Chapter 609: Entering the Battlefield
“All three, dead in a shack at the foot of the Beacon Tower,” the chief justice confirmed. “The guards rotated weekly. By the time they were found, the bodies had been there long enough to make identification difficult.”
Soli’s fist struck the desk. Then he laughed — a short, sharp sound, more exasperation than humor. “They killed the garrison and lit the fire themselves. They were teasing us. Provoking us.”
“The specific motive isn’t clear. But there is one more testimony worth noting — I placed it last in the report deliberately.”
Soli turned to the final page and read through it quickly.
Two weeks ago, soldiers had established a barrier on the road beneath Coldwind Ridge. The barrier blocked passage toward the Impassable Mountain Range but allowed movement away from it. A Rat — one of the church’s informants — had been planning to travel to Deepvalley Town for work; he had witnessed merchants who should have been heading toward Hermes stopped and turned back.
Soli set the page down.
“Two weeks ago,” he said slowly, more to himself than to the chief justice. “And the last group of these grain-trading peddlers — when did they pass through?”
“Three days ago.”
He understood it all in the same instant. The peddlers had been moving through after the barrier went up. The barrier blocked everyone except those peddlers — or rather, those who looked like peddlers. They had been allowed through the Impassable Mountain Range.
They’re accomplices. All of them. Every single peddler was Roland’s man, moving through a corridor his soldiers controlled.
“How many soldiers were guarding the barrier?”
“The Rat only glimpsed from a distance. He estimated several hundred.”
Soli stood up. “Several hundred.” He turned it over. A barrier. A controlled corridor. Dead guards and a lit beacon. A false grain stockpile. All of it designed to pull Holy City’s attention here — to provoke them into sending men ahead of the main force, into marching down the mountain before they were ready. “Order the Judgement Army to assemble. All of them.”
The chief justice went still. “My lord — Supreme Pontiff’s orders were to hold Coldwind Ridge after seizing it. Maintain the road, wait for the main army. If you want more information, send a small detachment to capture someone for interrogation—”
“I’m not sending a detachment.” Soli pulled on his gauntlets. “I’m going down there myself, and I’m crushing their barrier, and I’m hanging their heads above the gate. That is the price for making a game of Holy City.” He saw the chief justice’s expression and answered it before the man could speak. “If we leave now, we arrive the day after tomorrow. This doesn’t touch the main army’s schedule. His Holiness won’t object.”
“But if this is a trap—”
Soli looked at him. “I fought at Broken Tooth Castle in Wolfheart. Difficult terrain, many traps. Even with geography on their side, they could only delay us — and they were soldiers, not peddlers and farmers. What can a trap set in open ground at a mountain’s foot do to God’s Punishment Army?” He paused. “Frankly, I hope they have the courage to actually fight rather than scatter.”
”… Yes, my lord.”
“A large column has left Coldwind Ridge.” Iron Axe looked at Maggie as she settled her wings. “How many?”
“Around a thousand soldiers, coo!” She tilted her feathered head. “No supply wagons, no militia. Everyone is in armor. Some of them are carrying big shields. Short spears. Coo.”
“Big shields.” Iron Axe straightened. “How big?”
Maggie eyed him, then spread her wings to roughly his height and width.
“I see.” He pressed a piece of dried meat into her beak. “Well done.” To the guard outside: “Ask Battalion Commander Brian and Artillery Commander Van’er to my tent. The enemy is moving.”
Brian arrived frowning. “This soon? His Majesty is still two or three days from Deepvalley Town. The Longsong Cannons aren’t in position yet—”
“Whether His Majesty is here or not, we hold our line,” Iron Axe said. “The enemy does not cross the foot of this mountain. That is the only requirement.”
“Yes!” Brian and Van’er said together.
“The church reacted faster than we planned, but the defense plan doesn’t change.” Iron Axe spread his hands over the rough map on the table. “Here is the arrangement. We have over two thousand God’s Stones of Retaliation — distribute as many as possible to the front rows. Machine gunners get priority protection, every one of them wears a Stone. I’ll assign ten good marksmen and a machine gun team to stay with Miss Sylvie; they follow her guidance on which targets pose the highest threat. Everyone else follows the standard drill as rehearsed.” He paused. “The shields on those soldiers—”
“God’s Punishment Army,” Van’er said.
Iron Axe nodded. “Most likely. Maggie’s description matches. Commoners don’t march with shields of that size.”
Brian leaned forward. “Can a bullet penetrate those shields?”
“We won’t know until we try. If the flintlocks don’t stop them effectively, your people slow their advance and leave them for the artillery.” Iron Axe looked at Van’er.
Van’er smiled. “Artillery it is. Leave the hard ones to me, Your Excellency.”
Two days later, Danny was in the trench before dawn.
He moved to his position by feel and habit — right wing, center trench, the spot where the cut brush gave him an unobstructed line across the entire field. He arranged three flat stones into a small rack on the trench wall, rested his rifle barrel across them, and looked through the sights.
Dew on leaves. A spider on the wire fence. A clay road still holding the morning cold, pressed with horseshoe prints from days ago. The wall of the Impassable Mountain Range at the edge of the world.
He opened the bolt, chambered the first round, and settled in to wait.
He had always been patient. The mountains had taught him that — years in the forests above Border Town, where you held still longer than any animal, where the shot only came once and had to be right. He had carried that stillness into every battle since.
Since the day he first held a flintlock, he had belonged to it. Handy and powerful, demanding only good eyes and a little gift. Before that gift had a name, he had felt it as a warmth in the palms when the stock pressed against his shoulder — something rising from the base of his chest, telling him the alignment was right before his eye confirmed it.
He had been at every major engagement: the defense against the demonic beasts, the Longsong Stronghold operation, the push into King’s City. His weapon had evolved with the war — flintlock to bolt-action, each iteration a little more reach, a little more precision. In terms of rounds fired in earnest, he was among the most experienced soldiers in the First Army. If he had wanted rank, he could have had it; Brian had offered it twice. He preferred the position.
There was a short guy running along the trench toward him, breathing hard, lugging a sack.
“Captain, you’re early.” Malt arrived and dropped the sack at Danny’s feet. “Here’s your ammunition.”
“How much?”
“Thirty bullets.”
Danny glanced at the sack. “Bloody machine gunners.”
Malt was sixteen. He had come to this assignment through Karl Van Bate’s mild persistence — the Minister of Construction treated every Karl College graduate as something between a student and a son, and he had asked Danny, quietly, with the particular tone of a man asking a favor he has no right to ask, whether Malt could be assigned as his protector. Danny disliked the arrangement. He disliked it less when he reminded himself that the sharpshooter’s position was well behind the front, and a protector assigned there was safer than most.
And he could not easily say no to Van Bate. They had been neighbors for years. The same street in the New District, the same winter nights when the wind came off the river hard. He understood the man’s attachment to the young ones who had come through his school.
He watched Malt sorting bullets and said, “Have you thought about a different posting? City Hall. You’re a Karl College graduate — you’d qualify for a good position. Less dangerous than this.”
“I like it here,” Malt said, without looking up.
“This isn’t a game. We could die any time.”
“I know.” Malt continued sorting. “But I don’t want to run errands for officials. I want to hold a gun and protect His Majesty.” He paused. He seemed to be blushing. “Besides—”
“Miss Nana.”
Malt said nothing. His cheeks darkened visibly.
Danny laughed. “Half the soldiers in this army admire the Angel. Her father is a baron, even without his land. She’s not in your reach.”
“I’m not — I don’t need her to notice me.” Malt arranged the last bullets in a careful row. “I just want to see her every day. That’s enough.”
Danny stopped arguing. He had been that young himself — or something like it. Even now, without deciding to, the image of green hair arrived unbidden whenever he closed his eyes at rest. A forest clearing, months ago, when a hand had pulled him back from something he hadn’t seen in time. She had been the enemy then, or so everyone thought. She had still pulled him back.
He had buried that feeling with the care of a man burying something he isn’t sure is dead.
The horns sounded — low and sustained, the signal they had rehearsed.
Danny collected his thoughts. He gathered his ready rounds, fixed the rifle stock to his shoulder, and pressed his eye to the sight.
Whatever else he was, he was a soldier right now. The church was coming, and it had hunted witches, and that was reason enough to shoot straight.