There Will Be War Volume VIII, page 37
The first one ten days ago had cost the garrison a hundred men, the Styphoni three thousand. It had gained the enemy the north tower, but shellfire from the keep had kept them from mounting guns there.
The second storming would be more dangerous. The enemy would certainly have some tactics devised to meet shells. Those heavy rifles would come into play against the Hostigi marksmen who had butchered the mercenaries’ captains.
Worst of all, this time Styphon’s Red Hand would be clutching at Tarr-Hostigos. Their massed columns had been gathering in Hostigos Town all day. Would they lead the assault, or bring up the fear to remind the vanguard that there was something more to be feared than Hostigi shells?
Two men carrying Captain-General Harmakros’s chair set it down with a thump. The two men carrying Harmakros himself gently lowered him into the chair, arranged the cushions behind him, and stepped back.
Even in the twilight, Ptosphes could see that Harmakros’s cheeks were too flushed for a man who was supposed to be healing well.
“Did you have wine at dinner?”
“Why not, Prince? It will take more wine than we have in Tarr-Hostigos to kill me before Styphon’s House does.”
Ptosphes sighed. With variations, he’d heard this at least twenty times today, since it had become obvious that the Styphoni were gathering again. No one expected to see tomorrow’s sunset. Nobody seemed to care, either, so long as they could take a proper escort with them. To be sure of doing that, everybody had worked all day as if demons would pounce on them the moment they dropped their tools or even stopped to take a deep breath.
Ptosphes looked the length of what was, for another night at least, his castle. The work done to protect the mortars showed most dearly. The four small ones now had stones banked around them, so that the shells bursting outside wouldn’t do so much damage. The three larger mortars were back on their field carriages. They could move to prepared positions all over the courtyard as fast as the men on the ropes could pull them, then be firing again almost as soon as they stopped.
The four biggest “mortars” were still in the pit in the outer courtyard. They were really just an old twelve-pounder and three eight-pounders, with their breeches sunk into the earth and their muzzles raised. They were too heavy to move or mount anywhere else, and in any case they could reach everywhere around Tarr-Hostigos from the courtyard. Their crews were finishing a magazine of timbers covered with stones, to protect their shells and fireseed.
“Prince Ptosphes!” One of the riflemen on sentry duty was pointing toward the siege lines on the west side of the castle. “They’re starting to move around before the light goes. Think they’ll come tonight?” He sounded almost eager.
Ptosphes stared into the dusk, wishing for the hundredth time in the last four years that he had one of the far-seeing glasses of Great King Truman’s army. But they were like Kalvan’s old pistol—the Great King couldn’t even teach his friends how to make the tools to make the tools to make the glasses!
Yet those skills would be learned. What the gods had taught once, they could teach again—and more easily, because they would be teaching men who were trying to learn and knew what power the new knowledge might give them.
If Kalvan’s luck continued to hold, his children might live to look at a battlefield through far-seers, or even ride into battle aboard one of those armored wagons that moved without horses and carried guns that fired many times while a man was drawing a deep breath.
Ptosphes put aside thoughts of the future he wouldn’t see and looked to where the rifleman was pointing. The man was right. Guns—heavy ones from the number of horses drawing them—were rolling slowly along behind the lines. It was too dark to make out more, but Ptosphes suspected that the missing Hostigi sixteen-pounders had just been found.
“Should we try a few shots, just to remind them that we’re awake?” Harmakros asked.
“Not with the mortars. We want to save their shells. That little rifled bronze three-pounder on the inner gate, though—it might have the range.”
“Kalvan said we shouldn’t use case shot with rifled guns,” Ptosphes said, “It damages the rifling. With solid shot, that three-pounder will do more good up here.”
Harmakros “s face asked what he was too tactful to put into words: how likely is it that any gun in Tarr-Hostigos wili last long enough to damage itself, once the Grand Host advances? Perhaps he was also chafing at waiting like a bear tethered in a pit, for the dogs to come down within reach.
The hoisting tackle on the keep easily hauled the three-pounder up on to the roof, but not before darkness fell. Half a dozen shots produced a satisfactory outburst of shouts and curses from the Styphoni, but otherwise they seemed to have fallen off the edge of the world. After the half dozen failed to start a fire, Ptosphes ordered the gun to cease fire.
He made a final inspection, counting with special care the torches and tarpots laid ready, in case the Styphoni came at night. It wasn’t likely; the chance of hitting friends in a night attack would not please the mercenary captains. It wasn’t impossible, either, and Ptosphes was determined to follow Kalvan’s teachings to the end (not far away now): prepare for everything that isn’t impossible.
At last Ptosphes returned to the Great Hall, to find Harmakros asleep in the chair of state and snoring like volley fire from a company of musketeers. Ptosphes rolled himself in his cloak without taking off his armor, on a pallet as far from Harmakros as he could find.
He’d thought he might be too tired or uneasy to sleep, but instead he was drifting off into oblivion almost as soon as he’d stretched out his legs and lowered his head on to the dirt-stiffened cloth.
III
Phidestros brushed the sleep out of his eyes and stared through the valley’s early-morning shadows at the Grand Host’s encampment. A splendid sight with its thousands of campfires—until one remembered that all these tens of thousands of men were chained to this desolate valley by a castle held by four hundred old men and walking wounded. Meanwhile, the Usurper fled into the wilderness.
Phidestros realized now that it was in some measure his own fault, that he was not free to ride on Kalvan’s trail. He had not questioned Lysandros’s orders that he should not go against the will of Grand Master Soton. Apart from the folly of divided command, he respected the man too much.
He had not realized how completely Soton would be in Roxthar’s pocket. He had not considered the possibility with as much attention as he would have given to the effect of rain on the roads he needed to bring up fireseed! Had he done so, a few discreet questions at least might have already been asked, and the mystery closer to solution. Certainly he would have been able to do more than he had, against the Grand Master’s seeming need for Roxthar’s permission to break wind!
As it was, he was chief over the Grand Host only in name. In truth, he was first among equals, all of them hamstrung by Roxthar. The Investigator was utterly convinced that the root of Kalvan’s heresy was to be found in Hostigos and equally determined to extirpate it if he had to investigate every person in the Princedom! He would not allow any stone to be left unturned, including Tarr-Hostigos. Against that particular stone the Grand Host had bruised its foot for the best part of a moon, but with Galzar’s favor that was about to end!
Phidestros also asked for Galzar’s favor, to keep Investigators out of his promised lands of Sashta, Beshta, and Sask. A small forest of poles already held the bodies of more than a quarter of Hostigos Town’s people, those who had failed the Investigation. Add to that those who fled with Kalvan, and by spring there would hardly be enough Hostigi left to bury their dead!
If the Investigation came to his lands, Phidestros resolved it would not be his subjects who decorated gallows. He somehow doubted that Investigators with iron pincers would do as well against soldiers as they did against women and children. It might cost his own head to take Roxthar’s, but he would have the pleasure of harvesting the Investigator’s first!
The shadows began to fade. From his high vantage point, Phidestros saw the camps coining to life, like kicked anthills. He’d wanted to lead the Iron Band in the first assault himself, but Soton insisted on his staying safely in the rear. Captain-Generals, Soton stated emphatically, were not meant to be fired off like barrels of fireseed!
Soton was right, of course. Had Phidestros been in the vanguard during the first storming attempt, he might be dead along with so many others from Ptosphes’s exploding cannonballs.
He might also have kept more influence over the mercenary captains. It would have been worth risking Solon’s wrath to forestall the hornet’s nest Brakkos’s departure had unleashed. Or would unleash, as soon as the Red Hand could be spared from the siege to go and hunt the captain down. Roxthar had somehow realized that sending away his picked troops at this moment would end the siege and might end his own existence.
It still rankled, to be leading from behind. One more thing he would have to get used to, he supposed, along with asking who had married whom before he swore unquestioning obedience…
Phidestros cupped his hands around his pipe bowl and used the tinderbox to get a spark. When the pipe was drawing, he blew out a long plume of smoke, watching the rising morning breeze chase it away.
“Please, Captain-General,” Banner-Captain Geblon said. “Would you get down? Otherwise the Hostigi will aim at your smoke.”
Phidestros doubted that in this breeze even a Hostigi rifleman could hit a man at this distance, but obeyed. He could see as well, and make Geblon happy to boot.
The guns newly emplaced in the battery at the foot of the draw thumped. Their shots tore masonry from a gate tower. Another salvo followed, and white smoke rose in place of the morning mist.
Phidestros puffed on his pipe and prayed to all the true gods that today’s butcher’s bill would be a light one.
FOUR
I
Ptosphes was leading a cavalry charge at the climax of a great battle. The guns thundered and something else was growling like a whole forestful of hungry bears.
He looked down. He wasn’t riding a horse, but standing on top of one of Great King Truman’s iron wagons with its strange gun. Except that the wagon wasn’t quite as Kalvan had described it—it had the head and tail of a horse, the mane flying into his face. As they rode downhill toward the lines of an enemy in the colors of Styphon’s Red Hand, the wagon-horse turned its head to look at Ptosphes. Its eyes glowed a sinister green, and he knew that he was riding a creature possessed by demons.
He clawed for reins he couldn’t find, trying to turn the creature so he wouldn’t have to look into those eyes. No matter how desperately he groped, he couldn’t find the reins. At last his fingers closed on something that felt like woolen cloth, which was a strange thing to make reins out of—
“Prince Ptosphes! Prince Ptosphes! Wake up!”
Nobody should be telling him to wake up in a dream and this was still a dream. He could still hear the thunder of guns, even if he couldn’t hear the bearlike growling of the iron wagon.
“Prince Ptosphes! The Grand Host is coming!”
“Hu-rrupppp!” Ptosphes lurched into a sitting position before he realized that he was awake and clutching his blanket.
He also heard guns thundering and someone shouting in his ear that the Styphoni were attacking. The window showed gray instead of black. Two men ran toward it, carrying a heavy rifled musket and nearly tripping over Ptosphes as they came.
Ptosphes threw off the blanket and stood. The air of the keep already held a sodden heat. He felt obscurely resentful that so many men should have to fight their last battle on a miserably hot day.
Someone was pushing a cup of tea into his hands. He emptied it in three gulps and held it out again for more. The second cupful was half Ermut’s brandy. He set the cup down on the nearest chest, retrieved his sword, and buckled it on.
Harmakros was sitting in the chair of state, wide awake and barking orders. His stump was propped up on a pillow-padded stool and two pistols hung from the arm of the chair.
“Good luck, Prince.”
“The same to you, old friend.”
That was all the speech Ptosphes allowed himself, even if it was probably the last time he would see Harmakros. If the riflemen were taking position before the arrow slits, there was hardly time to talk.
Chroniclers a hundred years from now will probably make up fine farewell speeches for both of us. Tutors will torment children by forcing them to learn those speeches.
As Ptosphes passed through the keep door on to the outer stairs, the gun-roar doubled, then doubled again. The mortars had opened fire. Whatever was coming at Tarr-Hostigos was now within their range.
Ptosphes hurried down the stairs as fast as he could without appearing uneasy. At the bottom he saw that the guards who saluted him were also busily piling tar-soaked brushwood under the timbers of the stairs. One torch and the easy way into the keep would go up in flames, making another line of defense for the last of the garrison.
From the tower over the gate between the courtyards, Ptosphes could see everywhere except directly behind the keep. Three large storming parties were advancing, one toward the breach made by the siege guns, one by the main gate, and one holding well back on the northeastern side. At a single glance, Ptosphes knew that nearly half the Grand Host must be hurling itself at the castle.
Heavy guns were now firing from the battery at the foot of the draw, over the heads of the column climbing. Big guns, too, even if maybe not the Hostigi sixteen-pounders. Ptosphes saw half the main gate flung backward off its hinges into the portcullis, which bent ominously.
A less well aimed shot ploughed through the infantry of the storming column. They halted, giving the guns and musketeers on the gate towers an even better target. Their firing sounded like a single volley, and they fired three more times before the column moved again. It moved more slowly now, leaving behind it a trail of writhing, bloody bodies, like a dying animal dragging its guts behind as it sought to close with the hunter.
The column coming at the breach was taking most of its punishment from the mortars, whose crews were firing too fast to be much concerned with safety. Ptosphes saw one man knocked down and crushed as a mortar shifted on its base, and a shell with a fuse cut too short blew up just above the walls. A dozen defenders went down. The ones who rose again shook their fists at the mortar crews.
Now the guns beside Ptosphes were shooting. Another regiment was coming into sight behind the first one—armored men, marching under a black banner with a silver sun-wheel. Soton’s Knights were fighting on foot today.
The Knights lumbered through the gaps in the first line to take the lead. Ptosphes shouted, “Change to case shot!” It wasn’t going to make any difference to the fate of Tarr-Hostigos now, but the more dead Knights, the better for Kalvan.
The guns aimed at the main gate was firing higher now, trying to silence the guns in the gate tower. One of them was disabled, but the other was still hurling case shot straight into the column, inflicting hideous losses. Guns from the other towers were now hammering at the column as well, scything down entire companies like farmers scything wheat.
Smoke gushed up from the enemy battery, more than one could expect from the discharge of even the largest gun. Ptosphes saw men flying into the air and others running with their clothing on fire. He heard the double-thump of an explosion—someone careless with fireseed—as the rate of fire increased.
More Hostigi case shot tore the main column—then suddenly it was breaking up and the men were running back down the draw in a futile effort to escape, some of their officers beating at them with halberds and swords, others joining the rout. From the walls of Tarr-Hostigos, cheers joined the gunfire.
Ptosphes had a moment of thinking that perhaps their doom wasn’t so certain after all. One column broken, and its men looking as if they would be hard to rally for another attack. Do the same with the other two columns, and at least the mercenary captains might have the same second thoughts they’d had during the first storming attempt. If they had second thoughts and let Styphon’s House know them, the False God himself couldn’t keep the Archpriests from having to listen. And if the Archpriests chose to turn the Red Hand loose on the mercenaries, the Grand Host’s war against Hostigos would become a civil war within its own ranks—
Ptosphes’s moment of hope ended as he saw the column approaching the breach suddenly sprout scaling ladders. They were going to get in or at least close; the heavy mortars had fired off all their shells and round shot wouldn’t do so well even against packed men—
The twelve-pounder on top of the barricade let fly with a triple charge of musket balls. Like a volley from a massed regiment it smashed into the column. Already ragged from climbing the slope, the column now barely deserved the name.
Hard on their heels came point-blank musketry that melted away more of the column. Every musketeer within range had six or seven loaded weapons ready to hand for just this moment. For a brief space, they could fire as fast as the rifles of the Great King Truman’s host, with their “magazines” of eight rounds.
These foes had their blood up, though, or maybe better captains. Then Ptosphes saw the blue and orange colors and recognized the Sacred Squares of Hos-Ktemnos, the best infantry in the Seven Kingdoms. They rose across the rubble before the breach like a blue wave, with clumps of musketeers on the flanks firing over the heads of the storming parties to keep down Hostigi fire. The crews of the useless heavy mortars drew swords and pistols and joined the mass of men struggling in the breach. Ptosphes drew his own sword, ready to join them if they showed signs of flagging.
One of the overheated four-pounders beside Ptosphes recoiled so violently that it snapped its breechings and knocked down Thalmoth. He lay with his thigh a mass of blood, white bone shining through the torn flesh, cursing the gun crew for not remembering what he’d taught them and asking for a pistol. Ptosphes gave him one of his own, as scaling ladders suddenly sprouted to either side of the breach.
