by Roland Green
EIGHT
I
"Way! Way, there. Way for the Great King of Hos-Hostigos!"
The leading riders of Kalvan's escort were shouting at the wagon train ahead loudly enough to make the draft oxen look up dubiously. Kalvan suspected they were also shouting loudly enough so that any hostile ears within half a mile would know who was riding along this muddy Beshtan road with only sixty-odd men for escort.
Note: top priority, a system of highways based on the Roman roads. Like the highway that ran up and down the West Coast, Highway101, El Camino Real, The King's Highway, which I saw during my vacation in California after the Armistice. Why not a Great King's Highway in Hos-Hostigos?
He remembered that Rylla hadn't liked his coming so far east on this tour of inspection. Her asking him to stay out of danger was a real turnaround. But she did have a point. Was he doing anything useful other than indulging a Great King's power to get rid of a bad case of cabin fever? It didn't matter now; he was less than four miles-or eight marches as the locals counted them-from Harmakros' headquarters at Tarr-Locra. He could dine and sleep at the castle tonight, then consult with Harmakros and Count Phrames on the situation of the Army of Observation. Maybe they could tell him what he needed to know, if not, he'd head south.
Prince Balthar had been sending a stream of messengers complaining about how the Army of Observation was infringing upon his Princely rights and demanding access to the border tarrs, which Harmakros-upon Kalvan's suggestion-had put under Royal authority and castellans they could trust. In a time of war, this was not an unusual state of affairs and he wondered what was behind Balthar's complaints. Balthar had probably expected Kalvan's rule to be as laissez-faire as old Kaiphranos'. If Kalvan were half the despot Balthar claimed, he'd have hanged the old miser from the nearest tree and appointed a new Prince of Beshta-Phrames or Harmakros.
And he would have strung Balthar up, too, if in so doing he hadn't feared gaining the name of a Great King who does not honor his vassal's rights. Being saddled with that kind of reputation, in the Great Kingdoms, was an open invitation to revolt by one's vassals-and invasion by his neighbors. And right now, despite last year's impressive victories, he was only one defeat away from losing everything to Styphon's House. And his princes and nobles knew it.
He only hoped his neighbors didn't.
At least Kalvan had accomplished one major thing during the harsh winter months; he had created an independent Royal Army of Hos-Hostigos. It was necessarily a compromise force, since Kalvan had no hereditary lands to supply troops. He would become Prince of Hostigos upon Ptosphes' death, of course, but he hoped that event was decades away. When the invasion of Sask, last fall, ended in Sarrask's surrender, there'd been seven to eight thousand mercenaries, hired by Gormoth of Nostor and Sarask for the war against Hostigos, with no place to go. Styphon's House considered them Kalvan's troops since they hadn't fought to the death, and King Kaiphranos considered them generally untrustworthy.
Kalvan made the free lances an offer, with the blessing of Prince Ptosphes and the grudging agreement of Prince Pheblon of Nostor and Prince Balthames of Sashta; twenty-acres of land and twenty newly minted silver crowns for each enlisted man; a hundred acres, a hundred crowns and a team of oxen for each petty-captain; and a small barony and a hundred gold crowns for each captain in selected regions of war-ravaged northern Hostigos, Nostor and Sashta. Well over two-thirds of the unemployed mercenaries had taken Kalvan up on his offer.
Kalvan had organized these 'volunteers' into four infantry regiments of five-hundred men, ten cavalry regiments of two-hundred and sixty men and an additional Mobile Force of six hundred mounted pikemen and musketeers-two hundred of the musketeers with rifled weapons. Hopefully, the following year would see them all equipped with rifles and sabers. The new Royal Army and the tried and true Army of Hostigos would form the anchor for the Army of Hos-Hostigos. Kalvan would have liked a better ratio of foot to horse in the Royal Army, but here-and-now mercenaries were predominantly cavalry, reminiscent of the German reiters, Sixteenth Century mercenary pistol-wielding heavy cavalry who had dominated the battlefields of France during the Wars of Religion.
His next step had been to reform army organization without turning it on its head, starting with the new Royal Army and ending with all the princely armies of the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos. Standard here-and-now organization had been companies, bands and blocks or squares, of varying size, sometimes in the same army. The whole system wasn't much advanced over the Medieval battles: vanward, center and rearward.
Kalvan retained the companies, made them one hundred and ten men strong under a petty-captain, put two companies into a battalion and made a regiment under the command of a colonel out of three battalions, one a headquarters outfit with sixty officers and halberdiers. With the cavalry it was troops, squadrons and regiments.
Kalvan sent a third of the army to their new homes and quartered the rest in Hostigos Town and Tarr-Hostigos for the drill and training in his new tactics. This had put a real strain on the capital's housing, despite some hastily built barracks, nor had his subjects been happy about competing with the new Royal Army for rations…
The hill the road climbed ahead was higher than the one his troop had just descended. As they left the shelter of the valley, Kalvan felt the chilly wind on his back and his horse whickered irritably. At least the wind was only chilly, not cold, and the hard blue-sky overhead now shed freezing rain instead of snow. The mud of the road had turned rubbery elsewhere, and in a few places it had thawed enough to be sticky. It wasn't spring yet, but the Winter of the Wolves was definitely behind them.
Towards the middle of the wagon train Kalvan came to a big long, hauling wagon-two sets of wheels connected by a long beam and drawn by eight oxen. Tied to the beam was a massive canvas wrapped bundle; on either side of it were two iron-rimmed gun wheels. Another eight-pounder was on its way to the Army of Observation, disassembled for easier travel. The carriage, trail, tools and harness would be back somewhere in the train. When the whole piece was assembled at Tarr-Locra, one more Beshtan gun could go into the shop to be modernized with trunnions and a proper carriage.
The head of the wagon train his troop was passing reached the crest of the hill before Kalvan's party came up with it. He saw the train's captain rein in abruptly and throw up his left hand in a signal to halt. As Kalvan rode up, he drew a pistol from his saddle holster. Kalvan and his troopers did the same.
The far slope of the hill was steep enough so that the road made a wide bend halfway down, where a small village straggled along the bend. Smoke billowed from three or four houses, too much for a chimney, and mounted men were riding up and down the road in front of it, shooting randomly into the windows of the unburned wattle and daub huts.
Farther down the road, half a dozen troopers were driving a miscellaneous gaggle of livestock, with dead fowl hanging from their saddles. The Harphaxi colors of yellow and red fluttered from lance tips and on the banner held by a dismounted man standing over a dead horse.
"Move out!" Kalvan shouted, sheathing his pistol and drawing his sword. Major Nicomoth, commanding the escort, drew his and held it out with the flat of the blade across the chest of Kalvan's horse.
"Drop back to the rear, Your Majesty!" he cried. "I beg you!"
It sounded more like an order than a humble subject's request.
Kalvan controlled his first impulse, which was to tell his aide de camp to perform unnatural acts upon himself and let the escort pass on either side. Charging down that hill, at the head of his troop, he'd be in as much danger of being unhorsed and trampled as being shot by the enemy.
All along the train, teamsters were running to the heads of their teams, while guards checked the priming of their muskets and took position. Some perched on their wagon seats to keep a lookout; other crawled under the wagons to fire from cover.
Nicomoth shouted, "Charge!"
The one order no cavalry outfit in any land at any time ever nee
ded to hear twice.
Kalvan's troop of the First Royal Horseguards were all experienced soldiers and expert riders; they didn't bunch up as they plunged down the hill. Halfway to the village, the hillside's boulders and scrub gave way to cultivated fields. Some of the riders took their horses over the ditch beside the road and into the fields, taking a shortcut toward the cattle thieves.
The Harphaxi raiders weren't beginners, either. They dug in their spurs and rode for their lives, except for two who were picked off by wild pistol shoots at miraculously long ranges. Another stayed behind to give the banner bearer a hand up onto his own mount.
Three pistols and a musketoon banged, and both the helpful rider and his mount screamed and went down kicking. The banner bearer knelt, holding the banner out before him like a pike with one hand while drawing a pistol with the other. He fired as Nicomoth charged him but the bullet went wild. In the next moment, Nicomoth's sword came down splitting the man's face. The Guardsman behind Nicomoth drew rein and leaned down out of the saddle and picked up the fallen banner on the tip of his sword. Kalvan joined in the cheering.
As if the cheering had frightened them out of their cover, six mounted men rode out of the rear of the village. Kalvan noted that several wore three-quarter lobster armor and each held a heavy-barreled musketoon slung across his back as well as a brace of pistols. They were riding real destriers, much bigger than the usual Harphaxi horses. Whatever or whoever they were, they weren't friendlies. One the raiders threw a lighted torch onto a thatch roof as he passed, then all six were riding hell-for-leather across the hillside fields towards the far end of the hill.
"After them!" shouted Nicomoth. The squad chasing the cattle thieves had already anticipated the order; they were pounding across ditches, fences and last year's stubble. The few who still had loaded pistols were firing as they rode. An unarmored rider dropped out of his saddle, and one of the armored knights reined in to help him. It was a gallant but futile gesture. Two of the Hostigi lost their seats jumping a fence, but others came up with the fallen rider and his comrade. Two war cries, a quick flurry of swords and another Guardsman and the raider were down.
That was all Kalvan saw as he rode into the village at the rear of Nicomoth's second charge. Houses and barns narrowed his view as they thundered through the village, turkeys and geese overlooked by the raiders, flapping frantically in their path. Doors and shutters slammed hastily as villagers who'd been coming out to greet their rescuers ducked back into their wattle and daub huts.
By the time Nicomoth and Kalvan passed the dead raiders, their surviving comrades were out of sight around the far end of the hill. Kalvan rode with his Guardsmen that far, then reined in. The raiders had obviously followed a trial that ran straight as an arrow between two farms, then climbed a hillside into second-growth forest. A hundred yards beyond the forest, horsemen would have had to go single file within pistol shot of the trees. A better place for five men to ambush fifty couldn't have been found within miles.
"Your Majesty!" Major Nicomoth was dismounted now, kneeling beside the two dead me. "This one is a Zarthani Knight, I swear it. Can you see where the Tarr-Ceros proof mark has been removed?" He was holding the dead man's helm, which looked like a Fifteenth Century armet-beautiful work with wings on the side and the front shaped like a hawk's beak.
It certainly did look as if a proof mark on the helm had been defaced with a heavy file. Kalvan looked down at the other dead man. He was dressed in deerskin from head to foot and wore his long black hair bound up in a simple iron cap. If Kalvan had seen a face like that in Pennsylvania he would have said the man had a good dose of American Indian blood in him. The resemblance was increased by the iron-headed tomahawk trailing from his out-flung wrist on a braided leather thong.
Kalvan attempted to recall what little he knew about the Order of Zarthani Knights. They were one of the two martial arms of Styphon's House, the other being Styphon's Own Guard-or the Red Hand as they were called by the populace, for obvious reasons. The Zarthani Knights were a crusading order, more along the lines of the Teutonic Knights of the old Holy Roman Empire than say the Knights Templar. Like the Teutonic Knights, it was their job to hold and subdue the frontier areas of western Hos-Ktemnos and Hos-Bletha. They had a line of forts that went up and down the Great River, the largest being Tarr-Ceros which was located at Louisville, Kentucky. They were reputed to be among the finest cavalry in the Five Kingdoms and were constantly at war with the Sastragathi and Trygathi barbarian clans. The Zarthani Knights were not an outfit he was looking forward to meeting in force.
"He must be the Knight's oath-brother," Nicomoth said, kneeling and pulling the dead man's cap over his face.
"He doesn't look Zarthani," Kalvan said.
"He is probably from one of the Ruthani tribes who live by hunting and fishing in the swamps of Hos-Bletha, Your Majesty. Some of them have turned to the worship of the True Gods and their warriors often serve the Zarthani Knights as scouts. Then they may swear oath-brotherhood with a Knight and he with them. To abandon an oath-brother is a crime no Zarthani Knight's honor would allow."
Counting the possible Zarthani Knight and his oath-brother, the raiders had lost seven dead and one badly wounded prisoner. In return for two Hostigi dead and one wounded, plus two horses dead and four injured. Allowing for what losses the village may have suffered, the day appeared to have gone to Hos-Hostigos. Kalvan felt good about that.
He felt almost as good about the simple chance to be in action again, able to fight his enemies with a sword and a pistol instead of parchment, pen and sealing wax. A Great King had to use more of the second than of the first, of course, but Kalvan knew he wasn't going to be happy doing all of his leading from behind a desk.
By the time Kalvan's men had picked up the bodies, the wagon train was up to the village and Count Phrames himself had ridden in from the opposite direction-regular Hostigi cavalry, mercenaries and a handful of tattooed Sastragathi on horses that looked more fit for the soup pot than for the field of battle. Kalvan made a mental note to ask where the Sastragathi had come from, then a more urgent note to get at least some of the mounted men out of the village. The villagers' defenders now considerably out-numbered the villagers themselves; they were in as much danger of being trampled by their friends as they had ever been endangered from their hit-and-run enemies.
Kalvan gave his men the order to clear the streets of villagers, then rode over to ask Prince Phrames for an escort.
"By all means, Your Majesty," Phrames replied. "I'll send twenty of my men with your Guardsmen and you can all ride over to Tarr-Locra in time for dinner. I'll follow as soon as I've heard the villagers on what they've lost and told off some men to help them re-build. Phrames raised his voice. "We can't give back everything they've lost, but we can add it to the debt the Harphaxi are going to pay when we come to grips with them."
A lot of cheering followed that last sentence.
Kalvan turned his horse leaving Phrames to ride over to the largest unburned house and knocked on the door with his pistol butt. With Phrames on the scene, there was nothing more to worry about. Correction. There was nothing more to worry about in this village, or today. There was a Styphon's Own Lot to worry about if Zarthani Knights were coming north so soon. Six might just be scouts, learning the countryside and Hostigi tactics, but what would they be scouting for except a larger body-and where were they?
Kalvan wracked his brains all the way to Tarr-Locra without coming up with a reassuring answer to that question.
II
Captain General Harmakros' page poured more wine into both men's cups, bowed and stepped back. Kalvan sipped at his, trying to keep his face straight; the wine apparently couldn't make up its mind whether or not to turn into vinegar.
"Where did those odds-and-sods with Phrames and down in the barracks come from?" Kalvan asked.
"The mercenaries were mostly men we were going to settle in Sashta, who couldn't find free land."
Kalvan loo
ked steadily at him. Harmakros sighed. "Or those who didn't want to settle down and become farmers at all."
"I thought so. And the Sastragathi? They're a little far from home."
"A couple of small tribes of Urgothi forced off their land by raiders coming across the Mother River, and some chief's younger sons."
"No outlaws?"
"None that I know of."
For once Kalvan's attention to Xentos' rambling lectures paid off. "They wouldn't admit it if they were. But if the Sastragathi learn we are accepting their outlaws and forcing lawful warriors to serve besides them, the whole Sastragath would think twice before giving us aid. Not to mention the problem of keeping the outlaws from making off with everything that isn't tied, nailed or boarded down."
Harmakros grinned. "Remember those gallows on the hill aside the stream that feeds the moat?"
"They did look new."
"They were busy, too, at least for the first half moon. After that, I think the survivors learned their lesson. Besides, we're feeding them much better than they ever ate at home."
He lowered his voice, although the boy was standing discreetly out of hearing distance at the far end of the chamber. "There is more food in Beshta than I'd expected. There must have been trading across the border into Hos-Harphax, just as we expected. Paying only in silver as far as I can tell, but there are a few court officials I wouldn't mind questioning rigorously for a day or two."
"You haven't arrested anyone?"
"I couldn't touch anyone important enough to know anything without Prince Balthar throwing a tantrum. I wasn't going to do that without asking. I just informed some of the merchants that the Great King might forgive their treasonable trade if they would sell their grain to his loyal soldiers at the same prices they paid for it. I wasn't going to make Beshtan grain merchants rich just feed a few hundred Sastragathi, I swear to Dralm!"