The Stealers' War (35 page)

‘More guns inside the village’s flanks or more guns along the mountain peaks?’ asked Paetro.

‘More up high,’ said Balbus. ‘In valley slopes and mountains behind.’

‘They’ve laid out a nice straight path for us to attack down,’ said Paetro. ‘Right through the centre of the village and into their windharbour, which is what we’ve come to secure anyway.’

‘Do you think they’re planning a second ambush?’ asked Duncan. ‘They could have half the Rodalian army hiding in those mountains over there and we wouldn’t know it.’

‘Might be,’ said Paetro. ‘So what’s up above us, Balbus? Any sign of barbarians keeping their heads down and biding their time on our side of the valley?’

‘No,’ said the legionary, simply.

‘You’re sure?’ asked Duncan.

‘Certain.’

‘Balbus’s instincts in the peaks are a match for any rice-eater,’ said Paetro. ‘His word’s gold as far as I’m concerned.’

‘They’d want to ambush us from both sides of the valley to be sure,’ said Duncan.

‘Yes. They’re not fools. So what are we not seeing then, lad?’

‘Just what could get us killed.’

‘Aye, that much is certain.’ Paetro turned to the soldiers crouching in the cave. ‘We’ll infiltrate our way across the valley floor and skirt along Ganyid Thang’s left flank. Fight our way through that side of the village. Unless their scouts are blind, they’ll know we’ve got sixty tanks idling their engines around the corner. They’ll presume we’re heading down there to offer infantry support to our armour, which by rights should be rolling through the houses on the village’s right flank. Maybe the mountain tribes will hold back on whatever their dirty scheme is until the baron decides to join the feast, too.’

Duncan nodded. It was as good a plan of attack as they could execute given the circumstances. The Rodalians couldn’t know that the baron intended to keep on holding his big guns in reserve, trusting Duncan would catch a bullet and rid Prince Gyal of a troublesome rival.

‘Charia, up into the slopes above us with you. Take the four longgunsmen and cover our advance. Work your way through the tribe’s sharpshooters, officers and marksmen first. Balbus, you and young Carbo follow her and keep your telescope trained where the rest of us will be forging ahead. Any sign of nasty surprises, Carbo, you sprint down and find me. I want good warning. Not left with my pants hanging around my ankles.’

Paetro’s sharpshooters did as they had been ordered, spreading out into the slopes above the cave. When they had taken up position, Duncan, Paetro and the rest of the legionaries broke cover and started moving through the valley. They stayed low and advanced fast through stands of dark green-needled evergreens, paddy fields and long burial mounds which, from their size and extent, contained some once-highly elevated Rodalian nobles. Bullets whistled past from the white buildings on the valley’s opposite side. Each puff of smoke was answered by Charia’s squad behind them. Duelling marksmen, with the core of the company used for bait to draw the enemy out. Duncan’s blood coursed so fast he could hear his heart thumping. Ganyid Thang nestled on the far slopes, a series of around fifty smaller buildings in front of ten larger, fortress-sized buildings to the rear, and higher still the dark entrance into the wind-harbour. The village’s constructions were blocky and thick-walled, narrow slits for windows. Built for protection against the fierce storms, but bastions that served equally as well for defence in warfare.
They wouldn’t last long against the Imperium’s metal castles on caterpillar tracks, though
. But thanks to Duncan’s presence here, the monstrously large vehicles would stay well out of the fight.
Don’t look back. Don’t slow to see who might have been cut down behind you.
Little geysers of dirt erupted around his boots as he drew closer to the village, yells from the legionaries behind him, and then he was in the lee of one of the white-plastered walls, his lungs burning from the exertion.
This is a stiff fight.
The enemy was all around. Up on the roofs. Behind window slits. In the rocky slopes behind the village. But to locate them properly you’d have to hang like a rube out in the open, watching for flashes of smoke and fire, catching a bullet for your troubles.

A bullet twanged off a wall, spraying brick fragments over his shoulder. Duncan thought he saw movement from a roof ahead and sprayed a volley from his rifle, the rifle butt slamming painfully against his shoulder. He hadn’t sighted, and beyond taking chunks out of roof masonry, he suspected he’d just expended four bullets for nothing.
It’s like fighting an invisible enemy. So how come they still seem able to see me?

Paetro slipped beside Duncan. ‘This doesn’t seem right, lad.’

‘Nobody standing up to take a shot in the clear? While magically still being able to take pot-shots at me. Never did seem right.’

‘Welcome to street fighting,’ said Paetro. ‘No, this village. It’s as if they’re not fighting to hold it.’

Duncan glanced nervously around, checking each shuttered window slit for a rifle barrel jutting out. ‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Concentrate on slowing your breath. It’ll clear your mind and steady your aim.’ Paetro glanced around the corner, finding nothing that seemed to please him. ‘We’ll keep on skirting the village. Head for the slope back there. I want to see how well defended their wind-harbour is.’ Paetro turned back to the men running low behind him and flashed them a series of directions using the legion’s sign language.

They passed rapidly through Ganyid Thang’s fringes, attracting the occasional shot from the mountains or the village. Paetro appeared to treat the fire with contempt. As if nothing could hurt him. Duncan wondered how much of that was an old soldier’s act.
I wonder how long I’d need to serve with the house before I could pull it off as deftly.

Ganyid Thang’s wind-harbour was much the same as the others Duncan had visited. A tunnel mouth carved into the mountain slopes, perhaps fifty feet across and twenty high. It might have been a stone works save for the fact that the walls inside had been brick-sealed and the gargoyle-like faces of a host of wind spirits leered down from around the entrance. A pistol shot barked in their direction and Duncan caught sight of a shadowy form pulling back into the cover of the wind-harbour.

‘Stay back,’ ordered Paetro. Duncan saw the old soldier had the wooden handle of a grenade grasped in his hand; the ugly spiked metal can on top packed with powder and shrapnel barbs. He yanked the pin out of the bottom of the grenade’s wooden grip and then sent it spinning towards the entrance. A thunderous explosion followed, a shower of hot rock fragments and metal before its echoes faded angrily within the entrance tunnel. There was no more sign of opposition from inside. But there was something else. The grenade’s blast had blown away dirt and wiry grass from in front of the windharbour, leaving uncovered what had been shallowly buried. Duncan pointed out the freshly disturbed soil to the side of the cavern . . . a half-exposed twine fuse. ‘That’s why they left a lightly defended path through the centre of the village.’

‘What kind of war is it when the barbarians try to bury you under their own rocks?’ complained Paetro.

‘If the Rodalians deprive us of all the wind-harbours from here to Hadra-Hareer, they’ll slow our advance; make us vulnerable to Rodal’s storms.’

‘It’s a ruthless commander who burns his own grain stores to stop his enemies eating them.’

Duncan knew exactly who Paetro meant.
Jacob Carnehan again, curse the man.
‘I’ll find the master fuse and cut it.’

‘Be careful,’ said Paetro. ‘I wager they’ve mined more than the wind-harbour. The last settlement Mad Machus took, the baron circled his tanks around the wind-harbour and fed it shells until the townspeople sheltering inside surrendered.’ Paetro pointed to the heights behind the wind-harbour. ‘What do you think the barbarians are hoping he repeats the tactic?’

‘A landslide, as well?’

‘Aye. When the barbarians realize their plan to crush us inside their wind-harbour has failed, they’ll boil down from those slopes, lad.’

‘If they’ve got the numbers,’ said Duncan. ‘Maybe entombing the legion was all of their plan?’

‘We’ll find out the hard way, I reckon.’

Duncan sprinted from the cover of the street to the entrance, Paetro sending a volley up into the slopes above, but, as rapidly as Duncan dashed, he didn’t hear any answering fire.
Yes, they want us to fight our way inside there
.

Duncan drew to a halt inside the entrance. The Rodalian who had shot at him lay still and silent twenty feet down the tunnel on his front, killed outright by the grenade’s explosion. Every wind-harbour seized before had cost a considerable butcher’s bill paid in Vandian and royalist blood. Desperate hand-to-hand fighting as the tunnels and chambers inside were cleared of defenders. Many wind-harbours possessed secret access passages, tunnels and chimneys to carry down air or light by mirrors. Labyrinths where Vandians and King Marcus’ soldiers could crawl in by the squad and never be seen again. This chamber, Duncan suspected, would prove empty.
Or have they left more of a suicide detail than a single soldier to put up token resistance and draw us inside?
Duncan carefully explored the wind-harbour’s opening. Up ahead was the first of many twists and turns to break the storm’s force.
So where would I set a master fuse?
He discovered a sentry alcove in the wall, where a guard could keep out of the worst of a storm while staying on post to help stragglers and new arrivals pass inside. Its stone cavity was lined with wood, and some of the planks looked like they had recently been removed and replaced. Duncan slipped a steel dagger out of his belt and levered at the timber until it broke. Behind the facade lay a space newly carved inside the rock-face. It contained a tiny wooden drum not much bigger than a biscuit tin. The canister sat connected to a nest of oil-soaked twine fuses and Duncan well recognized the container from years in the local territorial guard. Fuse paste packed into the casket, an incendiary core burning down the middle. The lid was painted red, the colour indicating the time taken to burn out and ignite. Duncan ripped the fuse lines from the drum and tossed the now useless device out into the tunnel. Then he checked the sentry post opposite, finding the alcove empty of further surprises.
The Rodalians’ turn for a shock. When the charges they’ve set in this place fail to explode.

As Duncan returned to Paetro’s position he found Kenem Posda had caught up with them, ‘It’s done. They’d left a fuse drum burning inside. I’ve ripped it out.’

‘Bad day for them,’ said Paetro. ‘They’re not going to bury us or the baron’s tanks today.’

‘So, that’s why they’re so light on swords in the village,’ said Kenem. ‘Sneaky buggers.’

‘They might still bring down a landslide on us,’ said Duncan. ‘Out of spite. The detonator for that will be up there in their hands.’

‘Pull back to the village’s western edge. That should be clear enough of rockfalls if it comes to it. We’ll make our stand there. See how far the barbarians’ taste for destroying their own property stretches today.’

‘What about our orders . . . pressing our claim?’ said Kenem.

‘That’s how I’m choosing to do it,’ said Paetro. ‘If the baron wants to complain, he can drive into the village on his big shiny steel bombard to do it in person. Maybe I’ll forget to mention my suspicions about how many powder barrels they have hidden up on the peaks.’

‘Now you sound like Charia,’ said Duncan.

‘She was right about one thing. There’s a difference between rolling a grenade inside an idiot’s tent and finding a barbarian’s done the job for you.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘On a good day, a firing squad,’ said Paetro.

They fell back to the low, single-storey buildings in the far corner of the village, legionaries retreating with them as they ran. Paetro’s troops seized a block of four connected buildings on the edge of Ganyid Thang; a high, stone-walled structure with a series of low stone dry-pools to remove moisture from rice. This was a farm, large enough to support three families tending the valley’s fields. There was a clear sweep of fire into the pass on two sides, easily reinforced by legionaries coming down from the opposite slope. And now the narrow shuttered windows would be working for the Vandians as they defended it.
No sign of the farmers who lived here, though
. Someone had taken the trouble to evacuate the locals before the attack. And not inside the wind-harbour, where the populace usually fled.

They remained hunkered down inside for half an hour, exchanging the occasional shot with Rodalian marksmen from nearby rooftops, as well as chasing off enemy warriors easing around adjacent buildings. From up on the roof Duncan heard a shouted warning not to shoot, and a minute later Carbo appeared, his face crimson and dirt-streaked from his sprint across the valley.

‘What is it, then?’ barked Paetro.

‘Mountain soldiers, maybe seven hundred of them, moving down the east slope in three companies.’

‘No doubt vexed we’ve tickled their trap and have yet to set it off.’

‘Charia and her long-gunsmen are asking to come across and make nests inside the village.’

‘You run back and order Charia to keep shifting position across the west slope, pick off the barbarians. Then you find whichever cave the radioman’s hiding in and inform our illustrious leader that the enemy are attempting to set off a landslide above the wind-harbour and bury the legion’s armoured brigade. My recommendation is that the baron swings around the village, holds well outside while he mounts a heavy bombardment against the rice-eaters.’

‘Will he heed that?’ asked Duncan.

‘Who knows?’ said Paetro. ‘I’m just the tip of the spear.’ He turned to the legionaries kneeling behind window slits around the room. ‘And what does a spear do?’

‘Impale!’ came the shout.

‘And after I’ve passed word to the baron?’ asked Carbo.

‘Stay with Charia,’ said Paetro. ‘And observe. When you get back to the house in Vandia, tell them how we fought here.’

‘Permission to return.’