There Will Be War Volume VIII, page 36
A long line of gallows rose by the gate of the prison pen, most of them dangling bodies, and continued on down the road halfway to Hostigos Town. Ptosphes could smell the bodies who’d been dangling more than a couple of days, even over the stable-and-powder-smoke reek of the siege.
The gallows seemed to be more burdened now than even a few days ago. No doubt the Styphoni had finished with their Hostigi slaves after they’d sweated and bled to haul the captured sixteen-pounders up the slope to the siege battery.
That whole affair had been as bloody in itself as some of the battles of the days before Kalvan. The Styphoni had killed a fair number of their own men, mining the places where Ptosphes’ grandfather had carved the slopes into vertical faces. The Hostigi had also had to kill some of their own folk, weeping and cursing as they flailed at the gun teams with case shot and rifles.
The end of it was what had to be, when one side could spend men like water. The guns were in place and hammering at the walls of Tarr-Hostigos in a way even those ancient stones could not endure forever. Hostigi guns, Alkides’s prize sixteen-pounders. No surprise that, considering that all of them except “Galzar’s Teeth” had been lost at Ardros Field.
No surprise, and therefore something Ptosphes should have been able to do more about. He’d forgotten Kalvan’s advice, given late one night when they’d all been emptying a jug of Ermut’s brandy.
“Always plan against the worst thing your enemy can do. That way you’ll be safe, no matter what he does. If he doesn’t do his worst you’ll win more easily.”
Wise words. Clearly the army of the Great King Truman taught its captains well.
Ptosphes shook his head and lit his pipe. There was no call to feel sorry for himself. He had done too much of that. Besides, while he might not be fit for service in the hosts of Great King Truman, he was no bad captain for Tarr-Hostigos when every day it held was another victory over the Styphoni.
III
The man on what had been Menandra’s best table writhed and twisted, and almost but not quite screamed. The four mercenaries holding him strained to keep him still.
“Lie quiet,” Sirna muttered. “You lie quiet, or I’ll have to use a sandbag on you. I don’t want to do that. You may have already hurt your head, when the tunnel fell on you.”
The soldier on the table sank his teeth into his lower lip. Blood came, but he lay still as Sirna cut open the flesh of his cheek over the finger-length splinter there and drew out the bloody wood. More blood flowed freely. Sirna let it flow while she picked out the last bits of wood, then bound up the wound in a dressing of boiled rags. By the time she’d finished the bandaging, the soldier had fainted, but he came awake as his comrades lifted him off the table.
“Sorry to be so much trouble, girl,” the soldier said between clenched teeth. “But I wanted to look at something pretty.”
Sirna grinned. “With the gods’ favor and no fester-demons, you’ll have two eyes to look at pretty girls. And a fine scar to attract the ones you want.’’
The scar would be a lifelong disfigurement—no reconstructive surgery here-and-now. Still, if the soldier was able to contemplate life with it…
She’d thought she’d been used to what people on Fourth Level could face, after almost three years with the University Team. It still made a difference, to live alone among such people, with the nearest person who would have ever heard of First Level at least a hundred miles away—farther if they’d kept on running. Not to mention the possibility of spending the rest of her life here-and-now.
On top of everything else, Styphon’s soldiers! It wasn’t easy to accept that men who fought for something as silly, irrational, even barbaric, as Styphon’s House could be like other men. But they fought just as bravely, cried out just as loudly for their mothers when they hurt, and made just as many bawdy jokes that could still turn her face brighter than her cropped hair.
Or rather, it hadn’t been easy to accept this, ten days ago. Now it sometimes seemed that she’d never believed anything else.
No more sick or wounded seemed to be coming, so Sirna sent one of the women with the knife and the salvaged bandages off to the kitchen to boil them clean. She also made at least her twentieth mental memo:
Borrow some better instruments from a priest of Galzar, or have the Iron Band’s armorers make them.
Another woman, face streaked with makeup, wiped down the table with a bucket of boiling water. Menandra herself brought Sirna a cup of hot turkey broth.
“You’d better eat something solid, you know,” the madam said. “Even if it’s only an omelet. Won’t do, having you faint on top of men too hurt to enjoy it!”
“Oh, I’ll eat something tonight.” At the moment, the mere thought of solid food made her gag.
“Tonight…” Menandra began, then lowered her voice to a whisper so that none of the wounded on pallets along the other side of the room could hear.
“The talk in town is that it’s tomorrow they go for the castle. So you’d better eat and sleep tonight, or by Yirtta I’ll turn you over my knee and spank you!” She ruffled Sirna’s hair with one large greasy hand.
Sirna gulped her broth with both hands clasped tightly around the cup so Menandra wouldn’t see that they were shaking. Seventeen wounded men in one day was bad enough. If they stormed the castle, it could be more like seventy—or seven hundred! Although she might have more help from the priests of Galzar if the promised reinforcements came up. Had they? She was trying to think of a tactful way to ask when the door to the street opened and a suit of armor wearing dusty leather breeches and boots strode in.
The suit of armor also had a brown beard and wide gray eyes, but it wasn’t until the high-crested helmet came off that Sirna realized there was a man inside. When she saw that the man had a high forehead and a long scar across his right cheek, she knew who’d come to visit his wounded.
Grand Captain-General Phidestros waved the men trying to rise back on to their pallets with his free hand, set his helmet on the table, and took off his mud-caked gloves. Then he grinned at Sirna.
“You randy bastards! You’ve been keeping secret the best thing this wreck of a town has to offer. Where’s your loyalty to your commander, you——?” The term would have been insulting as well as obscene in any other tone. The men replied in kind, except for Banner-Captain Geblon, on light duty today because of an attack of dysentery.
“She is Menandra’s healer, Captain-General,” Geblon said, trying to both look and sound innocent. “She has been marvellously chaste.”
“I’m sure she has,” Phidestros replied. “But has she been caught? If she hasn’t, you aren’t the men I thought you were!”
Sirna stopped blushing and started giggling. Phidestros bent down and gripped her by one arm, pulling her to her feet as easily as if she’d been a child. Seen close up, his long face showed deep lines, apparently gouged with a blunt chisel, then filled with dust.
By the time he’d led her into the hall where no one could see her, she was trying to stop giggling. Somehow she wanted to impress him favorably, and not only because he had the power of life and death over her.
“To speak plainly—what is your name, by the way?”
“Sirna.”
“Speaking plainly, Sirna, I owe you for a good thirty of my men helped and at least two saved outright. Where did you learn to treat burns like Aygoll’s?”
“My father had some skill in healing, and was always quick to learn anything someone else would teach. One year we lived not far from a smithy. They knew how to heal burns from molten metal.”
“Curious. What you did for Aygoll is very much like what Kalvan is said to have taught, about driving out the fester-demons.”
“Is it not possible that the gods can send wisdom to both good and evil men, and leave it to them how it shall be used?” She looked up to meet his eyes as she spoke, and she thought she kept her voice steady.
“It’s not only possible, it happens all the time,” Phidestros said. “Only don’t try arguing the point with Holy Investigator Roxthar. He’s threatening to purge the hosts of Styphon once he’s finished with Hostigos.”
“Aren’t you speaking a little freely, if he’s running—if he’s that suspicious?”
Like most of the surviving population of Hostigos Town, Sirna had stayed indoors. Those whom urgent business or the search for food drove outside too often found themselves confronted by white-robed Investigators or squads of Styphon’s Red Hand. Few of those returned. Now only rats and fools strayed outside; rumor had it that the Investigators were turning to house-to-house searches in East Hostigos Town.
“Afraid you won’t be paid, Sirna?”
“That’s not it at all! I just—I’m not like Menandra, you know. I’d feel sorry for a thrice-convicted rapist facing the Investigation.’’
“So would I, believe me.” He grinned, displaying a mouthful of almost intact white teeth, which meant not only good health but good luck in battle.
“Menandra is no worse than the gods made her, but they were drunk that day and perhaps a little careless. No, Sirna. I’m in no danger. Not unless the Archpriests decide they don’t need good soldiers anymore. That won’t be until Kalvan’s dead, and somehow I think that man is going to take a lot of killing.”
Sirna would have kissed Phidestros if she hadn’t known he would misinterpret the gesture. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it did,” she said.
“No. Which means that Roxthar is going to be dealing lightly with soldiers for a while. Healers who may be tainted with heresy aren’t quite as indispensable. Remember that, and you may live to be paid for your work with the Iron Band.
“Oh, and I’ll pay it right into your hands. If Menandra asks for a single brass piece, tell me. We’ll roast our victory ox over her furniture.”
The way Phidestros’s voice and face changed in those last words made Sirna want to flinch away from his touch. She forced herself to stand still as he put a hand behind her back and urged her back toward the main room.
“Let’s join the men, before they gamble away all their money wagering which one of us was on top!”
THREE
I
Phidestros awoke the instant a hand pressed over his lips. Instinctively his right hand snaked underneath the bedroll his head rested on, to grip the poniard there.
Now another hand gripped his right wrist. Phidestros used his left hand to reach for the single-shot widow-maker he kept in a pouch next to his heart.
“For Galzar’s sake, sir! It’s me, Kyblannos!”
Phidestros stopped struggling when he recognized the voice, but didn’t let go of the still-undrawn widow-maker.
“What in Regwarn’s Hidehole is up now?”
“A parlay, sir. Some of the mercenary captains would like a private word with you, out of Archtorturer Roxthar’s hearing.”
“By the Wargod’s Mace, couldn’t they pick a more civilized hour?” Phidestros groaned.
At least the captains had picked the right place. The tent Phidestros used when he spent the night in the siege lines was a thousand paces from the nearest other tent. Men like Kyblannos guarded it, men who had been with Phidestros in the days of the Iron Company, men who had no fear of priests or torturers. Men who had guarded him with their lives and would go on doing so.
Phidestros cursed again and sat up.
“Who wants to talk with me?”
“Grand Captains Brakkos, Demmos, and Thymestros, Captain Phidammes, Uncle Wolf Eurocles, and three other captains I could not recognize.”
That was five of the best freelances in the Grand Host, leading about a sixth of its strength. Now that he was awake enough to think clearly, Phidestros found himself not altogether surprised.
The first attempt to storm Tarr-Hostigos had been a disaster. The attack up the mountainside at the breach and up the draw toward the gate had been bloodily repulsed. The Hostigi had thrown everything from barrels of fireseed to ordinary rocks at the storming parties, reducing them to bloody rags fifty paces from the walls.
In the northern work, a handful of Hostigi had slaughtered twenty besiegers for every man they lost before the scaling ladders finally reached the walls. They might have held as firmly as they had in the main castle, if it hadn’t been for the newly arrived siege rifles.
Converted from the heavy boat swivels used by the Zarthani Knights against the Ruthani of the southern swamps, they could go anywhere three men could climb. Once in action, they outranged even a Hostigi rifleman perched on a tower. Ten of them had given the Grand Host the northern work of Tarr-Hostigos. Fifty might have given them the main castle.
At least they now had a place where heavy guns might play against the keep, once they were hauled up there. Given time, those guns would finish the work with no need for another attack.
Time, though, is just exactly what I won’t have. If the freelance captains don’t take it away, Roxthar will. He knows only one way of solving this problem, and that the bloodiest.
Does he plan to bleed the Grand Host to a shell, so it cannot turn against him after Kalvan is overthrown?
Phidestros began pulling on his clothes. “By the way, Kyblannos. What do they want? More gold?”
“I don’t know, sir. Truly.”
“Help me get my breastplate on, then let them in.”
The captains slunk into the tent like foxes into a turkey yard. Uncle Wolf Eurocles was in the lead, chief among the Host’s Uncle Wolfs and formerly a freelance Captain-General of some note in his own right. His hair was almost white and his beard iron gray, but his face was still ruddy and his back straight as a musket barrel.
When everyone was inside, Phidestros rose. “I won’t apologize for poor hospitality. It’s too late for that. What can I do for you gentlemen?”
Eurocles spoke first. “In the name of Galzar, can you bring this mad siege to an end?”
“Not without putting my jewels between the blades of Roxthar’s clipping shears.”
Nervous laughter skittered around the tent.
Grand Captain Brakkos spoke up next. “I thought you led this army, Grand Captain-General, not Roxthar’s regiment of bedgowns.”
“I command, but only so long as I do nothing to offend Archpriest Roxthar or Great King Lysandros. Where do you think I would have been if we had lost at Ardros Field? Even now, I have Grand Master Soton, Roxthar, and would-be successors all tugging at my swordarm.
“The real commander of this Host is the one who fills your pay chests with gold—and you know it.”
“Then not even you can stop this senseless assault on Tarr-Hostigos?” Eurocles asked.
“No, Uncle Wolf. Were it up to me I’d leave a blockading force with a few heavy guns, to starve the Hostigi out of their fortress or knock it down on their thick heads. I would take the rest of the Host after Kalvan until I caught him, then pickle his head as a gift for Lysandros.
“But our Holy Investigator decrees otherwise. As I would like to survive this siege, I am not going to disobey.”
“May Galzar strike that blasphemer of Galzar dead!” Brakkos shouted.
“Hush, man! Even the walls have ears,” a captain urged.
“Curse and blast Styphon and all his Archpriests!” Brakkos raved on. “This isn’t the only gap in the mountains, for Galzar’s sake! None of the others are half so stoutly defended. Let us push through one of them and fight Kalvan’s fugitives, not sit here like owls in a thunderstorm!”
“Silence, Brakkos,” Eurocles replied. “Your flapping tongue is a danger to us all.” His steely gaze finally reduced Brakkos to stuttering.
“Captain-General Phidestros, you are the leader of this Host, and that is a sacred trust given by Galzar. You must stop this madness.”
“If I had Galzar’s hand to guide mine, I would. I do not. Only Styphon’s branding iron and the headsman’s ax rule here. I say again, and I hope for the last time—if I order the Host to do anything whatever that displeases Roxthar, my life will be forfeit and the Host under the command of Soton.”
“Then stay and be Roxthar’s slave if you will,” Grand Captain Demmos snapped. “We shall do otherwise.”
“Do anything else and your life won’t be worth a bent phenig,” Phidestros replied. “Roxthar has a memory like Galzar’s Muster Book.”
“Styphon’s tentacles do not cover the earth,” Brakkos replied. “King Theovacar is always ready to hire freelances, and I’ve heard there’s a revolt in Wulfula and a king taking oaths. Too, there are no Investigators in Hos-Zygros or Hos-Agrys.”
“Not yet, my friends,” Phidestros said, wearier than even the hour and a moon of work could explain. “Leave at your own risk. The day is Styphon’s and his sun burns hot and reaches everywhere.
“If you must leave, do so at night, without a word to anyone. If Roxthar hears of your plans, the Red Hand will drown you in your own blood.
“Let it also be said that this is oathbreaking and I speak against it. Uncle Wolf, what say you?”
Eurocles shook his head. “The Captain-General speaks the truth. Any of you who desert this siege without his permission will be under Galzar’s ban. I have no choice.”
Brakkos spat on to the ground. “Priest, you are as weak-spined as our Grand Captain-General! Don’t you see, when Roxthar and his butchers are through with Kalvan they will next turn on Dralm, then Lytris, then Yirtta Allmother, finally on Galzar himself! Fight before it is too late! We betray Phidestros, but we do not betray our god!”
In a thunderous silence, Brakkos left the tent.
It was Eurocles who broke the silence. “He and his men will be gone before dawn,” the priest said in a hushed voice. “By Galzar’s Mace, they are doomed.
“Yet I fear he may well be right.”
II
Ptosphes looked around him at the battle-strained faces on the keep’s roof. At dawn they would face the twenty-first day of the siege; almost certainly they would face the second storming attempt.
