Well, now… Just keep the old cranium down and get on with the job in hand. That was the way of it, by Zair! The only way.
Jiktar Travok Ramplon, to whom I had given Fango in exchange for Shadow, led his zorca archers out to trail his skirts before the enemy. He would raise the dust and lure Hangrol on. We had no Battle Maidens, no Jikai Vuvushis, with us, for which I was profoundly thankful. The local people rallied round wonderfully and scraped up a wild assortment of riding animals. These were apportioned among the infantry, for neither men nor beasts would be fit to act as cavalry against the kind of opposition we were facing.
Our two regiments of swarthmen were weak, only around three hundred each; but they were going to have to take the brunt of it when the cavalry came to handstrokes. The totrixmen were good quality, and Drak’s three squadrons would help. But…
We marched out of Ovalia, heading for our start lines, and news came in that Hangrol had turned like a maddened graint to follow Jiktar Travok Ramplon and his zorca bows. Turko nodded in satisfaction.
“Grapple him, Dray, like any ordinary wrestler. Then throw him and twist his neck!”
“Aye.”
Very rapidly becoming accustomed to being addressed as a kov, our Turko the Shield. “Yes, kov,” and,
“Certainly, kov.” Oh, yes, Kov Turko of Falinur — living very high on the vosk, our Turko!
The flags flew in the light of the suns, the men marched, the dust rose, and as we of the Eighth Army swung along so the swods in the ranks sang. They sang old songs and new songs, sprightly ditties and scurrilous comments on their officers. They sang sickly love ballads like “She Lived by the Lily Canal.”
This was the song sung almost obsessively by the men on the night before that resounding affray, the Battle of Kochwold. Of a similar sentimental nature was “Wedding Dirge of Hondor Elaina.”
Then the veteran swods of the Fifth Churgurs struck up “Paktuns’s Promenade” and sang their own repeatable words, and when that was done they warbled out many a ditty I have mentioned to you. At last I half-turned in the saddle and glared at the Second Regiment of the Sword Watch. In my fruity old bellow I started to yodel out “The Bowmen of Loh.”
And, soon, the whole army bellowed out that brave old song and the imbalances of echoes as the words rolled down the lines sent tiny birds scurrying for shelter.
Seg Segutorio was not with me. Many of my fine Archer regiments of Valka, who used the Lohvian longbow, were with Drak. But we raggle-taggle bobtail of any army sang as we marched. Continually I rode up and down the lines, observing the men. And, in their turn, they observed me. Many were the comradely greetings flung to and fro. And, as we marched, my thoughts insisted on dwelling on Prince Tyfar and our comrades and our experiences in Moderdrin. It seemed to me I had learned something there and I did not know what it could be. Certainly, a mere trick of thorn-ivy and its escalation into army scale could not be the reason I had found my way to the Humped Land. If Quienyin knew, I fancied he would tell me.
Marking how the Tenth Kerchuri marched, their pikes at ease, the Hakkodin with their axes or halberds over their shoulders, the attached Chodku of archers singing lustily, I thought of other times when we had marched singing into battle. Well, this time would be different and yet just the same. The differences became apparent as, wheeling to meet an attempt to flank us, I realized afresh the frightening smallness of our company. Kapt Hangrol was a seasoned campaigner, and he sought to pin and crush us. We had to work on him, out-march him — for all his aerial strength would avail him nothing if he could not put troops on the ground — and whittle away both his strength and his confidence. We lost men in skirmishes. I raged and grieved; but we went on with the words of Clardo the Clis to sustain us.
“If one man dies for what he believes in — would you deny him that right? We all chose to be here!”
The maneuvers were complicated and pretty. We kept to good cover, making the utmost use of woods and darkness. The pace told on us and the men grew lean and hungry. The quoffa-drawn wagons caught up with us from time to time and yielded provisions and provender. Brad the Berry disgorged an amazing quantity of first-class food from his wagons, the Hagli Bush Irregulars delighting in showing how well they could provide. And we played Kapt Hangrol and his army, and in one classic attack we cut off and destroyed four full regiments of the iron legions of Hamal. With them went a shrieking collection of Layco Jhansi’s hoodwinked adherents, spearmen, savage, almost barbaric fanatics. As a few miserable and shaking prisoners were interrogated, I reached the conclusion that Jhansi must be using sorcery to control and enflame these men. Only a few seasons ago, before the Time of Troubles, these same shrieking savages had been sober, industrious citizens of Vallia. It was not just civil war and all its attendant horrors that had brought this travesty into being.
“That rast Hangrol draws near,” said Turko, most cheerfully, on the day when the maps and the scouts’
reports showed the raiding army to be within a day’s march. All ideas of raiding farther into Orvendel had been abandoned by Layco Jhansi’s men. I could guess that Kapt Hangrol and Malervo Norgoth had been exchanging acrimonious words. That cheered me up, since I was a malignant sort of fellow. We had trailed the red rag and they were bedazzled and enflamed.
“Right, Turko — or should I say, Kov Turko?”
“And I say to you — do you wish to try a few falls?”
We laughed companionably together. For all the seriousness with which Turko took his new status as a kov, he, like my comrades and myself blessed or cursed with these noble titles, could see the ludicrousness, the pompous jackass nonsense, of putting too much store by rank and title. Estates, now
— ah! That was a different matter.
These intricate maneuvers were of absorbing interest. We pivoted so as to maintain the Tenth Kerchuri with its solid mass of pikes as our fulcrum. And, of course, the local folk of Orvendel were extremely severe on any raiders who fell into their clutches.
Absorbingly interesting or not, the purely maneuvering phase had to come to an end.
“You are right, Turko. Tomorrow should see them nicely positioned.”
“The spot you have chosen and worked them to is perfect. Now all that remains is for them to go in like idiot dermiflons, braying and charging full pelt.”
“I think they will. Empress Thyllis has sent men up here in a desperate attempt to recover her losses in Vallia. Hangrol knows his head is forfeit if he loses.”
My knowledge of mad Empress Thyllis encompassed her macabre Hall of Notor Zan where the wretches she deemed had failed her were thrown to the slavering fangs of her pet Manhounds.[8]
Everything was in order and to hand. The men sat around their campfires and a few songs lifted; but in the main they got their heads down and tried to sleep. I fancy that most of them did not, not being veterans. So the morning dawned. Palest rose and apple green, the Suns of Scorpio, Zim and Genodras, rose into a dappled sky. The air tanged with a morning bite. Food was eaten by those whose appetites remained. The final polish to weapons, the last adjustment to harness, the bilious shouts of the Deldars bellowing the men into their ranks — so we raggedy little bunch, so magniloquently styled the Eighth Army, fell in.
The lay of the land was simple and all important. Not being sufficiently strong to meet Hangrol in open battle, we must perforce make him attack piecemeal, which, being a skillful general, he would not do unless hoodwinked. The plain was here cut by a wide gash, the bed of an ancient stream long since lost to the Canals of Vallia. Vegetation clothed its flanks. Here were posted the archers. At the end of the depression the Tenth Kerchuri stood, formed, solid, a glittering array of crimson and bronze. They were withdrawn just enough to be out of sight of the distant end. Our cavalry waited my orders on the flanks. Scouts and skirmishers moved forward in clouds to deny the enemy clear observation. The churgurs waited just inboard of the archers. It was a simple arrangement to all seeming, and not a particularly military layout, either. I knew a fair old number of princes and generals who would blanch at the mere sight of the formations we adopted.