He was from the forward advance guard and so I knew one of our patrols had come in with news. We might have no aerial scouts; but we kept our patrols probing well ahead. He brought the news for which I had hoped, scarcely thinking such good fortune would fall our way. But Five-Handed Eos-Bakchi had smiled and his knuckle-bones had turned dexter.
“Ha!” said Seg when the rider had finished speaking. “We have the cramph now.”
“We have the opportunity,” I said, mildly. “We have but to execute the design.”
“Execute! Aye, we’ll execute Colun and all his villains.”
Waiting for his rearguard to come up, Colun was separated from them by a good forty miles. If we could strike into the gap and turn on one force before they linked, we would stand a chance. The forces were ill-balanced. Which should it be?
“Hit Kov Colun,” counseled Nath Nazabhan, sturdily. He had left his devoted Phalanx, being infantry, to be with us in the vanguard. Our vanguard was all cavalry or mounted infantry.
“His main body outnumbers us five to one, Nath.”
“Maybe,” said Seg, screwing up his eyes and with all the shrewd practicality of his race showing through the fey recklessness in him in these matters of operational policy. “Maybe it would be better to chop his tail off first. They are two to one. I’d say he was waiting for stores and equipment. Then he’ll be isolated, and if your Phalanx gets here in time, Nath-”
“If? If!”
“Well — when. We will crush him sweetly, like a rotten gregarian.”
I said: “I would like to hit Colun immediately. He has at least fifty thousand or so with him, with twenty thousand in the rearguard. We have almost four of cavalry and six of mounted infantry. And, in the rearguard, I fancy as Seg says, will be artillery, stores, battering equipment.” I looked at these men with me, loyal, shrewd, experienced. “The rearguard it is!”
Nath sniffed and nodded. “Very well, by Vox. I am with you, majister. But when my Third come up -
why, then we hit Colun-”
“We do, Nath. We hit him most severely.”
The orders being given, the vanguard stirred into motion again, ten thousand jutmen riding in a jingling, turf-thumping stream of zorcas and totrixes and nikvoves. To the regiments left after the debacle at Sicce’s Gates we had added a further regiment each of the three main saddle animals. Seg’s Bowmen of Loh rode zorcas and acted as mounted infantry. They wore dark crimson uniform with light bronze-studded leathers and I had great hopes for them, a mere three hundred though they might be. So we rode on through the mingled streaming lights of Antares. As Jiktar Nath Karidge said, breathing hard with his beard all a-tufting: “By the Spurs of Lasal the Vakka, majister! We will tweak this rast’s tail for him — aye, yank it out by the roots!”
He then went on to make some disparaging comments about our mounted infantry, typical jutman’s talk, and he made great play with his pelisse as he spoke. Some of the mounted men riding in the group of messengers and aides-de-camp with him started to wrangle at this, and a merry little professional ding-dong ensued as we trotted along in the suns shine. We had twelve regiments of infantry mounted up on an amazing assortment of saddle animals, preysanys, hirvels, totrixes, marlques and urvivels among them. We also had, would you believe, a regiment of spearmen mounted on sleeths. Sleeths!
This last regiment had been formed by Tarek Roper Ferdin, a passionate sleeth-racer who still, to the despair of us zorca men, refused to concede the superiority of the zorca. The regiment, being a private one, was clad in a bright bottle green outfit with a quantity of bronze studding. But, troops as green as their uniforms though they were, I had inspected them and fancied they would stand firm on the day of the battle. They were representative of what Vondium had put forth, again, and if they failed then all might fail.
By a series of forced marches we covered the ground and, choosing our time and place well, were able to strike at Colun’s rear guard just as they had begun preparations for pitching camp for the night. Give them their due, they were not like Fat Lango’s apology for an army. They were tough and hardened. But, all the same, caught with tents half-erected and men out collecting firewood and fetching water and leading the animals to the picket lines, they folded. Pockets fought madly and well; but the cavalry swamped them and the infantry raced in with a whoop and dismounted and finished the job. It was all over as the last of Zim and Genodras flushed ruby and emerald fires over the land, painting everything in an eerie sea of flame and verdigris.
There were many prisoners and the local Delphondi promised not to slay them all but to keep them penned until they might be ransomed or exchanged. We counted the cost and felt the satisfaction of relief from dire foreboding that our casualties were so few. We were still an army in being, and, into the bargain, an army crowned with success.
“Now,” said Nath. “For the main body?”
“We must chivvy them a space, yet. Hit them here and run. Ambush there — and run. We run rings around them and no man will take shame that he runs. When we have them nicely molded to the certainty of their defeat — then we will deal with them.”
Certain information reached me that this Kov Colun had been badly shaken by the defeat of a part of his army. He continued his advance; but he advanced cautiously instead of, as we all felt would be the wiser course, making an all-out effort to race through to the capital. His air component, mainly mirvols although he had some fluttrells, would prove uncomfortable in the day of the battle. During this period as we prepared his army for destruction they were chiefly an irritant. They scouted us with insolent ease and at times we were forced to pretty shifts to deceive them.
Seg’s contingent of Bowmen set themselves the task of driving off the mirvols, and succeeded remarkably well at most times. But there were many pretty little skirmishes as Bowman and flyer clashed. In the end Farris spared us a couple of small four-place airboats and these did sterling work. Colun’s air was almost all flyer-mounted; of fliers he had a few he kept close and I, with a cynicism born of being an emperor, had no need to be told what those particular vollers were intended to do. As each day passed and Colun struggled nearer and nearer Vondium, we chipped away at his forces. And, each day, messengers reached me with the latest news. Much of it concerned the preparations we made. The most ominous told me that the clansmen led by Zankov were now moving steadily down toward the city. As a defensible city, Vondium stood in much the same league as a holiday camp. The walls and fortresses had suffered so severely in the Time of Troubles that, as even Yantong had seen when he had been in control there, it would take many seasons to rebuild them. Mind you, by Zair, Vondium would be defended at the end. There was no doubt on that in anybody’s mind. None whatsoever.
This discrepancy in the defensive power of the city between the time when we Vallian Freedom Fighters had taken it back, and now when we sought to defend it, lay in the nature of the forces involved. Now the attackers would be clansmen from the Great Plains of Segesthes. The very thought of them sent cold shivers down the backs of civilized men.
The determination to fight on to the end and, if it came to it, die well, carried the men on during this period. They just did not think too far ahead. When the day came to meet the clansmen in battle, well, they’d call on Opaz and go forward and fight. And when it was over and they lay in their windrows of death, what would it matter then?
Seg remained amazingly cheerful, fully occupied, a fiery spirit of defiance and resistance. I could guess at the hurt he thus hid, the agony in him, and still I could not allay that hurt or intensify it by a single word. Every day the sense of pressure increased. We chivvied and chopped Kov Colun’s army, and ran. The clansmen drew nearer the city. The recruits drilled and sweated in Vondium and the adjoining areas. The arsenals worked all day and night producing the new arms and armor we required. Each day twisted another circle in the spiral of the press that closed on us. But we soldiered on. The progress of Colun’s army slowed. It faltered to a stop, clustered about a bend in a tiny river, a mere stream, where once it would have boldly pushed on. Provender had been scarce for that invading army of late. We hemmed them in, and still they substantially outnumbered us. Nath walked over to where I stood in the shade of a group of missals and his face bore a wide and beaming smile. Seg looked up, and said, “So your Third have come up, then, Nath?”