The smaller juvenals that were brought along to feed the drivers were slaughtered next, and the adults went hungry for a few days.
On the eleventh day, when they finally caught up to the tail end of Duke Dennon’s column, they were down to only a dozen children pulling each cart, with the drivers, Kren, Bronki and Dol pulling as well.
Bronki was particularly unhappy about this situation. “Look at the bright side!” she complained to Dol, “They might have made us walk! Dammit! They might have made us haul cargo, too! And they did!”
Dol didn’t respond.
“I’m five thousand years old, I have two dozen and four doctorates, and they have me hauling mindless carnivores down an illegal tunnel to an illegal war for immoral purposes!”
Dol still didn’t respond.
No one had ever suggested trying to use the mindless young carnivores for the task. The brainless but basically docile juvenals were hard enough to control. Trying to use the brainless but ferocious carnivores was unthinkable.
Kren resisted the suggestion that they use some of the young carnivores for food. He had a use for those bodies, and the juvenals were just food, anyway.
On arrival, Kren trotted forward and reported to Duke Dennon.
“You are late, Kren. Did you have difficulties?”
“Yes, Your Grace, but we still managed to get here. I was worried that the attack would be over before I could take part in it.”
“No such luck. I still don’t know how it happened, but when my engineers finally tunneled up to the surface, they found that they were not in Tendi’s basement. They were in the middle of a snowy field! They had missed Tendi’s castle by over two gross yards! Either your tunnel was out of position or my engineer’s measurements were way off! And when I find out who was at fault, I will not be lenient!”
“Yes, Your Grace. Although a third possibility could be that the castle isn’t where it’s shown to be on the maps. It wasn’t as though we could go out to Tendi’s castle and survey it, the way we did with your palace. Once we’d done that, we were spot on with the tunnel there. I’ll solve the riddle for you eventually, but there’s nothing that I can do about it right now. I assume that a new tunnel is being dug?”
“Yes, of course. With any luck, no one in the castle was looking out over that snow-covered field when my engineer’s head stuck up out of it. Just maybe, we still have the element of surprise on our side. We expect to be through to the proper position in a few hours, so you’d better get your armor on. I’ve saved you a place right behind me, leading the second company into the breach.”
“We won’t be in the front of the line? I’d had visions of being the first one up and out of the hole!”
“No, I’ve got some specially trained shock troops ready for that job. A leader must be visible, Kren, but that doesn’t mean that he should be stupid.”
Kren’s trip to the rear of the column was slow. The carts had been pulled fairly close together, and many thousands of soldiers were trying to get their armor on in very cramped quarters.
Young, boxed carnivores were being handed overhead, and each was placed in a cart as soon as the armor was emptied out of it. Soon, the carts would become resurrection cages.
Eventually, Kren stood in his armor at Dennon’s side. Dennon had made him a temporary colonel for the battle, and without that insignia on his shoulders, Kren might not have made his way through the crowd in time.
Combat engineers were still passing buckets of dirt out from the tunnel, and metal hoops into it that would hold up the roof. Soon, the sound of pickaxes attacking concrete could be heard. The duke went down the line of the first assault company and personally handed each soldier a small white pill.
Kren kept his thoughts on that one to himself.
In practice sessions, it had been proved that the spear was not an effective weapon for fighting indoors. It was too cumbersome. All of Duke Dennon’s men were armed only with a sword, although one in six also carried an axe, and one in twelve a pickaxe, for chopping through doors and other barriers.
There was a shout, and the engineers slid down out of the tunnel and got out of the way, their part of this operation completed.
The first company ran gleefully up the steep incline, with the duke and then Kren right behind them. Dennon had stressed to his men, dozens of times over, that success in this operation depended on moving fast, hitting hard, and not stopping for any reason.
The tunnel came up, not through the floor, but through a wall in a disused lower basement that wasn’t shown on the maps. This hadn’t bothered the drugged troops of the first company. They had found a light switch, a stairway up, and had charged!
Kren and Dennon ran after the soldier in front of them, having trouble keeping up with the drug-crazed idiot. On the floor above they found six bodies, five of them apparently unarmed, but in the livery of Duke Tendi. Dennon’s single casualty seemed not to have been wounded by a weapon, but to have run into a wall and injured her silly head.
Kren glanced at the dead or unconscious soldier and thought, I knew it, I knew it! Drugs in combat are a stupid stunt!
They left her where she was and ran on.
The job of the first two companies was to go up, and the third was to guard the landings. Later arrivals would worry about making sure that each floor was secure, but the way up had to be taken first.
They went up through five basements, and were on what had to be the ground floor before Kren saw his first living enemy soldier. Small, high, heavily barred windows showed that it was dark outside, the troop seemed to have just awakened from a stupor, and she was holding her sword in a languid manner. Kren took her head off with a single swing and ran on without bothering to watch her body fall.
Alarm gongs were sounding throughout the castle, Mitchegai were shouting to each other in a dozen languages, and pouring out into the hallways. Some of them were armed, but most were not. But anyone who got in the way of the silent, panting invaders was cut down without a thought. They had no time for talking, and very little breath left for it, either.
Someone in a very expensive robe stepped in front of Kren, and died for her foolishness. Most of her would soon be revived, and it was all grist for Kren’s mill.
The first assault companies were working their way to Duke Tendi’s private chambers. Once Tendi was killed, preferably by Dennon himself, the rest of the castle’s defenses could be depended upon to collapse. Loyalty among the Mitchegai was always on a personal basis, and never on a territorial one.
Kren and Dennon, who was having a hard time keeping up with his temporary colonel, found a pitched battle going on in a very large room between their armored troops and four times as many enemies who were pouring out of a guard room at the base of Duke Tendi’s private tower.
Kren never slowed down, and when he got to the battle line, he went right over it!
He vaulted off the hip of one of Dennon’s soldiers in front of him, propelling the warrior right through the enemy’s ranks. This startled warrior could have easily been killed, but much to her surprise, she lived. At the time, Kren himself didn’t much care. He wanted to be behind the enemy line, and he got there!
He stepped on another soldier’s shoulder, and then on the head of an enemy troop, knocking her unconscious, after which another of Dennon’s soldiers took her head off.
He killed two enemy soldiers on the way down with his sword, crushed a third beneath his armored feet, then bounced off a wall and took five more of them out from behind with three fast swipes of his sword before most of them even knew that he was there.
“I love this war!” Kren shouted, as the warrior that he had kicked through the lines started fighting at his side.
Then he started fighting in earnest.
During all of this mayhem, Kren was very careful to kill his opponents with clean neck cuts, and leaving their brains undamaged. One day soon, half of them would be his own troops, after all, and waste not, want not.
When Tendi’s soldiers noticed that their rear rank was gone, some of them made the mistake of turning to meet this new threat, at which point they were cut down from behind by Dennon’s drug-crazed troops. Fighting fair just wasn’t the Mitchegai way of doing things.