Great Kings' War

by John F. Carr

  Lysandros was as brave as he was able; he might not wish to survive such a defeat and if he were in the forefront of the battle, he might not survive whether he wished to or not. Some men could do Styphon's House as much service dead as alive; Lysandros was not one of them.

  King Kaiphranos continued, "Prince Philesteus, it is Our wish that you may lead such part of your Royal Lancers as you wish into the field to form part of Our strength watching the hosts of the Traitor, Rebel and Servant of Daemons Kalvan. You and they are to obey the orders of Captain-General Aesthes in all matters where his authority runs."

  It would take the God of Judges, Galzar Himself, to determine that, thought Soton. Both Aesthes and Philesteus started to reply, then both seemed to think better of it. For the first time in half a candle, Soton felt like smiling. Duke Aesthes was clearly none too happy about having under his authority a Prince notoriously hot-headed enough for three captains half his age. Philesteus was just as torn among his joy at going into the field at the head of his beloved Lancers, his frustration at being under the Captain-General's orders and his reluctance to leave Harphax City with the opportunity to intrigue with the captains of his own faction against Kaiphranos' policy.

  From the bland way Kaiphranos was studying his two commanders, Soton was quite sure he was reading their thoughts just as clearly. Had the servants of Styphon underestimated the wits remaining to Kaiphranos? If so, he would have to discuss the matter with First Speaker Anaxthenes when he returned to Balph.

  "My Knights and I must take counsel as to how we may best obey the will of the Great King. I must say that I think he has been given advice by men not knowing the true strength that Styphon's House may bring to the aid of its allies. Yet, it is no shame to them not to know the secrets of the God of Gods."

  "Will be you taking your Lances of Knights away from the Army of Hos-Harphax?" Duke Aesthes asked, his rheumy eyes remained aimed like twin cannon mouths at Soton, ignoring the glare from Philesteus and the cough from Kaiphranos.

  "As I said, I must take counsel with my Knights. I can say, however, that there seems to be small need for that at present."

  Which means, old man, that two thousand of my Brethren will be within reach of your orders if you need to rein in that spirited stallion Philesteus the Bold and find no one else will help you because they're all afraid of offending their next ruler. But Styphon have mercy upon you, should you make ill use of them—for I shall have none!

  By the Gods, let me escape from this snake pit and I will do anything you ask of me even if it means sacrificing captives to you as the Mexicotal do on their stone altars!

  Archpriest Phyllos moved for the first time and Soton found himself looking into eyes that made him think of a whole battery, loaded and with the matches smoking in the gunners' hands. Certainly Styphon's House could not afford to leave the Knights alone in supporting Hos-Harphax against Kalvan. Too many Harphaxi nobles would never forgive or forget if they did that and Lysandros' devotion to the True God would become even more a black mark against him.

  Too bad for Anaxthenes' catspaw if this was another of the First Speaker's grand schemes. Archpriests were going to have to learn the difference between cavalry and infantry just like everybody else if they wanted to stop Kalvan before grass grew on the ruins of Styphon's temples!

  II

  Master Gunner Thalmoth finished winding his slow match around the eight-foot linstock, then held the lighted end up to his lips and blew on it until Kalvan was afraid the man's beard would catch on fire.

  "Everyone back!" Thalmoth shouted. The other gunners and foundry workers backed away from the gun-testing pit, leaving Thalmoth standing alone with a smoldering match poised over the touch-hole of the new sixteen pounder inside. "Farther, farther!" he shouted as a few of the younger workers showed signs of wanting to stay close enough to the pit to see what happened.

  The workers kept back and somehow in the process Kalvan had to join the retreat to avoid being jostled in a manner not befitting a Great King's dignity. He grinned, wondering if Thalmoth had planned this to avoid having to publicly give orders to his sovereign.

  Suddenly the linstock dipped, the priming powder puffed and the sixteen pounder spewed flames and white smoke. Double-charged for the proof firing, it reared halfway out of the testing pit on its oak beam, then thumped back into place. From where Kalvan stood, it looked completely intact.

  Half a dozen picked men ran forward with sponges to cool the barrel, rammers and tools to measure any deformation of barrel or bore. As a light breeze blew away the smoke and dust, they leaped down into the pit, leaving Thalmoth posing dramatically at the rim with a linstock over his shoulder.

  Kalvan didn't begrudge the old man his moment of glory; he'd come out of retirement to take care of the testing program for the Royal Hostigos Arsenal and was clearly worth any two other gunners in Hostigi service, except Alkides. Although a native of Hostigos, Thalmoth had spent twenty of his younger years as a mercenary and he'd handled guns in more battles than he had fingers and toes.

  Finally, Thalmoth turned to the spectators and gave the thumbs up signal for success which Kalvan had introduced. The next step would be firing a proof charge with the breech dug in to give the gun maximum elevation, then a field carriage—thank Galzar or Somebody that the gunsmiths, black smiths and carpenters had finally stopped arguing about who would be in charge of the carriage shop!—and last of all, a naming ceremony, with Uncle Wolf Tharses presiding over the gun's acceptance into the Royal Artillery. That would be about the last such ceremony for a while, though. No more brass for the Foundry, or at least not much; Kalvan doubted there was a brass chamber pot left in the entire Great Kingdom.

  Hooped wrought iron would do for the four and eight pounders, but Hostigos already had about as many of those as there'd be horses to draw. What was needed was the heavies, the sixteen pounders and those thirty-two pound siege guns he'd been dreaming of since last summer. Made of brass and firing either solid shot or iron shells—he'd seen the first experimental shells last week—the heavies would pry open any tarr he'd seen here-and-now like a sardine can. Made of hooped wrought iron, those brutes would simply be too heavy to move over here-and-now roads without slaughtering draft animals like hoof-and-mouth disease.

  Wait a minute! If he couldn't make siege guns with hooped wrought iron, what about siege mortars? They would be made large enough to lob a really destructive shell a few hundred yards and have a trajectory that would carry it over any walls. Solid shot, too. If castles couldn't be battered open, perhaps they could be hammered flat from above. Or, at least, made uninhabitable if the shells could be filled with some sort of incendiary compound...

  Of course, the mortars would have to be very short range in order to be light enough to move easily. Four or five hundred yards would probably be the limit. However, they could easily be dug into pits like the one being used for gun testing. It would require some fancy shooting to hit them, and a few dozen riflemen in other pits close to the walls could discourage any gunners standing in the open long enough for that.

  Mortars might be a poor man's weapon, but Kalvan had been at the wrong end of enough Chinese mortar barrages to have a lively respect for them. Besides, anything that impressed castle-holders that a siege was no longer something to sneer at would be an asset to the Great Kingdom.

  Kalvan sent a page off to his tent for a piece of the thin-cut pine he used in place of notepads and some charcoal. For at least the fiftieth time he cursed the slowness of the paper project which had worked up only as far as a high grade of mush. For the fortieth time he realized that Brother Mytron was doing the best he could with the knowledge and tools at hand, not to mention the time he could spare for the paper project. Mytron in fact now wore three hats: he was Royal Papermaker of Hos-Hostigos, Surgeon-General to the Royal Army and Rector of the new University of Hostigos. Unofficially, he was also chief Rylla-watcher, a job in which Ptosphes and Kalvan gave him all the help their military duties al
lowed. That wasn't much, with the campaign season growing nearer each day. As soon as the streams and rivers shrank a bit...

  Unfortunately, the warm weather had only given Rylla her own bad case of cabin fever; she felt fine and was firmly convinced that keeping her shut up like the crown jewels was good for neither her nor the baby. She argued the point with her husband, her father, with Brother Mytron and even Head Midwife Amasphalya, who as a girl of fifteen had helped her grandmother bring Ptosphes into the world.

  Maybe Rylla had a point. Certainly there were plenty of "good breeders," as Amasphalya put it, among the women on both sides of her family. Maybe Princess Demia's troubles hadn't been passed on to her daughter? Maybe any baby who didn't miscarry from its mother's temper tantrums could easily survive mere cannon shot? Maybe Kalvan was being a little selfish, keeping Rylla shut up, just to save himself one more headache?

  Maybe, but he wasn't going to change his mind now. If Rylla sailed through the last two months of her pregnancy as well as she did the first seven, she could have her next baby in a trench at the siege of Balph if she wanted to. But for this one, she'd stay put!

  The page returned with the pine board and charcoal. Kalvan realized he was hungry and sent the boy off to the gunner's mess to scrounge some food and wine. Rylla claimed he didn't keep enough ceremony with his meals, but he'd be damned if he was going to waste time with that sort of thing now. With a twenty-nine hour day and no need for sleep, he just might get done half of the things that needed doing no more than a moon or two late.

  III

  Kalvan was finishing his first sketch of an eight-inch mortar and the wing of a rather tough goose, when he heard one of his pages clearing his throat. "Your Majesty, Duke Chartiphon wishes audience."

  Kalvan tossed the goose bones aside, wiped his hands on his breeches and stood to greet Chartiphon. Despite his new titles and responsibilities, the old Captain-General of Hostigos appeared much the same as he had when Kalvan had first entered Tarr-Hostigos. He was a big man with a gray-streaked golden beard and rugged features, still wearing the same battered and lead-splotched breastplate and two-handed sword.

  Chartiphon bowed, then motioned to a man standing beside him to come forward. "Your Majesty, this is Ranthar, a free trader come from Grefftscharr. He bears a message from Colonel Verkan."

  Ranthar was a tough-looking young man with sandy hair and a bristling beard; he wore well-worn leather riding clothes and looked to be well under thirty until you saw his eyes. Kalvan hoped he would have a chance to hear from Ranthar the stories of some of what those eyes had seen.

  More immediately to the point was the signet ring on Ranthar's left middle finger; it was Zygrosi work, plain brass, and there were only four rings like it in the whole world—none of them likely to be in the possession of someone Colonel Verkan didn't trust.

  "You've assured yourself of a warm welcome already, Trader Ranthar. How is Verkan?"

  Trader Ranthar bowed gracefully, as though meeting Great Kings was an everyday event for him, then smiled. "Colonel Verkan was well the last time I saw him. Also very busy, putting together a shipment of victuals and weapons for Your Majesty's use. He sent me on ahead overland with a pack train while he followed the ships across the Saltless Seas to Thagnor, Morthron, the Nythros City States and Ulthor Port. If you send men to Ulthor Port now, they should be just in time to meet him and help unload his cargo swiftly."

  Ranthar handed Kalvan a leather wrapped wooden tablet listing what Verkan was sending. It was quite an impressive list, with its most notable entries, a thousand stand of muskets, five tons of Kalvan-formula fireseed, six hundred sets of pikeman's armor and a hundred tons of grain and salt pork. Also a thousand ingots of brass and two hundred of lead riding on Ranthar's pack animals along with a miscellany of gunlocks, flints, powder horns and other lightweight but necessary gear.

  "Well done," Kalvan said. "See my Paymaster at the Treasury for twenty gold Crowns for yourself. I'll tell Colonel Verkan that he's chosen a good messenger."

  Not that this was any surprise; a free trader who didn't learn to pick good subordinates probably wouldn't live to wear out his first hunting knife.

  "My Thanks, Your Majesty," Ranthar said. "Colonel Verkan says he wishes he could have sent more sooner. However, the nomads of the Sea of Grass are now on the move. King Theovacar would let neither food, nor arms, nor fireseed leave his realm until he was certain the nomads were not turning north. Even then, Colonel Verkan had to pledge all he owned and all he could borrow from his fellow traders in payment."

  "He will be repaid in full, if not before the campaign, then afterward."

  "At Styphon's expense?"

  "Exactly."

  Ranthar's report confirmed others, both about the nomads and about Theovacar's character. Theovacar was in his mid-to-late twenties and definitely ambitious to expand his kingdom, but equally determined not to risk what he already had. Not a bad man to do business with if you had something of value to bargain with—and Kalvan realized that if he offered to show Theovacar the way to the copper and iron deposits around Lake Superior, he'd have something the man should jump at. Also a permanent solution to any shortage of metal for cannon.

  He'd have to talk with Verkan when he arrived in Hostigos Town to be sure he wasn't planning to sell King Theovacar knowledge he already had. Even if the ore deposits were known, of course, that didn't mean they couldn't use a better way of getting the metal from the shores of Lake Superior down to the docks of Greffa.

  Kalvan only knew a little more about mining than he did about paper making, but it could also solve his shortage of artillery...

  He'd have to work mostly with Verkan, of course. That might mean turning the man from Colonel of the Mounted Rifles into here-and-now's first copper magnate, which would be a pity; the man was too good a combat officer to be spared easily. However, it was probably necessary; one of these days Kalvan might have to stop making ten men do the work of fifty, but he suspected he'd be a grandfather before that day was even in sight.

  Ranthar was now fumbling something out of his belt pouch. "This is not from Colonel Verkan, it was from a man who thought someone trusted by the Colonel would be the best way to send it to Your Majesty secretly. As you will surely see, it would be the end of him if any of Styphon's minions were to discover his betrayal. I shall tell you the man was on his way from Agrys City, but I would rather not tell any more."

  He handed Kalvan a piece of parchment, folded in four and with the badge of the Inner Circle of Styphon's House stamped into the sealing wax. It directed a certain sea captain to transport two thousand cattle southward in ships to the mouth of the Thebra (Potomac River). He was to return with a full Lance of Zarthani Knights, landing them in Harphax City no later than eighteen days from today. The meaning of the date was obvious; it was about when the Harphaxi were supposed to march. That in itself was useful to know, although Kalvan had never had any intention of waiting more than another half moon.

  This last minute movement of Knights, particularly when the Harphaxi Army would need more than a single Lance to stiffen its spine, was perplexing. They had three Lances of Zarthani Knights—with oath brothers and auxiliaries about twenty-five hundred horse—with them already, according to his spies, but they would need five or six more to stiffen the well-born nitwits and ill-paid mercenaries of their cavalry enough to face the Army of Hos-Hostigos.

  Several of the 'traders' working for Skranga had reported troop movements throughout Hos-Ktemnos and, for the last half-moon, it had been apparent that Styphon's varsity would be coming from the south. Kalvan didn't like the idea of dividing his forces, but it looked as though he wouldn't have a choice.

  There have been rumors of bad blood between the Harphaxi and Styphoni, who were mostly Knights and Styphon's Own Guard, popularly known as the Red Hand for their bloody treatment of enemies and allies alike. The Temple Guardsmen were placed behind unreliable mercenary companies or poorly trained levies with orders to kill all th
ose who turned, ran or attempted to surrender. The Red Hand weren't above killing civilians, either; if that's what it took to put down a peasant uprising. Mostly recruited from hardened mercenary units, Styphon's Own Guard gave one and all, high and low, respect for the might of Styphon's House—and a healthy dose of fear as well.

  Was Soton was using his Knights to put some backbone into the Harphaxi Army? If so, were even more Lances moving toward Harphax City? Or was the Inner Circle, now that it had decided to fight its own war, strengthening the Harphaxi just enough to make them a better grade of cannon fodder? If that could be proved and a word whispered into Great King Kaiphranos' ear by a well-placed and reliable secret agent, if there were such a thing... He'd have to talk with Skranga about whether or not they had such a spy.

  One thing was certain; this wasn't something he could decide all by himself. "Chartiphon, send out messengers. We're going to hold a Council of War at Tarr-Hostigos. Count Phrames should be arriving from Beshta sometime tomorrow, so we'll set it for tomorrow night. I want Ptosphes, Klestreus, Xentos, Rylla and Brother Mytron."

  "Good news?"

  Kalvan shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Styphon's House is up to more of their slippery tricks. Here. Take this message to Prince Ptosphes and have him read it to you."

  Chartiphon nodded and left. Like most Zarthani men who were not scribes or priests, he felt no shame at not being able to read, although he was good at recognizing map symbols. Harmakros was the same way. Fortunately, most of the upper nobility and merchants knew how to read and write the Zarthani runes, but Chartiphon had begun his career as a simple trooper and owed his rank to Ptosphes' eye for talent.

  Kalvan turned to Trader Ranthar. "I'm afraid you'll have to stay in protective custody for a while. It's not that we don't trust you, it's that I don't trust Styphon's House not to have spies here. If they learn what you've done, the first news I might have for Verkan is that you've been kidnapped and tortured for what you might know about their plans. That would be poor payment to him, and even worse to you."