Great King_s war k-2

by Roland Green

  The regiments to the rear were out of range of everything except a two-pounder in the breach itself, which was firing too slowly to be a problem once the Hostigi began their forward movement.

  A final shell burst against the face of the keep itself, spraying chunks of masonry into the courtyard, then the guns were silent. Kalvan had spoken of the guns of his homeland, which could actually keep firing over the heads of the infantry as they advanced on the enemy, and General Alkides swore that his gunners could do the same if they were allowed to. Phrames had politely refused; Prince Sarrask had refused somewhat less politely.

  "I know all you gunners think you can drop a ball into Styphon's chamberpot if you have the chance!" the Prince had growled. "Maybe you can. And maybe you'll just drop the ball on my head, and while maybe it isn't the greatest head Dralm ever made, it's the only one I've got!"

  A minute later the Beshtan fire seemed to slacken and arquebusiers, musketeers and gunners shifted position to meet the attack they knew was coming. Most knew that there would be no quarter given in this fight-despite the Great King's promises; after all, Kalvan wasn't Lytris with eyes that could look in two directions at once. Phrames decided it was safe to climb out of the trench for a better view. He'd reached open ground and was rising to hands and knees when a bullet wheeted past his ear. A second spanged off a stone by his left hand-and then, with a crash of thunder louder than the Great Battery at Phyrax, the skies opened and poured rain.

  Phrames had never been in such a storm; it was more like being under a waterfall than being out in the rain. He felt as if he were lifting a tangible weight as he struggled to his feet, his boot soles sinking into suddenly muddy ground. As the thunder rumbled away into silence, he heard someone squalling in panic:

  "The gods are angry! This is a warning from Thanor not to fight today."

  One such idiot could be more than enough to start a panic. Phrames drew his sword with one hand and gripped his banner-bearer's helmet to urge him upward with the other.

  "Traitor! Fool! This storm is the gods themselves fighting for us! Dralm and Galzar and Thanor and Lytris have sent this storm to soak the Beshtan fireseed. We outnumber them ten to one; with no fireseed they're doomed. We can take the castle with our bare hands!"

  Phrames gave one final heave to his banner-bearer, who struggled up to stand beside him. Then he raised his sword high and ran toward the breach without looking back to see if anyone was following him.

  At first he didn't look back because he didn't want to give the impression of doubting his men's courage. Before long he didn't look back because he had to look where he was going to keep from falling over his own feet. He'd been noted both as a runner and a climber as a youth, but he'd never tried to do both at once, over muddy ground strewn with rain slick stones and shot, in a pouring rain, wearing three-quarter armor. He began to wonder if broken ankles would account for as many of his men as Beshtan fire would have otherwise.

  By the time Phrames was actually at the breach, enough of his men had caught up so that while he was certainly the first there, it wasn't by much. He counted forty or more Hostigi scrambling over the rubble that had filled the moat, sometimes falling but helping each other up and always going on. The rain had brought Beshtan gunfire to an almost complete halt-something to thank Lytris for.

  Suddenly his banner-bearer went down with a crossbow bolt in his leg halfway up the breach. Phrames caught the banner before it fell and made a mental note to set up a special fund in the Princely treasury to support the kin of his banner-bearers; the job seemed unreasonably dangerous.

  Being one-handed because of his grip on the banner nearly cost him his life. Many of the Beshtans who'd lost their dry fireseed hadn't lost their courage; they swarmed down from the top of the breach, swinging swords, musket-butts, half-pikes and maces like madmen. Phrames had to use the banner pole like a spear, catching one swordsman in the throat, then he dropped it and laid about with sword and pistol butt. He made another mental note to carry a mace the next time he had to storm a breach. His sword was a fine weapon for use from a horse, but on foot he needed something that would stop an opponent as well as just kill him.

  The second regiment of Hostigi came pouring up through the breach, and for a moment Phrames was wedged so tightly between his own men and his enemies that he couldn't have wielded a feather, let alone a mace. Finally the sheer weight of numbers pushed the Beshtans back. The gunners around the two-pounder gave up trying to find dry fireseed, drew swords or picked up their tools, and waded into the fight.

  Phrames chopped through a rammer with one sword cut and through the gunner's raised arm with the next, then thrust the man in the face. Thank Galzar most of these soldiers don't have swords with points! In this kind of close-quarters brawl, the Hostigi ability to thrust was a large advantage. Maybe I should be thanking Kalvan instead of Galzar, Phrames wondered, although Kalvan has obviously been blessed by the Wargod with these new ideas of his. So I suppose I can thank Galzar and thank Kalvan without blaspheming the gods.

  With lines being drawn now so that friend could be told from foe, the Beshtans on the wall were joining in. Some were leaping down to thicken the defenders' line, other adding bullets, arrows and even thrown stones from above. The number of fallen Hostigi began to increase at a rate that did not meet with Phrames' approval, and not all of them were men who'd slipped on wet stones or tripped over a comrade's foot.

  Someone was shouting in his ear about bringing up the pikemen of Queen Rylla's Foot, the third regiment in the storming column. Without bothering to turn and face the man, Phrames bellowed, "Great Galzar, no! The pikes are the last thing we need until we're down in the courtyard. They won't have room to use their pikes or even defend themselves up here." A pikeman needed firm ground for both feet and both hands for his pike; if he lacked either, he was just an easy target instead of one of the deadliest kind of infantrymen ever to march.

  The Beshtans were falling faster than the Hostigi; in places their dead and dying were strewn three deep. Reinforcements were still coming up; it looked as if the defenders were staking everything on holding the breach and the walls and not worrying about a second line of defense in the keep.

  A man Phrames recognized emerged from the Beshtan line-a baron who'd commanded a Beshtan cavalry squadron on the Great Raid into Hos-Harphax in the spring. He'd done a good job, too; why had he chosen to follow his damnable Prince into treason? No one would ever know, most likely; all the man could be given now was an honorable death. Phrames shouted a war cry and raised his sword.

  For about a hundred breaths it wasn't entirely clear who was going to give whom what sort of death. The baron's sword was heavier and his reach longer than Phrames'; three times the Baron beat down the Count's guard and would have finished him if Phrames' armor hadn't been sound. Finally, he hooked a foot behind the baron's leg and sent him crashing down on the stones, then thrust him in the throat through his mail aventail. When he stepped back from the dying baron, there appeared to be as many Beshtans as ever and he began to wonder if he hadn't been a little too hasty in dismissing the pikemen. They wouldn't help to get through the breach, but as for holding it against the Beshtans…

  As Phrames completed the thought, a new uproar of screams, war cries, curses and the crashing and clashing of weapons and armor burst out behind the Beshtans. Somebody was hitting them in the rear. By the time Phrames had caught his breath, that somebody had opened enough of a gap in the Beshtan line to let him see men in Saski green and gold swarming across the courtyard. At their head was a bulky figure in freshly re-gilded armor, wielding a bloody mace and defaming the sexual habits of all Beshtans, their parents, and their illegitimate offspring by an astonishing variety of mothers-not all of them human or even earthly.

  For a moment Phrames wanted to curse. To owe his success at the breach to Sarrask of Sask-! Then he sighed. His honor was one thing; the lives of his men another. He could not throw the second away because of some whimsical notion of
the first. Besides, it was beginning to seem that Dralm and Galzar had so made Sarrask that there was some good in him-or at least a fighting man's courage that the right leader could bring out, and then Dralm and Galzar sent Kalvan…

  No good ever came of questioning the judgment of Allfather Dralm or Galzar Wolfhead, even when one did not understand it.

  So Phrames walked down the rubble over the outstretched bodies of the Beshtans to greet Prince Sarrask with outstretched hands. They touched palms and the big man grinned, then clapped Phrames on both shoulders.

  Sarrask unhooked a silver-stoppered flask from his belt. "You look like a man who could use this."

  "After we've cleared the courtyard, I won't say no."

  "Then drink up, Count. We've got everything except the keep already. He swept his hand around to the broken Beshtans scattered around the courtyard, most surrendering and calling "Oath to Galzar!" with only a few clots still holding out against the Hostigi.

  Phrames looked toward the keep and realized that the downpour had passed almost as quickly as it had come. He could see the whole castle and the trench-carved ground beyond it. The courtyard swarmed with Sarrask's men, and the walls were crowded with the Sastragathi irregulars who'd followed the Saski up the ladders. True to their habits, the Sastragathi were busily stripping what Phrames hoped were the corpses of the defenders and tossing them into the moat or onto the courtyard.

  On top of one of the gate towers a little knot of defenders was still holding out, but below a gang of Saski with sledges was already trying to free the portcullis and lower the drawbridge, to let Alkides bring in his artillery and finish off the keep.

  "Hope those poor bastards in the keep have the sense to yield before Alkides brings in a bombard," Sarrask said, waving the flask at Phrames again. This time the Count took it. "Otherwise you'll be a Prince with no place to sleep. I could knock that (guilty of fornication with a barnyard fowl) pile down with my mace! Drink up, Count!"

  Yes, all this was going to be his soon! Phrames didn't know quite what to think of all that; he did know he owed Kalvan more than he could ever repay. How was he going to turn this princedom into a loyal cornerstone of Hos-Hostigos? He took a deep drink of what turned out to be a most potent winter wine and sputtered, with wine dripping it down his beard.

  When he'd caught his breath, he took a more cautious swallow. It was extraordinarily good wine. "Thank you, Prince. Your own stock?"

  Sarrask shook his head. "Made in Hos-Agrys. Those Beshtans nobles and are taking everything with them but the cobblestones. This one was on his way to Syriphlon with a cartload of wine in a wagon train that passed too close to one of my foraging parties. Captain Strathos was out raiding that day and bagged the lot. He presented it to King Kalvan, who sent over a barrel last night. Come around tonight; there's plenty left."

  Phrames drank again, considering that Sarrask of Sask accusing another nobleman of being too comfortable in the field was the pot calling the kettle black-as Kalvan liked to say-but hardly inclined to say it out loud.

  Then a Saski captain was coming over to tell his Prince that the portcullis was hopelessly jammed; did he and Phrames think the gate should be blown up or did Alkides want to drag his guns through the breach?

  "Galzar strike me dead if I know" Sarrask said. "I'm no damned gunner! Phrames, do you mind a few more holes in the wall of your new seat? I'll hand over a few ransoms to you and see that Balthames does the same, since the gods didn't finish the little bugger off at Tenabra or Phyrax! If you need to rebuild-"

  Phrames wasn't listening. He was instead looking at the top of the keep, where a helmet was being raised over the battlements. A moment later a second joined it, then a third.

  "Never mind, Prince. I don't think we're going to need any artillery in here at all. Just someone to parley with the men in the keep. Would you care to join me?"

  "My pleasure, Count Phrames."

  THIRTY

  I

  The screams and groans of the dying were fading behind Kalvan as he descended the winding stone staircase in the northwest tower of Tarr-Beshta. They weren't fading fast enough to suit him, but he couldn't move any faster. The stairs were crumbling and treacherous-more of Balthar's cheese-paring! Besides, Captain Xykos was just ahead and determined to slow his Great King to what he considered a proper pace. Since Xykos filled the stairs from top to bottom and nearly from side to side, his determination counted for a great deal.

  After what seemed like enough time to reach the bottom of a mineshaft, they reached the tower cellar. Here, so it was said, lay the door to Prince Balthar's treasure rooms, whose riches had grown in soldiers' imaginations until they rivaled Styphon's Own Treasury in the Holy City of Balph-the here-and-now equivalent of King Midas' hoard. With all the tales of debauchery and poisoning and double-dealing and such goings on in Balph, it most resembled the Papal City sometime in the late Sixteenth Century.

  Kalvan hoped the rumors were true; from first to last Balthar had cost Hos-Hostigos too Dralm-damned much to be paid for with nothing but his head and those of his kin who hadn't been able to cross into Hos-Harphax before the Army of Observation swept into Beshta.

  The cellar was already crowded, with Phrames and half a dozen of the King's Lifeguards. They held either drawn swords or torches, except for one who was bending over a dying woman, trying to work a dagger out from between her ribs. Two men and another woman lay sprawled in a corner, already dead.

  "Your Majesty," Phrames said. "One of the men seems to have been the keeper of the-of whatever lies beyond that door." He pointed to an oak door bound in tarnished brass to the left of the stairs. "He had a key to it. We unlocked the door but thought you should have the honor of being first to enter."

  It was on the tip of Kalvan's tongue to remind them that men who'd seen Leonnestros' cavalry massacred by the explosion of the artillery redoubt at Phyrax should be aware of booby traps. The words died there; they were doing him an honor and besides, he'd be drowned in mare's milk if he'd abandon "Follow Me" leadership, even here in the bowels of Tarr-Beshta. Kalvan drew his sword, thrust hard against the door, and when it squealed open on rusty hinges stepped through the gap.

  It took a moment for Kalvan's eyes to adjust to the thick darkness inside. It took several more moments to believe that what they were showing him was actually there.

  Several tunnels ran off in different directions from a stone-walled circular room. On either side of each tunnel sacks, boxes, barrels and kegs were piled as high as a man, except where cloth or wood had rotted and let the piles collapse. There the tunnels were completely impassable, knee-or even waist-deep in fragments of rotting cloth or wood and gold and silver!

  Kalvan heard blasphemous mutterings behind him as the Guardsmen pushed in through the door and stared around them. He also saw more gold and silver gleaming in the chinks and rents in the many boxes and canvas bags. The torches now lit one tunnel; he saw that not all the piled gold and silver were coins. Most of the silver was, but a lot of the gold was rings, cups, bowls, plates-even ingots; not to mention swords and daggers and armor plated with precious metals, bags of pearls, ornamental boxes inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, what looked like uncut emeralds Kalvan's head spun, and not just because so many torches were burning in an unventilated room. Now he understood how Cortez felt when he first saw the golden treasures of Tenochtitlan. The Treasure of Beshta was no soldier's tall tale. It was real; and enough specie to buy a Kingdom-or save the one he already had. Three generations of miserliness…

  Kalvan took another step, to see if what looked like pearls really were, then saw for the first time the man sitting in the tunnel just beyond the emeralds.

  Prince Balthar, his gray hair tousled and sticking up in clumps, sat cross-legged, with his back braced against a barrel. He was running gold coins through his fingers like a child playing at the beach with the pretty shells he had collected.

  "Yes, yes, my pretties," Balthar said, in a cackling voices that made Kal
van's flesh crawl. "Dada will see that the evil Daemon won't hurt you."

  Balthar wore nothing but one of his threadbare trademark black gowns, and even from a distance Kalvan could tell that both the gown and its wearer stank as if they'd been fished out of a midden pit. The only ornamentation he wore was the Princely gold circlet around his neck. Kalvan stepped forward to peer into Balthar's face, then turned away, very much wishing he hadn't or that at least his stomach would stop twisting ominously.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Rylla's voice. "I came as quickly as I could. I see you found the traitor and his hoard. It seems he will escape justice after all…"

  Frustration filled Kalvan. What good would it do to put a madman on trial for treason? Balthar wouldn't understand what was happening to him, and would be more likely to end up an object of pity than anything else. Or a rallying point for enemies of the Throne. As for caring for him until his body was as dead as his mind-what would that accomplish, except insulting the memory of all the men that Balthar's treachery had murdered? Men whose widows and children would not be living nearly as well.

  Balthar deserved to die, if only in the same way that a dog run over by a car but not yet dead deserved to be put out of its pain. Kalvan drew his flintlock pistol and was cocking it when Rylla gripped his arm."

  "No, Kalvan."

  "We can't have the farce of trying-"

  "You don't understand. A Prince has to die by steel."

  Kalvan nodded, half his mind wondering why he hadn't asked first and the other half replying that he'd never expected to need to know. He started to draw his sword, then doubted it would be heavy enough for the job. His stomach twisted again at the thought of hacking Balthar's head off or running him through. What he needed was a heavier blade "DOWN, YOUR MAJESTY!" Phrames shouted.