"It didn't occur to me to consult you," the Mindak admitted. "Go ahead. Fire away. I'm always open to suggestion."
"Look at the bigger picture before you start your planning."
"Explain."
"Nieroda has committed an unpardonable strategic sin. The general trend of this discussion indicates that you're going to let her get away with it. That you haven't yet noticed."
"I don't follow you."
"She's taken on a war on two fronts. The enemy on each side is stronger. She's risked it thinking she knows you well enough to predict your behavior. She's betting she can whip you before the Alliance gets its house in order. The way you're all talking, she made the right bet."
The generals muttered among themselves. Gathrid caught fragments of sentences involving sentiments ranging from embarrassment at not having seen the obvious to irritation at the dwarf for having interrupted his betters.
"So?" said the Mindak. "What would you do?"
"Make her sweat. Just plain don't fight her. Dig in right here. Hold the Karato. Time is on our side. Every day that passes will tighten the jaws of the vise. Sooner or later she'll have to come to you, and try to finish you, on your ground and your terms. In one place, where Daubendiek can do the most damage."
Ahlert reflected but a moment before nodding. "Tactically sound, Rogala. But let's note a wee problem. It's not springtime. If I sit my men down in one place, digging trenches and building stockades, how do I feed them? They wouldn't be able to forage. And we don't have the Power to keep the pass open."
Rogala smiled. "I didn't overlook that angle. I haven't forgotten the old saying that an army marches on its stomach. Nor the considerable likelihood that Nieroda's foragers have already stripped the countryside, the colonials out there being beholden to your family and therefore fair game."
The Mindak's eyebrows rose. He surveyed his staff. With a trace of sarcasm, he observed, "I don't recall anyone having made that point before."
One officer blustered, "We anticipated using stocks captured from the enemy.''
"Oh. I see. Gentlemen, I never claimed to be a military genius, but even I can see the hole in that kind of planning.''
"One giant hole," Rogala said, chuckling. "That's desperation planning. Easy! Easy! I've been round the quartermasters. I know what we have, down to the last bushel of oats. We can get through the winter."
"Would you tell us how?" Ahlert asked. "I know of rations for two months. The Karato will be closed four to five."
Rogala sucked air between his teeth. "Now we come to the part where I get unpopular." He grinned a big, toothy grin behind his wild beard. "First, there'll be casualties. Nieroda will have no choice. She'll have to attack. That will mean men dying. Dead men don't eat. That'll help some."
One of the generals muttered something sour about negative attitudes.
Rogala winked and went on. "Mainly, though, the way to manage is for the officer class to swallow a side order of pride with their meals. This army has almost as many animals as men. Not a lot of them will be useful if my strategy is adopted. So eat the animals, beginning with the non-workers.
The warhorses. Then eat their food, that you worked so hard to haul over the mountains. Oats cook up just fine, and a two month supply for one horse will support several men for the same length of time."
Ahlert's staff seemed to have gone into shock. Roga-la's suggestion was so absurd, by their standards, that it took a half minute to fully penetrate and generate an angry stir.
The Mindak raised an admonitory hand. "Wait!" he said. "Rogala, that's asking an awful lot." The war-horse, specially bred and trained to carry an armored man in battle, and extremely expensive if calculated by the man-hours invested in the animal, was the symbol of status in feudal society.
Rogala's suggestion could not have been met with greater horror, east or west, had it been that they eat their babies.
Rogala clung to his point. "Look at it pragmatically. You won't need the animals. In my scenario you'd fight on foot anyway. Grab replacements from the enemy... . Meantime, let the animals forage. They can eat grass and leaves. Soldiers can't. Save the grain for them."
"What about pursuit?" someone demanded. Rogala had lighted a fire. The Mindak's staffers were wide awake and looking for a dust-up.
"Why worry about it? Where's she going to run? Just sit tight. Make her come to you, but keep her out of Ventimiglia. Let the Alliance mobilize behind her. Let her get desperate, attack and be defeated. Judging her troops by past performance, you won't need to chase them. They'll come begging to join up with you."
Gathrid followed the exchange in silence, often finding it amusing. Rogala was serious, he knew.
Intensely serious, and probably right. The Mindak's officers sensed the logic of his suggestions, and that raised their hackles even more.
Ahlert gave them free critical rein. For a time the meeting turned into an enthusiastic verbal brawl.
Rogala, unfortunately, was blessed with a lack of tact and an ages old habit of not explaining in sufficient detail. Both worked against him now. He answered most objections simply by saying, "You can't whip Nieroda in the field. She's got too much. Believe me." He failed to provide supportive evidence, so his arguments were not accepted. "Not even the Sword will help if you meet her on her terms. Damnit, you have to let her defeat herself. You have to sit here and look like you're going for a draw. You have to let the Alliance become a threat behind her. So she don't dare commit herself completely anywhere. If the alternative was defeat, I'd think getting my feet dirty was trivial. But that's just a coarse little peasant of a survivor's opinion."
Later, after an especially bitter denunciation by one of the conservatives, Rogala observed sadly,
"You're always the same. In every age. What do they do to you when you're little? Suck your brains out your earholes and stuff your heads with wool? You always consider your illusions more important than winning. I just don't get it. Hold it there, your undeserved generalship. I'm going to pronounce an oracle on your enterprise, based on a few thousand years of experience. You damned fools are going to get smoked. Nitwits always do."
"Smoked?" the offended general demanded.
"Smashed. Stomped. Decimated. Wiped out."
Ahlert made a gentle, open-palmed gesture in the general's direction. The man subsided immediately.
He still awes them, Gathrid realized. Maybe he hasn't slipped as much as he thinks.
Musingly, Rogala continued, "The Swordbearer and me, of course, we're going to get out of it all right. The lad here, he's emotional. He's going to mourn you all. Your wives and families too.
That's the way he is. Me, I'm just going to laugh. I get a kick out of seeing jerks get what's coming to them."
Rogala turned to Ahlert. "One other thing, Chief. Assuming somebody has an attack of smarts and listens to me, that gang of camp followers has got to go. Right now. They aren't nothing but eating mouths. The mouths you want to fill belong to your soldiers, not your harlequins and harlots." He stamped away. After a few steps, he paused to beckon Gathrid. The youth rose and followed.
Once out of earshot of Ahlert, the dwarf said, "We're not going to have any more luck here than we had with the Alliance Kings. These clowns would let their army get stomped like cockroaches in a cattle stampede before they'd swallow their pride and do what I tell them."
Rogala misjudged the mettle of the Mindak. The army remained encamped in the mouth of the Karato.
Immense earthworks began to rise, more as a means of keeping the troops occupied than for their military value.