Miles Cameron - The Dread Wyrm

Sauce took a pair of lances to the top of the first wall of earth and Mag came up behind her.

Without any drama, she pointed a finger at the ground to the north and there was a flare of heat-the sort of shimmer that warm rock can give on a hot summer day.

Mag smiled. “I have sewing to finish,” she said. She went back to camp.

Young Phillip-one of her Morean knights-looked a little pale.

Sauce made a face. “I used to think Tom was the scariest of the bunch,” she said.

She walked off to look at her pickets.

She had to walk a long way. Given two full days and some farm labour, Ser John had managed a small miracle of construction. The low ridge-not so low in places, either-that hemmed in the Hole on the south and west was now crowned with a long, winding earthworks well-reinforced with lumber, and in front of it the trees were cleared to stumps for almost a hundred paces-right down to the marsh-and then piled beyond in a tangle of spruce and maple.

Closed redoubts watched the ends, with trenches. On the west side, the ridge ran to the very edge of the creek that helped define the position. On the east side, the ridge petered out into a deep, wide bog. Behind her there was the higher ground with the old fort. They didn’t have the manpower to hold it-but it would take a determined assault willing to take heavy losses to get round the east end and past the redoubt-and the covered, secret surprise.

She knew the smell of roast boglin and it was heavy in the air. She wrinkled her nose and exchanged salutes with the armoured men in the south redoubt. They’d clearly stood to arms, and now looked sheepish and bored.

“Plenty of fighting later,” she said. “Christ, only a fool looks forward to it.”

She peered out over the wall. Someone out there was alive-a very accurate sling stone buzzed past her head.

“Fuck me,” she muttered. But she was on display, and she enjoyed the salutes. They never got old. She grinned. “Don’t get hit,” she said. “That’s an order.”

A generation of very young Jarsay knights grinned back at her. She’d been, to all intents, the primus pilus for three weeks. Everyone knew her.

“Don’t stand there like gowps,” she snapped. “Get a couple of archers behind a mantlet and scour the killing ground. You know the drill.”

The second attack had more meat in it. There was a directing intelligence behind it-at least, they heard horns and bellows-and a boiling mass of boglins threw surprising amounts of wood and grass and ferns and other organic matter-including charred boglins-into the ditch. They’d crossed the marsh silently, mostly the new imps and more boglins.

A heavy crossbow coughed from a covered position well up the ridge. On one of the few small mounds of dry in the swamp, a daemon was struck right through his body. His screams went on until one of his mates finished him. The boglins crossed, climbed up the revetment, and died.

Some of the farmers from the valley and the Brogat, working away at clearing trees and digging dirt, were appalled by the wave of boglins. Some ran. A few deserted.

A few started killing boglins with shovels.

“Sign ’em up,” Sauce said. Both men proved to be farm labourers-men who owned nothing and were almost slaves.

“How’d we get all this farm labour?” she asked Ser John.

Ser John was watching the sky. They had four towers going up, all holding new-built torsion machines. He was wondering where the wyverns were. “The Captain of Albinkirk offered a year’s remission of all taxes for ten days’ digging,” he said.

Sauce grinned. “That Captain of Albinkirk, he’s one smart man.”

A little after two in the afternoon, and the mess kettles were on for dinner. A convoy rolled in from Albinkirk-forty wagons full of food and munitions. Sheaves of new arrows, already on spacers in linen bags, and new tinned-iron kettles. Some new brass kettles made in Genua.

“Miss me?” the captain said, and Sauce threw her arms around him and kissed him. Some of the newer members of the company and some of the knights with Ser Ricar were appalled. Others cheered.

She leaned back to look at him. “You look like you got the cream.”

He laughed. “We’ll see,” he said. “The cream may yet get me. In the meantime…”

He spent two hours with them, outlining the new alliance, quelling their fears of having a Wild ally, and riding along the two ridges south and west of the Hole and one high beech-tree-covered ridge north and west of the little stream.

When he was done, he bowed in the saddle to Ser John. “You’ve done it. It’s beautiful.”

Ser John was hesitant. “I was only going to be here until today-tomorrow at the outside.”

The captain nodded, his eyes on the distant Green Hills. “I expect we’ll fight tomorrow, but the real fight will be the day after.” He kept watching the hills. “I may have this all wrong. The sorcerer can still just go north into the woods and come at us on the old Ticondaga road or across West Kanata.”

Sauce raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“But he has much greater supply problems than we do,” the captain said with his breezy confidence.

“A million monsters…”

“They still have to eat. And no supply train, no wagons, nothing.” The captain was watching the woods. “He can go around-but will he have an army at the end?”

Ser John whistled. “You give me joy,” he said.

The captain shook his head. “He could still decide to march into Morea. Then - ” He sighed. “Then it’s all for nothing, and we start making stuff up.” He looked down at the first ridge, below them. “Every attack by boglins makes me happy. Bad Tom ought to reach you at sunset.”

Sauce started. Ser John raised both eyebrows.

“Messengers. All the white banda will come in-here. Tom’s Hillmen will stay out-off our right flank, in the ravines to the east, on the other bank of the Albin.” He looked back at both of them. “I’m not going to repeat Chevin. I can only hope that Thorn is .”

Ser John chewed the end of his moustache. Sauce chewed her hair.

Sauce said, “Why not hit one end of our line or another and roll us up?”

The captain shrugged. “Then we have a battle. I’m trying to be the sorcerer. He can’t have much control over his minions beyond ‘stop’ and ‘go.’ I don’t think the stone trolls can form fours and march to the flank. But we’ve had time to prepare and we’ve used it. It should prove a decisive advantage.”

Sauce said, “But you have doubts.”

The Red Knight nodded. “I always have doubts.”

Sauce glanced at him.

“My military tutor had an interesting definition for this situation,” the captain went on. “He said that a battle was a situation where two commanders each thought they had a decisive superiority and one was wrong.” He was still watching the distant hills. “I keep putting myself in the shoes-or what-have-you-of the sorcerer. Why’s he even here? He should go home and declare victory.” He frowned. “I’m missing something.”

“He killed your mother, and you think he should just go home?” Sauce said. “Don’t you want to fight?”

He looked at her as if she had something hideous springing from her forehead. “That’s amateur talk, Sauce. You taught me better than that. This is strictly business.”

Sauce laughed. “I never said any such thing.” She shrugged. “Maybe I did.”

“You did. You were talking about johns, and sex. But it’s the same lesson. No room here for hate. Strictly business. War is about mess kettles and latrines and having the last set of warm, dry fighters in reserve.” He nodded. “I think the sorcerer hates us. That would be excellent.”