About half of the dozen officers grouped around the map table looked as if they were getting it. The other half, Guouwaxeus worst of all, were staring at him as if he was reciting "Jabberwocky."
Someday, he thought, I will watch you die on a cross, Guouwaxeus, and every last one of your wellborn shit-for-brains relatives beside you. But not yet, unfortunately. It was one thing to teach a man how to march and shoot and dig, or even how to handle a company of riflemen, and something else entirely to teach them a whole new way to think about conflict. Damn, if only I'd had another five years before this war!
"Then…" one of the Ringapi chieftains said, with a speculative look. "You say we are defeated, Lord King?"
Oh, somebody give me strength. "No, Lord Tautorun," Walker said. " 'Moving back' is also not the same thing as 'losing.' In fact, it's perfectly possible to move forward and win all the battles, and lose the war."
Now he got a few glances of the sort you'd expect to see on a man who'd just turned a corner and come across a hyena eating a baby. Or the way a Baptist might look if he found he'd stumbled into a Wiccan orgy.
"If we pulled back to here," he said, sketching a line on the map, "we could bring up supplies as fast as we consumed them. So we'll go a little further west, to here."
He drew a line that included most of the passes up onto the plateau from the coastal lowlands along the Aegean and Sea of Marmora.
"That means we'll be able to build up stockpiles over the winter. We'll also use the time to thoroughly pacify the areas we occupy, train new recruits, build roads and bridges, and to bring forward enough transport. Then, when we move east in the spring we can deny the enemy his harvests"-since grain ripened in late spring and early summer there-"and be well supplied right up to the Halys and past it. Once we've taken Hattusas, the enemy will have to fall back on Kar-Duniash. That will take another year, maybe two."
He looked around. "We'll need a rear guard, of course. Lord Guouwaxeus, I think that'll be your job."
The others drew a little aside, as if the Achaean had contracted some deadly, infectious disease.
He sat brooding over the map after the rest had left; they'd pull out tomorrow. I hope we don't have too many frostbite cases, he thought. Transport and shelter were very short.
Harold came up beside him. "They should not dare to oppose you, Father," he said hotly. "They are little men, without understanding."
Walker chuckled and ruffled the boy's blond mop. "Yeah," he said. "Most of the time. There are reasons to listen to them, though. First one is it makes them feel better if they think I take them seriously."
Harold scowled and clenched a small fist. "They should fear you!"
"Oh, they do. But an actively terrified man doesn't make much of a general-for that matter, if he's easy to terrify, he won't make much of a general either. Capisce?"
The boy nodded slowly. "I see. Father. They must be brave men to serve you in war?"
"Yeah, more or less. And self-confident. I can't be there to look over their shoulders all the time. Plus… would you like to hear a story?"
Harold perched on a chair, eyes bright; he was dressed in a smaller version of his father's black fur-and-leathers and looked comfortable in them despite the bitter cold outside the thin canvas.
"Yes!" he said.
"Okay, this happened in a land far, far to the east-China." Harold nodded; his geography lessons had taken that in. "Well, in this empire of China there was a mighty emperor, who'd put down all his neighbors and made himself ruler of all the civilized kingdoms."
"Like you, Father?"
"Sort of, but I'm smarter. Anyway, this emperor-his name was Lu Pu-Wei-"
He could see the boy silently mouthing the alien syllables.
"-had a minister named Li Ssu. Now, Li Ssu was big into punishment. He had a saying: If light offenses carry heavy punishments, one can imagine what will be done against a serious offense. Thus the people will not dare to break the laws. So he had pretty well only one punishment for anything-death."
"Okay," Harold said. "Yeah, I see… but where's the catch, Father?"
Walker laughed. "When this emperor's dynasty was overthrown, it started like this. One day, some farmers who'd been called up for military service were sitting in the mud. Rainy season, you see."
His hands sculpted the air, and Harold was bobbing up and down and grinning as his father went on:
"So one farmer says to the others: 'What's the punishment for being late?' and the others all answer: 'Death.'
"Then he says, 'What's the punishment for rebellion?' and the others all answer 'Death.'
"Then he stands up and says: 'Well, brothers, I got news for you-we're late.''
"Oh," Harold said. Then he laughed himself: "You mean, if they think you're going to kill them anyway, or might over some small thing, then they might as well rebel-they don't lose anything by it."
"Exactly, kid. The other reason for listening to the generals is that sometimes, they're right." He gripped the boy by the back of the neck and shook him a little. "I'm not always right. Neither will you be. If nobody tells you when they think you're wrong, you'll make more mistakes-it's like blinding yourself. Now run along; you've got some studying to do."
He leaned back and laced his hands behind his head, scowling himself, looking at the map. The temptation to try to smash them just one more time, and then they'd truly run… No. He might have been able to take Hattusas, but that would have been one bridge too far. Napoleon had taken Moscow, and look how much good it had done him.
After a moment the flap opened, and Hong came in. "You sent for me, Will?"
"Yeah," he said.
He stood and swung his arm. The open palm caught her across the face and knocked her down with a flat heavy smack sound and a thump as she hit the ground without any of her usual grace.
For a moment her face was fluid with surprise; then she smiled as her tongue came out and touched the blood at the corner of her mouth, then slowly wet her lips.
"Oh, you have some frustrations to work off, do you, Will? I like that. It's been too long."
"Maybe you won't like it this time," he said, kneeling.
His left hand picked up a pillow and pushed it over her face with relentless strength, while his right tore her clothing open. Not until she stopped arching her body into the smothering weight and panicked, tearing at his hand and thrashing to escape, did he release the grip… and thrust into her in the same instant. The slight woman gasped and bucked under two hundred pounds of weight, unable to draw a complete breath into air-starved lungs.
"Bet I can make you scream," he said, drawing back a little.
Hong laughed and wrapped her legs around him. "Bet you can't," she gasped, deliberately hyperventilating; the dark flush of her face faded a little.
"And maybe I'll forget and really kill you one of these days," he said, grabbing her legs and pushing them roughly back until her knees were by her ears, rising and slamming down on her while only her shoulders and neck touched the ground.
"Oh, yeah, I know, and I like knowing that, too."