That he would, by Dralm! With how much success, though, was something else.
The messenger, having taken time out for a deep drink, continued: “Finally, a rider came in from this side of the mountain. He said that the Nostori were across and pushing Prince Ptosphes back into the gap. He wanted to know if the captain of Tarr-Dombra could send him help.”
well?
The messenger shrugged. “We only had two hundred regulars and two hundred and fifty militia, and it’s ten miles to Vryllos along the river, and an even longer way around the mountains on the south side. So the captain left a few cripples and kitchen-women to hold the castle, and crossed the river at Dyssa. They were just starting when I left; I could hear cannon-fire as I was leaving Sevenhills Valley.”
“That was about the best thing he could do.”
Gormoth would have a couple of hundred men at Dyssa. Just a holding force; they’d given up the idea of any offensive operations against Dombra Gap. If they could be run out and the town burned, it would start a scare that might take a lot of pressure off Ptosphes and Chartiphon both.
“Well, I hope nobody expects any help from us,” Harmakros said. “Our horses are ridden into the ground; half our men are mounted on captured horses, and they’re in worse shape than what we have left of our own.”
“Some of my infantrymen are riding two to a horse,” Phrames said. “You can figure what kind of a march they’d make. They’d do almost as well on foot.”
“And it would be midnight before any of us could get to Vryllos Gap, and that would be less than a thousand.”
“Five hundred, I’d make it,” the cavalry brigadier said. “We’ve been losing by attrition all the way east.”
“But I’d heard that your losses had been very light.”
“You heard? From whom?”
“Why, the men guarding prisoners. Great Galzar, Lord Kalvan, I never saw so many prisoners..
“That’s been our losses: prisoner-guard details. Every one of them is as much out of it as though he’d been shot through the head.”
But the army Klestreus had brought across the Athan had ceased to exist. Not improbably as many as five hundred had recrossed at Marax Ford. Six hundred had broken out of Hostigos at Narza Gap. There would be several hundred more, singly and in small bands, dodging through the woods to the south; they’d have to be mopped up. The rest had all either been killed or captured.
First, there had been the helter-skelter chase east from Fitra. For instance, twenty riflemen, firing from behind rocks and trees, had turned back two hundred trying to get through at the next gap down. Mostly, anybody who was overtaken had simply pulled off his helmet or held up a reversed weapon and cried for quarter.
He’d only had to fight once, himself, he and two Mobile Force cavalrymen had caught up to ten fleeing mercenaries and shouted to them to yield. Maybe this crowd were tired of running, maybe they were insulted at the demand from so few, or maybe they’d just been bullheaded. Instead, they had turned and charged. He had half-dodged—and half parried a lance and spitted the lancer in the throat, and then had been fighting two swordsman, and good ones, when a dozen mounted had come up.
Then, they’d had a small battle a half-mile west of Systros. Fifteen hundred infantry and five hundred cavalry, all mercenaries, had just gotten onto the main road again after passing on both sides of the burning town when the Fitra fugitives came dashing into them. Their own cavalry were swept away, and the infantry were trying to pike off the fugitives, when mounted Hostigi infantry arrived, dismounted, gave them an arquebus volley, and then made a pike charge, and then a couple of four-pounders came up and began throwing case-shot, leather tubes full of pistol balls. The Fitra fugitives had never been exposed to case-shot before, and after about two hundred were casualties they began hoisting their helmets and invoking Galzar.
Galzar was being a big help today. Have to do something nice for him.
That had been where the mercenary general, Klestreus, had been captured. Phratnes had taken his surrender; Kalvan and Harmakros had been too busy chasing fugitives. A lot of these had turned toward Narza Gap.
Hestophes, the Hostigi CO there, had been a real cool cat. He’d had two hundred and fifty men, two old bombards, and a few lighter pieces. Klestreus’s infantry had attacked Nirfa Gap, the last one down, and, with the help of Netzigon’s people from the other side, swamped it. A few survivors had managed to get away along the mountain top and brought him warning. An hour later, he was under attack from both sides, too.
He had beaten off three attacks, by a probable total of two thousand, and was bracing for a fourth when his lookouts on the mountain reported seeing the fugitives from Fitra and Systros streaming. east. Immediately he had spiked his guns and pulled his men up the mountain. The besieging infantry on the south were swept through by fleeing cavalry, and they threw the Nostori on the other side into confusion. Hestophes spattered them generously with small-arms fire to discourage loitering and let them go to spread panic on the other side. By now, they would be spreading it in Nostor Town.
Then, just west of the river, they had run into the wagon train and artillery, inching along under ox-power, accompanied by a thousand of Gormoth’s subject troops and another five hundred mercenary cavalry. This had been Systros over again, except it had been a massacre. The fugitive cavalry had tried to force a way past, the infantry had resisted them, the four-pounders—only five of them, now; one was off the road just below Systros with a broken axle—arrived and began firing case-shot, and then two eight-pounders showed up. Some of the mercenaries attempted to fight—when they later found the pay chests in one of the wagons, they understood why—but the Nostori simply emptied their arquebuses and calivers and ran. Along with “Down Styphon! “ the’ pursuers were shouting “Dralm and no Quarter!” He wondered what Xentos would think of that; Dralm wasn’t supposed to be that kind of a god, at all.
“You know,” he said, getting out his pipe and tobacco, “we didn’t have a very big army to start with. What do we have now?”
“Five hundred, and four hundred along the river,” Phrames said. “We lost about five hundred, killed and wounded. The rest are guarding prisoners all the way back to Fitra.” He looked up at the sun. “Back almost to Hostigos Town, by now.”
“Well, we can help Ptosphes and Chartiphon from here,” he said. “That gang Hestophes let through Narza Gap will be in Nostor Town by now, panting their story out, and the way they’ll tell it, it will be five times worse than it really was.” He looked at his watch. “By this time, Gormoth should be getting ready to fight the Battle of Nostor.” He turned to Phrames. “You’re in charge of this stuff here. How many men do you really need to guard it? Two hundred?”
Phrames looked up and down the road, and then at the prisoners, and then, out of the comer of his eye, at the boxes under the improvised table. They hadn’t gotten around to weighing that silver yet, but there was too much of it to be careless with.
“I ought to have twice that many.”
“The prisoners are mercenaries, and have agreed to take Prince Ptosphes’s colors,” the priest of Galzar said. “Of course, they may not bear arms against Prince Gormoth or any in his service until released from their oaths to him. In the sight of the war god, helping guard these wagons would be the same, for it would release men of yours to fight. But I will speak to them, and I will answer that they will not break their surrender. You will need some to keep the peasants from stealing, though.”
“Two hundred:’ Phrames agreed. “We have some walking wounded who can help.”
“All right. Take two hundred; men with the worst beat up horses and those men who are riding double, and mind the store. Harmakros, you take three hundred and two of the four-pounders, and cross at the next ford down. I’ll take the other four hundred and three guns and work north and east. You might split into two columns, a hundred men and one gun, but no smaller. There’ll be companies and parts of companies over there, trying to re-fo
rm. Break them up. And burn the whole country out—everything that’ll catch fire and make a smoke by daylight or a blaze at night. Any refugees, head them up the river, give them a good scare and let them go. We want Gormoth to think we’re across the river with three or four thousand men. By Dralm, that’ll take some pressure off Ptosphes and Chartiphon!”
He rose, and Phrames took his seat. Horses were brought, and he and Harmakros mounted. The messenger from Sevenhills Valley sat down, stretching his legs in front of him. He rode slowly along the line of wagons, full of food the Nostori wouldn’t eat this winter, and would curse Gormoth for it, and fireseed the Styphon temple-farm slaves would have to toil to replace. Then he came to the guns, and saw one that caught his eye. It was a long brass eighteen-pounder, on a two-wheel cart, with the long tail of the heavy timber stock supported by a four-wheel cart. There were two more behind it, and an officer with a ginger-brown beard sat morosely smoking a pipe on the limber-cart of the middle one. He pulled up.
“Your guns, Captain?”
“They were. They’re Prince Ptosphes’s guns now, I suppose.”
“They’re still yours, if you take our colors, and good pay for the use of them. We have other enemies besides Gormoth, you know.”
The captain grinned. “So I’ve heard. Well, I’ll take Ptosphes’s colors. You’re the Lord Kalvan? Is it true that you people make your own fireseed?”
“What do you think we were shooting at you, sawdust? You know what the Styphon stuff’s like. Try ours and see the difference.”
“Well, Down Styphon, then!” They chatted for a little. The mercenary artilleryman’s name was Alkides; his home, to the extent that any free-captain had one, was in Agrys City, on Manhattan Island. His guns, of which he was inordinately proud, and almost tearfully happy at being able to keep, had been cast in Zygros City. They were very good; if Verkan could collect a few men capable of casting guns like that, with trunnions ...
“Well, go back there by that burned house, by those big trees. You’ll find one of my officers, Count Phrames, and our Uncle Wolf there. You’ll find a keg of something, too. Where are your men?”
“Well, some were killed before we cried quits. The rest are back with the other prisoners.”
“Gather them up. Tell Count Phrames you’re to have oxen—we have no horses to spare—and get your company and guns on the road for Hostigos Town as soon as you can. I’ll talk to you later. Good luck, Captain Alkides
Or Colonel Alkides; if he was as good as he seemed to be, maybe Brigadier-General Alkides.
There were dead infantry all along the road, mostly killed from behind. Another case of cowardice carrying its own penalty; infantry who stood against cavalry had a chance, often a good one, but infantry who turned tail and ran had none. He didn’t pity them a bit.
It grew progressively worse as he neared the river, where the crews of the four-pounders and the two eight-pounders were swabbing and polishing their pieces, and dark birds rose cawing and croaking and squawking when disturbed. Must be every crow and raven and buzzard in Hos-Harphax; he even saw eagles.
The river, horse-knee deep at the ford, was tricky; his mount continually stumbled on armor-weighted corpses. That had been case-shot, mostly, he thought.
SO your boy did it, all by himself,” the lady history professor was saying. Verkan Vall grinned. They were in a seminar room at the University, their chairs facing a big map of Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific Hostigos, Nostor, northeastern Sask and northern Beshta. The pin-points of light he had been shifting back and forth on it were out, now.
“Didn’t I tell you he was a genius?”
“Just how much genius did it take to lick a bunch of klunks like that?” said Taigan Dreth, the outtime studies director. “The way I heard it, they licked themselves.”
“Well, considerable, to predict their errors accurately and plan to exploit them,” argued old Professor Shalgro, the paratemporal probability theorist. To him, it was a brilliant theoretical achievement, and the battle was merely the experiment which had vindicated it. “I agree with Chief’s Assistant Verkan; the man is a genius, and the fact that he was only able to become a minor police officer on his own time-line shows how these low-order cultures allow genius to go to waste.”
“He knew the military history of his own time-line, and he knew how to apply it on Aryan-Transpacific.” The historian wasn’t letting her own subject be slighted. “Actually, I think Gormoth planned an excellent campaign against people like Ptosphes and Chartiphon. If it hadn’t been for Kalvan, he’d have won.”
“Well, Chartiphon and Ptosphes fought a battle of their own and won it, didn’t they?”
“More or less.” He began punching buttons on the arm of his chair and throwing on red and blue lights. “Netzigon was supposed to wait here, at Listra-Mouth, till Klestreus got up to here. Chartiphon began cannonading him—ordnance engineering by Lord Kalvan—and Netzigon couldn’t take it. He attacked prematurely.”
“Why didn’t he just pull back? He had that river in front of him. Chartiphon couldn’t have gotten his guns across that, could he?” Talgan Dreth asked.
“Oh, that wouldn’t have been honorable. Besides, he didn’t want the mercenaries to win the war; he wanted the glory of winning it himself.”
The historian laughed. “How often I’ve heard that!” she said. “But don’t these Hostigi go in for all this honor and glory jazz too?”
“Sure—till Kalvan talked them out of it. As soon as he started making fireseed, he established a moral ascendancy. And then, the new tactics, the new swordplay, the artillery improvements; now it’s ‘Trust Lord Kalvan. Lord Kalvan is always right’.”
“He’ll have to work at that now,” Dreth said. “He won’t dare make any mistakes. What happened to Netzigon?”
“He made three attempts to cross the river, which is a hundred yards wide, in the face of artillery superiority. That was how he lost most of his cavalry. Then he threw his infantry across here at Vryllos, pushed Ptosphes back into the gap, and started a flank attack up the south bank on Chartiphon. Ptosphes wouldn’t stay pushed; he waited till Netzigon was between the river and the mountain, and then counter-attacked. Then Rylla took what cavalry they had across the river, burned Netzigon’s camp, butchered some camp-followers, and started a panic in his rear. That was when everything came apart and the pieces began breaking up, and then the commander at Tarr-Dombra, there, took some of his men across, burned Dyssa, and started another panic.”
“It was too bad about Rylla,” the lady historian said. “Yes.” He shrugged. “Things like that happen, in battles.” That was why Dalla was always worried when she heard he’d been in one. “We had a couple of antigrav conveyers in, after dark. They had to stay up to twenty thousand feet, since we didn’t want any heavenly portents on top of everything else, but they got some good infrared telephoto views. Big fires all over western Nostor, and around Dyssa, and more of them, the whole countryside, in the southwest—that was Kalvan and Harmakros. And a lot of hasty fortifying and entrenching around Nostor Town; Gormoth seems to think he’s going to have to fight the next battle there.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Talgan Dreth said. “It’ll be a couple of weeks before Kalvan has his army in shape for an offensive, after those battles. And how much powder do you think he has left?”
“Six or seven tons. That came in just before I came here, from our people in Hostigos Town. After he crossed the river last evening, Harmakros captured a big wagon train. A Styphon’s House archpriest, on his way to Nostor Town, with four tons of fireseed and seven thousand ounces of gold. Subsidies for Gormoth.”
“Now that’s what’s called making war support war,” the history professor commented.
“And another ton or so in Klestreus' supply train, and the pay-chests for his army,” he added. “Hostigos came out of this all right.”
“Wait till I get this all worked up,” old Professor Shalgro was gloating. “Absolute proof of the decisive eff
ect of one superior individual on the course of history. Kalthar Morth and his Historical Inevitability, and his vast, impersonal social forces, indeed!”
“Well, what are we going to do now?” Talgan Dreth asked. “We have the study-team organized, the five men who’ll be the brass-founders, and the three girls who’ll be the pattern-makers.”
“Well, we have horseback travel-time between Zygros City and Hostigos Town to allow for. They’ve been familiarizing on adjoining near-identical time-lines? Send them all to Zygros City on the Kalvan time-line. I have a couple of Paracops planted there already. Let them make local contacts and call attention to themselves. Dalla and I will do the same. Then we won’t have to worry about some traveler from Zygros showing up in Hostigos Town and punching holes in our stories.”
“How about conveyer-heads?” He shook his head. “You’ll have to have your team established in Hostigos Town before they can put one in there. You have a time-line for operations on Fifth Level, of course; work from there. You’ll have to get onto Kalvan timeline by an antigrav conveyer drop.”
“Horses and all?”
“Horses and all. That will be mounts for myself and Dalla, for two Paracops who will pose as hired guards, and for your team. Seventeen saddle horses. And twelve pack horses, with loads of Zygrosi and Grefftscharr wares. Lord Kalvan’s friend Verkan is a trader; traders have to have merchandise.”
Talgan Dreth whistled softly. “That’ll mean at least two hundred-foot conveyers. Where had you thought of landing them?”
“Up here.” He twisted the dial; the map slid down until he had the Southern corner of the Princedom of Nyklos, north and west of Hostigos. “About here,” he said, making a spot of light.
GORMOTH of Nostor stood inside the doorway of his presence-chamber, his arm over the shoulder of the newly ennobled Duke Skranga, and together they surveyed the crowd within. Netzigon, who had come stumbling in after midnight with all his guns and half his army lost and the rest a frightened rabble. His cousin, Count Pheblon, his ransom still unpaid; he’d hoped Ptosphes wouldn’t be alive to be paid by the moon’s end. The nobles of the Elite Guard, who had attended him here at Tarr-Hostigos, waiting for news of victory until news of defeat had come in. Three of Klestreus' officers, who had broken through at Narza Gap to bring it, and a few more who had gotten over Marax Ford and back to Nostor alive. And Vyblos, the high priest, and with him the Archpriest Krastokles from Styphon’s House Upon Earth, and his black-armored guard-captain, who had arrived at dawn with half a dozen troopers on broken-down horses.
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