There was still enough twilight that Melody could see the camps spread around her, the armies of five kingdoms and one tribe, their cookfires dying, their tents low shadowed humps. No doubt some of their men were already asleep.
They'd get little enough of it this night.
Late Five-Month had advantages and disadvantages for invasion. Grazing was good, and they had the whole summer ahead of them, if need be. On the other hand, the season was subject to thunderstorms, and the nights were short. And tonight they had much to do between nightfall and dawn, especially between nightfall and moonrise.
She recognized the Indrossan command tent by the torches lashed to spears thrust in the ground beside its entrance. And as she approached, by its being guarded. She dismounted in front of it, handed the reins to her orderly, and loud and clear, identified herself to the guards as Marshal Macurdy's aide, then told them to take her to their commander.
And waited. Despite her position, and her bright new colonel's insignia, they stared back insolently, showing no sign of obeying. So she drew her saber, and before either man realized what she had in mind, held its point to the belly of the nearest.
"You son of a bitch! Did you hear what I said? How do you want it? Quick and bloody, here and now? Or at a rope's end tomorrow, pulled up to strangle from a branch after a drumhead court?"
The man backed away into the entrance, and she followed, keeping her blade at his belly while her aide, a Kullvordi, followed with his own saber, covering her back. When she was inside, she shouted the Indrossan general's name. "Eldersov! I have orders for you from Marshal Macurdy!"
It wasn't entirely dark inside. She could see a short corridor through the tent, with rooms on each side set off by curtains. Lamplight filtered through two of them, and a hand brushed one aside. "General!" the guard squawked. "She drew her sword on me and forced her way in!"
"You miserable get of a troll and a sow!" Melody snapped, "An insult to me is an insult to the marshal!" Her glance shifted to the general. "I'm Marshal Macurdy's aide. I stopped at the entrance, showed them my baton of authority, and told them I had orders to deliver to you from the marshal. They stood there and sneered."
His grunt dripped scorn. "You're a woman. We don't take orders from women here."
"They're not my orders, they're Marshal Macurdy's. Do you refuse them? When I carry a message from the marshal, I speak with his voice."
"We take no one's orders from a woman."
Abruptly her sword tip moved from the guard to the general. "You just signed your death warrant, general. Unless you reconsider." Even while she said it, she knew he wouldn't, which it seemed to her was just as well. Otherwise he'd be a source of trouble and danger throughout the campaign. "No? Where's your second in command?"
Another curtain had been pushed aside; now a man stepped out. "I'm Colonel Lidsok."
"Colonel, you are now in command of the Indrossan Army. General Eldersov is under arrest. I'm taking him to the marshal's headquarters for trial."
With his curtain open, enough light shone into the corridor that the colonel could see the woman's teeth. Lidsok hesitated, unsure. Her wrist twitched and the sword tip bit, not deeply, slicing Eldersov's skin. "Sergeant at arms!" he shrieked, "arrest these intruders!"
Shit! she thought, and thrust hard with her sword, her wrist half turning. What lousy timing. For just a moment, Eldersov stared down at his belly while his life's blood poured from his severed aorta into his abdominal cavity. Then his knees buckled, and he pitched forward dead, Melody stepping aside. While she'd talked, another man had emerged from a room toward the rear, saber in fist. The sergeant at arms, she decided, and ignored him. "Colonel," she said, "do you reject Marshal Macurdy's orders?"
Again Lidsok hesitated, more from not knowing how to address this bloody madwoman than anything else. Ma'am? Sir? He settled on rank. "No, Colonel," he said. "I do not reject them."
"Did you hear Eldersov refuse Marshal Macurdy's orders? And order the marshal's aide arrested?"
"Yes, Colonel. I heard him do both those things."
"Good. I suggest you tell your sergeant at arms to drag the carrion out of here and have it tied across a horse. I'll stop on my way back to the marshal's headquarters, and take it with me. Eldersov's no loss. If a general refuses his commander's orders, particularly in war, God knows how much disaster and death he'll bring on people, his and his allies. Now, let's get down to business. You'll be crossing the river tonight, and I've got orders for four more armies to deliver within the hour."
Lidsok looked at the sergeant at arms. "You heard the marshal's aide. Drag the body out."
Reluctantly the sergeant at arms sheathed his saber, came over to his late general, took him under the arms, and began dragging him toward the tent's back entrance. Melody became aware that the guard she'd followed in still stood there.
She spoke softly, enunciating. "Do you have a post, soldier?" she asked.
He looked to his colonel, then back at Melody. "Uh, yessir."
"Good. Return to it. And keep your mouth shut. I've got a good memory for faces."
The man sidled away, then turned out through the entrance.
"Colonel, I presume you know your loading area and boats?"
"Yes, Colonel. I'm our embarkation commander."
"Good. Have your troops strike and pack their tents as drilled, and leave them. In two hours—two hours—your army will be on the shore, ready to go. Their gear will follow in the morning. Any problem with that? Tell me if there is."
"None whatever, Colonel. And Colonel?"
"Yes?"
"In my view, General Eldersov was not fit to command, and most of his officers feel the same. But he was a crony of the king's; trouble may grow from this."
"Thank you, Colonel. At your first opportunity you'll write to your king, telling him just what happened here. That's an order, in the interest of the alliance. Perhaps his new wife will help him see reason."
With her aide she left the tent then, mounted her horse and rode away in the twilight, leaving two awed guards staring after her.
Terel Kithro—Major Kithro—was the "crossing marshal," responsible for coordinating the embarkation of the various armies. Not the easiest of jobs. Significant mental lapses among key officers could cause chaos.
The moon wouldn't rise till after midnight, and the Milky Way produced light enough to see only vaguely his immediate surroundings. Torches and bonfires had been forbidden along the river, and loud talk, because sound carries well over water, and the enemy was less than a mile away on the other shore.
But each embarkation commander, and each cohort commander was marked by a loose white cap or wrapping over whatever helmet or other headgear he had on. Also, Kithro had a head for details, quick intelligence, and a responsive memory. He walked briskly along the shore, knowing every motley concentration of small boats, and the cohorts and companies assigned to them. He stopped to speak briefly with each senior commander.
Each cohort commander would ride its lead boat, and Kithro reminded each of them that the bridgehead commander, in the first boat of all, might elect to change course while crossing. The cohort flotillas needed to follow each other closely enough that they would see and duplicate any course change, upstream or down. The bridgehead commander, General Jeremid, had already told them this, not an hour earlier, but it was well to repeat it.
There were compelling reasons that only cohort commanders were being told, and in a murmur. Venders of various sorts had been mixing with the soldiers as the camp filled up, and surely there'd been spies among them. Thus the crossing plan involved one deceit underlying another, and even now, only four men knew all of it, Kithro one of them. As things progressed, of course, the enemy commander would figure it out, more or less, but the later, the better.
Earlier, Kithro had seen a fire lit on a small hill upstream a bit, probably some spy's signal, though what the ylvin commander made of it, there was no telling. A spy was unlikely to have a boat available to take word to him, unless he'd managed to stash one in a shed somewhere. But even so, he'd have to launch it above or below the fleet.
Presumably the ylvin general already knew that three more armies were still enroute a day or two away, marching and riding toward the staging area. And hopefully hadn't expected a crossing until all the southern armies were on hand.
Along the south shore, all but the smallest boats had been commandeered for many miles in both directions, including its southern tributaries. Raiders had snatched barges and ferries even from the north shore, to help transport the cavalry. The miscellaneous smaller boats would carry infantry.
Kithro passed the last of the small boats, and came to the wharves along which the barges now were tied, packed tightly with horses and warriors—the Kormehri cavalry cohort. The Kormehri were the only troops with whom Kithro felt uncomfortable. Their peculiar sense of honor had turned bitter and cruel after the terrible events at Ferny Cove, and their smoldering vengefulness gave off a stink of violence. Meanwhile they waited grimly for the bridgehead commander to lead off.
Jeremid and two companies of Kullvordi cavalry would cross on ferries. As Kithro came up to them, he saw that they too had already loaded, as crowded as the Kormehri. Jeremid would be waiting, no doubt impatiently, for word that things were ready.
Jeremid's ferry was the farthest downstream, tied stern-on to the wharf in a sort of slip, and held against the current by a bow line. On her stern, two raised platforms flanked the ramp, one for the steersman, one for the bosun. Jeremid, on the bosun's platform, watched Kithro clomp up the ramp onto the boat. Its oarsmen half sat on tall seats, oars upright.
He could feel Jeremid's glower, and imagined the nervous stress he felt. "Everything's fine," Kithro murmured. "Pull out whenever you want; just let me off first. Us old crocks are too brittle for fighting."
It had been the right thing to say; he could feel Jeremid lighten, and heard him chuckle. "All right, old crock, get off and we'll get started. I'll see you after the war."
Let us hope, Kithro told himself. When he was on the wharf, the bosun and his helper raised the loading ramp with a windlass, the rattling of its well-greased chain a signal. A moment later he heard Jeremid speak quietly to the bosun, who called softly, "Oars in the water and give her slack." Kithro saw the oars lower, felt the wharf bumped by the stern. The dockers cast off the lines. Quietly the bosun grunted "stroke"; there'd be no drum beat to regulate the rowing tonight. The oarsmen pulled and the boat drew away, sluggishly as if dragging bottom. Meanwhile a courier, who'd been waiting for an hour, nudged his horse's barrel and trotted away toward camp, to inform Macurdy that the crossing had begun.
Now too, Kithro knew, a sleek, carvel-built river cutter would be pulling out, Jesker in command, with five similar cutters following closely. Each held Kullvordi brawlers, men selected for their fighting attitudes, three of them bending strong backs to the oars, while a half dozen more sat with spears and axes. Those in Jesker's boat were to cut loose any craft tied at the landing site, freeing the docks for the troop carriers. The men in the other cutters would defend the axmen and their work, and hold the wharves if need be.
Kithro watched the second ferry pull away from the next dock upstream, and beyond that another, and another. First the ferries, then the barges moved out into the current, disappearing into the night. When the last barge pulled out, the small boats would follow.
But not with all the men; there weren't nearly enough boats for that. The rest stood in ranks in camp. In a few minutes, Macurdy's courier would reach headquarters, and Macurdy would speed march the remaining troops five miles downstream to the Inderstown docks—another part of his fabric of deceit.
Jeremid's gaze was not ahead toward the unseen north shore, but back toward the south shore. When it was only a vaguely darker darkness, he began to count slowly. At thirty, he spoke to the bosun. "Turn downstream and hold course near the middle, until I tell you otherwise. I don't want us seen from either shore." Not that some cat-eyed ylf can't see us if he's watching. But it can make him uncertain; make him stop and puzzle.
The bosun had been prepared for a change in course, but this? "Yes, General," he answered, and ordered the steersman, who pulled hard on the steering oar, turning them sharply left. The oarsmen continued to dip and pull their long oars, despite the break in the bosun's soft and rhythmic chant of "Stroke." With the current, they were making good speed. Upstream there was no light yet from the moonrise to come, and downstream Jeremid still couldn't see the guide torches that should have been lit at dusk. Had better have been, or this operation could run into serious trouble. Though if it came down to it, they'd make it work somehow.
Briefly he turned his attention to what he thought of as the troop deck. Between the oarsmen's narrow halfdecks, with their low protective railings, the cargo deck was packed with horses, each with its rider standing by its head, one hand gripping the bridle while the other stroked the animal's long nose, or its neck. The horses were another source of possible trouble when they docked.
Shortly Jeremid saw a row of torches ahead on the south shore, and spoke to the bosun. "Steer for the Parnston docks. The rest of the army is marching to Inderstown; they'll cross to Parnston from there." The order drew an "ah" of understanding, and the bosun ordered the steersman, who pushed on the steering oar, angling them right. By starlight, Jeremid could make out the next two ferries following, could even hear a low voice calling an order on the nearest—nearer than he liked.
The north shore became more distinct, until at about sixty yards, the bosun gave another order and the steersman turned parallel to it. A minute later, Jeremid made out the Parnston barge docks ahead. Now if Jesker had done his job . . . He had: the barge and ferry docks were clear. The bosun gave more orders, sharply now. The steersman turned them sharply. Oars were raised or backed water, and for long seconds Jeremid forgot to breathe. The oars dipped again, stroked once, then backed strongly; the ferry dragged bottom slightly, and bumped the wharf just enough to throw Jeremid against the bosun's rail. Men jumped onto the wharf with lines, while the portside oarsmen dug blades into the muddy bottom, holding the ferry in place till the lines were secured. Then the bosun ordered the forward ramp lowered.
Several horses had fallen when the ferry bumped the wharf, but they all got up again; there'd been no broken legs. Jeremid was the first to lead his gelding up the ramp, at the same time aware of shouts and swearing from other ferries docking without benefit of longshoremen. He scowled; what he didn't need was wrecks, horses with broken legs, or boats colliding, perhaps dumping their troops into the current.
Ashore, his men stood by their horses. Jesker's advance landing party stood watching; if it had been in a fight, there was no sign of it. They should have a beacon fire ready for lighting. "Jesker!" Jeremid called.
"Here, sir!"
"Light it off!"
"Yes, sir!"
If Macurdy were here, the Ozman thought, he'd have it in flames with a gesture. He looked downstream. It was the barges and the crazy Kormehri that he needed to see to now.
Subcolonel Caill Cearnigh was thoroughly at home in the saddle. He'd been a horseman since childhood, and had passed the midpoint of the century he expected to live. As for riding by night—while his night vision wasn't the best, it was a lot better than any of the Rude Landers', he had no doubt. Though the advantage was less with the cupped, newly risen moon throwing its light across the land.
Whoever the southern commander was, he'd shown himself both clever, and capable of complex staging and coordination. But simple arithmetic made it clear that the numbers the man could have landed so soon, half-trained humans that they were, couldn't begin to hold a landing zone against ylvin cavalry. Certainly not without trenches, ramparts, and troll brambles, and they'd had no time even to begin making them.
Cearnigh had elected to lead his seven companies down the road that paralleled the river. It was quicker and safer, for nearer the river, the land was public pastures. Which had rail fences along jurisdictional lines, and woodchuck and gopher holes a horse could break a leg in.
At their easy trot, his companies should be there in another quarter hour. And then . . . He knew the terrain around Parnston. The southerners had probably taken positions along the wooded west bank of the Sweet Gum River, but it was neither broad nor deep, and the banks were low.
"Colonel!" It was his sergeant major. "Do you hear them?"
Cearnigh shook off his musings, and listening, heard a faint rumble of hoofbeats.
"It sounds as if they've sent out cavalry, Colonel."
Where in hell were they? The sound wasn't from up the road. Ahead and to the left, that was it, cut off from view by a low rounding of land. And not far away.
"They must hear us, Colonel, if we hear them." The sergeant major sounded concerned.
Cearnigh had overlooked that. "Obviously, Sergeant," he said, and called an order to his trumpeter. The instrument's crystal notes brought the column to a halt. Another order turned the westward-bound column into three ranks facing south. The next sent them off the road, rank by rank, again at an easy trot, shields raised, spears at the ready. They'd gone only a short way when the southern cavalry topped the rise about three hundred yards ahead. A single weird cry, a warbling epiglottal shrilling uncanny in the night, triggered a wild clamor, and the invaders spurred their mounts to a canter, charging downhill at the ylver.
For just a moment, Cearnigh felt dismay tinged with panic. Then he barked a command. Trumpets belled, and his troopers spurred their horses, but even on such a mild slope, they had no momentum when the barbarians crashed into them. A smashing blow pierced Cearnigh's shield, wrenched his arm and drove him from the saddle. Somehow he got to his feet without being trampled, aware that the arm was useless, the shoulder dislocated or separated. As he drew his saber, a riderless horse knocked him down. He felt an instant of shock as a forehoof came down on his belly, then a hind hoof crushed his rib cage.
The trumpeter saw his colonel unseated, then the ranks passed through each other, and somehow he was still in his saddle, untouched by any enemy. As a trumpeter, his only weapon was his saber. He lacked even a shield, and as soon as they'd passed through, the enemy wheeled, this time closing with drawn steel. The wild war cry had ceased, replaced by shouts of "FERNY COVE! FERNY COVE!" The air was thick with them, and with impacts, grunts, inarticulate cries, the screams of horses. An enemy singled him out and struck at him. He took the blow on his saber, a blow of more force than he would have imagined, almost paralyzing his arm. Then they'd passed again.
Two things occurred to him at once: The cohort must flee—it was that or be butchered—and no one was in charge. With his left hand he raised his trumpet, and unordered blew retreat, then spurred his horse back toward the road.
But there was no safety in flight. Shouts of "FERNY COVE! FERNY COVE!" pursued him closely. Something—a horse's shoulder—struck his mount from behind, throwing it off stride, and he turned to his left to see the horse that had done it, its rider's face a glimpsed grimace. Then someone on the other side struck his thigh with a saber. He felt and heard his own scream, then the ground slammed him, and he bounced and rolled. For a moment, perhaps a minute, he lay stunned. At least a minute, for when he regained his wits somewhat, the sound of hooves was gone.
And he hadn't been trampled! He reached, felt his bloody thigh. The man who'd struck him had been right handed, had had to swivel in the saddle as he'd passed, and the blow had lacked force. Even so, he couldn't stand, but lay shocked, mentally and physically.
What manner of enemy were these, so full of rage and deadly purpose? Shouting "Ferny Cove" as they rode in pursuit. Who had looked at him with such hatred? Kormehri, obviously.
Colonel Morghild inspected his smashed camp, his shattered companies. As force commander, he'd sent two companies of his own cohort along with Cearnigh's. Holding back three, along with the militia cohorts. Then the Rude Landers had come, and most of the militia had scattered without fighting. His own men had fought of course, fought and fallen. And the enemy, after trampling the camp, had whirled back westward.
Fragments of Cearnigh's companies had ridden, walked, or been helped back to camp, some still straggling in after sunup. Altogether, of more than 1,100 imperial officers and men, 362 were known to be fit for duty, and 334 others reported wounded and unfit. Which left some 400 killed or missing. Morale too had been smashed, would take time to rebuild.
As far as the militia was concerned, if he had his way, they could stay wherever they'd scattered to. But having one's way wasn't part of military service, so he would round them up, all that he could, eat the ass out of their officers, and see what could be made of them.
As for the Rude Landers, they'd been ferrying men across since midnight. Apparently they had no intention of fortifying their landing zone; attack was their strategy.
And "Ferny Cove!" their rallying cry. Their attackers had almost surely been Kormehri. Quaie's atrocities against the Sisterhood had received most of the publicity, perhaps properly so, but it was well known that Quaie had slaughtered the Kormehri companies he'd overrun, taking no prisoners and butchering the wounded.
And now, Morghild told himself, we have our reward. Too bad Quaie isn't here so they can pin it on him in person, with a Kormehri saber.