The Stealers' War (23 page)

The door at the front of the troop cabin swung open. Paetro stood up and swayed himself across to a view of the cockpit. One of the two pilots turned around, her head hidden by a bulbous green helmet with a dark crystal visor for eyes, a metal-stamped face-mask shaped as an eagle staring impassively at the officer. ‘Setting down on the peaks in two minutes. Be obliged, Barca, if you and your steel-shirts clear the
Airhorne
before some local kite drops in and empties its wing guns on us.’

‘Barbarians aren’t giving you trouble, are they Sabiana?’

‘More canny and accurate than our lying bastard briefing, I’ll say that for them. If they weren’t out there flying on those midget toys, we might be in for a real fight.’

‘We’ll be out of your bird faster than a tax collector’s smile. Time to earn your pay, my beauties,’ grinned Paetro, hanging on to the cargo lashing. ‘We’re the tip of the spear, today. Time for a lungful of fresh mountain air.’

‘Almost a shame to spoil it with gun smoke,’ said Kenem Posda. ‘That should be an honest smell for working dogs like us.’

‘Mayhaps that’s why Prince Gyal and Baron Machus are asleep back in the camp,’ said the guardsman.

‘The celestial caste sent a few of the emperor’s Twelfth Legion with us for company, instead. What more do you want? An invite to a ball at the Diamond Palace?’

‘We know our place,’ rumbled Little Aldro. ‘I’ll dance with these mountain barbarians instead.’

‘Aye, and make sure they drop to the floor first.’

Duncan saw they were slowing down, the helo blades’ pitch changing as the engines worked harder to hover without forward velocity, and then the cabin’s deck swung side to side, hovering half a foot off the hard stone of the mesa top. He unclipped himself with the others, jumping out of the hatch furthest from the canyon edge. Duncan was hit by a fierce cold gale – hard to tell if was the rotors’ roaring down-draft or one of the legendary winds of Rodal. He sprinted after the others across a bluff split by fissures and littered with boulders and outcrops, following the sound of mountaineering equipment jangling against their backpacks. Ahead of him smoked the rubblestrewn stumps of a pair of watchtowers, which, until minutes ago, had guarded one of the many traders’ trails snaking through the canyon. It looked like the squadron’s hornets had been in here and done their job, clearing the escarpment of all opposition that would have given the Vandian guardsmen trouble. The defenders on the other side of the canyon were still in situ, however. Cannon bursts from ramparts clinging to the nearest peak, Hadra, thumped off the dark grey rock, showers of stone and flames erupting out around their position. Duncan followed Paetro, diving behind a boulder big enough to shelter three crouching invaders. As Duncan swivelled around he witnessed the rest of the
Airhorne
’s contingent running low, taking position behind every outcrop and granite shelf large enough to deflect shrapnel. Their helo was already lifting away, showing them the aircraft’s camouflaged belly as its pilots pirouetted the craft in midair and swung west; chased by the mountain city’s cannons, but well clear of the gunships’ crossfire and
The Caller
’s monstrous batteries.

If Paetro’s raiders were flustered by their reception, they hid the signs well. The marksmen calmly extended the barrels of their rifles, slotting range extensions into place that would have been too unwieldy to hold inside a cramped helo cabin. They followed this with the addition of optical sights, long telescope-like affairs that clipped into place across the weapon’s stock. The guardsmen might have been chimney sweeps calmly assembling brushes inside a patron’s salon for all the worry flicking across their faces: total concentration on their rifles.
We’ve done it. We’re in position
. Duncan’s pounding heart slowed. He reached back to touch his gun, the words
Gratch Foundry
stamped into its steel, and drew a measure of confidence from his shoulder-slung weapon. Like Paetro, Duncan lugged a semi-automatic gas-piston carbine rather than a sharpshooter’s long gun – the perfect helo legionary’s weapon. Light, accurate and fast-firing. It might not have been one of the legion’s weighty electric guns, able to spit a hail storm of bullets, but comparing it to any rifle Rodal or Weyland could manufacture would have been like comparing a well-honed steel knife to a sharp oak stick. A drum magazine on top carried sixty rounds while a rotating bolt minimized its recoil. One of these in the hands of a Vandian legionary was worth a company of Weyland troops. He’d have to thank the workers of the Gratch Weapons Foundry when he returned to the Imperium.

Mandus Talia was the other soldier sharing Duncan and Paetro’s cover. He was the stick’s radio operator, a heavy aerial-topped slab of a backpack lashed on to his spine as though it was an extension of his body, which it might as well have been. Talia always appeared too high-strung to Duncan for a life of soldiering, although Paetro swore the man was an artist who could conjure a connection to an artillery unit even while buried inside a cave.
There are probably a few of those around here. That level of talent might come in useful.
Accompanied by a fizzing and popping, Talia cupped the black mouthpiece hanging from a curled rubber cable against his mouth. The man teased the radio into life, ready to relay any orders. No dispatch riders risking life and limb, being shot at on horseback. Commanders able to send orders across the battlefield and see them obeyed almost instantly.
As good as magic, here. The black kind that leaves the empire’s enemies floundering to keep up with Vandia’s legions
. Duncan squatted on top of the Yarl Heights, a view south over the Yarl Valley. Across the gaping canyon, Duncan could see the Trade Gate. In reality not one gate but many. A series of grey, steel-doored openings atop a stone staircase, carved into the North Rim’s canyon wall and leading deep into the city under the twin mountains. He wasn’t quite far forward enough to watch the Yarl River’s fast-moving green waters winding through the canyon bed, but he could spy what was left of the wooden jetty that had met the river in front of the Trade Gate. Black splintered wood, a trio of hornets pulling out of the canyon where they had raked the gate with rockets and turret guns. Little puffs of rifle smoke came from arrow slits where Rodalian defenders were shooting at the aircraft; firing from buildings carved out of the rock, hanging on to the top of the canyon on either side of the Trade Gate.

Little Aldro came running up on Duncan’s right, a sharpshooters’ rifle cradled in his arms. ‘There’s a crevice sitting between them two keeps. Narrow enough to jump across. It widens out into a pony trail below. I found a staircase leading down to the trail in what’s left of the tower.’

‘Any merchant stupid enough to drive their caravan through a battle deserves a grenade dropped down on their mules,’ said Paetro.

‘The barbarians inside the city will be desperate enough when their gates come tumbling down and we close their burrow,’ said Aldro. ‘Desperate enough to pay traders with silver weight-for-weight for potatoes. You’ll see traders coming here then. Sure as scavengers after a slaughter.’

‘The Rodalians prefer rice,’ said Duncan.

Paetro nodded. ‘So let’s give them a fine serving of lead sauce to wash it down with. Take position, big lad. The miners’ helo will be settling above the city gate any minute. Mark the defenders’ rifle slits well. Our hornets are buzzing in and out down there to draw fire against their armoured skin instead of our miners’ soft arses. Raise
The Caller
, Mandus. Let them know the Trade Gate is in our sights and we’re ready to cover our lads as they toss lines down.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Mandus, sounding as though he’d just been asked to pick up one of the mountains.
The Caller
had disappeared behind the rise of the twin mountains, but Duncan could still hear her main batteries. At this distance, it sounded like thunder.
A thunderstorm would feel like a blessing compared to what the Rodalians on the mountain are experiencing right now
. Skyguard flying wings crisscrossed the air, engaged in aerial combat against the helo squadron. No skyguard had spotted the interlopers on the Yarl Heights yet. Hopefully, the single stick of Vandian guardsmen would stay of negligible interest set against
The Caller
’s deadly threat. If that situation changed, Duncan might yet find himself sheltering behind boulders as diving flying wings tore chunks out of the heights.

All along the ridge the helo’s hand-picked guardsmen had taken up position, sheltering behind ledges and boulders, their sharpshooting rifles extended at full length, barrels resting on folding legs. A couple of guardsmen had set up on their rear, including Kenem Posda, making sure they weren’t surprised by Rodalians already on the heights.

‘Wind’s fierce,’ called Charia Wyon from behind a rise of rock.

‘I’ll spot for you,’ offered Duncan, having to raise his voice above the howling mountain winds.

‘They train you for observation while you were Princess Helrena’s bodyguard?’

Duncan glanced at Paetro before he ducked down to where the soldier crouched. ‘Don’t think there’s much I haven’t been trained in, of late.’

‘Wise enough. Never know how the house’s enemies are going to come at us. Moment you think you do, that’s the moment you die.’ She set up a tiny wind gauge on a tripod in front of her, three rotating silk sails on a metal sphere with a dial to take readings. The sails were fair flying around with the gale. Charia Wyon passed Duncan a telescope. ‘Feel how you’re shivering with the cold? That’ll make the air denser for shooting. Combined with this gale . . . hell of a day for fighting.’

Duncan extended the leather-lined telescope and stared through its lens. There was a cross-hair reticule at the other end of the scope and it had its own leg mountings to fold out and keep it steady on the ground.

‘I’ll fire a ranging shot,’ said Charia. ‘Aiming for the gargoyle head far left above the Trade Gate. Watch the round’s vapour trail and tell me if I’m high or low on my slant range.’

‘Won’t the Rodalians hear you . . . see your muzzle flash?’

Charia shook her head. ‘They can’t hear our shots at this range and those tin cans mounted at the end of our guns work to suppress flash and smoke. I could be firing at the barbarians all day and they’d only know I was here when one of them drops.’

Duncan found the gargoyle using the telescope, the last of a line of creatures on the ledge above the gate. It protruded from the side of the canyon wall – a fat leering demon’s face: bulbous nose; a strangelooking jowled beard around a hare lip; two distended arms, one clutching a dagger, the other a tome of some sort.
No doubt one of the evil spirits of the wind that Hadra-Hareer needs protection from. They should have carved those things as Vandians. That’s who they need to fear more
. ‘I have it.’

Charia worked the bolt on the back of her rifle, rested its butt against her shoulder and let loose with a murderous crack. A shower of stone rained down on the gargoyle’s slab-like eyebrows, a slight haze of distortion in the air where the shell had passed.

‘High.’

Charia adjusted the sight mounted above her weapon. ‘Again.’

A second shot split the air. This time the gargoyle’s forehead broke into pieces. ‘Haircut.’

‘I was aiming for laughing boy’s tongue,’ growled Charia. She adjusted the sight again, checked the dial on the wind gauge and pulled the bolt to chamber another round into the weapon. ‘Again.’

Her third shot was the charm. It struck the lip and the whole gargoyle crumpled apart from the violence of the impact, shards of stone tumbling down on to the deserted staircase below the city entrance. ‘Right down its gullet.’

Charia rolled over and loaded a fresh round into her long rifle’s breech. ‘I’ve never shot into a blow like this before. It’s madness. Gyal should have dropped a maniple of cannon-cockers up here, not sharpshooters.’

Duncan grimaced.
Yes, but an artillery shell wouldn’t discriminate among defenders and the Imperium’s miners
.

‘Well,’ sighed Charia, ‘there’s nobody else here but us. Find me some barbarians whose future I can cut short.’

On the other side of the canyon floor their three hornets had withdrawn. Then Duncan caught sight of a troop helo dipping in above the North Rim, hovering a foot above the surface as soldiers hurled themselves out of the helo’s cabin. Almost as quickly as it had appeared, the helo pulled away, leaving the force of miners on the lip of the canyon’s ledge, scattered directly above the Trade Gate. Each soldier wore a backpack heavy with charges. Probably enough to send the whole company to their deaths if one caught a stray bullet and exploded. The miners moved above the edge, ready to begin their descent; lines unfurled down, secured against the mesa top. Cracks exploded around Duncan as the sharpshooters opened fire, a wood-splintering sound, each bullet sent towards one of the buildings clinging to the North Rim’s canyon wall.

Duncan pointed the telescope toward the city and scanned for defenders at the windows. Windows on the canyon were thin slits with grooves for internal storm shutters to lower inside its walls. Perfect loopholes for defending Hadra-Hareer, as well as keeping its inhabitants warm from freezing cold gales. He could only just make out the occasional rifle barrel jutting out of a loophole, searching for the helos that had been attacking the capital moments ago. There were balconies, wall-walks and terraces on some of the buildings, but these were closed off and just as empty of citizens as the docks and piers below the Trade Gate.
Is this how Rodal fights? They hide inside their stone burrows at the first sign of danger while they send up their skyguard to die for them?
Duncan was disappointed, despite himself. What had happened to the famous Walls of the League? Defended by the plucky mountain people against every nomad horde who had ever tried to fight their way across the peaks and invade Weyland?
Hell if I should complain, given I’m the invader now
. Over on the opposite canyon the miners sailed down their lines unopposed. No defenders rushing out on to the ledges to cut lines or shoot at the Vandians. It would only take a couple more minutes for the miners to drill holes for their charges and set fuses, then Hadra-Hareer would be a lot more sealed off and ‘safe’ from the rest of the world than the Rodalians ever wanted.
This is too easy
. The thought floated into Duncan’s head, unbidden. As easy as the fall of the rebel capital at Midsburg. But the rebels had at least put up some semblance of an opposition, even if it had quickly crumbled under the combined might of the Imperium and their local ally King Marcus.