Great Kings' War (51 page)

"That's most likely the way of it. But the Great King doesn't sit down with me over the wine to tell me why, he just gives orders. Our own Prince has much the same—"

"We have no room to house all these soldiers! Kalvan will have to find some other place to quarter them," Talgan Dreth interrupted.

Sirna hadn't seen Talgan leave the farmhouse where he'd been cowering all day. Most of the Study Team had bugged out to Fifth Level; Talgan, as Team leader, had reluctantly stayed behind. Now that he knew Styphon's Holy Host wasn't on the way, he'd gathered his courage.

The captain, obviously shocked by such open disrespect for his Great King, started to draw his sword. Then he stopped, as though realizing he was dealing with outlanders who couldn't really be expected to know any better. "You are speaking of our Great King. Great King Kalvan to you!" He rapped his knuckles on his sword hilt for emphasis.

Talgan Dreth turned deathly pale, as if he'd suddenly realized how close he'd come to achieving a bad end to his long life. "My apologies, Captain."

Sirna and Eldra smiled at each other behind Talgan's back. She doubted they were the only ones enjoying the Director's predicament.

"It's not what you want or what I want that matters," Captain Strathos continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "It's what the Great King wants that matters, and what he wants is to split the mercenaries up and give some of them to you. They've sworn Oaths to Galzar, so they won't be troublesome."

He fixed Talgan Dreth with a singularly cold eye. "If you don't treat them right, they may think they're released from their Oath. If five hundred mercenaries run wild in Hostigos Town because you mucked up your job, you'd all better run like the flux before the Great King wins the battle and comes looking for you!"

"We shall do the Great King's will," Aranth Saln said. "Remember that if we treat the men well while we have care of them, we will find favor in the eyes of the Wargod and his priests. We shall then have reason to expect honorable treatment."

"Please yourself, as long as you please the Great King," Captain Strathos said. "Now I'll assume you'll be ready for the prisoners and won't need any more dry-nursing. Farewell," he ended, with a wink at Sirna, then was off in a spray of dirt clods.

"He said '
before
Kalvan wins," Sirna began, "does that mean—?"

"Very little," Aranth said. "The captain didn't mention their having broken the Zarthani Knights, who won the decision at Tenabra. Meanwhile, we'd better get ready for our guests. Most of them can camp in the courtyard, but the wounded will need shelter."

"You take care of this, Aranth," the Director said. "I've got more important things to do than worry about somebody else's prisoners."

Eldra's lips twitched, then she whispered in a voice loud enough for the Director to hear. "Yeah, you need to get the rest of those cowards back from Fifth Level and at the Foundry before anyone learns the truth about how they ran away on your watch!"

The Director harrumphed, spun around and stomped back to the farmhouse with all the dignity he could muster.

Sirna and Eldra both laughed until Aranth Saln silenced them with a frown. "We've got more important matters to deal with your than infighting." Then he turned back to the guards and Foundry workers. "We'll need more guards here," he added. "We don't want anyone wandering inside the Foundry stealing tools."

The workers turned and headed back to the Foundry. Aranth directed the guards back to their posts, with, "The battle isn't over yet. Take your positions."

When all the Foundry workers and guards were out of hearing range, Aranth said, "It might be better if the prisoners saw everything except the papermaking equipment. We'll just have to keep an eye on them. The more they see, the more they'll realize that it's just an improved version of a regular cannon foundry. Not a fireseed devil or imp in sight."

Eldra looked ready to argue about 'betraying Kalvan's secrets' when Medico Sankar Trav broke in. "If we're going to be treating wounded, I suggest we start cleaning out one of the storerooms about ten minutes ago! Sirna, you'll be my assistant, although they'll probably have at least one priest of Galzar with them and some mercenaries trained in first aid. Break out the med kit of yours, then go to the kitchen and have every pot we have filled and put on boil."

Sirna looked a question. The medico shook his head. "Not full antisepsis, no. But you can boil the Styphon out of the instruments and dressings. Also, they understand removing foreign matter from a wound. But we're servants of 'the servant of demons,' and Mytron really hasn't persuaded even the Hostigi that antisepsis is a Dralm-sent blessing—yet."

He shrugged. "A pity Kalvan wasn't able to introduce distilling. Then we'd be able to sterilize, anesthetize and toast Kalvan all at once!"

Kalvan watched from the top of the Great Battery as the recently re-supplied Hostigi artillery raked red furrows into the Sacred Squares of Hos-Ktemnos. After Soton and the Zarthani Knights had retired, Kalvan had put Count Phrames in command of the cavalry with orders to hit the Squares from the rear. The time had come for him to return to the role of supreme commander, rather than the more exciting one of cavalry general.

As he watched an eight-pound ball roll through the Ktemnoi ranks, knocking men aside like bowling pins, Kalvan wondered just how much more punishment the Sacred Squares could take before retiring. Their claws were not yet blunted, he noted, as a cluster of Hostigi horsemen drew handgun fire from below. A couple went down; the rest dismounted and came toward Kalvan.

Prince Ptosphes, in his battered armor, was in the lead. Blood had trickled from a scalp wound down into his beard and caked there. He was carrying an antique battle-axe instead of a sword and his face was downcast.

"Welcome, father. Are you all right?"

Ptosphes looked around wide-eyes, as though waking from a dream. "I am still alive?"

"Yes. We are on the verge of a great victory."

"It is all yours, Your Majesty. Not mine. I failed you again, letting the Knights drive my command from the field. I am sorry—"

"You owe me no apologies, father. I couldn't expect you to hold the Knights for the entire battle. No man could have done any better with the forces you had."

In a low, toneless voice, Ptosphes said, "Phrames did."

Kalvan pretended he hadn't heard, then turned the conversation to a topic in which they both were in accord. "Have you heard anything about Rylla and the baby?"

"No. Has—she died?"

"No! She's gone into labor. At least she had, according to the last message I received from Brother Mytron several candles ago."

"Praise Yirtta Allmother! May the Goddess keep a watch over Rylla and the baby."

"Amen," Kalvan said. Under his breath, Kalvan heard Ptosphes add, "A better watch than She kept over her mother."

"Other messengers from Mytron could have been killed or lost their way, but I'm beginning to wonder..." Kalvan kept the rest of his worries to himself. If Mytron was hiding bad news to keep his Great King and Prince in shape to win their battle, the priest might soon find himself guest of honor at a hide-pinning party. But, why assume the worst?

Why indeed?
Nonetheless, Kalvan knew that if he could have sold his soul for Rylla's safety, he would have signed on the spot. If the deal had also included ten rifled sixteen-pounders and a thousand shells with reliable fuses, he wouldn't have bothered reading the fine print.

"I had hoped to die before I gave way to the Knights again," Ptosphes said with a moan. "But Galzar did not hear my prayer."

"Do not despair, father. You were not the only one today who gave way before the Holy Host. Harmakros was forced to give up the Great Battery."

Which Harmakros probably could have held if he hadn't had to wait so long for Chartiphon to commit the Ktethroni reserve. Memo: Find an honorable way of kicking Chartiphon upstairs to where he will no longer be commanding in the field. 
 

The Duke appeared to be developing General Longstreet's problem: obeying orders in his own sweet time. Robert E. Lee had tolerated Longstreet and probably lost a war because of it; Kalvan I of Hos-Hostigos, on the other hand—

From below the rise the Ktemnoi trumpets reverberated. They had a deep bellowing tone, like the ancient
bucinae
of the Roman Legions.

Ptosphes hefted his axe. "That's their signal for a charge. They must know it is madness now."

Maybe, but what a magnificent lunacy, he thought.

Ptosphes' voice was lost in the rumble of musket volleys from below and answering fire from both muskets and artillery from above.

The Sacred Square of the Princedom of Imbraz was the one heading straight towards Kalvan. The musket bullets whistled about him,
spanged
off rocks,
thunked
into the ground and occasionally made the unmistakable
smack
of sinking into flesh. Ptosphes let out a yell as a bullet struck the head of his axe, jarring his whole arm. A Hostigi heavy gun fired; Kalvan saw the white smoke-puff of a shellburst in the oncoming Square.
Galzar's Teeth
would be a lot sharper for about ten or twelve more rounds—

Case shot smashed into the front ranks of the Imbrazi Square from several guns at once. Bodies and parts of bodies, weapons and hunks of armor flew in all directions. The front ranks were a mob, but they were an armed and dangerous mob—and they were still coming on.

Kalvan shot one arquebusier, felt a hammer blow across his ribs as another hit him with a glancing bullet, shot that man, then dropped his empty pistols and drew his sword. A billman swung a mighty blow in an attempt to part Kalvan's helmet, but misjudged his distance and sank the billhead into the earth. Kalvan slashed at him, but the soldier jerked up his weapon. The bill shaft knocked Kalvan's sword up and to the side, while another billman ran in, too close to swing at but not too close to thrust hard enough to dent Kalvan's breastplate—

Ptosphes charged from Kalvan's right side, swinging his axe and shouting what sounded like war cries. The first billman had his bill chopped in two with one blow, his arm chopped off with the next, his helmet and head split with the third. The old Prince was fighting like a man possessed. His fierce charge gave Kalvan a chance to run in under the second man's guard, as he raised his bill hook, and stab him in the face. He fell, and both Great King and Prince gave ground with more concern for haste than dignity.

To the left the Imbrazi seemed to be carrying everything before them, although it was now bills and clubbed muskets, with nobody stopping to reload. Kalvan backed a way to the right without looking behind him until he tripped over a corpse and fell hard enough to knock the wind out of himself.

He sat up to see Ptosphes crouched beside him, shielding him and looking anxious. On the other side was Harmakros, lying behind a dead horse and carefully picking off Imbrazi with two pistols and a musketoon. A cluster of his troopers lay just behind him, reloading the weapons as fast as he emptied them and passing them back to him.

Improbably, Harmakros was smoking one of the royal stogies from the box Kalvan had presented him for his good work at the Heights of Chothros.

Then Kalvan's ears rang to the sound of massed musketry and the war cries of the Ktethroni pikemen as their countercharge went in. The dragoon pikemen were fitting themselves into the Ktethroni lines wherever they could, while the arquebusiers and musketeers darted along the flanks and between the files, firing their smoothbores as targets presented themselves.

Kalvan decided he'd better mount up and show himself, even if it meant withdrawing a short distance. Otherwise, someone would be sure to start a rumor that the Great King was dead or captured or missing or carried off by ravens—or something. He could imagine a number of consequences of such a rumor, all of them unpleasant.

It took less than fifteen minutes for the Ktethroni to halt the Sacred Squares and another fifteen to drive them back downhill. By the time they'd done that, Phrames was hitting the Squares from the rear. Kalvan waited until he saw that Phrames had thickened up his cavalry cordon enough to block any attempts to break out, then ordered the trumpeters to ride down with their helmets under a sword and sound for a parley.

Ptosphes stared.

"They can't get away, and I suspect their captains know it," Kalvan said. "I'll offer reasonable terms—honorable ransoms for the nobles and captains, good treatment for the men, an escort out of Hostigi territory after they're disarmed. It will be as big a victory as killing them all—and cheaper, too."

"Shouldn't we wait until the prisoner guards return?"

That would give the Army of Hos-Hostigos fresh fireseed, which it desperately needed, and six or seven hundred fresh cavalry, which it needed almost as badly. The victory was going to be sweet, but tallying the losses—well, many more victories this costly and there wouldn't be an Army.

"If we wait," Kalvan said, "the rain will hit and that may give the Ktemnoi ideas about trying to break out with cold steel, oath or no oath. The sky over the Bald Eagles had turned black in the last half hour, and it was no longer just his weary imagination that he saw lightning flashes.

Ptosphes signed. "Very well. If you've gone mad, I'll pretend to go mad along with you so that people won't talk."

"Or they may think the Great King's madness is catching," he replied. Kalvan couldn't admit now or perhaps ever his real reason for the parley. He didn't want to kill any more of these men. They were too good—too much like the army he wanted to lead someday, that he would
have
to lead someday if he was to survive here-and-now. Already, almost a third of their number were casualties and with here-and-now medicine in its infancy most of the seriously wounded would die shortly.

Down the hill, bills and muskets were being lowered and helmets hoisted, while someone lowered a pole that held a Square's banner. Kalvan and Ptosphes took off their helmets and lifted them on their swords, then gathered Major Nicomoth and the escort troop of the Royal Horseguards and rode down the hill.