He, and all of his ministers in fact, had worked very hard to eliminate such practices.
“So it would appear.” Verescens wandered around the perimeter of the table, stepping in close to examine various details, upside-down admittedly from that side of the table. He looked at the northern coast between Sinopus and the lands of the barbarians in between there and Windermere. The Heloi, another barbarian tribe, were slotted in below Windermere and then there was a sort of lawless buffer zone where the Empire held nominal sovereignty along a strip of coast. The sun-baked interior was dominated by the unlettered and possibly even unwashed peoples of the desert. As agreed, this thin veneer along the coast would be a desirable place to land troops, in the event of a two-pronged attack on the Empire. Their western outpost of Kthmarra, with a considerable garrison, would be cut off. The only problem was the neutrals and combatants left on your right flank and in your rear. The attack would split any alliance in two, and bring in much booty as the region produced dates, figs, and olives. There were small but well-garrisoned trading towns about every forty or fifty miles along the coastal strip. In the interior, for about a day’s journey inwards, there were small forts. After that, nothing but desert and somewhere over on the other side of that, reportedly lay the Zagyges, a tall, slender black race who spoke a language known to no civilized man.
He eyed the scale of distance.
The massive red shape of the Empire of the South encompassed something like a million square miles, with small seas and vast freshwater lakes encapsulated within its borders. The Khan’s rather more recently-established empire was only half the size in terms of area, but had a population almost comparable. Both had iron and copper mines, gold, fish, and grain in abundance. On paper, they were almost evenly matched, with a slight preponderance, at least in numbers, in favor of the Empire of the South. This preponderance would be negated by concentration of forces at the point of attack. This attack would consist of soldiers with superior training, superior tactics, superior strategy—especially naval strategy, which would come as a surprise to the enemy. As much as anything, the campaign was to be fast-paced, and relying on the shock and awe rendered by a combined-arms assault coming from many points of the compass.
He practically had it memorized by this time. The map’s view of the Empire came to him at odd times. It was difficult to shake all the endless details, not even in his leisure hours. The campaign had come to dominate his life. The map was showing up in his dreams. He suspected it ever would, that he could never escape it, and that was something that few could ever really understand.
His master’s voice came.
“I see now that the capture of Sinopus was a mistake in the larger and longer-term strategic picture.”
Well, I did try to tell you.
He could never really come out and say that, of course. Deference was an adaptation he had made second nature long ago, for Verescens had originally been just another barbarian mercenary. Such skills had made his career meteoric while less subtle men had been disposed-of or forgotten and never called upon again.
What a long way we have come, he thought.
“In what way, oh, Great Khan?”
“It was too much, too soon. Unfortunately I never could pass up any real opportunity.” It had probably been just enough to set the others thinking.
The taking of Sinopus had revealed some part of his intentions before it was really necessary. As to what the enemy might make of it, that varied from place to place—which was an assumption fraught with imponderables.
He saw that now.
Sinopus could have been taken later, in early spring, using the exact same strategy of bribing the nobles, fomenting riot and unrest, and then offering a protectorate that quickly turned into political and economic dominance—all for the good of the people of Sinopus. Their fleet might have been waiting, poised to strike at the first signs of break-up. They had chosen to do it another way.
A ferret of a man, the bastard son of the former khan now kept the throne warm for them, in spite of the obvious risks. Such fools were everywhere, thought Verescens with contempt. His time would come all too soon.
There were other considerations, but then there were always other considerations.
Having taken the place, the bulk of the troops had been withdrawn, leaving a substantial garrison. The rest could now be used elsewhere when spring rolled around. They would be in place, ready and waiting just a few miles from their start-lines.
The small city state, situated at the northeastern corner of the Great Sea, had been taken by bluff as much as by subterfuge.
Verescens nodded, grinning slightly, reassuring his master that was all a bit of a joke, really.
“Yes, they’ve really got the wind up now, haven’t they?”
Their information, and there was an awful lot of it, was a multi-year compilation from many different sources, diplomatic, covert and public. Sometimes it came right from the mouths of the foreign kings and queens themselves. The number and types of forces that might be arrayed against the Khan, in certain cases as Verescens was fond of calling them—a word that simply did not exist in his native tongue, was known with a fair degree of accuracy.
“According to Lowren, he can call upon ten thousand mounted warriors, and in any paper calculation, he can round up a considerable number of volunteer infantry.”
“What’s your point, Master-General Verescens?”
Verescens nodded at the use of the title, for the Khan and he were not the only ones in the room.
“For one thing, they are just paper calculations, relying only on some rather amateur census numbers. While I am sure that Lowren is not a fool, and that he has some rational appraisal of their abilities, I strongly doubt if they’re half as good as our regular troops.” In most circumstances, he was thinking, but the Great One knows that too.
Most of our troops. The most highly-trained would jump off and lead the attacks on several fronts. The most newly-levied would still be training, or at best on garrison duty, patrolling the roads for thousands of miles, protecting official convoys. The list went on, and the need for large numbers of what were essentially just warm bodies, was still pressing even in the event of a quick campaign in the face of a demoralized enemy.
As for the speed at which the Hordesmen could gobble up territory, that was all guesswork.
This put it essentially in the laps of the gods.
They stood in a thin circle, officers in a rainbow of colors and uniforms, eyes and ears agog as their greatest general and the Khan went through yet another map exercise for the benefit of senior commanders. Each raised points, and each raised objections, their words going back and forth as the stalked about the table, here, there, back and forth. Others put in questions and comments, and these were dealt with one at a time, as thoroughly as possible. They took turns playing the demon’s advocate. Most of the points were well known but bore repeating. Their troops would come from a thousand different clans, tribes, nations, and the Khan’s own regular military services. There was a good representative group there today—all regulars, no auxiliaries or barbaric chieftains had been invited. Theirs was but to accept their pay and do what was asked of them; and to observe certain proprieties when in contact with the Khan’s own people or when crossing his territories.
“I think he is overestimating his own abilities. Even if he could put that many men and horses into the field at any one time, which I doubt, they will very quickly melt away.” This was especially true in the case of summer campaigns, and ever more so in the event of a summer siege, where the attackers had no amenities in terms of sanitation, cooking and housing the troops.
They had gone so far as to compose Tables of Attrition, for their own troops and the enemies they expected to encounter. The Horde were fairly competent in all aspects of war and were becoming quite professional in analyzing their victories and defeats.
It was something new in the art of war. Verescens thought it was a bit much bu
t had never said so. There was something to be said for planning, after all. Logistics was everything, something a good general never forgot.
“In my very humble assessment, this represents a negligible force in any conceivable, set-piece battle. This does not take into account engagements on terrain and under conditions which might not be of our own choosing, oh, mighty Khan.”
There was little doubt ten thousand Lemnian troops could do a lot of damage. They might wipe out small or badly-handled detachments of regular Hordesmen, somewhere off on their own and without support.
“Very well.”
“Yes, oh, Great One. But this is not actually my point.”
There was a long sigh from the assembly, on their feet for at least a couple of hours at this point and no end in sight. They were going to war, and would acquit themselves with great honor and gallantry when the time came. Other than that, most of them followed orders, with great enthusiasm in some cases and with some degree of reluctance in others. All they asked was to be pointed at an enemy. Their training and discipline would take care of the rest.
They fully expected to win and their units had the captured enemy standards to prove it. They had lost battles and for the most part survived the experience—there were the dead and maimed, of course, in any battle.
There, but for the grace of the gods go I...
“Go on.” There was the fine glint of humor in Jumalak’s eyes, for the rather more ordinary generals all knew that Verescens had never lost a battle save one—which he had once said was more than enough for him.
“Lowren.”
“Lowren has lost a few battles over the years.”
“Lowren and Eleanora...together now, somehow, in a way or manner, which we do not fully understand. She is great friends with the Heloi, and even Lowren has been making the rounds of his neighbor’s courts.”
“And this troubles you?” If his general could be somewhat maddeningly intuitive at times, his master was never very far behind him.
The Khan strolled over and took his seat again.
“Oh, Great One. It is just that other than the Emperor himself...those two are the only ones to demonstrate any real imagination in the governing of their own kingdoms. Lowren’s division of his forces at the Battle of the Otrapopa River was dead against all military doctrine—and it was also brilliant, and quite frankly resulted in the massacre and dispersal of the Ju’upiano.”
The Lemni were known for mounted bowmen and intrepid infantry, untrained in large formations and yet highly-skilled in the arts of various weapons. According to reports, they would go into battle with swords, small bucklers, long-bows, crossbows, pikes, spears, slings, everything in the barbarian military inventory save the use of poisoned arrows. Every second archer, especially the crossbowmen, had a boy, or pavisor, to carry a pavis, a tall, square-cut wooden shield propped up with another big stake. The kid or perhaps a lesser-skilled adult would be loading spare bows just as fast as he could while the senior archer sniped away.
They would poison a well or burn a village in a heartbeat he expected, to deny it to an immediate enemy force.
To give them proper credit, they didn’t seem to engage in the mass executions of prisoners, and yet they weren’t above burning the crops and driving off all stock, or killing any suspicious males of military age that they came across—it was said they detested their own deserters as well. In a vague sense the Khan wondered why the Lemni would even come into the equation. The concern over Windermere was another matter, as everyone agreed on the economic basis for that aspect of their plan. The Lemni were subsistence farmers, herdsmen and fishermen. Any surplus they had from year to year barely met the combined needs of trade, a primitive kind of nation-building (they had to give Lowren full credit for that) and the most minimal taxation.
There would be precious little left over for military preparations.
And yet in war, the very smallest detail often matters the most—for want of a nail a shoe was lot, and so on, and so forth.
After some thought, the Great Khan took a good breath and sat up straighter in his chair.
“Very well. Thank you, gentlemen. You are dismissed.”
A rumble of grateful conversation lifted from the crowd of generals and admirals in the room and then the Khan was left alone with Verescens. The filtered out, still muttering over what they had seen and heard and of course their own role in it.
They were wondering how they would fare.
The general, used to the routine, waited for the last one to leave. The stone-faced guards closed the doors to the war room again. The two white-clad men froze into their unnatural position, spears held at the ready.
“So, General. What do you think? What should we do?”
“About what, oh, Khan?”
“About Lowren and Eleanora—and this Theodelinda person, and whoever she plans to marry.”
“My personal suggestion, uttered with the deepest respect, my master, is that we should do nothing.”
“Nothing!”
Verescens nodded gravely, then bowed deeply in spite of slightly-arthritic knees and an aching lower back.
“We can’t do that.” His lord and master smiled his most charming smile. “Can we?”
“Certainly we can. We can simply ignore it, in fact that is our wisest course.”
“And why do you say that?”
“Because I fear this Lowren—and I think I fear this Queen even more, oh, Great One.”
Jumalak thought about it. Why give them any more credit than they had before?
Don’t give them the satisfaction, in other words.
“We might observe them closely, oh, Khan.”
“Because she’s giving her own cousin to this henchman of Lowren’s?”
His face went hard, as if suddenly petrified by the dry desert wind. A pleasing picture entered his mind. A captive Theodelinda was a tempting bargaining chip. He had a few henchmen of his own, and some of them would truly appreciate such an honorable gift.
“Something like that. The problem is that I don’t understand their thinking, oh, Great One. More than anything I don’t like surprises from our enemies, and just when we are so close to being finally ready.”
Jumalak fell silent. He could reinforce Sinopus, and probably would in spite of Verescens’ insistence that it wasn’t decisively important. It wasn’t the general’s city, or his empire for that matter, to lose.
But to just sit there and do nothing, in the face of what might be a carefully-calculated insult, was intolerable to one of his disposition.
As to what other moves they might make, Jumalak really couldn’t see anything on the board that hadn’t already been foreseen, taken into account, and ultimately provided-for.
The waiting was always going to be the worst.
And, as Verescens had put it in his own humble, forcible eloquence—I do not like surprises.
“Verescens.”
“Yes, oh, Khan?”
“When does the northern part of the Great Sea freeze, anyways?”
Chapter Fourteen
Jumalak was pleased to be able to reinforce Sinopus before the big freeze-up made further movements by sea impossible.
His spies were everywhere. Their reports were interesting if not entirely unexpected as to contents.
Kings and princes and lesser khans, queens and the meanest tribes with any vestige of pride or liberty remaining to them were in ferment. Couriers, post riders, diplomats and ambassadors went back and forth. Spies were said to be everywhere, and more than one man or woman had already lost their lives on mere accusation. Fears and feelings were running all too high. The truth was that nothing much had happened since Sinopus fell under the sway of the Great One.
The Heloi had signed a defensive pact with Windermere, and stated their neutrality in any conflict in the region that did not directly affect their long-established and equally well-known interests.
The Sicurri were encamped on the northeastern borders of
Lowren’s Lemnian kingdom. They moved about every ten or fifteen years, and this was about the southern end of their range. The vassal tribes and related bodies of barbarians were surprisingly peaceful. Their normal pattern of raiding back and forth amongst themselves, especially in winter, was somehow held in abeyance.
The enemy had their spies as well. The problem with barbarians was their propensity for selling their swords to the highest bidder. There had been cases of defections, where a band of light, mounted auxiliaries had taken their pay, and ridden off. This was the unfortunate result of minor corruption among some of his officials, who had been rather summarily punished for the indiscretion.
It was too late, of course, but it sent a certain message to other officials.
To let their pay get too far into arrears was their first mistake, Jumalak considered. But to pay it all off in one go was another—they were all up to date and they had an end date in their articles of service. If they chose not to re-up, there was little he could do about it without it being noticed. Simply to make up the numbers, they would be relying heavily on native troops, and tributary bands sent by minor kings, and then there were the professional mercenaries. Not all of them were illiterate barbarians, either. They could and did send letters home.
At this point in time, any sort of notice was unfavorable. All the Khan’s officers could do was to smile, wave goodbye, and chalk it up to experience. It was always unwise to send barbarian troops into battle against their brothers and cousins. The usual remedy was to put them up against some other foe, a blood enemy if possible or merely a foreign race they had never heard of.
With no moral objections either way, not going up against their own tribesmen, they usually acquitted themselves well enough. The lure of plunder and adventure, beauteous slaves and a fistful of gold pieces was plenty of motivation for the typical barbarian auxiliary soldier. The money was one thing and making a name for oneself as a warrior was another.
The Conqueror Page 13
