He began waving at nearby units, gathering them about him as he headed to the rear and the rain began to fall. At first, the drops were scattered, but in moments the storm had become a real Mardukan gullywasher. Water pounded down like a hammer—or a waterfall—and quickly formed puddles nearly knee deep to a human.
Rastar slashed down a few of the locals on the way out, especially when they were delaying his forces, but his main objective now was to withdraw his men intact, not to run up his body count. He'd only drawn his pistols once, but when he saw a cluster around a group of dismounted Vashin, all four came out. The Vashin, including Honal, were hunkered down behind their dropped civan, slashing and firing at a group of about twenty Krath who obviously wanted their weapons and harnesses.
Rastar pressed the civan into a gallop, and it responded wearily. He could tell the beast was badly fatigued, but its feet spurned the bodies of the fallen and it leapt over the occasional civan body until it finally bounded into the midst of the Krath attackers. Rastar laid down a curtain of revolver fire all around himself, while the civan kicked and bit in every direction, until a dozen of the other troopers he'd rallied came charging in to finish the enemy off .
"Rastar!" Honal protested as he drove his sword into one of the wounded Krath. "You're not leaving any for me!"
Rastar leaned over and offered his cousin an arm up as one of the other troopers dismounted to retrieve the bugler and the flag of Therdan.
"And what the hell was the colors group doing following you, and not me?" he demanded.
"You bloody idiot! You ran ahead of us. And you complain about me being headstrong! We got bogged down, and there you were, charging into the distance like some kid!"
"Oh, sure, blame it on me," Rastar said. He took the bugle from the bugler, who was clearly too cut up to wield it, and put it to his lips.
"Sounds like they're withdrawing," Pahner said, stepping back under an awning as the skies opened up.
"I wonder if the Krath will advance in this?" Roger asked.
"Probably, Your Highness," the Gastan said.
"What is this, 'Follow Roger Week'?" Roger asked with a smile he hoped the Gastan interpreted correctly.
"The buildup on this flank was easy to note," the Gastan said. "I'm not sure the sally was worth the loss of your riding beasts."
"I don't think it was," Roger agreed. "And even if the raiding party in the rear started any fires, they've been put out by the rain."
"Time for Plan B," Pahner mused. "If we had one. But the only one I can think of is to take the spaceport first. Gastan, I won't argue for that plan, but how long would it take for a force to make it to the port from here?"
"No more than twenty days," the Gastan replied. "Less for runners. I can have a message to Temu Jin in less than nine, and a reply in twice that."
The brief, intense rain squall was already clearing, and Roger gazed at the distant fortress.
"It's slightly lower than us, but we don't have any effective artillery to destroy it," he mused.
"They were starting to cast real siege cannon in K'Vaern's Cove," Julian said. Then he grimaced apologetically. "Sorry, just brainstorming. Too far, too long."
"And what would we do if we destroyed the walls?" Roger asked, gesturing at the Krath. The good news was that it seemed the combination of rain and the sally had caused the enemy to withdraw for the day, but— "They still outnumber us forty-to-one," he observed.
"We broke up their formations when they came at us by targeting the leadership," Fain said. The concept of brainstorming had been explained to him, and he found it a valid idea. "It was a technique I'd considered against the Boman, but I was never able to implement it at the time; my men weren't good enough shots. All the target practice since made the difference."
"The French introduced that technique during the Napoleonic wars," Pahner commented. "Congratulations on rediscovering it. I should have suggested it."
"But we can't snipe them to death," Roger said, looking up at the mountains looming above the citadel. The mountains to the north and south had relatively shallow slopes, and the Krath fortress had been cut into them. But beyond that, the valley necked down to the gorge of the Shin River. From there, it dropped over a thousand meters to the town of Thirlot. "We could drop teams on them, but even with armor, that would be pinpricks."
"Assassinate the leadership?" Julian suggested.
"They're relatively civilized," Pahner pointed out. "They're fighting by policy, not personality, and they have a solid chain of command. If we kill the current leaders, their replacements will step into their positions with hardly a ripple. Otherwise, that would work."
"We could roll rocks down the hill on them," Julian said. "Gronningen can handle the boulders."
"Pinpricks again," Pahner objected. "Even a large landslide onto the citadel or the army wouldn't do enough damage. Even if we did it several times, they'd just give up the slopes. And we still couldn't move them."
"Do it enough, and it might break their will," Julian argued mulishly. " 'The objective is to break the will of the enemy.' "
"A combination of all of them?" Fain mused. "Marines and my fellows sniping, the Shin to take to the heights and start rockslides, the occasional sally and raid... over time, we might be able to wear them down to the point they'd quit the field?"
"No." Roger shook his head, still looking at the distant ranges. "Not a battle of attrition; we need a battle of checkmate. Gastan, how long, again, to get a message to Jin?"
"Nine days." The Shin king gave Roger a sidelong glance. "What are you considering?"
"I'm going to make them wish they'd never pissed me off," Roger said. "I'm going to get them to surrender, without the need for a single battle. I'm going to send them home without their arms, their food, their bedding, or their pretty little tents. And with virtually no loss of life. I'm going to humiliate them."
"And how, exactly, are you going to do all that, Your Highness?" Pahner asked.
"I'm going to introduce them to geology," Roger said with a feral smile.
Pahner looked at him, then up at the mountains, and then up at the end of the valley. The intensity of his speculation was obvious, but, finally, he shrugged with a puzzled expression.
"The salient point to the plan is that this entire valley was once a lake," Roger said, looking around the steam-filled room.
The conference had been moved to the town of Mudh Hemh for a multitude of reasons, but the main one was that Roger wanted input from Despreaux. Since all the wounded had been moved to Mudh Hemh, the conference had to be moved to follow them.
The shift was beneficial on another level, as well. Although the town was filled with the sharp smell of rotten eggs from the nearby geothermal area, it was also surprisingly pleasant for the humans—which, of course, meant unpleasantly chilly for Mardukans. The Shin of Mudh Hemh maintained their movement ability by bathing in the warm waters from the Fire Lands, and the town was half-barbarian village, half-sybaritic spa.
Indeed, since the conference had been pushed into evening, it ended up being held in the primary bathhouse of the Gastan; and most of the Mardukans were submerged up to their necks in the steaming hot water. In any other circumstances, the thought of a major war-planning session being held in a spa would've been ludicrous. But to the Bronze Barbarians, who had held them in pouring thunderstorms, swamps, mountains, and flooded plains over the last half-year, this was infinitely better than many alternatives. The sight of Dogzard, paddling from person to person to mooch treats, and of the IAS journalist, discreetly filming the entire conference, simply added an amusing counterpoint.