Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (39 page)

A mere elemental blessed with earth power thinking to
stand against the god of the very same.  How impudent.

Xenos left them at their work to settle into his
quarters.  They were stark, which suited him.  The walls were thick, which
suited him better.

He traced his finger along the stone.  Power seeped
from his flesh, carving a flat niche in the rock.  After a moment he had a
secret store in which he could keep the objects he wished to conceal. 
Everything except his personal scrying ring went in, then he passed his hand
over the hole.  To all appearances it reformed.  The illusion of solid stone
would fool any person, mage or otherwise, who happened in his chamber.

Sitting on his bed, he called forth images from
Galemar.  Yes, there was the place in which Harbon had mysteriously met his
end.  He could do more than simply see through the ring.  Xenos could feel the
lingering energy traces imbuing the far away earth.

The view shifted, following his thoughts.  Deep in the
Rovasii, under a ruined village of age-old caretakers.  A forest pond over
submerged roots.  And deeper…

Yes.  The pulsing power…hidden deep for so many
centuries.  What glories it would revive once he controlled it!  Such
magnificent…and awesome…glories…

During the subsequent planning sessions, one fact
became abundantly clear to Marik.  The primary flaw in the earlier plan had
been the path the riders would take during their flight.  It brought them
between the archers and their targets for far longer than he had anticipated. 
Several other details had erred as well but that one major fault had been the
worst strategic mistake.

The three squads separating at different speeds was a
human error, unforeseeable for the most part until the men proved themselves
through trial by fire.  He had only recognized the other flaws while looking
down from the etheric, and later wondered why Torrance had not pointed them out
to him before.

With so much at stake, the commander would never have
left mistakes like that in the plan strictly to teach the fledgling a lesson the
hard way.  His superior should have pointed out the risk to him as soon as he
reviewed Marik’s proposed plans before the raid.

Only during the long reviews did Marik come to realize
what had transpired.  By dint of his phrasing while relating what he had seen
from the etheric in addition to the scout reports, he had implied far greater
knowledge concerning the enemy than he truly possessed.  Torrance had assumed
Marik commanded information specific enough that the crown-general had solid
reasons behind positioning his forces the way he had.

In war, nothing should ever be assumed.  Everything
should be verified regardless of how certain a person is of the answer.

No one told him that.  Marik arrived at that
conclusion on his own.  In his mind, he called it Lesson Number One; if the
general fails to communicate clearly with his men, the resultant failure is his
alone.

He kept the truth private.  Revealing the depth of his
blunder to Torrance would cause him no small amount of shame.  The mercenary
commander had placed a good deal of faith in him.

Not to mention it would start Gibbon frothing at the
mouth as if rabid.  The army lieutenant had made it plain he would send a full
report to Thoenar at the earliest opportunity relating every detail of the
first attempt.  With luck, real strategists would be sent to assume control
over the debacle.

Marik was determined not to make the same mistake
twice.  Nor to make another as foolish.  He spent two days straight in the
meager tent, mostly consulting with Torrance who offered whatever advice was on
his mind.  Gibbon, the six band leaders, various Crimson Kings lieutenants and
army officers rotated through at Marik’s summons.

He still believed in keeping the plan as simple as
possible.  Except, as he quickly learned, even the simplest plan had dozens of
details that could effect the result.  The last plan had relied on specific
outcomes influencing a multiple of factors.  At the time he had not realized
how much it depended on one thing going right after the previous.

Every step for the new plan must be carefully
considered.  Possible outcomes must be weighed, examined to see if events could
unfold to results other than what he desired.  Once the first step was set, the
next, which wholly depended on the first, could be planned, examined, peeled
apart and judged.  Endless possibilities seemed to branch out from any action,
making his head ache while he attempted vainly to evaluate each.  After a time,
he felt as if they piled at his feet while he stripped away consequence after
consequence, finding still new ones lurking underneath, like…a
gods…damned…onion...

Marik had come to loath onions.  Landon’s casual
comparison of warfare to the layers in an onion many years before had been
uncannily apt.

Torrance warned him of the new danger he faced.  In
this fresh determination to craft the best plan, he could easily flip to the
opposite extreme in over-planning.  According to him it was far better to take
an immediate action, dangerous and half-effective as it might be, than to
paralyze oneself with indecision.

Through it all echoed the old maxim that battle plans
never survived the first engagement with the enemy.  He could spend each moment
of the day thinking about the most efficient methods to assault their enemies. 
In the end, nothing would play out the way he had anticipated it would.

It was a truth he had known since his first year with
the Kings.  It persisted in popping into his mind, usually in Kerwin’s voice,
suggesting that the victor in any battle was determined by Fate rolling her
cosmic dice.  No influence from presumptuous men would effect the outcome.

One thing he was certain of; they needed better
battlefield communication than the Screamers alone could account for.  He
needed to be closer to the various elements to send orders that would reach the
leaders in time to have useful effect.  The only reliable method seemed to be
keeping a company of riders close to hand, ready to gallop off on an instant.

Scouts came back on the third evening after the raid
with unsettling news.  Their long-range scouts had ridden hard to report a
reinforcing regiment on the move.  They would make the ruined town by afternoon
of the next day.

Marik would have liked to remain invisible.  If the
Arronaths had believed their raid to be a strike force that hit where
opportunity allowed before escaping to wreck havoc elsewhere, they might have
been able to make a second surprise raid.

Except the Arronaths had deployed plenty of scouts as
well.  His own, mostly drawn from Second and Fourth Squads in the Kings’ ranks,
had noted the ones further away, dropping the ones who strayed too close. 
Seeing which scouts failed to return undoubtedly told the Arronath leader all
he needed to know about where his enemy was.

So surprise was out.  But with reinforcements, being
able to retake the town became a far trickier business.  One that would surely
involve losses his force could ill afford.

The next attack would have to be that night.

*        *        *        *        *

Instigating a second raid following the same natural
corridor through the trees seemed foolish.  For this assault, Marik finally
decided on splitting his forces.  He placed squads from the Kings at each
force’s core with soldiers attached as backup strength.  They had proven
reliable enough for that, providing they had experienced men like Skelton at
their head.

The six lesser bands were the great debate.  Rodolph
swore he had followed the orders he heard through the Screamers on the very
instant he deciphered them in his head.  It had taken him longer to remember
the signal for ‘speed up’, especially mixed discordantly with arrows for the
other squad, than it had for him to recognize the single ‘retreat’ command.

Gibbon flatly disbelieved him.  Marik also wondered at
the truth of Rodolph’s claim, but found it impossible to dismiss any men still
able to fight.

He kept the bands back for this raid.  Marik moved
much closer to the combat front this time to enable faster orders to be sent
via rider.  This increased his danger.  Torrance accepted the decision after stating
once that leaders usually stayed back in a fight to preserve command
structure.  Killing the general was a sure way to create instability within the
enemy ranks.  Gibbon attempted no dissuasion.  If King Raymond’s mercenary pet
bought a hole in the earth six feet deep during this attack, it would suit him
very well.

According to Marik’s logic, the Arronaths would expect
two likely courses in the event of a second raid.  If the Galemaran leaders
were fools, they might attack through the exact same corridor as before.  If
the Galemaran leaders wanted to surprise them, they might creep through the
dark to assault a point on the opposite side of their camp.

After much thought he chose a point roughly an eighth
further along the compass to the north.  This put him north-northeast of
Drakesfield’s remains rather than slightly south of the western tick on the
compass rose.

Sun had set two marks earlier.  The Arronaths followed
the rigid schedule Marik’s scouts had observed since the first day.  Watch
posts changed to the next shift…the signal.

Marik had focused hard on obtaining every crossbow
available before departing Thoenar.  In a patronizingly token gesture, the
quartermasters had offered the damaged bows left behind by the Arm’s forces. 
No doubt they thought the mercenary would refuse in anger, enabling them to
claim they had
tried
to supply the irrational crown-general.  He had
taken them along on the belief that every bad bow would have salvageable
components.

Most were junk, only good for providing miniscule
materials to repair others.  Several were split along the grain so badly that
no amount of tightly-wound leather strips would hold them together.  The
sixteen serviceable bows had joined the two-hundred odd issued to members of
the Crimson Kings.

After the shift change, his bows began firing shafts
blindly into Drakesfield’s ruins.  Clatters resounded through the night rather
than the hoped for screams.  No lucky shots in this flight.

Among the quarrels streaked flaming meteors from fire
arrows arcing across their shorter range.  Little flammable material was left
in the town after the Arronath’s rampaging entrance.  Burning arrowheads
bounced off earthen streets pounded hard as stone by generations of residents. 
Several ricocheted from cracked walls until they tumbled into a barren corner. 
Only one landed in a wagon’s bed, unfortunately empty.

It succeeded in its primary objective.  Alarmed shouts
flew from every corner.  In a matching rendition, forms ran out of the
darkness, gathering to ward off a renewed assault.  Marik could see the Taurs
angrily resisting when white-robed sorcerers forced their minds from slumber
back toward the wakeful world.  The beasts were not nocturnal by choice.

Too much time would give the enemy an edge.  They
would reform into set groups.  Already voices called in an alien tongue. 
Arronaths shifted from the open areas to hug buildings, duck behind shattered
walls or put soot-blackened trees between them and the concealed archers.

Lieutenant Baxter sneaked into the rear from the
town’s western edge with his Sixth Squad.  With him ran Sergeant Skelton, the
only army officer playing a forward role this night.  His soldiers had become
minor heroes among the newest camp graduates since their face-off with the
black soldiers.

Close to two-hundred men scampered through the dark,
making as little noise as they could manage.  On every fourth shoulder teetered
a small cask designed to split apart at the first great shock.  Marik had
commandeered the war oil from Harpersfield, a town twenty miles east to which
the army had hastily moved as many supplies as possible when their border lines
began collapsing months earlier.  He’d taken it on principal when they marched
past, seeing little use for it at first since he possessed no catapults.  Nor
did the Arronaths preside over any fortresses that the Galemarans would
besiege.

To the north, Lieutenant Devry started raising a
ruckus.  His Seventh Squad emerged from the trees to shout their defiance.  War
cries were hurled.

The south also suddenly erupted with enemies.  Every
wall taller than four feet had been destroyed by exuberant Taurs over the
pervious month.  Lieutenants Piccary, Lydan and Bainard brought their squads
over the rubble to the very edges of what was left of the town.  Arronath
sentries wasted no time in retreating.

Arrows flew from the town into the southern flankers.

*        *        *        *        *

Lieutenant Jayran found the enemy bow fire irksome. 
“Can you see where their cussed archers are firing from?” he demanded.

“From the damned town, where else?” returned an archer
from the shielding gloom.  A cracker from outside his squad to reply with such
cheek.

“Figure out the most likely position you could shoot
from, and be quick,” he ordered.  “Those are fellow Kings taking hits!”

“Has to be from the well square,” a different voice
answered.  “No other good place for that many bows and see what you’re shooting
at.”

“Then all of you send your next flight into the well
square.”

“Are you serious?  You couldn’t hit that if the wind
were coming from your back!”

“Shoot off your arrow, Adley, not your cussed mouth!”

The next flight disappeared into night’s curtain. 
Jayran held his breath until he heard a pained cry, flowed a moment later by a
second.  “Good!  Keep that up!  We can’t take down their archer forces, but we
can sure as dirt make them dance!”

*        *        *        *        *

Lieutenant Baxter led his men by example.  He carried
a cask slung on one shoulder as easily as he once had the yearling pigs on his
father’s farm when a youth.

His men with free hands ranged forward.  Baxter
watched six enemy watches taken down, their warning cries drowned under the din
ringing through the air with every new squad that call attention to itself.

Broken stones marked where the town had once
prosperously spread.  Skelton took his soldiers on a northern angle, hopping
jagged barriers while the Sixth Squad continued straight ahead.  Two men
twisted their ankles coming down on loose fragments.  With the enemy’s back
turned, Baxter loudly husked for those two to remain sitting on the wall,
keeping a lookout.  They would be retrieved on the way out.