“But the supply trains-Ah!” Now Cavotti saw the play. “Yes! Go on!”
More leering. “Yes! He’s been shipping in far more food than the real garrison needs. He’s stockpiling the fort so he can try a breakout in the spring, home to Vigaelia!”
Cavotti limped across to the door, fetched his pack, and found a place in the half-circle between Butcher and Filiberno, who was almost as good a strategist as he was himself. “So what do you want to do?”
“Depends how you are doing at Celebre,” Filiberno said tactfully.
The agreed plan for the rainy season was to stay out of the Altiplano and keep nibbling away at the Vigaelians’ perimeter. With both sides concentrated in the northwest and fairly evenly matched in numbers, the war had become one of maneuver. If Stralg let his forces get too dispersed, units could be cut off and wiped out. If he ever got too concentrated, he would be ripe for encirclement and starvation. But he had the inside lines now. He could concentrate his forces and break out at any time. It was a dance of scorpions.
“Nothing has changed,” Cavotti said. “Stralg keeps feinting at Celebre. He wants us to move in ahead of him to defend it. He needs a victory, and storming Celebre with us in it would give him one, very likely. We’d like to see him make the same mistake.”
He did not mention that a few days ago he had sent a message to the dogaressa, reminding her of the tholos signal. So far she had not fallen into the trap. Stralg would certainly have learned of the code from his seers, so if she had responded, the Fist might have stormed in to keep the Liberators out. That was not the sort of triple bluff to try and explain to Butcher.
“Famine, then?” Nuzio said. “We’re going to see famine by the spring. If we stop the Fist’s stockpiling, that would help a bit.”
The opposing hordes were wasting the whole northwest, using up the peasants’ surplus. When they had eaten even the seed corn, the only food left would be in the granaries of Celebre, and one side or another would be forced to take the city. And after that had gone…
Filiberno scratched a furry ear with a claw. “We could bring up half my host and feint at Veritano. If Stralg wants to keep his back door open, he’ll have to divert forces up here to defend it. Or we can add some of Fangs’s men and take it. Then he won’t have a back door! He won’t have any reinforcements next year to look forward to, either.”
It was damnably tempting, so tempting that a tiny inner voice of caution kept whispering that it must be a trap. “When?”
“We figure we can have three to one in a sixday,” Nuzio said. Those were the minimum odds for an assault on a defended position. “If the boy was right, and if we can get there before the caravan arrives.”
“They’ll be in no shape to fight if they’ve just come over the Edge.” Cavotti spoke dismissively and noted the grins that followed this hint of approval. They wanted to do this, every one of them. It was risky, yes, but doing nothing was risky too. After a year of victories they were losing momentum.
Butcher handed him a wine jar and another greasy lump of meat. Butcher was as loyal as a hound, but some of these others were future rivals. The end of Stralg would be the end of unity. Already men were slipping away and heading home to other parts of the Face. That was another worry.
“Then what?”
Filiberno shrugged. “Stralg will try to take it back. Then we hit him in the rear.”
And sacrifice the men left in Veritano? “How do you get those numbers there so fast?” Cavotti asked. “If we stick around, how do we avoid being pinned against the Ice?”
He was playing for time to think. To move a host into the Altiplano might be suicidal folly. The rains were already starting to wash out roads. The Fist would counter with his cold weather advantage-in fact this Veritano bait might be a trap like Cavotti’s tholos message to the dogaressa. But if Veritano was lightly manned, they could certainly raze it in a lightning strike and make sure both the Fist and the Face heard about it. Stralg would have lost another battle and another five sixty men. The ice devils’ morale would plummet even lower. But do not linger. Hit it, burn it, and run-safe but effective. And do not stay!
He explained. It took a while, but he brought them around without having to overrule anybody. “And if Caravan Six appears it can eat ashes,” he finished. “So there go four sixty more at no cost to us.”
They all grinned, excited at the prospect of another massacre. He did not point out that they would be stripping men away from the main theater, a force that might not get back easily if the weather changed, and would be badly missed if Stralg tried something. Nor did he tell them his hunch that Stralg would react by occupying Celebre and trying to use it as a bargaining chip to buy his way home to Vigaelia.
Always Celebre looked like the final prize in the war. It was the last big city left standing. If the Face was ever to be rebuilt, surely they must preserve it as a model of what civilization should be? Celebre was Cavotti’s hometown and he secretly yearned to save it, somehow. He did not know how. He had not saved any of the others, every one of which must have been somebody’s hometown.
“I want to do this one myself,” he said. “I need some action.”
“You can’t battleform any more!” Butcher growled.
Cavotti gave him a glare. His glares were much more deadly than they used to be. In fact he could battleform again, but only once. It would kill him.
“You don’t need to prove anything, Mutineer,” Vespaniaso said.
“I know that!” Cavotti roared, although he didn’t. “I also know that some of you find it a lot harder to give up ground than take it. I want to be certain there’s no sudden change of plans. Fili, you go and take over at Celebre for me. Nuzio, it may be a trap; we must keep close watch that Stralg doesn’t follow us up there. Can you get orders on their way by first light?”
Nuzio laughed. “Sound the trumpets!” He sprang up and departed, taking his pack. Quickly the others followed him, muttering about checking on their men. By the time Cavotti saw what they were doing, they had all gone, even Butcher, and when the door slammed he was left with what was probably the only really warm room in the town.
And Giunietta.
“You don’t mind if I sleep here too?” he asked the fireplace.
“Of course not.” Her voice in the shadows was low.
Not looking at her, he knelt and opened his pack to find the salt he used to clean his teeth… correction: his fangs. A thirty ago his arms had been smooth brown skin, like Nuzio’s. Now they were matted with black hair. Just about all of him was. His fingernails were black claws. His face…
“They warned you, I hope?” he said.
“I knew.” Her voice was closer. “It doesn’t matter.”
He looked up sharply. She was spreading a blanket in front of the hearth.
“I don’t mean I’m not sorry for you,” she said. “Of course I am. I am also enormously happy that you were rescued before they killed you. I’m relieved that I don’t smell madness on you, after what you went through.” She turned and stared at him. “In fact I don’t even detect any bitterness.”
“I’ve done my share of havocking. It was their turn, that’s all. And Vespaniaso made sure they paid for it.”
“You are a most extraordinary man! Hurry up. I’m waiting.”
“You know that’s impossible now,” he said. “I mean, I am very grateful for the offer, but no, we mustn’t and I won’t. There’s nothing more to discuss.”
Her wrap fell around her feet. “I know that you still have everything necessary under that chlamys. Come on, lover. You can’t deceive me.”
He sat down and began to fight with his boots. She knelt at his feet and used human fingers to untie the laces. “You can’t deceive a Witness, you know. You’re extremely horny. So am I.”