The Exiled Duke's Lottery system

Halder’s Reach, transport platform, second yard

The two guards on the platform had been standing there since dawn.

"Something big’s going on," the first one said.

"And what makes you say that?"

"Dont you feel the atmosphere has been very tense"

"This is a fortress,it can be normal"

"And the couriers. One out before dawn, another an hour after, then two more, and one about twenty minutes ago." He shifted his spear to the other hand. "Castellan’s been in session since ten. Nobody’s come out of that room all morning. And every officer who’s crossed this yard today has been walking too fast."

"So?"

"So what do you think it is?"

"How should I know? I cannot tell the future, can I."

"You could guess."

"I could guess and be wrong too."

Just then a WHOOSH.

The formation cut into the platform stones lit up under their boots — every line of it at once, gold and rising.

"Why is it lighting?" The first guard was already off the edge. "Nobody’s due today. Was there?"

"Nobody’s due."

Then with a deep hum.

Four hundred and eleven men came onto the platform at once.

They came out packed shoulder to shoulder, still in the mud they had been standing in, half of them holding somebody else up. Blood on nearly all of them. Wounded lying at the feet of the men who had carried them. A cannon sergeant with a crystal box under his arm sat straight down on the stones.

The guards immediately became alert.

Then a man came down off the platform edge toward them. No helmet. Blood dried down one side of his face and more across his chest, and a horse behind him that was bleeding too.

"Where is the fortress master?" he said. "I have something important to tell him."

"Sir—"

"Where is he."

"Council chamber, sir. Above the Great Hall." The first guard was already running. "I will take word — Kellen, get the healers! All of them"

Kellen shouted for the healers down the length of the yard, then turned back and looked at the man in front of him properly.

"Sir. Are you all right?"

"Yes," Marsh said.

The healers came running and then more of them, and then the fortress cooks as well.

They started healing on the platform. Men who had been carried a hundred miles in the last two minutes were laid out on the stones in rows, and the ones who could still stand made room by stepping back off the edge and standing in the mud of the yard instead.

Soon the Castellan came down himself flanked by his personal guards.

Orwin Rache held Halder’s Reach. Marsh had met him twice by his wits.

He came through the crowd, looked at men standing on his platform then turned towards marsh.

"Which line?"

"Third sector, sir. The canal."

"Lost it?"

"Yes sir."

Rache took that in.

"The healers have them. Come up." He was already turning. "You, the dwarf, and the mage on the chair."

They soon came to room.It had a table, six chairs and a map on the wall, and Rache shut the door himself.

Ilder was carried in and set down. Bren stood, the hand-axe was still through his belt.

"Now," Rache said. "Tell everything from the beginning."

Marsh soon started telling everything.

From the smoke on the far bank. The swarm out of it first, running, and Iron Maw clan regular soldiers coming up through the middle of them. The cannons firing at eight hundred paces and the front of the swarm coming apart.

Then five machines out of the smoke behind all of it.

"Machines."

"Iron boxes, sir. Low at the front, sloped, wider than a wagon and longer. They run on belts, not wheels — belts that go round and round on their own." Marsh spread his hands to show it. "A round drum on top of each one that turns, with a pole out of the front of it. That pole is a weapon. There is a second, smaller up on the roof beside it."

"How large?"

"Taller than a man at the shoulder. Heavy enough to leave ruts a foot deep in the meadow." He shook his head. "I cannot tell you what they weigh, sir. I can tell you the ground did not like them."

"And what pulls them?"

"Nothing. No beast, no crew outside, nothing pushing. They make a low steady noise the whole time and they simply move." Marsh’s voice stayed level. "They came down the bank, went into the canal, came out the other side, and did not slow down."

"How deep is that canal?"

"Deep enough to drown a man chest deep."

"And it did not slow them."

"It did not slow them, sir. The water came up over the lower part of them and they kept going, and they came up my bank with mud sheeting off the front."

"And your cannons?"

"I took every cannon off the swarm and put them on the machines. Nineteen pieces. Five or six missed by a few metres, the rest landed all round them, and one landed square on the second machine."

"And?"

"It stopped for four seconds. Then it straightened up and came on like nothing happened."

Rache looked at him a moment. Then at the dwarf.

"You are the artificer."

"Bren Marlok, sir. On that line since it was dug."

"Explain it to me."

"It’s the wrong weapon, sir. That’s the whole of it." Bren did not move from where he stood. "Our cannon doesnae punch through anything. It bursts. The mass travels, comes apart into fire, and takes everythin’ soft that’s inside it. Which is exactly what ye want when there’s four thousand of them wading through a meadow, and it is what we have wanted since this war started, because there has never been one hard thing out there worth punchin’ a hole in."

"And now there is."

"Now there’s five of them. Puttin’ a mana mass on one is a bucket o’ fire thrown at a rock. Ye’ll scorch it. Ye might knock somethin’ off the outside." Bren shrugged. "Ye’ll not open it."

Marsh went on.

The machines coming up onto the other side two hundred paces out and stopping there. Choosing the ground.

Then the drum turning, and the pole coming round the line of cannons, and stopping.

"The fourth cannon went first. One shot. No mana mass, no light, nothing that came on the way — a solid thing arrived, and then the cannon was not there. Six men on that crew." Marsh paused. "Then the seventh. Then the eleventh. They took them in order along the line, sir. Left to right, with long seconds between each one."

"They were choosing."

"They were choosing. And my crews had to stand behind their canons and watch a barrel come round and pick." Marsh’s jaw clenched once. "Six cannons in about twenty minutes. Thirteen still standing at the end, and every one of them useless."

"What did it do to the earthworks themselves?"

"It took the sand out with the guns. One shot opened a gap wide enough to walk four men through, and the shot that killed the fourteenth took the parapet with it and left the trench behind it open to the meadow."

"And the swarm went in there."

"The swarm went in there. It had been in my earthworks since I took the cannons off it, and my infantry held it hand to hand for the whole time, and that is where most of my nineteen hundred men went."

Rache kept quiet.

"I called for the goblins. Three airships came in minutes, went over the machines and dropped everything they had. They opened one along the top and killed it." Marsh let that sit. "Then the drum turned it’s pole—up,at the sky — and put a solid thing through a gasbag, and the ship came down across the meadow with eleven goblins in it. The other two climbed out, and one was venting gas the whole way south."

"One machine for one airship."

"One machine for one airship, sir. It is the only trade of the day I would make again."

"And then you charged them," Rache said.

"Then I charged them. Four hundred riders, standard arrow formation, two hundred paces we covered the distance in minute." Marsh looked at the table. "They fired into the wedge before we closed. When we reached them, hatches opened on the roofs and a demon came up out of each one to machine and used the small pole. Those turn faster than the big gun does."

"How many came back?"

"Eighty-eight up and nine carried."

"Lances did go into the sides about a hand’s width and stop," Marsh said. "They go into the front and skid off it. Riders got round the back, where the plate was thinner, and put lanves into the boxes at the rear — and one machine started tearing somewhere inside itself after that and could not steer." He stopped. "I used the family skill. My lance went in at the join between the body and the drum, and every seam on that hull lit up from the inside, and everything stopped probably got everyone in it. That is two of the five."

"And the other three?"

"Standing in that meadow now." Marsh nodded at Ilder. "He put them in chains for four minutes so we could get the men out."

Rache turned to the mage.

"Golden Time Lock, sir." Ilder’s voice was thin. "It held them for five minutes, It was the only spell i could think for getting everyone out ."

"And the scroll?"

"Mine," Marsh said. "I have carried it since I took the sector. I used it."

"You will not have another this year according to the alliance distribution rules then."

"I am aware, sir."

Rache went to the window and stood there a moment.

"Is that everything?"

"No, sir." Marsh put his hand flat on the table. "I took one of them in my space ring before we retreated."

Rache turned round.

"Say that again."

"The one I put down. Whole — body, belts, drum, and whatever is inside it. I took it off the field in my ring while I was riding." Marsh spread his fingers. "Give me a yard with a floor that will hold it and I will put it down for your artificers within the hour."

Rache looked at the marsh for a long moment.

"That," he said, "is the first useful thing anybody has said to me in two days."

Marsh went still.

"Sir. Did something happen to others."

Rache went to the map on the wall.

"You were the third sector." He put a finger on it. Then moved it and put it down again. And again. "Second sector, at first light. Fifth. Eighth. Eleventh. The Kelder crossing at about noon."

"Kelder is a chokepoint."

"Kelder is a chokepoint and it is theirs as of four hours ago."

Marsh looked at the map.

"That is five besides mine."

"Five besides yours. Every one of them reported machines behind the swarm, cannons that did nothing, and a line that went in an afternoon." Rache’s finger moved once more, further east, and stopped. "And this is the ninth sector."

"Sir?"

"There was no withdrawal from the ninth. No scroll. No report." Rache did not take his finger off the map. "Nobody has come out of it. Two thousand one hundred men all dead. We know what happened because the twelfth line watched it through a spyglass from four miles off, and then the twelfth pulled back without waiting for orders, and I have decided not to hang the officer who gave that order."

Nobody spoke for a while.

Bren was the one who broke it.

"How many machines at the other lines?"

"Five at the second. Five at the fifth. Six at the eighth, or maybe six is what they counted." Rache came away from the map. "No information at Kelder. And the ninth is a hole in my map."

"Then they built at least thirty of them," Bren said. "And they probably also didnae build thirty and send all thirty."

"No," Rache said. "They did not."

"Six lines," Marsh said. "In one day."

"Yes six lines in one day, on a front that has not moved an inch since it was drawn. So you are not the man who brings me the news, Captain. You are the sixth man to bring me the news."

He looked at Marsh’s hand again.

"And you are the first one who brought me the thing itself.so get it out of that ring."