The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  “Yes,” Ward answered him gently, “I agree. A very good idea. I’ll handle it.”

  Bench looked at him urgently, wanting to believe it. “You will?”

  “Certainly. Now get some rest. We’ll be needing you.”

  “Yes. Rest. Thank you.” And Bench relented. He lay his head back on the hard ground and closed his eyes, instantly unconscious.

  “Is he badly injured?” Ward asked the surgeon on duty.

  “Musket ball to the calf is all,” the man answered. The surgeon was twenty-five years old, but carried himself with the air of someone half that age. “Hard to get it out, but I did it. Really had to dig around, and—”

  “I understand. What’s his prognosis?”

  “His what?”

  A pause. “What are his prospects?” A short wait. “Will he recover, do you think?”

  “Oh, that. Well.” The young man thought long and hard, looking at his patient while chewing his lip. “I think he should be fine. Provided the calf heals up. And so long as the fever or the gangrene don’t kill him first.”

  Prince Ward squinted, nodding thoughtfully. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  The surgeon grinned.

  Prince Ward was rubbing his throbbing head, when a breathless young soldier burst into the tent. “Your Highness!”

  “Yes?”

  “Someone said you was here. There’s a row about what to do next. Can you help?”

  “What to do next?”

  “Yes, sir. Colonel Bird and a Lt. Colonel Somebody, just a goin’ at it.”

  Ah, leadership at last. “I’ll follow you.”

  Prince Ward knew Colonel Bird. He was the same old man who had told him swaggering stories at the King’s Arms a few days back. He looked sallow and pinched now, though, not ruddy and beaming as he had been when in his cups.

  Ward didn’t recognize the other man, the lieutenant colonel. He was much younger than his antagonist, maybe thirty-five, square-featured without being handsome, and very calm. The two stood face-to-face by a campfire with a small crowd of soldiers in witness. The lieutenant colonel stood with feet wide apart, hands behind his back, unmoving as the colonel laid into him.

  “I’ll have you whipped, do you hear me?” The colonel pointed a bony finger at the younger man’s nose to emphasize each phrase. “Court-martialed, disgraced, relieved of command. And whipped!”

  “Colonel, with all due respect, I’ll be happy to be whipped, and whatever else you please. But unless we get the men out of these pastures, you won’t live long enough to do it.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all, sir, I’m speaking of the next wave of attack by the Drammune.”

  “We have outposts, scouts. We have time to organize!”

  “We had outposts and scouts yesterday. The Drammune overwhelmed them.”

  “And so we wisely called a retreat!”

  “Retreat? Sir, with all due respect, that was a rout.”

  “It was a retreat, sir!”

  “Then where was the delaying action? Where was the rear cover? We were routed, sir, and you know it. We need to stand and fight next time, not turn and run. But to do that, we need a defensive position. The forest will provide cover, and we’ll have the high ground.”

  “You are impudent, sir! And as of this moment you are relieved—”

  “May I be of assistance?” Ward interjected, stepping too close to be ignored.

  The old colonel turned on him. “Who the blazes are you?”

  Prince Ward smiled. “Ward Sennett. Sir.”

  The colonel’s hard gaze melted into a prunish smile. “Ah, many apologies, Your Highness. I did not recognize you.”

  He took Ward by the arm and walked him away from the group, speaking warmly. “Highness, I appreciate your offer, but this is a military matter involving both discipline and battle tactics. I will gladly brief you.” He raised a bony finger. “Give me but a moment to conclude here, would you?” His tone was paternal, and dismissive.

  Ward nodded, and the colonel left him to return to the campfire.

  The prince looked at the ground, kicked a rock. He was tempted to walk away. It was what he had always done. Instead, to his own surprise, he followed the colonel back to the campfire and spoke first, before either man could pick up the conversation. He spoke evenly, calmly, and with a confidence that amazed even himself. “Excuse me again. But we are going to move these men out of this farmland. The lieutenant colonel is right. There are forests not ten miles from here that are easily defensible.”

  “Your Highness,” Colonel Bird protested. “The defensibility of an army’s position is not a matter of state. I appreciate your desire to—”

  “You are going to do this, Colonel,” Ward said calmly. “And you’re going to do it now, on my orders. And should you wonder, yes, I am speaking in the name of the king. Is anything about that unclear to you?”

  Colonel Bird was astounded. “Your Highness. Forgive me. If I have offended you in any way, why, I offer my apology.”

  “I don’t want your apology. I want these men moved. And I want the women gone, the children gone, the ale cut off.”

  “You want the ale cut off…?” He smiled at all those gathered around. Then he chuckled. “With all due respect, you have no authority to countermand my orders. I am a member of the military with a rank of—”

  “And I am your prince, and while I might not have the authority to countermand your orders, I do have the power, in the absence of the king, to take away your commission.” Ward said it easily, firmly. Even diplomatically. “And sir, that is what I am forced to do. As of this moment, you are relieved of your command.”

  “You speak on behalf of the king?” the colonel was shocked. “That is only possible in wartime, and if the king is—”

  “Deposed or indisposed or decomposed or some such, I don’t remember exactly, but yes, I know,” Ward said. “It is wartime. The king is one of those words, you pick. Regardless, I can assure you the king will be unavailable for any appeal for the remainder of the day, as will be the crown prince. So thank you for services, that will be all.” Then he turned his back on the wide-eyed old man, and faced the lieutenant colonel. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Jameson, sir.” He saluted. “Lt. Colonel Zander Jameson.”

  Ward returned the salute casually. “You have a plan for moving this Army?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve already moved my troops to the Hollow Forest. Little over nine miles from here. I’ve come back to get the rest of the men, but I’m having trouble as they aren’t under my command.”

  “They are now. You’re a brevet colonel. Get it done.”

  “Sir, even a colonel can’t move this Army. Only a general can issue the orders to—”

  “Fine, now you’re a general.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’ve been promoted. Get used to it, and get the task done, General Jameson. Did you not hear me? Why are you still standing there?”

  “Yes, sir!” He turned away with a bright determination lighting his face.

  “Wait!”

  The new general turned back.

  “Do you know where I might find a raiding party? Bench Urmand was known to lead a fairly gallant bunch, but he’s a bit under the weather.”

  “Yes, sir. His horsemen are ranging the area. But I think we may be able to find some of them. I saw a few up in those rocks.” He pointed uphill. The area was dark, under a stand of trees.

  Ward smiled. He was sure he would find them quite well-armed, and at least some of them wide awake. “We won’t be needing the horses. But I believe those will be precisely the men. I’ll see to it myself.”

  The raiding party was not, however, ready immediately. Bench’s horsemen were accustomed to taking orders from Bench and only Bench, and though they were eager to fight, they were not eager to leave either their leader or their current assignments. With Ward’s permission, one of them went to ascertain Bench’s opinio
n. Ward wished him luck.

  But when they were finally organized and ready for the journey, there were six of them: four of Bench Urmand’s best fighters, Prince Ward and, in a late addition, Bench Urmand himself. His fever had broken, and neither the surgeon nor Prince Ward was able or willing to keep him lying down on a bedsheet when there was work to be done. He was a bit weak and quite pale, and he limped badly, but he was coherent and appeared to be almost as capable as he claimed to be.

  “You are the minister of defense,” Prince Ward suggested over the hardtack and jerky that was breakfast, likely lunch, and maybe dinner. “Moving our armies to defensible ground would seem a higher calling.”

  Bench looked around at the slow movement of troops across the ploughed fields, heads hung down as they gathered up weapons and what little else they had under the tongue-lashing of their newest general, and began a trudge that would take most of the day. Bench’s moustache drooped and his skin was pasty, but his neck was bulled and his hard eyes were ablaze. “I will not send a prince of this realm into danger, nor will I let a national hero hang, so that I may watch over yet another evacuation.”

  Ward got the feeling Bench had had quite enough of bureaucracy. And while he didn’t know much about the military, he knew better than to tell a leader that he could not lead.

  But Ward’s troubles were far from over. First there was Bench’s injury. The spirit was willing, but it turned out the calf was weak. Bench’s limp quickly grew worse, and he was forced to use the walking crutch Ward brought along for him. He refused to slow the team, however, and so he pushed himself, not only to keep up, but to stay in the lead with Ward. His calf was wrapped tolerably well, but it turned deep red, the cloth soaked through before they had even reached the tunnel entrance. The toll that this effort was taking on the indomitable former sheriff was obvious to all, with the possible exception of the former sheriff.

  Then there were the Drammune who blocked their way. The entrance Ward sought was a trapdoor inside an old smithy. But two heavily armed Drammune scouting parties had met there just moments before the raiding party arrived, at this precise location, and had stopped to smoke and trade war stories. They sat and stood on the smithy’s front stoop.

  Ward and company sat in frustrated silence, hidden behind an ivy-covered fence just across the street, watching and waiting impatiently for, it turned out, more than an hour. It was one of those maddening decisions; of course there were other entrances to the tunnels—one was less than thirty minutes away—but they would take a chance of being caught if they moved. And these soldiers seemed again and again to be saying their goodbyes, only to strike up some new line of discussion or tell some just-remembered joke. As time dragged on, the idea of fighting through them seemed a more and more positive alternative, at least to Bench’s men. But it was out of the question. They were outnumbered, and even if they hadn’t been, they needed to save ammunition for their objective, the prison at the palace.

  Then when the Drammune finally moved on and the raiding party was safely underground, their movement back toward the palace was painfully slow. This was due not only, or even mainly, to Bench’s injury. Rather, it was the layout of the tunnels themselves. Each door was quite obvious to any traveler headed away from the city, but as these were designed as escape routes, every door headed toward town was heavily camouflaged. Ward didn’t know these doors nearly as well as he did those closer in, so finding the door, and then the hidden keyhole, took time.

  Bench grew impatient and irritable. A glance at his sweat-soaked shirt told Ward that the minister was rapidly growing weaker, anxious to press on because he feared his stamina was nearing an end.

  And then, in what would be the second-worst development of their journey, Prince Ward got the party lost. The others looked at him in stunned silence. He sheepishly admitted that he was most familiar with passages that allowed him to move freely between the palace and the pubs.

  “I have wandered on unsteady legs through many of these dark hallways, escorting once or twice women of less-than-stellar reputation. I have even awakened, groggy and disoriented, at a crossroads that had proved too much for my sodden brain the night before. But I never did memorize the pathway to the prison. For some reason, that route did not catch my fancy.”

  Bench and his men seemed to appreciate the prince’s honesty and good humor, if not his compass. Moral or otherwise.

  Ward eventually found his way. But then came the worst setback. They were nearly back to the familiar passageways around the palace when their one small lamp ran out of oil. The next door they reached took all their matches, and still Ward could not find the keyhole. Nothing remained but for the prince to leave the party in the dark and feel his way backward toward an exit where he could surface to find some kerosene. And some more matches.

  So when they finally entered the small torture chamber of the palace prison, it was nearly ten o’clock. What had taken Ward hardly more than an hour going one way had taken closer to three hours coming back. Bench was white and pale, his lips blue, his clothing drenched, his hands trembling. But they had arrived.

  The six men now stood in the enclosed space, listening. Bench leaned hard on the crutch, propping himself up between it and the wall, his head down, breathing hard. They all heard voices in the corridor: the guttural vowels and rolling R’s of the Drammune. Prince Ward crept near the door and listened intently, the only one among them who knew the language.

  “The hero of Nearing Vast,” one of the guards was saying. “He looked soft to me.”

  “I saw no fear in him, though. And why do you suppose he was locked up in here?”

  Ward sighed. “Past tense,” he whispered. “They’re talking like he’s gone already.”

  “How many are there?” asked Bench, his voice surprisingly strong. Ward saw fire in his eyes. But it was a gritty, almost frantic fire. His bandage now dripped blood.

  “Hard to tell. Two at least.”

  “Well, open the door, and let’s find out.” Bench pulled his pistol from his belt. “And let’s see what they’re made of.”

  “Are you sure you’re well?” Ward asked.

  Bench straightened, handed Ward his crutch. He pulled a second pistol from his belt. “I’m well enough. You’ll want to wait here, Highness.” His men followed his lead, bringing out their own pistols and squaring themselves to the task at hand. Just that quickly, the raiding party was ready to deal out death.

  Ward believed. “Remember the armor,” he said.

  “What armor?” Bench asked.

  Ward closed his eyes. Did Bench not know? Had Mather not told even Bench Urmand? “They wear armor. Your pistols won’t penetrate it.”

  The five looked at one another in surprise. “Really?”

  Ward smiled sadly. “Really. Vest and helmet. Shoot anywhere else.”

  “Good to know,” Bench said matter-of-factly. “All right, then. Let’s do this.”

  It was over instantly, and silently. There were four guards, and they were surprised to the point of shock. They threw their hands up and surrendered.

  But the cell at the end of the row was empty. Packer was gone.

  Then the minister of defense all but collapsed. He struggled to the nearest cell, held onto the bars, his body betraying his will. “Now what?” he asked Ward.

  The prince was shocked that Bench would ask that question of him. The faces around him all looked to Ward for leadership. But his mind was blank. He had made no plans past getting Packer and getting out. He cursed himself silently. He should have been thinking about this. Mather was always thinking of what next, and what if. And Ward was always sitting back and letting him.

  He rubbed his chin, then his neck. A drink, just a quick snort, and his brain would work better. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We don’t even know how long he’s been gone.”

  “About five minutes,” came the answer from a nearby cell. Ward now noticed, for the first time, the emaciated faces that peered out from the
cells, watching listlessly. But one of them wasn’t emaciated. Not nearly. It was Chunk, still in his dragoon uniform, leaning on the bars, his broad face pressed up between them.

  “Where did they take him?” Ward asked.

  “Took him to hang.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t speak Drammune. Probably on the Green.”

  “What are you in here for?” Bench asked suspiciously.

  “Helping Panna Throme escape.”

  Ward smiled. “A friend of the cause! Where are the keys? Let’s get you out of there.”

  “Whoa,” Bench said. “How do we know he’s telling the truth?”

  Ward grew irritable. But he had no answer for that. “Look, you question him.” Ward tried to suck some moisture into his mouth. He couldn’t stand this indecision. “I need to do a little scouting. You just stay here until I get back. And don’t close that door behind me, or you’ll be stuck here.”

  “Wait!” Bench called, but the prince was gone, practically at a run. The raiding party looked at one another.

  They had been led to the prison, and then left.

  Prince Ward fought demons. They were in his head, and in his throat. They were in his chest, and in his belly. They wanted him to go back to the King’s Arms. They pulled on him. They taunted. They pleaded. They wanted to buy him a drink. And he very much wanted that drink.

  What was he doing? Who did he think he was? Surely Packer was dead already, hung for the world to see. Surely the war was lost. The Vast Army couldn’t stop the Drammune. The only thing the average Vast soldier could stop was a musket ball. And then only if he couldn’t outrun it.

  Leave the raiding party in the prison. They’ll be fine. Just as well they stay there as die out on some battlefield. Prison is safe. Bench can’t fight anyway. He needs a doctor. Just leave him. Leave them all. Have that drink. Have several. What does it matter? Drink a whole barrel. Why not? Let them find you passed out, dead drunk. The Drammune will put you in prison, or kill you. Probably both. Serve you right. No more than you deserve.