother, Prince Chithqosz, on the Scrub Coast with seventeen regiments-fifteen of infantry and two of cavalry-and one circle of sorcerers. Kurqosz, his twenty-two regiments and two circles of sorcerers, would find a major port town, capture the district or region there, and send back ships to get the regiments left behind.

Meanwhile ship repair would continue on the Scrub Coast. And the troops left there would continue to forage, to supplement their shrinking food supply.

Unknown to the crown prince, on the same day he left (night, actually, for it was on the other side of the world), a large, seagirt mountain exploded. Cubic miles of rock were pulverized and blown high into the sky; the sound was audible two thousand miles away. Effects more significant than sound would be felt much farther.

25 Attack on Balralligh

No word of anything worrisome reached the East Ylvin Coast Guard for weeks after the armada landed. The hurricane had run up the coast, weakening a bit, but damaging harbors and vessels extensively. A week afterward, a refitted Coast Guard flotilla-a schooner and three sloops-had run south on a routine smuggler patrol. It kept the low coast in sight, but saw no craft at sea, not even a fishing boat. Which in itself might have inspired investigation, but didn't.

Its pass back northward, two weeks later, was a bit closer inshore. This time, on the Scrub Coast, eight hulks were spotted on offshore islands, dismasted and no doubt derelict. The commodore entered them on his log, but did not investigate.

Three days later, the log was turned in at the Coast Guard office in Balralligh, and interest was finally sparked. Two seers had recently reported dreams of a voitik fleet, but no one had informed the Coast Guard. It learned of it quite incidentally, well after the patrol flotilla had sailed off southward, and then didn't take it seriously.

Now the admiral sent a message to Emperor Morguil. Who had just received a dispatch describing Gavriel's and Cyncaidh's concern, after their meeting with Macurdy and the great boar.

All military leaves were canceled. Level One mobilization orders were issued, carried by the best postal service in Yuulith. Command staffs down to cohort level were ordered to report. All other officers and men were to make themselves ready and available should further mobilization become necessary. And the rams were to be refitted and recrewed as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, a light flotilla-four fast sloops-was sent to investigate the hulks. In the face of southerly winds, they sailed southward till they spotted the first armada ships close offshore. Ugly with their stubby replacement masts, about forty of them rode the hook in the assembly area, awaiting the others. The Coast Guard sloops made about and headed for home.

Within an hour of their arrival, the great bell at Balralligh Fortress banged its alarm across the city, continuing for ten head-rattling minutes. Couriers galloped out, headed for every other city in the eastern empire, particularly Colroi, the imperial capital. And as dusk thickened into night, a great beacon, newly piled on Balralligh Hill, was fired. It could be seen for thirty miles. Within sight of it were other beacons waiting for the torch, and within their range, still others.

The ylvin admiral was sticking his neck way out. There'd been no identification of the ships seen, and no consultation with the imperial palace. But forty strange ships? If they weren't voitik, then they were some other potent threat. And in his talented bones, he felt those ships were what his people had first feared, then largely forgotten about over the generations.

From his palace in Colroi, Emperor Morguil ordered full mobilization.

The Balralligh Legion was more human than ylvin-four cohorts of ylvin cavalry and six of human infantry. For even with long-youth mixed bloods registered as ylver by the census, humans outnumbered ylver in the eastern empire.

The legions officers and men were all from the Balralligh and Lower Ralligh River Districts, and within three days they were almost fully mobilized. They were decently trained, though inevitably they lost some of their edge and physical conditioning between the annual exercises. But given the nature of the alarm, all were in a state of repressed excitement. If it came to a fight, they felt ready.

The Coast Guard had sent picket sloops south to watch, and on the fourth day the armada was seen approaching as briskly as it could, given its jury-rigged masts. As it approached, the pickets turned home one by one. Balralligh's great alarm bell banged again, this time at intervals all day. And again couriers galloped off with brief but fearsome reports and orders. The newly rebuilt Balralligh beacon was doused with oil in preparation for nightfall.

General Kethin, Lord Felstroin, stood atop the wall of Balralligh Fortress. It no longer provided the security it had fifteen centuries earlier, when it had still enclosed all there was of the mile-square town. Since then, Balralligh had greatly outgrown its enclosure, spreading over an unwalled area eight times as large.

Still the fortress, and the mangonels atop its walls, commanded the harbor and its wharves. And fifteen years earlier, during the "pirate" scare, a lesser fortress had been built on the promontory commanding the harbor entrance. Now, to intercept the invaders, the imperial battle fleet had put to sea-twenty rams, biremes with rows of muscular human oarsmen, and cargos of ylvin marines.