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He paced slowly, brooding in the night wind. The pike was the true mankiller of Pardal, and most armies had at least three of them for every musket. The Temple Guard certainly did, and Tibold had explained how it used its phalanx-like formations to pin an enemy under threat of attack, "prepared" him with artillery and small arms, and finally charged home with cold steel. Yet for all their horrific shock power, those massive pike blocks were unwieldy; he suspected traditional Malagoran tactics would have given Rokas problems even without the "angels" and their i
The Malagorans' polearms reminded him of Earth's Swiss pikemen, but with fewer pikes and more bills which, in the absence of any heavy cavalry threat, were shorter, handier melee weapons than those of Earth. Tactically, they were far more agile than the Guard, relying on shallower pike formations to hold an enemy in play while billmen swept out around his flanks, and Sean's modifications should make them even deadlier... assuming they were ready.
If only he'd had more time! He'd let Tibold handle training, and the tough old captain made Baron von Steuben look like a Cub Scout, but they'd had barely two months. Their army had incredible esprit and a hard core of militia (Malagor's self-governing towns and villages raised their own troops in the absence of feudal grandees), and over eight thousand Guardsmen had defected to the rebels, but fusing them into a single force and teaching them a whole new tactical doctrine in two months had been a nightmare.
Worse, none of his own training had taught him how to lead troops with so little command and control. He was used to instant, high-tech communication, and he suspected his most pessimistic estimates fell far short of just how bad this was going to be. His men looked good at drill, but would they hang together in battle when the whole world went crazy about them? He didn't know, but he knew too many battles in Earth's history had been lost when one side lost its cohesion and fell apart in confusion.
Still, he told himself firmly, if they did hold together, the Guard was in trouble. Normally, its phalanxes would have had the edge at Yortown, where flanks could be secured by terrain and mass and momentum were what counted, but that was where the contributions of Israel's crew came in. They hadn't gotten the volume of their troops' fire up to anything approaching a modern level, but it was far heavier than Pardal had ever seen... and pike blocks made big targets. If he could get the Guard stuck, it was going to learn what the bear did to the buckwheat, and he thought—hoped—he'd found the place to bog it down. The Keldark Valley narrowed to a little more than six kilometers of open terrain at Yortown, and if Lord Rokas was as good a student of military history as Tibold said...
He sighed and shook free of the thoughts wearing grooves in his brain, then stretched, glanced up at the alien stars, and took himself off to bed, wondering if he'd sleep a wink.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lord Marshal Rokas climbed the hill and opened his spyglass with a click. The morning mist had lifted, though tendrils still clung to the line of the Mortan, and his mouth tightened as he studied the terrain. He'd expected—feared—from the start that Tibold would offer battle here, for more than one invading army had been broken against Yortown.
The town stood on the bluffs beyond the river. Its walls had been razed after the Schismatic Wars, but the heretics were building new ones. Not that they were really needed. The Mortan ran all the way to the Eastern Ocean, twisting down the Keldark Valley to escape the Shalokars, and it coiled like a hateful serpent about Yortown's feet. The river swooped from the northern edge of the valley to the southern cliffs before it turned east once more, and like many a Malagoran before him, Tibold had drawn up beyond that icy natural moat.
Rokas's glass lingered on the Yortown bridges with wistful longing, but the demolitions had been too thorough. The broken spans had been dropped into water too deep to ford even across their rubble, and he smothered a curse. If the Circle hadn't hesitated so long, he could have been past Yortown and into Malagor's heart before the heretics got themselves organized!
He turned further south. No position was impregnable, but his mouth tightened anew as he considered the fords the blown bridges had made the key to this one. They lay southeast of Yortown, where the river broadened, and raw earthworks reared on the western bank. He saw the glint of pikes and gleam of artillery, and his heart sank. Those fords were over a hundred paces wide and more than waist deep; the wounded would be doomed even without armor. With it—
He turned back to the north to glare at the dense forest which sprawled down from the valley wall almost to his hilltop vantage point. It offered his right flank a natural protection—God knew no pikeman could get through that tangle!—but it was a guard against nothing. The river was too deep to bridge, much less ford, north of Yortown, and no captain as ca
He closed his glass. No, Tibold knew what he was about... and so did Rokas. Too many battles had been fought at Yortown; defender and attacker alike knew all the moves, and if the cost would be high, it was one he could pay. It would trouble too many dreams in years to come, but he could pay it.
"I see no need to alter our plans," he told his officers. "Captain Vrikadan," he met the high-captain's eyes, "you will advance."
"God, look at them!" Tamman muttered over his com implant, and Sean nodded jerkily, forgetting his friend couldn't see him. No sensor image could have prepared him for seeing that army uncoiling in the flesh, and he braced himself in the tree's high fork, peering through its leaves while the Host deployed towards the fords. Musketeers screened massive columns of pikes, and nioharq-drawn artillery moved steadily between the columns. Armor flashed, pikeheads were a glittering forest above, and the marching legs below made the columns look like horrible caterpillars of steel.
"I see them," he replied after a moment, "and I wish to hell we had the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!"
Tamman chuckled at the feeble joke, and Sean's dry mouth quirked. He wished he—or Tibold, at least—could be at the fords with Tamman. He knew he couldn't, and he needed Tibold here in case something happened to him, but he'd felt far more confident before he saw the Host with his own eyes.
He sighed, then slithered down the tree. Tibold stood with Folmak, the miller who commanded Sean's headquarters company, and Sean met their eyes.
"They're doing it."
"I see." Tibold plucked at his lower lip. "And their scouts?"
"You were right about them, too. There's a screen of dragoons covering their right flank, but they're not getting too far out."
"Aye." Tibold nodded. "Rokas didn't become Lord Marshal by being careless even of unlikely threats. But—" his teeth flashed in a tight grin "—it seems Lord Tamman did indeed teach his men caution yesterday."
"So it seems," Sean agreed, and peered into the green shadows where twenty thousand men lay hidden amid undergrowth as dense as anything Grant had faced at The Wilderness. They wore dull green and brown, their rifle barrels had been browned to prevent any betraying gleam, and they made a sadly scruffy sight beside the crimson and steel of the Guard, but they were also almost totally invisible.
He flicked his neural feed to the stealthed cutter above the valley, exchanging a brief, wordless caress with an anxious Sandy, then plugged into Brashan's arrays through the cutter's com. The Host was closing up, packing tighter behind the assault elements. With a little luck...