She looked at him in some confusion. “I still don’t understand all this,” she told him.
He grabbed for a flask, uncapped it, and took a long pull. It was a lot stronger than ale, but he downed it like it was water.
He coughed slightly, wiped his mouth with his hand, and let the flask, which was on a chain around his waist, drop. He sighed and grinned.
“Allies,” he told her. “And who could they get? Not Alestol—they’re stuck in their hex. Not Palim, surely. That left Zhonzhorp, to the west. A high-tech hex. It’s where those excellent rifles and cannon were manufactured. The Zhonnies voted against us, too—as did most, o’ course—and they would also like to see the battle fought on somebody else’s territory. Keeps from messin’ up the landscape.”
The reserves were attacking, closing in now.
“The Olbornians will be comin’ back now to try and hit us, but it’ll do ’em no good. See? Right now some of our flying folk are givin’ it to ’em good, just beyond the trees there. When we combine, there’ll be little left in the way of an enemy in our area, and our combined force will push out at the Olbornians. That’ll be that. Better part of a day is all.”
“I’m still confused,” she persisted. “Why did you attack the way you did?”
He grinned. “Well, if we’d split up into three main bodies, there would’ve been maybe two, three thousand tops, to cross that open area. The pussy cats would be down to that number or so after the bombardment, so it’d be fairly even: their turf, our superior racial forms for this kind o’ thing. Most of us are harder to kill than them. Then, as the flankers came to the aid of our forward attackers, they’d be hit by the Zhonzhorpians. Again, equal numbers, but their turf, their surprise. Their three forces would be back to back to back, so to speak. If any carried, they could be hustled to some place in trouble. We’d be divided, an enemy force between any two of ours. They’d have held.”
She rushed to him, gave him a hug, and kissed him. “Oh, Asam! What would I have done without you?”
He looked down at her and smiled. “Found another sucker,” he said dryly.
She wasn’t sure whether or not he was kidding.
At the Bahabi-Ambreza Border
“The men are gettng pretty pissed off, sir,” the Hakazit general told him sourly. “I mean, it’s not what they signed on for. Hell, I don’t believe it myself! Close to nine hundred kilometers and we haven’t killed anybody yet!”
Marquoz shrugged. “What can I do? That whole Durbis army was set up to take us—force-ray projectors, helicopter gunships, and all—and when we marched over that hill, everybody decided they’d visit the seashore for their health. I’ll admit it’s been a damn sight easier than I expected—so far. You just tell ’em that going up the Isthmus isn’t going to be any picnic.”
“It better hadn’t be,” the general huffed. “Otherwise, they’ll do us both in and go on a rampage on general principles.”
Marquoz chuckled and turned back to the border. Children, he thought. Like little children always dreaming and playing at war. The glories of battle and all that. Inwardly, he was thankful that a force of fifteen thousand Hakazit troops marching in precision across a wide swath of countryside had scared the hell out of the locals. He would need this force later, he knew, and he wasn’t all that certain that, when their buddies were getting smashed into goo all around them, the romance might not be over.
He was, he decided, developing a whole religious faith around the absolutism of genetics, and he hoped it wasn’t a false deity.
Ambreza, he believed, would be another easy mark. They wanted him in Glathriel and would do almost anything to let him get there. Getting out would be the problem.
As with many other races and most of the hexes here, a white flag or cloth meant not to shoot. It was a logical choice. Quite simply, it was easier to see at a distance. He wondered uncomfortably at times, though, about what would happen if he ever met an army whose national flag was white.
Affixing the flag to a staff, he rumbled down the side of a hill to the party below who waited under a similar banner. It was getting to be very routine by now.
The Ambreza were enormous rodents that somewhat resembled overgrown beavers, complete to the buckteeth and large, paddlelike tail. They walked upright, though, on large hind legs, using their tails as added balance, and their look of extreme innocence was deceptive. Once this hex had been Glathriel, not Ambreza. A high-tech hex whose “humans” had built a massive and powerful civilization, one that, simply from its own laziness and indolence, outgrew its living space and decided that the lush farmlands of the Ambreza next door were necessary to its continued comforts. Rather than fight a losing battle, the Ambreza had cast about and, as usual when certain impossibilities were needed, found it in the North, among races so strange and alien that you could get them to whip things up for you if you had the right trade goods and they would never even consider that they were making up a weapon, in this case a brutal gas that was harmless to all except Type 41 humans.
In the final preparations, the humans had begun massing on the Ambreza border when, throughout the hex, the canisters of gas were loosed. The Ambreza may have been nontech, but they weren’t ignorant. Their own “peace” party in negotiations in Glathriel had triggered the gas releases electronically.
It was colorless, odorless, and quite effective. In some way even the Ambreza didn’t understand it worked on the cerebral cortex of the human brain, and, rather slowly, the humans had simply become increasingly less able to think, to reason. The great apes had been the model for the Type 41s, and, mentally at least, great apes they became. The gas didn’t dissipate, either; it stayed, and settled into the rocks, the soil, everything, affecting new generations. Most died; the rest became pets of the Ambreza in their expansion into Glathriel.
Brazil had changed all that the last time he was through. Inside the Well he had altered not the gas but, subtly, the Type 41 brains that were affected by it. During Mavra Chang’s exile in Glathriel they had been savages, yes, but thinking savages. Marquoz wondered what they were now.
There were five Ambreza, each wearing some sort of medallion that the Hakazit took to be a badge of office or rank. With them were several others, one of whom looked decidedly strange, Marquoz thought uneasily, a huge, looming shape of pure white with only two small black ovals.
He stopped a few meters from the party and stuck his white flag in the dirt. “I am Marquoz of Hakazit,” he told them in his most menacing tone.
“I am Thoth, Chamberlain of the Region,” one of the Ambreza responded. “My fellow Ambreza are from the central authorities. The others are representatives of the council force invited here, with this,” he pointed to the white specter, “their commander, Gunit Sangh of Dahbi.”
Marquoz was impressed. He’d heard of Gunit Sangh, although the Dahbi were half a world away. He seemed to recall that Sangh had once tried the same trick the Ambreza had pulled on Glathriel but had been screwed in the attempt.
“I’ll get to the point,” he said, not acknowledging the others. “We have no wish to harm any citizens or territories, yours included. We only wish to march through the areas under your jurisdiction, Ambreza and Glathriel, as quickly as possible on the way north.”
“You are welcome here, friends,” Thoth responded, “but Glathriel is a very fragile place. We should not wish large forces to go there. It could upset the ecological balance.”
“We must go there to go north, as you well know,” the Hakazit parried. “Ginzin is only passable along the northeast coast. Glathriel is necessary. We will do minimal damage.”