“Schueler’s bones,” he muttered. “I see it and I still don’t believe it! How in Shan-wei’s name did he manage that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell not going to complain!” Mylyndyz replied almost prayerfully.
“For a worthless city boy from Gorath, you do get it right once in a while,” Mahkgyl told him.
The hill was scarcely a towering mountain—according to the maps, its crest rose a whole seventy feet above its surroundings, although Mahkgyl figured that was an exaggeration—but it passed for a commanding height in these parts. The hill three miles to the northwest, where Wahlys Sahndyrsyn’s 4th Company was dug in, was half again as tall, but despite its less lofty height, “Seventy-Foot Hill” was actually the steeper of the two.
Now Mahkgyl and Mylyndyz watched the black silhouettes of the eight-man party struggling up the slope. The silhouette at its head was huge, at least six feet tall, and wore the kilt of a Salthar mountaineer. There was only one man that size in 2nd Company, and the kilt was a dead giveaway of his identity. Besides, there was also only one man in the entire company who could have organized the miracle they saw approaching them.
It took that miracle quite a while to arrive, since the hill’s western face was even steeper than the eastern side. That was unfortunate for several reasons, the biggest of which was the little matter of who lay hidden beyond the scrub woods on the eastern side … and who’d made three determined attempts in the last two days to come up that side of the hill. Several dozen of those who’d made those unsuccessful attempts still lay out on the slope, stiff and stark, and the sickly smell of decay wafted up the hill on the gentle easterly breeze. From behind the hill, an occasional salvo of angle-gun shells landed in those woods at random intervals. Not because any heretics were visible at the moment, but to discourage them from massing for yet another attack.
Mahkgyl had his doubts about how effective that would be if the heretics decided to make another serious try, especially since they seemed willing enough to put snipers into the woods, despite the harassing fire. On the other hand, it sure as Shan-wei couldn’t hurt!
Second Company—and, in particular, 4th Platoon—was here to keep the road from Cahrswyl’s Farm to the Saiksyn Farm open, although calling that sandy, unpaved country track—suitable (barely) for farm wagons—a “road” was a bit of a stretch. That unprepossessing dirt lane had acquired an importance far beyond its grubby appearance, however, when the heretic advance cut the high road between Bryxtyn and Waymeet eight days ago. Scuttlebutt had it that in the last five-day they’d also taken the town of Mahrakton, thirty-plus miles northwest of Bryxtyn and cut the Sairhalk Switch Canal south of Waymeet, as well. That made the miserable strip of dirt running up the southern end of 4th Platoon’s hill the only lateral connection north of Kettle Bottom Swamp between the Waymeet-Fronzport High Road and the Bryxtyn-Shan High Road, and if the heretics really were sweeping around the fortresses’ flanks.…
Neither Mahkgyl nor Mylyndyz really liked to think about that, although it did explain their present position. Colonel Mahryahno Hyrtatho’s regiment had been ordered to dig in hard to hold the road. It had done just that for the last three days, and at least the heretics in front of it seemed almost as exhausted as its men were. Unless Mahkgyl missed his guess, the heretics were moving up fresh troops beyond those damned woods, though. In theory, an entire fresh regiment was on its way to relieve Hyrtatho’s Regiment, as well, but Ahskar Mahkgyl would believe that when he saw it.
In the meantime, half the regiment was deployed farther north along the road, leaving 2nd Company to hold Seventy-Foot Hill while Captain Tybahld Hwairta’s 1st Company and Captain Daivyn Sebahstean’s 3rd Company held Cahrswyl’s Farm and anchored Hyrtatho’s right flank. Their companies were even more understrength than 2nd Company, which was why they’d been brigaded together under Captain Hwairta to hold the farm. Well, the fact that Captain Sebahstean had been carried to the rear on a stretcher before the sixty remaining men of his command were handed over to Hwairta probably had a little to do with it, as well, Not that 2nd Company was in much better shape; 4th Platoon was down six of its thirty-seven men, but that still made it 2nd Company’s strongest platoon. In fact, Hyrtatho’s entire regiment had been badly mauled during its fighting withdrawal from the Stryklyr’s Farm-Atlyn line.
General Rychtyr had fought hard to hold that line, the last strong position before the Dohlaran border, but the heretic engineers had blown a path through the obstacles directly along the canal bed under cover of their damnable artillery. Then a Siddarmarkian assault had carried the breach while a simultaneous flanking attack by mounted Charisian infantry and a regiment of Siddarmarkian dragoons curled around Atlyn. With its front broken and its right flank crumbling, the Army of the Seridahn had been forced to give ground yet again, falling back for forty miles into the Duchy of Thorast—onto Dohlaran soil for the first time in the Jihad—until it had managed to stand once more.
It would have helped if the new “line” offered better defensive terrain, but the need to hold the connection between the high roads into Bryxtyn and Waymeet left the general no option but to hold here. If the heretics took the two fortresses, they could advance up either high road far more readily than they could using country roads like the one 2nd Company was charged with protecting. They’d be out of the straitjacket to which the Army of the Seridahn’s slow, stubborn retreat had so far confined them, with all sorts of maneuver advantages they hadn’t had before.
That would be … bad.
But however well Mahkgyl and Mylyndyz grasped the reasons they were stuck on their miserable hill, it struck them as grossly unfair that the detail struggling up its steepest side couldn’t use the road they were guarding. It would have offered a much easier ascent, but the heretic snipers still floating about in the scrubby, tangled trees to the east had shown a nasty tendency to take the road under fire at unpredictable intervals. True, the light wasn’t very good, even for heretic snipers, and it was getting worse rapidly. There hadn’t been any firing anywhere along 2nd Company’s line for the last couple of hours, for that matter, and Mahkgyl and Mylyndyz had watched a mounted courier gallop by without drawing so much as a single shot less than thirty minutes ago. Maybe the harassing artillery fire was actually working for a change. On the other hand, the fact that they weren’t firing at the moment didn’t mean they weren’t lying there, watching the road over their rifle sights, waiting for a richer prize … like a group the size of the one picking its way up from the west.
It took the eight-man detail over twenty-five minutes to climb what wasn’t a particularly high hill, but only partly because of its steepness. The four large, covered kettles suspended from the shoulder-carried poles at the center of the detail accounted for most of the delay. And given what they were almost certain those kettles contained, Mahkgyl and Mylyndyz approved wholeheartedly of their fellows’ disinclination to spill them.
The sun had disappeared below the horizon and dusk was setting in by the time they reached the top of the hill, crossed its highest point, and clambered cautiously down to 1st Section’s lizardholes. The first pale stars showed in the eastern sky, but the sky to the west still glowed, and Mahkgyl was careful not to silhouette himself against it as he greeted the man at the small column’s head.
“When you said you were gonna see about some food, I thought you meant more of this crap, Sarge,” he said, waving his gnawed-at bit of hardtack at the kilted giant. “I didn’t realize you meant like … well, like food food!”