Steel And Flame (Book 1) (60 page)

Little would be gained by being choosy, he finally
decided.  Marik settled on a dappled brown gelding whose variations in color
appealed to him, like watching sunlight across a forest floor after it filtered
through the branches.  He tossed the blanket over the gelding’s back.  The
horse turned its head to look at its new rider.

“You’re not going to give me any trouble, right?”

The horse whuffed, ruffling the still short hair on
Marik’s forehead before returning to its breakfast.  Marik accepted that as
agreement and placed the saddle over the horse’s back, pulling the straps under
its belly.  It wanted to eat and chose to be unhelpful, so he kneed it in the
stomach to force out its breath.  He finished affixing the various tack,
working around the animal’s indifference, just as Earnell shouted to move out.

“Sorry fellow, but we need to get going.  Besides, I
think you’ve had enough breakfast, and it can’t be much fun trying to eat with
a bit in your mouth.  And anyway, is that stuff really so appetizing?”

The horse might have disagreed but after a firm tug on
the reins, it allowed Marik to lead it out the gate.

Marik mounted with his friends.  He used the last
moments before riding to adjusted his sword’s position and made certain the
water skin hung in easy reach.

When they drew near the gate in the western
fortifications, Fraser shouted instructions at same time the other three
sergeants shouted as well.  “We’ll be joining up with army men once we’re
outside the camp.  All of us are heading north together, so be nice.  Grab a
package on the way out the gate.  Enjoy your breakfast.”

To the left and right of the earthwork gate, men
handed out small bundles wrapped in cloth strips.  Marik grabbed one while he
followed everyone else across the collapsible ramp spanning the trench.  Inside
he found a doughy lump of bread, a strip of hardtack and an apple so wrinkled
from a long winter in a storage cellar he almost mistook it for a prune.  He
looked down at his horse.

“I take it back.  I think you’ll be the better fed of
us after all.”

The horse snorted.

*        *        *        *        *

It rained on them again.  That might have been
annoying if Marik could not still remember the previous days of heat.  Still
close enough to the experience, he enjoyed the cool respite.

Rain made the world look strange to him.  Vertical
black streaks slashed the healthy green glow of land covered in spring grasses
and trees, as well as the faint purple glow of dissolving energy filling the
air.  The landscape became a scored painting, scratched relentlessly by a
jealous artist.

Marik closed his mage senses.  Sunlight little brighter
than the constant illumination from the etheric’s mass diffusion filled his
vision.  A gray day, overcast with rain clouds that only let fitful swatches of
sun through.  Wrapped in his foul-weather gear and riding endless patrols, the
single-most activity which might be worse was hacking dirt and mud from the
ground with the army men digging fortifications for the Sixth Supply Depot.

A depot had been placed roughly every thirty miles
from the gold strike to the Southern Road, making thirteen supply areas that
needed guarding.  Only ten if he discounted the three major strongholds serving
as the base of operations for the combined forces.  Existing holdings housed
half the remaining depots as well.

So only five new depot sites needed to be constructed,
yet they would be the most vulnerable to attack.  This resulted in endless
patrol rides hoping, or not hoping, to find enemy units.

They had arrived on the front nearly two eightdays ago
and Marik had yet to see one sign of the Nolier forces.  He had asked Fraser
about that.

“Don’t be so eager for a toss up.  Maybe you haven’t
seen any action, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  You’ll get your
share.”

Marik took that to mean reports of fighting between
other Galemaran elements and the Noliers had arrived, though why the sergeant
refused to share the specifics puzzled Marik.  Any fear that spies might take
reports back to their officers seemed foolish.  Wouldn’t the Noliers know as
much about the fighting as the Galemarans?  Probably the sergeant enjoyed
knowing things his men were in the dark about.

A rider from the north reined in before the company
head.  Captain Peet ordered a halt.  While the army officer spoke with the
messenger, Marik and several others slid from their saddles to stretch.  He rubbed
his rear to restore circulation, asking Dietrik, “So how does it feel to be
back in the army?”

His friend made a bitter face.  “I thought I’d left
all this behind me.”

“What, riding in the rain?  Looking for men eager to
kill you?  You shouldn’t have joined the Kings then.”

“I was referring to all this ruddy stiff-necked
regulation and adherence to ridiculous procedure.”

Marik nodded.  “We’d ride out, find the nearest group
of enemies, figure out the best way to crush them and do it.  We wouldn’t be
riding back and forth like a pendulum between the depot and the main camp.”

Dietrik shook his head.  “Actually, that’s not
entirely correct.  I understand the reasons.  We don’t want to leave any
stretch of ground unprotected for long.”

“What did you mean then?”

“All this ‘yes sir’ and ‘stand up straight boy’ and
‘polish that bit of mud off your boot before you can eat’.  We are mercs after
all, not bloody soldiers.  Why do we need to act like them whenever the army
officers drop by to make our lives miserable?”

Marik shrugged.  “It’s their way of proving they’re
better than we are, I suppose.  I can see why you left.  I’d have gone crazy
after an eightday as an army regular.”

Smiling, Dietrik added, “Not to mention the food.”

“Luiez spoiled me.  I’m about ready to run across the
kingdom on the edge of a golden coin if I have to look at another lump of
hardtack.”

“I might go barking mad with you as well.”

“Heads up.  The captain just ordered a remount.”

“Then duty calls.”  After he hauled himself onto his
mount, Dietrik added, “Though what I miss most is a bleeding fireplace.”

“Oh?  I think this is nice and refreshing.”

Dietrik gazed at him a moment.  “I think perhaps you
have started to balance that coin on its edge already.”

“Not yet!  I’ll be sure to inform you before I do.”

The company moved out, and the messenger or scout or
whatever he was rode away toward the Green Reaches.

Time passed slowly for the men continuing through the
rain, the escape from the heat soon losing its relief, turning instead to
discontented grumbling.  Thankfully they were not riding with Balfourth.  He’d
elected to remain with the other three men of upper class assigned to this
detachment.  It pleased everyone to let him go wherever he wanted, as long as
he went away from them.

For the moment the Ninth rode among the men Balfourth
brought with him from his father’s barony, as well as four regular squads from
the army.  Together they totaled nearly five-hundred, half the men under the
command of Balfourth and his peers.  Dornory’s son stayed half a day behind,
riding through the field after the Kings and the point group ascertained no
foes endangered his precious skin.

That was how Marik usually thought of it.  He knew
Dietrik had been right and no ground should remain uncovered for long, but
leave it to Balfourth to stay with the group least likely to run into trouble.

It had become the normal routine after days on
patrol.  Their company split into two; the first half leaving before dawn, the
second shortly before noon.  The latter half would not arrive at the next depot
until long after sundown, yet war demanded such trials of stalwart men.  Marik
could imagine how Balfourth would embellish the terrible hardship at court,
making it seem a cruel sufferance he had endured for the good of the kingdom. 
At
least I had enough time in the morning to fluff my lace and crimp my hair!

He snickered to himself, causing Dietrik to look over
at him.  “What’s so jolly?”

“I let my mind wander.  It’s nothing.”

“Tell me anyway. I could use a good laugh.  Look,
there’s another scout reporting to the captain.”

“Good.”  Marik stopped when the captain raised his
hand, the command for a company halt, and slid off his mount as quickly as he
could.  He began stretching when the command came to remount immediately,
eliciting a groan all down the line.  “That was fast.  What’s the rush?”

Dietrik looked as far ahead as he could through the
rain.  “I don’t know, but it looks serious.  He’s ordering fastest speed.”

“Looks like the war finally found us then.”  Marik
climbed back into the saddle.  He took a long pull from his water skin while he
waited for the horses ahead to move.

They remained on their original course, which must
mean the trouble lay ahead.  Best odds, as laid by Kerwin, placed trouble at
the Sixth Supply Depot and they needed reinforcements.  Marik thought as much,
so stayed out of Kerwin’s bet this time.

Riding hard in the rain was a damned unpleasant
experience, Marik quickly learned.  The rain beat hard against his face,
cutting his visibility.  His clothing stuck uncomfortably to his body and he
knew it would rub the skin raw by the time they stopped.  Also, horses were far
from the most intelligent creatures around.  They tended to plow straight into
mud holes unless directed around them, and puddles seemed to be the favorite
pastime of his own mount.  He thought the blasted creature should have learned
by now that puddles could be a lot deeper than they looked.  Either his horse
was slow to catch on or used to letting its rider do all the thinking.

They refrained from an all-out gallop which would have
exhausted the horses quickly.  Instead they alternated between an easy canter
and a fast trot.  Every so often they slowed to their normal walking speed to
allow the horses a breather.

After two candlemarks, they reached the Sixth Depot. 
Marik first thought he should have taken Kerwin up on that bet after all.  As
far as he could tell, the base remained normal.  He assumed the captain would
order them onward, to continue past the depot to trouble further north, but
Peet signaled to the watch, who extended the ramp out to them.

Inside, they were told to stable the horses and report
to their immediate commanding officer.  This being a supply base rather than a
full camp, the horses were gathered in a clear area inside the trench and
earthworks.  Marik heard from the master handler what had happened.

“A scouting group came in,” the old man said through a
mouth missing half its teeth.  His remaining gray strands of hair were
plastered to his taut skull while rain dripped from his bushy eyebrows.  “Said
they saw a horde of enemies cutting through the Reaches up north.  Said they
was turning south to come attack us.”

“When?”

“Don’t know that for sure.  Report come in several
candlemarks ago.  Could be they attack any time.”  The old man swiveled to
repeat his story to the next man who wanted answers, happy to be the center of
attention.

They left their mounts and rejoined Fraser.  “Everyone
here?” he called.  “Good.  Archers, take every arrow you have and get up on top
of those earthworks over there.  Keep your strings dry as possible.  Everyone
else find a foreman and start hauling dirt.  He’ll tell you where it’s most
needed.  Keep alert and be ready to drop your loads and grab your weapons at
the alarm.”

“Do you know how far away they are?”

“No, Marik, I don’t!  Your life could ride on that
dirt over there, and mine too, so quite wasting time and get working!”

Scouts followed the progress of the invading Noliers. 
They came in at irregular intervals to update the depot’s commander.  Marik had
grown used to them storming in, nearly riding him and the others down where
they labored beside the entrance ramp.

Thankfully, the rain had softened the ground.  Digging
through it had become easier, if much messier, than at the main compound.  He
and Sloan used spades to hurl shovels of muck and dirt clods from the trench
floor up the tall earthwork.  Stakes had earlier been set while the soldiers
built the mound.  Crawling up the side to place loads in specific locations
could no longer be done safely, not if they needed speed.  Their immediate
concern lay in making the trench deeper and the slope steeper.

They uncovered yet another son-of-a-whore root, thick
as Marik’s arm.  In unison, as though they had spent a lifetime doing so, they
uncovered it across the trench’s width until it stretched bare along the
bottom.  Sloan grabbed a one-handed mattock with a hatchet head on the back
side and chopped at the root until it severed.  Marik pulled the loose end upward
so Sloan could hack at the other side.  Once it came free he tossed it up the
mound where it landed between two closely set stakes.  With luck, a Nolier
might trip over it and impale himself.

They bent back to their labors.  Sloan worked
tirelessly as a mill’s waterwheel, hurling mud with a steady rhythm Marik was
unable to match for long.  He would swear the silent man enjoyed himself.

Sloan had certainly not enjoyed the digging at the
main compound, but that tightening of his face must be a twisted breed of
smile.  Marik thought, knowing Sloan as he now did, that the prospect of being
attacked and fighting for his life at any moment lit a spark within him. 
Dietrik had been right; Sloan truly enjoyed battle.

Marik found that vaguely unsettling, realizing such
about a shieldmate.

They had worked for three candlemarks, with two to go
before the light faded altogether, when the alarm bell clanged.  Everyone in
the depot pivoted toward the three-story lookout tower that had been the first
structure built on the depot’s low hill.  The crisscrossing log structure
supported a platform large enough for four men.  A brass bell hung in the
center, only a foot tall yet with a voice to be heard miles away.

One lookout yanked the clapper rope back and forth,
shouting words nobody could hear over the vibrant ringing.  He pointed with his
left hand an instant before the other lookouts.

Marik saw movement near the tree line a mile to the
north.  The rain forced him to strain in order to see clearly.  At first they
seemed to be a cluster of the many scouts who had ridden back and forth, except
figures kept pouring from under the trees.  Far too many for scouts.

Everyone reacted.  The workers grabbed their tools and
raced into the depot or clambered up the side of the earthworks.  Those on top
reached down to help those slipping in the mud, in danger of losing their lives
to their own defenses if they tumbled.

After running across the ramp, Marik and Sloan tossed
their tools into the nearest supply wagon without bothering to clean them off. 
They raced north to join the Kings atop the earthworks.  Marik retrieved his
sword and a bow he’d requisitioned while he took his assigned place between
Hayden and Edwin, the latter having been waiting at the depot with Landon when
the patrol arrived earlier in the day.  Among the first scouts to report the
penetration, they had been kept by the depot’s major for their archery skills.

“Nice to be at the fore where we’ll be the first to
catch it in the teeth, eh?”

“Someone has to be here, Hayden.”

“And always us expendable mercs.”

“Think of it as an honor, being given the most
important position all the time.”

Hayden glanced behind them at the camp’s latrine
trenches.  “Some honor.  At least it’s not hot anymore.  I think I’d faint dead
if the rain wasn’t pounding the smell into the ground.”

“Just don’t bring a torch over here,” Edwin said. 
“We’d cook in our own pyre.”

“Then you’d better hope this fight ends before
nightfall.”

Edwin asked, “You think if I stood up and explained to
the Noliers, they’d extend me the courtesy?”

“Better not count on it.”

“Nock up!” shouted Earnell from elsewhere, the rain
concealing his whereabouts.  “Release on my command, then keep loosing until
you can’t!”

The Nolier riders stopped beyond bow range.  Unmounted
fighters running behind them also paused to regroup.  They wore the dark blue
of Nolier’s banner, making them easy to distinguish from Galemar’s green and
brown.  Once the Nolier foot soldiers reformed, they stormed forward while the
horses stayed behind.

Of the thirteen-hundred men defending the depot, only
half wielded bows. 
It’s too bad there aren’t more,
Marik thought. 
If
we could all let off, this might be over before any reach the trench!

Earnell and the sergeants shouted to shoot.  The
archers launched their first volley.  Thrumming bowstrings echoed in Marik’s
ears over the rainfall.  Piercing whistles shrieked for brief instances as the
shafts split apart the air.  Arrows struck the fore ranks of the approaching
enemy.  A hundred tumbled beneath the feet of their fellow soldiers.  Marik
snatched up a second arrow.  He still fumbled to fit it to his bow string when
Hayden and Edwin released their next flight.  Despite the culling, Noliers
reached the trench and jumped in.

At nearly seven feet deep and several feet across, all
the excavated earth had been used to form the mound.  The Noliers faced a climb
of nearly fifteen feet up slippery mud dotted with sharpened stakes.  Marik
targeted one man reaching for a secure hold on the mound. His arrow took the
enemy in the shoulder, making him fall, dead or not Marik didn’t know.  If the
man survived, he would soon be crushed under the other Nolier soldiers leaping
into the trench.

“Damn it all!” he heard Kenley swear from Hayden’s
other side.  “They’re going around the stakes!”

“They’re supposed to, boy,” Hayden growled while he
released his next shot.  “The stakes are only there to slow them down enough to
pick off!”

Marik shook his head.  If the younger man survived, it
would be a miracle.

The arrow whistles became a staccato riff weaving
around the raindrops as the skills of each archer altered their nocking speed. 
Marik heard a single whistling buzz followed by four atop each other.  Under
the arrow song and the rain and the shouting on both sides, the howling cries
from the wounded played as a disturbing accompaniment.  Men clutching shattered
wooden shafts in their flesh wailed while bright life’s blood gushed through
their fingers into the mud.  Already the water accumulating in the trench had
turned murky red.

Marik ignored the ululating sobs of the dying,
focusing instead on a climbing Nolier when a blur streaked past his cheek.  Its
passing breath sighed against his skin.  He yanked his head down and around
instinctively.  Beyond the latrine trenches he spotted it protruding from a
supply warehouse’s wall.

Cries of sudden agony and pain erupted along the
Galemaran line as he shouted, “Crossbows!  Crossbows!”

“There!” Edwin yelled, though Marik had no idea where
Edwin meant.  The bowman pulled back his string and loosed a shaft while
bellowing, “Horse archers!”

The frontline’s rush had driven the horses from
Marik’s mind.  They had spread out to ride behind their foot troops.  One
finished reloading his artillery, aimed and fired without stopping.  His horse
must be trained to respond to either verbal commands or knee cues when rider
squeezed the mount’s sides.

“Do they have the range on us?”  Marik shouted over
the battle’s roar to Hayden.  Edwin answered in his stead.

“Don’t think so.  We’re elevated above them, so that
extends our range.  ‘Course in this rain with wet bowstrings, it might take
that extra right back!”

Edwin attempted to shake his plastered hair from his
eyes while he targeted again.  Marik reached over to scrape his hand across his
shieldmate’s forehead, flopping the hair back over Edwin’s head in an arcing
spray of water.  The archer grunted thanks without averting his gaze from his
mark.

Nolier foot soldiers advanced while the mounted
crossbows occupied the archers.  Water dripped into Marik’s eyes.  He missed
his intended target but struck the following Nolier, who tumbled backward,
upsetting those below.

Men surged upward.  The mass of bodies seemed to
expand like yeast-thickened bread dough.  Many attained the earthwork’s
heights.  They were met by Galemarans bearing swords.  Metal on metal joined
the cacophony reverberating in Marik’s ears.  The slippery ground made for bad
footing, hindering both Nolier and Galemaran swordsmen as they engaged their
enemies.  Slain Noliers were hurled down on those still struggling to advance,
dislodging climbers or becoming an obstacle to be overcome by the living.

One rider drifted closer than he must have realized
during his ride back and forth along his line.  Marik shot, wanting to take him
despite being no hunter.  His arrow fell far short due to rain weighting down
the shaft.  The same held true for the other men who sent their arrows at the
rider.

Edwin was a hunter, though.  As Landon also missed,
Edwin drew a lead on the target, accounting for the horse’s speed as well as
the rain with its accompanying wind.  He let fly, missing the rider, instead
taking the horse in the flank.  It stumbled to a sudden halt.  The horse ended
its life and its master’s when several archers fired on the stationary target,
turning them into a macabre parody of a porcupine.

The Nolier officers decided they were losing too many
men.  They pulled their forces back while they reconsidered their strategy.  It
startled Marik to see it had grown no darker than when the assault had begun. 
He would have sworn that whole marks must have passed.

Archers held their bows at the ready while they
watched the massed enemy in the field beyond, wondering what the next move
would be.  Boys acting as squires or pages used the lull to run along the
earthwork top, distributing arrow bundles and helping wounded men to the
warehouse the chirurgeons were using.  Most of the dead and injured resulted
from the crossbow fire they had taken.

While the boys helped the wounded, men dealt with the
Nolier bodies.  Close by Marik lay a blue uniformed figure.  Still alive, his
hands groped feebly at his torso.  A sword slash had eviscerated his stomach,
allowing his orange-pink entrails to bubble out into a grotesque pile beside
him.  Two Galemaran fighters roughly snatched him from the muck.  They ignored
his sobbing howls and tossed him down slope.  He rolled to a rest against a
protruding stake where he twitched weakly, his guts extending in a twisted line
back up through the slimy mud.

This was a raw, primal type of warfare very unlike
Dornory’s battle to destroy the dam.  Though he had killed men there and fought
to conquer the enemy, that campaign could hold no candle to the excoriated
carnage of a war between kingdoms.  Marik pondered why that should be.  What
hatred so turned average men to the brutal butchery of living souls, hacking
until their opponent resembled meat scraps fit only for village canines?  But
perhaps there was no difference between the two battles.  Perhaps only the
pouring rain made this one seem so savage

Marik took the water skin he’d had the foresight to
tie to his belt, drinking deeply until his insides were as wet as his out. 
There was no telling how much longer the unfortunate Nolier would live.  He
decided not to think on that, blotting the man’s tortured wails from his ears
as well.  All part of the job he had chosen.

The Noliers decided to forgo further attack for the
moment.  They pulled away from the depot and made camp in the field.

*        *        *        *        *

“Listen,” Fraser told Marik.  The gloom of a day ended
surrounded the two.  “Expect them to come in the dark.  They know there’s no
way they can starve out a supply depot in a siege and they know damned well
that if they spend too much time here, reinforcements will show up to chew them
apart.”

“What about Balfourth?”

“His group isn’t due in for three candlemarks.  Scouts
went out to find him, same as us, but even if his group hustled, it’d be
another two.  So get up there and use those night eyes of yours.  I asked
Tollaf what I could expect from you and he told me you can see better in the
dark than us normal types.”

Marik grimaced.  “Only in a sense.”

Fraser poked him in the chest with one hard finger. 
“Then you’d better use that sense.  If you do see them, don’t ring that damned
bell!  Send word down the tower directly to the major.  And to me, of course.” 
Fraser cocked a half-grin as he said that last.

“How?”

“There’s a messenger boy assigned to the lookouts. 
He’s probably already up there.  Get going.”

Marik walked to the lookout tower.  A square,
spiraling staircase with a short railing wound between the crisscrossed logs
and beams that supported the platform.  When he reached the top, he found two
other men already in position.  They spared only a moment to glance at him
before resuming their study of the darkened lands.  In the platform’s center
sat a boy no older than eleven by Marik’s reckoning.