IronStar Page 13

  “Irshe’jasa, as you want your city to live, tell me this: Have you ever seen walls or gates such as these, broken down? Has it ever happened?” That got a thoughtful look…

  “I have heard the O’dai have siege ships that helped them take the walled city of Ale’appa, across the Sea of the Sun, two winters ago…” Right. Siege technology on ships. Ships that could navigate rivers like the Geera. Technology that could be bought, or borrowed, or copied. That could be mounted on wagons. That could be pulled by horses. Wrth horses. Like an Academy classroom exercise, the gears slipped smoothly into place in Kirrah’s mind. Not in my city, you don’t, said that dark, dark voice. Not to my people.

  “I need to talk to Lord Tsano. Today. Now.” Irshe knew the sound of command when he heard it. He was halfway to the tower door before he realized that he was following the orders of this strange woman with the hard, hard green eyes. Not always hard, the thought passed across his mind, lost in the welter of images and dread.

  Chapter 14 (Landing plus twenty-five): Arithmetic

  “Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once.” - Sir Winston Churchill, 20th century warrior and statesman; England, Terra

  The meeting, to which Kirrah and Irshe were invited, was held at the palace in a beautifully paneled octagonal conference room in the southwest corner of the outer block. Torches and candles lit the chamber as the light faded from the sky outside. Lord Tsano and the four Masters Kirrah had met weeks before, essentially the executive body of the government, sat at the center of a semicircular table. In addition to Armsmaster Opeth, there were half a dozen of his lieutenants around the heavy polished table, representing the Palace Guard, the City Guard, the Border Patrol and the Reserve Militia. They waited in silence as Major Doi’tam and two of his cavalry lieutenants entered, took their places at the center of the table opposite Lord Tsano, and made their report.

  The final tally for that morning’s savage skirmish was forty-five Talamae cavalrymen killed or out of action out of one hundred two taking the field, and sixty-eight horses killed or put down, in exchange for ninety-seven Wrth raiders down, out of what Kirrah now estimated at one hundred fifty attackers. Add five more bowmen killed on the walls, and subtract eight more Wrth shot out of their saddles in that final in-your-face charge up to the gate and west along the wall. Plus another sixteen civilians killed when they could not outrun the raiders and reach the city gates; three more farming families wiped out, each with friends, relatives, connections, each loss a whole universe gone dark. Arithmetic should not use people, Kirrah thought, fingers clenching and writhing in her lap as the numbers were reported.

  Major Doi’tam seemed calm, thoughtful. He promised a better effort should his troops be needed again. He solicited the prayers of Issthe and the priesthood for their efforts. He requested enlistment to be formally opened for what he considered to be promotion, that is, voluntary recruitment to his Cavalry, from the ranks of the border patrol and other mounted forces, since his was ‘temporarily depleted’. This was solemnly approved. Concerns were raised about the state of the wall’s defenders, and it was agreed to call up the Militia reserve. When the meeting showed indications of coming to a close, Kirrah could contain herself no longer. She whispered to Irshe:

  “You are my liaison, the King’s Ear. Tell the King I would speak.” Irshe made shushing not-now motions, but as Kirrah’s hackles rose to a confrontation, Issthe said, in her smooth, calming voice:

  “Perhaps we would do well to hear the words of our guest-soldier. She sees with other eyes.”

  Kirrah took the indicated place at the table, to Issthe’s right. Try to make your points without pissing off the big, strong men, like Angela could have done so skillfully, she reminded herself forcefully.

  “Today I saw much skill and bravery.” Enough flattery, get to the point… “However I fear for the soldiers and citizens of Talam. The enemy is many, this was a small part of their strength. Who will defend the city, if all the brave cavalry spend themselves thus? Will it be left to the border patrol? Will the life of the city depend on its walls alone?” Several people tried to speak at once, but the tall, blond Cavalry Major got the floor:

  “It is the job of the Royal Cavalry to spend themselves in defense of the City. We do not turn aside from it. We perform our duties.”

  “It is not your duty that is at issue, it is the safety of the city,” said Guildmaster Delima. Lord Tsano raised a hand, and pointed to Issthe, who said:

  “Kirrah’s views may be interesting. Let us attend. Would you tell us, Kirrah shu’Roehl, what you saw today?”

  “Today I saw brave men cut down through no fault of their own. If a blacksmith uses a spoon, a very good spoon from the Royal table, to forge a sword – he will just ruin the spoon.” As Major Doi’tam’s brow darkened and he drew in a breath, Kirrah added: “Just as if the King used his father’s hammer to serve soup, he would fail. Your men, Sir,” ignoring several covered smiles and looking directly at the simmering Major, “were slaughtered by ropes and crossbow bolts, not swords and courage, and your enemy wisely and wickedly attacked your horses, while your men honorably fought other men.” Aha, that one scored! Before she could press home her advantage, Armsmaster Opeth leaned forward and interjected.

  “The Wrth grow ‘wiser’ every raid. They learned long ago not to attack our Royal Cavalry as they attack our villagers, with swords from horseback. But if they can dismount a cavalryman, they can easily feather him from a safe distance. Thus they attack the horses, which as we know receive extensive training and are not swiftly replaced.” Oho, thought Kirrah, noticing the sideways eye-flick towards Major Doi’tam. If we protect certain egos, we can have this conversation. She continued:

  “On another world, this has already been noticed. There are other solutions, and there are tasks, essential tasks, which only heavy cavalry can do,” until we invented gunpowder and repeating rifles, that is, Kirrah thought with a pair of fingers mentally crossed behind her back.

  “Perhaps our guest Warmaster would instruct us all,” said the large Cavalry Major, “…or even show us.” Several sharp intakes of breath and averted eyes suggested that he had just exceeded the bounds of civil behavior. Lord Tsano looked embarrassed, Issthe looked …disappointed. Kirrah spoke quickly into the awkward silence before someone could compound the problem by attempting an apology.

  “I thank Doi’tam-fira'tachk for his invitation. If that is agreeable to others?” Lord Tsano’s eyes widened slightly, but he nodded at her, and Issthe smiled a small smile of encouragement and approval. Ignoring the splutter beginning from across the table, Kirrah continued: “On my world, we learn that every weapon is a tool, and every tool has its use, and its limits. The mounted man, or at least his horse, is subject to the bow. The bow is subject to the sword. The man on foot is subject to the horse. Thus every weapon has its master.” I have to show these people the ancient game of rock, scissors, paper… but first we have to invent the scissors…

  “The Wrth combine the tools of sword and horse and bow, and change from one to another at need. This is what gives them their strength. Their swords alone are no match for ours. As we saw, when the Royal Cavalry is among their ranks, they die. But first, their bolts turn too many of the Royal Cavalry into Royal Footmen, whom they can kill at leisure by becoming archers. Archers on horses.

  “I tell you, soldiers of Talam, there is another way to defeat them. As their swords are no match for yours, we can make bows which their crossbows cannot match. And I can show you how to stop their mounted charge, with a new kind of foot soldier.” That’s put the fox into the chicken coop, Kirrah thought, as she paused to gauge her audience. Intent silence awaited her words, plus a few disbelieving stares from the cavalry section, she noted.

  “Give a foot soldier a heavy wooden staff, as long as …this table,” Kirrah said, indicating the five-meter straight side before her, “with a point as long as a long dagger, but broader. Add a second point, narrow like
a spike, and turned to the side, so he can also strike down from above. A single row of these soldiers, these pikemen, can stop the charge the Wrth brought to your very gates this day.” Widened eyes, exchanged murmurs, some disbelieving looks.

  You want war, I’ll show you war, you murdering Wrth bastards! I have a whole history of war to show you! Kirrah continued, growing more passionate as she spoke:

  “Behind two rows of these pike, let me put archers, also in two rows. Not archers as you have on border patrol.” Kirrah had queried Irshe about their simple meter-and-a-half bows, and knew their range was about eighty meters, less than half that against leather armor.

  “No, I want archers with new, longer bows, and heavier arrows with bodkin points, that will kill a Wrth at twice the distance they can shoot from. Archers trained to shoot three, four times from both rows, while the Wrth charge once. No Wrth will even reach the pikemen.” Kirrah paused, almost panting. Men were staring at her as though her hair were on fire. Oh, shit, what did I get wrong, Angela, help me! she thought. She felt Irshe moving at her right… one, two of the men were standing and drawing daggers, four men had drawn, what… Irshe had his dagger out too, Kirrah took an alarmed half-step backwards. I didn’t think it was that bad a speech…

  The lightest butterfly-touch on her left wrist; Kirrah jerked her gaze sharply left to see Issthe reaching out to her, a smile hiding behind her calm gray eyes, and saying in that calm, soft, rich voice:

  “Here are your students, ‘guest Warmaster’. Use their lives well.” With a mingling of relief and the sense of having just stepped over the edge of some unseen precipice, Kirrah followed Issthe’s graceful gesture, to see that all five of the daggers were held point down in fists, and all the fists were rising in the throat-salute a soldier made to an equal. Or to a leader. To her.

  She looked at Lord Tsano, who was nodding with Armsmaster Opeth.

  “One quarter, it is agreed, then,” he said. “These four… Irshe, do you speak for your squadron? Very well. These five, that will be one hundred ten men. Will that suffice for kir’shazza… a ‘lesson-between-friends, no offense’?”

  “Ah, ah… your pardon, Lord, it will not.” That’s it, thought Kirrah, don’t just step over the edge, ride a dropshaft! Lord Tsano looked at her sharply, both eyebrows raised, a tiny gleam in his eyes, and waved his hand for her to continue. And don’t ever, ever piss off this gentle giant, at least not while on the same planet, registered someplace in Kirrah’s mind where she kept her list of never-make-enemies-with.

  “I will also need full and immediate cooperation from sufficient armorers and blacksmiths, to make the implements I have described. And a field to practice in. And one other thing.”

  “I think I may have a few friends in the smithies who will still heed me,” said the King, perhaps a little warily. “And?”

  “And all Talam will need Doi’tam-fira'tachk’s cavalry at full strength, to defend our walls against the siege engines which, if I were Wrth, I would be dragging even now towards our City. Because one thing my pike and longbowmen cannot do, my Lord, is stop a siege engine from battering these walls to rubble. That is a job that only brave and disciplined heavy cavalry can do. If my suspicion is correct, all our lives will soon depend on them doing it.” All eyes swiveled to Major Doi’tam. Like a deer caught in the headlights, Kirrah recalled the ancient Terran image, looking at the startled cavalry officer.

  “I… of course, my Lord, the Royal Cavalry will do everything it can, to protect the City…”

  “Even if it means not meeting the Wrth on the field, but saving his men like a treasure held back, to win a crucial bid-at-auction?” asked Issthe’s silken contralto. Somehow her voice found just the right tone - not challenging, not mocking, but pinning the hapless Major to his duty and honor, as neatly as a fly to a specimen board. When he drew his dagger and saluted the King, and said, “As the King wills”, and his lieutenants did likewise, Kirrah knew her victory was complete.

  The next day, the Deathnaming songs were sung for the fallen.

  Chapter 15 (Landing plus thirty): Supply and Demand

  “If we are marked to die, we are enough, to do our country loss;

  And if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

  – “King Henry V”, Shakespeare; ancient Terran author.

  “No, no!” Kirrah declared, for the umpteenth time that morning. “You must put the tough yag’la wood on the front, and the springy pa’wai wood on the back! This bow will break when it is drawn fully.” At the look of dismay on the woodworker’s face, she instantly regretted her abrupt tone.

  “This is easily remedied,” she said. “And your shop’s arrows are exactly what is needed. Your brother the blacksmith got the bodkin points exactly right.”

  “They are so heavy, Warmaster. I fear they will fall short…” the man said. His two apprentices nodded, large-eyed. When exactly did the Cavalry Major’s sarcastic jibe get to be my official title, Kirrah wondered, and by what lips did it escape the meeting? In the corner of her eye, Irshe lounged, back to a rough squared ceiling post, scuffing one toe innocently in the wood shavings littering the carpenter’s loft, one hand covering his lower face.

  “Indeed they are heavy, Do’thablu. Those bodkin points,” she indicated the narrow, fifteen centimeter iron spike at each arrow’s tip, “…will penetrate the heaviest leather armor, and these clever teeth,” Kirrah stroked the two offset three-centimeter wire barbs, “…will bite deep, and hold. But the strength of this arrow is in its length.”

  “But, it’s the length that makes them so heavy…” Indeed it did, the hundred-centimeter shaft weighed almost double the narrower, sixty to seventy centimeter standard Talamae arrow.

  “Ah yes, Do’thablu’jasa, but the longer the shaft, the deeper the bow can be drawn, and the longer the string pushes on it, so it will fly faster than the old arrows. And faster means farther. And when it hits, its extra weight and speed will drive it through even steel armor. As you will see, when I have my bow. With the pa’wai wood on the back!”

  “I know nothing of this, Warmaster, but I will make the bow as you require. The glue will be dry tomorrow, begging your pardon, on the correct bow.” With a small sigh, Kirrah thanked the man, bowed and they took their leave.

  “What did you say?” asked Irshe as they thudded down the wooden steps outside the shop.

  “Sorry, I was muttering. I said, ‘I hope he gets it right before the Wrth return’.”

  “Our scouts are watching closely now. The Wrth are raiding to the northwest, as far as our border with the Pavatta nation at the end of the Realm, where the northern woods meet the Sea of the Sun. It will be another five days at least.”

  “You knew, didn’t you?” Kirrah stopped, and turned to look up at the calm gray eyes, one eyebrow rising quizzically.

  “You knew, when you saw the Wrth’s work at Malame’thsha, that they would be here. And you knew, all along, that your City was not ready.”

  “I suspected,” he replied after a thoughtful pause. “The Wrth cannot feed their growing numbers. They need more land to hunt and graze their sha’pluuth herds.” These wooly native herbivores, about the size of a sheep, were one of the few species like the mu’uthn that could digest the native not-grass.

  “Must we destroy them all, or be destroyed?” Another thoughtful pause.

  “For generations,” Irshe replied, “the Wrth lived in the valleys of the WhiteCap Mountains to the east. My father’s father’s father traded with them, sha’pluuth wool and hides for dried fruit from his farm. They have always been fierce and wild, but never so destructive, or so many, as now. If we could drive them back to their mountains, we would all be at peace again. If we could hurt them enough here, often enough, we could at least force them to bother other peoples. Then we might get an alliance with our neighbors to the south and the Pavattans to the northwest, and return to peace.”

  “Hurt them,” said Kirrah, as they continued down the steps to the
ir horses. “I will show you how to hurt them. But it is not only the Wrth, you have the O’dai biting at your trade ships. I have not met an O’dai, but I think they come out of greed, which can be just as powerful as need. And they will not be stopped by a few arrows and pikemen. Do you suppose the training pikes will be delivered yet?”

  “Let us find out,” the tall man said, leaning down from his saddle to offer her a hand up into hers. Irshe had insisted that Kirrah learn to ride, to her initial dismay. Her horse, a light brown mare she had dubbed ‘Whoopsie’, seemed gentle enough, and responsive to the reins once you learned what the signals were. Kirrah suspected she’d never achieve that one-with-the-mount ease that Irshe expressed so naturally. He’d shown her the knee and heel pressures he used to guide his big black gelding, but it seemed to confuse both her and her horse when she tried it. And it just didn’t seem …natural, or something, to use another creature to carry one around. Not respectful, to treat a critter like a machine. Not that ‘Whoopsie’ was just a critter, she was obviously a very well-mannered lady, who never bit the fingers that held her treats. And never laughed at Kirrah’s …unique ways of mounting. Or dismounting.

  After a pleasant ride through the twisty streets of the old part of the city, through the inner gates and across town to the military compound, they learned that the practice pikes were indeed ready and drill was scheduled for after lunch. Kirrah spoke to the forty or so trainees when they were ready to start:

  “Each pikeman will have two of these,” she said, hefting one of the heavy five-meter hardwood poles. “The padded ends will be replaced by these.” Kirrah held up one of the forged iron pike heads ready for installation. It looked like a forty-centimeter tall iron cross. The short end was a ferrule to slip over the end of the wooden staff. The long end was a twenty-five centimeter blade, gleaming sharp on both edges, and twelve centimeters broad at its widest. Set between the two, at right angles to the shaft’s length, was a forty-centimeter iron crosspiece as thick as a man’s thumb, each end sharpened into a piercing spike.