The battle plan consisted of a staged withdrawal, timed to commence when Arberus had judged each successive line of trenches to have inflicted the maximum casualties on the enemy. Upon receipt of the signal the defenders would withdraw to the next line under cover of the combined weight of gunnery from the cannon on the Redoubt and the ships waiting a few hundred yards off shore. He estimated they could hold out for three days, perhaps four with a modicum of luck. Lizanne’s last trance with Clay indicated he needed at least another four days to reach them, so it appeared they would have to make their own luck.
“They’ll wait for darkness,” Arberus concluded as the Spoiled army continued to stand immobile. “Take advantage of their freakish night-vision. Best spread the word for our lot to get what rest they can.”
Lizanne nodded and began to press the fourth button on her Spider, then stopped as Arberus raised a hand. “Wait. They’re moving.”
“An attack?” she asked, returning her eye to her own glass and blinking in surprise at what she saw. Instead of commencing a march towards the trenches the Spoiled were clustering into three large divisions, each one resembling a disturbingly well-co-ordinated group of ants in the way they reordered themselves into narrow columns. Lizanne suspected they intended to assault the defences in three places at once, hoping the narrowness of their formation would negate the effects of the fire-power they faced. But then she saw the first rank of Spoiled sink to their knees and begin to dig. Most had shovels, but others clawed at the ground with their inhuman hands, tearing up clods of earth and grass with a fierce, near-frantic energy.
“What are they doing?” she wondered.
“Sapping,” Arberus replied, a faint note of admiration in his otherwise grim tone. “Sirus always did know his history.”
Apparently it was a tactic from the early days of the gunpowder age, favoured by armies besieging fortifications in an effort to spare their soldiers the fire of defending cannon. It had fallen out of favour with the advent of faster-firing modern artillery and repeating small-arms, but Sirus had evidently found a use for it now. The three trenches progressed across the plain with remarkable swiftness. The Spoiled worked in a ceaseless relay, clawing or digging at the earth until exhaustion set in, whereupon they staggered to the rear and were immediately replaced by fresh labour. Consequently, the trenches were each close to fifty yards in length before nightfall and the Spoiled didn’t show any signs of resting for the night.
“They’ll be in range of our cannon come morning,” Lizanne pointed out. “A sustained barrage should impede their progress.”
“It should,” Arberus admitted. “But every shell we fire can no longer be replaced. And something tells me Sirus is too clever to simply dig his way into our sights.”
He was proven correct come first light, the rising sun revealing that the forward progress of the enemy trenches had halted. Instead they were now digging laterally, new trenches branching out from the terminus of the three already dug. By late afternoon the White’s army had a trench network of its own, whereupon all activity apparently ceased.
“I’d wager a sack of gold that Morradin no longer has a say over this campaign,” Arberus noted with grudging respect. “Sirus has spared his troops a good two hundred yards of open ground. Even at extreme range our cannon would have taken a fearful toll when they advanced. Plus we would have had ample warning of the moment they decided to attack.”
Arberus ordered a few of the more powerful cannon in the Redoubt to try their luck at the enemy trenches, scoring a few hits. However, most of the shells went wide and the damage inflicted was minimal. There was no answering fire from the Spoiled; in fact most sat in their trenches in placid quietude. Tekela made several offers to attack in the Typhoon, arguing that it would be a simple matter to rake the trenches from end to end with Growler fire. Lizanne forbade it, unwilling to risk an aerostat in the massed Red assault that would inevitably follow.
Arberus had the army stand on full alert throughout the night. Rocket flares supplied by the fleet were prepared all along the Redoubt, ready to bathe the battlefield in artificial light when the attack came, except it didn’t.
“What are they waiting for?” Arberus wondered aloud come the morning as he and Lizanne looked out at the Spoiled still sitting quietly in the trenches.
“As long as they keep waiting,” Lizanne said, “I shall consider myself satisfied.”
“We can’t become complacent. There must be a strategy at work here. Something we’re missing. Just like the Jet Sands.”
Noting the tension in his unshaven jaws, Lizanne saw for the first time how deep the sting of defeat had wounded him. Pride, she thought, reaching out to grasp his forearm, the disease of generals and revolutionaries alike. “Get some rest,” she told him. “I’ll be sure to wake you should anything happen.”
Got hit by a storm last night, Clay told her. Lost sight of the Endeavour till morning. The captain had to take the blood-burner off-line. He reckons it’ll be another two days sailing.
Lizanne replied with a pulse of acknowledgment, momentarily distracted by the clarity of the shared trance. Before his new-found ability Clay’s mindscape had been somewhat basic in construction, Nelphia’s surface a uniform grey and the black sky above lacking a rendition of the planet they called home. Now it hung above them in majestic, blue-and-green glory against an endless spectacle of stars.
Kriz helped me with it, he explained, sensing her curiosity. Ain’t had much else to do during the voyage.
Somehow I doubt that, she replied, enjoying the momentary thrum of embarrassment that ran through the dust.
Is there a secret in my head you don’t know? he asked.
Thousands, I’m sure. It’s not your thoughts that betray you, but your feelings. Something they used to drill into us in the Academy.
She gave a final glance at the planet filling the sky above, resisting the urge to lose herself in the beauty of it, even for a short time. I have to go, she told him. Our Blue stocks are low. Please reiterate the need for urgency to Captain Hilemore.
I do that one more time he’s like to shoot me . . . Clay trailed off, his gaze drawn to something beyond her. Who’s she?
Lizanne turned, seeing a sailing-ship approaching across the mindscape, the moon-dust parting like a wave before the bows. Morva was perched on the figure-head below the prow, hands cupped around her mouth as she called to Lizanne: You have to come! It’s started!
CHAPTER 47
Sirus
Light the fuses.
Sirus watched through Forest Spear’s eyes as he touched a match to the tip of the fuse wire, igniting a ball of sparks, then tracked its fiery dance into the depths of the tunnel. He checked to ensure the fuses laid in the other two tunnels had also been lit then returned to his own eyes, peering down from Katarias’s back at the enemy trench works below.