Golden Scorpio [Dray Prescot #18]

by Alan Burt Akers

  I did say: “If a sword or axe strikes that plume-holder it'll knock your helmet off—if it doesn't break your neck."

  So the Justicar's people, with enormous glee, arranged the tall nodding plumes with holders of stiffened leather which would be cut off or bent when struck. I left them to it, mindful of the thought that in this they showed themselves to be their own men, and increased their importance in their own eyes.

  We were distressingly short on swords, and so I could not contemplate, with the scarcity of steel, the mass manufacture of two-handed swords, which would have worked wonders on the iron armor of the radvakkas. Stabbing spears had to be substituted and long knives. Anyway, for handstrokes the halberds and axes would do a fine job—or so I hoped.

  While these preparations continued and increased in tempo day by day as the people saw the results of their work, and the men drilled in their files, and the files joined together in ranks and grew daily more solid and regular, I worried over the tactical aspects I must decide.

  It was clear to us all in the ringed city that the radvakkas, having plundered the surrounding countryside and being awash with food and wine and good things, were content to sit down and starve us out. They tried their fire-throwing a couple of times further; but our fire service quenched the flames with ease.

  We kept an alert watch at all times. The radvakkas made not a single attempt to scale the walls. If they couldn't ride their benhoffs, then they weren't interested. All day they rode about and we watched them in mock combats, in sports, in drunken orgies. All in all, the time passed, and still the tactical questions remained unanswered.

  The men in the files would be armored as best we could manage. They would carry pikes and shields. If the Macedonian and Successor phalanxes could contrive that, then so could we. The Renaissance and pike and shot man did not carry a shield—or not very often—but the cavalry charge had dwindled away a trifle by his time from the mailed charge of chivalry, resplendent in the panoply of plate. I worried over our serious lack of missile power. Our five hundred archers practiced religiously each day and the stock of arrows grew. Once the Phalanx had come to grips with the foe then I was completely convinced we would succeed. It was getting them there, and protecting their flanks, that exercised my mind.

  Because Europe pushed out into the world, the military institutions and titles familiar to us came into very wide being. On Kregen the Empire of Loh had given the impetus to the terminology with which, so far, I have acquainted you in these tapes. As the Landsknechts handed down administrative ideas and organizations to succeeding armies, so the army of Walfarg that carved out the Empire of Loh left its methods to Havilfar and Pandahem and to Vallia, also.

  With the eager help of the Justicar, who delved deeply into the history of Kregen, we reached past the time of Chuktars and Jiktars, of Hikdars and Deldars, back to a time when the organization of warriors was based on the figure six—one of the twin calculating systems of Kregen.

  “Twelve men to a file,” I said. “With the file leader, the Faxul, in front where he belongs. A half-file leader, the Nik-Faxul, and two quarter-file leaders, the Laik-Faxuls, each in their allotted stations. And, in the rear, the file-closer, the Bratchlin. He should be a steady man, hardy and stubborn, and, I may add, ready to thump a comrade in front who lags too tardily."

  The Justicar pored over his dusty tomes, bashing the stiff pages open in his enthusiasm. The pages were filled with colored illustrations of the pageantry of old, filled with the legends and heroic stories of Kregen—the Quest of Tyr Nath, King Naghan, the Canticles of the Rose City, Prince Nalgre, and many many more.

  “I have the utmost confidence in you, Jak the Drang. Where you came from, Opaz knows; but, also, thanks be to Opaz you came to our city. We would have been lost without you."

  “Vallia,” I said, foolishly touched by his words. “I am concerned for the people of Vallia.” I would have to break the news to him about the slaves, and then he and his wealthy friends might not be so kindly disposed toward me.

  “Each file of twelve joined with two others, the whole commanded by a Danmork, the center file by a Terfaxul, just so that there is no confusion who gives the orders when they suffer casualties, or form close order."

  The Justicar nodded, no doubt thinking of the pageantry of the men marching shoulder to shoulder, their bright plumes nodding proudly over the serried ranks.

  “Twelve files to form a Relianch,” I went on, roughing out the diagrams with paper and ink. “The whole one hundred and forty-four commanded by the Relianchun, marching at front and right, and assisted in command of the second half of six files by the Paltork. Yes, it is a plan almost like others I know of, and yet adapted to our needs. Each Relianch of a hundred and forty-four men will have its own flankers of medium men, halberdiers and axemen, the Hakkodin, twenty-four of them, with their own file leaders and half and quarter file leaders.” I did not smile, but I felt my lips rick. “I shall choose these Hakkodin, these men to guard the flanks, carefully. They will not have a file closer, a Bratchlin, with them."

  Slaves pattered into the airy room in a brightly lit tower of the Justicar's deren bringing trays loaded with the superb Kregan tea and miscils and palines. We were not hungry yet, in the beleaguered city. But I had to get my phalanx organized and trained, disciplined, able to march in step and line, perfectly moving as a single gigantic organism. “There will be six Relianches to a Jodhri,” I said. “Eight hundred sixty-four pikemen and one hundred forty-four Hakkodin to a Jodhri commanded by a Jodhrivax."

  We drank the tea and wiped our lips and then sorted through a list of stores stylors brought in demanding instant attention. Also, a lesser chamberlain reported that a certain butcher was charging ten times his normal prices for meat. I told Nazab Nalgre to send around first of all a deputation from the butcher's khand to reason with the fellow and to bring his prices to levels where the folk might afford meat. If he would not accord with common decency then we'd send around a posse of our volunteer pikemen to make him see sense. The people of Therminsax were one—or ought to be one. I knew enough about sieges to know that those in authority must never be seen to favor any one class over another—save, always, that the fighting men must eat. And, of course, if this damned siege was prolonged, therein lay the rub. Not that this was a siege in the real meaning of the term.

  Those illiterate unwashed hairy barbarians outside had no real idea how to prosecute a siege. Had we faced them when we'd been hemmed in in Zandikar, we'd have laughed at them. So we went back to the organization of the phalanx, for, as you will readily perceive, this was my way of obtaining the positions in the phalanx for the men I wanted there.

  “Each Jodhri will be one thousand and eight men strong. Six of them, I think, will form a Kerchuri, six thousand and forty-eight men strong.” I cocked an eye at the Justicar. Nazab Nalgre was looking pleased that his old legends with their continual references to the six and twelve organization and the names of ranks was once more coming into use. He was a fine antiquary, whatever kind of imperial Justicar he might be. “We may find that unwieldy. But I want two commanders of the Kerchuris appointed, two Kerchurivaxes."

  “You have the men in mind, Jen Jak?"

  I nodded. “Aye."

  He studied my face. I knew that the commanders of the two wings of the phalanx would have to be Therminsaxers. There were many bright sparks anxious to command, although very many of the lesser nobility had already packed up and left long before the radvakkas appeared, and many women and children, also, had left.

  “Men of integrity, stubborn, physically strong, courageous,” I told Nazab Nalgre, speaking a trifle heavily, I fear. “Men who have a presence, who know they will be obeyed when they give an order. Men who are respected by their fellows."

  I merely described the generality of Vallian koters.

  “They must be Therminsaxers,” I went on. “Otherwise I've half a mind to install that defiant man Cleitar the Smith, for I know him to have discovered he is
a bonny fighter when it comes to push of pike. I want Targon the Tapster to handle the Hakkodin.” I looked directly at Nazab Nalgre. “Your son, Nalgre, your fine limber young son, Nath. He will command the first Kerchuri."

  I brushed away Nazab Nalgre's babble. I was doing him no favor. But Nath na Therminsax, for he was allowed to adopt his father's style for all he had no rank of nobility so far, was a fine young man in truth and, over and above all the qualities I have enumerated, he was quick-witted. “I will make a break with tradition here, Nalgre, and Nath will ride a mount and conduct affairs from outside the Kerchuri. The right hand position—the lynch-pin—will be taken by that pillar of the city, Bondur Darnhan. The second Kerchuri will be commanded by Strom Varga, and the right-hand man will be Jando Quevada.” I sighed. “I pray to Opaz they will live through the battle. But the front rank men—well, that is why they are there, why they wear the tapes and the feathers, why they are respected, why they are followed."

  Nalgre nodded brightly, seeing only the brilliant nodding plumes over the massed files, the onward surge, the pageantry and honor, seeing his son Nath riding back with the victory. Again I sighed. When honest citizens turn their hands to war they are usually highly practical; Nazab Nalgre, the Justicar of Therminsax, shared the other side of that character, the romantic, the high idealism, the shining honor. He was a man of parts, for the governor of an imperial province, called a Nazab, ranks with a kov. His son Nath might if he wished take the surname Nazabhan. Delia's father had not been altogether a fool in his choice of men to run his affairs, and although he had been sadly led astray in his capital of Vondium, he had appointed sound men in his provinces. Nazab Nalgre was now fully recovered from that mortifying crisis of nerves that had afflicted him after the Hamalese rode out.

  Continually, the Justicar moved among the training men, exhorting them to effort, to the acquisition of the skills they must have. The paktuns smiled and quoted the old proverbs about the length of time it takes to make a fighting man; but I put my faith in the innate solidity of the burghers, their strong feelings for their city, their orderly habits of mind, and saw day by day the growing cohesion of the phalanx. Mind you, we carried out most evolutions at this time with the Relianch, the tactical unit. When six Relianches formed and stood shoulder to shoulder in a Jodhri, and we filled the kyros with the Jodhris formed in file, then we could bring them into close order and present a front of four hundred and thirty-two pikes. Drummer boys, four to a Relianch, and trumpeters, sounded the orders, the drums with their solemn and deep blam-blam-berram to keep the step, the trumpets to shrill their commands.

  In the manner of these things, just how the name began no one could tell; but folk began to talk of the pikemen in the files as brumbytes. The brumby was—I say ‘was’ for the animal was thought to be extinct or legendary—a powerful eight-legged and armored battering ram of whirlwind destruction, armed with a long straight horn in the center of his forehead. Something like an elegant rhinoceros, the brumby symbolized the headlong energy of the pikemen. At once I gave orders that the shields should bear a painted and stylized representation of this formidable beast, along with the formation signs. The ordinary brumbyte carried a clear strip across the top of his shield. The differing ranks in the duodecimal system then carried stripes of color to indicate their status, rising from a single stripe—complemented with a single tape on the buff-sleeved shirt and a single feather alongside the helmet plume—to the four tapes and two stars of a Paltork.

  The shields, bronze-rimmed and bronze-bossed, were crimson, the imperial color. The First Kerchuri carried a broad brown chevron and the Second a brown ring upon the crimson.

  All main plumes were of crimson. The tails were colored Jodhri by Jodhri. As I said to the officers: “We present a solid mass, a devastating avalanche of crimson and bronze.” Then, because these things matter, I added: “But the brumbytes may decorate their kaxes in any way they wish, so long as they do not destroy either their effectiveness or their suppleness."

  The brumbytes sang as they marched to the beat of the drum, manipulating their pikes with growing confidence, although you may be sure there were some horrendous tangles at first. When a fellow tried to make a right turn with his pike horizontal—well, the imagination does not boggle, but he became highly unpopular with the brumbytes in the files near him.

  Colors, flags, standards, were carried; but these would only be a hindrance after the onslaught, and arrangements were made for them to pass to the rear. Each Relianch had its color, of course, and a grave variety they made, all based on the imperial crimson.

  One evening when I was at last beginning to think we were in some cases to march out, Archeli the Sniz reported to me, allowed immediate access as I had ordered. He was a sly, prying little fellow, recommended to me by the Justicar, and I had set him to spy upon the chief priest of Florania.

  “Jen!” he said, speaking quickly. The gathered city fathers and officers looked up from their work at the long tables. “The cramph has been in communication with the radvakkas. I did not know what he purported—but now I know he means to open the Gate of Aman Deffler to them. And, Jen, the task was difficult—"

  “Yes, Archeli. It was. Go on."

  “Tonight, Jen. Tonight he means to open and let them in."

  * * *

  Seventeen

  The Battle of Therminsax

  The fuzzy pink moonlight washed over the stones of the wall and deeply shadowed the buttresses. Moon blooms opened their petals greedily to drink of the light. The silence drifted with a little breeze, broken only by the occasional sleeping growl of a ponsho-trag. We watched the lenken gates. The Gate of Aman Deffler was the nearest gate to the Temple of Florania. The idiot intended to open up and let the radvakkas in. I had collected the Hakkodins, the halberdiers and axemen, and now we lay in wait.

  Presently footsteps sounded pattering along the flags. Dark figures moved on the ramparts, for here the gates fronted an open pasture and no suburbs had been built up against the walls. The watch, alerted just in time, made no resistance but fled. I did not want good men killed. The gates swung open, carefully greased by these deluded followers of Florania.

  Crouched in the shadows, tense, I saw the oncoming mass of Iron Riders. I gave the sign.

  Up on the walls the watch returned and with them bowmen and the paktuns. Down below my Hakkodin moved forward. We let perhaps a hundred radvakkas in, surging confidently forward in their iron. Then the gates were shut, the way cleared by lethal sweeps from axes and halberds, the opening bolted up.

  Then we turned on those Iron Riders who had ridden in.

  By Vox! The pent-up fury of the citizens was wonderful to behold—wonderful and horrible in its revelation of the fury honest men feel when their lives, their livelihoods and their loved ones are threatened. The axes cleft mail, the halberds swung with irresistible force. The Iron Riders were swept from their saddles. They stabbed with their spears and swung with their swords; but the devils of my Hakkodin were everywhere, swarming all over them. In a matter of murs the carnage was over, the savage sounds of steel on iron, the shrieking commotion of men in combat stilled.

  Panting, his halberd a shining brand of blood, Targon the Tapster confronted me.

  “Hai, Jak the Drang. Now you have seen!"

  “Aye, Targon. Now you understand the radvakkas are merely mortal men—"

  “By Vox! When you leaped on them I almost felt sorry for the benighted devils.” He laughed, the reaction setting in. “Although, I swear by the Invisible Twins, you are a greater devil than any of them."

  “Clear the mess away,” I said, intemperately. “Carry all the iron to the workshops. Take the unhurt benhoffs to the stables and you do not have to be told what to do with the poor animals who have been injured.” I looked up at the walls. “Hai! Have they gone?"

  “Aye, Jen. We saw them off and emptied a few saddles."

  “Shudor the Mak!” I bellowed. “Take your men out and cover the working party. Bri
ng in everything of value the cramphs of Iron Riders have left us."

  Shudor, who had signed a contract and accepted good red gold for the services of his paktun band, obeyed. We wasted nothing in besieged Therminsax.

  Then I went off to have a few words with the priest of Florania.

  The Justicar and the city fathers met in solemn judgment. Everything was done with strict impartiality and adherence to the long-established customs of the bokkertu in Vallia. But the evidence was so strong that the verdict of guilty was the only one possible. So I, being squeamish, left the matter in the hands of the city fathers of Therminsax, whose city would have been betrayed by this misguided man. What they did I will not repeat; but the example, I felt reasonably confident, would deter any other poor deluded wight from plunging so foolishly into an act of treason.

  As for his followers, they repented at leisure.

  I went to find the two Krozairs, Zarado and Zunder. As always, they were arguing, this time about the relative merits of the halberd and the axe, and so I was able to say: “I have noticed your swords, koters.” I called them koters in the Vallian way, for koter, being a word of similar meaning to gentleman, covered our transactions. “I fancy I would like to have the armorer make me one up in like fashion."

  They laughed, and showed me their Krozair brands. In Therminsax there were the usual number of smiths any place would need; of armorers there was but one, Ferenc the Edge, for it was said he could hone a blade like no one else in all Thermin. He had been kept busy, grumbling about letting blacksmiths into the high mysteries of his art. I had simply told him that any self-respecting blacksmith could put a good edge onto a scythe or sickle, that I had shown the women how to fashion the scaled bronze kaxes, and to pitch in with a will. Now the two Krozairs showed me their swords, and I took them off to find Ferenc the Edge. With me I took an armful of the radvakka swords.

  “Now, Ferenc,” I said, in the heat and smoke of the armory. “These two monstrous swords. You see them."