Hand of the Wicked

Chapter Four

The army split into three parts less than a week later. The V.A.C. forces made for the Settru Pass to the east. Settru was the pass through the Korum mountains by which Dryden had made his escape to Andaban. The Company forces would chase the main body of the rebel army and prepare to invade Vurun directly. The King’s army went north along the western edge of the Korum, where the hills met the broad flat desert of the west. The cavalry cut northwest, following the path taken by Aisa’s forces. With the Settru pass occupied by the V.A.C. army, the most likely path that Aisa and her clans would take to escape was closed. The king’s forces would cut off the next most convenient escape. The cavalry would hound her.

The 13th Dragoons, the 6th Hussars, and the 3rd Dravani Lancers rode out together behind the banner of the Bloody 13th. Havelock had been made an acting Colonel to command such a force of men. Seven hundred cavalrymen they were at the start. The wind blew strong from the south as they rode out away from the army. It was a dry hot wind that blew the dust from the two thousand horses.

“They’ll make forty miles per day,” General Haddock had told them during their briefing the day before, “I want you to make forty-five.”

That demand was not a simple one. It was a demanding pace. Horses needed hay. Men needed ready food. Not only that but extra horses were needed. Every trooper needed a horse. They needed extras because horse often went lame, and they needed more for the speed they intended to make. Not only did the soldiers need horses, but the entire army, including the baggage train, needed mounts to keep that pace. Officers had three or four horse per man. Every down to the cooks and servants needed mounts. The number of horses and the support for them was staggering. Dryden himself only had Rosie now. He’d had more than one horse when he’d arrived in Vurun. He’d been down to two at the outset of the rebellion. Now it was just he and Rosie. At least she was a sturdy horse, she had seen him through Golconda, up the Settru Pass, and down the other side to Andaban. She’d been wounded and exhausted, but she’d carried him all the way herself. Dryden knew he’d need another horse, and soon. But if any horse could make the pace alone, it was Rosie. She was as stout a horse as he’d ever had.

The horse were chosen to make this trip, however, because the path that led out into the desert and away from the mountains followed an old road that went between the oasis towns. This was the road that Aisa meant to pillage. It was a road her cavalry could follow. Vastrum could follow it too. The road was not, strictly speaking, a proper road with pavement. It was simply a well-worn track that crossed the desert. They were near the first town on the road when they smelled smoke. It was not long until a scout returned with ill tidings.

“Major, Sir.” The scout saluted Dryden as he rode up. He was a Dravani rider of the 3rd lancers. He wore the blue and yellow uniforms of their unit. He was a young man, dark-skinned, with long straight black hair tied in a plait down his back.

“Report.”

“The town ahead is burned, sir.”

“Survivors?”

“None.”

“What of the dead?”

“Left for the vultures.” The man spat after he said the words. Dryden knew that the Dravani held great respect for the dead.

Dryden leaned back and turned to a nearby sergeant, “Name, sergeant?” He was still learning the men under his command.

“Sergeant McFinley, sir.” The man saluted. His accent was thick. He was a man of short but thick stature. He had the red hair and green eyes of a Vastrum islander, that part of the old empire that consisted of a hundred small islands off the coast of the main part of the country. His stout-looking face sported a well-groomed red moustache.

“Well, Sergeant McFinley, inform Colonel Havelock. I will be taking Khathan’s Squadron and some Dravani to secure the town.”

Captain Khathan rode next to Dryden. He turned and bellowed orders to the men around them. The big Guludan officer was a strong presence. Men snapped to follow his orders. Less than an hour later the front elements of the 13th, including Dryden, were riding into the village.

It was a small place. Before today, to Dryden and the other officers, it had been a small dot on a map of the colony. Its name, Dryden remembered, was Kugall. That was what had been written in black ink. Nothing more. In reality, it had been a stone well, a handful of stone buildings, and a few palm trees. The few people who had lived here were dead and left to rot in the sun. Feasting vultures flew off when the riders approached. They checked the well and found that a dead body had been left to fester in its depths. Some troopers were set to bury the corpses. Even though it would slow the cavalry battalion, Dryden would not make that mistake again.

When one of the men who was on the detail complained, he told him, “Burn the dead or bury them deep, lest the witch raise bones from their sleep.“ It had become a common refrain among the Sommerhall soldiers in the garrison at Andaban. No funeral rites or magic seemed to be able to keep the dead from rising when the witch worked her necromancy. There were enough men to bury the dead here, that it was done before the rest of the battalion had caught up. Still, the decision was made to carry on past the town. The water supply was tainted, and they would find no succour in Kugall.

The next town was the same, as was the one after that. A burned-out village around a small well that had been tainted intentionally by the enemy. These villages had names. Inzah. Uludi. Zhazhdanan. They had been points on a map. Stops on the old road from east to west. Now they were nothing. The Witch of Vurun had seen to that. Three days passed before they saw any signs of life on the old road aside from vultures and wild dogs. Somewhere ahead of them in the distance, as they approached another dot on the map, muskets fired. Someone in this vast desert still lived.

The column had stopped, “What’s the next village?” Colonel Havelock asked.

“Ruvat Ban. It is an old caravanserai built in the ruins of a Styranian fort, as I understand it.” Captain Adams explained.

Havelock nodded, “Someone still defends it, it would appear. Let us ride to their rescue. Captain Adams, lead us in.”