PART SIX
Chapter Twenty
Elmy,
We whooped
them good, in the end, out there on the snow-spattered plateau. The five Auger
legions were heeling and toeing it toward the southeastern horizon, so intent
on their goal that they could not see the danger bearing down upon them. They
put out no scouts and established no rearguard. They did not expect us, so they
never saw us coming.
As I said,
a delight in their own potency. I will go to my grave wondering how the most
significant technological find of the new Auger age did not rate, from their
point of view, five thousand riding machines, while a battle to keep a city
they had held for the last ten years devoured every available resource. Was
Jerem Cozak so piquant? Did the jewel city Kasora contain treasures unimagined,
but also unemployed? Or did they simply believe they had time enough to
accomplish all these things? If the Augers had sent valkyries, they would have
climbed the Road to the Sun while I was still napping on the beach.
Instead
they died mid-morning upon an empty, wind-driven plain as flat as any tabletop.
They were perhaps a watch’s march from the road’s beginning. The howling of the
heavens buried the sound of our advent. The horizontal snow, just thick enough
to obscure the distance, concealed our approach. My own scouts had reported
five irregular columns, trailing long tails on the march, like ants across
improbably white sand. I spread us out in an inverted crescent, ordered the
charge from pretty much dead west, broadside. I swear they were still marching
when our front line hit. They folded up like paper dolls. It wasn’t until I was
mostly through the center column that the ranks tightened up and turned to face
us – and then they were miserably equipped. Heatwhips do poorly from the ground
against a charging valkyrie.
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