The Conqueror (26 page)

Jumalak was rather stumped by this
one.

“
...in the south, the
campaigning season is much longer. But up north—where we get at
least some of our supplies, and where many of our troops are
stationed, the season is much shorter...”

“
And?”

He bit his lip. The Great Sea was
almost two thousand miles from north to south, and the southern
arm, off to the east, went six hundred or so miles further south
than that.

“
I don’t know, Master. And
that worries me to no end—”

Rottewald had a thought.

“
With enough supplies in
Sinopus, they could support a large incursion of horse into our
northern provinces.”

Rottewald had a point. Reports from the
lands north of the Great Sea had been greatly reduced since the
fall of Sinopus. With sufficient gold, and a recent impressive
victory, it was certainly possible that the more remote northern
tribes would come in on the enemy’s side. There was no incentive
for them to declare themselves, except by attack. Otherwise they
would await events.

They might be barbarians, but they were
rarely complete fools.

As for Verescens, he rather doubted, at
least for this season, major land attacks from the north. It was
just too early for that. The attack on Sinopus, successful as it
was, was merely a feint. The real center of operations was to the
south. If the Empire fell, or if its power was seriously reduced,
then the balance would shift across the whole region. The smaller
powers could see that very well.

He knew what he would do if he was the
enemy.

The real question was how to prevent
them.

***

As the campaign wore on and spring
turned into summer, the enemy’s strategy became clearer.

“
Damn it!” Jumalak was
furious, furious at his military and naval commanders, was mostly
angry with himself.

Yet he and Verescens, and all of the
other generals, were hard-pressed to come up with ideas as to what
to do about it.

Strong forces had been raiding their
sea-borne supply lines. Reports indicated a combined fleet from a
total of four or five nations, for the coastal republics had
committed themselves finally to oppose Jumalak and risk
annihilation—what fools they had seemed at the time. Events had not
borne this out.

The Horde, relative newcomers to the
sea, seemed to have made every mistake in the book. It was common
talk in the streets and taverns.

As was so often the case, public
opinion wasn’t being strictly fair, as Admiral of the Fleet
Apodasius explained. The combined enemy fleets were choosing their
targets judiciously. They never attacked without some advantage of
numbers, wind, or weather. They struck swiftly, taking one small
ship or a squadron of supply ships in one place. Then they
disappeared, only to reappear hundreds of miles away. The ships of
the Horde, attempting to cross the Great Sea for the southwestern
front, were constantly tacking into the prevailing southwest winds,
and the fact that their enemy was based on that upwind shore was to
give up any advantage. Until they had actually acquired some
experience in naval warfare, it had been difficult to assess the
hazard properly. The navy, while not yet pressing for withdrawal
from the Kthmarra front, was expressing deep concerns about
resupply and defending the attackers from further surprises. This
was especially true over the winter months and the storm season
leading up to it. It had been all too apparent that Kthmarra had
been extensively-refortified and no doubt stuffed to the rafters
with wine, oil and provisions.

“
Suggestions,
anyone?”

There were murmurs but no clear voices
rose above the muddle.

One thing seemed clear, there was to be
no overwhelming victory this year. It was as Verescens had always
feared it would be, a war dragging on most likely for
years.

Yet the situation was still militarily
advantageous to the Horde. Their ships far outnumbered those of the
enemy. They had gobbled up great swathes of territory, especially
along their common border with the Empire in the southeast. The
petty coastal states had been chastised, and their governments
dismantled, although Massagetaiia still held out. Their small
battle fleet had been destroyed and they could eventually be
starved into submission.

It was hard to suggest anything
different from what they were doing now.

“
We must hold what we have
taken.” Jumalak looked up and around at the faces, grimmer now that
they had seen loss, failure, and the cost of war.

They had already lost two or three
hundred thousand men, and ships carrying reinforcements were ships
that were not carrying their proper allotment of food and
fodder.

Several generals had already spoken at
some length on the subject of consolidating their gains and
planning something just a little bit different for next
season.

Verescens sighed, deeply. What was
truly vulnerable was their land force at Kthmarra. It was ensconced
on an extensive beachhead. This was a large proportion of their
forces, including the siege train for the attempt to take Kthmarra,
stuck way off at the southwestern end of the Great Sea.

He had this terrible feeling that if
they knew exactly what the enemy fleets were doing, they wouldn’t
like it one little bit. So far they did not have a
consensus.

All the really important decisions were
being taken in other places.

Chapter
Nineteen

Commander of the Horde’s forces in the
Kthmarra campaign was General Aabdicus. Following standard
practice, he had landed his forces from a large fleet of transports
and warships on the coast seven or eight miles from the
city.

His fleet was anchored offshore. The
fleet had sufficient reserves of manpower and weapons to defend
itself and the beachhead from seaborne assault. It was also, in the
last resort, a means of retreat. The fortunes of war being what
they were, sailing into the heavily-defended port of Kthmarra was
seen as too bold from the onset. They had simply landed a few miles
away. The Hordesmen had again followed standard practice, throwing
up first a breastworks and then a properly-constituted camp, laid
out in rows, with streets, gates and small guard towers on the
corners.

With a fifty thousand men at his
disposal, General Aabdicus had moved on from there to circumvallate
the city and fortress of Kthmarra. It was now cut off from its
extensive hinterland to the south and west. Further up the coast,
the territory of the Empire of the South ended abruptly and then
there was a barren, cliff-lined stretch of land that pretty much
all civilized peoples were content to leave to the
Iazyges.

His estimate of the garrison were about
twenty-four thousand, plus any number of able-bodied males in a
city of about a hundred thousand or so it was said. The investing
force included five thousand cavalry, and the garrison had more
than double that. It was interesting that they hadn’t done more
with it so far.

Historically, its sea port and its
commercial captains had dominated this end of the Great Sea for
centuries, before the place fell into desuetude, eventually to
catch the notice of the Emperor Kullin’s ancestors.

The garrison commander, confronted by a
superior force, and yet one that was a long way from home and
succor, wisely decided not to risk a set-piece battle on the plain.
He withdrew all forces into the city and was prepared to withstand
siege.

If nothing else, the men of the
garrison had a lot of horsemeat to look forward to.

This was how the situation stood even
as the Khan and his advisors wondered not only what to do next, but
what the other side was going to do next.

With not much time until the season for
attacking at least was over, it was anybody’s guess—and anybody’s
move.

At most, there were six or seven weeks
left in the season, by their own reckoning, and there was much that
could happen in that time.

***

The Lemni had originally come from far
to the east. The sagas and traditions seemed to indicate that they
had adopted the horse and the bow at about the same time. The Lemni
had always used boats, of course. They had first come to the notice
of the more civilized lands of the south and west because of their
coastal raids, which emanated from the mouths of the largest rivers
along the fringes of the Great Sea. Those early ships, with short,
skinny little masts, no keels to speak of, and their simple lateen
sails were not much more than seagoing canoes. Long before the rise
of the Horde, they had broken out of the narrows separating the two
major arms of the Great Sea. This had happened in more than one
wave of migration. The band that eventually became the Lemni was no
different. Those ships of old may have been smaller and cruder, but
they weren’t that much different from the ships Lowren now
led.

They had never been entirely without
ships. Ships to trade, ships to fish and ships to make war, were
all a part and parcel of their cultural framework. But Lowren and
his captains were learning much from the greater vessels, the level
of skill and equipment, and from listening to the captains and the
admirals of the fleets of Windermere and the Heloi.

When operating alone or on their own,
the Lemni and the other groups handled their ships in their
traditional manner, and his own ships were built for little more
than raiding. The Heloian vessels, on the other hand, were built
specifically for ship-to-ship warfare in a way that he had no
experience with. With his limited resources, he might have never
had a chance to learn or to even see it in action.

With the enemy fleet exposed in shallow
water and with their troops encamped within their bastions for the
most part, foraging or raiding parties aside, all of the choices
were up to the attackers. What was most striking was that the naval
commanders of the Horde didn’t seem to see the danger.

With the example of Sinopus, and not
all that long ago, they should have at least been more alert to the
possibility of fire-ships. Enemy ships went back and forth to the
eastern ports, but steered clear of the more populated coastal seas
of the Empire of the South, where presumably they were more apt to
be challenged.

Enemy ships patrolled regularly eighty
or a hundred miles up the northward-curving west coast from
Kthmarra.

The impression on the part of the
allies was that they were fearful of a surprise attack from east or
west.

With a little consultation, a plan had
quickly come together. The Lemni ships were to come down from the
north. They would travel close inshore by night, and lay up under
cover by day. The coast was mapped well enough and they had
experienced pilots on loan from various interested parties. They
were dispersed and laid up during daytime in marshes, up some long,
winding bays, and in river mouths for the journey, right up until
the point of concentration. This had occurred the previous evening,
just as planned.

Lowren and the ships of Lemnia had been
given an important and honorable role, but it looked as if all the
glory would go to the Heloi. As for the ships of Windermere, they
were to stand off the coast a few miles, prepared to engage any
ships that attempted to interfere. In the face of a superior force,
they would fall back on the Heloi war-galleys and cover the
withdrawal of the Lemni…

Rounding the point of the Kthmarra
Peninsula just after midnight, they had been creeping along in what
silence they could generate, waiting to catch a glimpse of their
quarry.

Sometimes just breathing properly was
the key to military success.

***

The pallid light of dawn grew steadily.
Looking back, there were multiple v-trails, their own as well as
the wakes coming off all the boats, and every stroking oar added
its own new flourish. The rows of wavelets followed them up the
beach, crashing along in their own small way, unwelcome heralds of
their coming.

The ships rocked and the incoming tide
swelled the sea under their keels.

Just as predicted, a heavy
fog hung off the mouth of the bay, over the colder waters of the
Great Sea proper. This seasonal fog would usually take until
mid-morning to burn off. On some days in late autumn, when the sun
didn’t come out at all, that dismal mist wouldn’t lift all day. In
those cases, the nights were usually clearer. Generally speaking,
those were
calm
days whether day or night. Until winter, most traffic would be
doing just what they were doing, staying close inshore.

There was very little fog on the bay
itself, sheltered as it was by the headland of Kthmarra and the
hills on the south side, above the bay of the same name. Being
shallower, the water was perhaps a little warmer and there was
shelter from the cold winds coming down over the ridges and
hills.

The boats edged through the water,
which was calm and glassy. Men stood on a small perch, high on the
bows, but their best information was that the bottom dropped off
quickly along this shore. At this time of day, there was no way
they were going to see shoals or a big rock before they were on it.
Twenty or thirty feet of water would be more than
enough.