Mistress of the Catacombs (47 page)

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"Well, my lords—and princess," said Carus, bowing to her as they stood on the ridgeline viewing both the royal fleet and the vast assembly in the bay beyond to the west. "I did Admiral Nitker an injustice in not believing that Lerdoc could raise fifteen thousand men. He's got that many and more besides, I shouldn't wonder."

Hundreds of ships were grounded on the open coast to the west of the royal encampment. Most of them were sailing vessels, round-bellied merchantmen which could carry some hundreds of men apiece, albeit in great discomfort. Only a score of triremes escorted them; the Blaise fleet was no larger than the royal fleet had been before Garric—guided by Carus—began to rule the kingdom.

You could command an island with soldiers. To command the Isles, you had to have a fleet.

"You didn't say that you doubted him, your highness," said Lord Attaper. Nitker was a former officer of the Blood Eagles, Attaper's friend and protege. "Not in my hearing, at least."

"Didn't I?" mused Carus. "Maybe I learned something in the time since—"

Sharina reached out to touch Carus' cheek. The gesture must have looked odd to the high officers standing close and scowling as they gazed at the rebel army, but was better than having the ancient king blurt some variation on "—since I drowned a thousand years ago."

The king's face was warm but as stiff as sun-washed marble. He patted Sharina's fingers and said, "Since I first came to Valles. I thought Nitker was wrong, though."

If the royal triremes had met the Blaise merchantmen at sea, only surrender could have saved the rebel army from drowning to a man. If. Luck or more likely wizardry had given Count Lerdoc perfect weather, perfect timing, and perfect secrecy for his sweep across the Inner Sea. Someone was weaving a plot as complex as one of Ilna's tapestries.

Sharina and the command group were mounted, but Lord Attaper had flatly refused to allow Carus to gallop back to the harbor with only a troop of Blood Eagles to guard him. All four regiments of javelin-armed skirmishers had jogged along with the high officers, the horsemen adjusting their pace to that of their escort. They couldn't fight the whole Blaise army, but they could delay any desperate thrust by the rebels long enough for the rest of the royal army to arrive.

"We could attack them now," said Lord Dowos, previously commander of a cavalry regiment which had remained behind to guard Valles. He pointed at the confused mass of ships and men. "Before they get organized, why, we'll slaughter them!"

Dowos was Lord Waldron's cousin. When he'd demanded to accompany the expedition to Tisamur, Waldron appointed him adjutant of the royal army. Since he and Waldron thought alike, Dowos was a good choice to ride with the king while Waldron sorted out the sudden disruption of the siege.

"No!" said Lord Attaper, to Dowos' right. "That'd be slaughter, all right, but not—"

"Who are you to—" Dowos shouted. He jerked his mount's head to face Attaper. The captured horse, unused to being ridden and too small for the big cavalryman anyway, stumbled to its knees. Dowos jumped clear and reached for his sword.

"If you draw that, Dowos," Carus said in a voice of thunder, "then you'll be the first rebel I kill on Tisamur. Depend on it!"

"Wha—?" said Dowos, turning in amazeent at the violence of the words. "Your highness, I'm no rebel! I only—"

"Silence!" Carus said.

Sharina sat transfixed on the king's other side, afraid that any action she took would spark his barely-restrained fury. Carus was angry beyond reason at the situation he'd created by bringing the royal army to Tisamur where the kingdom's enemies could trap it. If Dowos, if anyone, did the wrong thing now, the king would unload that anger lethally on an undeserving victim.

Attaper kneed his mount between Dowos and the king. He caught the reins of the loose horse and said in a neutral voice, "Let me help you back into the saddle, my lord."

Now Sharina could touch the king's cheek again. "Your highness," she whispered.

Carus threw his head back and laughed. Sharina knew the humor was honest, but at this juncture it disturbed the nearby officers as much as the anger a moment before had done.

"Your suggestion wouldn't be a worse blunder than the way I brought us all to the present pass, Lord Dowos," he said, "but one bad mistake is quite enough for a campaign."

He nodded toward the rebel force. Lerdoc had brought mounts for his cavalry, trusting his wizard advisors for fair winds—if he weren't simply being a nobleman and therefore a fool on the question. At least a squadron of horsemen were with the skirmishers, moving out as the regiments of heavy infantry tried to form on the beach. On the ships stranded when the tide backed, men swarmed like bees from an opened hive.

"Next thing to chaos, isn't it?" the king said with a wry smile. His expression hardened. "How good do you suppose our formation's going to be after we go charging down into them, hey? Especially when their archers start shooting at us from the ships' decks! Everyone one of those ships is going to be a little fort with its own moat of seawater."

"Your highness...," Dowos said, but his voice trailed off. Abruptly he added, "Lord Attaper, my apologies. And my thanks for your assistance with my horse."

Sharina looked over her shoulder. The skirmishers, savage looking men with bundles of javelins and a broad knife or a handaxe, were spreading into a loose screen on the forward slope of the ridge. Most of these men were hirelings from islands less settled than even the rural parts of Ornifal: hunters, goatherds, nomads of one sort and another. A few wore hide garments, and many were in dressed leather rather than cloth. They were men well used to a hard life, and used also to killing.

In the far distance Sharina could see the leading ranks of the phalanx, moving more slowly because they needed to keep formation if they were to be ready to fight at sudden need. 18-foot pikes waved upright in the air above them like the spines of a poisonous caterpillar. The phalangists wore bronze caps and carried flat, round shields; their real protection came from their tight formation and the hedge of spearpoints that kept enemies from closing with them.

The traditional heavy infantry would be bringing up the rear, but from where Sharina stood they were still out of sight. Those regiments were recruited from Ornifal's yeoman farmers and provided their own equipment, considering themselves socially superior to the oarsmen who formed the phalanx and were the core of Garric's new tactics. They'd be on their mettle to prove themselves better than the phalangists in battle as well as birth.

"Attaper," the king said, "how long do you think it'll take them to get organized enough that Lerdoc would engage of his own accord?"

"Not today," said the Blood Eagle commander. "He's a rash man—he wouldn't be here if he weren't—"

Carus smiled like a curved knife. "True of more than him," he said.

"—so he may not wait to fortify a proper camp, but he'll want to get all his troops ashore and marshalled."

"That's what I'd judge as well," Carus said, nodding. "So.... What do you suppose he'll do if I withdraw Waldron and those last regiments from Donelle... and I bring the whole army together here on this ridge?"

The royal officers looked at one another, dumbfounded by the king's question. "Surely you're joking, your majesty?" said the first who dared speak; Lord Muchon, a former officer of the Blood Eagles and now in command of a division of the phalanx.

He didn't sound sure. Like many of the other officers present, Muchon knew little of Prince Garric beyond the rumor that he'd been a shepherd on Haft a few months before.

"The regiments still in the lines around Donelle are holding ten times their numbers of rebels, mercenaries as well as local militia," Attaper said cautiously. His contact with Garric had been close and of the sort that cements trust. "If you withdraw them, then the rebels will combine their forces and attack us with..."

He turned up his palms in a deliberately vague gesture. "Twice our numbers. At least."

There was a general murmur of assent from the command group. The other men looked relieved that Attaper had stated what they all thought was obvious: obvious even to a priestess, let alone to the prince commanding their army.

"Aye," said Carus with a smile like a striking viper's. "The rebels'll march out of Donelle, and we'll hit them while they're marching. Kill the most of them and scatter the rest. If things work well, we'll take the city gates while some of the survivors' try to get back inside, but that can wait if it needs to."

Lord Dowos had been trying to avoid calling attention to himself, choosing to stand holding his horse's bridle instead of remounting. Carus' latest proposition shocked him to speech again.

"But Count Lerdoc!" he said. "It's only three miles to Donelle. Lerdoc'll attack us from behind while we're fighting the troops from Donelle and, and...."

"We'll hold the ridge line here with two regiments of heavy infantry," the king said briskly. "Waldron will. The phalanx has to be moving to be effective. The phalanx to slice through the locals fast, the rest of the heavy infantry to watch the flanks, and the javelin men to keep the survivors running far enough that they can't regroup when we turn to deal with Lerdoc."

He slammed his right fist into his left palm. "Crush them!" he repeated. "And then crush Lerdoc, while he's stuck here fighting Waldron."

"May the Lady cast Her cloak about me!" blurted a regimental commander. Nobody else spoke for a moment.

Sharina felt cold. Crush and slice were metaphors when applied to armies, but they and other words—gut, butcher, tear, and every similar term of violence were literal descriptions of what would happen to thousands of the individuals who made up those armies. Twenty thousand hogs being slaughtered in a morning, squealing and spewing blood on ground already soaked with the blood of others....

"Your highness," said Lord Attaper, his expression agonized from the effort of what he felt he had to say for the kingdom's sake. "My prince.... Count Lerdoc is a traitor to you and the Isles, but he's an able general. When he realizes Waldron has only two regiments, he'll bypass them and rush to take the rest of us in the rear."

"We'll have to hope he doesn't move fast enough to do that," Carus said, his tone dismissive but a dangerous glint in his eyes. "It's hard to get an army moving when it doesn't expect to, you know that."

"He's got cavalry," Lord Dowos said, fully animated again. "Maybe not all his infantry at first, but his horse and skirmishers will reach us. They'll hold us long enough for him to get the heavy regiments up too."

"I'll lead my phalanx against anybody you show me, your highness," Lord Muchon said forcefully. "But you said yourself that we have to be attacking. We can't defend against somebody behind us while we're already engaged!"

"Silence!" the king said. His right hand gripped his swordhilt, and it was with an obvious effort of will that he managed to release it.

No one spoke. The disbelief of the men around Carus was changing to sullen anger.

"We're going to carry out the plan I've outlined," Carus said in a tone of quiet, deadly fury. "Because there's no other choice. Do any of you see an alternative that has a chance of success?"

"Given where we are," said Master Ortron, a commoner and former mercenary leader promoted to command of the other division of the phalanx, "no, there's no chance of anything else working. May the Sister swallow my soul!"

He snorted. With a humor that he might not have been willing to show openly under if he'd expected to survive the coming battle, he added, "As she doubtless will."

"See to it, then!" Carus snapped to his officers. He jabbed his mount into a trot in the direction of the fleet encampment.

"Your highness!" Sharina called, prodding her own horse as well. She wasn't a good rider; the only horses in Barca's Hamlet had been those brought by wealthy visitors.

Carus didn't slow down. Attaper, with a face of grim death, gestured forward the platoon of Blood Eagles who formed the king's immediate escort.

"Brother!" Sharina cried.

Carus looked over his shoulder, then reined back so sharply that the hastening bodyguards almost rode into him. The slope was a mixture of brush and turf, but loose rock was exposed on the trail proper; pebbles danced downhill ahead of the king.

"Let me talk privately with my brother," Sharina said as she rode past Attaper.

The Blood Eagles' commander eyed her speculatively. He nodded with the hint of a grim smile. "First section, lead his highness by fifty paces!" he ordered. "Second section, we'll follow at the same interval."

Carus waited for Sharina, then walked his horse down the track beside her. "It isn't what I want, girl," he said quietly, looking at the camp half a mile ahead instead of meeting her eyes. "But there's no choice, the way things are."

He grimaced. "The way I've made things, I'll admit."

The king's eyes swept his surroundings with a sort of wakeful energy that proved to anyone who'd grown up with Garric that some other spirit now animated his form. Garric was an observant youth, but Carus had been a warrior. To him a glint in the forest suggested ambush and slaughter rather than a neighbor cutting wood.

"What's that?" he said as two Blood Eagles trotted a sedan chair out of the camp. Then, recognizing Tenoctris—who else could it have been?—he added, "If she's found something that couldn't wait till we reached her, then I don't suppose it's good news."