H. Piper - Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen

"But that's contamination!" the professor of Paratemporal Theory objected. "You're teaching his people to make cannon, and…"

"Just to make better cannon, and if I didn't bring in fake Zygrosi founders, Kalvan would send somebody else to bring in real ones. I will help him in any other way a wandering pack-trader could; information and things like that. I may even go into battle with him again-with one of those back-acting flintlocks. But I want him to win. I admire the man too much to want to hand him an unearned victory on a platter."

"He sounds like a lot of man to me," the lady historian said. "I'd like to meet him, myself."

"Better not, Eldra," Dalla warned. "That princess of his is handy with a pistol, and I don't think she cares much who she shoots."

THE general staff had a big room of their own to meet in, just inside the door of the keep, and the relief map was finished and set up. The General Staff were all new at it. So was he, but he had some vague idea of what a General Staff was supposed to do, which put him several up on any of the rest of them. Xentos was reporting what he had gotten from the Nostori Fifth Column.

"The bakeries work night and day," he said. "And milk cannot be bought at any price-it is all being made into cheese. And most of the meat is being made into smoked sausages."

Stuff a soldier could carry in a haversack and eat uncooked: field-rations. That stuff, even the bread, could be stored, Kalvan thought, but Xentos was also reporting that wagons and oxen were being commandeered, and peasants impressed as drivers. They wouldn't do that too long in advance.

"Then Gormoth isn't waiting to get his harvests in," Ptosphes said. "He'll strike soon, and taking Tarr-Dombra didn't stop him at all."

"It delayed him, Prince," Chartiphon said. "He'd be pouring mercenaries into Nostor now through Sevenhills Valley if we hadn't."

"I grant that." There was a smile on Ptosphes's lips. He'd been learning to smile again, since the powder mills had gone into operation, and especially since Tarr-Dombra had fallen. "We'll have to be ready for him a little sooner than I'd expected, that's all."

"We'll have to be ready for him yesterday at the latest," Rylla said. She'd picked that expression up from him. "What do you think he'll hit us with?"

"Well, he's been shifting troops around," Harmakros said. "He seems to be moving all his mercenaries east, and all his own soldiers west."

"Marax Ford," Ptosphes guessed. "He'll throw the mercenaries at us first."

"Oh, no, Prince!" Chartiphon dissented. "Go all the way around the mountains and all the way up through East Hostigos? He wouldn't do that. Here's how he'll come in."

He drew his big hand-and-a-half sword-none of these newfangled pokers for him-and gave it a little toss in his hand to get the right grip on it, then pointed on the map to where the Listra flowed into the Athan.

"There-Listra-Mouth. He can move his whole army up the river in his own country, force a crossing here-if we let him-and take all Listra Valley to the Saski border. That's where all our iron-works are."

Now that was something. Not so long ago, to Chartiphon, weapons had been just something you fought with; he'd taken them for granted. Now he was realizing that they had to be produced.

That started an argument. Somebody thought Gormoth would try to force one of the gaps. Not Dombra; that was too strong. Maybe Vryllos Gap.

"He'll attack where we don't expect him, that's where," Rylla declared.

"Well, that means we have to expect him everywhere. "Great Galzar!" Ptosphes exploded, drawing his rapier. "That means we have to expect him everywhere from here"-he touched the point to the map to the mouth of the Listra-"to here," which was about where Lewisburg had been in Calvin Morrison's world. "That means that with half Gormoth's strength, we'll have to be stronger than he is at every point."

"Then we'll have to move what men we have around faster," his daughter told him.

Well, good girl! She'd seen what none of the others had, what he'd been thinking about last night, that mobility could make up for lack of numbers.

"Yes," he said. "Harmakros, how many infantrymen could you put horses under? They don't have to be good horses, just good enough to take them where they'll fight on foot."

Harmakros was scandalized. Mounted soldiers were cavalry, everybody knew it took years to train a cavalryman; he had to be practically born at it.

Chartiphon was scandalized, too. Infantrymen were foot soldiers; they had no business on horses.

"It'll mean," he continued, "that in action about one out of four will have to hold horses for the others, but they'll get into action before the battle's over, and they can wear heavier armor. Now, how many infantry can you find mounts for?"

Harmakros looked at him, decided that he was serious, thought for a moment, then grinned. It always took Harmakros a moment or so to recover from the shock of a new idea, but he always came up punching before the count was over.

"Just a minute; I'll see." He pulled the remount officer aside; Rylla joined them with a slate and soapstone. Among other things, Rylla was the mathematician. She'd learned Arabic numerals, even the reason for having a symbol for nothing at all. Very high on the I love Rylla, reasons why list was the fact that the girl had a brain and wasn't afraid to use it.

He turned to Chartiphon and began talking about the defense of Listra-Mouth. They were still discussing it when Rylla and Harmakros came over and joined them.

"Two thousand:' Rylla said. "They all have four legs, and we think they were all alive last evening."

"Eighteen hundred," Harmakros cut it. "We'll need some for pack-train and replacements."

"Sixteen hundred:' Kalvan decided. "Eight hundred pikemen, with pikes and not hunting-spears or those scythe-blade things, and eight hundred arquebusiers, with arquebuses and not rabbit-guns. Can you do that, Chartiphon?"

Chartiphon could. All men who wouldn't fall off their horses, too. "It'll make a Styphon's own hole in the army, though," he added.

Aside from the Mobile Force, that would leave twelve hundred pikemen and two hundred with firearms. Of course, there was the militia: two thousand peasant levies, anybody who could do an hour's foot-drill without dropping dead, armed with anything at all. They would fight bravely if unskillfully. A lot of them were going to get killed.

And, according to best intelligence estimates, Gormoth had six thousand mercenaries, of whom four thousand were cavalry, and four thousand of his own subjects, including neither the senile nor the adolescent and none of them armed with agricultural implements or crossbows. He looked at the map again. Gormoth would attack where he could use his cavalry superiority to best advantage. Either Listra-Mouth or Marax Ford.

"Good. And all the riflemen." All fifty of them. "Put them on the best horses, they'll have to be everywhere at once. And five hundred regular cavalry."

Everybody howled at that. There weren't that many, not uncommitted. Swords flashed over the map, indicating places where they only had half enough now. Contradictions were shouted. One of these days somebody was going to use a sword for something besides map-pointing in one of these arguments. Finally, by robbing Peter and Paul both, they scraped up five hundred for the Mobile Force.

"And I want all those musketoons and lances turned in," he said. "The lances are better pikes than half our pikemen have, and the musketoons are almost as good as arquebuses. We won't have cavalrymen burdened with infantry weapons when the infantry need them as desperately as they do."

Harmakros wanted to know what the cavalry would fight with. "Swords and pistols. The purpose of cavalry is to scout and collect information, neutralize enemy cavalry, harass enemy movement and communications, and pursue fugitives. It is not to fight on foot-that's why we're organizing mounted infantry-and it is not to commit suicide by making attacks on massed pikemen-that's why we're building these light four-pounders. The lances and musketoons will go to the infantry, and the fowling-pieces and scythe-blade things they replace can go to the militia.