There Will Be War Volume VIII, page 35
A quarter-candle took Phidestros up the hill to Solon’s outpost. Phidestros dismounted and advanced to greet Soton, as Banner-Captain Geblon arrayed the Iron Band facing the Knights.
The two commanders clasped hands. Soton pointed to Tarr-Hostigos.
“A hard nut to crack, aye, Captain-General?”
“One to give any squirrel a bit of work. It’s big enough to hold two thousand men and supplies for a year, if they don’t mind horseflesh. We may see snow before we see a breach in those walls!”
“Rest easy, Captain-General. We’ve interrogated some prisoners—not as the Investigation does it, by the way. Kalvan’s left only a skeleton garrison, five hundred men and some of those wrinkled like crab apples. We should have the castle invested in a few days. Then we can see about tracking Kalvan all the way to the Great Mountains if we must!”
Phidestros wanted to sing, dance, and embrace Soton, but dignity and caution shaped his tongue to a question. “Will His Bloodiness let us show such wisdom?”
“Guard your tongue, Phidestros. You are not so high that you cannot be made to lie down on the rack!” Solon’s look would have stopped a charging bull.
This time frustration and disgust kept Phidestros altogether silent. Just how far into Roxthar’s pocket was Soton? Before this year he would not have believed a man lived who could bind Soton to his will. Surely the mystery of Soton and Roxthar demanded a solution, before it threatened the victory so dearly bought with the blood of men Phidestros had led to battle!
When Phidestros found his tongue again, his voice was cold. “Yes, Grand Master. I have seen the fate of women and children who defy the Holy Investigator.”
Solon’s face paled and he looked away. “It is our duty to obey the Temple’s will,” he muttered. “This war against women and babes is not my choice, either, Phidestros. But when the Hostigi heresy is scourged from the land, the Investigation will be ended.”
If you believe that, Phidestros thought, you aren’t half the man I’d thought.
“The commanders are to be billeted at Ptosphes’s new palace in Hostigos Town,” Soton continued. “I’ll be going there myself, as soon as we finish this drawing of Tarr-Hosligos.”
He pointed at a Knight sitting on a stump with a slate and charcoal in hand. Phidestros peered over the man’s shoulder, to see a fine rendering of the castle, with every tower and gate clearly shown.
Best round up Kalvan’s mapmakers as soon as we’re settled in. Some may have fled, and doubtless Soton will want his share. But this, please Galzar, is something soldiers can settle between them without listening to priests’ babbling!
A hundred petty matters kept Phidestros and his Iron Band out of Hostigos Town for much of the morning. By the time they’d covered the last furlongs of Old Tigo Road, the few fires were out. The streets were deserted, except for soldiers and chain gangs of prisoners, led by Roxthar’s Investigalors and Styphon’s Own Guard, resplendent in their silvered armor and red capes.
Phidestros was hardly surprised to see the Guard acting as the Investigators’ allies. The Temple Bands had a reputation as stout fighters, who neither asked nor gave quarter. That last habit had given them the nickname of “Slyphon’s Red Hand.”
The chain gangs all seemed bound for Hostigos Square, which Phidestros found already half-filled with slave pens of Hostigi prisoners. The palace itself was garrisoned by Guardsmen standing practically shoulder-to-shoulder, and Investigators darted in and out like rats from a half-eaten corpse. Phidestros led the Iron Band toward the palace, ignoring the curses and threats of Styphoni brusquely pushed aside.
The Iron Band replied only with silence, and occasionally with a hand rested lightly on a pistol butt. Before it reached the palace, the Styphoni were giving way without protest.
As Phidestros dismounted, he knew one thing. He’d be cursed if he billeted any of his men in this nest of temple-rats! He’d say that the siege demanded all his attention and find quarters elsewhere! Otherwise the Iron Band would start the war against the Investigators here and now, and he’d be lucky to end up back commanding a company of every other captain’s leavings!
TWO
I
Danar Sirna’s first thought on waking up was to wish that she hadn’t. Being dead or at least asleep seemed the best solution to quite a number of her problems, starting with her crashing headache.
The first thing Sirna saw clearly was a dead man. Beyond him lay two more dead men, one with half of his face blown away. Was she in what passed for field hospitals here-and-now?
She was lying on a straw pallet, with a wood-beamed roof over her, whitewashed plaster walls around her, and a window in one of those walls. The warped wooden shutter was ajar; through the gap she could see what looked like a cobblestone street in Hostigos Town.
She must have been picked up and brought in by one side or another, and put in here because she looked dead or dying. The whole left side of her head not only throbbed horribly but felt caked and stiff with dried blood. A scalp wound like that could make you look dead to people in a hurry.
Sirna had just decided that sitting up was a bad idea when a board creaked behind her. She decided to face her visitor sitting.
She struggled up, groaned, and turned to see a woman well past middle age, made up in a fashion that would have announced her profession on many other time-lines besides this one.
“So you’re alive,” the painted lady said. “They call me Menandra. What’s your name, sweetheart?” The voice was gruff and coarsened by alcohol, but not unfriendly.
Better say something. Sirna didn’t dare nod, but her mouth was so dry that only a croak came out.
Menandra bawled something in a voice that would have rallied a cavalry regiment. Sirna winced. One of the house women appeared with a jug and a cup.
“Drink this.”
Sirna rinsed her mouth out, then swallowed. It went down, heavily watered wine with some herbs in it. When she thought it was going to stay down, she asked. “What’s been happening since—Ardros Field?” She realized she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious.
Menandra looked at the ceiling as she spoke. “Well, King Kalvan is on his way west with what’s left of the—his men. Prince Ptosphes is holding the castle, to let him get away. We’re playing host to Captain-General Phidestros’s Iron Band. Does that answer you, girl?”
“What’s Phidestros doing here?” Sirna asked.
Menandra’s reply was a hoarse whisper. “I hear that the Captain-General’s not too pleased with how Roxthar’s Investigators are tearing up this town. He’s supposed to be staying over there at the big headquarters, in what used to be Ptosphes’s palace. But he spends most of his nights here or over by the siege works.” She grinned. “Once he sets eyes on you, he won’t be staying anywhere else.”
Sirna strangled another groan. Menandra shrugged. “War’s like that. Now, the next question is, what do we do with you now? Some peasants picked you up, thought you fit for ransoming. They had you in a cart when the Iron Band passed by. They ran you on into town in the cart, facedown on top of a load of squash with your skirt up to your arse.”
“With my skirt–?”
The picture made Sirna giggle, then laugh. Once she started laughing she couldn’t stop, although it made her head hurt worse. It also shook her stomach, which finally rebelled.
When Sirna stopped retching, Menandra was still standing over her, trying to look stern but not entirely succeeding. “As I said, what about you, girl? You’re a long way from home and your friends at the Foundry are either dead or run off, the true gods alone know where.”
“Run off?”
Menandra couldn’t give many details, but what she said told Sirna very clearly that the survivors of the University Study Team had left her for dead. It took all her self-control not to cry. She not only felt sick, she was frightened.
“Not good for you, the more so since the Styphoni will be looking for people from the Foundry. Outlanders especially. I can probably protect you here at the Gull’s Nest, if you’re willing to work.”
This was more than Sirna could digest in one gulp. Clearly Menandra was the owner and madam of the Gull’s Nest (and why that name, this far from the sea?) and was quite willing to let her earn her keep, sick or not.
“No!”
“It’s how I started out in Agrys City, girl. More years ago than either of us wants to think about. There’s worse things than making a living on your back. Gives you a new view of the world, you might say.”
There probably were worse things here-and-now than making a living as one of Menandra’s whores. Right now Sirna couldn’t think of them. She shook her head slowly.
“Well, you’re handsome enough for it, and to spare.”
Sirna shook her head again.
“I’ll leave it be, then. Just remember, though—anything you make in the house, half goes to me. Or you go to the soldiers!”
Sirna closed her eyes and wished it all away. The smoke-blackened timbers were still there when she opened her eyes. She really was in a situation where she could be turned over to a band of mercenaries and passed from man to man until she died or they got tired of her. It was a long way from reading or even writing about “the inferior position of women” to experiencing it.
Deliberately, she closed and locked a door in her mind, on First Level and all the pleasures and privileges she had there, even on her chances of ever seeing it again. (Which were slim enough at best, with Kalvan defeated and her left for dead.) She would look forward, look this Styphon-cursed time-line squarely in the eye, and dare it to do its worst.
Not that it hasn’t already given me its best shot–
She came back from this mental exercise to see Menandra looking positively concerned. “That crack on the head didn’t addle your wits, did it?”
“I—don’t think so. I must have slept off the worst of it. I was just thinking—what I’m going to do to those sons of the gods only could count how many fathers who ran off and left me.”
That was no lie, either. She now understood emotionally as well as intellectually the concept of the blood feud. If she ever caught Outtime Studies Director Talgan Dreth alone in a dark place—
“By Yirtta’s dugs, girl, I can’t give charity! Phidestros’s men may pay me if Styphon’s House ever pays them. Then again they may not. If they don’t want to and I ask, they may burn the place down!”
And pass the women around among themselves, Sirna added mentally. Somehow the idea was no longer so paralyzingly frightful, now that she’d closed that door to First Level.
“If you know anything about healing, even the smallest bit, you might make yourself useful. Phidestros is going to be sending his sick and hurt here. The Iron Band’s Uncle Wolf was killed in the battle, and there aren’t so many priests of Galzar that even a Captain-General can conjure them up. You help patch and purge Phidestros’s men, and there won’t be any trouble keeping you.”
“Help those damned filthy Styphon’s sons of–?” Sirna began.
Gently but emphatically, Menandra slapped her. At least it was probably intended as a gentle slap. Sirna had to shake her head a couple of times, to make sure her neck wasn’t broken. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Menandra warning her against saying anything less than complimentary about Styphon.
“Archpriest Roxthar’s here with his Investigators. Anyone who blasphemes Styphon within a day’s ride of him will wish she had been turned over to the soldiers. Yes, and the stallions and the draft oxen too!”
From what she’d heard of Roxthar, Sirna saw no reason to argue the point. “I’m sorry, Menandra. I’m still a little confused.”
“Well, unconfuse yourself, girl. You might start with that head wound. Clean it up, and I’ll think you’re good enough to turn loose on Phidestros’s men.”
Menandra bawled for scissors, a mirror, hot water, and bandages, while Sirna took off her mud- and blood-smeared clothes and examined her body for other injuries. A prize collection of black-and-blue marks was all she turned up. Her anger toward the people who’d abandoned her grew. If they hadn’t been too panic-stricken to spend ten seconds examining her, they’d have learned she was alive and fit to be moved.
The head wound was a long shallow gash, probably a sword cut. She must have picked up the concussion when she fell. No signs of infection, but she made a thorough job of cleaning the wound, starting with cutting off the hair all around it. It was bleeding again by the time she was finished, and so was her lower lip where she’d bitten it. She finished by trimming her hair all around.
“You’re cutting off one of your best parts, you know that, girl?’’ Menandra said.
Persistent, aren’t you? “I’ll be hard to recognize with my hair short. Maybe they’ll even think I’m too ugly to bother.”
“With a figure like yours? You’ve got a lot to learn about men, girl. Somebody’s going to want what you’ve got if you shaved yourself bald! Best arrange to give it to a man big enough to fight off the rest. Or else you’ll wish you’d taken my first offer.”
What am I, a mare to go with the strongest and fiercest stallion in the herd?
Exactly.
Sirna sighed and stood up, swaying slightly but not really wanting to lie down again. That was one good sign. Another was that she was hungry.
“Is there anything to eat around here?”
Menandra chuckled. “You’ll do, girl. Come on down to the kitchen and I’ll see if the bread and tea are ready.”
II
Tiny clouds of white smoke rose three times from the Styphoni siege battery. Ptosphes started counting. At “five” the three shots crashed into Tarr-Hostigos. One struck the face of the outer wall, the others hit the left side of the breach. Rock dust as white as the powder smoke whirled up, carried down toward Ptosphes on the morning breeze. He tasted the grit on his tongue and teeth. It was a familiar taste by now, with the siege into its tenth day.
The men working on the barricade rising inside the breach barely looked up from their work. The barricade was made of heavy timbers from the buildings of the outer courtyard, flagstones from the courtyard itself, and stones from the breach itself. The men at work were lacing the timbers together with ropes and strips of leather, while others stood by, ready to haul a cannon on to the top of the barricade.
“Pretty old-fashioned way they have of doing things,” said Master Gunner Thalmoth, who was standing beside Ptosphes. “’Thout those captured guns and the slaves to haul ’em up, they’d be sitting down on the level making faces at us.”
Thalmoth was old enough to remember standing in the crowd with his father to see the newborn Ptosphes presented to the people of Hostigos as their future Prince. Too old to take the field, he’d taught at the University as well as lending a lifetime of artillery experience to testing the new Hostigi guns.
Ptosphes wondered if Thalmoth had volunteered to remain behind entirely because of his age. (He’d been seen to lift powder barrels and wield handspikes on balky guns.) Did he perhaps hold himself responsible for the prooftesting explosion that killed four men and took off Captain-General Harmakros’s leg on the eve of the campaign that led to Ardros Field?
Thalmoth owed an answer to that question only to Dralm or Galzar, not to an overcurious Prince.
“It’s their first big siege,” Ptosphes said tolerantly. “No doubt they’ll do better next time.”
This morning he felt almost benign even toward the besieging Styphoni. It was a beautiful day, and not too hot. He’d eaten a good breakfast. The garrison’s wounded were doing as well as could be expected. Best of all, the men of Tarr-Hostigos now knew they’d won the victory they had to win.
Last night a party of picked men had slipped into the besiegers’ forward positions. Their score was twenty-eight taken prisoner, more than fifty killed, a magazine blown up, and three bombards spiked, all for the price of one man dead and four wounded.
All the prisoners said that Kalvan hadn’t been overtaken. Some added that the men chasing him had been ordered back to join the siege. One said he’d heard a whole band was wiped out in an ambush by Kalvan’s rearguard. (Ptosphes suspected that the last man was trying to please his captors, who had nothing to lose by blowing him from a gun.)
The last stand at Tarr-Hostigos was not going to be a waste of lives. If that wasn’t worth celebrating, then nothing was.
Of course, the odds against the besieger would rise still higher now that the Grand Host was bringing back their vanguard. Since those odds were already close to a hundred to one, who cared? Ptosphes rather liked Harmakros’s way of putting it:
“Aren’t we lucky? We’ll never run out of targets now!”
That might have been Harmakros’s fever speaking. In spite of his stump having been cleaned to drive out the fester-demons, Harmakros had been working far too hard for a man so badly hurt. However, most of the rest of the garrison seemed to feel the same way.
Ptosphes continued his walk around the castle walls, Thalmoth following ten paces behind. The riflemen in the towers encouraged enemy musketeers to stay beyond accurate range, and the besiegers didn’t waste cannon shot on single men. Ptosphes suspected that they were short of fireseed and saving what they had for the storming. No trouble of that kind for his people, even without the reserve of twelve tons of Styphon’s Best in the cellar of the keep.
He inspected the gunners at the main gate and the siege battery at the bottom of the draw leading up to the gate. The battery had been laid out by someone who knew his business, which was also why it had no guns in it as yet. They would be needed for the storming, to keep the Hostigi on the gates from having target practice on the men coming up the draw. Until then, they would simply be on the wrong end of plunging fire from the gate towers.
Another hundred paces along the walls, and some of Ptosphes’s good mood evaporated. On this side Archpriest Raxthar had his prison—really more of a stock pen—for the people he was Investigating. Like most of the besiegers’ works, it was walled in timber and stone carted by slave gangs from Hostigos Town, but lacked their roof of old tents. At the rate the besiegers’ works were swallowing the town, it soon wouldn’t matter if they burned it or not.
