Great Kings' War

by John F. Carr

  The thought of rears gave Kalvan a final idea. One of the things the Ulthori had been looting across the Harph was clothing. They'd been mustered into service in what they'd owned as civilians; even when that had been half decent it had been a bit threadbare, and now most of it looked like rags destined for the bins of the new paper mill. Half of the men now looked like Ulthori peasants, except for their Hostigi red scarves and sashes.

  Why not put a few hundred Ulthori in the captured boats and sent them downriver into the Harphaxi rear? Let them loot to their heart's content, looking as much as possible like a peasant uprising. Something every noble feared at the pit of his stomach. Maybe they could spark a real one if he gave them orders to turn captured weapons over to any local peasants who seemed anti-Styphon enough. Maybe, but that would be getting into delicate territory politically; enough for now that they just pretend to be a peasant army and scare the whey out of Philesteus.

  Kalvan tried to think if there was anything more that didn't have to be left to the chance of battle, and decided there wasn't. One of his Princeton history professor's favorite remarks came to mind, a quotation from some Army manual: "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."

  This Battle of the Heights of Chothros would be no exception. The number of things that could still go wrong was rather appalling. The best Kalvan could honestly say was that he'd disaster-proofed the Army of the Harph, given it a damned good chance of victory, and would have to leave the rest to Galzar, Duke Aesthes, Prince Philesteus and plain old-fashioned luck.

  "Very well, gentlemen. I think it's time we stopped talking and prepared to start shooting. Oh, Harmakros!"

  "Your Majesty?"

  "If any of your tame Sastragathi take Prince Philesteus' head as a trophy, don't let them bring it to me!

  FIFTEEN

  I

  "Here they come again," General Hestophes said. He wasn't quite as calm as he was pretending to be; Kalvan noticed that the pipe in his mouth was not only unlit but upside down.

  The new Harphaxi attack seemed to be aimed at what Hestophes called Barn Hill, at the northern end of his position. Six guns and a thousand infantry held the slopes around the half-ruined barn; three thousand more and the cavalry held the saddle stretching diagonally from northwest to southeast. The southeastern anchor of Hestophes' position, where Kalvan now sat on his horse, was referred to as Tavern Hill, for the stone-walled inn that crowned it. Another thousand infantry and the other six cannon held the slopes or crouched behind loopholes knocked in the walls of the tavern itself. The ones in the upper-floor windows and on the roof had an excellent view of the lower slopes of Tavern Hill, strewn with the dead and dying from the first two Harphaxi attacks.

  The third attack looked like about five hundred cavalry and a thousand infantry, wearing yellow sashes and plumes, carrying the flag of Hos-Harphax—a gold double-headed axe surrounded by a circle of eighteen stars on a red field, each star representing one of the princedoms that made up the Great Kingdom of Hos-Harphax. Only the flag was obsolete; more than a third of the stars depicted were now represented within the Army of Hos-Hostigos.

  Most of the infantry were arquebusiers and assorted skirmishers with halberds, poleaxes, bills, glaives and various polearms sticking up at random intervals. Kalvan swore he even saw a long-handled scythe or two! This must have been how it looked when the first Roundheads went up against King Charles, before Cromwell turned them into the New Model Army.

  They were marching raggedly enough, but they were also marching out of the range of the guns on Tavern Hill, with the additional shelter of a fold in the ground topped by a low stone wall.

  Out of the dust behind the cavalry came three Harphaxi gun teams, turning toward the wall with the gunners jumping down from the horses or running up behind. The guns looked to be twelve and eighteen-pounders, great clumsy iron-hooped things that probably weighed more than a Hostigi brass sixteen-pounder and once off their traveling carriages would be about as mobile as the Rock of Gibraltar. However, they could reach the pikemen in Hestophes' center, who would have to stand there in massed formation and take their shot or risk inviting a cavalry charge.

  Correction: they would have had to stand there and take it, except that when Kalvan came up to visit Hestophes he also brought a thirteenth gun. It was the newest of the sixteen-pounders, which Uncle Wolf Tharses had honored with the name Galzar's Teeth.

  "May they be sharp," Hestophes said, as he looked back at the gunners digging the big piece into position.

  Kalvan grinned. "I've heard it said that thirteen people at one table is unlucky. I've never heard that thirteen guns on one position is."

  "If so, Your Majesty, it will only be unlucky for the Harphaxi."

  From behind came a shout, Colonel Alkides trying to be respectful to his superiors even when they insisted on standing in his line of fire. The generals and their escorts shifted twenty yards to the left, then another twenty as the gunner shouted even louder. Finally there was a thunderous roar as Galzar's Teeth fired its first shot in action.

  Here-and-now gunners hadn't had good enough field guns to learn the trick of aiming short and letting the shot ricochet into its target. Even if they had, the soft ground at the foot of the rise might have defeated them, the way it had Napoleon's gunners at Waterloo. However, the slight downgrade helped. The sixteen-pound ball fell short but kept rolling fast enough to smash through the stone wall to the right of the enemy guns.

  Stone dust and bits flew. The enemy artillerymen didn't even bother to look up. Mercenaries, undoubtedly—the Harphaxi artillery was even more of a joke than the rest of their army—but a good grade of mercenary. Kalvan mentally noted a need to find out their names and, if they were captured, to try and recruit them.

  The artillery duel went on for a good ten minutes with a minimum of damage on either side. Several Harphaxi shot flew over the mercenary arquebusiers to the left of the First Foot and rolled back down into their ranks. Kalvan saw one damned fool of a new recruit stick out a foot to try stopping one of the rolling shot; a moment later he was on the ground with his foot missing, screaming loudly enough to make his comrades back away. Hestophes looked back at the crew of Galzar's Teeth with a get-your-act-together-now expression on his face.

  Whether inspired or intimidated, the gunners succeeded. Their next shot fell close to the leftward enemy gun and must have done some damage, because the next time it fired the carriage split apart. With their own piece useless, its crew shifted to the other two guns, increasing their rate of fire. A couple of stone balls landed among Queen Rylla's Foot. Unlike the mercenaries, they held steady until the wounded were carried away, then closed ranks. Kalvan mentally noted down their Colonel for a commendation. Time for something like the Presidential Unit Citation for regiments that did particularly well.

  In the next moment Galzar's Teeth slammed a roundshot squarely into the muzzle of the enemy's left-hand gun. It burst apart like an exploding boiler, and something hot must have skipped into an open fireseed barrel, because there was a crashing roar and a tremendous cloud of white smoke. When the smoke cleared away, both guns were wrecked and most of their gunners down; Kalvan saw riders in the cavalry of the attacking column struggling to control their spooked mounts.

  "Good shooting!" Hestophes cried. "One could wish they'd done that sooner, but big guns are like women. They need careful handling and long familiarity before you can be sure they'll do what you want them to do." From the pained look on the General's face, Hestophes appeared to be speaking from personal experience on both topics.

  Kalvan rode over to the gun to praise the shooting and to give the gunners ten Crowns with which to celebrate after the battle, while Hestophes organized his counterattack by the four Royal regiments. By the time Kalvan returned, three regiments were on their way downhill in alternating companies of pike and shot. Queen Rylla's Foot formed a column on the left and a skirmish line of three mercenary arquebusier companies was out in front.

&nbs
p; "The wall ends on the left and the ground is firmer there," Hestophes said. "Any cavalry charge will come in there. "I'm going to take the First and Second Regiment of Horse down to where they can support Queen Rylla's Foot, and meanwhile stiffen those mercenaries who don't like hearing the cries of wounded men."

  Major Nicomoth suddenly seemed to have developed an exceptionally severe case of the lice that had infested everybody in the last few days. Kalvan and Hestophes exchanged looks, then Kalvan smiled. "All right, Major. You may take thirty of the Royal Horseguards and ride with Hestophes, as long as you swear to obey him as you would me."

  "With my life, Your Majesty."

  Kalvan watched the cavalry forming up with the thought that Nicomoth was the classic well-born young cavalry officer who knew to perfection two of the operations of war: charging gallantly and dying gallantly. Kalvan liked the young officer, but would cheerfully have traded twenty of him for one more professional soldier like Harmakros, Hestophes or Count Phrames—who were about the sum total of real professional officers in the Royal Army. A pity that none of them had the rank to command the Army of the Besh, particularly Hestophes, who wasn't even a noble, just the son of a tavern owner in Hostigos Town.

  That, at least, could be remedied. It would have to be remedied, in fact; Hestophes had been a colonel-equivalent at the Narza Gap, doing a major-general's job, and there'd been some grumbling about a commoner holding such an honorable post—mostly from Baron Sthentros and that crowd. The Quisling faction, that's what I call them, thought Kalvan. He kept wishing they'd do something overt so that he could hang the lot of them, or at least, stash them in the dungeon of Tarr-Hostigos—they'd make good company for the castle rats.

  Skranga had half a dozen operatives keeping an eye on them to see if they made contact with any of Styphon's House's agents. Sadly, Skranga's spies had nothing to report, other than the usual dirty laundry: assignations with mistresses, tax fraud—almost a hobby here-and-now—bullying the servants and the occasional drunken brawl—pretty much standard fare for here-and-now nobility.

  Well, if Hestophes finished off today's assignment and was still alive tomorrow, he'd be a Baron. Invest him with Tarr-Hyllos, there's a vacant seat there since the local baron's death during the action at Listra-Mouth. With the advantage that it's next door to Sthentros' barony. Plus, it would solve the problem of having him obeyed; Chartiphon had started from a lot farther down and nobody questioned his orders since Ptosphes ennobled him.

  Handing out goodies to men who'd done well was one of the perks of being a Great King, a reward that sometimes almost made up for the headaches.

  There was a sound like distant thunder when the Hostigi regiments stopped short of the soft ground, and the arquebusiers and musketeers of the three lines let fly almost seven hundred strong. Two more volleys and a couple of shots from Galzar's Teeth, and the Harphaxi were edging away toward Barn Hill and into range of its guns. Two salvos from those, and the Harphaxi infantry didn't even wait for the mercenaries on the hill to advance toward them. They retreated, not quite as a rabble but certainly as a unit with most of the pepper and a couple of hundred men shaken out of it.

  The Harphaxi mercenary cavalry made a brief feint toward the left of the Hostigi force, but the arquebusiers let fly, their volley felling two score of horses and emptying a few saddles. Kalvan hated to see the horses get killed, but they were bigger targets than their riders and didn't wear armor. Smoothbores were good for mass fire, but not accurate enough to aim at anything smaller than a horse.

  Then the pikemen and halberdiers covered their comrades, everybody moving so precisely that it was hard to believe they'd only been drilling since last fall, and then not continuously.

  Hestophes and his two regiments rode forward ready to break the enemy to pieces, and Kalvan led the rest of the Royal Lifeguards down to stiffen the mercenaries, but neither of them had any work to do. The enemy cavalry sheered off, picked up the surviving artillerymen and departed as fast as the stableful of glue-factory rejects they were riding could carry them.

  "Don't worry, Major," Kalvan said, as the Hostigi returned to their positions. "You'll be able to charge all you want before this day's over."

  Nicomoth tried to cover his disappointment, but his pale face flushed.

  "Sooner than that if Your Majesty is planning to remain here," Hestophes added. "The lookouts on the tavern roof have reported sighting a new Harphaxi column approaching. They say it may number six thousand men, and the Royal Banner of Hos-Harphax is at its head."

  Six thousand wasn't too many men for Hestophes to handle from his present position, unless the Harphaxi suddenly developed the ability to launch a coordinated attack, and if they did that, Prince Armanes was on call with more than two thousand completely fresh troops. However, it was definitely enough to surround the position and make it completely useless as a command post for Great King Kalvan.

  After reminding Hestophes that if it looked as if the Harphaxi were about cut off his rear, to retreat as planned. "You've pinned the Harphaxi nicely here, so I'd like you to hold this position as long as you can. What will you need to meet them?"

  "More fireseed—and soon. Also, some cavalry to take our prisoners from the first attacks to the rear." Hestophes did not add, "And for the Great King to take his royal arse with them so I won't have to worry about it!" but thought it very loudly.

  "We'll send you the fireseed before the next attack, or in the first lull after it," Kalvan said. "As for the prisoners, my guards and I can escort them back as far as Prince Armanes' position." Kalvan managed to keep from laughing out loud at Hestophes' efforts to suppress a sigh of relief.

  II

  The scene at the south end of the Middle Gap over the Heights of Chothros reminded Phidestros of the struggles of a farmer he'd once watched, trying to get five pigs into a cart that anyone could have told him would hold three at most. The farmer had finally admitted defeat only after the cart collapsed and the ox hauling it broke loose and ran off, followed by four of the pigs.

  Prince Philesteus and Duke Aesthes, it seemed to Phidestros, were much like the farmer. They had dimly grasped the notion that the way to win a battle was to get around the enemy's flank. They had not grasped in the least how to find that flank. Still less did they seem to know what to do with much of their army while they were searching.

  So something like a third of the Harphaxi Army was either through the Middle Gap or on the way; the Iron Company would have been among that nine thousand if Captain-General Aesthes hadn't given them a rest as reward for their good scouting. Phidestros had taken the reward gladly, although he'd been surprised to discover that Aesthes could tell good scouting from bad.

  The pace of the advance through the Gap made turtles look fleet-footed, when everything wasn't at a halt due to a gun losing a wheel or two sets of wagon traces getting tangled. Not to mention the places where the road's incline required eight animals to do the work of four. Phidestros recalled seeing one entire team lying in the traces, dead from a futile attempt to pull an Agrysi nine-pounder back on the road.

  After an eighth of a day of this, Phidestros realized that there was no reason for him to ride about in the confusion, trying to see what most likely wasn't there to be seen. He sent Banner-Captain Geblon and six of his toughest veterans over the Gap to scout, then rode back downhill.

  He'd just reached the Iron Company's temporary camp when he heard peculiarly deep-toned trumpets blaring to the west. He hurriedly turned off the road and watched from the fields as a Lance of Zarthani Knights cantered past.

  The Holy Order of the Zarthani Knights had been formed three hundred and fifty years before, when the civilized native Ruthani of the Lower Sastragath tried to drive out the Zarthani settlers encroaching on their tribal homelands. The Knights had broken the Ruthani alliance and afterward had become the defenders of the Southern Great Kingdoms against the barbarians of the Lower and Upper Sastragath and the Trygath. The Knights were also a priestly order of
Styphon's House, and had helped spread Styphon's worship throughout Hos-Bletha and eastern parts of the Trygath.

  The head of the Order was called the Grand Master and was an Archpriest of the Inner Circle of Styphon's House. He ruled a domain larger in territory than any two Great Kings combined. The current Grand Master, Soton, was the most feared and respected military commander in the Five Kingdoms. Under his rule, the Order had quelled several barbarian uprisings on the western frontier and built three new border tarrs to protect the marches.

  As always, the Knights were marching in the formation in which they preferred to fight. At the head of the Lance went the flag of the Order, a large white banner bearing a black, broken sun-wheel with curved arms—Styphon's Own Device. The Lance rode in a wedge-shaped formation, with the oath-brothers riding ahead as skirmishers, and the fully armored Brethren forming the tip. The hundred Brother Knights had black armor with white and black plumes on their helms, and carried a heavy lance, a brace of pistols and a sword. Behind the Brethren were two hundred Confère Knights in three-quarter black armor with lance and pistols, followed by two hundred sergeants in back-and-breast with pistols and sword. A hundred mounted arquebusiers brought up the rear, followed by a hundred horse-archer auxiliaries.

  This third Lance added to the other two that had already gone up the Gap would make more than two thousand Order horse ready for Aesthes' hand. Phidestros had the liveliest doubts that the elderly Captain-General would know what to do with them, and hoped their own Knight Commander in charge would be able to find something on his own.

  The dust from the Knights' passage was barely starting to settle when Phidestros saw bright flashes of metal, then a solid mass of red emerging from a cloud of dust. A Temple Band of Styphon's Own Guard swung by, glaives shouldered, musketoons slung across their silvered breastplates, and most of them singing a hymn to Styphon in voices that would have knocked dead from the sky any birds who hadn't long since fled from the battlefield.