IronStar Page 12

  Well, thought Kirrah an hour later as they returned to the carriage for the ride back to the school, that was a full day. I have adopted an eight-year-old orphan (make that six local years), I am temporary custodian over a three-hundred-square kilometer landgrant, I have introduced the locals to beamers, wristcomps, the ideas of netphones, irrigation and farming equipment, and modern medical care. And by the way, I may have stumbled across an agriproduct that will revolutionize the entire multi-trillion Krona rejuv industry back in the Regnum. I wonder who will protect the Talamae’s interests, once the big corporations and Mercantiles get wind of this?

  Who do you think? replied a voice from somewhere in the back of her mind. A Survey Helm takes on herself the authority of a First Contact - Shee’thomm - authority with responsibility. The artist guides the wood, the wood guides the artist.

  Chapter 12 (Landing plus eight): Tourist

  “That government is best which governs least.” - “Civil Disobedience”, pub.1849 A.D., by Henry David Thoreau - 19th century A.D. philosopher; United States of America, Terra.

  Kirrah spent the next eighteen days touring what felt like every nook and cranny of the metropolis of Talameths’cha, capital of Talam. With Akaray happily gorging on lessons in a class of students his own age, Kirrah and Irshe, sometimes accompanied by one of the teachers or a Guild member, visited each of the city’s districts. She learned the city extended approximately 2.6 kilometers along the river Geera, tapering to a narrow point at its east end, and spread 1.6 kilometers north from the river into the plains.

  Much of the city consisted of those ninety-meter square buildings called vai’atho, a city block with each side made up of five or six separate residences, each with a private entrance off a common inner courtyard. Each square housed approximately one hundred people in its twenty to twenty-four living units. The corner units were usually shops or businesses, most often retailing the goods or services that a single block typically specialized in. In many ways each block operated as a semi-independent financial institution, with income and effort partly shared. Each block also supplied a set number of armsmen to the King’s service. In each block’s common courtyard, a sort of vegetable garden somehow managed to absorb the unit’s biodegradables and supplied fresh fruits, vegetables, sometimes spices or decorative plants, according to the skills and needs of the unit’s gardeners.

  The inner defensive walls crisscrossing the city were relics of earlier, smaller city boundaries, but were still maintained. These now divided the city into five zones, plus the palace. The southwest zone specialized in agriculture and food preparation, with some forty-five hectares of inside-the-walls farming, plus bakeries and slaughterhouses, tanning, and residences for the workers. Outside the walls, another eight or nine square kilometers of farmland, divided into forty or fifty family-operated plots, provided much of the produce and all of the surplus for trade, barring outside hostilities.

  Kirrah realized, however, that with its walls, river access and hundreds of interior family gardens, this city was well-prepared for any siege. Also outside the walls was a growing accretion of shops, market stalls and dwellings. To Kirrah the city resembled some giant organism getting ready to molt and grow a new, larger wall. Travelling with her escort down the busy streets, visiting one of the bustling open-air markets, or passing through a pleasant residential neighborhood, she was struck again and again by the teeming, colorful order-within-chaos vibrancy of the place.

  The north quadrant looked to be mostly middle and upper class residential, including almost all of the (rather modest, by Regnum standards) civil service, and the three schools, one of which was currently Kirrah’s home. Besides formal schooling, many children were apprenticed by various tradesmen, often within their own home block. The east quadrant was older, consisting of middle class, merchant and laborer dwellings, and included the site of what had been the palace before the latest expansion, a building which was now serving as Guild headquarters. South of that, in the oldest part of the city and extending on a vee-shaped piece of land between a river and the small lake, was a concentration of docks, shipping, warehousing and manufacturing, that is, blacksmiths, shipwrights, armorers and masons.

  The fifth and final section of the city ran in a narrow strip south from the palace, down to the lake. In that section, enclosed by more of those internal walls, were the military barracks, cavalry stables, training and storage facilities, and various armories.

  The city had grown from a few docks and an inn at the point where the river Geera was formed from the union of three major tributaries: the Upper Geera flowing in from the northeast, down which she had first approached the city; the Geeratha - ‘mother of Geera’ - flowing from due east across the plains; and the South Geera, from due south. All three tributaries flowed into the east end of an eight-hundred meter long crescent-shaped lake scoured out of the plains by erosion and turbulence where their currents met. The city had grown and wrapped itself around the north curve of this lake. The combined currents made up a good-sized river, perhaps a hundred meters wide, flowing west to …whatever Sea of the Sun was.

  Trade down the river had been better in the past, several merchants complained to Kirrah, but the O’dai, a larger and comparably advanced nation to the west, had become much more aggressive in the past few years. Now an honest merchant ship could hardly find cargo. Not that he’d want to risk his ship and livelihood to the mercies of a larger and better-armed O’dai ‘excise squadron’. One man had spat on the ground and called them simply pirates with a king’s banner. Kirrah’s years in the Regnum merchant fleet made her a sympathetic audience.

  Her visit to the small military zone had turned up other information. The city’s population of about twenty thousand was protected by a total fighting force of approximately thirteen hundred men. Unlike other trades, military service was exclusively male. This included a palace guard of about one hundred, another two hundred on active city patrol including wall security, these stiffened by ready reserves of four hundred militia. There were also four hundred mounted men serving as border patrol, Irshe’s orange-and-greens, responsible for everything outside the city’s walls. Kirrah gathered there was not a lot of call for police duties. Everyone she met seemed so …polite. Not slow or passive, no one could accuse Slaetra or her students of being anything less than fully absorbed by life, but consideration for others seemed almost culturally ingrained. Even in the poorest or most industrialized sections, there was nothing that could properly be classed as slums.

  The city also maintained about two hundred mounted men, a force Kirrah could only consider as cavalry. They rode specially trained war horses and wore the only metal armor she had seen. Each man carried one of those thick shields which had been the subject of her sidearm demonstration, and a heavy double-handed sword that could probably cut an opponent in half. For the first time, she also met someone who was less than eager to answer all her questions. As far as she could glean with Irshe filling in a few blanks, although the cavalry wore orange-and-blue they considered themselves an elite force, answerable to no one but the King, and well able to deal with any enemy who dared show themselves within sight of the city walls.

  Their commander, a Major Doi’tam shu’Gamalar, saw no reason to take questions or advice from anyone, with or without a letter of introduction from the Guildmaster. The cavalry had a proud tradition of service, and the thought of a Wrth horseman with his crossbow and light curved sword meeting one of his cavalry was a laughable mismatch. You’re probably right about that, one on one, Kirrah had thought to herself, but just counting the arrows in Akaray’s village, I seriously doubt the Wrth attack one on one. (Bolts, she corrected herself, crossbows shoot bolts, or quarrels, not arrows.)

  The final military presence in the city was its navy. Kirrah was almost reluctant to use that term for the half-dozen vessels tied up at the docks at the foot of the military zone, or for their bored-but-anxious looking crews. It looked as though some small cargo ships about ten o
r twelve meters long had been outfitted with wooden planks over the gunwales as shield against arrows. They carried an inefficient-looking square sail, a dozen oars, and a boarding plank. Their mission seemed to be to carry troops to enemy ships coming up the river, board and capture them. In a match with skilled sailors, Kirrah would reluctantly have to place her bet with the attackers. Thank God, she thought, all this military effort will be obsolete in a few more months.

  Twice during her days of touring the city, Kirrah had wakened to see fading columns of smoke to the north and west. The evening of the second of these days, Irshe had returned to the school, grimfaced, with the news that another village had been burned out, and almost all of its inhabitants killed or missing. Some had already joined the steadily growing trickle of villagers arriving from the north, finding shelter among the farming homes outside the city walls or within the city itself.

  Chapter 13 (Landing plus twenty-five): Skirmish

  “Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who don't.” – ancient maxim, source unknown, first recorded in late 20th century TerraNet.

  Three days later, the city’s alarm bells were ringing before breakfast. Irshe, Kirrah and her six palace guards quickly made their way north from the school building, three blocks to where their street ended at the outer wall and a watchtower. After some haggling with the duty officer, Irshe managed to get all of them into the tower’s cramped interior, up the wooden ladder and out onto the top of the wall, giving them a good view for several kilometers up the north road.

  Already Kirrah could see a wave of panicked farming families riding and running south down this road and across the adjacent fields, making as quickly as they could for the gate in the city’s north wall, located three city blocks west of their tower. At the gate, these refugees were crowding around in a growing pool of humanity, and Kirrah realized at the same moment that they were not being allowed in, and the reason why. Out from the gate rode forty of the impressive Royal Cavalry, large armored men atop snorting, stamping war horses, fierce, beribboned, and colorful. Perfect for a period 3V show, Kirrah thought uneasily, but I hope they know what they’re up against.

  As though on cue, along the north road came into view a long line of horsemen. A long, long line. They spread out across the fields a kilometer or so to the north, and began torching the abandoned dwellings and outbuildings. Kirrah estimated well over a hundred riders. The cavalry pulled up in a neat row, and waited. The civilians had begun to filter through the city gates, although some of the men and not a few of the women waited to see what would happen. Occasional angry shouts or wails gave commentary on one or another building’s flaming demise as the raiders moved closer. The line of cavalry waited, steady.

  “Now would be a good time for a tso’ckhai to strike from the not-grass,” Kirrah mused, mostly to herself.

  “Hmmm?” Irshe replied, his eyes on the line of raiders. “A tso’ckhai? The farmers keep them cleared from near the city. Dangerous nuisances. Not as dangerous as a band of Wrth, though…”

  After about twenty minutes, the raiders simply ran out of outlying buildings to burn, and turned toward the cluster of shops and dwellings strung out for half a kilometer along both sides of the north road. As they did, a second column of cavalry flowed out through the gates and joined the first. Oho, at least someone had the sense to send for reinforcements, Kirrah thought. That Major Doi’tam may be a bit pompous, but he has some idea of odds. There must be a good hundred men in the troop now. Let’s see how good he is with tactics. And let’s get the rank right, that’s Doi’tam-fira'tachk, ‘leader of braid-of-groups’.

  At the sound of a chime, the cavalry began to pour up the north road, five abreast across the ten-meter-wide hard-packed earthen surface. The raiders spotted the movement and began to form into a loose circular grouping about fifty meters across, centered at the point where the thoroughfare broke free of the roadside buildings. Oh-ohhh, thought Kirrah, that looks exactly like a swarm of missiles getting set to englobe the lead elements of a convoy.

  Apparently whoever was at the head of the cavalry column had some tactical sense of the situation as well. About fifty meters back from the last building, the column split in two, three of the five lines turning abruptly right and two turning left between the last few buildings, in an obvious attempt to attack both flank ends of the semicircle of raiders. The raiders in turn split their semicircle into two groups, each forming a V with its wide end open toward the approaching cavalry, which by now was at full gallop.

  Kirrah groaned. They’re not going to charge into… yes, that was exactly what they were doing. Shields in place, the two cavalry columns rode straight into the open ends of the facing V’s, which turned to keep them centered. From this distance, Kirrah could only imagine the hail of crossbow bolts at short range, but the effect was obvious as the lead five or six horses in each rank stumbled and fell almost simultaneously. The rest of the columns plunged on, straight into a second volley. They’re not reloading, she thought, there’s no time - they’re just using their weapons to best advantage, firing by squads.

  By this time, the remaining cavalry was among the raiders. Screams reached the walls, delayed and attenuated by distance, screams of horses, she realized. They must have been deliberately targeting the horses. In the pitched battle that followed, two patterns began to emerge. The two cavalry columns did their best to keep organized as units, making devastating slashing attacks with their heavy swords and armor against the lighter-armed and armored Wrth horsemen. The raiders on the right skirmish worked in loose groups of ten or so to surround any Talamae they could isolate, some focusing especially on the dismounted men, others on individual cavalry or the last riders in a column.

  The results of the different strategies began to show up in the casualty counts, as the riderless Wrth ponies and dismounted but active Talamae cavalry began to clutter the field. On the right, where about sixty cavalry had engaged seventy or eighty raiders, the heavier armor and weapons of the Talamae was showing its value. About three dozen cavalry remained mounted in a coherent line, which now swept man-abreast through the thinning ranks of Wrth. Every pass left two or three fewer cavalry, but twelve or fifteen more riderless Wrth ponies.

  On the left, where some forty cavalry had clashed with a similar number of Wrth, it was a different story. Almost half the column had fallen to the initial crossbow salvoes, and the dozen or so dismounted men still on their feet tried to form up into a defensive circle. The remaining cavalry attempted a charge through the almost-intact Wrth force, which folded before them at first, then wrapped around them like a hungry irwua nest. The twenty or so cavalry simply lacked the momentum to get farther than halfway through the packed mass of Wrth. From this distance, Kirrah could see men falling from their horses, some without apparent injury. Then she was able to make out an individual Wrth horseman swinging an arm overhead, and realized they were using ropes somehow to dismount the cavalry from behind. The circle of Wrth began to tighten and shrink around the remaining cavalry. Those raiders on the outside simply could not reach the enemy, and some turned to reloading their crossbows. By ones and twos, the dismounted cavalry began to fall, with no chance to come within sword’s length of their mounted attackers.

  Suddenly a shrill whistle came from among the Wrth. On the right, the Talamae cavalry had completed a fourth pass through the tattered remains of the raiders, and only a handful stood to face the next charge. At the note, the entire Wrth force broke off, and drove headlong straight for the city gates. With the thirty or so cavalry in full pursuit, the fifty-plus remaining Wrth rode straight down the road, reloading as they came. The handful of villagers scrambled through the gates, which swung shut with a double thudding reverberation that could be felt even this far down the wall. The Wrth kept ahead of the heavier Talamae mounts, and rode up to the gates, turning at the last moment to ride west along the wall, firing at the defenders atop the battlement and throwing smoking brands into the stalls and shops huddled a
gainst it. Before the cavalry could reach the gate, the attackers were back in the open plains and heading away from the city at a gallop.

  Kirrah unclenched her hands from their painful grip on Irshe’s left arm. When had that happened?

  “How many are the Wrth?” she asked, in a not-too-steady voice. Irshe stared over the plains, where the six or seven dismounted cavalry remaining on the left side, and the fifteen or so on the right were marching together and forming up in ranks.

  “How many!” she demanded, in a shriller voice. “How many, altogether?” With a start, he responded to her pulling on his sleeve, coming back as from a great distance. He looks like a man who has just seen his own death, she thought, as she captured his gaze.

  “Perhaps two thousand. Perhaps more.” The gaze, gone again, out into the plains.

  “Irshe. Irshe! Forgive a foreigner’s ignorant question. Did I not just see a small fraction of that number, defeat half of Talamae’s strongest soldiers? Did I not?” Another tug on the sleeve brought him back.

  “Defeat… Doi’tam-fira'tachk will claim a victory. He has, his forces have …have driven off the Wrth. There will be celebation.”

  “Irshe shu’ Kassua, you listen to me! Another victory or two like that,” she spat, gesturing to the scatter of uniformed Talamae lying motionless on the field, “and this city will look like Akaray’s!”

  “Ah, ahem, we will have to move the farmers inside the walls. Others have attacked our city. Our walls hold well. They cannot reach us with their crossbows and swords, behind our walls.” He was not looking at the carnage again, but he was not meeting her eyes, either. Irshe looked as uncomfortable as she had ever seen him.