The March North (7 page)

I don’t recommend going hiking with Rust.

Early afternoon we come down a dip-and-turn scree slope into a main valley.

Can’t manage scree when hastening; everything slows right down while the road foundation gets melded into the bedrock, switchback by switchback. Even if this wasn’t the hollow ground of the Northern Hills the road will be gone next spring. Rust might be doing that on purpose,
or might just have trouble remembering that the rest of us have to worry about actual feet in contact with actual ground.

Rust stays on the second-to-last switchback and points, very proper, as I go by behind Two Platoon, but pointing’s hardly needful. Pretty much due north up the valley, maybe three kilometres, there’s a wall, clean across the little valley.

Maybe, just maybe, a wall would be
somebody trying to get away from it all, and picking an area unfriendly to travelers in the hope that would help. A couple thousand guys in the armour of Reems, in four blocks around a fire-priest central standard? The only question is why they’re on this side of the wall.

Words make themselves out of smoke in my mind.
The wall is the front edge of a heavily warded zone.

Zone
? I can see the ward-edge
fine.

Misty bits of map come into the standard, even Rust has trouble drawing with smoke, but lots of volume, probably the whole of the valley above the wall.

The road goes from done to not done about two kilometres in front of the wall. There’s a messy pile of tools and wheelbarrows on the edge of the hard surface, like someone was trying for a barricade before they grew a brain. Below that is
a mess; dirt, gravel, rocks, no obvious pattern or shape. It looks like they’re digging out the roadbed with shovels, which can’t be efficient. Not that fire-priests are good for building. If the big ward isn’t clever enough to let their stuff out, they might be out here because they figure they can take us.

Or Rust; I wouldn’t want to get stuck behind a ward while giving Rust as long as needed
to figure out how to break it.

Being on this side isn’t a hugely better option for them.

The road’s obviously connected to the wards, so we stay off it. Just because it’s not lit up now doesn’t mean they can’t. We do march up until we’re about even with the finished end, staying high on the valley while we do it. Grass, but no trees; this is probably not a very stable slope, and I’m worried about
keeping anchors into our footing the whole way.

Captain, Battery.

Battery, Captain
. Blossom sounds calm in drills. This has a lot of cheerful over the calm.

Set up. Pretend your tubes are five-layer if that works. If it doesn’t work, don’t walk up the stairs, go straight to nine. Targets are the fire-priests. If you get trouble from the wall, switch two tubes to it. Notice before firing.

Agreement
comes back from Blossom and the Master Gunner, bright and solid.

Two, Four

Captain
, twice, and you can tell it’s Radish and Hector. Don’t ask me how, but you can.

Get to
 — that bit, there — 
and do a short wall and a ditch. Careful with digging. Give the artillery as much slope as you can.
Because once anybody’s inside artillery range they’re completely your problem.

The lead platoons just start
moving; there’s a faint thread of acknowledgment but what I really get is flying dirt. I can get Twitch to talk to them about that if any of us live through this.

One
.

Captain
. Toby’s dead level best not to sound worried. Going up against six or seven companies worth of guys is
supposed
to be worrying, even when you’re pretty sure they have no equivalent to the standard. They’ve got
something
. It might just be craziness, but something.

You’re local reserve on Two and Four; you don’t let them get flanked and you don’t let anybody get between the artillery and them. Dig how you like but don’t make it harder to pull back on the tubes for you
or
for Two and Four.

Sir.
Very thoughtful, from Toby. Good. That’s not an easy job.

Sergeant-Major
.

Captain
. Twitch isn’t twitching at all now.

You’re in command of the forward position.
Position
is a little strong, but the language insists you’re doing it right even when you’re trying to bail a swamp with a teaspoon.

Sir
from Twitch, and fainter
sirs
from Hector and Radish and Toby.

Just to Twitch,
Fall back on the artillery as required to avoid being overrun. The longer you can hold out there, the more time the artillery’s got.

Gotcha
. Twitch is positively laconic; there’s a lot of people about to demonstrate murderous intent towards us all. Not quite as calming as going for Twitch specifically, but I suppose Twitch is confident that will happen in time.

Battery, Captain. Battery ready.

Captain, Battery. Range your targets.

SHOOT!
Definitely happy over the calm. Whole battery, not just Blossom.

The first shot is a fling, at
five; as much as a normal artillery tube can do for sustained fire. It makes some pretty lights. Doesn’t look like the fire-priests had to work for it, but they do get the two closest blocks of troops moving at us. Two and Four’s digging goes from brisk to downright hasty.

Under the circumstances, a kilometre just isn’t very far.

Three
.

Captain
. Dove’s calm’s nearly real.

Somewhere back in the
focus is “long white-black-black”, sounding eager.

Cover the artillery and the train. DO NOT assume we can see all of them. There could be another battalion’s worth crawling through that scrub.
Closer to the wall, the ground is better, and if you can’t call it trees it’s at least woody plants.

Sir
.

Which is another reason coming down all that scree wasn’t a bad idea; slower, but it does a lot
for our flanks provided we don’t get the lot of it dumped on us.

Watch the scree, too; someone playing avalanche would be annoying.

Sir
. That one has a snort in it.

Battery, ten shot, ripple rate, SHOOT!
Happy cheerful Part-Captain Blossom, happier than usual.

I hunch: everybody, bronze bulls and Eustace included, hunches. Halt pats Eustace’s reassurance-seeking nose, absently. Still got that
shawl up. I am developing a suspicion that nobody from Reems has noticed Halt, which would be entirely fine if true.

Two-and-a-half tonnes of iron roars overhead in sufficient haste you can feel the air burning away from the tracks of it like sunburn, even if you’ve got the mother-wit to look down and not at the lines of burning iron scored through the sky. Sounds like a landslide. Scree’s still
stable, thankfully. The switchbacks
should
encourage any slumping to happen out to the sides.

Use the focus, don’t shout
. Everyone’s ears are ringing. Shouting starts to feel like panic.

Range extension. Certainly. By all means, let us be better able to fight at safe distances, instead of breathing air that reeks of burning iron.

Half a dozen fire-priests managed to survive. Most of the acolytes
have splashed, not just died, there’s a bunch of holes in the road, and shattered road surface and blazing iron flew backwards and forwards through the blocks of troops. The two forward blocks have wheeled right and are breaking into a run, to get to us before the artillery can get to them.

I think it’s messed with their timing; fire-priests work in groups, and chewing the acolytes off ought to
have slowed them down.

Captain, Battery, switch two tubes to the attacking troops
.

Sir
. Hank; Blossom’s paying attention to effectiveness.

Not quite ripple rate on the priests; fast rate, five shots in a minute. Won’t get through but it will make them think about stopping it, rather than cooking us.

Short black-black-red going out at the charging heavies; not the Iron Guard but the same sort of
heavy partial plate, big shields, and spears. It’s not standard shot; standard red shot explodes, in fire or shards of iron.

This stuff turns into a great flailing transparent mass, and spins. From the look of the results, all of it is sharp. It rips strips four files wide clean through the charging blocks of heavy infantry. Maybe a third of them are going to make into the dead ground, anyway,
but they’re not going to be in good order when they get there.

A big pulse of heat splashes across most of the front of the focus; it’s not well-directed and it’s not all that hot, and I can downshift it to a rumble in some ground none of us are standing on without using more than Three’s push to do it. Two and Four are going to be busy in a moment.

The ground shakes; Blossom put something nasty
in the regular rain of long shot at the fire-priests.
Very
nasty, half the rear block on the enemy left is down from the concussion and there’s a hole in the road you could lose an eight-ox hitch in.

One of the fire-priests is still standing. Looking worse for wear, but standing. A cloud of butterflies with steel wings rise from the armour of the fallen and devour even the screams.

The two rear
blocks of enemy infantry start pulling back toward the wall. The artillery stops firing at the charging infantry; they’re into the dead ground.

Captain, Battery, target the retreating
.

More glass-tentacle short shot goes out, at steady rate from all four tubes. The rear blocks break, and sprint for the wall.

Twitch shouts
Throw!
and sixty of the pointy sticks with surprises arch out. It’s not
a great throw, but half of them hit and nothing in the available magical protections seems to stop them from working. Two more throws thin the charge by a third, and breaks them up even more.

The charging heavies pile into the north corner, half of them into the ditch and half set to go round Two’s flank. Toby piles One Platoon into their flank. The focus isn’t grabbing them at all; plain guys
in armour would just bounce.

Reems troops aren’t used to being smaller than the folks they’re attacking. I’d give odds they thought the warswords were the primary weapon, too, instead of the weights on a chain on a stick. Those were designed to give regular guys a good shot at cracking plate armour; the weight is a disk with the chain through the centre and a rim that’s an edge like an axe all
the way around. Officially, “axe, detached, circular, infantry”; they say “add-see” in the Creeks, where most of the Line says just “ad”. It gets loud, and there are a few crashing noises followed by shouts about how stabbing with the special pointy sticks is a bad plan. Shouts through the focus, they’re getting the idea.

Twitch has things well in hand there; most of Four is contributing by chucking
rocks by files. We’ve lost some down, but not two files out of three platoons, and what’s left of the Reems infantry isn’t going to last another thirty seconds.

They don’t run, and they don’t surrender, and they don’t stop trying, but it’s closer to twenty seconds, all the same. Medics start moving down from the waggons and the injured start getting moved back. Six dead. Two starts to get a bit
growly, and Radish gets a grip on it.

Artillery’s stopped firing. The survivors of the other two blocks of heavies are hugging the wall, and the ward there sticks out far enough they’re covered.

Any active sorcery
?

No
, in the bitter scent of burning herbs;
No
, as a plain word from Blossom.

That was way too easy.

Well done
to Twitch, personally, and then
Well done
to the whole command.

That’s a good start. Hold in place, food’s coming.

You start taking casualties quick when you don’t feed them and keep doing heavy lifting with the focus. Missing lunch for a battle won’t help with that.

Twitch and the Master Gunner sort out where to put latrine trenches, and those get dug. Blossom’s gunners are
sagging; they were throwing hard and fast, mostly above sustainable rate. Never mind having to leap around to put out the grass fires under the muzzles, seldom a relaxing experience.

Blossom starts unlocking things in the battery captain’s waggon, and hands a substantial silver container to the Master Gunner. Blossom’s emphatic, so I get the actual words about “twenty-five scruples in the second
mug of water”.

What is that?

Vigour and cranberries.

Dilution does seem wise.

If you take it straight, it spoils your judgment. The lift feels a lot bigger than it is, it’s just replacement, not enhancement.

I send
Good, carry on
back. Enhancement is something you’re going to pay for later, usually just when your contribution to the focus is important. How Blossom got vitality in a can can wait
for another, less busy, day.

Twitch has a couple guys from Four trotting up the hill to Rust, carrying a collection of amulets over a Reems spear haft. If there’s some big nasty the Reems guys back of that wall have one of, Rust is too far away for it to get Rust and the Line both, so keeping that far apart for now is a good plan. Or they haven’t got it active yet, because it’s more than nasty
enough to devour us all, but I can’t do anything about that.

Focus is up firm, food and water are moving, the sergeants are getting the issue concentrated citrus into the water and into the troops, the gunners are going with the vigour and cranberries instead, and the remarks about the alleged cheese are staying mostly cheerful. Two gets its six bodies washed and wrapped and under the dirt before
eating, as is entirely customary. Individual fused-scree sarcophagi are’t customary, but that’s fine. I want to take them home too, if we can. Two does eat, in large part because Radish is determined about it. Good. Best thing to do is keep moving.

Halt drifts through where the medics have the hurt lying down. Most of them get up. There’s a conversation much calmer on Halt’s side than the medics'.
The three with head injuries go on a waggon; the dozen others still look a little stunned. I toss the image at Twitch, Twitch gets Dove to send a couple file closers from Three forward to get food and fluids into the suddenly-up injured. Then back into armour and into the line, soon as we can. A couple full files from Three show up and start de-renting the armor where the medics had it off the
hurt.

It’s going to smell indescribably bad in an hour; it smells bad now. Four has the Reems infantry that are in any sort of manageable pieces between our front and the road under the turf, but there’s a lot of them on the road in various distributions and a lot of formerly human liquids all over the turf. Hector can’t figure out how to get just that off the grass, and that’s fine, because I
can’t, either. I send
Well done
and
Your turn to eat
and hope playing catch by a river of blood is going to help some with handling the smell.

Blossom’s artillery teams have swapped light caissons back for full ones by the simple expedient of unhitching and re-hitching. The bronze bulls share with their ox progenitors a tendency to get confused if the line of march changes.

Nothing comes out of
the wall, or over the wall. The…call it a short three companies of infantry keep on hugging the wall. There’s for sure a gate there. I don’t see anything coming down on ropes, even. Stupid. Double stupid if they can’t open the gate without dropping the ward.

Amateurs.

It’s not obviously a masonry wall; I think it’s stucco over timber, which is a strange thing to do unless you’re trying to keep
the enemy guessing about just what is under there, materials and runes of power both. They might be moving a wall up to the point of completion, sticking the road out some new distance, and then moving the wall up to the new end of the road. Slow, but careful. Which only makes sense; we’re intact because we’re compact and moved fast, and also because Rust recognises most dangers and most dangers
recognise Rust. I really don’t want to stay in the Northern Hills any length of time, all the same.

Especially not with all these guys from Reems, even if contemplating their presence is a real help with chewing the hardtack.

Steel-winged butterflies come and land around me, wings all the subtle blue and purples of sword-steel quenched in oil bordered in bright steel. The wings quiver and words
that smell of oil smoke and scorched leather form in my mind.

The amulets are a simple avoidance of the Power; use of the focus slides off the wearer.

Spiders dance, but not into words. Halt could say things about that, but is staying hidden, I take that to be. If anybody from Reems can reach through the focus and pull threads of thought out, we’re doomed anyway.

I get diagrams in front of my
eyes, a hemisphere fifty metres across forming over a spectral Reems infanteer and crushing inward, complete with indications of where you need to reinforce the focus to keep the air from igniting an escape path through soil or rock and the math for the change in air pressure and the implausible temperature achieved; the Reems infanteer isn’t survived by so much as sandal nails. There’s even a little
note that says it’s more efficient though more difficult to use just the oxygen, not all the air.

Blossom’s hair has a handful of shining steel butterflies scattered across it, but the words come through the standard.
That’s the dumb avoidance
.

How many known shields against the Power are there?

Five
, say the spiders.

That we know about
, says Blossom.
They might have a new one.

So very dubious,
the spiders.

The sensation of quenched esoterica is better than the actual argument, I’ll say that much for it.

Old dust, burned up in candle flames.
The wall is one anchor point for the road ward.
A high, high view shows a road behind the wall, and the shimmer of the warding, substantially wider than the road itself, snaking back up the valley.
There are others, stronger, further up the valley
.

It’s not like they don’t know we’re here
. Spider-chuckles, one of Blossom’s smiles, the smell of pine needles tossed on fire someplace where the air is cool and pure and clean. One grim vision of fire from the Master Gunner. Blossom wasn’t the only one who’d wanted to try that fast ripple for awhile.

Attention to orders
. A ripple of more active listening comes back through the standard.

Two and
Four keep the front. One back on the left in column; Three back on the right in column. Tuck the artillery up behind the front; supplies behind the artillery
.

Half a question from a dozen places.
Rust hasn’t spotted anybody from Reems except these guys at the wall. One problem at a time.
They settle; Rust has earned some trust. If there’s any substantial Reems force behind us we’re in an entirely
non-viable position, and I suppose it’s good the company is smart enough to know that.

Artillery loads for short-range infantry suppression. Everybody make sure you’re watching the lanes
. “Or you’re going to be part of the suppressed infantry” floats around, in the way of ancient jokes. Pretty even float between the company and the artillery teams.

We’re going to march up toward the west corner
of this wall and see what we can do with ground shock, so we’re not going to dig in.
Collapsing trenches on yourself is embarrassing.

Once we start, that Reems infantry by the wall is going to pile back in. Ready on the pointy sticks, ready on making bad ground
 — there are a truly surprising number of quick ways to make the ground worse to run on or march over — 
and ready on the breath-sucker.
Blossom’s immolating implosion aside, just taking the oxygen in the air away should drop these guys.

It takes maybe five minutes to get it all together; no rushing, good competent speed. Twitch, that thorough soul, grabs Two and Four to roll the latrine trenches back under the substrate, so you couldn’t tell they were there. Nothing quite like heading back this way in a hurry and winding up in
your own trench.

One, tube one, Two, tube two, the colour party with the standard and the Standard-Captain, tube three, Four―can’t have it seem like I just started at one and counted — tube four, and Three. One and Three are refused already, since I can’t see how eight hundred guys aren’t going to try to wrap our front when they come back off the wall. If we’re not careful it might even do them
some good.

Ready
from Twitch, standing by Dove at the front of Three.
Ready
from Blossom, mounted by the caisson with the special cataclysms in it, back of tube two’s regular caissons.

The Line will advance.