Uthon frowned as, with his escort stepping close all around him, he came around a corner to find Lord Blacklock laboring with a shovel as he and several powerful Lupus were working together to dig a trench.
"What manner of madness is this?" the captain of his guard muttered in a low voice, obviously confused by Blacklock's behavior. "The Master of the Hunt digging holes?"
"Not holes, captain," Uthon quickly interjected as, in that moment, he realized what the powerful Lupus leader was attempting to do.
"A siege trench. Something that'll slow down a heavy, ponderous piece of seige equipment." The Lupus must've learnt something from a scout, something about what was about to attack them. He looked over at the captain.
"And we'll be helping him. Find us shovels. Now!"
Seeing the powerful Master of the Order of Grim working side by side with his mortal enemy, the Master of the Hunt, the other Fisted manning the walls also came to the realization that whatever the news was, it was important enough to bring the two together to work on a common cause. And that was enough to bring them in droves to help, each armed with a shovel or a mattock. They quickly took up positions around the two leaders and, with some direction given by Blacklock, began to hack at the frozen ground.
With the combined efforts of several dozen powerful Fisted and human warriors turned to the task, a long and fairly deep trench that ran along the front of one of the primary defense walls quickly appeared. Not satisfied with just one trench, Blacklock quickly directed his makeshift work force to the other side to dig another one there.
They had just about completed the second trench when a lookout on the wall shouted:
"I see dust!" the Pantor soldier cried. When all eyes swung onto him, he pointed towards the distant hills.
Standing some distance away, Kelly glanced at the Pantor and saw his pointing finger. Frowning, he looked in the indicated direction and saw the dust rising in the cold air. Taking into consideration the current wintry conditions, to make such a cloud would take a massive force. A force like the Primiad horde. Lifting his binoculars quickly to his eyes, it didn't take the elvish officer long to confirm his suspicions.
"It's the Primiad," he grimly announced. "They've finished moving through the barrier hills and are advancing on our fortification."
Kelly frowned and let the binoculars drop from his eyes
The cloud of dust approaching from the hills was now clearly visible as it drew closer. If he were any judge of distance and speed, he gave the Primiad perhaps an hour before they were on them.
"Then things get interesting," he grimly muttered.
Van Joss glanced to his right and watched the massive beasts leading the horde towards the alliance fortifications for a moment, the battered knot of Moonrunners keeping pace maybe a kilometre off their flank. With the ground pretty much flat between the hills and the heart of the plain where the fort was built, the gargantuan creatures were making good time, their tree-trunk legs sending impact shivers through the ground underfoot with each step.
"We just don't have the energy to outrun them," Darkfyre growled, the Moonrunner captain pacing the limping human on his right. "I only hope my messenger has reached the fort already. Or the defenders won't have time enough to prepare for the assault led by those giant monsters."
Van Joss didn't reply, choosing to thoughtfully frown instead.
Even if their runner had gotten to the fort ahead of the horde, there was no guarantee the defenders would understand the rather cryptic report they had sent with him. Or how to modify their defenses to counter the devastating power of those wall-crushing beasts. 'What we need is another delay,' he mused, his thoughts generating possibility after possibility and just as quickly discarding each one. ' Something that will slow the horde down just enough to buy a bit more time ...'
It was then that the tattered human remembered what Princess Salina had said during her initial interrogation. Something about not all Primiad supported Ran and Wormwood's crusade against the other races of the world. Some even chose to resist, usually resulting in their destruction.
What if some of those that opposed Rand had been pressed into service as part of the horde? What if there were soldiers in the midst of that military juggernaut that, even now, would do anything, like Salina and her father, to stop the mad prophet Wormwood and his plan to subjugate the Fisted and obliterate Humanity?
Abruptly van Joss grimaced. 'Even if there were, how would I find them and recruit them as a fifth column?' He darkly mused. 'It's not like I can reach across the intervening distance and speak with each ...'
Van Joss' mental voice stumbled into silence as a realization hit him like an avalanche.
He could talk them from a distance, and without fear of discovery, with the mind speech that the Cetacea has given him! All he had to do was mentally reach out to them like he did to the Picea heavies during the battle for the boomslang. 'I just hope it still works,' he thought. 'I haven't really used it since convincing the Ursa to join our cause several moons ago!'
Letting Darkfyre's presence at his elbow guide him, van Joss slipped his attention into the depths of his mind. As he did, he let his senses reach beyond himself as he had that fateful day of furious oceanic battle. Almost immediately he felt the bright and determined minds of the Lupus grouped around him, each and every one of them focused on getting back to the fort before their enemy reached it.
Sensing that was enough to loosen the knot of anxiety that had been tightening in his mind as he wondered if the wondrous Cetacean gift had been lost. Now all he had to was reach out to the horde and somehow find the ones that opposed Rand.
Pushing his senses past the Moonrunners, the human reached further and further out, trying to focus on the nearby Primiad. In doing so, he left the bright sparks that were the Lupus behind and moved towards a veritable nebula of swirling lights that, in his mind's eye, represented the horde.
In doing so, he immediately noticed that some of the lights were far brighter than others. While yet others were so dark, they were almost beneath notice. One in particular blazed like a miniature sun, dwarfing the far dimmer lights around it. Yet, when the veteran operative focused on it, he could sense that nova of a mind was somehow wrong, the light corrupt in a manner he couldn't explain, the brilliance swirling chaotically and without reason.
Then occurred to him: it Was without reason, the chaotic fire the result of a broken and insane mind.
"Wormwood!" van Joss breathed, realization sweeping through him in a rush of clarity.
Here was the architect of the Primiad Empire's crusade against the Fisted. Here was the madman that slaughtered hundreds of thousands in order to crown the New Men Masters of Earth. If he could strike this beast down before they could launch their final assault, he could save not only Gideon but every other nation on Earth as well.
There was only one question that remained: would the psychic shout that he had used so effectively against the Picea heavies work on a creature with far more intelligence? Again there was only one way to answer that: obviously he'd have to try.
Focusing even more on the chaotic swirl of light that was Wormwood, van Joss gathered himself. Then he was hurling everything he had at the distant Primiad leader as he had with the giant sharks. Such was the feedback that it nearly sent the weakened operative to his knees. Only Darkfyre's quick hand under his elbow and his own determination kept the staggered operative on his feet.
Brushing aside the Moonrunner's helping hand even as he ignored the big Lupus' questioning look, van Joss once again cast his senses out toward the distant Primiad army. Then he was nearly falling over yet again, this time in shock, surprise and disappointment when he found Wormwood not only still alive, but apparently unphased by the attack, his mind still swirling with chaos.
It was astonishing that the madman, some slip of a jumped up monkey, had managed to resist his psychic shout when the Picea monsters had not. And yet, it made a perverse sort of sense. With the amount of chaos he saw swirling in Wormwood's mind, it likely deafened him to anything beyond the cacophony of madness howling like an unchained maelstrom inside his head.
Well, if he couldn't kill Wormwood, maybe he could take down the next best thing: the self-proclaimed emperor of the Primiad. 'And which one of these capering baboons is You, Ran?' he grimly wondered, using his diminished yet still considerable energy to scan for the monkey king.
"Whatever you are doing, human, you best do it quick," Darkfyre growled with more than a touch of urgency. Pulling back into himself enough to take a quick look around, it didn't take long for van Joss to see the reason for the Lupus' urgency.
The Primiad had drawn within five kilometres of the alliance's main fortification. Even as his eyes told him of the horde beginning its final approach, his ears picked up the hoots and screams of bloodthirsty excitement from the Primiad troops on the leading edge as they came into sight of the makeshift fortress. It wouldn't be long before that bloodlust grew to fever pitch, a surge through the monkeys' veins that would send them sprinting into battle, screaming at the top of their lungs. Time indeed was short.
Grimly van Joss drew into himself before he hurled his silent senses back out towards the advancing enemy. He no longer could afford to spend time hunting for Ran amongst the thousands of his soldiers. Now all he could do is find the soldiers who resisted Wormwood's evil and hope he had enough time to convince them to switch sides.
Swiftly van Joss focused on the nearest of the brighter lights while hoping it wasn't madness that made them bright as it did Wormwood. And just as quickly found himself touching a frothing mind filled with gibberish, confirming his fear.
A scan of a mind on the other end of the spectrum revealed one that was damaged by drugs and torture, victims of the hideous mind-control efforts Salina has described both Rand and Wormwood using on their prisoners.
That left the handful of minds in the middle, not too bright with madness, or dulled by mind-control. Hopefully one of them was a potential ally, and not a willing follower of the madman's crusade.
Selecting the nearest of the medium lights, van Joss carefully extended himself.
- Hello,- he said into the Primiad soldier's mind.
- Who ... who said that?- came the immediate reply, van Joss sensing that the soldier also said it out loud, earning hard looks from those standing near him, both annoyed by his fearful tone and the fact that he had spoken out loud in violation of their orders.
- I did, - van Joss, mind whirling as he tried to think of how to broach the subject of whether this soldier actively supported the holy war or not. - A voice from beyond with a question for you. -
- A, ... question? - the soldier's mental stammered with uncertainty.
- A question,- van Joss repeated, keeping his mental voice calm and even despite the almost overwhelming need for haste. - Are you ready for this final chapter in the prophet's holy war? Are you ready to not only finally face the Old Men in battle but the might of Noranda's Fisted Races as well? -
Van Joss then felt a surge of anger, fear and betrayal come flooding over the connection to the Primiad soldier's mind.
- Holy war? - If the soldier could've spat in disgust, he would've. - Prophet?? That insane fool would still be gibbering away in frothy oblivion as he lay in the gutters of Bataagon City if he didn't have highly placed patrons amongst the emperor's nobility! -
Van Joss' eyes narrowed thoughtfully at both the cultured words and the amount of vitriol with which they were delivered. If he were to guess, he would say he had reached one of the nobles who has stood in opposition to Wormwood, as Salina's father. But, instead of getting himself executed or tortured and fed to the siege beasts as had so many of Wormwood's enemies had been, he was ironically conscripted into the very military machine he had stood against, a foot soldier now destined to die in his enemy's name.
Then the soldier was drawing him out of his musing with more hard and angry thoughts.
- There is nothing Holy about this war, - he mentally snarled. - It's a power and land grab, pure and simple. Most of us were more than content to leave the Old Men to the Fisted of Noranda, who were well on their way to wiping those tail-less fools out once and for all. But Ran, may his progeny rot in a thousand hells, wasn't satisfied with ruling a kingdom of his own. He wanted to rule over the whole planet! So he took everything that we had, killed or enslaved any who stood in his way, and used his slaves to build an army that no one Fisted race could hope to defeat. With that army, and with the madman providing visions to justify the brutality, he made Suudama his in a few short seasons. -
The soldier paused there, as if pondering his next thoughts.
- It didn't take that greedy bastard long to look north and beyond, - he then said almost musingly. - After Noranda, the plan was to go over the Cold Storm Sea and make the Fisted of those lands bend the knee next. From there, with an even greater army, the rest of the planet would fall. -
Van Joss slowly nodded in understanding. While that information was completely unsolicited, it served to confirm his earlier suspicions. The lands of the Ursa were indeed next to be targeted. However the insight the former noble had brought concerning the real reason behind the invasion was simultaneously logical and chilling.
The Primiad lusted for power; that was no secret. But to have created such an elaborate ruse to justify their war of conquest, not to mention foment fear and trepidation in their target, that was new. It was almost ... Human.
- If you do not support this war, why haven't you tried stopping it? - van Joss asked in an attempt to see how willing this former noble was to turn against the mad prophet and the emperor.
Again he got the feeling that the soldier spat, this time mostly in frustration.
- If I had ten thousand hardened troops at my back, I would've done so a hundred times over, - the soldier growled. - If only to have my vengeance on the scum who slaughtered my family and kin when I refused to kneel before Ran as emperor. -
- What if I could give you the sword of every soldier currently in Ran's army that stands in opposition to him? -
There was a pause as the soldier, frustration and anger still fresh in his mind, considered the human's words. Then:
- Voice in my head, if you are real and have that power, I would attack now, while Ran's commanders make their final preparations to attack. But how is such a thing possible? - the former noble asked, intrigued. - How can you gather soldiers together without sending dispatches or using signals? Not to mention, how will you know who is against Ran and who is for? -
- How am I speaking to you now? - van Joss countered. - As I have spoken to you, I will speak to others in your company that feel as you do. Then, when all are ready, I will give the signal to attack. Kill the officers that fight for the emperor first so ... -
- The soldiers in their command won't know what to do, - the soldier finished the thought for him. - I will do as you say, voice. All I need to know now is your signal. -
Van Joss let a slight smile of satisfaction crease his lips. Then he was cold sober and dead serious once more.
- Your infantry carries bugles to signal the charge. Shortly after Ran's commanders order the advance, I will have a single bugle sound three short blasts. That will be the signal to begin your attack from within. -
Uthon frowned as he watched with a critical eye the last squad of defenders, a knot of brawny Tigris, take their position by the gates, polearms at the ready. The polearms were meager, less than sewing needles, against the monstrosities that now approached with ponderous footsteps. Unfortunately it was all they had against the Primiad siege beasts.
"Archers!" an under officer barked, a grim-looking Pantor in a leather jerkin with metal disks sewn into it, which served as archer's armor in the Protectorate.
"Take your positions!"
With the rattle of wood shaft arrows in their quivers, handfuls of archers hailing from every corner of the makeshift moved into position at key locations along the top of the main wall. At one of those locations, set fairly close to the fort's primary gates to counter what was anticipated to be a focal point of the horde's assault, Kelly and a handful of elves and Kanid legionnaires manned a wall-mounted ballista.
"Steady," the Kanid commander, a stately Great Dane derivative sporting the gold braid of a centurion on his shoulder, rumbled from where he crouched near the ballista's spring crank. "Wait until those beasts stumble in the trench before firing. Then we'll catch them off-balance and vulnerable."
Kelly nodded in mute agreement before passing the order on in the elvish tongue to his comrades. It was sound siege strategy, especially in dealing with the unknown qualities of the monsters now within bowshot of the walls. He just hoped the beasts did stumble, as van Joss's scouting report suggested they would.