Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The Ridge

They came along the top of the ridge, a squad of imperial infantry with their shields interlocked and shortswords at the ready. Ghazni regulars, by the looks of the feathers sprouting from their helms.

‘Stand firm,’ Halahan shouted to the two lines of Greyjackets standing along the waist of the ridge, the foremost covering the rear with borrowed shields. He didn’t doubt that they would. He simply wished to remind them that he was there, that they weren’t alone.

It was the first organized counter-attack since his Greyjackets had taken this high position overlooking the imperial camp. On the slopes of scraggly yellowpine, the bodies of imperial troops lay contorted where they had fallen, after their initial ragged attempts to retake it. Since then, the Imperials had contented themselves with firing missiles onto the position, rifle shots, arrows and bolts mixed with the occasional grenade. His own men lay around the westernmost point of the ridge in a thin line of defence. They were firing down on the enemy while they used bodies and propped shields for cover.

In the very centre of the ridgeline, other Greyjackets had taken over the imperial mortars they had captured there. The men handled the shells with the utmost of care and attention, removing them from their waterproof wrappings like newborn babes. Each shell resembled an oversized rifle cartridge, though with a short fuse poking out from the open top of cartridge paper. After a crew soaked the fuse from their water flasks, they would quickly drop the thing down the stubby mortar while they flung themselves behind the cover of the wicker screens already in place there. An instant later, with the charge punctured by a firing pin at the bottom of the tube, the blackpowder ignited at the sudden exposure to moist air and the live shell – nothing more than a large grenade – shot out of it too fast to see with a solid whump.

Halahan watched them for a lingering moment then looked away. He had more pressing matters at hand – the enemy assault along the ridge, for one.

‘Fire away!’ Staff Sergeant Jay shouted at the Greyjackets along the waist, and they unleashed a volley that struck into the front rank of the advancing infantry. Half of the Ghazni regulars went down. Others stumbled over them.

Their vacant positions were quickly occupied. imperial officers shouted orders to keep the line and press on. Another volley of rifle shots, another bloody tumble of men. Still they advanced closer.

With ten feet to go, the advancing infantry gave a roar and charged. The two lines met with a crash of men and shields. Hala-han watched through a puff of drifting pipe smoke.

The shock of such a clash could be enough to stun some men, so that they froze with open mouths while they pissed their breeches or worse. Sometimes, if they were truly green, they could even drop their weapons and hold their hands out against the press, calling out to their assailants to stop, pleading for sanity, for respite.

Two of the inexperienced Greyjackets went down quickly like that, stunned into inaction or breaking entirely. Then three. Then four.

Halahan wasn’t overly concerned as he watched the medicos rush to give them aid. It always went this way at first. As for the fallen men themselves, those who would not recover, who would leave loved ones grieving behind – Halahan had no time for such sentiments. Leave them be until later. Leave them for the bottle.

A fifth man fell, a stump of an arm shooting blood. The line bulged inwards.

‘Staff Sergeant Jay – half the men in the first platoon to reinforce the second!’

Sergeant Jay ran along the crouched Greyjackets on the southern edge of the ridge, tapping every other man on the shoulder. They stood in turn, drawing their swords and, grabbing what shields they could find, and rushed to join the fighting. The line almost broke, but it steadied itself with the timely arrival of the reinforcements. Slowly, they pushed themselves back into shape.

Halahan strode towards the edge of the ridge and the Greyjack-ets firing down from their prone positions there. Missiles hummed through the night air or struck the ridge with dull slaps. Halahan ignored them, too proud and stubborn to do otherwise.

A flare shot into the sky. It screamed like a firework as it rose on its smoky trail, lighting the boiling scene beneath it in hues of green. It illuminated a bird-of-war far over the east of the camp. Another skyship was pursuing it, firing its prow gun at its envelop.

The ridge ran from east and west along the edge of the imperial camp, and afforded a full vantage of the field. It was going badly down there, he could tell. The Khosian formation stretched before him long and thin, a great dark mass of glinting squares surrounded by hundreds of torches and thousands of the enemy. In parts it was bulging inwards, or breaking apart. Far off to his right, he could see how the front of the formation had been stopped in its tracks. At this rate, the army wouldn’t last another half-hour.

Halahan doubted he could hold onto the ridge for half that time.

He squinted, judging the distance between the ridge and the Khosian formation. He called for the corporal of the platoon that was manning the mortars.

‘Curtz,’ he said as the rangy man towered above him. ‘The front enemy lines there, facing our chartassa,’ and he pointed to the forward clash of Khosians and Mannians. ‘Could those mortars make it from here?’

The man studied the distance, then held his nose in the air to catch the breeze. Curtz had been an artillery sergeant in the Pathian army and knew his business well. ‘Aye, Colonel, I think so. We’d have to be right careful though.’

‘Pass the command, then. Target the lines directly in front of our own chartassa.’

The order was passed on. Curtz handled the first shot himself, adjusting the elevation of the mortar and noting its setting. He soaked the fuses and slotted the cartridge into the tube then squatted there while his men retreated behind the nearest screen.

Whump went the shell. Curtz gazed down on the plain, waiting. Long moments later, a brightness of flames erupted amongst a dark mass of predore not far from the Khosian front. A remarkable shot.

He turned his face to Halahan. ‘I can’t do any better than that.’

Halahan chewed the stem of his pipe.

‘Continuous fire!’ he barked.

Beyond the Matriarch’s encampment, almost deserted when Ash came to it at last, he followed a column of white-robes as they marched at the head of the imperial standard towards the scene of fighting. At their fore hung Sasheen’s raven standard.

He paused as he came upon a medical station blazing with light within the main camp. Stretcher-bearers were moving in a steady flow towards it, and corpses had been arrayed in the snow behind the main tent. No sentries were in sight.

Boldly, Ash walked up to the corpse of an Acolyte and pulled free the white cloak and then the mask. He glimpsed a surgeon at work within the brightly lit tent, the man sawing through a limb as his patient gabbled in a delirium.

Ash moved on, shadowing the Matriarch as she headed towards the clash of arms.

They were taking heavy losses now. Bahn himself had been wounded by an arrow that had gone through the flesh of his lower arm, nicking his tendons, he thought, for he could no longer clench his left hand fully. It hurt like fire, and as he kept pace with General Creed he gritted his teeth and bore it silently while a medico hastily treated the injury.

All was not lost, for they were moving again. Halahan’s Grey-jackets on the ridge seemed to be lobbing mortar shells onto the imperial lines directly before their formation, thinning them enough to allow the forward chartassa to push through. Creed’s mood had lifted at this development, as though his prayers to they sky had been answered. The general eyed the fighting chartassa before him, willing them onwards.

‘Keep your arm still!’ the medico hollered at Bahn as she cleaned out his wound with a flask of alcohol.

Through the pain of it, he looked down at the young woman in the black leathers of the Specials, noticing her properly for the time. She was no more than a girl, he saw, and pretty too, in a thin, fragile sort of way. Her tongue poked out from the corner of her mouth as she worked. Her honey-coloured hair was smeared over her head in a flattened mess.

For a moment he didn’t recognize her. Not here. Not in this place.

‘Curl?’ he croaked in surprise. ‘Is that you, girl?’

Her eyes met his for a moment before they returned to her task. ‘I wondered if you’d recognize me,’ she panted.

‘What are you doing here, for Fool’s sake?’

‘Fixing your arm, so you don’t bleed to death.’

‘Are you all right?’

She paused to look up at him. ‘No,’ she said with a shake of her head, and tugged a bandage from her bag. ‘Are you?’

She was white with fear, he saw, and her eyes held a haunted look to them, as though she had witnessed things she’d vowed never to see again.

He recalled that she was a Lagosian, and that she’d survived all the crimes the Mannians had perpetrated against her people. In that moment, and with the greatest of intensity, Bahn thought: These bastard Mannians… if there is any justice in this world at all, we will somehow win this fight, and crush this army, and hang their Holy Matriarch by her stiff neck.

A body in the way, clearly dead. They both stepped over it as they walked onwards. Curl pressed a wad of bandage against his wound. ‘Hold that a moment,’ she told him, and searched through her bag again. She pulled out another bandage, began to wrap it around his arm. ‘You can let go of it now.’

Bahn reached for his flask of water. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and held it in the same hand as the flask and took a quick drink of the cool water. He was losing track of time here. How long had they been fighting now?

‘Drink?’ he asked Curl.

She opened her mouth and let him pour a little into it. When she finished tying the knot in his bandage, she took the cork from his hand and closed the flask and hung it across her shoulder from its strap. ‘I need it more than you,’ she told him. ‘For the wounded.’

He missed his chance to reply. Creed had spotted something up ahead, and was striding forwards to peer through the bristling spikes of the forward chartassa.

Bahn followed his gaze, barely believing what he saw. The Matriarch’s standard was flying directly ahead of them. Sasheen had joined the battle.

Sweet Dao, we might still reach her yet.

With the mortar shells continuing to fall down before them, shattering the enemy lines in confusion, Bahn experienced a momentary spike of hope.

If only Halahan can hold on to that ridge.

‘Colonel Halahan!’

‘I see it, Staff Sergeant.’

The Mannians were trying to attack from the other side of the ridge, the southern side away from the battle. He’d been expecting that for some time. A dozen Greyjackets were positioned there, crouched behind a low wall of snow and whatever dirt they’d been able to scrape up from the ground. They aimed their rifles and fired down on the enemy troops that scrabbled up the slope towards them.

A hail of rifle shots crackled back in reply. A Greyjacket tumbled backwards. The defenders managed another volley, and then they were drawing their shortswords to meet the attack.

The rest of the ridge was a similar scene of dispute, every flank hard pressed.

On the east flank, across the waist of the ridge, the surviving Greyjackets stood in two ranks and chopped and shoved against seemingly endless numbers of Ghazni regulars. They were exhausted, and being forced back step by step.

On the northern side, the majority of Greyjackets fought hand-to-hand against more infantry climbing the slope. Behind them, in the centre of the ridge, the mortar crews maintained their fire as fast as they could, though their supply of shells was starting to run low.

Watch it.

A Mannian broke through from the southern side where the newest attack had been launched. Colonel Halahan took the man in the chest with a shot from his pistol. He reloaded the piece as he studied the buckling lines, looking for areas of stress and weakness, judging tensions, breaking points, knots of strength, as an artisan might inspect the materials of his craft.

The lines were too damned thin. Two more Imperials broke through from the south. The colonel fired his pistol, yanked out another with his other hand, cocked it and fired that too. They were going to break at any moment, and after that the men across the waist would fold, and the rest of them would be finished.

‘Staff Sergeant Jay! Five men from the mortars to support the waist. Another five to the south.’

It was all he could do; if he relieved the mortar crews of any more men, their effect on the Mannian lines would be minimal.

Halahan leaned on his good leg as he drew life back into his pipe. He wondered if it was the last time he would experience the simple pleasure of a smoke. He hoped not, for the taste of it was bitter in his mouth just then.

Strange how his own mood could do that.

Halahan grunted. It seemed he was fated never to defeat these people.

Sergeant Jay was shouting something from the northern side of the ridge. Halahan turned and saw Imperials breaking through all along the line. The staff sergeant was laying into them left and right with his curved Nathalese tulwar as he yelled back over his shoulder. Halahan took aim and fired, sending an imperial beside the sergeant spinning away. He swung around in instinct, drawing another pistol and cocking it as he twisted, pointed it over his shoulder at a soldier rushing at him with a raised sword. Halahan pulled the trigger.

The firing arm snapped down, but nothing happened.

Halahan was too old to gape at such a surprise. He swerved a wild slash of the sword and punched the barrel of the gun into the man’s throat. His eyes saw him go down, but his mind was already taking in the line to the south.

It was collapsing too.

‘Hold tight!’ he roared around the stem of his pipe, fighting an urge to rush to the aid of his men. He discharged his fifth pistol into a soldier attacking the remaining mortar crews in the centre. He tossed it aside and drew out his last gun.

This is it, then, he thought grimly to himself. At least we took the fight to the bastards for once.

‘Colonel!’

Staff Sergeant Jay stood panting in exhaustion on the northern flank. All of the Greyjackets there were panting hard, steam rising off their bodies, swords dripping, looking down the slope. Somehow they’d fought off the attack.

Halahan left the desperate melee behind to step over and join them.

On the slope amongst the trees, black-garbed figures struggled upwards stabbing through the remaining Imperials as they climbed; Specials, all of them.

For an instant, Halahan was indeed surprised.

Hands reached down to aid the new arrivals. Faces appeared out of the night’s gloom, filthy, grim, wide-eyed. Perhaps forty in all, many of them wounded.

‘Glad you could make it,’ said Halahan as he pulled a woman to the top.

‘Glad to be here,’ she replied without breath.

‘Any officers?’

‘Dead,’ she told him.

Typical that, of the Specials, for their officers always led from the front. Halahan faced the newcomers. ‘Quickly, now. Those who can fight, spread out to support the lines. We are required to hold this ridge for as long as we can.’

Every one of them moved into a position of defence. In moments the lines stabilized and the remaining attacks were repulsed, save for the continuing thrust along the waist. At least they were holding their ground now.

Along all sides of the ridge, bodies were rolled against the makeshift walls to strengthen the defences.

‘Well done, Staff Sergeant.’

‘Thank you,’ said the old smith, dabbing at a cut on his brow.

‘Pull back those who need a few minutes to rest. See to the wounded, and pass out some water.’

The sergeant nodded, eyeing the Specials spread out amongst them. He leaned towards Halahan.

Quietly, he said, ‘You know that if they attack again, it still won’t be enough?’

‘I know it. But let’s keep that to ourselves for now, shall we?’

Now that Curl was within the relative protection of the main Khosian force, and had time to look about her, to think and feel, she found that terror was beginning swamping her.

It was no longer even the madness of the violence, nor the risk to her own life. No, it was her proximity to these soldiers of Mann, just on the other side of the chartassa – some even running amok within the formation. They were the same men who had gutted her people and laid her homeland to ash and waste.

Curl was ashamed of the fear they instilled in her; it was beyond reason, something primal in it like fear of darkness. It was appalling, this power they still held over her.

With haste she finished fitting Bahn’s wounded arm into a sling. It was good to stand next to him, a familiar face in the storm. The man was frightened too, she could see.

‘Thank you,’ he told her as he inspected the sling.

‘Have it seen to properly when you can,’ she told him.

They looked at each other for a moment, something unspoken passing between them. Bahn opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes flicked to the side, and she saw it too – a squad of imperial soldiers behind their lines, one of them tossing a grenade in their direction. Someone shouted a warning. Bahn launched himself at Curl. His arms wrapped around her, and then a bang knocked the senses out of her and she was engulfed in a wash of cold air, and then a hot blast.

She was lying on her back with the wind knocked out of her, and Bahn pressing against her body.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m all right.’

But his eyes were closed. She couldn’t feel him breathing.

With a shove she pushed him off her and onto his back. His left cheek was torn open. Blood leaked from the ear on that side. Another man lay close by them, his eyes staring blankly at the night sky.

‘Bahn!’ she shouted as she checked his pulse. It was hard to find, but it was there, faintly beating.

She was fumbling for her bag when General Creed himself came stamping towards her with his bodyguards trying to keep up. ‘Is he alive?’

‘Barely!’ she shouted back.

The general glanced across to where an officer was calling out to him. He returned his attention to Bahn sprawled on the ground.

‘Look after this one, you hear me!’

She nodded her head. Creed took one last look at Bahn then strode off towards the officer. ‘Look after him, you hear?’

‘Matriarch,’ said the captain of her honour guard. ‘We should withdraw to a safer position. You are exposed here.’

The captain was right. Sasheen was deep within the imperial lines, a position she’d sought for good reason.

‘Captain. When we win this battle I do not wish it to be said that I sat and watched it from the rear. You are my bodyguards. Protect me.’

Che listened to the exchange with interest. They stood in a clear space of field between the multitude of formations still to be employed in the fighting, and those in front already embroiled in the action.

The Khosians were edging ever closer.

Archgeneral Sparus had been beckoned to her side some moments earlier. He came now on foot, trailed by his own retinue of officers.

‘Can’t you stop them, Archgeneral?’ Sasheen demanded, sitting astride her zel as she considered the scene ahead. ‘I thought they were nearly finished?’

Sparus looked up at her with his bloodshot eye, like a man long ready for his bed. ‘They are, Matriarch. But they have mortar crews holding a superior firing position on the ridge to the south.’ He pointed for her benefit. ‘They fire down upon our forward lines. It allows them progress.’

‘Then retake the ridge and have us finish this.’

He hid his annoyance well. ‘We’re trying to, Matriarch. It will be ours again presently.’

She waved a hand to dismiss him, and Sparus gave a curt nod of his head.

Che turned his back on it all. Behind them the fresh infantry was standing impatiently, waiting for their turn to join the fight. They seemed eager to get this business finished too. It was cold in that armour of theirs on this frozen valley floor. Many were likely hung over, or at least still tired from being awakened so rudely from their sleep.

As a Roshun, and then as a Diplomat, Che had been trained to spot the important details first. Something drew his attention now, and he squinted between the formations of men at a lone Acolyte moving towards the Matriarch’s position.

It took Che a moment to become conscious of what was wrong with the image. The man wore leather leggings beneath his robe.

Che’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword.

Ash was close.

He could see the Matriarch astride her white zel, a golden mask over her face, surrounded by white-robes and mounted bodyguards and her standard hanging above them. His eyes narrowed.

He marched along the edge of a waiting square of men. Deserted camp equipment and trampled pup tents lay scattered across ground that had been churned into a filthy mush. He strode through the remnants of a campfire, scattering ashes and still-glowing embers. His hand closed around the hilt of his sword as he neared the outer ring of Acolytes gathered about the Matriarch.

Behind Sasheen, off to one side of the white-robes, a young Acolyte stood watching Ash.

Ash stopped.

The man drew his blade and stepped out to meet him.

As the Khosians pushed closer towards the Matriarch’s position, the imperial light infantry of the Eighty-First Predasa – less hardened auxiliaries in the main, freshly returned from garrison duty in the northern hinterlands, all of them now sober, tired, and positioned in the thick of the action next to a hardcore of Acolytes – decided that losing over half of their numbers to mortar fire and grenades, including most of their officers, was too much to tolerate for a single night, and decided to beat a retreat to safer ground.

They broke, in fact, when the largest and fiercest of their number, Cunnse of the northern tribes, there for the money and little else, threw aside his shield and sword and shoved his way back through the loosening ranks, shouting that enough was enough, it was time for someone else to meet the slaughter. It took only a moment for the rest to follow his lead.

In no time they were rushing back towards the lines behind them, back towards where the Matriarch was positioned. Others in the fore joined them, retreating from the concussions of mortars raining down from the overlooking ridge.

Che was shoved from behind by this sudden surge of men as he tried to stride forwards.

He fell, rolling through the muck as he held fast to his sword. When he regained his feet he saw men flooding past Sasheen’s position. Her Acolytes and mounted bodyguards struggled to shove them aside or back into the fray. Swords swung, felling some of them – dead men being better than routing ones.

Che looked back. He could no longer see the impostor in the sudden milling press of bodies.

What am I doing? he demanded of himself.

He had more urgent matters at hand. The Khosians were fast approaching the Matriarch’s position, who sat shocked on her jittery white zel with its tail dyed a pretty black.

Che shoved a fleeing soldier out of his way. He took out the pistol loaded with its poison shot.

Waited to see what Sasheen would do next.

Bahn came to a with a gasp, and found that he was being dragged along the ground by a bearded soldier.

A woman was fussing over him.

‘Marlee?’ he croaked.

It was Curl, though, not his wife, and she was bent over him with a vial of smelling salts in her hand. She looked surprised at his recovery, even managed a nervous twitch of her lips.

‘Don’t move,’ she said. ‘You may be concussed.’

He looked up into the bruised and bloodied face of the soldier. The man nodded to him, kept dragging him along.

He had no recollection of how he’d come to be here. One instant, Curl had been treating his wounded arm… then blackness. ‘What happened?’ he rasped.

‘You’re all right,’ she told him. ‘You’re going to be fine.’

‘Was I hit?’

‘You were caught in a blast. You’re lucky to be in one piece.’

He looked at his body, saw that everything was still there.

Around them the battle was still raging. The entire formation continued to push forwards. ‘Get me to my feet,’ he said, and held his hand out weakly.

Curl frowned, then grasped his hand, and she and the soldier hauled until Bahn stood on his own two feet. He felt faint, nauseous.

‘We’re still here, then,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ said the soldier in his roughened voice. ‘Afraid so.’