by Alma Boykin
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Matthew dismissed the man to go take care of a supply problem and sank into one of the camp chairs. Ricks studied him, turned and disappeared, returning with a small bottle and two cups no larger than Matthew’s thumb. He poured something into each cup, and handed one to his chosen lord. “Here. Sip it not, Matje,” he said, lapsing into his native Sea Republic dialect. “Drink fast,” and he tossed back the blue-black liquid.
Matthew sniffed it. It smelled like pflums and spicebark. When the old man didn’t fall over dead, Matthew poured the drink into his mouth and swallowed. He gasped for breath as dark fire exploded from his gullet and blew off the top of his skull. Heat washed through his body and he shook his head, surprised it didn’t fall off. “What is that?”
Ricks smiled and helped himself to some of the dried meat and camp bread that had been on the table before the scout’s arrival interrupted the afternoon meal. “That, Matje, is thrice-distilled spirits of pflum and blue apple.”
“By St. Sabrina’s shimmy, that would knock an ox off his hooves.” Matthew still couldn’t quite catch his breath, and he grabbed some of the campbread to get in his stomach before the liquor finished knocking him onto his ass.
Ricks just smiled. “I’ve found it can help, well, help a man regain perspective.”
“Lying flat on my back is not a helpful perspective,” but now that he’d mostly recovered, Matthew did feel a little more relaxed. “How long does a bottle that size last?”
The mercenary captain pointed to himself, white eyebrows raised. “Me? A year at least: I’ve never gotten drunk on it. Too dangerous. And never, ever follow a shot of it with beer or another liqueur. Switch to tea or water after you have a snoot, Matje, or you’ll wake up dead, and I don’t mean with a ‘St.-Basil’s-sheep-camped-in-my-mouth-Godown-take-me-home-please’ hangover, either.”
That I believe. “You don’t disagree with my plan.”
“No, Matje, I think it might work, and it is different. Whether that will make it more of a surprise, I don’t know,” he warned, “and Bustos has a point about the plumed princes in the cavalry.”
Matthew pursed his lips, considering his numbers. “I am … considering detaching some of the heavy cavalry as long-range scouts and raiders, to worry the Turkowi flanks and encourage them to stay on the main roads.” After a moment he added, “And to protect my rear.”
Ricks’s eyes narrowed beneath one raised brow. “Indeed, Matje.”
The Oligarchs had sent a score of their younger sons, all equipped with fancier armor than almost anyone but Matthew and his personal guard, as their contribution to the war, along with supplies and some grudgingly-rendered gold. The merchants’ sons had not proven their worth thus far, with a few notable exceptions. I’d never have thought Tomasso Cevalo would make a soldier, but damn, he’s got promise. If he doesn’t get killed. Most of the group alternated between preening and bitching, and the few times they’d exercised with the militia and Matthew’s full-time soldiers, the resulting horse-wrecks had been entertaining, but not amusing. I’d rather have fewer men, men that I can trust, than a horde of malcontents.
“Will that leave enough to break the Turkowi lines?”
Matthew shrugged. Godown willing they’ll break themselves against us.
“If it matters, I’m inclined to agree with you. They’re too much like the Frankonians were before that little scrum at Sarmas Flats.” The two exchanged wolfish grins: neither bore any great love for Frankonia.
Matthew’s small army reached Scheel Center three weeks later. He shook his head, disgusted by the ghost city that had been the prosperous home of almost five thousand people only thirty years before. A few brave souls had begun mining the walls for building stone, hauling the material north and west to use to fortify their farms and villages. Blackened ruins showed where fire had ravaged parts of the city, and Matthew noticed his men giving the remaining walls nervous looks. Well, Leo, he told his long-dead brother, I swore to retake Scheel at least as far as the Morpalo and make it mine, or die trying. I haven’t quite managed that, but I may still die here.
Instead of forming up inside the city and using the walls, Matthew’s men continued south, then a little east. “Here.” An enormous open area, at least a kilometer east to west, and almost as much north to south, marked abandoned fields and pastures. Only a few trees had begun creeping back in, and they would disappear quickly once the men began cutting and gathering firewood, tent stakes, and other things. Matthew walked along, using a shovel to cut a line three hundred meters long in the remains of a farm field and meadow. “Start digging along this line. I want a ditch two meters across and two deep at least, and a wall behind it, facing west of south. Anchor on the buildings there,” he pointed to an abandoned stone house.
“I ain’t no nose-digger,” one of the sergeants protested. He’d balked a few times before, complaining up the ranks and causing trouble, and Matthew’s patience had grown thin.
“What did you say, sergeant?”
The man glanced around for support and as the men around him grumbled, he repeated, “I said, I ain’t no nose digger, to wait for the bastards in a hole.”
“Dig. Now.” This is your last chance.
The square-jawed man shook his head. “Nah. I’m a sold—” Crack. He never finished.
Matthew let the body drop, the head lolling at an unnatural angle on the broken neck, empty eyes staring up at the pale blue sky. He dusted his hands and met as many eyes as were not trying to avoid his. You’re had all the chances I’m giving you. Which would you rather face—me or the Turkowi? “Anyone else care to disagree with my orders?” He heard the breeze in the trees, and the sounds of the men setting up camp half a kilometer away, and his own pounding heart. “Get to work.”
An hour later he dug a little himself, venting his lingering anger on the dirt and grass.
He sent the cavalry out, searching for the Turkowi and trying to intercept any enemy scouts. I don’t want them to have time to plan their counterattack. Matthew walked along his wall, keeping the men honest and making certain that the construction matched his designs and desires. “Smooth that out,” he repeated over and over. “Make that slope just as straight and even as you can. Don’t give them a step to climb on.” He also watched as Ricks drilled the gunners. They’d brought a few cannon, but even more of the match-fired ball guns.
He’d gambled, buying every one the gunsmiths of Kirwali and her sister-towns could make. He’d wanted the newer flintlocks, but his men knew the matchlocks, and they cost less for the same firepower. Too heavy for a man to hold and fire, the meter-long barrels rested on Y-shaped shooting sticks. They belched smoke and, Godown willing, fired a ball as big as his thumb-joint thirty five meters. Farther, if you didn’t mind not hurting anything, Matthew reminded himself with a snort. He’d had men mark out the range, and Capt. Ricks threatened the gunners with everything from damnation to forced marriage if they opened fire before his or Matthew’s command. Granted, archers could fire faster, but Matthew wanted the guns and noise and smoke. I want the Blackbird to strike out of the clouds and beat them into the ground.
He knew the Turkowi marched closer, and he alternated between praying that they’d attack within the next hour and end his wait, and that the ground would open up and swallow them. I know the priests all say that Your time of miracles has passed, and that You expect us to take care of ourselves, more or less, but I’d appreciate a little help, Godown. Otherwise I don’t think you’ll have much of a tithe, because you will have about fifty thousand fewer followers once the Turkowi reach the Imperial border. Godown, as usual, didn’t answer, at least not in a way that Matthew could hear.
A day after the men finished the ditch and wall, a scout came riding in with news. “A day’s march, Your Grace,” he reported. “Maybe less. Some of the cavalry have already collided with them. We lost a few, they lost a few.”
The idiots! That’s not what … damn it. Well, I wasn’
t planning on an ambush, so it’s no great loss, as long as he doesn’t know what we know. Matthew made himself calm down and release his death grip on his riding whip before he sprained his hands or broke the silver-chased whip. “Good. And they are staying on the main road, as best you could tell?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Unless they sent some troops around the hills, that is, but then they’d be dealing with those streams and the tracks are mighty tore up, ‘specially that one on the eastern side.” The bearded man nodded, repeating, “Mighty tore up, overgrown too.”
“Thank you.” A silver coin slid across the camp table and the man tugged on his forelock, then hurried off to get food. Ricks unfolded a map and they studied it once more. “Why haven’t they repaired the road …” Matthew thought aloud, then looked more closely. “Because it goes nowhere.” Or it did now. Once the eastern track had led to some mines in the foothills, cutting the corner from the river fort. Now it faded off into overgrown woods and dardog lairs.
“It’s odd, Matje.” Ricks tapped the symbol for the mines. “I have never heard of them taking over the old workings. Farms, yes, animal raising, but not mines. Is there something in their religion that keeps them out of the ground?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard of, and I have no idea what they do on the eastern side of the Dividing Range. No one does, as I understand it.” He straightened up, looking out the open tent flap and watching the bustle of camp going past. “And these were small, one-man operations producing a little ore and some soft earth-coal, the smelly kind.” Master Jaros hated the stuff, said it put impurities into any iron you tried to work and ruined the trade value. Mistress Cevalo hated it because it made such a mess when it burned. “They can buy metals and cut down trees for fuel, so why bother with the effort, assuming they even know about the things?”
“Hmmm, point, Matje.” Ricks leaned back as well. “So, how are we organizing the men?”
“Like so.” Matthew scooted the large wax board into a spill of light from the open smoke-flap overhead. “No one in their right mind would form up out here with such nice, sturdy walls ready and waiting. Small guns here, just as we planned, cavalry out here and here, and infantry reserve between the houses and the woods. Cannons really should be here,” at the ends of the dirt embankment. “But,” he shrugged, and Ricks copied the gesture.
“Flanking fire, Matje, and it’ll give the cavalry reserve something to defend while they wait.” That they’d also be painfully vulnerable to a flanking attack went unsaid, but Matthew’d found no better way to use his small cannons. They’d loaded the smallest guns with scrap shot, scatter balls, and the few large cannons had regular balls for bombarding the Turkowi artillery.
Ricks smoothed his missing hair. “No changes, not what anyone would be expecting, and unless the Turkowi can fly,” Matthew snorted at the idea, “they’ll be confused enough to be off stride.” He looked at the designs scratched into the wax. “Godown willing.”
“Selah.” It meant a great deal to Matthew that the old man had not laughed at his idea, or dismissed it out of hand. “May it please Godown to encourage the heathen to do as they always have, at least this once.”
“Selah,” Ricks averred. “And may it not rain.” Everyone in earshot made saints’ signs.
That afternoon and evening Matthew spoke to each group of soldiers in and around camp. The gunners and some infantry made cold camps in their positions, allowing the support troops to move the tents and wagons out of easy range of the Turkowi guns and skirmishers. Lt. Bustos had divided the cavalry, those still with the main army, sending a small group to wait with the cannoneers and the rest to guard the baggage train and ammunition. “I know you are worried about getting your share,” Matthew told the men before anyone could voice their complaint again. “You’ll get your chance when we harry them back across the Donau Novi. The season is just starting, and I need you here, because you know as well as I do that some of the bastards will swing around and try to catch us from behind.” The older, more experienced men nodded, frowning, still not pleased. “And lest you succumb to temptation, no one, and I mean no one will be rushing out of the lines after loot. Infantry, hand gunners, cannoneers, no one.” He looked the front row of men in the eyes. “Besides, do you trust the gunners’ eyesight well enough to be able to tell you from those mustard-clad bastards once they get excited?” The rolling laughter answered his question.
After due consideration, once he returned to his tent for the night, Matthew had another thimble-full of Capt. Ricks pflum spirits. “Has anyone tried to pour some over a pudding and light it?” he asked once he could breathe again.
“Oh holy Godown no, not after the fire back in my grandsire’s day. Someone got careless with a lamp, used an unshielded one, brought it into a warehouse on the dock at Shellyport when they tapped a keg to let a buyer see the quality.” Ricks threw both hands into the air, spooking the young men acting as runners and Matthew’s manservant. “Boom! That was the end of the warehouse, the dock, and almost all of Shellyport. The wind was blowing onto shore. Granther swore that burning spirits flowed through the gutters like the river of flame in hell.”
Blessed Godown, I’m surprised there was enough left to rebuild. Ugh. And here I thought taking a match into a powder magazine was dangerous. He fought off a yawn, then gave up. “You are dismissed for the night.”
Ricks heaved himself to his feet with a creak and a grunt, saluted, and disappeared into the darkness outside the command tent. He’d spend the night with the gunners, behind the dirt wall. Matthew’s couriers bedded down out of the way and their commander wiped off some of the day’s dirt, then dozed off on his camp cot.
His aid nudged him awake, carefully, before dawn. “Sir? Sir, the Blackbird is setting.”
Matthew groaned into a sitting position. Two hours until dawn. Godown hates me. No, he decided as he stretched and scratched, if we rediscover how to see in the dark and fight at night like Lander soldiers could, then I’ll know Godown hates me. Carousing all night and fighting all day no longer appealed as much as it had twenty years before. He stood up and, after using the night soil box, began stretching in earnest. His left arm required careful work before he could extend it. The elbow remained bent a few degrees, but now he could fight and carry a shield if needed. And get dressed.
Hot chokofee, strong enough to curl Capt. Ricks’ hair, finished waking him up. He dressed to the point of heaving on his mail shirt and other bits of armor. The Turkowi wouldn’t attack for at least an hour, and he didn’t see a point in getting tired before he had to. Matthew said his morning prayers, adding a few for anyone who’d gotten caught between the two armies, and for Kiara to leave Barbara alone. He’d spoken with Fr. Paul, a young priest who’d come with the army as chaplain, the afternoon before. He’d also triple-checked Shadow, his horse, not that it would stop the beast from laming himself, Matthew grumbled. They always got hurt at the worst time—just before a battle or the morning you wanted to sell them.
By sunrise, the men had gotten into position. They’d seen the fires of the Turkowi camp the night before. You can’t hide an army, Matthew repeated to himself as he rode along the line. Once he moved behind the wall, anything in the field became fair game for his gunners and cannoneers. He rode slowly, the black plume on his helmet fluttering like his blackbird banners. Shadow pranced, fresh and eager after his few days of rest. From the field, Matthew could just barely see the tips of the pikes poking up over the wall, and a few glints of light from the polished brass on the cannons as the misty sun rose. Not quite a true fog, the soft haze blurred the distance, almost hiding his lines. From the end of the field, by the Sigurney-Scheel Center Road a kilometer distant, he couldn’t quite see the dirt wall. And the ditch? Invisible. He smiled.
The first Turkowi appeared three hours later. The ground began to vibrate, or was that his nerves? A mass of horsemen appeared, a yellow wall of fluttering banners and gold-touched shields. Matthew’s mouth went dry. One figure seemed to s
tand out from the other horsemen, his armor glinting brighter in the summer sun, his banner a touch larger than those of the troops around him. That’s probably just my imagination. The birds fell silent and he could hear the sound of jingling tack, even over his pounding heart. Where’s their artillery? I know they have cannons—are they in the woods? Or were they forming up behind the cavalry screen? He could see more banners appearing, filling in behind the horsemen. He glanced up to see the leather-winged carrion eaters starting to gather. They always know, somehow.
Only Godown knew how long the men waited. Matthew, braced for an artillery attack, grew tenser and tenser. Damn it, do something! he begged. Then the familiar harsh Blat blaat! Blat blaat! sounded across the fields, ringing in the still air. Sunlight flashed off of sabers, and the yellow mass called, “Selkow! Selkow and her Rajtan!” The Turkowi cavalry surged into motion without waiting for their own cannons to fire, charging for the wall and the seemingly helpless Morloka.
Matthew watched from the wall just beside his gunners as the first rank stepped into position. They stood four deep on a special platform behind the crest of the wall. He held his breath as they sighted. Ricks had drilled them well and no one moved as the cavalry pounded closer and closer, dirt flying, trumpets blaring. Matthew wanted to turn and run from the unstoppable yellow mass thundering towards him.
“Front rank, fire!”
A volley of shot slammed into the riders, staggering some, while others continued on.
“Second rank, fire!”
Impossibly fast, another round of ball found targets in the Turkowi charge, dropping men and horses both. Animals and men screamed, audible over the thunder of the riders behind them.