by Robert Adams
Thoheeks Grahvos nodded. "Yes, Vikos, it sounds exactly of a piece with all else I know of the man. For all of his personal ferocity and his expertise in the leading of armies and the waging of wars for the three kings he served during his lengthy career, still was he ever noted to be just and, when it was possible, merciful to his defeated enemies.
"Strange, I'd just assumed him to be dead, legally murdered by Fahrkos or Zastros, as were the most of his peers. It is indeed good to know that at least one of the better sort survived the long bloodletting. Who was his overlord, anyway? Does anyone here recall? If he'll take the oaths, I can't think of anybody who would make us a better thoheeks then Strahteegos Pahvlos the Warlike."
"And so," concluded old Komees Pahvlos, "when it was become clear to me that these usurping scum, these bareborn squatters, were all determined to not only deny young Ahramos here his lawful patrimony, but to
take his very life as well, were they granted the opportunity, I knew that far stronger measures were required, my lords."
He sighed and shook his show-white head. "Could but a single man do it alone, it were done already. Old I assuredly am—close on to seventy years old—but still am I a warrior fit for the battle line, and my good sword is yet to become a stranger to my hand. But only a strong, disciplined, well-led force will be able to dislodge that foul kakistocracy that presently holds Ahramos' principal city and controls his rightful lands, and due to reverses, I no longer own the wherewithal to hire on men, to equip and mount and supply them with even the bare necessities of warfare.
"The two of us, Ahramos and I, were able to fight our way out of both the palace and the city, but far more than a mere two swordsmen will be required to hack a way back in and see justice done the now-dispossessed son and heir of the late thoheeks. This is why I come."
"I would wager pure gold, Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos," said Thoheeks Grahvos thoughtfully, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger, "that nothing—neither adversity nor your venerable age—has robbed you of a whit of your old and rare abilities to lead armies, plan winning battles and improvise stunning tactics on the spur of the moment any more than those same forces have taken away your skills of swinging sharp steel hard and true.
"I'll be candid: I had meant to hear you out, then ask you to take oaths to the Council and the Confederation and then confirm you the lord of one of the still-vacant thoheekseeahnee, for I trow you'd make a better thoheeks than many another candidate for that rank. I still mean to see you so installed, too.
"But now, fully aware of how vital you still are and how great is our need, I have in mind a better, far more useful task for you, at present."
* * *
Pawl Vawn, Chief of Vawn, sat at a table in the camp quarters of Sub-strahteegos Tomos Gonsalos; with them around the scraps of the just-eaten meal sat Captain Guhsz Hehluh and Captain Thoheeks Portos.
As he filled his cup with the honey wine and passed the decanter on to Portos, the Horseclans commander demanded, "If this Pahvlos is such a slambang strahteegos and all, Portos, how come he didn't tromp you all proper for his king and end it all before it got started?"
"Oh, he did, he assuredly did, my good Pawl," replied Portos in his grave voice, "in the beginning, years ago. I was there, I was a part of that rebel army then, I and my first squadron of horse, and I am here to tell you that he thoroughly trounced us. He nibbled off all the cavalry and the light troops, then smashed the main force with a charge of his war-elephants and his heavy horse, crushed it like a beetle, virtually extirpated a force that had begun the day a third again larger than his own and had drawn itself up on the best stretch of ground with the most natural assets available in that part of the country.
"It required years of effort, after that, and the then-unknown help of the Witchmen to reassemble an army for Zastros to lead against Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos Feelohpohlehmos. That, in the end, we did not have to face him again was an inestimable relief to many a one of us, believe me, my friend."
"Well, why didn't you?" asked Pawl Vawn.
Portos shrugged, toying with his winecup. "By that time, all of the ancient royal line was become extinct and Thoheeks Fahrkos, who seized the crown and the capital, had dismissed the strahteegohee, as they all were hostile toward him. Most of the royal army as then remained had chosen that point to march away with their officers, so that all Fahrkos had when we brought him to bay was his own skimpy personal warband."
"Well, even so," put in Freefighter Captain Guhsz Hehluh, as he doodled with the tip of a calloused forefinger in and around a pool of spilled wine, "before I'm going to put me and my Keebai boys under the orders of some white-bearded doddard, I'll know a bit more about him, if you please . . . and even if you don't, comes to that.
"You Kindred and Ehleenee, you can do what you wants, but if I mislike the sound or the smell of thishere Count Pahvlos, why me and mine, we'll just shoulder our pikes and hike back up north to Kehnooryos Atheenahs and I'll tell High Lord Milo to find us some other fights or sell us our contract back."
But within the space of bare days, Captain Guhsz Hehluh was trumpeting the praises of the newly appointed Grand Strahteegos of the Confederated Thoheekseeahnee of Southern Ehleenohee. Komees Pahvlos and his entourage had ridden out and found the Freefighter pikemen at drill. For almost an hour, he sat his stamping, tail-swishing horse beside Hehluh's in the hot sun, swatting at flies and knowledgeably discussing the inherent strengths and weaknesses of pike formations and the proper marshaling of infantry. At length, Pahvlos had actually dismounted and hunkered down in the dust of the drill field to sketch with a horny finger the initial positions and movements of an intricate maneuver.
"I'd been led to believe he was lots older than he actually is," Hehluh declared to his officers. "He's really not that much older than me, and he's not one of these hidebound bastards that so many Ehleenees are, either. He flat knows the art of war, by damn! Hell, after only the one meeting, I've already learned things from that man."
The Freefighter captain drained off the dregs of his mug and said, "Frahnzwah, you go find us some more beer or cider or wine to drink. The rest of you, clear off the top of this table and I'll show you some of the things our new Grand Strahteegos showed me. Never can tell when I might not be around and one of you may have to take over in the middle of a battle."
After he had watched and evaluated the heterogeneous units which Council had assembled and called its army, Pahvlos closeted himself with Tomos Gonsalos. To begin, he said, "It's basically a^good unit you command here, Lord Tomos, these northern troops. I'd take you on with them just as they are now were you not a mite shy of infantry and a mite oversupplied with cavalry for good balance. In order to rectify the deficiency, I'll be brigading your pikemen—Captain Hehluh's unit—with two more regiments of equal size—all veterans, too, no grass-green peasants and gutter-scrapings more accustomed to pushing plows and brooms than pikes.
"I'm of the opinion that both you and Hehluh will get along well with Lord Captain Bizahros, who commands the reorganized Eighth Foot, from the outset; however, Captain Ahzprinos, leader of the Fifth Foot, also reorganized, is another dish of beans entirely.
"Please understand me, Lord Tomos, Captain Vahrohnos Ahzprinos is a superlative warrior and a fine commander in all ways, else he would not be serving under me in any capacity. But he also is loud, brash, bragadacious and sometimes overbearing to the point of real arrogance. Nonetheless, I can get along with him and I expect my subordinates to do so too."
And so, in the ensuing weeks that stretched into months, the Confederation troops and the two regiments of once-royal foot of the Kingdom of Southern Ehleenohee drilled and marched, drilled and marched, shouldered pikes, grounded pikes, presented pikes at various heights and angles, sloped pikes. They drilled by squad, by file, by platoon, by company. The regiments formed column, they formed lines of battle of all descriptions, from schiltron to porcupine, propelled always by the roll of the drum and the hoarse, savage s
houts of their officers and sergeants. When felt to be ready, they were assembled as brigade in battalion-front line-of-battle and put through even more and more intricate drills under the critical eye of Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos the Warlike himself.
Old Pahvlos had sent, early on, messengers to old friends in the far western lands, requesting that they send fully war-trained elephants, feelahksee and elephant-wise officers, but as yet none of the messengers had returned and no elephants had arrived; therefore, he still was perforce employing the three cows that had been there when he first arrived and took over the army.
Of course, these three were not those huge, looming bull elephants to which he was accustomed and which now were—hopefully—on the march from their western breeding and training grounds, but rather the smaller, usually tuskless beasts that his previous armies always had used only for draught purposes. That the old man had consented to their use in battle at all was a testament to the truly extraordinary control of them exercised by their Horseclans feelahksee, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz and the other two northern barbarians.
The old officer had been astounded at his witnessing of the first drill he ordered for the elephants, that he might judge their degrees of capability. Before his wondering eyes, the three cows rendered performances such as he never before had seen in all his many years of serving with and commanding elephant-equipped armies. Certain of his staff, indeed, had been set to mumbling darkly of sorcery and barbarian witchcraft until he dressed them down in disgust at their unsophisticated superstition.
Still not quite certain that he actually believed that this lot come from off the Sea of Grass by way of Kehnooryos Ehlahs really were capable of mind-reading and telepathy with animals, nonetheless, the komees would freely admit that he was greatly impressed with the Horseclansmen in general, for it had never before been his pleasure to own the services of so splendid and versatile a mounted force as the small squadron of armored horse-archers commanded by Captain Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn.
Traditionally, Southern Kingdom horse had come in three varieties only—the heavy horsemen who were fully armored, usually noblemen or gentlemen and their personal retainers, and fought with sword or axe or similar edge weapons; light horsemen or lancers, who wore half-armor, carried lances and sabers, and rode smaller, lighter, faster and more nimble horses; and irregular cavalry, who were mostly hired barbarians from the borderlands, who equipped, armed and mounted themselves and had often proven far from effective and dependable, save as horse-archers operating from a distance only.
But he was assured by Tomos Gonsalos and by his own instinctual judgments that these Horseclansmen had been, were and would be both dependable and murderously efficient. True, their horses were not so striking of build as those of the traditional heavy horse, but neither were they as modest of proportions as those of the light horse, either. Both Gonsalos and Hehluh—who had served both with and against these Horseclans cavalry—averred that the short, slight men were noted for both their uncanny accuracy with their short, powerful bows and their ferocity in breast-to-breast encounters with their broad, heavy sabers, their axes and their spears.
Due to the horse sizes and the amount of armor that the Horseclansmen wore, Pahvlos classed them in his mind as medium-heavy horse. And it comforted his mind no little that he now possessed a reliable mounted force that could both lay down a dense and accurate loosing of arrows, then case their bows, draw their steel and deliver a hard, effective charge against whatever unit their arrow-rain had weakened.
After talking with various of the older Horseclans warriors and observing them for some weeks, Pahvlos thought he could understand much of how these men and their forefathers had so readily rolled over the armies of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, the Kingdom of Karaleenos, assorted barbarian principalities of the farther north and numerous tribes of mountain barbarians.
As he thought on his mounted troops, Pahvlos could not consider the reinforced squadron of Captain Thoheeks Portos just a normal unit of lancers, either. Equipped and mounted as they all were, they were become, to the old strahteegos' way of thinking, true heavy horse, and he utilized them as such, requesting and eventually receiving of the Council a squadron of old-fashioned Ehleen light-horse lancers to assume the scouting, flank-guarding and messenger functions of the traditional light-horse usage.
To Portos' questions regarding the reassignment of functions of his squadron, Pahvlos replied, "My lord Thoheeks, in my mind, if you dress man up in steel helmet, thigh-length hauberk, mail gauntlets and steel-splinted boots, arm him with lance, saber, light axe and a long shield, then put him up on a sixteen- or seven-teen-hand courser all armored with steel and boiled leather, then that man is no longer a mere lancer. He is become at the very least a medium-heavy horseman. That force you continue to call lancers differ from Lord Pawl Vawn's force only in that his are equipped with bows rather than lances and carry round targes instead of horseman's shields."
Although inordinately pleased with all of his cavalry, both the native and the barbarian, Komees Pahvlos found himself to be not quite certain just what to make of or do with the most singular pikemen of Captain Guhsz Hehluh.
Unless they chanced to be the picked foot-guards of a king or of some other high, powerful, wealthy nobleman, Southern Kingdom pikemen simply were not and had never ever been armored, save for a light cap of stiffened leather and narrow strips of iron, a thick jack of studded leather and a pair of leather gauntlets that in some rare instances had been sewn with metal rings, and only the steadier, more experienced and more dependable front ranks were provided with a body-shield to be erected before them where they knelt or crouched to angle their pikes. And, also traditionally, they had always died in droves in almost all battles whenever push came to shove, and this had always been expected.
But such was not so in the cases of the big, fair-skinned, thick-thewed barbarians commanded by Captain Hehluh. Only the cheek-guards and chin-slings of their helmets were of leather; all of the rest—the crown-bowls, the segmented nape-guards, the adjustable bar-nasals—were of good-quality steel. Their burly bodies were protected to the waist and their bulging arms to a bit below the elbow by padded jacks of canvas to which had been riveted overlapping scales of steel. Both their high-cuffed leather gauntlets and their canvas kilts were thickly sewn with metal rings, and, below steel-plate knee-cops, their shins were protected by splint armor riveted to the legs of their boots.
Moreover, each and every one of these singular pikemen bore a slightly outbowed rectangular shield near two feet wide and about twice that length. On command, each man could quickly unsling that shield, fit it to his arm and raise it above his head in such a way as to over- and underlap those about him and thus provide a covering that would turn an arrowstorm as easily as a roof of baked-clay tiles turned a rainstorm.
Nor were these the only differences in the arming and equipage of the barbarian foot and those of the onetime Southern Kingdom. Aside from his fifteen-foot pike, your traditional pikeman bore no weapons other than a single-edged knife that was, in practice, used mostly for eating purposes. In contrast to this, not a one of Captain Hehluh's pikemen but also bore a heavy double-edged sword that was almost two feet in its sharp-pointed steel blade. Other weapons and the numbers of them seemed to be a matter of personal choice; knives, dirks and daggers of various lengths and sizes were carried, sometimes even short-hafted axes or cleavers, such as could be utilized as tools, hand weapons or missiles.
Even their pikes were different. Ehleen pikes ran thirteen to fifteen feet in the haft, the steel point usually being six to eight inches long, narrow and of a triangular or a square cross-section; ferrules were never of iron or steel, rarely of brass, usually of horn. The pikes of Hehluh's men, however, were much longer to begin—some eighteen feet in the ashwood haft—with a reinforced blade point that was single-edged (so being capable of being used to cut the bridles of riders, for one thing) and a foot or more long, with iron-strip barding that was riveted along the
haft from the base of the point for a good two feet to prevent swords and axes lopping off pikepoints. Ferrules were of wrought iron and nearly as long as the points; however, the overall weight thus added to the weapon was compensated for somewhat by the added balance imparted and by the availability of a last-ditch weapon to be afforded the pikeman by reversing his haft and making use of the blunt iron point.
Burdened as they thus were, Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos had at the outset entertained fully understandable doubts that these overprotected, overequipped, overarmed pikemen would be capable of maintaining the needful pace on the march or in a broad-front pike charge; but those doubts had evaporated after he had put them to it. Those doubts had evaporated to be replaced in his open mind with an intensely troubling set of other doubts.
These new doubts began to breed in him changes of his formerly rock-hard opinions. He began to wonder just why so many generations of his forebears had carelessly, needlessly sacrificed so many other generations of common pikemen with the excuse—now proven patently false—that proper armor and secondary weapons would significantly decrease mobility. Moreover, Captain Bizahros agreed with him and had initiated formal requests for at least basic pieces of armor, real helmets and shortswords for his reorganized Fifth Foot. On the other hand, Captain Ahzprinos did not agree with Pahvlos—flatly, loudly, unequivocally and at very great length citing all of the old, traditional arguments as well as some new-thought ones of his own.
Slowly, the force began to become a true, almost complete, field army as certain specialist units were assembled, trained or hired on. One of Council's traveling recruiters found and sent marching back to Mehseepolis two battalions of light infantry—one of dartmen, one of expert slingers equipped with powerful pole slings. Eeahtrohsee came with their ambulance wagons, bandages, little sharp knives, bone saws and ointments. Artificier and pioneer units were organized and assigned and fully equipped. An experienced quartermaster officer was found and—miracle of miracles for his breed—proved out to be a relatively honest man! They all trickled in—the cooks, the butchers, the smiths, the farriers, the wagoneers and muleskinners, the herders, the bakers and all of them with their assistants and /or apprentices and/or servants and /or slaves. And still no war-elephants arrived.
