13 Day War (19 page)

The soldier gulped air greedily and slowly rose to his knees. The forest was darker than when they had entered it. He could not see the bodies of the first four men struck down, but he could see the last, and the arrow sticking out of his forehead. A tremor of revulsion rippled through the soldier and he turned and ran towards the camp.

* * * *

General Kolling was irritable. His legs were tired from walking, and he felt filthy. Road dust and sweat had turned his hair into a dense, tangled mat, and had made his uniform unbearable. He gritted his teeth as he felt the grime under his uniform clogging his pores and irritating his skin. He longed for a bath and headed straight towards the large tent that he could see in the distance. So he was more than a little upset when Colonel Ednor stepped in between him and the tent.

“We have problems, General,” stated the colonel.

“Tell me something I don’t already know, Colonel,” snapped the general. “I am already four hours late arriving in camp because there is not a single horse left alive in this entire army. I want a bath drawn immediately, and I want a meal served while I soak off this grime.” The colonel’s mouth opened to speak, but the general was not done. “And tell me why I did not have to pass any fortifications on my way into camp. This is only our second day in this country and already I am seeing laxness that I absolutely will not stand for.”

“There is no food,” the colonel blurted out.

The general stood staring at the colonel with a confused look. It took a few moments for the words to sink in.

“No food? What are you talking about?”

“The cache was empty,” stated the general. “There was not a lick of food left. It is all gone.”

“How is that possible? The first day’s cache was as it was supposed to be.”

“I do not know how it happened,” admitted the colonel, “but it was discovered when the first regiment arrived.”

“Send out foragers immediately,” ordered the general. “I will not have my army starve to death.”

“That is exactly what I did,” the colonel responded. “That is why the fortifications were ignored. I felt that obtaining food was a higher priority.”

“You do not send an entire regiment out to forage,” berated the general. “While I agree with your priorities, you have enough men to do both.”

“If it was simply foraging, I would agree,” frowned the colonel. “The foragers are being killed.”

“Killed? Who is killing my men?”

“We do not know,” the colonel said softly as some soldiers walked by. “I started by sending out teams of six men, figuring that the rest of the men could start on the fortifications. It didn’t take long to realize that we had a major problem. Each team of six men was attacked by unseen foes. In each and every case, one man returned alive, not a scratch on him. All of the survivors speak of an eerie attack, arrows flying from invisible archers. Not a single man will admit to having seen the enemy.”

“Preposterous,” scowled the general. “How can experienced hunters go into the woods and be killed without even a scent of the enemy. I don’t believe it.”

“I do not have an answer to that question, General,” conceded the colonel, “but I improvised as best I could. I started sending out whole squads. The men were not attacked, but neither did they come back with any game. Twenty men marching through the woods is not the way to hunt if you are depending on quickly caught game.”

General Kolling stood staring at the trees for a long time. Colonel Ednor remained silent, knowing that the general was formulating a response. Eventually the general sighed wearily and spoke with exasperation in his voice.

“Order my bath drawn, Colonel, and tell General Gertz to join me as soon as he arrives in camp. Pull all of the men out of the forest and put them to work on the fortifications. I want a double guard this evening, and no one is allowed to leave the encampment without express permission from me.”

“If I pull the hunting parties,” frowned the colonel, “the men will have nothing to eat tonight.”

“The men will go hungry this night,” declared the general, “but I will not risk being attacked without our fortifications built. In the daylight tomorrow, men will be assigned to forage as we march towards Ongchi. Then we shall see exactly who our enemy is. Once we have determined that, we will annihilate them.”

The colonel saluted and retreated. General Kolling walked to his tent and sank into a chair. He pulled his boots off as men brought buckets of water for his bath. A few moments later, General Gertz entered the tents and slumped into another chair.

“This is a ghastly land,” complained General Gertz. “I think we need to find a village or a farm and commandeer some horses. I cannot walk all the way to Ongchi.”

“Walking to Ongchi is the least of our problems,” stated General Kolling. “The Alceans know that we are here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am positive. At first I suspected some of our own men for the poisonings last night, but I no longer think that way. They struck at the mages because they needed the mages dead more than us. They fear our magic, but now they do not have to worry about it.”

“And the horses?” questioned General Gertz.

“To slow us down,” answered General Kolling. “I am pretty sure that we have seen the last cache of food that we are going to see for this journey, and the enemy is sniping at our foragers.”

“Merely sniping at our foragers means that they are not strong enough to fight us directly,” General Gertz pointed out. “Do you think they are slowing us down until they can raise a force large enough to confront us?”

“I think that is exactly what they are doing.”

“But they will be decimated from behind when the other two prongs arrive at Ongchi,” frowned General Gertz. “By drawing all of their armies together to confront us, they are actually making our task easier.”

“You are correct in the grand scheme of things, but that does little to alleviate the pain our armies will have to endure. We need to keep our armies on schedule and not let the snipers slow us down. The closer we are to Ongchi when the thirteen days expire, the better our survival rate is likely to be.”

“Then we will push on,” stated General Gertz. “These Alceans will soon learn that the Federation cannot be defeated. I predict that they will break and run when we finally do confront them.” General Kolling did not respond and General Gertz looked at him questioningly. “What is it that you are not saying?” he finally asked.

“It bothers me that the enemy discovered us on the first day,” frowned General Kolling. “In fact, the poisoning of our horses and the assassination of our mages leads me to believe that they were waiting for us to arrive. How could the Alceans possibly know that any Federation army would be arriving in the city of Barouk?”

“We only learned of our destination a few months ago,” agreed General Gertz. “That would barely leave enough time for a ship to cover such a large distance.”

“There has not been enough time for a ship to arrive here,” corrected General Kolling. “Either the Alceans have infiltrated General Tauman’s army, or the Alceans have capabilities that we are unaware of. Neither possibility bodes well for the other teams coming to Alcea.”

“General Tauman needs to be made aware of this,” General Gertz said in alarm. “We must send someone back to the portals.”

Just south of the Sordoan city of Caldar, two huge armies approached each other. General Omirro’s 10
^th
Corps from Ertak and General Barbone’s 22
^nd
Corps from Spino met at the rendezvous point assigned to them, and General Omirro took command of Team Caldar. Two regiments of infantry from the 22
^nd
Corps had entered Caldar with General Omirro’s men while two regiments of cavalry from the 10
^th
Corps had used the portal that had opened to a farm so that they could more easily carry their saddles. The four regiments switched places, rejoining their own armies.

“That worked out well enough,” stated General Barbone. “Any problems on your end?”

“None,” answered General Omirro. “The city was deserted. Seems the Alceans are celebrating the coming of spring with a festival. I do not think they will be celebrating much longer.”

General Omirro turned and gave Colonel Verle the signal to start the march towards Trekum while the two generals moved to the side of the road to continue their chat. Two thousand mounted soldiers formed up and started moving along the Coastal Highway towards the capital city of Sordoa. The infantry regiments found comfortable spots at the side of the road to rest until it came time for them to join the column.

“Some of that horseflesh looks rather poor,” frowned General Omirro. “Don’t the Alceans feed their horses? I understood that Sordoa had the finest horses in Alcea. If these are their finest, this land is not worth conquering.”

“It was worse than you think,” General Barbone replied. “I wanted to reject all of the horses that were waiting for us. They were so bad that I did not think that some of them would survive the journey to Trekum. I personally went back through the portal and complained to General Tauman. I managed to squeeze one-thousand horses out of him that he was saving for other teams.”

“You couldn’t get them all replaced?” frowned General Omirro.

“No,” sighed General Barbone. “I had to fight for what we got. Tauman was complaining that the change in plans would cause him severe problems.”

“I really don’t care about Tauman’s problems,” scowled General Omirro. “I have two armies that require useable mounts. Perhaps I should go back and talk to him myself.”

“It won’t do any good,” replied General Barbone. “He just doesn’t have the horses to give us. He was shouting at his own officers to get out and find some more horses to replace what he was giving me. Believe me, if he was open to giving us more, I would have gotten them. You know how stubborn I can be.”

“I do know that,” laughed General Omirro. “All right, we will deal with what we have, but if we run across any horses on the way to Trekum, we will pause long enough to take them. Were there any other problems?”

“Just the two farmers who were supposed to procure the horses for us,” General Barbone smiled oddly, “but they are problems no longer. My men left them hanging from the barn.”

General Omirro raised an eyebrow. “You think they sold us out to the Alceans?”

“No.” General Barbone shook his head. “I think they lined their purses with Federation gold. Colonel Pineta said that he saw many fine Sordoan horses when he was here in the fall. It is clear to me that the farmers bought inferior horses and charged the Federation for prize stock. I was in no mood to let them get away with it.”

“Tauman will be upset,” warned General Omirro. “He is not a man to cross so casually.”

“The next time we see General Tauman,” shrugged General Barbone, “the war in Alcea will be over. He has no reason to send anyone else through the portal, and I certainly don’t plan to use it again. By that time, it will be forgotten, assuming he even learns of their deaths. I am not concerned.”

The last of the Ertakan cavalry left the site, and the infantry rose to follow. General Omirro mounted his horse and looked down at General Barbone.

“We will talk more tonight. Put your mounted regiments at the rear of the column. I want them ready to repel anything that comes up behind us.”

On top of a nearby wooded hill, two Knights of Alcea stood watching the departing armies.

“It is quite a sight,” commented Sheri. “That group down there is three times the size of the whole Targa Army.”

“Governor Mobami has almost as many men,” countered Wylan.

“True,” retorted Sheri, “but this is only one leg of the attack against Trekum. There are two more just like it coming up from the south.”

Wylan did not respond and Sheri gazed at him with concern. “What is the matter, Wylan? We both know the armies coming against us are huge. Why are you downplaying them?”

Wylan sighed and walked away from the ridge. Sheri followed him, and he turned and looked into her eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I guess I find the odds against us rather overwhelming. You stand there marveling at the size of those massive armies down in the valley, and all I can think about is that we have to penetrate their camp tonight.”

“And you don’t want to?” questioned Sheri.

“Want to?” Wylan replied as if the question was absurd. “Of course, I don’t want to. What I want to do is spend the rest of my life with you, raising a family and taking care of our children. Only a fool would be desirous of sneaking into an enemy encampment and killing some battle mages.”

“It has to be done, Wylan,” frowned Sheri, “but you don’t have to do it, and I don’t want you doing it to please me. I will go in alone.”

“You will not,” Wylan replied adamantly. “I said that I did not look forward to the task. I did not say that I would walk away from it. I know the difference between desires and obligations. As Knights of Alcea, our duty is to sneak in there and kill those mages, and I will not falter from my duty. I just wish this killing would stop some day. That is all I am saying. We deserve a life together.”

Sheri smiled at Wylan and kissed him. “We will have a grand life together soon. In two weeks this war will be over. There will be no one left to stir up trouble. We can return to Southland and start a family. We can even resign from the Knights of Alcea if you want.”

Wylan sighed deeply. “That is not what I want. I am proud to be a Knight of Alcea, and even prouder that you are also one. I have always lived to serve my country, and King Arik is exactly the type of leader I dreamed about serving. I guess I just get angry when people like those in the valley back there feel it is their duty to come half way across the world to disturb the peace that King Arik brought to Alcea. Why didn’t they just stay home and kill each other instead of bothering us?”

Sheri could find no answer to her husband’s question. In a way, she was just as angry. She had seen the pettiness and greed up close when she was portraying Lady Zachary, and it appalled her. As much as she yearned to free the people of Zara from their lousy rulers, her desire for peace in Alcea was even greater. She nodded understandingly and playfully tugged on Wylan’s sleeve.