Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (10 page)

The city states of the Princedons are almost all coastal. Those on the southern coast are in frequent contact with the rest of the two continents via the trading and military, mostly Frangerian, ships that ply the oceans and make port in them. For their livelihood those on the northern shore rely more heavily on fishing in the Princedon Gulf and have slightly less contact with the larger world.

Inland, matters are somewhat more problematic. The Princedon Mountains are a formidable range that forms the spine of the peninsula and, if we may indulge in understatement, restricts easy north-south movement. The multiplicity of towns and villages that fills the land between the coasts and the mountains claims allegiance, generally, to one or another of the city states, but such allegiance is normally quite fluid, and one town’s patron city this year might next year be its archenemy. The fluidity of city-town and town-city loyalty is abetted by the historic failure of the city states to establish military garrisons in the hinterlands of their holdings.

That fluidity combined with the lack of military garrisons has, over the centuries, allowed the founding and growth of a number of fully independent settlements, some grand enough to be called towns. Although most such settlements rely on agriculture (farming, husbandry, or both) for their sustenance and even prosperity, some turn, by design or happenstance, to brigandry. Those brigand settlements send out heavily armed bands of men to prey upon travelers in the interior of the peninsula and even to attack and pillage other, more law-abiding towns and villages.

Due to the fact of the brigandish depredations on the highways and byways, those who must travel from place to place in the Princedons’ interior most frequently do so in large, heavily armed troops. Hence, each settlement, be it village or town, has within its confines an inn far larger than one might reasonably expect in a village or town of its size.

Owing to the lack of garrisoning by the coastal city states, even the most peaceful and law-abiding settlements of the interior find it necessary to maintain armed forces of a size inconsistent with their own sizes; that is to say, small armies independent of the city states. The richness of the land allows the profligate expense of maintaining these small armies. The land is fertile for the growth and harvest of bountiful crops and for the husbandry of domestic food animals. Similarly, the forests that grow large between the settlements abound in flowering, leafy, and tuberous foodstuffs. Additionally, game animals are frequently plentiful in various locations. In addition to which, those settlements closest to the mountains ofttimes have access to the mineral wealth provided by mining.

Fortunately (or otherwise, as the case may be and ofttimes is) almost all of the “soldiers” of these independent settlements are part-time soldiers who normally make their livelihoods as farmers, husbandmen, tradesmen, craftsmen, or otherwise. Naturally, that means most are not the match of the well-trained and effective soldiers maintained by the city states of the Princedons or, indeed, any other proper state in the known world. The great majority of the defensive forces, however, do possess a cadre of experienced soldiers who have training and experience in the army of one or another of the Princedon city states or, with surprising frequency, a proper nation state from elsewhere in the known world. These cadres most generally consist of one or two officers and anywhere from one sergeant to three or four sergeants, though a few have no more than one properly trained and experienced sergeant as their cadre.

[Note, please, that the author wishes to imply no offense to sergeants in that last statement. Any more than the most cursory study of military matters and the history of warfare is sufficient to convince all but the most aristocratic that the fighting ability of any armed force relies more on its sergeants than on its officers. Whilst officers make strategy, draw plans, and provide for the arming, uniforming, supplying, and provisioning of armies, it is the sergeants who do the training and enforce discipline, without both of which no army can win any battle. (Note: The Jokapcul appear to be the sole exception to this rule. In the Jokapcul army, sergeants appear to be simply relayers of officers’ orders.)]

There is, however, an ameliorating factor in the disunity of the Princedons. To wit, language. The city state of Penston, on the seaside of the root of the peninsula, some hundred miles east of Zobra City, speaks a dialect of Zobran. As one travels eastward from there, the language deviates more and more from its Zobran root until by the time one reaches Harfort, at the easternmost tip of the peninsula, the local tongue is hardly recognizable as being related to Zobran. The matter worsens along the gulf coast. As the natal Zobran influence of the local tongues lessens, the tongues are increasingly affected by the guttural language of the little-known denizens of the Low Desert to the north of the gulf, until at Dartsmutt, at the gulf-side root of the peninsula, the local tongue is almost a dialect of the little-known language of the Low Desert. (Some scholars, however, argue that the tongue spoken by the Low Desert nomads is, in fact, a dialect of the tongue spoken in Dartsmutt.) Inland, close to the spinal mountains, the local tongues follow a similar pattern, though they are frequently little related to their geographically nearest coastal neighbors. The local tongues drift as they move from coast to spine, so that in the middle they are mixes of the tongues spoken at the extremes. Thusly, communication between city states is difficult at best, and often problematic.

In these days, any paper on Nunimar requires a note on the practice of magic. The magics practiced in the interior of the Princedons are most commonly those practiced by healing witches and other healing practitioners. Magicians who control demon weapons, such as are said to be used by the nation states of southern Nunimar west of the Princedons, and to greater effect by the ravening Jokapcul from the Far West, are largely unknown in the Princedons, or if not unknown, in the main are unused; similarly, guardian demons are in minimal use, if used at all. Healing demons such as aralez and land trows are the only demons known to be in use.

In conclusion, the Princedons are an agglomeration of loosely affiliated but potentially wealthy city states that need merely to become affiliated less loosely and to clear out their native brigands in order to join the first rank of the known world’s nation states.

Scholar Mu’sk,

It aggrieves me to see yet another paper from you written in a style so totally inappropriate for publication in a learned journal such as
The Proceedings
. As I have on innumerable occasions in the past when you have submitted such inappropriately worded papers, I struggled with the jury to get this paper past the peer review process to acceptance. You are, when all is taken into proper consideration, a preeminent scholar in Far Western Studies, and held in general high esteem. In selecting this paper for publication, however, I had to go considerably beyond what is considered proper editorial influence. So far beyond, that my position as editor of this scholarly journal has been threatened.

I am required, albeit reluctantly and with less than full enthusiasm, to inform you that should you submit another paper written in anything other than a proper scholarly style, I shall be compelled to return it to you forthwith without submitting it to peer review.

Munch, kindly forgive the tone of the preceding paragraphs. Our friendship and mutual respect have entirely too long a history for me to speak, or write I should say, to you with such disrespect. But I am under a great deal of pressure to raise the tone of
The Proceedings
to the highest levels of scholarship. To that end, I
cannot
accept another paper from you written in the popular style you have recently adopted in many of your papers; to do so could well cost me my position as editor.

In friendship,

Klules

They progressed only a few miles from the bivouac before the character of the land and the life it nourished began to change. From an imperceptible downward slope, the ground began to ripple easily upward toward the spine of the peninsula, and a rocky substrate broke the surface in places. The canopy trees thinned out to competition from shorter trees whose major branches sprouted lower on their trunks, whose boles split and split again until the leaves formed a bloomlike ball. Direct sunlight reached the ground, allowing an undergrowth of bushes, weeds, and flowers. Animate life changed along with the landscape. Butterflies displaced many of the salt-lickers and bloodsuckers under the canopy. There were more bees than before. Tracks of wild goat mixed in with those of deer. Rabbits scampered from the approaching men, foxes peered at them from behind screens of grass. Ground birds hunkered under brambles. Somewhere an elk bugled and was answered.

Following the changing lay of the land, the road wound about more than before, went around rather than over the higher or steeper groundswells. In places the roadway had been cut into a rise rather than climb over its top. On the approach to one such cut, Haft began hearing the muted clops of walking horses, the tree dulled jangle of tackle. The sounds echoed in the trees, making it difficult to tell their direction. He whistled to get Birdwhistle’s attention, then angled toward the road. When he reached it he listened. The sounds came from the front, ahead of them. He signaled Birdwhistle, then darted across the road where he found Archer coming his way. Unlike Spinner, Haft had no questions or qualms about his right to command.

“Horsemen,” Archer said. “They came across our front and turned onto the road.”

“How many? Who are they? Jokapcul?”

Archer shook his head. “We weren’t close enough to see. It sounded like a squad. They didn’t talk, so we heard no language.”

Haft thought for a moment. They needed to know the identity of those people; they also needed to remain unseen until they found out. “Could you tell how fast are they going?”

“A slow walk.”

“All right. Maintain contact, but keep your distance. Don’t let them see you. Send Hunter back to tell Fletcher to close up with us.”

Archer nodded. “Right.” He turned into the forest to find Hunter.

Haft dashed back across the road and looked for Birdwhistle. He saw him not far away and headed for him, then spun toward a shadow that darted through the trees ahead of him. He whistled to alert Birdwhistle, and lowered himself to a knee with his crossbow at his shoulder, sighting along it toward where he saw the fleeting shadow.

A shape leaped out of the shadows and bounded toward him, it twisted in time to evade the quarrel he fired at it and was on him, grinning jaws clamped on his right sleeve, before he could draw his axe. It was Wolf.

Haft jerked his sleeve from the animal’s mouth and glared at him as he rearmed his crossbow. “One of these days, Wolf,” he snarled, “you’re going to do that but I’ll be faster. That’ll end your games.”

He half expected Wolf to snort and vigorously shake his head as he usually did when Haft made such remarks, but the wolf didn’t. Instead, he looked at Haft expectantly.

Haft looked toward Birdwhistle. The scout was watching them intently and angling closer. He signaled him and Birdwhistle came straight over.

“A squad crossed Archer and Hunter’s front,” he said when the Zobran reached him. “They weren’t close enough to see who they were. I sent Hunter back to bring Fletcher and his men up. Now I want to find out who those people are.” He looked in the direction from which Wolf had come and saw the ground rise in a nubbin of hill. “They’re beyond that rise somewhere.”

When he said that, Wolf grabbed his left sleeve and pulled hard enough that Haft had a choice of going with him or being pulled off his feet.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” he growled.

“Ulgh,”
Wolf growled deep in his throat, and jerked Haft’s sleeve again.

“I think he wants to show you something,” Birdwhistle said softly.

“Nonsense!” Haft snapped. “Let go,” he ordered Wolf. The wolf let go, but kept looking at him expectantly.

“I had a dog acted like that once. Let’s see what he wants. Maybe he saw them and wants to show us.”

“Ulgh,”
Wolf said, and bobbed his head up and down.

Grumbling quietly, Haft let Wolf lead him. Wolf kept his head and shoulders low. Without conscious thought, Haft followed his example. They ran at an angle away from the road, around the rising ground. The sound of the horses dimmed almost to inaudibility.

A streambed with a mere trickle of water in its bottom cut through the forest floor and meandered toward the farther end of the high ground. It was deep enough for them to stand slightly crouched and not be seen. Wolf led them into it and followed the watercourse for a short distance, closer to the rise, before he stopped and looked at Haft. They could again hear the clopping and jangling of the horses. The wolf bellied down and began to climb the bank. Haft started to stretch fully erect to look over the top of the bank, but Wolf grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back down.

Haft looked at him oddly for a couple of seconds, then said softly, “All right, I’ll do it your way.”

Wolf immediately let go.

Crouched below the lip of the streambed, Haft leaned onto it and slithered up its side until he could peer over the top. He dropped right back down.

“Bandits,” he whispered to Birdwhistle. The armed men he saw lying in watch over the road in his quick look probably weren’t soldiers; they weren’t dressed uniformly, nor did they carry the same arms. More carefully than before, he looked over the bank again. A dozen or more men lay on the slope of the rise where they couldn’t be seen from the road. They weren’t lying relaxed; they were alert and armed with a variety of short bows and swords, positioned to jump to their feet and rain arrows down onto the road from their higher vantage. The horses on the road were closer now, nearing the ambush’s killing zone. He twisted to his right at another sound and brought his crossbow to bear. He let go of the trigger just in time to avoid shooting the Skragland Borderer named Kovasch. Meszaros was right behind him.