Yozef made no more comments, and the meeting adjourned.
Battlefields
Yozef had one more item he’d planned to include at the meeting, ultimately deciding it wasn’t the right moment.
No matter how much the Caedelli trained and produced more weapons, he didn’t relish the thought of an open field battle against the Narthani army. The islanders would probably win, but the cost would be far higher than he thought any hetman understood, especially after their belief in a stirring victory at Moreland City. In contrast, Yozef believed they had been extraordinarily lucky. The terrain features the clans had taken advantage of, the two incredibly stupid errors by the Moreland and Eywell hetmen, and the Narthani being unprepared to expect a clan flank attack had combined to lead to a tactical draw, not an outright victory.
He didn’t believe they could hope to be lucky again.
A major class of contingencies, perhaps the most important, involved a situation where the clans might have to face the Narthani again in a field battle, one where the clans couldn’t rely on luck or Narthani mistakes to save them. Although Yozef recognized that he was no general, he knew that where a battle took place was often decisive, if one side had terrain features in its favor. He didn’t doubt many clan leaders would intuitively use terrain wherever they could, but he feared they weren’t ready to appreciate the importance of terrain being a decisive factor, if they had the opportunity to choose the battlefield.
Compounding the problem, Yozef had no doubt the Narthani leaders understood the use of terrain, and they would work on their side to pick sites favorable to them and unfavorable to the clans.
When he was a teenager, Yozef and fellow gamesters had endlessly argued and discussed the strategies used in famous battles, pretending they were qualified to critique military campaigns. He remembered multiple examples of famous battles where terrain was a major factor, although histories, novels, and movies tended to attribute victories to more glamorous factors, such as leaders, weapons, and noble causes.
At the Battle of Crecy, the English defeated a large French army, with the longbow given credit for changing the nature of warfare. But the English victory was also due to a judicious choice of the battlefield. The English chose the site and waited for the French. Towns and a river prevented flank attacks by the French cavalry, the heart of the French army. The English positioned themselves at the top of a slope, so the French cavalry had to ride upward to attack the English, only to find the archers protected by pits and obstacles. It was a shattering defeat for the French, and the English suffered few casualties.
Less than a century later, not having learned their lesson, the French suffered another disaster at the hands of the English at Agincourt, where a combination of weather and terrain gave the English longbowmen an overwhelming advantage. Their flanks protected by dense woods through which the French cavalry couldn’t maneuver, the English positioned themselves at the end of a large field recently plowed, a field that had turned to mud from a recent rain. Armored French knights had to slog through deep mud to get at the English and were slaughtered by longbowmen.
He recalled other examples: terrain that restricted maneuvering at the Battle of Chickamauga in the U.S. Civil War, the Russian winter’s effects on Napoleon’s and Hitler’s armies, and the French ceding of high ground to the Vietnamese communists at Dien Bien Phu.
Military theory writers often emphasized terrain. Sun Tzu’s On War had an entire chapter on army positioning. Terrain played an especially important role in “first-generation warfare,” as defined by a Pentagon report referencing battles with massed men using column and line tactics, before such tactics were rendered obsolete by rifled muskets, breech-loading rifles, and cannon, not to mention the first machine guns and indirect artillery fire.
Yozef saw only two ways to get the Narthani to leave Caedellium: either defeat them in pitched battles outside of Preddi City or besiege Preddi City until they withdrew by ship or surrendered. If it became necessary to fight the Narthani in a field engagement, he wanted to scour the island for battlefield sites that might give the Caedelli the advantage. It was not an appealing option. Then again, neither was a siege.
CHAPTER 27: IF THEY DO THAT, WE DO THIS
Yozef and Maera worked the next two sixdays organizing the contingency-planning group. Yozef also took the opportunity to begin setting up formal intelligence gathering and analysis. Without checking with Culich, he named the group the Military Intelligence Unit, MIU, and set it up on the top floor of a two-story building in Caernford. A clothing shop occupied the bottom floor.
Yozef also saw the group as a chance to inch the clans into closer cooperation, so he asked Culich to contact other hetmen to recruit at least one member of their clans to come to Caernford and join the MIU. Six clans responded, and the group began operation. Maera and her third cousin, Riona Klofyn, represented Keelan. They were also the only women, which proved awkward at the first meeting of the entire group, until Yozef sent home one of the two Mittack men for snarky remarks about women and rational thinking.
It took only two days for Yozef to determine that six of the remaining nine members of MIU were keepers. Naturally, this included Maera and Riona. From Clan Adris came Owill Brell, a forty-one-year-old man, tall and wiry, with receding hair and a seemingly endless talent for devious thinking. He was matched by Halwon Ristwyn, a twenty-year-old Stentese, whom Yozef identified as a certifiable nerd and a correspondent with Cadwulf on mathematics. Yozef thought he’d recognized the name when Welman Stent appointed Halwon as Stent’s member of MIU, but it was Maera who made the connection that Halwon was already a candidate for the University of Caedellium’s Department of Applied Mathematics. Halwon’s main fault was not keeping his attention on the task at hand but instead wandering off on something that caught his attention but had nothing to do with contingency planning.
Two less astute members were Isla Luwis, Vortig Luwis’s daughter, and Gartherid Kennrick, Pedr Kennrick’s son. However, both were dedicated and bright enough to be useful.
Owill Brell emerged quickly a leader of the group, along with Maera, who soon suggested Brill might be the best leader of a larger intelligence operation, leaving her to focus on analyzing Narthani culture and on projecting Narthani intentions. One of Brill’s strengths was getting Riona to be productive without letting her irritate him. Maera’s cousin was forty-one, a widow, and the mother of three teenage children. They apparently ran their household, because Riona felt they were old enough to take care of themselves.
“I’ve always felt sorry for her,” Maera told Yozef. “I’m afraid her husband and immediate family had very traditional ideas about the role of women, more like the northern clans, instead of here in Keelan. Ever since I’ve been old enough, I’ve realized that Riona was unhappy. Whether due to the situation or her own inherent personality, she always seems to alienate people, often by things she says, without judging or caring about the consequences. I’ve tried to avoid her at family gatherings when her family participated, but she’s one of the sharpest members of the Keelans. Yet she has had no outlet for it.”
Yozef spent the first day of MIU operations meeting with the group, mainly giving examples of contingencies they should consider and how all clans, not just Keelan, could respond. He then left them to return to his other projects, only stopping in one morning a week to be briefed on their progress. For the third such summary session, Maera alerted him that the group had something he needed to hear. She declined to give him hints, saying it was best that the entire group told him, although Maera hinted that Owill and Riona were the prime movers.
Yozef delayed, due to making a stop at the cannon foundry, and arrived a few minutes late to the meeting. The others waited around a table.
“About time you got here, Yozef,” snarked Riona. “We’ve got more to do than wait around for your convenience.”
Maera rolled her eyes, and a corner of Owill’s mouth hinted at a smile. The other members ignored their
insolent colleague.
Yozef sat in the only empty chair, and Maera started them off.
“Owill will tell you what we’ve discussed the last sixday.”
The Adris man rose and went to one of the many maps tacked to the room’s walls. He stopped at a map of the entire island.
“One of the scenarios you gave us was if the Narthani attacked one of the northern or western provinces. For this example, let’s assume the target is Pewitt, Swavebroke, or Farkesh. You mentioned that distance can limit our clans from helping. We’d like to redefine the problem from how to respond to such an attack, to how to promote Narthani withdrawal and make them hesitate before any future attempts.
“What would the Narthani response be if, instead of coming to Pewitt’s aid, we attacked their provinces? They would have needed to use enough of their men for the Pewitt attack to be successful. Therefore, they must have also weakened their remaining forces in the three provinces they control.”
Yozef had had a similar thought but hadn’t carried it through, too many other things always demanding his time.
“Where do you see our attacks aimed?” Yozef asked.
Brell pointed to the map with a forefinger. “We suggest three possibilities. One is from the coast of Stent into Selfcell Province. Two is from the northwest border corner of Eywell and Moreland, and the third from Dornfeld in Keelan into the southern part of Eywell.”
“And the size of the force we would use?” asked Yozef.
“Well, shit, Yozef, it’ll obviously depends on how far we want our people to go and how much fighting they expect to they run into,” said Riona, a snarl of disdain curling her lips.
Yozef again tried to ignore her, but his patience wasn’t endless. Maera saw the look on his face and jumped in.
“At least a thousand men, Yozef, and some of the 6-pounder horse artillery whose crews are trained well enough to commit to action.”
Yozef went to the map and stared for a minute. He missed Maera giving Riona a frigid stare and a shake of the head and Riona about to say something back and then restrain herself.
Yozef let his left forefinger rest on the first option. “Let’s eliminate this possibility. The Selfcellese might be allies of the Narthani, but so far, they haven’t seemed very enthusiastic. There’s always the chance we might peel them away from the Narthani, so we don’t want to get into battles with them where losses of life or property make it harder for them to change sides.”
“Change sides!? They should be crushed along with the Narthani,” said a man whose name Yozef forgot. He did remember that the man wasn’t one of the team’s sterling members.
Yozef tried to keep his tone civil, but he knew a trace of irritation crept in.
“If the clans have to fight the Selfcellese, there will be casualties that could be avoided if we can get Selfcell to either be neutral or come over to us. I think it’s best to remove option one. I like the other two options. Eywell is severely weakened from their losses at Moreland City. In this scenario, the Narthani garrisons we learned about by questioning prisoners have to be weakened or are less likely to be aggressive, with so many other Narthani troops gone on the northern clan attack. For option two, Stent or Orosz would have to lead it, since Moreland is still chaotic, trying to settle their leadership vacuum. For the southern option, Keelan would be the lead clan. Both raids would be coup de mains.”
Maera cleared her throat loud enough to alert Yozef that he’d done it again, except this time he’d used a French term.
“Oh, sorry. A coup de main is an attack that uses speed and surprise to reach its objective. In this case, the objective would not be holding territory or inflicting casualties, but to destroy and threaten. If we made the Narthani feel as if the Eywellese were threatened or even their own territory was, in the original Preddi Province, they’d be more likely to withdraw from their northern clan attack to bolster defenses at home.”
They talked for another half hour before Yozef decided. “I’m satisfied that you’ve identified a course of action we can bring to Hetman Keelan’s attention. I’ll ask the hetman and a few others to join us here tomorrow morning.”
That evening, Yozef watched Maera breastfeed Aeneas on their back porch. It was one of his favorite things to do. As she switched sides with the baby, Yozef asked a question about Maera’s cousin.
“What’s with Riona, Maera? Is she always like she was today?”
Maera sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. It’s one reason I’ve never had much to do with her. I suggested adding her to MIU both because I thought she would be an asset and because I hoped that giving her something important to do might mellow her out.”
“I can predict that she won’t last long with that kind of behavior. No one wants to be around someone who spits acid every time she opens her mouth.”
“I know. Yet it was an interaction between her and Owill that came up with the diverting attack idea. I don’t know if the rest of us would have seen it without her.”
“Then get her settled down. If you think it might work, I’ll talk to her, although I don’t know whether I should try patient counsel or scream and threaten to dump her from MIU.”
Yozef was on time the next morning and half expected another testy comment from Riona, maybe about being early this time, but she ignored him. Culich, Luwis, and Denes arrived shortly after that, and Brill gave an updated version of the briefing from the previous day.
Culich sat with a hand cupping his chin, while Brill spoke. Once he raised a hand to restrain a question from Luwis, his attention remaining on Brill and the map, and he only briefly glanced at Yozef.
“Thank you, Ser Brill,” said Culich. “An interesting idea. I like how it both has the potential to restrain the Narthani from future attacks and keeps our men closer to Keelan. Luwis and Denes, what do you two say?”
“As you mentioned, Culich, I also like our men staying closer, instead of sending them off toward the north,” Luwis answered, “not knowing what was happening to them or if they had any effect helping the invaded province. And I’d worry about them being so far away, in case the Narthani turned on us.
“However, for this to work, we would have to respond quickly after the first word of the Narthani attack. There wouldn’t be time to spend sixdays gathering men and supplies, then get them to the Eywell border and across. By then, the Narthani might have destroyed the attacked clan and even returned to Preddi, where they’d be in a position to threaten our raiding force.”
“I agree,” said Yozef. “The southern option, attacking along the Eywell coast, would have to be Keelan and allies, and the men would have to be within days of the border, all supplies in place, and a maneuver plan ready.”
Denes went to the map. “It’s a hundred miles from Caernford to the Eywell border north of Dornfeld. Starting from Caernford, it would take three days to reach Dornfeld without breaking down the horses, unless we have multiple changes of horses.”
“Pre-position,” Yozef almost blurted, before catching the English words. “Uh . . . we could have horses and supplies already at Dornfeld or on this side of the Dillagon pass to Dornfeld. That way, we’d just have to get the men there the fastest way, connect with horses and supplies, and be off toward the Eywell border.”
“Wagons,” said Denes. “The men could get to Dornfeld by wagon, so they wouldn’t have already ridden a hard hundred miles before even starting the attack. I suggest modifying existing wagons to handle a load of men or perhaps building wagons dedicated to this purpose. The more comfortable the men, the better shape they’d be in for the attack. If we have wagons to hold twenty-five men each, that’s forty wagons for a thousand men, plus supply wagons. We could change horses several times and make the trip in one long day. Give a day to link up with horses and supplies, rest, and be ready to move on Eywell two days after getting word of a northern attack.”
“Is a thousand men the right number?” asked Luwis.
“It needs to be enough to brush aside mos
t opposition,” said Yozef, “and enough to fight their way back to friendly territory, if they run into major Narthani and Eywell forces. In fact, to help tie down the Eywellese and some of the Narthani, it would be best if option two were also implemented.”
“A raid staged from Moreland territory toward Hanslow?” said Culich.
“Yes,” replied Yozef, “though a more cautious raid, since we know there are concentrations of Narthani troops and Eywellese fighters in and around the Eywell capital. The raid’s main objective would be to fix those forces in place and secondarily do whatever damage they can to the province.”
“I’ll have to communicate with Stent and Orosz to see if they would agree,” said Culich. “An attack on a northern clan is only one scenario. Yozef, if your MIU comes up with too many like this, we wouldn’t be able to make plans and commitments for them all.”
“Of course,” said Yozef. “However, this one scenario would account for attacks on the coastal clans from Stent on western Caedellium to . . . ” he went to the map, “ . . . all the way to Bevans on the eastern tip. We would only have to adjust the details.”
Culich nodded, looked across the map again, and then sat. “Back to the question of how many men. I agree with Yozef’s advice that it needs to be enough of a threat to the Narthani, yet we have to balance that with how many men can be away from Keelan.”
“Bring in other clans,” Yozef suggested. “We already have men from six other provinces rotating through Denes’s training site, where they’re learning to fight as dragoons and using the new 6-pounders. Part of the purpose of this training is getting clansmen from different provinces to work together. Why not expand the role of these men into what we can call a ‘ready reaction force,’ in the event they’re needed for the scenarios we’ve been discussing?”
“I like that idea,” said Luwis, with more enthusiasm than for many of Yozef’s ideas. “But one problem is, what if we need this reaction force right when a new rotation of men from other clans has just arrived? They wouldn’t have had dragoon training, used the cannon, or trained together. It’d be asking for disaster should they run into major opposition.”
Heavier Than a Mountain (Destiny's Crucible Book 3) Page 36