Trumpets of War

VIII

Some week after the visit of Captain Stehrgiahnos to his camp, the elderly strahteegos and his staff were apprised by a sweating, bleeding galloper that a detachment of his far-ranging lancers had made contact—exceedingly violent contact—with an estimated two thousand men, mixed foot and horse, who apparently were proceeding with and guarding a long wagon train, a large herd of cattle and a smaller herd of horses and mules. These newcomers were onan west-to-east line of march that pointed directly toward Kahlkopolis.

Grinning like a winter wolf, the Grand Strahteegos dispatched Captain Thoheeks Portos with a mixed force consisting of both heavy and medium-heavy horse. As an afterthought, he reinforced the small units of lancers which were ambling just beyond easy bowshot of the city walls, lest someone in there get the idea of riding forth to try to succor this column from the westernkomeeseeahnee—obviously a late-arriving supply and reinforcement column.

At a bit after nightfall, Portos rode back into camp to report most of the foemen dead, the few survivors widely scattered and all running hard, with few casualties in his own force. He also reported that his troopers were bringing in all of the wagons and the horse herd, but that the Horseclansmen who had been a part of his force and were vastly more experienced at moving cattle had advised that the beeves be left at the site of the encounter until men on herding mounts rather than warhorses could collect them and bring them into camp.

Three hours after the dawning of the following day, Vahrohnos Djehros Kahktohskeera, with his white banner, mounted on his creamy-white gelding, was sent forth across the plain in the direction of the city. Some two hours later, Captain Stehrgiahnos and a small party issued from out the main gates and rode toward the spot whereon thevahrohnos waited patiently, slapping at flies and studying the many engines visible from his position upon the walls and towers of the City of Kahlkopolis, sketching in his memory their placements and fields of fire. For, expert herald or not, he was first and foremost a military officer, and he just might, someday soon, have to take a part in an assault upon these very walls, with those very engines hurling death at him.

Only the renegade nobleman himself and Vahrohnos Djehros were allowed to pass the outer lines and proceed into the camp this time, and Stehrgiahnos was escorted directly to the pavilion of the Grand Strahteegos. There, ranged in a line just beyond the hitching rail, a number of peeled wooden stakes had been sunk into the ground, each of them crowned with a livid, blood-crusty head. Paling slightly, the broken nobleman recognized the sharp-pointed nose and the large, prominent, outthrust incisors that had given Ratface Billisos hisnom de guerre on one of those ghastly trophies and the thick, almost pendulous lower lip and thoroughly pock-marked face of Horsecock Kawlos on another of them. The silent message was clear, indisputable: there now would be no resupply of the city, no additional troops, no remounts, no matter how long Mainahkos and Ahreekos waited.

Pahvlos’ words were short and brusque, his tone and manner were absolutely frigid. “Yesterday, Lord Stehrgiahnos, units of my heavy horse intercepted and exterminated the western contingent of yourchiefs bandit band. We captured some two hundred head of horses and mules, a goodly number of big, strong draught oxen, above fifty wains and wagons loaded with supplies of divers sorts and quantities, as well as so many cattle that we had to leave the most of them running loose around the site of the skirmish.

“If you exercise any influence over your chief’s decisions, it were wise that you urge him to come out of the city and bring his forces to battle without further undue delay, for he will not now be either reinforced or resupplied. It would be better for his arms were he to fight now, while his men still are strong and well fed, rather than to wait until an ongoing siege has weakened them through disease and short rations.

“Understand, it is not that Thoheeks-designate Ahramos nor I care a pinch of dried chicken dung how many bandits, footpads, thieves, ruffians and renegades of your foul ilk starve or suffer or waste away of the pox, the bloody flux or siege fever, but we want no unnecessary sufferings to befall the innocent noncombatant citizens of the City of Kahlkopolis .”

Having recovered from his initial shock, Stehrgiahnos began, “My lord Strahteegos—”

Pahvlos cut him off icily. “Shut up, Lord Stehrgiahnos! You were not whistled over to my camp to talk, only to see and to hear. This audience is done. Get back on your horse, ride back to that sounder of common swine you now serve, to whom you chose to sell your honor and your soul, and do my bidding.

“I will draw up my battle lines on the plain between the camp and the city two days hence. If no one comes out to fight by noon, I will assume that you all are craven and begin preparation of siegeworks.

“Those are my last words, renegade.”

That night, on a meticulously detailed sand table prepared from the reports of lancers and scouts by his staff, Pahvlos carefully explained his plans and projected placements of regiments, squadrons, smaller units, reserves and portable engines to his assembled captains. After two full hours of briefing, followed by more than another hour of questions and answers, he dismissed them all, staff and captains alike. He, however, sat there long into the night, staring at the reproduction of the city and its surrounding plain, essaying to work out in his mind any and every possible reverse and pre-plan and what his reflexive actions must be.

“Hmm, that scheme that Lord Pawl proposed for the use of those war-cats was brilliant. That’ll be one thing that those bandit scum can have no way of foreseeing or expecting in advance; they’ve never faced such a threat before, hell, no army in these lands ever has.

“Ahzprinos’ ideas, now, they’re impossibly hidebound. The man just cannot seem to get it through his thick head that amazingly as these elephants we have can perform, they still are only three cow elephants, with only some year of war training behind them, not a dozen towering bulls. There’re just not enough to do this the old-fashioned way, the way Ahzprinos would have us do it. No, I know that my way is best, the only way to make best disposition and utilization of what we have.

“Of course, can we believe what was wrung out of the prisoners taken from that relief column, this Mainahkos owns no elephants at all, only some score war-carts of the antique design. Not that those, if properly employed, can’t be dangerous weapons in their own right, but I think I have the answer to scotch them if they are only used as mobile archery platforms, rather than to burst apart infantry lines.

“Naturally, if they do try to break up the pikemen with those carts, Bizahros and Captain Hehluh will know what to do; neither of them are puling babes, comes to open warfare. Open up lanes in the formations wide enough to pass them through to the rear area, where the engine crews, mounted lancers and dartmen will make short work of the bastards. When other than at the gallop, those carts and their crews are terribly vulnerable; that’s why they went out of use even before elephants were adopted to serve the same general purposes. I wonder just who got this pack to fabricate them and start using them to begin with? Likely that renegade or another of his unsavory ilk.

“Now our forebears, who invaded and conquered these lands, were no fools, nor anxious to die, either; so I’ve always figured that the only possible reason they started using those suicide wagons to begin was because they had to have mobility for their warriors and lacked enough horses or mules to mount any large number of themselves as proper cavalry. Why did our arms continue to use them for so long? Why did places like Kehnooryos Ehlahs still use them within living memory, then? Probably because of kings and strahteegohee of mindsets similar to Ahzprinos’—‘Whatall was good enough for my great-grandsire is good enough for me!’ Ridiculous!

“Elephants themselves are far from invulnerable, really rather delicate, all things considered. But they’re far more maneuverable than a war-cart, their height gives those mounted upon them a bird’s-eye view, and their very bulk and speed—even of these smaller cows—is daunting to those standing to receive their charge. Only the most veteran, best-trained, most strictly disciplined men have what it takes to stand firm before such a charge, then open ranks at the last minute, let the creatures through, surround them and hamstring them or wave blazing torches in their faces.

“Ahzprinos has got his big nose out of joint now, after hearing my battle plans, but he’ll just have to accept it and live with it. Had he been willing, as Bizahros was, to modernize his regiment—give his pikemen armor pieces and body-shields and secondary weapons—then I might’ve made one of the others the reserve regiment in thisengagement. As it is, though, I

have to place my best-equipped men on the forefront in the center of the line, for they’ll be the ones who will take the brunt of an enemy charge or drive home any charge I hurl, and it’s not as if he’s been entirely cut out of the battle line, no, I’ve taken half of two of his battalions for the wings of my line, and he knows full well that he and the rest of them will be sent for should any gaps appear or any serious overlapping of my lines occur.

“I think those thieving bastards will get an unpleasant surprise or two from my placement of my Horseclanner barbarians, too. Using them on the wings of the main battle line will give me the lancers, who would occupy that place in an old-fashioned Ehleen battle, as an extra maneuver element, along with the heavy horse.

“Best of all, the spot I’ve chosen gives me a definite, though far from obvious, advantage for the kind of battle I mean to fight. I rather doubt that there are enough command veterans with that hodgepodge army of theirs to be able to realize that fact, however, until it has become far too late in the game to break off the action. They could always try to withdraw back to the city, of course. I pray God that they try just that. Heheheh.”

He smiled and rubbed together the calloused palms of his hands. “Damned baseborn poseurs! I’ll teach them the folly and the deadly dangers of playing at soldier.”

Within the City of Kahlkopolis itself, there had really been no choice in the matter of which of the partners would lead out the army against the grim Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos the Warlike and which would stay behind to hold the city, for although he had been champing at the bit like the old warhorse that he was, Ahreekos the Butcher had been unable to find in all of the city a panoply that would come anywhere close to fitting his overcorpulent frame and shape; moreover, the warlord found that he tired very easily these days, he frequently had difficulty in getting his breath, and any strenuous exercise—especially of a sexual nature—bred severe pains in his chest, shoulders and arms, and at the base of his throat.

Mainahkos was not entirely pleased with the force he had on hand to lead out. He sorely missed Ratface Billisos and Horsecock Kawlos; both had been good subordinate officers, Ratface’s highly innovative tactics having saved the day more than once for the bandits over the years; he also sorely missed the horses that the two had been bringing in from the west, for lacking them, the would-be thoheeks was going to be unable to mount all of his cavalry, and he was short of cavalry to begin. Moreover, without the wagonloads of seasoned pikeshafts which had made up a part of the now-lost supply train, Mainahkos would be unable to arm all of the spear levy of the city.

Nonetheless, the two partners, Stehrgiahnos and the other bandit sub-chiefs had done everything that they could: every house and every stable had been scoured of usable weapons and horseflesh of any and every description, age and type; straight, well-cured timbers of the appropriate lengths had been commandeered, even if doing so meant the partial razing of homes and other buildings, then impressed crews of carpenters, turners, joiners and even cabinetmakers had been set to rendering them into hafts to which pikepoints could be riveted, and the craftsmen were kept at it day and night at the points of swords where this was found to be necessary, though it seldom was, for the surviving citizens of Kahlkopolis were, after three years of occupation by the savage, brutal bandit horde, now virtually devoid of leadership and thoroughly cowed.

This exercise did turn out a goodly number of pikes—although but precious few of the hafts were of the preferred ash or oak, rather were they of elm, maple, pine, cedar, hickory and too many others to name or enumerate—but with few exceptions, they were short pikes, only eight to ten feet long, but Mainahkos knew that they would do, they would have to do.

The search for cavalry mounts, however, was far less successful, so few acceptable mounts being actually turned up that he gave over planning on putting former troopers up on a horse and decided to use them afoot or to crowd a couple into each war-cart, instead, to hurl darts alongside the archers.

Even so, the would-be thoheeks was able to march a force of some respectable size out of his city on the morning of the day of battle. To the roll of the drums came something over thirty hundreds of foot, about a third that number of horse and some fifty war-carts, each of them with six or eight missile-men, plus two armored postillions.

Screened by two files of mounted lancers whose orders had been to deliberately raise as much dust as possible in their progress, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz and the elephant Sunshine led the way toward the position assigned them for the opening of the battle, now looming close ahead. The three cows, Sunshine, Tulip and Newgrass, were all clad in most of the protective armor they would wear in battle, but their huge, distinctively shaped bodies had for the nonce been almost completely shrouded in long, wide sheets of dust-colored cloth, while the heavy, cumbersome archer boxes of wood and leather had been all dismounted and were now being borne in the wake of the pachyderms by the archers who would occupy them and some of the elephant grooms.

After the third or the fourth time he slipped and stumbled on the broken, uneven footing, his boots not having been designed for ease of walking anyway, Gil found himself steadied and easily lifted back onto his feet by the powerful but infinitely gentle trunk of Sunshine.

“I will say it once more,” came her strong mindspeak, “you are silly to try to walk, man-Gil. Why your poor little feet will be sore beyond bearing by sunset.

Those men yonder are all astride their own small, skinny-legged beasts, so why do you three not ride Sunshine and her sisters, brother?”

Gil sighed. Sunshine could be as stubborn as any hardheaded mule when she chose to so be. He beamed in reply, “It is still as I have said ere this, sister-mine: high as you are, if I should take my place upon your neck, anyone watching from the other army will then know that at least one elephant is in this area, and it is the plan of the Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos that they gain no knowledge of just where we are until the time comes for us to attack them. Please try to understand this time, dear sister.”

“Silly, silly, silly!” Sunshine mindspoke disparagingly. “Two-legs are surely the very silliest of any living creatures! Fighting is surely the silliest of all two-leg pastimes, and Sunshine is herself silly for deigning to take any part in such ultimate sillinesses ... she only does so because it makes her brother happy and she dearly loves him, man-Gil.”

Even as man and elephant communicated, seven huge long-toothed felines were but just arrived stealthily in position a short distance behind the cavalry reserve of the bandit army. They crouched, unmoving as so many statues, only the respiration movements of their sleek, wiry bodies denoting that life resided in them. In a tiny copse they lurked, the agouti bodies blending well with the dead leaves that here thickly littered the ground.

One of the prairiecats—for such they all were, having come as part of the Horseclans force—meshed his mind with those of two others of his kind to gain sufficient mental projection for farspeak and then beamed out, “We are where we were told we should be, Chief Pawl. The horses cannot smell us. Not yet, but if the wind should shift . . . ? If they do smell us before you want them to, Chief Pawl, will we still get to fight? It has been so long since we were allowed to fight.” There was a wistful note to the last comment.

Pahvlos found it necessary, at the onset, to alter his carefully laid-out and planned battle line. With the bandit army forming up into position some hundreds of yards distant in clear sight on the verdant plain that lay between his camp and the walls of Kahlkopolis, it was become painfully obvious that was his center to not be overlapped by the more numerous enemy center, he must either stretch his lines of armored pikemen to a thinness that would be patently suicidal or he must commit to the battle line the unarmored pikemen of Captain Ahzprinos, and for the umpteenth time he foully cursed the old-fashioned, obstinate, obtuse officer and his stubborn failure to emulate the Freefighter regiment as had Captain Bizahros.

At length, the Grand Strahteegos made what he felt to be the very best of a singularly bad situation. He grudgingly extended the fronts of Captains Hehluh and Bizahros in a depth of only four pikemen, then he took the two battalions of the unarmored men from off the wings, rejoined them with their reserve regiment and used them to back the armored pikemen all along the battle line. He realized that there still would be some slight overlap, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

Of course, these rearrangements left him damnall reserve—one battalion of the old-style pikemen, the engineers, pioneers and artificiers who could be thrown in in a real emergency, the headquarters guard of heavy horse and a scattering of lancers—but it would just have to do.

Nor was he formed back up any too soon, for out from behind the battle line of the bandit army came the war-carts, moving at a slow walk until clear of their own men, then gradually increasing the pace of their big, barded draught mules to a fast canter. As soon as they were safely away, the entire enemy line began to advance, in formation, at a walk, their shouldered pikes standing high above them like some long, narrow forest of wind-slanted saplings, the silvery points all aglitter in the sun. Their form of advance told him exactly how the oncoming war-carts would be used, at least in the opening segment of this battle. He sent a galloper to the captain of engineers notifying him of the walking advance, that he might reset the torsions and tensions of his engines for the shorter range.

Only a mere two of the oncoming war-carts were struck by the volley of stones and spears hurled by the engines before they were reset, but even this was remarkable and lucky in the extreme, considering that the targets were moving quite fast and could not be seen by the men who loosed off the engines. Pahvlos had been told that Captain of Engineers Teemos was the best of the best and that he numbered among his company some real artists at the tricky skills of handling light engines; now the old strahteegos believed it, every word of it.

Barded to the fetlocks as the mules were, there was no way for Pahvlos to determine just how heavily or fully the draught mules werearmored, it was only safe to assume that they were. Between six and eight men stood in the bed of each jouncing, springless cart, mixed archers and dartmen from the looks of them; on the two nearside mules, fully armored men with sabers or axes were mounted, so none of the missile-men need worry about guiding the mules. He noted that the carts consistently kept a goodly distance one from the other, lest the long, cursive steel blades projecting from the wheel hubs become entangled with another set or, even worse, cripple a mule.

Even if the slow advance of the enemy infantry lines had not told him, Pahvlos would have known as soon as he saw just how few of the armor-plated war-carts there were that they were too few to tempt even such an amateur strahteegos as the bandit chief Mainahkos to send them head on at a hard gallop against the massed pikes and hope to get more than a mere handful of them back, for anyone with a grain of sense would realize that the cavalry in the rear areas could ride rings around such relatively slow, cumbersome conveyances, deadly rings, in the case of the horse-archers that the bandits knew he owned as a part of his army.

That left only a couple of alternative uses for the archaic carts. One of these would be an attempt to drive between wings and center and thus take the pike lines on the more vulnerable flanks; the other would be to make a series of passes across the front while raining the pikemen with arrows and darts.

It was to be the latter choice, Pahvlos saw. In staggered lines, the war-carts were drawn, clattering and bouncing over the uneven ground, the full length of the formations of pikemen, expending a quantity of arrows and darts for precious few casualties against the armored front ranks. As the leading war-carts reached the end of that initial pass, however, and began to wheel about, they received an unexpected and very sharp taste of similar medicine to that which they had been seeking to so lavishly dispense to the static lines of infantry. Captain Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn, commanding the left wing, treated the carts and their mules and postillions to such a pointblank arrow storm that nearly a dozen were put out of action then and there. Nor did the hapless crews of the carts receive any less from the half-squadron of Horseclansmen under one of Captain Pawl’s sub-chiefs, on the other wing, which eliminated more of their number, almost halving the fifty that had set out to begin.

With it patent that the war-carts were doing no significant damage to his front, Pahvlos dispatched a galloper to carry his order to Captain Thoheeks Portos and his heavy cavalry. Out from the rear area they came, taking a wide swing around the right of their own lines to end in delivering a crushing charge against the mixed heavy and light horse on the left wing of the bandits’ battle line. That charge thudded home with a racket that could be heard by every man on the field and even in the camp and the city, walls or no walls.

Portos’ heavy cavalry fought hard and bravely for a few minutes after the initial assault, their sharp sabers carving deeply into the formations of opposing horsemen, even penetrating completely through, into the skimpily armored ranks of light-infantry peltasts who flanked the pike lines. But then, abruptly, a banner was seen to go down, and with cries and loud lamentations they began to try to disengage and withdraw in the direction of their own lines.

Sensing a victory of sorts within grasping distance, the entire left wing of the bandits’ army—horse and light foot alike—quitted their assigned positions to stream out in close pursuit of the retreating heavy horse.

And no sooner had they left the flank they had been set there to guard than up out of a brushy gully filed Sunshine, Tulip and Newgrass. With practiced speed, the cloth shroudings were stripped away, the last few pieces of armor put on and the heavy, unwieldy metal-plated boxes were lifted up onto the broad backs and strapped into place. As the archers clambered up into the boxes, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz and the other two feelahksee were lifted by the pachyderms to their places just behind the armored domes of the huge heads and those men still gathered about on the ground uncased the outsize swords—six feet long in the blades, broad and thick and very heavy, with both edges ground and honed to razor sharpness—which the behemoths would swing with their trunks in the initial attack. All of these last-minute preparations had been well rehearsed and so took bare minutes in the accomplishment. Once fully equipped and armed and out of the gully in which they had hidden, the three huge, fearsome-looking beasts set out in line abreast at a walk which the trailing and flanking lancers had some difficulty in matching for speed over the uneven terrain.

Now, much of Mainahkos’ “infantry” was no such thing, save by the very loosest definition of the term. Rather were the most of them just a very broad cross-section of male citizens who had been impressed in the streets of the city at the points of swords and spears, handed a short pike and hustled willy-nilly into an aggregation of fellow unfortunates, then all marched out to add depth and length to the bandits’ pike lines. To these, the mere distant sight of the three proboscideans fast bearing down upon them, swinging terrible two-mehtrah swords, their high backs crowded with archers and a horde of mounted lancers round about them, was all that was needful to evoke a state of instant, screaming panic.

Bandit army veterans strode and rode among the impressed men they chose to dignify with the term “citizen spear levy.” With shouts and with curses, with fists and whips and swordflats and spearbutts, they tried to lay the panic, get the untrained men faced around to try to repel the flank attack, all the while cursing the peltasts and heavy horse for so exposing the flank and profanely wondering just when Lord Mainahkos would get around to sending the reserve cavalry to replace those who had ridden off to who knew where.

Of course, they could not know that a few minutes before, Pawl Vawn of Vawn had farspoken but a single thought: “Now, cat-brother!”

With bloodcurdling squalls, the seven mighty prairiecats had burst from out the tiny copse and sped toward the mounting cavalry reserve. All of them broad-beaming mental pictures of blood and of hideous death for equines, never ceasing their cacophony of snarls, growls, squalls and howls, the muscular cats rapidly closed the distance between the copse and the horses and men.

Within the City of Kahlkopolis, things were not well. Ahreekos, frantic for a better view of the battle, one not partially obscured by folds of ground, high brush or copses, had decided on the city’s highest tower as an observation point and had led his followers in the climb up to its most elevated level. However, less than a third of the way up, he had gasped and fallen on a landing, jerking and beginning to turn a grayish blue in the face.

His followers had almost ruptured themselves in bearing his broad, corpulent bulk down the narrow spiral stairway, only to find upon finally reaching the first level that they had been carrying a fat corpse. Ahreekos was dead.

Leaving the body precisely where it lay, pausing only to strip off rings, bracelets and anything else of value from it, in the way of their unsavory ilk, the followers departed and began to make ready to leave the city, for what they had already been able to see of the progress of the battle had not been at all encouraging. It would seem that overconfident Mainahkos had finally met his match in the person of this white-haired eastern strahteegos and his small but very effective army, and the personal slogans of all of those who had for so long followed the two warlords had always been “He who fights and runs away lives to run away another day.” They were, after all, not warriors but opportunists, and so could desert without even a twinge of shame.

The condition of Mainahkos’ main battle line was not at all pleasant, for all that there had not as yet been any contact with the enemy for the front ranks or the right flank. Numerous small engines, apparently situated just behind the enemy center, had been hurling stones and long, thick spears in high arcs to fall with effect both devastating and deadly among their close-packed ranks, reducing the depth as rear-rankers needs must advance to plug the gory gaps. But it suddenly got worse, far worse.

At almost the same instant, three towering war-elephants crashed into the left flank and began to roll it speedily up, while elements of their own cavalry reserve slammed into the rear of the right-flank formations, and the panic of those horses, for some unknown reason, spread like wildfire among the horses of the heavy cavalry guarding that flank as well.

In the space between the two opposing battle lines, the harried, now-wounded commander of the war-carts just stared, astounded. Like Stehrgiahnos a broken nobleman and the man who had persuaded the two warlords to build and fit out the carts to serve the functions of the elephants that they did not have and never had had for the bandit army, he had known his full share of formal warfare in better days, but even then he had never before heard of such a thing as this.

Leaving their secure, unthreatened position, the entire length of the enemy pike line was advancing, moving at a brisk walk, their lines still even and dressed, their pikes at high-present—shoulder height—an array of winking steel points that projected well ahead of the marching lines. It was an unholy occurrence, thought the renegade; the miserable infantry simply did not advance against armored war-carts. It was unthinkable!

For him, it was truly unthinkable. Basically akin to Captain Ahzprinos of the opposing force, a less than imaginative or creative man, he did then the only thing of which he could think to do. He signaled and led a withdrawal back to whence he and the others had come, back to their own lines.

But before the carts could reach the left wing, their own infantry lines suddenly surged forward, looking less like a formation of men than like a cylinder of raw dough pressed mightily at both ends. The boiling press of men thoroughly blocked the way of the carts.

Deeply contemptuous of the common footmen at even the best of times, the commander led his force directly into the infantry, carving a gore-streaked path through them up until the moment that a wild-eyed, terrified man smote him across the backplate with a poleaxe and flung him to the ground at just the proper time and place to be raggedly decapitated by the sharp, blood-slimed, whirling blades projecting from a wheel hub of his own war-cart.

Portos’ squadron of heavy horse had continued their “panicky withdrawal” until he judged that the enemy horse and peltasts had all been drawn far enough out that they could not easily or quickly return to their assigned positions and that the way was thus clear for the elephants and supporting lancers to assault the left flank of the bandits’ pike lines. Then, abruptly, the “fallen” banner was raised high again and flourished, and the squadron reined about and began to fight, not flee. They had hacked a good half of their erstwhile pursuers from out their saddles before the survivors broke and fled, scattering the peltasts before them.

At that juncture, Captain Thoheeks Portos halted his force, reformed them and directed them against the nearest protrusion of the roiling, confused mass of men that had formerly been the center of the bandits’ pike line. But that projection had recoalesced back into the main mass by the time the heavy horse had come within fifty mehtrahee of it, so quick-thinking Portos led his force around the broil into the howling chaos that had but lately been the rear area of the enemy army. After detaching half the squadron under a trusted subordinate officer to see to it that as few horsemen as possible escaped back to the city, the grim-faced Portos led the other half in a hard-driving charge upon the rear and flank of those units still more or less coordinated and functioning as flank guards on the enemy’s right. His half-squadron struck only bare moments before those same units were assaulted all along their front by Captain Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn and his Horseclansmen.

When the war-carts so precipitately withdrew from the field, Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos ordered the drums to roll the chosen signal. At that sound, the pikemen dropped their shields from off their backs, lowered their long, heavy pikes to low-guard present—waist-level—position and increased their pace to a fast trot, although they all maintained their proper intervals and formation up to the very moment that their hedge of steel points sank deeply into soft flesh or began to grate upon armor or bone.

The pursuit and slaughter continued for some hours more and the executions of the captured bandits went on for days, both outside and inside the city, but the charge of the pikemen had really ended the hard-fought battle at Kahlkopolis.

Pahvlos had, at first, decided to simply hang the most of the captured bandits and convert the less dangerous ones to slaves of the City of Kahlkopolis, granting the captured renegades their choice of hanging with the rest or being beheaded. That was before the signet of the late Vahrahnos of Ippohskeera was found among loot in the personal quarters of Mainahkos in the ducal palace of the Thoheeksee of Kahlkos, which find he took to mean that it was this particular pack had committed the atrocities the dying man had detailed.

Consequently, the executions were savage. None were kept for slaves; rather were all of the bandits, excepting only the chief and the three renegades, tied onto crosses stretching all along the part of the trade road that ran through the Thoheekseeahn of Kahlkos, many of them after having already been subjected to torture and mutilations.

The three onetime noblemen were manacled heavily and thoroughly, thrown into a wagon-mounted cage and set off on their journey to Mehseepolis to there be judged and sentenced by the Council of Thoheeksee.

The Grand Strahteegos had Mainahkos’ fingers crushed, one by one, then saw him impaled on a thick, blunt stake of oak, most of it with the rough bark still on.