Errant

by Armas, Florian

  “The army is not in good shape. Half of it has already deserted,” I glanced at Mohor, wishing I could tell that they had no army at all, but it made no sense, even though it was true. “And morale is always low after a lost battle.” It was at least a correct assessment, if not the best approach.

  “I thought we would hear a plan, not a list of preemptive excuses,” Big Mouth interrupted me, pointing out that this obviously was the wrong approach – at least for him.

  “Many of the problems come from a weak chain of command that neglected the army for a long time,” I paid him back without realizing that Mohor would feel included in the command chain too.

  “I know, rag tag army.” Irritated, Mohor stopped me with my own words, it seemed that Cernat carried my warning in full, without any diplomatic mediation. “Can we go to the next step?”

  “My point exactly,” Big Mouth agreed with him, just to say something.

  “We cannot engage directly Mehadin’s army at the moment. From our last estimations, he still has around two hundred soldiers, his losses were low. We have only one hundred and ten left ready to fight, some of them slightly wounded.” Forty soldiers were lost in the battle; some had heavy wounds, and the rest of Mohor’s army deserted.

  “You forgot Orban’s squadron,” Big Mouth added, something that would have been in tune with my assessment of us being too weak, if correct. He just wanted to score a new point against me, and his usual strategy was to bite fast, not leaving the opponent much time for defense.

  “Orban’s squadron is already home, and for the moment he will not be drawn into another conflict. His point was made; he proved to your allies that a small fish like Mehadin can win against you.” In the hierarchy of Frankis Kingdom remnants, Mohor was considered almost twice as strong as Mehadin in military terms, yet that hierarchy did not consider the total neglect of his army. My finger was pointing at Mohor, who raised his eyebrows in surprise; none of them new about Orban’s soldiers withdrawing.

  “You don’t know that,” big Mouth insisted in attacking my plans.

  “You don’t know that,” I mimicked him. “And it was your job to know. His soldiers fought under Mehadin’s banner, just to have plausible denial, and no one will believe that he was involved, no matter how many letters you write,” I spoke again to Mohor, trying to avoid another conflict with Big Mouth, and with a neutral gesture, Mohor told me to continue. “We have to attack them by surprise, hit and run, no big battles.”

  “That’s not a plan,” Big Mouth said, with a face that looked very concentrated on the issue, but I knew him well enough to understand that he was happy for any detail that could be used against me. “It’s just wait and see, maybe something good happens.”

  “That’s my plan. It may work or it may not. What we know for sure is that yours failed.”

  “We can’t afford a classic battle right now,” Cernat stopped us. “Some unorthodox methods, as you mentioned,” he pointed at me, “might work better.”

  “We need to send scouts to find Mehadin and check our soldiers,” I pointed to Vlaicu. “I want to take only one hundred with me. The best prepared. Twenty of them good archers.”

  “You did not say anything about the left wing,” Bucur interjected. “I think I have gained that position.”

  “The army is too small to have wings. It will act as one. And you are wounded.”

  “It’s not a big deal. I can be your third in command,” he insisted, and Saliné reacted slightly.

  Did you realize that his wound is not a big deal or do you admire the hero? “Your wound needs attention. I am sure you will receive it.” There was no reaction from Saliné this time, but Big Mouth looked satisfied, and that almost made me take my words back. Curiously there was a slight reaction from Mohor too, his eyes staring briefly at me with a thoughtful look.

  “Vlaicu, send more scouts,” Mohor ended the council, letting me know that things were already in motion. “You know our soldiers. Codrin, don’t leave yet.” He asked only for me, but Jara and Cernat stayed too.

  The last to leave, Saliné stopped briefly in front of me. “Thank you for helping us, Codrin,” she said and left the room quickly.

  “Orban is gathering his army.” Mohor stared at me as if I should already have known about that.

  “Duke Stefan placed a five hundred strong army at Orban’s northern border,” I said, and some small reactions around the table pointed to their lack of knowledge.

  “There are more things in motion than we know.” Jara gestured to include all of us in her statement, then glanced at Mohor, who, in silence, took a letter from his cabinet and pushed it across the table to me, with an intense look.

  The message was brief and concise – I never saw terrible news written in many words. Orban was raising two armies, one north of Arad ready for Duke Stefan, and one south of Arad, ready for Severin – both five hundred strong. Vasile, I read the name of Mohor’s spy who signed the letter, a peasant’s name. A false name, I thought, glancing at Mohor; it was for the first time I observed such sophistication in collecting information from Severin’s court. What else am I missing?

  “It came this morning,” Mohor misunderstood my glance.

  “The date when it was written would be more important,” I shrugged.

  “Five days ago,” Mohor smiled with all that fear running around, it was his day of catching me on the wrong foot.

  My fingers were playing absently with the paper, my thoughts on Cantemir. The small diversion I wanted in the south became a large storm. What made him raise the southern army? “We can only guess Orban’s intentions,” I said. “His southern army may or may not be gathered for an invasion.”

  “Does it matter?” Jara asked. Her question appeared unintelligent, yet it was not.

  “It doesn’t; we must act as if Orban wants to take Severin now,” I agreed with Jara, and I almost physically felt the fear behind her composed face. “Awful words I said, but I will not apologize.”

  “Act...” Jara repeated with the resignation of someone who knew that we could not ‘act’ too much.

  “Mehadin should be here before Orban’s army. Do you have scouts in the north?” I asked, and Mohor just nodded, pointing to the lack of information, which was good news, Orban’s army was not yet in sight. “We have a chance to take them one by one,” I said to raise their morale, but no one believed me, and Jara smiled sadly, touching my hand over the table. “Theoretically,” I shrugged.

  “Mehadin will pillage and destroy, waiting for Orban to attack too, or just to obtain more favorable conditions. He knows that we need to stop him one way or another, and he is sure that we will ask for negotiations, with a weak hand. How fast can you rout him from our lands with small attacks?” Cernat asked, his voice showing an optimism that was not there.

  “I don’t know, and I can’t guarantee anything,” I said. “There are several places where I can ambush him. It depends on the route he chooses to come here. If he comes here. My main task is to keep him away from Orban’s army. You must gather another army here. At least two hundred soldiers.”

  Mohor had the impulse to interrupt me, then, resigned, he closed his mouth and stayed silent, yet I waited, staring at him. “I sent messengers for more soldiers this morning,” he finally said. “Some will come today, some tomorrow. One hundred, if we are lucky. We can’t count on the deserters,” he sighed.

  “Call everybody. Old men, young men. The enemy will not know it. Keep your troops outside, close to the walls and Orban’s scouts at a fair distance. Let them learn that an army is waiting here. At a distance, even a pole looks like a spear. If they start the siege, send your army to hide in the forest. Make them fear that you will attack any time from behind. Cernat, you can lead this,” I stared at him, and he nodded in silence.

  Severin castle was a fortress, but a weak one. Most castles were built in the old, good time of the Frankis Kingdom when order prevailed, and there was no need for strong fortifications. Severin’s
walls were raised just twenty years ago by a Seigneur lacking financial resources. A six-seven hundred strong army had a chance to take it, if not challenged from outside too. “You might also call your allies...” I said to Mohor, who just shrugged.

  “No one will risk to help us now,” Jara said annoyed, avoiding mentioning how the defeat isolated them politically. She stood up, closing the council before I could answer, trying to shield Mohor who was not in his best mood.

  We went out to the field outside the castle to see the army, and some choices were made, but I was not pleased. And I was even less pleased that I had to sleep in the Guards Tower again – it was now crowded; the guards returned from battle, and some wounded soldiers were settled there too.

  As promised by Mohor, more soldiers came the next morning, and some of them had leather armor. We are not going training…

  “I know what you are thinking,” Mohor said, seeing the same pathetic picture as me. “Rag tag army.” This time his irritation seemed unrelated to me, something was changing in his mind.

  Good that you realize now, I shrugged. “Let’s hope we can find a hundred that can fight. Half of them may run before the battle starts.” We had chosen just eighty-five at that point.

  “The best hundred is not so weak,” Mohor protested meekly.

  “It’s not the weakest who lose, but the ones who looks back first. If we can’t avoid a battle, I want their backs to be against the wall.”

  “What?” Vlaicu asked, not sure he understood, and Mohor stared uncomfortably at me.

  “I need them in a position without possibility of retreat. They must know that it is fight or death. It’s the only way to forge a winning army.”

  “We are outnumbered. It will be a fight to death. Do you have another plan?” Vlaicu no longer trusted my abilities to lead an army. Not that I trusted them too much.

  “Vlaicu,” I laughed, not really naturally. “I don’t have suicidal tendencies. We fight like that only if there is a good chance to win. If not, we will just hit and run, until they come here for Mohor. He is good bait.”

  “I will do my best to charm them,” Mohor joked, helping me to raise the morale of the five Knights gathered with us, and there was some anemic laughter.

  “Our scouts,” Vlaicu pointed to three riders approaching fast on the road.

  “They are coming,” the scouts’ leader said swiftly, even before dismounting his horse. “What should we do?” he asked in panic.

  “Behave,” I snapped at him, “and give a full report.”

  “Codrin is our army commander,” Mohor informed the soldier, who was ready to curse me. “And he is right.”

  “Last time we saw them they were close to Siliste, coming here by the northern road. They are around two hundred fifty now. Mehadin received some reinforcements,” the scout shrugged. “That’s why they did not come faster.”

  “Waiting for Orban?” Mohor asked, in a low voice, staring at me.

  No, I shook my head, trying to give the impression that his question was a trivial thing. “We leave today,” I said, without hesitation. “I know a good place for an ambush, but we must be there tomorrow evening.”

  In a turn, we had chosen ninety-five soldiers, and our small army left before noon, watched by Mohor, Cernat and Big Mouth. I could not read anything under their apparent calm, hoping that I was keeping my own worries hidden, too. I wish Saliné and Jara were here...

  We reached the place I wanted just in time – a junction with a minor road going into the forest.

  “We leave the main road,” I told Vlaicu. We were riding in front, together with Vlad, who was my personal scout, even though he was hired by Mohor as a mercenary, at my recommendation. The only mercenary in the whole army, I smiled. “That forest,” I pointed. “It’s just a minute’s gallop from the main road. I want to attract them inside. There is a small road going deep into the forest, before entering a small gorge. No more than five soldiers can ride abreast. We just need the proper bait,” I preempted his question, and continued to explain my plan.

  “It may work,” he reluctantly agreed, still afraid that I might want to fight with our backs against the wall.

  In ten minutes, we passed through the short gorge and stopped in a meadow that lay on the right side of the road. There was another gorge in front where the road followed its course through the mountains, along the small stream.

  “Vlaicu, send twenty people who knows how to cut trees, and block the gorge there,” I pointed to the other side of the meadow. “Ban,” I told the archers’ commander. “Find good places to shoot from, on the ridges, and ask your men to gather some stones too,” I pointed to the place where the first gorge met the meadow. “The Mehadins are hard-headed, we may need to crush some thick skulls first,” I joked to raise the morale and they guffawed – a sign that the memory of the lost battle was dissipating, and there was some trust in my strategy.

  Our war council ended late in the night, brief and with nothing important to say or to plan; I summoned the leads just because it was a mandatory step before any fight – I knew it from my long dead past. Three war councils with the Arenian army, I still remember them…

  The last one had been before the battle against the nomads from the eastern steppes who were invading our lands as they did many times before. I was fourteen years old. That had been a real battle. The memory made me feel insignificant; there was no way to compare my less than a hundred men against the fifty thousand my father had commanded in that battle. The Mehadins had two hundred and fifty soldiers, the nomads more than a hundred thousand. The ratio is almost the same, I tried to fill some importance in my first position as commander – indeed, both father and I faced a more than twice stronger enemy. The Arenian army gathered in a tight place that could not allow the outnumbering nomads to take advantage of their superior strength, and I suddenly realized that I copied the same tactic. Father was a brilliant strategist, and he never lost a battle. Apart of that night when the traitors from the Royal Guard took over the Palace. Unable to rein in my thoughts, I walked away from our fire, and Vlaicu nodded slightly, a discreet way to encourage me; he could not perceive that my uneasiness was not stirred by the future battle that we could lose, but by a past that I had already lost. Around the fires, partially illuminated by the leaping flames our soldiers resembled sitting ghosts, their shapes changing restlessly. With a strange acuity, I observed something that had avoided me in the past: around the playful fires, people gathered based on similar reactions to the inherent tension before the battle. Some were silent, sitting with no visible reaction, their hoods pulled over their heads like a barrier between them and a world full of danger. Others were speaking loudly, or even singing like there was no tomorrow. It might be true, I acquiesced that many would not see the fires of next evening.

  In the morning, I took forty riders, and all S’Severin’s banners that we had, and stopped, hidden at the end of the forest, waiting for Mehadin. His army came later than expected; the sun was two turns past noon.

  “Ride!” I shouted and moved out from the forest. In a half-minute, we stopped, face to face with the enemy, as if just now seeing them, four hundred paces away. We turned the horses abruptly, making them neigh, and mimed running away from a stronger army that had appeared from nowhere. Our banners were raised high, just to add more flavor to the bait. A column moved out from their army, following us. I was the last one to enter in the forest, and looking back, I saw their entire army chasing us, in a disorganized way, in stretched columns – we looked so weak.

  The forest ended at the gorge, and the path became stony. Many horseshoes played on the rocks, in different cadences, and echoes answered in muffled tones, multiplied by the rocks, tempering the stridence with a weird musicality. Here and there, metal stirred sparks from the stones. Just before the exit, another echo reached us from behind, the Mehadins had entered the gorge too. We moved into the meadow, turning right, and joined the rest of the army that was waiting for us.

>   “They are coming,” I said to Vlaicu, in a thrilled tone that had nothing in common with death coming to chase us.

  “Charge!” I shouted when the first enemies came into the meadow.

  They slowed their horses to meet the cavalry charge coming from their right, then they turned abruptly. Each move slowed them further, so they were almost immobile when we clashed. There were only fifty Mehadins out in the meadow, less than our seventy-five riders. Caught by inertia, the rearguard of the army was still trying to enter the meadow from the gorge, and their horses ploughed into the ones in front of them. Rocks and arrows fell from above, and the first men died before our swords met. At full speed, we crashed into them, and the melee become even tighter. Some horses fell, crushing the riders. I do not know who my first adversary was, I just met his sword with my small one, then the long one went for his neck. The Assassin swords were perfect for tight battles, and I pushed on further. On my right and left, Vlaicu and Vlad were doing the same, and I knew that I was covered. We had to exploit the commotion provoked by the horses and the attack from the rock-walls. Two minutes later, there was no way to advance other than killing an enemy; the pack of riders in front of us was now too tight, and everything became static. Now and then, an arrow made room for those still trying to enter the meadow from the gorge. Their horses moved over human and animal bodies, some of them still alive. That put down even more horses, their hooves stumbling on the flesh underneath.

  In the fight, your mind and senses are both focused and distributed. Your main attention is the immediate field. A sword rising in front. Another one on the right. Your hands react. A clang, another one. A dying cry.