Chapter Thirty-One

The fort of Golconda came into view just as the first of these reckless enemy horsemen crashed into the flank of the column just ahead of where the 13th was riding. They laid into the colonists with a wicked brutality that left even Dryden’s heart cold. He had known their enemy hated them, but these were not soldiers being killed, these were civilians. He spurred Rosie once again, and she responded at his urgent kick bounding up the narrow road past people and carts. Dryden ripped his sword from his scabbard. Behind him, he heard his men drawing weapons as they rode and his sergeants shouting for men to follow.

“Up, with the Major!” Flint shouted from just behind.

“Move you bastards!” Vane shouted from further back.

Dryden pointed his sword at the nearest enemy riders, who were laughing and trampling over the dead bodies of several colonists, “Fight me!” He shouted at the man and before the enemy could answer, Rosie was past the man, and his sword had carved a bloody path through the enemy warrior. These were not soldiers, they had no discipline. These were warriors they faced. He kicked his horse again and made for the next man. His troopers, few though they were, swept past him, riding in the rough terrain off the road with the same lack of fear that the enemy had. They swept into the side of the raiders. There were so many of them, though, and so few of the 13th. Still, the Bloody 13th, the Butchers of Vurun, those that were left, were the toughest of the lot. The enemy fell back momentarily. It was enough. Dryden speared another man through. The blow ripped the sword from his hand and his horse continued on. He pulled out his pistol, a weapon he didn’t care for, and looked for another enemy. He found one, for they were many and all about the column. He shot a man, who fell silently from the wagon he was looting.

“Sir!” Someone shouted. Dryden looked over and saw Private Harper coming up with the regimental colours flying, “Take my sword!” The young man shouted and handed it over.

Dryden took it, “My thanks, Harper.”

Then the flow of the fight took them away again as the 13th fought the raiders all up the line towards the front. The 22nd Rangers were coming now from the head of the column led by that big bastard of a man, Lieutenant Koen. His men slowly worked their way methodically backwards from the front, sniping enemy riders. Then a cry of despair came up from the colonists again. More riders were coming from the hills around Golconda. The column was moving towards the fort. Soldiers in the column were arraying themselves to defend, but there were too many foes and the column was stretched out down the hill with most of the best soldiers covering their retreat from the army behind that still harried them like wolves chasing a stag.

“With me!” Dryden shouted, “13th, rally to me!”

Harper was there with the banner, Locke with his blunderbuss. Mar exhaled a long puff of indigo smoke. Pugh stood in his stirrups on his dappled grey horse with a bloody sword in his hand looking furious. The irregulars and the general’s guard were there too, behind them, waiting for orders.

“Assessment, Pugh?” Dryden asked his only remaining captain. The last one left was a man of rare vision. He could see how battles would play out in a rare way.

“We’re buggered, sir.” Pugh replied, “No choice left but to go straight at them and die well.”

There were only dozens of what was now the 13th in name only. But there was no one else to meet the enemy charge. They were damned either way. Pugh was right. Dryden saw it too. Die running or die fighting. He knew Julia was near. He would not die as a coward while she watched. He didn’t know if she truly watched him, but he felt her presence.

“Orders?” Pugh prompted. There was no time left to decide, only to act.

Dryden’s blood was up. He stood in his stirrups and turned to his men, “I know you for the motherless bloody fucking bastards you are! But those dogs don’t! They wouldn’t be riding this way if they did! Fucking show them!” He bellowed. Then he spurred Rosie again towards the screaming enemy horde. With a cry of rage, all that remained of the 13th rode to meet their doom.

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Hooves thundered across the treacherous rocky slope that was their battlefield. The enemy came swarming around to envelop them. The Vastrum men rode close in a V formation, as close to one another as they dared to laterally across the steep rocky slope. Dryden took the lead, his sword out in front of him like a spear. Harper was beside him with the banner. Mar was on his other side, close enough to reach out and touch. The wizard’s grim face became soft and blissful. Suddenly, Dryden found that he could smell the sea and hear the roar of the ocean. Ahead of them something like a roaring wave rippled through the air and washed across the enemy, sweeping horses and men down the slope screaming in terror. Again, another wave washed across in front of them, clearing a path through the centre of the Vuruni hordes. Then a third time it came, sweeping more horses and riders down. The enemy charge halted momentarily. Again, that moment was all they needed. The last charge of the Bloody 13th struck home. The impact thundered. Horses fell, men were thrown, their limp bodies rolling down the steep slope to their deaths. Men fought on the hillside. Dryden raised his sabre and chopped again and again, hacking at the enemy alongside his men. He saw a soldier in the general’s guard uniform go down under the weight of a falling horse. He screamed for a moment, and then the man was gone, down the hill and away. Dryden wheeled Rosie around such as he could and looked for friendly faces. He found few. He rode hard at the enemy and wherever Dryden went, the enemy fell back. He realized that he had pushed beyond the rest of his men. He could still hear fighting and killing. Locke’s blunderbuss fired loudly somewhere. Flint’s voice could be heard bellowing at his men and swearing at his enemies. But Dryden had become separated. Vuruni horses and men circled around him on the hill, their lances pointed in at him.

A leering face loomed at him out of the crowd, “You are the one they call Dry-Den, no?”

“I am!” Dryden looked up and saw the standard that this group of enemy cavalry bore. It was a black flag with a golden eagle, its wings outstretched, with a green viper gripped in its talons.

“I am Zhan An-Zhigo. They were my son and grandson you killed. I must ask, did you kill them fast, or slow?”

“It was quick,” Dryden called out.

“Lucky for you! I will grant you the same mercy!” Then the man urged his horse down the hill at Dryden, his gold helm gleaming in the fading sunlight.

Zhan wielded a wicked-looking curved talwar. His mount was black and sleek and moved almost like a mountain goat on the steep terrain. He swung his blade as he came. Dryden pulled his reins around, Rosie responded nimbly and Dryden deflected the mighty swing. The man then pulled the same trick Dryden had when he had killed this man’s son. Zhan whipped his horse around, the butt of the horse colliding with Rosie. She neighed in a primal sort of terror as she almost lost her footing. She instinctively spun around and she did not fall. Dryden, however, did. Between awkwardly parrying the blow, the sudden spin of his horse, and the angle of the slope, he slipped over backwards. He hit the ground hard and began to roll uncontrollably. His borrowed sabre flew off into the void somewhere and he landed hard with a crack on a great boulder. It was lucky that he had not fallen much further, though the pain through his side felt anything but fortunate. The enemy warrior dismounted from his horse and strode down the hill, letting the rocks slide just slightly with every step. He grinned wickedly at Dryden as he came. Dryden tried to move, but his ribs hurt terribly. He rolled over onto his side and tried to come up, but he couldn’t do more than sit upright.

“You fight good, too bad you’re not Vuruni. You could be a warlord. But you are Vastrum, so now you die.” The man raised his huge curved talwar to end Dryden’s life.

Somewhere a great gun sounded, a boom that echoed from Golconda and reverberated down the walls of the stone mountains that surrounded them. Then another sounded. Then a third. Zhan paused and turned to look back. A cannonball from the fort ripped a bloody scar through his men. Then a second. He looked back at Dryden, “You die now.”

A third cannonball ripped through the massed enemy horse, bouncing down the hill as it went. It bounced right behind Zhan, tearing through his sword arm and knocking him to the ground. Dozens upon dozens of enemy soldiers were dead or dying. Horses too. Zhan sat near Dryden, looking at his own arm with disbelief, it was detached and mangled just below the shoulder. His huge sword lay nearby, still gripped in his twitching bloody hand. The cannon fire was too much for the enemy cavalry to bear and they fled, leaving their dead and wounded.

It was suddenly quiet. Dryden stood and looked around. His men were either dead or had fled back towards the column when the cannons started. He stood up and looked for his horse. Rosie, as far as he could tell, had run off back towards the column with the rest of the surviving 13th, leaving Dryden on the boulder. He stood and saw Mar kneeling nearby. He left Zhan, he hadn’t the strength left in him to kill the man, not with his body wracked with pain like this. He and Mar found one another and hobbled together back towards the butchered remains of the column.