Dragons of War (34 page)

"We are going downriver to try and get to the High Pass," said Relkin. "Captain Eads thinks we'll be needed there."

Ton Akalon shook his head. "Can't be done, my friends.

The enemy is way ahead of you. They burnt the settlements at Bur Lake two days ago. If you look downriver now, you will see the refugees struggling toward us. The enemy is close behind, nipping at their heels, trying to capture women."

Relkin stared at him. "That close?"

"There has been a terrible disaster in the valley of the Lis. Fort Redor fell, did you know that?"

"We heard a rumor. I did not credit it possible."

"The enemy has many new and terrible weapons. Apparently Redor was too undermanned to withstand them. Following that disaster, the enemy began to catch up on the rear ranks of the refugees from the Teot and Don lands. Butchery most terrible took place. Imps broiled many prisoners alive and fed them to the trolls. The river ran red with blood, it is said."

Relkin was staggered.

"Enemy cavalry seized the mouth of the Bur several days ago. They had ridden nonstop from the sack of Redor. There was a panic up the river and most of the population left their homes at once. This saved a lot of lives, for the next day it rained and the river became impassable. The enemy cavalry almost caught up while the refugees were trapped by the floodwaters. I was in the settlements at Bur Lake. We were working on soil profiles of the basin around the lake. It will be good land." He paused and sucked in a breath. "If we can ever win it back."

"We will, we have to," said Relkin determinedly.

There was a shout from Swane, who had been sitting up in a tree. Chektor stood up in the shallows and craned his head.

"Someone comes. Many boats."

Within five minutes, an armada of small boats was in view, dozens of them, of all types, from canoes to a large river yacht.

Voices began bellowing orders.

The refugees streamed past for an hour in hundreds of canoes, scows, even fragile-looking lake punts. Among the people huddled aboard, Relkin saw many women. The sight chilled him. He knew the enemy would make a great effort to capture fertile women. The folk of Bur Lake had been lulled into complacency by their location in the backwoods. Now their women folk were in terrible danger, for in the hands of the enemy they would be marched westward to serve as breeding slaves in the dungeons of Axoxo.

According to Ton Akalon, there were upwards of five thousand imps, a hundred trolls, and perhaps five hundred cavalry coming up the valley in pursuit.

The leaders of the Bur Lake folk came ashore to meet Captain Eads and discuss strategies. Later they were joined by a Captain Whiteart of the Kohon Yeomanry and by Bowchief Starter from the Bur Lake bowmen. Their forces, about 350 strong, were providing a buffer of sorts between the refugees and the pursuit. At the most they could slow the enemy with occasional ambushes and sniping.

Soon word was passed down through Sergeant Quertin. A party of perhaps five hundred Baguti cavalry was approaching on a forest track that ran parallel to the river. It would run down to the river about two miles farther northeast at Gemma's ford. They would have to march on narrow hunting trails through rough country to reach it.

Eads had decided to march inland at once and set an ambush. If he could catch them on a track through dense forest, then he could do serious damage while they were bunched up and unable to maneuver.

The main enemy force of imps and trolls was much farther back, and Bowchief Starter was confident that they would not come close for hours.

In the coming campaign, Eads knew that he had to reduce the enemy's cavalry advantage. He had a century of Talionese Light Horse, superb cavalry of course, but the Baguti tribesmen of the steppes were virtually born in the saddle, and there were five times as many of them. Still, Bowchief Starter had given Eads great news. There was a perfect ambush point at the ford.

Orders went out, and the men fell in. The 109th Dragons formed up for the march and took their place in the line. Eads sent them forward, with guides from the local bowmen, on a narrow country path through the woods. He himself rode ahead with a party of scouts to investigate the ambush site personally.

The way was cut up by gulleys and short rushing streams, well fed by recent rain and quite arduous to cross, especially if one was carrying equipment. The dragons enjoyed the streams, but everyone else simply got soaked and miserable. Nor was there time for any break in the pace. On better ground they virtually ran. Time was vital.

Along the way, detachments of the Kohon Yeomanry began to join them out of the woods. The yeomen were mostly retired legionaries, and they came well armed, with swords, shields, and spears. Most wore their old legion helmets, and many had breastplate and greaves.

The 109th Dragons kept up the pace, although the Purple Green complained mightily about having to march so quickly. At one stream, where the water was jetting down-slope between the boulders, Relkin lost his footing and almost fell into the raging torrent. Manuel, fortunately, was right beside him on the rock. He got hold of Relkin's sleeve and hauled him upright once more.

The broketail dragon ran well. He was fit and hale, and ready for battle. He did not concern himself with odds. He felt Captain Eads was trustworthy and competent. Like most dragons, he didn't dwell too much on the ominous future, as long as the red star did not ride above the moon.

They covered the two miles in less than half an hour and arrived to find a handful of armed farmers, under the command of farmer Besson, holding the ford.

Captain Eads and his party had crossed and were up on the other side.

The ford was situated at a point where the river had cut down through some gravel-packed hills. The stream was deep but narrow, except at this ford where it broadened out across a shallow bar. On the far side loomed bluffs, set back a hundred yards from the river. A dense thicket of oak, hornbeam, and hemlock covered the ground. The trail ran on into this forest and vanished. However, Relkin could see a rider at the top of the bluffs, signaling to Captain Senshon of the 3rd Century, Second Regiment, Second Legion, the 322s, who was in command.

The armed farmers gave them a cheer as they lumbered across the ford and plunged into the gloom beneath the thicket. The path turned sharply leftward and went along upstream for perhaps a hundred paces before it curved right-ward and climbed steeply up the side of the bluffs, where they were angled away from the stream for a space. As they climbed they had a steep, barren slope above on their left and an equally abrupt drop on their right, down into the thicket on the stream plain.

At the top they were met by Captain Eads, who directed them to their places for the coming ambush. Eads planned to take advantage of the Baguti's confidence that they had gone around the flank of the retreating force of Kenor bowmen, which had caused many casualties farther downstream. They were riding hard, trying to get ahead of the fleeing fleet of boats. They had a short, simple screen of scouts out in front. They weren't expecting any trouble. They were eager to seize women for which their masters would pay a heavy bounty.

The site was bisected by a wide gulley, bubbling with a dirty brown stream. The gulley split the bluff and ran down into the thicket, choked with debris, branches, driftwood, even tree trunks. Dragon Leader Turrent ordered the 109th to get down into the gulley and conceal themselves.

Dragonboys accompanied their charges. The dragons quite happily splashed in the foaming tide of rainwater.

Relkin urged Bazil to hunker down between two rounded boulders. The water ran by on either side. Relkin dug in the bank of the gulley with his dirk and his hands, and threw the soil over the dragon and rubbed it in.

Swane had completely hidden Vlok under a downed pine tree. The same tree concealed Alsebra and Byron. The Purple Green was concealed in a wallow under a hanging rock. In fact, the dragons seemed to have disappeared into the ground, so well were they concealed.

All around them now, Eads was placing his force. Kenor bowmen were hidden on the slope above the path, ready to pour down fire on the enemy once they were packed on the climbing pathway. These were men who knew how to fade into the landscape. They lived by hunting in the wild woods. Now they vanished into cover.

The 66th Dragons had been sent upstream to hide themselves in a dense patch of hemlocks by the riverside. The river there was passable for dragons. Their mission was to cross unseen and to come down and close off the ford behind the enemy cavalry, bottling them up in the ambush.

The Talion Light Horse had been sent a mile or more down the road, hidden in a grove of birch trees. They were to provide the "clapper" on the bottle.

The two hundred legionaries, along with eighty Kohon Yeomen, were set back in the dense thickets on either side of the path, ready to join the Light Horse in the assault on the head of the enemy column.

The 109th were to wait for the signal and then to advance down the gulley, through the thicket and to throw themselves on the horsemen who would be bunched up on the path along the riverside.

Eads himself had found a vantage point up in a massive beech tree that grew on a prominence set back one hundred yards from the position of the 66th by the bank of the river. From his perch he could see the ford and the point where the path gained the top of the bluffs. Everything depended on timing and near-perfect execution of movements. Tension began to build.

Suddenly there were movements on the far side of the river. Several small, dusky men riding swift, well-fed horses, came cantering down to the stream. For a moment they paused and scanned the scene. There were signs on the ground that a considerable party had recently crossed the river. The scouts turned back and called out in triumph. Refugees were close, there would be women. Soon they would be rich!

The scouts plunged over the ford and rode on through the dense thicket. They climbed the steep path to the summit and paused there to make a cursory inspection of the surroundings. They did not take the trouble to ride off on either side very far into the thickets, just to be safe. They were too concerned with being among the first to catch up to the fleeing women.

One of them was told to ride down and report. He complained loudly, but went. The others turned and spurred their horses up the road. They saw nothing of the bowmen, nor of the soldiers hidden back in the thicket. They never even considered looking in the gulley down below.

Now further halloas went up from the scouts at the ford. Within moments, the van of the Baguti column appeared and then they came, five hundred men with greased black hair coiled in pigtails, greased beards, and mustaches, and big floppy hats of rawhide, the best light cavalry in the world. They trotted across the ford and then went confidently up the sloping path to the top of the bluff.

Eads had already sent his first messenger, riding just ahead of the enemy's scouts, up the road to the waiting Talion Light Horse. Now another messenger was dispatched to set the 66th Dragons in motion.

The first contact would come between the enemy scouts, now rushing heedlessly ahead up the road, and the charging Talionese.

When he heard the first sound of alarm from up the path, shrill screams and then a piercing alarm whistle from the Baguti, Eads gave the order for the attack.

Shrill blasts of the legion cornets suddenly resounded through the woods. The Kenor bowmen rose and opened fire on the Baguti right beneath their feet. The Bagutis reacted with rage and momentary confusion. Some pulled out their own horn bows and began to reply, others tried to press on to reach the top and get out of the confinement of the narrow path suspended over the thickets below.

And in the thickets the 109th Dragons were on the move, scrambling down the gulley and then forcing their way through the dwarf trees with their huge swords at the ready. Dragonboys danced along behind them, doing their best to keep up and not get crushed in the charge.

Now a couple of the Baguti scouts came flying down the road, whistling in alarm.

At the top of the path up the bluff the Baguti horsemen were just starting to open out their position but they never completed the maneuver, for in the next moment the Talion Light Horse came thundering down the path and pitched straight into them with sabers aloft. The impetus of their charge carried them and the van of the Baguti column back down the steeply inclined path, and bottled the enemy up there in a knot of confusion while sabers and scimitars rang off each other and men tumbled from their saddles with black fletched Kenor arrows sticking up from their bodies.

At this point, the 109th Dragons broke through the thickets on the flat and fell on the horsemen who were bunched up on the path by the riverside. Dragonswords sang and wove a tracery of death in this fight in which all the advantages seemed to accrue to the dragons and dragonboys.

More cornets had started blowing and now the legionaries and yeomen came over the crest and joined the fray on the narrow path, pulling Baguti from their saddles and killing them on the ground.

The final stroke came with the sudden appearance of the 66th Dragons, who burst out of the woods on the far side of the stream, splashed across, and fell on the rear of the Baguti, near the ford.

It had all happened in the space of a minute with near-perfect execution of the plan. In his perch in the tree, Captain Rorker Eads let out a wild whoop, climbed down, and leapt into the saddle. He hadn't dreamed the whole complex plan could work so well. But by the time he reached the scene, the fight was over. The Baguti were fierce but not foolish. After the initial clash they flowed back downhill, and finding dragons holding the ford amid the bodies of men and horses, went straight into the river and swam their horses across below the ford.

Still, they'd taken dreadful punishment. Nearly a hundred Baguti corpses were pulled out and piled up by the ford. Eads could be certain that at least as many had taken wounds and sprains. The enemy's cavalry advantage still existed, but it had been reduced. Furthermore, Eads was sure the Baguti would be far more cautious in the future. That would slow their pursuit of the settlers from Bur Lake.