And that made him think of what Churchill had called Hilter the lance corporal who had promoted himself to commander-in-chief at one jump. Corporal Morrison had done that, cut Hitler's time by quite a few years, and gotten into the peerage, which Hitler hadn't.
It was quiet on the mountain top, even though there were two hundred men squatting or lying around him, and another five hundred, under Chartiphon and Prince Ptosphes, five hundred yards behind. And, in front, at the edge of the woods, a skirmish line of thirty riflemen, commanded by Verkan, the Grefftscharr trader.
There had been some objections to giving so important a command to an outlander; he had informed the objectors rather stiffly that until recently he had been an outlander and a stranger himself. Verkan was the best man for it. Since joining Harmakros's scouts, he had managed to get closer to Tarr-Dombra than anybody else, and knew the ground ahead better than any. He wished he could talk the Grefftscharrer into staying in Hostigos. He'd fought bandits all over, as any trader must, and Trygathi, and nomads on the western plains, and he was a natural rifle-shot and a born guerrilla. Officer type, too. But free-traders didn't stay anywhere; they all had advanced cases of foot-itch and horizon-fever.
And out in front of Verkan and his twenty rifled calivers at the edge of the woods, the first on any battlefield in here-and-now history, were a dozen men with rifled 8-bore muskets, fitted with peep-sights and carefully zeroed in, in what was supposed to be cleared ground in front of the castle gate. The condition of that approach ground was the most promising thing about the whole operation.
It had been cleared, all right-at least, the trees had been felled and the stumps rooted out. But the Nostori thought Tarr-Dombra couldn't be taken and they'd gone slack the ground hadn't been brushed for a couple of years. There were bushes all over it as high as a man's waist, and not a few that a man could hide behind standing up. And his men would have been hard enough to see even if it had been kept like a golf-course.
The helmets and body-armor had all been carefully rusted; there'd been anguished howls about that. So had every gun-barrel and spearhead. Nobody wore anything but green or brown, and most of them had bits of greenery fastened to helmets and clothing. The whole operation had been rehearsed four times back of Tarr-Hostigos, starting with twelve hundred men and eliminating down to the eight hundred best.
There was a noise, about what a wild-turkey would make feeding, and a soft voice called, "Lord Kalvan!" It was Verkan; he carried a rifle and wore a dirty gray-green smock with a hood; his sword and belt were covered with green and brown rags.
"I never saw you till you spoke," Morrison commended him. "The wagons are coming up. They're at the top switchback now."
He nodded. "We start, then." His mouth was dry. What was that thing in For Whom the Bell Tolls about spitting to show you weren't afraid? He couldn't have done that now. He nodded to the boy squatting beside him; the boy picked up his arquebus and started back to where Ptosphes and Chartiphon were waiting.
And Rylla. He cursed vilely-in English, since he still couldn't get much satisfaction out of taking the names of these local gods in vain. She'd announced that she was coming along. He'd told her she'd do nothing of the sort; so had her father and Chartiphon. She'd thrown a tantrum, and thrown other things as well. She had come along. He was going to have his hands full with that girl, after they were married.
"All right," he said softly to the men around him. "Let's start earning our pay.'
The men around and behind him rose quietly, two spears or halberds or long-handled scythe-blades to every caliver or arquebus, though some of the spearmen had pistols in their belts. He and Verkan advanced to the edge of the woods, where riflemen crouched in pairs behind trees. Across four hundred yards of clearing rose the limestone walls of Tarr-Dombra, the castle that couldn't be taken, above the chasm that had been quarried straight across the mountain top. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis up, and a few soldiers with black and orange scarves and sashes-his old college colors; he ought to be ashamed to shoot them-loitered in the gateway or kept perfunctory watch from the battlements.
Ptosphes and Chartiphon-and Rylla, damn it!-came up with the rest of the force, with a frightful clatter and brush-crashing which nobody at the castle seemed to hear. There was one pike or spear or halberd or something-too often something-to every two arquebuses or calivers. Chartiphon wore a long brown sack with arm and neck holes over his armor. Ptosphes wore brown, and browned armor; so did Rylla. They nodded greetings, and peered through the bushes to where the road from Sevenhills Valley came up to the summit of the mountain.
Finally, four cavalrymen, with black and orange pennons and scarves, came into view. They were only fake Princeton men; he hoped they'd get rid of that stuff before some other Hostigi shot them by mistake. A long ox wagon, piled high with hay which covered eight Hostigi infantrymen, followed. Then a few false-color cavalry, another big hay wagon, more cavalry, two more wagons, and a dozen cavalry behind.
The first four clattered over the drawbridge, spoke to the guards, and rode through the gate. Two wagons followed vanishing through the gate. Great Galzar, if anybody noticed anything now! The third rumbled onto the drawbridge and stopped directly below the portcullis; that was the one with the log framework under the hay, and the log slung underneath; the driver must have cut the strap to let it drop, jamming the wagon. The fourth, the one loaded with rocks to the top of the bed, stopped on the end of the drawbridge, weighting it down.
Then a pistol banged inside, and another; there were shouts of "Hostigos!" and "Ptosphes!" He blew his State Police whistle, and six of the big elephant-size muskets went off in front, from places where he'd have sworn there'd been nobody at all. The rest of Verkan's rifle-platoon began firing, sharp whipcrack reports entirely different from the smoothbores. He hoped they'd remember to patch their bullets when they reloaded; that was something new for them. He blew his whistle twice and started running forward.
The men who had been showing themselves on the walls were gone now, but a musket-shot or so showed that the snipers in front hadn't gotten all of them. He ran past a man with fishnet over his helmet stuck full of twigs, ramming a ball into his musket; another, near him, who had been waiting till he was half through, fired. Gray powder smoke hung in the gateway; all the Hostigi were inside now, and there was an uproar of shouting-"Hostigos!", "Nostor!"-and shots and blade-clashing. He broke step to look behind him; his two hundred were pouring in after him and Ptosphes's spearmen; the arquebusiers and calivermen had advanced to two hundred yards and were plastering the battlements as fast as they could load and fire, without bothering to aim. Aimed smoothbore fire at that range was useless; they were just trying to throw as much lead as they could.
A cannon went off above him when he was almost to the end of the drawbridge, and then, belatedly, the portcullis slammed down and stopped eight feet from the ground on the log framework hidden under the hay of the third wagon. They'd tested that a couple of times with the portcullis at Tarr-Hostigos, first. All six of the oxen on the last wagon were dead; the drivers and the infantrymen inside had been furnished short broadaxes to make sure of that. The oxen of the portcullis wagon had been cut loose and driven inside. There were a lot of ripped-off black and orange scarves on the ground, and more on corpses. The gate, and the two gate-towers, had been secured.
But shots were coming from the citadel, across the bailey, and a mob of Nostori was pouring out the gate from it. This, he thought, was the time to expend some.38-specials. Standing with his feet apart and his left hand on his hip, he drew the Colt and began shooting, timed-fire rate. He killed six men with six shots (he'd done that well on silhouette targets often enough), and they were the front six men. The rest stopped, just long enough for the men behind him to come up and sweep forward, arquebuses banging. Then he holstered the empty Colt-he had only eight rounds left for it-and drew his rapier and poignard. Another cannon thundered from the outside wall; he hoped Rylla and Chartiphon hadn't been in front of it. Then he was fighting his way through the citadel gate, shoulder to shoulder with Prince Ptosphes.