“Not impossible. Twenty two thousand if it's true.”
He looked angry. “They said you might be a coward, cousin. Tell me you are not, please.”
I flushed up. “No, at least I think not. What I am is a rational man with a head full of everything ever written on the subject of war. Break enemy plans, avoid the joining of enemy forces…”
“Then we should pick one direction rumored and strike out against them.”
“It's too late for that. They are too close, hours away. If we hit one and I'm right we could have an enemy at our back or flanks when still engaged. Our only advantage is that they may not know we are here, yet. In which case,” I continued, thinking as I went along, “they will head for the nearest town…” I stormed away, heading for the tent, Tul a step after me. I knew where the nearest town was, what I wanted to do was look at the terrain and make sure the map was right.
“Yebratt!” I needed scouts to report on the terrain, to check against the map.
“You think they will hit Undralt without knowing we are here?”
“Maybe! It would give us an interesting situation. If we let them take it before acting we can destroy half their army while the other half is trapped inside.”
“Battle of Yerprathin! The siege after the siege! I read too, you know.”
I laughed. “Of course you do. We don't send out more scouts, agreed?”
“We don't want to risk one captured. Break the camp?”
Bugger. My lovely towers and siege engines. “Let's think about it.”
When Yebratt arrived we kept him busy.
45
“There are still recruiters out there.”
The thought had just occurred to me and I just spat it out. There was no time to do anything else, decisions were being made. Get the info out there. Facts, think, decide, act.
“We leave the fort up then, you have a way understrength cohort, we leave them and the engineers and baggage.”
“And messengers. We won't be that far but if the fort is hit we need to know.”
“Agreed.”
We were now in a tent full of commanders who were taking orders and instructions or, like Sheo, passing orders out the door as they came to be acted on. There were already people watching the town of Undralt from cover. They had mirrors to signal with if anything happened. A relay would get the message here pretty fast. A detailed message would follow. There was a battle mage on the walls. There is a dinky spell called far-see that gave them better range of sight. But we didn't send them out of the fort. Too useful to risk. At night we would have to wait for word. As the scouts came in we re-assigned them. No more scouts out lest they be seen or captured. We were trying to stay unknown now, and hoping it worked.
The day was on the wane. We needed to be ready to move out at any time, but I doubted anything would now make us move until dawn. There would be no practice tonight for me, and none for any of us the next day. Tomorrow it might be the thing we had been practicing for. A battle. The excitement bothered me but I couldn't not feel it. I didn't feel any fear, oddly enough, the excitement and the fact I was busy masked it if it was there.
“Best let the rest of the world know what's happening.”
Tul was in fact at his desk writing, it was me who couldn't stop pacing and thinking and talking.
“I'm on it. Three copies, one for Orthand, one for the King of Wherrel, one for the assembly of patrons.”
“Should we have warned the magistrate of Undralt?”
“How can they not know the enemy is near? And do we want to risk giving the enemy any information of us, no matter how slim the chance? I'm trying to write.”
I let it lie and worried at my lip, trying to think if we had missed anything. It all relied on not being seen, even then nothing was certain. The enemy attack the town, take the walls, flood into the town and then we hit them hard from the rear. Any inside the walls would be useless, and as long as we broke the force that remained outside we could probably take the rest as they flooded back out again, their numbers useless. And they had numbers. The three force theory was holding up, traveling separately in an arc from north to north-west. They might join up before reaching Undralt, or arrive at different times, either way we would wait until the town fell. Something over twenty thousand looked to be true. Ten times our numbers. Six miles from here to the town. There was a danger that outriders would find us and we had small units placed in any cover, ditch or copse, to take down riders. Their instructions strict, keep cover if you can't take them, take them down if you can. If engaged, don't let any enemy ride away alive, no matter what the cost. If a large unit got close enough to see the fort – which would be a mile due to lay of the land and vegetation; orchard, coppice, copse and so forth – we would have some warning and be able to prepare to take them down. There had been no camp fires all day and would be none in the night.
We worked on, worried, worked over the plans again and again. By nightfall I was exhausted.
“Sleep,” Tulian instructed me. “You'll soon enough be woken if something happens.”
“Have we missed anything?”
“I hope not. I don't think so.”
“If they see us beforehand we are going to have a serious problem.”
“The fort's solid, your towers and siege weapons, battle mages, crossbowmen, enough men to man the walls…”
“A serious problem.”
He nodded, knowing I was right. “Sleep.”
It was my turn to nod. I knew he was right.
46
“Wake him.”
The words alone were enough to bring me to full consciousness. I had a whole new definition of the term restless sleep.
“I'm awake,” I said, up and out of bed in one movement, reaching for my sword and helm. I'd slept in my armor, finding the only way to be even half way comfortable was flat on my back.
“We have a signal. There's movement around the town.”
I recognized Sheo's voice and headed for it in the dark, moving slowly.
“Anything more concrete?”
I shuffled forward like a blind man, heading for his voice and the cool breeze he let in by holding the tent flap open. I stepped carefully, arms reaching until I touched an outstretched hand. “Here,” he said, unnecessarily. Outside was no better, a faint glow from my left. Tul had a lamp lit in the command tent. I could hear people moving in the dark; they sounded as slow and careful as me. Once inside the command tent I could see well enough, lots of shadowy figures but the table was crisp and clear in the light of a single lamp, a map of the immediate area spread out on it. Tul met my gaze but didn't say anything. I had nothing to say either. No one did. We were waiting. So we waited.
Tension oozed around the room, seeping into me in irregular waves. How long would we wait? Knowing there was something going on in the night, that the enemy had been sighted, but not knowing where or how many or what they were doing, sent thrills of uncertainty and fear through us. We waited.
The noise of someone coming to join us sounded loud against our tense silence and we all looked at the entrance even though we could see nothing; the flaps parted and Kerral stepped in, looked around, held the commander's gaze and shook his head. No, he had no news. We all relaxed back into the silent tension of waiting, the thrill of possible action unfulfilled adding to the pressure of expectation.
To keep the pressure at bay I started thinking; the plan was set, more or less, but we could still change it. Hell, we could right now move west, away from the enemy and seek out our allies and join forces with them. If we
