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That eager alertness had left Fain free to watch the progress of the battle, and he'd recognized that in Bistem Kar he saw someone operating on a level of competence he could recognize and appreciate but never hope to approach himself. Now he watched the Boman attacks trickle off as darkness finally fell and the last of the relief force, including the command group, withdrew behind the walls of Sindi.
Kny Camsan stood in the evening rain and stared in disbelief at the walls of Sindi.
It couldn't be true. It was impossible! Yet the evidence was there before his eyes, impossible to deny.
He had trusted Mnb Trag to hold Sindi in his absence, and he wanted to blame the old chieftain for failing him. But no one could look at those walls and blame Trag. Even all that the shit-sitters had done to the host throughout this long and terrible day paled beside what they'd done to Sindi. Camsan could not imagine what had torn and ripped the massive walls that way, but there were dozens of breaches through them-huge wounds through which the shit-sitters must have stormed to wrest the city from Trag and his warriors.
"What do we do now?" one of the other chieftains demanded harshly.
"We gather our numbers throughout the night," Camsan replied, never taking his eyes from the ravaged walls of the city which was to have been his capital.
"And what then?" the chieftain pressed, and Camsan turned to face him.
Tar Tin was of the Gestai, one of the larger Boman clans, and the Gestai had been among the most restless under Camsan's leadership. Tar Tin himself was a chieftain of the old school, one who believed in the exalted power of the battle frenzy to carry warriors to victory over insurmountable odds, and that made him dangerous. Worse, he'd been one of the stronger supporters of the war leader Camsan had replaced after the debacle at Therdan, and his resentment at being pushed aside by those who'd supported Camsan ran deep.
"And then we pin the shit-sitters and starve them," Camsan said sharply.
"And starve our women and children right along with them?" Tar Tin more than half-sneered. "Truly a plan of rare genius!"
"It's the only way!" Camsan shot back forcefully. "The losses we've taken charging into their guns again and again today are proof of that!"
"I say that it is not the only way," Tin spat. "The shit-sitters themselves have broken and torn the walls which might have held us out, and they hold our women and children hostage against us. Do you think that they'll hesitate for a moment to kill those women and children-the women and children you gathered together here that they might be 'safe'-once they realize they themselves are doomed? We must attack-now! We must storm through the gaps they made for us in their own foolishness and overwhelm them before they destroy the entire future of the Boman!"
"That is madness!" Camsan protested. "Didn't you see what their new weapons did to us in the forest? Don't you realize that if they can tear such rents in walls of stone and mortar, they can do far worse to our warriors if we allow them to catch us in the open? No, we must find another way!"
"We must attack!" Tin snarled, even more loudly. "That's what true Boman do-they charge, and they die. And then other Boman charge over their bodies, and still others, until a charge strikes home and we triumph!"
"We've lost thousands this day!" Camsan snarled back. "And if we assault those walls, today's losses will seem as nothing. It will be Therdan all over again, only many times worse. What good will we do our women and children by charging to their rescue only to be destroyed ourselves? Do you think the shit-sitters will hesitate to kill them once they've destroyed the host, and the threat of our vengeance no longer hangs over them?"
The war leader clapped his hands in a gesture of violent negation.
"To charge a prepared enemy with the weapons these shit-sitters possess would be as stupid as it would be pointless! We must find a better way!"
"It is your 'better ways' and your clever stratagems which have killed more of us than anything else," Tar Tin said in a flat, deadly voice. "I think you have lost the respect of the clans. This disaster is your doing, even more than the shit-sitters'."
The Gestai chieftain stepped back and raised his hands.
"Who is the origin of our grief? The walls of the city lie broken and open! Our warriors lie dead on the field for nothing! Whose hesitation and refusal to overwhelm K'Vaern's Cove gave the shit-sitters the time to prepare these 'new weapons,' and who led our warriors out to face them while our women and children were stolen from us?" Tin glared savagely at Camsan, and his voice dropped to deadly softness as he repeated, "Who is the origin of our grief?"
The other chieftains gathered around the argument. Most of them were far older than Kny Camsan, and more than a few had resented his relative youthfulness when he was named war leader. They'd supported his ascension after Therdan because the horrible casualties suffered trying to storm that city's walls had been enough to frighten even Boman. But now, with casualties almost as heavily piled on the field and scattered through the jungle, and with the bulk of the clans' women and children in the hands of shit-sitters, they were willing to consider another change.
"What do you think they're doing over there?" Roger asked wearily.
His mobile force had reached Sindi shortly after nightfall. Even many of the infantry had learned how to doze in the saddle now, for utter exhaustion was an excellent teacher, yet Chim Pri and his cavalry had somehow managed to dress ranks and trot jauntily through the southern gates under their snarling basik standard. Now the prince stood on the battlements, most of his weight propped on a merlon while he and Pahner gazed out across the fields.
"Jin has a LURP team keeping an eye on them," the captain said now. "We can't get close enough to tell exactly what's going on, even with the directional mikes, but it sure sounds like they're having some sort of deep and meaningful discussion, complete with lots of threats. I imagine they're discussing a possible change in the chain of command, and, frankly, nothing would please me better. This Camsan character is much too flexible and i
"You really think they'll come at us again in the morning?" Roger waved at the heaps of Boman bodies, clearly visible to both of them thanks to the magnification of their light-gathering helmet visors. "After we did that to them in the open field?"
"I've done everything I can think of to encourage them to, at any rate," Pahner replied. "We used up almost a dozen charges for the plasma ca
"And if they don't?" Roger asked. "What do we do then?"
"If they won't come to us, then we go to them-in a ma
"In some ways, I'd have preferred to do that from the begi
Roger turned his head and gazed at the captain's profile. Armand Pahner, he had discovered, was as complex a human being as he'd ever met. The captain was one of the most deadly people the prince could imagine, with a complete willingness to destroy anything or anyone he had to in order to complete his mission and deliver Roger alive to Earth once more. Yet for all his ruthlessness, the Marine was equally determined not to destroy anything he could avoid destroying. The prince had discovered enough about his own dark side, here on Marduk, to know how easy it would have been for someone in Pahner's place to become callous and uncaring. The Boman were only barbarians, after all. Why should their fate matter to a civilized man whose entire objective was to get off their planet in the first place?
Yet it did matter to him. As he stood there on the battlements beside Roger, Pahner had all the pieces in place to trap and destroy the Boman host. Not simply defeat it, but destroy it, in a massacre which would make today's casualties look like a children's pillow fight. The captain had worked for weeks to plan this operation, driven his Marines and his allies mercilessly to prepare and execute it, and he was determined to drive it through to a conclusion. No doubt many people would have believed that his determination sprang from a desire to stamp out the Boman once and for all, but Roger knew better. That determination sprang, in fact, from a desire to spare all the Boman that he possibly could. It was a recognition that the Boman would never concede defeat until they were made to do so, and that the only way to make them was to crush them militarily, with all the casualties and carnage that entailed. But the only way to prevent Pahner's allies from truly destroying the Boman by massacring the women and children who represented the continuation of the clans, was to force the warriors to admit defeat.