“Good. Is he clever enough to notice that certain things don’t quite match?”
“I don’t think so. He’s very excitable—and he’s in absolute awe of Sergeant Khalor. He’ll do anything Khalor tells him to do, and he’s so worked up right now that his thoughts aren’t really coherent. I don’t think Koman’s going to get very much from him—except for the story you just made up about Eliar’s condition.”
“He’s earning his pay, then.”
“Are you actually paying him?”
“I might—if it starts to look as if we’ll need him in the next war.”
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S I X
It was slowly growing lighter in Sergeant Gebhel’s trenches and along the opposite ridgeline, but the valley between was in deep shadows. The drunken Ansus on the far slope were building up their bonfires and waving their torches. Their war cries began to echo from the nearby hills.
“Subtlety doesn’t seem to be part of the Ansu nature,” Chief Albron observed. “Only an idiot would believe that those howling fools over there are the main force.”
“Actually, it’s not bad, my Chief,” Khalor disagreed. “They’re overdoing it a bit, but they’re fairly drunk. This is the place where the main assault’s going to hit Gebhel’s trenches, and the playacting’s supposed to make us believe that nothing serious will happen here. Our main problem is that Gebhel’s probably being taken in by the fakery, and I can’t tell him about those people in the cave with Koman out there listening to every message I send down to the trenches. At the first hint that we know about the hidden army over there, the enemy Generals will change their plans and hit us from someplace else.”
“Gebhel’s been around for quite a while, Sergeant Khalor,” Althalus told the kilted Arum. “I’m sure he’s shrewd enough not to be taken in by the nonsense across the valley.”
“I’d still be a lot happier if he had more men in this stretch of his trenches,” Khalor said bleakly, “but I don’t dare send him any messages that can’t be explained.”
Gher tugged at Althalus’ sleeve. “Ask Emmy if she could make some fog near that cave,” he said.
“I suppose I could, Gher,” Dweia replied through Althalus, “but why?”
“I’m not sure if this would work,” the boy said, “but sometimes fog looks a lot like smoke, doesn’t it?”
“Not too much, no. Where are you going with this, Gher?”
“Well, I was sort of thinking that we don’t really have any snoopers over there near that cave, and Koman can’t hear us talking, because Leitha’s busy counting bits and pieces of numbers, and that makes him wild. That sort of means that the only thing he can hear is what Salkan’s telling Mister Gebhel. If we wanted to, we could tenlike we had one of our snoopers over there and—”
“ ‘Tenlike’?” Althalus asked in a puzzled tone.
I think he means “pretend like,” Althalus, Dweia murmured. Gher tends to mash things together when he gets excited.
“Oh. Go ahead, Gher, but don’t jump over too many things.”
“All right. It goes sort of like this. Emmy puts fog around the front of the cave, see, and Mister Khalor hears from his tenlike snooper that smoke’s coming out of the cave, and he right away sends Salkan zipping down to the ditch to tell Mister Gebhel that there’s somebody in the cave, but he can’t really say how many. Ghend would take a quick look and see the fog, and he’d think that our tenlike snooper wasn’t smart enough to be able to tell the difference between fog and smoke, so he’d just think that Mister Khalor’d made a mistake. Mister Gebhel’s not the kind who takes chances, though, so he’d bring in extra men because there might just be an army in the cave. Ghend might swear a lot because we’d made a mistake, but he wouldn’t know that we know for certain sure, so he won’t have any reason to change his plans, will he?”
Sergeant Khalor squinted off at the eastern sky, scratching thoughtfully at his cheek. “This boy’s a treasure, Althalus,” he said finally. “Stupid blunders like the one he just described happen all the time in wars, so there’s nothing remarkable about it. It’ll keep Gebhel right where he is, and Koman won’t be able to find anything the least bit unusual about why Gebhel’s staying put. Ghend loses the element of surprise, and things settle down to a protracted siege of Gebhel’s trenches. That should give Eliar all the time he’ll need to recover, and once he’s back on his feet, we can go back to the old plan.”
“Then I done good?” Gher asked eagerly.
“You did just fine, boy,” Khalor said, grinning. “Go find Salkan, and we’ll get started.”
The steel-grey light of dawn began to seep into the valley below Sergeant Gebhel’s trenches, and the drunken Ansus on the opposite slope lurched toward their horses in preparation for their mock assault. There was a great deal of laughing involved, for some reason.
“They’re behaving as if this is some kind of joke,” Chief Albron observed critically.
“In a peculiar sort of way it is, my Chief,” Khalor told him. “We aren’t supposed to take this mock assault very seriously—at least that’s the way it started out. I don’t think Ghend’s laughing right now, though. I’d imagine that Gher’s foggy smoke took a great deal of the fun out of his morning.”
The Ansus clambered into their saddles and came galloping down the slope toward Sergeant Gebhel’s outer fortifications, mixing laughter with their war cries.
“Is Gebhel just going to ignore this mock attack?” Chief Albron asked.
“I doubt it,” Khalor replied. “The Ansus seem to think this is funny, but Gebhel doesn’t have too much in the way of a sense of humor. I’m sure he’s got a greeting for them.”
As the Ansus reached the foot of the slope, Gebhel’s catapults lofted baskets full of ten-pound rocks high into the air over the laughing attackers.
“I’ll bet that hurts like crazy,” Gher observed as the rocks began to rain down on the Ansus.
“I’m sure it does,” Althalus agreed.
“They’re getting ready,” Leitha announced as the sun began to peep over the eastern horizon. “They’ll be coming out of that cave in just a few minutes.”
“That’s stupid!” Khalor exclaimed. “They know they’ve lost any chance of surprising us. What’s Ghend thinking of?”
“Ghend isn’t in the cave, Sergeant,” Leitha advised him. “Gelta’s the one who’s giving the orders.”
“That would begin to explain it, Sergeant,” Althalus noted. “Gelta’s almost as thick-headed as Pekhal. Does she have any sort of plan at all, Leitha?”
“Nothing very coherent. She’s going to lead her forces to the top of that hill over on the other side. Then she’ll wait until they’re all lined up out in plain sight. She’ll order her trumpeters to give us a little concert at that point, and then they’ll charge down the hill.”
“Typical cavalry behavior,” Khalor said, shaking his head. “They always seem to want to make grand entrances on a battlefield. They seem to think it intimidates their enemies.”
“Does it?” Althalus asked him.
“Not really, no,” Khalor replied, shrugging. “Gher, go tell Salkan to run down to the trench and alert Gebhel. Pass the word that the Ansus are getting ready to charge.”
“Right away, Mister Khalor,” Gher replied.
“There they come,” Althalus said, pointing across the shallow valley.
The Ansu horsemen were cresting the ridgeline on the far side. They paused there, brandishing swords or lances and howling shrill battle cries.
“Typical,” Khalor said drily.
“What is, Sergeant?” Albron asked.
“All that posing over there. I’m not sure what it is about sitting on a horse that makes people want to show off. A good soldier keeps his head down until the fighting starts. Those juveniles over there simply can’t bear the idea of not being noticed. A cavalryman inevitably spends more time and effort saying, ‘See me! See me!’ than he does fighting.”
“It makes them easi
er targets for the archers, though,” Althalus added.
“It does that, right enough,” Khalor agreed. “That might explain why only a few cavalrymen live to see their twentieth birthdays.” Then he laughed. “Oh, well,” he said, “if my enemy wants to be stupid, more power to him.”
The trumpets sounded across the valley, and the Ansu horsemen began their charge. They thundered down the slope howling war cries and waving their weapons. Gelta sat astride her black horse on the ridgeline, shouting encouragement and brandishing her ax.
The charge down the far slope was quite impressive as the newly risen sun flashed and glinted from the Ansus’ saber blades. Things began to go wrong for the attackers when they reached the bottom of the hill, however. Horses began to tumble and roll across the ground—and not infrequently over the top of their riders.
“What’s happening down there?” Albron asked. “I thought the shepherds weren’t going to start throwing rocks until the horses got closer.”
“Trip lines,” Khalor explained. “After that false attack at first light, Gebhel sent some men down there to drive stakes into the ground and stretch ropes between them. The high grass hides those ropes, so the horses can’t see them. If those Ansus had any brains, they’d have burned that grass before they mounted their charge. Now they’ll have to start being a little more careful. That’ll slow them down and make them easier targets for the shepherds.”
The Ansu charge had slowed to a walk now, and the war cries were noticeably weaker as Salkan, his red hair aglow in the sunrise, came running back up the hill. “General Gebhel’s going to let my boys take the first crack at the Ansus, General Khalor,” he said proudly. “I passed the word to them to aim at the horses instead of the people. Some of them weren’t very happy about that. They don’t seem to be thinking like shepherds anymore.”
“Wars tend to do that to people,” Kahlor replied.
“They didn’t all come out of that cave,” Leitha told them. “About a third of them are still in there.”
“Reserves,” Khalor explained. “Fresh troops—and horses—for later on in the battle. Are you picking up any foot soldiers anywhere nearby?”
Leitha raised her face slightly, and her eyes grew distant. “Nothing yet,” she replied after a few moments. “Is something wrong, Sergeant?”
“They aren’t doing this right,” Khalor fretted. “Pekhal’s not the brightest fellow in the world, but he should know that trying to take a fortified position with nothing but cavalry is a serious blunder. Keep an ear out for foot troops, Leitha. Things are going my way now, and I don’t want any surprises.”
The Ansu charge began to pick up momentum again once the trip lines had been cleared away, and the mounted men veered almost without thinking into Chief Albron’s more lightly obstacled avenues.
There was no response from the trenches until the onslaught reached the unobtrusive markers Chief Albron had placed along the side of the slope. Then Salkan’s shepherds scrambled up out of the trenches with their slings whirling. At a sharp command from Gebhel, the shepherds sent a hail of stones into the very teeth of the charge.
The chaos along the front of the charge was immediate, and it spread on down the slope as thrashing horses by the score rolled back down the hillside into the ranks of the following cavalry. The squeals of injured horses and the startled shouts of the cavalrymen replaced the war cries, and the attack faltered.
Then the assault collapsed, and the Ansus turned and fled.
———
Gelta, Queen of the Night, was in full voice, and she was clearly audible. She commented at some length on cowardice. She dwelt on ineptitude. She raised questions about the parentage and probable descendants of her Ansus. Her choice of words was very colorful.
“I don’t even know what some of those words mean,” Chief Albron confessed.
“You’re a gentleman, my Chief,” Khalor reminded him. “You’re not supposed to know what they mean.”
“Will they try again?”
“Oh, yes,” Khalor replied. “That’s the whole point of her oration. I’d guess that there’ll be two more attacks before the sun goes down.”
“Aren’t they going to try to clear away those barricades before they mount another charge?”
“That’s what the charges are supposed to do, my Chief,” Khalor told him bluntly. “It costs Gelta the life of a man—or a horse—to break off every stake or drag away one of your bushes, but I don’t think that bothers her very much.”
“Why don’t they use catapults—or grappling hooks—to clear the obstructions?”
Khalor shrugged. “It probably hasn’t occurred to them yet. You rarely see a cavalry army towing catapults behind them. They seem to feel that it’s a sign of weakness.”
“He’s right, Chief Albron,” Leitha said sadly. “The lives of Gelta’s men mean absolutely nothing to her. She even enjoys watching them die.”
“That’s insane!”
“It’s even worse than that,” Leitha told him. “I’m trying my very best to stay away from some of Gelta’s thoughts. The sight of blood—anybody’s blood—arouses her in ways I’d rather not talk about.”
Driven by the shrieks and curses of the Queen of Night, the Ansus mounted charge after charge up the stake-studded hillside at a dreadful cost. The bodies of men and horses littered the lower half of the slope. Althalus noted grimly, however, that the senseless-seeming charges were inexorably gnawing away at the defenses. “If she keeps this up, she’ll be in the trenches by nightfall, Khalor,” he predicted.
“Not hardly,” Khalor disagreed. “We didn’t hire Gebhel to just stand and watch, you know.”
By late afternoon, the frenzied charges of the Ansus had eaten away all but the last few rows of the stakes and their intertwined thorn bushes, and then Gelta’s trumpets summoned her forces back to the far hillside.
“Have they given up, General Khalor?” Salkan demanded.
“No, lad,” Khalor replied. “They’re giving their horses some time to catch their breath, that’s all. The barricades are mostly gone now, and it’s almost sunset. Gelta’s going to mount one more charge, I expect. She’s probably convinced that her forces will break through this time.”
“We have to do something, General!”
“Gebhel’s already done it, Salkan. He’s got a fairly nasty surprise waiting for the Ansus when they charge up that hill.”
“What kind of surprise?” Chief Albron demanded.
“Watch, my Chief,” Khalor told him. “Watch and learn.”
The sun was nearing the western horizon when Gelta’s trumpets sounded and the Ansus charged. Most of the obstacles had been broken down, and the Ansus galloped up the unobstructed slope, howling victoriously.
Then dozens of stake-studded logs rolled down the hill to greet them.
“That’s the main reason for digging your trenches along the ridgelines, Chief Albron,” Sergeant Khalor pointed out. “Things don’t roll uphill very often. Most of the time, they roll down. A twenty-foot log weighs a ton or more. If you bore holes in the log, pound in stakes, and then sharpen the stakes, it’s almost certain to make life very unpleasant for anybody in its path once it starts rolling.”
“I thought those spiked logs were just a part of the defenses of the earthworks,” Albron said.
“It appears that the Ansus thought so, too, my Chief. I’d guess that this is the first time they’ve ever come up against trained infantry. We have all sorts of surprises for them.”
The stake-studded logs rolled and bounded down the hill, crushing and maiming horses and men as they went. The Ansu charge faltered, and then the now-terrified horsemen turned their mounts and fled.
On the far hill, the Queen of Night began to scream curses again.
“I don’t think she likes you very much, Mister Khalor,” Gher said.
“Isn’t that a shame?” Khalor replied with an evil smirk.
“Are you catching any hints at all of Pekhal?” Sergeant K
halor asked Leitha.
“Nothing at all since early this morning, Sergeant,” she replied. “I’m catching a few hints that he’s gone off.”
“I was afraid of that,” Khalor said sourly.
“Is something wrong, Khalor?” Chief Albron asked.
“It’s my guess that he’s gone to fetch some infantry. You saw what happened today. Cavalry’s worse than useless in trench warfare. If Pekhal’s bringing in an army of infantry, tomorrow’s likely to be very unpleasant.”
Eliar’s starting to wake up, Althalus, Dweia’s voice murmured. Let’s go see how he’s coming along. Bring Leitha. I might need her.
All right, Em, Althalus replied. He motioned to Leitha, and the two of them went inside the glowing tent.
“He’s stirring a little bit,” Andine reported hopefully. “That means that he’s going to be all right, doesn’t it?”
“We’ll see,” Dweia replied. “Cut the dosage back to once every four hundred heartbeats now. Some of those herbs are a little dangerous, so we don’t want to give him any more of them than we absolutely have to.”
“You didn’t tell us those herbs were poisonous,” Andine accused.
“Almost every medicine is poisonous, Andine—if you take too much of it, anyway. We’ve been dosing him steadily since last night, so I’m sure we’re getting very close to the limit. We won’t accomplish very much if we heal his brain and stop his heart, now will we?”
“He seems to be right on the verge of waking up, Dweia,” Leitha reported. “He can hear us talking, but he doesn’t fully grasp what we’re saying.”
How long do you think it’ll be until he’s up and about, Em? Althalus asked silently.
Several days at least—probably as long as a week.
Emmy! he protested. We’ve got to have access to the doors! If Pekhal’s gathering infantry to assault the trenches, we don’t have a week!
The Redemption of Althalus Page 42