Chapter Thirty

This time the enemy came on horseback. Dryden and the remnants of the 13th rode up the hill away from the line of battle, and towards the colonist carts that were taking to the high road. Thousands of civilians went ahead of the army. Only the rangers and a few other depleted infantry units went at the front. The immediate threat was behind them now. The vast army of Kurush moved as one mass. There was no real attempt at making organized battle lines. They had outnumbered the Vastrum men at least two to one at the outset of the fighting. So much good infantry had been lost in Belfair’s square formations against massed infantry. Now the exact numbers were impossible to say, but it was lopsided by far in the Vuruni’s favour. Their new king sought to sweep Vastrum from the field with their sheer bulk. There was one difference now, however: Gorst was no Belfair. Dryden felt helpless nonetheless. All he could do was watch the men behind and below fight off their enemy as he advanced with the ragtag column of survivors.

Gorst had organized his lines in ranks three men deep. When the enemy cavalry was in range the first rank fired. Then fell back. The second rank fired and fell back. Followed by the third. By the time the third had fired and moved back, the first rank was ready to fire again. Quartermasters and sergeants rode with carts between the units, giving them new cartridges for their muskets. Rank by rank the army pulled back up the hill. As the path narrowed, the men compressed, condensing their fire. Horses and men fell dead before the raking gunfire. It took only minutes before all the momentum of the Vuruni charge had failed and the mob of charging enemy cavalry had backed up on themselves in a chaotic mass like a wave receding from the shoreline only to disrupt the next wave coming behind it.

Soon the whole enemy mass was moving backwards, finding their strategy unsuccessful. The field was littered with dead men and writhing dying horses. Dryden watched the dying horses, the whinnying and neighing and bleating of the dying animals echoed even up to where his own men rode. He felt Rosie whinny under him and he wondered if the scene did not make her sad as well. There was nothing to be done.

The enemy came again not long after. This time they came on foot, firing back at the Vastrum army with their longer-ranged jezails. They did not have high ground, and they did not fire in any kind of organized way, so they killed few. The Vastrum men were harried and harassed until the last of the army was off the plain and following the narrow road to Golconda. Between the civilians who had fled back to the city, those who had died in the cold, or fallen exhausted along the road, and the dead soldiers who fell to snipers, skirmishes, and finally to two brutal battles, the column now seemed a small pathetic thing. They had lost half of their fighting force, half their baggage, all their Vuruni civilians, most of their cavalry, and even the Company mercenaries had vanished up the road somewhere. Their only hope was if Golconda still stood, and even that was a vain hope. It was not a large fort. It had some supplies and weapons. It did not have enough food or room for even a quarter as many as still marched, without even considering if Colonel Hood had got there first.

When the road was wide enough, Dryden and his relative handful of cavalry passed soldiers and carts until they finally arrived near the front where the colonists trudged away up the hill. They had lost many carts too. What they had were good supplies though. None had bothered to retrieve or haul their furniture this far, these items had been thrown into the ditch as they had gone along. Now many of them walked along, with no cart or animal to ride. No one greeted the cavalry officer, there was no one to take charge from. They simply moved along as a herd like cattle, following the soldiers that led them. As the road turned up a steep embankment he finally found Lady Julia Gorst, Lady Helena Blackwater, and Roxana, the daughter of Shah Guranji. He had been tasked with guarding these women. He pulled Rosie up alongside the cart that the three women were riding in, one of the few carts still functional. Helena was sitting in the front holding the reins to the two huge draft horses that pulled the cart up the slope. Julia was seated next to her with a grim exhausted look on her face. Roxana was seated in the back of the cart holding a young girl in her arms. The princess was still dressed in the soldier’s uniform that Havor had given her. None of them took any note of Dryden until he had come right up next to the cart. He had not seen Helena or Julia since the ball. He had been much too busy for social calls. Even covered head to toe with dirt from the road Julia still looked beautiful to his eyes, her striking red hair was wild and whipped up from the wind, and her freckles were dulled by the dust on her cheeks. None of that mattered. He found he was more than pleased to see her. She seemed a flash of colour in this drab cold land.

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“My lady.” He said, addressing Julia.

Her eyes searched his face with no recognition, “Major.” She said at last.

“Please, call me John.” He replied earnestly.

“John, then. To what do we owe the pleasure?” Her voice was sweet and light as if he had come calling for luncheon on a bright spring morning with the sun in the air and bees buzzing. As if he had come carrying a handful of fresh flowers for her.

“I have come to escort you to Golconda, with what few men I have left under my command.” He said, trying his best to sound brave and strong and confident.

“What of the rest of your men?” Julia asked.

“Fallen, m’lady.”

Her face went white, “So many dead?”

“Indeed. We lost many on the plain below.”

“What of Havor?” Roxana was suddenly interested in the conversation. Her dark eyes flashed with something between passion and defiance when she said his name.

Dryden shook his head, “He was wounded badly and captured. I know no more than that.”

“A pity.” She replied haughtily.

“What of my father?” Helena spoke up. Her soft face looked up sadly at Dryden.

“Captured as well, though when last I saw him, he was unharmed.”

“What of mine?” Julia asked next. They were desperate for any news at all. They’d been riding in the column and they’d had no messengers. Little communication had passed along. Dryden had taken all his knowledge for granted.

“Colonel Gorst commands the army now. He’s as good a commander as Vastrum has. He’ll see us home, don’t you worry.” Dryden tried to assure them. He did not think he sounded completely genuine, but his words seemed to calm the women in the cart.

As he said the words, he felt a shadow fall across his face and he looked up to the left. There was a rider on an outcrop. The man reared his horse up and shouted something. From the side of the road up the valley, a stream of horsemen came galloping out at speed towards the column. There was nowhere to turn, nowhere to circle carts. The hillside was rugged terrain and the enemy horsemen came on quickly. What the enemy was doing, riding out across the incredibly steep slope, looked like suicide, but they came fearless and full of rage. The column needed no urging. Together, all the thousands of colonists and ragtag soldiers began to run up the slope. Their only hope was the fort at Golconda. Dryden prayed it was not a false hope.