“I’ve been reading Yurgazh’s reports, as well, Sir Vaijon,” Arsham put in, “and I don’t see any reason you should have thought anything of the sort on the basis of what you knew then.” The Bloody Sword prince shook his head. “I know Yurgazh thinks all of you you let yourselves miss it because of your ‘contempt’ for ghouls, but I think you’re being too hard on yourselves.”
“You may be right, Your Highness,” Vaijon said after a moment, “but whether we should have spotted it then or not, we’ve damned well spotted it now! And it was only by the grace of Tomanak-not to mention Yurgazh’s good sense-that it didn’t cost us a lot more than it did, too.”
“That’s true enough,” Trianal agreed with feeling, and grimaced. “I wish certain Sothoii nobles and armsmen whose names I won’t mention could see what a solid line of hradani infantry is really like! There wouldn’t be any more stupid talk about riding down the escarpment and ‘dealing’ with your folk once and for all!”
“Well, as for that,” Bahnak said with a slow smile, “it’s not hurt a thing, a thing, for some of our own hotheads to’ve been seeing why it is no man in his right mind’s any desire at all to find out the hard way what your ‘wee little pony-riders’ can be doing to them as might be foolish enough to poke their noses where they’ve not been invited!”
Arsham snorted in agreement, and Trianal acknowledged Bahnak’s point with a wave of his tankard. Then the young Sothoii shrugged.
“True enough,” he repeated, “but it really was Yurgazh’s steadiness and those Dwarvenhame arbalests that saved all our necks, Your Highness.” He shook his head. “I never thought there were that many ghouls in the world, and when they came boiling up out of that valley…”
His brown eyes went cold with memory of how the sudden, unbelievable tide of ghouls had flooded up over the hill when his own men had dismounted to water their mounts. They’d swarmed his pickets right under, then charged directly towards the rest of his command, screaming their bestial warcries and waving their weapons of stone and wood like some furious, hungry sea. Only three of the men on picket duty had survived, but at least they’d given enough warning for the majority of his men to scramble back into the saddle before the ghouls hit them. That was all they’d managed to do, though, and it was only the gods’ own luck that Yurgazh’s scouts had seen the attack uncoiling from the other side of the valley.
There’d been no time for the Sothoii to uncase or string their bows. It had been all saber and lance, yet Trianal had dared not sound the retreat. Not only had he still had men on the ground, dismounted, hideously vulnerable to the ghouls if their mounted comrades left them unprotected, but the enemy was too fast. They couldn’t keep pace with his superb warhorses over a long course, but even the finest horses took time to accelerate. The ghouls certainly could have caught his troopers before they managed to pull away, and the nightmare creatures were tall enough and strong enough to pluck any Sothoii armsman from his saddle as easily as Trianal himself might have plucked an apple, if they took him from behind.
The situation had been headed towards the desperate when Yurgazh had brought his infantry across the valley at a dead run. The Navahkan general had halted to give the enemy a single, murderous volley of arbalest bolts at pointblank range before ordering the charge, and then his battalions had crunched into the ghouls’ backs like Tomanak’s mace.
Trianal suspected the ghouls had been too focused on his own horsemen even to realize Yurgazh was approaching their town from the other side. Their shock and surprise when the hradani suddenly poured fire into them and then charged into their rear had been obvious, at any rate. Yet even then, they hadn’t reacted the way ghouls were supposed to react. They’d neither fled in yelping panic nor turned and fought in the grip of their own ferocity. Instead, they’d run away-run away as a body, in something closer to an actual formation than he’d ever seen out of any ghouls, and in clear obedience to some sort of pre-battle plan-and his own cavalry had been too disordered to pursue immediately.
“They’re better organized than they’ve ever been before,” he said flatly, “and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of ghouls doing anything that could be described as actually planning an attack.”
“And it’s certain you are that’s what they were doing?” Bahzell asked, ears half-flattened and eyes narrowed and concentration. “It’s not that I’d doubt your judgment, Trianal, but it’s often enough I’ve seen what looked as how it was a planned response when it was after being nothing of the sort.”
“Yes, and it’s often enough I’ve been part of a response like that,” Arsham put it dryly. “Just because your troops are operating like a mob-the way certain Bloody Swords I could mention had a way of operating, once upon a time-doesn’t mean they can’t get lucky and simply catch the other side unawares.”
“I’m certain,” Trianal said, and raised an eyebrow at Vaijon, who nodded firmly in agreement. The Sothoii looked back at the hradani. “It might not have been the very best plan in all the world, and they obviously didn’t have enough scouts out to watch their own backs while they concentrated on ambushing my men, but it was planned, all right. And so was the way they broke off. I lost thirty-seven men, dead or wounded. Yurgazh lost another eight, and even with his arbalests, we accounted for less than two hundred ghouls.” He shook his head. “That’s not an exchange rate we can sustain, and it’s a lot worse rate than we’ve ever had before. Worse, there must’ve been a good three or four hundred of them still on their feet when they ran for it. How often have we seen that many of them simply take to their heels when they’ve got an enemy in reach?”
Bahzell nodded slowly, cradling his tankard between his hands on the tabletop while he considered what Trianal had said.
“And not a one of their young did you see?” he asked after a moment.
“No, and that was another strange thing,” Vaijon replied. He looked more worried than Bahzell was accustomed to seeing him, and his blue eyes were distinctly unhappy. “I’ll admit it…bothers me when their young come at us, but it bothers me even more when we take one of their villages and their are no young-or females-in it. That’s another reason I’m sure Trianal’s right about their having planned the entire ‘battle.’ They had to have sent their young and their females away ahead of time, which means a couple of things I don’t like to think about.”
“Ah?” Bahzell’s tilted ears invited him to continue, and Vaijon shrugged.
“First, they’re trying to protect their young, and they’ve never worried about that before. Everyone knows ghouls don’t care about that-Tomanak, they eat their own young! But this time, they’d sent them away, which can only mean they were deliberately protecting them from us.
“Second, they knew we were coming far enough in advance to send them off before we ever got there. How? We were over twenty miles away before we made our night approach march, and we’d been moving the other direction for two days. We’d even bivouaced ‘for the night,’ in case any stray ghouls were wandering around in our neighborhood, before we turned the men out for the attack. So either they spotted us on the way in and managed to organize the removal of all their females and their young-and you know how hard it is for even a ghoul to catch one of their young, Bahzell, much less round up all of them! — on the fly, or else they decided to evacuate their ‘noncombatants’ ahead of time simply because we were in the vicinity. I don’t know which would be more unnatural coming out of a ghouclass="underline" the ability to respond that quickly and flexibly, or the forethought to evacuate just as a precaution!”
“Vaijon is right,” Trianal put in, and his expression was even more frankly worried than Vaijon’s had been. “And that’s part and parcel of the way they broke off, too.” He shook his head. “I think it’s obvious they let themselves get too focused on my prong of the attack-probably because of our horses-and didn’t realize Yurgazh was there until he hit them, but when they did realize he was there, they immediately turned and ran.”