The Reformer g-4 Page 20

  Couldn't find his dick with both hands and a hooker to help, Demansk thought automatically. Still, however much of a tomboy she was, there were things you didn't say to a daughter.

  "Couldn't find his arse with both hands on a dark night," he chuckled aloud. "Not quite fair. He has enough sense to leave details to experts, and he listens . . occasionally. But he's set in his ways even for a man of his generation. And I asked you a question, missy."

  Helga's chin went up. "Adrian will do what you least expect, and when you least expect it," she said proudly. "His brother's a good soldier and a demon with a sword but Adrian. . thinks about things."

  Demansk shuddered, a little theatrically. "Allfather Greatest and Best, this business is bad enough without scholarship," he said, and then cocked an eye. "Rumor has it that the gods talk to your Adrian."

  He hid his surprise when Helga looked distinctly uneasy; she was as skeptical as any young noble-the way the younger generation openly said things that were whispered in his younger days shocked him, now and then. In his grandfather's day they'd been killing matters.

  "I'm. . not altogether sure about that," Helga said. "Sometimes. . sometimes I'd catch him murmuring to somebody. Somebody who wasn't there."

  Demansk grunted. "Perhaps he's mad, then."

  "I don't think so, Father. Madmen hear voices, but if Adrian's listening, it's to someone who tells him things that are true. Or at least very useful."

  That's a point, a distinct point, Demansk thought.

  He was lifting the cup to his lips when the alarm sounded out across the camp.

  NINE

  "This time they're being cautious," Esmond said, bracing his feet automatically against the pitch and roll of the ship.

  "How so?" Adrian said curiously, peering towards the shore, where the causeway swarmed with workers and troops, like a human anthill.

  "They're putting in a wall with a parapet and fighting platform along the edge of the causeway as it goes out, see? And they've got their building yard completely surrounded with a ditch-and-stockade, and they've brought out those two fighting towers-they'll push them out as the causeway proceeds. The catapults on them outrange anything a ship can mount, and they've got archers packed tight in there too. They can shoot from shelter."

  "Hmmm," Adrian said. "Not good, brother."

  similar situations tend to produce similar solutions, Center said.

  Meaning what?

  Center tends to get a little oracular now and then, son, Raj thought with a chuckle.

  Well, that's appropriate.

  What he-or it-means is that this isn't the first time these tactical conditions have come up. Back on Bellevue, I got a reputation for originality partly because Center kept feeding me things that other generals had done, back on Earth before spaceflight. I've studied more since Center and I have been. . together. There was a man named Alexander. .

  "Adrian? Adrian?"

  Adrian shook himself, stopped squinting at the eye-hurting brightness of water on the purple-blue sea, and looked at his brother.

  "Sorry."

  "I know Scholars of the Grove are supposed to be detached, but we have a problem here." A scowl of frustration. "Or are you still mooning over that Confed girl?"

  "Yes, but that doesn't mean I can't think of practical matters," Adrian said, slightly annoyed.

  I've been getting that detached business since I was fourteen, he thought. One of the earlier Scholars had had the same problem from his family, and had cornered the olive-oil market for a year, just to prove a philosopher could also outthink ordinary men in ordinary affairs.

  "Don't think of it as a problem," Adrian went on aloud, with a smile he knew was a little smug. "Think of it as an opportunity."

  He began to speak. Esmond's eyes narrowed, then went wide. When he'd finished, the older Gellert spoke:

  "Well, I will be damned to pushing a boulder up a hill for all eternity. That just might work-and it's a little longer before we have to let them know about the rest of your surprises. Captain!"

  Sharlz Thicelt hurried over. "Sir?" he said.

  Esmond looked up, frowning a little-there were few men taller than he-and spoke:

  "What are the prevailing winds like here, this time of year?"

  "My General, they vary. Usually from the northwest, particularly in the afternoons-an onshore breeze, very tricky. It dies at night and backs in the morning, though. Of course, the Sun God alone can predict the weather on any given day; at times there are strong offshore winds, particularly if we get a summer thunderstorm, and-"

  "Thank you very much, Captain Thicelt," Esmond said hastily; the Islander loved the sound of his own voice-something of a national failing in the Islands as well as the Emerald cities. "That may be very useful. Very useful indeed."

  * * *

  "Odd," Justiciar Demansk said, shading his eyes with one hand. "Those look like merchantmen."

  The causeway had made two hundred yards progress, and the siege towers were half that distance from shore. Already the inner surface looked like a paved city street, flanked by fortress walls; attempts at hit-and-run sniping hadn't been more than a nuisance. And we've sunk one of their galleys. That had been the stone throwers on the siege towers. Nine stories of height made a considerable difference in one's range; when they got out to Preble, the tops would overlook the city wall by a good fifteen feet, and the archers and machines there could sweep the parapets bare for the infantry. Thousands of workers hauled handcarts and carried baskets of broken rock out to the water, and the sound of it dropping into the waves was like continuous surf. Masons worked behind them, setting up the defense parapet, and where it hadn't reached yet the workers were protected by mantlets-heavy wooden shields on wheeled frames. All was order, and rapid progress. At this rate, they'd be out to Preble in less than a month. And the troops would be royally pissed at having to work this hard for this long-it was worse than road-building detail, itself always unpopular. Added to what had happened there during the uprising, and the fact that Jeschonyk didn't even intend to try and keep the men in hand, and it was going to be a very nasty sack.

  Demansk felt a little sorry for the inhabitants of the island city. The Confed occupation had been enough to drive anyone to distraction. . although not, in his opinion, to suicide. Which was what came of massacring Confederation citizens; the ones spared for the mines would be the lucky ones. Jeschonyk was talking about a special Games for the captured adults; a Games Without Issue, pairs forced to fight to the death and then the winners matched with each other, with one survivor left to be poled.

  He took an orange out of the helmet he had balanced on one knee and began to peel it with methodical care. We've really got to do something about provincial government, he thought. Every time there was a political crisis at home there was a revolt somewhere, and it was all because of the tax-farming system. They're our subjects, we've got to stop treating the provinces like a hunting ground. As it was, a provincial governor had to extort to the limit, to stand off the lawsuits that would be launched when he retired; for that matter, anyone who crossed swords with the tax-farming syndicates would be sued into bankruptcy or exile.

  The Preblean flotilla was approaching the causeway from the northwest, with the sun behind them and to their right, and the wind directly astern. Hmmm, he thought. Four galleys, and they're each pulling a merchantman. Could they be trying an assault?

  No, they weren't insane, or that desperate yet. He had a full brigade of troops ready to hand, with more to draw on-the working details had their equipment stacked and he'd drilled them in moving rapidly to kit out and fall in.

  "Then what are they doing?" he asked.

  Helga's got me spooked, with her tales of that damned Emerald she took up with, he thought sourly. This is the modern age, not the plain before the walls of Windhaven during the Thousand Ships War. The gods do not don mortal disguise to fight in mortal quarrels, if they ever did.

  Still. . "First Spear," he said. "Ge
t your outfit standing to."

  "Yessir!"

  That would be done competently, he knew. He squinted again, then stiffened as the rebel flotilla came into closer sight, just outside catapult range from the siege towers. The galleys were casting off their tows, turning, their oars going to double-stroke; heading away, then halting and backing water, their sterns to the causeway. The tubby deep-hulled merchantmen were sheeting home their big square sails, though. Heading straight for the causeway. .

  No. Their crews were diving overside, climbing into small boats and rowing like Shadesholm back towards the galleys. One paused, just close enough to see, and pumped a hand with an outstreched finger towards the Confed forces. The four ships came on with the tillers of their dual steering oars lashed and the wind steady on their quarters, faster now, little curves of white foam at their bluff bows. And smoke, smoke curling up from under their deck hatches.

  "Messenger!" Demansk barked. "The towers are to open fire on the ships-rocks. Knock down their masts, or sink them-immediately. I'll have the rank off the commander who lets them get through. Move!"

  Demansk was a man who rarely raised his voice. The man ran as if the three-headed hound of the Shadow Lord were at his heels, and the Justiciar ground his teeth in fury.

  Emeralds, he thought. No discipline; he'd fought them from Rope to Solinga, talking less and hitting harder. But they were. .

  "Sneaky. And these Gellerts, they're sneaky even for Emeralds."

  The tendrils of fire licking up from the hatchways of the ships were growing even as he watched, pale in the bright sunlight, but full of promise and black smoke.

  * * *

  "Burn, you Confed bastards!" Esmond whooped.

  Beside him on the raised stern of the galley, with his head on the curling seabeast stemhead, Adrian winced slightly. A rock from one of the tower catapults splashed into the water a hundred yards astern; either someone there was getting vindictive or they were really bad shots. More fifty-pound rocks were striking the fireships sailing in at six knots towards the Confed siege tower, knocking bits off their railing, making holes in the sails, some of them crashing through decks or striking masts. The holes in the deck simply gave the fires spreading belowdecks among the barrels of pitch and tar and sulfur and oil and tallow more air, miniature volcanoes shooting up after each hit. One ship's mast did fall over; the high stern of the merchantman was still enough to keep it drifting steadily before the wind towards the tower, although it turned broadside on.

  "Haven't a prayer of sinking them," he said.

  You could sink an ordinary galley by catapult fire, if you were lucky. They were lightly built, racing shells of fragile pine, quickly made and quickly worn out. Freighters had oak frames and much thicker hull planks and frames. They were built to take strains and last; many sailed for thirty or forty years before they had to be broken up. The only real way to sink one was to ram it, or burn it. . and these weren't going to burn to the waterline until long after they hit the causeway.

  "They're bringing up men with oars," Esmond said.

  Adrian could see them too; someone had been bright enough to rig a pump, to keep them covered with water. They'd never be able to stand the heat, even so. Probably.

  "We'd better discourage that," he said. "Captain Sharlz, if you could bring us broadside on?" He turned and looked down onto the gangway of the galley: "Simun! Six arquebus teams-target the men trying to fend off."

  "Sir, yessir!" the underofficer shouted back, as the galley heeled and turned in its own length, oars churning and then going to a steady slow stroke to keep the craft on station.

  Puduff. Puduff. Puduff.. Sulfur-stinking smoke drifted back to the poop. Men fired, stepped back for their loading teams, stepped forward again, intent on their work. The first six rounds brought one man down-good practice, at this extreme range. The four-ounce balls and seven-foot barrels gave the arquebusiers more range than any torsion catapult, though.

  "Bastards don't know what's hitting them," Esmond chuckled.

  That they don't, Raj added. There's no reason for them to associate a bang and a puff of smoke with someone getting killed. But they'll learn.

  They did, as more of the men getting ready to fend off the fireships went down. Confed troopers trotted up, raising their big oval shields to hold off whatever it was that was killing their comrades. Adrian could see the bronze thunderbolts on their facings glitter as they raised them; another row behind held them overhead, making a tortoise as they would for plunging arrow fire. Habit, but it was also habit that kept them so steady. Even when the first soldiers went down; the arquebus balls knocked men back, punctured shields, smashed through the links of mail.

  This time Esmond winced; Adrian sensed he wasn't altogether happy at seeing personal courage and skill and strength made as nothing by a machine striking from twice bowshot.

  " 'Strong-Arm! How the glory of man is extinguished!' " the elder Gellert murmured; a king of Rope had made that cry from the heart, the first time he saw a bolt from the newly-invented catapult.

  "Progress," Adrian replied. Then: "Cease fire!"

  The first of the fireships would ground not ten yards from its target. The Islander sailors had done their work well.

  * * *

  "Ungh."

  A man not two paces from Justiciar Demansk went down, grunting like someone who'd been gut-punched. Unlike a gut-punched boxer he wasn't going to get up, not from the amount of blood that welled out around his clutching fingers. Better he bleeds to death now, Demansk thought with a veteran's ruthless compassion. I'd rather, than go slow from the green rot. A puncture down in the gut always mortified. He could smell shit among the blood-stink, even from here.

  "That went right through his shield," he said aloud.

  "Fuckin' right it did," his First Spear said. "Sir, you've got to get out of here! You get killed, who's going to command this ratfuck? I can't, and them bastards in the command tent, most of 'em can't."

  Demansk shook his head. Jeschonyk actually had half a dozen reasonably experienced advisors-one good thing about the past twenty years of Confederation history was that the upper classes were full of men who'd seen red on the field. He turned in exasperation, keeping his voice low:

  "I can't expect the men to hold steady under this if I don't-"

  Ptannggg. Another trooper went down in front of him, a hole punched through his shield. Justiciar Demansk found himself on the rough stones of the causeway as well, blinking up at the First Spear's horrified face.

  "Where's the velipad that kicked me?" he muttered.

  His hand went to where the pain was, the left side of his torso, and then he jerked it away from metal burning hot. When he looked down there was a trough along his flank, ploughed into the thick cast bronze of his breast-and-back muscled cuirass. Lead was splashed across it.

  "The Justiciar's dead! The commander's dead!" someone was wailing.

  That pulled him out of his dazed wonder. He took a deep breath; there was a shooting pain in his ribs, but nothing desperate, no blood on his breath or grating of bone ends.

  "I am not!" he said. "Get me up, gods condemn you!"

  Hands pulled him up; he walked up and down behind the ranked troops, letting them see him.

  Some way of making hellpowder throw things, he realized. Throw them farther than a torsion catapult can, and too fast to see. That's what those puffs of smoke on the galley are.

  Another thought brought his eyes wide, appalled. "First Spear!" he snapped. "Get those men with the oars away from there."

  "Let it ground, sir?" he asked, puzzled.

  "We can't stop it." Still less push it around the front of the causeway, to drift harmlessly downwind. Somebody out there-those damned Gellerts-had probably timed this very carefully. "Have the battalion retreat-get everyone else out behind us. Walking retreat, shield-wall formation, but be damned quick about it. Move!"

  He turned himself and began to walk to the rear. He'd been campaigning most of his fif
ty years; there was nothing in him of the need to prove his courage that had driven a young tribune to lunacy, so long ago. And the First Spear was partly right; nobody else was going to do this job better, if he couldn't.

  * * *

  "They're bugging out," Esmond said, disappointment in his voice. "Someone got a rush of thought to the head."

  Adrian nodded tightly; he wasn't grieved that fewer men would be burned alive. The first of the fireships was almost in contact with the sandbank the causeway was being built on. . almost. .

  "There!" he said.

  The comandeered merchantman touched, lurched forward and then stopped dead. With a long slow crackling audible even over the growing roar of the fire, the mast toppled forward, to lie with its burning sail over the rock of the causeway. It fell towards the tower, but did not quite touch it-men were leaning out of the upper works of the siege tower, reckless of arquebus bullets, and pouring water down the layers of thick green hides that made up its outer skin. Any moment now. .

  BUDDUFFF.

  The force of the explosion was muffled by the hull of the ship, and the weight of combustibles lying above it. That confinement increased the force, as well. The burning deck of the fireship vanished in a spectactular volcano of flame, burning planks, beams, and dozens of barrels of flammables; many of them had ruptured in the hull as well, and added their sticky, fast-burning contents to the cone of flame that leapt upwards. It wasn't aimed at anything in particular, but the breeze bent it south and eastwards. . and most of it fell across the wall of the siege tower. Buckets of water became utter irrelevancies, and so did the layers of hide-they dried out and began to burn almost immediately. When the explosion cleared, the whole flank of the tower was already burning, and smoke was pouring out of the arrow slits and catapult ports all along the other side of it. Men jumped too, men with their hair and clothes aflame. A few were running from the other side, but not many could have made it down the ladders. The tower was a chimney now, sucking in air from the bottom and blasting it out the top and every opening along the sides, the thick timbers and internal bracing adding to the holocaust.