I am haunted by the clear knowledge that, in the end, evil always triumphs.
Oh, my. Trouble. There is a nasty black cloud crawling over the hills to the northeast. Everybody is running around, grabbing weapons and saddling horses. Raven is yelling at me to get my butt moving....
Chapter Five: HARDEN
The wind howled and flung blasts of dust and sand against our backs. We retreated into it, walking backward, the gritty storm finding every gap in armor and clothing, combining with sweat in a stinking, salty mud. The air was hot and dry. It sucked the moisture away quickly, leaving the mud dried in clots. We all had lips cracked and swollen, tongues like moldy pillows choking on the grit crusting the insides of our mouths.
Stormbringer had gotten carried away. We were suffering almost as much as was the Rebel. Visibility was a scant dozen yards. I could barely see the men to my right and left, and only two guys in the rearguard line, walking backward before me. Knowing our enemies had to come after us facing into the wind did not cheer me much.
The men in the other line suddenly scuttled around, plying their bows. Tall somethings loomed out of the swirling dust, cloakshadows swirling around them, flapping like vast wings. I drew my bow and let fly, sure my shaft would drift astray.
It did not. A horseman threw up his hands. His animal whirled and ran before the wind, pursuing riderless companions.
They were pushing hard, keeping close, trying to pick us off before we escaped the Windy Country to the more defensible Stair of Tear. They wanted every man of us stretched dead and plundered beneath the unforgiving desert sun.
Step back. Step back. So damned slow. But there was no choice. If we turned our backs they would swarm over us. We had to make them pay for every approach, to intimidate their exuberance thoroughly.
Stormbringer’s sending was our best armor. The Windy Country is wild and brisk at the best of times, flat, barren, and dry, uninhabited, a place where sandstorms are common. But never had it seen a storm like this, that went on hour after hour and day after day, relenting only in the hours of darkness. It made the Windy Country no fit place for any living thing. And only that kept the Company alive.
There were three thousand of us now, falling back before the inexorable tide that had swamped Lords. Our little brotherhood, by refusing to break, had become the nucleus to which the fugitives from the disaster had attached themselves once the Captain had fought his way through the siege lines. We had become the brains and nerves of this fleeing shadow of an army. The Lady herself had sent orders for all Imperial officers to defer to the Captain. Only the Company had produced any signal successes during the northern campaign.
Someone came out of the dust and howl behind me, tapped my shoulder. I whirled. It was not yet time to leave the line.
Raven faced me. The Captain had figured out where I was.
Raven’s whole head was wrapped in rags. I squinted, one hand raised to block the biting sand. He screamed something like, “Ta kata wa ya.” I shook my head. He pointed rearward, grabbed me, yelled into my ear. “The Captain wants you.”
Of course he did. I nodded, handed over bow and arrows, leaned into the wind and grit. Weapons were in short supply. The arrows I had given him were spent Rebel shafts gleaned after they had come wobbling out of the brownish haze.
Trudge trudge trudge. Sand pattering against the top of my head as I walked with chin against chest, hunched, eyes slitted. I did not want to go back. The Captain was not going to say anything I wanted to hear.
A big bush came spinning and bounding toward me. It nearly bowled me over. I laughed. We had Shapeshifter with us. The Rebel would waste a lot of arrows when that hit their lines. They outnumbered us ten or fifteen to one, but numbers could not soften their fear of the Taken.
I stamped into the fangs of the wind till I was sure I had gone too far, or had lost my bearings. It was always the same. After I decided to give up, there it was, the miraculous isle of peace. I entered it, staggering in the sudden absence of wind. My ears roared, refusing to believe the quiet.
Thirty wagons rolled along in tight formation inside the quiet, wheel to wheel. Most were filled with casualties. A thousand men surrounded the wagons, tramping doggedly southward. They stared at the earth and dreaded the coming of their turns out on the line. There was no conversation, no exchange of witticisms. They had seen too many retreats. They followed the Captain only because he promised a chance to survive.
“Croaker! Over here!” The Lieutenant beckoned me from the formation’s extreme right flank.
The Captain looked like a naturally surly bear wakened from hibernation prematurely. The grey at his temples wriggled as he chewed his words before spitting them out. His face sagged. His eyes were dark hollows. His voice was infinitely tired. “Thought I told you to stick around,”
“It was my turn.,..”
“You don’t take a turn, Croaker. Let me see if I can put it into words simple enough for you. We have three thousand men. We’re in continuous contact with the Rebel. We’ve got one half-assed witchdoctor and one real doctor to take care of those boys. One-Eye has to spend half his energy helping maintain this dome of peace. Which leaves you to carry the medical load. Which means you don’t risk yourself out on the line. Not for any reason.”
I stared into the emptiness above his left shoulder, scowling at the sand swirling around the sheltered area.
“Am I getting through, Croaker? Am I making myself clear? I appreciate your devotion to the Annals, your determination to get the feel of the action, but....”
I bobbed my head, glanced at the wagons and their sad burdens. So many wounded, and so little I could do for them. He did not see the helpless feeling that caused. All I could do was sew them up and pray, and make the dying comfortable till they went-whereupon we dumped them to make room for newcomers.
Too many were lost who need not have been, had I had time, trained help, and a decent surgery. Why did I go out to-the battle line? Because I could accomplish something there. I could strike back at our tormentors.
“Croaker,” the Captain growled. “I get the feeling you’re not listening.”
“Yes sir. Understood, sir. I’ll stay here and tend to my sewing.”
“Don’*look so bleak.” He touched my shoulder. “Catcher says we’ll reach the Stair of Tear tomorrow. Then we can do what we all want. Bloody Harden’s nose.”
Harden had become the senior Rebel general. “Did he say how we’re going to manage that, outnumbered a skillion to one?”
The Captain scowled. He did his shuffling little bear dance while he phrased a reassuring answer.
Three thousand exhausted, beaten men turn back Harden’s victory-hopped horde? Not bloody likely. Not even with three of the Ten Who Were Taken helping.
“I thought not,” I sneered.
“That’s not your department, though, is it? Catcher doesn’t second-guess your surgical procedures, does he? Then why question the grand strategy?”
I grinned. “The unwritten law of all armies, Captain. The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.”
The Captain eyed me from his shorter stature, wider displacement, and from beneath shaggy brows. “That holds them together, eh? And you know what keeps them moving?”
“What’s that?”
“Guys like me ass-kicking guys like you when they start philosophizing. If you get my drift.”
“I believe I do, sir.” I moved out, recovered my kit from the wagon where I had stashed it, went to work. There were few new casualties.
Rebel ambition was wearing down under Stormbringer’s ceaseless assault.
I was loafing along, waiting for a call, when I spotted Elmo loping out of the weather. I hadn’t seen him for days. He fell in beside the Captain. I ambled over.
“... sweep around our right,” he was saying. “Maybe trying to reach the Stair first.” He glanced at me, lifted a hand in gr
eeting. It shook. He was pallid with weariness. Like the Captain, he had had little rest since we had entered the Windy Country.
“Pull a company out of reserve. Take them in flank,” the Captain replied. “Hit them hard, and stand fast. They won’t expect that. It’ll shake them. Make them wonder what we’re up to.”
“Yes sir.” Elmo turned to go,
“Elmo?”
“Sir?”
“Be careful out there. Save your energy. We’re going to keep moving tonight.”
Elmo’s eyes spoke tortured volumes. But he did not question his orders. He is a good soldier. And, as did I, he knew they came from above the Captain’s head. Perhaps from the Tower itself.
Hitherto, night had brought a tacit truce. The rigors of the days had left both armies unwilling to take one needless step after dark. There had been no nighttime contact.
Even those hours of respite, when the storm slept, were not enough to keep the armies from marching with their butts drooping against their heels. Now our high lords wanted an extra effort, hoping to gain some tactical advantage. Get to the Stair by night, get dug in, make the Rebel come at us out of perpetual storm. It made sense. But it was the sort of move ordered by an armchair general three hundred miles behind the fighting.
“You hear that?” the Captain asked me.
“Yeah. Sounds dumb.”
“I agree with the Taken, Croaker. The travelling will be easier for us and more difficult for the Rebel. Are you caught up?”
“Yes.”
“Then try to stay out of the way. Go hitch a ride. Fake a nap.”
I wandered away, cursing the ill fortune that had stripped us of most of our mounts. Gods, walking was getting old.
I did not take the Captain’s advice, though it was sound. I was too keyed up to rest. The prospect of a night march had shaken me.
I roamed around seeking old friends. The Company had scattered throughout the larger mob, as cadre for the Captain’s will. Some men I hadn’t seen since Lords. I did not know if they were still alive.
I could find no one but Goblin, One-Eye, and Silent. Today Goblin and One-Eye were no more communicative than Silent. Which said a lot about morale.
They trudged doggedly onward, eyes on the dry earth, only rarely making some gesture or muttering some word to maintain the integrity of our bubble of peace. I trudged with them. Finally, I tried breaking the ice with a “Hi.”
Goblin grunted. One-Eye gave me a few seconds of evil stare. Silent did not acknowledge my existence.
“Captain says we’re going to march through the night,” I told them. I had to make someone else as miserable as I was.
Goblin’s look asked me why I wanted to tell that kind of lie. One-Eye muttered something about turning the bastard into a toad.
“The bastard you’re going to have to turn is Soulcatcher,” I said smugly.
He gave me another evil look. “Maybe I’ll practice on you, Croaker.”
One-Eye did not like the night march, so Goblin immediately approved the genius of the man who had initiated the idea. But his enthusiasm was so slight One-Eye did not bother taking the bait.
I thought I would give it another try. “You guys look as sour as I feel.”
No rise. Not even a turn of the head. “Be that way.” I drooped too, put one foot ahead of the other, blanked my mind.
They came and got me to take care of Elmo’s wounded. There were a dozen of them, and that was it for the day. The Rebel had run out of do or die.
Darkness came early under the storm. We went about business as usual. We got a little away from the Rebel, waited for the storm to abate, pitched a camp with fires built of whatever brush could be scrounged. Only this time it was just a brief rest, till the stars came out. They stared down with mockery in their twinkles, saying all our sweat and blood really had no meaning in the long eye of time. Nothing we did would be recalled a thousand years from now.
Such thoughts infected us all. No one had any ideals or glory-lust left. We just wanted to get somewhere, lie down, and forget the war.
The war would not forget us. As soon as he believed the Rebel to be satisfied that we were encamped, the Captain resumed the march, now in a ragged column snaking slowly across moonlighted barrens.
Hours passed and we seemed to get nowhere. The land never changed. I glanced back occasionally, checking the renewed storm Stormbringer was hurling against the Rebel camp. Lightning rippled and flickered in this one. It was more furious than anything they had faced so far.
The shadowed Stair of Tear materialized so slowly that it was there for an hour before I realized it was not a bank of cloud low on the horizon. The stars began to fade and the east to lighten before the land started rising.
The Stair of Tear is a rugged, wild range virtually impassable except for the one steep pass from which the cordillera takes its name. The land rises gradually till it reaches sudden, towering red sandstone bluffs and mesas which stretch either way for hundreds of miles. In the morning sun they looked like the weathered battlements of a giant’s fortress.
The column wound into a canyon choked with talus, halted while a path was cleared for the wagons. I dragged myself to a bluff top and watched the storm. It was moving our way.
Would we get through before Harden arrived?
The blockage was a fresh fall which covered only a quarter mile of road. Beyond it lay the route traveled by caravans before the war interrupted trade.
I faced the storm again. Harden was making good time. I suppose anger drove him. He was not about to turn loose. We had killed his brother-in-law, and had engineered the Taking of his cousin....
Movement to the west caught my eye. A whole range of ferocious thunderheads was moving toward Harden, rumbling and brawling among themselves. A funnel cloud spun off and streaked toward the sandstorm. The Taken play rough.
Harden was stubborn. He kept coming through everything.
“Yo! Croaker!” someone shouted. “Come on.”
I looked down. The wagons were through the worst. Time to go.
Out on the flats the thunderheads spun off another funnel cloud. I almost felt sorry for Harden’s men.
Soon after I rejoined the column the ground shuddered. The bluff I had climbed quivered, groaned, toppled, sprawled across the road. Another little gift for Harden.
We reached our stopping place shortly before nightfall. Decent country at last! Real trees. A gurgling creek. Those who had any strength left began digging in or cooking.
The rest fell in their tracks. The Captain did not press. The best medicine at the moment was the simple freedom to rest.
I slept like the proverbial log.
One-Eye wakened me at rooster time. “Let’s get to work,” he said. “The Captain wants a hospital set up.” He made a face. His looks like a prune at the best of times. “We’re supposed to have some help coming up from Charm.”
I groaned and moaned and cursed and got up. Every muscle was stiff. Every bone ached. “Next time we’re someplace civilized enough to have taverns remind me to drink a toast to eternal peace,” I grumbled. “One-Eye, I’m ready to retire.”
“So who isn’t? But you’re the Annalist, Croaker. You’re always rubbing our noses in tradition. You know you only got two ways out while we’ve got this commission. Dead or feet first. Shove some chow in your ugly face and let’s get cracking. I got more important things to do than play nursemaid.”
“Cheerful this morning, aren’t we?”
“Positively rosy.” He grumped around while I got myself into an approximation of order.
The camp was coming to life. Men were eating and washing the desert off their bodies. They were cussing and fussing and bitching. Some were even talking to one another. The recovery had begun.
Sergeants and officers were out surveying the lie of the slope, seeking the most defensible strongpoints. This, then, was the place where the Taken wanted to make a stand.
It was a good spot. It was that part of the
pass which gave the Stair its name, a twelve hundred foot rise overlooking a maze of canyons. The old road wound back and forth across the mountainside in countless switchbacks, so that from a distance it looked like a giant’s lopsided stairway
One-Eye and I drafted a dozen men and began moving the wounded to a quiet grove well above the prospective battleground. We spent an hour making them comfortable and getting set for future business.
“What’s that?” One-Eye suddenly demanded,
I listened. The din of preparation had died. “Something up,” I said.
“Genius,” he countered. “Probably the people from Charm.”
“Let’s take a look.” I tramped out of the grove and down toward the Captain’s headquarters. The newcomers were obvious the moment I left the trees.
I would guess there were a thousand of them, half soldiers from the Lady’s personal Guard in brilliant uniforms, the rest apparently teamsters. The tram of wagons and livestock were more exciting than the reinforcements. “Feast time tonight,” I called to One-Eye, who was following me. He looked the wagons over and smiled. Pure pleasure smiles from him are only slightly more common than the fabled hen’s teeth. They are certainly worth recording in these Annals.
With the Guards battalion was the Taken called The Hanged Man. He was improbably tall and lean. His head was twisted way over to one side. His neck was swollen and purpled from the bite of a noose. His face was frozen into the bloated expression of one who has been strangled. I expect he had considerable difficulty speaking.
He was the fifth of the Taken I had seen, following Soulcatcher, the Limper, Shapeshifter, and Whisper. I missed Nightcrawler in Lords, and had not yet seen Stormbringer, despite proximity. The Hanged Man was different. The others usually wore something to conceal head and face. Excepting Whisper, they had spent ages in the ground. The grave had not treated them kindly.