Rascha came by about then and directed those of us who didn't need treatment to pick up javelins and make sure they were unbroken, which was sufficiently mind-numbing to be relaxing after the battle.
We had not, it seemed, been in the worst part of the engagement; there were places where the carnage was much worse, and Jheregnormal-sized oneswere circling overhead. Sometimes one would come a little too close and someone would hurl a stone or a javelin at it.
"Why is it, Loiosh, that they hate Jhereg so much but like you?"
"My winning personality, Boss?"
"Yeah, that must be it."
By the time I got back, the bodies were neatly stacked, and the seriously wounded were gone, and the walking wounded had, for the most part, been tended to. Napper had gotten over his battle-fury and was himself once more. "We should attack," he said disgustedly.
"Good thinking," said Virt. "They only outnumber us about three to two."
"Don't matter," said Napper.
"And we'd be leaving our protection, which is the only way we survived the attack."
"Don't matter."
"And they could probably bring a spear phalanx against us."
"Hmmm. Matters," said Napper.
"What," I asked, "is a spear phalanx?"
"A unit specially designed to wipe out units like us."
"Oh."
"Think of a solid wall of very big shields with ranks of spears sticking out of them, and those in back, who aren't even in danger, pushing the ones in front at you."
"I see. Well, no I don't, but I'm convinced I don't want to."
"I've been through one of those," said Virt. "I didn't much care for it. I probably wouldn't be here if we hadn't had help."
"What sort of help?"
"They don't like getting hit from the flank while they're engaged in front. The especially don't like it when it's heavy cavalry."
"Do we have heavy cavalry?"
"Probably. I'd still rather skip that fight."
"Okay," I agreed. "I won't order it."
"Thanks," she said. "Which reminds me. That business last night."
"What about it?"
"Are you"
I was saved from having to evade another question by the juice-drum, which told us to form our line again.
"Here they come again," said Rascha.
"Bugger," I said.
Napper stood and bounded back to the earthworks, his eyes shining.
"More mounted infantry," said Rascha. "Ready javelins."
You don't need to hear about the second assault, or the third. We survived, and more died. Virt picked up a gouge on her left leg that didn't amount to much, and I got a bruise on my forehead that knocked me down and would probably have been fatal if I hadn't been rushing my opponent; she caught me perfectly, but it was the flat of the blade. Things got hazy for a bit, and I don't know what became of her, but then it was over, and, while we were awaiting the fourth assault we got word to retreat. Napper didn't like it, but I was delighted.
Rascha came by and gave me a new cap, since I'd lost mine in the last assault, and Virt, limping along next to me, said that the bandage around my forehead made me look like a real warrior. I made scatological culinary recommendations.
"Loiosh, I just want you to know, for the sake of my familiar having complete information, that my feet hurt."
"I think you're cheating, Boss. Everyone else has to either carry on without complaint or be known as a complainer. You get to complain without anyone knowing it."
"Because I had the foresight to show up with a ready-made listener to complaints."
"That's a new job for me. Do I get a raise?"
"Sure, Loiosh. Your salary just doubled."
"Heh."
We didn't start the march until fairly late in the day, so we stopped blessedly early, posted the extra pickets, and settled in to a hasty but well-organized camp. I suppose the art of setting up camp has a whole lot of theory behind it, too. Maybe that was what Crown was so good at; I don't know.
I had the second picket duty, which gave me the dubious pleasure of sleeping a little less than four hours, standing guard for four, and then sleeping another hour and a half before having to get up. We weren't attacked during the night, which I wondered at. In fact, I wondered why we never launched attacks during the night. I wondered if it was some sort of agreement among Dragons, the way the Jhereg won't have you assassinated in your own home or in front of your family.
Turned out I was wrong, it was all a matter of generalship and the art of war, about which I know nothing now and at the time knew even less. You see, I somewhere got the idea that good generalship would have a lot in common with running the organization and that there would be a great deal of similarity between battle tactics and, say, planning an assassination. I found out later that I was wrong. Oh, in very general terms, sure there are some similarities, but not in any useful way. I was speaking with Sethra Lavode about the Wall of Baritt's Tomb and the campaign leading up to it. I said, "You have this reputation, you know. I mean, as being a great general. You were Warlord I don't know how many times, and"
"What about it?"
I had to cast about for words. It's hard to tell the most powerful sorcerer and perhaps greatest general in history that you weren't impressed with how she did her job. She might take it wrong. After mumbling a bit, I finally said, "I don't know. It's just that the whole time I was marching and waiting and sneaking around and fighting and marching again I kept waiting for you to make some brilliant maneuver, or some great stroke, or pull some trick, or something."
"How many tricks do you use in your work?"
"Huh? I'll use a trick any time I think I can get away with it."
"So will I," said Sethra Lavode.
"But you usually don't?"
"Tricks, feints, sneak attacks, night attacks, they all work better if they're on a smaller scale. A unit, maybe a company, that's about it. Once you have anything larger, the chances for miscommunication and mistake become too great. And there's always more of a chance for error on attack than defending even in the most simple operations, so if you add something tricky it gets much worse. That's one reason I prefer to defend whenever possible."
"So that's why we kept holding positions and then retreating after we'd won?"
"Those skirmishes you're talking about"
"Skirmishes?"
"All right, Vlad. Those battles, then, that you won, you couldn't have actually won if you had remained. Fornia wouldn't have attacked if he hadn't been pretty sure he could overrun those positions eventually. We had to keep drawing him after us."
"Well, I suppose that counts as a trick, then."
"Maybe. Except, of course, that he knew very well what I was doing."
"Then why did he do what we wanted?"
"Because it was what he wanted, too. He wanted to try to get past our advance positions so he could divide our forces, which would have put me in a very uncomfortable position. It was a race, if you like. I needed to hold him off long enough for all of our forces to be in position; he needed to break through and separate us so we couldn't combine. And then, of course, the big, decisive engagement. However much planning you do, you don't really know until the armies meet and have it out. Even if your position looks perfect on paper, or even if it looks utterly untenable, you don't know until someone calls for an attack and the fight happens."
"Okay," I said. I tried to phrase my next question, then gave up just as she figured it out.
"The reason," she said, "that I have been successful is that I pay attention to details. The fewer details you miss, the greater your chances of winning."
"Well," I said. "That much is rather like assassination. Or so I've heard."
"I don't doubt it. It means keeping open lines of retreat and communications, and always knowing how you're going to feed and water the troops, and where they'll be camping, and what sort of ground they'll be crossing at every point, and the nature of your officers and where their strengths and weaknesses are, and how much dependence to place on which intelligence reports, and how far to push a particular victory, and how to salvage as much as possible from a given defeat, and so on and on and on. The detailsthe little things that lead to your peace, instead of the enemy's."