At present, two of them were escorting the Dragon as it was laboriously hauled through this hellhole of a gorge in this hell-sent blizzard. One was riding on the wagon, supposedly keeping watch for enemy Speakers, although at the moment nobody could see anything in this Satanic blizzard. A second was busily blessing the gravel of the road, the fords and bridges, and even strengthening the team of sixteen oxen that hauled the monster.
The third Speaker was supposedly supervising and enabling the digging of the emplacement at the point where the road emerged from the gorge and turned the corner. There the gun would have a clear shot at the gates of Castle Gallant, which would begin a historic first storming of that castle. What not one of the damned-for-eternity military idiots had thought to tell His Grace was that the road there was carved out of living rock. Worse, they had not considered the narrowness of the ledge between cliff-up and cliff-down. Now the sappers had hacked out a trench about three feet wide and two feet deep-not yet deep enough for the bombard, but wide enough to block passage of any vehicle larger than a cart. How did they think the gunners were going to get the Dragon into that hole? The dray was too wide to pull up alongside it. Did they imagine a team of sixteen oxen could back up? And if it could, that would leave the bombard pointing the wrong way!
Even in the blinding snow, Wartislaw himself saw the problem at a glance. His roar of fury caused the Speaker to vanish, and half his escort moved off, into the fog. The duke wheeled his horse, drew his sword, and prepared to behead the captain in charge. The man screamed in terror, backed away too far, and vanished over the edge of the cliff. Good riddance. Wartislaw ordered one of his mounted escort to remain and take charge-and finish the excavation by morning, or else. Then he bellowed for the rest to follow him, and spurred his horse back into the gorge.
By the time he reached Thunder Falls, he had still not solved the emplacement puzzle. The answer would probably involve ropes, which he had, and dozens of pulleys, which he did not. His falcons could fetch them from Pomerania, but it might take weeks to find enough.
Perdition!
He had to slow his horse to a walk as the escort attempted to clear a way for him along the mass confusion of the trail, carts bringing forward tools, weapons, and ammunition, and men-at-arms standing by to repel any sortie from Gallant. There just was not enough room here to fight a war! Even the rumble of the falls could not drown out the cursing and bellowing of orders, clumping hooves, squealing axles, lowing oxen, clattering shingles. The sides of the gorge varied from sheer rock to almost-sheer moss and scrub. Even above the falls, where the canyon became slightly wider, the extra space was taken up by rocks and tree stumps.
And out of the gloom and the swirling snow emerged an incompetence worse than any yet. He had left strict orders that his pavilion was to be situated as close to the gun battery as possible, so that he could watch the bombardment when it began. But the fools were assembling it on a shingle bank only a third of the size it needed, so half of it would be in the river, and the rest strung through the boulders like a ribbon of colored silk.
“Idiots!” he roared. “What do you think you’re doing?”
An elderly servant-Wartislaw never bothered to remember menials’ names-looked up at him in terror. “Erecting your tent, Your Grace. You told-”
Wartislaw slashed him across the face with his quirt. “Pig-brained nincompoop! I’ll have you all flogged. Where is-”
Huh? Horses staggered, then reared in terror, even his own courser, until he hauled on the reins and beat it into submission. Several men had fallen over, and were scrambling to their feet again. Rocks clattered down the hillside.
“What was that?” he muttered, but nobody answered.
Thunder rolled and echoed. All heads had turned to stare back along the trail, the way they had come. Not thunder; a mine! He had never heard one that big, but the delay between shock and sound meant that it had been at least a mile away. So it must have originated within his baggage train. The train had still been working its way forward while the men were setting up camp. Had one of those cretinous wagoners driven too close to a campfire? Or was this more Jorgarian Satanism like that suspiciously defective ladder this morning? If a powder wagon had exploded in the middle of the column, Wartislaw might have to add two or three hundred casualties to the toll from thi s morning’s fiasco.
He spurred forward again, yelling for men to get out of his way. He must inspect the damage and get the bodies out of sight as soon as possible, or those superstitious churls…
And what was that? The roar of the falls was growing louder. Except that the sound was not coming from behind him, where the falls were. In front of him? Above him?
And then he was flying, horse and all.
CHAPTER 16
Vlad ran down the stairs to the armory, roaring orders to anyone he met on the way. He had divided Anton’s forces into three “battles,” naming them after city churches. Currently St. Andrej’s had the watch, St. Petr’s was on standby, and St. Sebastijan’s was off duty. By the time he reached the armory, the tocsin was clanging and St. Petr’s men were already running in to report for duty.
Dali Notivova arrived at his heels, bare to the waist, with shaving oil on one side of his face and two days’ beard on the other.
“Cute whiskers,” Vlad said. “Latest Italian style?” He peered around and located Sir Teodor looking for orders. He was a local rancher, well into his forties and too old for real roughhousing, but he’d fought for the Hungarians against the Turks and could handle men. Vlad had made him captain of St. Petr’s Battle.
“Muster,” he ordered, “and prepare to sortie out the north gate. Dali, muster the cavalry.” All twelve horses. “Take every horse we’ve got, but save the biggest for me.”
All around him jaws dropped, eyes widened.
Vlad raised his voice to address them all. “You felt that thump a little while ago? And heard thunder a little later? I’ve met that before, when a mine went off. I tell you now the Wends’ powder store was struck by lightning! If I’m wrong I’ll eat my own balls. Our Blessed Lord smote the evildoers for us! He blew half of them to hell. Now we’ll go and finish off the rest.”
They cheered like lunatics. Any action was better than being trapped in a cage while an enemy prepared to break in and kill you. Having God fighting on your side was good too. They would have to be lunatics to join a charge up that road in a howling blizzard, but he would lead them, and they would follow. He found the armor he had chosen for himself, the biggest in the castle but still damnably tight on him. Excited boys came running to help him.
Vlad felt no guilt about taking the Lord’s name in vain. Every action he had ever fought in-too many to count by now-had begun with someone assuring him-or him assuring others-that God was on their side. The Church, if it ever learned about young Wulf’s exploit with the bed warmer, would certainly claim that he had been helped by the devil, but that was just jealousy, because he could work miracles and they couldn’t. What a kid! Made a man proud to be his brother.
“No horse armor,” he told Dali. “No bows, just pikes and swords. Can’t see to shoot.” The snow was wet enough to soak bowstrings, and pike handles would make useful pry bars if they found the bombard where it might be rolled off the road. “You stay here and untie any knots.”
He›
“I don’t think they’ll be crazy enough to attack in this weather,” Vlad said, arms spread as a boy struggled to strap his cuirass around him.
“No, my lord.”
“We are, but they’re not.” He leered.
Unwilling to seem less brave, Karel leered back.