He turned without another word, charging to meet the Siddarmarkians without even looking back.
Every single one of his men followed at his heels.
* * *
“Second Platoon’s gone, Sir!” Sergeant Stahdmaiyr said, and Zhames Trynyr swore. Fourth Platoon had already crumbled and 1st and 3rd were fighting for their lives. If 2nd was gone.…
“Anything from Captain Yairdyn?” he demanded.
“Nothin’, Sir. But it don’t look good,” Stahdmaiyr said grimly. “Looks like the left’s clear back t’ the reserve line.”
“Chihiro,” Tyrnyr breathed. If Yairdyn had been driven back that far.…
“We can’t hold them, Wylsynn.” His voice was bleak, his face grim. “Go find Captain Zholsyn. Tell him it’s time to get as many out as he can. We’ll buy him as much time as we can.”
“I’ll send a runner,” Stahdmaiyr promised.
“No, damn it! Go yourself, Make sure the frigging order gets through!”
“I’ll send a good man.”
“You’ll take it yoursel—!”
“No, Sir,” Stahdmaiyr said flatly. “I won’t.” He showed his teeth for an instant, white as bone under the star shells. “Happen you can court-martial me later, if you’ve a mind to.”
Tyrnyr opened his mouth again, only to close it with a snap. There was no time … and he knew the sergeant wouldn’t go, anyway.
“All right then, you frigging idiot,” he said softly, squeezing the older man’s shoulder. Then he cleared his throat. “You’d best get it off quickly, though.”
“I’ll do that thing,” Stahdmaiyr told him, and Tyrnyr drew his pistol and checked the priming while the tide of battle rolled towards him in the staccato thunder of exploding grenades and the rattle of gunfire.
* * *
“Message for Colonel Sheldyn! Where’s Colonel Sheldyn?!”
The exhausted, mud-spattered courier half ran and half staggered into the Zhonesberg command post. He couldn’t have been a day over nineteen, although the insignia of a lieutenant was visible through the liberal coating of mud, and he scrubbed fresh muck off his face as he stared around the dripping, poorly lit hut.
“Here!” Gylchryst Sheldyn straightened, turning away from the map table. The light was so bad he’d had his nose almost touching it and still found the smaller labels almost impossible to read. “What message? And who sent it?”
The courier swayed on his feet as he scrabbled in his shoulder pouch and found the hastily sealed letter.
“From Colonel Hyndyrsyn, Sir.” Urgency burned through the hoarse fatigue of his voice. “The Switch’s been overrun. Captain Tyrnyr’s dead—we think—and no more than a hundred of his people got out.”
Sheldyn’s face tightened. He didn’t need to be able to see any maps to understand what that meant.
The heretics had taken Byrtyn’s Crossing just over a five-day ago, after driving the Army of the Seridahn out of Fyrayth in two five-days of heavy fighting. They’d obviously received a significant number of heavy angle-guns, and the heretic Hanth had used them to devastating effect on the Fyrayth defenses.
That was … unfortunate, since, Fyrayth had been the most important barrier, short of the border fortresses of Bryxtyn and Waymeet, against Hanth’s advance into Dohlar itself. It had dominated the highest ground along the entire length of the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal, and that alone would have made its capture a critical loss. Worse, though, its loss had let Hanth out of the bottomless quagmire which had mired his every effort to repeat the short, flanking hooks which had driven the Army of the Seridahn back, step by bloody step, before the winter rains set in in earnest. Drainage west of the Fyrayth Hills was far better, the ground was firmer, and the network of small farming communities between Fyrayth and the border provided a network of roads. They were little more than farming tracks, but they still offered far better mobility for troops and supplies than anything east of the hills.
The heretics were out of the box, he thought grimly. Hanth wouldn’t be sending any massive thrusts down any of those muddy farm roads, but he didn’t need to. Sheldyn’s present position at Zhonesberg was more than fifty miles south of the canal. There was no way General Rychtyr could hold a continuous front all the way from there to the canal with the sort of fortified positions needed to stop a determined heretic attack. The labor to build a line of entrenchments that long, even in this weather, might have been found, but he had too few troops to man something that enormous even if it had been available.
He’d fallen back thirty-five miles west of Fyrayth to his next main position, the fortified line of redoubts and entrenchments between the villages of Maiyrs Farm, north of the canal, and Stahdyrd’s Farm, forty miles north of Zhonesberg, but that was the widest front he could hold in strength, and if even relatively light forces got loose in his rear, reached the canal and high road behind him.…
The terrain north of Maiyrs Farm was almost as bad as that east of Fyrayth, which gave his left flank a certain degree of security; at least there should be time to pull his left back if Hanth came slogging through the muck and mud to turn it. But the “road net” south and southeast of Stahdyrd’s Farm was too widely spread for that. Instead, he’d fortified the towns and major farms and garrisoned them in company and regimental strength. No one thought those garrisons could stop any serious attacks, but what they could do was to slow the heretics down, impose enough of a road block Hanth would be forced to bring up the weight for those attracks—which would use up precious time—and warn General Rychtyr if his right was seriously threatened.
“How did they take the Switch so quickly?” he demanded.
“I don’t know for sure, Sir,” the swaying courier said hoarsely. “We saw signal rockets, then heard portable angle-gun fire.” He shrugged helplessly. “Couldn’t see or hear anything more than that through the rain before Colonel Hyndyrsyn sent me off to warn you, Colonel.”
Sheldyn wanted to glare at the youngster, but it certainly wasn’t his fault!
“What about—?” he began, then cut himself off.
No doubt Hyndrysyn’s dispatch would tell him what in Shan-wei’s name was happening … assuming the other colonel knew. But Hyndyrsyn’s position was held by barely half the strength which had been assigned to Tyrnyr. It was little more than an observation post and communication point. It was unlikely to stop anything that could punch Tyrnyr out of the way so quickly.
“Find this man something hot to eat,” he said curtly to his aides, moving closer to the lantern hanging from the hut’s roof. “And find me some messengers. Three, at least.”
“Yes, Sir!” someone responded, but Sheldyn was too busy slitting open the dispatch to notice who it was.
.XII.
The Temple,
City of Zion,
The Temple Lands,
and
Charisian Embassy,
Siddar City,
Republic of Siddarmark.
Zhaspahr Clyntahn snorted like an overweight doomwhale as the quiet chime sounded through his bedchamber. He rolled onto his side, pulling a pillow over his head, and the wide, comfortable bed surged under his weight. His current mistress stirred sleepily and rolled up against his back, wrapping her arms around him and nuzzling the back of his neck while her breasts pushed against his shoulder blades, and he smiled a half-awake smile.
But then the chime sounded again, louder and clearer. He shook himself and his eyes opened. One hand reached out and pawed at the dimly glowing circle on the bedside table and he squinted irritably at the clock. Its face was clearly visible in the mystic nightlight shining up from the tabletop in answer to his touch, and his face tightened with annoyance.