by Hugh Cook
'Die yourself!' snarled Watashi, drawing his sword.
In Hearst's hand, the death-stone kicked like a living heart. To use it would mean death, for when the stones of the throne room came alive, the building would collapse. But Miphon, Blackwood and Ohio were safe in the bottles: they would have time to search for the death-stone when they emerged into the ruins where once the city of Selzirk had stood.
And then again -
As Watashi raised his sword to strike, Hearst threw the death-stone. It took Watashi on the forehead. Hearst was drawing his sword even as Watashi fell. Sword to throat, he straddled the unconscious body of Farfalla's son, and challenged her:
'The right words now, madam, or your son is dead.'
Farfalla got to her feet and clapped her hands:
'Leave us. Everybody.'
The throne room emptied, and Farfalla resumed her seat. She was confident - and why not? No kingmaker of the Harvest Plains reached maturity without becoming quick-witted and resourceful. And now what?
Whatever Hearst had expected, he was surprised at what Farfalla did next, which was to recite, in a Trading Tongue translation, two lines of Saba Yavendar's 'Albatross Odyssey':
'Wind to horizon making;
Birds match their wings to its shaping.'
Then Farfalla gestured at the wind-wide open view across the city and out to the open plains, across which the wide waters of the Velvet River snaked from east to west, glittering in the sunshine. It was easy enough to make out the north-south line of the Salt Road, reaching away to far distant horizons.
'It's a hundred and seventy leagues downriver to
Androlmarphos,' said Farfalla. 'But on a fast ship, you can make the downriver journey in comfort in two or three days.'
'My journey lies south,' said Hearst. 'Along the Salt Road. My destination is Drangsturm, and the Castle of Controlling Power. I thought you'd know at least that
much.'
'I do,' said Farfalla. 'And I know the highway's windings make for a long journey. Another seventy marches, at least. On the other hand, from Androlmarphos there's just five hundred leagues of southing by sea; they tell me even a slow ship can make that journey in ten days.'
She was not exaggerating. A ship of any speed could manage fifty leagues a day - at least on the Central Ocean, where there was seldom any shortage of wind.
'Make me no offers,' said Hearst, i'd not trust my life to one of your pretty river boats. Not on the Central Ocean.'
'We don't take galleys to sea,' said Farfalla, 'but there are stout ships in plenty that sail from Androlmarphos. That is what I'd offer you - not just a passage to the south, but a ship entire, with the men to crew it.'
Hearst was tempted, but kept his wits about him, and stepped clear of Watashi, who was starting to recover. Watashi groaned and sat up. Hearst recovered the death-stone.
'What would you demand in return?' said Hearst.
'I'd have you organise the defence of the Harvest Plains against pirates - and against your friend to the north.'
'Alish has been disarmed,' said Hearst. 'I hold the death-stone. We need not worry about him.' And with these words, they began bargaining.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Miphon emerged from the green bottle after three days; Ohio and Blackwood, more cautious, waited for five. All were relieved to find Selzirk had not been destroyed, but more than a little annoyed to find that they would now be delayed while Hearst masterminded the defences of the Harvest Plains.
Nevertheless, they soon found compensations. For Miphon, it was a relief to be no longer travelling; he was able to resume a wizard's true life of study and meditation. For Blackwood, Farfalla's palace offered the solace of solitude, which, in a bustling city like Selzirk, was a considerable privilege indeed.
The rewards for Ohio were rich, as Hearst made him responsible for buying in stone and shipbuilding timber from the Chenameg Kingdom. While Ohio was not exactly corrupt, he found that a certain fraction of the money which passed through his fingers stuck to them -a process which happened so easily that he was almost able to persuade himself it was accidental.
For Hearst, there was an unexpected reward in that Farfalla, a master of Sunoya Dance - a mind/body training system perfected in Selzirk, and unknown to the world at large - was able to teach him physical and mental disciplines which slowly began to give his left hand the bladeskills which had once been possessed by the right.
And so the days passed, with spring becoming summer - and disaster fast approaching.
Hearst's plans for the defence of the Harvest Plains included new military roads, new castles, new ships, a guild of assassins, a courier service, and chains of
watchtowers able to signal with windmill-style vanes during the day and with fire by night. All this cost money, but the Harvest Plains were rich.
Combined with the formation of a militia, the construction of new armouries, and, if necessary, the recruitment of a few legions of mercenaries from the Chenameg Kingdom, Hearst's plan would give the Harvest Plains a strong defence against both the Orfus pirates and more traditional enemies, namely the Rice Empire which lay to the south.
The only thing wrong was that Hearst would never have time to put these plans into effect, because the enemies of the Harvest Plains fully intended to strike before the stone and timber from the east was assembled into castles and ships.
Hearst had spoken of Elkor Alish as being disarmed, but this, of course, was far from the truth. Hearst had spent too long in the company of wizards, and had spent too much time exploring the memories left to him by the wizard Phyphor; he had acquired something of a wizard's contempt for the weapons of men.
Alish was no stranger to the ways of war; his experiences in the Cold West had given him mastery of the mixture of bribery, flattery, fear, diplomacy, brutality and generosity needed to hold together a mercenary army.
The seaport city of Runcorn, complete with its armoury, its treasury and its ships of war, was under his command. Using Prince Comedo as a figurehead, he could pretend when necessary to be a servant of the Favoured Blood. Under his leadership were men from Dybra, Chorst and the Lezconcarnau Plains, eager for a share of the wealth of the Harvest Plains.
Alish was persuaded by necessity, that most unrelenting motivator of men, to make the best use of these resources. During his confrontation with Hearst, Alish had seen Hearst destroy a document summoning the Rovac fleet to Argan. Unfortunately, what Hearst had
destroyed was only a copy - the original ink had been despatched by ship to Rovac the day before Hearst manifested himself in Runcorn.
Alish had no doubt that the Rovac fleet would arrive in due course. Accordingly, it was vital that, as a minimum, he obtained control of the Greater Teeth and the Harvest Plains, as he had boasted of these conquests as if they had already been made.
The Greater Teeth, those cliff-built islands where the Orfus pirates had their lairs, were too strong for Alish to take without help from a death-stone. So he tried diplomacy.
The chief pirate, Menator, proved ready to negotiate. The capture and control of the island of Stokos had stretched his fleet and his manpower to the limit; an alliance would give him a better chance of making the conquests which his own followers, in turn, had already been promised.
And so it was that an alliance was made between these two- warlords who, between them, commanded lands, harbours, northern strongholds, infantry, a substantial body of cavalry from the Lezconcarnau Plains, and a strong fleet.
Menator and Alish, two sagacious and experienced warriors who had both on occasion been bruised by overconfidence, did not simply launch an onslaught against the enemy. Spies told them Hearst was still in Selzirk, which suggested their best move was to capture a city intact and hold its population hostage.
The city which fell to them was Androlmarphos; the garrison commander and other key officials were bribed, the garrison itself incapacitated by poisoned food, and the city walls commanded by marauders from the
sea before the general population had time to realise they were under attack.
Following the capture of the city, an orgy of rape, looting and torture might reasonably have been expected, but nothing of the sort took place. Alish and
Menator restrained their men. Apart from their desire not to compromise the hostage-value of the city, they did not want to see it casually destroyed as they were now empire builders in their own right.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Those in the kingmaker's party reined in their horses by the riverbank.
'We can ride no further, unless we care to make the animals swim the river,' said Farfalla. 'But, as you see, there are small boats that will take us on from here.'
'My lady,' said Watashi. it would be dangerous for you to go any further.'
'We're in danger every time we step outdoors,' said Farfalla. 'The sky might fall on us.'
'My lady -'
'But you can run ahead of us and hold it up with a stick, if you're worried,' said Farfalla. And that was the end of that.
They crossed the river in coracles, each of which could hold four people. They dragged the coracles ashore in the narrow end of a 'V made by two diverging branches of the river. A thousand paces to the west was an impressive burial mound; five hundred paces south of the mound was a pyramid, and another five hundred paces south of the pyramid ran the southern branch of the 'V, beyond which was marshland.
'Let's walk to that mound,' said Hearst.
it's a long way,' said Watashi, with a glance at Farfalla.
it's only half a league,' said Farfalla. 'And I'm not made of butter.'
* * *
A battle-line requires, in its front rank, one man for 383
each pace of the frontage. This is one of the unalterable rules of warfare; men placed closer together will not have sufficient room to move, while if they are spaced further apart they will be unable to cover each other's flanks. 'Warfare' in this case, of course, refers to the conflict between the disciplined armies of high civilizations; irregular forces and barbarians tend to be less scientific in their methods.
In the 'V formed by the diverging branches of the river, a north-south battle frontage placed just forward of the pyramid and the burial mound would measure 2500 paces; the burial mound itself, 600 paces long, offered an excellent view of the countryside.
'It's very flat,' said Ohio.
'Yes,' said Farfalla, scrutinising the dusty plains where the network of swamp and river glittered under the sun. 'The highest bit of ground is Tollar Hill, south of Androlmarphos, which rises scarcely two hundred and fifty paces skywards. The pyramid over there is higher than that.'
'Let's sit down,' said Hearst.
'Why?' said Watashi.
'We'll do what he says,' said Farfalla.
They sat. Hearst carefully studied the way the rivers fanned out to the blue immensity of the sea. Three leagues west lay lake Ouija and the city of Androlmarphos. Ships were afloat on Lake Ouija, ready to challenge any of Selzirk's craft which came down the southern branch of the river.
Irrigation ditches lay west of the burial mound, but all were dry, because they needed pumps to feed them; the pumps, worked by people or by animals, were idle; thanks to the invasion, the land was deserted.
'Would those ditches hinder cavalry?' said Hearst.
'Not much,' said one of the cavalrymen. 'They're too narrow, too shallow.'
'Usually you hardly notice them if you're out riding,' said Farfalla.
A group of horsemen was moving over the plains in the distance; dust could be seen rising into the air.
it's dry,' said Ohio, licking his lips.
'Yes,' said one cf the young cavalrymen. 'When it's like this it's iron-hard. I wouldn't like to take a fall from a horse when the land's like that.'
'Of course it's different in winter,' said Farfalla. 'The river floods. It's all mud then. In winter they couldn't ride the fields like that. Even in spring the mud can be knee-deep.'
One irrigation ditch ran just in front of the mound. Hearst studied the ground in silence. Thinking, i will command the battle from here,' said Hearst. 'This is no good,' said Watashi. 'Why not?' said Hearst.
'We need plenty of room for the cavalry to manoeuvre,' said Watashi. 'Here, what happens if we have to retreat? Behind us there's less and less room as we move back into the V-shape made by the rivers. I can imagine a disaster if too many horses were forced back into the waiting waters.'
'The pyramid and the mound provide us with two strongpoints,' said Hearst. 'The rest of the countryside is too flat.'
'Strongpoints don't have all that much relevance in a cavalry battle,' said Watashi. 'With a limited frontage like this, how can we manoeuvre? How are we supposed to outflank the enemy? They can spread from one river to the other.'
'What would you do?' said Hearst.
i'd move forward,' said Watashi. i'd advance three thousand paces to the west, half-way to Androlmarphos. That's where I'd do battle. There's more room to manoeuvre when you get out there.'
i understand what you say,' said Hearst.
For some time Hearst sat there in the sun, watching, listening, thinking. High in the sky overhead, some bird of prey wheeled over the dusty landscape. Hot. Dry.
Hard. The rivers, though wide, ran slow and sluggish under the sun.
'Is there any way to get a lot of cavalry across any branch of these rivers in a hurry?' said Hearst.
'It's a slow business,' said Watashi. 'Anybody will tell you that. You have to swim them across.'
T see,' said Hearst.
He sat in the sun some more, then he said:
T will command the battle from here. From this
mound. Now as for that pyramid . . . what is it,
exactly?'
'It's a tomb,' said Farfalla. 'We once had an emperor, a wizard of the order of Ebber, who built that tomb to his own glory. That was two thousand years ago, but we still remember the thousands who died building it. We are sitting on their burial mound. Our people paid a bitter price to raise that monument.'
'Let's go and have a closer look at it,' said Hearst.
* * *
Ten days after Hearst had scouted out the land, his troops began to move into position. Fleets of bamboo rafts brought them downriver; they disembarked in hot, dusty afternoon sunlight and took up their positions.
On the burial mound, a marquee was raised. Beside the marquee, two standards flew: one a dragon-banner that Farfalla had ordered her servants to make for Morgan Hearst; the other, Farfalla's own green and gold flag.
'You should not have come,' said Hearst, as he stood with Farfalla in front of the marquee.
if we fail here, there is no hope for me or for my people,' said Farfalla. 'Things would be otherwise if you were prepared to use the death-stone against the enemy. As it is, if we lose this battle, then here is as good a place to die as any.'
Slowly, ten thousand troops moved into position,
forming up in four ranks along the north-south battle frontage Hearst had chosen. The bamboo rafts were dismantled and their poles hacked into shape to provide each man in the first rank with a sharpened stake which he drove into the ground in front of his position; holes were dug further forward of these positions. A cavalry commander might have been reckless enough to assault such defences - cavalrymen are notorious for their infatuation with the romance of the charge - but Hearst doubted that a sober infantry commander like Alish would commit horse against a line of leg-breaking holes and sharpened stakes.
Those in the first three ranks were armed with long pikes; in the rear rank were bowmen and also lightly armed skirmishers who, armed with weapons such as cudgels and sickles, would have their best opportunities if - and Hearst hoped it would be when - the enemy broke and ran.
On top of the burial mound itself was an honour guard of three hundred swordsmen and axemen; all these warriors were heavily armoured and carried shields. Hearst himself wore no armour and went bareheaded under the
sun.
Toward evening, some horsemen from Androlmarphos scouted out Hearst's defences, riding just out of bowshot.
'That's good,' said Hearst, i want Alish to attack quickly. He'll feel more confident if his reconnaissance patrols can bring him a thorough account of the disposition of our forces.'
"What if he doesn't attack?' said Farfalla.
'He wants a quick victory,' said Hearst. 'He needs success to keep together his army of pirates and fortune seekers. Besides, Alish knows many of his men will be terrified by the thought that I might use the death-stone. If he waits, he gives such people the chance to betray his army to me. All things considered, he should attack at dawn.'
'Yes,' said Watashi. 'Particularly when he's got thirty or forty thousand men to bring against us. What did his last embassy threaten us with? Rice Empire mercenaries, armoured cavalry from Galgasoon, Sung bowmen, slingshot heroes from Breenmower, a legion of Collosnon deserters, skirmishers from Provincial Endergen-eer - half the vultures in creation must be under his command.'
'We'll have more men by morning,' said Hearst. 'Ohio's taking care of that.'
'It's late in the day to be moving any more men into position,' said Watashi. 'When are they coming?'
'Some time,' said Hearst, who, tired of listening to unwanted advice, had made his battle-plan without reference to Watashi.
