After the funeral ceremonies and a day and night of rest, Mazeppa's army rose from its robes at first dawn, broke camp, and immediately after sunrise rode out of Kato Town down to the river. But not in drag-ass defeat. It galloped off whooping, as if in victory. It was the first time since they'd entered Sota that Mazeppa's braves had all been together on the march. Heretofore they'd been a gaggle of war parties, suited to the type of war he envisioned and the type of fighting men he had.
Seen from the fort, two thousand braves made a long column, but soon the last of them had galloped out of sight, concealed by terrain and the riverine forest. Headed northward, for from its elbow at Kato, the Sota River ran very nearly north for many miles, the road to Hasty keeping it company near the east shore.
The military council could see no sign that the town had been or would be set afire. Yet the Dkota weren't abandoning the war, and Frazier was in no mood for needless risks. He sent orders to the civil authorities and gate guards that no one was to leave the stockade without his approval or General Jarvi's. Mazeppa might hope to draw the defenders outside, and in an hour or two come storming back, hoping to succeed by ruse where force had failed.
Then he called for volunteers to follow the invaders and report on them, and from those volunteers, appointed a dozen. After giving them instructions, he sent them off under an ensign and sergeant who knew the country.
But there was one volunteer he didn't consider sending: the one-time Dkota, Gavan Feeny. Until finding him among the volunteers, Frazier hadn't realized the young man was in the fort. Gavan, it turned out, had joined the Kato Town militia, and taken part in the defense. Withholding him from this scouting mission was not a matter of distrust. As Frazier explained to the youth, he had better uses for his knowledge, then and in the future.
Mostly the Sota River Road ran through riverine forest that spilled over onto adjacent uplands. For the first four miles, Mazeppa found the road promising: no abatises. But that changed. The road wasn't blocked, but on each side it was flanked by felled trees. Mazeppa stopped. As far up the road as he could see, there was no sign of defenders, but Sotan bowmen were quite able to lay quietly concealed. Of course, they sometimes left such barriers without a single ambusher; it was hard to be sure.
Some distance in advance, the Dkota scouts rode listening, scanning. Even the birds sounded normal. Stopping, they signed to one another, then two rode back and reported. Again the army moved. Mazeppa, who could be marvelously patient, responded to an impulse, and nudged his mount into a canter.
In fact, Katoan ambushers were there, and after letting the scouts and the lead parties pass well into the trap, began to loose arrows at the column. One struck Mazeppa's horse behind the shoulder; it fell like a stone. Which may have saved the chief's life, for at virtually the same instant another hit his quiver when it might otherwise have struck him. He hit the ground rolling and came up on his feet, arrows spilling, then dove for the cover of the fallen tops to avoid being trampled. Other riders too were down.
Mazeppa didn't call a retreat; didn't have a chance. His braves turned back on their own, shouting, warning those behind. Several slowed or stopped to load the fallen onto their mounts. Others, not disabled, saved themselves, for these were men who, in the face of a stampede, might grasp the mane of a lead horse running full out, swing aboard bareback, and control it at once.
It was a one-sided gantlet run at full speed. More horses went down. Others were hit but ran on. Some not hit had riders shot from their backs. But a half minute later the Dkota were out of it. No one knew for sure how many men they'd lost, nor were they about to go back and see.
It could have been worse, Mazeppa realized. This ambush had not been heavily manned.
They continued their retreat at a trot till they came to a place where earlier, open land had been glimpsed on higher ground. Mazeppa stopped, and sent scouts to examine it. They reported a sizeable clearing, with an abandoned cabin and outbuildings. Mazeppa decided, signalled, and leading his column, urged his new mount up the sharp slope, to regroup in the clearing. On its far edge was a gap in the enclosing forest. Gesturing, Mazeppa called to his chief scout: "Leonid, see what's on the other side of that gap."
The scout signed acknowledgement, and trotted his horse in that direction. Now, Mazeppa thought, I will have my chiefs learn who, of their braves, did not emerge from the ambush.
But that was not his prime concern. It was time to consider the morale of his braves again. Two nights earlier, they'd sent the spirits of many of their brothers to God, and this morning they'd fled headlong out of an ambush, attacked by—how many dirt-eaters? Forty? Fifty?
They left the clearing with its buildings burning behind them. Mazeppa's scouts led cross-country eastward and northward, picking their way through an irregular mosaic of forest and prairie, keeping largely to open ground and meeting no resistance. Of the woods they passed through, none had tangles of felled trees. Twice, early on, Mazeppa glimpsed the road, where it climbed out of the riverine forest to pass through prairie. That was where hills pinched out the floodplain, but inevitably the road returned to the floodplain again. He was not tempted to return to it. Enough to parallel it. In fact he tended eastward. The terrain seemed more open there. After a bit, he decided: to ride boldly east, and strike northward later. Perhaps he'd find dirt-eater settlements whose people hadn't fled; it would be good for morale.
Even riding over grassland was brightening their eyes.
>From 20,000 feet, Tahmm tracked the Dkota on the screen, concerned at their unforeseen change of course. The Austin militias were moving northward up the Hasty-Austin Road, presumably led by Donald Maltby, and there seemed a real chance they'd run into the much larger invader force. The ill-coordinated militias were growing from locale to locale, picking up locals, and should grow notably at Fairbow, as it had at Tonna. But even so, if they met the Dkota in open combat, it would prove disastrous. Militias were trained as squads and platoons, a few as companies, but as a battalion-sized force . . . ? Yet their involvement was needed. The trick would be to create a situation suited to them, though what that might be . . .
He triggered his radio.
Messengers had galloped in from Frazier's scouts, reporting the successful ambush, and that the Dkota had left the road. Frazier in turn had sent riders pounding north up the road to let other ambushers know.
Freddy was in his tiny command post when his com buzzed softly. "This is Freddy."
It was a conference call, Tahmm reporting the Dkotan commitment eastward, the progress of Donald's militias riding north, and the potential for their meeting. "Freddy, what can you do about it?" he finished.
Freddy closed his eyes to better image the map in his mind. "Luis, are you getting this?" he asked.
"Right. I need to sort out the possibilities with Keith, but here's what I have in mind. . . ."
Good, Tahmm thought when Luis had finished. This crew is as good as you can hope for, but Luis . . . came through at Eisenbach.
A hundred and twenty miles north, Gallagher, Goyuk and their braves followed their guides through the three-year-old burn. Reaching riverine forest, they came to the barrier of fallen trees, and turning north again, to the stretch of prairie that took them to the Misasip.
They paused by the river.
Gallagher felt good about his decision. His scouts were the same men who'd scouted the route in the month of grass growing, all the way to Hasty. Men who remember details. At the great camp, they'd said there was still a considerable distance to go, mostly through forest, before they'd reach the Misasip. To go that way, it had seemed to him, his army would spend days seeking its way around barriers, and fighting at a serious disadvantage.
It was not a way of war his people knew, and he'd wondered if his braves, many of them, might decide to go home. Many would not have come, except for what Sky Chief had said: that the dirt-eaters planned to kill all the buffalo. And a person had the right to decide that Sky Chief lied.
But today, on this new path, not a single arrow had been shot at them, and here they were at the Misasip. He wondered if the dirt-eaters even knew.
While their horses rested and grazed, the braves sat eating dried meat and pemmican. After a while, Gallagher and Goyuk sent couriers to their subchiefs, telling them the time had come to swim their horses across the river. When all had heard, he shouted a command, which was repeated by the cane men and the chiefs of war parties. Then he shook his spear overhead, strong arm pumping, and urged his horse down the river bank, a river more handsome than the Mizzoo, much less muddy. At the bank it was too deep to wade; the animal simply plunged in.
At once the cold current carried him downstream, his horse swimming powerfully, angling toward the other side, its progress as much downstream as across the current. With Gallagher's weight on its back, only its head and neck remained clear of the water. It was quickly laboring, eyes rolling. Sliding from his saddle, Gallagher gripped his horse's tail, letting it tow him. Now its back emerged; it would make better progress. An arrow struck the empty saddle, and Gallagher looked toward the shore. Here along the river there was not the tangled barrier he'd learned to dread, but dirt-eaters stood by their horses, drawing longbows, shooting arrows.
He spoke to his horse, encouraging it. "Be strong, my friend. With God's help we'll be safe."
Mostly it was the horses the dirt-eaters shot at; they were better targets. Gallagher never considered veering shoreward to fight. He knew the long knives the dirt-eaters carried. Even if his horse wasn't killed by a close-range shot, they could strike it with the blade as it struggled up the bank, and himself as he followed.
Clearly they'd known he was coming. He saw braves free-swimming now, and horses with arrows stuck in necks and backs. Other horses, dead or dying, floated with heads submerged. For the first time he peered at the far shore, the east shore. There too now, dirt-eaters on horseback jogged southward, keeping pace.
It seemed to him his army might have a long way to go in the water, maybe too far for horses to swim. Looking back, he called an order: move to mid-stream, then ride the current till they saw a place on the east bank where they could safely land.
He heard his order passed on, and forged forward to his horse's head, to guide it.
Time and the riverbanks slid by. It seemed they'd never be free of the bowmen on the shores. The cold water sucked body heat from horses and men. Some horses gave out and drowned, leaving their riders to catch one of the remounts that followed. On both banks, dirt-eater horsemen kept pace, but now, with the braves in mid-stream, the enemy saved his arrows.
At length the swimming braves saw the town of Cloud ahead on their right. From there, men rowed out in boats, wielding bows and sabers. But shooting longbows required standing, which made balance tricky, and boats were overturned by braves who'd approached underwater. The other boats drew off a ways; their people expended their arrows, then left.
Ironically it was a barrier of fallen trees that blocked their east-shore pursuers, and a prairie to the south of it saved the army. Deep-chilled, staggering, braves and horses struggled ashore. Most of the braves were too numb and dull-witted from hypothermia to pull themselves into the saddle. They scattered on foot to the fringe of the woods, where they gathered dry sticks for fires. Their sleeping robes were wet and cold, and the men spread them, rubbing most of the water out. Then left them in the afternoon sunlight, along with their saddles and other gear, to dry as much as they would.
For a time the war parties did not muster. The braves simply worked wherever they were, and Gallagher, Goyuk and their subchiefs didn't know how many men they had left. But before evening the war parties had gathered, and their chiefs counted their braves. The horse herd was gathered and guards posted.
The breeze and sun were warm. Men and horses dozed.
When they roused, they were famished. The men rummaged their saddlebags and ate. The horses grazed. In total, sixty-four braves were missing—killed or drowned. Gallagher did not doubt he'd have lost more, probably many more, if he'd fought fifteen or twenty miles of one-sided skirmishes along the road to Cloud. As it was, he still had a large and dangerous army, and they'd crossed the river. Not bad, he thought, not at all.
Night came. The men slept cold, their robes only half dried. When at last dawn arrived they rose stiffly, wrestled to warm themselves, chewed jerky with strong jaws, then mounted and rode off southward on the road to Hasty. From time to time, when they came to clearings or prairie, they stopped to spread their robes in the sun while the horses grazed. Morale recovered further as the miles passed without abatises.
Felled trees, yes, in bunches here and there, worrying and slowing them—and perhaps buying time for the dirt-eaters. A few times, Sotan sharpshooters took advantage of those tangles to shoot three or four braves before racing away, back through uncut forest. But all in all, it seemed to the Ulsters and Yellow Bears that the hard times were behind them.
That evening the Higuchians held another conference: Carlos and Paddy in the palace, Luis in his rented room, Peng in Cloud, Freddy somewhere north of Kato Town, and Tahmm and Lemmi in Tahmm's scout.
Tahmm initiated the call, and spoke first. "I can see Mazeppa's army now, and Donald's militias, so I'm in the best position to orient all of us. Freddy, where are you?"
"With Jarvi and Frazier bivouacked by the river road about thirty miles north of Kato. No tents, just sleeping under the sky and trees—so we can get on the way again early.
"We'd have made better time, but the road was blocked in places, part of the abatis system. We sent riders out ahead to get it cleared, and fortunately there were militia close by. They furnished the ax power, we did the pulling and lifting.
"The road's clear now, all the way to where we'll leave it, on what the locals call the Dindigul Trail, just south of Little Bend. It's a fairly straight shot to the Dindigul stockade.
"And that's it for me."
"Fine," Tahmm said. "Peng, tell them what you told me earlier."
Peng told about the northern army bypassing Cloud. "They took modest losses," he went on. "The locals estimate two or three hundred, so perhaps one hundred. They may reach Noka late tomorrow. The abatises there are neither extensive nor intricate; with good scouting, they can be bypassed. The Dkota experience west of Cloud has made bypassing attractive to them.
"It's not clear whether they'll try to take the Noka Stockade; it's said to be strong and well-manned. They'll probably burn the town though, which should occupy them for a few hours; it's a good-sized town.
"Carlos may want to leave Hasty in the morning, for the Knees, to provide liaison with the forces in ambush there. And that's all I have for now."
"Thanks, Peng," Tahmm said. "Lemmi's with me, and able to ride if need be. Luis asked for him earlier today, so Korri made an illicit thousand-mile sonic boom, delivering him to Kato. I took the transfer in Bishop Joseph's pasture. I'll let him off by the spring in the corner of the brother farm pasture."
He paused. "Luis, it's your turn. Take over."
"Right. Korri, if you're listening, thanks for bringing Lemmi. He and I need to be at Dindigul too. When it comes to reading Mazeppa—maybe talking with him—Lemmi knows him a lot better than any of the rest of us do.
"Carlos, have you got anything to say?"
"Yeah. If you're leaving for Dindigul, I better stay here instead of going to the Knees. Because something's going on here in the palace that feels important."
"Any idea what?"
"Nope, but something." He paused. "I think Paddy's got something to say. Paddy?"
"Yes sor. Oi'm worried about Luis and Lemmi and Freddy all being at Dindigul. If it falls, we'll lose them and General Jarvi's battalion too. So oi'd like to have the 2nd Rifle Company sent there, but oi'm not sure oi can get Colonel Bonde to send it. Do oi have permission to kill him if oi need to?"
"Send them if you can, Paddy. I should have thought of that myself. Work on Bonde this evening; Carlos can let me know how it goes. But don't kill him except in extreme emergency. We need the stability he provides."
Tahmm didn't comment. His proper role was support: aerial observation, and as necessary, errand boy and sounding board. Dindigul was vital to the whole operation. If it fell, the situation would be impossible to salvage. But Luis was right about Bonde's importance at Hasty, alive.
Luis continued. "At risk of belaboring the obvious, this is a good time to remember our goals. And that if we can, we need to come out of this with Mazeppa and Eldred alive. And Clonarty. And with noncombatant casualties as low as possible. We've done pretty well so far, but we need to avoid any more massacres like those at Ellbogen and Grove Falls.
"And Carlos, you're right. Stay at the palace. Something is going on there; I feel it too."
Riding west to the abandoned brother farm to pick up Lemmi, Luis thought about Dindigul. The country there was thinly peopled; rangeland, with too little wood suited for fence rails. Dindigul itself, though the seat of a barony, was scarcely even a village, and in the Royal Domains, at that. He wondered how strong the stockade was.
The answer to that could be the key to how this war played out, and to whether he and Lemmi survived to engineer a peace. If they didn't, Carlos and Peng would have a helluva job picking up the pieces.