Down Styphon!, page 4
Stretcher-bearers were coming forward, too, and so were villagers to loot. Corpse-robbing was the only way the civil population, here-and-now, had of getting some of their own back after a battle. Most of them had clubs or hatchets, to make sure that what they were robbing really were corpses. A lot of good weapons lying around, too. They ought to be collected before they rusted into uselessness, but no time to do that now. Stopping to do that, once, had been one of Stonewall Jackson’s few mistakes.
Away ahead, there was another uproar of battle, and more Down Styphon! That would be the two hundred cavalry from the far right hitting the second batch of mercenaries, who would be disorganized, by now, by fugitives from the fight at the hollow. Gormoth wasn’t going to have to pay a lot of mercenaries, if this kept up. The infantry were beginning to form up on the opposite hill, blocks of pikemen with smaller blocks of arquebusiers between, and some were running back to fetch the horses. And Nostori cavalry were coming in in small groups, holding their helmets up on their sword points and crying, “We yield; oath to Galzar.” One of the officers of the flanking party, with four men, was bringing in close to a hundred of them. He was regretful that so many had escaped. The riflemen on the bench were drifting east, firing as they went. All the infantry from the Athan and many of the militia had mounted themselves on captured horses.
There was a clatter behind him, and he got his horse off the road to let the four-pounders pass in column. Their captain waved to him and told him, laughing, that the eights would be along in a day or so.
“Where do we get some more shooting?” he asked.
“Down the road a piece. Just follow along; we’ll show you.”
He looked at his watch. It was still ten minutes till noon, Hostigos Standard Sundial Time.
By 1700, they were well down the road, and there had been a lot of shooting on the way. Now they were two miles west of the Athan, where Klestreus’ wagons and cannon were strung out for half a mile each way along the road, and he was sitting, with his helmet off, on an upended wine keg, at a table made by laying a shed door across a couple of boxes, with Harmakros’ pyrographed doeskin map spread in front of him and a mug where he could reach it. There were some burned-out farm-buildings beside the road, and the big oaks which shaded him had been yellowed on one side by the heat. Several hundred prisoners were squatting in the field beyond, eating food from their own wagons. Harmakros, and the chief captain of mounted infantry, he’d be about two-star rank, and the major-equivalent Galzar chaplain, and the brigadier in direct command of the cavalry, sat or squatted around him. The messenger from Sevenhills Valley, who had just caught up with him, was trying to walk the stiffness out of his legs, carrying a mug from which he drank as he paced and talked.
“That’s all we know,” he said. “All morning, there was cannon fire up the river, and then small-arms fire, a lot of it, and when the wind was right, we could hear shouting. A little after noon, some cavalry who had been patrolling the strip between the river and the mountain came in; they said Netzigon was across in force in front of Vryllos Gap, and they couldn’t get through to Ptosphes and Princess Rylla.”
He cursed; some of it was comprehensible in local cursing terms. “Is she at Vryllos, too?”
Harmakros laughed. “You ought to know her by now, Kalvan. Try and keep that girl out of a battle.”
He’d probably be doing that the rest of his life. Or hers, which mightn’t be so long, if she wasn’t careful. The messenger stopped, taking a deep drink, then continued:
“Finally, a rider came in from this side of the mountain. He said that the Nostori were over the river and pushing Prince Ptosphes tack into the gap. He wanted to know if the captain at Tarr-Dombra could help him.”
“Well?”
“We only had two hundred regulars and two hundred and fifty militia, and it’s ten miles up to Vryllos along the river, and the Styphon’s own way around the mountains on the south side. So the captain left a few cripples and kitchen women to hold the castle, and took everything else he had across the river. They were just starting when he sent me off. I heard cannon fire when I was crossing Sevenhills Valley.”
“That was about the best thing he could do.”
There’d be a couple of hundred Nostori at Dyssa—about Jersey Shore—just a holding force. If they could run them out, burn the town, and start enough of a scare, it might take some of the weight off Ptosphes at Vryllos and Chartiphon at Listra-Mouth.
“I hope nobody expects any help from us,” Harmakros said. “Our horses are ridden into the ground; half our men are mounted on captured horses, and they’re in worse shape now than the ones of our own we have left.”
“Some of my men are riding two on a horse,” Phrames, the mounted infantry CO, said. “You figure what kind of a march they can make.”
“It would be midnight before any of us could get to Vryllos Gap,” he said. “That would be less than a thousand.”
“Five hundred, I’d call it,” the cavalry brigadier said. “We’ve been losing by attrition all the way east.”
“But I’d heard that your losses had been very light.”
“You heard? From whom?”
“Why, from the men guarding prisoners. Great Dralm, Lord Kalvan, I never saw so many—”
“That’s our losses; prisoner-guard details, every one as much out of it as though he’d been shot through the head.”
But Klestreus’ army had simply ceased to exist. It was not improbable that as many as five hundred had safely crossed the Athan at Marax Ford. There would be several hundred more, singly and in small bands, dodging through the woods to the south. And some six hundred had broken through at Narza Gap. The rest had either been killed or captured.
First, there had been the helter-skelter chase east from Fitra. For instance, twenty-five riflemen, firing from behind trees and rocks, had stopped and turned back two hundred cavalry who were making for the next gap down. Mostly, anybody who was overtaken held up an empty hand or a reversed sword and invoked Galzar. He only had to fight once, himself; he and two Mobile Force cavalrymen caught up with ten fleeing mercenaries and charged them, shouting to them to yield. Maybe the ten were tired of running, maybe they thought it was insulting for three men to try to capture them, or maybe they were just contrary. Instead, they had turned and charged. He had half-dodged and half-parried a lance and spitted the lancer through the throat, and had been thrusting and parrying with two swordsmen when a dozen mounted infantrymen came up.
Then, they had fought a small battle half a mile west of Systros. Fifteen hundred infantry and five hundred cavalry, all mercenaries, had just returned to the main road after passing around both sides of the burning town and were forming up when the wrecks of the cavalry from Fitra had come pelting into them. Their own cavalry and the fugitives were trying to force a way of escape, and the infantry were trying to pike them off, when the Hostigi arrived, mounted infantrymen dismounting to fight on foot. Then the four-pounders arrived and began throwing case-shot, leather tubes full of pistol bullets. Gormoth’s mercenaries had never been exposed to case-shot before. Several hundred were killed, and the rest promptly hoisted their helmets, tore off Gormoth’s colors, and cried for quarter.
That had been where the mercenary general, Klestreus, had surrendered. Phrames had attended to that; he and Harmakros had kept on with the cavalry, now down to three hundred, pistoling and cutting down fugitives. A lot of these turned left toward Narza Gap.
Hestophes, the Hostigi CO there—about United States captain equivalent, he’d be a full colonel this time tomorrow—had been a real cool cat. He’d had two hundred and fifty men, mostly regulars with calivers, two old twenty-pound bombards, and several smaller pieces. Klestreus’ infantry had attacked Nirfe gap, the one below him, and, with the aid of Netzigon’s men from the other side, had swamped it. A few survivors had escaped along the mountain top and brought the news to Narza. An hour later, Hestophes’ position was under attack from both sides, too.
He had beaten off three assaults, a probable total of a thousand men. Then his lookout on the mountain reported seeing the Fitra-Systros fugitives streaming east. Hestophes promptly spiked his guns and pulled his men up out of the gap. The infantry who had been besieging him were swept along with the fleeing cavalry; from the mountainside, Hestophes spattered them with caliver bullets to discourage loitering and let them escape to spread panic on the other side. By now, they would be spreading it in Nostor Town.
Fitra had been a turkey shoot, Systros had been a roundup, and the rest of it had been a fox hunt. Then they had run into the guns and wagon train, inching along under ox power. There had been, with the train, a thousand of Gormoth’s own infantry, and five hundred mercenary cavalry. This had been Systros all over, but a massacre. The fugitive cavalry had tried to force their way through, the infantry had resisted, and then the four-pounders—only five, one was off the road below Systros with a broken axle—had arrived and begun firing case-shot, and then one of the eight-pounders arrived. Some of the mercenaries tried to put up a serious fight; when they found the pay chests in one of the wagons they understood why. The Nostori infantry simply emptied their calivers and threw them away and ran. Along with Down Styphon! the pursuers were now shouting, Dralm and No Quarter! He wondered what Xentos would have thought of that. Dralm wasn’t supposed to be that kind of a god.
“You know,” he said, getting out his pipe and tobacco, “we didn’t have a very big army to start with. Just what do we have now?”
“Five hundred here, and four hundred at the river,” Phrames said. “The rest are guarding prisoners all the way back to Fitra.”
“Well, I think we can help Ptosphes and Chartiphon best from here,” he said. “That gang Hestophes let through at Narza will be panting out their story all the way to Nostor Town.” He looked at his watch again. If he ever broke that thing, he’d be sunk! “By this time, Gormoth will be getting ready to fight the Battle of Nostor.” He turned to Phrames. “How many men do you absolutely need, here?” he asked. “Two hundred?”
Phrames looked up and down the road, and at the prisoners in the field, and then, out of the corner of his eye, at the boxes under the shed door that formed the table top. They hadn’t got around to weighing all that silver yet, but there was too much to be careless with.
“I ought to have twice that many, Lord Kalvan.”
“The prisoners are mercenaries, and they have agreed to take Prince Ptosphes’ colors,” the priest of Galzar said. “Of course, they cannot bear arms against Gormoth or against any in his service until released from, their oaths to him by the end of the war. In the sight of the Wargod, helping you to guard these wagons would be bearing arms against Gormoth, for it would free your own soldiers to do so. But I will speak to them, and I will answer that they will not break their oath of surrender. You will need no guards for them.”
“Two hundred, then,” Phrames said. “I can use walking wounded for some things.”
“All right; take two hundred, the ones with the worst beat up horses, and mind the store. Harmakros, you take three hundred and two of the four-pounders and cross at the next ford down. I’ll take four hundred across at Marax and work east and north. You can divide into two columns of a hundred men and one gun apiece, but no smaller. There will be companies and parts of companies over there trying to reform. Break them up. And burn the whole country out, set fire to everything that’ll make a smoke, or a blaze after dark. Any refugees going north, give them a good scare, but don’t stop them. We want Gormoth to think we have three or four thousand men across the river. That’ll take the pressure off Vryllos Gap and Listra-Mouth.”
He rose, and Phrames took his seat. Horses were brought; he and Harmakros and the others mounted. The messenger from Sevenhills Valley refilled his mug and sat down, stretching his legs in front of him. He rode along the line of wagons, full of food the people of Nostor wouldn’t eat this winter, and curse Gormoth for the lack, and kegs of fireseed the slaves in Styphon’s temple farms would have to toil to replace. He came to the guns, and saw one at which he stopped. A long brass eighteen-pounder, on a two-wheeled cart, with a four-wheeled cart for ammunition and to support the tail of the heavy timber stock. There was another behind it, and an officer in gilded armor sitting on the cart, morosely smoking a pipe.
“Your guns, captain?” he asked.
“They were. Prince Ptosphes’ guns, now.”
“They’re still yours, and good pay for their use. Gormoth of Nostor isn’t our only enemy.”
The mercenary artilleryman grinned. “Then I’ll take Ptosphes’ colors, and my guns with me. You’re Lord Kalvan? Is it really true that you make your own fire-seed?”
“What do you think we were shooting at you today, sawdust?” He looked at the guns again. “We don’t see brass guns around here.”
They’d been made, as he suspected, in Zygros. He looked at them again, critically; there wasn’t a thing wrong with Zygrosi brass-casting. The captain was proud of them, and glad he wasn’t going to lose them; he boasted about good shots they had made.
“Well, you’ll find one of my officers, Count Phrames, back by that burned house and those big trees. Tell him I sent you. He’s to do what he can to help you get those guns to Hostigos Town. Where are your men?”
“Some of them got killed, before we cried quits. The rest are back there with the others. They’ll all take the red and blue along with me.”
“I’ll talk to you later. Good luck, captain, and glad to have you with us.”
There were dead infantry all along the road, mostly killed from behind, while running. Infantry who stood firm had a chance, usually a very good one, against cavalry. Infantry who ran had none at all. It grew progressively worse until he came to the river, where the four-pounder crews were swabbing and polishing their pieces, and dark birds rose cawing and croaking and squawking when disturbed at their feast. Must be every crow and raven and buzzard in Hos-Harphax; he even saw a few eagles.
And the river, horse-knee deep at the ford, was tricky. Crossing, their mounts stumbled continuously on armor-weighted corpses. This one had been a real baddie for Nostor.
“So your boy did it, all by himself,” the lady history professor was saying.
Verkan Vall nodded, grinning. They were in a seminar room at the University, lounging in seats facing a big map of Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific Hostigos, Nostor, northeastern Sask and northern Beshta.
“Didn’t I tell you he’s a genius?”
“Just how much genius did it take to lick a bunch of klunks like that?” the operations director challenged. “From all the reports I got on it, they licked themselves.”
“Well, a great deal, accurately to predict the mistakes they’d make, and then plan to take advantage of them,” the elderly professor of paratemporal probability theory pronounced. He saw it as a brilliant theoretical accomplishment, vindicated by experiment. “I agree with Cheif’s Assistant Verkan; the man is a genius. Wait till we get this worked up a little more completely!”
“He knew the military history of his own time line,” the historian said. “And he knew how to apply it,” She wasn’t going to let her own subject be ignored. “Actually, I think Gormoth planned a good campaign—against Ptosphes and Chartiphon. Without Kalvan, they’d never have won.”
“Well, Ptosphes and Chartiphon fought a battle of their own and won, didn’t they?”
“More or less. Netzigon was supposed to wait across the river till Klestreus got up to Vryllos Gap, but Chartiphon started cannonading him—ordnance engineering by Kalvan—and Netzigon couldn’t take it.”
“Well, why didn’t he pull back out of range? He knew Chartiphon couldn’t get his cannon over the river.”
“Oh, that wouldn’t have been honorable. Besides, he didn’t want the mercenaries to win the war, he wanted the honor of winning it.”
“How often I’ve heard that one!” the historian laughed. “But don’t the Hostigi go in for this honor jazz, too? On that cultural level—”
“Sure, till Kalvan talked them out of it. As soon as he started making better-than-Styphon’s powder, he gained a moral ascendancy over them. Indispensable Man. And then, the new swordplay, the new tactics, the artillery improvements; now it’s ‘Trust Lord Kalvan; Lord Kalvan is always right.’ ”
“He’ll have to keep working at that. He won’t dare make any mistakes. But what happened to Netzigon?”
“He made three attempts to cross a hundred yards of river in the face of an artillery superiority. That was when he lost most of his cavalry. Then he threw his infantry across at Vryllos, pushed Ptosphes back into the gap, and started a flank attack on Chartiphon up the south bank of the river. Ptosphes didn’t stay pushed; he counter-attacked and flanked Netzigon. Then the girl, Rylla, took a hundred-odd cavalry across, burned Netzigon’s camp, slaughtered a lot of camp followers, and started a panic in Netzigon’s rear.”
“That was too bad about Rylla,” the lady historian said.
He shrugged. “That can happen in battles, any size. That’s why Dalla’s always worried when she hears I’ve been in one. Well, then everything went to pieces and the pieces began breaking up. We had a couple of conveyors in on antigrav last night. They had to stay above twenty thousand feet, we didn’t want any heavenly portents on top of everything else, but they got some good infrared telephoto pictures. Fires all over the western end of Nostor, and for a two-mile radius around Dyssa, and in the southeast, that was Kalvan and Harmakros. And a lot of entrenching and fortifying around Nostor Town; Gormoth thinks he’s going to have to fight the next battle there.”
“That’s ridiculous!” the operations director declared. “It’ll be a couple of weeks before Kalvan has his army reorganized, after those two battles. And powder; how much do you suppose he has left?”
