Byruhn gave over playing with the goblet and devoted his full attention to his elderly vassal, one side of his single red eyebrow arching up. “Riddle me not this night, Steev. The ride down here was exceeding wearisome and my body craves a long, warm sleep. The Kleesahks did well enough when last they cozened the lowlanders into fighting for us, so why should they be less successful this time around?”
The old nobleman shrugged. “Oh, I doubt not that the minds of all those brave men and women will be convinced that they must again risk lives and health for New Kuhmbuhluhn, my lord, but the bodies of not a few will be unable to follow the dictates of their minds.”
“That many are wounded, then?” queried the prince. “I had understood that Cousin Bili sustained relatively few casualties in the course of his campaign.”
The count showed crooked, yellow teeth and shook his gray head. “There are a few cripples, yes, but 1 speak not of them, my lord. It’s the Moon Maidens. Many of them are gravid—so big in the belly that they cannot even don their armor, much less mount a horse or ride north in the dead of a bad winter.”
The prince relaxed and shrugged, recommencing his toying with the stem of the goblet. “A bad winter, yes, and all of the portents promise that it will be late in departing into spring, which will likely give most of these former Maiden warriors time to foal, I doubt me not. If these Skohshuns adhere to the same tactics they’ve followed before, they’ll not even begin to raid until the spring rains are done, so there will be a plentitude of time for Cousin Bili and the squadron, with you and your men, to get up to King’s Rest Mountain, where I’ll be marshaling my forces.”
Old Steev shook his head. “A warcamp be no place for babes at suck, lord.”
Byruhn nodded once, forcefully. “Agreed. Nor do I want superfluous mouths to feed in New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, either the city or the citadel, not when the possibility of a siege be looming. Therefore, it were best that some few of the Maidens remain here with the spawn of themselves and their sisters. Even as poorly manned as it will, perforce, have to be, I can see no possibility of Sandee’s Cot falling to these Skohshuns. Besides, the knowledge that their children are down here, in the south, will give the squadron an additional reason to see to it that the invaders are stopped, defeated, driven back, in the north. Eh?”
The old man sighed, turning his hands palms upward in a gesture of surrender. “What you have ordered wrought this night and these future things you plan, here, may well be necessary to your mind, lord prince, but still are they one and all dishonorable and I fear me that no good can come of such devious infamies. But they are your royal will, and I am your sworn man.”
2
Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin, after easing his healing but still aching leg to a more comfortable position on the padded stool before his chair, took a swig from his jack of beer, then brushed the foam off his thick, drooping, gray mustache with a gnarled, callused and very hairy hand.
Showing worn teeth in a grimace of pain, he remarked, “Call it a great victory if you want to, Earl Devernee, but another such ‘victory’ could well be our ruination. Have you any idea how close, how damnably close, those feisty bastards came to hacking through, breaking our pike hedge? It just may be that we’ve finally met our match in these Kuhmbuhluhners. Perhaps it would be better to parley in the spring, rather than to go on fighting; they seem to be civilized and basically decent folk. Were the old earl, your father, still alive, I think that’s what he’d do.”
The young man to whom he had addressed his remarks did not answer; rather did he turn to the three other men, saying, “We’ve heard one opinion. Are there others?” He arched his thick brows and looked expectantly around. When a movement indicated a desire to speak, he nodded and said, “Colonel Sir Djaimz, what is your feeling on this matter?”
The man who nodded and began to speak looked to be a good ten years younger than the injured brigadier, but in all else they appeared as alike as two peas in a pod—average height, solid and powerful bodies with thick and rolling muscles covering big bones. Though only beginning to stipple with errant strands of silver, the colonel’s mustache was no less thick and worn in the same, drooping fashion. “Earl Devernee, I cannot but agree with much of what our wise and experienced brigadier has here said. It is long since our Skohshun pikes have been pressed so hard or stung so bitterly by so small a force of riders. Are we confronted, come spring, with anything approaching the size or composition of that stout band of warriors who stung us so badly in the most recent engagement, my voice will be unequivocally added to that of the brigadier.
“However, Earl Devernee, there is this additional matter to consider: Badly as they hurt us, I’m of the considered opinion that they were hurt worse… far and away worse. And such as I have squeezed out of the prisoners taken on that field tends to bear out my assumptions. These Kuhmbuhluhners have been here but a few generations; they were not very many who arrived and they are not many more now. Almost all of their nobility were among the heavy-armed horse who fought us so tenaciously, so splendidly, last autumn, and we all know how few of that force rode or hobbled or crawled off that bloody field.
“Therefore, I seriously doubt that we need even think of facing another such battle, for, brave and daring and stubborn and altogether worthy as these foemen have proved themselves to be, I surmise that their strength now is so sapped that they no longer can offer any dangerous sort of open battle.”
The old brigadier cleared his throat explosively.’ ‘Haarrmph.’”
The colonel immediately fell silent and, after a moment, the earl nodded his permission for the senior officer to speak.
“I have seen more than sixty springs, and 1 have been on campaign for nearly fifty of those war seasons, and I am here to tell you all that no formation, no tactic, no folk are ever unbeatable, least of all us Skohshuns; we’ve been routed in the past—although no one of you is old enough to remember it—and in just such a situation as this. The folk who broke the hedge that time were much like our present opponents— stark, brave warriors whom we had sapped and bled and pushed to the very wall over a period of years just as we have done here with these Kuhmbuhluhners.”
The young earl nodded. “Yes, brigadier, I think I recall my late father speaking of that disaster. Kleetuhners, weren’t they, those who routed us?”
The old officer had another swig of beer, then shook his head. “No, Earl Devernee… but yes, too. Yes, we were defeated once by the Kleetuhners, but that was many years ere even I was born and they are not the folk of whom I’m here talking; it was subsequent to our eventual merger with the Kleetuhners that our current tactics were developed and perfected.
“No, it was over forty years ago, this time of which I speak. I was then an ensign of foot and I came damned bloody close to dying that day, so I remember it full well. There was never a merger with those valiant folk possible. So long and hard and unstintingly did they oppose us that, in the end, we found it necessary to slay every adult male and female and many of the young’uns, even. The empty lands and a very few children was all we secured in the end.
“Those admirable folk called themselves Sinsnatyers, and almost every one of the couple of score boy children we adopted of them has become a fighter of note in Skohshun ranks. I greatly fear that if we push these Kuhmbuhluhners too hard, too far, we may well end with a similar situation or a worse one, mayhap. We now know their mettle and they ours, so should we now offer to treat… ?”
All of the other officers made to speak, but Earl Devemee forestalled them, raising his hand and saying, “Allright, brigadier, nothing can be lost by trying your idea; we can’t fight for some months, yet, anyway. You choose three heralds, send them to me, and I’ll draw up a set of demands and concessions—a great many of the former and a very few of the latter, of course.”