Chapter 17: The Reverse of the Coin

Freidal leaned back against a rock, weary beyond words. All night they had marched over ridge after ridge! After marching half the day before!

His batman, Tiki, came and stood next to him. Freidal gestured for him to sit.

The old sergeant laughed. "If I sit, it will take a half dozen hale men to move me again, Captain! Finding two tonight might be too much to expect."

Freidal glanced at the bulk of the ridge looming in front of them. "I didn't hear pickets go up."

The veteran sergeant hawked and spat into a bush. "The Captain-General has had to face that marching isn't as easy as riding. The pickets are tired, Captain. We have pickets about a hundred paces to the left, twenty paces forward and two hundred paces to the right. We're lucky, we are. He's decided to wait for the Mexicotal bearers to come up before we start up this next ridge. They won't be here until shortly after daybreak. When we get to the top of this next ridge we'll break until late this afternoon."

"The man is stupid as well as crazy," Freidal said, his voice audible only to himself. He looked up at Tiki. "Well, since you're on your feet, pass the word. We won't be the first up the ridge."

The sergeant shrugged. "We'll probably not get started until well after it gets light."

"Not until someone has gone up the ridge first," Freidal repeated.

The sergeant's teeth flashed in the near-blackness as he grinned. "Yes, Captain!" Not many had a commander who did not fear being called a coward. And going up a ridge that hadn't been scouted was an invitation to disaster.

Freidal allowed himself a mouthful of water and no more. He closed his eyes, imagining himself in command of this sorry mess. Politics! There were a lot of things he didn't like about his position, but if he were in command, a lot of things would change in an instant!

The sergeant kicked his boot much later. "The Captain-General is sending pickets up the ridge," the sergeant laughed bitterly. "Two men."

If there was a Hostigi ambush ahead of them, which was what the pickets were supposed to learn, two men would reach the top of the ridge and then vanish, never to be seen again. After a bit, even the Captain-General would realize that they were in trouble, trapped between two ridgelines, with a wash too steep to climb in one direction and a mile between them and the questionable safety of the basins to the east.

What would Freidal do if this was an ambush?

"I personally will give the order to move out," Freidal commanded, unconcerned if anyone thought of him as a coward. "Pass the word again."

The sergeant had moved off about twenty feet when a rock clattered down the hillside in front of them. The few night sounds vanished as everyone found something solid to hide behind.

Freidal looked around cautiously. It was steadily growing lighter. Abruptly, it seemed, there was enough light to see the two sweating pickets toiling up the ridge.

The sound, when it came was still a shock. There was no puff of fireseed smoke, just one of the pickets standing upright, then sprawling backwards. An instant later the crash of the rifle shot echoed through the canyon.

The other picket vanished and miracle of miracles, no one fired. Freidal grimaced. Not that Xitki Quillan was going to be pleased when he heard about this!

A dozen men of the picket force rose, their faces grim, led by their captain and they charged uphill. Freidal couldn't fault the man's courage or reaction. That's what the pickets were there for. If there had been more than a single shot, a dozen men would have been folly. For one... a reasonable response. Regardless of anything else, that single shot alone had held up the column a palm-width and perhaps twice that.

This time Freidal could see the flashes from the rifle, firing. A dozen shots crashed out, killing four or five, wounding a few more and sending the rest to cover.

Colonel Trium, who commanded the vanguard, yelled a command and a hundred men fired a volley uphill. A few seconds later, long enough to reload, they yelled and charged up the hill.

Freidal, though, once again felt fear. Not fear for himself, but fear of the future. He'd seen the flashes of the shots, but there was no smoke! One man, one man in all of recorded history shot smokeless fireseed! The High King! And there was just one gun firing at them from the top of the ridge! What else was up there?

If the High King was here, then everything was explained: the loss rate amongst the patrols, his own personal defeat and the catastrophe at the fort. And if it was true, the Captain-General had just delivered them into a trap that would see them all dead before sunset.

"Sergeant!" Freidal called loudly, "We will advance!" He stood, drawing his saber and screamed, "Charge!" He pointed the saber up the hill and started forward himself.

There was a ripple of rifle fire from the ridge. Twenty men were shooting Hostigos standard fireseed at them. Clouds of dirty white smoke began to billow over the ridge top.

There were billows at the bottom of the ridge as well, but not enough yet for effective cover.

More shots from on high, men were dropping rapidly. Colonel Trium went down and with his fall, the heart ran out of his soldiers. Freidal's twenty joined them, firing uphill, trying to find cover while they did.

Someone to Freidal's right, someone with a lot of men, launched them up the hill. It had been bad before, now it turned to hell.

Some of the Hostigi explosive artillery shells exploded in the bed of the wash, then more and more. The shells in the confines of the fort had been bad; in the narrow canyon, with rocks to provide more shrapnel, you had to hug the ground and not move. Freidal had no idea how many Hostigi were on the ridge, but it was clear there was more than enough to stop the second attack. The damn Hostigi guns slaughtered a lot of good men!

A runner came pounding up, sprawling into the rocks next to Freidal. "Captain! Captain-General Delos has called an officer's call! There!" The man pointed at a cluster of rocks, next to some small trees.

If the Captain-General had been handy, Freidal would have punched the stupid bastard in the face with his fist. An officer's call in the middle of an ambush? There were two choices to respond to an ambush! Attack or flee! Surely the man could pick one of the two!

Flight was stupid, so the whole damn force should be up, rushing the ridge!

Still, with a direct order, there was nothing he could do. He moved carefully, keeping to cover. He was about a hundred yards short of his destination when the Hostigi noticed that a lot of plumed officers were headed for the same place.

A dozen explosive artillery shells landed in roughly the right spot and officers and the Captain-General's hangers-on were running, jumping over rocks and generally making fools of themselves.

He himself turned and headed for the largest knot of soldiers he could see. There was a major in the middle, directing sections to move forward, some firing and some moving.

"Major! I'm assuming command!"

Bullets whined off rocks near them.

The major turned to him and shook Freidal. "You stupid fool! Why do you think my helmet's gone?"

Freidal looked uphill and for the first time, saw their enemy. An officer was pointing at him! Him! And men were firing. Bullets whined and ricocheted all around him.

Realizing the truth, Freidal leaped for cover.

Something slapped his helmet, hard. He stumbled to one knee, and then fell forward into a crack between two rocks.

When Freidal awoke, it was night. The heat of the day had come and gone; he was parched. He was once again leaning up against a rock; he could tell he was bareheaded. The wind moaned over the wash they were in, an eerie, unsettling sound.

He turned his head and looked around. There was no wind, just the moans of dozens, hundreds of the wounded. He raised his hand to his scalp. His head ached, there was a knob on his forehead, crusted with blood.

Tiki appeared with a water skin. "Captain, sip this. A little, sir. Take just a little at first."

Freidal controlled his thirst and took a small sip. After a dozen heartbeats, he took another, slightly larger. He carefully worked his throat, and then looked the sergeant in the eye.

"What happened?"

"Right after you were wounded, the fire from the ridge slackened. The Captain-General waited a palm-width, then charged up the ridge with most of the survivors, maybe six hundred men. The Hostigi had abandoned their positions, and had formed another ambush, about a mile west."

The sergeant looked at Freidal bleakly. "Scouts spotted the ambush right away. But instead of waiting, the Captain-General had everyone run the mile and attack again. He didn't survive. In fact, none of his officers survived. They shoot at officer plumes. Anyone, in fact, wearing a helmet."

"Where's my helmet?" Freidal said, trying to keep his churning stomach from making him throw up.

The sergeant handed it to Freidal. There was a long splash of lead, diagonally over the eyeholes. Freidal threw the helmet away as hard as he could, listening to it clatter in the night.

"I hope the Hostigi can't hear that!" Freidal said bitterly.

"No. After the second battle, they moved north. I sent a half dozen men to follow them." The sergeant hawked and spat again. "They're overdue. A stupid waste of men."

"What do we have?"

"A lot of men ran. No senior officers survived. Two other captains live, but one won't last the night. The other lost a leg. A half dozen lieutenants are well enough. Now that you're awake, you command."

"I meant, how many men?" Freidal demanded, knowing he wasn't going to like the answer.

"Three hundred and ninety wounded. Two hundred and ten well enough to hold their weapons. The one good piece of news is that the Mexicotal carrying our extra food and ammunition dropped their loads and ran like jackrabbits. I have men recovering all of that."

"Morale?" Freidal was reluctant to ask.

"They're stunned, Captain. In shock. You shake them, you tell them what you want them to do and they go do it. Then they stop. You have to shake them again to get them to do the next task. Mostly, it's senior sergeants doing the shaking."

Freidal remembered his sixteenth birthday well. As usual, he'd been clamoring for command of troops. Xitki had smiled and led him towards Clesti, Count Mountain Wall's, main town.

The two of them had followed a path along a mountainside; Freidal had thought he knew where they were, but he'd been wrong. A bullet sang off a rock in front of them and Quillan had pulled him into a hole in the rocks. For half of a day bullets had flown at them. There was no way to move, no place to go. That had been bad. Then the cannon started firing, a little before sundown. All night long cannon balls had smashed into the hillside around them.

There had been no sleep, only a steady, omnipresent fear of what was going to happen next. A few minutes before dawn, the guns stopped.

Freidal had stared at Quillan in the same stupor that was being described to him now. It had been too much; it had been too much to bear. Xitki, who'd never been further than Freidal's elbow, had pushed and prodded Freidal up, along the trail, and into Count Mountain Wall's citadel. It had been a lesson, a demonstration, that he hadn't yet learned all that he should.

It took Freidal two days of nearly continuous sleep to recover his wits. For several moons a loud noise would send him sprawling for cover. And two moons later, he'd gotten his first troop command. Bittersweet was the term for that. Here was only bitterness; there was nothing sweet about it.

"Did you message Count Quillan?"

"Yes, sir. Four men in a party, every palm-width since we pulled back. Seven parties now, sir."

Freidal started to struggle to get up, but the sergeant gruffly told him to be still. "Captain, you look like baby plop. Rest, sir. There is nothing that needs doing now, not until daylight. If the Hostigi come again, we'll wake you, I promise. Rest. Let one of the priests see to your wounds. We'll find your baggage before morning and get you cleaned up."

Freidal didn't have the energy to struggle. He sank back, nearly exhausted. He reached up and gripped the sergeant's arm. "Are there any rumors of the High King being on the field today?"

The sergeant shook his head, obviously mystified. "The High King's safely back in Hostigos, Captain. There were a dozen reports of that, before the war started."

Freidal debated mentioning what he'd seen, but decided not to. He took a full swallow of water and then was handed some jerky. He smiled slightly as he chewed the salty meat. He was going to be thirsty again in no time! Was any of this wise?

Tanda and Tazi listened to the rifle and mortar fire all morning. When the sun was halfway to the zenith they carefully moved east, then north, staying in folds of the ground, going slowly and making no dust.

When the shooting started again just past High Sun, Tanda stopped, listening carefully.

She turned to Tazi. "You can hear the difference between the Hostigi rifles and the Zarthani rifles, yes?"

Tazi nodded and added her own observations. "Lord Tuck and his men are still shooting together. The Zarthani aren't. Fewer and fewer of them are shooting at all."

"Yes. The Zarthani have been defeated again. Now the question is, how badly? If they fragment, it will be too unsafe to travel for several days."

"How could so few," Tazi asked reasonably, "defeat so many?"

"Because Tuck fixes on a clear goal. He is willing to change it, as he has to, but he fixes his mind on his goal, then he thinks long and hard about what he has to do to achieve his goal. I think if you are not focused on defeating Tuck, you can't. Even I, when I fought him. I wanted to escape. I saw him and wanted to kill him and then escape. He simply wanted to live. It made the difference."

Tanda nodded to the trail ahead. "We must move faster. They will go until they cannot see further. We must too."

They ran as fast as they could. Tazi was pleased that she could keep up with Tanda, even if it was all she could do to do so. Just before the light started to fail, they turned up a ridge and started climbing. Earlier, it hadn't been so bad, but not now; Tazi's calves screamed with fatigue.

Finally Tanda stopped and looked at her. "Well, sister, some day you will have proud, strong daughters! And you will tell them of this day, the day you ran thirty miles in an afternoon! Then climbed the mountain!"

Tazi smiled.

Tanda laughed, "Then, your daughters will go out and beat up every boy in the village!"

Tazi's breathing returned to normal and at once Tanda was moving again. It was, Tazi thought, clear. Tanda had stopped because Tazi needed the stop, not Tanda.

It was a dark night, clouds having come up in the last minutes before dark. They moved slowly, until finally Tanda put her hand on Tazi's shoulder. Tazi stopped obediently.

"Soldier of the High King! It is I, Tanda Havra!" Tanda said into the night.

"Password?" a gruff voice came from the dark. Rather close, Tazi thought.

"Rylla," Tanda replied.

"Pass, friend," then the voice spoke a little louder. "Sergeant of the guard, post six!"

"Two friends," Tanda and Tazi chorused together.

A candle appeared in front of them, carried by the old sergeant, Vosper. "Tanda, Tazi! It is well!"

"Is it?" Tanda replied.

"Four dead, six wounded. Well enough."

"Tuck?"

"Safe," Tuck said from the darkness. "I'm glad you turned around."

"We saw them in the early evening, yesterday," Tanda told him. "There was no way to get around them in the dark. This morning, at first light, we heard the shooting."

Tuck explained, "The good news is that we executed a successful meeting engagement. We defeated the initial rush, disengaged, fought them at High Sun and disengaged again. They started out ten times our number. They probably still out number us five to one."

"However," Vosper said seriously, "their will to fight has evaporated."

"And that's the bad news," Tuck told him. "Right now those men are in shock. Last night at this time they were raw recruits, now they are blooded veterans. It will be a dozen times harder the next time. And at some point, the idiots in command will all be dead and someone who knows what he's doing will take over."

"It was a glorious victory," Gamelin said, coming out of the darkness, Judy Bondi next to him.

"It was," Tuck told him. "All I'm saying is that next time it will be harder."

Tuck smiled at Tanda and she smiled back. "And the plan now?" Tanda asked.

"We shot off most of our mortar rounds, about half the rifle ammunition. We have to go back."

Tuck walked closer to Tanda, reached out and took her hand. "Come, tell us what you saw."

Much later, Tanda tossed and turned in her blanket, hating herself. He was a nice man! She was too close! She should tell Manistewa to pull her out. If she stayed longer she was going to mess up, she was sure of it.

Late the next evening they were again riding the wagons towards Outpost. Judy was feeling good, hardly tired at all. Again, Count Tellan was there with his staff, Becky, Lydia and Elspeth as well. She smiled at her friends.

More explanations, this time as they rode. It was nearly midnight when Judy stumbled into her room and collapsed across her bed in the citadel. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that she'd spent more nights sleeping on the ground since they'd arrived than she had in all the rest of her life.

Elspeth came early to wake her and Judy went and took a sponge bath from a basin of warm water someone had brought. How many years ago had it been since Tuck explained how things worked? At home hot water and all of the amenities were taken for granted, even though, exactly like here, people had worked to provide them for her. At home, those people were faceless, not so here.

She thanked the old woman who brought her towels, then she thanked the woman, not much younger than she was, who laid out clean clothes for her.

Breakfast was with her friends. They were animated, talking about what they'd been doing; trying, Judy realized at last, not to ask her about the battle.

Judy finally laughed. "It's not what you think," she told them.

They all looked at her, not understanding. "The battle came in two parts. First, we ambushed them in a wash. I ran messages back and forth, but behind the ridge. Seriously, Tuck told me if he saw me taking a peek over the ridge he'd plant his boot in my backside. I never saw them, I swear.

"Then, we retreated about a mile and set another ambush. I did get to see them coming, but after that, I had to help hold horses, so another man could get into the fight. All of the horse holders, the second time, were wounded, except for me."

"They won't let you get in the fight?" Elspeth asked.

"No. But I think Tuck is right. There were men killed, but it was usually because they made a mistake. In the first part of the battle, a man about twenty feet from me jumped to his feet, aiming at someone and fired. His sergeant was screaming at him to get down. It was pretty awful, every last one of the Zarthani must have been shooting at him. He was hit a dozen times in less than a second."

She looked at them. "If he had stayed down, he wouldn't have been shot. But he forgot or got excited. Tuck's right, you have to learn all that stuff. It's not safe, but if you're careful, it's as safe as it's going to get."

"Count Tellan's wife has been talking to me about birthing here," Elspeth said. "She's determinedly optimistic, after all, she's had four kids. The fact is, until the High King introduced the idea of washing your hands, half the time you died. Now, it's down to one in twenty. I am so looking forward to having this baby."

Judy looked at her. "Would you have it, if you had a choice?"

"Which choice?" Elspeth said bitterly. Judy kicked herself. "No, I don't think so. It's seems like from beginning to end this has been out of my hands. My choice hasn't counted for anything. At least here I'll be awake so I can scream at the first midwife that comes at me with dirty fingernails!"

Judy winced. Everyone said childbirth was painful. Yet another argument for not getting much friendlier with Gamelin. But they'd hugged yesterday, after the battle. It was a quick thing, hastily done. She didn't know what expression she'd had on her face, but she could see the concern and affection on his face.

Elspeth changed the subject. "The logistos is a little upset with Tuck. He's fired off about a tenth of the mortar ammunition, between training and the two fights. They had not intended to make any here, but now they are working on it, night and day."

"Then it should be okay," Judy said.

Elspeth sniffed derisively. "You have no idea. Yesterday four master smiths spent the day making drawings of a shell casing. A week, they say, before they can duplicate it. A month, they say, before they have it down pat, and making shells regularly. They are concerned about the little gizmos that make the shells explode when they hit the ground. Fortunately, they have about two thousand extra of those, because they haven't a clue how to make even one."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Plus, the stuff that makes the mortar round fly isn't regular fireseed, either. You can use regular fireseed, but the gun will only shoot about two-thirds as far and there's a serious problem with the fireseed fouling the tube.

"If they save half the ammunition to defend Outpost, that leaves enough for just three or four more fights for Tuck. And from what everyone seems to say, they'd like a hundred fights, not three or four."

Judy nodded. How do you learn all of this? There must be a million separate things Tuck had to be keeping track of! And what about Count Tellan? Ten million? How many different things did the High King have to keep track of? It was dizzying and dismaying.

There was another council of war late the next morning.

Tuck stood up in front of everyone and reported on the action, dryly speaking the bare bone facts of what had happened.

It seemed so very different from the fear and excitement that had filled Judy at the time. She'd watched Tuck; she watched Gamelin and Sergeant Vosper. They had been unfailingly calm, speaking in confident tones, crisp and clear in their orders.

Count Tellan listened gravely then turned to the others around the table. "Does anyone have any questions?"

A man down the table leaned forward, someone Judy didn't recognize.

"Why, Captain Tuck, didn't you turn and reengage, once you saw you had defeated the Zarthani? I think another push would have routed them."

Tuck shrugged. "It is unlikely that we killed or wounded more than half of them, Captain. And what if we had attacked and routed them? We'd have had to deal with hundreds of Zarthani wounded. There was no way we could take them prisoner; we would have had to let them go again, or slaughter them as they lay. I have no stomach for the slaughter of the helpless, Captain."

One of the priests, wearing a wolf's head cape, spoke up. "Galzar does not hold with the slaughter of those who can not defend themselves. When a man yields, Oath to Galzar, it becomes the duty of the captain who has taken him prisoner to safeguard him, so succor his wounds."

"Captain Helmoth," Count Tellan said, speaking to the officer who'd asked the question, "Captain Tuck presented me a plan. We attack the Zarthani where they are weak, we fight until they can return the fight effectively, and then we break off. I agreed to this, in the name of the High King. I will be sending a dispatch to the High King later today, with news of this battle, praising Captain Tuck for his courage and initiative in this battle. The High King respects the Gods, as he respects fighting men. If I'd sent him word of a massacre of wounded prisoners, I would fear for my head."

The captain bowed slightly, "Lord Count, I apologize. I was just wondering why he did not pursue his defeated enemy."

"Because they weren't that defeated," Count Tellan said. "As Captain Tuck said, his company was still outnumbered four or five to one. Several times the High King has commanded in battles where it looked like the day was going against him. He watched, he waited -- and when his enemies made a mistake, he was ready. Captain Tuck did not want to meet a captain who'd learned from the mistakes of others. And I do not fault him for it. Now, the question is, what next?"

Tuck was on his feet. "I think we should use the same basic plan again. We never got close to our objectives, there is no way the Zarthani could know of them. Their road should be complete now and supplies flowing. That must stop. I think, though, this time we should try a different route, perhaps west, then south, as we talked about before, as our egress route."

There followed a general discussion of the plan. Judy heard Captain Helmoth ask question after question. It seemed to her he was sarcastic, impugning Tuck's courage and abilities, as well as the plan. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, Tuck stayed unflappable, replying just as calmly and firmly as when he'd been on the battlefield.

She was a little surprised that it was Count Tellan who ran out of patience with Captain Helmoth first. "Captain Helmoth, do you have any confidence in this plan?"

The captain shrugged and shook his head. "Lord Count, there are too many parts to it. It is complicated; it requires exquisite timing and flawless execution to succeed. If and when it succeeds, our soldiers would be deep within Zarthani controlled territory, easy to ambush."

"And the men you have been training?" the count inquired.

"They are brave, Count, but all of us are inexperienced with this new weapon. They lack confidence in the new weapon."

Count Tellan stared at the captain for a moment, then turned to Tuck. "Captain Tuck, you are tired, your men are tired. It had been my intention to allow you to rest for a moon-quarter, before you saw action again. Would you be up to helping to evaluate Captain Helmoth's company's training?"

"Of course, Count. As long as I can get someone else to do the rowing across the lake."

There were chuckles around the table.

"Take Lieutenant Gamelin, Lady Judy and a few sergeants. Let me know tomorrow what you find."

"Yes, Lord Count," Tuck said, bobbing his head.

"Captain Helmoth, you will return to your cavalry duties."

There was a stir in the room that Judy didn't understand.

The captain bounced to his feet like a jack-in-the-box puppet. "Am I being relieved? Why?"

"You are being returned to your company, Captain, where your men hold you in confidence. Confidence, Captain, flows downhill from a leader to his men. I asked you to do a very hard, a very difficult task; there is no shame in not being able to deal with it. Your experience is with cavalry: hard charges, dealing shocks to our enemies. Mortars are artillery, requiring careful use and new and innovative tactics, completely unlike those the cavalry uses."

There was a silence and coldness in the room that Judy still didn't understand. Tuck was staring straight ahead, no expression on his face. Gamelin was staring at his hands, folded on the table, never once looking up. A lot of people were looking down. Not a single person was looking at Captain Helmoth except Judy and Count Tellan.

Count Tellan rose. "We have things we need to be doing. Those dealing with the next mortar attack will meet here tomorrow, a palm-width past High Sun."

He strode away, while the rest of them waited. When he was gone, most of the others prepared to leave, including Elspeth and her friends. Judy waved and Elspeth stuck out her tongue. Evidently, waving to your friends wasn't done, at least not when you were on duty!

Sergeant Vosper appeared at her side. "Lady Judy, Captain Tuck asks that you prepare for a few more days camping." He grinned at her and she bobbed her head.

"Sergeant," he looked at her when she spoke. "What happened here just now?"

He looked around. The council chamber was now empty, except for them. "The count said it, Lady Judy. Confidence flows from those who command to the men under them. I don't know if Captain Helmoth wanted to be relieved or was ignorant of what he was saying. When he told Count Tellan his men lacked confidence, he was saying they lacked confidence in him. So the count sent him back to where he'd been."

They rowed across the lake and for the rest of the afternoon she followed behind Tuck and Gamelin, taking notes. The new company fired a couple of mortar rounds and while they weren't nearly as good as Tuck's crews, they were still hitting close, and with a little advice from Tuck and Gamelin, improved perceptibly before it started to get dark.

Tanda Havra came on a boat, Tazi at her side, just as the last light gleamed in the western sky. The big surprise was that Count Tellan and Tanda's uncle were with them.