Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (7 page)

If so, then Marik needed to put forth a good showing. 
It would help later when he tried to make them understand how truly horrendous
the monsters were.  He bent his full concentration on the miniature figurines.

“The reds and blues must be preparing to fight each
other after all.  I thought they were banding together against Basill’s
greens.  If the south wasn’t united against Basill yet though, then perhaps
not.”

“Argus Yylan was embroiled in his generations-long
dispute with the Reeocks at the time.”

Marik nodded, this time in thought.  “With the tree
clusters scattered around the valley, the greens might still be out of sight of
the other two,” he muttered, brooding over what he saw.  The presence of the
knight-marshal faded from his awareness.  “But they couldn’t stay hidden for
long…no commander worth his bread would fail to put out scouts to watch for
enemy flankers moving in.

“Of course, the reds and blues seem to have started
fighting already.  If they knew the composition of the enemies well enough in
advance beforehand, then once they located all the elements, the scouts
wouldn’t range too far afield.  It might be possible for a third party to sneak
a force in closer once they were occupied with each other…”

The knight-marshal said nothing.  He watched Marik
move around the table, peering at the various pieces.  For all that he intruded
on Marik’s shifting awareness, he might have been a granite statue.

Marik tapped the side wall of the diorama with his
fingers, seeing the situation for what it was thanks to the minute information
the old veteran had graced him with.  “That must be it.  These two…old enemies
for generations.  They were meeting to fight each other, not the Galemarans. 
Basill must have been moving south to bring the war against the Tristans. 
But…”

His head swiveled between the green forces and the
others.  “He didn’t have many men with him.  The first Arm, Faustus, he was a
clever one.  Maybe they came on the fight by accident…or maybe not.  If they
knew one of the Tristans they meant to subdue was about to go through a battle,
then maybe they inched closer to the fight, meaning let them weaken each other,
then take out both of them.  That’s still very risky, though…”

He straightened from a leaning crouch, fingering his
chin.  In a louder, stronger tone, he stated.  “That’s what I would do.  I
would hold my forces back, getting as close as I dared.  I would try to
position my men in the best place to make a hard strike when I thought the
situation best suited my purposes.  When one side had been reduced to a
fluttering rag, then I would hit hard and fast, attacking whichever was the
stronger first.  After I wiped out their main strength, I would be able focus
my men on stomping out the largest pockets of resistance on down.”

“A wise strategy, if your goal were to utterly
eradicate your foe,” the knight-marshal stated, jolting Marik from his
musings.  “But such was not Basill Cerella’s goal, was it?”

Marik felt a flush crawl over his face at the rebuke
buried in that steely voice.  He maintained his view despite it.  “Not to kill
everyone, no sir.  But he faced a massive enemy in the Tristan warlords.  He
needed to whittle their strength, perhaps to wipe out the first few southern
strongholds in order to make them see he meant business.”

A shrug met this, as if the response to the
challenging question were unimportant.  The knight-marshal’s eyes returned to
the display.  His lack of words prompted Marik to continue, hoping he were not
shoving his feet into his mouth.

“Each of the red and blue forces have reserves.  A man
like Faustus would surely have expected that.  In his place, I would have held
my men back behind the trees as long as possible, until I saw the reserves
moving in.  That would be the signal that one side was growing desperate.  They
would be nearing the point of defeat.”  His eyes flew between landmarks.  “I’d
say Basill’s men were a mile or so from the main battle, if the battle remained
where the two forces met.”

Silence from the current commander of Galemar’s
fighting men persisted, yet to Marik it seemed colder.  Was he making mistakes
in his evaluation?  He needed to do this right, damn it!  No mistakes could be
afforded if they effected his credibility later.  Time to get specific.

“Basill has no mounted lancers or cavalry men.  His
foot is mostly swords, only a few spears, but half his men are archers.  Both
the red and blue forces have few archers.  The Tristan has more horse than the
clan brought, so he must have used them as a millstone against the larger
number of melee fighters on foot.  The clan horses would have tried to counter
that but they made a big mistake.

“They brought no spears at all with them.  The
Tristan’s riders would have been devastating against the foot soldiers with no
spears to keep them at a distance, especially since half the horsemen are armed
with lances.  Clan riders would be fighting against their mounted enemies with
only minor effectiveness.  The warlord armed plenty of his foot soldiers with
spears to use against the clan riders.  With his own horses feinting and
leading enemy riders into traps of spear-wielding soldiers between their
attacks on the enemy foot, the Tristan should have won the day despite being
outnumbered at the beginning.  His melee fighters would fill in the cracks and
buy the time the horses needed to prepare for their next move.”

A twitch marred the knight-marshal’s left eyebrow. 
Marik hurried on, praying silently that he would be able to cover for whatever
mistake he had just made.

“The Tristan should have won if he used his men well,
but his forces must have taken damage.  No one gets a free ride against a force
twice the size of his own.  Still, I’d bet that the clan reserves were the ones
Basill’s scouts saw moving in to reinforce their main body.  If they came in
soon enough, they might have provided enough extra manpower that the Tristan
was forced to call in his own.  Basill should have started moving his men at
that point, preparing to attack them without warning.”

Marik sidled along the table’s edge, seeing the valley
laid out.  The walls were steep in most places, too steep to climb easily on a
whim.  A sound reason would be needed to crawl up the sides, a prospect that
would require the hands clutching for purchase as often as a man’s feet.

The southern end narrowed to a near needlepoint,
filled by a hill that seemed misplaced.  It resembled a skullcap left forgotten
squarely in the center of the valley.  Around to both sides, men could traverse
the valley floor without need to climb the hundred foot rise, yet the space
between the hill’s foot and the valley walls could only be forty feet on both
sides at most.  Such geography struck Marik as abnormal.  Strange.

But he would have seen it as a gift from Ercsilon if
he found such a lovely battlefield.  He continued his speculations.

“Basill must have made for the hill in the valley’s
southern mouth.  Holding the hill means any forces within the valley have to fight
their way through you if they want to leave in that direction.  With the tree
cover, he might have made it all the way to the perch unnoticed if the enemies
were concentrating on fighting each other.”

Marik paused, seeing a problem.  “There’s no guarantee
the Tristan or the clan leader would
want
to fight Basill, though.  They
could easily head north out the valley’s other end and circle to wherever their
lands lay.  The Tristan likely had his lands south and would want to return
that way.  Except after a major battle, he would be a fool to challenge a third
army with his own men still exhausted.”

He glanced to the knight-marshal.  The man stood with
his arms crossed, impaling Marik with his gaze.  Nothing was offered.

Marik swallowed his unease.  Having come so far he
shouldn’t try to second guess his own theory.  Besides, all he had said thus
far seemed like the most logical possibility.

“On the idea that Basill wanted to bring the war
south, he would want to force a confrontation.  He would need to
make
the surviving enemies fight him, but no matter where he stood, they might avoid
him by going the other way.  There weren’t enough Galemaran men to surround the
survivors, no matter how much the Tristan’s or clan’s forces had been whittled
in the fight.  What would a man like Faustus do…what to do…”

He circled the table again, looking not at the soldier
figures alone, but at the terrain features as well.  Earlier he had been taken
by their realism.  Now he began contemplating what the details of that craftsmanship
might offer.

“It looks like it is summer or late fall.  Most of the
grasses are dry, even if the shrubs are still green.”  The tick reappeared in
the knight-marshal’s eye.  Marik hurriedly pointed out, “Though they aren’t
all
green.  A handful are turning brown.  But if I meant to wipe out the enemies in
this valley, I see how I would probably do it.

“I’d put my melee fighters along the base of the hill
to keep any enemies from climbing it.  My archers would be on the crown, ready
to shoot down at anything moving.  The extra height would increase the range
they could fire at to boot.  I thought my forces would hit whichever of the
surviving groups was strongest, but that would mean moving the archers in fast,
hoping to get them into a good firing position.  Archers work best if they are
stationary.  The protected position increases their offensive power.”

Marik gestured to three different spots on the
northern valley, close to where the green soldiers were situated in their
eternal vantage point.

“Instead I would leave a handful of men in these
spots.  After my main force sneaked south under cover of the terrain and the
ongoing battle, I would make a signal.  I would have those men light as many
fires as they could.  The grasses are dry and would catch fast.  If these trees
are placed they way they really grew in the valley instead of just plunked down
for the model, then I would bet the wind usually blows through from north to
the south.  The fire and smoke would spread toward the surviving Tristan fighters
and clan warriors.”

Sweeping his hand in imitation of vast clouds rolling
over skies of tanned oak wood rather than robin’s-egg blue, Marik followed the
course of his theoretical firestorm.

“If the fires were set in the right places at the
right times, a wall of fire could block the entire northern valley.  Smoke
would make them all cough and choke.  They’d flee south.  In fact,” he added,
halting his hand over the hill as a god might pause to take note of a
particularly loud prayer from below, “the forerunners might charge straight
into the ambush before they realized the danger was ahead rather than behind. 
Half the survivors might be shot dead before the leaders could organize, and by
that time, they would not have the men left to stand a chance against Basill’s
forces.  The trickiest part would be the fires.  They would all have to be
precise, since the valley must be three miles wide at the northernmost end.”

When he noticed the knight-marshal’s continued glare,
laced with what he could only perceive as
disdain
, Marik abruptly shut
his mouth.  The sudden silence hung between them in a thick fog, until, unable
to bear it, Marik finished by limply saying, “Uh, well, that’s what I think I
would do.  Sir.”

Slowly, deliberately, the man with the gray hair
unfolded his arms.  He stepped to the edge of the diorama.  His eye settled on
a point near the green army.  When his words finally reverberated in the
enclosed room, they carried the considerable weight of a senior diplomat
chastising his aide for a bone-headed blunder that had caused a foreign
dignitary to declare a blood feud.

“You made an error in your…presumptions.”

After a long moment, Marik was forced to ask, “Error,
sir?”

“The fire with which Faustus caused the stampede.  The
northern valley is far too vast to be covered in such a short span of time with
fire, despite the summer heat.”  He bit his words off with sharper force than
he had previously.  “You would need to spread half the army across the area to
do the job properly.”

“I…”  Marik sternly commanded himself not to swallow
visibly in front of this man.  “I would still say it is the best plan, and the
one that would cost Basill’s forces the least amount of men.”

“That is why Faustus left the job to the
geomancer
traveling under Basill’s banner.  Clearly, it was an instance in which a user
of magic was of greater practicality than a division of fighting men.”

The answer, obviously the truth, made Marik hold in an
oath.  He, of all people, should have instantly thought of magic as the means
to accomplish such a feat as sparking wild fires.
  Except I will
never
think well of it
, his inner voice stated flatly. 
No matter how long I
have it, use it or am near it, I will never see it as a proper tool a warrior
should use.  Only steel and skill are what make a warrior’s heart.

His reluctance to accept the magic had skewed his
judgement in laying out the strategy for this reenactment.  Hesitantly, he
probed, “A geomancer would
be a better choice for starting a wild fire. 
So…I suppose that’s how Faustus chose to handle it.”

“Your ideas for handling a battle against two
formidable enemies are simplistic.”