"Useless," he said sadly to the assembled joint chiefs. "I saw it myself. It wobbled through the air and stuck in the big pile of dirt. We could bombard them all day long and they probably wouldn't even notice."
Orosin Zeuxis of the Linen Drapers', colonel-in-chief of the artillery, shook his head violently. "The plan is," he said, "to keep up a constant, hammering fire which will inevitably smash up those wicker basket things, loosen the earth and send it sliding down into the trench. We've run tests using donkey panniers, and-"
"Useless," Psellus repeated mildly. "We need to do a whole lot better than that. The scorpions are accurate, I grant you, but it's no good being able to pitch five shots in a foot square if they don't actually do anything. No, I think it's time we brought up the trebuchets and mangonels. I know," he added, raising his hand in a rather weak gesture; they stopped arguing at once, even so. "We were planning on keeping them in reserve, we don't want to let them know the true range we can achieve, so that when their main army gets close enough, we can take them by surprise. And no, ideally we wouldn't want to commit them to the embankment in case it's over-run, and there wouldn't be time to move them back again. All perfectly true. The fact remains that they're digging their wretched trench at an appallingly fast rate, and our only hope is to slow them down until their food runs out. Therefore," he said softly, so they had to shut up just to be able to hear him, "we will deploy the heavy artillery straight away. Orosin, that's your department. If you need help with transport and installation, feel free to use whatever resources you like. I know it's asking a lot, but I'd quite like to have at least one full battery in place and working by this time tomorrow."
Zeuxis glowered at him, then nodded stiffly. "I'll do my best," he said.
"I'm sure you will," Psellus replied. "And with any luck, that'll put a stop to their confounded tunnelling, for a while at least. Meanwhile, though, we need to do something else. I had a good look at the new trench they started the day before yesterday."
"Oh," someone said, "that. You know, I'm not too fussed about it. It's moving very slowly, compared to the others."
Psellus smiled. "That's because it's three times as wide," he said. "Which suggests to me that it's not for bringing up soldiers or sappers. I think that trench is going to be used for machinery of some sort. Artillery, perhaps, or some kind of digging or battering engine."
Someone else shrugged. "Maybe it is," he said. "But it's still a long way away. Out of range, even for the Type Twenties."
"Quite," Psellus said, dipping his head in graceful acknowledgement. "Which is why I think we ought to try a sortie."
This time they weren't so easily quelled. As their voices rose in protest and complaint, they merged, cancelling each other out, so that Psellus couldn't make out a word anybody was saying. He didn't need to, of course.
Manuo Phranazus, commander-in-chief of ground forces (not so long ago he'd been chairman of the Cabinetmakers' standards and quality control committee; war's strange alchemy, Psellus thought), eventually managed to make himself heard over the buzz, and the chorus gradually subsided. "We've been through this before," he said aggressively, "dozens of times. A sortie simply isn't practical. My men may be kitted out in the finest armour money can buy, but they're not soldiers. They've never seen action, their drill's still shaky, and the officers and NCOs have a long way to go before they're fit to be trusted to command a serious action. And on top of all that, trying to keep them in some semblance of order at night, in the dark-"
"I wasn't thinking of a night sortie," Psellus said mildly.
Now they were so stunned they couldn't even speak. "You can't be serious," Phranazus said at last. "You're actually thinking of attacking in daylight?"
"That's right, yes." Psellus' chin tended to wobble when he nodded. He'd noticed it in the mirror for the first time a few days ago, and was still painfully self-conscious about it. "Noon, to be precise."
"That's-"
"Recommended," Psellus interrupted. "In the book. It gives a whole host of excellent reasons: technical stuff, mostly, about shift timings. I've had someone keeping an eye on them, and there's always a shift change about a quarter of an hour before noon. The men coming off shift are worn out after working, and they tend to stop a little early. Meanwhile, it takes the new shift at least ten minutes to come up the trench and relieve them. And of course the last thing they'll be expecting is a sortie, in broad daylight, in the middle of the day." From the bottom of his pile of papers, he drew out a sketch. "If we come out of the sally-port and bridge the ditch here," he explained, "we'll be out of their line of sight until we actually round the point of this bastion; then it's only, what, six hundred yards, in a straight line, and then you're in the trench. At least, one unit goes in and kills the poor sappers. A second unit follows the line of their wall, bank, whatever you care to call it; the point is, they'll be out of sight from the enemy camp, so when the new shift come rushing up to take on our men in the trench, this second unit can drop in behind them as they pass and attack them from the rear. We can then use the trench as cover and rush ahead to sabotage the new trench, which'll be the real object of the sortie. The only point at which we'll be fighting them on equal terms is here"-he pointed-"where we'll need to send up a couple of platoons to hold them off while the rest of us do as much damage as possible in the new trench. I'm afraid this holding party probably won't be coming back." (He looked away as he said it.) "Still, the loss of two platoons will be a small price to pay if we can stop them bringing up heavy machinery for a while." It took a moment for the joint chiefs to realise that it was actually rather a good plan; an excellent plan, in fact, and afterwards they spent some time discussing among themselves where on earth the old fool could possibly have found it. Not from any of the approved texts, which several of them knew by heart; it must be that mysterious bloody book that he wouldn't let anybody else see. The thought that Psellus had dreamed it up all by himself never occurred to them. Even so, they said: a sortie. When will he get it into his head that we aren't proper soldiers? The point that the joint chiefs had overlooked, though it hadn't escaped Secretary Psellus, was that the Vadani sappers weren't proper soldiers either. When the sortie burst into the trench, they couldn't understand what was happening. They'd been expressly told that the Mezentines had no infantry; their mercenaries had all gone home, and the citizens themselves were far too effete to fight. Who the men in armour pouring into the trench could be, therefore, they had no idea; nor had they any intention of staying around to find out. They dropped their picks and shovels and tried to scramble up the blind, unbanked side. Some of them made it.