Lord of Janissaries (116 page)

The problem was that the map wouldn’t always tell you anything you didn’t already know. The map in front of him was a case in point. The blue pins showed the twelve thousand men of his Army of Chelm exactly where they’d been the day before, and the day before that, and the day before
that
. Same thing with the red pins for the twenty-odd thousand men in the High Rexja’s Army of the West.

It wasn’t the odds that bothered him. Two to one wouldn’t be enough against star weapons and Tamaerthan archers. Some of the enemy captains were veterans of Sarakos’ campaign, of course; they would have seen the archers and the weapons in action, and might have worked out tactics to make them less effective. Still, tactics wouldn’t hold troops together if the one-oh-six started dropping WP into their formations from five stadia away. Black magic did a lot to wreck morale—at least the first time around. Rick was pretty sure that if he was willing to use up most of his ammo, he could keep the Army of the West from fighting again, at least for another six months.

The problem was, the High Rexja’s captains had learned something even more important than how to meet star weapons—they’d learned scouting. Maybe they’d always known something—a lot of their cavalry was light stuff, mounted on centaurs or scrubby little hacks like Scots border horses. Those ponies could scatter across country and live on forage where heavy cavalry mounts would starve.

Certainly they’d learned a lot from a year of fighting the Westmen. The ones who’d survived were light cavalry of a quality that Rick had hoped he wouldn’t see on the other side for quite a while. A dumb hope, he now realized—nobody but Yatar could make sure that your enemies would always learn slower than your friends, and Yatar seemed to be sitting this one out.

So he couldn’t hope to take Captain General Ailas by surprise and defeat him in detail. Ailas would get word in time and pull his three “divisions” together. Or maybe he would hold with two and send one around Rick’s rear. He might even just stay where he was, with his army divided into three for better grazing and water supplies, and wait for Rick to move—forward or back, it didn’t matter. As long as Rick and his men were here in the west while the main army of the Five Kingdoms crunched into Drantos farther east, cutting it off from Rome, Ailas was helping win the war for his king without killing a single enemy!

It didn’t help that only half of Rick’s army was cavalry, and their mounts weren’t in the best shape. The rains had stopped and now the streams were drying up. Before long Rick might have to move his army just to stay near water.

What I need is the Tamaerthans. Pikes and archers. Then I could move them up, and to hell with Ailas. He can attack good pikemen with heavy cavalry and get his lunch, or he can hang back and let the archers have at him. Either way—

None of it mattered though, because he didn’t have the archers and pikemen. Ganton did.
And I hope to God he uses them better than Morrone did.

I’ve got to get up there where the real action is. This is nothing but a holding operation.

As for here, he’d have to do something soon enough or withdraw without a fight, and that would lose him his reputation for invincibility. When that went, a lot of men would go with it, some because they wouldn’t follow a leader who wasn’t lucky, but a lot more because they didn’t want to abandon their lands and would swear fealty to Toris to keep them.

Tylara wouldn’t like that.
Wouldn’t she ever.
If they ever sat down and had it out over what she’d done with her junior-grade ninjas, she’d be able to claim that he’d betrayed his own men and her just as badly. Stalemate—and from there Rick could see things going in a lot of different directions, most of them labeled “from bad to worse.”

He looked at the map again. Lost reputation or not, he’d better put the army on the move before it
had
to move to stay near water. Then there’d be too good a chance of Ailas cutting him off from water and doing to at least a part of his army what Saladin did to the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin.

The key to the campaign was that damned light cavalry. Ailas had been using it to scout in front of his army. Suppose he had to watch his rear? “Damn right,” Rick said aloud. “Now who do I send?”

There weren’t many candidates. The striking force had to be all cavalry, and there was a good chance it wouldn’t be coming back soon. That ruled out leading them himself, but the leader would have to know modern tactics and weapons. Somebody who would be obeyed by both mercs and Tran soldiers, and knew the territory well enough to make a small force do the work of a big one.

Exactly one man matched that description.

“Jamiy!”

His orderly appeared and saluted with a click of heels. (Rick wondered how much of his income from bribes Jamiy spent on new boots that would click properly.)

“My compliments to Lord Murphy, and I’d be pleased to see him at once.”

“Sir!”

* * *

“—stays dry for another couple of days, the water in Dead Gunkel Lake will be down enough for us to march along here.” Ben Murphy traced a line on the map with a forefinger.

“That’s pretty close to Ailas’ Second Division, isn’t it?”

“There’s a couple-three klicks of scrub and thicket just above the shore, between the lake and the camp. Even bandits don’t go there very much. It’s full of patches of quicksand and something that must be a wild cousin of madweed. Stinks like it, thorns like it, and it makes you crazy if you put the sap in booze.”

“They could still get wind of your movement, and put an ambush at Gorgon Pass to cut you off.”

“Not if we have a couple of heavy weapons along. Blast ’em out with a mortar or the Carl Gustav, and pick ’em off with one of the LMG’s as they run.” He frowned. “Mortar’d be better, I think. We don’t have to have it in line of sight, now that I’ve taught some of the local kids flag signals.”

“Sergeant Murphy, what the hell makes you think you’re going to have any heavy weapons at all?”

“Captain, I’ve been thinking it over. I know there’s a risk of losing them. but if I don’t get some of the big magic, my people might start wondering if they’re being sent on a suicide run. I may not be able to get them out of the camp, let alone keep them from running away if it hits the fan. And look, we can do a lot more damage with some heavy firepower. I think you want to stomp the bastards, not just tickle them!”

“What you really mean, Sergeant Lord Murphy, is that you
won’t
order your people out without heavy-weapons support.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Sure. And now what? I don’t need a crisis just now.

Jamiy’s blank expression matched Murphy’s. Rick hoped no one could ever pry this story out of him. It would make a story to tell, all right, one of the starmen bargaining with the Lord Rick. Shades of Parsons’ and Gengrich’s mutinies!

Not really, though.
This wasn’t an officer dealing with an insubordinate NCO, it was the Captain General of Drantos dealing with a bheroman who owed it to his people not to put them in needless danger. Murphy couldn’t really do much else.
But I bet the SOB. is having fun.

“Okay, Lord Murphy. You can’t have the Carl Gustav anyway, and I’d rather give you some rifle grenades than an LMG. You shouldn’t have to face a massed attack. We’re damned sure going to have to if it comes to the crunch.”

“Captain, if you give me an LMG I think I can beef up my force with Mad Bear’s Westmen. They’re used to raiding, and if they think they have some really big wizards on their side . . . Besides, I think they’re not too happy sitting around camp half the time.”

True enough. Despite Mad Bear’s oaths, his three hundred warriors weren’t really pulling their weight in the campaign, because nobody except Ben and a couple of his men-at-arms knew how to handle them. Not many in the army trusted them, either. There’d been a few nasty incidents—not too many, considering that a lot of men in the camp had lost homes and kin to the Westmen, but enough to worry about.

“I’m going to have to be sticky about the LMG, Lord Murphy. What about some rockets?”

The bargaining went on long enough for Rick to send Jamiy for more wine. They compromised: a section of First Rockets with twenty-five rounds, and Second Engineer’s portable ballista with twenty bombs, but no LMG. Ben would take two hundred and twenty-five Westmen warriors; the rest would stay in camp to protect the women, children, and remounts.

“That’s five hundred men, near enough,” Rick said.

“Yes, sir—”

“It’s enough. During the Civil War Ben Grierson covered Grant’s advance on Vicksburg with not many more, and he had to face a lot better men than Ailas has.”

“That right? Yes, sir. I’ll try. There is one more thing—”

“Yeah?”

Murphy poured himself more wine. “I want your permission to swear blood-brotherhood with Mad Bear.”

“Holy hell—why?”

“Captain, the thing is, if I’m blood-brother to Mad Bear he can never fight against you again unless I release him from his oath to me. Or you release me from mine to you.”

Better not ask what else Murphy might feel released him from his oath to his Captain General. “You’ve got a point. Go on.”

“It’ll also help in picking the men to go, ’cause they’ll all want to, and I may have to order some to stay behind. They’ll take it better if I’m sworn to Mad Bear. Besides, I may have to order night marches. Mad Bear doesn’t worry about demons as much as he used to, but a lot of his people do. If I’ve sworn never knowingly to put a warrior in the path of demons . . .”

“Okay, okay. Swear anything you think you can keep without having to rebel, only tell me about it afterward. Fair enough?”

“Sure thing, Captain.”

After Murphy left, Rick considered the new lesson he’d just learned. It wasn’t the stupid mercs who were dangerous. There were some who thought modern weapons could let them live as petty kings, but they weren’t the problem. It was the smart ones, like Gengrich and Murphy. The ones who knew how to give loyalty as well as take it.

The ones who knew how to be feudal lords.

* * *

Ben Murphy scrambled out of the warm, muddy stream. Rough-barked branches and sharp blades of grass scraped and pricked his bare skin.
Hell of a skinny-dipping party. Not a girl in sight. And Dirdre wouldn’t like it if there was.
It was funny how possessive she was now that they were hitched. Even funnier was the fact that he didn’t mind. Dirdre was a damned fine woman, even if she probably wouldn’t ever forget Lafe Reznick. Reznick had been one hell of a good man. One of the happiest days of Ben’s life at Westrook was the day they dedicated the shrine to Lafe, so that all the young men could come ask his spirit to bless their weapons and give them courage in war—

“Come, brother-to-be.” Mad Bear’s voice broke into his thoughts. “It is time to run.”

They loped up the north side of the little valley. Ben gritted his teeth as the stones and scrub punished his bare feet, but pushed himself as hard as he could. He didn’t want Mad Bear to have to hold back for him.

By the time they reached level ground, Ben had worked up enough of a sweat to satisfy any reasonable god.
Wouldn’t old Father McCarthy have a fit if he heard that!

He stumbled and nearly fell as a root snagged his left foot. He didn’t need Mad Bear’s warning cough to remind him that falling on his face now would bode very badly for their blood-brotherhood. Murphy emptied his mind and settled down to the run.

The Firestealer silvered the water of the stream behind them and gave enough light for Murphy to find a path through the scrub. Night birds called, but Murphy couldn’t hear anything but his heartbeat, his pounding feet, and the rasp of his breath.
Benjamin Murphy, you’re too damned old for these barbarian rituals.
It was too late now. Murphy realized that he’d been heading toward this oath and tomorrow’s raid ever since the day Mad Bear and his tribe rode into Westrook.

It was the wives and kids that had done it. Murphy couldn’t send them back with their men to be slaughtered by Walking Stone. He couldn’t do that, any more than he could have said, “Sure, and I’ll be glad to blow up a store full of grandmothers and children, as long as some of them are Protestants,” when the two Provo gunmen came to reason with him.

He was three-quarters through the run. Another half-klick, then jump over the bonfire and enjoy the applause. Sure.
I never was much for jumping. Hope I can get over it without losing something Dirdre might miss.

Closer up, the fire was less intimidating. It was burning in a little hollow, and the light reflected from the sides of the hollow made it look bigger than it was. Murphy flexed his knees as he reached the raised lip of the hollow.
Holy Geronimo! Here goes—
He sailed over the fire and landed on his feet. But the grass was slippery and the hill sloped away under him. He overbalanced and went down on hands and knees in front of two dozen Westmen.

Mad Bear landed on his feet beside him, but the tribesmen were already hissing and muttering.
Not too swift, Murphy. Now what? Ah.
He remembered one of the Captain’s history lectures. He pulled up a clod of earth and grass with each hand, and held them high as he got to his feet.

“I hold this land I have taken with both hands,” he shouted. “None of the High King’s dogs will drive me from it. With my brother-to-be, I will whip them all back to their kennels.” From the corner of his eye he saw Mad Bear grin. The hisses and mutters died away.

They drank water from the same cup, and sipped fermented mare’s milk mixed with blood from the same bowl. They ate from the same piece of break sprinkled with salt. It was lousy bread, but Murphy didn’t care. The ritual had called for him to fast from the setting of the Father Sun, and now he was hungry enough to eat a lamil raw.

Murphy took out his knife.
Mad Bear’s knife, actually. Arekor gave it to him while he was a prisoner.
He held it high, then laid its blade against his wrist. A moment later he handed the blade to Mad Bear, who did the same. They pressed the cuts together while someone started beating a drum. Someone else piled more branches on the fire, and Mad Bear began to chant.