Rip and TEA Regiment

Brochwel and company picked up the imperial army just southeast of Gorges de Beaulancre. Here the road toward Kirrglos twisted through ravines carving between old limestone bluffs and forests of pine and monkey puzzle. He had brought his unit down from the plateau by one of the volcanic ridges, and first order of business had been strapping foliage to their helmets and the horses' fabric barding. Anything that made them hard to spot from the air. Now they had split up, creeping along the ridges over the army, which marched along where the dusty road straightened for a moment before it turned again at the foot of a steep slope.

Such a bright, sunny day. Perfect weather for an ambush.

"Alright, let's gather them up."

On his order, and a signal flashed to the other side of the ravine with the sun and Tecca's compact mirror, a pair of butcher elk and a scimitar-toothed cat summon rushed through the trees toward the sides of the imperial formation. Brochwel began signaling Duhaan on the ridge in front of the imperial column.

General Haute wasn't to be seen with this first company of his army, but they performed as if they were under royal review. A whistle blew, the column stopped, closed what small gaps had formed, then swung spears out in unison to form a razor-sharp wall on either side.

It was beautiful, really. A straight column of troops, six across and many deep, moving in unison to defend each other from cavalry or fast moving summons. So smoothly done it must have been halfway to becoming an instinct.

Which made it predictable.

Duhaan's summon, an armadillo big enough to block a road, rolled off the base of the slope with a crash of bushes and small trees being crushed. Tucked into its round armor to roll down the slope, gravity had helped it pick up tremendous speed. When it hit a small rock, the eight-ton animal went airborne, trailing dust in its wake. The imperial soldiers tried to scatter, but in their tight defensive formation only those at the edges had anywhere to go.

Screams signaled impact.

"Alright, let's not wait around."

Brochwel tapped sunlight toward the two ridges with the mirror, then they ran back to their horses and set off. Below the second company rushed up to fend off the butcher elk. Haute's soldiers got their own summons searching the ridgeline above, but found only footprints.

The Tea Regiment kept hitting the column in steadily evolving ways. Haute began ordering his summoners to keep creatures guarding the flanks at all times. Brochwel started by positioning his archers on ridges above the road to extend their range, then had his summoners tunnel under the path and collapse it as the army's supply wagons tried to catch up.

Messing with the road signs proved ineffective (some of the imperial soldiers were from here), so Brochwel switched to triggering rockslides. Even when the falling stones missed and piled harmlessly in front of the column, it was still an obstacle they had to clear while bolts of lightning lanced out of unexpected corners of the valley. Through it all, Brochwel's primary task was striking down summons that came to find them.

When the imperials made camp that night, the only flat ground large enough was on the bend of a river. Brochwel and his team dammed the river downstream and flooded the camp. As the soldiers splashed toward the blockage, the Tea Regiment fell upon the surviving supply wagons and their guards.

"This is ..." Izabel said as she slouched under the weight of sack of stolen rations, eyelids drooping and feet dragging. "... The best day of my life."

Someone shouted the most bedraggled, worn out shout Brochwel had heard in years, "Brochwel, they don't have any horse feed to steal!"

"Of course they don't. Aside from the officers it's all infantry."

"Oh, right."

"Just grab more arrows and get out. They'll be back soon."

Spirits remained high, but exhaustion was starting to set in. Brochwel's heart sank the next morning when he saw a lone odonaran descend toward the soggy ruins of the imperial camp.

"Hey, Duhaan." Brochwel shook him by the shoulder. "Wake up."

The wolfboy tried to burrow further into his blanket and roll away, but ran into a tree root. "Five more minutes."

"You left your shrew summon down there, right? Somebody important looking just landed. I need you to relay what they're saying."

After some grumbling, Duhaan sat up. He stared into the middle distance, his ears swiveling from side to side to match his shrew, which had poked its head over the top of a tent stake to listen.

"The blonde in white is asking for air support ... the winged guy is saying yes, but only a few ... blonde exasperated, demanding to know why ... because it's Baron Bonthorpe's sixtieth and he reserved most of them for aerobatic display ... hang the birthday revue—ah! My shrew got found."

Brochwel patted Duhaan's shoulder. "Well, good to know the empire is just as prone to fussy nobles as the rest of us. Let's get everybody up."

The most sleep anyone in the canyon had gotten that night was just shy of an hour. And the coming day showed it. Brochwel's force started to get sloppy, struggling to get on their horses quickly. The imperial army trudged along, and finally fell (briefly) for one of the messed up road signs. Brochwel lost an archer who got too close around noon, then a caster who didn't escape his firing position quick enough a couple hours later. A trio he had sent to set up a trap went the wrong way down a slot canyon and were soon surrounded; he could only hope they managed to surrender.

All the while Brochwel positioned himself to intercept the summons that managed to find them.

"Sir! Above!"

Brochwel finished stabbing a boar summon then staggered back to try and see through the tree tops. "Where?"

"Nevermind, they turned."

A little while later, as he and the summoners were preparing a stand of tall trees for an ambush, again someone shouted that the odonarans were here.

"Which direction?"

"Oh, sorry, some dark shape flew at them. Just missed it."

There was only one odonaran Brochwel could imagine would even dream of helping him. The old one had said Aoda was hiding out from her arrest warrant somewhere around here. But did she even know he was here? Could very well be that Aoda was just fighting off those she thought were here to capture or kill her, with no idea he was near or even alive.

Seemed they were destined to keep missing each other.

"Alright, positions everyone. I think we've frustrated the general just enough he might do something impulsive for once."

Brochwel brought the archers to the enemy flank, firing over the summons that were supposed to protect them, but summon and summoner got sluggish after nearly two days of continuous vigilance. They rode back between soaring trees toward a slot canyon with summoned animals nipping at their heels and a great yell rising behind them as General Haute gave the order to pursue, cutoff, and overwhelm.

Brochwel and his troops slipped through the slot, every summon following them got a face-full of lightning and ice. For good measure, some rocks were dropped on them too, to close the way.

"They're in position, sir." Duhaan said, borrowing the sight of his shrew who this time went unnoticed.

"Thank you. Summoners, drop the canopy."

With a faint gnawing that went unheard under the soldiers' war cry, the last bit of wood holding the weight of a dozen hundred-foot-tall trees was cut away. Most fell their intended direction, toward a column in headlong rush. The evening air filled with the crash of wood and wails of terror.

This was it. Brochwel looked at his unit and knew that they had acquitted themselves extremely well, but they had now been in near-continuous battle for over two days. He had one javelin left. The archers counted two arrows between them. And just beyond this canyon the terrain opened up into rolling grasslands, and Brochwel's exhaustion-addled mind wasn't switching gears for flat, open-land fighting. Exemplary work had already been done. Whether it was enough to convince Haute to delay or call off his attack remained to be seen. More would cost them dearly for little reward. Time to go.

"Alright. Single file up that trapper's path, then ride north-east. From here on we can do more by being rested and ready to help General Callaway's forces. Ride home."

A cheer so exhausted it sounded sarcastic went up, and the Tea Regiment began their withdrawal. Their horses labored up a narrow footpath. Brochwel waited to be the last to go, in case some summoned eagle flew over the cliff to attack them on the narrow way up the cliff.

He needed a shave. And a bath. When was the last time he had a bath that wasn't in a cold river? Ernest's place had only had a wash basin and ...

He should have been watching the rock pile.

The stones shifted ever so slightly, a couple tumbling forward to create a small opening. Brochwel's ears picked up the clunk of shifting stone, and steered his eyes toward it. Just in time to see the arrow lining up.

Alarm flooded his senses and stirred him to action. Brochwel drew Cambadr from its scabbard and held its flat in front of him, turning his body as well to offer as little of himself as possible to the projectile.

The arrow released. It flew lower than expected, but then with all the rocks and dead summons piled in the way in a slot canyon, the archer didn't have room to position and aim wherever they liked. They hit what they could, which was the eye of Brochwel's horse.

He felt every muscle in his mount shudder. Disengaging his boots from the stirrups, Brochwel swayed to stay above the falling horse. He shoved Cambadr back in the scabbard, hefted his last javelin, and hurled it at the bowman. The javelin arced through the hole in the rock and found its mark.

No arrows followed, but the last member of his regiment had crested the rise and ridden away. Brochwel stood in a little canyon with a dead horse. He could walk out, but he would be traveling at the same pace in the same direction in wide open grassland as a whole army whose lives he had made miserable for days on end. But they had to go around a little to get out of the ravine, maybe he could ...

When Brochwel poked his head over the rim from the trapper's path, he saw the imperial army already quick-marching onto the plains after the horses disappearing toward Cargelhan. He would be in plain sight, and the only thing they could take retribution on.

Brochwel edged down to the floor of the canyon and settled on the pine needles and his back against a sturdy tree trunk.

Great. Well done, Brochwel. Sure, he had been keeping watch while the others slept, so he had fought continuously for two full days and a night, pausing only for a swig of water or to wolf down a scrap of ration. He told himself it was understandable that he had let his guard down after all that. Well 'understandable' wasn't going to resurrect his horse, now was it? He had been such a fool. No, calm down. There were other horses, somewhere. He could just steal one. If he just got to the nearest village.

Brochwel reached under his breastplate for the survey map. The survey map he had last handed off to Tecca, who still had it.

As he began spiraling into his thoughts, there came a sharp bird call just above him. Brochwel looked up. Tecca's tiny hawk fluttered down to perch on his knee and scream in his face.

"Don't worry about me, just keep going," Brochwel said as if to Tecca while big, grumpy, amber hawk eyes stared back at him. "You need to tell General Callaway what's coming. I'll ... do what I can."

With that, Brochwel hugged his knees closer. Still in enemy territory, with wide open fields for mile after mile. He tried to focus on possibilities; was there anything he still could do? Tarquin had shown them that underground canal, but could Brochwel get there alone and on foot? He tried to remember which part of the squiggly trace of his journey the rock had recorded matched that moment. He could only narrow it down to the multi-day stretch following the shore of the Gyre's lake. Likely a hundred miles away or more.

He was an idiot for thinking he could get there, to think he could do any of this. Brochwel had been given a warrior's embedding, he was one of those smaller stones on either side of a ring's centerpiece, neither cut nor set to command attention.

Tecca's hawk screeched in his face one more time, then flew up into the evening sky. Flying a search pattern, it flapped as unnaturally as Tecca could make it, shrieking every five seconds on the dot. The hawk flew over ravines and forest, searching, or rather, trying to be found. It kept flying for two hours.

All it seemed to do was startle the songbirds.

Only as the sun was beginning to touch the horizon did the hawk feel that unique fear that only a summon can know: seeing someone who killed it last time the two met. The hawk turned and raced back with Aoda in hot pursuit.