Roland Green - Great King_s war

And he would have strung Balthar up, too, if in so doing he hadn't feared gaining the name of a Great King who does not honor his vassal's rights. Being saddled with that kind of reputation, in the Great Kingdoms, was an open invitation to revolt by one's vassals-and invasion by his neighbors. And right now, despite last year's impressive victories, he was only one defeat away from losing everything to Styphon's House. And his princes and nobles knew it.

He only hoped his neighbors didn't.

At least Kalvan had accomplished one major thing during the harsh winter months; he had created an independent Royal Army of Hos-Hostigos. It was necessarily a compromise force, since Kalvan had no hereditary lands to supply troops. He would become Prince of Hostigos upon Ptosphes' death, of course, but he hoped that event was decades away. When the invasion of Sask, last fall, ended in Sarrask's surrender, there'd been seven to eight thousand mercenaries, hired by Gormoth of Nostor and Sarask for the war against Hostigos, with no place to go. Styphon's House considered them Kalvan's troops since they hadn't fought to the death, and King Kaiphranos considered them generally untrustworthy.

Kalvan made the free lances an offer, with the blessing of Prince Ptosphes and the grudging agreement of Prince Pheblon of Nostor and Prince Balthames of Sashta; twenty-acres of land and twenty newly minted silver crowns for each enlisted man; a hundred acres, a hundred crowns and a team of oxen for each petty-captain; and a small barony and a hundred gold crowns for each captain in selected regions of war-ravaged northern Hostigos, Nostor and Sashta. Well over two-thirds of the unemployed mercenaries had taken Kalvan up on his offer.

Kalvan had organized these 'volunteers' into four infantry regiments of five-hundred men, ten cavalry regiments of two-hundred and sixty men and an additional Mobile Force of six hundred mounted pikemen and musketeers-two hundred of the musketeers with rifled weapons. Hopefully, the following year would see them all equipped with rifles and sabers. The new Royal Army and the tried and true Army of Hostigos would form the anchor for the Army of Hos-Hostigos. Kalvan would have liked a better ratio of foot to horse in the Royal Army, but here-and-now mercenaries were predominantly cavalry, reminiscent of the German reiters, Sixteenth Century mercenary pistol-wielding heavy cavalry who had dominated the battlefields of France during the Wars of Religion.

His next step had been to reform army organization without turning it on its head, starting with the new Royal Army and ending with all the princely armies of the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos. Standard here-and-now organization had been companies, bands and blocks or squares, of varying size, sometimes in the same army. The whole system wasn't much advanced over the Medieval battles: vanward, center and rearward.

Kalvan retained the companies, made them one hundred and ten men strong under a petty-captain, put two companies into a battalion and made a regiment under the command of a colonel out of three battalions, one a headquarters outfit with sixty officers and halberdiers. With the cavalry it was troops, squadrons and regiments.

Kalvan sent a third of the army to their new homes and quartered the rest in Hostigos Town and Tarr-Hostigos for the drill and training in his new tactics. This had put a real strain on the capital's housing, despite some hastily built barracks, nor had his subjects been happy about competing with the new Royal Army for rations…

The hill the road climbed ahead was higher than the one his troop had just descended. As they left the shelter of the valley, Kalvan felt the chilly wind on his back and his horse whickered irritably. At least the wind was only chilly, not cold, and the hard blue-sky overhead now shed freezing rain instead of snow. The mud of the road had turned rubbery elsewhere, and in a few places it had thawed enough to be sticky. It wasn't spring yet, but the Winter of the Wolves was definitely behind them.

Towards the middle of the wagon train Kalvan came to a big long, hauling wagon-two sets of wheels connected by a long beam and drawn by eight oxen. Tied to the beam was a massive canvas wrapped bundle; on either side of it were two iron-rimmed gun wheels. Another eight-pounder was on its way to the Army of Observation, disassembled for easier travel. The carriage, trail, tools and harness would be back somewhere in the train. When the whole piece was assembled at Tarr-Locra, one more Beshtan gun could go into the shop to be modernized with trunnions and a proper carriage.

The head of the wagon train his troop was passing reached the crest of the hill before Kalvan's party came up with it. He saw the train's captain rein in abruptly and throw up his left hand in a signal to halt. As Kalvan rode up, he drew a pistol from his saddle holster. Kalvan and his troopers did the same.

The far slope of the hill was steep enough so that the road made a wide bend halfway down, where a small village straggled along the bend. Smoke billowed from three or four houses, too much for a chimney, and mounted men were riding up and down the road in front of it, shooting randomly into the windows of the unburned wattle and daub huts.

Farther down the road, half a dozen troopers were driving a miscellaneous gaggle of livestock, with dead fowl hanging from their saddles. The Harphaxi colors of yellow and red fluttered from lance tips and on the banner held by a dismounted man standing over a dead horse.

"Move out!" Kalvan shouted, sheathing his pistol and drawing his sword. Major Nicomoth, commanding the escort, drew his and held it out with the flat of the blade across the chest of Kalvan's horse.

"Drop back to the rear, Your Majesty!" he cried. "I beg you!"

It sounded more like an order than a humble subject's request.

Kalvan controlled his first impulse, which was to tell his aide de camp to perform unnatural acts upon himself and let the escort pass on either side. Charging down that hill, at the head of his troop, he'd be in as much danger of being unhorsed and trampled as being shot by the enemy.

All along the train, teamsters were running to the heads of their teams, while guards checked the priming of their muskets and took position. Some perched on their wagon seats to keep a lookout; other crawled under the wagons to fire from cover.

Nicomoth shouted, "Charge!"

The one order no cavalry outfit in any land at any time ever needed to hear twice.

Kalvan's troop of the First Royal Horseguards were all experienced soldiers and expert riders; they didn't bunch up as they plunged down the hill. Halfway to the village, the hillside's boulders and scrub gave way to cultivated fields. Some of the riders took their horses over the ditch beside the road and into the fields, taking a shortcut toward the cattle thieves.

The Harphaxi raiders weren't beginners, either. They dug in their spurs and rode for their lives, except for two who were picked off by wild pistol shoots at miraculously long ranges. Another stayed behind to give the banner bearer a hand up onto his own mount.

Three pistols and a musketoon banged, and both the helpful rider and his mount screamed and went down kicking. The banner bearer knelt, holding the banner out before him like a pike with one hand while drawing a pistol with the other. He fired as Nicomoth charged him but the bullet went wild. In the next moment, Nicomoth's sword came down splitting the man's face. The Guardsman behind Nicomoth drew rein and leaned down out of the saddle and picked up the fallen banner on the tip of his sword. Kalvan joined in the cheering.

As if the cheering had frightened them out of their cover, six mounted men rode out of the rear of the village. Kalvan noted that several wore three-quarter lobster armor and each held a heavy-barreled musketoon slung across his back as well as a brace of pistols. They were riding real destriers, much bigger than the usual Harphaxi horses. Whatever or whoever they were, they weren't friendlies. One the raiders threw a lighted torch onto a thatch roof as he passed, then all six were riding hell-for-leather across the hillside fields towards the far end of the hill.