The Chesian Wars (A Griffins & Gunpowder Collection) Read online

  Vladik, surrounded by two dozen mounted infantry, led his troops toward the small nation of Jarin. His officers rode alongside their men, more to avoid being at the front of the column than anything. At the tail of the column, the wagons and artillery plodded along as quickly as the huge draft horses could pull them. Vladik's raised fist signaled a halt and trumpets passed the word to the rear.

  "Sir!" The rider reined up in front of Vladik. "General Vallas has encountered enemy forces!"

  "Where?" Vladik asked.

  "At the other end of the valley, sir," the boy reported. He was winded from his ride and his horse's flanks heaved with each labored breath. "They were waiting for us, sir. The first brigade was cut down before we even knew what was happening."

  "Didn't the general deploy scouts?"

  "No, sir," the boy said.

  "How large is the enemy force?"

  "There's at least a division of them, sir. That's what the general said." Vladik shook his head. "There's three brigades entrenched at the end of the valley, another brigade split up between the two ridges. They've got rifles up there, sir."

  "Get your horse some water," Vladik ordered, waving the boy away. "Sound for the division officers."

  "Yes, sir," the trumpeter at his elbow said with a nod. A short three-tone melody rang out, echoed by trumpeters further back.

  The officers galloped to join their commander at the front of the stalled column. The last of them arrived nearly half an hour after the messenger.

  "Vallas has walked into a fire fight, and we're four hours' march from his position," Vladik said. He swung down from his horse and drew his sabre.

  "Sir, even at the double time, this storm is going to push our troops beyond their limits." General Tolenka Valeev was from the small district of Baranska. He was on the short side, a hand more than five feet tall, and had squinty eyes and thin black hair. His district had been one of the first to surrender to threats by Emperor Maximilian.

  "We'll have to take that chance, General. We'll split up as we approach the valley." Vladik drew two lines in the dirt to signify the valley. "Tolenka, you will take your division to the east, along the outside of the ridge. Gregori, you will lead your division to the west end. I'll lead the remaining two divisions up the valley to reinforce Vallas’s position."

  The officers nodded but no one spoke. Vladik wondered if he had been given all Rachowi generals if they might have provided some feedback on his plans. The military structure of the empire, a combination between generals who had surrendered to the emperor, those that had risen to power with him and those that had resisted him, did not lend itself to an honest debate between officers. Everyone was too afraid to voice their opinion lest the wrong person find out and dispose of the offending commander.

  Vladik supposed that it was only his cousin's position as the General of the Northern Imperial Army that had prevented one Vladik Ortoff from losing his position in light of the opposition he had so publicly voiced when the idea of invading Jarin and Malkala had been raised.

  "Return to your men, generals," Vladik ordered and waved at the trumpeter. The boy sounded the advance, at the double time, and the column began to move again.

  Pans and equipment clanged on the men’s backs as the first of Vladik’s regiments passed. They were trained to march at the double time for more than three hours at a time, with full packs, but they would be exhausted when they arrived.

  The first drops of rain began to fall and Vladik cursed his luck. A four-hour sprint to reinforce Dmitri would have been hard enough in the direct sunlight and scalding heat; rain would make the ground soft and the air thick. The soldiers' packs and uniforms would absorb the raid and become heavier and harder to move in.

  All because that idiot thought he wouldn't see a Jarin until we reached the city, Vladik thought as he nudged his horse to a trot.

  If there was one downfall of the Dragon's Teeth, it was their over-confidence. The Grobani forces had seen so many victories that they couldn't remember a defeat. They believed that no one would stand in front of them and that those who did would be cut down without incident. Even the most mediocre commander in any other division would have known to have scouts deployed, especially marching into a narrow valley. A single brigade would have been able to hold the Chesians at bay if they had enough time to entrench and knew that their enemy was coming.

  Vladik wondered how many of Dmitri's troops had died already, and how many would be left when his forces finally arrived.

  ***

  *Acheron*

  It was three hours past midday when the rain started, both a blessing and a curse. The storm would flood the stream at the center of the valley and force the Chesians to places where their movement was more limited. The mud would be hard to move in and would weigh down the horses.

  But it would also make it difficult for his men to reload and fire. Their muskets required a dash of powder to be poured into the pan at the base of the hammer to ignite the charge inside the barrel. Wet powder didn't burn. On the other hand, the as long as the Chesians didn’t have percussion cap muskets, they too would experience the problem.

  His scouts reported that they had cut down a third of the enemy forces and the rest were cowering far enough from his trenches that his main force would be ineffective. Acheron had passed orders to his commanders that the soldiers were not to leave the trenches under any circumstances. Leaving the trenches would strip those soldiers of the only advantage they had against the more numerous Chesians.

  Acheron had ordered his mounted troops to harass the Chesians instead, with support from his flanking regiments. His skirmishers had moved further away from the valley's mouth and were perched amongst the boulders in a particularly rocky part of the valley. They were at the very outside of their range, nearly four hundred yards away from the Chesians, but they would be safe from any retaliatory fire from the muskets below.

  Acheron hunched behind a particularly large boulder and leveled his rifle on the swarm of humanity huddled in the center of the valley. The stream was flooding, and each foot the Chesians were forced away from the stream was a foot closer they were forced toward the riflemen on the ridges. Some of the Chesians tried to hide behind the bodies of their fallen comrades; others found shelter among the boulders that littered the valley. Many pushed back against their fellows, trying to force their lines away from the Jarins.

  A movement to the north caught his eye; another charge by his riders. The horses found sure footing despite the mud and the bodies that lay strewn about the valley floor. Their riders brought their muskets to their shoulders and fire and smoke spouted from their weapons. As the riders turned to retreat, Acheron's men fired.

  Acheron's bullet found its mark in the middle of a man's forehead. Blood and brains sprayed. The men around him recoiled.

  Acheron tucked himself behind the boulder and reached into his pouch for another round, but his fingers came up empty. He leaned his rifle against the boulder and pried the pouch open with both hands, but found nothing.

  "Ammunition!" he heard a voice shout. Others joined; his men were out of rounds. Across the valley, the regiment was withdrawing.

  "Withdraw!" Acheron ordered, and his trumpeter blew the command to fall back. The sound was terribly muffled by the ringing in his right ear.

  As he hustled toward the hilltop, Acheron tried to find a way to continue the fight. His supply trains would be half a day away if they managed to keep pace.

  Without the support of the rifles on the flank, the cavalry would not be able to mount their raids without taking heavier casualties. When the Chesians started pushing back up the valley, they would be able to do so without concern for their flanks or how close they were pressed to the hillsides.

  He glanced down at the valley floor and the thought came to him. There were thousands of bodies littered across the valley floor. Their muskets were with them: clutched in cold, dead hands or sprawled beside the corpse of their owner. The weapons would not be
as effective as the rifles, but they would be better than nothing if the Chesians pushed up the hillsides.

  As he started down the outside of the hills, Acheron's breath caught.

  "Messenger!" he shouted.

  ***

  *Vladik*

  The rain had quickly become the bane of his existence, Vladik decided. What should have been a four hour sprint to the valley had devolved into movement barely faster than a crawl. It had been four hours since the messenger had returned with word that Dmitri Vallas' forces had been ambushed in the valley ahead of them, and Vladik's forces had covered barely half of the distance.

  Their packs had become unbearable and soldiers were falling faster from heat stress than they would have at the receiving end of Jarin volleys.

  The once solid road had turned to mud, and not the regular kind of mud. No, this was more like brown glue. Men lost boots, horses had lost shoes, and the wagons were completely immobilized.

  "Can this day get any worse?" Vladik muttered to himself.

  His four divisions wouldn't reach the valley before sundown, and the rain showed no sign of stopping. Lightning flashed from horizon to horizon and thick black clouds blocked out what would have been left of the sunlight. If they didn't stop now, they would never be able to get their tents assembled fast enough to provide them cover from the night's storm.

  "Call a stop," Vladik ordered at last. The trumpeter hesitated. "Damn it, boy, call a stop."

  "Yes, sir," the boy said. He brought his trumpet to his lips and sounded four long, low blasts. Trumpeters along the column echoed the call and soldiers sat down where they were, mud and rain and all.

  Vladik's generals were quickly upon him as a trio of men struggled against wind and rain to set up the commander's tent. Vladik could see, even in the dying light, that they were soaked from head to toe.

  "We're not going any further, generals," Vladik said as he dismounted. A private took the reins to his horse and led the beast away. "The rain is too thick, the mud is impossible to march through, and the light is dying. We will wait until morning to continue."

  "But General Vallas--"

  "General Vallas has a full division of Dragon's Teeth at his command, and he is in a snake pit of his own making. We will continue the march in the morning," Vladik said. His voice made it clear that he would hear no further argument on the matter.

  When the tent was finally raised, Vladik ducked inside and pulled off his jacket. The ground was muddy and the canvas was wet, but at least he was out of the rain. He hung his jacket and hat on a peg, unbuttoned the top of his shirt and sat in front of the small fire that his men had set for him. A steward slipped into the tent and set a pot of coffee over the small fire and then disappeared.

  Vladik had never considered that his orders would be so much trouble. If Dmitri had set patrols ahead of him, Vladik would have been able to take his time in reaching the valley. His troops could have re-established camp before the worst of the storm rolled over them, and he would be high and dry waiting for morning and the storm's passage. Instead, he was huddled beside a fire, trying to dry himself.

  He stood at the entrance to his tent while he waited for the coffee to brew and lifted the tent flap to look out on his army. The tent city had gone up with a quickness that astonished Vladik. Small fires had sprung up throughout that city as troops tried to warm themselves, or cook a meal, or both. Flashes of lightning illuminated the plains and Vladik could see the horse lines and the clustered wagons at the center of the tent city.

  "Sir, riders!" one of his sentries announced as half a dozen men rode through the tents toward his own. The riders wore thick, hooded cloaks to keep the rain out of their eyes.

  The figure leading the others could only be one man: he sat ramrod straight in his saddle and rode with the confidence of someone that had spent his entire life around horses. If he was nothing else, Dmitri Vallas was an excellent rider. It had been the one redeeming quality that Vladik had been able to find about the man.

  When he finally came to a halt in front of the commander's tent, Vladik could see mud caked on his subordinate's once immaculate uniform. His face was dirty and a trace of blood clung to his right ear. His face was twisted into an angry scowl.

  "Why did you stop?" Dmitri demanded as he dismounted.

  "Good to see you are unhurt, General," Vladik said. He stepped aside and held the tent flap open to invite his subordinate inside. Dmitri said nothing, but stepped past Vladik out of the rain.

  "I will not suffer that again," Vladik said as he pulled the coffee pot out of the fire. He poured each of them a cup and then sat on a folding wooden chair. "What is your report?"

  "I've lost two full brigades and a third is in tatters, but the enemy has not pressed their attack since I left. They had brigades armed with rifles on the hilltops, but they withdrew in the early evening, likely due to ammunition."

  "Are your estimates on the enemy strength solid?"

  "Of course they're solid," Dmitri said. "Two brigades of soldiers entrenched at the end of the valley, armed with muskets. Another brigade on either side of the valley and at least half a brigade of mounted infantry."

  "Any artillery?" Vladik doubted the estimates of his subordinate. The Jarins, at the last report, counted less than seventy thousand soldiers in their standing army and would only be able to muster another thirty thousand by calling their militias. A full division of soldiers in the right place at the right time would have left vast swaths of their border undefended, and unlike Dmitri they were not foolish enough to think that no one was looking at them.

  "Thankfully, we did not face artillery," Dmitri reported. Vladik's suspicions were confirmed: the Jarin presence had been dumb luck. If they had known where he was going to make the crossing from Chesia, they would have sent artillery.

  "That is fortunate," Vladik said. "To answer your earlier question, General, I stopped because the conditions demanded it. My men have been marching for most of the day, either in blinding heat or torrential rain. The ground has turned to mud, the air is too thick to breathe, and there is no light. I have medical camps set up for the last eight miles with thousands of troops under rest for exhaustion."

  "Sir, my division is being devastated. We need reinforcement!"

  "If you hadn't been so blindly arrogant, you would have seen the enemy in front of you and could have flanked them. Or, like your orders instructed, reported their position to me and routed yourself around them."

  "Sir, I did not expect the Jarins to be waiting for me," Dmitri offered in defense.

  "That much is obvious, General, but that is not an excuse." Vladik's voice was hard and his eyes cold as he stared at his subordinate. "You will return to your troops and withdraw them to the mouth of the valley, where you will entrench and await our arrival. You are dismissed, General."

  Dmitri stood slowly, as if he was contemplating a refusal, but he finally saluted and stepped out of the tent, leaving Vladik alone. Dmitri would have to lose his post, if he wasn't killed by the Jarins. It would be the only way that Vladik would survive this particular mess, he realized quickly. Incompetence was one thing; blatant disregard for orders was another.

  He drank his coffee and cringed at the bitter taste that was common when the stuff was brewed too hastily. Vladik set the cup on a small table and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  His troops were still ten miles away from the valley. Even if the weather was moderate and he pushed his army at the double time for another full day, he wouldn't reach the valley until after midday and his men would be exhausted. Nearly ten thousand of his troops were still behind him, recovering from heat stress, and he was sure to lose more on the day's march. If he wanted to go to battle with his divisions at full strength, he would have to wait at least two days for the stragglers to rejoin him.

  Another unacceptable option that I'm going to be forced to accept, Vladik thought. He was about to pour himself another cup of coffee when a ruckus outside drew his attention.
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  A trio of mounted men were outside of his tent, surrounded by a dozen of his guards. In the occasional flash of lightning and the dull orange glow from torches and lanterns, Vladik could see blue cloaks. The men that wore them were pale skinned, which ruled out the olive skinned Jarins.

  "What's the problem here?" Vladik asked from the shelter of his tent.

  "These men are merely doing their job," a voice announced in the Trade tongue. The language was the bastard of a dozen different cultures and was the closest thing to a common language on the southern continents of Zaria. The voice had an accent that Vladik couldn't quite put a finger on. "They were questioning our identities, albeit in a manner a little more forceful than we are accustomed to."

  "And who might you be then?" Vladik asked in Trade.

  "Ah, a learned man," the voice said, this time in flawless Chesian, even getting the correct inflection on the word “man.” "I am Zarek Rus, Marshall of the Fifth Sithean Army."

  "Let them by," Vladik ordered.

  The lead rider swung down from his saddle and approached the tent. He was a big man, at least a hand taller than Vladik. Short brown hair framed a thin, triangular face, and his large green eyes were set on either side of a sharp, thin nose. He was pale, more so even than Vladik. His cloak was indeed blue and a black scythe, its blade dripping blood, was sewn over his heart.

  "Your weapons?" He was unarmed, so far as Vladik could tell, but the Chesian commander wanted to leave nothing to chance.

  "I am unarmed," the Sithean reported. "It is our custom that officers do not carry weapons outside of battle."

  "You'll understand if I ask you to open your cloak and let me have a look?"

  "Of course." The Sithean bowed his head slightly, pulled his cloak back and let Vladik inspect him.

  Vladik was satisfied. "Please, come in out of the rain."