Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen k-1

by H. Beam Piper

  It was past midnight; a cool breeze fluttered the curtains at the open windows, and flickered the candies. He was tired, and he knew that he would have to rise at dawn tomorrow, but he knew that he would lie awake a long while if he went to bed now. There was too much to think about.

  Troop strengths: better than two to one against Hostigos. If Gormoth waited till his harvests were in and used all his peasant levies, more than that. Of course, if he waited, they'd be a little better prepared in training and materiel, but not much. Three thousand regular infantry, meaning they had been organized into companies and given a modicum of drill. Two thousand were pikemen and halberdiers, and too many of the pikes were short hunting-spears, and too many of the halberds were those scythe-blade things (he still didn't know what else to call them), and a thousand calivermen, arquebusiers and musketeers. And fifty riflemen, though in another thirty days there would be a hundred more. And eight hundred cavalry, all of whom could be called regulars-nobles and gentlemen-farmers, and their attendants.

  Artillery-there was the real bright spot. Four of the light four-pounders were finished and in service, gun-crews training with them, and two more would be finished in another eight or ten days. And the old guns had been remounted; they were at least three hundred percent better than anything Gormoth would have.

  All right, they couldn't do anything about numbers; then cut the odds by concentrating on mobility and firepower. It didn't really matter who had the mostest; just git th'ar fustest and fire the most shots and score the most hits with them. But he didn't want to think about that right now.

  He emptied the goblet and debated pouring himself more, lighting his pipe. Instead, he turned to something he hadn't had time to think about lately: the question of just when now was.

  He wasn't at any time in the past or the future of May 19, 1964, when he'd walked into that dome of light. He'd settled that in his mind definitely. So what did that leave? Another time-dimension.

  Say time was a plane, like a sheet of paper. Paper, experiment with manufacture of, that mental memo popped up automatically, and was promptly shoved down again. He wished he'd read more science fiction; time dimensions were a regular science-fiction theme, and a lot of it carefully thought out. Well, say he was an insect, capable of moving only in one direction, crawling along a line on the paper, and say somebody picked him up and set him down on another line.

  That figured. And say, long ago, one of these lines of time had forked, maybe before the beginning of recorded history. Or say these lines had always existed, an infinite number of them, and on each one, things happened differently. That could be it. He was beginning to be excited; Dralm-dammit, now he'd be awake half the night, thinking about this. He got up and filled the goblet with almost-brandy.

  He'd found out a little about these people's history. Their ancestors had been living on the Atlantic coast for over five hundred years; they all spoke the same language, and were of the same stock: Zarthani. They hadn't come from across the Atlantic, but from the west, across the continent. Some of that was recorded history he had read, and some was legend; all of it was supported by the maps, which showed all the important seacoast cities at the mouths of rivers. There were no cities on the sites of such excellent harbors as Boston, Baltimore or Charleston. There was the Grefftscharr Kingdom, at the west end of the Great Lakes, and Dorg at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, and XipWon at the site of New Orleans. But there was nothing but a trading town at the mouth of the Ohio, and the Ohio valley was full of semi-savages. Rivers flowing east and south had been the pathway.

  So these people had come from across the Pacific. But they weren't Asiatics, as he used the word; they were blond Caucasians. Aryans! Of course; the Aryans had come out of Central Asia, thousands of years ago, sweeping west and south into India and the Mediterranean basin, and west and north to Scandinavia. On this line of events, they'd gone the other way.

  The names sounded Greek-all those -os and -es and -on endings-but the language wasn't even the most corrupt Greek. It wasn't even grammatically the same. He'd had a little Greek in college, dodging it as fast as it was thrown at him, but he knew that.

  Wait a minute. The words for "father" and "mother." German, vater; Spanish, padre; Latin, pater; Greek, as near that as didn't matter; Sanskrit, pitr. German, mutter; Spanish, madre; Latin, mater; Greek, meter; Sanskrit, matr. In Zarthani, they were phadros and mavra.

  IT was one of those small late-afternoon gatherings, nobody seeming to have a care in the world, lounging indolently, sipping tall drinks, nibbling canapйs, talking and laughing. Verkan Vall held his lighter for his wife, Hadron Dalia, then applied it to his own cigarette. Across the low table, Tortha Karf was mixing himself a drink, with the concentrated care of an alchemist compounding the Elixir of Life. The Dhergabar University people-the elderly professor of Paratemporal Theory, the lady professor of Outtime History (IV), and the young man who was director of outtime study operations-were all smiling like three pussy-cats at a puddle of spilled cream.

  "You'll have it all to yourselves," Vall told them. "The Paratime Commission has declared that time-line a study-area, and it's absolutely quarantined to everybody but University personnel and accredited students. I'm making it my personal business to see that the quarantine is enforced."

  Tortha Karf looked up. "After I retire, I'm taking a seat on the Paratime Commission," he said. "I'll see to it that the quarantine isn't revoked or modified."

  "I wish we could account for those four hours from the time he got out of that transposition field until he stopped at that peasant's cottage," the paratemporal theorist said. "We have no idea what he was doing."

  "Wandering in the woods, trying to orient himself," Dalla said. "Sitting and thinking, most of the time, I'd say. Getting caught in a conveyer field must be a pretty shattering experience if you don't know what it is, and he seems to have adjusted very nicely by the time he had those Nostori to fight. I don't believe he Was changing history all by himself."

  "You can't say that," the old professor chided. "He could have shot a rattlesnake which would otherwise have bitten and killed a child who would otherwise have grown up to be an important personage. That sounds far-fetched and trivial, but paratemporal alternate probability is built on different trivialities. Who knows what started the Aryan migration eastward on that sector instead of westward, as on all the others? Some tribal chief's hangover; some wizard's nightmare."

  "Well, that's why you're getting those five adjoining time-lines for controls," the outtime study operations director said. "And I'd keep out of Hostigos on all of them. We don't want our people massacred along with the resident population by Gormoth's gang, or forced to defend themselves with Home Time-Line weapons."

  "What bothers me," the lady professor of history said, "is Vall's beard."

  "It bothers me, too," Dalla said, "but I'm getting used to it."

  "He hasn't shaved it off since he came back from Kalvan's time-line, and it begins to look like a permanent fixture. And I notice that Dalla's a blonde, now. Blondes are less conspicuous on Aryan-Transpacific. They're both going to be on and off that time-line all the time."

  "Well, nobody's exclusive rights to anything outtime excludes the Paratime Police. I told you I was going to give that time-line my personal attention. And Dalla is officially Special Chief's Assistant's Special Assistant, now; she'll be promoted automatically along with me."

  "Well, you won't introduce a lot of probability contamination, will you?" the elderly theorist asked anxiously. "We want to observe the effect of this man's appearance on that time-line..

  "You know any kind of observation that doesn't contaminate the thing observed, professor?" Tortha Karf, who had gotten the drink mixed, asked.

  "If anything, I'll be able to minimize the amount of contamination his study-teams introduce. I'm already well established with these people as Verkan the Grefftscharr trader. Why, Lord Kalvan offered me a commission in his army, commanding a rifle regime
nt he's raising, and right now I'm supposed to be recruiting brass-founders for him in Zygros." Vall turned to the operations director. "I can't plausibly get back to Hostigos for another thirty days. Can you have your first team ready by then? They'll have to know their trade; if they cast cannon that blow up on the first shot, I know where their heads will go, and I won't try to intervene for them."

  "Oh, yes. They have everything now but local foundry techniques and correct Zygrosi accent. Thirty days will be plenty."

  "But that's contamination!" the professor of Paratemporal Theory objected. "You're teaching his people to make cannon, and…"

  "Just to make better cannon, and if I didn't bring in fake Zygrosi founders, Kalvan would send somebody else to bring in real ones. I will help him in any other way a wandering pack-trader could; information and things like that. I may even go into battle with him again-with one of those back-acting flintlocks. But I want him to win. I admire the man too much to want to hand him an unearned victory on a platter."

  "He sounds like a lot of man to me," the lady historian said. "I'd like to meet him, myself."

  "Better not, Eldra," Dalla warned. "That princess of his is handy with a pistol, and I don't think she cares much who she shoots."

  THE general staff had a big room of their own to meet in, just inside the door of the keep, and the relief map was finished and set up. The General Staff were all new at it. So was he, but he had some vague idea of what a General Staff was supposed to do, which put him several up on any of the rest of them. Xentos was reporting what he had gotten from the Nostori Fifth Column.

  "The bakeries work night and day," he said. "And milk cannot be bought at any price-it is all being made into cheese. And most of the meat is being made into smoked sausages."

  Stuff a soldier could carry in a haversack and eat uncooked: field-rations. That stuff, even the bread, could be stored, Kalvan thought, but Xentos was also reporting that wagons and oxen were being commandeered, and peasants impressed as drivers. They wouldn't do that too long in advance.

  "Then Gormoth isn't waiting to get his harvests in," Ptosphes said. "He'll strike soon, and taking Tarr-Dombra didn't stop him at all."

  "It delayed him, Prince," Chartiphon said. "He'd be pouring mercenaries into Nostor now through Sevenhills Valley if we hadn't."

  "I grant that." There was a smile on Ptosphes's lips. He'd been learning to smile again, since the powder mills had gone into operation, and especially since Tarr-Dombra had fallen. "We'll have to be ready for him a little sooner than I'd expected, that's all."

  "We'll have to be ready for him yesterday at the latest," Rylla said. She'd picked that expression up from him. "What do you think he'll hit us with?"

  "Well, he's been shifting troops around," Harmakros said. "He seems to be moving all his mercenaries east, and all his own soldiers west."

  "Marax Ford," Ptosphes guessed. "He'll throw the mercenaries at us first."

  "Oh, no, Prince!" Chartiphon dissented. "Go all the way around the mountains and all the way up through East Hostigos? He wouldn't do that. Here's how he'll come in."

  He drew his big hand-and-a-half sword-none of these newfangled pokers for him-and gave it a little toss in his hand to get the right grip on it, then pointed on the map to where the Listra flowed into the Athan.

  "There-Listra-Mouth. He can move his whole army up the river in his own country, force a crossing here-if we let him-and take all Listra Valley to the Saski border. That's where all our iron-works are."

  Now that was something. Not so long ago, to Chartiphon, weapons had been just something you fought with; he'd taken them for granted. Now he was realizing that they had to be produced.

  That started an argument. Somebody thought Gormoth would try to force one of the gaps. Not Dombra; that was too strong. Maybe Vryllos Gap.

  "He'll attack where we don't expect him, that's where," Rylla declared.

  "Well, that means we have to expect him everywhere. "Great Galzar!" Ptosphes exploded, drawing his rapier. "That means we have to expect him everywhere from here"-he touched the point to the map to the mouth of the Listra-"to here," which was about where Lewisburg had been in Calvin Morrison's world. "That means that with half Gormoth's strength, we'll have to be stronger than he is at every point."

  "Then we'll have to move what men we have around faster," his daughter told him.

  Well, good girl! She'd seen what none of the others had, what he'd been thinking about last night, that mobility could make up for lack of numbers.

  "Yes," he said. "Harmakros, how many infantrymen could you put horses under? They don't have to be good horses, just good enough to take them where they'll fight on foot."

  Harmakros was scandalized. Mounted soldiers were cavalry, everybody knew it took years to train a cavalryman; he had to be practically born at it.

  Chartiphon was scandalized, too. Infantrymen were foot soldiers; they had no business on horses.

  "It'll mean," he continued, "that in action about one out of four will have to hold horses for the others, but they'll get into action before the battle's over, and they can wear heavier armor. Now, how many infantry can you find mounts for?"

  Harmakros looked at him, decided that he was serious, thought for a moment, then grinned. It always took Harmakros a moment or so to recover from the shock of a new idea, but he always came up punching before the count was over.

  "Just a minute; I'll see." He pulled the remount officer aside; Rylla joined them with a slate and soapstone. Among other things, Rylla was the mathematician. She'd learned Arabic numerals, even the reason for having a symbol for nothing at all. Very high on the I love Rylla, reasons why list was the fact that the girl had a brain and wasn't afraid to use it.

  He turned to Chartiphon and began talking about the defense of Listra-Mouth. They were still discussing it when Rylla and Harmakros came over and joined them.

  "Two thousand:' Rylla said. "They all have four legs, and we think they were all alive last evening."

  "Eighteen hundred," Harmakros cut it. "We'll need some for pack-train and replacements."

  "Sixteen hundred:' Kalvan decided. "Eight hundred pikemen, with pikes and not hunting-spears or those scythe-blade things, and eight hundred arquebusiers, with arquebuses and not rabbit-guns. Can you do that, Chartiphon?"

  Chartiphon could. All men who wouldn't fall off their horses, too. "It'll make a Styphon's own hole in the army, though," he added.

  Aside from the Mobile Force, that would leave twelve hundred pikemen and two hundred with firearms. Of course, there was the militia: two thousand peasant levies, anybody who could do an hour's foot-drill without dropping dead, armed with anything at all. They would fight bravely if unskillfully. A lot of them were going to get killed.

  And, according to best intelligence estimates, Gormoth had six thousand mercenaries, of whom four thousand were cavalry, and four thousand of his own subjects, including neither the senile nor the adolescent and none of them armed with agricultural implements or crossbows. He looked at the map again. Gormoth would attack where he could use his cavalry superiority to best advantage. Either Listra-Mouth or Marax Ford.

  "Good. And all the riflemen." All fifty of them. "Put them on the best horses, they'll have to be everywhere at once. And five hundred regular cavalry."

  Everybody howled at that. There weren't that many, not uncommitted. Swords flashed over the map, indicating places where they only had half enough now. Contradictions were shouted. One of these days somebody was going to use a sword for something besides map-pointing in one of these arguments. Finally, by robbing Peter and Paul both, they scraped up five hundred for the Mobile Force.

  "And I want all those musketoons and lances turned in," he said. "The lances are better pikes than half our pikemen have, and the musketoons are almost as good as arquebuses. We won't have cavalrymen burdened with infantry weapons when the infantry need them as desperately as they do."

  Harmakros wanted to know what the cavalry would fight wit
h. "Swords and pistols. The purpose of cavalry is to scout and collect information, neutralize enemy cavalry, harass enemy movement and communications, and pursue fugitives. It is not to fight on foot-that's why we're organizing mounted infantry-and it is not to commit suicide by making attacks on massed pikemen-that's why we're building these light four-pounders. The lances and musketoons will go to the infantry, and the fowling-pieces and scythe-blade things they replace can go to the militia.

  "Now, you'll command this Mobile Force, Harmakros. Turn all your intelligence work over to Xentos; Prince Ptosphes and I will help him. You'll have all four of the four-pounders, and the two being built as soon as they're finished, and pick out the lightest four of the old eight-pounders. You'll be based in Sevenhills Valley; be prepared to move either east or west as soon as you have orders.

  "And another thing: battle-cries." They had to be shouted constantly, to keep friend from killing friend. "Besides 'Ptosphes!' and 'Hostigos!' we will shout 'Down Styphon!"

  That met with general approval. They all knew who the real enemy was.

  GORMOTH, Prince of Nostor, set down the goblet, wiping his bearded lips on the back of his hand. The candies in front of him and down the long tables at the sides flickered. Tableware clattered, and voices were loud.

  "Lost everything!" The speaker was a baron driven from Sevenhills Valley when Tarr-Dombra had fallen almost a moon ago. "My house, a score of farms, a village…"

  "You think we've lost nothing?" another noble demanded. "They crossed the river the night after they chased you out, and burned everything on my land. It was Styphon's own miracle I got out with my own blood unspilled."