Vahk Soormehlyuhn carefully eased the still-twitching body of the big blond boy to the rocky ground, taking pains that no portion of his victim’s equipment clang or rattle. The soot-blackened Ahrmehnee warrior briefly regretted that so fine a head would have to be left to go to waste, then he moved on in a cautious stalk of his next victim, this one also observing the ongoing fires rather than keeping the watch to which he had been assigned.
The sentry killer reflected that Dook Bili had again been proved correct. When old Vahrtahn, among others, had questioned the wisdom of alerting any portion of the Skohshuns by loosings of fire and boulders upon the sleeping camp, the young leader had said, “Look you, gentlemen, precious few humans possess really decent night vision under even the best of circumstances. But all of us twolegs—even the Kleesahks—are cursed with an abiding curiosity. Now if their main camp is all ablaze and the garrison is milling about and taking casualties and screaming shouts and curses, just how many of the sentries guarding that work area do you imagine are going to be able to resist the natural, normal human impulse to steal at least a glance or three in that direction, eh? And each time they look at the blazes, they are going to weaken what little night vision they may normally possess, lessening the likelihood of our small sally party’s being apprehended until we are ready to be seen.”
When the last sentry was down, his lifeblood pouring out to soak the ground beneath him, Sergeant Eethah led her eight Moon Maidens toward the spot beneath the overhang of rock: where the carpenters and joiners lay rolled in their blankets, while Tsimbos of Ahnpolis and his largest contingent—all of them save him laden with huge, bulging, heavy skins of oil—raced to the long contraptions of wood, wicker and hides.
Most of the carpenters and relief sentries were dispatched while still asleep by the dripping dirks and shortswords of the grim Maidens. One only of them escaped, to run naked and shrieking in the direction of the distant, fiery camp; that is, he ran for the few steps he was able to take before Sir Yoo Folsom’s spinning, hard-flung francisca took him betwixt his shoulderblades and split his spine, at the same moment that an Ahrmehnee knife sank hilt-deep between two ribs.
Satisfied that no noise that they might make, no matter how loud or sharp, could be heard above the furious pandemonium emanating from the Skohshun camp, Bili set most of his band to work with the enemy’s own tools hewing and splitting and smashing what they could of the long, weighty devices before soaking them well with oil, throwing among them those tools and weapons they themselves were not taking back into the burk, then heaving the earthenware pot of live coals that Tsimbos of Ahnpolis had carried onto the site.
Bili held them until he was certain that the fire was well on the way to becoming an uncontrollable conflagration, then led them all back around the cliffline and into the tunnel. All helped the patiently waiting Kleesahks to replace the huge stones, the outer faces of which were so cunningly disguised as to make detection of their true purpose most unlikely.
Red-eyed and grouchy with lack of sleep, his hair, eyebrows and even his flaring mustaches fire-singed, Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin assessed the reports littering the top of the partially charred table before him. Occasionally, he squirmed in another attempt to find a really comfortable seat on the section of sawn log which now was the best that still existed in the near-ruined camp to serve him for a chair. At length, he summoned old Sir Djahn Makadahm, the herald.
“Sit down, Djahn,” the brigadier growled, indicating another sawn section of treetrunk, the bark still on. “If you brought anything to drink, I’ll have a bit of it.”
Unbuttoning his tunic, the herald drew forth a flat silver flask and proffered it, not speaking until after the brigadier had uncorked, upended, then recorked the flask and passed it back.
“I know it was a very bad night, Ahrthur, but just how bad was it?”
Maklarin huffed once or twice, demanding, “What the hell is that stuff you’re passing out, anyway? It’s as rough as a frozen corncob, I trow!
“Bad enough, old friend, and worse than that. Every single regiment lost men last night, killed or wounded. The surgeons and Dr. Arenstein are clearly like to drop of exhaustion, so long and hard have they been at it. At least we still have the most of our supplies, and we can thank the Kuhmbuhluhner who cast the load of stones on the supply tents, early on, for that fact; the barrels at the tiptops of the stacks were holed, and with everything soaked with beer and vinegar and brine, the fires never had a chance to get at anything more substantial than the tents.
“Am I rambling? It seems that I am, old friend. Blame it on lack of sleep and overmuch care. Whilst the Kuhmbuhluhner engines were wreaking their worst—or should I say their best?—on us, here, it seems that a sally was made from somewhere—though not out of the main gate and down the slopes, for the Ganik rifleman still was in his hole and he swears that no single man came out from the city in the normal way. I’ve had the idea all along that there must be two or three other means of egress from New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, and if only we could find even one of them ... But that’s neither here nor there and I’m rambling again. The bastards slit the throats of all the pikemen on sentry duty, then went on to murder the poor carpenters and the others, before hacking the ladder-bridges apart, then soaking them with oil and setting them alight. This morning, there is nothing more left of them than there is of our new batteries of catapults and spearthrowers, alas.
“And there will be damnall fresh beef for a while, too, Djahn, The herd is scattered to hell and gone, and if I could blame that on the bloody Kuhmbuhluhners, I surely would; but eyewitnesses aver that that huge mountain cat that has been plaguing us periodically spooked them on last night of all possible nights. Moreover, four of our herders were killed trying to turn that stampede, too.
“As of about an hour agone, there were one thousand, one hundred and fifty-two other-ranks casualties, twenty-three officer casualties—of course, that figure includes the dead, the missing and all classes of wounded.
“In addition, three entire battalions lost all their polearms—long pikes, short pikes, axes, hammers, everything. We are going to have to find a new way to stack our weapons, possibly stack them in company lots or smaller, for battalion stacks are simply too large and dense to allow for saving many if any once they are well afire. All the pike carts were lost, too, damn it, burned to the axles and beyond.
“And in the confusion of getting the draft stock out the rear gate last night, no less than four of our good lady doctor’s wildmen disappeared, along with two mules and two good horses, one of them my riding horse, True. One of the bastards was that fellow Tremain.
“Let me have another taste of that foul rotgut, Djahn, then I’ll touch on why I sent for you this morning.”
The brigadier again upended the flask and took a long pull. A shudder shook his whole body. “Saints preserve us all, Djahn, that is truly devil’s brew. Where did it come from, pray tell?”
Sir Djahn shrugged. “I’m sure I have no idea, Ahrthur. My batman bought a half gallon of it—at a whopping price, I might add!—from one of that fellow Potter’s people. I usually have brandy, as you know, but my keg blew up when my tent burned last night, and all that was available this morning was this ... this decoction. Sorry, old man. Can’t say that I’m overfond of the stuff m’self, but it’s better than water.”
“All right, Djahn, back to business. It’s thankful we should all be that there are no more of those New Kuhmbuhluhnburkers than there are up there, for had they had the force available to attack this camp last night on the heels of that hellish bombardment, the siege would’ve been broken then and there and no doubt the most of us would be dead this morning. We might not be so fortunate a second time around. In fact, if there weren’t so many wounded to transport, I’d move the camp, now, this morning, lay out a new one out of range of those damned Kuhmbuhluhn engines ... if that’s possible. I never heard of engines that could throw such weights of missiles so far, ere this—why, that boulder that came down atop my own tent must weigh a good four hundred pounds or more.”