Page a Day: One Hundred Seventy Seven

            Ash obeyed my orders. All advanced but the ten disks who had begun the fighting. Good. I dropped the ramp. Target the nineteenth tier. A similar exchange, and predictable result. The opposition did not realize their peril. The bulk of the Auger artillery kept turned north, to keep plastering Nogilian. A weakness I’d noted in the other firm, a delight in devastation and their own potency. It would get them killed here. We’d had ten times more artillery to start with. Jerem Cozak and I had scoured the world to have it, and I had lost two thousand men to getting it in superior position.   

            I watched Ash scour the eighteenth tier. Then I handed the oculars to the next highest officer available. All over but the dying, now. I did not need to see it.

            Came the buzz that presaged the cycling of the ramp again. This time I did not dismount. I turned away and rode a short ways out into the wind. The Shuni Plateau is one of those places where that never ceases. The eternal howling of the plain. 

             I stopped my valkyrie and looked at nothing. It was impressive, a vacancy greater than that of Nogilia. These grasses were too short to wave in the breeze, stubble mostly ankle-high. Seeing no rolling valleys, I suspected sudden canyons and dry riverbeds that went nowhere. Desert, then. Around me, east and west on either side, the mountains curved away until their great heights became smudges on the horizon. To the south even that was flat, the meniscus of open spaces. Out there the snow would become deeper, drifting, settling into depths one could not perceive.

            Snow, I knew from research, both does and does not support a valkyrie, depending on consistency. There were eight eights of fortresses scattered throughout this plateau, sixty-four cities in all. I wondered if we could rebuild our strength, if we had the time, if any of it mattered. I might not live long enough even for the blackbrain to return. Nogilian had warned me that the Shuni were fanatics even before the nightwind came. Feeling the wind hammer at my armor, I thought I understood.  

            I was still there when a patrol of ten returned from the emptiness. They seemed puzzled to see me away from the Stair. I raised an eyebrow.

Page a Day: One Hundred Seventy Six

            The same could not be said for the rest. Many of my squads looked half strength, some did not appear at all. Few were entirely unscathed. I had them sort out by thirds. Three columns, about a thousand each. Dammit, we’d started out with five. But even now more of our brethren were dying down there.

            “Right,” I said to them all. “No time, they’re trapped. This column, follow Ash when he takes the artillery down around the thirtieth tier. Dismount, keep them from coming up on our disks. Ash, don’t overextend yourself, take one tier at a time, cycle disks in and out. Center column, follow them, stay behind, keep the ramp clear so Ash can drop down when the time comes. This column, stay with me. We hold this control, we do not get surprised, we swoop down if it gets too hot. Got it?”        

            Everybody went. I nodded to the scout captain to hit the switch again. I took the oculars back from Ash, remounted, prepared to sit on my damn ass again. Nogilian’s furor still ringing in my ears. I will not be risked except in need. Curiously, I’d gotten that upbraiding while camped out in Sepira, in the depths of blackbrain, no one doing any fighting except me against myself. Had he been trying to break through? I supposed I’d never know. But it had helped. And I understood, now, why my dead men held him so beloved.  

            Now I watched two thousand of them go down to join a fight already involving fifty thousand on each side. But their placement was important. One hundred artillery cannot be ignored. That was all Ash took down, in the end, with the leading ten pulling up on the twenty-eighth. Between his disks and the men defending them, he occupied damn near every centimeter of that tier. Then began bombardment. He was methodical. He staggered the firing to maintain continuous pressure. There were attempts to climb, as Augers must have taken up quickswords from our fallen men below. And the four Auger disks parked on that level turned to argue. But all of this took time, and the whole point of the Stair was that it made ascent unnecessarily difficult. By the time I ordered the ramp open again, the twentieth tier had been reduced to vacant territory. Nothing further moved.  

Page a Day: One Hundred Seventy Five

            But praise all the gods that be, Ash’s artillery pulling up over the edge of the ramp, towed by their valkyries. Five hundred golden beauties. The ten breaths I gave them had been vital. Even Auger artillery takes a very definite time to recharge. By the time Ash had reached my devastation, the other firm hadn’t had anything to do other than volley a few lightspears at them, the worst possible assault against artillery disks in rapid motion. You can’t even see the operators. Ash was ready for combat. 

            The same could not be said for the rest. Many of my squads looked half strength, some did not appear at all. Few were entirely unscathed. I had them sort out by thirds. Three columns, about a thousand each. Dammit, we’d started out with five. But even now more of our brethren were dying down there.

            “Right,” I said to them all. “No time, they’re trapped. This column, follow Ash when he takes the artillery down around the thirtieth tier. Dismount, keep them from coming up on our disks. Ash, don’t overextend yourself, take one tier at a time, cycle disks in and out. Center column, follow them, stay behind, keep the ramp clear so Ash can drop down when the time comes. This column, stay with me, we hold this control, we do not get surprised, we swoop down if it gets too hot down there. Got it?”  

            Everybody went. I nodded to the scout captain to hit the switch again. I took the oculars back from Ash, remounted, prepared to sit on my damn ass again. Nogilian’s furor still ringing in my ears. I will not be risked except in need. Curiously, I’d gotten that upbraiding while camped out in Sepira, in the depths of blackbrain, no one doing any fighting except me against myself. Had he been trying to break through? I supposed I’d never know. But it had helped. And I understood why my dead men held him so beloved.  

            Now I watched two thousand of them go down to join a fight already involving fifty thousand on each side. But their placement was important. One hundred artillery cannot be ignored. That was all Ash took down, in the end, with the leading ten pulling up on the twenty-eight tier. Between his disks and the men defending them, he occupied damn near every centimeter of that tier. Then began bombardment. He was methodical. He staggered the firing to maintain continuous pressure. There were attempts to climb, as Augers took up quickswords from our fallen men below. And the four Auger disks parked on that level turned to argue. But all of this took time, and the whole point of the Stair was that it made ascent unnecessarily difficult. By the time I ordered the ramp open again, the twentieth tier had been reduced to vacant territory. Nothing further moved.   

Page a Day: One Hundred Seventy Four

            And I broke clear. Free and clear of the fire of the artillery and the dead I left behind. Free and clear of enemy occupation. Seventy breaths remaining. Silence. Empty, still silence. Huh? Tiers twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two were all unoccupied. I couldn’t believe it. There were supposed to have once been half a million men on this plateau. Had the Augers sent them all offworld? I shouted full speed to those cleared of the wreckage. I dare not look behind, not yet. I concentrated on the open ramp and the small switch house at the top, just a blip at this distance.

            The empty tiers rolled by. Sixty breaths, then fifty. The control building grew larger. Forty, thirty. There were men milling around it, a couple squads. Twenty breaths, I pulled back my quicksword, prepared to strike. Ten. Pulled up just in time to see new sunlight glinting on silver armor. Not a suicide mission, then. Not for these men. That was for the ones behind me.

            “Report,” I gasped, slewing sidewise, terrified of everyone who would not come up behind.

            “They left a couple squads up here,” the captain said, indicating bodies around a nearby outcrop.  “We were thinking about moving in when the chameleon broke and they charged us anyway. They were dumb about it, we were up on some rocks. That done, we knew what it meant, so we hit the switch and hoped. Glad you came. Got lonely.”

            I dismounted, giving him the eye. Pure deadpan, that. I have never known the White Swarm to diminish someone’s personality. Though I have suspected enhancement on various occasions.

            “Hit the switch,” I said. He looked at me. “Heatwhips don’t climb.”

            I wanted them trapped down there. He turned and stepped inside the building. Through the open door, I watched the sequence until I lost it, then turned away. To face what I did not want to. This part of the plateau was filling up with valkyries. But not as much as should be.

            They sorted themselves without my oversight, rally grouping inside a perimeter of watchers, with a few scouts setting out to patrol the plain. Windy up here, and cold. My boots crunched a skiff of snow. I reminded myself it was winter in this part of the world. To the south, between valkyries, I caught glimpses of a land of short grasses extending to infinity. Mountains climbing up forever on either side. Through the narrow gate, indeed. 

Page a Day: One Hundred Seventy Three

            Eighty breaths. We cleared the embattled tiers, slid into purely opposition territory. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. Fortunately, the ramp does not connect to any of the tiers except when lain flat, otherwise one must traverse the narrow lip at the edge. Redeployment is slow across that kind of terrain, though the Auger officers had had, now, the space of seventy breaths to put together some kind of action. You could see the thin lines of infantry forming up ahead, light shining between black forms blurred by distance. I accelerated. They weren’t the problem. They were the distraction.

            Came the hiss and whine of artillery disks otherwise unoccupied. Seventy breaths is worlds enough for them, and time. Time to pivot toward the ramp suddenly ascended. Time to send out a few men to the open surface of the incline to try to slow us down. Time to power up and wait and coordinate your fire for that precise moment and angle when a formation of valkyries is quartering away and could not, would not, turn to charge you. The blurred figures of the Augers on the open ramp lurched closer, became real men.

            My flying wedge met them just as all hell broke loose. I beheaded one, bellowed “Forward! Keep moving!” because there was nothing else to do. The world turned gold, and I was staring ahead. Came the stench of burned metal and the whine of swift emergency measures, all the energy shells of everyone hit dumping the overcharge into the ground, into each other. I held my breath. I’d spread everyone as wide as I could upon the narrow ramp.

            Then it came, the sound every cavalry officer dreads. Boom, as someone’s shell collapsed under the energy from the artillery disk and its bearer’s bones and organs liquefied. And their valkyrie slammed into the hard metal of the ramp, expending all the furor of its drive. Boom, as the energy of that collision cascaded into others. Boom and crash and the shrieking of Profusionist metal destroying itself at high velocities. Boom and boom and boom. Each explosion a death, a real death, as sure as if I stood there driving my quicksword into each unguarded brain. Boom and boom and boom and boom and boom, the teeth-shaking furor coming faster and faster until it became a constant roar and the heat of the wall of the explosions pressed against my back, my own shell straining against the roiling inferno now devouring the very air behind me.