Theodosius Valkorion's Arc

Chapter 15 of 22

Inag's second rider came in before the horses were saddled. The forward enemy column had broken from the other two and pushed hard through the night. It would strike the pass before dusk the next day. Heinrich's main column, and the fresh spears from the five lords, would arrive a full day after that. Thraxes would meet the column at a breached wall with a single legion and a cannon in the gap. Theodosius went to the map table in the hall. He measured the road with his fingers. He could not move the pass. He could not shrink the day. He could only put more men on the wall before dusk tomorrow, or Thraxes would be overrun and the pass would open behind him. He sent for the head of the Imperial Peacekeepers. Arcturus Zanator rode in from the town below an hour later in his light white and blue kit, the small four-pointed star on his chest scuffed from the saddle. He was not a soldier. He kept order in streets and markets. He had six hundred peacekeepers within a day's ride of the pass, watching the roads Theodosius had drawn under the new code. "I need your six hundred at the wall by dusk tomorrow," Theodosius said. Zanator looked at the map. "Peacekeepers aren't line troops." "They wear armor. They carry spears. They stand where I tell them." "Then who holds the roads behind you?" "No one, for two days. After that, Heinrich's column takes the roads as it comes up." Zanator did not argue further. He gave a short nod. "Six hundred. Dusk tomorrow. I ride now." He rode. Theodosius sent Peacekeeper Heron with him to carry the written order to each station along the road, so no captain could claim he had not seen the seal. By noon the next day the peacekeepers came up the pass road in loose companies, not in step, their light armor bright against the rock. Thraxes met them at the breach in his white and blue plate with the red accents at the shoulder. He put them behind the cannon in the gap and along the sound stretch of the south wall. He gave them stakes and told them where to plant. The forward column struck at dusk, as the rider had said. The cannon fired twice into the front of it and broke the head of the assault. The peacekeepers held the breach with the legion behind them until full dark, when the enemy pulled back to camp and wait for its other columns. The pass held. Thraxes sent word at moonrise: the wall was kept, but a third of the peacekeepers were dead in the breach, and the roads behind the pass now stood empty of any imperial watch.