Golden Scorpio (20 page)
We sat in the council chamber of the deren — the palace — and we all knew that there were noxious dungeons below. He flushed up. I felt quite sorry for him; but he was wrong, so wrong that if he had his way he would open the city to death and torment in forms so hideous he could never comprehend them. But, then, he had had no dealings with the Iron Riders.
The chief priest of Opaz, scratching his cheek, said in a gentle voice: “Sit down, brother, and keep your peace.”
With that out of the way we could go on to plan just how we would fashion the killing instrument of victory we planned to hurl against the mailed cavalry of the Iron Riders.
In Crimson and Bronze the Brumbytes Form
The days passed. The men sweated and marched and drilled. We had them learning how to march in file, for the organization would be based on the file. I prefer the line; but in this instance the file seemed to be the correct procedure.
The pikes were produced from the manufactories. Also the superb springy white wood of the letha tree, somewhat like ash, was mated to steel heads fashioned with spike, hook and axe, hefty, vicious cutting weapons, halberds. Leather jerkins were wired and sewn with bronze plates to form corselets, and shoulder pieces were artfully fixed at the back to be drawn over and fastened on the chest. The same old arguments went on over shields; but the citizens were not warriors and they were far more pragmatical about the thorny question of shield and no-shield. They had seen the Hamalese and their shields, and although the regiments of Hamal had been defeated, still, it struck the citizens as eminently sensible to have something behind which to stand. The shields, in a very real sense, were to them a continuation of the city walls and barricades. From chin to thigh, the shields were designed to protect a man. Also, springy bronze greaves were made for the lower legs. Now, helmets — the manufacturing capability of the city was fully stretched.
Well, the old vosk-skulls had surged forward under a rain of arrows before; they would do so again.
Vosk-skulls are notoriously hard. Piles and piles of them may be found outside most habitations of men on Kregen. The Vallians had built water mills and by harnessing the power of rushing streams had built trip-hammers that, with difficulty, could smash and crush the skulls to form a fine fertilizer. The vosk-crushing mill had almost burned. Around it were heaped and piled the skulls, hard as iron, waiting to be processed. We took these skulls, removed the jaws, scoured them out, affixed leather and quilted linings, riveted straps, added high brims to protect the eyes and grilled or barred face-coverings. For the nape of the neck overlapping and sliding bronze plates formed the well-known lobster-tail.
I rather liked the look of the resultant helmets. Grim, rounded, well-fashioned and offering high protection, they looked business-like.
Then I ran into a little example of the power of legend and story.
“But we must have plumes!” exclaimed the Justicar. We were watching men being issued with the helmets and relishing the looks of pleasure as the men felt the protection as well as the weight come on their heads. Foreheads must be well-padded. The helmets must sit firmly and yet not too tightly, not too loosely. The brim must give protection from falling arrows.
“Plumes?”
“Aye, Jen. Feathers and Plumes.”
Then the Justicar and his council produced the old stories and showed the old books. All heroes had tall and imposing plumes in their helmets.
“We are not heroes,” I said. “We are sober citizens doing a job of work.”
But they wouldn’t have it. So plumes were affixed to the helmets by thin bronze strips, and, of course, the majority clamored for that fashion of plume that rises like a giant question mark from the crown of the helmet. I had to give way.
I did say: “If a sword or axe strikes that plume-holder it’ll knock your helmet off — if it doesn’t break your neck.”
So the Justicar’s people, with enormous glee, arranged the tall nodding plumes with holders of stiffened leather which would be cut off or bent when struck. I left them to it, mindful of the thought that in this they showed themselves to be their own men, and increased their importance in their own eyes.
We were distressingly short on swords, and so I could not contemplate, with the scarcity of steel, the mass manufacture of two-handed swords, which would have worked wonders on the iron armor of the radvakkas. Stabbing spears had to be substituted and long knives. Anyway, for handstrokes the halberds and axes would do a fine job — or so I hoped.
While these preparations continued and increased in tempo day by day as the people saw the results of their work, and the men drilled in their files, and the files joined together in ranks and grew daily more solid and regular, I worried over the tactical aspects I must decide.
It was clear to us all in the ringed city that the radvakkas, having plundered the surrounding countryside and being awash with food and wine and good things, were content to sit down and starve us out. They tried their fire-throwing a couple of times further; but our fire service quenched the flames with ease.
We kept an alert watch at all times. The radvakkas made not a single attempt to scale the walls. If they couldn’t ride their benhoffs, then they weren’t interested. All day they rode about and we watched them in mock combats, in sports, in drunken orgies. All in all, the time passed, and still the tactical questions remained unanswered.
The men in the files would be armored as best we could manage. They would carry pikes and shields. If the Macedonian and Successor phalanxes could contrive that, then so could we. The Renaissance and pike and shot man did not carry a shield — or not very often — but the cavalry charge had dwindled away a trifle by his time from the mailed charge of chivalry, resplendent in the panoply of plate. I worried over our serious lack of missile power. Our five hundred archers practiced religiously each day and the stock of arrows grew. Once the Phalanx had come to grips with the foe then I was completely convinced we would succeed. It was getting them there, and protecting their flanks, that exercised my mind.
Because Europe pushed out into the world, the military institutions and titles familiar to us came into very wide being. On Kregen the Empire of Loh had given the impetus to the terminology with which, so far, I have acquainted you in these tapes. As the Landsknechts handed down administrative ideas and organizations to succeeding armies, so the army of Walfarg that carved out the Empire of Loh left its methods to Havilfar and Pandahem and to Vallia, also.
With the eager help of the Justicar, who delved deeply into the history of Kregen, we reached past the time of Chuktars and Jiktars, of Hikdars and Deldars, back to a time when the organization of warriors was based on the figure six — one of the twin calculating systems of Kregen.
“Twelve men to a file,” I said. “With the file leader, the Faxul, in front where he belongs. A half-file leader, the Nik-Faxul, and two quarter-file leaders, the Laik-Faxuls, each in their allotted stations. And, in the rear, the file-closer, the Bratchlin. He should be a steady man, hardy and stubborn, and, I may add, ready to thump a comrade in front who lags too tardily.”
The Justicar pored over his dusty tomes, bashing the stiff pages open in his enthusiasm. The pages were filled with colored illustrations of the pageantry of old, filled with the legends and heroic stories of Kregen — the Quest of Tyr Nath, King Naghan, the Canticles of the Rose City, Prince Nalgre, and many many more.
“I have the utmost confidence in you, Jak the Drang. Where you came from, Opaz knows; but, also, thanks be to Opaz you came to our city. We would have been lost without you.”
“Vallia,” I said, foolishly touched by his words. “I am concerned for the people of Vallia.” I would have to break the news to him about the slaves, and then he and his wealthy friends might not be so kindly disposed toward me.
“Each file of twelve joined with two others, the whole commanded by a Danmork, the center file by a Terfaxul, just so that there is no confusion who gives the orders when they suffer casualties, or form close order.”
The Justicar nodded, no doubt thinking of the pageantry of the men marching shoulder to shoulder, their bright plumes nodding proudly over the serried ranks.
“Twelve files to form a Relianch,” I went on, roughing out the diagrams with paper and ink. “The whole one hundred and forty-four commanded by the Relianchun, marching at front and right, and assisted in command of the second half of six files by the Paltork. Yes, it is a plan almost like others I know of, and yet adapted to our needs. Each Relianch of a hundred and forty-four men will have its own flankers of medium men, halberdiers and axemen, the Hakkodin, twenty-four of them, with their own file leaders and half and quarter file leaders.” I did not smile, but I felt my lips rick. “I shall choose these Hakkodin, these men to guard the flanks, carefully. They will not have a file closer, a Bratchlin, with them.”
Slaves pattered into the airy room in a brightly lit tower of the Justicar’s deren bringing trays loaded with the superb Kregan tea and miscils and palines. We were not hungry yet, in the beleaguered city. But I had to get my phalanx organized and trained, disciplined, able to march in step and line, perfectly moving as a single gigantic organism. “There will be six Relianches to a Jodhri,” I said. “Eight hundred sixty-four pikemen and one hundred forty-four Hakkodin to a Jodhri commanded by a Jodhrivax.”
We drank the tea and wiped our lips and then sorted through a list of stores stylors brought in demanding instant attention. Also, a lesser chamberlain reported that a certain butcher was charging ten times his normal prices for meat. I told Nazab Nalgre to send around first of all a deputation from the butcher’s khand to reason with the fellow and to bring his prices to levels where the folk might afford meat. If he would not accord with common decency then we’d send around a posse of our volunteer pikemen to make him see sense. The people of Therminsax were one — or ought to be one. I knew enough about sieges to know that those in authority must never be seen to favor any one class over another — save, always, that the fighting men must eat. And, of course, if this damned siege was prolonged, therein lay the rub. Not that this was a siege in the real meaning of the term.
Those illiterate unwashed hairy barbarians outside had no real idea how to prosecute a siege. Had we faced them when we’d been hemmed in in Zandikar, we’d have laughed at them. So we went back to the organization of the phalanx, for, as you will readily perceive, this was my way of obtaining the positions in the phalanx for the men I wanted there.
“Each Jodhri will be one thousand and eight men strong. Six of them, I think, will form a Kerchuri, six thousand and forty-eight men strong.” I cocked an eye at the Justicar. Nazab Nalgre was looking pleased that his old legends with their continual references to the six and twelve organization and the names of ranks was once more coming into use. He was a fine antiquary, whatever kind of imperial Justicar he might be. “We may find that unwieldy. But I want two commanders of the Kerchuris appointed, two Kerchurivaxes.”
“You have the men in mind, Jen Jak?”
I nodded. “Aye.”
He studied my face. I knew that the commanders of the two wings of the phalanx would have to be Therminsaxers. There were many bright sparks anxious to command, although very many of the lesser nobility had already packed up and left long before the radvakkas appeared, and many women and children, also, had left.
“Men of integrity, stubborn, physically strong, courageous,” I told Nazab Nalgre, speaking a trifle heavily, I fear. “Men who have a presence, who know they will be obeyed when they give an order. Men who are respected by their fellows.”
I merely described the generality of Vallian koters.
“They must be Therminsaxers,” I went on. “Otherwise I’ve half a mind to install that defiant man Cleitar the Smith, for I know him to have discovered he is a bonny fighter when it comes to push of pike. I want Targon the Tapster to handle the Hakkodin.” I looked directly at Nazab Nalgre. “Your son, Nalgre, your fine limber young son, Nath. He will command the first Kerchuri.”
I brushed away Nazab Nalgre’s babble. I was doing him no favor. But Nath na Therminsax, for he was allowed to adopt his father’s style for all he had no rank of nobility so far, was a fine young man in truth and, over and above all the qualities I have enumerated, he was quick-witted. “I will make a break with tradition here, Nalgre, and Nath will ride a mount and conduct affairs from outside the Kerchuri. The right hand position — the lynch-pin — will be taken by that pillar of the city, Bondur Darnhan. The second Kerchuri will be commanded by Strom Varga, and the right-hand man will be Jando Quevada.” I sighed. “I pray to Opaz they will live through the battle. But the front rank men — well, that is why they are there, why they wear the tapes and the feathers, why they are respected, why they are followed.”
Nalgre nodded brightly, seeing only the brilliant nodding plumes over the massed files, the onward surge, the pageantry and honor, seeing his son Nath riding back with the victory. Again I sighed. When honest citizens turn their hands to war they are usually highly practical; Nazab Nalgre, the Justicar of Therminsax, shared the other side of that character, the romantic, the high idealism, the shining honor. He was a man of parts, for the governor of an imperial province, called a Nazab, ranks with a kov. His son Nath might if he wished take the surname Nazabhan. Delia’s father had not been altogether a fool in his choice of men to run his affairs, and although he had been sadly led astray in his capital of Vondium, he had appointed sound men in his provinces. Nazab Nalgre was now fully recovered from that mortifying crisis of nerves that had afflicted him after the Hamalese rode out.
Continually, the Justicar moved among the training men, exhorting them to effort, to the acquisition of the skills they must have. The paktuns smiled and quoted the old proverbs about the length of time it takes to make a fighting man; but I put my faith in the innate solidity of the burghers, their strong feelings for their city, their orderly habits of mind, and saw day by day the growing cohesion of the phalanx. Mind you, we carried out most evolutions at this time with the Relianch, the tactical unit. When six Relianches formed and stood shoulder to shoulder in a Jodhri, and we filled the kyros with the Jodhris formed in file, then we could bring them into close order and present a front of four hundred and thirty-two pikes. Drummer boys, four to a Relianch, and trumpeters, sounded the orders, the drums with their solemn and deep blam-blam-berram to keep the step, the trumpets to shrill their commands.