Kingdom's Fall

Chapter 24, Part 2

They heard the battle before they saw it. Dusk was starting to fall, the sky streaked purple and orange, when the first tremor passed through the ground beneath them. It was soft - far off - but still noticeable underfoot, and the oxen pulling the carts stopped in their tracks, snorting their displeasure. Cuan looked at Gray, who was riding on the powder wagon, and the old soldier shrugged down at him.

"Landslide?" Cuan asked.

One of the Engineers, a wiry, thin-faced woman called Jerek, answered him. "Unlikely," she said. "Not enough steep rock until we get back into the foothills, and even then it wouldn't feel like that. Rockfall would feel more spread out."

A second tremor passed underfoot, this time more powerful, or closer - Cuan couldn't decide. The oxen stomped, backing up in their harness and trying to turn, and the Engineers rushed to try and control them. Over the sound of their voices as they soothed the animals, Cuan heard a distinctive crack, followed by another, and then another. Gunfire.

"Should we go check it out?"

Gray eased himself down off the cart, favouring his injured arm as he came. His face gave no sign of discomfort, but the movement was deliberately awkward to save him putting weight on it. "We're going to have to," he said. "I doubt we could get far enough on before we have to stop for the night. Sitting and hoping trouble won't come our way isn't much of a plan."

"Maybe I should go on my own," Cuan offered. "See what's happening and then we can decide."

Gray grinned, and Cuan finally saw the pain there, a pain that the Commander was holding on tight to. "It's good of you to offer, lad, but I think we'll go in force just to be sure."

They left three of the Engineers to watch over the oxen, the remaining six taking up their guns and falling in behind Cuan and Gray as they set off. The sound of gunfire was infrequent, as whoever was firing had to reload, but every time shots rang out they did so in chorus.

"It must be soldiers," Cuan said, loping along in a half-crouch that mimicked Gray's.

"Aye, but not fighting each other," Gray said. "There's no answering fire." The ground trembled beneath them for a pace, and was still again. "From that tremor I'd say a siege engine, but what use is a siege engine with nothing to fire at?"

"They'd just rush the crew and kill them."

"Aye. As much as we have to know, I'll say it now - I don't want to."

They ran the length of a low rise, the shots echoing close on the far side of it, and as they crested the ridge Cuan stopped in his tracks, unable to believe what he was seeing.

It was a cockroach. A cockroach as big as two of the wagons put together, the long, oval disc of its body held twice the height of a grown man off the ground by long, spike-covered legs that angled precariously at their middle joints. It had two pairs of wings - one longer set at the front, and a squat, triangular pair at the back - and as Cuan watched it launched itself into flight, lifting away from the ground to reveal a group of a dozen or so Carelian soldiers huddled tight in a square almost underneath it. The men fired, screaming over the sound of their own guns with animal desperation, and then scattered as the cockroach came back down to land on the spot where they had been with a bone-shuddering thump. The soldiers regrouped, trying to split their attention between the cockroach and their ammunition as they re-formed under the sway of its massive head. As successful as the fire-and-scatter tactic seemed to be at keeping them alive, Cuan could see that it hadn't always been the case. Enough crushed and broken bodies lay dead in the cockroach's wake to suggest that the unit had once been twice as many in number. Yellow-green blood lay in pools mixed in with the bodies, but the cockroach showed no sign of succumbing to the bullet wounds that cratered its abdomen.