War Maid's choice

Chapter Twenty-Two

“She’s a likely lass,” Bahnak Karathson allowed, looking across the hall at his newest daughter-in-law. “Mind,” he smiled a slow smile as his youngest son, “I’m thinking as how the ears might take some getting used to.”

“Do you, now?” Bahzell asked mildly, his own ears flattening ever so slightly. He glanced across the hall at Leeana-totally surrounded by his sisters (all his sisters) and his mother-and then looked back at his father. “It’s fond of her ears I am,” he said in that same, mild tone.

“Aye?” His father raised his eyebrows and took a long, slow considering sip of ale, then set the tankard back on the table and gave Bahzell another smile, this one warmer and broader. “Well, that’s all any man could be saying, isn’t it then? And the only thing as matters, when all’s said. I’ve not forgotten how your grandfather argued and shouted-aye, and threatened to disown me entire, more than once-when I’d the questionable taste to be falling in love with your mother. A stubborn man, your grandfather, but a wise one, too, when all was said. He came to love your mother like his very own daughter by birth, and it’s in my mind as how a son should learn from his father’s wisdom. So if it’s all the same to you, Bahzell, I’ll just be skipping over the stubborn bit and allow right now as how it’s a rare, beautiful wife you’ve found, and one it’s pikestaff plain has wit and wisdom enough for three…even allowing as how her taste in husbands might be just a wee bit odd.”

Bahzell gazed at his father steadily for a handful of heartbeats, then twitched his ears in solemn agreement.

“She is that, all of it,” he said softly, turning his head to look in her direction once more as she went off in a peal of laughter at something his youngest sister Adalah had said.

At twenty-five, Adalah came closest to Leeana in age of any of his siblings, but she wasn’t yet out of the schoolroom, given the difference in hradani and human lifespans, and it seemed fairly evident she was in the process of developing a deep, schoolgirl’s admiration for her new, exotic, redhaired, human sister-in-law. It rather reminded him of the way Sharkah had reacted when she first met Kaeritha Seldansdaughter, although he doubted Adalah would be particularly tempted to take up the sword. Like his immediately younger sister Halah-and most unlike Sharkah-she was more inclined towards the domestic lifestyle.

“I’ll admit, it’s more than a little hesitant I was at her age,” he admitted quietly to his father. “She’s naught but a girl, by our people’s way of thinking.”

“A well grown ‘girl,’ for such a wee little thing,” his brother Tormach said dryly. He was only twelve years older than Bahzell himself, and his…admiration for Leeana was evident.

Bahzell cocked an eyebrow at him, and Tormach colored quickly.

“I’ve no doubt as how your brother meant only to be saying she’s a way about her as makes you think she’s older than her years,” Bahnak said blandly, and Tormach’s face burned still hotter. He looked helplessly at Bahzell for a long moment, then shook his head.

“I meant nothing of the sort, Bahzell,” he admitted, “and it’s your pardon I beg. Aye, Father’s the right of it-I’d not believe she was a year less than forty, to see how she carries herself and the confidence of her-but that’s not what I meant, and it’s a wonderful muddy taste that boot in my mouth is after having.”

“Well.” Bahzell considered him thoughtfully, then snorted and reached for his own tankard. “It’s not so very irked I can be, given the same thought’s spent quite a bit of time working its way through my own brain. And that was part of the problem, as well. It’s years I’ve spent amongst the Sothoii now. I’m after knowing how quick humans grow into their lives, yet still any time I so much as looked in her direction I’d come all over guilty at the thought of ‘robbing the cradle.’”

“And you such an ancient graybeard yourself,” Bahnak observed in a marveling tone.

“You’ve no need to be rubbing it in, Da,” Bahzell replied, and his father laughed. But then his expression sobered.

“If ever I’d doubted that there’s more to adulthood than years, Kaeritha and Vaijon-aye, and Baron Tellian and Sir Trianal, come to that-would have cured me long since, Bahzell. Leeana is one as will keep you on the straight path, standing beside you, lending you her shoulder when you’re after needing it, and it’s plainer than plain as how the two of you were made to be one. It’s proud I am you had the good sense not to let the difference in your ages be standing betwixt you.”

He met his son’s gaze levelly, and Bahzell nodded slowly, reading the other part of his father’s message in the shadow deep within Bahnak’s eyes. Even if Leeana lived a very long time for any human woman, he himself would be little past middle age for a hradani when he lost her. Yet it wasn’t how long he’d have to miss her that mattered. What mattered was how long they’d have together, the life they would share. The memory of that would keep his heart warm to the end of his own days, happen what would. And, he reminded himself a bit more briskly, he was a champion of Tomanak, and as Tomanak himself had told him on that long-ago day, few of the war god’s champions died in bed.

“I’ll not be calling it good sense myself, Da,” he said quietly. “It might be that’s not so very bad a way to put it, but it was the heart of her that took me by the throat, and there was no turning away from her, come what would and sense or no sense.”

“Aye?” His father reached across and squeezed his shoulder firmly. “Well, that’s not so bad a way to be starting a life together, either, now I think about it. Not so bad a way at all.”

“Bahzell, it’s good to see you!”

Vaijon stood, reaching out to clasp forearms as Bahzell, Tormach, and their father walked into the council chamber. Trianal of Balthar and Arsham of Navahk rose a heartbeat later, and Bahzell smiled as he gripped Vaijon’s arm firmly.

“And the same to be seeing you,” he said, but his smile faded slightly as he studied Vaijon’s expression. There were lines of fatigue in that face, and he looked at least two or three years older than the last time Bahzell had seen him. The Horse Stealer glanced at Trianal and saw an echo of Vaijon’s weariness in the Sothoii’s face, as well.

“And Brandark?” Vaijon asked, leaning to one side as if to look around the three massive Horse Stealers and spot the Bloody Sword.

“As to that, I’m thinking he’ll be along in a day or three,” Bahzell replied, and snorted. “We’d some letters from Tellian to Kilthan, and the little man allowed as how he’d just be taking them on to Silver Cavern to collect Kilthan’s response before he was joining us here. He’d some business of his own he wanted to discuss with Kilthan, and he’d some strange notion of giving Leeana and me a mite of privacy on the ride from Balthar.”

“Did he now?” Vaijon chuckled. “Brandark as an exquisite soul of tact. The mind boggles.”

“Oh, he’s not so bad as all that,” Bahzell replied, and glanced at Trianal. He’d been more than a little worried about how Trianal might react, given the younger man’s original attitude towards hradani in general, but Trianal only smiled at him and extended his own arm, in turn.

“So Leeana finally caught you!” His smile turned into a grin. “I’d wondered how long she was going to wait.”

“And was it every living soul in Hill Guard-except myself, of course-as knew what was in her mind?” Bahzell asked a bit aggrievedly.

“Oh, no,” Trianal reassured him. “I’m pretty sure at least three of the undergrooms never suspected a thing. Of course, that was probably only because she paid us so few visits over the last few years.” Bahzell snorted, and Trianal squeezed his forearm firmly. “The truth is she and I did discuss it-well, discuss around it, I suppose-in some of our letters, Bahzell. I doubt she realized how much she’d let slip, but there was enough for me to be happy for her. And for you, of course, although speaking as her cousin and someone who was fostered in her father’s household, I have to warn you that you’re going to find your hands full the first time you manage to do something that truly pisses her off. And you will, you know. She comes by that hair coloring honestly!”

“Bahzell is a champion of Tomanak,” Vaijon pointed out, looking down his nose at Trianal, “and as all the world knows, champions of Tomanak are wily tacticians, skilled strategists, and complete strangers to fear. The first time Leeana picks up something to throw at him, Bahzell will demonstrate all of those championlike qualities and run. Quickly.”

Everyone but Arsham chuckled, and even the Navahkan smiled.

“It’s an approach as has served me well on more than one occasion,” Bahnak observed after a moment, then shook his head. “Still and all, I’m thinking we’d best get to it.”

He waved at the chairs around the council table, and all of them settled into place. Arsham and Tormach got their pipes lit and drawing nicely and Bahnak lifted the moisture-beaded pitcher and poured ale into all of their tankards with his own hand. They sat for a moment, gazing out the council chamber windows at a fine, misty rain filtering down across the broad blue waters of the lake, and then Bahnak inhaled deeply.

“It’s glad I am to be seeing the lot of you,” he nodded particularly to Arsham, “but it’s not so glad I was to be reading your reports.” He shook his head, ears half flattened, and Vaijon sighed.

“I wasn’t exactly delighted to be writing them, Your Highness,” he said, and glanced at Bahzell. “Have you had a chance to read them since you got here?”

“Aye. That’s to say as how I’ve skimmed them all, but it’s more attention I paid to the last two or three of them.” Bahzell shook his head. “No one but a fool-and I’m thinking there’s none of them around this table-would have been thinking it was going to be all sunny skies and fair weather once we’d got this deep into the Ghoul Moor. Still, having said that, it’s in my mind none of us were expecting this.”

“It’s not really as bad as it could be,” Trianal pointed out. He took a pull at his tankard, then sat back in his chair, his expression serious. “It’s not as if our casualties have gone soaring-yet, at least. Not compared to what they could’ve been under the circumstances, at any rate. But I admit I didn’t see it coming, and I’ve studied everything I could get my hands on about previous expeditions into the Ghoul Moor. This is something new, and those casualties of ours are going to climb if it continues and we’re not very, very, careful.”

“It’s buried I’ve been-if you’ll be so good as to excuse the phrase-in Silver Cavern, my own self.” Tormach’s tone was half-apologetic. “I’ve not been back more than a day or so, and I’ve not read those reports as Bahzell has. But I’m thinking this hasn’t been going on for so very long?”

He looked back and forth between Vaijon and Trianal, and Vaijon shrugged.

“Actually, I think it may have started before we ever noticed,” he admitted. “The first engagement or two, it was more the weather than anything else that made problems. And the weather still is making problems, for that matter. But looking back, we should have noticed even then that there seemed to be an awful lot of ghouls in those villages. Especially the first one, given that we’d cleared and burned it to the ground last year.”

“I’ve been reading Yurgazh’s reports, as well, Sir Vaijon,” Arsham put in, “and I don’t see any reason you should have thought anything of the sort on the basis of what you knew then.” The Bloody Sword prince shook his head. “I know Yurgazh thinks all of you you let yourselves miss it because of your ‘contempt’ for ghouls, but I think you’re being too hard on yourselves.”

“You may be right, Your Highness,” Vaijon said after a moment, “but whether we should have spotted it then or not, we’ve damned well spotted it now! And it was only by the grace of Tomanak-not to mention Yurgazh’s good sense-that it didn’t cost us a lot more than it did, too.”

“That’s true enough,” Trianal agreed with feeling, and grimaced. “I wish certain Sothoii nobles and armsmen whose names I won’t mention could see what a solid line of hradani infantry is really like! There wouldn’t be any more stupid talk about riding down the escarpment and ‘dealing’ with your folk once and for all!”

“Well, as for that,” Bahnak said with a slow smile, “it’s not hurt a thing, a thing, for some of our own hotheads to’ve been seeing why it is no man in his right mind’s any desire at all to find out the hard way what your ‘wee little pony-riders’ can be doing to them as might be foolish enough to poke their noses where they’ve not been invited!”

Arsham snorted in agreement, and Trianal acknowledged Bahnak’s point with a wave of his tankard. Then the young Sothoii shrugged.

“True enough,” he repeated, “but it really was Yurgazh’s steadiness and those Dwarvenhame arbalests that saved all our necks, Your Highness.” He shook his head. “I never thought there were that many ghouls in the world, and when they came boiling up out of that valley…”

His brown eyes went cold with memory of how the sudden, unbelievable tide of ghouls had flooded up over the hill when his own men had dismounted to water their mounts. They’d swarmed his pickets right under, then charged directly towards the rest of his command, screaming their bestial warcries and waving their weapons of stone and wood like some furious, hungry sea. Only three of the men on picket duty had survived, but at least they’d given enough warning for the majority of his men to scramble back into the saddle before the ghouls hit them. That was all they’d managed to do, though, and it was only the gods’ own luck that Yurgazh’s scouts had seen the attack uncoiling from the other side of the valley.

There’d been no time for the Sothoii to uncase or string their bows. It had been all saber and lance, yet Trianal had dared not sound the retreat. Not only had he still had men on the ground, dismounted, hideously vulnerable to the ghouls if their mounted comrades left them unprotected, but the enemy was too fast. They couldn’t keep pace with his superb warhorses over a long course, but even the finest horses took time to accelerate. The ghouls certainly could have caught his troopers before they managed to pull away, and the nightmare creatures were tall enough and strong enough to pluck any Sothoii armsman from his saddle as easily as Trianal himself might have plucked an apple, if they took him from behind.

The situation had been headed towards the desperate when Yurgazh had brought his infantry across the valley at a dead run. The Navahkan general had halted to give the enemy a single, murderous volley of arbalest bolts at pointblank range before ordering the charge, and then his battalions had crunched into the ghouls’ backs like Tomanak’s mace.

Trianal suspected the ghouls had been too focused on his own horsemen even to realize Yurgazh was approaching their town from the other side. Their shock and surprise when the hradani suddenly poured fire into them and then charged into their rear had been obvious, at any rate. Yet even then, they hadn’t reacted the way ghouls were supposed to react. They’d neither fled in yelping panic nor turned and fought in the grip of their own ferocity. Instead, they’d run away-run away as a body, in something closer to an actual formation than he’d ever seen out of any ghouls, and in clear obedience to some sort of pre-battle plan-and his own cavalry had been too disordered to pursue immediately.

“They’re better organized than they’ve ever been before,” he said flatly, “and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of ghouls doing anything that could be described as actually planning an attack.”

“And it’s certain you are that’s what they were doing?” Bahzell asked, ears half-flattened and eyes narrowed and concentration. “It’s not that I’d doubt your judgment, Trianal, but it’s often enough I’ve seen what looked as how it was a planned response when it was after being nothing of the sort.”

“Yes, and it’s often enough I’ve been part of a response like that,” Arsham put it dryly. “Just because your troops are operating like a mob-the way certain Bloody Swords I could mention had a way of operating, once upon a time-doesn’t mean they can’t get lucky and simply catch the other side unawares.”

“I’m certain,” Trianal said, and raised an eyebrow at Vaijon, who nodded firmly in agreement. The Sothoii looked back at the hradani. “It might not have been the very best plan in all the world, and they obviously didn’t have enough scouts out to watch their own backs while they concentrated on ambushing my men, but it was planned, all right. And so was the way they broke off. I lost thirty-seven men, dead or wounded. Yurgazh lost another eight, and even with his arbalests, we accounted for less than two hundred ghouls.” He shook his head. “That’s not an exchange rate we can sustain, and it’s a lot worse rate than we’ve ever had before. Worse, there must’ve been a good three or four hundred of them still on their feet when they ran for it. How often have we seen that many of them simply take to their heels when they’ve got an enemy in reach?”

Bahzell nodded slowly, cradling his tankard between his hands on the tabletop while he considered what Trianal had said.

“And not a one of their young did you see?” he asked after a moment.

“No, and that was another strange thing,” Vaijon replied. He looked more worried than Bahzell was accustomed to seeing him, and his blue eyes were distinctly unhappy. “I’ll admit it…bothers me when their young come at us, but it bothers me even more when we take one of their villages and their are no young-or females-in it. That’s another reason I’m sure Trianal’s right about their having planned the entire ‘battle.’ They had to have sent their young and their females away ahead of time, which means a couple of things I don’t like to think about.”

“Ah?” Bahzell’s tilted ears invited him to continue, and Vaijon shrugged.

“First, they’re trying to protect their young, and they’ve never worried about that before. Everyone knows ghouls don’t care about that-Tomanak, they eat their own young! But this time, they’d sent them away, which can only mean they were deliberately protecting them from us.

“Second, they knew we were coming far enough in advance to send them off before we ever got there. How? We were over twenty miles away before we made our night approach march, and we’d been moving the other direction for two days. We’d even bivouaced ‘for the night,’ in case any stray ghouls were wandering around in our neighborhood, before we turned the men out for the attack. So either they spotted us on the way in and managed to organize the removal of all their females and their young-and you know how hard it is for even a ghoul to catch one of their young, Bahzell, much less round up all of them! — on the fly, or else they decided to evacuate their ‘noncombatants’ ahead of time simply because we were in the vicinity. I don’t know which would be more unnatural coming out of a ghoul: the ability to respond that quickly and flexibly, or the forethought to evacuate just as a precaution!”

“Vaijon is right,” Trianal put in, and his expression was even more frankly worried than Vaijon’s had been. “And that’s part and parcel of the way they broke off, too.” He shook his head. “I think it’s obvious they let themselves get too focused on my prong of the attack-probably because of our horses-and didn’t realize Yurgazh was there until he hit them, but when they did realize he was there, they immediately turned and ran.”

“So they’re fighting smarter,” Arsham murmured, and Trianal nodded.

“Fighting smarter and in greater numbers than they ought to be,” Vaijon expanded. “There shouldn’t have been that many males in a village that small, and they didn’t have anywhere near enough food animals to support them there for very long. If I didn’t know it was impossible-and given what’s been happening lately, I don’t know it’s impossible-I’d say some sort of ghoul…warlord, for want of a better term, is managing to impose some kind of discipline on them. It’s as if they’d deliberately pulled all of the ‘noncombatants’ out of the area and transferred in more fighting strength, instead.”

“Now, that’s a thought I’m not so very happy to hear,” Bahzell murmured.

“Nor I,” his father agreed, frowning as he scratched the tip of one ear thoughtfully. “And no more will Kilthan or Baron Tellian, come to that.”

“They’d have to be able to mass in substantially greater numbers before they could hope to actually defeat us in battle,” Vaijon said. “Their tactics are getting better, but ‘better’ is a purely relative term when you’re starting from what we normally see out of ghouls. I’m not saying they won’t continue to improve, and they’ve already moved well beyond their usual scream-and-leap approach. But until they get a lot better than anything they’d shown us yet, they’d still need a crushing numerical advantage before they could realistically threaten a field force the size of ours.

“Unfortunately, they can hurt us a lot worse than we’d anticipated, whether they can actually beat us or not…and we don’t know what kind of numbers they’ll eventually be able to assemble. Given what we saw in this instance, I’m inclined to think whatever ghoul military genius is managing to coordinate them may well be able to concentrate even more of them next time. And even if he can’t, as Trianal says, we can’t sustain that kind of exchange rate over the entire summer’s campaign.”

“No, and if it should happen as how there truly is a ‘military genius’ on the other side, I’m thinking he’s not so very likely to be letting us cordon off the Hangnysti from the rest of the Ghoul Moor,” Bahnak observed sourly.

“I think it’s certainly going to be harder to clear the riverbank and keep it that way, at any rate,” Trianal said grimly.

“Yurgazh’s report makes it clear he’s of the same opinion, Sir Trianal,” Arsham said.

“Well, then.” Bahnak’s chair creaked as he leaned back and tipped it up on its back legs while he surveyed the others. “I’m thinking we’d best not let it come to that.”

“And would it happen you’ve a notion as to how we might accomplish that, Da?” Bahzell inquired, and his father snorted harshly.

“It’s in my mind we’d best nip in there quick and hard,” he said. “It’s a rare strange ‘military genius’ as is able to exercise his genius if it should so happen someone’s been and disconnected his head from his neck. So I’m thinking it’s time and past time as we saw to that little thing.”

“I could agree with that, Your Highness,” Arsham said dryly.

“Good.”

Bahnak let his chair’s front legs come back to the floor and leaned forward over the table, folding his arms on its top.

“Trianal, your uncle’s after being stuck fast in Sothofalas, and well I know it. Would it happen as how you could be calling out more of his armsmen of your own authority and get his approval after?”

“Within limits.” Despite his youth, there was no hesitation in Trianal’s response. “I can call up the Riding’s first levy, as long as I don’t keep them in the field for more than sixty days. Any longer than that, or calling for the general levy, would require the Crown’s authorization, which we might or might not get, given the balance on the Great Council.” He smiled fleetingly. “And, of course, I’d better be able to give Uncle Tellian a very good reason for why I did it when he asks!”

“And the first levy would be giving you, what?”

“If I call up all of it?” Trianal shrugged. “About another eight thousand men.”

Bahnak nodded, his eyes distant for a moment as if he were doing sums in his head. Then he turned to Arsham.

“It’s checking with Gurlahn I’ll have to be, but it’s in my mind as we could put that many more-or it might be even ten thousand more-of our own into the field without pulling too many hands out of the fields or off the canal.”

Arsham looked a bit dubious, but he didn’t challenge Bahnak’s numbers. Gurlahn Karathson, Bahnak’s only living brother, had been Hurgrum’s chief of staff for over thirty years. If Bahnak was being overly optimistic, Gurlahn would lose no time in bringing him back to reality.

Bahnak’s ears flicked in amusement, as if he’d read Arsham’s mind.

“It might be as we won’t be coming up with quite so many as all that,” he continued, “but I’m thinking as how another sixteen thousand men might just come as a bit of a nasty surprise to yon ‘military genius.’”

“Hit them with a bigger offensive than they’ve seen out of us yet?” Vaijon murmured. “Enough bigger to punch through anything they could pull together to stop us?”

“I’ll not be going so far as all that,” Bahnak said grimly. “We’ve too little idea of exactly what’s been after changing. But, aye, it’s in my mind to cut a broader swath than we’d first intended. I know we’d planned on taking the rest of the summer to be clearing the river line, and I’ll not pretend I won’t begrudge the kormaks to pay for so many more men. But I’ll not be frittering away anyone’s men at this nasty rate if it should happen there’s a way to avoid it, and I’m thinking this is most likely the best way to do that. It’s go in hard and fast, we will, and take the ground of our choosing, and if it should so happen our ‘military genius’ is minded to be doing anything about it, then it’s fighting on our terms he’ll find himself.”

Bahnak Karathson, Prince of Hurgrum and of the Northern Confederation of Hradani, flattened his ears and showed his teeth as he let his gaze circle the council chamber.

“And any ghoul as chooses to cross swords with the likes of hradani infantry and Sothoii cavalry on ground of their own choosing…well, I’m thinking he won’t be making so very many more mistakes.”