by David Weber
Not a wife for everyone, Lady Matilda Wincaster... but the only imaginable wife for him, and a brief, icy chill went through him as he realized yet again what a deadly weapon the demon-jester had to use against him, if ever the creature realized it.
"You have that look again," she told him.
"Do I, indeed?"
"Yes, you do. And in the very middle of the day, too," she said primly.
Sir George glanced out the tent fly. The dim sun of Shaakun was sliding towards the west, already half entrapped in the uppermost branches of the spindly trees on that side of the encampment, and he looked back at his wife.
"It's well past midday," he disagreed calmly.
"Not by more than an hour, at the most," she replied. "And what about Edward?"
"He and his cronies won't be back from their current fishing hole for hours," he said confidently.
"Perhaps not. But he's not the only one likely to come searching for you, now is he?"
"No, but he is the one most likely to manage to come bursting in unannounced."
"Oh, and so you can be confident Father Timothy won't drop by to discuss Elisabeth Goodthorne's latest indiscretion? Or that Sir Richard and Walter won't decide that this is the very evening you need to decide how to reorganize the mounted men-at-arms? Or Rolf and Dafydd won't—"
"No, but I can be confident that if I tell the sentry to inform any or all of them that I am... otherwise occupied they'll leave us in peace," he told her with a slow smile.
"Shocking! I am shocked that such thoughts could divert you from the requirements of your duty, My Lord!"
"Blame it on those garments our `Commander' has provided you, and not on any weakness on my part," he suggested, and she laughed like a flurry of silver harp notes. He supposed a proper husband should still find the tight-fitting, one-piece garment horrifyingly immodest and forbid his lady wife to display herself in public so revealingly clad. But the truth was that that shockingly immodest garment suited her tall, slender shapeliness amazingly well. Not all the women attached to the company were equally fortunate, although by now all of them had been forced to more or less adjust to it, since they had no option. But Sir George had decided, after a deplorably easy tussle with his conscience, that this was one innovation of the demon-jester's with which he wholeheartedly agreed.
"And what, My Lord, did you have in mind to occupy yourself with, if I might ask?" she demanded.
"Of course you may ask, My Lady," he told her with a grave courtesy only slightly undermined by the twinkle in his eyes. "However, I believe, all things being considered, that it would probably be simpler for me to demonstrate rather than attempt to explain."
"Would it indeed?" she purred.
"Oh, yes," he told her softly, rising and walking around the chessboard towards her. "Indeed it would."
* * *
"It seems a bit different today, M'lord."
"A masterful understatement, Walter," Sir George said dryly.
The two of them stood side-by-side beneath Sir George's banner and gazed outward at the moblike "formation" of the combined tribes led by the Laahstaar and Mouthai.
It was a large, sprawling formation. Computer had provided Sir George with regularly updated estimates of the maximum size of the force the native alliance could put into the field, but as the baron gazed out over that surging sea of hostile, four-armed warriors, he wondered if Computer had gotten his sums straight this time. According to Computer's current tabulation, the eight tribes which had come together, after a fashion, under the leadership of the senior war chief of the Laahstaar counted a total of approximately forty-one thousand warriors, of whom perhaps three-fourths could actually be brought to any field of battle. That should have meant that the maximum Sir George, his men, and their own native allies, led by the Sherhai, Naamaal, and Tairnanto tribes, could face would be some thirty-one thousand.
At the moment, it looked to Sir George as if at least twice that number of broad-footed natives were busy trampling the purple-bladed grass into dust as they headed for his own position. No doubt anxiety was making him count at least some of them more than once, but it still looked like an enormous force.
Well, of course it does! he told himself. The bastards are twice our size, after all. No wonder it looks as if there are twice as many of them!
"Well, M'lord, I'd best be getting over to Sir Richard." The master of horse looked at his commander for a moment, and his smile was crooked. "Do us all a favor, and try not to get yourself killed," he suggested.
"I was planning not to," Sir George replied. "My wife would never forgive me if I let that happen."
"With all due respect to your lady wife, M'lord, it wasn't her I was thinking about just now," Skinnet replied. "I was thinking what a right mess this would be if someone else—" he jerked a surreptitious thumb in the direction of the air car hovering overhead "—was trying to hold this carnival together."
Sir George glanced upward at the air car, and grunted something between a laugh and an exasperated sigh.
"I take your point," he told his henchman. "Now take yourself over to Sir Richard and see to it that he doesn't let his enthusiasm get the better of him!"
"Don't you be worrying over that, Sir," Skinnet assured him. "Sir Richard and I, we've come to understand each other. And if we hadn't, his squire and I certainly have." The tough old veteran chuckled nastily. "If I thought we'd need it, I'd have had someone take a wee knife to his saddle girth last night."
"You're an evil man, Walter Skinnet!" Sir George scolded with a grin.
"Aye?" Skinnet seemed to consider for a moment, and then tossed his head in an armored man's equivalent of a shrug. "No doubt you're right, M'lord. Still and all, they say as Purgatory isn't all that bad a place. And think of all the dukes and earls I'll have to keep me company!"
He laughed again, and then he and his gelding trotted off towards the mounted human force clustered about Sir Richard's personal standard. Sir George would have preferred to be over there in Satan's saddle himself, but he couldn't. Officially, the army of natives about him had been assembled by the demon-jester. It was even possible that the demon-jester himself actually believed that, but Sir George and all of his troops knew better. It was the baron, working through the translating offices of Computer, who'd truly put that army together. And it was also the baron to whom everyone in that army, natives as well as humans, looked for command.
Some of the friendly tribes shared generations of mutual enmity, with blood feuds as tangled as any Scottish clan might have boasted. Common need and the scent of advantage to be gained might have brought them together temporarily, but the mere thought of finding themselves under the command of one of their cherished enemies would have been intolerable. Sir George, on the other hand, was the chosen field commander of the "godlike" demon-jester, the strange, alien champion whose vastly outnumbered troops had completely destroyed the Thoolaas' power and killed almost five thousand of their warriors for the loss of only four of his own. He knew they considered him almost as uncanny as the demon-jester himself, and that sense of awe, coupled with the fact that he came from outside their customary quarrels and struggles, made him an acceptable leader when none of their own could have been. All of which meant he had to be right here, in the center of his line, where the most senior chieftains could see him and where he could see them—and the unfolding battle—clearly.
Personally, he could have done without the role of champion or the responsibilities which came with it, but he'd had no choice but to accept them both. And so he'd spent the last month (as nearly as Father Timothy could calculate it) combining the warriors of the three principal tribes allied with the demon-jester and the smaller bands of their vassal tribes into an army that, as of this morning, counted nineteen thousand natives and his own English. It hadn't been a simple task, yet in some ways it had been far easier than he had anticipated. The native leaders were as treacherous, scheming, and unscrupulous as the leaders of any feudal army Earth
had ever boasted, but they had nowhere near the experience at translating their treacherous schemes into success. Sir George hadn't spent the last fifteen years of his life rising to command in the feudal armies of England without learning to deal with much more capable plotters. The graduate of a far more sophisticated school, he'd played the various combinations skillfully off against one another.
The hardest part had been keeping the demon-jester at arm's length while he did it. The baron still was far from clear about why the demon-jester and his guild were bothering with this world in the first place. So far as he could tell, the locals had absolutely nothing that should have attracted merchants who commanded the demon-jester's marvels and "technology," and even if they did possess some unsuspected treasure, the demon-jester's roundabout way of going after it seemed particularly stupid. There had to be some reason for the mysterious guild to be involved here, even if Sir George couldn't imagine what that reason was, but if the guild was determined to control trade with the natives here, why not simply move in with their superior weapons? A small force armed with the fire weapons the dragon-man guards carried could easily have defeated an army far larger than the one currently headed in Sir George's direction... even under the demon-jester's inept command. Well, perhaps not with the demon-jester in command, he amended. After all, the demon-jester had raised military incompetence to a level of art not even a Frenchman could have rivaled.
That incompetence had become glaringly apparent the instant the demon-jester began attempting to assemble the coalition of native leaders Sir George had warned him would be required. In fairness to the demon-jester, at least some of his maladroitness probably stemmed from the fact that he'd never anticipated that such an alliance would be necessary, but that was part of the problem. Obviously, he had expected Sir George and his company to deliver a quick, salutary drubbing to the local potentate, following which he would dictate terms and speedily depart. Unfortunately, there had been no local potentate—not in any meaningful sense, at any rate—and even if there had, the severity of the "drubbing" the Thoolaas had received had completely broken their power. Apparently, it had never occurred to the demon-jester that, as a long-term policy, shattering the military capabilities of the people who were supposed to enforce one's terms upon their fellows was a self-defeating proposition.
The more Sir George had watched the demon-jester in action here on Shaakun, the more puzzled he'd become. Even leaving aside the matter of why someone with the weapons and capabilities the demon-jester possessed should require the services of swordsmen and archers, there was the question of how the demon-jester could be so incompetent at using them now that he had them. It was as if he'd begun this entire effort, from the moment he first stole the English from their own world, with only a vague, theoretical notion of just what he intended to do. For all his invincible assumption of superiority, he seemed to be learning as he went... and it was painfully evident that he was not an outstanding student.
In some ways that was good. As long as he was willing to allow someone who did know what he was doing (like one Sir George Wincaster) to get on with the practical management of the campaign, the consequences of his incompetence could be minimized. And the discovery that he required Sir George's insights and political skills as badly as he required the baron's military talents might well work in the English's favor. It certainly was working that way at the moment, at any rate, although it was also possible that it could turn into an additional danger for Sir George personally in the future. No wise general wanted to find himself completely dependent upon someone else to whom his troops looked as their true commander, and more than one such "indispensable" man had been put aside or quietly murdered when his personal stature became a threat to his superiors. On the other hand, from the beginning, the demon-jester had been completely contemptuous of the possibility that his army of stolen Englishmen could ever be a threat to him. It followed from that towering confidence that he could never visualize any way in which that army's devotion to its original commander could ever threaten him, either, and Sir George devoutly hoped that nothing would change the demon-jester's mind in that regard.
Whatever might happen in the future, though, it had been up to Sir George and Computer to identify the factions and ambitions swirling amongst their "allies" and to manipulate them to the demon-jester's advantage. And so they had, the baron thought, standing atop the ridge line at the center of his position and looking up and down the front of his combined army.
His line stretched for the best part of three quarters of a mile in either direction from where he himself stood, much further than he could have liked, despite the fact that he'd held out almost five thousand warriors as a reserve and that his main formation was as much as twelve ranks deep at what he expected to be the critical points. That was one reason Skinnet and Sir Richard were operating as a detached command on his right. Sir Bryan Stanhope, with Dafydd Howice looking over his shoulder to keep him out of mischief, had another small force of cavalry on the left, while Rolf Grayhame and Sir Anthony Fitzhugh commanded the archers in the center. Splitting his cavalry that way reduced its effectiveness, but it also let him use the detachments to stiffen the resolve and discipline of his more questionable native contingents.
Yet the dispersal of his horse was the least of his worries at the moment, for he was about to do something no human commander in history had ever done: exercise direct, personal command over an army of twenty thousand... men. Even attempting to control such a huge force would have been futile on Earth, but Sir George enjoyed certain advantages no Earth commander ever had. Computer's "overhead imagery" could watch over the entire battle with an eagle's eye, and Computer's reports would keep him updated on its course with an accuracy no scouts' reports could hope to equal. Even better, Computer could speak to him or to any of his subordinate human commanders here on the field just as easily as he could in their encampment, and he could relay orders and questions faultlessly.
Sir George wished he had thought more closely about all of the implications of that before his first battle against the Thoolaas, but he'd considered them at length since then. And he'd also come to the conclusion that he'd probably been right not to unsettle his men by adopting too much of the demon-jester's "technology" in that battle. But he'd worked with it in training exercises with them since until they were completely comfortable with it, and the fact that he no longer required trumpet signals or couriers to control his troops completely changed the nature of war. There would still be any number of things which might go wrong, but watching an entire army disintegrate from the confusion of orders gone astray wouldn't be one of them. Better yet, his ability to communicate orders instantly to any one of his subordinates turned his entire company into an extension of his own brain. He was in a position to enjoy a flexibility and sureness in execution such as no human field commander had ever known.
The inclusion of so many natives tended to dilute that flexibility to some extent, but the demon-jester's "communication relays" helped even there. There weren't as many of them as Sir George could have desired, but they had been distributed to all of the principal chiefs and most of the subchiefs, and Computer could use them to relay Sir George's translated orders to his native levies. For some reason he couldn't quite unravel, Computer had seemed a bit uneasy over that when he first proposed the idea. It wasn't anything Computer had said, but Sir George had come to recognize the reticence Computer fell back upon when one of his own questions obviously touched upon information the demon-jester had decided he was not to have. At first, he'd thought it would simply be rejected out of hand, but then Computer had changed his mind (or the demon-jester had overridden his reluctance), and Sir George wondered what could conceivably have caused Computer to hesitate even briefly. That ability to communicate quickly and surely was an absolutely priceless tactical advantage, and as one of the "god devices" the "Commander" could provide, it had also helped to cement the locals' acceptance of the demon-jester as at least semidivine.
Sir George, a good Christian for all of his faults, was just a bit uneasy at passing off the demon-jester, of all creatures, as "divine." The fact that he himself enjoyed something of the status of an archangel in their eyes bothered him even more, but not nearly enough for him to consider foregoing the advantages it offered. After all, he consoled himself, none of the natives had ever heard of Christ, so either they were all doomed to Hell anyway, or else a merciful God must have made other arrangements. And if He had, then it was most unlikely that anything Sir George could do would upset them.
He chuckled, eyes still on the steadily approaching enemy force, at the thought... and even more of Father Timothy's expression when he'd shared it with the priest. Oh well. No doubt Timothy would come up with a suitable penance eventually.
Then he shook the thought aside. The enemy was coming on much more slowly and deliberately than the Thoolaas had, but they were still drawing close enough that it was time to leave off his woolgathering and focus his attention on the matter at hand.
The opposing force was less of a mob than he'd first thought. It still boasted nothing he would have called discipline, but now that it was approaching, he could at least see what its commanders had had in mind. Two massive columns, each over a hundred warriors across, were headed roughly for the center of his own line. There must have been eight or nine thousand natives in each of those columns, and another four or five thousand had been detailed to cover the columns' flanks. The rest of the force, a solid mass of dart-throwers, was positioned between the columns, and he grimaced at the sight. There were at least seven or eight thousand of them, and this time the natives had been careful to adopt a formation which would not inhibit their fire.
Their intention was clear enough. They planned to deluge the center of his own force with javelins as they closed, then slam those twin columns through his shaken and decimated ranks like a pair of battering rams. As tactics went, it both had the virtue of simplicity and made the maximum use of their superiority in numbers. True, there was very little subtlety to it, but in Sir George's experience, subtlety was a poor substitute for overwhelming strength, anyway.