Chapter 35: Ambush

When I got to the HQ area in the center of the laager, I was very pleased to be able to greet the other Finger leaders that I knew; especially those that had been part of my training Finger.

Desrae and I stood together in companionable silence while we waited to see what was going on.

It didn't take long for all the Finger leaders to arrive, but Hand Evans was visibly impatient with the stragglers.

"All right people," Hand Evans began, "we're on the road at last. The delay in town was unfortunately necessary for us to make final preparations for the journey. I know that all of you have been wondering just what the huge rush was, and there have been all sorts of rumors flying around. The rumors have it half right. The fact is that the Fists of our Fight have been ambushed and decimated by an unexpected enemy force. Losing a tenth of their number forced them to retreat to a stronghold where they are currently besieged.

"After the initial ambush, the Fight has lost another two thirds of its strength, and they're barely holding on, waiting for the relief column, that's us, to arrive."

"The castle that they are occupying is some distance from here. At our current pace, it would take us about two weeks to get there, which we don't think is good enough, it has to be faster. We have no idea whether they can hold out long enough to wait for us and are concerned that either their food and water will run out or the defenses will be over-run."

Hand Evans paused to take a sip of water and took the time to look around the circle, meeting the gaze of each of us in turn. I got the definite impression that we were being evaluated against some internal checklist of criteria and that our taskings would be delivered as a consequence of that evaluation. I soon discovered that I wasn't far wrong.

Hand Evans continued on to explain that we would be leaving the support personnel behind with the wagons, and would move on foot as rapidly as possible. He then proceeded to issue instructions for the various fingers. I found that we were tasked with being part of the defensive screen.

The formation that Hand Evans chose was the main group marching in column of route, three abreast, with two screening formations in what I thought of as echelon left and right. This was basically two lines forming an arrow-head shape. My finger was assigned to the front left of the formation.

After Hand Evans had finished his briefing, I walked slowly back to my finger, chatting to Desrae as we walked. As it turned out, her Finger would be working with mine as the other part of the line. We decided that I would coordinate the two fingers and Desrae would keep an eye out on our back-trail. With those details sorted out, I filled Desrae in on the details of some of the strange things that had happened since we had last spoken. I didn't tell her specifically about the archery equipment, just hinted at it when I told her about D'ar'Beth's behavior.