Harness Chapter 3: Ruins
By Michael Gernes
Orlondo had half finished lacing his doublet when heard the trumpet blow. He blinked, and not just from the water running down his face. The orange blaze of the sunrise dazzled his eyes as it emerged over the marble-littered slope above him.
The last of the Shatters had just set, disappearing into the amethyst sky of the west horizon. He wished he’d stayed above last night to sketch the valley view now. He’d barely explored the Nave’s lower terraces, and he still wasn’t bold enough to remain after dark. Let alone take Gatewatcher up the winding, colossal steps to find out the truth about the peak.
The brassy blast was several short, sharp notes. He called over to Delphia without looking straight at her. She was still waist deep in the narrow river, taking her turn to bathe. “That doesn’t sound like your camprise tune.”
She was illuminated for a moment in a glowing circle of sunlight. She’d invited him to what had become her dawn habit here, away from the camp. Washing yesterday’s dust off before breaking their fast. She was still higher born than him, so it was hard to get completely over his unease—even if she insisted this was the field and not the city.
She called back over her shoulder. “No.It’s an alert. Maybe another courier coming.” He heard the smirk in her voice. “You should know that after a week camped here.”
Then they heard a tearing crack, like canvas ripped above the foothills. His back and limbs jerked tightly as the sound hit him. Holding a hand to his brow, Orlondo saw graysmoke billow over a knife-backed ridge in the middle distance, still shadowed by the mountain.
The trumpet sounded its blasts again. They both heard a second crack—followed by several high-pitched screams. Those came from the huddle of striped tents perched farther up the riverbank. More smoke rose from the same ridge. Orlondo now saw figures there, rushing about behind several wheeled carriages, each of which aimed a dull red-brown tube down at the camp.
Delphia rushed toward the bank, her strides hidden under her splashing wake. She pointed as she waded.
“Serpentines—Occhscene field guns. My picket must have only just seen them.” Her brown eyes were suddenly wide and darting, and her half-shouted speech was rushed.
Orlondo’s mouth dropped. “How did they miss cannon?” He asked, unable to stop himself.
Delphia’s eyes narrowed into a glare as she reached the pebbled bank. “I had them watching the pass at the end of the valley. Not up there.”
She jerked her head at the ridge. “Those guns are bronzecast. Ruinous to lose. No captain would risk theirs on a goat path like that.”
As she finished, another gun fired. Its blast drove it back, skidding dangerously along the loose stones of the ridge. It narrowly avoided a tumble down the reverse slope. After a moment, a figure in a plumed helmet appeared, gesturing sharply at the scattered crew. They returned, and began wrestling the gun back into place.
“No captain in the Peninsula.” Orlondo said quietly.
For a moment they were both silent. Then, two blocks of soldiery emerged over the shoulders of the ridge, flowing around the guns. They stayed loose enough to step their way capably among the scree, but moved steadily downhill. Each block bristled with dozens of long, iron-tipped pikes. Their ranks were a mosaic of blue- and red-striped garb, and the sunrise shone off their breastplates and helmets.
Orlondo heard shouts from the camp, which he realized was all that lay between him and the oncoming troops. He felt a sudden, cold rush in his chest.
“Hired pike-bands, from the Highvales” Delphia said, with sudden recognition. “That’s how the Occhscenes came by the mountain paths.”
“So, we’re at war now? Do I have time to get into Gatewatcher?” He shouted back to Delphia, who had already reached the pebbled bank.
“It’s a fight, and I’ll have to steal you some time. So, pray the God looks up the Well at us. Now throw me my clothes.” She was shivering.
He nodded as he gathered her pile and tossed it in her direction, then fumbled with his fingers to tighten his lacing and tie on his arming cap. It was suddenly difficult. “If I get armed, where do you want me? What’s your plan?”
Delphia hiked her hose up over her wet legs silently. When she looked up at him, she squinted and snapped with annoyance: “Your city gave you the harness. They paid me to escort you to the Nave. And hold it, while you draw lovely rubble. I don’t command you. So, If I get my company fighting, find your bowels and fight whatever I can’t. Those guns for a start.”
He stood a moment, gaping at her. His cheeks were burning. Born to a storied fighting house. Trained since she could walk, with the finest arms. Finally sent off to lead... And then caught on the valley floor at dawn?
“So you’re just an apprentice too.” He finally spat out.
She looked away, then softened her voice. “I taught you all the plays in sparring. It’s the same movements. Just remember: the harness follows your limbs, only slower. Now go, and I’ll see you on the field.”
He turned to sprint along the bank, then heard her call after him and looked back. “Watch out if the guns turn on your harness. They’ll be shooting iron balls.” She barked a laugh out. “We’ll both need some of those too.”
Then she ran up the bankside toward camp, her unlaced doublet flapping behind her as she grasped her sword belt.
———
Orlondo was sucking at the wind when finally he reached Gatewatcher. It was just where he’d left it: on flattish ground behind a tall grove near the mountain’s flank. Well beyond the edge of camp.
He’d chosen it for the distance. On the march, he’d had to stride clumsily ahead of the column along the cobbled roads north of Premonta. Here, he could practice alone in the harness, sending away everyone except his pages. Now he found both of them crouched behind the tending wagon, the top of its treadle crane almost reaching the harness’ knees. Orazia peered out owlishly, the crossbow in her slim arms already loaded.
“We heard the cannons, Master. I told you no one could see us behind these trees—even from the hills.”
He halted and took a long, deep breath. “You chose well. They’re shooting at the camp; not us. Right now, I need both of your help to get armed.”
Acso stood up behind her. Despite the shade of the grove, the boy was starkly lit by the greenish nimbus of Gatewatcher’s reliquary. He pointed to the trees. “The oblates were at prayer beneath the harness. As soon as they finished, they ran and hid.”
The youths dashed to the feet of the harness, each pulling at lines to lower the rope ladder from the culet hatch above. As soon as it dropped, Orlondo and both pages scrambled up. He’d gotten steadily faster at strapping and lacing himself to the harness’ loom. Yet he still needed their help to do it with any haste.
He blinked rapidly as they all worked, the now-familiar tingling lightness returning to his head and limbs, as if he were floating in some invisible fluid. It still impressed him how skillfully the pages worked around him in the chest. None of them discussed the plinth sensation, but he knew they all felt it.
They heard more crack-booms and distant shouting through the harness’ plating. The pages hadn’t yet finished strapping his arms when Orlondo looked into his mirrors and up through Gatewatcher’s helm ocular. He could just see enough through the tree-top gaps to swivel his head and pan along the valley floor.
Many of the camp’s tents had been smashed, but it was no longer undefended. Delphia’s wagons-of-war and even baggage carts had been pushed end to end in a rough half circle between the camp’s edge and the hill, and filled with her own soldiers. They’d had time only to throw on padded cotes or helmets. Still, they swung their polearms viciously down from behind the wagons’ thickly-pannelled, high sides, while others loosed crossbow bolts through loopholes cut into the wagons’ panels or even from beneath the simple carts.
The Occhscene infantry stood off from the wagons, jabbing at exposed defenders with their pikes. A few heavily armored figures lurked at the front of the thicket, slashing up with greatswords over the wagon sides or trying to brush polearms aside for the pikes.
In the center of the wagonfort was the company’s square, platform-topped banner carriage. The standards of Premonta and the Company of the Hawk were raised equally high over its stout center podium. Delphia stood beneath them, in a plumed helmet and mailshirt instead of her full armor. She was furiously gesturing with her baton as she batted away pikeheads with her hand pavise. A pair of her sturdiest fighters surrounded her, as several more crossbowers crouched at her side behind full-sized shields.
Despite the Occhscenes’ reach, Orlondo saw many of their bodies lying among the thicket, pierced by bolts. As he watched, a pike caught one of the fighters on Delphia’s carriage in the face. The man threw his hands over his eyes and tumbled from the platform, red dripping between his fingers.
“Close me up and get down from here.” He said to the pages. “Stay beneath the tending wagon. I’ll need you both after the fight. If you’re caught, tell them your family names first.” He worried about them, but hoped some Occhscene herald would know their parents’ banking houses could afford to ransom them.
Orazia seemed ready to protest. Instead she handed a wooden stave to Acso, so he could suspend it from its lanyard in front of the loom. Orlondo nodded back, grateful they had remembered it. Then, both of them did as he bid, slamming the plates shut and furling the ladder.
Alone in the chest chamber, he realized he no longer heard the Occhscene guns. He panned toward the hill, finding it empty. He turned his head, searching the mirrors. Then he looked at the lowest terraces of the Nave, to his left, and saw the wheeled guns again. Horse teams were hastily hauling them across a low connecting ridge, crew furiously pushing them along. The gunners couldn’t fire down with their soldiers in the way. If they got to the terrace though, among the stone ruins, they’d be able to rain shot down into the wagonfort from its flank.
Then, Orlondo’s breath caught as his chest seized in terror. Picking its way along the wooded ground beneath the terrace ridge, he saw a steel-plated form as tall as Gatewatcher. The dome of its helm bobbed above the trees. With its narrow sight-slit, it was impossible for him to tell where the Occhscene’s ocular was pointed. Then with a brief flood of relief he realized its bearer couldn’t see his clearing from there. Orlondo had stood on that same terrace the day before, sketching the valley.
So he stooped within the loom’s bindings, and the great harness stooped with him. Then he twisted toward the tending wagon and reached down toward it with his right arm. Gatewatcher’s poleaxe—almost thrice as long as the wagon and crafted by the Armory at his request—still lay in its cradle across the wagon bed. He closed his hand over the hanging stave, and the harness’s fist grasped the weapon’s mastlike shaft. As he pulled it off its cradle, its huge fluke caught on the dense fabric beneath it, yanking some folds loose from the wagonbed.
The cape. Useless for anything except a parade. Hundreds of pounds of canvas linen with Premonta’s arms embroidered to it, fringed with fur… and lined in deep green.
Our real craft is in angles and colors. That’s how you make the eye believe the unreal. Master Solvi had told him that in the studio one time.
The cape was packed into the wagon with its lining facing out. So he reached with his left arm toward the fabric and closed his fingers tightly in the air, until green fabric bunched in Gatewatcher’s gauntlet. Then he drew his arm up over his head, until he saw a shadow fall across the top of his mirrors. Turning his stave to point down at the chest’s decking, he mimed pushing off of it until he heard the thump of the poleaxe’s buttspike sinking into the ground.
His bearings wobbled, but he eyed the painted float bobbing within the little waterglass fixed below the mirrors, waiting until its mark levelled. And then he stood up above the wagon, turning to face the foes at his left.
———
Orlondo took careful steps through the light woods below the Nave’s lowest terrace, moving around the trees, always keeping some of them between him and the Occhscene harness. He hoped enough of the cape was draped between him and the eyes of the gunners on the ridge above, and that the thumping footfalls of the harness and clatter of its plates were muffled by the fabric and leaves. As the domed helm of his enemy came closer, he reminded himself to breathe.
He was only dozens of yards from the foe when he came to a gap in the trees—maybe three lengths of his poleaxe. The Occhscene stepped closer, and even in the full morning sun he could see red nimbus light falling from its steepled reliquary onto the back of its helmet and tops of its pauldrons. It was gracefully built, with slim shoulders, and spiralled fluting across many of its chest plates.
It turned its eye slit toward him, and its shoulders jerked as it suddenly halted.
He pumped his legs to charge and released his phantom hold on the cape. He heard the fabric slither down his harness’ shoulder plates and grasped the stave with both hands, raising it back over his right shoulder. Then he twisted into a vicious swing, aimed at the Occhscene harness’ helm.
In Orlondo’s mirrors, he saw the huge axehead sweep toward his target, only to see it crash with a booming, splintering clack against the haft of a huge, flange-headed mace the Occschene harness had suddenly raised. He felt the reverberation through his armature as stop-ratchets locked against the counterforce. He’d meant to strike with the hammer side of the head. Before a curse could cross his lips, the momentum of the strike carried the macehead into the side of his enemy’s helm. It bounced off with a clang that knocked his opponent off stride.
It gave him a moment to recover and ready the poleaxe again. He couldn’t quickly jab with the buttspike; there was a treetop between him and the enemy harness. So he stepped back.
The Occhscene harness-bearer recovered quickly themself, and then rushed out from behind the tree, raising their mace for an overhand strike aimed at his ocular. The thump of their footfalls sounded even through the chest plates around Orlondo.
He rotated in the armature and pushed his stave into a blocking angle, fighting both the loom-cables and inertia, but he got Gatewatcher facing his opponent, stopping the mace against his poleaxe haft. In the mirrors, he caught a brief glance of the Occhscene’s left arm, which had no shield or other weapon.
He had a horrifying image of Delphia grabbing his poleaxe in a sparring match once, to haul him off balance. Instead he felt Gatewatcher rocked with a heavy punch to its right waist. He heard a pair of metallic thunks against the culet plating and his head spun in disorientation. The water sloshed within the balance globe, the float badly off-angle from the chest’s bar-grilled view slit.
He fought to rebalance himself within the armature bindings, and heard gears grinding as the left leg locked. Heart pounding, he pushed down with his stave in the same direction as the float’s point, and felt a shudder through the harness’s limbs as its fall stopped.
In the mirror, he saw the Occhscene harness’s left arm pull back, and saw that it ended in a set of pronged tusks erupting from a snarling, sculpted boar’s head.
With those tusks, it could punch through a city gate.
The Occhcene harness stepped into him again, using its momentum to wind into another maceblow. With Gatewatcher’s weapon haft blocking his left side, the Occhscene bearer rotated their mace overhand into an offside strike, leaning forward to aim low.
At my knees, Orlondo recognized. He threw his leg into a wide rightward lunge, rotating his trunk to block the mace. As soon as he did, his opponent stepped back to wind their mace up again. So, Orlondo straightened his harness up and backed off, this time throwing a jab with the buttspike to discourage his foe from closing the distance again.
The harnesses sidestepped warily together for a few moments, Orlondo moved slightly left, leaving himself room to wield the poleaxe away from the trees. The Occhscene matched him, forfeiting their cover but staying just beyond thrusting range.
He turned his head to sneak a brief glance at Delphia’s besieged wagonfort. One of the blue-and-red striped pike blocks had visibly backed off. Many bodies lay fallen or draped around the wagons, one cart was smashed, and one overturned. Otherwise, the fight still continued doggedly.
Orlondo heard another tearing crack from his left, followed by a screaming whine, ending in an explosion of splinters and leaves among the nearby treetops. His heart jolted in his chest, and he turned to see a cloud of bluish smoke among the fallen stone blocks near the ridge.
I forgot the guns…
The serpentine that had fired was much closer than when it had been atop the first hill. He could clearly see figures behind a low wall rushing forth to swab the barrel and ready another shot. A few yards away, another crew was still wrestling their cannon into place behind the embrasure. He didn’t want to test Gatewatcher’s plinth-hardened plate against iron shot. But the Occhscene guns would find a moving harness a more pressing, difficult target than the wagonfort. Or so he hoped.
Orlondo leveled the harness’s poleaxe toward the enemy harness, adopting his overhand grip. The Occhscene harness-bearer raised their mace, flourishing it in a slow circle, and pointed their boar arm at him. Looking between its tusks for the first time, he saw the yawning barrel of a bombard in place of a throat. So, not just for punching.
Instead of firing the cannon, the Occhscene waved that arm inward, toward their harness’s chest; then, they gave him a curt nod.
Orlondo laughed. This was probably some knightly companion of King Roul, maybe a prince. Challenging a painter’s assistant to another dueling pass. But they don’t know my trade; only that I fight. So he raised his poleaxe up into a salute of his own, and came on.
He threw a lunging thrust with the spike at the Occhscene’s left shoulder, above the boar cannon. His enemy rolled their shoulder, sidestepping to their right with surprising grace. As they did, he heard another boom-crack from the field guns above him, followed by a close, screaming whine. He was already in motion though, and no shot struck him.
He moved with Gatewatcher’s forward momentum, following his lunge into a step past the enemy. The Occhscene took a long step forward too, dropping into their own lunging counterpunch, aiming the boar’s tusks and its bombard at his harness’ belly, and straight toward him.
He slid his hand toward the end of his poleaxe, widening his grip to plunge it downward into an oarlike sweep along his left side. The weapon’s hammer side struck the Occhscene’s forearm, knocking the boar’s head offside. An instant later, he heard a massive boom echo through the belly plating on his left, and felt a splitting, bell-ringing pain in that ear. An acrid powder stench rushed through the slit in his harness’s chest.
He managed to carry through with his steps, and whirled to face back at his foe. Their harness was almost kneeling in the rocky soil beneath the mountain. They’d thrust their macehead downward into the ground, and leaned upon it to keep balance. A haze of bluish smoke curled around them, thickest around the bronze boar’s mouth. Their vision slit was turned slightly over their left shoulder, not quite pointed at him.
Orlondo’s head and chest pounded as he drew hot, heavy, stinking breaths. Yet he felt an exultant flush run through him as he levelled the poleaxe once more at his foe. He wasn’t sure what to do next, then remembered the brass speaking trumpet mounted beneath his chest vision slit.
“Do you yield to Premonta?” He yelled toward the mouthpiece. “Tell your soldiers to surrender and… my agents can discuss ransom.”
The Occhscene harness-bearer turned slightly toward him and shook their harness’s helm in a silent “no”. Then they pointed up with their boar arm past and above him.
The field guns again, Orlondo remembered with sudden fury. Both at his foe’s stubbornness and at himself for forgetting the gun crews would be reloading and aiming during the duel. He turned his head and glanced in his mirrors to look that way, expecting shots to plunge down on him from above. Then he gasped. The guns were abandoned; he could see their crews leaping over the ancient stone bulwark to run away or crouching behind its blocks.
Above them, some vast effluence flared skyward over the Nave’s peak. It was like ink spilled into a glass vessel of water, but it spread upward instead of down. As it did, it shone with many, shifting colors that rivalled the morning sun and threw light across the mountainside and valley floor.
Within its edges, there was dimension and depth, like a torn canvas placed over a window frame, with things visible behind. As the colors shifted, Orlondo saw brief glimpses of different spaces beyond, as if he were flipping a deck of printed cards, printed with masterwork paintings instead of woodcuts. There was a red sky over a silver plain. Then a teal ocean beneath white moons. Then a black void with vast, crystalline flower-things between glinting, distant stars. Then a strange city of metal and glass under a vivid blue sky.
He stood there for a few moments, then snuck a glance at the rest of the valley. The battle had ended, and all eyes were turned to the sky.
He heard trumpets sound again across the valley, and briefly glimpsed horses and carriages arriving atop the hill where the fight began, bearing the standards of Premonta.
But after he had looked back into that tear in the sky, he found he could not look away.