Finally they entered a mini-clearing, caused by a huge tree that had fallen some years ago, taking down the neighboring trees and leaving an open area behind. There were no fires or torches, but the moonlight lit the place up well enough. Several men milled about, napped in the shadows, or tended to their gear while talking to each other in low tones. Navid had situated himself in the crook of the fallen tree, making himself a comfortable seat. When he spied the visitors, he leaped lightly to the ground and headed straight for them.
“Sir.” Navid exchanged a short salute with Darius.
“Where do we stand?” Darius asked quietly. Even with this distance, he didn’t feel comfortable talking too loudly. “Are they guarding the siege equipment at all?”
“A light guard,” Navid answered with a wolfish smile. “More concerned with their own skins.”
Ah-ha, as he had hoped. “Is everyone in position?”
Navid nodded. “Ready at your signal, sir.”
“Where’s a good place for me to be so that I can see?”
Navid thought for a moment before gesturing him to follow. With all of the trees and foliage here, Darius half-expected that he’d have to climb something before he could see the road. Instead, and to his complete surprise, Navid led him to the highway itself, albeit at several hundred yards away from the last posting. They hunkered down right at the edge of the tree line, sinking down to blend in better with the shadows.
Darius put a hand on Navid’s shoulder and leaned close to demand softly, “It’s actually safe being this close?”
Navid nodded, the movement barely discernible in the poor lighting. “Camp’s too long,” he whispered in explanation. “Patrol spread too thin protecting it.”
Ahh, that made sense. With a camp spread over that much ground, and so close to a forest that they knew harbored the enemy, anyone on patrol must feel it better to watch their immediate surroundings than focus on the deserted highway behind them. Still, it was a very stupid decision. That left their backs wide open.
Navid set the thief’s lantern down on the ground with a soft clink before slinging the bow off his back. Darius backed up a pace to give him room as he drew an arrow out. Bending, he lifted the lid on the lantern just enough to light the tip of the arrow before letting it clink shut again. Then with swift, sure motions he knocked the arrow, raised the bow at an upwards angle and let the arrow fly. It soared with a slight whistling sound into the air, arching up and then back down, hitting the nearest catapult with perfect accuracy. At this distance, and with such poor lighting, that was quite the shot to pull off.
“Good shot,” Darius praised Navid with a light tap on his shoulder.
“Thank you, sir.” Navid shot him a quick smile, but his attention was on the road ahead.
Almost before the arrow could find its mark, dozens of similarly lit arrows were released into the sky with twanging sounds. They all hit the siege engines sitting on the shoulders of the highway with ease. Of course, the siege engines were largely wood. Dry wood, at that, that had been exposed to the hot sun for months on end. It took no encouragement for them to instantly catch fire.
The soldiers—and no doubt engineers—that had been asleep nearby awoke and sent up a cry of distress and frustration to see their equipment go up into flames. With no water on hand, the only thing they could do was grab shovels and try to throw enough dirt on it to smother the fire. But they could not reach the tallest parts of the catapults and those quickly burned down to the ground, taking anything nearby with it.
Darius felt an evil sense of satisfaction as he watched everything burn. It took only minutes to accomplish. In this dense forest, the engineers could of course cut down more trees and construct new equipment.
If
they had all of the tools they needed to start from scratch.
If
they had the enough time to build with.
If
Darius would let them. The last would be the real reason. The men had strict orders to shoot anyone that tried to take an axe to any part of the forest. And heaven forbid if a man got too close to the forest with a torch in hand, too. He would instantly drop dead. The only way to defeat ambushers in this situation was to burn the forest down and destroy their cover. Every man in both armies knew that. Darius didn’t even have to issue any commands to protect the forest—the men did it automatically.
Satisfied, he prodded everyone back into motion and started back for the main camp in the Songhor Mountains. His second objective had just been completed.
Tomorrow it would be time for the third.
~~~
Darius woke up that morning with a terrible crick in his neck. Even as he groaned and slowly rolled out of his blankets, he thought to himself,
I’m getting too old for this.
The sun had already risen, although barely, and the men around him were stirring and getting ready to face the day. He sat there for a moment and watched them. Not one man looked like he’d gotten a restful night’s sleep. They all staggered around, rubbing at their faces and looking around for hot water so they could have a strong cup of tea to wake up with. He empathized completely.
They could not afford to have anyone clutter up the road winding through Dakan Pass. At places, the road became so narrow that a wagon could barely squeak through. Darius couldn’t have any movements impeded and he had so many traps and ambushes set up along the way that he didn’t think it safe for his men to camp down there anyway. Perforce, everyone had to sleep up in the mountains.
That’s when the situation became even more complicated.
With the armaments built up there, and the multitude of trees and rocky outcroppings, flat ground was at a premium. Officers ruthlessly pulled rank to get any flat space they could. Putting up tents was impossible from the start, so officers and foot soldiers alike were usually lying next to each other with barely a hand’s space between them. Even Darius didn’t fare any better, as the one section he’d found he had to share with his two bodyguards. Fortunately Sego wasn’t here to see this. He’d have had heart failure if he did.
Darius creaked noisily to his feet, joints popping as he moved, and carefully stepped over a sleeping Bohme. Tolk stepped into his shadow as he made his way down a little ways and to the nearest cook fire.
The safest thing to do with an army cook was to accept whatever the man handed you with a smile (dire consequences came with not smiling) and to eat it quickly before your tongue could adequately taste it. Even a lead general was not above these rules. Cooks were known to be very underhanded and evil in dispensing revenge. So Darius accepted the plate of sludge—really, no other word could describe it—with a smile, sat down and mechanically ate it as fast as he could before handing it back with a cordial word of thanks. The cook beamed at him, revealing several missing teeth, and offered him some hot tea to wash it down with. He even sprinkled a little sugar into the tea. (Something the rest of the men nearby grumbled about, but
they
hadn’t smiled.) Darius accepted the cup with more honest thanks before heading to the cliff’s edge.
Mihr had beaten him there. He stood with a hand shielding his eyes from the bright morning sun, intently watching the Brindisi camp below.
“Good morning, Mihr,” Darius offered as he joined the man.
“Morning, Bresalier.”
Darius stared downward for a long time, evaluating everything. The soldiers down near the ravine were slowly breaking camp and forming up into their squads. The Baiji horsemen were already saddled up and ready to go. But then, the Baiji believed in being up with the sun and they were always the first to be ready. He knew that from experience, as he’d fought several wars with the Baiji in his army.
In fact, it was their habits that he counted on to make this next stage of the plan work.
“They’ll be ready to move very soon,” Darius remarked. “Are we ready?”
“Have been since sun rise,” Mihr assured him. “I had everyone rise a little earlier this morning, just in case.”
“Good.” It had apparently not been necessary, but better to play it safe.
They watched without speaking as the rest of the Brindisi Army formed up and started moving. As soon as they did so, the leader of the Baijian horsemen waved his own men forward. Of course, with horses under them, they moved much faster and a gap between them and the foot soldiers quickly opened up.
He’d planned for that to happen, too.
Darius held his breath, the tea in his cup forgotten, as he watched. It took some time for eight thousand horsemen to ride past him, even with them moving two abreast.
As soon as the last one was clear, Mihr gave the order. “NOW!”
From both sides of the pass, the men knocked out the logs holding up stack of boulders and rocks. Their false avalanche of stone came tumbling down, gaining speed as it moved, and went crashing downwards.
Alarmed, the soldiers at the front instantly stopped, some even backing away. The Baiji horses spooked at the noise and tried to dart forward, but couldn’t get far without running into the horses right in front of them.
Fortunately for all, the Niotan engineers under Kaveh’s command were very good at their jobs. The rocks fell more or less into the position intended, clogging up the mouth of the pass without hitting anyone in the process. Not that Darius would have really cared if it had landed on any enemy soldiers, but he did
not
want any Baijians injured at this point.
The last few rocks came tumbling down, clacking and grinding against the pile already at the bottom. When the dust settled, Darius peered over the edge to get a good look at the situation. The Baijians had stopped in their tracks, milling about as much as they could in the tight quarters of the pass, calling out to each other in confusion. Their leader—easily distinguishable from the rest by his bright red coat of rank—stood in his stirrups at the very head of the line and peered backwards, trying to see for himself what the situation was. When he did, he swore loud and long—so loud that even the Niotan soldiers could hear him.
“Mihr, pass my compliments to your men,” Darius said with an admiring whistle. “That couldn’t have been done more perfectly.”
Mihr’s gave him a cocky smile. “I will. Thank you.”
Flashing him a smile, he turned back toward the camp. “Now, let’s go down and see if we can’t have a nice talk with the Baijian leader, shall we?”
~~~
There were three iron clad rules when dealing with Baijians. Darius had learned all of them the hard way. The first was to
never
compliment their women—they took it as a challenge. The second was to always offer them food and drink when hosting them. If you didn’t, they considered it an insult and went out of their way to make life difficult for you. But the third would come into play this morning: when negotiating,
always
do so from horseback. They wouldn’t take you seriously otherwise.
He took a squad of trusted men, Tolk, Kaveh, and Mihr with him down to the ground floor and made sure that every man was mounted. Sohrab hadn’t been ridden much in the past month, as he had been largely in the mountains the entire time, and the stallion felt a little feisty this morning. With Darius on his back, he pranced in a showy manner, head tossing a little from time to time. Normally, he’d check this, but the Baiji respected a man that rode a spirited horse.
Kaveh held a flag of truce up as they slowly rode toward the front line. Darius focused on the leader, as he had never met the man before and had very little information on him. He seemed to fit the description of his people perfectly—a small man, wiry and tough, the top part of his hair grown long and caught in a ponytail, the bottom part shaved. The red coat he wore had signs of wear to it, so he had held the position as leader for some time.
Darius stopped several feet away, keeping a firm check on the reins as Sohrab still felt feisty and wanted to charge at the stallions nearby. “I am Darius Bresalier, Lead General of the Niotan Army.”
In response, the other man lifted his hand, palm flat so that everyone could see the tattoo of a sun on his skin. Oh-ho! A clansman leader? That just made things interesting. “I am Tunheim of Windsweep, Second Clansman.”
“Tunheim,” Darius greeted with a cordial half-bow.
“General Darius Bresalier, Kingslayer of Farros the Great,” Tunheim returned the greeting in a loud voice and with an extravagant wave of the hand that swept into a bow. “I have orders to capture you, you know.”
“I’ve no doubt.” Tunheim struck him as a man that enjoyed plain speaking. Darius dropped the elaborate argument he’d prepared and went with a more direct approach. “Tunheim, do you know why I am serving as a lead general for Niotan?”
Tunheim’s eyes narrowed. “Because they offered you refuge?”
Darius shook his head, a sly smile on his face. “Because our wishes are the same. We both wanted to rebel against the Sovran.”
“Madness.” The word should have been scoffing but instead he sounded intrigued.
“Is it? The only reason why you were deployed was because they ended a campaign.”
“A retreat.”
“A
loss
,” Darius corrected. “Serrati is now independent because Brindisi couldn’t afford to keep fighting them. They’re stretched too thin, Tunheim. You’ve seen this for yourself.”
“A logical argument,” Tunheim acknowledged with a wave of the hand, as if granting him a point. “But you’re very outnumbered here, Kingslayer. Do you really think you’ll win this battle?”
“I won a naval battle without having a navy,” Darius pointed out. “Why do you think a force of twenty-two thousand will challenge me?”
Tunheim’s brows compressed in confusion. “He has thirty thousand.”
“Oh? The Baiji horsemen that I know are too independent to tolerate another’s rule. I thought you would join me in rebelling.”
Tunheim knew good and well he was being manipulated. But the idea of breaking free of Brindisi had the sweet flavor of temptation. Baiji had always been a restless conquest, constantly bucking against Brindisi’s iron rule. They’d just lacked the organization to present a cohesive front against the conquering force. They dealt better when they combined with another army. Darius knew this. So did Tunheim.