“Hop it Bee, the Captain wants you!” a voice snapped from the street. Bianca Paniterra stumbled from the stone linteled brothel in a state of absolute disarray. She had at least managed to get her pants on, as well as one boot and was hopping awkwardly trying to pull the other up over her foot. Her shirt hung open, exposing her breasts to the warm summer air. She was a trim woman with dark hair, bright green eyes and skin that had been burned a pleasant brown by years spent outdoors in all weathers. Bianca managed to get her second boot on and spun back towards the brothel, walking backwards as she tried to button her shirt.



“Talia, you truly are the greatest lover in all of Palona!” she called grandly, running a hand through her disheveled hair and trying to tie it back in an appropriate military bun.



“You said that about Zenda!” Talia called laughing from the shelter of the brothel, “and Lilsa, and Antonius!” Bianca sketched a bow as she finally managed to button up her tunic.



“And when I said it to each of them it was true!” she laughed.



“What about me?” a playful voice called from the building.



“Sorry Eva, you were only ok,” Bianca replied. A bundle flew from the doorway and hit Bianca in the stomach dropping her to the floor with a clatter of iron. She peered owlishly at the bundle before recognizing they were her weapons.



“If I’m not honest with you, you will never improve!” she shouted into the darkness to another round of giggling.



“If you are quite finished?” the initial voice said with a hint of exasperation. Bianca pulled herself to her feet and swung her weapons belt around her hips, the long cavalry sword and paired dueling pistols weighing it down to the left, not quite counterbalancing the weight of the buckler on the right. The speaker was a Rajindan woman named Nambi. She had dark, almost ebon skin, with a golden tear drop tattooed beneath her left eye. She was the healer of the Silver Swords and a certified wizard, marked and guilded.



“Well, I wasn’t quite but then you had to show up and be all… ‘the captain wants you!’” Bianca retorted in a fair imitation of the company doctor’s accent. Nambi folded her arms beneath her breasts with an air of irritation. Bianca had the alcohol induced swaying under control now and began to move down the street in the general direction of the old temple that was serving as the company command post. The streets of Palona were paved in warm stone as was the fashion in Iscala, the heat of midday still shimmered from the pavement, even though that was two hours passed.



“You were supposed to be there ten minutes ago,” Nambi muttered as they climbed a broad stone stairway up towards the top of the wall that surrounded the city, a much faster route to the temple than taking the maze of twisting streets. Bianca refused to be baited, too distracted by the dull ache of wine in the back of her head now that she was out in the hot sun.



“I’ll never understand why you insist on wasting so much time with wine and whores,” Nambi continued, unwilling to give up her carping. Bianca wasn’t surprised, the First of the scouts having had to endure her lectures every time she had yanked her from a brothel.



“It distracts me from the fact I’m going to die,” Bianca replied tiredly as they reached the top of the wall and surveyed the vista beyond.



“I have to say, most days that feels less immediate.”



Palona was built on a small hill in the middle of the broad plain of the river Ebo. Ordinarily the view from the city wall would have been a grand sight. One of neatly cultivated fields and prosperous groves of apples and cim fruit. Now however… The city was surrounded by a network of palisades and trenches, its apple groves cut down to provide timber for the besieging army that laired just beyond the walls of sharpened wooden stakes. The cim fruit, too sturdy to be easily cut down still stood, looking oddly festive among the wreck of the plain. Canvas tents in their hundreds surrounded the city, and the smoke from thousands of cook fires was already drifting skyward. The great army of Priest-Queen Hecantha had been besieging Palona for nearly a month. A great jagged sap zig zagged its way towards the city wall, wooden mantlets and wicker facines of earth defending those sections where they would have been exposed to fire from the walls. It looked like a puckered scar across the land with piles of spoil lining each side of the trench. The sap had advanced another fifty feet since Bianca had surveyed it at dawn.



“They must be paying those long-bearded bastards by the yard,” Bianca muttered. Fifty feet was prodigious progress in the rocky soil of the plain, a feat only dwarven engineers might manage. The reality was the Grimgi Grak weren’t being paid at all. The dwarven company had been on the side of High Prelate Sandus four months ago when the Priest Queen’s forces had routed them at Silver River. By the laws and traditions that governed mercenary companies in the subcontinent, Grimgi had been given the Three. The Three were the proscribed options a defeated mercenary company could select. The First was a day's head start, during which time no pursuit was supposed to occur. A company that chose the First was free to rejoin its employers, providing they could outrun the pursuit that began after the grace period expired. Taking the First almost always meant abandoning pack train and equipment. For some companies that was a price worth paying, for dedicated siege engineers like Grimgi’s Gak, with cannon and powder to protect, it was ruin and so he had chosen the Second. The Second was a six moon indenture during which the company would serve their captors without pay, twelve moons if they were taken in a siege. While they wouldn’t be paid they were allowed the traditional share of booty and a wise captain who put aside some gold could often weather such a setback. The Third was death. For obvious reasons, mercenaries rarely availed themselves of the Third.

“Today do you think?” Nambi asked, looking out over the approaching siege works. It was close enough that Bianca could pick out the shovels and picks flashing in the afternoon sun.



“Tonight maybe,” Bianca said. She made a gesture with her arm to a point twenty yards in front of the sap where hard men and mud-stained dwarves were filling facines around a platform of logs laid on crushed stone, replacing the wooden mantlets that had protected them from fire during its construction.



“We fought with Grimgi at Draza two years ago, he has a twenty pounder that can make the range,” Bianca explained, “it’s going to take them the rest of the day to bring it up.” A siege was not considered joined until the first cannonball struck the wall and Bianca suspected that Hecantha’s forces would wait until the following morning to commence.



“Will we sally, do you think?” Nambi asked. Bianca snorted with laughter.



“I doubt anyone is that eager to get killed,” she replied, pointing to a pair of small hillocks on which crossbowmen lazed behind a forest of pavise shields, quartered with the arms of the Golden Coin Company of Altria. The Golden Bough were legendary marksmen, to earn a place you had to be able to put a bolt through a golden ducat at a hundred paces. Riding out to attack the siege lines would be both suicidal and pointless, even a successful attack would only delay things by a day or two. Behind the crossbowmen were lines of horses tied to stakes, cavalry to drive off any survivors of the hail of crossbow bolts.



The two Silver Swords walked along the wall as they talked, passing Palonan defenders who sat with their backs to the wall, some smoking clay pipes while others played dice with their companions. The defenders were a mix of Palonan levies, unskilled peasants who had the family crossbow or an old billhook and perhaps a suit of boiled leather armor to their names, and mercenaries from across the continent. The League of the North, a coalition of cities that had banded together to resist the Priest Queen, had hired a number of companies to try to check her advance from the Emerald Hills, but their general, a northern named Costigan, had been overwhelmed in the spring when the Priest Queen’s army had surged out of the south, much earlier and in much greater numbers than anyone expected. The Priest Queen used mercenaries also, though the core of her army were fanatical followers from the teeming cities of the south. They were poorly equipped and had little training, but had swamped Costigan with numbers and enthusiasm for which he had been ill prepared. Now Bianca and the rest of the Silver Swords were stuck here within this island of of a town amidst a sea of death.



The Silver Swords were typical of the type of outfit the league had hired. Three hundred strong mounted infantry with a long history on the subcontinent. There were some two thousand mercenaries in Palona though, besides the Silver Swords, only the Iron Shields - a company of Northmen, and the Horse Lords - heavy cavalry from Bettony, numbered more than a hundred Blades. They were far better equipped and trained than the local levies were, but Palona wasn’t their home, and they weren’t motivated to fight to the death against fifty thousand frothing fanatics and their mercenary auxiliaries. To a mercenary there were no causes, only contracts, and if this one wasn’t panning out, it was time to find another.

"Forget it. Even with the river bed, it's suicide." Torm said dismissively, trudging along the banks of uplifted dirt that served for battlements in this small patch of land at the edge of the Shimmering Sea. The western wind carried the scent of smoke and death to waft into the Palona streets as if to remind the citizens they were a mere two hundred paces from a thousand men who's only goal to kill them and relieve them of all their mortal belongings. Even if they survived the siege, it was going to be a hard winter for Palona. The Knight wanted to help, but his duty was to his company first, and that dictated he not make foolish decisions because his subordinates were overeager.

"But-"

"I'm not giving that order, Carston." He said with a tone of finality. "It's not my decision to make."

The contingent of Knights and their war-steeds had been the most restless of the Silver Swords since their encirclement by the soldiers of the Priest-Queen a month ago. They were men trained to fight from adolescence, that is to say, at least the 'real' knights among them. Out of their number of five dozen, Torm was one of only sixteen that had actually been knighted by a lord and granted a title. Most of the others were men-at-arms, Cataphraktoi, and even a few Mamluks from the warrings states of the endless sun. It didn't matter, at least. They had been trained together, practiced drills, and fought together in over eighteen pitched battles and skirmishes. They were all Knights of the Silver Sword to sir Torm Draufkrieg, the Grey Wolf.

"But The Captain listens to you." Sir Carston argued, having not bothered to fully remove his bascinet helm, likely in case of stray projectiles. Torm recalled he had been raised in far Wildevalt, over the Karkasson Mountains across the sea. He was one of the deadliest with a lance, but he lacked strategy and still had more than his fair share of useless fretting from his time at court, before his long exile that led him into the mercenary life. On his tabard, a red flower was being cut in twain by a silver blade. He had insisted one be made for him to. Torm's had been gifted to him, with twin silver swords behind the head of a snarling wolf. Once the Knights had seen the embroidery, all of them had wanted their own personalized tabards. Of course, the Captain didn't deigned to gift any others, and so those that cared enough paid for it out of their own pockets.

"The Captain listens to everyone. That's why he's a good Captain." Torm said with a tone that warned this was the end of the conversation. The two walked past a group of sentries playing cards, their eyes widening when they saw Torm regard them sternly. They hastily pulled away the dice and the cards and stood back up, trying to appear as if it never happened. Torm remembered his time as a page, scrambling to erase away whatever he had just done wrong as if it could just cause it all to disappear. The commander turned to Sir Carston. "We'll speak no more of this. The Captain says we wait, we wait."

"Yes, sir. It was only an idea, is all." He said by way of retreat. The problem with anointed knights was their arrogance. Even an errant had a hard time keeping his pride in check, making them dangerously close to believing they were above their superior officer in certain matters. No one knew where the Captain was from, but he had never introduced himself as an aristocrat or one of the gentry. Some openly whispered Torm should lead, but sir Draufkrieg had punished any who suggested it in his presence.

The two stepped over a small embankment where the Silver Swords only real artillery piece lay. A siege arbalest they had obtained a year ago in at the Battle of Belhold. It was as large as two horses and had to be drawn by three oxen. Tough it couldn't effectively crush a stone wall like a trebuchet or a cannon, it had a simple loading system that allowed the company to arm it with a number of different alchemical concoctions or explosives, or even a bag of the heads of a besieged city's dead men. Whatever worked. More than once Torm had watched, amazed, as a slow fuse in a barrel of phosphorous powder had exploded over an enemy line, showing them in flames.

Passing it by, the sappers saluted Torm and Castor who gave curt, returning gestures before they stepped up the slope and into the first tent, one of the many that had been pitched up near the edge of town. Some of the men had been given quarters provided by Palona, but Torm had insisted his men live outside of them and make their own dwellings, to remind them they were apart of a team. He followed his own advice as well, his tent just half a mile up the road. Shoving aside the flap, he and Castor stood before two of their number, on their knees and bound. Both sported bruises and dried blood. The man on the left was Sir Montague Blakeny, and it looked like stitches were in order. He had a nasty black eye that swelled like an unwanted pregnancy. The right man was Aeneas Mirkanto, a Cataphract with a penchant for womanizing and screaming his own name in combat. His nose had been reset, but his jaw had seen better days.

Sir Robert Longfellow and a Man-At-Arms named Brightshot, dubbed so for his shiny white teeth, stood behind them, waiting patiently with their arms crossed. Torm was glad Longfellow was there, he always had a way of mediating between the boys. He was surprised to see Brightshot there, but then again he didn't know much about the man other than he liked to dance any moment he could and was a good saber fencer. Apparently having been raised and trained in both in one of the Free Cities along the coast to the east.

"What happened?" Torm asked.

"What do you think sir? It was over a woman." Brightshot remarked. Torm was already planting a palm on his face when Sir Longfellow began speaking. "A local girl named Clarissa promised she would meet Blakeny behind the tavern for some fun, but he found her and Mirkanto in the act. By the time I got there a few tables had already been broken. I got them off each other, but they had already roughed each other up something fierce."

"I let him get his pants on first, sir," sir Montague remarked. He couldn't look his commander in the eyes, just glancing Mirkanto's way. "Wouldn't have been decent otherwise, even if he is a cur."

"Thee would have had a thad night with you, quithquilian." The Cataphract managed to say with a noticeable lisp.

"Shut up!" Torm ordered, and all four of the men snapped to attention. Even Castor seemed perturbed. "Over a woman?" Torm asked incredulously, slowly shaking his head. They both opened their mouths but Torm held up a hand, his grey eyes wintry in their disdain. "No, stop. I don't care what your reasonings were. If this was over some expensive booze or a game of cards I might get it. If one of you had stolen some money, sure. Though you should come to me for such things, but a woman? There's millions of them. You cannot throw a stone without landing in the lap of some farm girl who sees a coat of mail and thinks you're from the legends. You two, you're both taking double shifts in the stables for three months. I want to be able to see myself in the shine of those horseshoes. And the tables you broke are coming our of your pay. I would reduce your rations but we need every man at peak fighting strength."

"Do you know when we'll be fighting, sir?" Robert Longfellow interjected. Torm looked at Castor as if daring him to speak, and then regarded sir Robert.

"I don't know. Any day now, I'm sure."

"Sir!" A voice rang out, the tent flap billowing open. A courier from Palona, one of the men the master of the town had given to the service of the mercs. "The Captain wants to see you. Now, sir."

The company command post was situated in the ruins of what had once been a great building. In these fallen days it was little more than a collection of half collapsed columns and partial walls which had been picked over by the locals for building material. The locals refered to the ruin as The Temple, though to which God or Goddess it had been dedicated even they had forgotten. It had been vacant when the company arrived and was close to the top of the acropolis not far from where the cities four major thougrough fares intersected. The Captain had ordered the drunks and homeless to be rousted and the place made suitable for their occupation. The Company had slung sheets of tarpaulin over ropes to create canvas awnings against the hot southern sun. Hammocks and pallets were slung close to the surviving walls where it was cool, serving as barracks and infirmary, though most of company were spread out in smaller billets around the town. A few sentries were lounging about, effecting indifference despite their no doubt keen interest in the command conference that was starting, or had started.

Nambi and Bianca pushed their way into the post, heading for the large map covered table where the captain stood with the other officers. She was clearly the last to arrive. Cadger Ironhal, their dwarven engineering expert, sat on a barrel of pickled fish, leaning back against a wall and puffing at his church warden pipe. He smirked when he saw her, though only someone as familiar with dwarves as Bianca was could have deciphered the look from a grimace. Aeon, the big black Losotan commander of infantry stood beside him leaning on his assegai, imperturbable as always. Torm Draufkrieg, the cavalry commander in his heavy armor and ridiculous tabard, was pointing at something on the map, though the conversation ceased when she entered. There were occasional rumblings that Torm should replace the Captain, though he himself was quick to put a stop to such rumblings. Bianca couldn't imagine the knight leading the company, like as not his brain had been rattled to mush in all the steel he wore.

"I'm glad you could join us Scouts," the Captain said in his strange accent. For the hundreth time she wondered where he was from. Rumors put him at all corners of the map or, in one case, off the edge of it in the sun drenched lands south of the Great Jungle. It was useless to speculate.

"I was on the wall watching the sap," she said, liberally interpreting the truth. The puff from Cadger's pipe didn't quite cover his snort. The Captain's level gaze suggested he wasn't quite buying it.

"And what have you to report?" he asked, evidently deciding chiding her wasn't an efficient use of time.

"They can fire their first gun as early as tonight," she told him. Cadger snorted.

"Bah... Grimgi will wait till sunrise, no point wasting time and powder firing in the dark," he opined. The dwarven folk were a clannish lot and it wouldn't have surprised Bianca to learn that Cadger was speaking from personal experience with the enemy captain.

"Regardless, we can expect the seige to offically begin by tomorrow," the Captain said. "Which raises the question, what should our course be?" The question was clearly rhetorical because rather than pausing for opinions he turned to an evil looking man whose face was difigured by a pair of long slager scars.

"Ryann, can we expect the League to relieve us? the Captain asked. Black Ryann was the other wizard in the company, though his magic was as different from Nambi's as night was from day. He also served as the companies spy master.

"Given the whipping they took at Parda, and given the fact that Palona is a minor member, I think its unlikely before the autumn," Black Ryann said, his voice breathy and sibilant as though he had smoked a pipe every day for thirty years.

"And how about the enemy seige breaking up?" the Captain asked. Ryann shrugged his boney shoulders.

"Some shortages, mostly meat. The fanatics prefer to live off the land, but the mercenaries out there will have stores and sources of supply. They can caravan it up from Dolche and Eloma. Might cause some friction once the local food is exhausted, but I'd guess that is a couple of months away at least," Black Ryann reported. The Captain nodded along.

"Our contract requires us to defend Palona 'as long as defense is reasonabley possible'," the Captain mused. "What is your opinion Torm?"

"Well, the men are ready for a fight. In fact, they're getting so restless we might have a problem soon." Torm reported, though that wasn't precisely answering the Captain's question. Torm crossed his arms and looked at the map on the table, small black and silver blocks set up along the perimeter of the town to showcase the positions of the enemy and their own troops. A few had been knocked over due to the uneven table and the constant setting down of varying flagons of drinks, but it was as accurate is it could be thanks to Bianca and her scouts. "Do you think they'll just let us walk away?"

"We could choose the first of three." The Captain reminded him, watching Torm. The knight seemed very far away, eyes glued on the table as he considered the question. "Would be easier."

"The men wouldn't like it, and I don't think I'm only speaking for my lads. And it might tarnish our reputation." Torm reasoned. Perhaps 'tarnish' was a strong word, but victory brought loot, fame, and a potential bonus. This last year had been very lean for them, having fought wars of maneuvering more often than any real fighting. It served Torm just fine, but he didn't want to do this forever. He tried to think, but something wouldn't come to him. He couldn't...

Torm gave a start, his eyes darting around which betrayed his developing thoughts. He opened and closed his mouth, and shook his head.

"Out with it, boy." Cadger rumbled, smoke wafting with every word. He shoved off the wall and stomped over to the table, crossing his burly arms, the dwarf's beard now hugged to his barrel chest. Torm saw the Captain was of agreement, and he sighed, placing a hand on the desk and drawing a line over the front gate of the town with his index finger.

"A night attack." He said, and the words fell out of his mouth like lead. He felt the idea would be accepted by no one, but he continued. "We could take them tonight, a few hours before sunrise. That would neutralize their crossbowmen and hit them before the cannons fired."

Bianca looked at him like he had given the dumbest suggestion imaginable. He had expected that. The woman didn't seem to like him, though likely because of his role rather than anything he had done to her. For Torm's part, he barely paid attention to the First of the Scouts. As long as she did her job, he didn't give two shits. Cadger and the Captain's opinion he valued, and they remained quiet for the moment.

"It's not exactly my field of expertise, but a night attack only works if we have an advantage in the dark." Black Ryann remarked. There was no love lost between he and Torm, but they could at least work together professionally.

"Cadger, dwarves can see in the dark, right?" The Cavalry commander asked.

"For the most part, aye. Wouldn't be good sapping tunnels, otherwise."

"Then why doesn't Grimgi hit us at night?" Torm asked, knowing the answer but wanting to relay it simply to everyone else.

"Because his artillery is meant to support an attack from the manling infantry." Cadger replied, brow furrowed. "Without the army he's with, it'll only be a half-assed measure to fire at us. But his boys are right up front, they'll see us and tell the camp before he made it fifty yards out of the palisades."

"And you wouldn't even be in the attack. Convenient." Bianca quipped at Torm's expense, trying to keep herself from speaking like she was talking to a particularly slow five year old. "Unless you want forty of your precious horses to get a broken leg or three."

"The good thing about heavy cavalry is they can be repurposed into heavy infantry at a pinch." The Captain said. "But I still don't see how this would end in anything but a slog all night, and they have the numbers."

"We use the arbalest." Torm explained, placing a finger on the entrenched siege engine. "Once we hit twilight, the sun will be behind us. We pull it down from its position and bring it to the gate. We load it with one of our last barrels of phosphorus. Once it's time, we get some of the townsfolk to hold torches up by the walls to make the illusion our patrols are still moving, and we use the glare to get us over the wall. Once we're on the ground, we move forward fifty yards, and that's when we blow the horn. The gate opens, Cadger and his boys fire the arbalest. At its longest range, it should make it into the front of their camp, right?" Cadger considered the question, then nodded. "The light will give us something to see, but every man in their army still can't see us. Then my men and I spearhead into them, followed by Aeon to hit them hard once we force our way through."

"The Dwarves will be right in front of you. They might not be specialists in close combat, but they're tough. They might hold you back long enough to keep you." The Captain said.

"They're not even being paid. Will they really try and fight us?"

"They'll keep to their word, no matter what." Cadger assured him.

"Was it their word to fight in a melee, or to do dig and fire the cannon?" Torm asked, and Cadger mulled it over in his head, and then shrugged. "I think they'll keep to themselves as long as we don't attack them directly."

"They don't have any love for the Priest-Queen, you might be right." The Dwarf conceded.

"Once we're in, we'll have them. Bianca and her scouts can go round and once we have the main force bogged down, she can hit the camp from behind and take whatever commander and reserves they have. Worst case scenario, she retreats to the hill the crossbow sit at when morning comes and slip away at her convenience. Even if we fail, we can pull back into the town and ruined the bulk of their progress."

"And we could also lose half our forces." Ryann said, weighing the consequences.

"I don't think that will happen, but it's the Captain's decision. It's the only idea I have. Hit them at night, set their camp on fire, use it to see and help our charge, and make them run into Bianca and maybe a few of Aeon's men he can spare. We'll surround them." Torm said with finality, raising an eyebrow as he considered the room.

Of all the hair brained, idiotic, cavalry schemes. There were sixty thousand of the Priest Queen's fanatics out there, maybe another fifteen thousand battle hardened mercenaries. Behind the walls, with the other mercenary companies and the locals, they could hold out, probably for months. Out in the field, even with the other companies it was liable to be a massacre. How was it that knight's never met a problem to which they didn't try to solve with a headlong charge. Worse yet the Captain seemed to be considering it. Black Ryann snorted.

"Even with the other companies, we can't hope to overcome them in the field," the sorcerer disparaged. Bianca didn't much like the man, few among the company did, but for once he was speaking truth.

"I concur," the Captain said, in a tone that didn't signify agreement. There was a murmer among the assembled officers, some in favor of Torm's plan others against. It was true that after months of march and countermarch, the men were eager for action.

"A spoiling attack.”

___________________

“Of all the shit for brains, moronic, knightly notions,” Sanchel spat. There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the scouts. They were sitting around a cookfire built in the cleared out stable of an alehouse. It kept them close to the ale but kept them out of casual knife fights and earshot of the locals. The Palonans seemed like decent people, but war would make spies out of anyone if circumstances permitted.

“The Old Man is in a tight spot,” Bianca told the score of scouts. “If we just sit here, or if we take the First, our employers can claim that we didn’t fight.”

“Fight?! Shit First, we have been fighting these bastards since snow melt,” Kali groused, taking a bite from a stick of smoking meat she had just removed from the fire. The scouts were divided roughly fifty fifty on gender lines with almost double the percentage of women in the rest of the company.

“Yeah well, marching around don’t look much like fighting to a bunch of rich merchant princes in Altaraea,” Bianca explained.

“Well what the fuck would they know about it?” Kali bitched.

“Nothing. But they are the ones paying,” Bianca said tiredly.

“Girl!” Cadger’s gravelly voice boomed. Bianca stood up and moved out into the alley beyond. The dwarf was already in his battle harness, heavy chain hung with medallions of the dull metal that humans called eversteel. Bianca glanced at it reproachfully. The hard planes of Cadger’s face split into a grin.

“Someone has to come along to spike that gun, assuming your lordly friend gets that far,” he graveled.

“I get that uncle Cadger,” Bianca said in a measured tone, “I just assumed it was someone who could ride a horse.”

“I can ride a horse,” Cadger objected defensively. Bianca folded her arms.

“I can stitch a wound, that don’t make me a damn seamstress,” Bianca groused. Cadger winked at her, it was a human gesture he had learned, one that always looked comically exaggerated on a dwarf’s heavily muscled face.

“Not a debate lass. I came to tell you that the Ironshields have come in on the plan, so that will give us another heavy infantry element. Tough lads the Narguard, better odds of us all not getting killed,” Cadger said.

“What about the Horselords, I’d have thought they were more use than the footsloggers,” Bianca said. Cadger laughed.

“Aye, no doubt they would be, but they are taking the First, riding out right now the bastards,” Cadger sneered. Bianca grimaced, that was a blow, though not a surprising one. Cavalry weren’t much for jobs that might require they wind up eating their horses. They also could make good use of a days head start, especially when the enemy was investing to siege. They could probably just ride out and away west without bother. She suddenly straightened up.

“What is it lass?” Cadger asked.

“I’m a genius uncle Cadger!” Bianca grinned and clapped both hands on the dwarfs shoulders. Then she spun and started calling out names.

___________________

The Horselords rode out of the main gate under the striped flag of passage. The Ironshields and Silver Swords were both stood to. It was bad form, but it wasn’t unheard of for an army to try charging the gate while a company departed. Luckily the enemy wasn’t willing to chance it today.

It wasn’t a parade, the mercs were, kitted down for travel, their horses hung with bedrolls and panniers of food for the ride. Their swords were tied, ornamentally, with strips of white cloth to signal they weren’t combatants. Behind the armored men were wagons hauling the forges, medical supplies, and other gear needed to keep cavalry in the field. These might be lost if the enemy sent fast cavalry after them, but that wasn’t likely as any cavalry the Priest Queen’s forces had would be hard pressed to fight the Horselords in open country. It might have been a surprise to the Horselord’s officers to discover that behind the wagons rode a rearguard. Ten men and nine women on rangy horses, wearing the yellow cloaks of the Horselords. The fact that their weapons weren’t tied was easy to overlook in the dust and grit kicked up by the wagons. They rode straight through the besieging army, enduring the jeers of the attackers. It was only after the column crested the rise beyond the city that the rearguard peeled off and shed their cloaks. Bianca and her scouts were in position behind the enemy.

The captain has taken his advice, though not enthusiastically. Torm couldn't blame him, as he had spoken under duress and had only thought of the plan that would give them the best chance of winning without capitulating. And so now they would live or die based on Torm's idea. Ultimately it was the Captain's decision to make, but if this failed and Torm somehow lived, he might actually think Bianca some sort of seeress and take away all blame of her hating him. He would hate himself right enough. A stone's throw behind the commander, the men and women of Palona on the palisade walls whispered worriedly, casting glances at the Silver Swords or out into the darkness as they made their 'rounds' with the torches. Some of them shook like wet dogs, it was a wonder they could hold the blazing instruments aloft. But if this saved their town from the butchery and depravity of a sacking, they would do it, if only for their children's sake.

Torm stood at the head of an unruly mass of knights in full plate, armed with heavy weapons of steel and iron. Sir Draufkrieg himself held a sturdy poleaxe in one hand, its spiked butt piercing into the earth. Helms and accents from all nationalities and fiefdoms had gathered together to form a conglomerate of warriors before him, ready to spearhead into the enemy or die in the attempt. It was juxtaposed by a score of grim, battle-hardened dwarves armed with surcoats over finely wrought mail, each armored like the last. Eleven of them sported dwarf forged axes and shields of iron, and the remaining nine held smoothbore, muzzle-loading donderbus rifles. The Captain had taken what he could spare from the sappers and ordered them to help in the initial charge to kill two birds with one proverbial stone. The dwarves could see in the dark, and their presence would deter Grimgi's boys from getting overzealous. While it wasn't unknown for a dwarf to kill another in mercenary work, kinslaying was a grave crime in dwarvish society, and even when it was lawful they felt their gods would disapprove. Now the had nearly a hundred in the vanguard, with Aeon given orders to sweep in from behind as soon as Torm and his men had broken through.

"No enemy movements sir!" A voice called from a rise at the wall, one of the few men they kept stationed as their patrol. Clad in a kettle helm and a brigandine, he stood there with a dwarf sharpshooter, resting a long rifle on a fashioned hole in the curtain wall, keeping an eye on the battle line. Torm drew in a deep breath, as it was just about time. He turned to the men, clearing his throat to hush their restless murmuring. Out of the crowd stepped a burly dwarf named Gunir. An ex-soldier of a dwarfish citadel Torm couldn't recall the name of, he usually worked as security detail for the sappers or one of its chief diggers. He was clad in a suit of lamellar, overlapping plates of steel, riveted together atop a thick coat to add padding. He bore the typical squat, brazen helm of the dwarves, with cheek and nose guard. Gunir found a place beside Torm, as the knight addressed the men.

"Knights of the Silver Sword! Tonight we break the enemy before they can even begin to assault us!" The men gave roars and laughs of approval. It was good the enemy wasn't close enough to hear. Silence was key very soon. "When we step over this wall, you will move with me. We will walk and be as silent as our honored dead until the horns sound. If you see a dwarf, do not attack him. Ignore them unless they truly wish you dead. Our goal is beyond their earthworks. Tonight, we drive them out of these plains with their tails between their legs!"

"We cannot hope to kill them all, sir!" Called sir Ector of Lanebridge in his hounskull helm. Torm recognized him immediately for the shield he bore, a rarity among fully armored cavaliers in this day and age.

"We don't need to. I know every man and dwarf here will kill three of the enemy, or more. But our goal is to break their center, ruin their camp, and split the siege down the middle." Torm responded. "That, we can do. And we will. Now who is with me!?"

"We'll slay the bastards!"

"Keep yer heads about ye. Rifledwarfs in the back, and the other lads stay astride the manlings." Gunri said to his boys, and he patted the horn at his hip. A horn every axe-wielding dwarf held at their belt. "No unit tactics, too few of us. We're going with the buddy system, at least until we make it to the camp. Pick a group of manlings and keep them in yer sights. Ye know the tune to sing, so do it when I give the signal."

"Aye! Aye." The bearded folk responded, nodding. A few of them grinned or gripped their weapons tightly in anticipation. They might be sappers, but every dwarf male was taught how to soldier unless they were born in a human settlement. The stout folk had a martial tradition past human memory.

Suddenly a loud cranking was heard, the gathered throng turning to the gate as it began to swing open. Two Palona men pulled at the wheel mechanism as the five dwarf sappers left began to push the arbalest out, the fifth one gently cradling the barrel of phosphorus that was pivotal to the plot. Torm had seen this sort of munition fail before. All it needed was to be exposed to air and it would combust like a steam engine rupturing. Any chink in the barrel or sudden, unexpected nick might make it go sky high and potentially destroy their only artillery piece. As they moved, the patrols walked in practiced unison, coincidentally moving away from a small portion of the palisade, leaving room for Torm and the dwarves to approach it and get over, stepping on the pre-planted crates and hauling themselves above and past the palisade. Every curse was met with a whisper of silence, every grumble was smacked out of their mouths.

As Torm landed in the dirt and turned to help his fellows over, there below the wall in the gloom of the night, he wondered if the scouts were doing well. Bianca was savvy, but she was a firecracker. The knights and the infantry can drive the enemy off, but if the scouts didn't hit them at their weakest, the plan might go from victory to absolutely nothing. Jon Hangman reached over and Torm took his arm to help haul him across, the man-at-arms holding his curious eastern sword in his off-hand and using his elbow to help shove his weight up and around. The dwarves hit the ground the hardest, but they kept as quiet as they could and made only the barest grunts. Only one dwarf tripped, bouncing off the earth, but his fellows silenced his groans. Once all of them were over, they waited a minute, still as statues.

"Anything?" Torm breathed quietly to the dwarf at his side. It wasn't Gunir, but it didn't matter. A gruff cadence replied with. "Nay, no' a sound."

With that, Torm moved forward. Small commands from the dwarves were issued, and in an uneven wave, the contingent waded through no-mans-land, their armor making soft bumps and scraping noises, and though Torm knew it was just his nerves, it sounded like right clangor to his ears. He himself nearly fell first into a hole, quickly using the poleaxe like a walking stick to keep himself from pitching face first into it. He felt sweat beading on his chest and back, but taking solace in the fact the plan hadn't yet ended in disaster. The merciful lady would watch over them, this had to work.

"My bloody leg!" Someone cried. Torm's breath caught, and the next yell was muffled by unseen hands in the dark. He tried to squint, looking at the silhouette of the uneven ground to see the cause of it, but all he could ascertain were vague shapes moving. He glanced back at the well lit palisade walls, the patrols marching their torches this way and that, save for the gate. He needed to keep moving, the Knight Lieutenant stepping past the pothole and keeping his poleaxe before him, bumping the earth with it like a blind man.

"Oi! Who's that!"

"Enemies! Fuckin' attackers!"

The voices came from up ahead, and a few spans to the left a dwarf spoke in his native tongue to them. Damn, they still had another ten yards! Torm began to run in a trot, pulling every man he came across to join him. Now that they neared the earthworks, they could see the gleam of dwarvish eyes in the soft moonlight and the embers on their cigars. A few gunshots rang out from the ditches, flashes in the dark, but more shouts came in dwarvish by Torm, pleading and calling for what was no doubt a reassurance. A clamor of voices began to rise from the trench at the front, but it was drowned out by a sudden, powerful hornblow that shook every eardrum within two hundred yards. A mere second later it was joined by nearly a dozen more horns of similar quality.

"KIG'VOREN!" Torm heard Gunir cry in the din, a common dwarvish warcry that roughly translated to 'hew their necks.' Torm was no expert, but the Captain had every commander learn certain dwarvish calls so there was no confusion when battle began.

"Death and glory!" Torm roared, hefting his poleaxe into the air like a beacon as night suddenly turned to day. Above the battle line, an explosion of hot white illuminated the battlefield like a miniature sun. Torm could see the trench just in front of him and the cannon barrel he was looking straight into. The knight ducked and rolled, but the next thought he recalled was he saw no dwarf at its station and he felt the fool. Streams of fiery brilliance cascaded like missiles of flames into the front of the camp, piercing tents and scattering on the ground like burning sand. He saw Priest Queen patrols, close and with their spears leveled, suddenly turned and look in shock and horror at their own pavillions. The curs had no doubt heard some of their cursing and had been told to investigate, no doubt the commander having thought Grimri's boys having run into a few Silver Sword scouts or deserters. Torm smiled grimly, knowing they wouldn't expect a full scale attack until it had already come.

And it had.

Dwarf rifles fired across the trenches, cutting down three of the twelve or so spearmen and sending the others in a panic. Torm could see the camp clearly now, and all the shapes of the men that had tried to have a go at his knights. He vaulted over the trench, his men following suit. Heavy footfalls and crunched earth audible in their ears as they clambered past Grimri's battery line to start running, charging through the last stretch of ground before they hit the enemy camp with fury and bloodlust.

"Is it time yet," Kali asked, for what must have been the thousandth time. Bianca lay on her stomach in a grove of Cim trees watching the bustle of the evening camp. The rest of her troops, having peeled themselves off from the Horselords once they reached upon country, were among the trees on the lower slope of the small hillock, dismounted but ready to ride at a moments notice.

"It is not time, on account of the fact their hasn't been a huge fireball and a bunch of screaming just yet," Bianca replied tartly. Kali shrugged and muttered. She knew it wasn't time, she was just nervous, which was a sensible way to feel when you had twenty men with you and an army of scores of thousands infront of you. The enemy camp was in shadow now as the sun had dipped below the horizion, but it was lit by thousands of cook fires and watch flames. The wavering firelight reflected of canvas tents and lean tos giving the place an infernal aspect that prayed upon the mind. Figures were only dark shadows moving against firelight, like the souls of the damned. Despite Bianca's qualms about Torm and his insane plan. It wasn't quite as bad as it might bee. Sure, the enemy had nearly twenty to one advantage, but that advantage was diluted somewhat by the fact they had to ring the city, and further more by the fact that the mercenaries were in some cases in their own encampments. The actual number of enemies in front of the company was still high, but not suicidally so, at least not for the few minutes it would take the camp to rouse and start pressing in on their flanks.

"It must be getting about..." Bianca began, but before she could finish a great sheet of fire burst in the sky and rained down upon the enemy camp. Screams sounded and like an avalanche the camp began to stir to life. Men grabbed for weapons and rushed towards the sound and the sudden rain of fire. Screams and curses rang out as they fell over each other in the dark or saw phantom enemies wherever they looked. Alarms began to sound, bells or simply men hammering on shields to alert the rest of the camp. Bianca stayed down, peeking over the slight rise into the chaos. A minute passed, then two, stretching out on her nerves as she waited for the right moment. The enemy needed to know where the attack was coming from but not yet be ready to crush it.

"Alright," she said at last. "Kig'voren."

The scouts swept in out of the darkness without a sound beyond the hammer of their hooves, which was a trifle to the boiling confusion of the camp. At first they must have been taken as allies, for no arrows flew. The first target was a large log building built partially into the side of a hummock. The nervous looking guard gripped his pike as Bianca reigned up before it.

"Who are..." his voice trailed off as Kali's crossbow bolt punched into the mass of veins above his heart. He took a step and stumbled sideways. Around a fire nearby someone screamed, but Kali and Welsh were out of their saddles, running across and reaching for the door. It burst open before they could touch it, a surly looking dwarf stepping out and knocking the two scouts to the ground.

"What is this?!" he demanded. Bianca had already unhooked a shuttered lantern from her saddle, now she hurled it over the dwarfs head and into the building. It burst with a crackle of glass and a wooooshing sound.

"You idiot this is the powder...." the Dwarf began and then took off as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. Kali and Welsh were leaping into their saddles also. The fire in the building was spreading, Bianca had stitched a bag of phosphorus to the base of it for just this purpose.

"Halt!" cried the men rushing toward them from the fire. Bianca shot one of them through the face with her pistol as he reached for the bridle to her horse, dropping the weapon so it swung from the chain around her wrist and pulling the other one. A pike stabbed up at her and her horse reared, forcing her to stand up in the stirrups and fire the second weapon into the pikeman's chest, dropping him with a spray of blood.

"Ride!" she screamed as Kali and Welsh regained their saddles. They bolted back into the darkness, nearly reaching the rise before a colossal explosion almost through them off their horses. The powder in the magazine had caught. Bianca hunched as a spray of splinters pattered off her back plate and then turned around to see a column of smoke reaching high into the sky. The magazine and thirty feet of camp in all direction were gone, leaving a smoking crater filled with smoldering splinters. She hoped the dwarf had made it, having had the sense to run the second he saw fire in the powder bunker. Bianca worked her jaw to equalize the pressure and then spurred her mount, racing around the perimeter of the camp. One target down, one to go.

All around Torm was screaming and fire and death. Knights knocked standing torches into tents and pummeled aside the haphazard resistance they had been greeted with so far, elbowing into pavillions and slaying half-dressed men as they hurriedly attempted to arm themselves. Torm knew a few scholars and noble men who would call the slaughter dishonorable, and perhaps they were right. A man had to follow his Captain's orders and fight alongside his brothers, to refuse that would also call for disgrace. Better to choose the shame that ensured victory than that of defeat. Better to paint the tent canvases with the blood of their enemies than stain the ground with your own. It had to be done, and they did it with brutal efficiency.

The sentries that had been posted had fought bravely, having run forward to defend the camp at the first charge, but they were spread too thin to form a line or any organized resistance. The Knights and dwarves had run through them, shattering spear hafts and breaking skulls. Torm had grappled a spear with a horizontal shove of his own polearm and impaled the first patrol through his chest, the watchman's padded jack unable to repel the spike at the head of his poleaxe. Another sentry fell to the right, his leg cut off from a clean chop of Gunir's axe. It took only half a minute for the remainder of them to flee to gather help, leaving this section of the camp undefended save for its bewildered inhabitants.

Torm and his men had scattered to wreak havoc as the dwarves took a different approach. The dwarves now walked together, no longer needing to guide the cavaliers through the gloom of night. The stout folk had formed a shield wall and moved with a slow, methodical march, shouting 'hoo! hoo!' with every heavy step. Torm watched them press forward three 'lanes' away from him, seeing them move like they were a great turtle. Their shields stuck with quarrels and arrows, the dwarves lifted them at regular intervals by a call from Gunir, donderbus gun barrels bare and discharging into the handfuls of men who had the bravado to rush them before the shields closed again as the riflemen reloaded. Torm marveled at the precision of their drill for a brief moment, almost missing the movement to his left. He flinched and turned, a man decked out in a brigandine and an open faced sallet running at him with a flanged mace raised over his head, having hoped to catch him by surprise.

Torm raised his left arm, striking the haft of the mace with his armguard to halt the percussive force of the head mid-swing. He swung with his poleaxe in his right, but it was an awkward blow, doing little but banging into the side of his enemy's chestplate with the haft of the weapon. Likely it stung, but left no wound. "Silver Sword bastard!" His opponent spat, drawing back the mace for another strike. On instinct, Torm threw his head forward, the front of his greathelm smashing into the bare face of the soldier. Blood spattered from his broken nose, Torm using the pause to hook the fellow's leg with the hammer of his weapon and yanked back powerfully. The soldier fell onto his back, concussed. Torm moved his weapon in a circuitous movement, whipping it around to lift over his own head with a great swing, and the last thing the soldier saw in this world was Torm's axehead chopping down at his exposed face. Alongside him, sir Rennek of Waterwood with his longsword and a ferocious Mamluk of their outfit named Suleman fought a furious duel against three heavily armored soldiers armed with halberds. Torm tried to pull his poleaxe free, but the blade had bit into the steel of the man's sallet.

"Fuck," He breathed, pulling at it yet again. It wrenched, but not free. He let go of the weapon and pulled out his rondel dagger as he moved in to aid them. Suleman's macework was like a dance, sundering the helm of a man even as Sir Rennek was himself wounded by the axeblade of a halberd biting into the mail on his arm. He cried out and thrust his sword in defense, trying to find a weak spot in his foe's armor. More men came from around the burning tents past the melee, figures half obscured by smoke and flame. Torm had limited vision in his helmet as was-

Sparks suddenly filled his eyes, and he felt a pressure below his visor-line. He glanced down to see a new dent in his breastplate where his liver was, raising his head to see the source was a pistolier scowling at him, moving to reload. He thanked the gods for his many near-misses tonight, and asked for their continual favor. Torm picked up the pace, charging not at the pistolier past the men, but the melee itself. The enemy men saw him coming to aid and flinched, Suleman laughing and taking the chance to press his advantage, weaving his mace around his defenses to splinter the shaft of the halberd. Torm was satisfied with his feint, subtly altering his bullish course to swerve right and rush the gunman. He wouldn't wear his armor if it wasn't bullet proof. Every breastplate was tested with a pistol shot from twenty yards away. But a bullet, a bolt, even an arrow could potentially pierce the thinner parts of his armor, and sometimes armor simply failed. He didn't give the pistolier a chance to fully reload, dropping the powder in his barrel just as Torm stabbed him through the eye with his rondel dagger. Juices and blood ran down the fops face as his legs gave way and he hit the dirt.

His victory was short-lived, however. Crossbow quarrels began to fly sporadically across the narrow streets of the camp and more of the enemy began to appear, stabbing and hacking at his men exiting tents or making their way across the battleground, vainly trying to group up with their brethren. Torm ran back to his poleaxe, placing his foot on the ruined face of the mace-man and finally pulling it free after another two tugs. Small measure it was. He watched with shock as Hugh of Auvergne was killed by an arrow to the neck on his first glance up, and across the tents he saw the body of what he guessed was once Frankfurt Swordhand, an axe having pierced his breastplate and his helmet sundered by the blow of some blunt weapon. He suddenly felt a sharp, stabbing pain at his hip. An arrow hung loosely from his chainmail between the gaps of plate. Gently he closed his hand around the arrow haft and pulled it free, but a warm, wet sensation told him he was bleeding freely. Idly he realized they needed to gather together. Their momentum was fading.

"To me!" Torm cried as shadows moved just outside his vision, certain it was troops gathering to repel their advance. He did something risky and pulled off his greathelm, raising his voice over the din. "To me! Silver Swords to me!"

Suleman and the wounded Rennek approached, having just slayed their couple of soldiers. He saw sir William the Brave and Gascony Broadfellow, Rudi the Broad with his great hammer and Sir Brace, Knight of Thunder move into his field of vision from out of the smoke. John Hangman approached, bloodied but alive with Dimitris the Cataphract with his feathered helm and his doubled headed axe. As the moments passed, more and more of his cavaliers joined him as he continued to shout. Two dozen had gathered by the time his voice was hoarse, and he set them to form a line before placing his helm back on. A few scattered knights continued to appear, but Torm's eyes were on the enemy before them, who had now appeared within his eyeline. He felt fear grip him when he bore witness to the numberless ranks of halberdiers and crossbowmen marching with iron breastplates and grim faces toward their position. Torm couldn't see the end of the line from the left or the right. There must have been hundreds of them, roughly set in the size of a company. Even with the flames and the death toll they had wrought on the enemy, Torm and his men were still heavily outnumbered. Where the dwarves were, he didn't know, but they had as good a chance of surviving as any. The cavaliers needed to worry about themselves.

"Weapons forward!" He called, raising his poleaxe and lowering it as a lance. The men around him followed his movements, helms closed and heads down. A few of them gave great, wet coughs, but none of them fled.

"We are with you, sir! To the death!" Gregor the Bold yelled.

"We will hit them at the center and break them!" Torm called, knowing what he said was not possible. The line before them was growing stronger and more thick with men by the moment. All they would do would pierce the line just to get surrounded. But this entire escapade was his idea, and none of the men would run if he did not. He clenched his jaw, preparing to order the advance.

A huge explosion suddenly erupted from behind the enemy line like an awakened volcano. The shockwave flew across the camp, wavering flames and whipping tent flaps in unison. It caused the enemy to stumble, and even Torm felt the breeze fly through his visor to kiss his skin. The halberdiers and crossbowmen and what swordsmen they had began to falter, heads turning back to look at the destruction. Wood fell in splintered heaps and even a cracked bronze lamp struck the ground from the dark sky, clattering across the camp floor to roll at a stop at Torm's feet.

"Now." Torm said, and realized this was their one chance. He began to move forward, his march transforming into a run. "Now! Go!"

"For glory!" Someone cried, and the armored mass of thirty cavaliers charged headlong toward the now confused and uncertain enemy. Torm raised his hand and the men formed a wedge, as if they were on their bardic warhorses. With smoke around them, hiding their low numbers, the enemy who still gazed forward flinched with apprehension. From the sky, it would look like a great arrowhead flying towards the faltering ripples of a cloth. Torm and his men hit the line and broke it in seconds, shoving aside their polearms and shouldering the enemy to the dirt. It would take minutes of hard battle, but Torm and his men slew thrice their number in the clamor and confusion. Now thinking they were surrounded on all sides and seeing the audacity of the bloodied knights, the Priest-Queen's company brokw, scattering across the camp in small, frightened herds as the knights continued to trash the camp and take what hostages they could, finding three lieutenants and their entourage amongst the rubble.

A crossbow bolt whizzed past Bianca's head and was lost in the night. The camp was in uproar as the scouts charged through it, striking left and right with their long swords. Camp followers and non-combatants ran in all directions. The ill disciplined levies that made up the bulk of the Priest Queen's armies were filled with zeal, waving their weapons and screaming to their God to bring his vengeance upon his enemies. Though it was clear that the God had not provided much information in terms of where those enemies might be or what their disposition was. The fires were getting out of control as panicked men stampeded through the camp, booted feet dragging trampled tents into the flames. More than one soldier was caught in the flames, dropping to the ground and rolling, or running screaming off into the night. The scouts slashed not just at men, but at tethers of picketed horses, the panicking beasts adding their own chaos to the nightmare as they bolted away from the scent of steel, blood, and fire.

Their second target loomed ahead of them, a small compound in the camp hemmed in by a low wall of sharpened stakes. Bianca had hoped that the guards might have been caught up in the ongoing disaster but Lady Luck was not so kind. Troops were gathering at the improvised fort that served as the main food store for the horde. It wasn't a tactical decision, merely the natural result of men fleeing from an uncertain terror to find their courage bolsted by walls and a squad of men still under discipline.

"Halt!" one of the guards screamed as Bianca and her riders came out of the darkness. She shot him through the chest at the same instant a flight of crossbow bolts swept from the fort. A horse screamed and went down, spilling its rider and Kali took a bolt full in the throat, snapping back against her saddle and slumping to one side, her stiruped feet keeping her corpse upright as her horse wheeled right and off into the darkness. Bianca fired her second pistol though she had no target beyond the mass of men infront of her, the sharp points of pikes bright with reflected firelight. She wheeled her little troop around the side of the fort and out of the direct path of more bolts.

"Lanterns, lanterns!" she shouted and three phosphor laced lanterns sailed over the wall and into the compound beyond, detonating with the crack of breaking glass and the low whump of chemical ignition. One was misjudged and hit the top of the palisade, spilling a brilliant trail of fire across a ten foot length of wall. They curved around the fort and raced back towards Palona in a gallop that lathered the horses in sweat and risked a broken leg if the beasts fond rabit borrow or privy trench in the dark. It was tough to make out what was going on, but it seemed from movement in the dark that shoulders were forming around Torm's attack, as fleeing men who had been put to flight ran into men rushing forward to see what the disturbance was. A half dozen pikemen appeared infront of Bianca only to go down in a welter of blood as a score of iron shields, wielding long hafted axes and murderous expressions leaped from the darkness to hack them apart. It seemed the Silver Swords were not the only company putting in a good night's work.

The knights had regrouped, and to Torm's relief, they were now reinforced with Aeon's infantry that had spread out and marched through the camp, sticking spears into corpses and looting what foodstuffs and armaments they could as they marched. Torm had just killed another Priest-Queen's soldier with the spike of his weapon, and he turned to see Aeon striding through the smoke to his back, a rhythmic, howling chant lifting over the burning ground as his men pressed forward in a rough wave. The dwarves had managed to make it back to their position as well, moving in a tight unit. A few were wounded, but none dead. He couldn't tell with his own men yet.

"The captain calls for a retreat." Aeon said, the tall man's long face was as solemn as always. His assega was already bloodied from some unseen foe. Torm opened his mouth to argue, but closed it. No, the captain was right, of course. They had pressed forward further than he could have hoped, but no doubt the rest of the enemy would be swarming around the sides of the camp's perimeter in the matter of an hour. Maybe even less.

"Bianca?" Torm asked. They weren't friends necessarily, but she was a comrade at the end of the day. Plus she had a number of good men and women under her.

"We'll hold as long as we can," He replied, but even as he spoke his dark eyes fixed on the ground past Torm. The knight of the wolf turned, planting his poleaxe on the ground as he saw forms begin to shape amongst the smoke and debris. Multitudes of the enemy gathered. It had to be. The entire company of the Silver Swords wasn't that large, if his eyes weren't deceived. Aeon called out for his men to form up with a long hoot. Torm wasn't familiar with the order, but the infantry had been drilled in the manner of Aeon's distant homeland so their western foes weren't privvy to any commands he might make on the battlefield.

"Square up!" Torm called, pulling his weapon up and catching it mid-haft to use as a standard. What men he had left jogged to his position, armor tarnished and bleeding. They formed into a rough square over the span of a minute, bolstering themselves into an rotund, squat formation that was meant to whether an assault rather than aid in one. Spear's bristled along the knight's flanks, shields raised and helms lowered. Torm and Aeon needn't have bothered, however. Through the haze of night and smog, it wasn't the enemy that appeared first.

Bianca and her scouts raced into view, their slim horses galloping for all their worth towards the line.

Aeon howled twice, and gave a whistle. The line opened up like a parting sea, and Bianca's scouts moved through the ranks with only a nod in acknowledgement. Their skin was covered in soot and what wounds they had looked inflicted by wood and weather more than enemy swords. Torm moved his men to block the gaping hole in the infantry column, and at that moment, the Priest-Queen's forces arrived in their field of vision. They weren't as organized as Torm had feared, but they still quadrupled Aeon, Torm, and Gunir's combined forces. Twice the enemy hit them with a charge, their swings and cries that of desperate, sleep deprived men. But as the night drew to a close, the Silver Swords had managed to back up towards the gun trenches Grimi's boys had fashioned, and make a full withdrawal into Palona.

Dawn broke to find Palona wreathed in a pall of smoke it billowed thick and black from the shattered remains of the powder magazine bespeaking something more potent than simple gunpowder. Dozens of fires burned along the axis of attack and along the line Bianca and her scouts had ridden, adding to the omnipresent haze that rendered the enemy camp half invisible. Every now and again the wind gusted enough to drive away some of the cloud, revealing bodies laying where they had been hacked or shot, burial detail apparently still not having been arranged.

"What are they waiting for you reckon?" Cadger asked as he laid down two towers and scooped the pot. Bianca scowled but if the dwarf were cheating she couldn't detect it. He had fetched a blow from a mace in the night fighting, partially deflected off his shield, that had laid open a cut on his scalp. Nambi had tried to heal it, but as with all things dwarven the cut was partially resistant to magic. A paste of Bianca knew not what had been laid over it and hardened like plaster, save where serum had seeped through and colored the center a pale yellow, making it look for all the world as though someone had dropped a fried egg on her uncles liver spotted pate.

Torm and Nambi tossed in their own cards and Bianca began to deal again. It was a company tradition to play cards after a battle, the theory being you had been lucky enough to survive so you would probably be lucky enough to win. Bianca sucked at her teeth, irritated that she couldn't be out there answering that very question, but the Captain had flat forbidden it as too dangerous. She had three dead, Kali, Rivens, and Marcs, and she had yet to broach the topic of replacements. There were a couple of Aeon's infantry she was considering but it would be impolitic to ask so soon.

"Probably killed too many officers, takes time to sort out he new shitting order," Aeon opined, his smile brilliant against his dark skin. Aeon was technically the watch officer, and so the game was taking place in a guardhouse by the main gate. Bianca grunted. That was always a possibility with foes like this, particularly if a big wig contracted a bad case of sword to bowels without a clear successor. There was no way they could bring up enough food to feed their men, but they might not have realized that just yet. With any luck they would dally for a week and half of them would starve on the march back south.

"If I'd seen Torm and the Nargard come screaming out of the night it might take me a few minutes to find my balls too," Nambi said, opening the bidding by tapping two fingers on the table. Cadger growled and tossed his cards away. Bianca examined her own cards and followed suit, triggering a redeal, much to Aeon's evident displeasure. The rules of the game were arcane, a company tradition imported from the Gods knew where, and involved a sophisticated system of calling your shot with a certain suit as trumps. Torm grunted but didn't respond directly.

"You should have seen those Nargard, frothing at the mouth and slamming axes on shields. I think I saw one of them kill a man with his teeth," Cadger cackled. Black Ryann slithered into the post, his uniform neat and clean as always. The wizard rarely took part in the game, and was a notorious and obvious cheat, somewhat ironically for a wily intelligence broker.

"Cadger, Captain wants you," he barked, drawing a sigh of resignation from the dwarf who stood up and headed away towards the temple.

"Surely the mercenaries will tell them which end of the sword is sharp," Torm speculated, laying down a run of staves that was capped with a Hierarch, leaving the cards exposed for a second in case anyone had the Wisp of the Throneless King. No one did and he swept the pot, flicking Cadger's share back to his pile chivalrously.

"Ha, those sanctimonious bastards would say the sky was red if a lowly hireling tried to tell them," Aeon laughed. Play continued in a desultory fashion for a another few minutes. Bianca was getting ready to make her excuses and go find some company when Roni, a lanky scout hustled in looking troubled, his eyes scanned the room and then settled on Bianca.

"First... where is Cadger?" he demanded eyes wide. Play had already stopped all the participants too seasoned to ignore the interruption.

"He is at the Temple, whats up?" she asked, not in the most friendly of tones.

"I don't know, there is a dwarf and he wants to talk to Cadger," Roni blurted. Bianca stood though she was still confused as to why Roni was acting like the sky was falling.

"You speak dwarf don't you First, can you come talk to him? He is over at the Taproom," Roni asked, desperate to pass a potential problem up the chain to someone who knew what they were doing. Bianca did speak dwarf, having grown up among the hardy race after her own parents had been killed. It was vanishingly unlikely that the dwarf in question didn't speak a human language, but they were a clannish folk who often didn't trust outsiders.

"Sure, you head up to the temple and get Cadger. He is with the Captain but don't be afraid to barge in," she directed. She turned to speak to the others but Torm was already buckling on his sword belt, evidently having anticipated her request. Aeon was stowing his winnings preparatory to heading up to the wall to make sure all was well.

The dwarf in question was filthy, dressed in battered chain and a vast surcoat that had probably once been red but was now stained so badly it looked a rich brown gray. He wore an eyepatch over one eye, but judging by the uneven soot deposit over both eyes, it was an aid to limit a delvers eyes rather than a covering for a missing organ. Dirt was caked on him to an almost ludicrous degree but even so Bianca recognized him.

"Thossak Ironballs as I live and breathe," Bianca blurted out. The dwarf turned and peered at her in confusion.

"Cadger kon kanak gur?," he growled in equal surprise, then flipped up his eye patch, grinding at a reddened eye with a balled fist.

"Cadger kon gur macton Bianca," she replied. The dwarf seemed to relax, almost visibly deflating.

"You know this dwarf?" Torm asked, his tone showing that he didn't understand but expected to be made to shortly.

"He is one of Grimgi's Gak, his lieutenant actually," Bianca supplied.

"You mean, the enemy artillery company?" Torm asked, "how did he get inside."

"Time for that later," the Thossak broke in, demonstrating he could indeed speak Kindan, the common trade language of Shimmer Sea.

"We need your help, you and your company's," Thossak rumbled. Bianca arched an eyebrow, it was unheard of for a dwarven company to turn coat without a formal surrender.

"Ummm... I can take you to our Captain," Bianca temporized.

"You don't understand lass, those lunatics are about to assault the walls with everything they have, all sixty thousand of the bastards are whipping themselves up into a frenzy," he growled, "and they are going to launch it right after they burn our lads to appease their mad god!"

Palona wasn't in a state of panic, but the movements of the mercenaries weren't doing the townsfolk any favors. Torm cantered through rushing men on Lycurgus, his hand gripping the hilt of his arming sword, the knight's knuckles white. What were the bastards thinking? He knew there were zealots in the army, but he didn't think the commanders were lunatics. Why would Palona be worth losing thousands of men without powder or shot? Torm seethed with indignation, but he knew he had no one to blame but himself. The wolf should have known better than to poke the bear. This entire debacle was his fault. If they made it out alive, he would answer to the Gods if not the other officers.

Behind him, forty five of his men followed in his wake on their horses. Six had been slain last night, overwhelmed by the enemy. Twenty had been wounded, but only half that had been harmed enough to severely limit their combat capabilities. Torm felt the patched wound in his side flare up again with a stabbing pain, aching something fierce consistently throughout the day. The Knights saw Cadger and Bianca arguing over something in the distance as the dwarves suited up around them, likely expostulating over strategy. Torm and his men made it to the vicinity of the tunnel, a large cleft in the earth at the mouth of an old aqueduct. Torm had heard the town had once been the site of a great city, and these conduits of rainwater were the last remnants of it.

His shadow and those of his men loomed over the entrance, and he sniffed amusedly at the irony. The dwarf that had been digging to bite them in the ass had instead crawled up their ass to ask for help. It was a short lived mirth, however. The dwarves did not deserve that.

Across the small channel that fed into the underground, the Captain and his retinue awaited. Black Ryann, along with a few of the captain's special honorguard stood at the ready. Torm had heard the mage would accompany him at the fore. The idea did not enthuse him. He felt much the same about the spymaster as Bianca felt about Torm. He was certain the feeling was mutual. Aeon and his men were standing in formation just beyond, their column reaching down the street out of Torm's field of vision.

"Are we ready, Captain?" Torm called, reining Lycurgus in. The steed stamped with impatience.

"We are," a woman's voice replied. Torm turned to see Bianca and her scouts approaching. Cadger and his lads were in tow, though they didn't seem pleased with the end of their previous discussion.

"It's not right!" The Dwarf complained, as irate as Torm had ever seen him. The dwarf usually seemed detatched at worst and usually amused at any current events. Evidently, he had just been told something that went against every fiber of his being. They passed the Knights without even looking their way, but as Bianca and her men hopped into the tunnels, Cadger stopped at the lip with Thossack and the other dwarves.

"Their legs are longer, Cad." The Captain replied, motioning for Black Ryann to move forward with his steed. "We'll get them back, don't you worry." The wizard seemed unenthused at the command, but he did as he was bid. His roan was as black as the wizard's robes, but of good stock if Torm was any judge. Thank the gods the man hadn't enchanted good horseflesh. His eyes met Torms and the Knight whipped his horse to the left, giving the wizard room to follow as he and his men walked their horses down the incline to splash into the shallow water of the aqueduct. Thossack had assured them the tunnel was big enough for mounted men, and so they would go first. The war steeds had been well trained, stepping down carefully and entering the darkness of the channels behind Bianca.

The irony was that if Torm hadn't driven the enemy to insanity with his hair brained attack they would have been well and truly fucked. Of course that didn't mean that they weren't well and truly fucked now Bianca thought as she heaved on a heavy pry bar to shift another ancient stone out of the way. The aqueduct was huge, but so old it had faded entirely from the memory of the people of Palona. How Grimgi had discovered it she had no idea. Probably it had been stumbled across while working on the sap to bring his guns closer, or perhaps the innate tunnel sense of dwarven kind. In long years living with Cadger and his folk, she had learned the knack of keeping her bearings beneath the earth, the same knack that made her a good scout, but she lacked the kinship for rock and stone the dwarves seemed to be born with. Grimgi's dwarves had cleared up to within a dozen feet of the cellar, but they had been waiting for the siege to begin before they cleared the last few feet. The dwarf who had brought the warning had torn through the last few feet in a frenzy, but Bianca and the sappers were working furiously to widen the gap enough to allow for horses. Left to her own devices she would have just sent infantry true, but concerned as he was for the fate of fellow mercenaries, the Captain wanted men on horseback to make the rescue attempt.

"We got this Bee if you want to go," Lavarak, one of the senior sappers told her. He heaved a shovel full of silt forward through the hole they were enlarging. There was no time to establish a bucket line to take the spoil out.

"You sure," she asked, dropping the prybar.

"You scout and I'll sap," he responded sourly. She was well known among the sappers as Cadger's niece, but that respect didn't go so far enough that she could tell them how to do their jobs and except no come back. Bianca nodded and drew her sword.

"Right, sorry," she said and then slithered through the hole. The interior of the aqueduct was massive and crumbling. She moved swiftly along the ancient structure, noting that in places the stone had crumbled and been buttressed with fresh cut timber. It was possible whoever was in command of the enemy army didn't even know about the passage. A human miner would certainly have crowed about such a discovery, but dwarves were secretive when it came to tunnels, even when they had no reason to be. She followed the stonework for a minute or two before emerging into a gravel pit, with one face gently slopping up. A large spoil pile lay infront of it, along with mining equipment and the other tools of digging work. Pressing stealthy up the slope, she peered over the rim. Trumpets were beginning to sound as the enemy army prepared to try their insane escalade. Two large structures had been built over night, pens to hold prisoners. Grass had been piled up against the side and was already blazing as the fires were kindled to begin the sacrifice.

"Shit," Bianca cursed, and bolted back down the tunnel to relay the information to the Captain.

Torm was a picture of calm and reserved, and his men tried and failed to copy their commander. A few coughed and mumbled and others tried vainly to get their horses in line. Lycurgus seemed agitated as well, likely from the dozens of tones of rock and soil above their heads. Horses enjoyed confined spaces when they had sufficient exercise and food, to sleep for the night. But when mounted or feeling tense energy of men around them, they were discomforted. Torm rubbed his mount's neck, letting out a soft 'sssh' to keep him steadied for another few minutes. The sound of soft digging and dwarven curses up ahead was interrupted by a gruff word and the figure of Bianca bounding into view down the tunnel.

"What's happening up there? Bianca!" Torm called, and she stopped in her tracks. She seemed in the midst of indecision. The knight spurred her on. "If we need to move, we need to move."

"The Captain has given us leave to go if you deem it so." Black Ryann stated, leaning over his suitably dark mare. He held his staff lazily in a grip no doubt taught to him at whatever academies he had attended, arms crossed with the haft locking them in place with a deft stance.

"I deem it so." She said, waving them forward. "You'll see cages and a pyre. Hurry."

"Good!" A boisterous voice cried from the contingent of heavy cavalry. Torm took his helm from the chain around Lycurgus' flanks and placed it over his head. His poleaxe in his right hand, he spurred his steed forward at the head of the column. "Slow at first lads! No one get overzealous until we can ride in formation."

With a gesture, the horses began to move. Torm and Black Ryann at the head. Something shimmered around the magician, a coruscating globe of something semi-solid. An almost intangible sphere around his person that was no doubt a protective enchantment. Torm knew better than to ask the man if he could aid the rest of the party like that. No doubt he would if he could, and truth be told, he wasn't in the mood to argue with the black robed sorcerer. They passed by the stout sappers, the dwarves leaping out of the way and telling them to give them hell. Torm would have acknowledged them, but his face was unreadable under the helm. Instead they simply moved quicker, ducking as Lycurgus made it through the hole in the earth. The magician and the first of his men followed suit, and as they filtered through, it gave him a chance to look over the situation.

The size of the army was staggering, and they were all laid there in great, rough columns, He could see preachers crying out to their strange deity and the men being whooped up into a frenzy. Torm saw hills to the north, right of the army. A small contingent of crossbowmen were stationed there, but they were stationed for show mostly likely. Even if they were wary of a sorte, the crossbows would hit as many of their own troops as the Silver Swords. Changing the spot of his gaze, he garned the pyre. He cursed when he saw the dwarves being marched to it, some of them already strapped to the soon-to-be burning logs.

"Can you do something?" Torm asked Black Ryann, pointing at the pyre. The magician rolled his eyes, but Torm waited for him to answer. Even under the great helm, he could feel Torm's glare.

"I am certain they have magicians in their army, but even were that not the case, I would need to be far closer to halt any flames." He explained, his horse nickering in the air.

The last of Torm's men had come out of the tunnel, their horses leaping forward to skid into the tufts of earth and grass at the slope of the hill. Torm shook his head, lamenting they were about to face insurmountable odds against less than 24 hours after the last insane plot. At least it wasn't his idea this time. He raised his poleaxe high. "Safeguard the dwarves! Wheel right after we pass the cages!" He called.

Hoots and cries of acknowledgement met him, and almost as one, the heavy cavalry stepped over the rim of the hill and descended, gaining speed as they barreled toward the small picket line and the zealots that even now danced in fervor.

Bianca started to follow but Lavarak stepped infront of her hefting his shovel in bar. She tried to push past him but the dwarf would not be budged. The activity of the sappers had changed. They had ceased to clear the rubble and had begun to chip away at the ancient stone work, forcing bags of powder in behind the joists that Grimgi's miners had used to reinforce the ancient aqueduct. They were preparing to blow the tunnel to seal the breach into the city once the knights returned.

"No good lass, you'll never catch them without a mount," he pointed out.

"Someone has to guide the dwarves back to the tunnel," she objected, though even as she said it she knew it was foolish.

"Sure, guide a stunty to a tunnel, teach the bees to shit honey while you are at it. You are the First Scout, get your ass above ground and report. Or pick up a shovel and help," he suggested.

"Well fuck you too," Bianca replied, but she turned and ran back down the tunnel.

____

The city was in absolute chaos when Bianca emerged. Bells were ringing and armed men were rushing for the walls. Bianca joined the rush, heading for the gatehouse that she knew the Captain would be using as a command post. She climbed the step to the wall, smelling the reek of gunsmoke from the company's artillery pieces. The guns had been silent while the siege took form, a waste of time and powder to fire them before time. Now that the enemy were coming down on them in a tide, they were belching clouds of grape shot as fast as the crews could serve them. Not that it seemed to be helping, the whole plain was seething as the mass of frothing fanatics charged towards the walls, some of them literally frothing at the mouth. The Norgard sent sheets of arrows arcing down into them, the powerful weapons scything down men as they scrambled over the bodies of their fallen comrades. The attack wasn't entirely suicidal. The enemy carried hundreds of hastily constructed siege ladders, some little more than poles with knotted sting. One slapped the wall next to Bianca and she grabbed it and shoved it away. She felt something snag her glove and looked down to see thorns protruding from the leather.

"The ladder tops are poisoned!" she shouted, brushing the glove clean. Ahead of her a fanatic crested the wall, whirling a flail around his head. Bianca discharged her pistol into his back, sending him tumbling over the wall and into the town. She ducked uner another man's polearm and darted along the wall, squeezing between two Norgard rushing to repel the escalade.

"Captain!" she called, trying to make herself heard over the roar. Smoke was rushing up from the pyres but she could see the flash of steel back among the smoke. Torm had obviously reached the enemy. SHe just hoped they could rescue the mercs and get clear before the fanatics realized they had a force at their rear.

Torm and his men thundered down the hill with all the force of an avalanche. Even with sixty thousand zealots, a contingent of three score knights on barded destiers would trample through hundreds of men, anyone dumb enough to get in their way. Luckily for both the knights and the priest-queen's army, only small streams of the flood of men had crossed their path, most all too eager to make it for the walls rather than checking their flank. Perhaps in some small measure this would help the beleagured defenders. Once they safeguarded the dwarves, Torm would turn his men around and try and help as best they could.

Sir Draufkrieg felt his stomach clench, and Lycurgus raise his hooves, and then the turbulence of crashing into the body of a full grown man. His steed ran down three men before Torm's sword clove through the collarbone of a flagellant, splitting him open like a melon. He felt the tremor in his arm when his two handed sword struck the ribcage, but his strength and momentum sent his sword free of the body and ready for the next swing within the span of a second.

His men followed in wedge formation, so as to better penetrate through the swarm of men. He hacked the head off a second man, and he felt a small cut on his leg from a lucky zealot, but he did not tarry. All remaining zealots Torm left behind were run down seconds later. The men crashed against their horses like water on rock, dozens of zealots losing their lives every moment, screaming to their false gods. There was an occasional spearman in the horde, but even if they had the frame of mind to use it, they would need to have good aim to penetrade the steel armor the knights were clad in.

Beyond them, from the vantage of the horse, Torm could see the dwarves being set alight. Their hands bound by steel manacles and their burly forms set up against logs, pitch grasping at their proud beards. Torm cried in dismay when the first of the fires went up, and he called for his knights to hurry, though in his heart he knew it was too late. The dwarves stood stoicly, grimacing and giving out great roars of protest rather than squeals of pain, as a man might do. Perhaps they could save a few. Dwarves were known to be hardy against fire. Better to combat dragons with, Torm had heard. But they still had a stretch to go, and he knew he would see more dead dwarves than living when they got there.

The wall was chaos. Ladders clattered against the stone work, already packed with howling fanatics. The militia and their mercenary allies took a fearsome toll with bows, stones, and boiling oil but they came on like the tide going gladly to their deaths to claw another few inches. Here and there, they drove back the defenders, forming beach heads through which hundreds of men, some literally frothing at the mouth, could surge. The lead ranks threw themselves onto the blades of the defenders, glad to foul the weapon long enough for their compatriots to strike. The stink of blood, burning flesh, and unwashed bodies was intense. Bianca reached the Company command post just as they hurled back a wave of fanatics. The tower had become a microcosm of the siege with the Silver Swords defending both entrances with sword and shield while archers poured a withering fire down from above.
“Captain!” Bianca shouted as the shields opened to let her through. The old soldier had a bloodied sword in his hand, though he was shouting orders to all and sundry rather than participating in the fight.

“We are pulling out Bee!” the Captain boomed, “your men are already guarding the aqueduct?”

“Yes sir, what about the cavalry and the dwarves?” she demanded. It took the Captain a moment to bring his mind to Torm’s sally amid so many other demands on his attention.

“Too much smoke to know,” he replied, “Take command of the lower Tower, its going to be the Black One’s own pain in the ass to get everyone out of here as it is.” Bianca peered out through the narrow arched loophole in the direction of the dwarven pyre. As the Captain had said there was nothing to see save for a vast curtain of smoke. As she watched she saw lightning begin to flash in the great pall. Black Ryann must be calling rain to do what he could, a dangerous action, though hopefully any enemy wizards would be too busy with their assaults to notice.
“Move it!” the Captain shouted, giving her a shove towards the stairs. Bianca stumbled down the curving stone stairwell, furiously reloading her pistols as she went. At the bottom thirty men stood in a rough semicircle around the door, there were a few bodies in it, but it didn’t look like there had been heavy fighting.

“Hessel, Graves,” Bianca shouted, calling out the two file leaders she saw, “move out and form a corridor to the houses, double file, second man covering the first from above.” Relief shone in both men’s eyes at decisive commands to follow. They were veterans, but they wanted a task to accomplish. Bianca stepped out into the open. There were dozens of men along the base of the wall. Many were dead, others had been pushed off in the fighting and suffered broken legs or worse. An arrow hissed passed her and she ducked back beneath the shields of the emerging soldiers. Enough of the enemy had made the top of the wall that they could shoot down at the retreating mercs, though most were too busy trying to widen their breaches to bother. Bianca’s men formed a corridor between the tower exit and one of the deserted streets.

“Captain!” she shouted upwards but the old man was already leading his men through the corridor and into the relative safety of the street. She heard the sharp crack of grenadeos as the last soldiers covered their retreat, emerging from the tower at a run.

“Close up!” Bianca yelled and her reaguard swung away from the tower to secure their flanks with the street. Fanatics poured from the tower, many of them blinded from the grenadeos. One man’s hair was on fire, his eyebrows burned away, but still he swung his two handed axe in a great overhand blow. One of the company caught the blow with the metal edge of his shield and thrust into the fanatics belly, kicking him back into his fellows with brutal efficiency. The disorganized rush hit the shield wall like rain on a boulder, fanatics screamed and died on the swords of the company as they retreated foot by foot down the street.

“Grenadeos!” Bianca shouted and a dozen of the black metal spheres flew over her head and into the mouth of the tower, landing among the packed fanatics trying to claw their way out. There were a series of crackling booms and and great gouts of black smoke as the bombs did their deadly work. The pressure on the shieldwall fell immediately.

“Back, double time, keep your shields up!” Bianca ordered as the company beat an orderly retreat deeper into the city. She hoped the other contingents were having as much luck.

"Move! Move!"

Torm's two-handed sword clove through the haft of a makeshift flail, opening the skull of a zealot even as he wailed to his god. The lieutenant shoved the corpse aside as it fell, having no time to catch his breath or celebrate the victory. Behind him, his men had dismounted to clamber over the trenches at the base of the pyre, the near 3 score knights now moving uphill, faces covered and brutal weapons in their hands. Even on foot, they moved in a rough wedge formation, Torm at the front, leading them ever forward through the throng. The zealots at the base of the pyre outnumbered them by a factor of four, maybe five, but they hadn't the skill or the arms to thwart them.

What they had was time, however. Something Torm and the dwarves had precious little of.

Sparks flew as a thick bladed axe banged into Torm's pauldron, eliciting a grunt from him. Torm elbowed the zealot in the face, splitting his lip and leaving him to get cut down by his fellows. Sir Robert Longfellow let out a warcry, impaling the fallen zealot with the spike of his poleaxe, blood gurgling out of the wound as he yanked it out, stepping past the still warm corpse.

"To the death!" Gregor the Bold yelled as he fought alongside Malakum the Mamluk against a rearguard assault of flagellants and militiamen, side by side with two Cataphracti Torm could not quite identify in the din. Turning back to the fore, he saw a parting in the sea of foes as their numbers dwindled to but a few score, and past them, dwarves now aflame. Many struggled in their bonds, their beards alight. Some of them cried to their gods as the flames slowly but surely consumed them. Torm had been their enemy, but he appreciated dwarven honor and did not even wish this death on his enemies, though he now felt he would make an exception for the Priest-Queen and her bastard spawn.

Torm wrestled his way to the top, shoving a zealot off the platform as his men-at-arms climbed up with him. He did not know how many dead or wounded on his side, hurrying to the pyres. Even in his armor, he felt the intense heat. Squinting, his eyes beginning to water, he rushed across the wooden platforms that were now catching fire along with the straw and their dwarven captives. He found burnt corpse after burnt corpse, one or two dwarves still moved their mouths even as their skin was charred black. The willpower of the stout folk was an impossible thing, he marveled.

He only found one dwarf still relatively unharmed, at the edge of the flames and gritting his teeth, his hands burnt and his brow sweating profusely. He cut the dwarf's bonds and let him fall into his grasp, pulling him from the flames even as the dwarf cursed from the pain.

"Sir Draufkrieg!" Sir Castor cried, running to him. Every knight was trained to live and sleep in their armor if need be. A man couldn't join their ranks if they could not sprint in their full wargear. Past him, the huge army still moved like a flood. Some tendrils of the vast army swept towards their position, deceptively slowly as an avalanche viewed from far away. "We have five survivors, six with yours."

"Put them on the horses!" Torm called to him, helping his blonde bearded dwarf up. They had to move before they were stuck here, an island in a sea of enemies. "We must get back into the city!"

The Company retreated through hell. The attackers must have been through in a dozen places, and the city was well and truly burning. Black Ryann’s storm, if the tempest was the wizards work and not a cruel mockery on the part of uncaring gods, was making things worse. The intermittent rain drops were nothing compared to the high winds which fanned flames into blazing infernos and blizzard ash through the streets. Fanatics burst from alleyways and corners at irregular intervals, sometimes in twos and threes, sometimes by the score, throwing themselves on the swords of the retreating mercenaries with no regard for their own lives. Some were literally frothing at the mouth with insane frenzy. At one point a dozen Norgard had come charging out of a side street, aborting their rush at the last minute as the recognized friends, or at least not enemies. Bianca had allowed them to join the formation, at least until they found more of their own kind, if any such still lived.

Bianca, used to commanding small detached groups of scouts, found herself taxed to the breaking point, rushing back and forth between the front, where men had become disorientated in the blizzarding ash, and the rear, where men stopped to fight rather than continuing the retreat. Her legs throbbed but she chived her makeshift command along, pointing them towards easy to follow land marks and tugging men backward when they didn’t move quickly enough. At one point they were forced to open a gap between the men and a burning brewery, so intense was the heat and the enemy tried to rush around the flank, trusting their indifference to pain to carry them through. The Norgard took unreasonable delight in simply batting them into the flames with their heavy shields. The awkward rearguard continued.
“Bianca!” Hessel was shouting at her as she tried to push him forward. Her eyes focused for the first time in what seemed like forever. She wiped her face and her hand came away black. They all stank of burning hair. They had reached the entrance to the aqueduct and she could see troopers heading down into the tunnel. Other troopers, the rest of the Company she dared to hope.
“For her Dark Majesty!” someone screamed and a score of fanatics charged out of the smoke. Bianca lifted one of her pistols and cursed as it clicked empty. The shields locked and the bodies slammed into them like hail on a rooftop. Exhausted men thrust low through the gaps, ripping open groins and guts to leave a barricade of howling maimed men. One of the troopers went down, his helmet split open by a heavy axe blow that sprayed grey muck a half dozen feet in all directions. A Norgard stepped into he breach, his own axe lashing out to disembowel the fanatic before locking his shield int place.
“The Captain says you are the last unit, we need to disengage!” Hessel was shouting, his voice a plea. They could all feel how precarious the citation was, at any moment this cold disintegrate in a rout that lead to whole sale slaughter.

“Disengage,” she breathed forcing her eyes to focus for what seemed the first time in an age.

“Grenados,” she said but Hessel was already shaking his head.

“None left, used’m at the tower,” he explained. Bianca could only vaguely recall flashes in the smoke as the abandoned the tower, a subjective lifetime ago.
“Right,” she said, a place holder while she gathered her thoughts, she glanced around at the rickety building that concealed the entrance to the aqueduct.

“Right, get everyone inside, then fire the building,” she ordered. Hessel blanched.

“Fire it… after we are inside?” he asked. Bianca nodded vigorously acutely conscious of something her uncle once said: Indecision buries more men than stupidity.
“Do it, we can move down the tunnel as the flames force us back. Wrap scarves around your faces so you can breathe.” Hessel looked unconvinced but nodded turning to yell orders to the others. In short order Bianca found herself hustled into the aqueduct, feeling an instinctive sense of security steal over her. Flames crackled up behind her and she felt the air being sucked through the tunnel around her as she fell back. The aqueduct was packed with men moving forward as quickly as their numbers allowed. By her guess most of the company had made it, and a score or so of Norgard as well. Bianca pulled her canteen from her belt and gulped down great mouthfuls before sluicing her face clean.

“Bianca! The Captain wants you!” someone shouted and she pushed herself to her feet, forcing herself wearily through the packed ranks towards the front.

"We cannot go back that way!" Adolphus cried.

"At the flanks! We must move south!" Nikos cried, the mail ensconced Cataphract waving his mace in the air.

"Commander, orders?" Sir Gregor cried, and Castor gave a warcry as his destrier kicked out, snapping the neck of a flagellant that had attempted to get a lucky kill. Blood splattered on his fellows, who finally seemed reluctant to swarm in without the use of polearms. Seven knights had been torn out of their saddles, and though they killed at least three zealots even as they went down, they were butchered nonetheless. The cohort had only survived by keeping on the move, trying in vain to move up the hill toward the town. A flash and a sound of thunder rumbled as Black Ryann attempted to clear the way, but it did little except send a score of fanatics to their screaming gods.

The Dwarf, Gardek he called himself, spat contemptuously onto the head of a fallen flagellant, his eyes staring listlessly into the sky as he lay shattered on the blood stained grass. The dwarf was strapped to the horse so as not to fall off, very much awake and cursing the gods he was from all the riding. Torm hadn't the time to make the ride easy for him, and even if he had, the dwarf had tried to kill him and the Silver Swords yesterday. By Torm's estimation he should simply be glad he hadn't burned to death.

"Nikos speaks the truth!" Torm cried, raising his lance. "Wheel right and move south! Follow me!"

He set his great helm back on and urged Lycurgus forward. The horse whinnying with barely suppressed aggression. Fighting and being surrounded by foes did that to even the best trained horse, and Torm knew they could not keep this up all day. Every charge into the enemy threatened to break the cavalry's cohesion, and without it every knight would be swiftly torn apart. Torm and Lycurgus stormed south, bowling over militant after militant. A spear cut across Lycurgus's side, and though the horse screamed in pain, it didn't go down. Horses were big animals, able to survive wounds that would kill three men. And Lycurgus was armored. But still, Torm felt sympathy for his destrier, his most constant companion. He took solace knowing that anyone who swung at him would swiftly be trampled by the heavy cavalry that fanned out behind him.

There was a cacophony of screams and war shouts, but the knights were growing tired of charging. Even something as bloodlusting as trampling down wave after wave of poorly equipped infantry could grow exhausting and monotonous after enough time spent, and Torm knew if they didn't break out of last wave of the army soon, they would be stopped and forced to fight to the death. A Mamluk wailed in pain and anger as an arrow pierced his shoulder, but he kept himself upright with the skill they were legendary for. Luckily, within the next minutes, the grinding charge hammered through the last dregs of the Priest-Queen's right wing before the cavarly broke through. The horses panted and the men could hardly shout out calls of thanks to their gods. Instead, they silently trod eastward, going round the hillock of the town to get to whoever might be retreating through the tunnels. Hopefully there were still some Silver Swords left alive.

Vaguely, Torm wondered how Bianca fared. He did not entirely know why. He had never been on the best terms with the Scout lieutenant, but he knew if she died, the number of skilled commanders grew very thin. He hoped she didn't blame him for the pitiable number of dwarves they saved. He already put enough blame on himself, he thought grimly.