Dowos was Lord Waldron’s cousin. When he’d demanded to accompany the expedition to Tisamur, Waldron appointed him adjutant of the royal army. Since he and Waldron thought alike, Dowos was a good choice to ride with the king while Waldron sorted out the sudden disruption of the siege.
“No!” said Lord Attaper, to Dowos’ right. “That’d be slaughter, all right, but not—”
“Who are you to—” Dowos shouted. He jerked his mount’s head to face Attaper. The captured horse, unused to being ridden and too small for the big cavalryman anyway, stumbled to its knees. Dowos jumped clear and reached for his sword.
“If you draw that, Dowos,” Carus said in a voice of thunder, “then you’ll be the first rebel I kill on Tisamur. Depend on it!”
“Wha—?” said Dowos, turning in amazement at the violence of the words. “Your highness, I’m no rebel! I only—”
“Silence!” Carus said.
Sharina sat transfixed on the king’s other side, afraid that any action she took would spark his barely restrained fury. Carus was angry beyond reason at the situation he’d created by bringing the royal army to Tisamur, where the kingdom’s enemies could trap it. If Dowos, if anyone, did the wrong thing now, the king would unload that anger lethally on an undeserving victim.
Attaper kneed his mount between Dowos and the king. He caught the reins of the loose horse, and said in a neutral voice, “Let me help you back into the saddle, my lord.”
Now Sharina could touch the king’s cheek again. “Your highness,” she whispered.
Carus threw his head back and laughed. Sharina knew the humor was honest, but at this juncture it disturbed the nearby officers as much as the anger a moment before had done.
“Your suggestion wouldn’t be a worse blunder than the way I brought us all to the present pass, Lord Dowos,” he said, “but one bad mistake is quite enough for a campaign.”
He nodded toward the rebel force. Lerdoc had brought mounts for his cavalry, trusting his wizard advisors for fair winds—if he weren’t simply being a nobleman and therefore a fool on the question. At least a squadron of horsemen were with the skirmishers, moving out as the regiments of heavy infantry tried to form on the beach. On the ships stranded when the tide backed, men swarmed like bees from an opened hive.
“Next thing to chaos, isn’t it?” the king said with a wry smile. His expression hardened. “How good do you suppose our formation’s going to be after we go charging down into them, hey? Especially when their archers start shooting at us from the ships’ decks! Every one of those ships is going to be a little fort with its own moat of seawater.”
“Your highness…” Dowos said, but his voice trailed off. Abruptly he added, “Lord Attaper, my apologies. And my thanks for your assistance with my horse.”
Sharina looked over her shoulder. The skirmishers, savage-looking men with bundles of javelins and a broad knife or a hand axe, were spreading into a loose screen on the forward slope of the ridge. Most of these men were hirelings from islands less settled than even the rural parts of Ornifaclass="underline" hunters, goatherds, nomads of one sort and another. A few wore hide garments, and many were in dressed leather rather than cloth. They were men well used to a hard life, and used also to killing.
In the far distance Sharina could see the leading ranks of the phalanx, moving more slowly because they needed to keep formation if they were to be ready to fight at sudden need. Eighteen-foot pikes waved upright in the air above them like the spines of a poisonous caterpillar. The phalangists wore bronze caps and carried flat, round shields; their real protection came from their tight formation and the hedge of spearpoints that kept enemies from closing with them.
The traditional heavy infantry would be bringing up the rear, but from where Sharina stood they were still out of sight. Those regiments were recruited from Ornifal’s yeoman farmers and provided their own equipment, considering themselves socially superior to the oarsmen who formed the phalanx and were the core of Garric’s new tactics. They’d be on their mettle to prove themselves better than the phalangists in battle as well as birth.
“Attaper,” the king said, “how long do you think it’ll take them to get organized enough that Lerdoc would engage of his own accord?”
“Not today,” said the Blood Eagle commander. “He’s a rash man—he wouldn’t be here if he weren’t—”
Carus smiled like a curved knife. “True of more than him,” he said.
“—so he may not wait to fortify a proper camp, but he’ll want to get all his troops ashore and marshalled.”
“That’s what I’d judge as well,” Carus said, nodding. “So…What do you suppose he’ll do if I withdraw Waldron and those last regiments from Donelle…and I bring the whole army together here on this ridge?”
The royal officers looked at one another, dumbfounded by the king’s question. “Surely you’re joking, your majesty?” said the first who dared speak; Lord Muchon, a former officer of the Blood Eagles and now in command of a division of the phalanx.
He didn’t sound sure. Like many of the other officers present, Muchon knew little of Prince Garric beyond the rumor that he’d been a shepherd on Haft a few months before.
“The regiments still in the lines around Donelle are holding ten times their numbers of rebels, mercenaries as well as local militia,” Attaper said cautiously. His contact with Garric had been close and of the sort that cements trust. “If you withdraw them, then the rebels will combine their forces and attack us with…”
He turned up his palms in a deliberately vague gesture. “Twice our numbers. At least.”
There was a general murmur of assent from the command group. The other men looked relieved that Attaper had stated what they all thought was obvious: obvious even to a priestess, let alone to the prince commanding their army.
“Aye,” said Carus with a smile like a striking viper’s. “The rebels’ll march out of Donelle, and we’ll hit them while they’re marching. Kill the most of them and scatter the rest. If things work well, we’ll take the city gates while some of the survivors’ try to get back inside, but that can wait if it needs to.”
Lord Dowos had been trying to avoid calling attention to himself, choosing to stand holding his horse’s bridle instead of remounting. Carus’ latest proposition shocked him to speech again.
“But Count Lerdoc!” he said. “It’s only three miles to Donelle. Lerdoc’ll attack us from behind while we’re fighting the troops from Donelle and, and…”
“We’ll hold the ridgeline here with two regiments of heavy infantry,” the king said briskly. “Waldron will. The phalanx has to be moving to be effective. The phalanx to slice through the locals fast, the rest of the heavy infantry to watch the flanks, and the javelin men to keep the survivors running far enough that they can’t regroup when we turn to deal with Lerdoc.”
He slammed his right fist into his left palm. “Crush them!” he repeated. “And then crush Lerdoc, while he’s stuck here fighting Waldron.”
“May the Lady cast Her cloak about me!” blurted a regimental commander. Nobody else spoke for a moment.
Sharina felt cold. Crush and slice were metaphors when applied to armies, but they and other words—gut, butcher, tear, and every similar term of violence were literal descriptions of what would happen to thousands of the individuals who made up those armies. Twenty thousand hogs, being slaughtered in a morning, squealing and spewing blood on ground already soaked with the blood of others….
“Your highness,” said Lord Attaper, his expression agonized from the effort of what he felt he had to say for the kingdom’s sake. “My prince…Count Lerdoc is a traitor to you and the Isles, but he’s an able general. When he realizes Waldron has only two regiments, he’ll bypass them and rush to take the rest of us in the rear.”