webcrawl/APGTE/Book-6/tex/Ch-080.md.tex

\hypertarget{interlude-old-dogs}{%
\section{Interlude: Old Dogs}\label{interlude-old-dogs}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``I fear our tyrant in the east, but dread I reserve alone for
what staying on our knees would make of us.''}

-- Queen Eleanor Fairfax, founder of the Fairfax dynasty
\end{quote}

General Abigail looked into the Baalite eye again, wishing generals
didn't have to be on horses.

It made her stand out, and people who stood out did have that
unfortunate tendency to get shot. She couldn't even use the damned thing
to run away, because it made her stand out so people would bloody well
notice. It was the sixth time since the Third Army had begun to mobilize
that she was having a look at the enemy positions, but repetition wasn't
improving her prospects any. The drow had done good work, smashing up
the enemy's walls and collapsing their ditches, but the corpses had
worked tirelessly overnight. The walls had been rebuilt into little more
than stacked stones, more like a cattle-fence than a fortification, but
the nice thing about cattle was that it wasn't usually trying to stab
you.

Somehow she doubted the undead would be so congenial.

``At least they're low on bowmen,'' General Abigail muttered. ``Javelins
aren't as bad when it gets down to it.''

They did a number even on plate and they could scrap a shield, sure, but
the range was lesser and you couldn't carry anywhere as many of them.

``I don't understand why Keter fields so few,'' Staff Tribune Krolem
gravelled at her side. ``With their numbers, mass volleys would be near
impossible to deal with.''

Except with them mage shields, of course, but those would be needed for
the more exotic stuff the enemy had up its sleeves.

``Their dead are too dumb,'' Abigail absent-mindedly told him. ``The
Binds, the one with souls still nailed to the corpse, they're as clever
as people. But the Bones? They can't maintain gear for shit, certainly
not something as finicky as a good bow. Javelins are simpler, and easier
to make too.''

She glanced at her right hand, the tall orc looking like he was spoiling
for a fight. It wasn't his fault, Abigail reminded herself. Orcs were
just born that way, with more teeth to compensate for the absence of the
part where good sense went. Besides she'd probably like fighting more if
she got to eat the losers afterwards, she figured. Tavern rates these
days were basically robbery, so greenskins were definitely coming out
ahead there.

``We'll wait until the Sapper-General finishes her bombardment to
advance,'' she told Krolem. ``And send our bloodhounds out, would you? I
want this field cleaned up before our shield wall starts advancing.''

``On it,'' the Staff Tribune saluted.

Good man. Some would have called Abigail paranoid for the precaution,
but they couldn't. Largely on account of them all being fucking dead
while she was not. A nice empty field all the way to Lauzon's Hollow,
after Keter was allowed time to work its wickedness? Yeah, she wasn't
falling for that one. Her `bloodhounds' were a suggestion she'd made to
the Black Queen last year that got approved, to her surprise: mixed
crews of regulars, priests and lesser magical talents that could sniff
out the kind of hidden devilries the Dead King liked to leave lying
around \emph{before} her people walked into them. Leaving them to do
their work properly would slow the advance, but Abigail didn't exactly
mind. She looked into the Baalite eye again, silently bemoaning her
fate.

While it'd been a relief to learn that the Black Queen's battle plan
wouldn't require the Third to charge at the mouth of Lauzon's Hollow
under enemy fire, she'd still ended up stuck leading the vanguard. Her
inexplicably enthusiastic soldiers might think it was an honour to serve
as the foremost meat shields -- \emph{Dauntless}, they'd all cheered,
like the word meant they were no longer the people standing closest to
swords trying to kill them -- but General Abigail was not fooled. When
you tangled with Keter, the front was the last damned place you wanted
to be. Nowhere near was her own preferred locale, but she'd not had a
great deal of success getting there.

Gloomily, the general leaned back on horse as the wings of the assault
assembled to the east and west. The Second Army under General Hune would
stay behind her and serve as both the reserve and the escort for the
siege engines, while to the left the Procerans had assembled under
Princess Beatrice and to the right the two leading members of the Blood
had been granted a shared command. It made the west the weak flank, not
as steady or numerous, but the Black Queen had sent most of the
alliance's horse there to prop them up. It would be some time yet before
they had to advance, General Abigail knew, and when they did she'd at
least have Named with her.

It was still with despair that she realized they'd somehow got her
again.

She'd had a plan, a solid one. It was too late to back out of this whole
general business now, as a pragmatic soul she'd been forced to recognize
as much. Besides, Abigail of Summerholm hadn't stuck out this bloody
nightmare of a war to \emph{not} retire with a full general's pension:
when she got home, she fully intended to never lift a finger again for
the rest of her days and maybe drink herself into an early grave. It was
her \emph{godsdamned godsgiven right to do so}. So the plan had been
adjusted. Abigail was going to make herself just enough of an
embarrassment that they'd reassign her back home where she couldn't make
the Black Queen look bad in front of all the fancy nobles by being a
lout.

It would be a delicate line to walk, being embarrassing enough to be
sent away but not enough to be demoted, yet as the daughter of a long
and storied line of loutish drunks Abigail had trusted in her blood to
get her through this. It, uh, hadn't panned out quite how she'd
expected. People kept laughing when she said terrible things like `sure
the Dead King horrid, but in his defence he's been stuck living next to
Procer for centuries' and `makes sense the lake by the Dominion is from
a hole in the ground, that's pretty much the rest of the country too'
and instead of being made of pariah the amount of invitation to parties
had tripled.

She'd dug deeper into loutishness, trying things like saying `you
people' and repeating the filthiest stories you could hear living in
Summerholm as a brewer's daughter, but it turned out these fancy Procer
folk were shocking hard to, well, shock.

The only upside had been that these days Abigail might have to worry
about nooses and the Black Queen eating her soul, but at least she
didn't often have to worry about being stabbed! Best thing about being a
general was that when you got to a nice safe spot away from the
frontlines, you got to call it \emph{strategizing}. Very fond of
strategizing, Abigail was. She did as much of it as was humanly
possible. But now, as the Third Army spread out on the plains before
Lauzon's Hollow, the dark-haired woman finally understood the final
treachery of her rank: even if she stood at theback of her army, that
army could still be made to stand at the front of the coalition. She'd
been had again.

The general looked into the Baalite eye again and sighed. It really was
a shame about the horse, she thought. They might not have noticed her
slipping away otherwise.

---

Though Robber had been told that his assignment was to serve as
Pickler's bodyguard, he suspected that what he'd actually been sent here
to do was make sure that the Sapper-General of Callow did not end up
murdering her assigned spotter: the honourable young lord Gaetan Rocroy
of Cantal, also known as the Page. Robber admired the young man in a
deep and sincere manner, which he'd not hid in the slightest. It'd taken
him \emph{years} of work to able to get under the skin of everyone he
met, while the boy was pushing through on natural talent alone. It was a
wonder to behold, really.

``Praesi measurements are quite inadequate,'' the Page blithely said.
``Outdated, even. It is the Salian \emph{paume} that should be used, not
the-``

Sergeant Snorer, who had been a sapper for more than decade, twitched so
violently he snapped the thin copper wire he'd been adjusting. Crows,
but the boy was an artist. The talent could not be suppressed, Robber
would not allow it. It had to be encouraged, nay, \emph{cultivated}! It
would be a loss for Creation otherwise.

``Fire,'' Pickler coldly ordered.

The Page had not quite got out of the way, so when the trebuchet's
counterweight came down he had to hurriedly hop to the side.

``Eyes on the stone, lordling,'' Robber called out.

The hero glared at him for the presumption before doing what he was
supposed to and serving as a good little spotter for the sappers of the
Army of Callow. The boy's eyes narrowed after the stone hit the side of
a steep-sloped hill to the left of the hollow's entrance.

``It shook,'' the Page said. ``Stone shattered on the surface. No large
crack, though, you'll need to get closer.''

There was a shared sigh by everyone here who'd studied ballistics. Eight
hundred feet was well into the range of an imperial trebuchet, which was
the model the Army of Callow used. If the stones weren't enough to crack
open the hills at this range, then ballistas -- which shot further, but
with significantly smaller projectiles -- would do next to nothing if
deployed. The choice left was either to keep hammering away with the
trebuchets for hours or start pulling out more interesting ammunition.
The Boss had made it clear that she wanted those hills torn open for her
plan, and she hadn't looked like she was in mood for an argument as to
the practicalities involved.

``Iron framework inside, do you think?'' Robber asked Pickler.

She licked her chops thoughtfully, chewing on the thought.

``If your assessment of how hollow the hills are is even remotely
correct,'' Pickler said, ``then it is the most sensible theory. It could
be wards, I suppose.''

``Boss mentioned when one of the siege engines they've got was ripped
away, the top of the hill came clean off with it,'' Robber noted. ``She
thought the platform was sculpted from the stone, but maybe\ldots{}''

``It was simply anchored in metal beams that crisscross the summit of
those caverns,'' Pickler approvingly said. ``It would be metal
strengthened with spellcraft, to have had this particular effect, so
more likely steel than iron.''

Long, spindly fingers -- she had sapper's hands, Pickler, delicate and
deadly -- drummed the side of the closest trebuchet thoughtfully.

``We'll keep hammering away at the eastern hills,'' the Sapper-General
decided. ``Nothing we have will crack the western ones right now. I
dislike relying on sabotage, but it seems necessary this once.''

Without even a need to be ordered, the sappers around them heeded her
words: the nine trebuchets were prepared for concentrated fire, pivoted
on their platforms. Like a swarm of ants, the goblins to work. The Page
looked quite discomfited, staring at them uneasily, so Robber decided to
lend his help. Sidling up to the boy, he offered a wide and fanged grin.

``Do tell me about these \emph{paumes}, good sir,'' Robber asked.
``Unlike my ignorant and hidebound colleagues, I am always open to
heeding superior Proceran learning.''

The boy's face lit up with enthusiasm, and from the corner of his eye
Special Tribune Robber caught sight of a lieutenant kicking a trebuchet
stone in fury.

Would Catherine be open to permanently assigning the boy to him, he
wondered?

---

Roland de Beaumarais suspected that many would have envied the surface
of his current situation -- namely, walking forward slowly as four
beautiful women were pressed up against him. The whole part about it
also involving a tricky illusion spell and being surrounded by undead
desiring to kill them all might have been considered something of a
drag, mind you, and sadly he wouldn't even be able to remember the
experience fondly. Not when Sidonia kept elbowing him, as the Levantine
heroine just had the most horridly bony elbows, or when the Silent
Guardian was not stepping on his feet for the eight time.

Gods that plate armour was heavy, aside from the fact that the Guardian
herself was in no way a small woman.

``My foot,'' the Rogue Sorcerer croaked out in a whisper.
``\emph{Please} be careful.''

To the Silent Guardian's credit, she looked somewhat apologetic and
tapped his shoulder in apology. That already put her ahead of Sidonia,
who'd just snickered when told she kept elbowing him.

``Stop whining,'' the Blessed Artificer said. ``You'll give us away.''

That Adanna of Smyrna spoke the reproach without so much as a hint of
irony to her voice was, in its own way, impressive. Roland made himself
count to five so he would not indulge in a retort and then they resumed
their slow advance. The paths that Catherine's worrying goblin
lieutenant had found proved true eventually, the third attempt allowing
them to slip into a crevice that led into the great caverns below the
hills. There'd been difficulties on the way, of course, but between
Roland's knack for ward-breaking and the Silver Huntress' keen senses
they'd managed to avoid giving themselves away.

It was inside they'd been forced to stay under illusion, as the place
was crawling with undead. Even in the rare hallways Binds were always
patrolling, and Roland pressed close to the wall as the other Chosen did
the same to once more avoid the edge of his illusion being touched by a
patrol of thirty undead soldiers in pristine armour. The caverns were
shaking from the pounding of the Army of Callow's engines was giving the
surface, but while sometimes stones were loosened the place seemed in no
danger of collapse. He could understand why Catherine had taken the risk
to send them here, now.

Only a band of Chosen would be able to see this through halfway quietly,
or without everyone involved dying in the process.

``We're close,'' the Silver Huntress murmured. ``Only one level left.
Adanna, you're sure you can't do it from here?''

The device the Blessed Artificer had prepared ought to be able to
collapse the cavern's ceiling, but she'd insisted it ought to be
triggered as close to it as possible. There were hallway rings going up
the sides, fortunately, and four nerve-racking levels up the five of
them now stood close to the highest they'd be able to stand. There was a
fifth level, but it seemed narrowed than the others.

``I could have done it from the bottom,'' the Artificer peevishly
replied, ``but that would be rolling dice. I can only \emph{guarantee}
results from the level above us.''

``Then we go,'' the Huntress sighed. ``Steady and careful, all.''

The illusion Roland was currently using covered sound, so long as it was
of sufficiently low pitch. It was why he'd picked something otherwise so
unstable and finicky among his repertoire. Which was why when a great
axe sunk into the wall just above his head, a tall Revenant in pale
plate smiling mirthlessly as the spell shattered, he was rather
surprised.

Halfway quietly was out, the Rogue Sorcerer mused. Time to see if
`without everyone involved dying' could still be salvaged,

---

There was a moment of silence as a massive lance of Light tore through
the hilltops on the left side of Lauzon's Hollow, spinning up in the sky
like some behemoth's spit until it thinned and vanished into a shower of
motes. Trails of smoke followed behind, the heat from the priestly power
having set small fires and scorched rock.

``You know,'' Robber said, looking at the rising smoke, ``when the Boss
told me there would be sabotage, I figured it would be something a
little more\ldots{}''

``Subtle?'' Pickler suggested.

``Yeah,'' he faintly replied. ``That works.''

Was that from the woman that looked like Wasteland get? Gobbler knew it
couldn't be the Vagrant Spear or the Silver Huntress -- the former would
have had Archer bragging up a storm, while the latter would instead
probably have tried to kill Archer by now. The Rogue Sorcerer was a
skillful meddler but no used of Light, and the Silent Guardian was by
reputation a solid warrior but not particularly powerful. That left only
the woman with the Ashuran accent and those golden highborn eyes that
had Robber feeling wary every time he saw them. People with them were
usually quite dangerous, when they got to live up to the Blessed
Artificer's age.

``It will do the trick, regardless,'' Pickler shrugged. ``Shame they
didn't get the enemy engine, but I supposed it will have to do.''

In front of them, the trebuchets snapped into motion. One after another
they pounded at the hillside, until finally the thunderous crack the
sappers had been working at for an entire bell finally resounded. The
Page excitedly informed them there was a large fissure now. Another
seven stones and finally the side of the hill collapsed. The iron bones
that'd held it up were could still be glimpsed in the rubble, twisted
and bent but rarely broken. The sight matched that on the eastern
slopes, which had been smashed a more than half a bell ago.

``Hold fire,'' the Sapper-General ordered. ``The trebuchets are done.
Begin advancing the copperstone ballistas as soon as the Third
advances.''

Ignoring the Page who was asking whether he could finally leave, Robber
picked out one of the trebuchets and began to climb his way up the
beams. Unlike his fellows, he had an inkling of what was coming and he
wanted as fine a seat to witness is as he could. Deftly raising himself
atop one of the legs supporting the pivot, he watched as a great wyvern
took to the sky from near the frontlines. Not a real beast that one, it
didn't move quite right, but his sharp eyes caught sight of two
silhouettes on its back. The Summoner would be one, he knew, but he
wasn't sure for the second.

Archer ought to be with the Third, since it'd serve as vanguard, but you
never knew with the Boss. Not like she was low on Named these days,
anyway. The speculation served to entertain him as the wyvern flew
forward, swarms and a wyrm rising to meet it in the distance. A death
warrant for the two Named gone out, if it'd been meant to be anything
except a distraction. It wasn't, though, and with a pleasurable shiver
Robber felt the air begin to thicken. He gulped down his breaths as if
struggling against an unwilling Creation, the sheer powerbeing gathered
always surprising him. It was good for this army to be reminded exactly
what the Black Queen \emph{was} now and then, the Special Tribune felt.

Cat played nicer, these days, so sometimes the westerners forgot who it
was exactly that'd won the Tenth Crusade.

A large circular gate winked open in the sky above Lauzon's Hollow, and
to Robber's delighted surprise a heartbeat later a \emph{second} one
did. Sahelian was finally earning her keep, then. The hollowed out hills
on both sides of the pass had been torn open at the top and smashed in
the front, so now all that was left was using that broadened field of
engagement and giving a pitched battle -- or so conventional wisdom
would have suggested. That wasn't the Boss' way, though, not at all. She
rarely settled for a single knife in the kidney, it was one of the more
charming things about her.

So it was with utter glee that Robber began cackling when he realized
that the gates in the sky weren't connected to the Twilight Ways at all.
The way water began pouring out of them was something of a hint.

---

Roland pulled deep on one his strongest offensive magics, forming fire
and turning it dense and liquid before tossing a hundred droplets of it
at the mass of skeletons coming after them. The Vagrant Spear, pulling
the unconscious Adanna closer to her, turned just long enough to send a
blast of Light at the armoured Revenant still pursuing them, cursing
angrily in Ceseo when the dead hero shrugged it off like he had
everything else they'd thrown at him. Nothing made a dent: not steel,
not sorcery, not even Light. The Silent Guardian had managed to throw
him off the ledge earlier, the most success they'd had, but he'd been
back before long.

With more Revenants, of course, for the Gods despise Roland deeply and
wanted him to die screaming.

Alexis put a seventh arrow in the shield-bearing titan of a woman coming
after them with a halberd, that Revenant's unsettling laugh echoing
across the cavern even through the cacophony of an entire army
mobilizing to kill them. Arrows clattered against the wall as they
passed by a pillar, just a second too slow to catch any of them, but
already they were being charged at by armored skeletons ahead and
javelins were in flight from somewhere he'd not even looked at yet!
Swallowing bile, already feeling the raw sting of his aspects being
leaned on too harshly, Roland conjured a shield to take care of the
javelins.

The Silent Guardian plowed into the skeletons a heartbeat later,
smashing everything aside like a bull in a house of glass, but deep down
the Rogue Sorcerer knew it wouldn't enough. It was still two levels down
before they'd get to the crevice they'd squeezed in through and there
was simply no way they were going to last that long : opposition was
hardening the further down they got. The Guardian screamed when a great
barbed arrow punched through her mail, shot by some distant Revenant
with a black iron bow, and though the Silver Huntress managed to turn
aside a blow of the Revenant in pale plate and throw him off the ledge
again, it was a temporary relief at best. Already the one with the
halberd was coming at her, and now that the Silent Guardian was wounded
and was going to start struggling with their front it would all be-

A wall of water came down from the sky, smashing through the holed
that'd been melted through the ceiling of the cavern. The halberd
Revenant was caught by a stream and smashed into the wall as the
Huntress danced away just in time.

``That also works,'' Roland admitted.

Mind you, if they didn't figure a way out of this soon they were just
going to drown instead. Still, this was already a distinct improvement.
\emph{Thank you Catherine}, he mused. \emph{Very timely of you.}
Screaming at each other so they could hear over the roar of the falling
waters, the Rogue Sorcerer and the Silver Huntress agreed on a plan. If
you could call an agreement to get the Hells out of here as quick as
possible that. Water was beginning to gush down with them, and to their
horror it was already filling the crevice they'd used to come in. They'd
need another way out. Thankfully, even as they were wondered what in the
Merciful Heavens that would be, scaffolding on the level above them
collapsed.

A large flat piece of wood, one that must have served as a work
platform, bounced down and rolled slightly downhill until the wounded
and white-faced Guardian caught it with a hand. It was large enough for
all of them, Roland noted, and quite likely to float. He met Alexis'
eyes, then shrugged.

``Do you have a better idea?'' he asked.

She didn't.

---

General Abigail shivered.

It was not the first time she'd seen this horror unleashed. Even if her
memory had allowed her to forget the first day of the Battle of the
Camps, her nightmares would not have. The gates did not look the same,
now sleek rinks of darkness rather than the thin slices into Creation
the Black Queen had once wielded, but then as now the sky had opened and
wept. Abigail remembered the hate that'd simmered under the fear, back
in those days where it'd been the Principate they'd fought. The way
she'd known that their queen was a monster but she was not a monster who
had sought this war, that it had been forced on all of them by a handful
of rapacious princes in their palaces across the Whitecaps.

But not even then had she believed the invaders deserved that cold,
brutal and senseless end.

Not the sky wept again, two gates torn into the fabric of the world high
above, and like jugs being filled the hills that'd been ripped open by
siege engines received the deluge. Even stone shattered, when the water
came from so high, and before long the hordes the Dead King had hidden
within his caverns began pouring out on the tide half-smashed. The water
rushed out of the broken hills, taking with it rocks and corpses and
steel, and began to spread into the plains below. In the sky above Named
skirmished with horrors and Revenants, Light streaking bright as the
flood gates were protected from disruption. It wouldn't last forever,
Abigail thought, but it wouldn't have to. That'd never been the plan.

Water stormed out of the pass itself now, having overrun the hills
themselves and swept into the hollow between them, the tide bowling over
the undead and smashing the fortifications at the mouth of Lauzon's
Hollow. The mud would make for unpleasant fighting grounds, Abigail
thought, but it would hinder the undead as well. And it was the cost for
something almost priceless: right now, as the waters kept hurling down
from the gates, the Dead King's waiting army had been essentially
dispersed. All preparations, positions and traps and been unmade by the
brute force of thousands of tons of water coming down from the sky. It
would not win them the battle by itself, but as far as first strokes
went it was a masterful one.

Let it not be said the Black Queen had come by her reputation
dishonestly.

It was not even half an hour before the first enemy got through and took
a swing at a gate, making it stutter, and within moments both gates had
winked out of existence. Water kept pouring from a blue a cloudless sky,
jarring to behold, but General Abigail knew what was required of her
now.

``Krolem,'' she said. ``Have the advance sounded.''

``Ma'am,'' the orc saluted.

Water still flowed but the plains were large and it had not rained in
days: the earth would drink the tide in full, and it would not take so
long as one might think. Abigail would not waste the advantage she had
been given.

``Good, you're not dragging your feet.''

The dark-haired woman almost fell down her horse, utterly startled, and
froze in a different kind of fear when she saw exactly who it was that'd
addressed her. The absurdly large bow would have been answer enough,
even if the dark linen scarf and long coat had not been just as telling
a sign. The Archer was not an uncommon sight around the camps of the
Army of Callow, though Abigail preferred to avoid Named like the plague
when she could.

``Pardon?'' General Abigail got out.

``You're attacking,'' the ochre-skinned villainess said, smiling
pleasantly. ``Like Catherine wanted you to. Don't be afraid to press
your luck in the assault, general, we're not done with surprises for the
day.''

``I, uh, of course,'' Abigail stammered. ``You are to be the Named that
comes with the Third, then?''

``Something like that,'' Archer grinned. ``Don't worry your pretty
little head about it.''

Abigail noted that her horse was looking at the villainess with
fear-tinged distrust as well. A wise animal than she'd believed, she
conceded.

``I'll see you around, general,'' the Archer winked. ``Don't go
disappointing me, now.''

``I wouldn't dare,'' Abigail replied, a lot more honestly than she'd
meant to.

Luck was on her side, and so the Named drifted away as she laughed. The
general took the time to gather herself, straightening her back and
breathing out. She had a battle to get through. In the distance in front
of her, horns sounded as the Third Army's ranks tightened into a shield
wall and it began to advance. Noting its unease, General Abigail patted
her horse's neck and mercifully ignored the attempt to bite her fingers
she received in return.

``If you get through this, Boots, I might take you with me when I
retire,'' Abigail of Summerholm muttered. ``If you're unhappy about
being in this mess, that already makes you the second smartest animal in
this bloody army.''

Onwards they went anyway, to swift death and graves shallow.