deployed on the far side of the clearing, go after the smaller group circling behind him, or get the hell out now?
Use caution when dealing with their kind, Jurgen had always said. His old friend would have told him to get the hell out. If Brendan and the Tsurani had been wiped out by them, there were undoubtedly enough moredhel nearby to annihilate Dennis’s small command. Had the moredhel scout who was surely watching him known that a short distance down the trail sixty-odd cold, tired, and hungry Kingdom soldiers waited, he would be carrying word at this moment. Dennis knew what he must do.
Get out, circle around, then warn off any Kingdom troops that might be approaching from the south. He knew he would have to stand up, glance around as if satisfied that no danger lingered and move quickly back to where his command waited. Let the moredhel think him a solitary scout. Dennis would not be returning this way, and neither would any Kingdom force if he could intercept them. Let the Dark Brothers and the Tsurani fight with each other for a while. The moredhel would not linger to occupy a human stockade, and if the Tsurani managed to drive them away, Duke Brucal, Earl Vandros of LaMut, and Baron Moyet could decide how to drive them out of here and Mad Wayne’s next spring.
Dennis and his scouts had signals to use in these situations. He would remove his heavy cloak, shaking it as if he was trying to rid it of excess water. That would let Tinuva and Gregory know he was under scrutiny and they needed to withdraw without being seen. Dennis was on the verge of standing up to do just this when he saw the enemy. Stepping out of the forest, down on the south-west side of the clearing, a lone Tsurani appeared, easily picked out by his bright blue lacquered armour.
Dennis grinned. Damned fool, typical of them. Make a big show of bravado. A new plan instantly formed in Dennis’s mind. Except for a couple of their best units the Tsurani were blundering fools in the forest compared to his Marauders. The moredhel had to know additional Tsurani were here. In fact, it lessened the likelihood the moredhel knew that Dennis’s unit was nearby. The trap was set for the Tsurani. Let the two sides slaughter each other while we slip away, or with luck the Tsurani will so weaken the moredhel we might even finish them both off and reclaim the fort for ourselves. This might actually get amusing, he thought with a wolfish smile, and then he heard the crack of a branch.
‘It is a trap,’ Force Leader Asayaga hissed, gesturing towards the smoking ruins of the stockade.
Sugama said nothing, but Asayaga could already read what his second-in-command was thinking, and what he would do.
The night march had been an exercise in stupidity and waste. Two hours of double-quick march in daylight could have brought them to this position, but instead they had endured a frigid, miserable night. His men were exhausted, shivering from the wretched cold, and the perverse gods of this world were sending down bucketful’s of snow.
Now this damnable disaster. It was obvious that Force Leader Hagamaka of the Gineisa had launched the attack without waiting for the reinforcements Asayaga was bringing up. The thought of a Minwanabi ally failing so miserably, so publicly, might have brought Asayaga some pleasure, except for the sight of so many fine soldiers of the Empire dead, slaughtered in a futile battle. It was yet another tragic waste of good men. But why the urgent command for a night march through dangerous territory if Hagamaka wasn’t going to wait?
He first suspected that Hagamaka had intended to embarrass him, to order reinforcements up, not wait and launch the attack, then accuse him of failing to arrive in a timely manner.
Yet, as he surveyed the carnage, he wondered: it was obvious the attack had turned into a rout, a pile of nearly two score dead were clumped on a low rise not a hundred paces into the clearing, and a trail of dead led all the way back to the fort.
No garrison of fifty Kingdom troops could have done this. Did they have more hidden inside the ruined fort, or a force waiting in the woods which had cut Hagamaka off? Then, if so, why the abandoned fort?
The Kingdom considered this a key link in their chain which guarded the shadowy northern front. From the Lake of the Sky’s eastern shore down to the northernmost peak of the Grey Tower Mountains, only the chains of stockades prevented the Tsurani from sweeping eastward, then south into Tyr-Sog and the other Kingdom cities of Yabon. Earlier in the year the forces of the Empire had taken Mad Wayne’s fort to the north-west. If they could also hold Brendan’s, they could control enough of this area to stage an invasion down into Yabon in the spring. With a second invasion pressing out of the Free Cities to the south-west, the Kingdom would lose Yabon inside a year. The Kingdom knew this, and were desperate to garrison and supplying these small fortresses. If they had destroyed Hagamaka they would, at this very moment, be barricading the shattered gate, making repairs … and looting the dead. Messages would already have been sent south for more reinforcements.
Asayaga shook his head. No. Something was dreadfully wrong with this entire situation. He looked over at Sugama but knew there would be no sage advice. He was, after all, of House Tondora, allegedly assigned to Asayaga’s force for training in anticipation of the Tondora joining the Warlord’s host in the spring. It was an unusual but not unprecedented situation to have a junior officer train with the forces of an ally, but everyone knew that this was simply a charade. The Tondora – while publicly ‘politically neutral’, in the Great Council – were Clan Shonshoni and a client House of the Minwanabi, so everything they did was at Minwanabi bidding.
Though supposedly second-in-command, his bloodline and rank in the courts at home would have placed him far above what Asayaga could ever hope to aspire to. So there could only be one reason he was in a subordinate role now: to keep close watch on Asayaga. Asayaga was a son of the Kodeko, a minor house, but of Clan Kanazawai, and the Shinzawai were most likely next on the list of opponents to be crushed by the Minwanabi. The Minwanabi were far too clever to openly confront House Keda, the most powerful Kanazawai Clan family, and one of the Five Great Families of the Empire. But the Shinzawai, while an old and honourable family, with a venerated lord in Kamatsu, retired abruptly from the war with the other families in the Blue Wheel Party, dealing the Warlord a major setback. The move had actually helped the Minwanabi cause, but had also marked the Shinzawai as a political force to be reckoned with. And the Minwanabi never ignored such potential opponents. By discrediting Clan Kanazawai, the Minwanabi would weaken the Keda and their allies. It was but another ploy in the Great Game.
Against that possibility, Asayaga of House Kodeko was ordered to remain in the war by the clan leaders. Ostensibly of the Yellow Flower Party – still allied with the Warlord – Asayaga was the logical choice to be left behind to keep an eye on the Minwanabi. Someone had to be, for their plots and schemes were unending.
Asayaga recalled the disgust he had felt when word of the loss of Lord Sezu of the Acoma had reached him; while of Clan Hadama, Lord Sezu was nevertheless an honourable man worthy of respect. His death had been the result of a manipulation of the Minwanabi sub-commander, who had reinforcements arrive ‘too late’ to save Sezu and his son Lanakota from death. Now only Mara, his daughter, was left to shepherd her house, though by rumours reaching the front, she seemed adept at doing so.
Asayaga kept his disquiet to himself; this late arrival smacked of the same sort of machinations as that betrayal of Sezu in the first year of the war, and that made him uneasy. Fighting the soldiers of the Kingdom was one thing, and even facing the Forest Demons, those known as Dark Brothers to the enemy, was simple warfare. But the treachery of the Great Game, reaching as it did through the rift from the home world to this distant and icy frontier, that was an enemy impossible to confront directly. Besides, even back home Asayaga never liked politics. He took after his father in that regard, and it was for that reason above all others why the Kodeko had remained a minor house in Clan Kanazawai.
Asayaga’s gaze drifted to his senior Strike Leader, Tasemu, the true second-in-command, a veteran from the very start of the war. The one-eyed fighter nodded his understanding that
