John Carr - Siege of Tarr-Hostigos

Yet this should not have been a surprise. Desperate men will take desperate measures. Who had more experience fighting the desperate than Soton, Grand Master of the Zarthani Knights?

Soton smashed his fist against his armored thigh, insensible to the pain.

"Roxthar!" he shrieked. "Investigator, you will pay for this! By Styphon's Wheel, I swear it!"

Verkan Vall finished lighting his pipe with a Kalvan's Time-Line silver and ivory inlaid tinderbox, then turned back to the data screen and its display of information on one Khalid ib'n Hussein. The second cousin of a minor Palestinian prince assassinated five years earlier on his subsector branch, Khalid was putting together a Mideastern superstate that included just about every Islamic nation except Turkey and Iran.

As this new Islamic Caliphate emerged on Fourth Level Europo-American, Hartley Belt its pro-Western leanings seemed to be toppling the balance between Communism, that strange atheistic quasi-religion, and the so-called Free World. In what direction was the question, since India had just fallen to an internal Communist takeover. Another case of the inherent instability of the entire Europo-American, Hispano Columbian Subsector.

Verkan made a note to send out some investigators to see if the Mideast had 'accidentally' acquired a transtemporal hitchhiker like his friend Kalvan. And send out a team to see if they could track this Khalid on adjacent Subsectors in case he proved to be another John F. Kennedy. One of the problems with transtemporal history was that it was always easier to spot the important historical turning points after the damage was done! There was that Paracop chief two thousand years ago, who hadn't paid any attention to an anonymous carpenter's son until the religion his death launched was already shaking whole subsectors to the foundations.

The red light on Verkan's horseshoe desk lit up, announcing an important visitor.

Verkan looked up to see Kostran Garth enter. Kostran's face was red from exertion, his breath came short as if he'd been running, and he was holding out a data-storage wafer in one hand.

"What is it?"

"This just arrived from the Hostigos spy-eye. I scanned it briefly-Dalla had it red-flagged-and I knew you'd want to see it right away."

From the look on Kostran's face, Verkan knew the wafer did not contain good news; only bad news ever traveled that fast. Verkan slipped the wafer into his viewer and watched the wall visiplate light up.

The views began with a sky-eye scan of Hostigos and the surrounding Princedoms, from an altitude that made them all look deceptively peaceful. The next shots were close-ups of Tarr-Hostigos. Verkan sighed with relief; at least he wasn't going to watch Kalvan and his remaining soldiers caught like fish in a net. Without noticing, he began to rub the spot where he'd taken that musket ball to the chest.

The camera panned in closer, suggesting manual control of the cameras {remember to commend Dalia, who was running things back in Harphax City, for that precaution). A human wave was approaching the beleaguered castle; almost the whole Styphoni host seemed to be on the move; closer still, and Verkan saw whole units going down under Hostigi shells and musketry.

Verkan sped up the fast-forward. Whatever was coming, he wanted to get it over with.

The attackers poured into the castle like ants over leftover dog food. Muzzle flashes showed that the keep still had some live defenders. Were Ptosphes and Harmakros among them-Ptosphes who'd refused to leave his home, and Captain-General Harmakros, still worth any three men with two legs?

Suddenly everything vanished in a cloud of smoke. Verkan held his breath until the smoke began to clear. Slowly Tarr-Hostigos reappeared- or what had been Tarr-Hostigos.

A few of the walls still stood, battered and leaning. Otherwise Ptosphes' seat was a pile of smoking rubble. Verkan saw where one aircar-sized chunk of stone had crushed an entire company of Styphoni. The slopes around the castle were covered with more Styphoni-lying still, crawling, stumbling, a few lucky enough to be able to run.

Verkan's fist slammed down on his desk. "By Dralm, Ptosphes did it!"

"What?"

"The old man did what even Kalvan couldn't do. He stopped the Grand Host in its tracks! Look at that mess! The bastards must have taken five, maybe ten thousand casualties. That, my friend, is no longer a Grand Host. By the time Soton and Phidestros sort things out, Kalvan will be safe in Grefftscharrer territory."

Verkan rummaged a flask of Ermut's Best and two cups out of a drawer. "A toast, Kostran. A toast to the memory of a valiant Prince and his last and greatest victory!"

Kostran gagged at the taste of the brandy, but he was smiling as he said, "To Prince Ptosphes!"

Considering the Hostigi resistance, the three thousand casualties taken in entering Tarr-Hostigos surprised no one. From the stories brought in during the day with the wounded, Sirna concluded that another ten to twelve thousand must have been casualties of the keep's explosion. That made roughly fifteen thousand casualties. More than half were dead, and half the wounded wouldn't fight again this year if at all. Sirna would have liked more accurate figures, but she was relieved to know that she could go on doing a University outtime observer's work even in the middle of a battle.

It would be embarrassing if she ever returned home and had to confess that she hadn't taken advantage of her 'unique' opportunity to observe historically significant Fourth Level events. It would probably cost her that doctorate!

Sirna told herself this over and over again, to keep some grip on her sanity, as the wounded poured into the Gull's Nest. It was the first time she'd allowed herself to think of Home Time Line since the day she woke up in Menandra's back bedroom. Somewhat to her surprise it helped.

Having some extra hands helped even more. More of the lightly wounded men turned to changing bandages or helping comrades to the privies. Menandra rolled up her sleeves and went to work setting bones, a skill she'd acquired in her younger days from cleaning up after tavern brawls in Agrys City. She also turned out all of her girls who could be trusted to know a clean bandage from a dirty one, which was a larger number than Sirna had expected.

Another of Scholar Dras' bits of wisdom kept running through Sirna's mind: "The danger of paratemporal contamination doesn't come from the stupidity of lower-level people. It comes from the fact that they're inherently just about as smart as we are. Once they've been shown that something is possible, you would be surprised how fast they can pick it up and even start filling in gaps on their own."

Sirna knew that the problem-solving abilities of outtimers would never surprise her again.

By the time the western sky turned an appropriately bloody color, the flow of fresh wounded had stopped. A little later the sky darkened and rain began to fall. The crash of thunder resounded inside the Gull's Nest, reminding Sirna of Soton's guns. She trudged through the house on feet that felt shod in lead boots, checking splints and dressings she hadn't put on herself.

In the pouring rain outside she heard shouts and screams. Men, drunk or avenging dead comrades or simply celebrating being alive when they'd expected to be dead, were sacking Hostigos Town. The hard-eyed mercenary guards from the Iron Band kept the noise and the noisemakers safely outside.

At least she didn't hear the sinister crackling of flames she'd heard the night the Royal Foundry was sacked. The Styphoni weren't going to burn the town as long as they needed its roofs over their heads.

Sirna felt like a deer that'd somehow managed to be adopted by a pack of wolves. The Captain-General's men would protect her against all the other packs as long as she did what they expected. But that didn't make her a wolf. Somehow it was no longer hard to take for granted a situation she would have found unbelievably degrading two years ago. Not hard at all, when she listened to the screams outside.