Harry Turtledove - Fox and Empire

He looked over toward the trees again. He waved, on the off chance that anyone over there was looking in his direction and could recognize him at a considerable distance through the dust the chariots and horses had kicked up. A sudden thrust at the flank and rear of the imperials would be extremely welcome about now. The longer the men he' d concealed in the forest delayed, the greater the effect of that thrust would be. He knew as much. If they delayed much longer, though, the battle would be lost.

Van looked in the same direction. "Maybe they're waiting for an invitation, like shy maids hanging back from the dance."

"There won't be any dance left if they don't come soon," Gerin said.

Then he shouted. Out from among the oaks burst the chariots he'd stationed there. On toward the imperials they thundered, picking up speed with every lengthening stride of their horses. The crews in the cars shouted like men possessed. Arrows flew ahead of the chariots.

The imperials shouted, too, in dismay. Their whole line shook as Gerin's men took them from an unexpected direction. "Come on!" the Fox shouted, to all his warriors whom the men of the Elabonian Empire had been pressing back. "Now is our chance to beat those bastards!"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he'd phrased that differently. It was all too accurate for comfort. He'd hoped the flank attack would win him the battle. Instead, it was doing exactly what he'd said-it was giving him a chance to win. That it was doing no more than giving him a chance told him with unpleasant clarity how much trouble he'd been in.

"Forward!" he shouted. Forward his line went, instead of moving back. Forward-for a little while. Then the imperial resistance stiffened. Had he had a hundred chariots in the wood, he might have thrown the men of the Elabonian Empire into confusion enough to let him crush them. But, had he had a hundred chariots in the wood, he was likelier to have weakened the rest of his force so much, the battle would have been lost before they could think about a flank attack.

Dagref drove the chariot past a car full of imperials. Van speared the horse closest to him. Spouting blood, the beast screamed and foundered. Dagref's slash made the driver scream, too, and clutch at his neck. Gerin shot one of the archers in the car. The other dove out before anything dreadful could happen to him.

"That's as near a clean sweep as makes no difference," Van said as the archer ran for his life.

"You'll talk differently if he shoots you from ambush," Gerin said.

"If he shoots Uncle Van from ambush, he probably won't talk at all," Dagref said over his shoulder.

"To the five hells with logic, and with both of you, too," Van said. He looked around. "Now we get down to it. Are we going to lick these whoresons, or are they going to lick us?"

Gerin looked around, too. What had been an advance was stalled. The imperials had managed to contain the band that had attacked them from the forest. Without much fuss, without much style, but with plenty of men, they pressed ahead with the fight. He'd mauled them. He had indeed hurt them worse than they'd hurt him, much worse. They kept coming anyhow.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do about that. It wasn't how warfare usually worked up here in the northlands. Finding foes stubborn enough to keep fighting no matter how badly battered they were wasn't easy anywhere. A lifetime of experience and as much reading as he'd been able to do convinced him of the truth there.

He had just reached that unhappy conclusion when Dagref said, "I don't think we can force them back, Father."

"I don't, either," Gerin said. "They have too many men-that's all there is to it. Anything even close to equal numbers, and we'd beat them. We've proved that. But we haven't got equal numbers, and we can' t get them."

"Well, what do you aim to do, then, Fox?" Van asked.

"I've got two unpleasant choices," Gerin answered. "I can give up this battle, admit we've lost, retreat, and yield the field to the imperials. Or I can keep on fighting, do the best I can, and watch them chew my army to pieces one bite at a time."

"You're right-those are both nasty choices," Van said.

"If you see any others, please let me know," Gerin said. Van grunted while he thought, then shook his head. Gerin sighed. "Too bad. I was hoping you would."

Dagref said, "What will you do, Father?"

"What would you do?" Gerin returned. The battle was lost, one way or the other, but he might at least get a lesson out of it. It wasn't so dreadfully lost that a moment spent here would matter one way or the other.

"I'd hold the army together," Dagref answered at once. "Maybe they'll divide their force or send out detachments we can pick off, the way they did before, or leave themselves open to ambush. If we still have an army, we can take advantage of that. If we let them grind us here like flour, we're finished."

"You're my son, all right. For better and for worse, we think alike. I'm going to see if the imperials will the satisfied with a win and let us go." Gerin raised his voice in a reluctant shout: "Pull back, men of the northlands! Pull back!"

The imperials made no more than a token pursuit-certainly less than he would have made were roles reversed. He thought the commander facing him was the one who'd led the first imperial force into the northlands. The other one, with the larger part of Crebbig I's army, had more drive and more imagination-and was facing Aragis, who, while surely a driver, imagined very little.

Gerin had scant time to worry about Aragis. He had scant time to worry about anything except making certain he put enough distance between his army and that of the Elabonian Empire to let his men camp safely. That, with some effort, he managed.

Adiatunnus came up to him after the army halted. "And what do we do now?" the Trokm? chieftain asked.

"To the crows with me if I know," Gerin answered.

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What the army did, over the next several days, was retreat. Gerin fought a number of sharp skirmishes with the imperials. He never had any trouble pushing back their advance parties. Whenever the main force came up to support the scouts, though, he had to fall back himself.

Before long, he found himself with no choice but to abandon the swath of Aragis' country in which his army had been foraging. He cursed at having to do it, but it was either that or move south and let the imperials get between him and his own homeland. He resolved not to do that no matter what. If the Elabonian Empire wanted him out of his own holdings, the imperials would have to come and dig him out one keep at a time, just as Aragis would have had to do if he'd beaten him in the field.

"Good thing we stole their supply train," Van said as he gnawed sausage of an evening.

"Anything that keeps us going is good," Gerin said. "We'll have a hard time doing it again, worse luck-they've pushed us a long ways back from the Elabon Way now."

"See any chance of turning loose a decent counterattack?" the outlander asked, taking another bite.

"I wish I did," Gerin said. "This fellow isn't leaving himself open, though. He doesn't fight like a Trokm? or one of our crackbrained barons up here. I wish he would just charge straight ahead without looking where he's going. It would make life a lot simpler. But he doesn't want to do that. Slow but sure, that's him."

"Doesn't seem stupid, anyhow," Van said. He looked back over his shoulder, toward the northeast. "If he keeps coming, he's liable to push us back into the valley of Ikos whether we want to go there or not."

"That thought had also crossed my mind," Gerin said unhappily. "If we have to go back through there, we'll go back through there, that's all. Biton is the farseeing god. If he can't see far enough to figure out that we're doing what we have to do, not what we want to do, he's not as smart as I think, nor as smart as he thinks he is, either."