Chapter 16 : Laws of Form
The skirmish between Autumn and Winter rapidly deteriorated into a full scale conflict. To begin with, the battle went according to the plan which the Count and Pormysta had devised. The first wave of eight ice warriors were rapidly reduced to water and steam without a single human casualty. The second wave came in greater numbers, flinging icy spears and blasting beams of negative energy from their icicle fingers. This was an altogether more concentrated assault and four men were wounded before the Count ordered them to fall back.
A straggling band of ice warriors charged after the troops but it was a well organised retreat and they were caught by the flanking attack which Pormysta had ordered. Hot stones rained down on them from the tor and flaming spears struck them in the chest and legs. The stones shattered a couple completely and some of the spears did inflict a little damage but most of the warriors brushed them away like matchsticks. Five ice warriors got amongst the front lines of the gnomes and their touch reduced several of the tiny soldiers into shrivelled balls of frozen agony and killed four more outright. Even so, the gnomes torches proved partially effective in warding the attackers off. One assailant was steered into a shallow concealed trench dug by High Moors engineers. There had been no time to dig full blown pits and the trench was little more than a groove covered with heather but it was enough to make the warrior stumble and fall full length on the ground. Before the automata could rise again it had been smashed by multiple blows from fifteen small but fully functional ice axes. Another fusillade of hot stones provoked a confused retreat from the remaining pale blue giants.
Meanwhile, the Count and his men were able to reform on the flank and direct their Dragon guns at a second wave of warriors who were emerging to reinforce the battle front. Most of these met their fate at the end of a line of flame but some did manage to turn and strike out. Two of the Count's soldiers were too slow to prevent ice warriors closing on them and they were frozen to death by the deadly touch.
After that it all started to get a bit messy.
Colonel Frost and the Agents of the Proton King overlooked the battle from the top of Claremont Crag. It was an ideal location to supervise the ice captains and warriors but the Autumn Country's pre-emptive strike had caught them out. Eryndra was the one responsible for the first unfortunate charge, misdirecting her contingent straight onto the flames of the Count's soldiers. Sunanon backed her up, but his warriors were the ones to get caught by the gnomes. By the time Colonel Frost had imposed enough discipline to launch a second and more organised assault the moor was dripping with the watery blood of close to twenty ice warriors. Then they started to turn it round. The Colonel directed a small force out wide on the right to flank the High Moor gnomes holding the tor, whilst Kark and Jepson organised a similar force on the left which succeeded in bypassing the Yellow Mere lines and falling on them from behind. When the Colonel's warriors began their assault on the tor, they were met with a bombardment from the Pine Valley station but it wasn't accurate enough to do any real damage and in any case the stones fell equally on defenders and attackers alike, provoking a degree of panic in the High Moor gnomes. A circling swan flew back to the Pine Valley lines and from its back R'eskyl'ah'in ordered the firing to cease. In the confusion which followed, the Colonel's warriors captured the tor, destroyed the catapults and wreaked havoc amongst some of Pormysta's finest soldiers.
The Colonel commanded Tarragon, Jepson and Browning into the fray, pushing their reserves forward to drive a wedge between the distracted Yellow Mere troops and the remnant of Pormysta's own tribe, who were trying to reorganise on the moor.
There is a tide which must be taken at the flood, the Colonel thought. Now is the full flood of winter. Let them feel it!
He switched his attention back to the base of the crag, leaving only a small part of his mind to direct the moping up operation on the tor. Count Arcturus was the main threat and he must be neutralised. Even as the battle took its course, the Colonel's reserves were boosted by the arrival of another thirty pale blue troops. Now he took direct control of them and unleashed a hail storm of his hardest frozen warriors. They erupted from the wood in sufficient numbers to overwhelm the Count and his hapless contingent of men.
The battlefield had become a killing ground. The organised formations of Autumn Country defenders were blown apart into isolated fragments of surviving soldiers, their Dragon guns spraying random gouts of panic stricken flame like embers swirling in a tempest after the fire has been scattered to ashes.
Blood is thicker than water, the Colonel thought with sombre satisfaction as he watched the resulting slaughter. Thicker and slower.
Over most of the moor, the gnomes were in full retreat whilst Kark, Jepson and the rest hunted them down ruthlessly. Only the Pine Valley contingent had retained sufficient discipline to hold their place and launch an occasional volley of hot stones into the fray. But with the ice warriors now scattered and picking off their victims at will, the Pine Valley gnomes had no concentrated targets at which to aim. If they weren't doing any real damage, the Colonel wasn't worried about them; they could be cleaned up later. He had seen the way that R'eskyl'ah'in was trying to rally his forces but it was quite hopeless. The Colonel wondered whether to have one of his captains strike Cloud Of Truth from the sky with a blast of cold. His advance forces were just about in range. He held off for a while, biding his time until he could get a clear shot over the ground he controlled. The gnome prophet would be a useful hostage if he had to fight later battles in the wood.
Frozen bodies covered the wasteland, mixing blood and ice crystals. From out of the Christmas Passage came a blast of Winter more intense than anything it had breathed before, a cold river of deadly air carrying ten million snowflakes. The Colonel smiled as he watched the sudden whitening of the moor enhanced by a sympathetic fall from the grey clouds. Soon the battle would be over. This place would become the frozen heights from which he would launch his conquest of the rest of the Realm. For all the bad planning and incompetence which had prevented an unopposed invasion, it was a very good beginning : a very good beginning indeed.
One man's good beginning is another man's bad ending.
Count Arcturus, A'lekim and Harry Hammond had all but reached theirs. They stood at the crest of a small knoll close to the wintry oak trees at the base of the Crag. They had accounted for a score of ice warriors between them, but now the fuel in the Dragon guns was running out. Now they were bone cold, weary and surviving on determination alone. Two ice captains were besieging them, keeping a ring of warriors out of range of the guns and casting icy spears instead, which had to be picked out of the air before they could do any damage. This was wasting fuel and achieving nothing. Soon they would die.
The Count tried to consider this dispassionately. If the battle was lost then the gnomes in the forest would fare no better. All Yaskarrak could hope to achieve was to delay the inevitable. When Winter had a hold as strong as this it would not relax its grip for anything so trivial as a second gnome army. Nor would Desmond fare much better at the fortress. The seneschal had as many men as the Count had brought and he had his own Dragon guns but it would do no good. Winter would overrun the keep. Tarragon could probably trick his way inside and open the gates but even if he didn’t, the invading forces were much too strong to resist. That would mean the end of his little community of soldiers, old men, women and children. All would be slaughtered alike by the Winter. It would mean the end of the Autumn Country too.
There was only one solution. The Count hated the idea but it was his prerogative. The Owner had warned him not to use it lightly and he was well aware of the dangers. Ah well. If he was going to die anyway he might as well take some of these soulless icicles with him.
The Count reached into his jerkin and pulled out the gold battle medallion which hung on a chain around his neck. There was a certain very specific design on the back face - a design which was known only to scholars of arcane lore and trouble makers in the Twilight Realms. But it was a design that belonged to the Autumn Country and was rooted firmly in its ways and Laws of Form. The Count unhooked the medallion from the clasp on the chain and slipped it into his pocket.
"Cover me for a while," he ordered the other two. "I only need a few seconds".
He took a dagger from its scabbard and without hesitating, stuck the point quickly and firmly into the middle of the palm of his left hand, bringing a bright drop of blood to the surface. He winced and reached for the medallion with his other hand, swiftly clasping both hands together so that the bloody palm was pressed firmly against the ancient seal.
He said a word that ought not to be said. The blood on the medallion was the counter signature.
I hope you're ready for this R'eskyl'ah'in, the Count thought. I've just given your anti-social neighbours a wake up call.
There was a loud unnatural rushing wind and the tops of the frozen oaks bent and thrashed to the extent that three boughs cracked clean off simultaneously. Lightning struck four or five times in quick succession.
"What have you done?" Harry said uneasily. He let loose another blast of flame to discourage an approaching ice warrior.
"I've done the only thing I can," the Count said, strangely at peace now that the decision had been taken. He squeezed the trigger of his own Dragon gun and watched the comforting orange bloom of fire push the ice warriors back.
"In the world where Pendramon comes from they have a military term for it. It's a metaphor which is oddly appropriate for fighting the Proton King. They use it when they mean that a conflict has escalated out of control and the ultimate weapon has been unleashed.
"They call it 'going nuclear'.
"Well this war has just 'gone nuclear' in the terms of our Laws of Form. I've just unleashed the Autumn Country's ultimate weapon…"
They came from the castings of perverted shadows in the bowels of the forest, whose geometry makes a darkness deeper than the mere absence of light. They came from places where the sun is scared to shine. They rose with the halitosis of rank air from caverns where dripping water labours night and day to join stalactites and stalagmites into stone columns, making fish bones in the throat of the earth. They came from obsessive brooding over blood soaked ruins and the hateful sites of old, never to be forgotten murders. They came from unholy stone circles with vile histories which the gnomes had never dared to sanctify and reclaim. They came from the barrows and the graveyards and the tombstones and the places where the mist wolves make their lairs. Above all, they came from the blackness at the back of the mind whose mother is ignorance and whose father is fear.
The Autumn Country is not their only home, for they have both many homes and none, and they can cross the Barriers when they wish. But the Autumn Country is one of their homes and a Realm where their power is strong, for the Autumn Country is the place of their feasting hall. In other Realms their names are whispered only with dread and when they roam the land the doors are shut and the fires stoked higher. They are the spirits whose feast is the Eve of All Hallows, the spirits of Halloween.
And these were the eldritch agents that the Count had summoned. They came at the speed of thought, for that is the speed with which they always travel. They sensed the threat of desecration, the threat that their dark haunts would be destroyed by the bright cold of the Proton King's eternal winter snows. They were here to fight.
"Shit!" Kark said with feeling. "What in hell's name are those things!"
"They are the Autumn Country's last throw of the dice. After this, they are finished," Colonel Frost said. His expression was even bleaker than usual.
"In the long term they cannot survive our assault on the laws of form. Their time is almost over."
"That's all very well but what about the short term?" Kark asked. He had just witnessed a grinning pumpkin headed monstrosity take out one of the frozen captains with a single malevolent glare. Flickering candle eyes and a cartoon zig-zag mouth had suddenly had let forth a blast of fire which turned the warrior into a molten puddle of water in seconds.
Colonel Frost hesitated for a moment as the Agents watched the black tide of Halloween horrors engage with the Colonel's ice warriors in an orgy of mutual destruction. It was the first time the Agents had seen any doubt in the Proton King's lieutenant. The tide of battle was turning. Despite the ferocious blasts of cold radiation flung from the ice warriors fingers and the fierce resolution with which they swung their battle axes and threw their frozen spears, their enemies were pushing them back towards the foot of Claremont Crag and the Temple Of November. The trouble was, the Halloween spirits didn’t fear the cold. They were accustomed to dallying with the deep cold in the human heart and the weapons of winter hardly affected them.
"I must admit," the Colonel said at last, "that in the short term there could be a problem…"
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