Champion of the Last Battle

by Robert Adams

  That officer asked, “All right, Sir Djahn, give us a thumbnail sketch of this Duke of Morguhn and the general command structure within the garrison of New Kuhmbuhlulmburk. How many of the nobles were disaffected by this condottiere being placed over them?”

  “None, it would appear, Sir Djaimz. This Bili of Morguhn seems to be a universally popular officer and man. As regards my impressions of him, well . . . he is above avenge height, though not so tall or heavily built as the king — six foot two or three, I’d venture to say, somewhere between fifteen and seventeen stone weight — a thick-bodied man, though not fat, nor in any way clumsy of movements.

  “He wears the Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk, and his accent, too, is of the Middle Kingdoms, though his duchy seems to lie in the Ehleen Confederation. How he and his condotta came to fight for New Kuhmbuhluhn, I have no idea, but it seems that this is the second year of their contract. Last year they served in the southerly reaches of the kingdom, I was told, against some primitive savages called Ganiks.”

  The old brigadier nodded again. “Oh, yes, the cannibals. I’ve heard legends of how the ancestors of the modem-day Ohyohers drove that tribe across the river, years agone. But go on, Sir Djahn.”

  “Bili of Morguhn looks quite young, but I doubt me not that that look is deceiving, for he is obviously a trained and vastly experienced warrior and leader, both in fieldwork and in siegecraft. He seems well along in the task of welding the garrison of the burk into as well-run and efficient a force as his own, small condotta.”

  “Thank you. Sir Djahn,” said Sir Djaimz. “Now, this garrison, what numbers are we facing, what are they armed with?”

  “As might be expected, polearms, mostly reworked and rehafted agricultural implements from the looks of them, though some fair number are weapons made as such to begin, too. From the appearances, every able-bodied man in the city is being drilled in the use of those polearms, that or given lessons in the operation of crossbows and staff slings.”

  “A citizen levy, yes, that’s routine, expected, in any threatened city,” said the brigadier. “But what of trained bands, full-time troops? How many in this condotta, eh?”

  “About two hundred, Sir Ahrthur. perhaps a quarter of those either hornbow archers or expert dartmen. The royal footguards number some five score and are armed with short pikes and poleaxes. There are the New Kuhmbuhluhn nobility, of course, though not so many as I would have expected; I am told that their battle casualties were quite heavy, which you can believe or not, as you will. Two thousand horsemen could have been hidden in the warren they’ve made of that mountain and I’d never have known it. But it would seem that while the walls will be well manned, few of those manning them will be much experienced.”

  Chapter VII

  Behkah, though she of course yearned to be back with her man, was of the opinion that she might have fared much worse than she had since these Skohshuns had captured her, wounded and helpless, on the battlefield. Once recovered of her hurts, she had been kept fettered and under day-and-night guard in one small tent, while the captured Kuhmbuhluhners were housed in another close by. But she had been adequately fed, visited daily by one of the surgeons and encouraged to walk under guard as much as she wished. But she had not been raped yet, or afforded any ill treatment, save by a white-haired old man who had slapped her face a few times before her act had convinced him that she did not speak any Mehrikan at all.

  Nor did her fellow captives seem to have been ill used in any way, though of course she could not speak to them, not Without giving away her linguistic deception.

  She had heard her guards discussing the possibility of captives who had been taken earlier being brought to the encampment and housed with her and the rest, but that had not come to pass by the time the entire Skohshun army — prisoners included — took to the road and marched on New Kuhmbuhluhnburk.

  As amazed as Behkah had been at the neatness and orderliness of he first encampment she had seen of these Skohshuns, she was no less amazed at how fast the encampment before the walls of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk went up. Within less than one full day, the fosse was dug out, the rampart raised and the tents pitched in serried rows, the prison tents too, near to the center of the rectangular camp.

  The prison routine recommenced for her and the others, and on her walks about the bustling encampment, she often looked up at the burk straining her eyes vainly, wondering if one of those tiny figures on the battlements of the walls was her dear Frehd, wondering if ever he thought of her or if he now mourned her as dead.

  On the march and here in this new camp the Skohshuns had not borne their heavy, unwieldy, overlong pikes; rather had they been carried in bundles of several hundred and carefully wrapped against rain or dampness in long, narrow, stake-bed carts. Officers and pikemen alike all wore their swords and dirks, naturally. but unless going out to forage, few bore polearms of any description, she noted, though stacks of them were scattered about ready to hand when and if needed. Nor, with the exception of helmets, was armor much in evidence, again save that worn by woodcutters and foragers leaving the encampment.

  After the first few days, Behkah gave over trying to keep count of the numbers of felled trees dragged across the plain and into camp by teams of horses, mules and huge plodding oxen. Once topped, tall, straight trunks were set deeply into the packed earth inside the fosse, just far enough apart to force an attacker to squeeze through sideways; short or crooked trunks were quickly rendered into faggots for the cooking or watch fires, or shaped into double-pointed stakes and set into the floor of the fosse to impede attackers.

  Nor were even the smallest branches allowed to go to waste, she noted wonderingly. Of the nights, with little or no light, the skillful fingers of pikemen wove them into latticework fences to enclose the horse lines, officers’ tents and latrines, even one for the area around the tents of the prisoners. They also fashioned smaller-mesh frames to hold conifer tops and tips over which to spread their cloaks or blankets. She and the other prisoners were provided with these camp beds, as well.

  Then, early one morning, still another foraging party set out with their wagons, but it was not yet midday when they returned, all wreathed in happy smiles, three of the wagons creaking under, the teams groaning with the weight of, barrel after barrel of some liquid, all of which were off-loaded at the supply area.

  The young surgeon, who had faithfully called each day since their capture on her and the imprisoned Kuhmbuhluhners, failed to come for almost a week, and when he finally did arrive, he looked tired and drawn with care and worry. Behkah overheard him telling the other prisoners that half or more of the camp had suddenly come down with a violent, painful and debilitating flux of the bowels. The senior surgeon, he had gone on to say, feared an onset of the dreaded camp fever and was taking such precautions as he could — insisting that all potable water be briskly boiled, among other expedients, and recommending that the other ranks be afforded extra rations of beer until new sources of water could be found, especially since the discovery of a considerable quantity of large barrels of beer hidden away by some nameless New Kuhmbuhluhner farmer had swollen the beer supply appreciably.

  * * *

  When they came out onto the plain before the besieged city, Dr. Erica Arenstein breathed a sigh of utter relief. She had done a goodly amount of walking and hiking in this current body before the Skohshuns had captured her and a fairish amount since, curiously exploring the glen, under guard. So the march down from the glen to the siege camp, executed as it had been at the best steady pace the draft oxen could be prevailed upon to maintain, had been little exertion to her.

  But to her entourage of Ganiks, who had seldom in their adult lives walked any farther than the nearest pony or home, the march had constituted a form of slow torture. Only when kicks and blows, cuts of stockwhips and ungentle proddings with polearms failed to elicit a response of some sort was a fallen prisoner ever grudgingly tumbled onto the load of a wagon or a wain.

  Nor was the
simple fact of unaccustomed exercise the only or the worst problem undergone by the Ganik bullies. All of their boots had been taken in raids or after ambushes or battles, and consequently most were more or less ill fitting. Moreover, they were all horsemen’s boots, poorly suited for long-distance marching, nor had the primitive Ganiks ever used any sort of stocking or foot wrappings. Before the first the of the march was half done, their feel were become one excruciating mass of blisters, burst blisters and oozing sores. By the nightfall halt, even the strongest of the bullies were gasping, or crying out in pain at every limping pace, their lacerated feet squishing audibly in quantities of their own blood.

  After she and the handful of Kuhmbuhluhn prisoners taken after the battle of the previous year had done the little of which they were capable for the suffering men — bathing their feet with a mixture of vinegar and water, then putting them to soak in such containers as were available filled with more water laced with more vinegar and some salt — Erica stalked across the camp to confront the officer commanding this column, with whom she had had some harsh words earlier in the day.

  Supply and reinforcement trains were mostly commanded by a sergeant, an ensign, a lieutenant, perhaps larger or more important ones by as much as a captain, but Colonel Poller was a colonel and a regimental commander, as well as a blood relation of the earl. The soldier gossip was that his present assignment was a form of punishment for some misdeed or other. Erica could well believe that rumor, for from her first meeting with the pompous, bandy-legged little officer, she had found him possessed of all the charm and human warmth of a bull alligator combined with the patience of a rattlesnake with a toothache.

  This dusk, she found him dining with the only other two officers in this column, a junior surgeon — his rank roughly the equivalent of a captain — from the glen reserves, and the boy ensign “commanding” the three hundred reserve pikemen being marched up to fill out the ranks.

  An orderly at first halted Erica, but a snarled word and a wave of one of Potter’s greasy hands saw her passed to stop before his improvised dining table. There was a wicker-covered demijohn beside the colonels stool, and his ill-coordinated movements and slightly slurred speech told the woman what that demijohn likely contained.

  “Well,” he smiled coldly, “gentlemen, we are honored with a visit from our female-sawbones prisoner, with her overbig mouth and her loose, flapping tongue.”

  Then, to Erica, “What sort of outrageous demands and stipulations did you come to present me this time, woman? Chilled wine and rare roast beef, is it? Or perhaps feather beds for you and your unsavory crew for the night?” He laughed humorlessly, but Erica noticed that neither of the other two officers joined him — the teenaged ensign industriously applied all of his efforts and attention to his dish of boiled pork and potatoes, while the surgeon fiddled with his cup and looked embarrassed.

  “No, colonel, the rations are adequate of quality and ample of quantity,” Erica answered quietly and seriously. “But I must inform you, I fear, that none of my men will be capable of marching for at least a week. So badly are their feet injured that they will certainly be too swollen in the morning for them to get into their boots.”

  “Oh, really? How truly dreadfull,” said Potter mockingly.

  Realizing in advance that appeal to this sarcastic little man was pointless, Erica still felt that she must go on the record with her objections. She had told it all to Potter, alone, earlier in the past day, but now these other officers could bear witness.

  “Yes, colonel, as I mentioned this midday, the boots of my men were fashioned for riding, not for extensive walking. Moreover, they are unaccustomed to marching, having spent most of their lives in a saddle. Besides, Brigadier Maklarin’s message said that we were to be ‘conveyed’ to him, as I recall.”

  His narrow, pockmarked face twisted in anger, a feral gleam in his beady eyes, the colonel leaned across the table, heedless of the cup he overturned. “Can’t march, hey? Can’t get their poxy boots on, you say? Well, by God they can march without boots, barefoot, damn them! And any one of them not on his feet when I pass through in the morning will never need to worry about marching or anything else again, not in this life! D’you get my meaning, you insufferable sow? Conveyed, indeed! It’s more than enough that a wain had to be put to carrying your ratty gear and a tent. I’m damned if I’ll waste more wheeled transport on so scurvy a lot as yours!

  “Now get out of my sight and leave us to eat our dinner in peace. Female or no female, if you intrude on me again, come to me without my summons, I’ll have you stripped and well striped, woman!”

  Much later, well after darkness had closed about the camp, the junior surgeon appeared with two other Skohshuns outside the tent into which Erica and all the rest were crowded. One of the Skohshuns bore a lantern, and by its dim and flaring light the young man cursorily examined the feet of the Ganiks. In his wake came the third Skohshun, bearing a wooden tub from which he scooped large handsful of some strong-smelling, greasy unguent with which he liberally coated the Ganiks’ feet. Then the surgeon took the lantern while the first man swathed each foot carefully in a square of clean linen cloth.

  Beckoning Erica outside, the surgeon said, “Doctor, back in the glen, I never had the time to come and meet you, but I have heard much good of you, of the unsolicited medical work you did for our people, the new and most successful techniques you introduced. For this, if for no other reason, I deeply regret the shabby way in which Colonel Potter is misusing you and your followers. But, alas, nothing that I can say will in any way sway the man, now. When once we reach the siege camp, well, that will be another pot of beans.

  “He . . .” The Skohahun surgeon looked about before going on in a lower-pitched, conspiratorial voice. “Three large wagons and one wain were assigned to transport all you prisoners and your effects, as well as supplies for you for the trip, to include two tents of this size and a smaller one for you alone. I know this order for fact because my own orders followed on that same sheet, all signed by the brigadier’s adjutant.

  “Now the proper numbers of vehicles are in this column, so I can but assume that the colonel found some other loads to fill those wagonbeds that were to convey you and the men. Whatever those loads, they’re obviously something he’s damned edgy over. Hell, maybe it’s all whiskey, for the man’s been drinking steadily all the day long, and he’s still at it this night.

  “But drunk or sober, Potter is no whit less dangerous, doctor. Those pikemen and that child officer will obey him blindly, will maim or kill all of you, if he says the word. That’s the inbred discipline of our people and our army, for he’s a colonel and his mother was a Devernee. So please do nothing to provoke Colonel Potter, I beseech you.

  “I agree with you, with your prognosis. Those men will not be able to don their boots tomorrow. My assistants have gone back to the main camp, and when they return they will have a quantity of rawhides and leather lacings with which to fashion rough brogans for your followers. Tomorrow night, I’ll have them bring enough woolen foot wrappings for all of your men. Their boots can be carried in the wain. But they must march, doctor, one way or the other for now that that evil little man has publicly stated the intention, he will kill or have others kill every one of your men who is not on his feel on the road at dawn.

  “But he will suffer soon enough for these misdeeds, doctor. You have the sworn word of a Devernee on that.”

  Then he disappeared into the surrounding darkness.

  * * *

  Jay Corbett found the Dr. Harry Braun who was coptered up to join him with the special weapons and his replacement military commander, Colonel MacBride, a Broomtown man of late middle age, a far cry from the arrogant elitist he once had been. The body was different naturally, but Corbett and all the other original Center people had long since grown accustomed to seeing their colleagues in new bodies. Under the best of circumstances, they had to transfer into new, young bodies on an avenge of every twenty-five years.
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br />   No, it was not the new body; Braun’s entire bearing and personality seemed to have altered quite perceptibly. For all of the muscular grace, the youth and radiant health of that handsome new body, Braun’s eyes seemed to hold fear, terror, really, and the memory of long-drawn-out agony. His arrogance was become courtesy to the point of diffidence, and this courtesy seemed to extend to everyone, even the Broomtown men and old Johnny, whom he formerly had patronized in even his best moods.

  When this new and very different Dr. Harry Braun tried to thank Corbett for persuading the vindictive David Sternheimer to release him from the torturous imprisonment in that suffering, slowly dying body, he began to weep and, in the end, could only gasp “Thank you” over and over again between shuddering sobs. Embarrassed at the display of — in his mind, unmanly — emotion, Corbett left the tent as soon as he decently could, thankful that none of his men had witnessed it. giving as excuse the many and most urgent matters to be discussed in a very circumscribed time with Colonel MacBride, which was all true enough.

  Pat MacBride, at least, was unchanged, still being the same man that duty and Corbett had long ago shaped. Not too different from what his father had been, and his grandfather before thought Corbett. Jay had trained and worked closely with all of them, as well as with still more ancient MacBrides who preceded them, for Pat was the fifth generation of MacBrides who had soldiered for Broomtown and the Center. Nor was he the last, for his eldest son, Rory, was a captain in Gumpner’s regiment, two of his younger sons were sergeants and his youngest was presently in the training unit at Broomtown Base.

  When he returned to his tent, it was to find the grizzled, prematurely gray officer, a cold pipe clenched between yellow teeth, studying Corbett’s handwritten list of the personnel and equipment for the northbound expeditionary force which he was calling Operation Erica.