Two Pages a Day: One Hundred Two

           By noon, command drew up before it, chameleonic. We arranged two thousand riders on the top of the brief ridgeline that here separated mainland Sepiran from its shores. The silty islands and braided currents stretched from horizon to horizon to horizon, sheet-flat and green from marsh grasses. In the center of it all the port city sat, walls of silver gleaming in the sun, extending some places into the brackish water. The Profusionists who colonized this world had not left any island outside their city.

            It was, of course, utterly surrounded by channels dredged deep enough for barges and ships of every kind. And was, therefore, utterly immune to assault by valkyrie, which cannot cross anything a man can swim.  

            Nogilian and I had, of course, talked about this extensively. It was just a depressing thing to see. That was why Ki had led the rest to encamp on a series of seaside cliffs about sixty kilometers east. She had not liked even that location. She said it exposed us unnecessarily for a visual advantage we truly did not need.  

            She went anyway. I needed to see the waves. And we’d attack at dawn regardless. Besides, Nogilian liked my plan.

            That night went the way all nights before battles go. Back at the encampment I tinkered on paper, sending squads here and there throughout the columns. I changed the sequence of commands. I swapped the vanguard with the reserve. Better to have Nogilian go where intelligence was needed. I sent messengers everywhere.

            Finally, Nogilian came to see me. “Stop,” he said. “It is a good plan. We will not fail to execute. But frequent changes before a battle make everyone nervous.”

            I raised my eyebrow. I could not imagine Nogilian anxious even as a child. But he was right. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been getting the feeling I haven’t been doing much good. But it’s a lot of city down there.”

            Three-quarters of a million souls, if the records could be believed. We could be trying to break into a city that outnumbered us thirty times over.

            “The scouts report little activity. The Augers did not leave many people on this world.”

            We listened together to the rain outside. “I’ll try to ease off a notch,” I said. Nogilian nodded his assent and left. After had he had gone, I stepped outside to watch the breakers beat against the cliff. I’d had Ash throw my tent up on the very brink, and facing toward the ocean. There was an awning there to guard against the rain, when it wasn’t being lashed by oceanic wind.

            Surprise, surprise, this stuff was. I got soaked. I did not immediately depart. It seemed fitting somehow. Finally exhausted, I went back in to lay staring at the canvas until Ash came and got me.

            “It’s time,” he said, his hand on my shoulder. Huh? I had not even known I’d popped off. Muzzily, I stood up and got equipped. Then I went over to the corner bucket and threw up.

            “Nerves,” I told him. “We could all die today.” He did not look encouraged by my speech.

            I tried to do better outside. I stood there and looked upon forty-five thousand faces. The acoustics of the area were such that not quite all would hear me. I’d had Ash put the most reliably verbal where they would. It’s always good, Elmy, when they can spur each other on.

            “Your kin are captive in that city,” I said, “held prisoner by machines controlled by men they cannot see or feel or touch, men not on this world. I say we set them free! We have come so far. You have done so much, whether you came to me in Ariel or Redmarak or Nogilia itself. You are one. You have not been defeated. You are the dead! I say so are they. I say they just don’t know it yet!”

Two Pages a Day: One Hundred

 The dead said it would have scared them. They claimed fewer casualties resulted from such raids. Since most of them had once been Augers themselves, I did not attempt to disabuse them of the notion.

            None of us got much sleep.

            Nogilian knew enough not to develop any clear pattern. We did not always swarm from four sides. Sometimes we used cavalry to taunt the defenders into chase. Other times we dribbled over the walls by squads and cracked the nightwind’s relics open. Three times we split our forces to take cities within eyeshot of each other. Twice we actually undermined the nightwind’s wall. Once, we drew up outside the watchtowers, clearly visible, and challenged everyone to formal combat – while some artillery we’d happened upon began pounding the city gate from the opposite direction.

            Always, Nogilian chose the most effective and efficient plan for each situation. Always the chamelonic abilities of the White Swarm helped. Never were the Augers ready for whatever threat we presented. And never did they respond with profound organization. I mentioned as much to Nogilian. 

            Nogilian grunted. “It is true that they have exhausted the fields around these cities. They do not think strategically, or they would have replanted. It is good that we will move on soon. This valley is nearly spent.”

            I reminded him about the garrisons.

            He shook his head. “They will move the cities.”

            I pulled out my poker face again.

            He shrugged. “The White Swarm has already asked where it could move them to. The cities will dissolve and move as part of the swarm. The authorities of each will tell it where to go. When it arrives, the city will reform in any way the authority intends. Formation and dissolution each require a day.”     

            Amazing. “And to think you used to rely on tents.”

            He shrugged again. “It was no bad thing, hearing the fabric in the wind. But this will save these people a great deal of bother, and better protect them from the storms.”

            Not his people, Elmy. This will save these people. I made a few promises to myself. I stepped outside, ending the nightly conversation. I needed my thoughts to be my own.  

            Toward midnight, and the wind still blew. The plains around Cibola did not have so much breeze. Ash had suggested it was the difference in temperature between the sea we were coming to and the mountains we’d left so far behind.

            Regardless, it rippled the cloth of the tents we’d liberated from Ariel. And we were using fabric in very large amounts. The garrison we had defeated to take the first city had manned an outpost only. There were greater numbers south and west. Often, the garrisons of the cities had outnumbered us. 

            In each case, we’d liberated sufficient valkyries to provide for new recruits.

            So I looked upon the cooking fires of more than forty-five thousand men. My riding dead. My cavalry of corpses, or those who believed they once had been. Killed by weapon or infection, it mattered little to them. You came back changed regardless. I went inside and caught a few hours.

            Or tried to. I was unaccountably glum.

            The next day we saw the ocean. That was when I learned that the boundaries of Nogilia are not definite. It bleeds down into Sepira mostly by means of a steeper gradient. The grasses get longer and greener and mingle with more shrubs. The wind, no longer warmed by a journey across the sunny plain, cools down. It rains more often in Sepira, the hug the oceans give this northern continent. The shore itself consists of gentle beaches cut by steep draws and, where the Profuse River enters the ocean, a vast and silty delta that marks the middle of the province. On one of the alluvial islands sits the city named Sepira, the largest port city on this world.  

Page a Day: Ninety-Eight

            Start the roll call. Fire up the alternative battle reenactments. None of it is going to do anyone any good. But you’re going to do it regardless, Cassan Vala, because it continues the illusion that you have control in any sane or reasonable way.   

            I sighed. There would be no demotion after this. I was the Guardian. One hundred days were tick tick ticking away.

            I slid aboard and felt my hovering horse adapt. We rode the customary five feet above the floor. I led my column up after everyone else had followed suit.

            I was surprised to see that day had dawned entirely. Sometimes I think time flows differently in caches.

            Nogilian stood right beside the cache’s proscribed exit, bloody and victorious.

            “Polish up that armor, Nogilian,” I said. “Well done, very well done indeed.”

            He shrugged, a gesture of his I was pretty sure I understood. None of it ever good enough. He pointed back behind him to where a mob in black armor trudged toward the city square, escorted by Tevantes’ reserve. Those had been last to reach the city, and for all their running had achieved on the day little more than better physical condition. I had left the new recruits in his care. 

            “I will incorporate these men,” Nogilian said, lowly enough that no one else could hear, “and then they will also die.”

            “Nogilian,” I said “now we have cavalry. How many caches did you say there were, scattered all across this plain?”

Chapter Ten

Elmy,

            We whooped it up across the plain. Nogilia was good to us. Grasses made the foraging easy. The land coursed with streams for watering. And Nogilian was the greatest tactical mind of his generation fighting on the land of his birth. You can be damned sure we did what he suggested. I insisted only on seeing to the needs of my other commanders: logistics, operations, intelligence and communications. So we moved, we gathered information, and then we did what Nogilian said. Afterward, we incorporated new recruits. We established garrisons behind, ensconced in cities favored now by swarms of friendly white machines.

            Ki asked why we did not take everyone. She alone lingered past a nightly debriefing. 

            “Because if we win back this world, I need there to be someone left to enjoy it.”

            She went. She did not bother asking about the if. Each of my commanders knew I had no idea where the supposed lightships were. It’s one thing to encourage those who actually fight. It’s another to delude your command chain to the point of stupidity. They knew. They knew the same chances I did: certain death if we did nothing, slightly less if I happened to find those ships. I had told them Jerem Cozak conveyed not the slightest doubt that we would succeed. Which was true. I did not add the part where he also conveyed small cracks upon the surface of his sanity.

            One hundred days. Sixty until we met him. We’d spent twenty-four days in Redmarak and three in leaving it. We’d departed victorious from the first city of Nogilia on the morning of the thirtieth, halfway through the time we had to get our shit together.

            We spent sixteen more days warring across the plains. We attacked at any time of night. We attacked at dawn and dusk. We attacked during the changing of the guard. Once, we came in the middle of the afternoon, when the sentries were nodding off. The rank and file developed a preference for storming the gates in that bleak hour or two before the dawn, during which time defenders were prone to be shivering and exhausted and asking existential questions of themselves.

Two Pages a Day: Ninety-Six

        I led my squad in a frontal assault that just as quickly vanished. Then the ends, front, and quarters again. By the time the sun breached the horizon I had the Augers more split and confused than we had ever been. I had to tell Hame’s column to enter the cache ahead of mine, because we were too damned busy. 

Then I let the White Swarm do its thing. Augers have no coms, you see, only the telepathic voodoo that the nightwind provides. But the nightwind has never been able to penetrate an energy shell, so to talk Augers needed to drop their electric defenses. By the time my squads had almost gotten back to the main street, not an Auger among them walked around with a woken shield. 

They dropped like flies, like sacks of sand. They cradled their heads. They knelt and vomited. They had become, of course, fair game for the Swarm, which had restrained itself until this point. I had gotten us some recruits. Though I’ll admit the conversion was less pleasant than I had supposed. 

What was that Jerem Cozak said? The Augers are obstacles only? Well, this is what the Academy taught us to do with obstacles. You get them on your side.    

Nogilian’s column poured out of the cache as the second one started pulling in. Mounted on valkyries, they hurried to relieve the stranded column. I cracked the last of the relics, and watched the town start rolling over white. No kidding, even the buildings began to turn. I wondered if the White Swarm now knew construction, or soon would. There seemed to be some delay involved. 

We had reached that part of the battle where there was little more for command to do. My own column was sweeping back east to crack more relics on that side of town. Within fifteen minutes the White Swarm would  have been brought to every corner of the city. Nogilian’s mounted cavalry had chased off the Auger patrols, and set up a circuit themselves.  

That’s when the despair hit. That’s what the Academy never tells you. After every battle you will feel horrible about making human beings do this kind of thing. You even regret success. You intimately understand how each your decisions could have been improved. And gods help you if you actually made mistakes. I remember names, a mantra in my head of all the dead I’d left behind. It’s only the soldiers, Elmy, who get hopped up on adrenaline and believe the world is beautiful. Officers get something else entirely. 

The hum of valkyrie engines as Hame’s column started sliding up from beneath the earth. There was no need for camouflage now, so this time I noticed the shine that meant that these had not been ridden, ever. So. The caches were replacing those machines lost during the war, but had not released them to the Augers. Better. The day warmed. I watched my breath on the air and could not tell if it was the White Swarm. The wind whipped it away in either case. Even forty-foot high walls couldn’t stop the howling of the plains. But I realized what I had not time to before: there were no smells other than the nitrogen smell of the White Swarm. They are strangely anti-septic, the Auger cities. Machines whisked all the waste away. Here, as in the Auger cities around Cibola and no place else in all the universe, there was no litter. 

The last of Hame’s valkyries cleared the cache. I led us in. Unfortunately, the ceiling of a valkyrie cache on Thaeron is the same as ceiling of any cache anywhere: the floor of whatever is above, without a door or window. At least I did not flinch as I went through. There are always a few seconds where you absolutely cannot breathe. 

The cache itself was vast. It must have extended under the entire city. Came the strange sourceless wash of white Profusionist light that neither helped nor hurt the eye. Valkyries lined the floor in quiescent rows, silver and backwards-bullet shaped. There were no different than those on Earth: two meters long, a meter in average diameter and flexibly molded for the human form. Row upon row upon row. I went to the nearest one and woke it. Maybe that despair backed up an inch or so. 

That’s when the messenger caught up with me. Not only the detected scouts had perished, though they certainly understood the risks. I had made damned sure of that. But Ki’s thousand, caught outside the city gate, had lost a tenth of its strength. Tevantes’ reserve, coming from the northwest, had not gotten there in time. No one had relieved them until Nogilian’s cavalry had come.   

Two Pages a Day: Ninety-Four

            I happened to lead the squad that found the first relic. I swung a little harder than I needed to. Like most good things, cracking it open stung: my quicksword bit back. Still getting used to my new Profusionist suit. My armor, when it showed, shone entirely white. My thanks to some departed Guardian.

            Obligingly, the nightwind sifted down like ash. And indeed, by the time it got to the bottom it was turning white too.

            I sent the men to sweep surrounding buildings. And went myself, leaving a trail of frantic messengers in my wake. Finally, reports were coming in. The scouts originally sent to open the gate had been detected and killed. It had taken Nogilian’s detachment to finally open it. But Ki had become entangled and could not reach the city anyway. The outlying valkyries had had enough sense to come together and stumbled on to them. Tamarand’s reserve column was en route, but had to avoid detection themselves until they arrived. The valkyrie riders could not see our men but made passing assaults on the areas of trampled grass. There were casualties each time.

            Meanwhile, Nogilian had gotten the cache to open. One of the reasons for his rank had been his facility for all types of Profusionist machinery, a wonder on this world. Supposedly, it only happened once or twice a generation here. I had not told that similar proficiency was a basic requirement for every cadet going into every Academy on Earth. He did not seem the sort prone to overweening pride. He had already begun leading his thousand into the cache.  

            I proceeded. There was no reason to alter plans. We clanged and clamored around a lot of empty buildings. Huh? In Ariel, the Augers had scattered all throughout the city. There was no reason for them to live concentrated here. But they must have, because we had not yet encountered the one to five thousand men reported by the scouts. My column had not yet encountered anyone at all. Of course, that we were invisible surely did not hurt.

            We were almost to the eastern gate when we finally met resistance. Several large buildings abutted the wall near its corners, as black as all the rest. Approaching, I assumed that they were warehouses, two or three stories high. As with all the nightwind’s buildings, these had no windows. I shivered and raised my eyes and saw, creeping up in the east, the first pale haze of dawn. Then came the clamor of men moving in Profusionist armor – it is not stiff or heavy, but makes a distinctive thud, like someone slamming down a sack of mud. At first, I could not see black armor moving against black edifice, but then the edges of their shields encountered the White Swarm just ahead of us. They whined and rolled over green, jade as the stones that line the fabled streets of Kasora.   

            The Augers outnumbered the men of my column. But they were disorganized and did not emerge in units of nine or any other kind. I wondered what they were after, then caught sight of the open gate. They meant to go outside to further mire Ki’s column. They were gathering in the main street. They believed they had an objective. If they all got together it would be trouble. My men were scattered by squads throughout half the city. I had an idea.

            I asked the White Swarm a question. It returned the standard feeling of machine acquiescence, a numbness near the back of one’s own neck. I have never gotten used to it. But it was the first of what passed for communication between the Swarm and I.

            I whispered a series of commands to my squad leaders. Then I shouted hello to the Augers. I had my men back away. The Augers followed in my general direction, but could not find the person. They did not come in formation. Excellent.

            One of the squads tapped their very loose line from either side. They still were not seen. A brief flourish, and two Augers cradled their sides, never having seen what hit them. Now my squads who had done the cutting fell back, each making unnecessary noise. The Auger units followed them. They split up to do so. Better and better still.

Two Pages a Day: Ninety-Two

            We marched in cool twilight. The scouts and front ranks disappeared first. I looked down at my hand, and noticed it was see-through. Well, not transparent exactly. Sometimes, you caught a lag or flicker of delay. I supposed that bugs looking up would just see unbroken cobalt sky.

            We moved across the plain like ghosts. Wheat waved against our armor, green grass and brown, none more than chest high. Chlorophyll on the air, the scent of growing things. They say there are no seasons in Nogilia, and that every grass is edible. The human work is keeping all of them from ripening at once, by harvesting and replanting a region at a time. The things a world will think of.   

            The likeliest scenario had us splitting into five columns and coming at it from all four directions. Confuse. Overwhelm. Dump as many men into the cache as quickly as you could. And close the gates behind you, because we kept having to duck to let the enemy pass by unawares. What was it Jerem Cozak had called them? Obstacles. The Augers are coincidences only. Our enemies are not on this world. Right.

            It took a long time to walk to the horizon. Some of the gullies dropped down forty, fifty feet, and steeply. My dead and I discovered fairly quickly that everything ambulatory is harder when you cannot see your boots. The heavy mud at the bottoms forced everyone to slog. Then you climbed up the far side, whether the darkness let you see your chameleonic hands or no.  

            It was after midnight before I stood outside the northmost gate. The temperature was dropping quickly, as Nogilian had said it would. We were getting closer to the middle of the world, but clear nights on the plain do not retain the heat of the day. I shivered and waited for the scouts. I wondered why the machines of the nightwind did not report us as resistant. Likely it had something to do with this White Swarm, which seemed content for now to keep us camouflaged and uninfected. Later, of course, we had other plans for it.   

            The gate split open. They were all of the kind that opens that way, though those that open out are the most problematic for invaders. They just don’t think defensively, the Augers.

            It was a bright enough night where I could see all the way across the city, to opposite gate opening on a similar pile of nothing. For a while, the Augers would think there was just a problem with that system. I was astounded the streets were empty. The Augers of this world lacked sufficient organization for a curfew.

            I ordered the attack. We rushed toward each other, double time.  

            Well, three of the five thousand moved quite quickly. In the map of my mind, Nogilian’s southern column and Hames’ western one and my northern all closed the distance. Tevantes’ column stayed as reserve, to the northwest.

            Ki’s  column did not come. There was not, from the direction, the marching sound of boots. I glanced between the buildings, where that gate still stood closed. There came the sudden glow of energy shields, white and numinous.

            Contact. Our scouts had been discovered and prevented from achieving their objective. Before I gave the order Nogilian was on it, sending eight squads in that direction. Right. He had gotten there first. He was working on getting the cache to open up.

            So my column now had a different purpose. As did Hames’, if any of this was going to work. I swerved east, but into the smaller streets of this new Auger town. On Earth, my big habit had been cracking open relics, those centers of communication and control the nightwind relies upon. Smash one, and all the active nightwind around it comes crashing down.

            Nogilian figured it would make it easier for the White Swarm if the relics weren’t around. I agreed. So now I split my column to squads, had us scanning the western streets for those little knee-high black boxes that had given everyone so much grief.  

            Hame, doing much the same on the western side of down, reported no contact. Renly’s replacement, Hame was born Nogilian and knew weaponry and geography alike. He had distinguished himself in battle against the apes. His promotion on the way out of Redmarak had made as much sense as any.

            Never try to discern talent, Elmy. It’s a waste of time. Just reward success instead. 

Two Pages a Day: Ninety

            Nogilian had not been wrong. That city stood exactly where he had thought it would, though his people had built no permanent dwellings. They had lived instead in the fabled tent cities of Nogilia, which moved wherever the harvest went.

            I found him again as everyone unloaded. “Thank you,” I said. “You know your land well.”

            He scowled. “My land is dead. Nogilia was her people, who are no more. But the scouts would show you something.”

            I don’t know that I’ve ever felt a more solid presence than Nogilian’s, a fact I was sharply conscious of as I followed him down the river. He stopped and motioned. And two soldiers stepped out of the riverbank beside me.

            Huh? I might not be the brightest observer in the world, but I know when I’m being stood beside.

            I looked again, and the scouts phased in and out of existence. I reached out my hand and grabbed.

            And latched on to solid Profusionist armor. “Don’t worry,” Nogilian said, “they are no illusion. Tam, Isolos, thank you.” The two men sauntered off, no doubt to swap shifts. Scouts got to rest during their downtime, no matter what anyone else was doing. “It’s spread through all the scouting parties. It will hit the main ranks soon.”

            What, like an infection? “What’s going on?” I asked. “Nogilian, what’s happening to us?”

            He frowned. “This White Swarm has the ability to learn. You said you were in stasis, but awoke when you arrived. From there you went to the Well that held Jerem Cozak and the White Swarm. It was then that these machines learned to revive us from those you carried in your body. You brought the White Swarm to wake us, and we fought the chameleonic apes. From the machines in those the White Swarm learned to camouflage.”

            I nodded. It made a certain kind of sense. “So what’s next? We all grow tough scales or get really good at smelling blood?”

            He shrugged. “We attack the city.” He nodded toward the departing scouts. “I suggest a nighttime raid.”

            “Indeed. Prepare the men. I want scouts on every side of it before we go.”

            Nogilian nodded, likely already having done half of it. His reports came back a few hours later. The city was square, like so many of the Profusionist cities on this world. It was just that it stood where no Profusionist city ever had before. It was composed entirely of nightwind. It had four broad avenues that came from the cardinal directions and met squarely over the city’s cache. Though its walls exceeded forty feet in height, none of its buildings topped more than two or three floors. It garrisoned between one and five thousand men who had likely not fought anyone or deployed anywhere else in the last eight years. There were a few sedentary lookouts. They sparingly used oculars. They were not expecting anything.

            But there were valkyries scything across the plain every hour or so. Their riders were likely bored. When everyone was hurried up and ready, I ordered us to sit through an additional day. I wanted the White Swarm’s new trick to filter through to every last damned member of my army. Nogilian returned five separate scenarios for assault, complete with percentages and attrition profiles.

            I opted for the plan most likely to succeed. If we failed, a good casualty report wasn’t going to matter anyway. Oh, a bad one would brutalize me, of course, but I’m no child. I knew that, in this campaign, my own feelings mattered just as much as an ant’s. I watched the sun sink, then I gave the order.