Sir Thursday

Thirteen

LIEUTENANT CORBIE LOWERED his perspective glass and rubbed his right eye. It was sore from looking through the telescope for so long. For a whole afternoon, he and his troop of Borderers had been watching and counting the enemy column as it advanced through the pass below them.

"Add another five thousand to the tally," said Corbie to his sergeant, who was keeping count in his notebook. "More of the regular Nithlings, arrayed in units of one thousand."

"That's more than twenty-six thousand today, sir," said the sergeant. "All on the one tile."

"It's scheduled to go east and north at sundown," said Corbie, tapping the Ephemeris in its pouch at his side. "Shift a few more of them out of the way."

"There must be a million of them in the Maze by now," said the sergeant quietly. "What happens when every tile is full up with Nithlings? No point moving them around then."

"That's defeatist talk, Sergeant, and I won't have it," snapped Corbie. "Anyway, there are still plenty of empty tiles, and the Nithling invasion is being broken up very successfully. Tectonic strategy, as always, is working. And I heard the Second Battalion of the Regiment won another battle yesterday."

Corbie did not mention the fact that the XIXth Cohort of the Legion had almost lost a battle the day before yesterday. While the Nithling forces were being broken up every sundown when the tiles shifted them away, there were many tiles where there were very large numbers of Nithlings. Sometimes these tiles had to be cleared or retaken because they were scheduled to come close to GHQ or one of the other fixed positions.

It was six weeks since Corbie and his troops had left the Boundary Fort. That was in Nithling hands now. Though Colonel Nage had been killed with his entire garrison, he had managed to hold the switch room for twelve hours, and the gates had been closed. But not before four to five hundred thousand Nithlings had come through. And then, a month later, the gates had somehow been opened again, even though this was supposed to be impossible. Tens of thousands more Nithlings had marched in.

Still, as Corbie had reassured the sergeant, the time-honoured tectonic strategy was working. With the tiles moving every sundown and the enemy unable to concentrate its forces, the Army was able to battle the Nithlings piecemeal, winning most of its direct confrontations.

Not that this was enough for Sir Thursday, Corbie had heard. Never even-tempered at the best of times, Sir Thursday was supposed to have become angrier than usual.

Apparently he had even lost his temper with Marshal Dawn and had seriously injured her, after Dawn had questioned some aspect of the Army's response to this unprecedented invasion and the wisdom of changing the campaign in the first place, so radically and so late.

Corbie reflected that Dawn had been right, of course. It was very strange that the plan had been changed only hours before it commenced. Major Pravuil had been an odd messenger too. He hadn't seemed quite right to Corbie, like he held some kind of special commission and wasn't a regular officer at all. It all stank of politics and interference from higher up.

Corbie hated politics.

"More movement near the tile border," called one of the Borderers. "And I reckon we've been spotted. There's an officer … superior Nithling, or whatever we're supposed to call it … directing a squad our way."

Corbie peered down from the hill. He and his fellow Borderers were concealed among the tumbled rocks at the top, but some movement might have given them away. Or the reflection from his own perspective glass.

Instinctively he looked to the sun. It was near the horizon, making its rickety way down, but there was still half an hour at least till sundown. The tile border, visible to his trained eye as a slightly different tone of colour in the earth, was a hundred yards below them. If the Nithlings did attack, they'd have to make it past that border before dusk, when the tiles moved. Which was possible, Corbie estimated.

He wasn't that troubled, though. His forces were in the corner of their current tile, and a quick sprint in any one of two directions would get them on tiles that were moving to fairly safe areas.

"Something strange about that column," muttered the sergeant. "Looks like they're transporting something. They've got a whole chain of Not-Horses."

Corbie raised his perspective glass. Not-Horses were valuable livestock, creatures that had been copied from Earth horses and then half-bred and half-manufactured in the Pit by Grim Tuesday. Since Grim Tuesday's fall, there had been no new supplies of Not-Horses, much to the annoyance of the Moderately Honourable Artillery Company and the Horde.

But down below, the Nithlings had more than two hundred Not-Horses harnessed up to a giant twenty-wheeled wagon that was at least sixty feet long. On the wagon was … Corbie lowered his glass, rubbed his eye again, and took another look.

"What is it?" asked the sergeant.

"It looks like a giant spike," said Corbie. "A sixty-foot-long spike made out of something very strange. It's dark, and it doesn't reflect light at all. It must be some kind of –"

"Nothing?"

"Yes, I think so. Sorcerously fixed Nothing. But why transport it into the Maze? What would be the point, since they're never going to know where it will end up –"

Corbie stopped talking, put the telescope on a rock, and quickly opened his Ephemeris, flicking through the pages till he found the appropriate table, cross-indexing the day with the tile the Nithling Not-Horse train was on.

"That tile moves right to the centre of the Maze tonight," said Corbie. "Grid five hundred/five hundred."

"There's nothing special there," commented the sergeant.

"Not that we know of. But I've heard mention of a famous problem they set at Staff College called "The Five Hundred/Five Hundred" … the Nithlings must know where that tile is going. And they must have known where all the other tiles have been going, to get that thing this far."

"But they couldn't get hold of an Ephemeris without it exploding," said the sergeant. "Could they?"

"We never thought they could be organised either," said Corbie. "But they are, and they're being led by someone who knows the business. Here, take this and see if you can see anything else."

He handed the perspective glass to the sergeant and took out a small ivory stand and a lead soldier from the pocket of his quiver. The figure was of a colonel in the Regiment, all scarlet and gold. As Corbie put the model colonel in position on the stand, its colours grew brighter and lines sharper and then it was like a tiny living version of the real officer, far away at GHQ.

"Colonel Repton!"

"Hello, Corbie! Another informal report?"

"Yes, sir. I'll be reporting to Captain Ferouk, but it'll take time for this news to get from him through channels, so I thought you'd better hear this and try to get it to Sir Thursday directly –"

The little model colonel grimaced when he heard this but nodded for Corbie to continue.

"We've spotted a major Nithling column at tile seventy two/eight hundred and ninety nine, which is escorting an enormous wagon drawn by over a hundred Not-Horses. On the wagon is a sixty-foot-long, ten-foot diameter object pointed at one end that appears to be made from Nothing, though its shape is consistent. I can only describe it as a giant spike, sir. The thing is, that tile will move at sundown to tile five hundred/five hundred, and I –"

"Did you say tile five hundred/five hundred?" Colonel Repton sounded alarmed. "Would you describe the spike as obviously sorcerous?"

"Yes, sir!"

The figurine visibly paled.

"I must inform Sir Thursday at once! Wish me luck, Corbie!"

The figure stiffened and was once more merely lead.

"Better wish ourselves luck," said the sergeant, handing the glass back to Corbie and picking up his bow. "There are another three squads moving out towards us. They're definitely going to attack."