At nearly every sizable village there would be a contingent of them, swarthy, big-boned men in exquisitely fashioned coats of mail and open-faced steel helmets with cheek guards and segmented nape guards of hardened leather. To Sir Djim and his Freefighters they seemed all alike—big noses and black eyes, slashing swords and cursive daggers, spears and small, round, hammered-bronze bucklers, the leathern cases of darts and throwing sticks finely tooled and richly decorated, like the saddles on their big, bred-up mountain ponies, sleeping robes rolled and tied on the crupper, warbag and an occasional cookpot hung from the near side of the pommel, axe from the off side.
As the numbers of Ahrmehnee warriors began to seriously outnumber the company of Freefighters, Captain Djeri Guhntuh began to privately question the worth of so many irregulars and openly doubt the feasibility of hiring on more of the same.
But Sir Djim Bohluh welcomed—most cordially welcomed, indeed—every Ahrmehnee tribesman he could sign on. In the more than forty years he had soldiered with the Army of the Confederation, he had heard of and seen men just like these hike the very best regulars into the ground, then suddenly turn and beat those same finely equipped, well-led regulars to a frazzled standstilclass="underline" Whole battalions—and at least one entire reinforced regiment—of Confederation infantry had marched into the Ahrmehnee lands in hot pursuit of raiders to never again be seen, to disappear completely, and assignments to the always-under-strength garrisons of forts along the borders of Ahrmehnee lands had been, in Sir Djim’s soldiering days, considered to be a virtual death sentence by the rank and file of the Confederation Army.
Nor was there any need to carry load on packload of beans and grain for the mounts of these irregulars, as there was for the warhorses of Captain Guhntuh’s Freefighter dragoons. The mountain-bred ponies were quite capable of staying in good flesh off nothing more than grass, rougher herbiage, even tree bark, if necessary. That these ponies’ riders, too, expected to live off the land was attested by the small amounts of rations they brought with them, nor did Sir Djim doubt that they could do just that.
But Bohluh was nothing if not shrewd; he let it be widely known that he agreed with Captain Guhntuh, but allowed himself to be “persuaded” by the leader of his original force of Ahrmehnee, one Bahndahr Taishyuhn, to hire on any tribesmen passed upon by that worthy—a fortyish man with the scars of a veteran and the look and bearing of a natural killer. And so when at last he and his force approached the unmarked border of Behdrozyuhn lands, he lacked the numbers of warm bodies he might have led, but he felt assured that all or most of those he did lead were of better than average quality. He had ridden out of Taishyuhn lands with about two hundred and fifty effectives; he would join Sir Geros with nearly five hundred.
Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin still felt as if he had been ridden over, trampled by an entire brigade of heavy cavalry. Each and every necessary movement still brought a choked groan or a snarled curse from betwixt his swollen lips. On the left side of his head, just behind and above the ear, was a hard knot the size of a turkey egg. That New Kuhmbuhluhn bastard had smashed the boss of his buckler so hard into the brigadier’s face that it had actually bent the cold-hammered steel of the visor, breaking the old officer’s nose, mashing his lips until they split and spouted blood, loosening all of his front teeth and chipping four of them and all but breaking his jaws. While he had just lain there, half stunned, the dirty by-blow had kicked him in the head—the old man recalled that, clearly. And to add insult to injury, some issue of unspeakable filth had stolen his fine sword, which blade had been his father’s, before him.
He had been found by the regiment sent into the gap left by the virtual extirpation of Colonel Bruce Farr’s regiment.. A litter had been quickly fetched and he had been carefully borne up to his pavilion and the staff surgeon summoned. That worthy had speedily ascertained that, although his patient was one mass of bruises and contusions, scrapes and the occasional cut or split in the skin from crown to soles, a broken nose, loose teeth and three fingers that might or might not be broken were the worst of the old man’s injuries. He left him in the care of his staff and aides and hurried back to the scores of seriously wounded men who awaited him.
Well knowing his superior’s nature, Senior Colonel Sir Djaimz, immediately it was clear that the New Kuhmbuhluhn force was truly withdrawing from the field, had come to the brigadier and, when he found him both conscious and rational, had sketched the calamitous events of the day.
To all intents and purposes, one entire regiment of pikes—Colonel Farr’s—had ceased to exist. The colonel himself was gravely wounded, and it would be long before he took the field again, if ever he did. The two regiments which had flanked Farr’s—Taylor’s and Gambel’s—had been so badly mauled as both to be down to about half the effectives listed before the battle. The regiments to the west of the stricken three had all taken heavier than usual losses, most of them from a variety of small throwing axe identical to those which had exacted similar losses in the autumn battle of the year past.
There had been few if any missiles employed by the other two attacking forces, both of which had been easily held off by the pike lines and severely bled as they had attempted to hack through by main strength. But those who had thrown the deadly little axes had never closed in any strength until a way for them had been cleared by those who had come in afoot.
Unable to then speak clearly or without much pain, the brigadier had thought to himself, “Humph, well, our herald’s cozening didn’t work on all of them, obviously. Hope the canny bastard who led those axe throwers was killed. Wonder if he’s the same fucker who chewed us up so badly last year? Speak of last year, have to talk to our prisoners from last year again, too, along with those from this set-to ... if we captured any, that is. Far more men attacked us than I’d thought they’d be able to scratch up.
“And as for prisoners, what about that strange, dark woman and her band of scruffy scum we captured in our glen? Rifles! Our Skohshun legends speak of them or something similar—they used to be common, apparently, in our lost homeland. God in Heaven, if I had enough of them I could go through this land like a hot knife through butter! But she doesn’t know how to make them ... or, at least, she claims she doesn’t, nor even how to make the charges and projectiles for them. She does say that she could lead us to where a fair number of the rifles are buried, but from the maps she drew up, we’d have to go directly through the very heart of New Kuhmbuhluhn to get there.”
Sir Djaimz continued his report. “All save three of the short-hafts from Colonel Pease’s regiment are dead or seriously wounded, but with the exceptions of Farr’s, Taylor’s and Gambel’s sergeants, no other shorts were lost.
“However, the loss of officers was exceptionally high. Colonels Farr and Taylor are wounded, Colonel Gambel is dead. A total of seven other officers are fit for duty from the entire before-battle complement of those three regiments. Five of the six staff officers who rode with you down to the rear areas are dead. Lieutenant Bryson is wounded; so too is Ensign Grey. I’d sent the lad down to find you. Instead, he apparently essayed to stop the New Kuhmbuhluhn horsemen headed for Gambel’s regiment, single-handedly; the surgeon had to take off one of his legs at the knee, but he thinks he’ll live.”
“Poor valiant little bugger,” thought the old man, then, “Oh, Jesus, Lady Pamela, his mother, will ream me out a new arsehole for this! Fine piece of female flesh, there, that woman ... if only I were twenty years younger ... ten, even ... ? But she’ll not stay widowed long, if I’m any judge of these matters. Now young Tom can be honorably retired into the reserve and get to work siring a new generation of Greys on some likely chit.”