Beyond the Bulwarks Read online

  Purple brilliance pulled Anzo’s gaze back to the northeast tower. A tight swarm of lightning-hearted globes was wheeling above Terminus. Hairs stood up across Anzo’s body, some of the men at the walls bawling in panic. Then, one by one, the globes parted from the formation, carved across the sky in purple smears, and struck at the rear of the Vhurrian horde. Blinding jets of fire pulsed into the air, bodies and fragments of them carried hundreds of feet from the thunder cracks.

  Panic and retreat carried from the rear to the front. With a cacophony that defied description, the horde broke and flowed away into the Lydirian, as many dying in the rout, crushed in the press, trampled or drowned, as had to Legion weaponry. All across the Salient Line, the Vhurrs fled, chased on their way by cheers, clarion calls, and the pitiful squeals of the abandoned dying.

  Maricius was waving frantically to the signalers on the towers. “Break off! Do not pursue! Cease firing!”

  Down by the riverbank south of Estpont, some of the Secundus urged their mounts into the water, whirlwinds of violence amongst cowed Vhurrs, surging ever on with their discipline at the ragged edge of disintegration.

  “Break off!” Maricius relented as the signal lanterns fluttered the commands. He shook himself. “At this rate, that rain is going to play hell with our bow strings and catapult lines. We’ve got to give it a rest, conserve our supplies and strength.”

  A final flurry of Varya’s sorcery ravaged the river and the streams of men trudging back to the opposite side. The sharp crashes set Anzo’s teeth to grinding.

  “That was some damned fine timing on the part of Lady Varya,” Maricius said.

  Anzo’s grin prickled with an odd kind of pride he was only beginning to understand.

  The Legate leaned out through a crenel. He stared for a long time then pinched the bridge of his nose and turned away. “By Aeydon...that’s three thousand dead down there, at the least, to say nothing of those in front of the other forts and towers.” His face showed pasty and white, framed in the steel of his helm. “I don’t suppose that butcher’s bill will deter this Theregond any, will it?”

  Anzo watched Legionnaires and Auxiliaries and their civilian supports cheering and clapping one another in congratulations. Down by the river, Enu rode back and forth before his cavalry, whirling his blade high while his reforming riders shook spears and howled their appreciation. The triumph of the moment soured in Anzo’s stomach, became a chill that had Theregond’s smirk at its heart.

  “No. This is only the beginning.”

  ***

  The rain let up by evening. With its hiss gone, the miserable chorus of the dying wormed up to the battlements, along with a stink of mud, feces, and rot.

  At the wall, at the spot of flagstone he’d occupied so long now he figured the Empire would have to charge him with loitering, Anzo watched the night. Across the Lydirian, fires scrawled the dark and a deep, discordant song carried over the moans of the maimed. He ground his teeth, listening to the mournful notes, shot through with screams of anguish from Vhurrian womenfolk. He could hear the words: vengeance, slaughter, feud for all time.

  And Arshann.

  He’d seen Enu briefly for clasped hands and smiles before Maricius sent the Kharzualn riding off into the damp dark on a myriad of errands. The Legate, himself had crept away at sundown for food and conference with his commanders. Archers prowled the battlements, civilians scurried about with food for the defenders. But Anzo was alone.

  “A little wine for the chill?”

  Anzo managed a smile as he turned to Varya. He accepted a Legion-issue wineskin from her, uncorked it and took a long pull. He gagged at the watered-down warmth—he was spoiled, he figured, by Maricius’ personal stock. “Thank you.” He handed the skin back to her. “That was good work you did, this morning.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” The shadow of her hood hid her features but he saw the glimmer of tears. “But it was what the situation asked for.”

  Anzo pulled her into his arms and let his shoulder muffle her sobs for a time. A Legionnaire wandered by, eyes on the pair with a curious expression until Anzo’s glare chased him away.

  “There’ll be more.”

  Anzo squeezed harder. “That’s true.”

  “I don’t know how much I can take.”

  “You need to be strong.”

  “Of course, I know that.” She pulled back from him, wiped her nose. “Listen to me...like a First Year protege.” She shook herself. “I’m all right.”

  He touched her cheek. “I know you are.”

  Blinking, she gazed across the river and the Vhurrian firelight glinted on still-damp cheeks. “I’m surprised they haven’t returned yet.”

  “They thought they’d walk over us,” Anzo said. “Theregond probably warned them, but they wouldn’t have listened. Now, he’s probably working to rile them up again. They have to fight. There’s nothing left behind them but starvation.” He sighed. “We won’t get many breaks like this again.”

  “I can do this.”

  Anzo realized Varya was steeling herself. He brushed her arm. “You can.”

  “All Initiates train for the battle arts.” Her voice sounded far away. “But I didn’t really think I’d have to use them. Once, I thought I might study to be an Eye of Thoth or maybe research with the Seers. But Master Ossys said talents as potent as mine shouldn’t go to waste.” Something caught in her voice. She snorted bitterly. “To waste...”

  “There’ll be time for those things, Varya.” Anzo took her by the shoulders.

  She smiled at him, tolerantly, as she would to someone who is lying. “Can you promise me that?”

  Anzo drew her back into his arms, held on tight. “I promise.”

  Somehow, he meant to make it the truth.

  ***

  Dawn brought the Vhurrs surging across the Lydirian again. Though the overcast hung low, the rains didn’t return. The barbarians were clear for all to see in their numbers and their ferocity.

  Crows, crouched to a feast amongst the dead, took the sky in great clouds at their approach. The pattern of before was changed, two columns trudging forward now, deeply-packed, aiming to either side of Terminus. The Vhurrs moved more deliberately, tolerated the savage storm of Imperial artillery, ignored gaps ripped open by ballista shot and craters of flame dashed in their midst by the catapults.

  Aurid had played its tricks. The Empire had nothing left they hadn’t seen and none could match a Vhurr for marching up to a death he anticipates.

  Maricius watched the battle develop from Anzo’s side, flicking occasional glances to the towers and the patterns of the signal lanterns. “I’m still waiting on their cavalry.”

  “Well, they’ve seen yours now.” Anzo leaned into a crenel to watch the rightward column clamor for the walls of Estpont. “I think they’ll wait till you play Enu again.”

  The Legate grunted and looked northward. “I fear that won’t be too long coming.”

  Anzo climbed up onto the battlements to follow the commander’s straining gaze. The left column had reached the riverbank and seemed to be building up courage, even as Imperial archery slashed through them. A flurry of throwing axes hurtled uphill, the range long but the Imperial bowmen chased back into their ditches. A flurry went through the Legion, officers racing back and forth behind them, readying the men to rise up out of cover.

  With a shriek, the Vhurrs clambered up the hill, stomping over heaps of bodies left from the day before, a few still twitching and grasping at the pant legs of passing comrades. A last shower of Imperial arrows was answered by a storm of axes and spears and then the lines were at each other. The steely ranks of the Legion rippled with the shock but held. The gruesome shoving match, flick of steel, and red flow of gore commenced. The Legion line seemed pitifully thin, trembling against an avalanche.

  “Get down from there,” Maricius growled.

  A spattering of Vhurrian arrows clacked against the wall well below Anzo. He grinned. “Maybe you should come up her
e. The view’s great.” The memory of Arriakan recurved bows and a few misses much closer to the battlements convinced him of the Legate’s wisdom, however. Scuttling down, he said, “The right column is nearly at Estpont.”

  A roar from below made his pronouncement superfluous. The Vhurrs on the right angled across Terminus’ front, away from its river walls and the abandoned Estpont harbor, heaving around in a hook for the walls of the frontier town. The palisades shuddered to the impact of bodies and the crash of scaling ladders flung to the tops. Throwing axes set defenders to hunching and Vhurrs flowing up the palisade. Then they were amidst the Auxiliaries in flashes of violence. Horns called warning and Legion detachments peeled away from the ignored harbor barricades to scurry to the walls. Breakthroughs expanded then contracted, driven back to the ladders and death.

  Flames fluttered to life south of Estpont’s walls. The Vhurrians lapped around the town and were ravaging amongst the abandoned suburbs, what little discipline that existed amongst the barbarians failing at the thought of plunder. Doors and walls splintered, windows crashed, and torches fed on thatch. Howls of disappointment became frenzy as the men seethed through the empty outskirts and slammed against the town’s south gate. Small groups, seeing the hard fight there, broke off in sprays across the hillside, wandered further upwards towards the Legion road.

  Maricius turned and waved to the west wall.

  “Enu?” Anzo asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Squalls of Vhurrian panic presaged the appearance of horsemen atop the rise. Several dozen riders fanned out and trotted downhill in apparent nonchalance. Bows flashed from cases as the lightly-armored horsemen approached. Moments later, arrows flicked out to sting the small groups. Vhurrs dropped here and there, their comrades flinching back into hard groups with shields locked.

  Anzo shuddered at the resemblance to the Arriaks. But these were legion outriders, skirmishing specialists, many of them Kharzulans with a taste for loose, fast-flowing fighting style. They edged closer, lashing the knots of barbarians. Men who broke from their fellows in wild charges were cut down. The rest began to backpedal towards their main body.

  “Smarter than they look.” Maricius sniffed. “Of course, even a dog knows to cower when he’s kicked.” His gaze went to the towers and the signalers. “Way Forts Three, Four, and Five are under attack, as are all the Watch Towers between them.” He gave Anzo a grim look. “Theregond’s not falling back, this time.”

  The sun slipped through a part in the clouds as the rising heat of the day unraveled the overcast. Humidity gave the struggle a thick, cloying character, men soaked in sweat, the splash of the river, the blood of their fellows. The initial frenzy of the attack faded, was replaced by the slow, grinding push and shove of a wrestling match. Crises flared while other sectors went calm, desultory fights that wound down out of exhaustion and sudden thrashings as new blood took up the struggle. The crows wheeled above the chaos, some of the more daring darting down for a go at the slain. A few of the birds looked obscenely huge, fattened already on the day’s kill.

  Maricius rested the archers and artillery crews on the river wall, targets few with the fight in the dead ground below the walls. Shifts changed, units shifted positions, messages rattled out. The Fort took on an almost businesslike hum while the officers watched from the walls and anarchy raged beyond them. Glancing to the northeast tower, Anzo wondered what Varya was doing.

  An overdue breakfast arrived near midday for Maricius, cold salted pork, crackers, and a wineskin. The Legate was about to offer Anzo a bite when his aide, Sparto, came running. Behind the young man, beyond the north wall, urgent clarion calls played counterpoint to a great roar. “Problem, Legate!”

  “I can hear that.” Maricius cast aside a scrap of meat and stood from his meager plate.

  “They’re breaking on the left.” Sparto paused to catch his breath. “The Vhurrs are flowing into the low draw you’d worried about, between the cohorts.”

  Anzo started to mount the battlements but Maricius grabbed him by the sword belt and dragged him back down. “Stop that foolishness. Follow me.”

  The Legate led Anzo and Sparto to the north wall at a steady, deliberately unhurried gait. Arriving there, they found archers’ and artillery crews’ fire slowing while officers shouted or paced in frustration. The reason for the slowdown became apparent when Anzo shouldered his way to a crenel and looked out.

  The great filthy mass of the Vhurrs bunched before the narrow, metallic ranks of the Legion. The slope down to the riverside behind them writhed and fumed with wounded, dead, and streams of fresh men grinding their way to the fore for a chance at glory in oblivion. Sheer weight of numbers had ground the Legionnaires back to their fortified ditches where the fight was a nightmare of splintered abatis, piled corpses, mud, and heaving forms. In a few spots, Imperials fell back from the ditches to gain height and spear the Vhurrs down as the floundered in the muck, giving the Legion line the appearance of constant flexing.

  Into that mix, the archers and artillery could not fire for fear of raking their comrades.

  But the real point of the crisis was further down, where the lines dipped into a ravine. Motion was visible, blurs of thrown spears, axes, rocks, and the Legionnaires on either side of the draw were folding back, highlighting the breakthrough. Already, Vhurrs emerged from the gulley behind the punctured line in sprays, some wheeling to either side and hastening the backpedaling of the cohorts around them, others dashing for the Legion road and open ground.

  “Damn it.” Maricius waved along the wall. “Keep up the fire below the wall.” He pointed as officers glanced about in uncertainty. The angle the Legate indicated was dangerously low and near the battlements for the artillery crews. “Fire, damn you! Fire now!”

  Unwilling to defy their commander, the crews labored to pivot their catapults and ballista at the awkward angle while the archers resumed their mechanical knock-loose-pluck-knock-loose. A catapult released with a crackle of lines. Its firepot screamed down along the wall, so close naptha lashed its stones and Anzo flinched back, eyes dazzled and flecks of skin smarting.

  Below, Vhurrs howled in agony.

  Maricius whipped about to face the west wall and held up a hand, first with two fingers then with one. A signaler gestured acknowledgement and relayed the signal. Endless minutes passed as Anzo watched the breakthrough to the north widen and Vhurrs pour up onto the road while the Legion cohorts fell back like flaps of peeled fruit from a thumbnail.

  Maricius rapped the battlements with a gauntleted fist. “Come on. Come on.” The Legions could take a hammering for longer than any in the world, but after half a day’s steady fighting even they would begin to crumble in panic if the crisis was not met.

  Clarions sounded from behind Terminus, followed by a rumble that filled Anzo with a rush of warmth. A cohort of the Secundus trotted up the road, their gait building as their column of two’s swung out into a line fifty files wide. By the time they’d fully deployed, their left was at a full gallop, wheeling around like a door. The cornicerns sounded again and a cheer crashed from the onrushing riders, a dazzling tide of metal, shields, spear points, and their Kharzulan commander out ahead, scimitar tracing circles of lightning in the air.

  Anzo joined the Secundus’ cheer, hollered till his voice cracked while Maricius and the men along the battlements accompanied him.

  The Secundus washed over the Vhurrs in the road and surged into the gap in the infantry’s line, closing it with a clamor of destruction and panicked squeals. On either side, the Legionnaires pushed back into the ravine, compressing their foes into a mass clenched so tightly they could not wield their weapons, could only howl as they were butchered and the men behind them suffocated under the weight of their bodies.

  Anzo pulled back from the crenel, blew out a breath of relief, trembling as though he’d been part of the struggle below. Wearily, he noted a lone column of flame on the rocky height below Terminus’ northeast tower, marking the demise of
Varya’s little shrine of Thoth to Vhurrian torches. Worried suddenly, inexplicable for her, he looked to the tower top. He thought he heard a cry of fear and saw instantly the purple gleam of her sorcery. But the frantic waving of the signaler there drew his attention, instead. The man was gesturing into the sky, to the east.

  Oh, shit...

  Winged shapes flashed through the clouds of carrion birds above the river, dashing them into panicked vortices with their passing. Monstrous, vaguely feminine shrieks set Anzo’s skin to crawling and he thought he caught the vague stink of musk and bird feces.

  “Archers!” Anzo bellowed. He grabbed Maricius, flung the Legate about and pointed into the sky. “Get everyone firing!”

  “What are you—” Maricius’ expression went from angered confusion to horror in a moment. “Aeydon...what are those?”

  “Harpies.” Anzo tore his saber free. “Arshann is here.”

  Purple bolts ripped from the top of the northeast tower. Varya’s sorcery caught one of the harpies a glancing blow. The creature from the Age of Dreams spun in midair, feathers puffing away in fiery tatters, wings flailing as it attempted to keep altitude. A second bolt struck it squarely, bits of meat fluttering away as a rope of smoke traced its downward spiral to the river.

  Dozens followed the first, tearing the air with their keening. Archers on the river wall loosed recklessly, crisscrossing the sky with projectiles that seemed impossibly slow to claim the dodging beasts as they descended. One took arrows in both eye sockets and thrashed to rip them free as it plummeted. Another, torso prickled with bolts, reached the battlements only to be bludgeoned from the heights by archers wielding their bows as weapons.

  Then the rest were at the battlements of Terminus. Harpies died, skewered on spears, cut off at the legs by swords. But others tumbled in amongst the bowmen, savaging back and forth in their midst. One got a hapless Imperial in its arms and dragged the man wailing over the wall with it. A pair leapt onto a catapult, gashing crewmen with claws and fangs, snapping lines, overturning a firepot kept at the ready and washing a twenty-foot span of the river wall in flames.