Great Kings' War

by John F. Carr

  Kalvan decided he'd better mount up and show himself, even if it meant withdrawing a short distance. Otherwise, someone would be sure to start a rumor that the Great King was dead or captured or missing or carried off by ravens—or something. He could imagine a number of consequences of such a rumor, all of them unpleasant.

  It took less than fifteen minutes for the Ktethroni to halt the Sacred Squares and another fifteen to drive them back downhill. By the time they'd done that, Phrames was hitting the Squares from the rear. Kalvan waited until he saw that Phrames had thickened up his cavalry cordon enough to block any attempts to break out, then ordered the trumpeters to ride down with their helmets under a sword and sound for a parley.

  Ptosphes stared.

  "They can't get away, and I suspect their captains know it," Kalvan said. "I'll offer reasonable terms—honorable ransoms for the nobles and captains, good treatment for the men, an escort out of Hostigi territory after they're disarmed. It will be as big a victory as killing them all—and cheaper, too."

  "Shouldn't we wait until the prisoner guards return?"

  That would give the Army of Hos-Hostigos fresh fireseed, which it desperately needed, and six or seven hundred fresh cavalry, which it needed almost as badly. The victory was going to be sweet, but tallying the losses—well, many more victories this costly and there wouldn't be an Army.

  "If we wait," Kalvan said, "the rain will hit and that may give the Ktemnoi ideas about trying to break out with cold steel, oath or no oath. The sky over the Bald Eagles had turned black in the last half hour, and it was no longer just his weary imagination that he saw lightning flashes.

  Ptosphes signed. "Very well. If you've gone mad, I'll pretend to go mad along with you so that people won't talk."

  "Or they may think the Great King's madness is catching," he replied. Kalvan couldn't admit now or perhaps ever his real reason for the parley. He didn't want to kill any more of these men. They were too good—too much like the army he wanted to lead someday, that he would have to lead someday if he was to survive here-and-now. Already, almost a third of their number were casualties and with here-and-now medicine in its infancy most of the seriously wounded would die shortly.

  Down the hill, bills and muskets were being lowered and helmets hoisted, while someone lowered a pole that held a Square's banner. Kalvan and Ptosphes took off their helmets and lifted them on their swords, then gathered Major Nicomoth and the escort troop of the Royal Horseguards and rode down the hill.

  A large man in three-quarter armor that showed fine workmanship under the powder smoke rode out to greet them.

  "Prince Anaxon...?"

  The man's face seemed to work briefly at the mention of that name. "No, he's missing. He led the first charge..."

  "What about Prince Anaphon, his brother?" Kalvan asked.

  "Wounded...a bad leg wound. One of our Uncle Wolf's is treating him. Our Great King will be heartsick when he learns that his brave nephews—" He shut up, as he suddenly realized what he was saying. "I am Baron Phygron, Captain-General of the Sacred Square of Sephrax and Marshal of the Second Great Square of Hos-Ktemnos. Do you speak for the ruler of Hos-Hostigos?"

  Kalvan grinned and held up his signet ring, ignoring Ptosphes and Nicomoth's startled gasps. "I am the Great King of Hos-Hostigos. In my Own name and that of the Princes, nobles, subjects and peoples allied with me in the defense of the True Gods, I offer you terms."

  Baron Phygron swallowed and pushed up his visor. "May I hear those terms, Sir Kalvan?"

  "The correct term of address is 'Your Majesty,'" Prince Ptosphes added with steel in his voice.

  Kalvan nodded. "If I am not 'Your Majesty,' then obviously I can't be the Great King of Hos-Hostigos. If you are going to argue over names, we shall have no time to discuss more important matters, such as the surrender of your Squares. I assure you that there is no other alternative for them but complete annihilation."

  Phygron looked like a man who wished the earth would open up and swallow him. "I do not admit that. But, King—I mean, Your Majesty—"

  A musket blasted forth out of the Ktemnoi ranks, followed by two others. Major Nicomoth twisted toward Kalvan, one eye staring, the other replaced by a red-rimmed hole. Then he toppled from his saddle.

  Kalvan heard shouts of "Treachery!" and "Down Styphon!" from the Hostigi lines, then another shout:

  "They've killed the King!"

  There the fat was in the fire, or would be if he didn't get back uphill and show those damned fools that he was still alive. In the twilight before an oncoming storm it was an easy mistake for tired men to confuse Nicomoth for their Great King, since he and Nicomoth were not only about the same size and wearing similar armor but were now riding similar horses. If a king was going to go gallivanting into battle like a junior officer, it only made sense not to wear gilded armor and plumes to attract enemy fire.

  Sometimes it could lead to problems.

  Kalvan turned his mount and dug in his spurs. As he did, Baron Phygron clutched at his chest as three bullets punched through his armor—rifle bullets, they had to be, to be accurate at this range! He was going to have to speak to Verkan about discipline among the Mounted Rifles...

  If I get back to Hostigi lines alive, that is. The Ktemnoi were cursing, shaking their fists and drawing swords. Kalvan and Ptosphes waited until the Horseguards were on the move, put their heads down and their heels in, and then galloped up the hill. At any moment Kalvan expected to feel a bullet smash into his back, or at least into his horse. Surprisingly, they reached their own lines in one piece, with less than a dozen Horseguard missing.

  This, in Kalvan's mind, exonerated the Ktemnoi, although he doubted his generals—much less his common soldiers—would see it that way. To their minds it was clear-cut treachery and someone would have to pay. Kalvan was afraid it was going to be the wrong someone.

  As they reined in, a heavy gun fired, followed closely by the distant rumble of thunder. Then the smoothbores started up again, an irregular spattering from the Ktemnoi as they desperately let fly, followed by solid volleys from the Hostigi. He suspected the lull in the fighting had allowed more fireseed to be brought up to the front lines...

  Kalvan closed his eyes and wished he could close his ears to screams of dying men and horses. "Dralm-damnit!"

  Ptosphes gripped his arm. "Kalvan, it was my fault, not yours. I should never have allowed you to approach the Ktemnoi battle line. It was my duty to parlay with the Ktemnoi—"

  Kalvan shook his head. "It's not your fault. I jumped the gun! I wanted to end the slaughter. I wasn't even thinking about assassins wearing Ktemnoi uniforms. Maybe Styphon's Own Guard salted among the Squares to maintain discipline. When Phygron identified me, they saw an opportunity."

  "Still, I should have stopped you, Your Majesty." Ptosphes looked even more down in the mouth than usual. "If I hadn't been thinking about my loss—"

  "No. Forget it, father. I'm sure they would have recognized me—or you—sooner or later." Kalvan wasn't at all sure of the truth of those words, but he needed to switch Ptosphes off from this train of thought or he'd soon be blaming himself for every death on the battlefield. And there were going to be a lot of them after this snafu played itself out.

  Side by side, they rode back toward the Great Battery.

  II

  The moon came out just after Verkan Vall sighted the Mounted Rifles' campfires. Trust my men to be as good at scrounging little comforts such as dry wood as at fighting or at caring for their dead and wounded. In the far distance he could hear the popping of smoothbores; it sounded like the shots were coming from the Grove of the Badger King. Somebody was mopping up the last of the Knights' light cavalry. As long as they didn't call on the Mounted Rifles for backup, he was happy to leave them to their work.

  He rode slowly toward the fires, hoping the moonlight would keep his horse from stepping on dead bodies even if it did not do anything about his exhaustion. He felt that he needed about a week's uninterrupted
sleep, preferably with Dalla—except that then it wouldn't be uninterrupted...

  A sentry challenged him. "Halt! Who's there?"

  "Colonel Verkan of the Mounted Rifles."

  The man looked at him close up, nodded his head, saying, "Pass, Colonel."

  It won't be long before we'll be needing codes and passwords, Verkan thought as he rode into the firelight. The faces it displayed were almost as dead as those he'd seen on the corpses, except for the red-rimmed eyes and the slowly working jaws as they munched salt pork and hard cheese. Someone took his horse's bridle and two other someones helped him dismount, which saved him the embarrassment of falling flat on his face.

  Neither firelight nor moonlight lit the open ground between the foot of the slope and the woods. Verkan was just as happy about that. Before nightfall he'd seen enough of that field to last him a thousand-year lifetime. For hundreds of yards a man could walk from body to body without ever touching the muddy ground. Six thousand of the Sacred Squares lay there; about a third as many had escaped, including the Ktemnoi Royal Princes. According to one of his agents with the Holy Host—despite rumors to the contrary—both the Princes were still alive. Another fifteen hundred Ktemnoi had been taken prisoner after the Hostigi had worked off their fury at the treachery and both sides were too exhausted to lift their weapons in the downpour.

  That was only the beginning of the casualty list for the Holy Host: three thousand of Styphon's Own Guard dead to a man (the Hostigi had left no wounded alive, nor taken any of Styphon's Red Hand prisoners), over three thousand Order Foot, a thousand to fifteen hundred Zarthani Knights, most of Leonnestros' Pistoleers and Royal Guard (along with Leonnestros himself), thousands of mercenaries dead and two thousand Holy Warriors who would never again fight for Styphon or anyone else.

  Nor were all the bodies down there Styphoni—of course.

  Half the Mounted Riflemen were casualties, close to two-thirds of Harmakros' Army of Observation, half of Phrames' troopers. Count Euphrades of Ulthor who'd charged a little too far, all his plots and schemes now forever beyond the reach even of hypno-truth drugs, unless one encountered him in his next incarnation. Thousands of Ptosphes' men, and far too many of the Hostigi regular infantry. Verkan recalled, toward the last the standards of five regiments flying over a body of men hardly large enough to make two. Much of the fighting nobility of Ulthor, Nyklos, Sashta and Sask were dead or wounded, and as for the Nostori—Verkan doubted there was enough left of the cavalry, infantry and militia put together to make a single respectable battalion.

  Eleven or twelve thousand Hostigi casualties was the estimate Verkan had heard, and it matched his own. Many of the wounded would not last a ten-day. Too many more such victories and Kalvan would come to ruin; no matter how many more opponents he smashed as thoroughly as he'd crushed the Holy Host and the Harphaxi before them. The Styphoni casualties might run to twenty thousand dead, wounded or missing—with another eight thousand taken prisoner. Some of the wounded would recover, but still Soton would be lucky to take a third of the Host he'd taken north with him back to Hos-Ktemnos!

  And they would get away; the Hostigi were not only exhausted, but very nearly out of fireseed. In fact, Hos-Hostigos was practically where Old Hostigos had been pre-Kalvan—not enough fireseed in the entire Princedom to load all the artillery at once.

  Great King Cleitharses the Scholar would have his sons back, but not his High Marshal or much else of what he'd sent north. Cleitharses would probably throw a royal snit, and Styphon's House's support within Hos-Ktemnos would be diminished and shaken—especially when the butcher's bill of Phyrax became public knowledge. He and his Princes would certainly have no illusions that making war on behalf of Styphon's House was a cheap way to win friends in the Inner Circle or annex new territory.

  Nor Verkan thought would there were be many smiles in the Inner Circle when that news arrived.

  Over the crackling of the fire and the distant moans of the dying, Verkan heard a horse approaching. Kalvan or a messenger, probably. He forced himself to his feet, saw the rider take shape at the edges of the firelight, and then noticed that both mount and rider seemed oddly shrunken. The rider reined in and Verkan recognized young Aspasthar.

  "Good evening, Colonel Verkan," the boy said. "I bear a message for the Great King. Do you know where he is?"

  "Out there, somewhere," Verkan said, pointing along the ridge. He'd last seen Kalvan riding that way and hadn't seen him riding back, although it would have been easy to miss a whole regiment in the darkness before the moon came out. "If you'll tell me what the message it, I'll carry it. You don't want to be riding around in the dark on that pony by yourself."

  Too late, Verkan realized he'd just mortally insulted the lad. Aspasthar bristled like a cat with its fur stroked the wrong way. "It is a message for the Great King's ears alone, Colonel. I cannot entrust it—"

  Verkan felt his stomach drop to the level of his bootsoles. There was only one message he could think of that would be for Kalvan's ears only, and he'd be damned if his friend was going to learn about his wife's death from some pipsqueak—

  Aspasthar underestimated the speed of Verkan's speed and the length of his arms; well, he wasn't the first to make that mistake. Suddenly the page found himself hauled from the saddle and dangling with his collar firmly griped in two strong hands and his feet well clear of the ground. He kicked futilely at Verkan's shins, then used a number of words that suggested the boy had been associating with too many cavalry troopers.

  Verkan waited until the lad ran out of breath, conscious of the snickers of the Riflemen, and not quite sure he wasn't making an awful fool of himself. "Let's compromise, Aspasthar. You tell me the message privately and I'll ride with you to find the Great King."

  The peace offering fell flat. The boy took a deep breath and shouted: "Colonel Verkan has no honor, but his brave Riflemen do, so I will tell them. Great Queen Rylla is safe and well and delivered of a daughter!"

  The Riflemen cheered.

  Verkan's hands opened by sheer reflex, dropping Aspasthar to the ground. He bounced up in a moment, grinning impudently and bushing off his trousers. Verkan stood stiffly, now sure that he'd made a fool of himself, then was cheering along with everyone else. Someone started beating a drum, two or three men leaped to their feet and started a Sastragathi war dance, a few soldiers fired their guns into the air, someone else began to sing Marching Through Harphax in a voice that had to be drunk with fatigue because there wasn't anything stronger than water within miles—

  "Long live Queen Rylla and the Princess of Hostigos!" shouted Verkan. He heard the cheering taken up as the word spread, and suddenly he felt as if he could ride twenty miles and fight another battle at the end of the ride. He knew the feeling was purely an adrenaline fantasy, but he did think his new strength might last long enough to find Kalvan.

  "Aspasthar, if you don't mind the company of a man without honor—"

  The lad bowed with positively courtly grace. "I have cast doubts on my own honor by doubting yours, Colonel." Then he was wide-eyed and eager again. "Don't worry about Redpoll, Colonel. He's very sure-footed."

  III

  The musketry was dying down as Harmakros' irregulars drove out the last of the Zarthani Knights' auxiliary horse-archers, the rearguard of the Holy Host. So far Kalvan could see only two or three small fires in the village; the heavy rain had soaked the thatch and shingles enough so that they would not burn easily. Not that either side was actually trying to set the village on fire, although the Ruthani mounted bowmen were devilishly hard to kill. Still, they were only fighting to give the survivors of the Holy Host a head start, while Harmakros was mostly trying to keep them from returning to Phyrax Field.

  Torches glowed on the battlefield itself, where the Hostigi search parties were collecting enemy wounded. They also had orders to keep away the local peasantry until the fallen weapons and armor were gathered up, but so far the peasants didn't appear to be a problem. Maybe the sheer size and
slaughter of the battle had scared them away; the usual here-and-now battle involved fewer men than were contained in one of the wings of either of today's two armies.

  Against the torchlight Kalvan could see a rider making his way up the ridge. As he reached the crest, Kalvan recognized Phrames, undoing his red scarf. That scarf had been one of Rylla's name-day gifts to Phrames; on any other man it might have been a calculated insult to Kalvan, but on Phrames it was a symbol of his loyalty to his Great Queen.

  "Well done, Phrames. In another moon you can have Rylla embroider the arms of Beshta on that scarf." Kalvan's mind shied away from the thought that even now there might not be any Rylla.

  The silence was so long that Kalvan wondered if perhaps he'd overestimated the wits Phrames had left after today's fighting. The moon was disappearing again and another thunderstorm seemed to be building in the southwest, so he couldn't make out the Count's expression.

  Then he heard Phrames clear his throat. "Your Majesty—Kalvan. I—I am your servant in—all things. Then a soft laugh. "But don't you think this is selling the colt before the mare has even been brought to stud?"

  "No. We are going to have to remove Balthar's head—if it is still on his shoulders. We haven't found his body, and most of the Beshtans ran like the blazes as soon as it was safe to do so. I suspect he'll be giving Our Royal Executioner some business, and all his kin and ministers—"

  "Don't forget his tax gatherers."

  "Especially his tax collectors. That means nobody of the House of Beshta left except his brother Balthames, who is going to have to remain content with Sashta, or he'll join his brother. That leaves the Princedom of Beshta vacant, and if there's anybody else who deserves it more, I'd like to hear who you think he is—"