Great Kings' War (4 page)

The howl of the wolf floated down from the wooded hills to the right of the trail. A moment later, several more howls replied from farther off.

"Your Majesty. That first one's on the scent of prey. He's calling the pack!"

Kalvan reined his horse to a halt and looked back at the bearded trapper riding behind him. He might be Great King of Hos-Hostigos, but when it came to hunting wolves he would defer to Hectides' forty years accumulation of knowledge.

"The forest's too thick for us to blaze a trail here, Sire," Hectides added. "We'd best ride on a bit."

"What about them scenting us?" Kalvan asked.

There was another howl, this one closer.

Hectides pulled off a fur glove and held a finger up in the icy winter air. "Not enough wind. With wolves this hungry, they'll eat anything. They've got their minds on something."

There was a shot from the trees, then the sound of hooves at a canter. One of the buckskin-clad scouts came plunging back down the trail, his horse churning up the fine powder snow into a silvery spray.

"Your Majesty! There's a fire over the hill. Not too far. A big fire!"

As an intelligence report the scout's words left a lot to be desired, but they told Kalvan enough to make him think about his tactics. Wolves could be ridden down with lances or swords, or shot from the saddle with pistols. A fire could mean bandits and they could shoot back. Two of this winter's worst problems appeared to be up and about tonight. At least they were also the two easiest to deal with.

"Musketoons to the front," Kalvan ordered. That was ignoring the chain of command, of course, and one of these days he'd have to start being more careful. He also had time to wonder, not for the first time, if the confidence these people had in him was entirely justified.
Do I really know what I'm doing?
 

Kalvan had known what he was doing when he'd shot his way out of that—call it cross-time flying saucer, for lack of a better term—that scooped him up out of Pennsylvania 1964 and dropped him off here-and-now. Of course most of that was self defense, a fairly simple job for the trained reflexes of Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police and former sergeant, United States Army.

It was when he landed that things started to get complicated. Here-and-now was still Pennsylvania, but nothing like the one he grew up in. It was an alternate Pennsylvania that had never heard of William Penn or even George Washington. From what he'd been able to deduce in the past year, this was an alternate Earth where the Indo-Aryan migrations had gone east across Siberia, then in ships to the northeast along the Aleutians, instead of moving into India and Pakistan as they had in Kalvan's home world.

They had built city-states in all the natural harbors along the Pacific Coast as far down as Baja California. Later arrivals, proto-Germans who called themselves the Urgothi, had settled the Great Plains and the Mississippi River valley. Then, about five hundred years ago, there was a large-scale migration from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic seaboard, where there was now a gaggle of what Winston Churchill had called "pumpernickel principalities."

The local inhabitants of the Five Kingdoms had a late medieval to early-Renaissance culture and technology, with steel blades and gunpowder, using a back-acting flintlock. The monopoly of gunpowder gave Styphon's House, a here-and-now theocracy whose priesthood claimed that gunpowder (or "fireseed" as they called it) was a magical secret they alone knew passed down from their god, Styphon. Any ruler who defied them was put under the Ban of Styphon, which cut them off from any supply of fireseed—and that meant disaster.

Prince Ptosphes of Hostigos was under such a ban from Styphon's House when Calvin Morrison landed in his small Princedom, helped rout an enemy cavalry raid and was accidentally shot by Ptosphes' daughter Rylla. He'd spent his convalescence in Tarr-Hostigos as a guest of the Prince. He'd had no qualms about telling the Hostigi what he thought of Styphon's House, an outfit as bad as Al Capone's mob, and taught them the fireseed formula so they could make their own. Then Calvin Morrison had helped them prepare for the coming battle against Styphon's Princely pawns; the alternative was having Rylla's lovely head stuck on a spike on the battlements of Tarr-Hostigos—well, that was as good as no choice at all.

After that, developments had followed one another more or less inevitably. While the new Lord Kalvan had sometimes felt as if he were riding a runaway horse, he'd known there was no dismounting in mid-journey. More important, he could look back and say he hadn't made too many avoidable mistakes.

Taking the castle Tarr-Dombra was easy; that was craft and common sense, as well as a few otherwhen tactics, all used against an unwary and complacent opponent. The Battle of Fitra against Prince Gormoth of Nostor was a lot bloodier, but not much more difficult. Stupid generalship by Kalvan's opponents helped. So did new field artillery, with trunnions and proper field carriages, able to outshoot anything else in this world.

Then came the Battle of Fyk; Kalvan still wondered how anyone had emerged alive out of that fog-shrouded slaughterhouse where the eventual outcome was due more to luck than skill. Regardless, that outcome was a victory for Hostigos over the Princes of Beshta and Sask, and a resounding defeat for Styphon's House.

Now Hostigos was a power in the Five Kingdoms, whether it wanted to be or not. There was nothing else, really, but to proclaim it the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos. And who was the only man everyone would accept as Great King?

Corporal Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Police (Forcibly Retired).

That was as far as Kalvan's memories took him when he realized his escort and the wolf hunters were waiting for his orders. They were also crowding closer to either side of his horse, making a wall of horseflesh two or three ranks deep. Most of them were troopers of Queen Rylla's Own Dragoons; they'd rather be eaten by wolves or shot by bandits than return home to report to their colonel-in-chief they'd allowed her husband to be killed.

"Forwarrrd!" Kalvan shouted. The hunting party moved up the trail at a walk, until the trees to the right started thinning out. As they did, the wolf howls came again. This time it was the whole pack, closer than before—much closer.

At last Kalvan could see the fire for himself—a wavering orange glow from near the crest of a low hill to the northeast. In the light he could see a zigzag trail leading downhill, ending among a dozen sleek gray shapes. Whatever had made the trail; it was down now, with the pack ready to dine.

"Follow me!" The old infantry command turned everybody's head toward Kalvan as he swung his horse off the trail. In the lee of the hill, the snow lay only a few inches deep on hard-frozen ground. Kalvan's horse barely broke stride as it plunged in among the trees. He bent low to keep snow-laden branches from scalping him and cantered out onto the open field while drawing a pistol from his saddle holster.

A dozen wolves made a target impossible to miss even from horseback. Kalvan's shot drew a howl from the pack, and one rangy specimen yelped and jumped into the air as if it'd been horse kicked. Half the wolves drew back with snarls and bared teeth, while the others turned from the blood-spattered mess on the snow to face Kalvan. A quick look over his shoulder told Kalvan he'd outdistanced his escort by a twenty yards or so. For the moment, he was going to have to face the pack alone.

He cocked and fired his other pistol. The gray wolf he hit dropped as if it had been poleaxed.

The other four charged Kalvan, led by the biggest black wolf he'd ever seen. Even half-starved, it was the size of a Shetland pony. He was going to have to remember to stop judging animals here-and-now by the pitiful remnants of wildlife in his more civilized homeland. Kalvan dropped the empty pistols onto the snow, pulled two more out of his boots and discharged them both just as the wolves reached his mount.

Kalvan never saw whether or not his shots hit; he was thrown back in his saddle as his horse reared and struck out with its hooves at the attacking wolves. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground and the black wolf was worrying his left boot.

Kalvan tried to pull out his sword, but it was caught in the scabbard now pinned under his left leg. He found his knife at the same moment the black wolf realized its prey wasn't dead or stunned.

The wolf lunged and Kalvan threw his knife. The blade sank into the wolf's shoulder, but the oversize beast never even flinched. Suddenly he could smell its carrion-laden breath, stinking like the Hellfire and Brimstone his minister father had so often and so eloquently described. He closed his eyes and braced himself for terrible pain.

Instead of pain, he heard a deafening explosion. Then the wolf smashed into him, knocking the wind out of him but thankfully not sinking its teeth into his flesh.

He opened his eyes to the blurred movements of someone throwing off the wolf carcass. The next thing he saw was the face of Captain Nicomoth, his aide-de-camp.

"Your Majesty! Are you hurt?"

He looked down and saw bloodstains on his breeches. He quickly felt his legs. No pain or cuts; the blood must be the wolf's. He shook his head, sighing in relief. The prospect of a bite-wound without reliable antiseptics was bad enough, but more than a score of his subjects had died this winter of rabies. That possibility frightened him more than all of Styphon's armies.

"Sire..." Nicomoth stammered. "I don't know what to say...I can't understand how you rode so far ahead of the rest of the party. What will I tell the Queen?"

"Nothing, Captain. She has a breeding woman's fears, and I want nothing to upset her now."
Particularly since I'll be on the sharp end of her tongue, not you!
"Understood?"

"Yes, Sire."

"What about our party? Was anyone hurt?"

"Yes, one. Petty-Captain Vantros. He was badly mauled by one of the wolves. He will most likely never use his left leg again."

If he survives,
thought Kalvan, cursing to himself. One more victim of the hard winter and one less trooper to fight the war that would arrive with spring.

"Mount up," he ordered. He waited until Vantros had been strapped into his saddle before giving the order to move out. He examined what the wolves had left behind: the body of a heifer calf, dead and already half-eaten in the few minutes the wolves had been at it. He could also see the fire more clearly now; it was the thatched roof of a log barn, blazing merrily and quite out of control. In the glare he saw figures in peasants' clothing darting among the other farm buildings, beating out embers with old sacks or dousing them with buckets of snow. Two stood guard over what looked like a cow and a couple of pigs. Half a dozen clipped turkeys ran in circles.

No bandits, just an accidental fire and an escaped calf to draw the wolves. They had paid a high price for their half-eaten meal, too. Now what could he do for the people on the farm? Kalvan dug in his spurs and set his horse at the slope.

He didn't find any surprises at the farm: animals with their ribs showing, a father and two grown sons with eyes too large in thin faces, the plaintive cry of a baby from inside the house. The men stared at Kalvan without making the slightest sound or gesture of respect. Was it because they didn't know him, or were they too awed by the presence of Dralm-sent Great King Kalvan? Or maybe they just thought their being hungry was his fault.

A big war or a long one in an agricultural society always meant trouble; some parts of Germany took two centuries to recover from the Thirty Years War. Last year's war with Styphon's House had been both long and big, with raids all over the place, even when the main armies weren't in the field. There'd also been a high percentage of the peasantry sucked into the poorly trained militia, where casualties were always the highest. Cannon fodder.

Crops that weren't burned by the enemy or trampled down by either side rotted in the fields because the harvesters were dead, on campaign or had run away. Hostigos had harvested barely half its normal crops, war-ravaged Nostor still less. The people of Hostigos were facing a hungry winter even before the snows began and the temperature dropped. It was the worst winter in living memory, so everyone said—and Kalvan wasn't about to argue. He hadn't felt cold like this since Korea.

All winter snow had clogged the roads, so there was no carrying food from places that had a surplus to those where rations were short. To fill their larders, people went out and hunted; even a winter-thin groundhog could keep a family from starving. More animals died of hunger, unable to find food under the snow and ice. Wolves that had grown fat on escaped livestock and battlefield dead suddenly found themselves going hungry.

It was inevitable the wolves would turn on the hunters, then on travelers, then on isolated farms and even small villages. Men who might risk a blizzard and death from exposure wouldn't face being dragged down and eaten alive by starving wolves.

He knew that for this winter, the main enemy wasn't Styphon's House. It was the wolves, which were going to gnaw his Kingdom out from under him if they weren't stopped. That was what had brought him to swear a public oath two days ago that he would bring an end to the wolves' reign of terror. Hunting parties would go out everywhere the wolves were a problem. Which also meant leading one himself, to set an example, which was why he was out here tonight, slowly freezing in his saddle and doing a cavalry lieutenant's work.

"We took seven wolves as the price of your heifer," Kalvan told the farmers. "You may have the skins, and the bounty for them."

Wolf-bounty was five ounces of silver, or five talos—a silver coin about the size of a silver dollar, with a stamped image of a young King Kaiphranos on the face and a two-headed battleaxe on the obverse. Kalvan had recently added an official gold coinage, a one-ounce gold piece called a Hostigos crown, minted from the loot taken from Styphon's temples.

Maybe the silver from the bounty would keep the farmers alive until spring, maybe not. "Also, I will have soldiers come and rebuild your barn. In the spring," he added; there was no hope of finding fresh thatch in the dead of winter.