Warrior (The Key to Magic) (33 page)

When he reached the ground, he found that a gaggle of legion commanders and their subordinates had gathered.  Nearest the bottom of the stairs, Commander Tresh of the
Defenders
and Vice-Commander Rhel of the
Reapers
stood together with another, somewhat older officer who had to be Commander Dhyag of the Elboern Legion.  The rest were not drawn up in echelon as they should have been were this a proper ceremony to invest a new commander, but rather segregated into small, apparently partisan and occasionally adversarial groups.

Commander Tresh immediately saluted, an action copied in either a smart or perfunctory manner by the rest.

"Glad to see you alive, my lord prince!"

"Thank you, commander!  Introduce the other legion commanders quickly, if you would."

The four legions from Suhr were commanded by middle-aged but otherwise fit looking aristocrats, the Lords Mhaertymlel, Norst, Buhrstaen, and Tyldreyn.

The officers from Lhinstord, Emrae and Pyliu, were older and had the soft look and expanded waistlines of bureaucrats.  Their armor was ill fitting and new.

Though not indicated as such by Tresh, the commander of the combined legion from the southeast island princedoms, Hhlendt, was a tall and flame haired Cahlaborii and almost certainly therefore a mercenary.

The five commanders of the legions from the Inland Mercantile League all had a professional look about them, but were clearly at odds.  Khlavio and Jhakat, big men alike enough to be brothers, stood together, but the other three, Merchant Lhurismigeonir, a wiry man, Plhe, short and squat, and Lord Sahmosthreacs, a cultured dandy from the oiled ringlets of his black hair down to his manicured nails, waited at a good distance from each other and the first two. 

The various junior officers orbited their respective leaders and in some cases formed buffers between opposed factions.

Ghorn knew that he had no time for anything but strict military discipline and obedience and he had never been one to pamper egos.  He let his face slide into frown as the last officer was named.

"Though I can well understand that you may not yet have had sufficient time to integrate your legions in an efficient manner," he groused, "that is no excuse for presenting such a slovenly formation.  Form an inspection rank!"

While all the jolted officers moved immediately into two more or less straight lines, with the senior commanders in the front rank, some of them showed looks of muted surprise or affront.

"Snap to it! Dress those lines!" Ghorn barked.  "I have seen trainees do better!"

The officers, many of them tightlipped, shifted to something that he would have judged to be only marginally better as he made a formal march along the front rank, giving each legion commander a quick up and down.  Their armor and weapons were in perfect order, of course, but he would have been surprised if they had not been. At the end of the rank, he pivoted about, marched back to the center and turned to speak.

"The monks have attacked at Lhinstord.  The First Army will advance at once to the Sand River.  Commander Tresh, who is forthwith promoted by order of the king to the rank of Knight-Commander, will be in command of III Corps, which will consist of three legions from Mhajhkaei and two from Suhr.  Lord Mhaertymlel will be Commander Tresh's second.  Lord Buhrstaen will command IV Corps with Commander Emrae as his second.  Lord Sahmosthreacs will command V Corps with Merchant Lhurismigeonir as his second.   Tresh, Buhrstaen and Sahmosthreacs will remain with me.  The rest of you are dismissed to your legions.  Strike camp.  We march within the hour."

Save for Tresh, Ghorn had no notion of the command abilities of the others that he had selected to lead his corps, but he was constrained in his assignments by the entrenched traditions of the military culture of the Principate.  The nobles had an uncodified but unimpeachable privilege to superior rank and he would only have the right to remove them from command if and when they had proven themselves inept on the battlefield.

As the other officers scattered through the trees to their units, he addressed the three corps commanders.

"I Corps has been defeated before Lhinstord and is in retreat.  I do not have any more information than that.  The Emperor is flying to the relief of the city.  Our orders are to establish a defense on the western bank of the Sand River.  We must move quickly but will remain under the cover of the forest as long as possible.  I want to reach the river in no more than two days.  Questions?"

"What sort of supply train should we prepare, my lord prince?" Lord Sahmosthreacs asked.

"We have mules?"

"Yes, each corps has fifty mules that we requisitioned from Lhinstord."

"Each corps will take sufficient supplies for one week. After that we shall resupply as we can."

"My lord prince, will the corps march in column?" Tresh asked.

"No. We have no defense against the Shrikes and will separate into groups no larger than three sections and advance in a broken line.  Each group will maintain contact with the groups on its flanks but keep a minimum gap of fifty paces.  We will attempt to remain hidden as much as possible until we leave the weald."

"Sounds thoroughly disorganized," Lord Buhrstaen disparaged in a garrulous tone.  "We will have a mob, not legions."

Ghorn had visited Suhr with some frequency in past years and had met the Suhrii noble on a number of social occasions.  Buhrstaen hailed from a family that could trace the military service of its sons all the way back to an imperial patent granted by the Emperor Kharghk XIX.  They had a unblemished history of service to the Suhrii throne, and their lineage included several well known battle commanders that the Suhrii venerated as heroes.  As far as Buhrstaen himself, Ghorn knew only that the nobleman had had a proper military education and had served the current Suhrii prince for twenty years.  Importantly, what Ghorn did not know was whether Buhrstaen could do the job that would be required of him.

He gave the Suhrii noble his best glare.  "If you feel that you cannot lead your corps, Lord Buhrstaen, I can straightaway relieve you and appoint another."

Buhrstaen blustered for a moment, then rallied and said through clenched teeth, "I am fully capable of leading those under my command, my lord prince!"

Lord Sahmosthreacs ignored Buhrstaen's discomfiture.   "My lord prince, what will be our strategy once we reach the river?  Will we be constructing earthworks?"

"No. I do not know but suspect that the monks have brought some new sorcery to bear.  III Corps will move forward to attempt to secure the highway and the bridge.  IV and V Corps will deploy in skirmish lines to the north and south, taking advantage of any features of the terrain that will provide natural protection.    Until we understand what sort of weapons we face, we will decline to engage the enemy in the open field."

"What if the enemy does not cede us that option?" Knight-Commander Tresh wanted to know.

"Then we do what is necessary to take it.  There is no second line of defense behind us and we cannot allow the monks to continue west. Our objective is to hold the line of the river until we hear otherwise from the king."

"And if we cannot achieve that objective?" Lord Sahmosthreacs inquired with clenched eyebrows.

In a time before the fall of Mhajhkaei, Ghorn might have declaimed some bombastic phrase in the manner of "Then we will stand and fight like men."

Now, he just said, "Then we will find one that we can achieve."

Ghorn dismissed the officers, then ran up the mooring tower again to procure a final comprehensive view of the First Army.  With some satisfaction, he saw that the army, like a kicked anthill, had burst into activity.  It would take some time to swing the sixteen thousand strong force, the largest single contingent of armsmen fielded by the Principate in two hundred years, into action, but he judged that most of it would be on the move within the time limit that he had set.

When he returned to the ground, he stopped a bustling cook to get directions and then made his way to Lord Buhrstaen's camp. It would be impossible to command the First Army without the assistance of a staff and if Ghorn appointed the suspect nobleman as his adjutant, then he would be able to keep a better eye on him.

Buhrstaen's camp was atop a knoll a hundred paces from the precisely ordered tents of his legion and his personal living arrangements were as lavishly appointed as Ghorn would have predicted, with spacious tents and other amenities not normally found in the field, such as a copper bathing tub and live chickens for fresh eggs.

Buhrstaen had also procured several horses and when Ghorn arrived, he found the officer already mounted with a second horse saddled nearby.  A number of men who were obviously servants waited in a clump, all bearing heavy packs which no doubt contained Lord Buhrstaen's personal accoutrements.  Two older but stocky armsmen, both with fugleman's badges, held the reins of the horses and Ghorn had little doubt that both were actually stablemen from Buhrstaen's person household that he had put in armor to justify their presence.

"I have had one of my spare mounts saddled for you, commander," Buhrstaen mentioned languidly as Ghorn arrived.  "I was just about to send it around."

Ghorn made a sharp negative gesture.  "Horses will be unnecessary.  We will be maintaining the same marching pace as your legions.  The horses will be much more usefully employed to carry messengers.  These fuglemen can ride?"

Lord Buhrstaen drew back, rolling the corners of his mouth down.  "Why, yes, but --"

"Good." Ghorn pointed at the man holding the second horse.  "Ride to III Corps and make contact with Knight-Commander Tresh."  He swapped his gaze to the fugleman holding Lord Buhrstaen's horse.  "You do the same for V Corps."

Lord Buhrstaen gaped.  "But you cannot just --"

Ghorn cut him off.  "Lord Buhrstaen, go around to all of your legions and glean half a dozen junior officers to serve as my staff.  I will also want a section of veteran legionnaires to provide security
.  Now get down off that horse and obey my orders!"

Fulfilling Ghorn's full estimation of the spineless nature of his character, Lord Buhrstaen clamped his mouth shut, bolted from the saddle, and scurried off.

Dealing with the possibly incompetent officers that he had inherited would be the least difficult of the tasks facing Ghorn.

He was not sure at all that he would be able to communicate his orders to the three corps in a prompt enough manner to actually affect the outcome of any potential battle.  All legion commanders were trained to operate independently and he had little doubt that the individual legions would acquit themselves at their best, but he was afraid that their best might prove woefully inadequate.

He could not shake the nagging fear that brave men with steel would be useless against Phaelle'n sorcery.

FIFTY-TWO

Mar let Number One plummet through the cloud cover, dropping five hundred manheight in less than a minute.  When he released the flux bubble that enabled the rapid descent, air rushed in to flutter his hair and clothes and he saw Ulor working his jaw to relieve the pressure imbalance in his ears.  Without pause, Mar drove the skyship low in a diagonal path across the highway, allowing the polybolos, which could only depress thirty degrees, enough forward angle to strike their targets.  Like an eagle stooping to claw its prey, the skyship made ready to attack.

Making his voice carry from the steerage to the cabin section, he told Legate Truhsg, "Let them have it!"

At the legionnaire's hand signal, every polybolos on the skyship unleashed at once, raining ethereal death onto the steel beetles packed upon the wide and straight stone way.  Immediately, several dozen of the enemy conveyances were blown apart by direct hits and many others torn and thrown into the air.  Spiraling and tumbling, with spinning streamers of smoke trailing, the burning chunks of wreckage scattered all across the highway and the corn fields to either side, decapitating the knee-high plants and gouging out craters and ruts in the cultivate earth between the rows.  Behind the devastated head, the beetles of the column fanned out to the north and south in instant, self-evidently coordinated reaction, splitting into smaller groups that followed irregular serpentine tracks as they sought to avoid the bombardment.

Number One surged to the north as Mar gave chase, hounding a group of fifty or more that smashed down the corn and battered through fencerows.

"Try to hit the leaders!" he ordered Truhsg.

Explosions and craters chased the fleeing conveyances and lashed across them, destroying and disabling another ten or a dozen.  The survivors dodged out of line, their relative size giving them the agility to turn far faster than Number One could.  He banked sharply to starboard, the deck canting to nearly forty-five degrees.  Though Ulor had rigged a hand rope across the steerage and he and the two lookouts, Kyamhyn and Dhem, had wrapped their hands around it, the latter lost his footing and slid three armlengths before Ulor could reach out an arm to grab him.

"Shrikes!" Kyamhyn warned, staring east.

Mar set Number One to swerving and dodging, but remained fixed upon the enemy below.  Seeing another sizable group racing toward a multi-acre wood lot, he turned ten degrees to port to intercept.

Projecting his voice to the bulwark at the stern, he said, "Quaestor Eishtren, there are Shrikes to the east."

The archer's bow fired five unseen ethereal bolts in rapid succession. Mar felt the tremors in the background ether as the diving skyships exploded and then a second later the concussions smote Number One.

In the next second, Number One caught up with the second enemy group and Truhsg ordered a starboard broadside, leaving the port machines to clatter down.  The volley obscured the magical conveyances, but when the multiple headed mushrooming cloud of smoke, ejected earth, and flying debris settled, most of the steel beetles were intact and running away in different directions. 

Mar banked Number One back to the east, swinging his head around to look back toward the highway.  By now, the huge column had disbursed entirely.  Mar could chase down a few more of the armored machines individually, but the mass destruction of his initial strike could not be repeated.