"Where do we get some more shooting?" he asked.
"Down the road a piece; just follow along and we'll show you plenty to shoot at."
He slipped back the knit cuff under his mail sleeve and looked at his watch. It was still ten minutes to noon, Hostigos Standard Sundial Time.
BY 17:30, they were down the road a really far piece, and there had been considerable shooting on the way. Now they were two miles west of the Athan, on the road to Marax Ford, and the Nostori wagons and cannon were strung out for half a mile each way. He was sitting, with his helmet off, on an upended wine keg at a table made by laying a shed-door across some boxes, with Harmakros's pyrographed deerskin map spread in front of him, and a mug where he could reach it. Beside the road, some burned out farm buildings were still smoking, and the big oaks which shaded him were yellowed on one side from heat. Several hundred prisoners squatted in the field beyond, eating rations from their own wagons.
Harmakros, and the commander of mounted infantry, Phrames-he'd be about two-star rank-and the brigadier-general commanding cavalry, and the Mobile Force Uncle Wolf-somewhat younger than the Tarr-Hostigos priest of Galzar and about chaplain-major equivalent-sat or squatted around him. The messenger from Sevenhills Valley, who had just caught up with him, paced back and forth, trying to walk the stiffness out of his legs. He drank from a mug as he talked. He was about U.S. first lieutenant equivalent.
Titles of rank, regularize. This business of calling everybody from company commander up to commander-in-chief a captain just wouldn't do. He'd made a start with that, on the upper echelons; he'd have to carry it down to field and company level. Rank, insignia of, establish. He thought he'd adopt the Confederate Army system-it was simpler, with no oak and maple leaves and no gold and silver distinctions. Then he pulled his attention back to what the messenger was saying.
"That's all we know. All morning, starting before mess call, there was firing up the river. Cannon-fire, and then small arms, and, when the wind was right, we could hear shouting. About first morning drill break, some of our cavalry, who'd been working up the river along the mountains, came back and reported that Netzigon had crossed the river in front of Vryllos Gap, and they couldn't get through to Ptosphes and Princess Rylla."
He cursed, first in Zarthani and then in English. "Is she at Vryllos Gap, too?"
Harmakros laughed. "You ought to know that girl by now, Kalvan; you're going to marry her. Just try and keep her out of battles."
That he would, by Dralm! With how much success, though, was something else.
The messenger, having taken time out for a deep drink, continued: "Finally, a rider came in from this side of the mountain. He said that the Nostori were across and pushing Prince Ptosphes back into the gap. He wanted to know if the captain of Tarr-Dombra could send him help." well?
The messenger shrugged. "We only had two hundred regulars and two hundred and fifty militia, and it's ten miles to Vryllos along the river, and an even longer way around the mountains on the south side. So the captain left a few cripples and kitchen-women to hold the castle, and crossed the river at Dyssa. They were just starting when I left; I could hear cannon-fire as I was leaving Sevenhills Valley."
"That was about the best thing he could do."
Gormoth would have a couple of hundred men at Dyssa. Just a holding force; they'd given up the idea of any offensive operations against Dombra Gap. If they could be run out and the town burned, it would start a scare that might take a lot of pressure off Ptosphes and Chartiphon both.
"Well, I hope nobody expects any help from us," Harmakros said. "Our horses are ridden into the ground; half our men are mounted on captured horses, and they're in worse shape than what we have left of our own."
"Some of my infantrymen are riding two to a horse," Phrames said. "You can figure what kind of a march they'd make. They'd do almost as well on foot."
"And it would be midnight before any of us could get to Vryllos Gap, and that would be less than a thousand."
"Five hundred, I'd make it," the cavalry brigadier said. "We've been losing by attrition all the way east."
"But I'd heard that your losses had been very light."
"You heard? From whom?"
"Why, the men guarding prisoners. Great Galzar, Lord Kalvan, I never saw so many prisoners..
"That's been our losses: prisoner-guard details. Every one of them is as much out of it as though he'd been shot through the head."
But the army Klestreus had brought across the Athan had ceased to exist. Not improbably as many as five hundred had recrossed at Marax Ford. Six hundred had broken out of Hostigos at Narza Gap. There would be several hundred more, singly and in small bands, dodging through the woods to the south; they'd have to be mopped up. The rest had all either been killed or captured.
First, there had been the helter-skelter chase east from Fitra. For instance, twenty riflemen, firing from behind rocks and trees, had turned back two hundred trying to get through at the next gap down. Mostly, anybody who was overtaken had simply pulled off his helmet or held up a reversed weapon and cried for quarter.
He'd only had to fight once, himself, he and two Mobile Force cavalrymen had caught up to ten fleeing mercenaries and shouted to them to yield. Maybe this crowd were tired of running, maybe they were insulted at the demand from so few, or maybe they'd just been bullheaded. Instead, they had turned and charged. He had half-dodged-and half parried a lance and spitted the lancer in the throat, and then had been fighting two swordsman, and good ones, when a dozen mounted had come up.
Then, they'd had a small battle a half-mile west of Systros. Fifteen hundred infantry and five hundred cavalry, all mercenaries, had just gotten onto the main road again after passing on both sides of the burning town when the Fitra fugitives came dashing into them. Their own cavalry were swept away, and the infantry were trying to pike off the fugitives, when mounted Hostigi infantry arrived, dismounted, gave them an arquebus volley, and then made a pike charge, and then a couple of four-pounders came up and began throwing case-shot, leather tubes full of pistol balls. The Fitra fugitives had never been exposed to case-shot before, and after about two hundred were casualties they began hoisting their helmets and invoking Galzar.
Galzar was being a big help today. Have to do something nice for him.
That had been where the mercenary general, Klestreus, had been captured. Phratnes had taken his surrender; Kalvan and Harmakros had been too busy chasing fugitives. A lot of these had turned toward Narza Gap.
Hestophes, the Hostigi CO there, had been a real cool cat. He'd had two hundred and fifty men, two old bombards, and a few lighter pieces. Klestreus's infantry had attacked Nirfa Gap, the last one down, and, with the help of Netzigon's people from the other side, swamped it. A few survivors had managed to get away along the mountain top and brought him warning. An hour later, he was under attack from both sides, too.
He had beaten off three attacks, by a probable total of two thousand, and was bracing for a fourth when his lookouts on the mountain reported seeing the fugitives from Fitra and Systros streaming. east. Immediately he had spiked his guns and pulled his men up the mountain. The besieging infantry on the south were swept through by fleeing cavalry, and they threw the Nostori on the other side into confusion. Hestophes spattered them generously with small-arms fire to discourage loitering and let them go to spread panic on the other side. By now, they would be spreading it in Nostor Town.
Then, just west of the river, they had run into the wagon train and artillery, inching along under ox-power, accompanied by a thousand of Gormoth's subject troops and another five hundred mercenary cavalry. This had been Systros over again, except it had been a massacre. The fugitive cavalry had tried to force a way past, the infantry had resisted them, the four-pounders-only five of them, now; one was off the road just below Systros with a broken axle-arrived and began firing case-shot, and then two eight-pounders showed up. Some of the mercenaries attempted to fight-when they later found the pay chests in one of the wagons, they understood why-but the Nostori simply emptied their arquebuses and calivers and ran. Along with "Down Styphon! " the' pursuers were shouting "Dralm and no Quarter!" He wondered what Xentos would think of that; Dralm wasn't supposed to be that kind of a god, at all.