Forcing the Spring (Book 9 of the Colplatschki Chronicles)

by Boykin, Alma

  “Godown forefend.” Both men made little warding off motions. If the Harriers reached Muskava, well, Pjtor knew who he’d shoot first. It would not be one of the heathen. He eyed the Chosen Guards lining the walls and wondered how he could disband them. He had his own troops, with weapons and training, but he needed a true battle leader. Pjtor had read about waging war, but like sailing, he had to do in order to truly learn.

  But he knew enough to understand just how horrible Grigory’s latest so-called victory had been. The army, such as it was since muster came slowly because of Harrier raids in the west, had marched south and found nothing but blackened grass and muddy streams. The Harriers had burned everything the men of NovRodi might need, and Pjtor imagined Grigory cursing as his men straggled through a black, grass-les wasteland under the broad southern sky, the sun blazing down on them, horses and mules moving ever more slowly as hunger fed upon the beasts. When they did reach grass and the southern border outposts, they found two of the outposts under siege and a third burned to ash as the Harrier riders faded in and out of reach, killing, burning, and taunting only to vanish into the endless grasslands.

  Worse, scouts from NovRodi reached the shore of the Sweetwater Sea only to find Harriers and men from the southern kingdoms, the Spice Kingdoms, studying the land as if planning to build settlements and make a claim to the land. They’d even dared to claim a right to move into a Lander ghost city, something that horrified Isaac and Sara and intrigued Pjtor. But it seemed to block any hope of using the lake to stop the Harriers, had Grigory even thought of finding a way to make boats able to do that. The few collisions between the army and the Harriers ended poorly for the men of NovRodi.

  At the same time, to add injury to incompetence, messengers from the western lords had begun arriving in Muskava requesting aid to fight off increased Harrier raids and attacks. Pjtor wanted to take his regiment and go fight, but he did not know enough. And he, well, he worried about Isaac. Isaac had grown weaker over the past months, losing weight. He could no longer stand or walk for more than a few dozen meters, and that only with assistance. Pjtor imagined Sara watching like a leather-winged carrion-eater, biding her time until Isaac died and she could find a way to replace Pjtor and his son. If he died fighting the Harriers, or even suffered a major defeat, she’d steal the empire.

  All this flashed through Pjtor’s mind as Sara whispered instructions about what honors Grigory should receive and the rich reward the emperors would give him. Isaac struggled to resist, then stopped fighting and began making the pronouncement. Pjtor held silent, hands clenched under folds of his ornate outer robes, tongue firmly between his teeth so he did not make a sound. His birth feast would come in two months, after harvest. He would be of age, should anything happen to Isaac. He needed to act.

  A week later Pjtor escaped to the foreign district to speak with Captain Thomas Anderson. They’d met once before that Pjtor remembered, at a party one of Geert’s fellow traders held in honor of his daughter’s wedding. As he rode through the gate of the foreigners’ district, Pjtor sensed a tension in the air, people moving more quickly than usual for such a warm, quiet early fall day. Several glanced at him and carefully looked away, busying themselves with tasks or ducking inside the shops and courtyard gates. Here the houses had been covered with plaster to protect the heavy beams and to reduce the chance of fire. A few sported stone roofs, more had tile. Brightly colored shutters stood open at the windows and many buildings had been painted with figures or floral patterns around the windows or doors. The builders had tinted the plaster pink, light yellow, pale orange, or pale blue, unlike the plain white the people of NovRodi preferred. No one tossed their night-soil into the streets here, either, although the same yard fowl darted back and forth along the road, getting underfoot as yard fowl always did.

  Pjtor stopped his horse and dismounted at a small house with a figure of a man carrying water buckets painted on the wall. Geert had said that was St. Donn, patron of watermen, very popular in New Dalfa. Pjtor had never heard of such a saint, but then Geert had never read the life story of St. Boris of the Woods, so they were even. A boy in plain servant’s clothes appeared and took Pjtor’s horse, while a second boy opened the shoulder-high gate and bowed Pjtor into the yard. A very large, hairy dog studied the newcomer and gave a deep, quiet, “Whuf.”

  The door opened and a wiry man with close cut black and grey hair stepped out, then bowed. His black skin and dark eyes gave away his ancestry, and Pjtor wondered what New Benin had been like to turn all the people and their descendants black. Did the heat do that? Had it been dark all the time so people turned dark colored like dardogs were? A question for another day, Pjtor reminded himself as Anderson said, “Imperial Majesty. How may I serve?”

  You can tell me how to defeat the Chosen Guard and Harriers both. Aloud he said, “Thank you, Captain Anderson. You may rise. I have a question about matters in which it is said you have expertise.”

  The older man straightened up. “Ah. I see. Be welcome in my home, Imperial Majesty.” Anderson stepped to the side and gestured for Pjtor to enter. Pjtor ducked, as always, and found himself in a dark, snug house with very few windows. “The snow piles up on two sides, Imperial Majesty, so most of the windows are upstairs. I find solid walls more comfortable.”

  Before Pjtor could comment, the man chuckled and added, “And this was built as a storage building before it became a house, Imperial Majesty. You can see the bars overhead for hanging furs.” Indeed, when he peered into the shadowy space, Pjtor spied the pale, slender rods running across the width of the room. “But you are not here to hear the life story of the building, Imperial Majesty.”

  “No. I will be blunt. I need to learn how to order soldiers.”

  “To order, Imperial Majesty, or to command? For there is a difference.”

  Pjtor made himself think before speaking. “Command. My regiment obeys me, and drills well, and the men can shoot, but only a few have ever seen battle, and those only at the very edges, before they came to my service.”

  “Ah.” The dark eyes widened for a moment and Pjtor could see the white around the dark pupils. Anderson smiled, revealing crooked yellow teeth. “Do you drill with your regiment, Imperial Majesty?”

  “Of course. How else will I know how things work and what they do or cannot do?”

  “Sit, please, Imperial Majesty. I am a poor host, as Geert Fielder will no doubt attest when he returns.” Pjtor found a sturdy chair and moved a book out of it, dusted the cushion, and sat. As he did, Anderson poked the fire in the hearth and added a pair of smooth-barked logs. The fire flamed up. “White bark is good for light but burns too fast for good heat.” Anderson pulled a thin chain beside the fireplace, then stood before Pjtor, hands clasped behind his back. “Let us begin, if you will Imperial Majesty, by finding out what you know.”

  An hour later by candle, after a serving boy had brought two pots of tea and some crisp, thin, sweet things Anderson called “kuhkeys,” Pjtor felt as exhausted as if he’d had one of his spells. Anderson nodded and rubbed under his clean-shaven chin. “You have the theory, and you know the big picture, Imperial Majesty. Which is what I would expect of the emperor of NovRodi. You need tactics and the words to say in order to lead. That, I fear, Imperial Majesty, only comes with time and experience. Tactics I can teach, a little, but command is different.”

  “Then teach me.” Pjtor stopped, thought, and added, “Please.”

  Anderson smiled. “Good. I will do what I can. And the first lesson is to think of your men and beasts first, before anything else. Without men and beasts, you cannot fight, and sick, starving men who are sick and starving because of their commander’s incompetence will not follow his orders.”

  That makes sense. If a commander can’t organize food and clean campsites, how can he be trusted to fight? Perhaps he should ask what Grigory had done and simply do the opposite.

  The weeks passed at a crawl or at a race, depending on Pjtor’s mood. Godown be praised,
he suffered none of his spells, but once or twice he felt odd, as if a spell had tried to start and failed. Pjtor spent as much time as he could with his regiment and Captain Anderson, “playing soldiers,” as Sara sniffed. The men also talked about how to campaign and how to fight horse archers such as the Harriers. “It is not easy. The Turkowi made a fatal error when they tried to fight as we do,” Anderson said as they rode back into the walls of Muskava one early evening. Pjtor looked at the stubble of the harvested fields and the remains of the gardens, then stopped and bowed in the saddle to a small shrine to Godown the Generous. After he nudged his horse back into motion, Anderson continued, “We got ahead of them, better guns, better leaders, and Godown was on our side. Or the side of the Eastern Empire I should say. Imperial Princess Elizabeth von Sarmas has a knack for logistics, or her chief aid does, and she’s ferocious in a fight according to those who’ve campaigned with her.”

  Pjtor no longer doubted the existence of a woman soldier, but still wondered where she’d gotten her skills and knowledge. Probably her father and brothers taught her, he decided. He’d heard, well, everyone had heard of a few Lander women who’d been forced to act as men in the first years of the Harriers, and Pjtor suspected this Elizabeth was one of those, for reasons known only to Godown. “But you say only more cavalry can stop light cavalry?”

  Anderson lifted his dark, flat hat and wiped his forehead with his other hand, guiding the horse with his knees for a moment. “No, Imperial Majesty, infantry and artillery can stop them, but they have to be used properly, and the enemy has to cooperate. You are better off starving them out, removing their base of supply and overwhelming them with sheer numbers of men and settlements. If the Easterners keep defeating the Turkowi, your Harriers may lose their support, or be pulled all the way across the Half-Way Sea, what you call the Split Sea, to help. Probably not, but I’ve read of such in writings about the Lander wars, before they reached Colplatschki.”

  “Hmm.” Pjtor had a few ideas, but needed people. He had no people because the Harriers kept carrying them off on their damn raids, leaving fewer people to fight off the Harriers, and so it continued. Too bad people did not breed like lagoms or dardogs. Each dardog bitch whelped six pups per year, and after nine months the pups could breed, or so Pjtor had heard.

  An odd feeling swept over him and he slowed the horse, then stopped and held up his hand, signaling for the men with him to do likewise. He sniffed. Something was wrong. He sniffed again, peering around the road, past the trees lining it, to see if he could see anything unusual. Something burned, something rotting and damp, with a nasty undertone of roasting meat and burnt feathers.

  The captain sensed it too. He reached down and undid the ties on his saber and the saddle scabbard for his pistols. “It’s quiet. Where are the carts, the other road traffic?” He too sniffed the air. “Shit. That’s something burning, something rank.”

  Now Pjtor recognized it. “Like raw black-flax burning.” No one deliberately burned black flax, the stems were too valuable and the leaves made a burn remedy. Pjtor squinted, then pointed with his riding whip. “That way.”

  “Carefully. I’ll lead.”

  Pjtor started to argue and stopped himself. Anderson had fought. Pjtor had not, not really. Anderson drew his saber and turned his roan horse, crossing the shallow ditch beside the road and moving south across a stubble field.

  “Right face,” Pjtor ordered. The men in the road pivoted. “Form column.” They shifted into a line facing south. “Forward march, weapons at the ready.” He insisted that they carry powder and lead with them, to stay prepared and to train as the would fight. The men advanced through the field, flintlocks in hand, powder horns out where they could easily load. They found nothing in the field, but as they approached the next thicket of fan-leaf trees, Pjtor heard screaming and the scent of burning became a choking stench. He raised part of his neck-cloth over his nose and Anderson did the same. Pjtor wanted to ride straight through the trees and stop whatever was in progress. The captain raised a hand, halting the men. He pivoted his horse. “You,” he pointed. “Go see what we are facing.” One of the trumpet boys saluted and rushed ahead. “Load weapons,” Anderson called, a little louder. Pjtor was pleased as the men reached for their powder horns, measured, loaded the powder, added paper and ball, and tamped the load into place, then replaced the ramrods and returned to march order.

  Anderson shook his head. “By ranks.”

  Pjtor scrambled for the proper order. Damn, they’d trained for this, what was it? “Front rank to me, line abreast.” Twenty-five soldiers, blue and brown uniforms blending into the evening shadows, trotted forward and formed a line facing the trees. “Second rank, into position.” Twenty-five more moved into place. They would fire after the front rank did, followed by “Third rank, into position.” The remaining men would serve as reserve.

  As Pjtor turned back to Anderson, the trumpet boy returned, eyes wide, face a little green. “Harriers, m’lord! Burning a farm, they’ve got captives, some dead farmers too. Two hands of Harriers, didn’t see their horses.”

  “Damn it, by St. Sabrina’s shimmy and St. Donn’s bucket,” Anderson swore, but very quietly. “Attack on the march, fire on the march front rank. Wait until we’re close enough to make a difference, men, don’t waste powder and try not to hit your own people.”

  He turned to Pjtor. “My lord?”

  Pjtor’s mouth went dry and he felt a sudden need to piss. He swallowed, choked, and tried again. Godown be with us, he begged. “Advance. Trumpet and drums, silent until we clear the treeline.”

  “Forward, march!” Anderson ordered. He and Pjtor divided, riding on either side of the infantry line. They got through the trees and marched into flame, smoke, and chaos. The trumpets, both of them, called “advance” and the drummers set a quick march. Pjtor glanced to his right and saw the men moving steadily, flintlocks at the ready. He wanted to give the order to fire right then, but they couldn’t quite tell friend from foe yet. Although the flashes of brilliant green and yellow were a good clue. Pjtor growled. He kept his saber low, as did Anderson. Come on, come on I want to stop this where are the Chosen Guard where are the other soldiers where is Grigory I want to fight! Four Harriers appeared from around the side of a smoking hay stack. “Fire!”

  Enough of the shots hit to drop the Harriers. “Second rank, advance at the march,” Anderson called. Pjtor moved with them as the first group dropped back to reload. Pjtor watched the sides, eyes to the right, looking for movement. More Harriers appeared ahead of them, and Pjtor called, “Fire!”

  One heretic fell but the other dodged behind a bit of low wall. Arrows came from the left and Anderson called, “Fourth rank to me.”

  A voice shrieked, “Selkow! Selkow and her creation!” Pjtor hauled his horse around as a rider charged him, swinging a curving sword over his head and aimed straight for Pjtor. Without thinking Pjtor responded, kicking the horse into a run, his own saber ready. He was much larger than the other man, so was his horse, and at the instant they met, Pjtor swung down, then across. The impact wrenched him back, almost out of the saddle, and his shoulder hurt like fire, his hand numb. He managed to keep his weapon and turned the big brown horse. The Harrier’s mount turned as well, moving away, slowing, saddle empty. A headless body lay in the dirt. Pjtor had just enough time to register the green and yellow clad figure on black dirt and golden wheat stubble before he heard Anderson barking orders and a woman screaming. Pjtor looked and saw a girl running as fast as she could, a Harrier on foot close behind her. Pjtor jammed his heels into the big horse and charged, intending to saber the Harrier.

  Instead he almost died as arrows hissed past him. The woman fell with a flash of white skirt, the horse stumbled, and Pjtor struggled to keep his seat. Horse and rider recovered and he killed his target, then rode back to the protection of the infantry, who had taken position at the low wall and were firing at the Harriers. The half-dozen or so remaining raiders gathered their horses and fled.
Pjtor wanted to give chase but he didn’t have cavalry; neither did he want to join the thousands who had died from chasing retreating Harriers only to find a hundred more waiting just over the hill or down in a valley. Instead he slowed the horse, took a breath, and looked around.

  Most of the buildings had been at least scorched. Yard fowl ran back and forth, red and brown feathered agents of confusion, squawking and calling. A cow and some pfiggies lay dead, at least part slaughtered, and Pjtor could see another body, another woman, laying part-way under the cow. “Hello!” He called, feeling stupid as his voice squeaked. “In Godown’s name, come out, you’re safe.”

  “They’re over here, Imperial Master,” one of the sergeants called waving his brown hat. Pjtor rode over, carefully avoiding the bodies, and found three children and two men, all of them trussed up like fowl for roasting, and a half-dozen Harrier horses as well as two heavily-laden mules.

  “They’re thorough,” Anderson said from beside Pjtor as the soldiers freed the children. The civilians fell on their faces in front of Pjtor’s horse, spooking the gelding.

  “Easy, boy, easy,” he soothed. “Rise,” he ordered in a louder voice. “Who are you and who is missing?” They got to their knees but did not stand. The grimy children clung to each other, weeping, eyes wide.

  The smaller of the two men answered. “Oh most noble Imperial Master, blessed of Godown, your miserable slaves are the family of Boris son of Alexander, farm servants of Lord Grigory of Kalreva. Three women and two boys are missing, your imperial greatness. Please, accept our service and pardon our failing, majesty!”