Robert Adams - Bili the Axe

Gulping down the bile raised at thought of actually wearing the rotting, maggoty hide, Corbett swung up onto his mount and told Old Johnny, “It certainly will do that, and you know best in that regard. Get any help you need, here. But just stay downwind of me, please .”

Sir Ahrthur Maklarin had had his work table arranged as close to the hot hearth fire as was possible without risking the setting alight of his clothing and the papers which now were piled high on the table. One would have thought that, as heavy as had been the winter’s snows, the spring might have been decently dry, at least; but it was proving to be anything but, and his many necessary rides of inspection in the chill and wet had set every bone and joint and old wound in his body to aching as fiercely as a rotten tooth, and he knew of old that only heat would allay such pain.

Laying aside the quill pen for a moment, he first trimmed the lamps, then took from the hearth a copper loggerhead and, after he had carefully blown the fine ash from the glowing ingot, plunged it, hissing and spluttering, into his pewter tankard. After a tentative sip or two, he drained a deep draft from the now-heated mixture of beer and herbs, wiped off his drooping mustache with a characteristic swipe of his hirsute hand, then set down the tankard and returned to his figures and figurings.

The brigadier was a careful, planning officer. He worked his staff hard and himself ten times harder. He anticipated probabilities and possibilities, meticulously provided for and against each of them and calculated certain needs far in advance of the actualities. All of his immediate subordinates and his noble superiors—he had no real peers—were more or less in awe of the results he almost always achieved, for all their frequent and frustrated cursings of his slow, plodding preparations.

Under his generalship, Skohshun arms had suffered but a single real defeat, and that one—which was the reason they had found it necessary to leave their fine lands in southerly Ohyoh, won at such cost by their forefathers, and cross the river to hack out a new homeland—could reflect only additional glory on the old war dog. His strategies and tactics had enabled his vastly outnumbered battalions to several times inflict such heavy losses upon the attacking hordes that their leaders at last had agreed to allow all of the inhabitants of the Skohshun Confederation to emigrate to the south, across the great river, bearing with them all that they wished and granting them five full years in which to leave Ohyoh.

Of course, there had been that close thing last year, in battle aganst the present holders of these new lands, these doughty Kuhmbuhluhners. But that had not been a defeat; the pike hedge had not been completely broken at any time; it had really been something of a draw—with both sides so severely stung as to willingly allow each other the opportunity to retire in good form.

The old officer again warmed his tankard’s contents, then turned his chair half about and leaned back in it, thrusting his aching legs even closer to the source of the heat while he sipped and thought and muttered to himself.

“Not enough ash trees in this country. The lads of the battalions don’t like the replacement pikeshafts one damned bit. Hummph—don’t blame them, either. Oak’s a damned sight heavier, foot for foot, and the stuff splinters easily, too. But we’ll just have to make do with oak and maple until we hold and can explore more of these new lands.”

He chuckled to himself. “If ever we get to. These New Kuhmbuhluhners seem damned confident, to have suffered such heavy losses last year. It could be all bravado, of course. I pray God that’s all it truly is, else we may well be chin deep in the shit, for fair.

“No less than six battalions chewed up, well chewed up, and the earl hails it as a ‘great victory,’ simply because we were forced to allow what was left of their heavy horse to leave the field. We never even met their foot. Of course, it didn’t look like much, that foot, what I could see of it. No organization to it, apparently, just the usual rabble of archers and slingers and dartmen with a few pole arms here and there. They might do a little damage to us at a distance, but they could never stand against an advance of our hedge.

“No, we have nothing to fear from the Kuhmbuhluhners this year… unless they manage to come up with more of that damned heavy horse. I wonder if they have. Is that why they’re so damnably confident, why they rebuffed the earl’s heralds with such scorn and contumely? It would help vastly in my plans and calculations if I had the advantage of some decent reconnaissance, but no matter how skillful and experienced the scouts I send out, they’ve never come back to me with anything of true value.” He grimaced and then muttered regretfully, “Hell, most of the poor sods have never come back at all.”

Major Wizwel Teague sat his shaggy pony at the forefront of the knot of the pony-mounted company officers at the edge of the field whereon the brazen-throated sergeants were engaged in putting his battalion of pikemen through the intricate maneuvers of close-order drill. From the distance, it appeared to him that the formations were shaping up well, despite the autumn and winter and early-planting season when most of these men had devoted their time exclusively to necessary civil, rather than military, pursuits.

He was tucking the oiled cloak more tightly around his throat in hopes of halting the drip of the cold drizzle from the cheekplate of his helm down his neck and under his gambe-son when a sudden rattle of pikeshafts caused him to look up. From Number Two Company, some of whose ill-angled pikes could be seen to make X’s against the gray, overcast sky behind them, emanated the screamed curses and verbal abuse of several enraged noncoms, punctuated shortly by the solid thwacks of the sergeants’ sticks brought down with force upon the unarmored backs of the recalcitrant pikemen.

Teague simply went back to tucking in his cloak. Things were always so during the first few drills after the months of none, but he had chosen his sergeants carefully, and all were good, tough, experienced men. They soon would have the battalion moving in the certain and precise order demanded.

During the three weeks that it took to move his column up from Sandee’s Cot to the more thickly populated country just south and west of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, the capital and only walled city of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn, the young commander was exceedingly glad that he had so stoutly resisted the well-meant advice of old Count Steev to convey his gear and baggage and supplies in wagons and wains.

Throughout the long years when the huge bunches of the outlaw Ganiks had ravaged and harassed the environs of the scattered safe-glens of the southeasterly portions of the kingdom, there had been a dearth of funds, manpower, peace or opportunity to maintain existing roads or to construct new ones, so Bili of Morguhn had more than sufficient delay and difficulty in establishing and continuing a decent rate of march for his squadron, pack trains and the unwieldy herd of horses, ponies and a few mules and asses.

But move northward they did, despite slippery, sucking mud as a constant deterrent, since every day on the journey saw either rain or at best a misty drizzle. It was hellish and miserable. Within the first half week, there was not a single square inch of dry cloth amongst them all, nor could clothing be dried, for there seldom was much sun and, since not even the Kleesahks could find much dry wood, many nights saw cold, cheerless camps. The cold, biting winds that scoured the heights and whipped through the vales might have served to at least dry some of the sodden woolens and linen and cotton cloth, had not each frigid gust borne upon it unneeded additional moisture.