This, he recalled, was how Gustavus Adolphus had gotten killed, riding forward into a fog like this at Lützen.
An arquebus banged on his left; that was a charge of Styphon’s Best. Half a dozen shots rattled in reply, most of them Kalvan’s Unconsecrated, and he heard yells of “Down Styphon!” and “Sarrask of Sask!” The pikemen stiffened; some of them lost step and had to hop to make it up. They all seemed to crouch over their weapons, and the caliver muzzles poked forward. By this time, the firing was like a slate roof endlessly sliding off a house, and then, much farther to the left, there was a sudden ringing crash like sheet-steel failing into a scrap-car.
The Fyk corpse-factory was in full production. But in front, there was only silence and the slowly receding curtain of fog, and pine-dotted pastureland broken by small gullies in which last night’s rainwater ran yellowly. Ran straight ahead of them—that wasn’t right. The Saski position was up a slope from where they had lain under the midrange trajectory of the guns, and now the noise of battle was not only to the left but behind them. He flung up the hand holding the gold-mounted pistol.
“Halt!” he called out. “Pass the word left to stand fast!” He knew what had happened. Both battle-lines, formed in the dark, had overlapped the other’s left. So he had flanked them, and Mnestros, on the Hostigi left, was also flanked.
“You two,” he told a pair of cavalry lieutenants. “Ride left till you come to the fighting. Find a good pivot-point, and one of you stay with it. The other will come back along the line, passing the word to swing left. We’ll start swinging from this end. And find somebody to tell Harmakros what’s happened, if he doesn’t know it already. He probably does. No orders; just use his own judgment.”
Everybody would have to use his own judgment, from here out. He wondered what was happening to Mnestros. He hadn’t the liveliest confidence in Mnestros’s judgment when he ran into something the book didn’t cover. Then he sat, waiting for centuries, until one of the lieutenants came thudding back behind the infantry line, and he gave the order to start the leftward swing.
The level pikes and slanting calivers kept line on his left; the cavalry clop-clattered behind him. The downward slope swung in front of them, until they were going steeply uphill, and then the ground was level under their feet, and he could feel a freshening breeze on his cheek.
He was shouting a warning when the fog tore apart for a hundred yards in front and two or three on either side, and out of it came a mob of infantry, badged with Sarrask’s green and gold. He pulled his horse back, fired his pistol into them, holstered it, and drew the other from his left holster. The major commanding the regular infantry blew his whistle and screamed above the din:
“Action front! Fire by ranks, odd numbers only!” The front rank pikemen squatted as though simultaneously stricken with diarrhea. The second rank dropped to one knee, their pikes advanced. Over their shoulders, half the third rank blasted with calivers, then dodged for the fourth rank to fire over them. As soon as the second volley crashed, the pikemen were on their feet and running at the disintegrating front of the Saski infantry, all shouting, “Down Styphon!”
He saw that much, then raked his horse with his spurs and drove him forward shouting, “Charge!” The heavily armed mercenaries thundered after him, swinging long swords, firing pistols almost as big as small carbines, smashing into the Saski infantry from the flank before they could form a new front. He pistoled a pikeman who was thrusting at his horse, then drew his sword.
Then the fog closed down again, and dim shapes were dodging among the horses. A Saski cavalryman bulked in front of him, firing almost in his face. The bullet missed him, but hot grains of powder stung his cheek. Get a coalminer’s tattoo out of that, he thought, and then his wrist hurt as he drove the point into the fellow’s throat-guard, spreading the links. Plate gorgets, issue to mounted troops as soon as can be produced. He wrenched the point free, and the Saski slid gently out of his saddle.
“Keep moving!” he screamed at the cavalry with him. “Don’t let them slow you down!”
In a mess like this, stalled cavalry were all but helpless. Their best weapon was the momentum of a galloping horse, and once lost, that took at least thirty yards to regain. Cavalry horses ought to be crossed with jackrabbits; but that was something he couldn’t do anything about at all. One mass of cavalry, the lancers and musketoon-men who had ridden behind the heavily armed men, had gotten hopelessly jammed in front of a bristle of pikes. He backed his horse quickly out of that, then found himself at the end of a line of Mobile Force infantry, with short arquebuses and cavalry lances for pikes. He directed them to the aid of the stalled cavalry, and then realized that he was riding across the road at right angles. That meant that he—and the whole battle, since all the noise was either to his right or left along the road—was now facing east instead of south. Of the heavily armed mercenary cavalry who had been with him at the beginning, he could see nothing.
A horseman came crashing at him out of the fog, shouting “Down Styphon!” and thrusting at him with a sword. He had barely time to beat it aside with his own and cry, “Ptosphes!” and a moment later: “Ptosphes, by Dralm! How did you get here?”
“Kalvan! I’m glad you parried that one. Where are we?”
He told the Prince, briefly. “The whole Dralm-damned battle’s turned at right angles; you know that?”
“Well, no wonder. Our whole left wing’s gone. Mnestros is dead—I heard that from an officer who saw his body. The regular infantry on our extreme left are all but wiped out; what few are left, and what’s left of the militia next to them, reformed on Harmakros, in what used to be our rear. That’s our left wing, now.”
“Well, their left wing’s in no better shape; I swung in on that and smashed it up. What’s happened to the cavalry we had on the left?”
“Dralm knows; I don’t. Took to their heels out of this, I suppose.” Ptosphes drew one of his pistols and took a powder-flask from his belt. “Watch over my shoulder, will you, Kalvan.”
He drew one of his own holster-pair and poured a charge into it. The battle seemed to have moved out of their immediate vicinity, though off in the fog in both directions there was a bedlam of shooting, yelling and steel-clashing. Then suddenly a cannon, the first of the morning, went off in what Kalvan took to be the direction of the village. An eight-pounder, he thought, and certainly loaded with Made-in-Hostigos. On its heels came another, and another.
“That,” Ptosphes said, “will be Harmakros.”
“I hope he knows what he’s shooting at.” He primed the pistol, bolstered it, and started on its mate. “Where do you think we could do the most good?”
Ptosphes had his saddle pair loaded, and was starting on one from a boot-top.
“Let’s see if we can find some of our own cavalry, and go looking for Sarrask,” he said. “I’d like to kill or capture him, myself. If I did, it might give me some kind of a claim on the throne of Sask. If this cursed fog would only clear.”
From off to the right, south up the road, came noises like a boiler-shop starting up. There wasn’t much shooting—everybody’s gun was empty and no one had time to reload—just steel, and an indistinguishable waw-wawwaw-ing of voices. The fog was blowing in wet rags, now, but as fast as it blew away, more closed down. There was a limit to that, though; overhead the sky was showing a faint sunlit yellow.
“Come on, Lytris, come on!” he invoked the weather goddess. “Get this stuff out of here! Whose side are you fighting on, anyhow?”
Ptosphes finished the second of his spare pair, he had the last one of his own four to prime. Ptosphes said, “Watch behind you!” and he almost spilled the priming, then closed the pan and readied the pistol to fire. It was some twenty of the heavy-armed cavalry who had gone in with him. Their sergeant wanted to know where they were.
He hadn’t any better idea than they had. Shoving the flint away from the striker, he pushed the pistol into his boot and drew his sword; they all started off toward th
e noise of fighting. He thought he was still going east until he saw that he was riding, at right angles, onto a line of mud-trampled quilts and bedspreads and mattresses, the things that had been appropriated in the village the night before. He glanced left and right. Ptosphes knew what they were, too, and swore.
Now the battle had made a full 180-degree turn. Both armies were facing in the direction from whence they had come; the route of either would be in the direction of the enemy’s country.
Galzar, he thought irreverently, must have overslept this morning. But at least the fog was definitely clearing, gilded above by sunlight, and the gray tatters around them were fewer and more threadbare, visibility now better than a hundred yards. They found a line of battle extending, apparently, due east of Fyk, and came up behind a hodgepodge of militia, regulars and Mobiles, any semblance of unit organization completely lost. Mobile Force cavalry were trotting back and forth behind them, looking for soft spots where breakthroughs, in either direction, might happen. He yelled to a Mobile Force captain who was fighting on foot:
“Who’s in front of you?”
“How should I know? Same mess of odds-and-sods we are. This Dralm damned battle ...”
Officially, he supposed, it would be the Battle of Fyk, but nobody who’d been in it would ever call it anything but the Dralm-damned Battle.
Before he could say anything, there was a crash on his left like all the boiler-shops in creation together. He and Ptosphes looked at one another. “Something new has been added,” he commented. “Well, let’s go see.”
They started to the left with their picked up heavy cavalry, not too rapidly, and with pistols drawn. There was a lot of shouting——“Down Styphon!” of course, and “Ptosphes!” and “Sarrask of Sask!” There were also shouts of “Balthames!” That would be the retinue Balthar’s brother, the prospective Prince of Sashta, had brought to Sask Town—some two hundred and fifty, he’d heard. Then there were cries of “Treason! Treason!”
Now there was a hell of a thing to yell on any battlefield, let alone in a fog. He was wondering who was supposed to be betraying whom when he found the way blocked by the backs of Hostigi infantry at right angles to the battle-line; not retreating, just being pushed out of the way of something. Beyond them, through the thinning fog, he could see a rush of cavalry, some wearing black and pale yellow surcoats over their armor. They’d be Balthames’s Beshtans; they were filing and chopping indiscriminately at anything in front of them, and, mixed with them, were green-and-gold Saski, fighting with them and the Hostigi both. All he and Ptosphes and the mercenary men-at-arms could do was sit on their horses and fire pistols at them over the heads of their own infantry.
Finally, the breakthrough, if that was what it had been, was over. The Hostigi infantry closed in behind them, piking and shooting, and there were cries of “Comrade, we yield!” and “Oath to Galzar!” and “Comrade, spare mercenaries!”
“Should we give them a chase?” Ptosphes asked, looking after the Saski-Beshtan whatever-it-had-been.
“I shouldn’t think so. They’re charging in the right direction. What the Styphon do you think happened?”
Ptosphes laughed. “How should I know? I wonder if it really was treason.”
“Well, let’s get through here.” He raised his voice. “Come on—forward! Somebody’s punched a hole for us; let’s get through it!”
SUDDENLY, the fog was gone. The sun shone from a cloudless sky; the Mountainside, nearer than he thought, was gaudy with Autumn colors; all the drifting puffs and hanging bands of white on the ground were powder-smoke. The village of Fyk, on his left, was ringed with army wagons like a Boer laager, guns pointing out between them. That was the strong point on which Harmakros had rallied the wreckage of the left wing.
In front of him, the Hostigi were moving forward, infantry running beside the cavalry, and in front of them the Saski line was raveling away, men singly and in little groups and by whole companies turning and taking to their heels, trying to join two or three thousand of their comrades who had made a porcupine. He knew it from otherwhen history as a Swiss hedgehog: a hollow circle bristling pikes in all directions. Hostigi cavalry were already riding around it, firing into it, and Verkan’s riflemen were sniping at it. There seemed to be no Saski cavalry whatever; they must all have joined the rush to the south at the time of the breakthrough.
Then three four-pounders came out from the village at a gallop, unlimbered at three hundred yards, and began firing case-shot. When two eight-pounders followed more sedately, helmets began going up on pike-points and caliver muzzles.
Behind him, the fighting had ceased entirely. Hostigi soldiers had scattered through the brush and trampled cornstalks, tending to their wounded, securing prisoners, robbing corpses, collecting weapons, all the routine after-battle chores, and the battle wasn’t over yet. He was worrying about where all the Saski cavalry had gotten, and the possibility that they might rally and counterattack, when he saw a large mounted column approaching from the south. This is it, he thought, and we’re all scattered to Styphon’s House and gone—He was shouting at the men nearest him to drop what they were doing and start earning their pay when he saw blue and red colors on lances, saddle pads, scarves. He trotted forward to meet them.
Some were mercenaries, some were Hostigi regulars; with them were a number of green-and-gold prisoners, their helmets hung on saddlebows. A captain in front shouted a greeting as he came up.
“Well, thank Galzar you’re still alive, Lord Kalvan! Where’s the Prince?”
“Back at the village, trying to get things sorted out. How far did you go?”
“Almost to Gour. Better than a thousand of them got away; they won’t stop short of Sask Town. The ones we have are the ones with the slow horses. Sarrask may have gotten away; we know Balthames did.”
“Dralm and Galzar and all the true gods curse that Beshtan bastard!” one of the prisoners cried. “Devils eat his soul forever! The Dralm-damned lackwit cost us the battle, and only Galzar’s counted how many dead and maimed.”
“What happened? I heard cries of treason.”
“Yes, that dumped the whole bagful of devils on us,” the Saski said. “You want to know what happened? Well, in the darkness we formed with our right wing far beyond your left; yours beyond ours, I suppose, from the looks of things. On our right, we carried all before us, drove your cavalry from the field and smashed your infantry. Then this boy-lover from Beshta—we can fight our enemies, but Galzar guard us from our allies—took his own men and near a thousand of our mercenary horse off on a rabbit-hunt after your fleeing cavalry, almost to Esdreth.
“Well, you know what happened in the meantime. Our right drove in your left, and yours ours, and the whole battle turned like a wheel, and we were all facing in the way we’d come, and then back comes this Balthames of Beshta, smashing into our rear, thinking that he was saving the day.
“And to make it worse, the silly fool doesn’t shout ‘Sarrask of Sask,’ as he should have; no, he shouts ‘Balthames!’—he and all his, and the mercenaries with him took it up to curry favor with him. Well, great Dralm, you know how much anybody can trust anybody from Beshta; we thought the bugger’d turned his coat, and somebody cried treason. I’ll not deny crying it myself, after I was near spitted on a Beshtan lance, and me crying ‘Sarrask!’ at the top of my lungs. So we were carried away in the rout, and I fell in with mercenaries from Hos-Ktemnos. We got almost to Gour and tried to make a stand, and were ridden over and taken.”
“Did Sarrask get away? Galzar knows I want to spill his blood badly enough, but I want to do it honestly.”
The Saski didn’t know; none of Sarrask’s silver-armored personal guard had been near him in the fighting.
“Well, don’t blame Duke Balthames too much.” Looking around, he saw over a score of Saski and mercenary prisoners within hearing. If we’re going to have a religious war, let’s start it now. “It was,” he declared, “the work of the true gods! Who do you think rais
ed the fog, but Lytris the Weather Goddess? Who confounded your captains in arraying your line, and caused your gunners to overshoot, harming not one of us, but Galzar Wolfhead, the Judge of Princes? And who but Great Dralm himself addled poor Balthames’s wits, leading him on a fool’s chase and bringing him back to strike you from behind? At long last,” he cried, “the true gods have raised their mighty hands against false Styphon and the blasphemers of Styphon’s House!”
There were muttered amens, some from the Saski prisoners. Styphon’s stock had dropped quite a few points. He decided to let it go at that, and put them in with the other prisoners and let them talk.
PTOSPHES was shocked by the casualties. Well, they were rather shocking—only forty-two hundred electives left out of fifty-eight hundred infantry, and eighteen hundred of a trifle over three thousand cavalry. The body count didn’t meet the latter figure, however, and he remembered what the Saski officer had said about Balthames’s chase almost to Esdreth Gap. Most of the mercenaries on the left wing had simply bugged out; by now, they’d be fleeing into Listra Valley, spreading tales of a crushing Hostigi defeat. He cursed; there wasn’t anything else he could do about it.
Some cavalry arrived from Esdreth Gap: Chartiphon’s Army of the Besh men. During the night, they reported, infantry from both the army of the Besh and the Army of the Listra had gotten onto the mountain back of Tarr-Esdreth-of-Sask, and taken it by storm just before daylight. Alkides had moved his three treasured brass eighteen-pounders and some lighter pieces down into the gap, and was holding it at both ends with a mixed force. As the fog had started to blow away, a large body of Saski cavalry had tried to force a way through; they had been driven off by gunfire. Perturbed by the presence of enemy troops so far north, he had sent to find out what was going on. Riders were sent to reassure him, and order him to come up in person and bring his eighteens with him. There was no telling what they might have to break into before the day was over. The long eighteen-pounders were excellent burglar-tools.
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen Page 17
