The world swam back into focus accompanied by clanging metal and war cries. A wave of insectoids, effectively boney plate armored with flashing pincers and stabbing tails threw themselves into prepared men. Braced spears interrupted charges with meaty thunks. Piercing through the armor in some cases on the back of a Thrust and a high Pierce skill or merely arresting charges in others. Some weapons glanced off, even the crossbar failing to find purchase and it was only shields in the hands of Hastati that held them back.

  Ethan grimaced. There was a reason you came through a portal in formation, but it wasn’t how he’d like to start a fight. “HOLD” He bellowed, projecting confidence and utter certainty that they would do exactly that.

  The two synergistic skills pulsed outward in a wave of gold. Giving a sizable buff, but equally important, reassuring the men that they were ok. That they would win and that he was in control of the situation.

  It wasn’t that they needed to be told to do the obvious. It was the proof that there was someone here. Ready and capable to respond, and to direct men to respond in concert.

  Enemies weren’t the source of the greatest fear in war. Scattered or lacking leadership was.

  Leadership that wasn’t just Ethan.

  Guile dodged through a gap in the shield wall, stepping over the knocked prone Hastati, and his great sword arced forward in a glittering purple arc.

  The boosted blade shattered the thick carapace and removed the upper half of the bugs head.

  Conner smashed into another would-be breach with a powerful shield bash and a darting spear thrust that neatly slid into an arm joint between carapace segments.

  They weren’t quite upright scorpions. Having a bulging dome of a head spotted by six beady, wide-spread eyes. Small targets, but that didn’t stop Leofsige from putting a pilum through one, nor Andrew an arrow. And each picked their targets for positional dominance, not just killing speed.

  Even James stepped forward to support the line, snapping a Teamster’s bull whip forward and jerking all three legs on a side out from under a creature, a short sword waiting unused in his right hand.

  He watched, impassive as his men learned, adapted to their new opponents. Learned to deflect the massive pincers as they were swung and thrust more like maces or axes than as clamps. Employed to stagger men or smash shields aside, then following through with shockingly fast strikes of venomous tails.

  Tails that were much less heavily armored, he noted as a fortuitously placed bladed crossbar removed the last tail section, leaving ichor and venom to pour from the wound.

  “Target the tails!”

  The lines shifted, what was barely stabilized became steady, then dominant. Phalangites grouped up to pin and execute the bugs. Spears from multiple directions hooking or pinning, then a final spear punching through a joint or thinner side sections. Hastati with their shorter spears went for eyes, chinks between plates or removing legs with short brutal chops.

  Nor was it just the Bandsman. Ethan positively grinned as loops of rope were thrown by a set of Labori joining hands to drag a massive insect to the ground, stretched out like a rug between two decades for a good beating. And beat it they did. A passing Hastati removed the tail, then a half dozen more Labori took mattocks to its head.

  A two dozen more, their packs stacked to the center, darted around the edges of the fight, dragging the wounded to safety and pouring flasks of anti-venom into them when needed. The potions weren’t particularly difficult to decant for a trained craftsman or a much rarer Apothecary, but even so they weren’t commonly stocked. They didn’t keep for long, and unless you knew you were going to need them, it wasn’t worth the time.

  The acting Baroness had, of course, accumulated a reasonable stockpile and had generously, he coughed, still kicking himself, sold them to the band at only a reasonable, cough, markup.

  Fuck.

  He let the familiar burn fade as the fighting petered out. No fatalities, but several men would need to see the Magister. Broken bones, a very few deep but narrow stab wounds from the tails and of course venom damage. Even if the anti-venom stopped it from getting worse, that didn’t repair the damage it had already done.

  The portal wouldn’t cycle for another hour, so they’d have to wait. He barked a few orders and the men shifted. Rushing to form up, four men deep this time, opposite a tunnel large enough for 15 men to walk down shoulder to shoulder. Only one such tunnel, he was relieved to see.

  The same brown with black threaded rock of the room they occupied, lit in a dim blueish light from some unspecified and undetectable source. The walls arched sharply to a dome some 20 feet overhead. Smooth and unmarked by stalactites or tools. Underneath was loamy earth, riddled with mosses, mushrooms and odder plant life he couldn’t give name to.

  Spores and pollen perfumed the air with a slightly rank smell that spoke of both rot and fertility. A smell strong enough to mostly overpower the sweat, blood and ichor that spotted the floor.

  Mostly.

  “Sir Leofsige? Any other passages?” The Scoutmaster materialized beside him, already shaking his head.

  “Rift stone, Captain, that is Milord. If they could dig through that, we’d be worshiping them, not killing. Unless they’ve some potent illusion magic-” Not something insects were known for. “-that’s it.”

  “Good enough. Leave the wounded, and a decade to watch them and press on.”

  “Sir!” Fists slammed to chest as knights and decurions spread out quickly in an ordered seeming chaos that was uniquely military.

  The men were quickly formed into a U shape, the line made of Hastati with locked shields and the center filled with Phalangites. The flat bottom a full fifteen men wide stepped forward into the tunnel, backed by a forest of sarissa spears.

  Some invisible boundary was passed and a wave of insectoids burst from around a corner. Thirty or so, Ethan judged and being slightly larger than men, only 12 of them in the first ordered rank. Few things did instinctive formations so well as insects.

  But training beats instinct.

  “Volley!” Andrew barked, gold light following his words to surround the back rank briefly, then sinking into the massed flight of pilum that flew overhead. Thick carapaces shed most of the projectiles, but most was not all. Here and there, they penetrated lighter sections over joints or limbs, not to mention the few from higher-level troops thrown with sufficient strength and skills to pierce directly through.

  Few were killed, but that wasn’t always the point. Bodies on the ground tripped and spread out the incoming charge, drastically reducing the built-up momentum. And then-

  “Brace!” Ethan barked.

  The golden light leapt out once more, reinforcing men and spears even as they activated their own skills. The braced long spears spitted the chargers, turning their own high mobility against them.

  Buffed and with a high incoming momentum and their Pierce passive-

  The Braced spears pierced directly through even thick carapace bands. And if one didn’t fully penetrate, the other four or five in the bug's way would. You could fight with a sarissa five ranks deep, but not with a Hastati front wall. With unknowns or if ranged attacks were common, Ethan was just fine with three ranks.

  The bugs being wider than a human, with a more spread-out battle line, did them no favors either. They fell, and no Magister was waiting to heal them. A frontal charge against an intact sarissa block was folly.

  It was the flanking attacks and ambushes he had to watch for. Like the blind entrances to a rift, he reflected ruefully, that led to high casualties.

  They marched onward, several hundred yards and two more waves of ineffective creatures, before the ever-present light levels increased and shifted towards blues and greens.

  The tunnel opened up into a large cavern sparsely populated by a forest of slightly luminescent mushrooms fully thirty feet tall or taller. They were considerably fatter around the base than trees. Might take two men to join arms around one of the smaller ones.

  Sparse, but regular. Their placement was organized and a thin spiderweb of trenches brought trickles of water to each of them. This was a farm, not a forest and small black dots appeared here and there between their trunks, swarming around a felled mushroom like ants surrounding a crumb of bread.

  Only these ants were a little bigger than men.

  Mostly. It was harder to judge sizes without a reference but something back there didn’t look quite the same as the dead bugs behind them. Slimer, and with narrower pincers.

  If the analogy of ants held true, and it probably didn’t, then these might be workers.

  He let his sight fade back to normal; they’d deal with them when and if they needed to.

  The formation lock-stepped into the cavern, seamlessly transitioning as the U unfolded. It's back arms spread outward but locked to the cavern wall in an unbroken defensive ring. A ring that was soon to be tested as soldier Umbrals boiled out of the mushroom woods in a growing horde. Well over a hundred already and still coming.

  But coming the same old way. Only the trunks were somewhat blunting their momentum now. Widely spaced as they were. Ethan watched on, calm and unworried. Knights, a centurion and a host of decurions called out orders, adjusted lines and formations, even threw out a few buffs while he waited.

  Then the lines met with a sound like hundreds of hammers striking anvils.

  Calls went out, mass skills organizing the personal ones into far higher effect. A line of thrusts-

  piled dead bodies into an impromptu minor berm while Shield Bashes -

  Threw the slowed bugs off balance or knocked them away from the few wounded.

  Many active skills in succession would exhaust the men, but this didn’t look like a wave rift. Where any invading force would see ‘wave’ after ‘wave’ of monsters thrown at them. They could pull back and rest with a blocking force if needed. Better this early on to spend more stamina to lose less blood.

  It was going quite well.

  And then it wasn’t.

  Instinct saved him. Trained instinct perhaps from a life more on the battlefield than off. He stepped to the side, covering Quintus and the standard with his spear grounded and angled straight up. Unsure of what his body had noticed, but unwilling to gainsay it. And the spear bent and twisted beneath the Umbral that dropped from its perch, clamped to the wall over the entrance tunnel.

  It bowed but held as his weapon skill reinforced it. Held and pierced through, before with a grunt and a shift of his shoulders, dumped the corpse off and he spun the spear removing a striking tail right behind the first section while lowering his right shoulder at an angle to deflect a crushing blow from a pincer.

  It still nearly took him from his feet, spinning him in an arc that he took advantage of to drive his whistling spear into another like a bat, knocking it off course midair.

  “Plant it!” He barked, and Quintus slammed the standard into the soft, rich loam of the cavern floor, releasing an explosive pulse of the deepest gold.

  It outlined the men in a glittering veil that lingered on, while Bannerman Quintus, visibly winded, drew his sword gracefully and removed a striking tail of his own before taking a crushing blow to his shoulder. He could have dodged; he had more than sufficient speed for that. But the standard was behind him, and duty remained. No shield and without the distance a two-handed spear might give, he took additional blows in succession, where the guard detail couldn’t quite get there. But a Bannerman wasn’t chosen by lots, the man was firmly in the second tier and had the protective instincts of a Doberman.

  They’d bury him before he gave way.

  Something Ethan did not wish to see. “Knights Rear!” Be bellowed, kicking himself for a fool. Insects and he didn’t look up. Damn fool. But it didn’t show in word or expression as he joined the rearguard in damage control. They were already too close for the Phalangites, the bugs already in under the reach of their extended spears, and several fell, bowled over and crushed by swinging pincers and the occasional tail.

  He blessed his luck that the Labori had stayed well back. Still inside the tunnel with a plug of the rearguard. A guard that was already rushing forward, shields locked and shoulders lowered. They smashed into and over the bugs, viciously swarming the larger armored figures and driving spears up and under sliding plates of carapace, removing the vulnerable tails and even just brutally dog piling the creatures and taking casualties willingly to do it.

  The standard was the heart and soul of a Band. Lose it, and you lost everything. No future, no honor, no hope.

  Then Guile smashed into one side, great sword singing death and destruction. Conner the other, precision, balance and lethal efficiency. One with a bombastic flair that attracted all eyes to his sweeping, flashing power. The other, half artist, half workman. No flash, no flair, only a perfect grasp of his canvas, and a disinclination to waste the slightest motion.

  One crushed armor and sliced through all barriers, bouncing and jumping over return strikes and to add momentum to his blows, the other slid a spear like a viper through every chink and weakness, stepping lightly into precisely the right spot to avoid blows, seemingly before the beast had decided to swing them.

  Different, but both deadly.

  The insects didn’t route, they weren’t demons, nor humans and did not fear death. But fear it or not, they still died. And with every death, they pushed the bugs back until enough space was made, and a dozen long spears dropped and skewered the remainder.

  He glanced up at the walls, but the bugs had shot their bolt. And while he watched a few more build up speed, then run up the side of the wall for a ways, it was slow and precarious going. They were far too heavy to play like spiders. And long spears reached up to remind them of it. Spearing, hooking and decapitating with little effort.

  Ethan gave them a single glance and turned away. Without the benefit of surprise, that was a fool’s errand. To the front, the battle still raged on, and was quickly stabilizing. Men knocked about from behind were rejoining formations, spear lines were closing gaps and overburdened Hastati given needed cover and at least some minor rest.

  But there were bodies on the ground around him. Far too many of them.

  He hoped, even prayed for wounded. Not dead. But knew better than to expect none.

  Fuck.

  He continued to bark orders. Sorting out the chaos and adjusting the formations to take advantage of trees, ground swells and the growing piles of dead bugs. Folding the lines to strike from the sides, or give Hastati a chance to charge into flanks and vulnerable tails.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Then, reforming the troops as a small lull hit them. Bugs pulling back to mass in greater numbers and solid formations, before beginning the charge again.

  But without the distraction, it did them little good.

  They were dangerous foes, but while organized and under some guiding intelligence, that intelligence wasn’t individual and it wasn’t particularly flexible. He barked a command and slid a block of Sarrisas forward. Folding the end of the line around a flank and abusing the momentum to slam bugs sideways into one another. Cramped for space, the pincers couldn’t swing and tails became predictable in overhead only stabs.

  He shifted the lines again, allowing a block of Hastati to fling a full volley of pilum at nearly a right angle to the charging bugs, smashing legs and even penetrating the thinner pieces of side armor.

  He pushed them back step by step, using and abusing the mushrooms to control and funnel them into pointless charges and mini ambushes. Once burned, twice shy, a strong reserve stood behind them and kept sharp eyes out. A good thing to, as they skewered bugs jumping from the tops of mushrooms and others that dug free of shallow one bug burrows behind them.

  Then they crossed some invisible line and the fight changed again.

  In a massive wave, not spread out slightly like the soldiers to give their pincers and tails room to work, but cheek by jowl, packed in as tight as they could go, the workers charged en masse.

  Suicidally thrusting themselves, and their much lighter armor he noted, onto spears, pincers that were sharpened on the inside for lumbering work snipped at sarissa spears even as they died. Breaking spears and simply dragging others down, even the boar spear-like cross guards couldn’t keep the weapons from overpenetrating when the enemy wanted to be pierced.

  Then, hidden in their busy ranks, a few remaining soldiers leapt out, diving into the breaches and flailing madly. No more trying to survive than their thinner brethren. They just didn’t want to go alone!

  Men went down. Bowled over by the sheer quantity and foolish, mind-boggling nature of the charge. It wasn’t human.

  It was insect.

  It got hot and heavy, but no panic set in. These were crack troops. Trained in a far more desperate and vicious struggle. They were straining, stamina spent madly in response, muscles straining against the tide.

  But it was a familiar strain, one trained against oceans of demon spawn. The men didn’t flinch, didn’t waver. Trusting in the men beside and the commander behind, they handled the assault. Not bloodlessly, but with authority.

  And then there were none.

  ___

  A lesser forest of carapaced bodies, dotted here and there by demon hide and chain mail, spread across the couple hundred-yard-wide cavern. Ethan let out a tired breath, “Scouts out, watch decades post. Two extra decades on body detail. When in doubt –” he raised a hand to his ear. “Stab it again!” The men chorused back.

  Indeed.

  “The rest stand down, but stay frosty.” He didn’t want to lose men to leakers after a battle was won. It had happened before. And would again.

  Just not today.

  “Labori forward!” His words, voice unraised, echoed back down the tunnel easily, and it wasn’t long before water skins cut with vinegar and pouches of jerky were being passed around.

  The now unburdened Labori got started on their real purpose in the rift. Harvesting.

  Under the watch of a few Craftsmen, they got started breaking down the carcasses. Insects might be new, but harvesting rift creatures was something they’d done most of their lives. Mostly demon corpses, true, but as creatures of chaos the shapes, sizes and types included under that description was nearly uncountable.

  It taught flexibility and they quickly found methods that worked. Places to cut, joints to start from and which organs you really didn’t want to cut.

  Ethan coughed slightly, turning away and desperately tightening his throat muscles, while behind him, a dozen poor bastards, mercilessly closer to the offending punctured organ, vomited all over themselves.

  The green acidic paste sizzled and hissed as it hit the ground, while filling the air with a sharp, pungent metallic scent that burned the back of your nose and throat.

  Thankfully, there was a pool of readily available water to clean up, and as always, men learned.

  It quickly became an assembly line, insectoid corpses coming in an unbroken stream on one side, chunks of carapace, stingers and a fire to burn the offal out the other.

  The meat was technically edible, so Baroness’s men assured them, and the army cook they’d recruited quickly set up drying racks to let as little as possible go to waste. But edible didn’t mean palatable.

  With another cough, but thankfully considerably less of an urge to vomit, Ethan spat the foul-tasting chunk of oily meat out. The texture was actually quite nice, succulent even, but the metallic taste lingering in the back of his mouth was making his eyes water.

  It was rank and while Basics weren’t too choosy about food, it wasn’t something he’d choose to feed to soldiers.

  A scruple he wasn’t sure the Baroness shared, but then feeding the army outside for most of a year had to have emptied her coffers. She might not have much choice.

  “Sir James.” He didn’t have to wait long.

  “Milord. The wounded are ready for transport and I have two decades of escorts ready to take us out. I’ll arrange another two centuries of Labori to enter and harvest all this.” He gestured at the massive mushrooms.

  That was a considerably more pleasant find. The flesh was fibrous but firm and the taste damn near meaty. The Army cooks were even excited about it. Pronouncing it nearly the perfect food. Their skills told them it was energy dense for its weight, tasty and it should store nearly indefinitely if dried and kept that way.

  You could even eat it dry, though the texture lost a great deal. But added to the usual stew pots, it should prove a right treat.

  Already, there were a few fires lit, mushroom roots were burnable even if the trunks just smoldered, and even more drying racks were going up.

  A younger cook to the back was yelling something about smoking being superior and would use less fuel for the fires. James left them to it.

  “How long?” He glanced to the side, where a few Labori were already hacking away at a fibrous stem. The thocks were much softer in tone than he was used to, indicating a softer material than wood but considering the thickness, harvesting the forty-odd giant mushrooms was no small job.

  “With 300 men working? A day or so to cut them down. More to dry or smoke them, but that might be better done outside.”

  Ethan considered it, then sighed. If more men could get the job done faster, James would have offered them.

  “Sir Leofsige?”

  “Three more tunnels, Milord.” Ethan winced, already diming out two blocking forces and what that would mean for the main assault. “If we call where we came in south, then to the northeast, true north and northwest. North and northwest routes might merge later, but-“ he waved a hand absently. Instinct then. Probably right with a Scoutmaster of Leo’s experience and skills, but not something you could fully commit to. Also not something he would ever ignore.

  “Sir Conner?”

  “Thirty-six men down, Milord. Six with Kiron, may the scales tilt to glory, and two at Hectai’s mercy.” He’d hope for six then. Between Death and Health, Magic would decide the victor. And they had a Magister. Just so long as the men lived long enough to see him. He considered, and not for the first time, bringing Blake inside. But for all the reasons he hadn’t in the first place, leaving someone responsible outside, protecting the irreplaceable resource he represented. He again decided against it.

  But live or die, even eight dead was far better than he’d expected. Better even than he’d dared to hope after they’d got the literal drop on him.

  “How?”

  “Armor, milord. Carapace doesn’t hold much of a point. The tails fail to penetrate. More broken bones and crushed limbs than piercings and poisonings.” And that wouldn’t kill a man. At least not right away. So long as the helmet held up and that was the strongest single piece in a set of armor.

  He let out a breath. As grandpa said, generosity to the men paid for itself. Since its founding, the band split half the loot with the troops. A number that had earned him condescension and chidings on multiple occasions, but not one he’d ever considered changing. Sure, the men drank and whored away much of that. But the rest, especially the good materials, went into their personal equipment. They might not be in knightly plate but scaled armor of greater demon scales sewn on the hide of the same was quite common.

  “Sir Andrew?”

  “Arrows don’t do much less you hit an eye, just as well we left the archers out, even the pilum volleys are less effective than I’d hoped. Still worth doing, especially if we hold them for the smaller, slender critters.”

  “Grove Tenders.” Leo offered, having the highest Inspection skill for that sort of thing. “The burly ones are Hive Sentinels.”

  Andrew nodded. “Tenders and Sentinels then. Easy enough. The tenders have much lighter armor. Light enough to be vulnerable and they’re dense enough in a charge that we won’t miss much. Not many left to throw when they rushed us this time so it wasn’t obvious. I’d recommend holding a few pilum back if there is a next time.”

  “Agreed.” Conner spat out the side of his mouth. Tearing off a piece of dark brown jerky and passing the remainder to Ethan.

  “Gu – No, Sir Guile?” Then he took a bite. It was smoked goat. Generally a stronger flavor than he’d prefer, not that it would stop him from eating it. Today it was perfect. Anything to get that wretched taste from his mouth. He passed the remaining half a strip to Andrew.

  “Should be about ready- Ah! Prop it up there, Rodrigo. Yes, no to the left a bit. That will work.” A small party of four men propped up a mostly intact insect, an arrow protruding from an upper eye.

  A spear was handed to him and he began to demonstrate against the bug. First stepping up close and personal, and sliding the blade nearly vertically between rings of carapace, each at least 5 inches in height. Like a telescope, he mused. Then paused. Telescope? What was that? He lost the thread as Guile continued. Demonstrating how the rings slid against one another to give the bugs some maneuverability despite the thick armor.

  He stepped back to a reasonable fighting distance and began to work the joints. First the extended, lower leg joints. A protruding jagged bit of carapace stuck upward to the outside. A knee spike almost, protecting the flesh revealed by bending the limb. A short chopping motion from directly ahead, and right in front of the pincers, cut the limb off. Stepping to the side it was a much harder angle to do much with.

  But he moved up, striking at where the armpit would be on a human, and from the under side, his spear easily slid through a very thin section of carapace.

  Guile then took a step back, with a deep grunt, but only one hand, drove the spear straight through the side armor and easily up to the crossbar. He placed a foot on the armor and jerked the spear free, checked the edge and shrugged. “Blades not damaged. But…”

  He moved to the front and repeated the process. One-handed, the blade still stuck in, but about half the depth. He removed it, and using both hands, easily drove it all the way in again.

  “I can brute force it. Some of the others with a decent pierce skill or yous higher tiers could too.” He leaned back and tapped at the armpits, knees and eyes. “But… Armor is armor. Human, bug, demon. If you want to move, it’s got to have joints, you want to see? Its got to have an eye slit. They all have weaknesses. Might as well use them.”

  “Skill-wise, they’re a mixed bag.” He offered. Pulling up a pincer and walking it through the normal attack patterns he’d observed. “Heavy. But they can move them pretty easily. Even saw a few decent parries and blocks. A bit too ordered, really. Repetitive. They’ll stay exactly in their pacing, even if a small shift might have saved their life. Makes them predictable, and exploitable.”

  “Other side of that though is they work like multiple pieces of the same critter. Not different ones. The silence is eerie, but they’re talking somehow.”

  “Smell.” Leo offered, tapping his nose with one hand, tearing into a chunk of steaming mushroom with the other.

  “Smell? Might have to fart in their general direction then.”

  Ethan looked at him oddly, where did that come from? He let it go. He was an odd man. Useful though.

  “Biggest issue is dey have no sense for survival. Will take da deathblow to get yous back. De men they ain’t used to dat and it tells. But....” Conner drawled, dragging it out. “Tis also a weakness, yous can show a fake weakness and theys ‘ll let you gut dem reaching fo’ it.”

  Ethan nodded. He’d been abusing exactly that on the tactics side, but he was always happy to find more flaws to take advantage of.

  It was good to have competent subordinates.

  “Alright. A good start, all things considered. But let’s not get cocky; one surprise is already plenty. Sir Leofsige, double-check for any more of the burrows. I don’t want the Labori slaughtered while they work. Sir James, you take command here as soon as you return with help. I’ll leave you a decent reaction force in case of trouble. We’ll need a solid decurion and 30 men for each blocking force…” He considered it with a grimace.

  “Dat’s half our men, Milord.” Conner pointed out. Not exactly objecting, but certainly not in approval either. “And dat only if wes wait for da wounded to gets back. Have to cycle the portals at least twice. Probably more.” Hours wasted…

  “True. I don’t see as we have much choice. If Leo is correct, then we can clear out two tunnels for the price of one and recover a blocking force. But until that happens or the Labori finish harvesting this cavern, we’ll have to stick to clearing the surrounding tunnels. Push out to get the lay of the land, but retreat if we see stiff resistance or a cavern. And that only after the wounded are healed up and returned to us.”

  “Wes could draw on da baroness’s men.” Conner ground out, reluctantly, and with the air of a man doing his duty, no matter how unpleasant it might be.

  “I’d considered it, and if forced, it’s still an option. But. If she had the right troops for the job, then we wouldn’t be here. Hastati and levies for the most part. Not a piercing or armor sunder skill between them.” He considered for a moment, then decided to add the rest. “Also, she’d have a claim on the spoils. How much of one is debatable… and so far she’s easily won those.” If the last few words came out a trifle spitefully, well, who could blame him?

  Soft laughter rang from their circle, but no one disagreed.

  Conner leaned backwards, the scrunched-up thinking face he habitually wore on full display. Years of familiarity left the group quiet, giving the man the time to roll the idea around and look at it from all sides. There were more than a few disasters averted by his quiet, patient outlook. At last, he grunted, shrugged his shoulders and gave a nod. Ethan raised an eyebrow in surprise, that might as well have been a shout of approval from the taciturn older man.

  “All right then. Let’s get to it!”

  __

  But slowly.

  James led his column out in short order, but while he would be back with the Labori in about two hours, the wounded would take considerably longer.

  Not that they would sit on their hands waiting for them. The remaining Labori and Hastati together quickly threw up a set of ten-foot-high earthworks at each of the northern passages. Simple affairs of packed earth and spikes that narrowed the entrance down a bit, then extended backward in a steep-sided V with a gate opening to the cavern at the bottom.

  It wasn’t quite how he’d prefer it to be, but rift stone was the next thing to invulnerable. They were lucky that even dirt was available. Baskets filled with it were dragged from the cavern floor to build the fortification. There was no moat or even a simple ditch in front, but it would have to do.

  Like most fortifications, it wasn’t supposed to be impassable; an umbral squad could dig through it in five minutes, much less climb it. Its job was to slow them down while they did either of those things. If they were climbing or digging, they weren’t fighting. A problem the defenders would not share.

  With many hands helping, it went up fast. The basics in twenty minutes, fighting platforms, spikes, ram-packing the dirt where they could, that took an additional hour or two. Enough for the new formations of Labori to take over and the men to take a rest.

  A bit of work with a shovel shaped seats into the loam, throw in a small, sweet-smelling fire and it was almost homey. Made all the better by hot mushroom stew bubbling from many decade-sized travel pots.

  It was beginning to feel like a holiday for men who cut their teeth on day-long demon battles.

  Whoo-twoot.

  The whistle had scarce faded from the air and weapons were out, armor straps tightened and men sprinting into formation and those formations already marching to the northeast passage. The food and drink left half-eaten and forgotten behind.

  Seconds later, a shadowy shape slid through the makeshift gate at the bottom of the V and kicked it closed behind him. When a scout was running like that… Ethan lunged up the embankment, scrambling a bit on the still loose soil but making it in time to see a solid stream of insects barreling down the tunnel.

  There were a large number of them. But…

  He didn’t even bother to give a command. The men were already nearly at their assigned stations. Marching up the gentler, and ones with prepared footings, slopes in blocks. Their long spears already extending outward from either side like a shark’s jaws closing.

  Decades of Labori lined up behind the ranks carrying eight-foot sections of mushroom trunks on their shoulders.

  Then the bugs hit the defenses. And hit them hard.

  And not at all like a human army would have. Not even a demon army was this suicidal! The greater demons might not care and drive the lessers to their deaths in droves but those lessers still tried to survive.

  Bugs didn’t. Spikes designed to force formations to slow down to move around them were instead dived onto at full speed. The front ranks willingly serving as a ramp for the next. And the next.

  Not for free, the spikes were within spear reach and reach they did. Over and over. Killing or knocking would be climbers down in job lots.

  The bugs didn’t care and didn’t stop.

  Dirt was fountaining backward as bugs dug away at the base of the works while dead bugs piled up on top of them.

  Like mud pushed through a water reed, they just kept inching closer. Upward on a ramp of bodies and under with the cover of the same. Till they nearly made the top of the berm.

  “Now!”

  Men side-stepped aside in good order, compacting the formation while their spearheads kept covering the opened breach. Enough room for the Labori to approach at a run, and fling their burdens out and rolling over and through the climbing bugs, living and dead.

  What took ten men to lift, gently and on flat ground, sent bugs flying like nine pins.

  Then they repeated it 3 more times before the Hastati rushed through the gate and set to make sure things were, and stayed, dead.

  Clean up took longer than the battle, and with only three non-fatal casualties. Ethan, his weapon still undrawn, considered that a pass with flying colors for the earthworks. Giant holes dug into them notwithstanding. They would need to be repaired, but effort spent better than blood.

  “A hurry feature?” he mused, considering the timing and the piles.

  “Likely.” Leofsige’s voice came from an empty spot beside him and with the ease of long practice, Ethan didn’t even fully draw his blade before slamming it back down.

  Fucking stealthies.

  The man had being unremarkable down to an art form. Even without skills. With them? He was the next best thing to invisible. Better perhaps. You might hear an invisible person walking or notice footsteps. With a good stealth skill, they might make noise or leave tracks, but it just blended into the rest of such. Of course, if you did notice, it stopped working entirely. And the poor bastards rarely got a second chance to fail.

  “Every four to five hours then?” He managed to keep his voice level at least. Not giving Leo the satisfaction of more.

  “Likely.” He repeated. Active rifts had ways of making their displeasure known, and if a hurry up poke wasn’t quite a command to move on, it was a warning not to take things too far. One or two more would be safe-ish. But after that, it’d likely start getting mean.

  They’d have to make some progress to reset it. Little progress, little reset. Big progress, full.

  But…

  He looked at the cavern mostly full of tasty not-trees. Only an eighth at best harvested. They weren’t going to be able to get the whole lot. He considered it for a few more moments.

  Working out minimum entrance and exit times with force sizes needed to secure the Labori versus pushing into another larger cavern… They might pull it off, for this room at least. But that assumed they found nothing else in the cavern worth harvesting. Unlikely.

  He shrugged. That made things oddly easier. If they couldn’t complete it, then why worry? Just take everything they could and be happy at the opportunity.

  Well, mostly happy. Coordinating it all was going to be a real bitch.

  “Least we know which way the core is.” The Scoutmaster pointed out. Deliberately so. One might almost say pointedly so.

  “Likely.” Ethan retaliated blandly. Rift spawn. It was in the name. They were spawned by the rift, and that meant near the core. It also meant Leo was probably right about the other two passages connecting. A loop that led nowhere. “Doesn’t change much. We still have to clear it.”

  “Might want to move the reaction force closer to the northeast passage.” Leo retorted.

  Ethan let him have his win. It was a reasonable change. He glanced out at the swarm of Labori toting baskets full of dirt on their backs in a line towards the earthworks. Another line returned from the same with carapaced corpses for processing.

  He raised his voice and projected. “Decurion Marcaeus, take decurions Giselmund and Liupold to block the tunnel. For the rest, Bandsman, stand down.”

  “Command staff on me.” He stepped over and out of the way, already tracing out an outline of the cavern in the dirt and was quickly involved in a low conversation about where to base the reaction force and how many men they’d need to stop another such assault. And then how many more to add to make it mostly bloodless.

  The bandsman, like the veterans they were, took advantage of the downtime. Some dropped into an easy nap as soon as they could find a spot of unclaimed dirt and wrap their cloaks tight. Others ate, drank or played small games of chance.

  The usual. Mostly. Then a small cluster of Labori approached a campfire and the lounging soldiers about it. “Ah, sir?” One managed, clearly nervous.

  “Do you see a decurian's crista,” He gestured at his uncrested helm, “or a knight's plate? No sirs here, just speak your peace.”

  The young man froze for a moment, then awkwardly continued. “Can we’uns ask you somtin?”

  “Sure boy. We has da time. Yous go right ahead.” These weren’t just Basics, those the man might have brushed off. Having a very little status made some protect it all the more vigorously. But these Basics were future recruits. And a good lot of recruits from the looks of it so far.

  “When we’uns came in, why was da insects outside da lines?”

  “Heh. I asked dat myself once. Long time back. When I was getting cut on, wit the surgeons and Magister Blake.” The name had a holy, saint like aura when he spoke it. “He takes his time, he does, an explained it like. About five minutes of it.” He stopped and squirted a mouthful of water from the skin. Milking the movement a bit longer, then smiled widely. “Couldn’t tell yous one word of what he said.” Snorts and choking laughter exploded around the fire. Blake, may the Gods bless him, was like that.

  Powerful and useful, but he didn’t make much sense to a man as hadn’t read more books than he weighed.

  He grinned at the young Labori and took pity on them. “Dankfully, when hes moved on to his Magisterly business, da cutter, he takes pity on mes. Translates it like. See, a portal is like a shiny dinar. One side the empire, da other da rift. Us on top, bugs on da bottom, you see? Then you flip da coin. What was out is in, and what was in is out. Us in da rift, them in da world above. Dangerous in an Owned rift, that. Can get yous camp and supplies burned. Less sos a wild rift like this, still a worry. Only time it's safe is when it's locked.”

  “Ah, locked?”

  “Yous use it once and it gets tired. Yous has to wait for it to rest before it’ll flip again. Da flip takes longer da larger the coin. Da final demon rift? Dat bastard locked for a full day!”

  “Huh… Dank yous, Soldier?”

  “Milo, and yous can call me just dat.”

  “Danke Milo. Ah, can we’uns ask more?” One of the men beside him broke in.

  The soldier chuckled softly, then patted the ground beside him. “Not from up there yous can’t. Getting a crick in my neck I is. Sit down lads. Sit down and ask away. We’ll shoo yous on if we gets tired of yas.”

  “Da Knight Conner, he’s Master of Arms, ya?”

  “Master of Arms (knight). Yous always got to watch for dat rider. Makes a man dangerous, it does.”

  He nodded earnestly. “S’not a class on the Standard?”

  “Ahh, I see where yous going. Not a class on OUR standard. If yous real good, and even more lucky-“ There was a snort of honest laughter at that. “-then you might get ta honor of bowing to the Phoenix!” There was a hushed awe, and no little bit of yearning in his tone. “Them Standards as old as the empire! And theys got classes you’uns can only dream about. Classes I does dream of! So many they says the gods pick the three as fits you best and let yous choose.” He sighed, envy and admiration on full display.

  “But… they was bandsman then. Not Imperial nobles, ya? Ya got’s to belong right?”

  He chuckled softly. “Yous think a band don’t look to no one? Independent? Nah. They calls it the chain of command, and all men bear dat chain. Held back? Maybe. But supported to. All but one, and he holds us. Up and back as needed. Cause we’uns belongs to the Emperor, may ‘is light ever shine on us.”

  “May ‘is light ever shine on us.” The muttered refrain echoed from a dozen ardent throats.

  And that, Ethan reflected softly, pretending not to listen, as no doubt was the rest of his staff, was another reason why independence was so hard to keep. A baronet could belong to a count who could belong to a duke. Each step up having a history extending backwards for a dozen generations, and knowledge, classes and treasures of those generations to boot. The temptation of a better class, if not for yourself then for your children, was a powerful lure.

  He let the conversation fade from his attention as they kept working the map and discussing plans. But tier three was coming up for all of them and without the war under the Emperor’s eyes, and the chance at more battle merits, they’d have to either settle for what they had for a second tier, not a terrible option, but one that would eventually see them to a dead end as the quality of their class wouldn’t support another tier.

  Or they’d have to source new, upgraded classes somewhere.

  It was something to think about.

  _____