Not that he had any intention of explaining that to them, of course. Just as he had no intention of mentioning the hot meal he’d arranged to have waiting when they came off duty. As far as they were concerned, those meals were going to be the company cooks’ own idea … and the only reason he was out here was to carry out another “surprise readiness inspection.” And, to be honest, making certain they were on their toes despite the miserable conditions was about as important as things came. Not that he anticipated any problems at his next stop. Ohmahr Swarez ran a tight squad. The possibility that any of his men were slacking off, no matter what the weather was doing, didn’t really exist. Still—
Something moved at the edge of his vision, coming out of the brush beside the trail. He caught it from the corner of one eye, but he didn’t really have time to react. He was, however, more fortunate than Sergeant Swarez had been; the rifle butt simply clubbed him to the ground, unconscious, with a concussion which would leave him seeing double for a five-day.
* * *
“What the fuck d’you think he was doing, wanderin’ around out here by himself?” Private Hynryk Ahzwald muttered as he and Tahdayus Gahsett dragged the unconscious Klymynty off the trail.
“Damned if I know.” Gahsett shrugged. “Looks of things, he’s prob’ly a sergeant. Might be he had it in mind to make sure his outposts were doin’ their jobs.”
“Kinda late fer that,” Ahzwald said with profound satisfaction.
“Oh, yeah?” Gahsett snorted. “S’pose he’d come along five minutes earlier an’ caught the engineers goin’ in. Think Sergeant Ohflynn’d be just happy as a Temple Boy at a bonfire if we’d’a let that happen?”
“Pro’bly not,” Ahzwald conceded after a moment.
He rolled the unconscious Dohlaran over and began tying him up securely, although that was probably unnecessary, given how hard he’d hit the poor bastard. The odds were at least even he’d never be waking up again, and if he did, it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
If the other fellow had been a genuine Temple Boy, Ahzwald would have been inclined to simply slit his throat as the easiest way to make sure he wouldn’t be posing any problems in the future. Regulations—and Major Mahklymorh—frowned on that sort of problem-solving. Still, Ahswald was a practical man … and the major wasn’t here. But he’d developed a grudging respect for the Dohlarans. They seemed a lot less inclined towards “making examples” than the Temple Boys or the frigging Desnairians, and they were tough bastards. They’d given ground quickly when the Army of Thesmar first launched its counterattack, but surprise had never turned into panic. If there was an ounce of give-up in them he hadn’t seen it, and there’d been nothing easy about the long advance from Evyrtyn. True, the Army of Thesmar had advanced better than two hundred miles since then, but the Army of the Seridahn had fought hard for every inch of that advance, and there’d been precious few atrocities on either side.
Under the circumstances, he was prepared to give a fellow veteran of that campaign at least the possibility of survival.
* * *
“Last man, Sir,” Platoon Sergeant Gyffry Tyllytsyn, 2nd Platoon, 115th Combat Engineer Company, 19th Combat Engineers Battalion, said quietly into Lieutenant Klymynt Hahrlys’ ear.
“Confirmed the head count?” Hahrlys asked. Not that he doubted Tyllytsyn’s assurance; the platoon sergeant didn’t make that sort of mistake. But it never hurt to be doubly certain.
“Yes, Sir.” Tyllytsyn smiled crookedly. “Double-checked it twice.”
“Good enough for me.” Hahrlys patted the sergeant’s shoulder. “Now let’s just make sure we don’t trip over the fuse hoses, shall we?”
“Suits me right down to the ground, Sir. How’re we doing for time?”
“That’s a good question.”
Hahrlys turned to face east, raising his arms to spread his poncho, and gestured to the private with the closed bull’s-eye lantern. Raindrops hissed into steam on the lantern’s hot case as the private leaned close and opened the tiny circular port set into the lantern’s slide. The light spilling through it seemed almost blinding to their darkness-accustomed vision, but Hahrlys’ body and poncho blocked its brilliance from any Dohlaran eyes as he held his opened watch in the small pool of brightness.
“Fifteen minutes ahead of schedule,” he said with profound satisfaction.
* * *
“Sure would feel better usin’ signal rockets, Sir,” Sergeant Pynhyrst muttered. “This doin’ it all on a watch an’ hopin’ ever’one’s where he’s s’posed t’ be.…”
He shook his head dolefully, and Haarahld Hytchkahk snorted. Pynhyrst was as reliable as the rocks of his native Snake Mountains, but he did have a talent for finding things to worry about. Which, Hytchkahk had to admit, was one of the things which made him so valuable as 3rd Section’s senior noncom.
“If you have any concerns you want to discuss with Major Stefyns or General Sumyrs, I’m sure they’ll be happy to relay them to Earl Hanth,” he said very quietly in the sergeant’s ear.
“Just saying’ I’d like a little more … control, maybe, Sir,” Pynhyrst replied. “Waitin’ around fer someone else t’ open the ball’s the sort of thing gets on a man’s nerves.”
“Now, there I can’t argue with you, Adym,” Hytchkahk conceded and thumped the sergeant lightly on the shoulder. “On the other hand, I’d rather be us than the engineers, wouldn’t you?”
“Got a point there, Sir,” Pynhyrst admitted. “Scout snipers’ve earned their pay tonight, too, come to that.”
“That they have.”
The two Siddarmarkians sheltered under the stretched canvas Ohmahr Swarez’s picket no longer required. Its protection was purely temporary, and both of them were already so saturated that it was more symbolic than useful, but at least the rain which had already soaked them to the bone wasn’t being constantly replenished by even colder reinforcements.
In most ways, Hytchkahk actually agreed with Pynhyrst. He would have preferred something more positive than “we’re all supposed to be in position by now” himself. But he understood the logic, and the attack plan hinged on achieving surprise. In theory, the Temple Boys—although he supposed calling the Royal Dohlaran Army Temple Boys might be a tad unfair; they’d certainly massacred fewer prisoners than the “Sword of Schueler” or the Army of God’s regulars had—weren’t supposed to have a clue the 3rd Alyksberg Volunteers were anywhere close to them. Hopefully, they still thought they were dealing solely with patrols of the indefatigable Charisian scout snipers, and Earl Hanth had gone to some lengths to keep them thinking that way.
The Army of Thesmar had maintained the tempo of its patrols all across the Army of the Seridahn’s front but those patrols continued to focus their main effort on the line of the canal, both as genuine probes of the Dohlaran positions and to create uncertainty about precisely what Earl Hanth had in mind for his next move. The Dohlarans had gotten much better at both offensive and defensive patrolling of their own, but when it came to that game, “better” was nowhere remotely close to “as good as” the Imperial Charisian Army. The Republic of Siddarmark had never been what anyone would have called incompetent when it came to scouting and reconnaissance, but Hytchkahk would have been the first to admit that even the RSA had learned an enormous amount from its Charisian allies.
At the moment, however, it was to be hoped Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr’s attention was firmly focused on his main defensive line forty miles west of Fyrayth, where those patrols were doing their best to keep it fixed. The last place they wanted him worrying about was the security screen far out on his right flank in these miserable, rain-soaked woods.