Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (23 page)

“Now, what’s so urgent?” Spinner asked pleasantly.

The three looked at one another to decide who should speak first.

“You were gone long enough,” Fletcher said a bit sourly. “The troops, especially the Eikby Guards, need to see you so they don’t think you’ve abandoned them.”

“We sent word where we were,” Haft said and stretched with contentment.

“Yes, but we expected you back earlier,” Fletcher said. He added dryly, “We would have sent for you, but we thought you wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”

Spinner flushed and looked away; Haft looked blandly at Fletcher.

“We need to get the guards trained quickly,” Stonearm said in ominous tone. “They’ve made considerable progress since yesterday, but they’re a long way from ready for a battle.”

“Yes?” Haft didn’t understand the urgency. After yesterday’s dawn raid, it should be some time before the bandits returned—quite probably enough time to turn the guards into something resembling a proper fighting force. If the bandits ever returned at all. “You say they’re making good progress. Keep it up.”

Stonearm snorted. “We’re pushing the training as hard as we can, as hard as the guardsmen can take and then some. But it won’t be enough.”

“What do you mean?” Spinner asked.

“New refugees arrived today,” Stonearm replied. “Fortunately, we were able to intercept them before they got into Eikby.”

Spinner made a gesture to keep him talking.

“They didn’t come along the west road, they came from Penston.”

“But Penston is to the south!” Haft blurted.

“Gods,” Spinner gasped.

“That’s right,” Fletcher said. “Now we know the Jokapcul are on the peninsula.”

Silent finally spoke. “You know what they did every time they invaded another country west of here—they didn’t even wait to consolidate before they began moving inland.”

Spinner and Haft looked to the south and for the first time noticed that all of the construction teams were working on the southern fences.

“How long will it take to finish those fences?” Spinner asked. “What about trenches?”

“The basic fences will be up by the end of the day,” Stonearm said. “It’ll take most of tomorrow to affix enough of the barbs. We need to plan trenches.”

“Let me see that map of yours again.” The guard captain handed it over. “Are the fences laid out this same way?”

“Yes.”

Spinner nodded and lost himself in study of the map.

“Where are the new refugees?” Haft asked. “Tell me what they said, while we’re on the way to see them.”

“They’re over behind the hospital pavilion,” Fletcher answered. “We’re keeping them out of sight of the town.”

“Let’s go, Spinner.” Haft grabbed Spinner’s arm and pulled him along. Spinner took his eyes from the map only to look back to compare something on it with what he could see on the ground. Haft paid no attention to Alyline and Doli who followed them at a discrete distance.

“Put the map away, Spinner,” Haft said as they rounded the pavilion and saw the tarpaulin that was stretched tight from the side of a dogcart to two short poles to form a rude shelter for two adults and three young children. Two exhausted dogs lay panting just outside the shelter. Three of the Bloody Axes sat nearby, tossing bones in a game of knuckles while keeping unobtrusive watch over the new refugees.

“Hmmm?” Spinner hadn’t really heard Haft, nor had he seen the spread tarpaulin and the people huddled under it.

“Captain Stonearm, take your map, please.”

Spinner started as the map was yanked from his hands by the grim guard captain.

“Mind your manners, Spinner, we have company.” Haft squatted in front of the shelter and pulled Spinner down with him.

“Welcome,” he said in his best harbor Zobran to the nervous man and woman. Their children hid behind them. “They call me Haft, this is Spinner. We seem to be in charge here. You’ve come from Penston?”

The man scrambled to a kneeling position then bowed low.

“Lord Haft, Lord Spinner! I am so glad to see you.”

“Lord? We’re—”

Haft gave Spinner’s arm a painful squeeze.

“Tell us how you came here. And what is your name?”

“My name is Fleon, Lord,” the man said into the ground.”

“Sit up and look at us while you talk, you look like you’re going to be sick, bent over like that.”

Fleon pushed himself up to sit on his heels and looked warily at the two. “Lords, we fled the Jokapcul. They were all along the coast to the east and the west, inland was the only way we could go. We feared bandits, but we feared the Jokapcul more.”

“When did you leave Penston—and how many Jokapcul were in the invasion force?”

Fleon and his family had fled two mornings earlier, before dawn, but neither he nor his wife could give any information about the invasion force. It took many questions to get a clear story out of the man and his wife. They had been hearing for months about the westward movement of the Jokapcul and were terrified by the rumors. Two nights before, restlessness had kept Fleon from sleeping soundly. He was up before dawn to relieve a nervous bowel when he looked out a window and saw the shadows of many small craft entering the harbor. There was wave after wave of boats. The first boats tied against ships in the harbor while the rest headed for the wharfs and strands. Armed men, their weapons glinting in the moonlight, poured off them and trotted into the city. Fleon was far enough away that he couldn’t make out how big the boats were or how the soldiers were dressed, but he knew they must be Jokapcul. He didn’t think to count how many. He hurriedly woke his wife, she bundled the children into the already packed dogcart while he harnessed the two dogs. They left Penston by an unguarded gate and were in the forest out of sight of the city walls before the sun rose. Neither of them had seen any Jokapcul east or west of the city. He’d seen them only from a distance as they disembarked from their boats and ran into the city.

After thanking the man for his information, Spinner and Haft withdrew with the others.

“So, we don’t know if Penston was actually invaded or not,” Stonearm said. “For all we know he dreamed it.”

“I think we do know,” Spinner said. “Even though he didn’t have any details, his description of the landing was pretty vivid.”

Haft agreed. “His description matched the way they invaded New Bally.”

“So you think they invaded two days ago?” Fletcher asked.

“His wife didn’t look to see the harbor,” Haft answered, “but she confirmed how long ago they fled, so yes, I think that’s likely.”

“How much time do we have?” Stonearm asked.

“It’s likely their first troops began moving northward today, perhaps even yesterday,” Spinner said. “How many towns and villages are between there and here?”

“Three,” Stonearm said. “Two farming villages and a wayside hamlet.”

“Then they’ll be here in two or three days. Maybe sooner.”

“We can’t run, can we?” Stonearm asked.

Spinner shook his head. “Not with so many people, no.”

Haft had a different idea. “If people start heading north now and the first troop of Jokapcul is small enough for us to destroy, that will give everybody time to move north. Maybe there will be enough shipping along Princedon Gulf to take all of them.”

Stonearm looked grimly to the south. “I really thought I was retiring to someplace quiet and safe,” he murmured. Then briskly, “We had best get those defenses ready.”

“We need to send scouts south to give us warning,” Spinner said.

“I’ll take care of that,” Silent said. He ignored Haft’s glare.

Like drovers cutting sheep from a herd, Alyline and Doli separated Spinner and Haft from Fletcher and Captain Stonearm when the four headed to the southern defenses.

“Did you enjoy yourselves last night?” the Golden Girl asked, her voice dripping with scorn.

“While the rest of us were tending the wounded?” Doli added.

“And preparing the defenses?”

“And learning of the new threat from Penston?”

“Well, did you?” Alyline demanded.

“Ah,” was all Spinner could say. His face burned scarlet.

“We left word where we were,” Haft said with some heat. “Someone should have come and gotten us if we were needed!”

Alyline gave him an
oh, really
look. “What, and interrupt your dalliance?”

“Some things are more important than . . .” Haft’s hot words stumbled to a stop and he blushed, unable to say to the women what he and Spinner had done.

“But Alyline . . . ,” Spinner’s tongue tied and he couldn’t fit words to his thoughts.

“What do you care what we do in town?” Haft said. “You don’t like him,” he said to the Golden Girl, “and neither of you has much use for me. And after we risked our lives to free you from slavery! At least the women in Eikby appreciate what we do for them.”

Alyline cocked an eyebrow at him. Shocked, Doli gasped, then slapped him in the face.

Haft rubbed his cheek and worked his jaw side to side.

“But Alyline . . .” Spinner reached for the Golden Girl.

She batted his hands away. “
Pfagh!
You men are all the same. You constantly slaver over me no matter how plain I make it I don’t want your attentions. Then the first time we come to a town you bed a trollop! I guess I should expect nothing better of
him
,” she flung an angry hand in Haft’s direction, “but
you
, you always protest you
love
me. Love! And you do what you did last night!”

Doli pushed her way past Alyline and almost spat in Spinner’s face. “You didn’t
have
to go into town, you know. You
don’t
have to go to someone else!” She turned a glare at Haft, then back at Spinner. “Maybe I’m wrong about you, your behavior can’t simply be because of the company you keep.”

The two women turned about and marched off.

Wounded, Spinner stared after them for a moment, then turned to Haft. “How does everybody know what we did last night? They came unbidden to us in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep.”

Haft shook his head, still rubbing at his stung cheek. “Maybe we were so good they just had to tell everybody? Nah, someone must have been watching us who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. But why do those two care?” He wiggled his jaw again.

The Editors
James Military Review Quarterly

Dear Sirs or Mesdames,

Please pardon any clumsiness on my part in the matter of this submission of the enclosed paper, as the undersigned is fully unfamiliar with the procedures involved in making submissions to what I am told are called “popular” journals, for my papers have heretofore been published exclusively in scholarly journals such as
The Proceedings of the Association of Anthropological Scholars of Obscure Cultures
, which is the very journal in which most of my papers have been published.

Indeed, the enclosed paper,
A Brief Overview of the Command Structure of the Jokapcul Armies Currently Engaged in Conquest of the Nation States and Nation Cities of the Southern Portion of the Continent of Nunimar,
was originally written for that learned journal. However, the current volume’s selection jury was weighted in favor of scholars who have had numerous disagreements with the undersigned in the past, and they failed to agree to include this paper in any of this year’s numbers. The esteemed editor of
The Proceedings . . .
kindly suggested to me that I should submit it to a more “popular” journal.

Owing to the fact that, when I leave the confines of the university for an occasional foray into the nearby town of College Center, I see more copies of
James Military Review Quarterly
on the periodical shelves of bookstores than of scholarly journals, I hope I am correct in making the assumption that
James Military Review Quarterly
is a “popular” journal. Be assured, before submitting this paper to you, I did take the time to skim through several back issues of your journal and found, to my delight, that not only have you not recently covered the topic of this paper, but the tone of my paper is not too dissimilar to that in which most of the papers in your journal are written.

I have also noted that the papers published in your journal are extensively illustrated. Should you require that I provide illustrations to accompany this paper, I am confident that I can find appropriate wood or steel engravings in the university library.

Thanking you very much,

I am,

Scholar Munch Mu’sk

Professor

Mangle,

This guy sounds like your typical clueless academic, but his style isn’t too turgid. Besides, having an article by a full prof at a major university’ll give this rag a bit of class. Send him a standard contract, minimum rate, he won’t know the dif. Make a copy for the art department and tell them to dig up some generic pics to illustrate it.

Chop it down to column length. Oh, and get rid of that gawdawful title, give it a moniker with some pizzazz. I trust your judgement.

Thieph

As we all know, the armies of nation states and even city states are sharply pyramidal in their command structure. At the apex is the commander-in-chief, who may be a king, a prince, a duke, or a highly honored general. This CIC is assisted in planning by a staff of varying size depending on the size of the army and micromanagerial style of the CIC in question. Reporting directly to the CIC are the generals or other high-ranking officers who command units of the army. Those generals directly command officers of less lofty station who are in command of subordinate units, who in turn directly command lesser officers, and so forth down to the lowest level of unit commanded by an officer, most commonly a platoon consisting of between twenty and forty of the noncommissioned officers and enlisted men who do most of the actual fighting in which the army engages. Noncommissioned officers, that is to say sergeants and—in some but not all armies—corporals, command units of less than platoon size, which is to say in most instances squads and sections. Senior sergeants assist and advise higher-ranking officers in matters pertaining to the training and welfare of the enlisted men.