Gunpowder God (4 page)

It was hard for Kalvan to stay mad at Sarrask when he acted contrite since it was so out of character.

“My deepest apologies for disturbing you, sire, but I wanted to speak to you in private without all the popinjays present. But first, would you like some of Ermut’s Best?”

Kalvan shook his head, pointing to his goblet. “Thanks, but this wine will do just fine.” At Rylla’s urging, he’d sworn off the hard stuff—at least until the Fireseed Wars were over—which he knew might not be for a very long time.

Sarrask pulled a silver goblet out of his belt pouch and, after he unstoppered the brandy cask, filled his vessel. He took a deep drink, sighed, then said, “Your Majesty, you understand I would not dare to question your strategy, but I do have a few questions.”

Yes, everyone’s got just a few questions.
“Go ahead.”

Sarrask fluffed up the sides of his beard anxiously. “Sire, stab me, but I just don’t understand why we don’t just chase King Theovacar down to whatever hidey-hole he’s hidden himself in and finish him off? We stomped his fleet and now he’s running back home like a whipped cur. Why aren’t we chasing him down and finishing him off?”

“Now, as I understand it, you just recently freed your new Princedom of the last of Theovacar’s troops.”

“Well, they were hidden pretty well, but we got the last of them, I think.”

“Exactly. We won’t know for sure until you leave and we see what comes out from beneath the rocks. And just how loyal are your Ragyathi subjects?”

Sarrask shrugged, wiggling his hand back and forth. “Some of them welcomed us, but a lot of them aren’t too happy with all the subjects I brought with me.”

I bet
, thought Kalvan. At least a hundred thousand Saski from Hos-Hostigos had joined in what had to be the greatest migration in the Five Kingdoms’ history. Knowing Sarrask, he would bet dollars to donuts that the Prince pushed a lot of the Ragyathi nobility out of their ancestral homes to make way for his favorites. The Saski artisans and guild members were almost certainly displacing large numbers of Ragyathi guildsmen and creating a lot of resentment.

“Exactly,” Kalvan noted. “And how many armed men would you have to leave in Ragyath—if you left to fight for maybe two or three seasons—to ensure the peace?”

Sarrask’s forehead furrowed in concentration. “Stab me, if I know. Maybe half…. My army’s taken
a lot
of casualties over the past four winters.”

“How many men could you field tomorrow, if you called them up?” Kalvan asked.

“Phew! My muster rolls show about five thousand men in the Sask Army, but at least a thousand of those are missing or still recovering from wounds. I could probably raise four thousand men, twenty-five hundred cavalry and fifteen hundred foot.”

“So, if you left half of them to hold your princedom while you were gone, that means you’d only have two thousand for, say an expedition to hunt down King Theovacar?”

“Correct.”

Kalvan nodded. “How about your princely levy?”

“I couldn’t call up much of a levy since my former Saski nobles are still setting up their demesnes and don’t have many men to spare. I doubt I’d get much help from my Ragyathi nobles, since they lost a lot of men when King Theovacar moved his army there after he got his arse whipped outside Thagnor City. Theovacar conscripted thousands of young Ragyathi men and took others as slaves…women and children, too. The black-hearted bastard!”

“Now,” Kalvan continued, “what’s happened to you on a small scale, Sarrask, has happened here in Thagnor and everywhere else in Nos-Hostigos. Remember just last summer, after we lost the battle of Ardros Field, we had to abandon our homes and move the entire Army and many of our subjects from Hos-Hostigos to Thagnor City—all this with the Grand Host of Styphon on our tail. Once we arrived in Thagnor, we had to lay siege to Thagnor City, and forcibly take it from Prince Varrack and his Grefftscharri allies. Then, before the dust of that action had settled, we had the Grand Host of Styphon before our new walls laying siege to us, again.

“Our men are exhausted and weary from five winters of constant warfare. They need time to recover and to set down roots in our new lands. Every year the Royal and princely armies have taken horrendous casualties.” More than Kalvan liked to think about, maybe twenty-five to thirty percent casualties year after year. It was only the constant influx of mercenaries taking Hostigi colors and the desperate recruitment measures he had undertaken—right up to taking able-bodied men right out of the fields and putting them onto the battlefield—that had given the Army of Hos-Hostigos enough manpower to try to counter Styphon’s House’s advances.

Sarrask nodded. “I see the truth in your words, Your Majesty, it’s just that I’m not used to
not
fighting….”

“Of course, you’re not. But you do understand that all of us—me included—as well as our subjects, need time to rest, recoup and solidify our position here in these new lands before we undertake any major campaigns.”

Sarrask nodded. “Rylla and I thought this might be a good time to track down that rat-bastard Theovacar and end his miserable life, once and for all, while we had him on the run.”

Aha! I thought I saw my wife’s hand in all of this
.

“King Chartiphon shares the same problems. On top of which, he has had to lead punitive raids against Great King Lysandros as he’s retreated through Baltor and Vesthar, as well as Knight Commander Aristocles. We all need to recoup and rebuild up our supply base. Did you know that our fireseed supply is approaching critical?”

Sarrask shook his head.

“We don’t have enough sulfur to rebuild our stocks. Right now I have men out looking for new sulfur springs so that we can make more fireseed. True, we have wagonloads of Styphon’s fireseed that we captured, but I don’t trust their pathetic fireseed for anything but old bombards. And that’s just the beginning of the list of things on my ‘Must Have List.’ Right now, Prince Phrames is out on the Sea of Grass hunting buffalo so that we’ll have enough food to get through the coming winter. We certainly don’t have enough foodstuffs to supply a large expedition to go haring all over the Saltless Seas for King Theovacar.”

Sarrask held his hands up in surrender. “I see, Your Majesty. But what about Warlord Sargos? Why don’t you have him bring his barbarians up into Grefftscharr?”

“That sounds like a good idea, use one of your allies to do your dirty work. However, while Ranjar Sargos may be the warlord of the nomads, he is not their leader. They do as they wish, except when they go to war. Sargos did us a big favor last summer when he led the clans across the Great River and into the Sastragath, where they destroyed several of the Order’s tarrs. The clansmen had a great victory, but it was a costly one as well. Tens of thousands were killed attacking the Knights’ tarrs, thousands more were killed in the invasion of Hos-Ktemnos. Right now, most of the chiefs and headmen are counting their losses along with their booty.

“It will be another spring or two before the clans are ready again to make a mass advance over the Great River and throw themselves against the Order’s fortresses. Plus, now they want more gold, guns, arquebuses and fireseed before they go against the Zarthani Knights again. They’re learning that they need better weapons to go up against the Knights, and right now we don’t have the guns or fireseed to spare.”

Sarrask nodded. “There is much truth in your words. Still, maybe you might consider allowing me to accompany the reinforcements you intend to send to Captain-General Hestophes in Hos-Agrys.”

Kalvan sighed, wondering if Sarrask would ever get his full measure of fighting. If Kalvan had his druthers, he would order Hestophes home and let the Argrysi League of Dralm get hoisted on its own petard. If there were any princes there who had enough manpower to actually resist Soton’s Host of Styphon’s Deliverance, he would have sent gold and weapons to buy their help. Like the British during the Napoleonic Wars, he’d much rather pay allies to fight his battles than expend his own troops. The problem was the Fireseed Wars had bled the Five Kingdoms dry of mercenaries and professional soldiers. Most of the former free companions were either dead or aligned with him or with Styphon’s House.

“I will keep your request under consideration. However, Prince Sarrask, what I really want you to do is to finish repairing your tarr and training your new troops.”

G
rand Master Soton sat on his warhorse watching as the Host’s artillerymen loaded their guns, readying them for another salvo against the towering walls of Agrys City. Not much had been accomplished in his absence while he was in Glarth chasing down the heir apparent, Dementros, rather than attending to business. Before he left Glarth, he’d ordered his men to sack and torch Glarth Town as an example of what the Host of Styphon’s Deliverance would do once the siege of Agrys City was over. Now, the League of Dralm knew the cost of fighting Styphon’s House. The wiser princes would come to terms. If they didn’t, the death and destruction to come would be on their heads.

The curtain walls of Agrys City, made of black granite blocks, rose up some twenty rods and stretched out for dozens of marches on either side of the sally port where the artillery bombardment against the walls was focused. The plaster facing from this area was long gone and the wall was deeply torn and gouged with a growing pile of rubble accumulating at its base.

Most of Agrys City was perched atop ridges so every shot had to fight its way uphill while those fired downhill had the better trajectory. It was fortunate for the Host of Styphon’s Deliverance that most of the city’s towers only had one or two guns, usually old hooped-iron bombards that were slow to load, hazardous to fire and almost impossible to aim with any accuracy.

The head artillery officer looked over at him—Soton raised his warhammer.

When his warhammer dropped, the linstocks went down to the touchholes and a mass volley of gunfire roared forth releasing a cloud of white and gray-ribbed fireseed smoke billowing above the guns.

The cannon balls slammed into the stone wall with a sound like that of two battle lines of opposing lancers smashing into each other. Several large rocks fell from the wall and granite splinters showered the immediate area. The musketeers kept the Agrysi defenders from firing their muskets over the parapets at the artillerymen; they had quickly learned to keep their heads down and fire from firing slits in the walls which gave limited visibility in the smoky twilight of the battle zone.

Soton felt the ground shudder right through his saddle and horse. His destrier, accustomed to the moons-long bombardment, didn’t even twitch.

Just today six new eighteen-pounders had arrived by galley from Balph. The additional firepower was making a noticeable difference. Maybe this interminable siege would end soon.

He turned to Horse Master Sarmoth asking, “How long before we have a breach?”

“The master gunner told me a moon half with the new guns, if it be Styphon’s Will, sir. He said it would be sooner, but the Agrysi engineers are shoring the wall up with timbers and raising up another wall behind this one.”

Soton nodded. With enough guns, the Host of Styphon’s Deliverance could have provided the Agrysi with several breaches to worry about and they would have been too busy to build a second wall. Still, the loose rocks and boulders they were emplacing behind the proper wall would be quickly dispatched by concentrated gunfire. At best, they were buying a few days.

And for what? For the League of Dralm, which had gone down in ignominious defeat three moons ago before these very walls, to return? Or were they expecting a gods-sent miracle or the Usurper Kalvan to sail across the Sea of Aesklos, then travel over a thousand marches to come to their rescue? Ha!

No
, Soton decided,
the City is doomed and I will be the first man to successfully besiege this great city since the days of Simocles the Great several hundred winters ago.
Simocles had been a warlord from the marches when he had gathered a huge host of warriors and besieged Agrys City. In those times, the walls had been made of timber and he had fired them, driving his enemies from the City. At that time, the idea of stone walls was a new one and he had built the original tarr here and most of the surrounding walls, although they had been expanded in places as Agrys City had grown.

Once the City had fallen, the Host of Styphon’s Deliverance would give Hos-Agrys a new Prince and Prince-Regent. Archpriest Grythos would be proclaimed the new Prince of the Princedom of Agrys—taking the crown of the deceased Prince Vython. Grythos would remain Prince-Regent of the Kingdom of Hos-Agrys until Prince Dementros was old enough to become Great King of Hos-Agrys. The heir was only ten winters of age, which meant he wouldn’t reach his majority for three more years.

Will that be enough time to bind him to Styphon’s reins?
Soton wondered. The lad had spunk; Dementros had met Soton’s eyes with a direct gaze upon their first meeting a moon ago. He had even insisted upon bringing his two companions with him to the encampment. Soton had acquiesced to his demands rather than alienating the boy.

Soton’s plan was to use honey to win the boy over, but if that didn’t work—then an iron fist. Dementros’ companions would make good hostages, if it became necessary to force the boy’s acquiescence, should he ever begin to present his own ideas about ruling Hos-Agrys. The boy was to be Styphon’s figurehead, nothing more. His maidservant and her daughter would also make good bargaining tokens, as the boy doted on the girl.

Archpriest Cimon had taken a personal interest in the boy’s welfare which was good, as it kept him out of Roxthar’s way. The so-called “Peasant Priest” was also useful in dealing with the wounded and dying. He spent almost as much time around the healers as he did young Prince Dementros.

The maidservant herself stuck like a bone in Soton’s craw. She was assertive and overly-protective of all the children. She would be sent back to the village of Salis as soon as Dementros reached his age of majority.