After a brief but noticeable pause, Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz said gravely, “Although not in the same way, thank God, we have been flanked, taken in the rear, before—several times within my memory and probably many more than that in your own, sir—but our losses have never been this heavy before, mostly for the reason that the short-haftmen were there to do their principal task, that of defending the otherwise highly vulnerable rear and flanks of the pike lines for a sufficient time for men to ground pikes, turn about and form a hedge of two fronts or a porcupine, whichever seemed best at that time and place.
“Now, sir, while I am not necessarily saying that that would have worked in this case, not against a mixed force of both heavy horse and light horse plus a contingent of heavy-armed foot, I do state categorically that our chances to avoid such a bloodletting as our arms have this day experienced would have been far better had we had our shorts in the proper place when they were needed.”
“You’ll rise high, my boy,” thought the brigadier, “either in rank or by your neck from the end of a rope. You know damned well just who, just which noble arsehole, is directly culpable for this calamity, know as well as do I.
“It’s really my fault, though. I should’ve foreseen something like this happening under the circumstances. I knew that that damned Potter was displeased with the alignments, and I knew he is a cousin of the earl, and I knew that the earl—unlike his old father, God rest his soul—does dote on playing at war captain, when he finds or makes himself the opportunity.
“So, it’s going to be entirely up to me to gingerly chew our esteemed leader out for his tragic folly, this time. Sir Djaimz here obviously wouldn’t dare do so; he has too much to lose to chance incurring the earl’s disfavor. At least my place is secure.
“But I’ll put that particular chore off until I can speak clearly and precisely—there must be no misunderstanding of aught I say to him.
“Well, I suppose that the next, logical step is going to be to march on New Kuhmbuhluhnburk itself, and call on it to surrender ... not that I think the feisty bastards will, mind you. No, I’d wager we end up besieging them there ... unless the place is weak enough to fall by storm, which I doubt on general principles. Odd, that no scout of ours has ever been able to get an actual sight of that city and come back to us with the tale. Even our herald was not allowed close enough to give us any idea of the defenses of the place. But I must plan to act on the assumption that New Kuhmbuhluhnburk is at the very least defensible and well garrisoned and, being a mountain city, probably has sources of unpollutable water inside the walls, as well.
“And so, Ahrthur Maklarin, that leaves two options: entrench and throw zigzags close enough to tunnel and undermine a likely stretch of wall, or simply hunker down on the spot and try to starve the buggers out, if we can’t find a traitor or two to open a stray gate to us of a dark night.
“From last year’s crop of prisoners and from those we captured when we took our glen, I get an impression that out from the foot of the capital there spreads a long, wide and exceptionally rich plain. Conceivably, we could live well off their own lands while besieging their city. But as we’ve here learned to our sorrow, not all of these New Kuhmbuhluhners think or act alike. There’s a wide streak of shrewd canniness runs through some of the leaders, so no doubt but our folk up in the north will be on short rations, are our men on the siege lines to be fed for however long it takes to achieve a capitulation. But it can and must be done. Our folk are tough, accustomed to privation, and they and their forefathers before them have done the like before to support a field army. They will not conceivably stick at doing it all again, not to gain a prize so rich as these lands, this Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn.”
The Skohshun army stayed in place, remained in the camps they had come to call Twin Hills for long and long after the disastrous battle. The seriously wounded, if they lived through it, were wagoned back to what they called Skohshun Glen and the wagons returned with foodstuffs, beer and other necessities of field life.
Long before he could even sit up straight without blinding pain, the brigadier had reassumed his command. The young Earl Devernee had taken his oral birching with far better grace than Sir Ahrthur had foreseen. Apparently he had been shaken to his innermost core of being by the sanguineous results of his intemperate decisions of that morning before the battle. This fact cheered the battered old man mightily, for he had much yet to do and he had not relished the thought of an ongoing feud with his nominal superior whilst he went about his necessary tasks with the army.
Of the three, lonely prisoners—all wounded—taken in the aftermath of the battle, two were New Kuhmbuhluhn nobles, and they gave him precious little information he had not had ere this. The third, once stripped of armor, proved to be a dark and lovely woman; but she could not or, more likely thought the brigadier, would not speak any comprehensible tongue. Her racial similarity to the woman prisoner up in the glen struck him early on, so he suddenly decided to have all of the prisoners brought down to the camps, thinking that he might well find a use for them between here and New Kuhmbuhluhnburk.
As regarded the army, there was no rebuilding of Colonel Fair’s regiment possible, not without stripping the last reserve pikeman from the glen, nor could all the vacant places in the ranks of the other two regiments be filled in. Therefore, he had Farr’s regimental banner sent back in the same wagon that bore the wounded officer himself; it and he would become a part of the reserve establishment until/when/if there were enough trained bodies to again fill that unit out.
The few pikemen and shorts left of the “disbanded” unit were parceled out as replacement fillers where needed. As for the remnants of the regiment of the late Colonel Gambel, the brigadier retired that banner, too, and merged the survivors with the regiment of Colonel Taylor. It seemed to him the quickest and simplest answer to the problem, and he was itchy to get the army reorganized and on the march toward New Kuhmbuhluhnburk before the foemen had the time and the leisure to concoct any unpleasant surprises for him and his.
His mounted messengers kept the roads and trails dusty between Twin Hills Camps and the captured glen, while his messages kept the glen and a large number of its inhabitants as busy as so many ants. But the Skohshuns were familiar with this kind of activity. Almost every war season within living memory it had been the same drudgery of preparing their men for war and providing for them whilst they campaigned; the only activities held of more worth were those of agriculture and animal husbandry, and even these were closely related, of course, to the welfare of the troops in the field.
Unsatisfied with reports from various of his subordinates, the brigadier himself took the time to interview, to debrief first the commander, then several of the officers and other ranks of the dragoons who had trailed the defeated army of New Kuhmbuhluhn all the way to the capital. But to a man their observations of the city and its environs made no sense, had little similarity one to the other, yet these men all were trained, experienced scouts.
The brigadier found the whole business to be most unsettling, but he moved on to other affairs, rationalizing that he and all the rest would be there to see the city and countryside soon enough.
When Dr. Schiepficker had completed his oral report and surrendered the microphone to Corbett, the officer said, “If you’re not sitting down, David, I strongly advise that you do so, now.”
“Erica ... ?” came the hoarse, hesitant whisper. “She ... she’s ... you’ve found her ... her ... ?”