Chariots on the Floodplain

How far can two fat oxen drag a four-wheeled dray before three pairs of imperial warhorses run them into the dirt?

The answer, as I figured it from the dry rumble shaking the gravel under my boots, was roughly two miles past the toll-gates of Sluis-Dijk.

The western floodplains spread out like a butcher’s split hide, flat and gray-brown under the pale morning sky. There were no dikes out here, no willow-lined ditches to duck behind, only miles of sun-cracked alluvial clay laced with stagnant drainage swales. Half a mile to the south, three yellow dust plumes rose against the low horizon, moving twice as fast as my cart.

"Step out, Roep," I grunted, slapping the leather rein across his heavy rump. "Come on, Bruin. Pick 'em up."

Roep gave an indignant snort, his black tail swishing against the cart’s splintered side-rail, but he did not quicken his pace. A draft ox has one speed for hauling clay, another for wallowing in ditches, and none at all for fleeing bronze war-chariots.

The dust plumes resolved into three narrow, two-wheeled bronze cars, each pulled by a matched pair of roan stallions. Sunlight flared off their front aprons and the brass greaves of the drivers. Two men rode in each basket: a whip-hand leaning over the reins, and a spearman braced with a six-foot ash javelin. They spread into a crescent, aiming to pin me against the waterlogged depression of an old overflow swale.

They were Captain Bloem’s advance scouts. The three-sun crest on their car-housings matched the seal on the wanted parchment back at the lock. They had caught my trail the moment the toll-warden pocketed my bronze ditching-share and pointed west.

Running was done. Even if Roep and Bruin had the wind of thoroughbreds, a loaded ditch-cart has the turning radius of a church barn.

I hauled back on the guide-lines, dragging the team to a halt ten paces shy of the swale. The depression was four feet deep, choked with gray river-slime and black reed-stems.

"Stand, boys," I said, looping the reins around the brake lever. "Keep your heads down and do not kick the tailgate."

I pulled the seamless black whistle from beneath my linen tunic. The metal felt cold against my knuckles, humming with that faint, greasy vibration that made my teeth ache. If I tried to fight six imperial soldiers on dry turf, they would pin me with three spears before I could swing my ash pry-bar. But the ground here was three yards of wet river silt sitting over an ancient water-vein.

I stepped out ten paces ahead of the cart, planting my boots in the greasy mud at the lip of the swale.

The chariots came in fast, the thud of hooves drumming a heavy rhythm against the earth. The center car led by twenty yards. The driver leaned forward to work his whip, while his spearman braced over the left rail, raising his bronze-tipped shaft. They did not shout a surrender demand. Out on the frontier, a laborer with an unhitched cart was just another bag of grain to spear and tally.

Imperial war-chariots are impressive in a parade, but to anyone who has ever built a haywain, they look like an expensive mistake. The wheels are too small, the axle is set too far back, and the center of gravity sits high enough that a careless rut will spill the whole mess into a hedge.

I brought the narrow mouthpiece to my lips.

From my night in the suction-bogs, I knew that raw lung-force threw up brittle, porous slag that shattered under heavy weight. Instead, I pressed my lower lip flat across the bottom slit, narrowed my breath to a sharp hiss, and aimed the acoustic beam straight into the damp earth forty paces ahead.

The ground shuddered.

A sound like tearing slate ripped through the dirt. Ten paces ahead of the charging lead horses, the gray alluvial muck tore free from the grass. The wet clay locked together in a violent, interlocking wedge of jagged iron-colored slag, rising three feet out of the loam at a sixty-degree incline.

The lead driver saw it, but at full gallop, twelve hundred pounds of horseflesh and bronze do not turn on a copper penny.

The roans struck the sudden metal ramp head-on. The near horse shrieked as its chest took the iron wedge, pitching forward in a spray of dirt. The chariot vaulted directly over its broken neck. The bronze car launched four feet into the air, twisting sideways as the small wheels sheared off against the hardened crest. The car slammed into the turf upside down with a deafening crash. The spearman was thrown twenty yards across the gravel, while the driver was crushed beneath his own overturned chassis.

The left-flank chariot tried to sheer away, its driver hauling desperately on the rein. The horses skidded, their shoes throwing up clods of sod, but the momentum was too fierce. The right wheel clipped the corner of the metal ramp. The axle snapped with a crack like dry cedar, sending the bronze basket spinning across the dirt on its side, shedding brass fittings and screaming men.

The third car had time to react. The driver yanked his team hard to the right, angling wide into the open ditch-line to circle behind my position.

"Oh no you don't," I muttered around the tube.

I shifted my fingers, covering the side-vent and dropping the pitch into a low, throbbing warble.

The angled iron ramp in front of me instantly lost its metallic temper. With a wet, sucking gasp, the solid wedge liquefied, collapsing back into a gray pool of cold river mud.

I pivoted toward the third chariot as it tore across the swale. The driver had his horses in a full gallop, aiming to cut between me and the cart. The spearman had his javelin cocked back, his jaw set in a snarl.

I blew hard into the tube, driving the acoustic pulse straight into the wet bog under their churning wheels.

The liquid swamp beneath them did not rise into a wall. I widened the tone, commanding the suspended particulates to solidify from beneath, forming a series of jagged iron teeth directly under the churned mud.

The front hooves of the horses punched through the surface and struck the hidden teeth. The beasts tumbled headfirst as if their legs had been scythed. The chariot’s bronze axle dug into the solidified mire, stopping the charge in three inches of travel.

The car buckled inward like a stepped-on tin cup, and the driver and spearman were launched forward over the yoke, slamming hard into the petrified ditch-bank.

Silence fell over the floodplain, broken only by the whistling wind and the wheezing of injured horses.

I lowered the whistle, dragging the back of my hand across my mouth. The bitter taste of copper and cold river-dregs coated my tongue. My knees shook, the adrenaline draining away to leave a dull ache behind my temples.

"That's three," I said to the empty grass.

A violent, splintering crack sounded behind me.

I spun around.

The deafening roar of the crashes and the smell of hot, ruptured metal had finally penetrated the thick skulls of my oxen. Roep had his head down, his white eyes wide with blind panic. He lunged sideways against the yoke, slamming his bulk into Bruin.

"Whoa!" I shouted, dropping the whistle against my chest and sprinting toward them. "Roep! Bruin! Steady, boys!"

It was too late. Bruin bawled, a terrifying, guttural sound, and lunged forward. The sudden jerk snapped the dried ash tongue of the cart clean off at the axle. The heavy dray lurched, tipped onto two wheels, and crashed onto its side, spilling my ditching shovels, water skins, and sacks of meal into the churned loam.

Free of the wagon’s weight, the two oxen bolted.

They tore across the northern lip of the swale, dragging the broken traces and splintered yoke between them. They moved faster than I had ever seen an ox move in eight years of digging ditches, pounding across the open flatland toward the dense reed-thickets of the northwest marshes.

"Roep! Stop, you stubborn bastards!" I yelled, my voice cracking against the wind.

Neither beast looked back. Within moments, their gray-brown backs shrank into the waving sea of scrub and marsh-grass.

I stood alone in the center of the vast, open plain, surrounded by three shattered bronze chariots, dead imperial horses, and the ruined wreckage of my only wagon.

I looked down at the broken cart tongue in the dirt, then out toward the northern swamps where my livelihood had just vanished.

"Stubborn," I muttered, bending down to pick up my dropped ash pry-bar from the mud. "Just pure, unadulterated stubborn."