Great Kings' War (33 page)

The Harphaxi mercenary cavalry made a brief feint toward the left of the Hostigi force, but the arquebusiers let fly, their volley felling two score of horses and emptying a few saddles. Kalvan hated to see the horses get killed, but they were bigger targets than their riders and didn't wear armor. Smoothbores were good for mass fire, but not accurate enough to aim at anything smaller than a horse.

Then the pikemen and halberdiers covered their comrades, everybody moving so precisely that it was hard to believe they'd only been drilling since last fall, and then not continuously.

Hestophes and his two regiments rode forward ready to break the enemy to pieces, and Kalvan led the rest of the Royal Lifeguards down to stiffen the mercenaries, but neither of them had any work to do. The enemy cavalry sheered off, picked up the surviving artillerymen and departed as fast as the stableful of glue-factory rejects they were riding could carry them.

"Don't worry, Major," Kalvan said, as the Hostigi returned to their positions. "You'll be able to charge all you want before this day's over."

Nicomoth tried to cover his disappointment, but his pale face flushed.

"Sooner than that if Your Majesty is planning to remain here," Hestophes added. "The lookouts on the tavern roof have reported sighting a new Harphaxi column approaching. They say it may number six thousand men, and the Royal Banner of Hos-Harphax is at its head."

Six thousand wasn't too many men for Hestophes to handle from his present position, unless the Harphaxi suddenly developed the ability to launch a coordinated attack, and if they did that, Prince Armanes was on call with more than two thousand completely fresh troops. However, it was definitely enough to surround the position and make it completely useless as a command post for Great King Kalvan.

After reminding Hestophes that if it looked as if the Harphaxi were about cut off his rear, to retreat as planned. "You've pinned the Harphaxi nicely here, so I'd like you to hold this position as long as you can. What will you need to meet them?"

"More fireseed—and soon. Also, some cavalry to take our prisoners from the first attacks to the rear." Hestophes did not add, "And for the Great King to take his royal arse with them so I won't have to worry about it!" but thought it very loudly.

"We'll send you the fireseed before the next attack, or in the first lull after it," Kalvan said. "As for the prisoners, my guards and I can escort them back as far as Prince Armanes' position." Kalvan managed to keep from laughing out loud at Hestophes' efforts to suppress a sigh of relief.

The scene at the south end of the Middle Gap over the Heights of Chothros reminded Phidestros of the struggles of a farmer he'd once watched, trying to get five pigs into a cart that anyone could have told him would hold three at most. The farmer had finally admitted defeat only after the cart collapsed and the ox hauling it broke loose and ran off, followed by four of the pigs.

Prince Philesteus and Duke Aesthes, it seemed to Phidestros, were much like the farmer. They had dimly grasped the notion that the way to win a battle was to get around the enemy's flank. They had not grasped in the least how to
find
that flank. Still less did they seem to know what to do with much of their army while they were searching.

So something like a third of the Harphaxi Army was either through the Middle Gap or on the way; the Iron Company would have been among that nine thousand if Captain-General Aesthes hadn't given them a rest as reward for their good scouting. Phidestros had taken the reward gladly, although he'd been surprised to discover that Aesthes could tell good scouting from bad.

The pace of the advance through the Gap made turtles look fleet-footed, when everything wasn't at a halt due to a gun losing a wheel or two sets of wagon traces getting tangled. Not to mention the places where the road's incline required eight animals to do the work of four. Phidestros recalled seeing one entire team lying in the traces, dead from a futile attempt to pull an Agrysi nine-pounder back on the road.

After an eighth of a day of this, Phidestros realized that there was no reason for him to ride about in the confusion, trying to see what most likely wasn't there to be seen. He sent Banner-Captain Geblon and six of his toughest veterans over the Gap to scout, then rode back downhill.

He'd just reached the Iron Company's temporary camp when he heard peculiarly deep-toned trumpets blaring to the west. He hurriedly turned off the road and watched from the fields as a Lance of Zarthani Knights cantered past.

The Holy Order of the Zarthani Knights had been formed three hundred and fifty years before, when the civilized native Ruthani of the Lower Sastragath tried to drive out the Zarthani settlers encroaching on their tribal homelands. The Knights had broken the Ruthani alliance and afterward had become the defenders of the Southern Great Kingdoms against the barbarians of the Lower and Upper Sastragath and the Trygath. The Knights were also a priestly order of Styphon's House, and had helped spread Styphon's worship throughout Hos-Bletha and eastern parts of the Trygath.

The head of the Order was called the Grand Master and was an Archpriest of the Inner Circle of Styphon's House. He ruled a domain larger in territory than any two Great Kings combined. The current Grand Master, Soton, was the most feared and respected military commander in the Five Kingdoms. Under his rule, the Order had quelled several barbarian uprisings on the western frontier and built three new border tarrs to protect the marches.

As always, the Knights were marching in the formation in which they preferred to fight. At the head of the Lance went the flag of the Order, a large white banner bearing a black, broken sun-wheel with curved arms—Styphon's Own Device. The Lance rode in a wedge-shaped formation, with the oath-brothers riding ahead as skirmishers, and the fully armored Brethren forming the tip. The hundred Brother Knights had black armor with white and black plumes on their helms, and carried a heavy lance, a brace of pistols and a sword. Behind the Brethren were two hundred Confère Knights in three-quarter black armor with lance and pistols, followed by two hundred sergeants in back-and-breast with pistols and sword. A hundred mounted arquebusiers brought up the rear, followed by a hundred horse-archer auxiliaries.

This third Lance added to the other two that had already gone up the Gap would make more than two thousand Order horse ready for Aesthes' hand. Phidestros had the liveliest doubts that the elderly Captain-General would know what to do with them, and hoped their own Knight Commander in charge would be able to find something on his own.

The dust from the Knights' passage was barely starting to settle when Phidestros saw bright flashes of metal, then a solid mass of red emerging from a cloud of dust. A Temple Band of Styphon's Own Guard swung by, glaives shouldered, musketoons slung across their silvered breastplates, and most of them singing a hymn to Styphon in voices that would have knocked dead from the sky any birds who hadn't long since fled from the battlefield.

Phidestros backed his horse still farther into the field as Styphon's Red Hand marched by, and didn't return to the road until he could no longer hear their singing. He badly wanted to find out what might be going on toward the west, where he'd seen a good deal of smoke and heard more than a good deal firing, including artillery. He did not want it badly enough to call himself to the notice of a Temple Band whose grand-captain might have the ear of the Inner Circle.

He snatched a quick meal of bread, cheese and sausage washed down with warm flat ale, while the baggage boy changed the wet cloths bound around his injured knee. He no longer had to stifle a gasp when he put his weight on the leg, but he knew he'd best plan on running no footraces for a while and spending that day either lying, sitting or riding.

Several messengers rode by while he was eating. Two coming from the west stopped and accepted a few coins in return for their messages, but neither was able to tell him anything about the battle in the West Gap. They had not attacked, either. The second messenger added that the Royal troops of Hos-Harphax were coming up and seemed to regard this as good news, but then he spoke with a Harphax City accent.

Phidestros realized that if the Iron Company were to be thrown into the battle at the West Gap, their approach to it would be over open ground; he could at least send more scouts ahead to find what was going on. He had a feeling that he would need that knowledge fairly soon. Of course, this might leave him short of trustworthy petty-captains... But knowing the whereabouts of the Hostigi positions might be the difference between the Iron Company being shot into ribbons by Kalvan's
rifles
, or acquitting the field with valor.

He was just emptying his mug of ale when Geblon returned. His Banner-Captain's normally ruddy face looked pale with dust and something more that made Phidestros sit up and motion him to his side so that no one could overhear the Banner-Captain's message.

"The Hostigi barely tried to hold the far end of the Gap, let alone the crest. Their—
riflemen
—did some damage, their Sastragathi irregulars a little more, but that was all. They're holding Mrathos with hardly more than a thousand men, but in trenches with artillery. Everybody believes there must be more Hostigi, and half of them are scattered all over Yirtta's potato patch trying to find them!"

"Isn't Captain-General Aesthes trying to rein them in?"

Geblon took two quick puffs on his pipe before answering, "He's determined to reduce Mrathos before he moves a yard further. He
may
do that before nightfall. I couldn't get close enough to the lines around the town to ask him or anybody else who might know."

So if the Iron Company crossed the Middle Gap, it would find itself on a field where the enemy might or might not be present, and, if present, in unknown strength. Certainly a Captain-General who did not know his business would be present, and so would thousands of Styphon's finest troops. Not just on the field, but perhaps behind the Iron Company—and Styphon's Red Hand, at least, had a reputation for killing even allied troops, not just to keep them from retreating but to force them to stand and die to the last man.

"Did anyone recognize you or name the Iron Company in your hearing?"

Geblon shook his head. "Not that I remember."

"You're sure?"

"Almost sure."

"Sure enough to swear an oath?"

Geblon opened his mouth, obviously to ask what kind of oath, then shut it again. He knew of the reputation of Styphon's Red Hand, and he'd been a mercenary long enough to know that no one could be punished for not obeying an order he hadn't received. The less he knew about what was in his captain's mind, the less danger he'd be in if by chance Styphon's House or the Harphaxi wanted a convenient scapegoat.

If the example was to come from the Iron Company, Phidestros was determined that it should be from him. He owed them that much—that, and not leading them into a battle on the ground of a lackwit's choosing. Not if he could avoid it, by Galzar!

"Remember, at all costs keep five hundred paces between you and Baron Euklestes' column. If the cavalry can't fit into a gap that big, I'll have them all sent to one of Yirtta's temple-houses for the blind!"

"It shall be done, Your Majesty," Baron Halmoth said with a grin. "That should also let both us and Euklestes shoot at any Harphaxi unwise enough to ride into the gap, without fear of hitting each other. Am I right?" Kalvan nodded. "Then—when do we march?"

Kalvan hesitated a moment over his answer. Great Kings weren't supposed to admit to being at the mercy of their subordinates, even when the subordinates were as good as Harmakros. On the other hand Euklestes seemed intelligent enough to benefit from a short lesson in generalship.

"As soon as I receive the next message from Count Harmakros on how the battle around Mrathos is going." They both looked at the eastern sky above the treetops and at the towering plume of black smoke trailing across the blue like a scarf.

It bothered Kalvan that Harmakros had troops that had arrived too late to hold the Middle Gap; it had been his plan to hold the Heights and pick the Harphaxi to pieces as they went against both gravity and the tide of battle. Instead of retreating Harmakros had stood his ground at the town of Mrathos, turning that insignificant piece of real estate into a critical defensive point.

Mrathos Town was the here-and-now site of Strasburg, where two years before he was picked up by the cross-time flying saucer he'd lost a good friend, Sergeant Joe Bonnetti. The Sergeant, Calvin Morrison's mentor during his first two years as a Pennsylvania State Trooper, had been run off a wet road and killed by a drunken driver, a drunk with so many political connections that he'd got off with a slap on the wrist. There was no way to talk about this memory, either; even if there'd been anyone around cleared for the "secret" of his origins, they might call it an evil omen.

What was more annoying, Kalvan wasn't entirely sure they'd be completely wrong. Was living among people who took gods and demons and sorcery for granted making him superstitious?

Wasn't this a hell of a thing to be worry over as the biggest battle of his life approached its climax?

Kalvan turned his mind to a more practical question. What should he do about Harmakros, who'd shown initiative—Dram-damnit, nearly disobedience!—by holding Mrathos instead of retreating and contacting his commander-and-chief, then holding back four fifths of his men while the garrison of Mrathos drew most of the Harphaxi right on to itself? Certainly Harmakros had infected Captain-General Aesthes with an obsessive desire to reduce the town—to rubble and ashes, if nothing more—before moving on, or even bothering to control the rest of his troops. Some French general whose name Kalvan couldn't recall had the same bee in his bonnet at Waterloo and spent the whole battle attacking the Chateau of Hougoumont, leaving the rest of Wellington's right flank completely alone. The garrison at Mrathos didn't need to do nearly as much, and it looked as if they might have already done it.