Antiagon Fire

57

Over the next eight days, while Quaeryt had the sense that they were being watched as they rode westward toward Barna, none of the scouts could find any tracks that might have supported that feeling, and the people in the towns through which they passed seemed to know nothing about any Antiagon troopers.

On Solayi, near midmorning under a clear and bright winter sky, not that it seemed much like winter, Quaeryt stiffened in the saddle, glancing toward the northwest and a slightly higher hill, covered only at the top with trees bearing gold-tinted green leaves. Quaeryt hadn’t seen any trees like them until the past few days, and every time he’d seen them, he’d observed that each stand was on a hilltop unconnected to any other forested area.

“Gets to you after a while, doesn’t it?” asked Skarpa. “You have the feeling people are watching, but you never see them, and no one knows anything about them.”

“Or no one wants to tell you anything about them. It seems like everyone is too frightened to say anything about Aliaro or whatever Shahib owns the lands.”

“Don’t know what it is, but they’re scared. They’re not scared of the Antiagon troopers. They’re cautious around them, but not frightened,” added Skarpa.

It has to be imagers, because there isn’t any other thing it could be … or something else of power having to do with the Autarch or the Shahibs. That bothered Quaeryt-a lot-because he wanted to build the imagers into a force to support Bhayar, but he didn’t like the aura of quiet fear he’d seen in the cities and towns of Antiago so far. Would it be different if only High Holders and wealthy factors had to worry? He didn’t have an answer for that question … as he didn’t for so many.

“You’re worried about an Antiagon attack,” observed Quaeryt. “Where would you attack us?”

“Right now,” replied Skarpa, not quite humorously. “We don’t know exactly where we are, and we’re really not in the best fighting formation, because you can’t travel as fast if you’re set for battle.”

“There’s no cover nearby,” Quaeryt pointed out.

“If they put cannon on one of those hills and aimed down along the road, we’d take casualties even if we broke and regrouped immediately. With all their warships, they must have cannon somewhere here in Antiago.”

“Cannon are heavy. That’s why Kharst didn’t have many except close to Variana.”

Skarpa grinned. “The road is paved, and how many large cities are left before us?”

“You’re saying we should expect cannon … soon.”

“I’ve ordered the scouts to look for any traces of heavy wear on the road or especially leaving it, and they’re scouting in squads.”

“So that someone is likely to return if they run into trouble?”

The submarshal nodded. “I don’t like it when things are too quiet and they shouldn’t be.”

“That’s why you have the scouts farther out than usual.” Quaeryt was just repeating what Skarpa had said earlier, trying to see if the older officer would add anything.

“The last thing we need to do is find ourselves riding into massed cannon, even with you and the imagers. Riding into heavy cannon fire in terrain we don’t know with a force as small as we have…”

“In short, when you’ve got almost thirty regiments you can take some fire, but not with six.”

“And not when we’re more likely to be facing gunners who know what to do with their weapons.”

That unfortunately made sense, and that was why Skarpa and Quaeryt had gone over orders with the regimental commanders on what to do if the Antiagons attempted to shell the column from a distance. Basically, those orders were a refinement on what Quaeryt had done in the last battles against the Bovarians-to move quickly, at an angle.

Skarpa cleared his throat. “You said you thought the Antiagons wouldn’t wait until we got too close to Barna or Liantiago. That, if they attacked us at all, they’d do so away from towns or cities.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I’d be interested in why you thought so. We couldn’t maneuver as well in a town or city.”

“Have you noticed how well kept the towns are, even the older buildings in them?”

Skarpa nodded, even as his eyes scanned the road ahead and the gentle rolling hills, their heights generally tree-covered.

“I’m just guessing, but everything I’ve seen or heard suggests that they try to preserve what they have. Using troops and cannon inside a city would go against that. If they’re using imagers to build things-or repair them-what they can do at any one time has to be limited.”

“Limited? Your imagers rebuilt the entire Chateau Regis in less than three weeks.”

“They refinished it and modified some things, and we had the largest gathering of imagers in the history of either Bovaria or Telaryn. The autarchs may have been using imagers longer, and they may have gathered a greater number of imagers from those that they have, but Antiago is a smaller and less populous land-”

“Frig!” Skarpa gestured ahead to where a puff of smoke appeared above the trees on the hillside a good three-fifths of a mille ahead on the north side of the road. On the road to the south of the hilltop, a scouting patrol appeared, galloping back over a low rise in the road, and one trooper was waving a red banner-danger-trying to get Skarpa’s attention.

Almost instantly, the shoulder of the road ahead on the south side of the pavement erupted into a geyser of dirt, stones, and gravel.

“First company! On me!” Holding his imaging shields barely extended away from himself and the mare, Quaeryt urged her forward and to the north side of the road, across a field at an angle toward a stand of trees near the top of a ridge. The imager undercaptains and first company rode close behind him. As he glanced back, he could see Skarpa and Fhaen leading Third Regiment southeast at a quick trot.

Another explosion, even closer to him, so that stones and gravel rattled off his shields, momentarily blocked a better view of what the various regiments were doing. Quaeryt looked to the west, noting the location of the haze of smoke that marked from where the cannon were firing, then guided the mare more to the north so that first company would end up behind the trees.

The time it took first company to reach the trees, the same ones with the gold-tinged leaves, seemed like a full glass, but was far less than half a quint. Once Quaeryt had the company temporarily out of sight, he immediately raised sight shields and led them, at a fast walk, down the far side of the ridge and then along the fields to the west, trying to gauge how to reach the lower edge of the woods from which the Antiagon gunners were firing.

The field grass was barely ankle high as he led first company toward the larger hill from which the cannon were firing, but then, Quaeryt reflected, it was still supposedly late winter, and the meadows and fields in most of Bovaria and Telaryn were still likely cold and possibly frozen, and certainly still snow-covered in Tilbor. He could almost feel the passage of cannonballs across the sky to the south before they landed and exploded, but with the ridge between him and the road, he had no idea how effective the Antiagon gunners were being. He did know that he and first company had to put the cannon out of action as soon as possible.

The grassy field sloped down to a depression before slowly rising toward the trees that held the cannon still firing eastward at Southern Army. As he rode closer, all Quaeryt could see was a narrow expanse of dirt and mud, an indication that a stream had run there intermittently. Once he felt that first company was close enough that the cannon could not be depressed enough to fire at first company, he dropped the concealment shields and raised full shields across the front of the column.

“Imagers! Shields!”

Quaeryt had barely issued the order when a hail of arrows arched out from the trees, the clattered off his shields.

Under the cover of the archers, two squads of troopers in maroon and white uniforms advanced from the woods, half of them bearing long pikes.

“Advance and plant!” called a voice from the trees.

“Threkhyl,” said Quaeryt in a low voice image-projected to the undercaptain, “bring the trees down on them.”

A sound like rainfall followed a series of creaks and cracking sounds as the greenish gold leaves shivered while the limbs and the trunks bearing those limbs shuddered and then toppled northward onto the advancing pikemen.

Only a handful of the pikemen escaped the tangle of leaves, branches, and limbs, but behind the welter of fallen trees some hundred yards wide were several hundred troopers bearing small round shields larger than bucklers and blades longer than the sabres of first company. Behind them were archers, not quite a company’s worth, Quaeryt judged, although it was hard to tell with so many of them partly concealed by the shadows of the tall trees with their green-golden leaves.

Almost absently, Quaeryt noted that the trees were planted in rows. Another kind of orchard?

Above them on the hillside, the sound of yet another round being fired echoed down the slope, reminding Quaeryt that the objective was not the archers and the troopers in the woods, but the cannon on the slopes above. Unfortunately, bringing down the line of trees had made charging the archers all but impossible. And you’ll lose too much of first company if you don’t deal with the archers.

“Imagers! Iron darts on the archers!”

As the archers began to fall, the footmen glanced around, then began to break. With that so did the remaining archers.

“Khalis, Lhandor, Voltyr! Hot iron to the cannon!” Quaeryt followed his order by imaging scores of hot iron splinters to the area where the cannon appeared to be. When there was no apparent reaction, he tried again, and a faint flash of pain seared across his eyes, then faded. He took a deep breath.

For several moments nothing seemed to happen. Then the top of the hillside erupted into a geyser of flame, and the ground under the mare’s hoofs shook for several moments before subsiding. The remaining handful or so of Antiagon troopers staying in the trees glanced uphill, then turned and sprinted for the woods to the west.

“First company! Hold!” ordered Quaeryt.

“Hold!” echoed Zhelan.

Quaeryt quickly scanned the tree debris between first company and where the Antiagon force had been, but he saw no movement, but it was more likely that any surviving Antiagons were lying low than that the toppling trees had killed or wounded them all.

The flames rising from the top of the hill faded into an orangish yellow light, but did not die away. Slowly, as first company re-formed and as fourth squad took charge of the few handfuls of Antiagon prisoners, that orangish light began to intensify. Before long, thick gray smoke began to billow upward, and a sweetish, almost perfume-like odor filled the air, rather than the acrid scents Quaeryt associated with fire.

“The whole top of the hill’s on fire,” declared Horan. “Must be oil nut trees.”

Quaeryt had read about oil nut trees, but he’d never seen them, nor had he realized how fiercely they might burn. He turned to Zhelan. “The fire’s spreading, and it’s hot. There’s no way we can track down or capture the Antiagons who fled. We need to finish re-forming and head back to Southern Army.”

“We’re ready to go, sir.” Zhelan paused. “We don’t know if the rest of Southern Army was attacked, do we?”

Quaeryt appreciated the gentle reminder that they had no idea what they might be heading back toward. “Once we leave here, I’ll try to hold concealment shields until we have a better idea of what to expect.”

“Yes, sir.” The major turned in the saddle. “Head out! On the commander!”

Quaeryt eased the mare forward.

Even after he’d ridden several hundred yards east, he could feel the heat from the burning oil trees on his back, and he had no doubt that the troopers in fourth squad and the prisoners they were marching with felt it even more strongly.

Once first company began to circle back toward the road, Quaeryt asked Zhelan, “Do you have any idea of our casualties?”

“Five wounded, maybe a few more. No deaths so far. The archers were the problem, and the imagers’ shields protected most of the men.”

“I can’t believe the oil nut trees.”

“They use the oil for lamps. Must work well,” said Zhelan blandly.

Quaeryt couldn’t help smiling, but he kept looking at other hilltops and at the road. The section of road to the west of where Southern Army had been was clear, although there were small craters on both sides of the road and places in the road itself where the cannonballs had hit and left shattered stone and small depressions.

Southern Army was largely formed up by the time first company reached the section of the main road east of where Quaeryt had been when the initial cannon fire had begun. Quaeryt saw bodies in maroon and white everywhere. Most of the fallen looked either too young or too old to be proper troopers. Leaving first company in the vanguard position for the continued advance on Barna, Quaeryt rode back to meet Skarpa.

The submarshal gestured toward the raging fire on the hilltop to the west. “What did you do?”

“We blew up the cannon. The fire happened because they were hidden in an oil nut tree plantation. I’d wager that’s why all those hilltops with the trees that have golden green leaves are surrounded by pastures and meadows. What happened here?”

“They sent a mounted regiment against us.” Skarpa offered a wry smile. “I did tell you that they’d find out we were heading toward Liantiago no matter what we did.”

“You were right.”

“In a way.” Skarpa shook his head. “They were barely trained. They lost over a thousand troopers before the rest broke and fled. There wasn’t any point in trying to chase them down. They’re scattered all over the countryside.”

“And Southern Army?”

“We lost fifty or so, but we’ve got another hundred fifty, maybe two hundred wounded. The whole thing was designed to see how much they could bleed us without risking really trained troopers, or likely even their best gunners or cannon. Terrible waste of men.” The submarshal frowned. “Unless they intend to keep doing the same thing all the way to Liantiago.”

“That could be a problem,” admitted Quaeryt, “but I can’t believe they have that many troops to spare.” After a moment he asked, “Did you run into any musketeers?”

“No. Did you?”

“Not a one. A company of archers, but no musketeers.”

“Cannon, but no musketeers. That’s strange,” mused Skarpa. “Can’t be because muskets are too heavy, not if they’re lugging cannon up on hilltops.”

“You think it could be because they don’t use muskets on their ships?”

“I have no idea, but it bothers me. I don’t want to be surprised the way we were in Bovaria.”

Neither did Quaeryt, and he had to admit to himself that it bothered him as well, but there were more than a few aspects to Antiago that were troubling-and they’d likely become even more troubling if he and Skarpa were successful in removing Aliaro and controlling Liantiago.