By Heresies Distressed (56 page)

“Risky, if you'll permit me to say so, Your Majesty,” Clareyk observed.

“Agreed. But if you can pull it off, the return could be decisive.”

“I can see that. At the same time, Your Majesty, I trust you'll forgive me for saying that if I'm about to try something risky, I'd really prefer for you to be somewhere else while I do it.”

“Everyone seems to keep saying that to me,” Cayleb replied with a tight grin. “And, usually, I can talk myself into going along with them. But this time, I think not, Brigadier. I'm asking you and your men to run a greater risk than we'd discussed earlier. I'm not going to do that while I sit somewhere in the rear.”

“Your Majesty, my entire brigade is worth far less to Charis than you are,” Clareyk said bluntly. “With all due respect, I must respectfully decline to unnecessarily endanger your person in a situation like the one we're discussing.”

“Brigadier—” Cayleb began sharply, then made himself bite off his sentence. His jaw clamped for a moment, and then he inhaled sharply.

“You really intend to be stubborn about this, don't you?”

“Your Majesty, I'm sorry, but I do.” Clareyk faced his monarch squarely. “It's your prerogative to relieve me of my command, if you so choose. But the Empire literally cannot spare you at this time. You know that as well as I do. If you want me to bait a trap for Earl Windshare, I'll do that. But I won't risk your life on the possibility that Windshare might get lucky.”

Cayleb half-glared at Clareyk, but the brigadier didn't flinch. Then his eyes flickered sideways to Merlin for a third time.

“Very well, Brigadier,” the emperor said after a long, simmering moment. “You win. And you're wrong about my prerogative to relieve you.” He showed his teeth. “I'd get away with it about as long as it took for the Empress to find out what you'd done to piss me off.”

“I'll admit that that thought
did
occur to me, Your Majesty.”

“I'm sure it did. However, if I allow you to chase me back to the rear, I'd at least like to leave . . . call it a personal representative behind. Someone who can report to me in person as soon as whatever happens happens.”

“May I assume you have someone in mind for that duty, Your Majesty?”

“I thought I'd leave Captain Athrawes.” Cayleb held Clareyk's eyes levelly with his own. “I've always found Merlin's reports extremely accurate, and I trust his judgment.”

“As do I, Your Majesty.” Clareyk smiled ever so slightly. “If you feel you can spare the
seijin
's services, I'd be honored to have him remain with the Brigade.”

Sir Alyk Ahrthyr stood slapping his riding gloves impatiently against his thigh as the courier galloped up to him. He was out of direct contact with the semaphore masts Gahrvai had ordered constructed all across his rear areas. He could communicate only by old-fashioned dispatch riders, and that left him feeling even more edgy and irritated than he'd been when he received Gahrvai's original, stunning message. Not that he needed much in the way of additional irritation.

“
Well?
” he growled as the courier drew up beside him.

“I'm sorry, My Lord,” the dust-covered young lieutenant replied. “The Baron hasn't marched yet.”

“Then what in the name of Shan-wei is the idiot
waiting
for?!” Windshare snarled. Diplomacy had never been his strong suit, and unlike Gahrvai, he saw no reason to waste what little diplomacy he had on someone like Barcor.

I may not be the smartest man in the world
, he thought savagely,
but there's at least
one
who's a lot stupider than I am, by God!

“My Lord, I—” the courier began, but Windshare waved him into silence.

“Of course you don't have an answer, Lieutenant. That was what General Gahrvai would have called a ‘rhetorical question.' ” The cavalry commander surprised himself with a sharp bark of laughter. “Not exactly what people expect out of me, I admit.”

The lieutenant, rather wisely, simply nodded this time. Still, it was amazing how much better the exchange made Windshare feel . . . for the moment, at least.

He turned and stumped back over to the hilltop nearoak under whose broad-branched shade he had established his temporary command post. Dry seed cones crunched under his boots, and he found himself wishing the crunching sounds could have been coming from Baron Barcor. His staff looked up at him, and he grimaced disgustedly.

“The fat-arsed idiot hasn't even started marching yet,” he growled. Very few of his staff saw any more reason than he did to conceal their opinions of Barcor, and one or two of them actually spat on the ground.

“My Lord, if he doesn't start moving soon, then this army is well and truly fucked,” Sir Naithyn Galvahn said harshly.

Major Galvahn was Windshare's senior aide, effectively his chief of staff, although the Corisandian Army didn't use that particular term. Like virtually all of Windshare's other officers, Galvahn was exceedingly wellborn. That was inevitable, given the fact that the cavalry tended to attract the nobly born like a particularly powerful lodestone. There was nothing wrong with Galvahn's brain, however, and Windshare knew he tended to lean on the major.

“I know, Naithyn. I know,” he said, and looked out from the small hill, glaring at the dust clouds rising above the local turnpike which connected with the royal highway less than three miles from where he stood at this very moment.

Galvahn was right about what was going to happen if the Charisians managed to seal the western end of Talbor Pass while Gahrvai's army was still trapped inside. Unfortunately, everyone seemed to understand that except the one man responsible for getting the army's rear guard the hell out into the open to prevent it from happening!

Windshare didn't want to admit just how desperate he was beginning to feel. Cayleb's move to flank Talbor by landing a force west of it had scarcely been unexpected, but his ability to somehow eliminate the observation posts specifically placed to detect any such landing definitely was. He'd used the advantage of surprise he'd gained ruthlessly, and at this point, Windshare hadn't even been able to form a clear, hard notion of how many men were ashore. It wasn't for lack of trying, but against an army whose every soldier was equipped with a rifle, his cavalry patrols hadn't been able to get as close to the Charisian columns as he would have liked.

It wasn't his troopers' fault. His men had no shortage of courage or horsemanship, but the ability of cavalry armed with lances, sabers, and horse bows or arbalests to stand up to massed rifle fire was . . . limited, at best. The only real advantages the horsemen retained were mobility and speed, and neither of those was great enough to offset their newfound
disadvantages
. The worst of it was that cavalry required open terrain if it was going to operate efficiently, but open terrain only allowed riflemen to begin killing them sooner, at longer ranges. And most of the terrain between Cayleb's landing point and Green Valley consisted of rolling, open grasslands, rising steadily towards the east as they merged with the Dark Hills' western foothills.

In light of his scouts' inability to maintain close contact with the enemy, his notion of the Charisians' strength was problematical, at best. The most anyone could say on the basis of the reports he'd received so far was that Cayleb had landed somewhere between ten thousand and eighteen thousand men. Windshare personally inclined towards the lower figure, but he was frustratingly aware that he had nothing concrete upon which to base his feeling. And even if Cayleb had “only” ten thousand men with him, Windshare had less than four thousand of his cavalry actually present. Another eight thousand of them were scattered along the line of the Dark Hills, watching the passes farther north from Talbor, but there was no way to recall any of those detachments in time to do any good. So here he sat, with not quite four thousand men and orders to harass a numerically superior force equipped with much longer-ranged weapons in order to delay its advance until Baron Barcor got his thumb out of his arse.

Which, at this rate, isn't going to happen before Langhorne returns to gather up the world
, he thought disgustedly.

“All right, Naithyn,” he said finally, turning back from the oncoming dust clouds. “We're going to have to do something, and you're right, we're going to have to do it quickly. I want everyone we've got moved to those cotton silk plantations west of Green Valley. Their columns are going to have to tighten up where the highway passes through that belt of woodland. I know it's not very deep, but it should at least cramp them, and the ground on this side of the woods is the best place we're going to find for cavalry.”

“Sir, those woods aren't that thick or overgrown. Certainly not anything like the approaches to Haryl's Crossing. Loose-order infantry can probably get through them without a lot of difficulty, and if they send riflemen forward into the trees, they'll be able to use them for cover and—”

“Don't worry, I'm not planning on deploying a nice juicy target for them inside rifle range. I'm not going to object if they do waste time sending their marksmen into those woods, mind you. What I'm thinking, though, is that there's that nice rising slope this side of the woods. If we take position just over its crest and they know we're there, they won't be able to shoot at us, but they'll have to respect the possibility of a charge. If nothing else, it should encourage them to halt in place until they can bring up additional infantry. And given the fact that they don't seem to have any cavalry of their own on this side of the mountains, they may not realize we're there in strength at all. If they advance up that slope, away from the protection of the woods, and get close enough to us . . .”

He let his voice trail off, and Galvahn started nodding. Slowly, at first, and then with increasing enthusiasm. Much as the major respected Windshare as a fighter, he wouldn't have trusted the earl as a strategist. He was the ideal regimental or divisional commander, in many ways, but he probably would have been a disaster as an
army
commander. One of his virtues, however, was an excellent eye for terrain, and he was right. The plantations' fields, covered in roughly knee-high cotton silk plants, offered a stretch of fairly level ground almost four miles wide. It was a fan-shaped stretch, widest at its western end and narrowing as it climbed towards the east. And, as Windshare had just pointed out, the land along its eastern edge broke down into a shallow trough before it started climbing again. The resultant depression was big enough—probably—to allow Windshare to conceal the bulk of his cavalry from the approaching Charisians until they were right on top of him. Nothing could magically erase the advantage the Charisians' rifles bestowed upon them, but Windshare's chosen spot was the closest thing to ideal ground they were likely to find.

Aside, of course, from the fact that it was barely a mile and a half west of Green Valley. If they couldn't convince the Charisians to halt there, it was virtually certain Cayleb's Marines would take Green Valley without a fight. And if
they
held Green Valley, the chances of any infantry force breaking out of Talbor Pass would be slim.

“Yes, My Lord,” he said now. “I'll see to it at once.”

“Excuse me, Brigadier.”

Brigadier Kynt Clareyk looked up from his conversation with Colonel Arttu Raizyngyr, the commanding officer of the 2/3rd Marines.

“Yes, Captain Athrawes?”

“I wonder if I might have a word?” Merlin asked diffidently.

Clareyk looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.

“I need to catch up with Colonel Zhanstyn's battalion, anyway,
Seijin
Merlin,” he said. “Why don't you ride along with me?”

“Thank you, Sir,” Merlin replied, and waited until Clareyk had mounted his horse once again.