Chapter Text
Harvest season was the busiest time of year for the inhabitants of Goldstead. Nestled between the banks of a river and the thickly forested hills to the north, every square metre of arable land outside the walls was given over to agriculture, a patchwork of fields stretching as far as the eye could see. But today, the harvest lay ungathered in the fields. The flashing of sickles, and the cries of oxen and men alike that accompanied it, were absent. The only sound that could be heard across the fields that led down to the river was the steady tolling of a bell.
Peering over the wall was the town militia, a ragged looking assortment of humans clutching whatever weapons they had to hand. The few professional soldiers in the watch were gathered in the gatehouse, herding the townsfolk that had been working in the fields inside the safety of the walls.
Over the sound of the tolling bells, a terrible roar echoed out from the forest. The sound seemed to intensify the panic amongst the townsfolk, and the watchmen scrambled to close the gates as more voices joined the distant howling.
The first cyclops broke out of the treeline at a run, emerging onto the field with another blood-curdling roar. Twenty-five feet tall, armoured and clutching a huge shield and war hammer, the monster trampled down the wooden fence at the edge of the field and made a beeline for the wall. Two more opted for a more direct route, smashing through a wooden hut at the edge of the forest as they charged. Behind them came the haflings, more than a score. Creatures of all shapes and sizes, some shambling, others running. Cyclopes could interbreed with most forms of life, producing monstrous offspring that accompanied them into battle.
Wielding a huge maul with a head the size of a boulder, the leading cyclops strode ahead of the pack, heading directly for the town. A line of sharpened stakes arranged in front of the town wall offered little protection as the monster crashed through them. The creatures were now just a few hundred metres from the town, and closing rapidly. From the walls, the militia let fly with the few projectile weapons they had to hand. Slings, bows and even a handful of muskets showered the attackers with projectiles, but to little effect.
Suddenly, a streak of white light stabbed out from the treeline above the town. It struck the shield the first cyclops was carrying, blasting through it with a terrific explosion that cut the monster in two at the waist. A shower of blood and burning metal splattered against the haflings around it, setting the hairier ones ablaze. As the sound of the explosion faded over the battlefield, smaller projectiles began to pour out from the trees with a loud popping sound, skimming off the ground and punching through armour and flesh alike. The second cyclops only managed to swing its shield in the general direction of the unseen enemy before a glowing light ricocheted off it and passed through its eye socket in a shower of gore.
"Good shot, Sergeant! All units, hold fire. We can handle the rest from here."
Through my periscope, I watched as the attackers faltered, the sudden death of their leaders throwing them into confusion. A puff of propellant gas briefly obscured my vision as the breech of the cannon opened beneath me. Cursing the faulty fume extractor, I cracked open my hatch to allow the smoke to clear.
"Gunner - eyeball on his left. Loader – frag!"
From somewhere near the stowage bins on the turret floor came a gruff voice. "Out of frag, sir!"
"Give me HEAT!" Reaching forward, I slapped the shoulder of my gunner, signalling for them to cease fire with the machine gun. With practiced ease, the loader drew another 100mm shell from the rack behind his seat and rammed it into the breech. As the loading gate rasped shut, he quickly produced another round and took up position, ready to reload.
The face of the remaining cyclops loomed large in my periscope. With two dead and many more wounded by shrapnel, any normal enemy would have broken and fled. But even with an arm missing, and surrounded by dead and dying haflings, the cyclops waved an axe in the direction of the town and roared in defiance.
"HEAT up sir!" A green light appeared on the gunner's sight in front of me, indicating that the cannon was ready to fire.
"Fire."
The tank shuddered; a muffled thump followed by a crash as the gun recoiled back into the turret. A huge fireball flashed in front of my optics as the shell left the barrel, kicking up a cloud of dust that briefly obscured the battlefield. When it cleared, the last cyclops had vanished, with nothing but a crater remaining where it had been standing. As clods of earth and body parts rained down around them, the remaining haflings broke and began to flee back into the woods, with another burst of tracer fire from the coaxial machine gun mowing down the stragglers.
A cheer went up from the town militia on the wall, joined by a few enthusiastic whoops that were audible over the company radio. In the tank, there was a brief silence as the crew paused to await my next order, broken only by the clatter of the shell casing being ejected from the cannon.
"That's the lot. Stand down." Unplugging my helmet intercom, I swung open my hatch and pulled myself out onto the roof of the turret, eager to get out of the stifling heat inside.
"Woo-hoo! Did you see that first shot, sir? Who knew haflings burned like that!"
Sergeant Teeva had followed me out of the commander's hatch, and was now perched on the barrel of the cannon. Massaging the blood back into her pointed ears, the elf flashed me her characteristic grin.
"Good shooting Teeva. Looks like you've adjusted to those new craft-made shells."
"Oh yes, the latest batch has just the right powder mix for my liking!" Still beaming, Teeva patted the roof of the tank like a beloved pet. "Ulther helped me clean the barrel last night too, which I think made all the difference."
At the mention of his name, the loader swung open his hatch to the right of mine. The dwarf sighed with relief as he emerged from the heat inside the tank, untucking his beard from inside his coveralls.
"That we did, sir. And I saw what happened with the bore evacuator, I'll mend it in camp tonight. Can't have smoke blowing in our faces mid-battle."
"That would be perfect." Teeva leaned over, and planted a kiss on the loader's forehead. "If I may be dismissed, Comm-"
I cut her off with a wave of my hand. "Go, make it quick!"
Ulther and I watched as she leapt down from the tank and disappeared into the treeline behind us. With a sigh, I stepped off the track guard and onto the ground, and began fishing around for a cigarette.
"You can hardly tell she's just blown something to kingdom come. Honestly, I'm not sure I could have taken another week of elven hyperactivity."
Ulther stepped down next to me, a feat made slightly more difficult by his short stature. Before I could offer him a cigarette, he had already produced a brass pipe from within his uniform and was fishing around for his lighter. "Aye sir. Let's hope that's got it out of her system for now."
"You don't have to sit behind her. I swear, if I ever meet the man who designed the commander's seat on the T-55..." As I spoke, I lifted my binoculars and aimed them in the direction of the town below us. "Looks like the civilians want to talk. Go up the line and tell the other vehicles to ready up, I'll be back in a second. Do I look...presentable?"
"In a style befitting your knightly status, sir. Besides, I'm not seeing any other nobles around to challenge you on that." With a salute, Ulther turned and headed towards the next tank a little further up the hill, still puffing on his pipe.
I returned his salute with a wry smile. I was dressed as a knight, though in a style that had only recently come into fashion on Eonos. Resplendent in olive green coveralls, army boots and a leather utility belt that carried my shining sword – or in this case, an old Makarov pistol. Leaving my trusty steed in its hull-down position, I donned my Soviet-style tanker helmet and set off down the hill towards the town.
Even on chilly mornings, my helmet was perfectly designed to make the head of any species uncomfortably hot and sweaty within minutes, and I was still mopping my face as the delegation approached. A chorus of "Thank you, sir Knight!" went up from the townsfolk as I took the hand of the elder.
"Please, no need to thank us. You did the right thing when you sent for the Lifeguards."
"About that, my lord..."
I pointed back up to the hill. "We've brought you a replacement radio. Your boy made good time on that horse of his but if he'd gotten lost, we wouldn't have made it. Look after this one!"
The townsfolk murmured their approval, and from behind the crowd I could see a few men struggling to roll a large barrel of ale up the hill towards us, no doubt as a gift. I smiled and shook hands with the elders, but as I glanced repeatedly back towards the company position, I could see no sign of the radio or the vehicle that had been carrying it. As the crews of the other vehicles began to appear in dribs and drabs to accept their "gifts", I excused myself and jogged up the trail that led back into the woods.
Suddenly, something leapt out from behind a bush and knocked me off balance. Whatever it was let out a triumphant yell, and I saw a flash of steel. My pistol had almost cleared its holster before I recognised the silver hair of my assailant.
"Teeva! Uh..."
"Commander!" Ever cheerful, the elf lowered the knife and laughed, as though she had not just been trying to kill me. "I thought you were a deer, sneaking around like that! I guess my devotion will have to wait...unless you want to-"
With a start, I rose to my feet, sending the elf tumbling back into the leaflitter. "Later, Sergeant! Have you seen Captain White anywhere? He's got that radio we were supposed to drop off with the civvies."
Teeva clapped a hand over her mouth, supressing a sudden giggle. "Oh Commander! I tried not to laugh, but I saw them on the road just now! They were in that ditch we nearly fell in yesterday."
"That explains it. Well, when you're done, mount up and await my orders. Maybe tell Reynauld to warm up the engine and drive up here, we're probably going to have to pull White out. And Teeva?"
The elf flipped the knife over in her hand and secreted it back into her boot holster. "Sir?"
"I want to go and take a look at the field before we leave. Would the corpses down there be...uh...sufficient?"
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Sticking half in and half out of a deep ditch by the side of the trail was a BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle. The APC had a long boat-like hull flanked by thin tracks, and topped by a comparatively tiny turret, sporting a 73mm cannon. The crew, consisting of a human and two dwarfs, were in the process of attaching a thick steel cable to a tow hook on the front of the hull when I approached. A gaggle of infantrymen, mostly humans, were milling about in roadway. As they belonged to the premier fighting force in the kingdom, they had the luxury of owning an assault rifle each, though their uniforms were the usual mix of Soviet gear patched over with local leatherwork.
"...the other side, get it dug in before you slide it under." I recognised the voice of Captain Dennis White, the American commander of the Royal Mechanised Infantry company.
Grinning, I held my wristwatch up to the light. "Hmmm. That's twenty minutes, thought you said you'd have it out by now?"
"Fuck off. If Tosh hadn't dug us deeper by going full throttle when I told him to stop, we'd have been out in five." White glared at one of the dwarfs, who wrung his soft cap between his hands nervously. "How'd it go up there? Didn't hear much shooting."
"Three eyeballs and a bunch of halflings. I reckon this was the group that hit those farms on the Ochre River last week. Not sure why they'd come this far into the kingdom, must be pretty desperate."
"Guess that strike last month killed a few more than we thought. Fingers crossed that we've made them an endangered species around here." White stood up, wiping his hands on his uniform. "Might as well send my guys in to secure the town. Make sure they don't get lost, will you?"
"No problem. I'll send my tank up here to pull you out."
With the infantry in tow, I jogged back down the track and returned to the company position overlooking the town. The crisp morning air was filled with the rumble of tank engines and the shouts of their crews as the nine other tanks under my command prepared to move out.
L-1, my personal vehicle, was a T-55M, a modernised variant of Earth's most produced tank. Weighing in at almost forty tons, it was small and undergunned by the standards of today's Abrams and Leopard tanks, but out here the legendary reliability and simplicity of the vehicle made it the tank of choice for the Kingdom of Hyneron. The old Socialist army had received seventy of the type back in the 1980s to equip their tank divisions, and they had fought in nearly every conflict on Eonos since. Fewer than half of those were known to have survived the War of the Seal, and even fewer without being extensively rebuilt by dwarven engineers. As I approached L-1, I could see the booted feet of Private Reynauld sticking out from underneath the hull.
"Reynauld?"
"Commander!" With a start, the gangly teenager pulled himself out from under the tank and stood to attention. " I...I was just checking the thaumic countermeasures. I don't think any magic came our way, but you never know. There are reports of mountain clan 'mancers as far as Eastervarn, and I wouldn't-"
"At ease, at ease." I jerked a thumb towards the tool kit on the hull of the tank. "We're heading back now. Before we do, would you mind filling in the trench? Would be rude to leave it as is."
Nodding, Reynauld began to udo the latches on the toolbox. A chorus of laughter went up from the infantry as I cracked him across the helmet with my glove.
"I'm joking! Crank it up and get us back on the road. Captain White fell in that ditch I warned you to steer clear of, we've got to pull him out."
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"Does she really have to do that?"
Dennis was looking past me towards where Teeva was hunched over the corpse of a particularly large hafling. My tank and crew had escorted the infantry down to the battlefield to examine the aftermath of the cyclops attack, and my subordinate and I had dismounted for a closer look.
"Elves will be elves, Captain. Remember Tookwool? Never seen a BTR driven like that, so we put up with it. Maybe he'd still be with us if he'd gotten that wound checked out, but still, that's the price we pay for having them in the company."
"Crazy bastard, not a nice way to go." Dennis grimaced as he turned his attention to the cyclops at our feet. "Ironwood shields? Since when did the mountain clans have an R&D department?"
I ran my hand across the surface of the shield. The metal face was pitted and scarred by numerous pieces of shrapnel, and even a few places where machine gun rounds had struck but not penetrated. The hole left by the HEAT round was roughly the size of my fist, and still warm to touch. Peering through, I could see that the shield was actually composed of several layers of material.
"Steel on the front, ironwood in the middle, then whatever this is...and steel on the back. Clever. Not enough to stop a 100 mil, but small arms might struggle."
"Well, Pete? Assessment? And don't say Mindscrivers, you'll freak the locals out."
I grimaced. "I mean...maybe they came up with the idea themselves? You know, in between mindlessly banging everything that moves for miles and rolling around in their own dung. Sure, they came up with the idea for composite armour on their own. Or..."
Dennis rolled his eyes. "Here we go with your conspiracy theory."
"...or, maybe people who know all about composite armour and what makes it useful are arming groups like the mountain clans in order to cause chaos in the kingdoms? Just like they have done dozens of times before? Think about it."
"You're giving a lot of credit to a bunch of commie magicians. Twenty years and they haven't figured out how to get off that island, but you think they're running a proxy war."
After examining the equipment of the cyclops, Dennis whistled for his BMP, and with the help of the vehicle we dragged the larger corpses back to solid ground. The shield fit neatly into the troop compartment of the BMP, and I tossed a few other interesting items into the storage bins on my tank for later.
As the infantry set about piling up the corpses into a bonfire, a chorus of shouts alerted us to the approach of the townsfolk. Bearing goblets, barrels of wine, and even some of the less able town elders, we were quickly surrounded by the cheering throng. Before I could stop them, the troops were mingling with the civilians, their duties forgotten, happily accepting the hospitality.
Ulther passed me a goblet, along with a scrap of paper. "Message just came through from the palace, sir. It's...ah, not the news you were perhaps hoping for."
"Ah, this will be for the support weapons I ordered...to...he did what?"
Peering over my shoulder, Dennis chuckled. "Glad to see the royals still have their priorities in order."
"But it's the last piece of functional rocket artillery in the kingdom!"
Dennis shrugged. "It's his Highness's birthday, and he loves fireworks."
The crowd raised their drinks in a toast. "To his Majesty's Royal Lifeguards! Protectors of the Kingdom of Hyneron! Long live the King!"
Putting on a smile, I clambered onto the roof of the armoured personnel carrier and raised my goblet, with Dennis following suit. "Long live the King!"