Reign of Ash (43 page)

“W
e’re under attack!”

The shout woke Niklas from his sleep, and the sound of the camp rousing for battle snapped him instantly alert. He rolled from his cot, dressed in a rush, and belted on his sword. By the time he cleared the doorway of his tent, he could see his soldiers already mobilizing.

Thank the gods I decided to stay down here with the men instead of up at Glenreith
, Niklas thought and gave a worried glance over his shoulder. Up on the hill, Glenreith loomed dark and silent.

“Report!” Niklas collared one of the soldiers who ran toward where the men were forming up into battle ranks.

“Don’t know who or why, but we’ve got a godsdamned army closing in on us, sir,” the man reported, his face flushed with excitement.

“Shit,” Niklas muttered.

“Captain!” Niklas looked up as Ayers strode in his direction.

“Tell me what we’re up against,” Niklas replied, falling into step as he and Ayers made their way toward where the men were massing. He could hear his lieutenants rallying the soldiers, assigning posts, readying for battle.

“Best guess is that it’s Pollard, and he’s got more men than we do,” Ayers replied tersely. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he intends to take out our camp, then march on Glenreith.”

“
Talishte
?” Niklas asked.

Ayers grinned. “That’s one thing that went right, sir. They sent
talishte
against us as a sneak attack and didn’t expect us to have biters of our own. We drove them back, and the scouts had a chance to report that there’s a large force headed our way.”

Niklas nodded grimly. “Now we get to see if all our preparation was worth a damn. I’m glad we’ve gotten some reinforcements.”

Though they had not been camped long, Niklas’s men had been busy in the time they had been at Arengarte. One contingent had dug out and secured the old cellars as a precaution against magic storms. The other three contingents had been tasked with fortifying both Arengarte and Glenreith. Both Blaine’s manor house and Niklas’s family home were included within the defensive line Niklas and his commanders had devised.

More important, word had spread that Niklas’s straggler army had returned. Since they set up camp, two other bands of soldiers found their way to Arengarte and asked to swear allegiance to Niklas’s lord and join his regiment.
Glad to have the extra help
, Niklas thought.
Something tells me we’re going to need it.

“Use the signal lantern to get word to Glenreith,” Niklas ordered.

Niklas’s troops had turned a large rectangular area connecting Arengarte and Glenreith into a no-man’s-land, with a heavily defended perimeter. Four lines of defense were designed to make an advance as slow and costly as possible for attackers and to provide defenders with time to inflict a steep toll on their enemies. Only one clear path led to the camp and past it, to Glenreith, and it was well guarded and easily blocked.

The forest had yielded a wealth of trees from which abatises were formed: tangles of large trees felled or positioned so their sharp branches faced the enemy, impeding advance. Behind the abatises, Niklas’s soldiers had dug deep trenches lined with sharpened pikes. Caltrops had been fashioned from old nails harvested from ruined buildings and bent into wicked, four-pronged shapes that always had one pointed end skyward, ready to impale a boot or a hoof. The caltrops were spread lavishly across the land on all sides of the defended area, where they became nearly invisible in the dry grass.

Behind the abatises and the trenches were line upon line of X-shaped wooden obstacles, logs studded with sharpened pikes designed to stop a mounted attack and slow men on foot. Behind the pike-logs the men had thrown up an embankment to hide archers who could pick off invaders as they wormed their way through the defenses. In the heart of the camp, small, mobile catapults were armed with a nearly inexhaustible supply of rocks to lob at an advancing force.

“Let them come,” Niklas muttered. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Captain Theilsson!”

Niklas turned, and in the blink of an eye, Gennedy, one of the
talishte
fighters Geir had assigned to the camp, seemed to appear out of nowhere to stand before him.
I’m never going to get used to that damn
talishte
speed
, Niklas thought, simultaneously grateful that, thanks to Geir, he could claim some of that advantage on his side.

“We struck camp, and the open area is secure. My archers are in place,” Gennedy reported.

Niklas nodded. “Good, good. We’ve got to hold Pollard here, keep him from getting anywhere close to Glenreith.” He gave a wolfish grin. “The more of Pollard’s men we kill tonight, the fewer we’ll have to deal with later.”

Gennedy’s smile mirrored his, even more predatory with his visible fangs. “I have no love for Reese’s men. We’ll clear the skies for you.”

After the pounding Geir’s
talishte
had given their camp over Blaine’s capture, finding a way to avoid
talishte
-inflicted casualties had become a high priority. Once Geir’s vampires and Niklas’s men had patched up their misunderstanding, they had worked together to find a way to protect the camp – and Glenreith – from similar attack.

Niklas had a small number of
talishte
fighters, far too few to risk in hand-to-hand combat if it could be avoided. Instead, he had matched the
talishte
with his best mortal archers to make aerial attack expensive. Striking the tents and hiding them in the stone cellars meant the camp became far less vulnerable to fire.

Now it’s time to see if it all works the way it’s supposed to work
, Niklas thought as he strode down the lines. His soldiers were the final defense, and they were ready.

“Pull!” Across the camp, the command echoed as one after the other, the catapult teams lobbed their missiles at the dark shapes just beyond the abatis line. Niklas heard the whirr and squeal of the mechanisms, the thunk as the central wooden rod slammed against the wooden mechanism, sending its deadly contents flying through the air.

High overhead, Niklas could make out more of the dark shapes. Arrows sang through the air as the
talishte
archers let fly and reloaded almost faster than mortal sight could follow. Both the archers and the catapult soldiers had a second round of defense, with oil-soaked rags and chunks of wood that could turn arrows and catapult rocks into fiery projectiles.

“They’re attacking from the west, sir.” The messenger was Taras, one of Niklas’s men.

Niklas nodded, still watching the sky warily as volleys of arrows disappeared into the darkness. “How many?”

“Hard to say, Captain. Estimate about seventy-five on horseback, and at least as many on foot.”

“Damn,” Niklas muttered. “Are the battlements holding?”

Taras nodded. “For now.”

“Has Glenreith seen the warning lantern?” Niklas asked, casting a worried glance toward the dark outline of the walled manor on the hill behind them.

“Aye. They’ve readied themselves.” Niklas could see that, despite the hour, torchlight blazed along the archers’ walks around the top of Glenreith’s walls.

“Sir, you’d better see this!” Niklas and Taras both turned to follow the voice. Ayers pointed toward the western fortifications, where one line of the abatis had been set aflame.

“It was just a matter of time,” Niklas muttered. “Did the men soak the wood first?”

Ayers nodded. “Most of the trees were still green when we felled them, so they won’t take like tinder. But sooner or later, they’ll take.”

Niklas sighed. He’d never thought Pollard a fool, and any decent military man knew that fire and grappling hooks could dismantle even the best-laid abatis. All it took was time.

Ayers seemed to guess his thoughts. “We’ve moved the catapults, so we’re making it difficult for them. They may be able to set the fires from a distance, but the grappling hooks will bring them out into the open where we can pound them.” Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes, and a cold chill went down Niklas’s back.

Does Pollard have any idea who he’s taken on?
Niklas wondered.
My men may not have been the king’s crack troops, but they’ve been beaten and gotten back up again, marched across half a continent, and lived to tell the tale. They’d like nothing better than to give someone the whipping they couldn’t deliver in person to Meroven.

A man’s scream echoed in the darkness. There was the sound of flapping cloth, and a sickening thud as a body fell from the sky with several arrows protruding from his back. A few yards farther, another body fell, and a cheer rose from Niklas’s men. Two soldiers ran out with torches and lit the downed bodies of enemy
talishte
, which caught fire like dry leaves and burned with the smell of putrid meat, flashing into flame and then dissolving into cinders. Niklas watched the burning corpses with a mixture of satisfaction and dismay.

What do our
talishte
allies think?
Niklas wondered. Yet he could not disavow his own feral pleasure at seeing such a nearly invincible opponent brought down. And it was not lost on him that the arrows were most likely fired by the undead fighters who had been assigned to protect his camp.
Reese and Penhallow have been enemies for a long time
, he thought.
Maybe they were itching for a reason to fight, and we just offered a convenient excuse.

Two large sections of the abatis were on fire, with flames reaching high into the night sky. As Niklas watched, three other sections caught fire. Taras and Ayers returned to the line, but one after another, more runners came bearing news. Niklas squinted, trying to make out anything on the horizon, but Pollard’s men were still too far away.
For now
, Niklas thought darkly.
Pollard’s not the type to give up. But with luck, by the time he manages to break through, we’ll have whittled his forces down to size.

Niklas knew he was supposed to remain visible by pacing along the lines, cheering on his men. Yet he itched for hand-to-hand combat, the sheer physical release that came with launching himself into the fray and working out his anger with the blade of his sword.

The only warning Niklas had was the sound of rushing air, enough to cause his battle-heightened nerves to throw him sideways as a round object fell from the sky. The sphere exploded on impact, sending a rain of fire and shards in a wide burst. Another explosion sounded seconds later, then another and another, with a deadly hail of broken pottery and flame.

“What in Raka is that? Where are the archers?” Niklas shouted, beating out the places where his cloak had caught fire. One of the catapult crews had taken a direct hit; the men rolled on the ground, trying to douse the fires that burned their flesh while the catapult itself was a total loss.

“The archers are still firing, but Reese’s
talishte
are dropping those godsdamned fire bombs from so high up, our arrows can’t reach them!” Gennedy shouted.

Niklas stooped to examine the remains of the nearest bomb. Charred shards told him all he needed to know.
Some kind of pottery vessel, filled with oil, with a rag for a wick and lit just before it’s dropped. When the flames hit the oil, it burns and spreads.

Niklas helped drag the survivors free of the fires, then joined the men shoveling dirt and rocks onto the patches of still-flaming oil. Thanks to the precaution of striking the camp at the first sign of attack, the main area was free of nearly everything except catapults, archers’ blinds, and a few shielded campfires. Their tents, provisions, and other materials awaited them in the underground storage chambers.
If we survive to retrieve them
, Niklas thought.

He stared up at the night sky, watching for the next round of firebombs. By now, his men knew to watch overhead, spot the falling objects, and scatter. Even so, fires flared across the inner camp, and men screamed in agony as the splattered oil set them aflame.

Niklas cast a worried glance toward Arengarte.
Thank Mother Esthrane that we thought to stable the horses in the granary threshing floor instead of out in the open. Arengarte, with its stone walls, is likely to survive. We’ll have plenty of food and enough water from the mill to outlast the siege.

“Look up!” one of the soldiers shouted. Niklas dodged for cover and looked skyward.

In the moonlight, he could just make out a dark shape streaking up, as a smaller shadow fell toward the ground. Before the pottery bomb could hit the ground, a man’s silhouette snatched it from the air, doused its wick, then levitated gently down to land a few feet away from Niklas.

Gennedy was grinning broadly, his eyeteeth prominent. In his hands he carried one of the lethal oil bombs. “Can’t promise we’ll get all of them, but we’ll catch as many as we can,” he said. He handed off the sphere to Niklas. “You might want to keep these – could come in handy if we get to return the favor and besiege those sorry sons of bitches.” With that he streaked upward, deftly evading the hail of arrows.