A final note regarding the command structure of the Jokapcul army is necessary. The preceding description applies only to the army in the field. The army in garrison and on staff has a more conventional structure with kamazai and knights being assigned to a variety of superior and subordinate positions by the commanding kamazai, and determination of superior and subordinate is never decided by trial by combat.
James Military Review Quarterly is pleased to welcome to our pages with this article the highly renowned Scholar Munch Mu’sk, Professor of Far Western Studies at the University of the Great Rift. Scholar Mu’sk has long been recognized as a leading expert in Far Western studies ever since his doctoral thesis, Sea Raiders on Matilda, Local Brigands in Disguise or Invaders from Beyond the Horizon?, was published in chapbook form.
III
FURY AND BLOOD
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Two hundred yards of open, plowed ground separated the fence from the southern edge of Eikby’s cleared area. Because of the orchards, the town itself wasn’t visible from where the road left the forest; the fence was obvious.
“Do you have caltrops?” Spinner asked as they examined the open area.
Captain Stonearm shook his head. “I can have a smith make some.”
“Good idea,” Haft said. “Put more than one blacksmith on them.” He didn’t look at the guard captain, his eyes were focused on the forest, looking to see how deeply he could see into it.
“Right away, Sir Haft,” Stonearm answered sarcastically.
“Would you please, Captain,” Spinner said more diplomatically.
Stonearm nodded and signaled for a guard lancer to take a message into town.
They headed back through the gate and calculated bow ranges.
“They’ll probably assemble halfway to the fence before they charge,” Haft said. “That’s in range of our bows. We can take some of them out before they begin their charge.”
“It’s also in range of their bows,” Spinner observed. “That means they can shoot our archers before they charge.”
Haft thought about it for a moment. “I think you’re right. The archers should be back farther and not fire until the Jokapcul begin their charge. We’ll be able to cause them casualties before their archers can start shooting at us.”
They started laying out trenches and pits forty yards inside the fence.
In another hour a blacksmith and his apprentice were turning out caltrops. They were simple constructions: two pieces of iron rod, each three inches long, bent at a right angle in the middle and crossed together, then heated in the forge and hammered until they welded together. When finished they had four points arranged so that no matter how they were dropped they settled with three points down and one straight up. The rods were cut at an angle to begin with, so there was no need to spend time sharpening the points. They were too small to cause a fatal injury except by accident, but were long enough to be cripplingly painful to a charging horse—or man—that stepped on one.
Then they began planning the evacuation of Eikby—until they were interrupted.
“Stop! Stop!” the mayor screamed as he rode his carriage into the southern defenses. “Everybody, stop working!”
“Who let him out?” Haft snarled, and turned away.
Workers looked up at the shouts, some stopped their labor to watch what was happening. The carriage stopped near the small group of leaders and the mayor jumped out of it, almost stumbling in his haste.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded of Captain Stonearm. “What do you think you’re doing?” His eyes were wild and spittle flew from his mouth. His cassock was misbuttoned, and his gilt medallion chain of office was askew. He removed his floppy hat to wipe his brow, jammed it back on crooked.
Stonearm bowed. “Lord Mayor, the Jokapcul are in Penston. They will be here soon. We must prepare proper defenses with which to meet them.”
“The Jokapcul!” the mayor shrilled. “You expect to fight the Jokapcul?”
“We expect to defeat the Jokapcul,” Haft said in Zobran.
The mayor glared at him. “I don’t need foreigners making decisions and causing death and destruction for my town.” The mayor turned back to Stonearm. “Stop all work immediately. Dismantle the defenses. If the Jokapcul come, we will do nothing to give the impression we are hostile to them. We will welcome them and give them anything they ask for!”
“Lord Mayor,” Spinner understood enough of the mayor’s words, “the Jokapcul will ask for blood and slaves. Are you willing to let your people die or be turned to slavery without a fight?”
“You are a foreigner here,” the mayor snapped. “What we do is not your business.” He snorted. “We didn’t even have any trouble with the bandits until you arrived!”
“Excuse me, Lord Mayor,” Stonearm said firmly. “Before they came, the bandits bled Eikby at will.”
“They killed no one, they destroyed no property!”
“At the price of keeping the town and its people poor.” Stonearm waved his arm at the landscape. “This is a rich land, this should be a prosperous town. It’s not. Instead, all the wealth that by rights belongs to the good folk of Eikby has been handed over to the bandits without complaint. Because you weren’t willing to resist.”
“They would have killed us!” the mayor screamed. “They would have raped and murdered and taken everything!”
Haft shook off the restraining hand Spinner put on his arm and said harshly, “The Jokapcul are worse than the bandits. They will leave you even less—and they love to murder and rape.”
Stonearm ignored Haft; he folded his arms across his chest and slowly shook his head. “If the guard was properly trained, the bandits would have been afraid to attack. We could have joined forces with other towns and driven them out.”
The mayor stepped back, startled by the captain’s further insubordination. His wild eyes steadied and he gave his guard captain a long, hard, look before saying, “I always thought it was a mistake to appoint you to your position. You are dismissed. If you are not gone from Eikby by the time the Jokapcul arrive, I will hand you over to them.” He seemed to have forgotten that he’d tried to arrest Stonearm already and failed when the guardsmen refused to raise hand against their commander.
Stonearm returned the mayor’s look, then slowly looked around at the men and women of Eikby who had halted their work on the defenses to watch and listen. Their faces showed nothing of their thoughts, but some gripped shovels or picks as though they were weapons, others angrily clenched their fists. Two or three shook their heads.
“I’m tired of bowing down,” one woman said just loud enough for her words to carry to the group around the mayor.
Stonearm looked back at the mayor. “I haven’t been here long, but in that time I have come to like this town, its people, and its land. I have heard too many tales of how the Jokapcul treat the people they conquer. If I leave as you wish, then I will be abandoning the good people of this town to be enslaved or raped and murdered, and their town burned to the ground. That’s what the Jokapcul do.”
“He’s right,” Spinner said.
Haft joined in, “If anything, the horror that will come upon Eikby will be worse than he says.”
Fletcher nodded his agreement. “I’ve seen what they do.”
“But we can’t resist!” the mayor said.
“We must resist,” Stonearm said firmly. “And we must evacuate the town, try to move everybody to safety north of here before the Jokapcul arrive.”
“No! You will anger the Jokapcul as these strangers have angered the bandits. Captain, leave now, today, or face the consequences!”
Stonearm took a deep breath, and said solemnly, “Lord Mayor, I have never done anything like this before, and it grieves me deeply to do it now. But I must, because this town and its people who I have come to love will suffer greatly if I don’t.” He turned to two nearby guardsmen who had halted in their work and signaled them to come to him.
He turned back to the mayor and said, “Lord Mayor, I hereby place you under arrest on charges of gross dereliction of duty and treason to the people of Eikby.”
The mayor gaped at him with shock.
“Take him to his house and mount a watch on him,” Stonearm told the two guardsmen. “He is not to leave his quarters without my express permission.”
The two guardsmen looked at their captain, one nervous, the other with a slowly growing grin.
The grinning one slapped his fellow on the arm. “You heard the Captain.” To the mayor, “Sir, come with us, please. And kindly do not resist. Except for letting the bandits bleed us, you haven’t been all that bad a mayor and I don’t want to get rough with you.”
Sputtering, the mayor let himself be led back to his carriage and taken away to imprisonment.
When he was gone, Stonearm looked at the others and shrugged. “He should have known better after what happened before.” He turned to the laborers, most of whom had already resumed work on the defenses. He waved a hand and the others got busy. Many looked happy at the turn of events, most worked with more will than before.
They didn’t want the evacuation to be a panicked flight; if it was to be successful it had to be orderly. That meant people had to leave in groups guarded by armed men—the bandits were still out there. But none of the company’s fighters or the Eikby Guard could be spared to escort the evacuees. Was there a place the townspeople could assemble that wouldn’t require dividing the forces?
“Up there,” Captain Stonearm pointed, “at the foot of the mountains. There’s a narrow, steep-sided valley with only one entrance. A few men could hold it against bandits for a long time if they had to.”
Spinner and Haft looked where the captain pointed, then grinned at each other.
“We established that as our rally point when we first entered Eikby’s clearing,” Spinner explained.
“It stands out; we figured people could easily find their way to it if we ran into trouble and got scattered.”
Stonearm chuckled. “You picked a great place without realizing it.” He looked northward for a moment. “I think we can move half of the people up there in good order over the next two days without cutting into the number of people we have building the defenses. Or stripping the troops we need to defend with if the Jokapcul show up sooner then we expect.”
“Captain, this is your town, your people. We’ll leave that up to you.”
“If you don’t need me here just now, I’ll get started on it right away.”
But the evacuation turned out not to be as easy as the guard captain had thought. Word had spread through the town about the anticipated approach of the Jokapcul. Some people were already in flight to the north—others to the east or the west. Others scoffed at the danger, certain that the defenses under construction and the fighting men who would man them were enough to defend the town.
Silent came back the next afternoon. He expressed admiration for the progress on the defenses, then gave his report.
“I arranged mounted scouts in ten relays between here and Ceaster.” This was the next farming village to the south, halfway to Penston. “When the first pair sees the Jokaps, they’ll count them and see what they do in Ceaster. Then they’ll go fast to the next pair and change horses. They’ll change horses with each pair in order that their mounts will still be fresh when they make their final sprint to us. When the second team sees the Jokaps, they’ll count them to see if any stayed in Ceaster, then head north, changing horses along the way. And so on. That’ll get word to us fast.”
Work on the defenses progressed well over the next two days. The evacuation of Eikby’s didn’t. Too few people were willing simply to pack up what they could take and leave the rest behind. But only the poorest of the villagers were able to take everything; others piled carts and wagons so high that carts fell over or collapsed under the weight. But too many people were convinced that the tales of Jokapcul rapacity were exaggerated and refused to leave or make any preparations at all.
A small cloud of bees buzzed in through a window in a tower room. It wasn’t the highest room of the highest tower in Penston; that room was reserved for the exclusive use of the Dark Prince, titular head of the Jokapcul armies that had conquered all of southern Nunimar as far as this westernmost of the Princedon city states. This tower room was slightly more than halfway up a tower of middling height—high enough to see above the surrounding houses, but not so high as to give its occupant the impression he was more important than he was.
The room’s occupant, a magician of slightly more than middling rank, perched on a stool at an oak board alchemist’s table, hunched over one of the magic tomes conjured so many years earlier by the Dark Prince. His eyes had nearly glazed over, the pathways of his mind clotted with useless data, and his thoughts twisted themselves into a Möbius strip as he struggled to understand the workings of the M249 Light Machine Gun (SAW). He was charged with deciphering the drawings that accompanied the largely unintelligible text, to learn which demons properly lived in the object, and its best use as a weapon—if, indeed, it was a weapon.
To be sure, the M249 Light Machine Gun (SAW) had vague resemblances to the M1911A1 .45 Caliber Pistol and the AT4 Light Anti-Armor Weapon, both of which were demon spitters in use by the invasion force. It stood to reason that the M249 Light Machine Gun (SAW) also was a demon spitter—it was described and illustrated in the same tome as the two known demon spitters. But the most baffling thing about it was the “(SAW)” in its nomenclature. “Saw” was one of the relatively few words in the tomes to have been deciphered with a reasonable degree of certainty. Peer as he might at the illustrations of the M249 Light Machine Gun (SAW), the magician could discern neither the bladelike structure nor the teeth one expected to find on a saw. Equally baffling to the magician was why a demon spitter would be combined with a carpentry tool. Unless it was a demon-operated carpentry tool that had nothing to do with weaponry. In which case, why was so much space devoted to it in a weapons tome? And why did it bear a familial resemblance to other demon spitters rather than to other carpentry tools?
The magician sorely needed to unglaze his eyes, clear out his mental pathways, and untwist the Möbius strip of his thoughts. He sat straight and winced at the quite audible popping from his spine and shoulders. He really must, he told himself again, see a research healing mage to find out if they had yet discovered a demon that could do something for the aching backs of magicians and mages whose charges required that they spend long hours bent over tomes. He twisted and stretched one last time, grimaced once more at the popping as he reached for an amplifying glass, then bent over the tome again. Perhaps examination of the illustrations themselves would do for his thoughts what stretching and twisting failed to do for his back.
The illustrations in the tome never failed to bedazzle him in their felicity of detail. Never before had he seen such, not from the hands of the finest artists and draughtsmen of Jokapcul, or any of the other nations whose paintings, drawings, and tomes he had examined. They had to be engravings or drypoints, but the fingertips he lightly brushed over them felt none of the ridges and burrs left by the press when it squeezed the paper into the ink-filled lines and holes in the printing plate. Neither did the amplifying glass show any ridges or pitting. If they weren’t engravings or drypoints, by what magic had these illustrations been printed? They clearly weren’t woodcuts or wood engravings; wood was simply incapable of holding the detail of these illustrations. Neither were they lithography; no lithographer’s sticks were capable of the fineness of line and detail found here. And the illustrations in color! Both woodcut and lithography required the use of multiple blocks, one for each color. It was inevitable that there be some discrepancy between blocks, it was simply impossible for the registration of lithography stones or wood blocks to be so precise. Moreover, the water used in lithography caused a certain amount of bleeding of colors—bleeding that was not in the least bit evident in these illustrations! And it w
as simply impossible for hand coloring to be so exact.
The magician’s mental Möbius strip took another, unexpected turn and his eyes crossed. The amplifying glass slipped from his fingers and he straightened up with a groan. Gingerly, with a hand clamped on the small of his back, he slid from the stool to his feet and hobbled to the south-facing window. Perhaps if he stuck his head out of the window a waft of sea air would buffet his face and clear his mind and eyes.
That was when the bees, their cloud in the form of a large scavenging bird or smallish dragon, flew in through the north window.
“Gwah?” the magician exclaimed, surprised, when he heard the long-awaited buzzing. He turned away from the south window and saw the cloud of bees, retaining its formation, come to perch on the alchemist’s table. The tribulations of understanding the tome forgotten, he cautiously approached the bees, watching the pattern of their dance within the cloud, listening to the changing inflections of their buzzing, peering closely at them for signs of damage.
The cloud was thinner than it had been when he sent it out from Zobra City. The bees within it were thinner as well.
“Poor seekers,” the magician crooned. The bees were obviously too tired and hungry to deliver their message. “Poor messengers.” His hand brushed soothingly over the cloud, not quite touching the dancing bees. “I will send for sustenance. Is it warm enough for you in here? I can light the brazier if you need.” The magician turned his head toward a precariously balanced stack of tomes in a corner of the room and summoned the demon, who warily peeked one eye at the bees from behind a tome.
Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) Page 19
