The center of the thing was a roughly sculpted contour map of the region. I could recognize the Pearwoods, the Timberwatch, and even the first slope of Green Hill. The road had been roughly sketched in, but the forests were only indicated by chalk for now. There were tiny flags and notes held down by stones here and there. A large rock served to represent Timberwatch castle, and someone had stuck a crooked stick behind it, held in place by two smaller rocks. I assumed Lanse would replace it with something more detailed, later, but at the moment it looked oddly obscene.
To a layman it might not seem like more than a complicated hole in the dirt, thirty feet wide by fifty feet long. But from what I could see, Lanse had rendered the entire vale perfectly. The proportions and the distances were exact. “What scale? One sixth?”
He nodded, as one of his assistants handed him a beaker of some noxious green beer from Farise. “It seemed like it would be the best fit, for the space we have. I’ve got two of my boys harvesting samples of timber and stone now, to fill in the details. But I think I’ve got the rest of it roughed in.”
“This will be perfect,” I said, smiling down at the metaphor of the valley despite myself. “I can see the slope, the three causeways, the fields, the villages, the castle . . . look, the riverbed – you’ll fill that with water?”
“I’ve got some coming,” he agreed. “Then we can start working on the effigies of the troops. I brought two chests of yellow knot coral, enough to do thousands at this scale. We have benchmarks laid already, and I have two more apprentices working on the architectural modeling. Then I can really start showing you what I can do,” he promised.
“You already have,” I nodded. “This is very impressive. No further test is needed. You get your stone, if you swear the oath. We need you, and this. As soon as possible.”
He grinned like I was joking, for a moment, and then realized I was serious. He got solemn, after that, and after I explained the details of the oath, and he made the vow in front of the witnesses, I presented him the largest of the stones I had hanging around my neck. I tried to give it some ceremony – I was elevating him to High Mage, after all. If I succeeded at all this, that could mean a lot in a future Kingdom of Castal.
He looked at it in wonder, and I gave him a few lectures on the hazards of overuse, and the process of attenuating yourself to the stone. He listened aptly, but already he was sinking his consciousness into the outer recesses of it’s shroud. I finally groaned and told him to go experiment for a while, because you really can’t resist doing that at first. His assistants knew their work well enough, and went back to it with trowels in one hand and individually-labeled rocks and clumps of dirt in the other. Not glamorous work, but necessary.
“Nicely done, Captain,” Terleman said, slapping me on the shoulder just a little too hard. “He’s an asset. Now let’s try to turn that into an advantage. We should be able to field thirty thousands, if we’re lucky and the Duke gets here before the horde. I’m not happy with those odds,” he confessed.
“No reason you should be,” I agreed, reluctantly. “But we may yet have other allies to depend on. In the meantime, we’ll just have to use some classy Imperial magic and show those fuzzy little snots the wisdom of being on the wrong side.”
The rest of the afternoon de-evolved into a magical war council. The primary topic of discussion was just what we could do to even the odds. With so many of us around, and such a detailed map available to consider, we started tossing around ideas to mess up the Dead God’s day.
The ideas ranged from the conventional to the extreme. It was fascinating watching them work together, making suggestions, criticizing ideas, and seeing things through the perspective of their own individual expertise. After an hour or so, I finally had one of the Orphans find a table and chairs, and a skin of wine somewhere. I sent back to Bold Asgus to beg a secretary to write it all down, and while we waited for it we had supper and got to know each other a little better.
The ad hoc council lasted far into the evening, and each of us gave Lanse a hand attuning each little section of the diorama, while he experimented with some advance runic techniques and made adjustments. I barely understood what he was doing. Carsetra has a set of symbols all its own.
By nightfall we had come up with a number of ideas. Some were common sense, once they were pointed out. Others were fiendishly clever, daring, and possibly a little stupid. Still others were disturbing in their potency and their effects, making me wonder at our own humanity for even considering employing them. I sent for more wine, and we talked and watched the digging and the sculpting and we tried not to think about the fact that we could all be dead in less than a week.
* * *
There was one other piece of business Asgus wanted to discuss, after the others left the room.
“Captain Minalan, there is the matter of the mercenary contracts . . .”
“Huh?”
“The occupation of Tudry, the training of the Tudrymen, the policing of the town, none of that was covered under our original agreement. It’s not a huge problem. We need to add a few variances and extensions and such, is all. As it is, we’re well over our original budget.”
“We are?”
“We are,” he assured me. “But the original extension provisions should cover most of that. If we’re going to be in charge of organizing and provisioning this larger army, though . . .”
“You think you can manage that? Really?”
Asgus smiled indulgently. “Captain Minalan, I have already sent for two other support units of the Orphan’s Band from the south and east. Another thousand cooks, furriers, sappers, and provisioners. They should start arriving within the week, along with the army from Vorone. With their assistance, I can keep this place organized, make sure everyone is fed, and run the physician’s tents with little difficulty. But . . . it won’t be inexpensive.”
“I don’t care,” I shrugged. “It’s the Duchy’s money. Do what you have to do, spend what you have to spend, just make sure that when the troops show up, they have a place to sleep, food to eat, and a place to take a crap. You do all of that and keep any fights from breaking out, then you can charge all you want.”
“The Captain is quite generous . . . with the Duchy’s money.”
“There’s only a very small chance I won’t be dead at the end of this,” I reasoned. “I’m not going to worry about budgetary concerns during a war.”
Asgus grinned. “Captain, I like the way you do business. I’ll have the new contracts drawn up and sent to your tent this evening.”
And he did. And then the Orphans really got to work. Once they had funds and clearly-stated purpose, not to mention authority to order the camp, they managed to prepare hundreds of campsites in preparation for the arrival of the Alshari army.
Two days later, the small village of Timberwatch had swollen in size, as new companies arrived from Tudry hourly. They were shown where to place their camps and ordered to begin preparations for a battle of truly horrendous proportions. And then they were assigned a labor detail for any one of several ambitious projects we had going. For days the place rang with the song of anvil and hammer. The wagons began arriving, as well, filling the southern fields with their stores. Tudry had been nearly emptied of food and fodder, and scavenging parties had picked every abandoned cot and hold clean to feed us.
The first elements of the Alshari army began arriving at Timberwatch from Vorone about that time, too. Two companies of light cavalry came in, and after seeing to their mounts and their quarters, I had them begin patrolling the lands south of the escarpment in force, replacing Redshaft’s archers. The captain of the vanguard, Sir Ysallant, was stiffly polite as he reported to me. Apparently not everyone in Alshar was pleased with my antics at court, and Ysallant was as close to openly scornful as you could ask without crossing the line into rudeness.
I didn’t care. It might not have been politically astute, but despite Isily and Pentandra’s instruction about such things, I was
focused on winning the battle, not soothing the feelings of huffy nobles. Thankfully Bold Asgus was willing to step in and coordinate the disposition and ordering of the encampment, a task for which he was ideally suited. Sir Ysallant and his peers weren’t much happier dealing with a mercenary, but at least Asgus wasn’t a mage. The rumor that I had stirred up the goblins in the first place had penetrated the circles of the Alshari nobility where it stubbornly resisted the truth, and sentiment among the officer corps was decidedly anti-magi. They were here, and they would fight, but only because the Duchy was in danger and their duke commanded it.
It didn’t help that the warmagi were strutting around, enjoying their new-found power. Traditionally, we’re seen as support personnel, on par with teamsters, smiths, and sappers, not as fellow warriors.
Now even Carmella was acting with a new boldness that bordered on arrogance. She’d stilled the vocal cords on a man-at-arms who had something offensive to her (a temporary spell, but a terrifying one) and I had to speak to his captain. And when Azar showed up at the head of three hundred Megelini knights and men-at-arms, who looked upon him worshipfully and treated him as some sort of hero, it didn’t improve relations much. Especially when Azar expected everyone to share their opinion. The Orphans had to start patrols to police the chaos and stop brawls from breaking out, and I had to speak to Azar about provoking the Alshari.
If someone had time to brawl, they had time to dig, my old commander on the Farisian campaign was fond of saying. I already had the men building redoubts under Carmella’s direction, on the theory that the infantry-driven goblins, who had just figured out the rudiments of siegecraft, had never encountered battlefield fortifications before. We built six of them of rough-hewn timber and hastily-mined rocks in a rough line west to east, just within bowshot of the escarpment. We would fill them with archers and mangonels and use them as strong points to rally around.
And then there were the trenches. I feared they would do us more harm than good, when Mavone first proposed them – after all, trenches are great from keeping your enemy cavalry from charging. Only there weren’t any enemy cavalry to speak of this time. Mavone pointed out their utility for avoiding some kinds of magic – including a few kinds we were using – and I relented. A zigzagging network of trenches soon crawled across the rocky hills between the redoubts, complete with freshly harvested tanglewood bushes, hidden stakes within the brush, and a few nasty tricks only the mind of a bored infantryman could think up.
During those last, busy days I spent most of my day ‘talking’ to my magical subordinates via telepathy as they sought guidance, made reports, and took new orders. Mostly scouting missions to confirm what we thought we knew about the horde that was marching closer to us nightly. An army that size is almost impossible to conceal from scrying, but knowing there were things that only a man on the ground can observe that can turn the tide of battle. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.
As it was, the map I was using to chart where everyone was – enemy and ally – was showing a very disturbing trend. By the third day, it was clear that if the goblin horde didn’t slow down, and the men from Vorone and Tudry and elsewhere didn’t hurry, then we would be set upon long before we were ready. That was a problem. I couldn’t do much to speed up my side, but I decided to do what I could to slow down theirs.
Azar was still strutting around the camp, loudly declaring his desire for battle to any who would listen. It was annoying and obnoxious, but it did get the men stirred up. Some positively, some less-so. Terleman was too busy overseeing the preparations for battle to ride herd on him, and Mavone wasn’t willing to get in his way, and Taren was about the least confrontational warmage I’d ever known, so I finally decided to solve two problems with one stroke. I called he and a few others – Rustallo, the new high mage and former Censor, Landrik, and a couple of the more daring cavalry captains. Then I pointed to the big gold coin I was using to represent the horde on the map.
“I need you,” I said, determinedly, “to slow down this army.”
Landrik looked at me, eyes wide in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?”
“Our forces are still coming in, and if the horde keeps moving as fast as it is, we won’t be ready to receive them properly. What if you take . . . say, a thousand cavalry and a half-dozen warmagi. Do you think you can slow them down? A day? Maybe a day and a half? Every hour you can buy us means another sword at the front. Unless . . . you don’t think you can handle that,” I added casually. That was precisely the thing to get my preening warmagi to attempt it, by challenging their abilities.
“Of course we can, Captain,” assured Azar. “A thousand men? Against ninety-thousand goblins? We’ll have to make sure we leave you a few to fight, I suppose, but it shouldn’t be such a great task.” He sounded as eager as a bride on her wedding night. Rustallo looked pretty pleased too, although Landrik was still struggling to imagine such a thing. While he was a trained warmage, he was also used to dealing with wayward witches and undocumented footwizards, not the prospect of a glorious death in battle. I tried to soothe him.
“You don’t have to defeat them, remember, you just have to slow them. As a matter of fact, avoid pitched battle at all cost. But there are all sorts of things you can do to slow down an army on the move. With magic, and a little imagination, you’ll think of something. But buy me a day. Two, if you can. And make them miserable. When they come down that escarpment, I want them tired, hungry, disoriented, and ready to run at the first clash of swords. Sneak like bandits, cast like adepts, fight like champions . . . but buy me some time!”
I got a mix of wolfish grins and worried looks in response, but it did remove the cocky element from the warmagi, and allowed the rest of us to finish our preparations. And there were a few.
Special orders of alchemical supplies from Tudry. As many pumpkins as our foragers could find left in the fields. Construction of artillery, mostly catapults and mangonels. A truly staggering amount of liquor from any source we could find it. Every drop of honey the Honeywood could supply. Wax in abundance. And that’s on top of the timber needed for fortifications, the tools needed to dig, the boots, clothes, and other supplies the thousands and thousands of soldiers needed. And the truly astonishing amount of provision required to keep them in one spot for any length of time.
And wouldn’t you know it? Azar and his raiders did far better than I expected. They bought me four days.
Five would have been better.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Taking Command Of The Expeditionary Force
Cleston, Midsummer
So I won. Hooray.
As bittersweet as the political victory over the Censorate was, and as much as I’d wanted to ride to the defense of Alshar, as I approached the ad hoc army camp on the commons of the border village of Cleston, I was starting to realize that my “victory” put me, once again, in physical peril. Only now I couldn’t even take comfort in my conscription: I’d volunteered. I’m an idiot.
Worse, it began to dawn on me, I was in charge now. I was the stupid, misbegotten moron with poor judgment that every soldier everywhere has had the luxury to curse under his breath. I was the captain of this army, the general officer in charge of its orders, its deployment, its supply, and its ultimate destiny. I even had a little gold badge and a portfolio full of parchments to prove it.
My gods, I thought as I rode Traveler to the sentry-manned gate. What have I done?
The Orphan’s Band was the heart of my force: a force of infantry, sword, spear and shield in well-made leather and steel armor. They were expensive mercenaries, but that’s because they were good. They also had archers, and more importantly they had the field hospital and kitchens that would heal and feed my men.
My men. When I was in the army in Farise, I’d always heard officers speaking of the troops possessively like that, and I’d thought it a conceit, as if they “owned” their men. Now I realized that the ownership seemed all one-way. How many of these men who had me to
lead them would never see their homes and families again? How many would leave behind widows and orphans? How many would die under the mallets of the gurvani because I made a stupid mistake? The horror of the responsibility weighed more on my shoulders with every step my horse took, until it weighed on me like a cloak of iron.
I looked around the neat and tidy camp of the Orphans, rows of tents and campfires, clusters of shields and spears and helmets, men laughing and swearing and coughing and farting around the campfire, waiting for orders, waiting for wherever the whims of fate would direct them, waiting for victory or a valiant death, waiting for . . . for me. I was the one who would dictate their fates.
I knew I had it within me, I reasoned, as I turned toward the headquarters tent where I would meet Bold Asgus, Captain of the Orphans. After all, I had commanded men in battle before. I had run most of the siege of Boval Castle, and had managed without making too many idiotic mistakes.
But then I had been desperate. There had been no one else who understood the capabilities of the gurvani and their shamans as I did. And when Sire Koucey had taken leave of reason and nearly doomed us all, I had assumed power and directed the defenses in name as well as deed. The job had been easy, then: you see a goblin come over the wall or through a tunnel or breach, you killed him. When there wasn’t a goblin coming over the wall, you waited for one to come. That was simple.
But this wouldn’t be a defensive war, not really the same way a siege was. I would have to lead the troops to the enemy, not just wait for them to shimmy up the drainpipe. That meant finding them, and that meant scouts, and that meant scrying . . . and if I was wrong, then some of these men would die.
Hell, even if I was right, some of these men would die. That was a depressing thought. As I glanced at their faces as they made their way through camp, the oppressive notion that I would be the cause of each man’s demise led me to a kind of despair I hadn’t known about. It’s one thing to fear for your life. It is quite another to fear the responsibility of so many other lives.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 60