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Wedgewood
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The snow was gone, and so too were the late winter pioneer blossoms. Spring flowers were giving ground to fiddle-headed ferns and Ungerngerist pollen drifted down in great clouds to catch in the hungry, open cones.
“Why did Achelous let you join the Wards?” asked Pottern, “I thought you were too busy running trade missions?” Pottern gave Outish a teasing sneer.
“We’ve enough business around Mount Mars to keep me busy,” replied Outish. “I—” Lettern held up her hand, waving them to silence. She was lean and tan, fresh from the Alon’s rescue mission to the east. The gauntlet scars on her cheek, from the fight at Murali’s, were fading from angry purple to blush red. Their witness to that outrage would have been more vivid if not for Mbecca’s healing touch. Lettern seldom spoke of that day in front of Murali’s, but Outish sensed she burned with the shame of it.
In the distance, a dog could be heard baying. “Is it Noodles?”
Pottern listened carefully. Aloft in the forward watch-stand on Ungern Way, the main road into Wedgewood, they had a good view beneath the canopy to the next ridge where the road tipped out of sight descending the mountain. “Sounds like her,” he answered. The baying stopped. Curiosity crossed Pottern’s face. “Maybe I should go see what she’s gotten into.” It was something to do other than being stuck in the watch-stand.
Lettern held out her arm, stopping him. “I never heard a treedog bay like that. I thought you taught her to track troglodytes?”
Pottern nodded, “Yep. She’ll chatter when she’s on the scent.”
Just then, Writing, one of the ward’s two telepaths, came running on the trail from her post at the main watch-stand, nearer to Wedgewood’s Main Gate. Outish dropped the rope ladder, and Writing came scrambling up, on the fly. Rolling through the trap door, she asked breathlessly, “Pottern, where’s your dog?”
“Out there,” he pointed, “she’s been roaming and caught the scent of something.”
“Yes, I know,” said Writing, “she’s onto trogs.”
“What?” exclaimed Outish.
Writing nodded. While human pathics could not communicate with animals, the tight human-canine bond offered a rudimentary form of shared visualizations, and if the dog trained with its handlers, like Noodles did with the ward, then the images could be honed and interpreted almost as good as a proper connection. “She’s onto them. They might try to kill her.”
Suddenly worried, Pottern stammered, “Maybe I should call her back?”
Lettern shook her head. “Not without letting the trogs know we’re here.” She asked Writing, “Did you send a message back to the gate pathic?”
“No. I wanted to make sure first.” Sending a trog alert to the telepath at the Main Gate would stir Wedgwood into a frenzy.
Lettern turned back to the distant baying. A false alarm would not do.
Noodles appeared at the top of the far ridge still barking, her attention riveted on something to the east. “I’m going down,” said Pottern.
“No, you’re not, Pots, you’re staying right here.” Lettern grabbed her bow from the bow rest and in one practiced motion bent and strung the hornbeam bow like it was matchwood. Taking the cue, Outish loaded his handbolt.
“Writing,” Lettern instructed, “go back down and wait. If I signal with two fingers it’s trogs, and you send a message to the gate pathic and get back to Main Stand. One finger means it’s just a badger or wolf or something.”
The pathic climbed down the rope ladder and backed away from the massive tree to get a head start to Wedgewood. Moments ticked by. From the ground, Writing couldn’t see the far ridgeline where the dog barked. The sound stopped. The mental images from the dog were confusing, compounded by the fact they came from the visual perspective of a foot off the ground, ferns and grasses blocked much of the view. The dog didn’t need to see the troglodytes, its sense of smell more than sufficed. Maybe the images of the trogs were from the dog’s memory? A clear vision came to her of the dog with its nose high in the air, nostrils flared as the nose waved back and forth seeking scent. Writing began to relax. She felt her heart beat slower; the dog was probably just agitated over something that might have smelled like a trog and it conjured up the image from memory. Then a motion from the watch stand caught her eye.
Outish frantically waved a hand with two fingers raised.
Writing bolted, calling to the gate pathic as she fled.
“What do we do now?” whispered Pottern. A lone troglodyte stood in the center of the ridge surveying the road, testing the air.
“We blow our horn,” said Outish.
“Not yet,” hissed Lettern, “our camouflage is working. He doesn’t see us. Writing has gotten off her message, and she’ll carry the word to Main Stand. Let’s watch a bit before we spook it.”
Chattering like a squirrel, Noodles scrambled up the tree to the watch stand. Standing on the railing, panting, tail wagging, her tongue lolling out, the dog looked at Pottern for approval. “You did good, good girl,” he whispered, petting her profusely.
Outish tapped him on a shoulder and pointed. Three more trogs stood in the road. Another appeared off to the right in the forest.
“Shiren,” Lettern cursed. “Time to go boys. Where there’s four there’s a whole lot more.”
Pottern and Outish scrambled down the ladder and Noodles followed behind them on her raccoon-like claws. Lettern saw another trog to the right, three more to the left, and the ones on the road began to move forward. “Outish,” she called.
As he looked up, Lettern dropped her bow to him. She straddled the railing and used the rappelling rope to descend in two bounds. Hitting the ground, she commanded, “Go! Run!” She raised the watchhorn to her lips.
Ogden assembled the Second Ward beneath Main Stand. The operations captain was holding off on sounding the general alarm until Ogden confirmed with his own eyes the presence of trogs. The two had argued over the decision, but the ops officer was firm. Ogden had complained, “Ula, what good is it to have lookouts if we didn’t believe them?”
The captain countered that with the town being tense from the last incursion, calling a tree-up for an invasion would spin the citizens into a tizzy, so they would wait to confirm. Sending the whole town to hardpoints and treeforts, shuttering businesses, and escorting children and old folk caused a substantial disruption to the clan. Ogden had left the confrontation in disgust and rode forward with his ward. Over the soft beats of the eenu hooves, three sharp watchhorn notes sounded down the road. Two blasts meant enemy sighted. Three blasts meant enemy sighted, and the watch was falling back.
The trumpeter, in the Main Watch stand above where Ogden dismounted and arrayed his ward across the road, blew one note followed by three more. His was the relay call to Wedgewood a mile away.
As much as Ogden preferred to meet the trogs on eenuback, the forest turf was too spongy and riven with roots to make for anything but treacherous galloping when they left the road. “Two ranks. Ottern, Milarn, Boden, Torden, flankers left and right.” Giving the commands to position his ward across the Way, he could see to where the pine-needle lane ran a twisting course through the forest and around the enormous trees. They’d picked that watch location because the understory was low, so except for the tall, cathedral-like arches of the trees, his view was unrestricted. Three figures emerged on the road at a run. It was his forward watch post.
“Flanking watch posts is vacated,” reported Bagonen, the branch warden.
“Aye,” acknowledged Ogden.
The sound of a galloping eenu came from behind. Ogden turned and saw the Scout’s boss.
“What do you have Ogden? I hear a lot of horns, but don’t see any green scales.”
Ogden turned back and focused on the three approaching runners.
Lettern stopped in front of the ward, all three Timberkeeps were panting heavily, encumbered by their weapons. “Skirmish,” Lettern said, gulping air, “skirmish line,” she pointed back, “they’re coming through the forest.”
“How many?” asked the boss.
At the end of the road, a group of trogs appeared, loping. The force grew and did not hesitate when they saw the line of warriors barring their path. Turning into a mass, it lengthened along the road.
“That answer your question?” asked Ogden.
The Scout’s boss paled when he saw the charging horde. Without a word, he turned towards Wedgewood and whipped his mount to a gallop.
“What now?” asked Bagonen, an edge to his voice.
“Pull Main Stand. Send riders to the outer posts. Tell them to fall back on the town.” Ogden gritted his teeth.
“And us?” asked Bagonen.
“Mount up. We’ll fight at the wall.”
Every bell in Wedgewood rang. The bell in the Mother Dianis vestry rang so hard Sedge thought it would it lose its clapper. “Silence those bleeding bells! I think the town knows we have visitors. All except for Timber Hall. It’s far enough away, it can ring for the outlands.”
From his vantage in Tall Lofty, the gigantic Ungerngerist tree that housed the Command Post, Sedge watched the twelve wards muster. Townsfolk and other non-combatants walked, some ran to their safe houses. Crews of the forty-plus treeforts donned their armor, strung their bows, stacked their arrows and quivers, unlimbered rock boxes, and pulled up their lifts, ladders, and ropes. Some of the largest of the treeforts like Tall Lofty could house forty fighters and others less than five. Many of the wards had dual duty posts: first on the wall and then in a tree fort should the wall fall.
The bells, one by one, stopped ringing, except for Timber Hall, and the welcomed silence was filled with the murmurs of the pedestrians below. Sedge watched in satisfaction as the tree-up drills paid off and Wedgewood became an armed bastion in just minutes.
Off in the east, beyond the Main Gate and somewhere along the Ungern Way, came the clarion note of a brass wardhorn, purposely different in tone from the ox-sticker watch horns. A second note immediately followed the first, and the town held its collective breath, waiting. Then the third note.
What the bells, with all their tolling clangor, failed to accomplish, that one lone, distant trumpet more than made up for. Those who were nonchalantly mustering to their safe houses now broke into a run.
“Ward in retreat commander!”
“I heard it,” answered Sedge. A ward sounding retreat, so close to Wedgewood, was in dire straits. “Who has the watch?” he asked.
“Second Ward, sir.”
Sedge grunted. He visualized the plight of their commander. “Stay wise, Ogden,” he said to himself. “Don’t get your bravos trapped.”
Christina, just returned from the expedition in the east, strode purposefully towards the gate, her Defender shield upon her arm and plain to those all around. She wore her full armor, bastard sword slung over her back, longsword at her hip. At the gate, she met Alex and Feolin. A half-company of Sedge's mercenaries were arrayed in two ranks before the portal, and the wall, such as it was, was fully manned with five wards. The problem was, even in their haste to finish the rampart it encompassed only half of Wedgwood. Where the wall ended, a wooden palisade had been erected. She gazed to where the barricade met stone; at least the trogs couldn't just walk in.
“Open the gate!” called the gate captain.
On the road, eenumen galloped, a full squadron of mounted infantry. While they rode with haste, their form was good and discipline evident in the two columns riding stirrup to stirrup, no gaps. They came through the gate, and their leader swung aside directing the troop to the stables. Christina recognized him under his distinctive horned helmet and brass shield. “You have word, weapons master?”
Ogden looked up to where Christina paraded on the wall-walk. “Oi, they’ve bloody emptied the Great Swamp, so they have. I’ll wager every trog buck between here and the Angraris is slathering on the Ungern. Coming fast they are.”
She turned, peering out beyond the wall, her hand resting on the granite block cut fresh from the mountain. She could hear the troglodytes before she saw them. The thud of their feet pounded into the carpeted road and through the foundations of the wall. The jingle and clash of harness grew, and then the trog host hove into view. Her eyes narrowed. “Mother...” Alex breathed. Christina could feel her heartbeat beneath her breastplate. The sight sent a chill along the wall. “So many,” one archer said. The troglodyte host came at the wall at a dead run, one long, sinuous, reptilian battering ram aimed at the gate over which Christina, Alex, and Feolin stood.
“Captain, you have orders for your archers?” Christina asked, stirring the gate captain from his shock.
He stammered, then called out, his voice carrying, “Archers! Ready!” Bows and crossbows came up.
So rapid was their advance the trogs were already in range. The captain called, “Loose!” Before the first flight thudded home, he called again “Archers!” The first ranks of trogs, tightly packed on the narrow road, fell sprawling in a gnarling, twisting mass of leather jerkins, green scales, and all manner of spiked weapons, tripping and entangling the rearward ranks. But in their reptilian agility, the troglodytes overcame the sudden obstacle leaping their fallen hatchren in great vaulting arcs.
“Loose!”
More attackers fell stumbling and rolling in the pine needles.
“Loose!”
The archers were now firing point-blank down the open mouths of the reptiles as they stacked up at the foot of the wall and began climbing. Christina watched in detached professionalism as a trog reached the first of the sharpened stakes embedded in the wall, pointing downward. The beast grabbed the stake and tried to pull it free. Mounted solidly, the spike resisted, and the animal attempted to maneuver around when a quarrel pinioned its shoulder dropping it into the thrashing mass below. A reptile’s javelin sailed past, and Christina made ready her shield. More javelins came, and she moved along the wall deflecting the projectiles while their targets, the archers, emptied full quivers. An archer gargled behind her, and she turned. A trog, climbing over its hatchren in a writhing reptilian ladder, was through the spikes and ripping out the throat of the warrior. She drew her bastard sword and cleaved the foe’s jaw clean away.
“They’re on the wall, sir!”
“I see them,” said Sedge, watching through his telescope, “Damn that was fast. Sound Tree Mount.”
The Tall Lofty bugle sounded two short blasts followed by two long.
Ogden hustled to his assigned post and called out “Second Ward! Form skirmish line!” To his right, Barrigal was assembling half of his hundred and eighty-man mercenary company, the center of the line, and to the right of them, the Seventh Ward formed the right of the skirmish line. Their task to hold back the assault giving the wall defenders time to quit the ramparts and gain their respective treeforts. They had practiced the tactic but never really expected to do it. Ogden watched as Alex, the Defender, the last on his section of wall, jumped from the wall-walk and landed in a hay wagon. Alex rolled out of the hay and jogged to the waiting skirmish line. Alex, not particular as to where he fought, nodded to Ogden, and squeezed in beside him. “Mind if I join you, weapons master?”
“Oi, happy to have your sword any day, Defender. We’ll be falling back to the Perrty and Coarky Forts as soon as the wall is cleared.”
“Then we’ll be parting company along the way. Defenders are assigned to the Hall.”
Christina and Feolin had the use of parapet steps to descend the wall and fought a delaying action against trogs pushing down from above. The pair used the cover of an arrow barrage from the three supporting treeforts to break contact and ran to the Barrigal’s waiting line of mercenaries. The Defenders, their shields freshly painted courtesy of the artist’s guild, heartened the skirmish line and a cheer went up.
Troglodytes streamed down the wall steps taking five or six at a bound. Their hoarse, guttural croaks and squawks added a strange, alien sound to the ordinarily peaceful woodland town. They waved spiked clubs, hammers, and flails; the myriad of weapons was confounding. One trog wielded a pitchfork purloined from a Timber farm, and another hefted a useless plow blade.
“Sheild wall! Shields up! Lock shields,” called Barrigal in command of the entire line. They need not hold long, but they were only one rank deep.
“Blast these shield walls,” Feolin whispered to Christina, and she replied, “We’re among good company.” She sheathed her bastard sword and drew the shorter long sword. “Will be close work,” she said.
Feolin groused, “Never was one for the oyster line. No room to swing and you have to stand like fence post.”
The trogs came at them in scattered groups unprepared as to what to do once they were over the wall. As one, the warriors in the shield wall readied for Barrigal’s next command. “Three steps forward. Ready... Now!” Together the line surged forward and smashed their shields into the leading reptiles. The tactic was meant to stall the initial surge, cause it to jam up, and then confuse the mass of warriors coming from behind in a flood. They need not hold them long but stop them once they had to do. Christina planted the boss of her shield square in the open maw of a fiend and felt the crunch of teeth while simultaneously stabbing with her sword from below. She twisted her sword free of the sucking flesh and jabbed at the face of a reptile attacking the Timberkeep warder beside her.
A rain of arrows slanted down from the surrounding treeforts growing into a hailstorm as more defenders made it into the tops. Dead and wounded Troglodytes began blocking the way of the others behind, but still, the shield wall was only one rank deep.
The attackers at first attempted to bull their way through by sheer mass, but the defender’s shields were locked shoulder to shoulder, and the trogs succumbed to right-handed sword cuts from below the shields. The wilier reptiles tried to grapple with the shields and pull them down, blocking the sword thrusts while snapping at the warriors with their jaws.
“Back three!” Barrigal called, and the merc bugler sounded the call.
“Back three!”
Retreating steadily down the street, Ogden saw they were between Murali’s on the left and the stables on the right. The farther into town they withdrew, the more treeforts came into bow range of the shield wall. Some troglodytes, distracted by the new surroundings, split off from the nasty fight at the shield wall to ransacking buildings, assault treeforts, or just commit mayhem. While the trog host was numerous, their discipline within the town was nonexistent. It was almost as if they assumed the capture of the wall and intrusion into the town would end the matter, but it was in the streets where Sedge intended to fight the real battle. Having listened to the accounts of Whispering Bough, he doubted any wall could withstand a determined trog rush unless it was triple the height of Wedgewood’s.
Baryy cranked back the cocking lever of his handbolt and fired at a troglodyte climbing the trunk of the Perrty tree fort. “Did you get the message off?” he asked Trishna. She pulled her bowstring, sighted at the distant shield wall as it bent backward from Murali’s. Her arrow struck in the thinning mass of troglodytes. “Yes, Marisa is with Achelous. They know.”
Baryy watched the line of Timberkeeps, depleted by ones and twos, continue to backpedal. Stretching from the gate were the bodies of the shield warriors, fallen wherever Barrigal had ordered a stand. Baryy sought out Outish but couldn’t tell his armor from the others. Today there would be no Ready Reaction to the rescue. As far as the IDB knew, Outish had gone home to Halor and Baryy and Achelous were on Remus IV. His message to Achelous in Tivor warned of the attack and alerted him against traveling to Wedgewood until, until... he dispelled the dark thought and loaded another bolt. So far, no trogs had directly attacked their fort, but there were enough of the green bastards running around below to make everyone nervous. Per the fort defense doctrine of overlapping and layered fields of fire the redoubts farthest from the fighting directed their bows at forts closer to the main enemy body so those bastions could, in turn, could direct their fire further in. And so it went, with the epicenter of the battle being the Main Gate and spreading ever westward as the trogs fanned out.
“Buckthorn has fallen, sir.”
Sedge took the news with a clenched jaw. “Did they make it off?” he asked twisting his head at the messenger.
“No reports yet, sir, but twelve made it off of Hollowmeade.” All treeforts were connected to at least one other fort, if not two, by rope bridges. The fort defenders drilled on how and when to surrender a fort, retreating across a bridge, and then pulling the support pins as the enemy followed them across. As long as the center forts held, the outer bastions would have positions to fall back to. Sedge didn’t need to look at the fortification map of Wedgwood. He often lay awake at night, sleepless, tossing and turning over the plan, the positioning, and the manning of the forts. Hollowmeade and Buckthorn were the two forts nearest the Main Gate.
Her eyes burned with sweat; her hair plastered beneath her helmet. Christina backed and felt the first step of Timber Hall with her heel. It had been a long, slow, painful slog, watching those in her care die in ones and twos, but they’d made it without the line being broken or overrun. Second and Seventh Wards had split off to their respective tree redoubts, and now Barrigal and his merc company along with Christina and Alex were finally at their destination, a half mile of hard fighting and backstepping the whole way. Feolin had gone down under a sudden rush only to be dragged back by Timberkeeps to their line at the last moment. Christina personally fought a way clear for him to be locked into one of the safe houses they passed, brimming with spear points and snarling Timberkeeps, guarded from above by the archery of five treeforts. The trog assault had degenerated into roving bands of reptiles bouncing from one hard point to another, always seeking a weak, easy target, but finding only determined resistance from behind barricaded doors.
Barrigal limped, bleeding from a spike wound to his thigh, the blood draining into his boot so that it squished. He grasped the rail at the top of the stairs. “Right. ‘Ere they come, lads.”
A throng of seventy or so trogs led by a chieftain came straight at the Hall.
“No shield wall,” she said.
“Finally,” grumped Alex. The remaining sixty mercs and Defenders were arrayed in a loose line across the front of the hall. They were bait.
“Back to back?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, unlimbering her bastard sword.
The trogs came in a heaving, grunting rush. Then the barricaded windows flew open, and a cascade of arrows sang forth on the twang of bowstrings and thump of crossbows. Trogs fell in a wave-like surf rebounding from a spume-covered cliff: The Hall. Blood splattered across her face, sweat trickled down her back and between her breasts. Christina swung her greatsword, finally free of its sheath, to wreak Mother’s Vengeance. She swept left and right in efficient arcs, conserving her ebbing strength. Once again, the fighting enveloped them. Alex stabbed low from a crouch as Christina’s two-handed sword came whistling overhead, slicing, maiming, extorting gruesome wreckage on all it touched. Alex and Christina fought, attuned to each other. She swung hard left, and Alex, knowing her backswing would expose her, gutted the attacker seeking the opening. She saw a trog aiming a massive club at her shoulder. The trog’s eyes bulged, blood sprouted from its nose, and the club fell free. She brought her blade around driving a trog back from Alex. He followed her around in the pivot like a shadow slashing anything that drifted into her wake. A trog on her left lost an eye before it reached her, but Alex was at her right hip? The attacker staggered away clutching a paw to its face. Christina looked up the steps. “Rachael! Get back inside child!”
On the veranda, a girl in a plaid dress, knee-high deerskin boots, and a braided ponytail, pulled something from a leather foundry sack and threw it at a trog. The instant the object left her fingers it accelerated and swerved unerringly for the beast’s eyes. It struck with a hard, squishy thump.
“Rachael! Inside!”
“No!” she yelled back. “I want to be a Defender!”
Barrigal made to lay a hand on the girl, but she danced nimbly away and threw another lead musket ball. She might never be a pitcher for the Pinecone lobcaller team, but what her arm lacked her kinetic mind made lethal. The projectile swerved from its downward angle and caught a trog in the ear with a solid thwack. The iron pellet hit like a ballista bolt. Rachael let out a whoop.
Alex bashed his shield into the bloody snout of a troglodyte, smearing it with gore, and drove the animal back over several bodies, stabbing it in the groin. Leaping the bodies, he and clove the head of the chieftain.
The attack broke. Their chieftain dead, the troglodytes skulked away. Alex watched as a few of the reptiles slaked their thirst in an eenu trough. Exhausted, adrenalin draining away like a mountain stream, he stumbled backward, drawn to the steps by Christina. Sheathing his sword, he watched as a Timber matron burst out from the doors and pursued Rachael, intent on dragging her back inside. He smiled at the girl’s determination to avoid capture. “Who is that?”
Christina shook her head in concern, tired green eyes seeing the future of Wedgewood. “Rachael Stouttree, Lettern, and Pottern’s younger sister.
He laughed as the matron grasped a handful of Rachael’s shawl, but the girl spun free, surrendering the garment. “Please, please,” she said running to him, “I want to be a Defender!”
He smiled mirthfully as the matron, with Barrigal’s wounded help, caught the girl and hauled her up the steps. She beseeched him. “Please!”
“When we’re through with this, come see me.” He called as the girl was carried away, and the Hall door thudded shut with her safely inside. Barrigal limped to the head of the stairs. “Damned handy with pellets, that one is. I wonder if all those kids are that good.”
Alex grunted and watched the roving bands of troglodytes seeking easy targets while trying to stay out of range of the treeforts.
“Rock Lichen has fallen, sir. The trogs scaled the trunk and managed to swing out to the edge of the parapet and climb in on the rope bridge. They trapped the garrison when Long Needle pulled the pins.”
Sedge didn’t need to be told what that meant. All six of the fort’s defenders were dead; trogs didn’t take prisoners unless they wanted the meat fresh for later. That made the third tree fort. On the bulk of it, losing only three forts up to this point was good news, but more alarming was how Rock Lichen had fallen. The trogs had studied its exposed position. Exhibiting spontaneous battlefield planning, they assembled a determined rush. They’d gone up the tree in a blitz while the defenders shot their bows, dropped their rocks, and stabbed down with their spears easily wounding a half-score of the attackers, but the end had come too quick. He went to the plotting table. Surveying the town map, he tapped his finger on Archwood. It anchored the southern end of a line of four forts and formed the corner pivot into the east-west fort line. He fingered it again, saying to no one in particular, “If I were them, I’d go for Archwood next and try to pick off each fort in line.” He considered the attack from every direction. “Send ten warriors from the Twelfth to reinforce Archwood,” he ordered.
“Sir! Sir! The Paleowrights are here! They’ve come to help!”
Sedge stared at the messenger in confusion. “Paleowrights?”
“They’re on the wall.”
He went to his telescope and trained it on the gate. Three Scarlet Saviors stood atop the wall and watched as two more opened the gate, which up to that point the trogs had been content to go over. Spying through the scope, Sedge saw a company of Paleowright Church pikemen march through and form up, a line abreast three ranks deep. “What sort of treachery is this?”
“Sir?” asked someone from behind him.
“Surely they’re here to help,” another said.
Sedge snorted and wheeled on them. He looked from face to face, their hope draining away in the heat of his gaze. “We just fought the Paleowrights in front of Murali’s, down there,” he stabbed toward the floor. “Interesting timing they should show up now, and with Church troops? And explain to me why the trogs are completely ignoring them?” He looked around at the silent gathering. “Pass the word to all forts and safe houses, engage the Paleowrights as enemies, they are consorting with the trogs.”
“Gads,” a voice could be heard, “It’s Whispering Bough all over again.”
Sedge snapped. “The hell it is! This is Wedgewood, and by their blasted Ancients, the Paleowrights will learn the difference!”
Agent Larech, as the Washentrufel observer, stood on the newly captured wall next to Decurion Uloch, the Drakan commander. Behind and below them, outside the wall and out of sight, were the decurion’s two Drakan centuries, two-hundred men. They appeared to be typical Isuelt mercenary companies: they wore no uniforms, tabards, or insignia, and instead donned whatever clothing and armor the man preferred or could afford. Helmets ran the gamut from simple pot-heads to full-faced bassinets, but Larech was not a casual observer. To his trained eye, the two centuries, arrayed as they were in typical Drakan formation, were as conspicuous as a bull wearing an apron. The armor and clothing may vary, but the weapon types and counts were all Drakan. Each century had ten skirmishers, ten halberdiers to form the ‘crush’ squad, sixty hoplites, and twenty archers, the standard configuration for a front-line century. Each hoplite was armed with a spear, a short sword, two javelins, and a round shield.
“No archers,” said the decurion.
“Eh?” Larech puzzled.
“The churchmen have no damned archers. I told the prelate in Hebert that would be a problem,” the decurion growled.
Larech watched a Church battalion form up for the attack, and all four hundred men bore only pikes.
A signal sounded and the battalion, crisp in their uniform tabards and tall black boots, their twin standards flying, marched forward arrayed in four orderly ranks. Ahead of them was a line of four treeforts and what appeared to be three heavily barricaded buildings. They marched in silence while the nearby trogs stopped to slaver and gawk, more than few of which sported arrow wounds and even embedded arrows with fletchings.
The battalion, in the blue and green of the Hebert Cathedral, with their red shoulder sashes and gold tassels, crossed an unseen line, and the defenders in the treeforts, clustered at the railings, opened with a barrage of arrows. “Well, that answers that question,” said Uloch.
Larech grimaced. “The Timmies are ready to fight the Church.”
“I hope your commandant has this figured, Larech. When Oridia and the Western Alliance hear of this...”
The agent breathed deeply. “Darnkilden and Sea Haven will mobilize.”
Shaking his head, the decurion added, “The Church clergy didn’t think the Timmies would fight? And that the trogs would do the job?” He watched the arrow barrage. “Paleowright troops attack Wedgewood.” He let the ramifications sink in. “This was supposed to be an occupation at the most.”
The first churchmen stumbled and fell; their fellows behind stepped around the bodies and closed ranks. They trod over the fallen troglodytes that littered the ground like forgotten trash. Everywhere they looked lay a dead reptile. More arrows rained down. The pikemen held up their shields like turtle shells, but their coordination was haphazard; as they marched, gaps appeared in the shell through which the archers poured iron-tipped death. As the range closed, the shafts easily punctured the tin chainmail. Polished, it looked good on parade at Church ceremonies, but the tin, not iron, links were weak in battle. The first pikemen reached a tree fort and, failing to find a way up, clustered about the base. Well-placed rocks and arrows persuaded the pikemen to move on.
The Churchmen came to the first hard point, a granary dug partially into the mountain. Stakes protruded from the ground in front of shuttered and barricaded windows. Crossbow bolts flew out from arrow slits. With more patience than the troglodytes, the pikemen beat at the stout doors and levered and pried at the barred windows, all the while arrows plucked and struck down from the forts above. Here and there, a window was pulled open or battered in, only to be replaced by spear points. Mini battles erupted around each hard point. Where pikemen gained an opening, they were sometimes dragged in while their comrades listened to the man’s screaming as he was hacked to death.
At the leather goods store, the pikemen forced their way in but were bottled up at the door as three and four defenders stabbed and slashed at every man to enter. The doorway became a gruesome, slippery mess with blood, gore, and dead bodies, blue and green tunics trampled red. The pikemen gave a final surge, and screams could be heard from inside the store. Finally, the noise subsided. Five of the fifteen pikemen who went in came out.
Larech watched the second Church battalion form up in front of the wall. “Reinforcements.”
Uloch grunted, accompanied by a deep frown.
Then the first battalion trumpet sounded recall.
The decurion’s frown eased. “Well, that’s the first smart thing they’ve done.”
From below, the second battalion’s commander called up to the decurion, “May I borrow your archers?”
Uloch answered, “All forty? And what will you do then? Scale those trees with your bare hands, in full armor. The lowest branch is thirty feet off the ground!”
The officer looked at the treeforts with renewed attention. Clearly weighing the situation, he called up to the decurion, “Ladders?”
“Ladders, grapples, rope, and fire!”
“Eh, hem,” Larech cleared his throat.
“What?” Uloch snarled.
“If you read my report, you’ll know that Ungerngerist bark is resistant to fire.”
“But...” then he eyed the nearest tree. “But what about the branches and needles? Surely they will burn?”
The agent shrugged. “Tis late spring, the dead needles have fallen. It's wet here on the mountain. I doubt a flaming arrow, by itself, would burn much. More’s my guess those tree lovers have already thought of your idea and prepared for it. I would suggest a fireball. Something big, soaked with oil.”
“You’d need a catapult for that,” Uloch responded impatiently, “and that will take time. Days, at least.”
Larech twitched his lips. “I, unlike our Paleowright allies, never expected this to be quick. At every turn, the churchmen have underestimated the Timberkeeps.”
“Catapults,” mused the decurion. Then he nodded. “They’ll take some days to build. In the meanwhile, we can starve the bastards.”
