The Chesian Wars (A Griffins & Gunpowder Collection) (5 page)

A young boy, no more than fourteen, hurried from the weapon's ammunition box, a cartridge cradled in his hands. The man with the twisted coil set the rod against the gun's crossbeam, accepted the cartridge from the boy and shoved it into the barrel. The man with the sponge used the opposite end of the rod to press the round to the base of the cannon. The man with the glove removed his thumb from the vent, and the officer in command of the gun pressed a primer attached to a lanyard into the hole as the crew cleared the front of the weapon. Finally, a sergeant checked the sights of the piece and stepped back.

"Ready to fire!" the sergeant shouted.

"Firing!" the lieutenant shouted. He pulled the lanyard taut. The gun crew covered their ears and the lieutenant yanked on the cord, igniting the primer. The cannon breathed fire like a dragon and bucked backwards several feet. The crew pushed the weapon back into place and began again.

Acheron watched through binoculars as the Chesians scrambled to get their guns attached to their horse teams and pulled back beyond the range of his smaller guns. One of the next rounds fell behind the enemy artillery and exploded with little effect; the other fell between guns and blasted shrapnel into the gun crews.

Acheron turned to his east and swept his binoculars over the Sithean forces. The Chesians had withdrawn behind the ridgeline, but the Sitheans were marching after them. At the rear of the Sithean line, a cloud of brown dust was forming and Acheron focused on it.

The Sithean cavalry galloped toward the western end of their line; they would turn the corner and charge into the teeth of the Chesian skirmishers and light infantry. Except they didn't turn. The heavy cavalry, sabres glinting in the sunlight, charged past the end of their line and past the foot of the eastern ridge. They were riding straight for the eastern end of his trenches, and his troops would be defenseless.

Commander Kasimir Parten woke to a panicked knocking on the door to his quarters. The sky outside of his window was still dark and remains of a fire still smoldered in his hearth; it was the middle of the night.

"I'm awake!" Kasimir shouted. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, stood and stretched with a gaping yawn.

He pulled his robe on over his thin linen clothes and lit a candle from the embers of last night's fire. Flicking open his pocket watch, he frowned. It was hours yet before the sun would rise and there would be little so urgent that he needed to be woken.

"I'm coming!" Kasimir said when the knocking started again. The light from the candle did little to dispel the shadows in the corners of the room; the gray stone walls drank the light from the tiny flickers.  "You'd think someone important had died."

"Commander!" Kasimir's steward, Karel Shor, said when he finally opened the broad oak door.

The man was shorter than Kasimir's six feet by several inches, but they shared the black hair and green eyes that were common among the people of Malkala. The steward wore a thick brown robe over his silver uniform. Sweat beaded on his shaved head and Kasimir saw fear in his green eyes. "Commander, a messenger just arrived from Aldris."

Kasimir frowned. The small village of Aldris sat on the border between the Sovereignty of Malkala and the Empire of Chesia and was home to a modest Malkalan fortress. The main highway from the Chesian capital of Yerik to the Malkalan capital, Cestmir, passed beside it.

Reports from the fortress had claimed that the Chesian Imperial Army had been performing more training exercises near the border than usual and merchant traffic had diverted to the north, along the secondary highway.

The fortress at Aldris had been designed to withstand siege and prevent the advance of any armies into the Malkalan Valley. If they had sent for help...

"Well, let's have it then," Kasimir said impatiently.

"Sir, the messenger reports that an Imperial army has crossed the border. Twenty thousand heavy cavalry ahead of more than one hundred thousand infantry and forty cannons."

"Ruler save us," Kasimir whispered. The whole of the Malkalan army only counted fifty thousand infantry and commanded less than fifty cannons. General Niklos Hollatz had less than five thousand men in the garrison at Aldris.

"The garrison at Aldris attempted to retreat," Karel reported as if he had been reading Kasimir's mind. "Two regiments were able to make it into the forest but the rest were ridden down by the Imperial cavalry."

"Sound the alarm," Kasimir ordered. "I want the whole garrison on the walls in thirty minutes and a platoon deployed as scouts. Send a rider to Cestimir as well; we'll need all of the help that we can get."

"Yes, sir." Karel saluted and hurried back up the hallway.

Kasimir closed the door to his quarters and started dressing. His battle uniform, silver trousers and jacket with brown stripes, had been cleaned and pressed the day before. His sabre had been sharpened and his revolvers were clean. The single action, six-shot pistols were made of solid Andivari iron and Malkalan red wood.

At least I'll die in clean clothes and with clean weapons
, Kasimir thought to himself as he pulled on his black boots. They had been spit-shined less than a week ago. He realized now, too late, that he'd had far too much time to keep his clothes clean, and far too little to drill his soldiers.

The peace between Chesia and Malkala had always been contingent on Malkala's ability to placate its much larger neighbor with trade alliances, and on Chesia's lack of interest in their small neighbor. The Chesian Empire had always been satisfied with the trade subsidies that Malkala had offered on the iron ore and other raw materials extracted from the Malkalan mines. The internal conflict that raged amongst the Chesian districts had helped to secure Malkala's peace, but that had changed with the rise of Frederick Maximillian.

Frederick Maximillian had not ascended to the title of Emperor as much as he had secured it with the blood of tens of thousands of soldiers and the complete destruction of his enemies. Before his "War of Unification", the territories of Chesia had been divided by warlords and merchant barons who fiercely protected their lands.

Through a series of political alliances, assassinations and trade agreements, Frederick had managed to secure the support of a third of the Chesian Districts. War had brought another twenty of the forty-eight districts under the control of his iron boot. Fear of invasion and more assassinations had completed his conquest of the Chesian Empire.

A pair of outlying districts still resisted Imperial Rule, but they were sparsely populated and of little consequence to the overall stability of the Empire.

The unification of the Empire, however, had meant that the nation of Malkala had been forced to sacrifice more and more of its trade to Chesia in the last three years, lest they risk angering the Emperor. Rumors had become rampant that King Vladislav Tasya had been trying to marry his daughter to one of the Grand Dukes of Andivar to secure a mutual defense alliance, but nothing had come of that.

The armies of Andivar were respected as the best trained and best armed forces throughout the civilized world. One of the few standing armies in the known world, the Andivari trained incessantly and their military program started at birth.

Kasimir wondered, not for the first time, how his life might have differed if he had been born just a few hundred miles westward. Instead he had entered the military at eighteen, then spent the next eight years working his way through the ranks of the Malkalan army.

Only to die a commander at the hands of the Chesians.
Kasimir shook his head, lifted his haversack over his head, picked up his musket and stepped out into the suddenly busy hallway.

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Kasimir's garrison boasted two regiments of infantry, a company of cavalry and a single artillery battery.

Fort Demitas had been built from local gray stone at the peak of a line of hills that eventually led to the Crooked Mountains. The walls stood sixty feet tall and thirty feet wide; ramps provided access from the common yard to the ramparts. Towers had been built twenty feet taller at each of the corners and massive gatehouses protected the entrances. The northern and western walls were unapproachable, but the eastern and southern sides had smooth attack lines and would require the majority of the defensive focus.

The fortress could have supported nearly double the garrison that Kasimir had been granted, but he knew that there weren't enough soldiers in the whole of the Malkalan army to fully garrison all of their fortresses. Instead, the Malkalan Army had to rely on superior training and weapons purchased from Andivar to hope to defeat any Chesian incursions. Kasimir had positioned four of his battalions, two thousand of his three thousand soldiers, on the walls of his fortress and had ordered the rest to act as reserves.

He would have liked to set up a trap for the approaching Chesians, but without quality information about the organization or target of the approaching army, he would risk throwing his soldiers away for nothing. Kasimir knew that the army that had violated the territorial sovereignty of Malkala could only belong to the Emperor; no single Chesian warlord would have been able to muster or support a force that size.

I guess they finally got tired of paying for our minerals
, Kasimir thought as he climbed the ramp to the top of the southern wall.

"Junior Commander Karasik, what is the report?" Kasimir asked as he stepped to the ramparts and lifted his looking glass to his eye.

The Crooked Mountains pushed out to the south and cut to the east, creating a hook. On the other side of that hook was Aldris. Anyone approaching from there would have to march right down the sheer cliff face and into his fire. The forest to the east provided another avenue of attack, but it would take days to march around Fort Demitas to approach it from that direction.

"We've seen nothing so far," Jarak Karasik reported. The commanding officer of the Fifteenth Malkalan Infantry Regiment was taller than Kasimir by several inches, and had brown hair instead of black; he wore a pair of glasses over his green eyes. He was leaning against the ramparts, cleaning his musket's barrel and bayonet. "The cavalry scouts rode out half an hour ago and we haven't heard back from them."

"Is the artillery primed to fire?" Kasimir asked.

"Yes, sir," Jarak said with a nod. The two five-pounders and four ten-pound guns were evenly divided between the southern and eastern walls. Against a force of marauders, those cannons would have been a serious deterrent; they'd be a mere inconvenience for the army that was marching to face them now.

"Did the rider from Aldris have anything to say about the size of the artillery that's coming our way?"

"No, just that they spotted forty horse teams. The Chesians favor the ten-pounders for their infantry, though."

"Yes, I've read the reports."

Kasimir shook his head.

The ten-pound guns were the standard issue artillery for much of the world's infantry. It was a mobile piece that could still cause serious damage to the walls of any fortress that stood against them for too long. The lighter five-pound guns had better range, and were ideal for travel through the hills and mountains of Malkala, but their shells caused too little damage and were ineffective against a large scale attack.

"What I wouldn't do for a wizard," Jarak said as he checked his haversack. He counted the cartridges inside and closed the satchel.

"As long as we're asking for things that aren't likely to show up, I'm in for one of those Elven marksmen regiments I was reading about last week," Junior Commander Laslo Purden said with a chuckle. He carried an ivory pipe that oozed thick black smoke.

"Is your regiment ready?" Kasimir asked.

"And waiting," Laslo confirmed.

"We're not likely to get any wizards, or regiments of Elven marksmen, in these parts," Kasimir said, turning back to their conversation.

"All we can hope for is -"

"Cavalry approaching from the east!" someone shouted.

Kasimir hurried to the eastern wall.

The sun had finally crested the horizon, casting red glow across the open field before the castle. Riders were emerging from the pine forest by the dozens, riding hard toward Fort Demitas.

The riders wore dull golden uniforms, accented with red tassels and piping. The first group that had emerged from the forest carried a pair of massive banners and Kasimir prayed silently while he tried to determine what sigil was on them. When he could make it out, however, he cursed: a red dragon on a gold field: the banner of the Empire of Chesia.

"Please, not the dragon," he whispered as he waited for the second banner to unfurl. This one was black, a red dragon's head emblazoned upon it, its massive maw gaped open and golden teeth were set in its jaws.

Kasimir’s heart fell. "The Dragon's Teeth," he said.

Of all of the Chesian units that could have attacked his fortress, it had to be the best-trained, best-armed and most feared of them all.

"Jarak, get one of your battalions to this side," Kasimir ordered as he pulled back his musket's hammer and pressed a percussion cap onto the nipple. "Enemies approaching! Artillery, fire at will!"

The three cannons positioned on the eastern wall thundered in unison. Fire spewed from the mouth of the artillery and plumes of dirt exploded skyward when the solid shots slammed into the field near the edge of the forest. The rounds were poorly aimed and none of the approaching Chesians were hit. The artillerymen took to their sights to better their targeting.

The soldiers on the eastern wall pulled their muskets to their shoulders and leaned into the ramparts. Their weapons would only be effective at a hundred yards, but the men felt safer tucked behind the stone ramparts.

"They're carrying carbines, sir!"

Thank the Ruler
, Kasimir thought as he pressed his looking glass to his eye once more. The shorter barreled firearms served cavalry well for their mobility and lesser weight, but they had less than half the range of the muskets that Kasimir's men carried.

The Chesian cavalry galloped toward the fortress. The thunder of their hooves echoed across the fields, and Kasimir watched with dread as more continued to pour from the forest. A full regiment had charged onto the field already, with no end in sight. The first riders were already halfway across the open field that Kasimir's troops had maintained for this exact purpose.

The field was two thousand yards across, from the edge of the forest to the base of the massive stone walls. At their gallop, it would take the cavalry another several minutes to reach the Malkalan musket range and another several minutes before they could effectively answer fire. They would be exposed to artillery fire for the whole time and Kasimir restrained his enthusiasm when the second volley exploded. The explosions consumed a dozen riders and shrapnel felled another dozen.