Great King_s war k-2

by Roland Green

  The mounted men started arguing among themselves as to who should beard Philesteus. Phidestros gripped Snowdrift's saddle with one hand and drew his pocket pistol with the other, then followed his men downstream until the banks were low enough to let everyone climb out. As he moved, he was aware again of the sharp pains in his knee and also of the fresh muck oozing into his boots, not to mention the drying muck on his arms, clothes and skin that was beginning to ripen in the hot morning sun.

  II

  Kalvan was on the bank of the Harph, inspecting the night's haul by the Ulthori raiders. A good quarter of Prince Kestophes' foot soldiers were fishermen, and Kalvan had been sending them across the Harph each night to bring back anything and everything that could float to the east bank. Kalvan had no intention of leaving his river flank vulnerable in case the Harphaxi had a captain with the brains to think of an amphibious landing; he had every intention of being in a position to conduct one himself.

  After a couple of days of Ulthori piracy, the local citizens who hadn't taken to their heels or their boats formed the habit of hauling their watercraft up on shore and hiding them. The Ulthori search parties wandered farther and farther inland, usually burning the boats and making off with everything portable worth carrying down to the Harph. So far they hadn't started burning houses or assaulting civilians, and one reason for the morning inspections was to make clear to them exactly what would happen to them if they did and how little they would like it.

  He was discussing what to do with this morning's pile of loot with the Ulthori commander, when a messenger rode up to tell him that the scouts reported contact with the Harphaxi vanguard.

  The messenger's report was not the clearest that Kalvan had ever heard, even here-and-now, but it was plain that the Heights of Chothros was the key point in the coming battle. Kalvan, Major Nicomoth and the escort of Royal Lifeguards mounted up and rode east. They could have covered the eight miles to the West Gap in half the time, but Nicomoth sent scouts ahead to smoke out ambushes each time trees crept within musket shot of the road.

  Kalvan consoled himself by thinking that this pace at least spared the horses, but he was not in good temper by the time they reached the West Gap, about where New Providence would have been back home. He nearly lost his remaining patience when he saw the entire High Command of the Army of the Harph, with the exception of Verkan, waiting for him, with nobody sure just where the enemy was or how strong. This looked like a good way to lose not only the battle but the war if hostile cavalry suddenly galloped up the Great Harph Road.

  Second thoughts and a second look kept Kalvan's temper under control. Without radio, the corps and regimental commanders had no way to coordinate tactics or pass intelligence except for mounted messengers, who would likely be snapped up by prowling enemy cavalry.

  Also, this Forward Command Post wasn't exactly undefended. Harmakros' Sastragathi were lurking behind every tree, the personal staffs of most of the commanders were still mounted and armed, their regimental and brigade banners flying proudly; a glint of armor around the flank of the low rise hinted at a cavalry regiment or better within easy reach. Kalvan's Lifeguards had joined the staffs by the time he dismounted, and Harmakros' aide had unrolled a map and was pointing out who was where, or at least appeared to be, when he joined the generals.

  The Harphaxi advancing toward the West gap were almost certainly the whole left-flank column of the enemy, possibly fifteen thousand strong. The rest of the Harphaxi should be off farther to the east, probably making for the East Gap north of the village that occupied the site of Christiana.

  "At least that's our best guess at the moment," Hestophes said. "Colonel Verkan has picketed the Heights, and we expect messengers from him within three candles. The other column can't be out of sight from the Heights without being as good as out of today's fighting."

  In this kind of country that was probably the case, particularly for an army with inadequate transport and communications, as well as discipline that hardly deserved the name. In fact, it was possible that the two Harphaxi columns were completely out of supporting distance of each other. Did this give the Hostigi a chance to smash the left column before the right could come to its support?

  A look at the map told Kalvan there was a chance, but not a particularly good one. At the moment the Harphaxi probably had more men close to the West Gap than the Hostigi, if the estimates of the Harphaxi columns' strength were accurate. The Hostigi army was echeloned back as far as Middletown (Lesthos) and down to the Harph, at the Ulthori camp somewhere just below the site of Safe Harbor Dam. To concentrate his troops before the Harphaxi could seize the West Gap would mean grinding, foot-blistering, horse-wearing marches. It also meant a good chance of having to open the battle with a frontal assault on the West Gap, which didn't appeal to Kalvan even if he did have the edge in numbers and many of the Harphaxi were the scourings of every dive and almshouse in Hos-Harphax and Hos-Agrys.

  Not to mention that the currently unlocated or at least out-of-sight Harphaxi right probably contained Styphon's House troops-the fanatical infantry of Styphon's Own Guard, who had not won the name of Styphon's Red Hand for their good knightly behavior-and the cavalry of the Zarthani Knights. Everybody else he was facing, except probably the Harphaxi Royal Army, could be fooled or frightened away. The Styphoni would have to be fought, whenever and wherever they turned up.

  So much for what he shouldn't do. Now for the hard part: What should I do, other than wait for the Harphaxi to make the first move and then react to it? While that wouldn't necessarily cost him the battle, it would probably lose him the chance to make it decisive enough.

  Kalvan lit one of his special stogies with his gold tinderbox, a gift from Rylla, and squatted by the map again, careful not to drop ashes on it. He was mentally composing orders for bringing up the rest of the army when the sound of galloping hooves drew him to his feet. A Mobile Force officer on a thoroughly lathered horse pounded up and hurled himself out of the saddle before his mount had come to a complete stop.

  "Message from Colonel Verkan, Your Majesty. The right column is making for the Middle Gap. The Zarthani Knights are with it. One of our patrols has also seen enemy reinforcements moving from the left column to the right."

  "How many?"

  The officer paused to catch his breath before continuing. "The patrol said at least four thousand, mostly cavalry."

  Kalvan's eyebrows rose. He ignored the fact that his cigar had gone out and bent over the map again. The Middle Gap was north of-what was its name otherwhen? Georgetown?-and the road through it followed roughly State Highway 896 to Strasburg-Mrathos, here-and-now.

  If the estimate of four thousand reinforcements to the column headed for the Middle Gap was correct, that was now the main enemy thrust. For a moment, Kalvan wanted to curse in frustration at the ancient commander's dilemma: can you trust the people you need to send you intelligence when you can't go see for yourself?

  Kalvan decided to trust the report. Dralm-damnit, if he couldn't trust somebody who was probably handpicked by Verkan-whom he did trust-he might as well turn around and march home right now!

  Harmakros traced the Middle Gap road over the Heights with his sword point. "It looks as if somebody in Harphax has heard of flanks, other than horse's or women's."

  Kalvan nodded, then stood up grinning. What he was about to do was a gamble, but less of one than he'd faced last year, and this time he was using his own dice.

  "Hestophes. How many men do you have ready to march for the West Gap?"

  It turned out that Hestophes had about five thousand: the four Royal regiments of foot-the King's Lifeguard, Queen Rylla's Foot and the First and Second Regiments of Foot; the infantry veterans of Old Hostigos; and several companies of first-grade mercenaries.

  "I'll give you a thousand cavalry and twelve guns to add to that. Take the whole force to the West Gap, find the most defensible position that blocks it and defend it."

  "For how long?" The General didn't loo
k perturbed; his young blocky face, still wearing a splotchy beard, was as expressionless as a stiff-upper-lip Englishman's. He still obviously wanted any suicide missions to be clearly labeled as such.

  "Until you've drawn the main weight of the Harphaxi left into trying to push through you," Kalvan said. "Or until there's danger of your retreat being cut off-if that happens first."

  "Done, Your Majesty." Hestophes pulled on his leather gloves and turned to Harmakros. "Duke, if you can give me an escort from your guards, men who were down this way on the spring raids, I'll ride on ahead and have the ground all picked out while the men are coming up."

  "Will twenty be enough?"

  "That should do, if they all have eyes in the back of their heads."

  Even if they did, General Hestophes was going to have his hands full if the enemy came up in force before his men did. Kalvan tried not to think of losing the man who'd stood off a Nostori force ten times his own strength at Narza Gap last year, or of what all the widows and orphans in Hostigos would say if it turned out that he was sending Hestophes' six thousand to their deaths. That was not likely, though. Man for man they were probably the best infantry force ever seen here-and-now, and they weren't supposed to defeat the Harphaxi left outright, just keep its attention while the rest of the Hostigi plan unfolded…

  Harmakros' five thousand cavalry, mostly veterans of the Royal Horse and the Army of Observation, would be stationed on the open ground north of the Heights to watch the Middle Gap and hold it as long as possible. Kalvan would give them a thousand infantry and four guns; the infantry should mostly go up the Heights to reinforce Colonel Verkan and the Mobile Force.

  "If we can make them think the Heights are held in force, so much the better." Harmakros was looking down in the mouth, and Kalvan knew why. "Don't worry. I know your troopers are spoiling for a fight. They'll get one sooner or later, and if it's sooner, it will probably be against the Zarthani Knights. If that's not a big enough fight, I don't know what else I can do for them!

  "Prince Armanes, you will remain here"-Kalvan tapped a point on the Great Harph Road about three miles, or six Zarthani marches, north of Hestophes' most likely position-"and be prepared to move either to support either Hestophes or Harmakros at their request. Any request for help from them shall be treated as if it came from me personally."

  "As Your Majesty commands." Prince Armanes was very much a book soldier, but he wouldn't do anything dangerously stupid as long as you handled him right. His twenty-four hundred Nyklosi were also about the best of the Princely armies, after Hostigos and Sask.

  That took care of somewhat more than half the Army of the Harph, but it tied up the whole enemy army one way or another for long enough to let Kalvan move his remaining eight thousand more or less where they would do the most good-or damage, depending on whose viewpoint you took. Meanwhile, the rough wooded ground, mostly second-growth forest, between the West Gap and the Harph would hide the eight thousand from any scouts less determined than the Zarthani Knights, who would have to fight their way past Harmakros before they could do any good.

  What was George Patton's description of a certain maneuver-"We're going to hold on to them by the nose while we kick them in the pants"? The first pants to be kicked would probably be the Harphaxi left's, already somewhat out at the seat after several hours of frontal assaults on Hestophes. After that, Kalvan intended to play the battle very much by ear, but he would have a good chance to get into the rear of the enemy's main column on the right, and they'd have next to no chance of getting into his rear.

  The thought of rears gave Kalvan a final idea. One of the things the Ulthori had been looting across the Harph was clothing. They'd been mustered into service in what they'd owned as civilians; even when that had been half decent it had been a bit threadbare, and now most of it looked like rags destined for the bins of the new paper mill. Half of the men now looked like Ulthori peasants, except for their Hostigi red scarves and sashes.

  Why not put a few hundred Ulthori in the captured boats and sent them downriver into the Harphaxi rear? Let them loot to their heart's content, looking as much as possible like a peasant uprising. Something every noble feared at the pit of his stomach. Maybe they could spark a real one if he gave them orders to turn captured weapons over to any local peasants who seemed anti-Styphon enough. Maybe, but that would be getting into delicate territory politically; enough for now that they just pretend to be a peasant army and scare the whey out of Philesteus.

  Kalvan tried to think if there was anything more that didn't have to be left to the chance of battle, and decided there wasn't. One of his Princeton history professor's favorite remarks came to mind, a quotation from some Army manual: "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."

  This Battle of the Heights of Chothros would be no exception. The number of things that could still go wrong was rather appalling. The best Kalvan could honestly say was that he'd disaster-proofed the Army of the Harph, given it a damned good chance of victory, and would have to leave the rest to Galzar, Duke Aesthes, Prince Philesteus and plain old-fashioned luck.

  "Very well, gentlemen. I think it's time we stopped talking and prepared to start shooting. Oh, Harmakros!"

  "Your Majesty?"

  "If any of your tame Sastragathi take Prince Philesteus' head as a trophy, don't let them bring it to me!

  FIFTEEN

  I

  "Here they come again," General Hestophes said. He wasn't quite as calm as he was pretending to be; Kalvan noticed that the pipe in his mouth was not only unlit but upside down.

  The new Harphaxi attack seemed to be aimed at what Hestophes called Barn Hill, at the northern end of his position. Six guns and a thousand infantry held the slopes around the half-ruined barn; three thousand more and the cavalry held the saddle stretching diagonally from northwest to southeast. The southeastern anchor of Hestophes' position, where Kalvan now sat on his horse, was referred to as Tavern Hill, for the stone-walled inn that crowned it. Another thousand infantry and the other six cannon held the slopes or crouched behind loopholes knocked in the walls of the tavern itself. The ones in the upper-floor windows and on the roof had an excellent view of the lower slopes of Tavern Hill, strewn with the dead and dying from the first two Harphaxi attacks.

  The third attack looked like about five hundred cavalry and a thousand infantry, wearing yellow sashes and plumes, carrying the flag of Hos-Harphax-a gold double-headed axe surrounded by a circle of eighteen stars on a red field, each star representing one of the princedoms that made up the Great Kingdom of Hos-Harphax. Only the flag was obsolete; more than a third of the stars depicted were now represented within the Army of Hos-Hostigos.

  Most of the infantry were arquebusiers and assorted skirmishers with halberds, poleaxes, bills, glaives and various polearms sticking up at random intervals. Kalvan swore he even saw a long-handled scythe or two! This must have been how it looked when the first Roundheads went up against King Charles, before Cromwell turned them into the New Model Army.

  They were marching raggedly enough, but they were also marching out of the range of the guns on Tavern Hill, with the additional shelter of a fold in the ground topped by a low stone wall.

  Out of the dust behind the cavalry came three Harphaxi gun teams, turning toward the wall with the gunners jumping down from the horses or running up behind. The guns looked to be twelve and eighteen-pounders, great clumsy iron-hooped things that probably weighed more than a Hostigi brass sixteen-pounder and once off their traveling carriages would be about as mobile as the Rock of Gibraltar. However, they could reach the pikemen in Hestophes' center, who would have to stand there in massed formation and take their shot or risk inviting a cavalry charge.

  Correction: they would have had to stand there and take it, except that when Kalvan came up to visit Hestophes he also brought a thirteenth gun. It was the newest of the sixteen-pounders, which Uncle Wolf Tharses had honored with the name Galzar's Teeth.

  "May they be sharp," Hes
tophes said, as he looked back at the gunners digging the big piece into position.

  Kalvan grinned. "I've heard it said that thirteen people at one table is unlucky. I've never heard that thirteen guns on one position is."

  "If so, Your Majesty, it will only be unlucky for the Harphaxi."

  From behind came a shout, Colonel Alkides trying to be respectful to his superiors even when they insisted on standing in his line of fire. The generals and their escorts shifted twenty yards to the left, then another twenty as the gunner shouted even louder. Finally there was a thunderous roar as Galzar's Teeth fired its first shot in action.

  Here-and-now gunners hadn't had good enough field guns to learn the trick of aiming short and letting the shot ricochet into its target. Even if they had, the soft ground at the foot of the rise might have defeated them, the way it had Napoleon's gunners at Waterloo. However, the slight downgrade helped. The sixteen-pound ball fell short but kept rolling fast enough to smash through the stone wall to the right of the enemy guns.

  Stone dust and bits flew. The enemy artillerymen didn't even bother to look up. Mercenaries, undoubtedly-the Harphaxi artillery was even more of a joke than the rest of their army-but a good grade of mercenary. Kalvan mentally noted a need to find out their names and, if they were captured, to try and recruit them.

  The artillery duel went on for a good ten minutes with a minimum of damage on either side. Several Harphaxi shot flew over the mercenary arquebusiers to the left of the First Foot and rolled back down into their ranks. Kalvan saw one damned fool of a new recruit stick out a foot to try stopping one of the rolling shot; a moment later he was on the ground with his foot missing, screaming loudly enough to make his comrades back away. Hestophes looked back at the crew of Galzar's Teeth with a get-your-act-together-now expression on his face.