The Shasht War (4 page)

Thru could bring up the Alvil's orchards, but he didn't want to. What need did they have of the orchards now, anyway? Ter-Saab and the Sixth Regiment were marching for Annion, so Twelfth Regiment were alone in Sulmo camp and had plenty of room.

"I see." The Meld seemed surprised by Thru's forthright acceptance of the blame. He dropped the topic, but Thru felt his reputation taking a beating.

"Well, I hope that it never happens again."

"Yes, sir. It will not."

"You have known General Toshak in his private life, I believe."

"Yes, General, before the war. We were in a wandering troupe, lead by a tumbler."

The "wandering troupe" was an unfortunate revelation perhaps. The Meld seemed to take an even dimmer view of Thru.

"And you were close to him during the fighting last summer."

"I think the whole army was close to him during the battle at Dronned. He covered every regiment. I think he worked harder than anyone else."

The general looked away for a moment and took a breath. Toshak had been most insistent that this Thru Gillo was an excellent soldier, and the one to talk to. The Meld had to wonder if he had the wrong Thru Gillo here.

"What would he be thinking now, if he were in our position, do you think?"

"I wouldn't presume to speak for Toshak, sir, but I would guess that he'd be concerned first and foremost with reconnaissance. Where's the enemy? How many do they have?"

"Yes, of course. Well, I can tell you that the enemy have moved up the Punwell Valley. The new estimate of their number is six thousand. The most recent report put them on the south bank of the River Pun and heading for Shimpli-Dindi."

Thru felt a stab of anxiety. Six thousand strong! That was a larger force than they'd faced before. They would have to be very careful.

"And he'd also be concerned about meeting up with the other regiments."

"As am I. I was hoping to join up with Brigadier Colss at Shimpli-Dindi, but I don't know exactly where the other brigades are. And now it looks as if the enemy will get to the crossroads before we do."

"Well, if we're that close to them, then we have to accept that they probably know we're in the vicinity."

"How so?" said the Meld, alarmed.

"Toshak always insists that we remember that the enemy will be doing his own reconnaissance work and may know more than we like about our positions. He suggests that we always work with the assumption that the enemy knows something of our position."

"Mmmm."

The Meld looked around him at the forested hills with visible unease, then took another look at Thru. Maybe Toshak had been right about this fellow.

Thru was busy examining the map, already rather worn from being studied so much in recent days. "The roads all converge on Shimpli-Dindi and then run down to Chenna, correct?"

"Yes. Chenna has a new stockade around it, and it will be held by a small force of local militia. How long they can hold out is unknown."

Thru tried to calculate the time and the distances. He cast a glance off to the south. About a mile from Demel rose a hill called the Sow. There was a notch where her neck was and then another smaller bump called the Head. The top of her Head was bare of trees, probably eight hundred feet above the plain. It was famous all over this part of Annion as a place where wolves liked to howl on nights of the full moon.

Over on the other side of that hill lay Chenna Forest and the vital crossroads. South of there, somewhere down the road to Glaine was the other force of four thousand mots, led by Brigadier Colss. Thru knew Colss only by reputation, since Colss had command of East Glaine and Reel Annion, but that reputation was a good one. Thru imagined therefore that Colss would have his own scouts abroad and would be aware of the existence of the Shasht army on the road ahead of him. Colss was most likely moving cautiously forward, seeking some sign of the Meld and the main army.

The two forces of mots, four thousand under Colss and the six thousand under the Meld, were separated by something like ten miles. In between, and close to Chenna was the army of men, six thousand strong—too big for either of the separated mot forces to handle. They had to coalesce, but the only road lay through Shimpli-Dindi and Chenna and was likely to be blocked by the enemy army.

Most likely the enemy knew he had this advantage, too. He would seek to draw one or the other of the two mot forces into an engagement and crush that force before the other could become involved. Then the men could turn on the remaining force of mots and destroy them, too. Thru had no illusions about the battlefield skills of the larger part of the army of Sulmo. The regiments under the Meld were capable of little more than holding a defensive line. Any maneuvers would soon turn them into chaotic mobs and such ill-disciplined units would be easy meat for the well-trained men.

Suddenly a plan just fell into place in his mind. Thru pointed to the hill.

"Sir, that is the Sow's Head. Take the army up there and fortify. Make him attack you on good defensive ground. He's between our two armies, and he can probably bring one or the other to battle before we can join. So we must make him attack our stronger force first. While he engages on your front, the other half of our army must drive in and take him in the rear."

"You think he will attack?"

"That is his best option. We have to hold him off, win time to allow us to combine."

The Meld licked his lips. The terrible weight of responsibility had never seemed so heavy before.

"And what of Colss?"

"Send me to Colss, and I can advise him about the situation as you see it."

"And what if the enemy chooses not to attack us all dug in on Sow's Head?"

"Then Colss and his army will have to find a way to reach you by going cross-country. There must be hunting trails through Chenna Forest. When we have the entire army together, then we will be strong enough to defeat him."

"Yes." The Meld clearly liked that idea.

"And what if the enemy attacks Colss?"

"Then Colss must move back into the forests quickly and avoid giving battle. He would be outnumbered and outclassed."

"What should my regiments do in such a case? In your opinion, Brigadier."

"Hold fast, sir. These regiments are not likely to hold together too well during attacking maneuvers. Use the better trained regiments for maneuver, once the army has been pulled together."

The Meld was nodding. His six thousand raw youngsters, stiffened with eight hundred veterans of the Guard, could be deployed in a defensive arc on the hill. They could hold a position like that and give a good account of themselves. To ask anything more of them was to risk a loss of cohesion when faced by men with swords in their hands.

"Go, then. I will write you orders and a message for General Colss. He is to press the enemy hard, but he is to be careful. We cannot afford defeat."

The Meld gave a series of orders, and shortly thereafter the army turned off the road and marched along narrow trails up onto the flanks of the Sow. Soon they reached the top of her Head and formed a defensive arc. Scouting parties were sent out into the forested slopes of the hill.

Thru waited for the Meld's sealed orders for Colss. Far down the valley of the Shimp he could see the temple steeple of the village of Shimpli-Dindi. Down there were men and soon there would be war.

Thru and two young mot soldiers, Beerg and Natho, kept to the rocky streambeds, under the hemlock and sycamore forest. They made little sound as they sprang from boulder to boulder, stone shelf to stone shelf.

They had left Sow Hill far behind and, after cutting down through stands of pine and birch, they'd reached the stream in the late afternoon. Thereafter they'd followed the wild dipping water and then the larger stream to which it soon joined. Somewhere ahead lay Chenna, through which the stream, by then a river, would flow.

As they traveled, they glimpsed the animals of the forest. Flocks of ducks took wing from a pond. Small groups of deer bounded away at another point. Beaver slapped water in alarm, and a blue heron watched them pass its pool without moving.

Above, through the trees, they glimpsed a clear blue sky. Under such clear conditions the Meld's army would be plainly visible to the Shasht generals. Thru was sure they would take the bait. The men of Shasht were very confident of their own strength.

As they moved on down the rocky riverbed, Thru let his thoughts wander. Jumping from rock to rock he chewed at a question he often asked: Why had the men of Shasht chosen this path? Was it something inherent in Man's nature? Was that why he was known to them only as Man the Cruel?

The Assenzi spoke of an evil force, a personage that lurked somewhere in Shasht. Thru had helped them send a special message to that person. He knew only that the message contained great power, and he hoped it would have the desired effect.

Bu Thru had fought men on several occasions now. He'd seen the incredible determination that men exhibited, even when badly hurt. There was some elemental drive in men that drove them to make war. They were conquerors, enslavers. They seemed to have no sense of the harmony of life and the way of the Great Spirit. Thru wondered how they could possibly be so bereft.

The stench of the ship on which he'd been briefly kept captive came back to him. Perhaps living in such a stink had driven them mad. Perhaps that was how they always lived, packed together in huge buildings, so close that they had no privacy. The stench of their wastes in their nostrils every day. They had no concept of the inner life of the spirit. They had gone insane, locked away from the natural world.

Simona, his human friend, had told him many things while they taught each other their respective languages. The land of Shasht had once been green and fertile. A dozen small nations had expanded to fill the arable land, and as a result there had been endless war, which was only curbed by the creation of the Empire. That had been the work of the First Emperor, Kadawak the Great. Since then the Empire had ruled all the lands of men. Its enemies were always broken, always brought to the temple pyramid and sacrificed to the Great God while the multitudes bayed below, the priests tearing open their victim's chest to rip out their still-beating hearts to offer to their cruel and bloodthirsty God.

And yet, these harsh people dwelled in a high city, carved in white stone, draped in the scarlet cloth that honored the Emperor. Great song festivals were held where choirs and musical ensembles strove to produce great music. They produced paintings and rugs and many other beautiful objects.

It was all a huge puzzle to Thru. How did they turn from the harsh world that Simona described to sing of love and the caress of the infinite?

And again, just for a moment he had that thought of the entirely new mat design that had come to him in a flash of insight. The excitement he felt at this idea left him acutely uncomfortable, as if he'd done something completely forbidden. So he shrugged it aside, suppressing the idea once more.

They came out into a place where the stream broke into dozens of channels on flat ground. Dwarf pine competed with the birches here, and they watched a pair of storks fly up in alarm.

They were a good distance from the storks. And storks were never hunted or killed except when they raided sea-pond. All three mots exchanged a look, but after careful study of the ground ahead of them, they moved on through the dwarf trees, across the braids of gravel in which the stream wandered.

At the far side of the open space, the stream fell more steeply. Huge hemlocks towered up above, leaving only dimness on the forest floor. After the dwarf forest it was like walking into a quiet vault.

Suddenly, Beerg froze and raised a hand.

"Look!" he whispered.

Lying on the gravel bed, beside the stream, was an old mor. She was wrapped in a thick, homespun cloak and appeared to have died peacefully, most likely from exhaustion and exposure.

"Refugee," said Natho before offering a short prayer for the dead mor.

Beerg had found tracks.

"There are many, and some are not from mot or brilby foot."

Mot eyebrows flashed up and down in the universal sign of apprehension.

Men!

They studied the ground. Beerg pointed out the details that showed which marks were made by mots and which by something else.

"May the spirit be with us," whispered Natho.

There were at least ten men somewhere ahead of them. Before that a party of mots, many mots, had passed across the streambed.

"Scouts from their army, I guess," muttered Thru as he studied the ground.

They went on down the tumbled stone of the streambed, then again they halted. They heard sounds from up ahead. Moving with extreme care, they drew back and shifted off the streambed and into the forest. After a while they peered over a huge fallen tree trunk and saw a party of men, lounging by the side of the stream. Thru saw the straggly dark beards, the metal helmets, their swords and spears. These men were completely at ease here in the forest of Chenna. The big noses, the fleshy lips were ugly to his eyes, and Thru felt hatred course through his veins.

Natho pinched him and pointed. Thru sucked in a breath.

Tied to a tree by a length of rope were two ragged-looking young mors, youngsters no more than ten or twelve years old. They looked exhausted, with mud and perhaps blood staining their fur.

The men suddenly stirred and called out, and then from the trees on the far side came more men, carrying wood gathered from the forest floor.

With cheerful banter that Thru could understand at least in part, the men built a big pile of wood. Then they set it ablaze with the help of a splash of oil. Soon smoke was rising, and flames were licking up from the wood.

Now, to the horror of the watching mots, the men seized one of the mors, cut her free from the tree, and dragged her, screaming, to the streambed where they smashed her head with a blow from a heavy club.

As the watching mots gagged, the men cut the mor open and emptied her body cavity into the stream. Then using their swords and dirks, they butchered her into pieces that were set on sticks and placed over the fire. The stench of burning flesh filled the air, and the mots crouched down and ground their teeth.