Through the hanging pall of smoke—
Trimmed with red, it was, and dripping with
a deep and angry stain!
And the day came walking then
Through a lane of murdered men,
And the light fell down before her like
a cross upon the plain!
But the forts still crowned the height
With a bitter iron crown!
They had lived to flame and fight,
They had lived to keep the Town!
And they poured their havoc down
All that day . . . and all that night . . .
Each morning when the dazed defenders looked out at the swarming, teeming enemy they felt despair, yet still they fought. One night the enemy finally succeeded in gaining a major bridgehead across the river, a salient that couldn’t be dislodged, and the Guldur began to work their way up the slopes. Now vast numbers of hastily trained riflemen and musketeers manned the ramparts and added their fire to the withering barrages that swept down the bluffs. Yet still the enemy advanced.
So they stormed the iron Hill,
O’er the sleepers lying still,
And their trumpets sang them forward through the dull succeeding dawns,
But the thunder flung them wide,
And they crumpled up and died,
They had waged the war of monarchs—and they died the death of pawns.
The sailors—Stolsh, Sylvan and Westerness—spent most of their time on board their ships waiting for any possible attack upon the Pier. They were under orders to stay out of the ground battle. They wouldn’t tip the balance much on the ground. Barely trained militia could man the ramparts almost as well as a sailor.
Only Melville’s two rangers were active in the front lines, happily serving as snipers to wipe out enemy gun crews and key leaders. Technically this was disobeying his orders, but the rangers’ unique status as elite, attached, ground troops made this acceptable in his mind. Also, although it was dangerous on the battlements, Melville couldn’t bring himself to stay away, and the Stolsh and Sylvan admirals were often there beside him.
As the battle unfolded it became increasingly clear that they would be defeated. The defenders’ only real option was to hurt the hateful enemy as much as possible and then evacuate, and only well-trained sailors could do that. Militia couldn’t fight through the blockading armada. And soldiers couldn’t evacuate beloved family members. But first they would make the enemy pay, and pay, and pay.
But the forts still stood . . . Their breath
Swept the foemen like a blade,
Though ten thousand men were paid
To the hungry purse of Death,
Though the field was wet with blood,
Still the bold defences stood,
Stood!
Then one night at moonrise the Guldur king came to look upon that which he had wrought. He was a huge cur upon a white horse, dressed in a red-trimmed gray uniform. Surrounded by an elite cavalry regiment, he came down to the river’s edge. All along the line the Stolsh cannons paused as the mortal personification of their foe looked across the river and gazed up at the bluffs. Arrogantly, without a flag of truce, he surveyed the battlefield.
And the King came out with his bodyguard
at the day’s departing gleam—
And the moon rode up behind the smoke
and showed the King his dream.
For a moment the grim battle ceased, and only the constant, tragic cry of the wounded echoed down the slope. A writhing sea of maimed and wounded, crawling over the dead, envying the dead, cried out to their king.
Three hundred thousand men, but not enough
To break this township on a winding stream;
More yet must fall, and more, ere the red stuff
That built a nation’s manhood may redeem
The Master’s hopes and realize his dream.
Beside the Guldur king, riding as an equal, was a figure wearing a hooded black robe. Who could have dreamed that such a target would appear? Melville cursed and wished that his rangers were here, but they were contributing to the battle as snipers now; which was a daylight activity, and they were back at the ship getting some well deserved rest. The two BARs with expert gunners would have cut the enemy force to ribbons, but the precious BARs and their few thousand rounds of ammunition weren’t here. They were being held back out of danger, for a key, future battle. Melville cursed himself. Who could have imagined that an opportunity like this would arise!
He yearned to give the order to strike down that distant figure, but only Broadax and Ulrich and his squad of marine bodyguards were with him. He grabbed a rifle from a nearby Stolsh soldier and took aim. Westminster or Valandil might have made it, but it was virtually an impossible shot for him, or for his marines. Nevertheless, he would try. He would do his best.
“On my command, open fire on the enemy leader!” he called out to his marines, and they eagerly leaned or knelt against the walls to take careful aim.
“No! Don’t!” shouted the Sylvan admiral beside him. “We do not wage war on leaders.”
Ulrich and Broadax gave synchronized snarls and drew their weapons, turning their backs to their captain, facing the surrounding Stolsh and Sylvan leaders and staff officers. The squad of Westerness marines never wavered as they waited patiently for their captain’s order to fire.
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” asked Melville. “War as you know it is over. Now you battle evil itself. Before you is an enemy who is no respecter of kings. They murdered our captain under a flag of truce, and they’ll do the same to you. Here is an enemy who will intentionally, remorselessly butcher men, women and children, and then make the survivors envy the dead. You can no longer play by the old rules. Strike! Strike with every gun and pray that you slay your foe!”
The Sylvan admiral and the Stolsh commander exchanged glances. “He is riight,” said the ancient commander, sadly. “The oold ways aare goone.” With a deep, booming voice he continued fiercely, “Ie willl diee with this cityy, and befoore Ie diee Ie willl killl everyy Guulduur Ie caan! Aalll caannoon, aalll rifles, aat myy commaand, yoou willl fire aat the enemyy commaander!”
Many of the cannon had already been shifted to bear on this new target, the rest shifted eagerly, swiftly. The riflemen waited impatiently. The word rippled down the ramparts. Finally, as the moon rose and the enemy force began to pull back, the old general gave his order, in a deep booming voice, “FIIRE!!” Such a command would have echoed like a gunshot across the wide river valley, but in this case his “echo” was a vast array of cannons and muskets roaring out defiance and hate.
Melville and his bodyguards joined in the fusillade firing at the distant target. The Guldur bodyguards around the king staggered and fell. His mysterious, hooded comrade turned his horse and raced away. The king himself had his horse shot out from under him. He scrambled over the mounds of Guldur dead. He was a little gray louse upon a great, vast corpse. Then he disappeared into the darkness as a cloud came across the moon.
One barrow, borne of women, lifts them high,
Built up of many a thousand tragic dead.
Nursed on their mothers’ bosoms, now they lie—
A Golgotha, all shattered, torn and sped,
A mountain for those royal feet to tread.
Chapter the 13th
Rear Guard:
Not the Be-medalled Commander
Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers
Riding triumphantly laureled to lap the fat of the years,
Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with spears;
“A Consecration”
John Masefield
The next morning a cold rain swept down from the north. On that tragic morn the Guldur’s Orak allies joined the attack and the walls of Ai finally fell. As the rain and cold swept away the sweltering heat, so did the Orak forces sweep away the brave defenders of the last Stolsh stronghold on Ambergris, and drive them from their world. No one had known that the Guldur were allied with the Orak, but now they understood who it was that rode beside the King of Curs as an equal.
If the Guldur were canine derived, then the Orak were from porcine stock. Pigs, swine, hogs, and porkers, they were called, but in reality they were like huge boars standing upright, with sword, shield and tusks rending all before them.
The same ancient, Ur-civilization that seeded the galaxy with human, Sylvan and Dwarrowdelf to live on worlds with varied gravities, and Stolsh to live on aquatic worlds, had also chosen to wander farther afield in their genetic manipulation of the basic human stock. The Guldur were a strange cross of human and canine, but they were still far more man than dog, just as the Orak were more human than porcine. Most of these races could, reputedly, interbreed. Just as all the diverse breeds of canines or felines could generally mate and reproduce, although some such matches were reported to produce only sterile “mules.”