Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Bearcoat

‘Rather a lot of them,’ Halahan casually remarked, puffing on his pipe beneath the brim of his straw hat.

General Creed showed no sign that he was listening. He stood in the cold twilight on their vantage point above the valley, his long hair hanging in stillness about the shoulders of his fur coat, his eyes fixed on the imperial encampment in the far distance, the campfires already glittering in their hundreds.

Bahn and the rest of the officers waited in silence as the colours of the day slowly faded. Early stars were already pricking through breaks in the clouds, which had thinned in the last hour without dumping further snow.

The imperial army had settled in for the night on a stretch of the road around a hamlet known as Chey-Wes. As far as the eye could see they occupied the road and the valley plain that it followed, bordered on the north by the flow of the Cinnamon and Hermetes Lake, and on the south by a thin ribbon of elevated land, one of several that ran along the spine of the valley like the ridged back of a whale.

‘No earthworks around the main force,’ commented Halahan, hoisting the fallen branch he had been leaning on to jab at the distant camp. Trickles of snow fell from its tip. ‘They reckon themselves safe in their numbers.’

Bahn listened to these remarks in silence. He was trembling, and he didn’t mind admitting to himself that it was more than the mere chill of his armour. He looked away from the awful sight of the invasion force and turned his head to look back at the setting sun, savouring it for long moments as though it was his last. In its diminishing glow the Khosian army was preparing its own camp for the night, small enough to remain hidden behind the rise of ground the officers stood upon. Far beyond it, he could just about discern the sparkles of Tume reflecting off Simmer Lake.

The officers waited for Creed to say something, to lead them, but he was still deep in thought, his jaw muscles working as he ground his teeth in concentration.

Bahn knew all these men in his capacity as Creed’s aide. From the corner of his eye, he studied each of them in turn. General Nidemes of the Hoo, and his old rival General Reveres of the Red Guards, two grey-haired veterans who could have been brothers for all their similarities in features. Colonel Choi of the Free Volunteers, Coraxian by birth. Major Bolt, commander of Special Operations for the field army. Colonel Mandalay of the Lancers, their contingent of cavalry. And Halahan, positioned closer to Creed than the rest of them.

Each wore a pair of Owl goggles about their necks, priceless items of equipment made with lenses cast in the Isles of Sky. Each stood with his cloak wrapped tight about his armour, travel stained with all the days of forced marching. None looked remotely happy to be there, save for Halahan.

‘There are six thousand of us, brothers,’ Creed declared as he turned his back on the imperial army. ‘In all, we face over six times our number. I can tell you now, from what information we have gained from captured scouts, that many are veterans of Lagos and the High Pash campaigns. Two thousand more are Mannian Acolytes. For cavalry, the numbers are unclear; we believe they lost a large number of zels during their voyage. They have a sizeable contingent of archers and riflemen. Added to that, of course, is their artillery. They have ten heavy pieces for every one of ours.

‘Options, if you please.’

General Reveres of the Red Guards cleared his throat and spoke first. ‘We dig in here and fight a holding action. We can hardly defeat them in open battle with so many cannon facing us.’

‘May as well have stayed in Bar-Khos then,’ quipped General Nidemes.

‘You disagree?’ asked Creed.

Nidemes’s gaze was hard and unflinching. ‘Absolutely. We should attack them at first light. It will be the last thing they expect of us. If we’re lucky, we might catch their batteries unprepared.’

‘That still leaves forty thousand fighting men to contend with,’ argued Reveres.

Nidemes was unimpressed. ‘So? We were outnumbered in Coros too.’

General Creed wore his heavy bearskin coat over his armour. He tugged it tighter around himself, then crossed his arms in silence.

‘I agree with Reveres,’ said Choi, the bearded, blond-haired colonel of the Volunteers. ‘We should dig in here and hold them off as long as we can. You said yourself our intention was to buy time.’

‘Colonel Halahan?’ Creed enquired of his old friend.

The colonel replied with a wolfish grin. ‘You know what I would have us do, General.’

Creed fell quiet again, musing.

Bahn watched the general and waited. Even now, he believed the man could save them.

‘You know how I killed this bear?’ Creed asked suddenly to no one in particular, and held his fur coat open for show.

‘It chased me off when I was checking some fish traps my father had placed in a stream. I was a boy, and I had a gutting knife with me, a tiny thing, about twice the size of this one,’ and he looked down at the curved dagger that hung against his chest, the Mannian ceremonial blade, which he had placed there for some reason known only to himself.

‘I needn’t tell you I was scared out of my wits. Couldn’t move for the life of me, in fact. But when my heart started beating again, and I saw how the bear was breaking into the traps, I knew I was even more terrified of what my father would do if I stood there and did nothing. So I charged at it, tried to frighten it away, if you can imagine that. The most foolish thing I’ve probably ever done in my whole life. And that’s when it grabbed my arm in its jaws and tried to rip it off me. Still, I had the knife in my hand. I fought back with it. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with the blood pumping out of me, and the bear was gone.

‘I crawled back to the homestead, where they saved my arm. And the next day, my father tracked the bear through the hills, and found it dead a few laqs from the broken traps. It had bled to death from the stab wounds in its throat. I was sorry to hear that. But proud too.’

Creed tilted his head back and looked at them all. ‘And that’s what we shall do here, with these invaders,’ he declared. ‘We will get in close, and we’ll go for their throats while they try to crush the life from our body.’

‘Sir?’ said Bolt, taken aback.

‘We attack. We attack tonight while they sit huddled in their tents waiting for the sun.’

Around Bahn the officers shifted in their stances. Bahn felt his stomach fall away.

‘Colonel Mandalay!’

The cavalry officer stood to attention. ‘Sir.’

‘Your men are to advance on the enemy position. As soon as they spot you, charge the camp, understood?’

‘General,’ acknowledged Mandalay after a pause.

‘Don’t linger. Head straight through the camp until you’re into the baggage train. Destroy as much as possible while you’re there. Look for powder wagons in particular. The quartermaster will furnish you with some firebombs for the task. And if you can, disperse the remainder of their zels too.’

It was a tall order, thought Bahn. The skin of Mandalay’s face had grown tight.

‘Major Bolt. The Specials will follow closely behind the cavalry charge. The enemy will be alerted by the time you reach the camp. We must hope they will still be in some confusion. Your task is to maintain that confusion, and to stop them from easily forming ranks until the main body of infantry can strike.’

Bolt nodded his head, his face impassive. Cool, thought Bahn, for a man just handed a suicide mission.

‘I’d like to leave my medicos with the main force, general,’ Bolt requested. He did not need to explain why.

Creed consented.

‘Nidemes. Reveres.’

The two generals waited at attention.

‘The main body will move in behind these actions in a warhead formation. General Nidemes – if you would, I’d like the Hoo to take the centre. General Reveres – the Red Guard chartassa will take positions on our flanks. We will break through their lines and proceed directly to the imperial standard, wherever it may be flying. That is the throat we must work upon. We’ll be going for the Matriarch herself.

‘Colonel Halahan – we have reports of a mortar position on the ridge along their southern flank. You and a company of your Grey-jackets will be dropped behind the imperial lines. Overrun that ridge and hold it at all cost. I repeat, at all cost. We must have the high ground for ourselves.’

General Creed, Lord Protector of Khos, faced his officers with a sombre intensity. The story he had offered was as close to a rousing battle speech as he would ever make. He wasn’t a man to spoil it now with some glib words of victory and duty, not when asking men to lay down their lives at his command.

‘Questions?’

Bahn waited to see if anyone else would speak. ‘Our cannon,’ he said at last, his tongue a dry slab in his mouth. ‘What of our cannon?’

‘They’ll be of little use to us once battle is joined. And vulnerable too. Better if we send them to Tume along with the rest of our baggage. Anything else?’

Still no one spoke up. By the general’s side, Halahan observed their uneasy silence with a quiet amusement. He hunched slightly over the stick of wood he leaned upon, using his weight to screw the tip of it deep into the snow, then cocked his head a little to one side. ‘Aye, General,’ he said; and he exhaled a puff of smoke from around his pipe, simple tarweed for once. ‘I was just wondering why you were carrying that damned Mannian knife around your neck, is all.’

‘Why?’ responded Creed with a flash of his eyes. ‘Because, Colonel, if we reach the Matriarch herself, I intend to cut her bloody throat out with it.’