Great Kings' War (29 page)

"Suppose I dealt with the man myself?"

"You could; as a free trader's daughter, they'd expect you to be handy with firearms. I don't recommend it. You're not a noble woman, and even if you didn't start a feud you could end up on the wrong end of a wrongful-death suit. We don't want the Study Team dragged into court, either, if we can avoid it."

"So I should keep my head bowed, my mouth shut, my neckline high and my skirts low?"

"Until you have a feel of the time-line, that's the safest course. Once the war is over Hostigos may be a better place for women than the rest of Kalvan's Time-Line, but that won't be for at least another year."

"Is that from Rylla's example?"

Eldra nodded.

"How could have Ptosphes have raised her any other way, if she was going to be heiress of Hostigos?"

"Very easily, my dear. Or do you still have a touching faith in male decency at your age?"

The tone was light but Sirna detected bitterness and disappointment underlying it. She remembered the stock University phrase for Professor Baltov's four noisy companionate marriages: "the victory of optimism over experience."

"No, I suppose another Ptosphes could have re-married and had more children, or even adopted a male heir and then married Rylla off to him as soon as she was of age."

"Yes. One we know of on another time-line did just that—Styphon take him! Rylla was about fourteen and the adopted heir combined the worst features of the late Gormoth of Nostor and Balthar of Beshta.
Our
Rylla was allowed to do what she wanted, and landed herself a first-class husband on top of it. Oh well, if we start moaning about how unequally the luck of the universe is divided up, we'll never get anything done."

A robot rolled in with Sirna's ale and winter wine for the Professor, and the conversation took a backseat for a moment. While they drank, Sirna picked out a list of equipment she'd selected from the terminal's surprisingly well-stocked storerooms. She'd known that the Fifth Level Kalvan Project terminal had been expanding as the project grew, but she hadn't expected storerooms that looked big enough to supply all the needs of a small belt. She deleted the questionable gown, replaced it with another she knew had a neckline up somewhere around her chin, then skimmed the rest of the list and handed it back to Eldra.

The History Professor's eyebrows rose. "That's a pretty big medkit you're taking, isn't it?"

"Yes, I was surprised to find some of the things in stock."

"We've been unloading new shipments every couple of days while you were in Grefftscharr. Things are about to get very lively in Kalvan's Time-Line and we don't want to have to spend time sending requisitions all the way back to First Level where the clerks can lose them. The Kalvan Project has a Grade Two priority, but you know how much that means. Our request for a hundred needler chargers will still be kicked down below some bureaucrat's request for a new rug."

Sirna knew that; she also knew that the stockpile of equipment here on Fifth Level would be out of sight of the Executive Council, newsies or the people who were waiting for her reports. They would not be out of reach of the University people—or the Paratime Police, starting with Verkan Vall.

To turn the conversation away from this potentially dangerous territory, Sirna shifted into Zarthani and told the story of how her father, the Free Trader Sharthar of Greffa, had been gifted by the gods with some skill as a healer, had learned healing arts wherever he went and practiced them when trade was poor and finally taught much of what he knew to his daughter before he died.

Eldra was smiling by the time Sirna finished. "I'm impressed. You have the Grefftscharri accent better than any of us except Verkan Vall."

"Thank you. I practiced it a lot while visiting Ult-Greffa, the start of the old Iron Trail, and the other Grefftscharrer princedoms. Grefftscharr is larger than any of the Northern Great Kingdoms, yet Theovacar is only considered a king."

Eldra smiled. "And not very happy about it. Four power blocs dominate Grefftscharrer politics: the king, the Greffan nobility, the Grefftscharrer Princes and the merchant magnates. No one of the four is strong enough to enforce its will on the other three, and as a result Grefftscharrer politics has been shaped by constantly shifting alliances among the power blocs. This is typical of most of the Upper Middle Kingdoms' princedoms and city-states, like Volthus, Morthron, Ragnor, Karphya or the Nythros City States. It hasn't helped Theovacar that the Grefftscharri kingship has been diluted by three weak kings in the last century. He's bucking the tide and not very popular at the moment, which has helped Verkan in his role of Trader Verkan since he represents a powerful new ally for the king to court. Of course, little is predictable about Theovacar; paranoia is common in the royal Greffan line and he appears to have inherited more than his share. He could use a ten-day with the Bureau of Psych-Hygiene!"

They both laughed.

Sirna winced when Eldra took out her pipe; she was allergic to tobacco smoke, which reminded her to take an anti-allergy implant before she left for Kalvan's Time-Line, where everybody but the household cat smoked. "I was surprised at how large Grefftscharr really is."

"Yes, it's the dominant kingdom of the Upper Middle Kingdoms. The early Zarthani and Urgothi—most of the Middle Kingdoms were settled by the Second Wave Urgothi migration—followed the navigable waterways and settled along them. Around the Great Lakes, as they're called on Kalvan's home time-line, are a number of rivers and large tributaries, which attracted settlers like a lodestone. They stopped at the eastern border of what is now Glarth in Hos-Agrys. At its peak half a millennium ago, Grefftscharr ruled over most of the Upper Middle Kingdoms with a heavy hand. Some of the Princedoms, like Thagnor, are now Grefftscharri possessions in name only. Theovacar has his work cut out for him if he truly intends to re-create the Glory that was Greffa at the height of the iron trade."

Eldra paused to light her pipe, which was self-igniting.

She would have to leave her pipe on Fifth Level when she went outtime, thought Sirna, and exchange it for a tinderbox and a corncob pipe.

"Next to Hos-Hostigos," Eldra continued, "Greffa is the most exciting Study Team post on Kalvan's Time-Line."

"How about Balph, Styphon's House's Holy City?" Sirna asked.

"It's both more dangerous and boring—who wants to listen to a bunch of priests chatter about a religion even
they
don't believe in? Plus, there are too many cabals; Kalvan's really stirred up a hornet's nest. We only have a small observation group stationed there. The odds are, as soon as he deals with Hos-Harphax, Kalvan will clean out the entire clutch."

"I hope so," Sirna added. "Is there anything in the kit I should have left out, or anything missing I could have safely put in? I was thinking of antiseptics—"

Eldra shook her head. "Kalvan doesn't have much faith in the local midwives and was drumming antiseptics into Brother Mytron's ear five minutes after he learned Rylla was pregnant. That we know. The knowledge hasn't spread generally, yet. That there's no distilling to produce high-proof ethanol in most of Aryan-Transpacific doesn't help either, although their winter wine would make a pretty good antiseptic if anyone there understood the germ theory of disease.

"Also, we have to reckon with the possibility of Styphon's House declaring any of Kalvan's non-military innovations to be of demonic origin. They won't dare outlaw his fireseed formula because they'd lose too many allies, but something that doesn't kill people—"

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"It makes sense to the people of Kalvan's Time-Line, and their opinion is the one that will matter once you're out there among them. Remember that, and face the fact that one day you may have to let an outtimer you've come to care about die of blood poisoning because you can't use outlawed or contaminated medical knowledge to save him. You'll find such an outtimer, too. Maybe not on Kalvan's Time-Line, but much sooner than you expect."

Sirna wanted to express grave doubts that she would ever care for someone so barbaric as to fight and die for a religion, but something in Eldra's face and voice stopped her. There was a story there that even the most scurrilous University gossip had never hinted at but which had obviously left something sunk very deep in the professor.

"I'll remember," Sirna said and covered her uneasiness with another drink.

Eldra sat looking into space or maybe into the past for a moment, then keyed the big visiscreen on the wall behind her desk to life. A map of the current theatre of action in Kalvan's Time-line sprang into sight.

"As you can see, things are building up rather quickly to as nice a pair of pitched battles as you ever want to be a long way from. Ptosphes has moved down into what Kalvan would call Chambersburg, Pennsylvania—Tenabra in Kalvan's Time-Line. The vanguard of the Knights and the Ktemnoi is up to Tarr-Corria—Hagerstown, Maryland. Ptosphes may be about to decide to give battle, because as far as he can see the enemy only has about seventeen thousand men assembled at Tarr-Corria. He knows the rest have to be catching up sooner or later but he doesn't think they've done so."

"Do we know differently?"

"We suspect Soton either knows something we don't or is just confident that he can fight and win against three-to-two odds. We don't have anybody on the ground with Soton, and we've done all the air reconnaissance we can do without giving any portents. We don't want that, not when we don't know to whom we'll be giving them!"

Sirna looked up at the map again. "Wasn't there a battle in the American Civil War on the Europo-American Subsector fought near Tarr-Corria?"

"Yes. Antietam—I think. That was the Northern victory that ended the War and made General McClellan President after Lincoln. No, wait a minute—that was another Europo-American Subsector, not Kalvan's. Have you been studying up on his home time-line?"

Sirna nodded. "Mostly American history, but some European, too. Genghis Khan is fascinating in a horrid sort of way. Hitler is just plain horrid."

"Wait until you've talked to a few people who've been out on timelines where the Third Reich won." Eldra made a face and took a long pull at her drink. "Some of them make Aryan Transpacific, Styphon's House Subsector look pleasant."

"So Kalvan and the Army of Hos-Harphax will probably be going at it within the next few days?" Sirna asked.

"It looks that way. Kalvan's Mobile Force has moved down to within three days' march of Harphax City itself without meeting any serious opposition."

"Does he plan to besiege Harphax City?"

"I don't think so. According Aranth Saln, our Study Team military expert, it appears that Kalvan is baiting a trap with the Mobile Force—using the smaller force to
taunt
the Harphaxi to come to battle. He's slowed his advance now to give Prince Philesteus and Duke Aesthes a chance to come out of their tarrs and meet Kalvan on the battlefield. Either that or face a prolonged siege that the Harphaxi are ill prepared to suffer, since they have less than two weeks provisions—if that!—in their storehouses in Harphax City and Tarr-Harphax.

"Aesthes isn't much of a general, according to Records. They show he's only fought in four minor campaigns, usually princely rebellions or peasant uprisings, and in each engagement he dragged his heels; usually, the Harphaxi won because they had the bigger army and more supplies. There hasn't been a war this big in Hos-Harphax in over a century. Aesthes' tactics—if you can call them that—are not going to work against a large, very mobile army like Kalvan's Army of the Harph.

"Saln's theory is that, beside being a family friend, King Kaiphranos appointed Duke Aesthes to head the Harphaxi Army as a counterpoint to young—that's only relative to Aesthes advanced age, since the Prince is some thirty-six winters old as the Zarthani count years—Philesteus, who is known to be hot-headed and rash."

Eldra went on to explain how Kalvan did not want to engage in a siege as the opening move of the battle. "No siege guns and too few men to blockade the City. Also, Kalvan would run into supply problems, since the country between where he is now and the City will be foraged bare in another ten-day. It would also see him far removed from his storage depots in Sask and Beshta. In which case, he would have to depend on supply trains vulnerable to smaller Harphaxi units and local bandits. Protecting the supply trains, would tie up too much of his cavalry.

"Nor, does Saln suspect, that Kalvan wants to spend the time and men it would take to pacify the territory between Beshta and Harphax City, which might take four or five ten-days and tie down much of his infantry guarding prisoners and
pacified
villages and towns. If Kalvan can 'convince' the Harphaxi to chase the Mobile Force to near Beshta, where he has the majority of his forces, it will be the Harphaxi who have stretched supply lines and re-supply problems. The Hostigi will be rested and able to maneuver the Harphaxi into a picked battlefield."

"So what are the Harphaxi waiting for?" Sirna asked.

"Philesteus and Aesthes are waiting for another shipment of Styphon's muskets and fireseed to re-arm the City Militia Bands and re-equip some of the worse-off mercenaries. If they march now, almost a quarter of the Harphaxi Army would be Styphon's House troops, the Temple Guardsmen and the Order of Zarthani Knights. Prince Philesteus doesn't know whether he'd rather be called a coward or give Styphon's forces the chance to claim credit for the victory."

"He sounds like a fool," Sirna said.

"He isn't really. Philesteus is an acceptable cavalry commander, but high-level politics and grand strategy are over his head. He's also caught up in a chivalrous code that was obsolete in the Five Kingdoms a hundred years ago. The same goes for most of the other Harphaxi nobility, which is why Kalvan is going to stamp them into the mud of the Harph, like the dinosaurs they are, when the shooting starts." There was no mistaking the positively bloodthirsty note of anticipation in Eldra's voice.

"Anyway, the shooing is going to start within a ten-day at most. I want to take you to Kalvan's Time-Line in time to at least catch the aftermath."