Dragon Ultimate (33 page)

By nightfall the catapults on both sides had virtually ceased firing. Dusk settled over a quiescent battlefield. Cookfires blazed up and men and dragons got down to their evening meal. Despite the adversity, the arrival of a hot meal produced a degree of good cheer among the men.

General Urmin made a hurried inspection of the lines. Much of the damage caused the previous day had been repaired, at least partly. New defensive works had been thrown up at Mud Pond, south of Brownwater Lagoon, where extensive quicksands constricted the approach to a strip of sand barely a hundred yards wide. Dragons and men had labored through the afternoon to dig a ditch and throw up a rampart.

Urmin had increased the strength of the flank force. A full regiment, the Marneri Fourth, First Legion, under Lenshwingel, now held the place, along with two squadrons of dragons. This had reduced the dragons on the main line to the barest minimum, but Urmin knew that almost anything could happen on the swamp flank, and he had to lay in significant force to deal with it. The 109th and 145th together had brought down the monstrous beast that attacked the Angle. Two full squadrons of dragons seemed the minimum required to deal with such a large and difficult opponent.

Commander Lenshwingel was bubbling with excitement and adrenaline in equal measure. His first taste of combat had left him in a strange state of exaltation. The fighting had been hard, furious for much of the time, but their lines had held, and they had piled up the enemy in drifts. Now Lenshwingel's responsibility had risen to command here at this vital point. He was virtually babbling about ditches and parapets. Urmin thought the commander needed a good night's sleep.

And all the time, hovering in the air was the thought of sorcery. Every man in the army now knew they were facing more than just the Padmasan horde. The previous night's fighting had been the work of land squids or some such madness. It sounded laughable, except that men had died under the assault, and the position at Brownwater was broken open. Prayers were said every hour, and many more men than usual joined the prayer groups.

Urmin wished he could take the time for prayers himself. Instead he rode back to his command post and found General Hollein Kesepton waiting to report that all was quiet on Argonath Legion's front. The river mists were thickening, but no enemy lights had been reported beyond the distant shore, where a city seemed to glow as the enemy sat by its campfires.

The first change in the situation came on the southern flank. An hour after the fall of night, suicide squads of Baguti came out of the swamp and up against the flank line. Here and there they broke into the lines. Fierce fighting was eventually required to kill them or throw them out again.

Urmin read the reports as they came in very carefully. No hint of sorcery about it. The attack had been made by roughly two thousand Baguti, who had crept through the swamp and swum the lagoons. There had been no backup assault by the main mass of the Baguti. It looked like a feint, except that the Baguti had paid with hundreds of lives. This was unusual behavior for the nomads, who were hardly ever as suicidal as imps.

Uneasy, Urmin decided to hurry down there and take a look at the position himself. This took ten minutes or so, working down the narrow track that lay behind the main line camp, two miles altogether. He met with Commander Fina and then with General Va'Gol. All seemed quiet. Parties of men were still adding abatis, working in the swamp by the light of small lanterns.

"What d'you make of it?" asked Urmin.

"I think it must have been a feint, sir," replied Fina. "There was no support."

"These Baguti are acting strangely."

"We are fighting a sorcerer of immense power," murmured Va'Gol. "Perhaps that is the source of this unusual energy among the nomads."

Urmin concurred and studied their detailed charts. The flank position had been thickened where possible. It looked as if it should hold.

It was while they spoke beside the brazier outside Va'Gol's tent that they first detected the sound. It was not very loud at first, like the howling of a faraway hound. Slowly though it increased in volume. The main source seemed to be north, a long way off, but now there also seemed to be a source off to the east, behind their lines, somewhere out by the Angle.

"What the hell?"

"Wolves?" said Va'Gol.

"Those're not wolves," said Fina.

"I must return to my command post." Urmin hurried to his horse. "Keep me informed, General," said Urmin as he spurred his mount north.

The howling continued, each time taking half a minute or so to rise very slowly from the lowest to the highest note. If it was a dog, it was a dog the size of a bull.

As he rode Urmin felt a deep sense of dread creeping over his heart.

He hurried his horse northward along the line. His staff followed with heads lowered, as if before a storm. It was hard to talk, hard to concentrate on anything, since the howling never stopped and kept getting louder.

While they were riding up to the command post they observed huge clouds boiling out of the north and blocking out the stars. These clouds moved with an extraordinary rapidity. Lightning flashed and flickered in the north, and soon the thunder was booming over their heads.

Still the howling could be heard throughout, getting louder by degrees. Dragons roared back every so often, and these short, heavy sounds could obliterate the howling for a few moments, but then it recurred.

Everyone on the line was up and awake and looking off to the north, where the storm clouds had piled up in a huge anvil cloud.

Urmin found Kesepton waiting in the command post. The howling continued as before, rising steadily to a pitch that set men's teeth on edge.

"Location?"

"Not sure, yet." Kesepton turned to Hadea, the witch, who was trying to fix the direction from which the sorcerous noise was emanating.

"What is it, sister?"

"A power, sir, a very great power. He is just a few miles away, to the north."

"The howling?"

"It is his work. There is a field, a bed of sorcery, that seems to encompass all the swampland around us. He is the source of it."

Just then there came the lightning blast, a pillar of green fire that shot down from the leading cloud edge into the swamps north of Brownwater. The fire continued to flare, a line of brilliant green stark against the dark night. Thunder cracked and rolled, and the whole sky seemed to quake with the power of it.

After a long half minute the green bolt cut off, leaving them startled and temporarily blinded. The thunder roared over the land for a long time while they swallowed and stared around them blinking. At last it shook itself out.

Silence returned. They blinked and rubbed their eyes.

"Was that what it was like when you saw it, Commander?" said Urmin.

"Much more powerful, sir. When we saw it at Gideon's it didn't last so long, nor was it quite that bright."

"Have you noticed that the clouds have completely disappeared?" said the witch, with no little wonder in her voice.

They looked up and saw the stars visible in the north again, where so recently there had been clouds.

"At least that damned howling is over."

"There's always a silver lining…" Urmin said with a tight smile.

There was not long to wait. A rider came galloping up within the hour. The man was wild-eyed, his uniform in disarray. Urmin's hands shook as he read Lenshwingel's report.

The beast…

A creature of enormous proportions had arisen out of the swamp. It stood on four ten-foot-tall legs that were like pillars beneath a huge blunt body and a massive, spade-shaped head. The brute had tramped up the middle of the sand causeway and smashed into the main works. The palisade had collapsed, the ramparts of sand had given way, and the monster had broken through. Behind it came the Baguti, an army of ten thousand, driven by a fanatic passion that had never been seen in Baguti before.

The dragons attacked the beast, but even dragonsword could scarcely cut deeply enough. Baguti overwhelmed the Legion soldiers, and in the cramped, confused surroundings they managed to get onto the dragons. Two were slain there, cut down by a multitude of men with spears and swords.

Lenshwingel had been forced to pull his survivors back, but they were being pursued hotly by the enemy. The flank position was destroyed. They had killed hundreds of Baguti, but the rest were as crazed as imps with the black drink in their systems. The Marneri Fourth Regiment, First Legion was in flight.

The huge beast had then vanished; some said it had simply sunk back into the swamp and disappeared, others that it had been consumed in green fire. Either way its work was done. The Legion position was unhinged.

Cornets shrieked up and down the line. Men fell in and were dispatched to the northern flank, dragons under way behind them. The Talion cavalry was already at work there, fighting desperately to delay the Baguti. On this occasion, however, the nomads were unstoppable. When the solid ground was blocked, they took to the waters and swam across to infiltrate behind any position. Their archers climbed trees in the darkness and sent their arrows thudding down into men and horses below. Other Baguti archers used fire arrows to spread fear and confusion.

Urmin and his soldiers turned themselves about to face the oncoming Baguti. The dark woods suddenly blazed with the green fire and the Baguti swarmed out from the trees and were on them in the next moment.

The fighting grew up and down a temporary line established at the edge of the woods skirting the military road that led east to the Angle. The Talion cavalry riding that road had orders to keep it open. If they had to retreat, that was the only way out.

The Baguti fought like maniacs. They fought more cleverly than imps ever could, and their use of feints and sudden rushes caught many dragons by surprise.

The casualties were far too high for Urmin to accept, though his lines held firmly. The dragons and men of the Marneri Four Ones under Lenshwingel got word out that they were cut off and surrounded about a mile from the line. A force of volunteers was sent in to break them loose. After some fierce fighting they succeeded, and the Four Ones rejoined the army. They had lost 230 of their number and four dragons. Lenshwingel was ashen-faced, reduced to mumbling. He had personally slain three Baguti, fighting hand-to-hand on several occasions during their flight through the dark swamps and forest.

Appalled, Urmin had orders drawn up for a retreat. The Angle and the forts at the crossings of the three major streams were all stoutly held. A retreat in good order was possible if necessary.

And while this phase of the battle played itself out, and the Baguti attacks faded in intensity, nobody much noticed the subtle thickening of the river mists to the west. Hidden by this dark cloaking cloud of sorcerous origin came Munth's climactic assault, two columns, each ten thousand strong, filled with the black drink and stiffened with trolls, led by teams of the huge ogres.

Now they came tramping out of the darkness and threw themselves against the northern end of the Red Rose Legion line and the southern end of the Argonath Legion line. It was the junction between the two halves of the army, carefully ferreted out by Munth's scouts during the first wave of fighting.

The lines were broken by the ogres swinging their huge hammers. Dragons were reduced in number in the units on either side of the junction, and these squadrons were unable to cope with the packs of trolls that came up against the palisade. Within a few minutes there were breakthroughs, and the junction area itself was lost completely as both Legions contracted toward their own centers, away from the point of attack.

Urmin hurried every available dragon to the breach. The 44th Kadein Dragon Squadron died to the last during this phase of the battle, all gone but for a single dragonboy, named Heraut.

The fighting stabilized, but the Baguti were pressing again on the north flank, and now there was renewed assault on the southern flank.

Urmin's head was swimming as disaster rose up in front of him. He called a conference. Kesepton and Lenshwingel joined Va'Gol and Fina in his tent.

"Either we retreat, or we die here, gentlemen," was Va'Gol's comment. Kesepton agreed and urged an immediate fighting retreat to the Angle.

"The position is untenable. We retreat, at once. Get your men out in an orderly fashion. The Marneri Eighth will cover on the north end, the Kadein Eleventh will cover in the south. Cover will be rotated when possible."

"Wagons?"

"We leave the wagons. We've eaten most of the food. The trolls will stop to eat the oxen; that will take them out of the battle for hours."

"The horses?"

"We take the horses, of course."

"Sound the retreat, gentlemen."