The Tears of the Sun tc-5

by S. M. Stirling

  Darkness was falling now, as the long summer twilight faded; the coals underlit the faces around him, giving them an odd bony look with the lanterns in the tents throwing contrasting shadows. The meat had gone on the fire, mostly on wooden skewers, sending up fragrant smoke and making the coals flare where drops of fat landed. There was a bubbling pot of beans stewed with onions and dried tomatoes and chunks of bacon, another of greens, and one of the helpers was frying sliced potatoes in a pan.

  “This is more like a hunting trip than a war, so far,” Oak said as plates were handed around. Grudgingly, as he took a loaf of rough maslin bread from a basket and tore off a piece: “The PPA has done all they promised in the way of supplies. We’re even getting these from the city bakeries by the wagonload every day. And they’ve assigned us enough wells, though only just.”

  Rudi understood the scowl. Oak’s sister Aoife and his foster brother Sanjay had all died in the wars against the Association. But his foster father had been killed by the CUT in the battle at Pendleton last year. Chuck had been First Armsman after Sam Aylward resigned the position, but Oak hadn’t inherited it because of anything but proved ability. He’d been his father’s right hand for years anyway, as Chuck had been Sam Aylward’s before him. The Clan had an informal approach to such matters.

  “It’ll be dog biscuit and jerky soon enough,” Rudi said.

  He pulled the eating tool out of the little sheath on his dirk scabbard, with a spoon on one end and a fork on the other.

  “You’re ready?” he went on, catching the chunk of bread Oak tossed him out of the air and sticking the fork-end in it.

  “The last three thousand from the southernmost Duns are just here the now,” Oak said. “All together, twelve thousand one hundred fifty-two archers fit to stand in the bow-line. Not counting healers, pipers and eoghann.”

  Seeing Bjarni’s puzzlement, Rudi spoke aside to him, nodding to indicate the teenagers: “ Eoghann. Youths and maidens not yet old enough to fight, to ‘take valor,’ as we say. In a stand-up battle they mainly carry arrows forward to the bow-line from the reserve stocks. It’s important work.”

  Someone handed him a plate loaded with fried potatoes, boiled kale and skewers of grilled mutton. He made the Invoking pentagram over it and murmured a quick thanks to the Mother, and Her Consort who died to give the grain life and rose again each year. The Norrheimers and Fred Thurston hammer-signed theirs, and spoke their own blessing: Hail, all-giving Earth.

  Oak nodded as he ladled out beans: “The test for the First Levy is shooting twelve arrows to the measured minute and keeping it up for ten minutes, from a bow of eighty pounds pull or better, and putting nine of each twelve into a man-sized target a hundred yards away. That’s the minimum, you understand, not the average. Against massed targets we usually start shooting at about three hundred long paces’ distance.”

  Bjarni’s brows went up. “Twelve thousand archers… twelve arrows a minute…”

  “That’s twenty-four hundred a second,” Rudi said, touching the Sword. “Or just under a hundred and fifty thousand in one minute. It is,” he added gently, “a great whacking lot of arrows, the which is why we call it an arrowstorm. Nor are most battles only a minute long. Hence the eoghann scurry about a good deal, the darlings.”

  Bjarni pursed his lips. Behind him Edain chuckled very quietly; he’d been the first to show the Norrheimers what the Mackenzie yew longbow could do, in their own distant homeland. Now their king was contemplating what twelve thousand such bows could do to a force trying to close with them. Rudi knew that wasn’t entirely fair; Edain was known as Aylward the Archer for a reason. Nor was the great armor-smashing stave he carried typical. That bow drew over half again the minimum allowed.

  But it’s mostly fair if not entirely, Rudi thought. A fifty-pound draw on a hunting bow will put a broadhead through a bull elk’s body, breaking ribs going in and coming out; I’ve seen it done. Eighty pounds on a warbow will do for a man, sure, often enough even if he’s wearing a tin shirt.

  “That is a great whacking lot of arrows,” Bjarni said. “How many do you lug about with you?”

  Oak grinned. “You ask the right questions, Bjarni King,” he said. “And the answer is as many as we can. Also the eoghann run out to scavenge as many spent ones as they can from the field, when it’s safe. Food can be foraged at a pinch and you can fight barefoot or even bare-arsed if you must, but a cloth yard arrow needs well-seasoned straight-grained wood for the shaft, good flight feathers from a goose and glue and thread for fletching, horn for the nock and fine hard steel for the bodkin, and all put together with skill in the making. Fashioning arrows is one of the tasks we do in the Black Months, when the farm work is less. It’s part of the Chief’s Portion.”

  “The scot, you’d say,” Rudi amplified. “The tax.”

  “And nobody skimps the work, when their lives and families might rest on it,” Oak said. He turned his face to Rudi. “And another four thousand archers in the forts in the Cascades, the ones who can fight but aren’t up to much hard marching for one reason or another. The enemy’s withdrawn some men from overmountain and the Bend country, but not all of them.”

  Soberly, he met Rudi’s eyes. “This is all we have, High King. If we lose it the Clan dies.”

  Rudi nodded, equally grave; all that was a fifth of the Clan’s total population, and a much higher share of its adults.

  “I know. It’s still our best chance. Our archers and the Association’s knights are the biggest edges that we have, and sure, I intend to wring every scrap of advantage from both that I can.”

  Then he took up a skewer of the wether’s flesh, biting off a chunk. The tender meat was juicy-pink in the center and Judy Barstow’s sauce, tangy with garlic and sage and peppers, was crusted on the seared outer surface. It would have been finer still for marinating a while, but it was better than ample for a war-camp.

  “See you, Oak,” he said, gesturing with the remainder of the kebab, “I’ve read your reports on the fighting you did in the mountains west of Bend while I was gone on the Quest. You beat them handily, but don’t judge all that they can do by what happened when they had no choice but to charge you on your own ground in the passes. Or by the poor and pitiful performance of hungry frightened plainsmen clumping in high-heeled rawhide boots through a strange snowbound forest.”

  Oak nodded. “From first to last the CUT’s horse-archers were a pain in the arse at Pendleton,” he said. “Much more so when we were forced to retreat, and they had room to maneuver fast. They’re hard trouble in any sort of open country, and that is a fact. That’s how my father died.”

  And you took a spectacular vow of vengeance at Chuck’s passing ceremony, Rudi thought. Will it cloud your judgment?

  He didn’t think so, and he wasn’t sure whether that was the long knowledge of growing up in the same Dun as this man, or something the Sword of the Lady gave him. He’d always been fair to excellent at reading folk, but with the Sword at his side no man could lie to him, even if the words deceived the speaker himself. He found himself fighting to keep that from souring his view of humankind, sometimes.

  “We had a lot of trouble with them in the battle at Wendell,” Fred observed. “And that’s how they beat Deseret-more cavalry and moving faster. You can fight them with infantry but you need some horse-archers yourself, and a shitload of field artillery really helps, since it outranges their bows. Then if they thin out their formations to cut down their casualties they drop the intensity of their firepower a lot.”

  “We needed the cavalry and catapults badly to hold them off so that we could break contact,” Oak agreed. “We’d have been surrounded and whittled down to nothing, else, instead of just hurt.”

  “Just so, and Lugh of the Many Skills knows the Boise infantry are a bad lot in a fight too. Very disciplined, very well drilled in their maneuvers and it’s an annoyingly persistent set of omadhauns they are to boot.”

  Fred grinned. “Yup. If they try charging us, well
, we’ll give them as much trouble as they want.”

  “Exactly. It’s uncomfortably good at combined-arms work Boise’s army is, and they have no religious scruples about making catapults of their own, unlike the CUT. I’m doing what I can about that stubbornness, breaking their heads from the inside, you might say, and Fred’s been a help. But in the meantime I think you’re going to need a reaction squad of head-bashers in the more usual sense of the word, more than Fred’s band can provide, and I’ve just the men for the core of that.”

  Bjarni was mopping up beans with a chunk of the bread. He nodded, still chewing, drank from the mug of watered wine beside him, and spoke: “That we can do. We’re not wizards with the bow like you Mackenzies, but handstrokes are our sport and our delight. And my five hundred are picked men, the best fighters of all the tribes of Norrheim. Well used to fighting side by side by now too.”

  Rudi slapped him on the shoulder. “That they are, Oak. For planting their feet in the dirt and locking shields to conquer or die where they stand, I’ve seen that there’s none like the warriors of Norrheim. Pitiless fighters, fell and grim. Also they’re the truest of men to their oaths, and fear does not enter into their actions.”

  There was a slight happy growl from the armored hirdmen behind their king; he couldn’t have picked a compliment from all the world’s tongues that would have pleased them more, as long as it came from someone they respected.

  The which they do, after the Seven Hills fight, at which all these men shed sweat and many let their blood on the ground from their wounds. And for their pledged oaths many of them will die very far from home, meeting their end on foreign ground with their last sight the faces of angry strangers. I will do what I must, for the kingdom’s sake and the world’s. And for my children yet unborn. The praise will also go a way to reconciling them to being brigaded with Fred’s not-really-turncoats. It’s an acrobat a High King must be!

  “Now, when is this battle where we Norrheimers will do our head-bashing to be?” Bjarni said, belching contentedly and handing his plate to the youth. “And where?”

  More of the watered wine went around, and a small sack filled with dried fruit and nuts. Oak leaned forward eagerly as well, and Fred’s face had a wolf’s keenness.

  “It’ll be as late as I can manage,” Rudi said. “Around Samhain, if I can harry and delay until then. Yule would be too much to hope for.”

  He turned aside to Bjarni for a moment: “Samhain’s our festival of the dead and the Otherworld, that ends the sacred Wheel of the Year. The Quarter Day at the end of October. Lughnasadh is the summer festival, just past.”

  Oak hissed between his teeth. “Samhain? That long?” he said, obviously thinking of the autumn planting and a hungry year to follow if it was skimped.

  “Everyone planted more last fall than normal, I hear, and we can put in more spring grain next year needs must. Time fights for us, remember; time, and the land itself,” Rudi said. “The enemy outnumber us three to two; or they will at the beginning of things.”

  “It would have been two to one, if you hadn’t gotten us allies,” Oak acknowledged.

  Rudi nodded; it was true. “I’ll make them leave their base of supply far behind, draw them in, with each step making them weaker as they must detach forces to guard their lines of supply and invest the strongholds. Then I’ll bring them to battle at the time and place I choose.”

  “Where?” Oak said.

  “The Horse Heaven Hills,” he said, nodding eastward.

  Bjarni frowned, and Rudi drew in the dirt with a twig, showing how those lay between the valley of the Yakima river and the Columbia, a little east of where they were now.

  “Or at least Horse Heaven is my choice,” Rudi said, seeing the lay of those long swells in his mind. “The enemy, the dirty dogs, will have a plan of their own, the which is a reason why we call them the enemy. It’s nicely varied terrain, not too closed in to maneuver freely or use our heavy cavalry, and not so open there’s no element of surprise or choice of ground. They might try to go north of there, up the Yakima, but that would trap them in a cul-de-sac and the Free Cities are too strong to storm with an army still on their flank.”

  “It’s rich land, if they’re hungry,” Oak said. To Bjarni: “A great valley, closely tilled-watered by channels from the river, one fortified village and walled town after another, field after field. Densely peopled with strong yeomen, and they good farmers and stubborn fighters both.”

  “Rich land but with all that’s edible behind walls,” Rudi said. “Or it will be after my orders are carried out. Taking the Yakima would only make sense in a slow campaign aimed at steady conquest of one bit at a time, but now that the League of Des Moines and the Dominions are marching up their backsides they don’t have that luxury.”

  “You think that will make them give you a fight where and when you want it?” Bjarni said. “Letting your enemy set the terms of battle is halfway to a battle lost. If they have good war-captains, they’ll know that.”

  Rudi nodded. “They’ll go for our main field army, the beating of which is their only hope of any real victory now. Castles and walled cities can slow and frustrate an invader, but it’s only in concert with an army that they can defeat him. That’s the bait I’ll dangle before them, snatching it away again and again by taking positions too strong to attack as I fall back.”

  He smiled. There was something he’d read once… and the Sword prompted him. He said something in another language. When the two men looked at him questioningly, he went on:

  “In our tongue… Those skilled at making the enemy move do so by creating a situation to which he must conform; they entice him with something he is certain to take, and with lures of ostensible profit they await him in strength.”

  “That’s sensible,” Bjarni said.

  “Sun Tzu generally is, the wit and keen insight of the man.”

  “I’ve read him, Dad was big on his Art of War,” Fred noted soberly. “The thing is, Martin read him too. He’s an evil treacherous shit but he’s not stupid.”

  “You’re thinking of the man as you knew him,” Rudi said. “I have grounds to suspect he’s much changed. Also knowing what you should do and overriding impulse are two quite different things; and he’ll be much concerned with things at home, and even the most absolute ruler must take the opinions and feelings of his war-captains into account. By Samhain they’ll be mad with rage and fear and hunger and want nothing so much in all the world as to finish it. Then I’ll offer battle in a position that looks just a little more doable from their side than it really is, and-”

  Bjarni drew a thumb across his throat below the dark red beard and made a horribly realistic gurgling sound, like a man drowning in his own blood, rolling his eyes upward; the coal-glow from the fire added an unpleasant touch to the pantomime. He and Oak barked laughter together. Fred looked grim; any victory would mean the death of a good many of his people.

  “Or so we hope,” Rudi nodded.

  They discussed options and details, munching on the raisins and slices of dried peach and apricot and apple, the walnuts and hazelnuts in the bag and calling over a couple of those with clerk’s skills to take notes. After an hour or so a stir came from the northward.

  “Ah, and yet another detail to squeeze into the capacious folds of the dying day,” Rudi said. His head turned to look down the valley. “Twelve thousand… not a quorum by itself.”

  Oak nodded. “Counting proxies, yes, though. They’re all duly registered, so we have the Oenach Mor here with us, that we do.”

  A helper brought round water and a well-used cloth, and they washed their hands.

  “Oenach… Mor?” Bjarni asked.

  “A… folkmoot,” Rudi said. “Each Dun in the Mackenzie duthchas has its oenach, its assembly of adult members. And Mor means Great in the old tongue of our ancestors. The Great Moot, you might say, where the Chief presides and decisions are made for the Clan as a whole. The votes must represent the majority for the d
ecision to be lawful, by pledged proxy if they can’t be there themselves. In ordinary times it’s a great holiday, with games and contests and plays and such, held yearly after the harvest festival. Lughnasadh, about this time, in fact.”

  Bjarni’s eyes lit. “Why, that’s like the things for our tribes, and the all-thing for Norrheim!” he said. “The town meetings, as the old folk called them.”

  “Mmmm, ours are more noisy than yours, I’m thinking,” Rudi said judiciously. “They certainly last longer, as a general rule; though I’d say this one may be mercifully brief. You’re welcome to watch.”

  “I’ll bring my men and they’ll sit on the edge,” Fred said, nodding. “It’ll impress them. In more ways than one.”

  A stirring came through the darkness, and then the keening, droning wail of the pipes with a thuttering roar of drums beneath it. Rudi grinned to himself; his mother had composed that tune, too, when someone insisted. He thought it had been Dennie, a friend of hers who’d had a big role in establishing Clan customs in the early days.

  Officially the title was It’s a Clan We Must Be, from the first speech she’d given to the little band of fugitives meeting at the old hunting lodge that had become the core of Dun Juniper. She herself had been known to refer to it as Hail to the Chief, which oldsters considered a great joke; some obscure reference to the ancient world.

  His eyes sought her eagerly. After Matti, the one I love most in all the world, he thought. And Sir Nigel. I need their wisdom. And Maude and Fiorbhinn, so grown while I was away!

  Juniper Mackenzie listened to the pipers and the hammering rattle of the Lambegs and the dunting snarl of war-horns calling the assembly and smiled to herself. Beside her Nigel Loring, her man, leaned his head towards her.

  “That’s your ironic smile, my dear,” he said.

  The smooth cultured drawl of the grandmother who’d raised him was still strong in his voice. His parents had both died within a few years of his birth, and his grandfather Eustace had stood too close to a German howitzer shell during the retreat from Mons in 1914, leaving a young widow and a posthumous son. He’d been in middle age when he arrived a fugitive from Mad King Charles in England, fifteen years ago, during the War of the Eye. Now he was unambiguously old, his head egg-bald, the last yellow gone from the clipped white mustache. He was still slim and erect in the Clan’s formal garb of tight green jacket with lace at throat and cuffs and double row of silver buttons, badger-skin sporran, kilt and plaid, flat Scots bonnet with silver clasp.