Imager’s Battalion

57

On Samedi morning just before seventh glass, the three regiments and Fifth Battalion drew up facing the walls of Nordeau. The sun hung barely above the trees to the east of the plain extending out from the gray walls, and the browning knee-high grass was heavy with dew under a crystal clear sky. The air was neither cool nor warm, but felt thick to Quaeryt as he watched Ghaelyn ride forward toward the southeast gate under the blue-bordered white parley flag.

Skarpa hadn’t been especially pleased with Quaeryt’s report on the defenses of Nordeau on Vendrei afternoon, but he’d agreed to the plan of attack Quaeryt proposed. After that agreement, Quaeryt had briefed the imager undercaptains, and then Zhelan and the company officers on what each company was to do.

On Samedi, the first step was simple enough, to send forward Ghaelyn to request the surrender of Nordeau. Neither Skarpa nor Quaeryt expected that the Bovarians would even consider surrender, but Quaeryt had insisted that Skarpa make the offer.

“Why?” Skarpa had asked. “They won’t consider it. You know that.”

“I do.”

“Then…?”

“Because I want to be able to try to soothe my conscience,” replied Quaeryt.

Skarpa had merely nodded sadly.

Skarpa and Quaeryt were right. The Bovarians refused to surrender. But they didn’t try to kill poor Ghaelyn, for which Quaeryt was most thankful, recalling as he did how the hill holders of Tilbor had dealt with troopers carrying the request for their surrender. The Bovarians had just laughed and, from the gate towers, showered the undercaptain with ridicule.

Once Ghaelyn had returned, the Telaryn forces moved forward, slowly. Fifth Battalion, led by Quaeryt with Baelthm beside him, took the old road toward the southeast gate. Eleventh Regiment, positioned some six hundred yards to the south and west of Fifth Battalion, rode through the knee-high browning grass toward a point on the walls some four hundred yards southwest of the southeast gate towers. Near the front ranks rode Voltyr and Smaethyl.

Due south of the curved walls of Nordeau, Third Regiment rode toward the southernmost point of the wall, and close to Skarpa rode Threkhyl, Desyrk, and Horan. Farther to the west, aiming at a point on the walls equidistant between the target of Third Regiment and the southwestern gate, was Fifth Regiment, without any imager undercaptains. Taking the newer road toward the southwest gate was a battalion detached from Fifth Regiment, with the major in command accompanied by Shaelyt, Lhandor, and Khalis.

Quaeryt would have liked to have had imagers with each attack formation, but he didn’t have enough for that, and he was asking a great deal of them. At the same time, they needed to see what it was like when their lives and those of others depended on themselves, and not on Quaeryt. Some of them, he suspected, hadn’t even realized how much he had shielded them.

Even when the Telaryn formations had reached a point two hundred yards from the walls, the defenders had made no moves and launched neither arrows nor Antiagon Fire.

Then … dark shafts rose from behind the walls and angled down toward the attackers. There weren’t that many shafts targeted at each regiment and battalion, one of the reasons why Skarpa and Quaeryt had decided on the spread approach that they had adopted.

Quaeryt only had to raise and expand his shields for an instant so that the shafts dropped into the grass and road ahead of Fifth Battalion. From what he could tell, the other imagers had shielded most of the troops, with Lhandor, Khalis, and Shaelyt providing some coverage for Fifth Regiment as well as for the battalion they accompanied.

As the arrows were shunted away, a horn signal sounded from Third Regiment, and all the riders urged their mounts forward at a quick trot-because Skarpa had determined that the archers were behind the walls and not firing from the scattered slits and embrasures. That meant that the closer the attacking troopers were to the walls, the harder it would be for the archers to target the Telaryn forces, all the better for the attacker since the imagers couldn’t provide shielding and do what else they needed to accomplish next.

Because Quaeryt had studied the gates, he thought he could bring down those in front of him without too much strain, not that he intended to lead Fifth Battalion through them unless absolutely necessary. He’d also gone over the details of the gates with Shaelyt, suggesting the points of attack for the southwest gate.

As he rode forward on the ancient road, Quaeryt contracted his shields, to cover just the front of the column, then concentrated on removing a line of wood and metal from the outer edge of the gates. A flash of fire-pain lanced through his eyes, then dissipated so quickly that his eyes watered but for a moment. When he blinked again, he saw that the gates had dropped perhaps a third of a yard. There was the thinnest sliver of light on the left side, between what remained of the edge of the gate and the recessed stone that had held the ironbound wood in place. He concentrated once more, this time across the bottom, trying to angle what he imaged away.

The fire-pain lasted longer, and for another moment or two he could not see, but he did hear a muffled crash, and when his eyes cleared, the gates lay almost flat on the gray stone. As Skarpa’s scouts had reported, though, behind the gate was an iron portcullis, already lowered into place.

Quaeryt grabbed for his water bottle, then took a long swallow of the lager before recorking the bottle and slipping it back into the leather holder. Another attempt at image-cutting the iron of the portcullis followed, based on what he’d studied of such construction.

The third flash of fire-pain was no greater than the second, suggesting that the gates themselves had contained far more iron that he’d thought, and the portcullis crashed forward.

Quaeryt’s eyes flicked from the seemingly open southeast gate toward Eleventh Regiment and then toward the walls before them, drawn by a flash of light.

A narrow stone ramp, barely wide enough for two mounts stirrup-to-stirrup, stretched some fifteen yards from the ground to the top of the wall, and the troopers of Eleventh Regiment were riding straight toward it. Quaeryt could only hope that Voltyr and Smaethyl had been as successful at creating a ramp on the far side.

An even brighter flash of light flared from the south, but Quaeryt could only see the base of the ramp imaged by Threkhyl and Horan, and it appeared far wider and lower than the one imaged by Voltyr and Smaethyl. Quaeryt could not see anything near the southwest gate, and could only hope that the Pharsi imagers were able to create another entry to Nordeau. What he also did not see were defenders near the fallen gate or on or near the ramp up to the walls that was closest to Fifth Battalion.

One or even two ramps wouldn’t be enough to force an entry, especially once the defenders regrouped. Quaeryt looked at the fallen gate and took a deep breath.

“Fifth Battalion! On me! To the gate!”

As he neared the gate, and could feel the dull impact of arrow shafts on his shields coming through the opening where the gate had been, the thought crossed his mind, not that he could remember where he had heard the words, that even the best battle plan didn’t survive after the first moments. Abruptly the impacts of the arrow shafts stopped just before the mare’s hooves clattered on the wood and metal of the fallen gate.

Because Quaeryt had to slow the mare slightly in order to allow her to pick her way over the flat iron of the fallen portcullis, at any moment he expected either Antiagon Fire or burning or boiling oil. There was neither, but once he passed through the gate towers, the morning warmth of harvest was replaced with the chill of winter, and his breath and that of the mare steamed in the frigid air.

Quaeryt glanced around, seeing frost-shrouded figures sprawled everywhere within some fifty yards of the gates. His eyes went to his left, down the wide paved courtyard or street behind the foot of the walls to the south, where he saw horsemen pouring off a ramp.

“There!”

At that command from somewhere ahead, Quaeryt’s eyes flicked back forward along the street that connected to the gate, but which curved gradually past stone buildings until it headed northward to the bridge.

Archers scattered and ran down a side street as a company of pikemen marched toward Fifth Battalion, pikes angled toward first company. Quaeryt calculated. There might be seven or eight abreast. “First company! On me! Charge!”

Even as he issued the command, the pikemen stopped, and the first rank knelt, likely bracing their pikes against joins in the stone paving of the street.

Quaeryt extended his shields to a point, almost like the prow of a vessel where the stem rose just above the water, then linked them to the mounts that followed him. Even so, the impact when his extended shields struck the pikes jolted through him, pummeling him on his chest, forearms, and thighs. Pikes and pikemen and their armor clattered as they were hurled against the stone walls of the dwellings lining the narrow street. Beyond the pikemen, the company of lightly armored foot scattered, fleeing into alleyways and side streets. Quaeryt kept the mare and the company moving, following the street as it turned toward the bridge, joining another stone-paved street that most likely curved northward from the southwestern gate.

Quaeryt glanced back down the other street, but could make out neither Bovarian nor Telaryn troopers for the hundred yards he could take in before he turned his eyes forward toward the bridge. A few people actually stood on the narrow raised sidewalks, staring at the oncoming troopers, before fleeing into shops and dwellings, or other buildings.

From somewhere to the north came the clangor of bells and then a mournful sounding series of horn blasts. Ahead of him, a line of armored footmen sprinted up the gently angled stone approach to the bridge itself.

Where the approach to the bridge ended, so did the stone railings, replaced by comparatively narrow wooden handrails. Quaeryt blinked-the trailing armored footmen were jumping, as if over something, and the handrails were moving and flattening, leaving a gap between the stone walls and those very same rails.

Frig! A Namer-built retracting bridge!

Quaeryt reined up, barely coming to a halt before reaching the open space. A handful of armored footmen jumped, missing the retracting bridge and tumbling into the river below. The timbered section of the bridge continued to recede toward the small fortified garrison whose walls seemingly rose from the River Aluse itself. Given the efforts he’d already made, Quaeryt wasn’t about to try to image the bridge into place or create another span. He was surprised to see that the handrails on each side of the timbered section had dropped so that they lay flat against the roadbed, as if each railing support had been mounted on something like an axle.

Quaeryt slowly turned the mare and looked down the bridge approach into the southern part of Nordeau. While first company held the top of the approach, the remaining three companies were involved in dealing with the surviving Bovarian footmen and pikemen. Given the narrowness of the streets, there was little first company could do without getting in the way of the rest of Fifth Battalion.

Quaeryt’s eyes were watering, his head aching, and he didn’t want to do any more imaging unless it was absolutely necessary. He looked to Baelthm. “Are you all right?”

The older undercaptain looked back at Quaeryt. “Better question might be, sir, whether you are.”

“So far…” Quaeryt paused as more Telaryn troopers rode up the curved street that had to have come from the southwest gate, but they halted where the two streets merged, then reversed position and held. On the other street, the Khellan companies had largely stopped fighting, having either destroyed or routed the Bovarians they had encountered.

Quaeryt turned to Zhelan, who had eased his mount closer. “I need to see how the imager undercaptains are doing. I’m going to ride down to Fifth Regiment.”

“If you plan to go farther, sir, I’d recommend a squad going with you.”

“If I do, I’ll send for one, or take one from their companies.” Quaeryt edged his mount down along the side of the stone wall of the bridge approach until he reached the more open space near the last squad of first company. From there he could see Shaelyt and the two younger Pharsi undercaptains, one of whom was leaning over in his saddle and retching. Shaelyt was bent forward, his head almost resting on the neck of his mount.

“Undercaptain Shaelyt,” called Quaeryt.

Shaelyt straightened and turned in Quaeryt’s general direction, but it was clear that he did not see his subcommander. “Sir?”

Quaeryt rode closer. “I’m here. You’re having trouble seeing?”

That brought a nod, and a swallow, as if Shaelyt were trying not to retch. Both Khalis and Lhandor stiffened, but did not speak. Khalis was pale, but he’d been the one retching, Quaeryt realized. Lhandor was slightly wan, but looked composed, as if exhausted, but not nauseated.

“Did you get the gates down? Any luck with the ramp?”

“The gates … yes. We couldn’t manage a ramp, but … Fifth Regiment didn’t have a problem following us through the gates. There was … were … two companies … frozen … but another company of pikemen … we managed to hold shields enough to scatter the front lines … After that the troopers took over…” Shaelyt swallowed again.

“You’re not doing any more imaging today,” said Quaeryt.

“No, sir … can’t see, except in flashes…”

“And your head throbs like someone’s beating it like an anvil or jabbing it with spears?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about you two?” Quaeryt looked to Lhandor.

“I don’t think I could image a copper, sir.”

“What did you image on the attack?”

“I can’t do shields, not properly. I imaged iron darts into some archers who were taking aim on us and Captain Kharaf. So did Khalis.”

“Are you feeling better, Khalis?” asked Quaeryt.

“Some, sir…” The young undercaptain swallowed.

“All of you, sip from your water bottles until you can swallow. Then eat some of those biscuits I insisted you bring. Yes … I know they’re like bricks, but gnaw on them as you can. It will help.”

“Yes, sir.”

Quaeryt stood in the stirrups, trying to look farther south to see Meinyt and the rest of Fifth Regiment. While he could discern troopers who were likely from Fifth Regiment, he couldn’t make out Meinyt. He dropped back down into the saddle. “Undercaptains, we’ll return to first company.” He turned the mare and rode up the gradual stone-paved approach to the bridge, reining up at the rear of the troopers and turning the mare so that he could see whoever might be approaching.

The other undercaptains were supposed to rejoin Fifth Battalion as they could, but so far there was no sign of those who’d been with Eleventh Regiment and Third Regiment. Quaeryt blotted the sweat off his forehead, sweat he hadn’t even realized was there until it oozed into the corner of his eyes and delivered a salty sting.

To the south he saw the Fifth Regiment troopers ease to one side of the street and allow the Khellan companies to ride to rejoin first company. As Major Calkoran neared, Quaeryt didn’t see any empty saddles, and second company looked to be close to full strength. Quaeryt did see blood splatters and streaks on the sleeves of many of the troopers.

Zhelan rode forward and spoke to Calkoran, then continued onward to get reports from Zhael and then Arion before he rode back to Quaeryt.

“Sir, reporting on Fifth Battalion.”

“Go ahead, Major.”

“First company, two dead, fifteen wounded. Second company, four dead, five wounded. Third company, three dead, six wounded. Fourth company, three wounded. That does not count the undercaptains assigned to other regiments.”

“Thank you.” Only nine dead, and twenty-nine wounded. Unfortunately, Quaeryt had no doubt that the casualties were far higher among the regiments.

A squad leader wearing a green and red armband edged his mount along the side of the bridge approach toward Quaeryt and finally reined up facing him. “Subcommander, sir, the commander asks that Fifth Battalion continue to hold the bridge and prepare for an attack on the isle fort and beyond.”

“Tell Commander Skarpa that we hold the bridge but that an immediate attack on the isle fort is not physically possible. The Bovarians retracted the bridge before we could reach it.” Quaeryt gestured toward the open space beyond the bridge approach.

“Yes, sir.” The squad leader nodded, then turned his mount and rode back down the bridge approach and then onto the street that led to the southeastern gate.

Quaeryt eased out the water bottle and took a longer swallow, before fumbling out a biscuit and slowly chewing on it. You’re a little late in taking your own advice. He glanced back south, then northward toward the isle. He could see nothing behind the walls of the small fort in the middle of the river.

Before all that long, the troopers now in formation on the streets and the approach to the bridge made way for Skarpa, flanked by Khaern and Meinyt. Behind them rode the remaining imager undercaptains-Threkhyl, Horan, Desyrk, Voltyr, and Smaethyl. All five were sweat-drenched and pale.

Quaeryt eased the mare forward to meet the senior officers, then halted, as did the other three.

The imagers made their way past, and Quaeryt could see that Voltyr’s eyes were twitching. Horan was almost leaning on his mount’s neck. Quaeryt looked at Skarpa.

“I got your message, Subcommander. How did that happen?”

“We broke through the gates, and I led first company straight to the bridge. We didn’t hesitate at all. They were retracting the bridge before we were even close to it. They left some of their own men on this side rather than letting us even get close.”

“Figures.” Skarpa snorted.

“How did the imager undercaptains do?” asked Quaeryt.

Skarpa nodded to Khaern.

“They got us a narrow ramp, and one most of the way down inside the walls. We got some cover from the arrows, but we were on our own inside the walls. Not too bad. We lost maybe fifty troopers, and another hundred wounded.”

Meinyt cleared his throat. “They kept the arrows off us, but we had to follow them through the gates. They couldn’t do much once we were inside. Didn’t have to, though. They killed a good company of defenders near the gates. Froze some and got a bunch with iron darts.”

“The two you sent with me did the ramp all right,” said Skarpa. “Broad and wide. Even cut away a yard of the top of the walls and some buildings on the other side.”

“But?” asked Quaeryt, sensing Skarpa wasn’t totally pleased.

“They couldn’t do anything after that. The newer one could barely ride. We lost almost a hundred troopers to archers.”

“I was afraid of that. I gave you the ones I knew could give you the best access, but they’re not that good with stopping arrows.”

Skarpa laughed roughly. “Better than I thought. Anytime you can take a walled city without siege gear and only lose a few hundred men … Have to say I was worried, but we took most of the casualties on the ride to and up the ramp. Almost nothing after that.”

Most likely because any defender close to the walls and ramp was frozen solid, and the archers fled. Quaeryt nodded. “I haven’t seen much of the city. We’ve been holding the bridge. I didn’t want to leave it and have them attack again.”

“No one was living in the dwellings directly behind the walls. Most were either sealed up or used to store goods,” said Khaern.

“There weren’t that many people living here on the south side of the river, except for the troopers in the barracks and garrison,” added Skarpa. “None of the locals we saw looked that prosperous, either.”

“There were more people on the avenue leading to the bridge,” Quaeryt pointed out. “There are shops there.”

“Still the poor side of town,” said Meinyt.

“It’s almost like it was all a garrison,” mused Skarpa. “This side of the river, anyway.”

Quaeryt stopped and looked back south. Everywhere he looked the walls were stone, the windows narrow, with inside shutters. The streets were all of gray stone. The roofs were primarily of grayish tile, although there were replacement tiles of yellowish rose, and on some roofs there were far more replacement tiles than gray ones. “I think it was. I think … it was a Naedaran garrison.”

“But…” Khaern protested, “they’ve been dead and gone for hundreds of years.”

“Good stonework lasts almost forever,” said Skarpa.

“Or longer,” said Quaeryt dryly. Especially if it’s imaged in place. He wasn’t about to point that out.

Meinyt frowned. “There’s something else. There aren’t any marks on the stone. No names or initials cut or scratched into it. Not anywhere. If this part of Nordeau is that old…”

“Why aren’t there any marks?” asked Skarpa. “Because the frigging stone is hard. One of the troopers tried to cut down a Bovarian. He didn’t realize just how close he was to a dwelling, and his sabre hit the stone and shattered. Didn’t leave a mark on that gray stone. If a blade wielded by a strong man doesn’t leave a mark, there won’t be many. Enough of that. We’ve got another problem.” His eyes went to Quaeryt. “How wide is that gap to the isle fortress?”

“Not that wide. Ten yards, perhaps a bit farther.”

“Can your imagers build a stone span across it?” asked Skarpa.

“We likely can,” replied Quaeryt, massaging his forehead. “But not today. Perhaps not tomorrow. From what I’ve heard and seen, none of them could now, and probably not today.”

Meinyt and Skarpa nodded. A look of puzzlement crossed Khaern’s face.

“It’s a matter of strength,” Quaeryt explained. “Imaging takes great effort. If an imager tries to do too much when he’s exhausted, it can kill him. I don’t see any point in killing people when there’s not that much to be gained, especially if it means Commander Skarpa won’t have imagers when we get to Variana.”

“No one ever mentioned that,” replied Khaern.

“That’s because no one’s ever studied imaging before,” said Quaeryt.

Khaern looked more closely at Quaeryt’s greenish brown shirt. “Oh … that’s why…”

“One of the reasons,” Quaeryt agreed.

“I’ll send a dispatch to the marshal, telling him that we can probably take the isle fort…” Skarpa paused. “I’d wager they’ve got another pull-away bridge on the other side.”

“We can likely do two spans,” said Quaeryt.

“I’ll let him know and see what he has in mind.”

Quaeryt doubted that Deucalon would be all that pleased, no matter what.