Kingmaker

by Rob Preece

  "We need to make them doubt the wisdom of their eyes and the senses of their mages,” Mark argued. “Here's how Lee did it.” He told them the epic tale of Chancellorsville and Lee's great victory.

  "This Lee,” Sergius mused. “His forces prevailed and he became King?"

  "Not exactly.” Mark looked uncomfortable. “He ended up getting beat. But he won that battle. In the world Ellie and I came from, people still study his tactics."

  "I would have felt better if he had become King,” Sergius said. “Still, let's hear how you would use these Lee tricks in our own desperate hour."

  Mark outlined his plan and Ellie couldn't help admitting it was clever. But was it too clever? And would it matter? No matter how well Sergius's army marched and how completely it fooled its enemy, the fact remained that either the garrison or Sullivan's field army, alone, had more than enough men to completely destroy everything that Sergius could bring to the battle.

  Arnold, of course, took objection with the dishonorable nature of fooling the enemy, but his complaints were growing increasingly perfunctory. Arnold might want to be honorable but even he didn't want to be dead.

  It was late afternoon by the time Sergius committed to the plan and allowed Mark to lay out the order of battle. Then the army packed.

  The sun was near the horizon when they marched out. They left behind only a thin screen of pikemen and a couple of dozen musketeers to defend their camp and most of their supplies.

  The two hundred men they left might be able to hold their camp against an aggressive troop of Girl Scouts, but they wouldn't have a chance in the world against a well-armed garrison of several-thousand professional soldiers.

  From the curses they called out to the departing troops, they knew they were the sacrifices and didn't like it.

  * * * *

  Dinan buzzed into activity before Sergius's army had even cleared the camp. Mark's plan depended, though, on saner heads prevailing—that Sullivan's wouldn't allow the garrison force to sally until the next morning. Surely they'd want Sergius's army to be well away, unable to turn around and reinforce the small guard. And night attacks too often backfire. Mark's plan depended on Sullivan doing the logical thing.

  The army wasn't happy. They were leaving a good chunk of the supplies they'd captured, marching to meet a group that outnumbered them by three to one, and leaving an enemy behind them that could chow down on the few men they left and come after them almost without slowing down.

  Still, the sergeants were at their loudest and most forceful and they managed to get a bit of cheering from soldiers threatened with dismemberment if they didn't shake a leg and look happy.

  The army marched on for about two hours after sunset, and then most of them turned around and marched back.

  They got some more heartfelt cheers from the turn. Their plan was pretty obvious to the soldiers. Sullivan's garrison would march out expecting to find only the remnants of the army and would, instead, hit the entire force. With luck, they'd be surprised. With luck and a few miracles, they might be defeated. After all, surprise or not, they still outnumbered Sergius's troops by more than two to one.

  The sergeants made sure the cheers died quickly and then enforced silence. About twenty of the soldiers who couldn't take a warning and shut up were clouted on the head and left behind.

  Ellie wasn't as happy about the situation as most of the soldiers. Robert E. Lee notwithstanding, Mark's plan essentially invited their enemy to attack. It might be the only way they could survive but that didn't make it any less dangerous.

  A few minutes after the army's about-face, Lawgrave nodded to her. They were out of sight of Sullivan's watching eyes, but his mage's scrying could reach much further. The plan would fail if the mages guessed what they'd done.

  She dismounted her horse, tied it to the wagon that Lawgrave traveled in, and then clambered in with him. He'd set a couple of boards in front of him and already had his stones arranged and in play but there was room for hers as well.

  She shook the stones from her mother's velvet bag while Lawgrave set a roughly drawn map in front of her.

  "Set the first marker here.” Lawgrave pointed to a spot on the map.

  Ellie nodded, established her wards and focus, and then slowly inched the bit of military fabric onto the spot Lawgrave indicated. The wool scrap smoldered, then turned to ashes.

  Despite the chill of the night, she was sweating by the time she'd placed the first token. Lawgrave had first taught her illusion that afternoon and she wasn't very good at it. But Lawgrave was busy creating an entire bubble of protection over a pretend army. It was her job to make it look like just a bit of leakage was taking place—that the occasional soldier had strayed from the cloaked column and allowed the Dinan mages to pick him up. Ellie's tokens were bits of fabric, buttons, or broken equipment that had picked up some essence of a particular soldier through contagion. Each had been broken in half. Arnold's knights rode ahead, dropping their half the token near the road toward Sullivan's field army. Ellie's magic imbued the token with the appearance of the person. Contagion, again, passed that appearance to the second half the token wherever Arnold and his gang left them. Similarity brought the map and the actual territory into confluence. It was clever use of magical logic, but it was exhausting.

  "Now here."

  She recast the wards, the focus, and slowly eased another scrap of fabric into place. With a great deal of luck, a mage in Dinan would see what they wanted him to see—a warded soldier continuing the march they'd started that afternoon.

  Arnold had been brought up with the certainty that heavy cavalry was the soul of the battle. He'd protested against being sent away from Mark's trap. But when Sergius had finally agreed to the plan, Arnold insisted on doing everything he could to make the feint convincing. So he and the rest of the knights, once more stripped of their armor and heavy weapons, had continued down the road, magically representing their entire army as they strewed bits of fabric, buttons, and other military paraphernalia along the road.

  Ellie lost count of the number of tokens she placed. Each one required a full layout of a pattern, full concentration, and an exhausting snapping of the final object onto the map.

  "Time to camp,” Lawgrave grunted. His voice was a bare croak. Ellie didn't think it was just the pale light cast by the stars that did it. He really had turned a shade of gray.

  "Right.” She had prepared for this but wondered if she still had the strength. Dozens of bits of tent canvas would represent the mythical camp where their mythical army rested. Charcoal stood for the fires. More fabric and buttons stood for the camping soldiers and their sentries.

  Every muscle in Ellie's body protested as she leaned into the pattern, using her entire body weight to press the last bit of canvas down.

  She sagged with relief as it snapped into place, then charred and vanished. For a moment, the vision she'd created washed back on her.

  It was impressive. The non-existent camp consisted of many dozens of tents. It even seemed that she could see the soldiers moving around, caring for their horses, enjoying a bite of food around the fires. The scents of fire, meat, and pine trees filled the air.

  "Good,” Lawgrave nodded. “Don't touch the stones. We'll have to leave them in place until morning. It will continue to drain your strength but you can sleep."

  Sort of. The magic tugged on her, slowed her movements, her thought processes, and filled her with a lethargy that was anything but comfortable.

  She tried to stand and found that she couldn't.

  "I've got a blanket,” Lawgrave said. “Lie down in the wagon. I'll drive the wagon."

  Nobody else in the army would get much sleep that night but Ellie wasn't about to protest. The magic was too draining and she'd be needed in the battle.

  "What about you?"

  "I've got to keep up the shields."

  But he was already exhausted. “Are you sure you can do it?"

  "I must."

  She nodded
. Mark's plan might be their only hope, but it would press every soldier, every mage, every sergeant to their limits and beyond. In Lawgrave's case, he was putting everything into tonight's deception. At best, he would succeed and be worthless the next day, when the real battle raged. She didn't even know what the worst could be. Lawgrave had warned her about overdoing magic but they hadn't really had much time for a real apprenticeship. She didn't know what the consequences of overuse might be.

  She did, though, have an idea of what could happen if Dinan's twenty mages opened up against the camp and there was no magical opposition at all. Whoever got in their way was in a world of hurt.

  * * * *

  The sergeants knew their orders and silently led their men into their assigned areas when they arrived back at the gates of Dinan six hours after they'd left.

  The army was tired from marching. They wouldn't be completely fresh for the battle, but the men seemed to be in high spirits. These were professional soldiers and had plenty of respect for a clever trick.

  A third of the army was detailed about half a mile behind the camp. Another third was assigned to each side of the camp, but behind it creating a U-shaped encampment with the old camp being at the top of the U facing the city. Only the covering force they'd abandoned that afternoon covered the top of the U.

  Ellie noted the placement, then collapsed back into sleep.

  She struggled back to consciousness as the fingers of dawn touched the sky. The wagon she shared with Lawgrave had been pulled around to the right side of the U.

  "You okay?” she asked Lawgrave.

  He didn't answer.

  She looked more closely and saw his hand move a stone a fraction of an inch. His breathing seemed impossibly slow but a pulse beat hard in his forehead.

  She reached over and wiped the sweat from his eyes. She'd thought he was a terrible man when she'd first met him but now he didn't look frightening at all. He looked old and tired.

  "They're coming."

  Ellie recognized Dafed's voice and climbed out of the wagon to check on the situation.

  Sergius was having second thoughts. “They'll overrun our camp. Shouldn't we bring everyone up? We have prepared positions in the camp. Our defenses here are terrible."

  Mark simply shrugged. “It's too late to change the plan. Besides, if we rushed forward, they'd either push their way through or return to the city. Either way we wouldn't hurt them.

  "Sullivan is a capable general and his captains have fought more battles than everyone in this army put together. We can't count on him being completely stupid."

  Ellie kept her mouth shut. The magic was still draining on her and she felt more than stupid herself so why couldn't their enemy have problems too?

  "Here they come.” A single bugle call came from the nearly abandoned camp.

  As a crescent of the sun cleared the horizon, Dinan's city gates and sally ports swung open.

  Lightly armed footmen scurried out.

  They were expendable, intended to trip any traps that Sergius might have set.

  A couple more bugles sounded in their old camp and the small guard they'd left stirred to life. Nobody had told them the plan before the army had marched off but Ellie was certain they had heard that the army was back. They jogged into place, setting their pikes along the earth walls that guarded the camp.

  Some shouted curses at the Dinan forces and one turned and dropped his trousers.

  "Couple more minutes.” Lawgrave's voice barely reached Ellie although she was only a few feet from where he slumped in the wagon.

  "Hang in there, buddy,” she said.

  After the auxiliary infantry had deployed, Sullivan's knights trotted out.

  Compared to this group of a thousand or more heavy knights, Arnold's small heavy cavalry looked like a punk gang. Their burnished armor gleamed red in the rising sun.

  A group of maybe fifty knights rode toward the camp walls, clearly angered by the soldier who was still mooning them.

  "Drop it now,” Lawgrave breathed. “You've done all you can."

  Ellie reached in and gathered her stones.

  Before, the stones had gone quiescent once she'd completed a casting. Because the camp illusion had been intended to endure, the stones still glowed with energy—energy they drained from her. She had to work to break the pattern.

  She didn't feel any less tired but the constant drain vanished, replaced by the feeling of exhaustion she might get if she had to spar five or six opponents in a row. And she'd done that plenty of times in training. She knew how to suck it up.

  "They'll see the camp breaking. Soldiers packing.” Lawgrave was letting her end her spell but he was maintaining his own.

  "Can't you stop?” she begged him. “You'll kill yourself if you keep this up."

  Lawgrave had always been gaunt but now his skin seemed to adhere directly to bone with no muscle, no flesh in between.

  "Almost. Waiting for pikemen. Sullivan still hasn't committed."

  As Sullivan's knights spurred toward the nearly deserted camp, the soldier on the barricades, someone Ellie now recognized as one of the sergeants who'd competed with Dafed for the right to face her as the army's swords champion, pissed down into the dry ditch in front of their fortified camp.

  He was a good half-mile away but Ellie heard his words as clearly as if they'd been electronically magnified. “I told Lady Aeffan she shouldn't sleep with that donkey. But she wanted a mule for a child."

  One of the knights, on Ellie's guess Lady Aeffan's son, rose in his saddle, lowered his lance, and spurred his horse directly toward the wall, spurring ahead of the lightly armed infantry scouts. A group of his friends followed.

  Ellie wasn't sure what his plan was when he got there. Maybe to ride his massive horse through the earth walls all by himself. It didn't matter, though, because Dafed's buddy had gotten what he wanted.

  The two swivel-guns were hidden in the no-man's land between the city and the camp. Now, at point-blank range, both unloaded at the charging knot of knights.

  More than half of the knights went down instantly. The others quickly turned and fled.

  "Looks like the guys got a little creative,” Mark said. He didn't sound unhappy, though.

  "You don't think they'll decide to abandon the attack?"

  Mark only laughed. “Sullivan is cautious but he's not a complete fool. He knows he can roll over a couple hundred men in the rear guard. And he'll do it because he'll want to trap Sergius. Believe me, if your magic worked, he won't pass up this opportunity.

  Sure enough, Sullivan wasn't going to do that. A vast array of pikemen assembled under the walls of the city, protected by the city's heavy cannon.

  Meanwhile, a group of light cavalry trotted out from one of the sally ports and charged the swivel-guns.

  The guns both got off a couple of shots but the light cavalry was dispersed and took the losses stoically.

  When they got within a hundred feet of the cannon, Sergius's gunmen broke and made a dash for the camp.

  The light cavalry chased them back, firing with long-barreled single-shot pistols and, when they ran too slowly, spearing them with their sabers.

  Only when twenty musketmen stood and fired a volley did the cavalry retreat. They'd done their job, though. They'd cleared the pickets and forward defenses that protected the camp. Ellie could only hope Sergius's men had spiked the swivel-guns before they'd abandoned them.

  Now it was time for the heavy infantry.

  Sullivan's pikemen moved forward like an irresistible force.

  Chapter 10

  Lawgrave's eyes went wild. He tried to move a stone, but the effort was too much for him. He leaned forward, his head smacking into the board that held his pattern. His bright gems scattered.

  Ellie felt the magic backwash like a kick in the gut but Lawgrave got the full dose. He moaned and went limp.

  Whatever he'd concealed from Sullivan's mages was concealed no more.

  In moments, Sullivan's
mages would scry the trap, send their warnings. But surely it would take time before that word got to Sullivan and his generals. By then, she had to hope it would be too late. Now it was up to the soldiers to do their part.

  Ellie didn't think it would be any easier for them than it had been for Lawgrave.

  Sullivan's pikemen marched forward in a concentrated phalanx.

  The camp's guards had lost their two swivel-guns, but they still had the big cannon they'd captured in the forest and they used it to hammer away at the approaching infantry.

  They fired three times before they ran out of time. The first two were solid shot and tore entire columns out of the approaching phalanx. The third, fired in conjunction with the first musketeer volley, was loaded with case shot—a hail of lead pellets each an inch and a half in diameter. Pellets big enough to slice through multiple pikemen, to bounce off the ground and keep moving.

  Ellie forced herself to watch. She was responsible for this death and she couldn't hide from that.

  The pike phalanx shuddered as it took the blow. Dozens of men fell from the ranks. But the phalanx didn't stop. For a hundred years in this alternate dimension, pikemen had been lords of the battle. They knew that they'd be hurt when they marched. But once the pikemen got close, nothing but an even larger group of pikemen could stop them.

  Pikemen toughed it out. They knew they'd get their revenge in the end.

  The camp's guard was mostly pikemen and they had the advantage of the ditch and the earth wall they'd built around the camp. They stabbed down and killed.

  For a few minutes, it looked like a standoff. Ellie knew that wouldn't last.

  Weight matters. Sullivan had too many men. His phalanx began to penetrate.

  Sullivan was a capable general. He waited until that moment of weakness, only then sending his light cavalry around the flanks of the camp. If the small guard didn't retreat, they'd be cut off and cut down.

  One slow blat of bugle and Sergius's men backed away from the camp walls, formed a pike square, and retreated. The square was their best defense against the horsemen. But it was pathetically weak against Sullivan's phalanx.