52
They crouched behind the low stone wall, watching the swaying trees through the Cleft. The past hour had been frantic, but they were as ready as they could be. The dead soldiers had been moved into the mountain pass, and covered with tents out of respect.
The wall was a fragile thing, constructed from the loose boulders left over from the watchtower and a clay mortar mixture of drinking water and the powdery earth beneath their feet. It curved in a U-shape, so that the enemy would receive fire from all sides as they came into the space beyond the Cleft. Fletcher’s soldiers were spread around it in a single row, their muskets loaded and aimed at the jungles. There were thirty extra muskets gathered from the Forsyths – not all of them had carried guns but it allowed most of the men a spare to fire before they had to reload.
Blue and his fellow gremlins stood nearby, unable to see over the top, but ready with ramrods to load the spare muskets once they had been fired. Half-ear scowled, still angry that their mounts had been sent on with the refugees: they would be little use in the tight confines of the mountain pass.
‘Do you see anything?’ Sir Caulder asked, his knees creaking as he peered over the parapet.
‘Nothing yet,’ Fletcher replied.
He was wearing his scrying crystal, strapped like an eyepatch across his face. Far above, Athena had found a crevice to shelter in and was watching the jungles with a keen eye. But despite the clarity of the image, the foliage obscured the contents of the forest. The army could be waiting just a few feet beyond the tree line and Fletcher wouldn’t know.
As for Ignatius, Fletcher had learned his lesson after their battle. The Drake had no armour like a Wyvern, but was still a large target that would be vulnerable to javelins and spears in prolonged combat. So, Ignatius had instead been sent into the sky above, to intercept any scouting demons that might be flying ahead of the goblin army and then serve as their reinforcements should the tide of battle turn. Occasionally his shadow flitted over them as the Drake wheeled and swooped, eager for the fight.
‘How are we coming with the ammunition?’ Fletcher called over his shoulder.
‘We’ve a few hundred extra rounds,’ came the reply from Gallo, holding up a misshapen cartridge. ‘They’re not pretty though.’
Gallo and three other soldiers had been tasked with melting the lead ingots over a small campfire and casting them into musket balls, while two more wrapped them in paper with what remained of their gunpowder. With the numbers of goblins that would be storming the breach, Fletcher knew they needed to meet them with a hail of bullets, and their current levels of ammunition would run out swiftly.
The wall also served a different purpose: it would not only protect them from the hail of javelins and stabbing spears, but it would also shelter them from Fletcher’s other plans – if it all went wrong, that is. He had a surprise waiting for the first goblins to pass through the Cleft.
‘We’re out of lead,’ Gallo called, holding up the last heavy sack of newly minted cartridges. ‘That’s all of it. Scraping the bottom of the barrel for gunpowder too.’
‘All right, well done. Hand the new cartridges out to the men,’ Fletcher ordered, pointing at the other sacks at Gallo’s feet. ‘And send a few up to the watchtower too. Once they’re out of rifle rounds, they’ll be able to fire these at close range.’
Gallo blanched at the narrow path up to the platform high on their right, where rifle barrels could be seen, balanced on the low ring of rocks that had once been the base of the watchtower. Rotherham was up there with them, guiding his small squad of snipers.
‘I’ll do it,’ Logan volunteered, seeing Gallo’s expression. He jogged over and took the sack from the pale-faced dwarf, earning himself a respectful nod.
Fletcher smiled, despite his nervousness. That was one silver lining – whatever grievances the soldiers had before were now firmly in the past. If they survived this, the Foxes would be as close as any band of brothers in Hominum’s army.
He felt a twinge of excitement from Ignatius, just as Sir Caulder growled under his breath,
‘Where the hell are the—’
A corpse thudded beside them in a burst of black and white feathers, and Sir Caulder unleashed a tirade of curses as he was spattered in blood. It was the broken body of a Shrike, with a gaping slash across its midriff. Above, Ignatius roared in challenge. A second, smaller Shrike, crashed on to the wall, its corpse knocking a stone free in a puff of dust. The Drake was in his element, and Fletcher could see him swooping and diving as small black dots made a bee-line towards him. It could only mean one thing.
‘It’s starting,’ Fletcher said, drawing Blaze from his holster and resting it on the wall’s parapet.
But his words were drowned out, for a horrendous noise had begun. It was like hundreds of voices, screaming in agony, accompanied by an unearthly rattling. It echoed eerily through the canyon and into their ravine, setting Fletcher’s teeth on edge.
And then, at the forest edge, the first goblins could be seen marching out of the trees in a wave of grey. Hundreds of them.
‘Hold your fire,’ Fletcher called, watching as the man next to him tightened his grip on his gun, so much so that his knuckles turned white.
His eyes focused on the pink overlay of the scrying crystal. There were too many goblins to count, marching over the grass in a great unordered mass that poured out of the jungle. Just like their cassowary-riding counterparts, these goblins wore nothing more than a loincloth to protect their dubious modesty. But as well as the usual variety of spears, stone-studded clubs and javelins, they carried rawhide shields on their left forearms, and they clattered their weapons against them as they marched into the canyon, providing some answers for the terrible din. But not the screaming.
‘Where’s that noise coming from?’ Logan shouted, returning from his precarious journey up to the watchtower.
‘Death whistles,’ Mason answered. He was crouched to Fletcher’s left, still shirtless, but now armed with his cleaver-like falchion. ‘You’ll see some orcs blowin’ ’em. Bloody ’orrible things, made to scare the enemy. Ignore ’em, lads.’
And indeed, orcs were emerging from the foliage behind the first wave, carrying great macana club-swords strapped to their backs. They held baying hyenas on rope leashes and lashed rawhide whips across the backs of the goblins nearby, driving them like cattle before them. As Athena’s gaze focused on them, Fletcher could see skull-shaped clay pipes clutched between their tusks, the source of the terrifying noise.
‘Well, it’s bloody working,’ Logan shuddered, taking his place at the wall.
Even from his vantage behind the wall, Fletcher knew the goblins were just out of rifle range. Rotherham had embedded two lines of stakes along the grasslands, so the men knew when to fire; one for the riflemen, another for the musketeers. Now the enemy army waited, just beyond the first scattered palisade, called to a halt by guttural barks from the orc commanders.
‘Come on, let’s be havin’ ye,’ Fletcher heard Rotherham growl from his perch above.
But the goblins walked no further, and the noise began to die down. Soon silence reigned across the grassy canyon. They had seen what Fletcher had left for them, just beyond their lines.
The corpses of the goblin riders had been strewn across the grass, their bodies arranged in a macabre display of splayed limbs and open wounds. The cassowaries lay beside them in forlorn humps of black feathers. Fletcher knew that the stench of rotting flesh would be thick and cloying in their nostrils, but not, in fact, because of their allies’ corpses – they were too fresh for that.
No, Fletcher had devised a use for the barrels of durian fruit from their wagon of supplies – slicing each open and strategically concealing them beneath the corpses, giving off their telltale stench of death. The enemy had tried to use fear on him. He would return the favour tenfold.
Their vanguard was dead to the last fighter, with no sign of their killers. There could be a thousand men on the other side of the Cleft as far as they knew.
‘Rotherham, give them a rifle volley,’ Fletcher called, his voice echoing unnaturally loud in the ravine. ‘Aim for the orcs. Take out their leaders.’
‘Aye,’ Rotherham replied. ‘All right lads, make these shots count.’
‘They’re out of range, sir,’ came a nervous reply.
‘Well, then you’d better aim at their chests,’ Rotherham said cheerily. ‘Easy now. Pick your targets. Slow squeeze of the trigger as you breathe out. On my mark … Fire!’
The crackle of rifles hit Fletcher’s ears, and a half-second later the volley whipped into the massed ranks. A missed shot threw a goblin to the ground, and another splintered one of Rotherham’s stakes, but the remaining shots struck home. One orc’s head snapped back, the others jerked as if stung; two falling to their knees, another clutching its arm. Not a single bullet struck the same target, a testament to Rotherham’s training.
Screeches began, spreading through the massed goblins as they retreated a dozen feet, scrambling over each other in their sudden fear. To them, the gunfire had come from the heavens themselves.
‘Stop your gawping and reload,’ Rotherham’s voice echoed above. ‘This is war, not target practice.’
The rattle of ramrods followed soon after, but the noise was drowned out by a sudden roar from the scores of remaining orcs, primal and deep with rage. A baying hyena took a retreating goblin by the neck in a sudden leap, shaking it back and forth like a rag doll. Whips cracked overhead, and the tide was turned more swiftly than it had begun, the goblins falling over themselves as they returned to their positions, some even stumbling beyond, over the corpses of their rider comrades.
‘Like bleedin’ sheep herdin’,’ Mason whispered.
‘But those ain’t no sheep dogs,’ Logan replied. ‘More like wolves.’
‘Silence in the ranks,’ Sir Caulder barked, quieting the pair.
But Fletcher’s attention was elsewhere, his eyes focused on a movement in his scrying crystal. A disturbance within the jungle, so great that the trees shook in a slow moving beeline that headed straight for them. A thud, thud of steps, that seemed to shake the very ground, reverberated through the canyon, quelling the panicked screeches of the goblins.
Then a grey-skinned giant burst from the forest, scattering goblins left and right as it stampeded into the light. Its great ears flapped in the wind, the enormous bulk of its body clearly visible as it lumbered through the clearing.
‘What the bleedin’ hell is that?’ Logan moaned.
It was a Phantaur. The rarest of all orc demons, a bipedal elephant that towered above the orcs as a mother did a child. It had a leathery hide so thick that bullets couldn’t penetrate it, and its great fists were as formidable as the long, sweeping trunk and serrated tusks that swung back and forth above the ground.
The demon halted as its shaman emerged from the jungle edge. In his crystal, Fletcher saw it was a decrepit, hunched specimen with a toothless mouth and a tattered cloak of woven fibres. A gnarled staff was clutched in its hands, and the old orc leaned on it with every faltering step. For a moment Fletcher felt a flash of pity for it.
Then it raised a long, hoary finger, and even without Athena’s overlay, Fletcher could see the orange glow of a fireball at the jungle edge, larger than any he had seen before.
‘Take cover,’ Fletcher yelled.
He and the men hurled themselves to the ground, hugging the earth for dear life. Suddenly their stone wall felt as solid as a paper sheet.
In the scrying stone, Fletcher saw the fireball swell and swell again, so enormous that it blotted out the shaman behind it. Then it was aloft, blazing through the air in a great, curving arc, trailing smoke and shimmering air. No shield of Fletcher’s could hope to withstand such an attack – not with the scant mana left in his reserves. Still it rose, so bright and blinding that it was as if Athena were staring into the sun.
As the ball began its slow descent, the Phantaur unleashed a trumpeting squeal that put Fletcher’s teeth on edge. Two heartbeats of stunned silence passed.
And then, like an unstoppable wave, the goblins charged across the grass, screeching with bloodlust.
The battle for Raleighshire had begun.