A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

  TWENTY-NINE

  Shevraeth was aware of Marec entering their tent only when something warm bumped his hand, and Marec murmured in a low, cheery voice, “Looks to me like a prime headache on you. Of course you forgot the first rule of summer games—”

  Yes, he had. He’d come straight off the game into his supervising duties, without stopping at the stream for a drink. Even though he’d had a desperate thirst, and a vile-tasting mouth, ever since... whenever it was.

  He forced himself to sit up, despite the heave of his stomach and the renewed hammer in his head. First sips then gulps of hot, bitter willow-steep burned his mouth without really satisfying the thirst, but he drank it all anyway, then, gasping for breath, he lay back down.

  He was not aware of Marec vanishing and reappearing until the cup, cold and wet this time, nudged his fingers. It was full of water, fresh from the stream. Another effort, though this time slightly easier as he sat up and drank. As he lay down again his overheated body burst out in sweat at last, leaving him shivering for a short time, but that, too, diminished, and gradually the pain lessened to a mere candle compared to its previous sun.

  When Marec returned for the third time, he heard the muted crunch of heels on dirt, the sough of the tent-flap lifting, and the rustle of Marec’s clothes as he sat on his bedroll. “Here’s a bread-and-cheese,” he said.

  Shevraeth eased himself up. He was going to live after all.

  Too bad.

  “Thanks.” He took the sandwich and braced for questions.

  Marec yawned. “Pereth gave you advance to the point where our second defense broke your regroup. Said to tell you to get shut-eye now, because he’s going to plant the flags the moment he’s got some sun, so we can get at it early, maybe finish by noon, before the heat gets too bad.”

  “Right,” Shevraeth said around his sandwich. And because he was not a coward, “Marec, I hit that boy as hard as I could.”

  “Yep. You did.”

  “Should I report myself to Keriam? I don’t want to leave that to Pereth.”

  “Pereth has to anyway. My advice is, let it be.”

  “But I hit him with all my strength. That’s not right.”

  “No. But you only did it once, and every single person here knows why. I think most were hoping you’d go berserk and lambaste him. Everyone except Pereth—only because he’d have to stop it—and Van’s particular friends. This is nothing new, and there are enough witnesses to the cause. You may’s well let it be. Concentrate on how you’re going to fight me tomorrow, or we’re going to grind you into the dust. I still have Stad, and we wounded Evrec.”

  Marec grinned and got up to leave.

  Shevraeth said, “Is there a night watch?”

  “Not for you. Pereth had specific orders for you to rack out, since you probably made the night easier for us. It being a star night.”

  Star night—oh, yes. Shevraeth’s overnights so far had mostly been cloudy or rainy nights, except for a couple his first year. Like everything else licit or illicit, there were unspoken but definite rules for tent raids. Dark nights were considered only a challenge for small boys as they were too easy, and you couldn’t see the apparently side-splitting effect of a collapsed tent thrashing about as its occupants tried to fight their way out. Rainy nights had been deemed over the years to lie outside the rules (unless a definite declaration of war), but starry nights gave the sneak a challenge, and the results the fine visual edge.

  Shevraeth lay down gratefully, and did not stir when Pereth and Marec decided before midnight that the colts had probably decided against these night festivities. The anti-Marlovair faction were too subdued. As for Marlovair, he’d declared (when he could trust himself to speak) that if That Rabbit Shevraeth could deal out welters for nothing, who knew what might happen if they were caught doing something?

  o0o

  When dawn blued the air outside the tent, Marec and Shevraeth worked together to pack up their stuff so they wouldn’t have to in the heat of day. They walked together to the cook tent, where a few early boys had gathered, most but not all on various morning duties.

  The boys saw the two army commanders together, and conversation ended abruptly. Shevraeth knew what they were talking about. He had already withdrawn behind the court mask, though he felt his ears redden, but his hair had grown so shaggy he hoped no one noticed.

  In silence one of the boys on duty passed mugs of coffee, then Pereth came striding round one of the tents. “Just got the markers set up. Shevraeth, you’re points ahead on advance. Marec, you evened up the points on casualties with the breaking of the second assault, so the first move goes to you. Marec, you’ve got four dead, Shevraeth, you seven. All the wounded have arm and leg bands.”

  Both commanders signified assent with lifted hands, food was passed out, and Shevraeth forced himself to focus on the shambles of his plans. The points on advance were unexpected—so he hadn’t been quite as bad as he’d thought. That meant they’d be closer to the summit. So what could he do with his remaining forces?

  As soon as breakfast was done—and it was a hasty meal—the eleven ‘dead’ dismally faced the task of collecting the camp’s neatly-rolled tents, bedrolls and gear and stowing them for ease of pack-up when the horses were brought to pick them up and take them to the academy. The sun had reached the top of the hill by then, the edges of shiny leaves already glittering with the promise of glare and heat.

  Pereth called the combatants together. “I’ll call a halt at noon,” he warned. “If there hasn’t been a win, we’ll count points then. But mid-morning there will be a truce, and everyone is to get down to the stream to water up. Then return to your places, so mark them, mind, soon’s you hear the signal.” He waved at the boy with the trumpet.

  At the peal Marec’s crowd gave a shout and began racing up the hill to the summit, where they’d hold their war conference.

  Shevraeth’s army followed more quietly to the base of the hill, where there was a grassy sward. He stopped and faced them. They all stopped, most sitting on the grass, all attention on him. He rejected the impulse to talk over their heads to the hazy fields beyond, and forced himself to scan them. Sullenness was what he expected to see in Marlovair, and did. Marlovair’s two particular friends were equally hostile. He’d braced himself to see it also in the rest, but the younger boys’ attitudes were more subdued, some wary, others uneasy. And some were grinning, still inwardly cherishing the memory of Mouth Marlovair getting what he deserved. The older boys mostly just wanted to get on with the game.

  “From what I can see,” Shevraeth began, “our markers are fairly close to the boundaries of their castle. So I think the best thing to do is try a single charge. Everybody, because they’ll probably be expecting a sneak-attack on the flank. We won’t get away with that again. However, what we can try is a row behind the front chargers, running obliquely—light cav after heavy—who will concentrate on their left flank...”

  o0o

  “. . . which is usually the weakest part of any line,” Shevraeth finished the next day in command class. “All the written records in the library mention that everyone’s instinct is to fight to the right. Unless you’re facing an outer wing made entirely up of left-handers. Which has happened.”

  Keriam signified assent.

  “But Marec was prepared for an oblique attack, and had his own second wing waiting for something of the sort. The result was a melee fairly fast. We did get a few of our best over the line, but most of ours were taken prisoner by Marec’s ridings all working as tight units. We pushed, they pushed, we did gain ground where the landslide made defense tougher, but we lost on casualty points: we didn’t have enough men left to hold what we took.”

  Keriam lifted a hand in agreement, then glanced Marec’s way. Marec had already given his view of the battle. “Anything to add?”

  “No, that’s an accurate summation.”

  “All right.” Keriam flicked a look toward the back of the room, where—they al
l knew, though everyone studiously avoided turning to stare—Senrid sat on the last bench, a slate on his lap for support, as he was writing with pen and ink. They could hear the rapid scratches of his pen. “What do you each perceive as your weak points?”

  Marec said, “Terrain first, for me. I really thought they could see more than they did. If I hadn’t been on my rock, I couldn’t have seen everything and commanded. And if we’d had the jelly-bag arrows on this game, I’d have been turfed first thing. In short, I won mostly because I could see better than anyone, and could toot my signals to my ridings.”

  Keriam smiled briefly. The only reason they hadn’t been permitted the jelly-bags was that the practice helms and quilting the boys had to wear under their tunics would have slain most of them in the fierce heat; even tipped with the little papers full of jelly, the arrows could hurt when they struck.

  “Shevraeth?”

  “Two major mistakes.” He frowned, picking his words. “First, I didn’t have good backup plans. But even if I had, I forgot about communications.”

  Keriam snapped his fingers, his way of indicating approval. “Comms, and scouts,” he said.

  Shevraeth did not feel the least gratified. He was utterly disgusted with himself for his loss of control. He had expected, and felt he had earned, a dressing down in front of all the others. That had not happened.

  Then, even if there had been no Marlovair, there was no excuse for forgetting a concept he’d learned from his father before he’d even come here. Maintain the inside line of communication. He’d always thought of it in political terms, further, his command the day before had been conceived in isolation—he didn’t know most of his army, and hadn’t even considered amending that fault, like Marec had, by setting up specific lines of communication.

  “What is the very first lesson I taught you?” Keriam asked. “You can probably recite the sound of it, because I know you were paying attention, but perhaps now you’ve experienced the sense.”

  Shevraeth said, “Command is control of comms.”

  “What does that mean, now that you’ve had your first experience of command?”

  Shevraeth’s mind sifted through all the talk of the past few months—the necessity of line-of-sight, the need to reduce the proliferation of reports which in turn proliferated decisions to be made, which in turn forced the commander to lag behind events.

  The others waited, still and polite because of the king sitting back there, until Shevraeth was ready to speak. The only sounds were the creak of a bench, the scrape of a heel, hastily stilled, as someone shifted. He said, slowly, “Command has to be exercised continuously, so one not only needs a good comms setup, but a way to protect it despite the change of events?”

  “Good, good,” Keriam began, but then the slate hit the bench from the back, and he abandoned whatever it was he’d planned to say as Senrid came forward, looking young, thin, and nervy.

  Now for the dressing down, Shevraeth thought, and braced himself. It was no more than he deserved for his loss of control.

  But Senrid did not even look at him. Everyone in the room could feel his tension as he began to pace back and forth, a quick step.

  He said, “Keriam’s also told you over and over the purpose of this place.” A wide-arm gesture over the entire academy, then his gaze took in the entire class. “Right? What is it?”

  A silence—shifty looks—rubbed hands down trouser legs—bit lips—then Stad said, “Training and drill are the only weapons we have against the chaos of battle.”

  Senrid whirled and paced restlessly back. “You know that. I know that. We grow up hearing it. We read it in old records. But like Keriam said to Shevraeth just now, what does it mean?” And when no one volunteered, he rapped his knuckles on the table. “You’ve got to see it. Perhaps if you turn it around. You are told that training and drill lead eventually to command, but the way you need to see it, I am becoming convinced, is that the success of command, given all other aspects being equal, is, oh, how shall I put it—measured exactly by the lessening of the information needed for action at any level.”

  Senrid turned to Keriam. “Am I right? Do I make sense? I’ve been reading and reading on this subject. The more we drill for all eventualities, and that includes comm systems for every possible ground, the more likely it is we can move fast. Can anyone translate that back, what I mean is—” He gestured again, a fast, tense jab with spread fingers. “—how are you hearing that?”

  They could all feel how important the question was to him, and every single one of them wondered what problem lay behind it.

  Stad looked right and left, then muttered, “Forthan told me last year that command works best not when one man is brilliant, but when it’s spread all the way down the line.”

  “Yes,” Senrid exclaimed, bouncing lightly on his toes. “Yes! The more everyone knows not necessarily what to do strategically—that’s the commander’s job—but how to do their part, the fewer orders needed. Think. If someone has never, say, folded his shirt before, you have to tell him to shake it out, how to find the seam and fold along it, what to do with the sleeves. But if he knows how to fold, and you see something wrong with what he’s doing. You don’t have to tell him everything. All you have to say is flatten the cuffs together and he knows what to do. See?” His chin lifted and his eyes narrowed with a distant focus. He seemed about to say something, but then, as abruptly as he’d gotten up, he returned to his seat.

  Keriam stepped forward again and said easily, “We’re going to step up the games as soon as the weather breaks.”

  o0o

  “So what happened?” Senelac asked as they slid onto opposite chairs at a tiny table.

  At Senelac’s insistence they met at different eateries just about every time. Though they were permitted to socialize outside the academy—and Shevraeth had seen a few couples here and there during his rec periods—Senelac made it plain she did not want to be gossiped about.

  The innkeeper of this new place, an older woman, gave them each an incurious glance. Her gaze flicked from their faces to their uniforms, and then she dismissed them from her interest.

  He was glad he’d got a haircut the day before, if for no reason better than he knew he was almost indistinguishable from most of the other academy boys, and if he kept his words short, and his hands from moving much, he could even pass for a Marloven. It was always his accent that betrayed him, if he had to speak more than a few words.

  The innkeeper took their order, then left.

  Shevraeth said, “What didn’t we cover in the—”

  She waved a hand impatiently. “Not the war game. I was listening to the report. I want to know what happened with Brat Marlovair.”

  Shevraeth grimaced slightly. “I hit him. What more is there to say?”

  “A lot. Word is, you gave him a welter.”

  He shook his head. “What do you want to hear, how much I hate transgressing my own moral code?”

  She leaned on her elbows, her dark eyes flicking back and forth between his own. The shadows at the sides of her mouth—it was such an entrancing mouth, not too wide, not too narrow, the corners deepened with a hint of sardonic amusement—deepened to an ironic quirk. Then she said, “You really do think we’re barbarians, don’t you?”

  The effect was like a bucket of ice-water somewhere in the region of his chest.

  “No,” he managed, and his faced burned. “No,” he said again, and at her narrowed-eyed head-toss of disbelief he protested, “My standard for barbarity is pretty... royal these days, exampled in our own king.”

  That in turn surprised her, and all the scorn left her face. “Ah.” She was about to ask more, then squashed down that impulse with a quick shake of her head, followed by, “So it’s your personal moral code that’s so superior to ours.”

  The faint lift to his brows, the widening of his gray eyes, signalled a hit. A corresponding stab of remorse struck her as he said soberly, “You did ask. Permit me to express myself a littl
e differently. I lost control of my temper, and struck someone smaller than me who had no weapon in his hands.”

  Her lips shaped another retort, and let out her breath slowly instead. It was not his fault that she found herself thinking about him far too often. It was not his fault she couldn’t stop studying the exact shade of his eyes—was it really gray, or a pale, pale blue, and why did they seem to change color ever so subtly? Was his hair as soft as it looked?

  The woman returned with their plates then. Because of the hot weather, both had chosen newly-baked bread stuffed with greens, a fresh-picked tomato, and sharp cheese. To wash it down there was a delicious punch made up of the juice of cranberries and lemon, mixed with enough fermented ginger to give it all a pleasant bubbly zing. The inn’s barrels, or whatever they made it in, had to be chilled by magic; the entire place, she saw, was drinking that punch almost exclusively, and she made a note to return here with the girls. Not him, not him.

  They turned to the food, each busy with their own thoughts. The snap of anger, of the possibility of quarrel, had subsided with her long breath, leaving him wondering what in his manner had angered her, and her with the intention to be fair. Or she’d lose his friendship through her own fault.

  After a few bites, and a couple of sips of the cold drink that went so deliciously down, she said, “Some of the older women swear the weather will break by the time of your summer game.”

  “I hope so,” he said, relieved at her pleasant tone. “Or a week out in this sun will bake us into human semblances of this.” He flicked the crispy end of his bread.

  She uttered a make-peace laugh at the mild joke, then said, careful not to sound confrontational, “How about your telling me how it’s losing control when you gave a whack—even a welter—to a brat who outraged the rules like he did?”