The Heights of Chothros were blocking the view to the northwest by the time Captain Phidestros reached the van. He could have reached it sooner if he hadn't wanted to spare his horse and inspect his columns. This was the first time the Iron Company had been the advance guard for the left flank of the Army of Hos-Harphax, and Phidestros knew that his men were on display even if they didn't.
So far he'd seen nothing to concern him, or at least nothing that couldn't be handled by petty-captains-loose saddle girths, frayed musketoon slings and the like. Even had these minor flaws been ten times as common as they were, the Iron Company would still have made much of the rest of the Army of Harphax look like rabble. That would not have kept the other captains from trying to advance themselves or at least conceal their own ineptness by pointing out Phidestros' minor lapses.
He spurred his horse at a trot along the Great Harph Road-a deeply rutted wagon trail that was Great only in name-until he was fifty paces ahead of the lead horseman of his center column. He would have given his next ten-winters' honors and booty for the Iron Company's horses to grow wings so that they might fly across the Harph and join the Holy Host of Styphon.
In the eight days since the Harphaxi leaders, if such well-born milksops could be called leaders, had chosen to march against Kalvan, it was possible that there were mistakes they had not made, but Phidestros was not prepared to wager more than the price of a cup of bad wine on it. They had paid dearly in blood for every march they chased Kalvan's 'Army of Observation,' as the Hostigi prisoners called it-what few there were. Kalvan's new far-shooting muskets-"rifles"-had taken a stiff butcher's bill. Every day the army marched, there were a hundred to two hundred new casualties-many of them irreplaceable captains and petty-captains.
Duke Aesthes, the nominal commander, kept saying that Kalvan was not fighting fairly; he should halt his army and fight like a civilized king, not like a Sastragathi warlord. Prince Philesteus was so angry he couldn't talk straight; instead he puffed and sputtered like an overheated teakettle.
If they were taking a beating this bad from Kalvan's forward body, Phidestros wondered what the butcher's bill would be when they joined battle with Kalvan's Army of the Harph! He feared that the Army of Harphax was a sinking ship-a ship sinking, moreover, through the fault of its builders and crew. Unfortunately, it would be some time before the Iron Company could safely imitate rats.
He wondered, for about the hundredth time, if he was fighting for the wrong side, that is, the losing side. He'd already fought against Kalvan at the Battle of Fyk; there he'd been lucky. In the confusion that followed the battle, he had found himself in charge of Prince Sarrask's baggage train. When word had arrived that the Prince had surrendered to the Hostigi, he had taken command of the baggage train and hot-footed it out of enemy territory. Of course, after giving short shares to another mercenary company, he had claimed the bulk of Sarrask's paychests.
This had left him able to outfit his company with style, but at the expense of making an enemy of a Prince who was renowned for never forgetting a slight. Unfortunately, this had also wedded Phidestros to Kalvan's enemies, primarily the Harphaxi Royal Family and Styphon's House. Any captain worth his steel knew his best bargaining tool was his ability to change sides when the paychests showed bottom, or the war effort appeared doomed. For now, he had no other options, but new opportunities would arise if this war were to continue for a few winters.
Especially, if Sarrask were to die in battle, as he likes to lead his Guard from the front. With Sarrask dead, he might find a place for the Iron Company in Kalvan's service. Maybe a bounty of a hundred gold rakmars on the Prince's head would help bring that day a little sooner.
He topped a little rise and looked back at the Iron Company. At least the Harphaxi would have their scouting done well today. The center column was mostly Lamochares' men, armed with pistols and swords, ready to come to the aid of the flankers and meanwhile under Phidestros' eye. The left and right columns were the old Iron Company with musketoons, pistols and swords. The left was nearly invisible in the brush and small trees toward the Harph; the right was on more open ground that stretched toward the wooded base of the Heights of Chothros.
He cantered down the far side of the rise, opening the distance to the men behind him another twenty paces. It felt good to be out in the fresh air, not breathing the dust and sweat and dung smells of even his own men, let alone ten thousand more.
He'd have to drop back into the center column before long, though. The Great Harph Road ran through the West Chothros Gap just ahead, with the Heights to the right and rugged, wooded country running down to the Harph on the left. The Hostigi had been foraging on this side of the gap; too many abandoned farms had been stripped bare to let Phidestros believe otherwise. Even without the signs of foragers, the West, Middle and East Gaps were places no one but fools like Philesteus and Aesthes would fail to picket. No point riding into an ambush, and being the Harphaxi's first Four smoke puffs rose from behind a stone wall lying across the path of the Iron Company's right column. Phidestros heard the distant pop of the discharges and saw two riders and one horse at the head of the column go down. He measured the distance from the wall to the targets with his eyes and whistled.
Three hits out of four shots at six hundred paces!
To Phidestros, that meant Hostigi rifles. He'd felt their bite before at Fyk.
Four more smoke puffs rose from behind trees on the near side of the wall, and two men nearly eight hundred paces away dropped from their saddles. That settled the matter for Phidestros. Few infantry weapons could reach that far, and those that could did well to hit a fair-sized barn at extreme range. Hostigi riflemen, for certain.
The rightward column was bunching up, whether to help their comrades or organize for a charge he wasn't sure. He was sure that he didn't want them to present such a fine target while they made up their minds.
He cantered back to the center column, shouting orders the moment he had their attention. Two men rode off to the leftward column to warn Petty-Captain Kyblannos, his second-in-command and titular commander of the Blue Company, of what was going on. Two others rode back along the column to order the gun team to bring up the eight-pounder. If he could have made a wager, he'd have bet Kyblannos would be near the eight-pounder. They'd had to leave the eighteen-pounder, the Fat Duchess, behind or risk killing a brace of horses dragging it up the Heights after the Hostigi. It was too heavy to be truly mobile, but Kyblannos had complained as if they were leaving behind one of the Petty-Captain's beloved children!
The eight-pounder was a good deal handier for this kind of work anyway, so for now that did no harm.
A dozen troopers gathered around Phidestros himself and followed him off the Great Harph Road along a glorified track that led across two farms toward the right flank. He was working up to a canter when he came to a narrow but steep-banked stream cutting between the two fields. He trotted onto the rough log bridge that carried the track across the stream, and was halfway across when from underneath he heard wood creak and begin to crack.
Suddenly the whole floor of the bridge tilted to the right, spilling Phidestros and his mount into the cold stream.
Phidestros was kicking his feet free of the stirrups from the first cracking sound, so he and Snowdrift parted company in midair. Somehow the horse landed on his feet, to come up snorting and dripping foul-smelling mud but undamaged except for temper.
He wasn't quite so lucky. Most of him landed in the muck, but his right knee met a stone that felt like a blacksmith's hammer. He could raise his face and upper body out of the mud, but for a terrifyingly long moment he couldn't move his legs.
Then four or five of his men were dismounting and half scrambling down the bank of the stream to his aid. With their help, he found that he could stand, although his right knee was throbbing, sending red-hot jabs of pain up and down his leg. That he could feel and move it suggested that nothing was broken, but the pain warned him to plan on spending the rest of the battle in the saddle and pray to the Wargod that nothing happened to Snowdrift. He'd have prayed to Galzar for that anyway; tractable mounts that could carry his weight for long weren't easy to come by and cost the Treasury of Balph when discovered.
The rapid popping of musketoons suggested that at least some of the right-flankers were wisely dismounting to shoot at the Hostigi rather than charging headlong. Two grunting men hoisted Phidestros on their shoulders and let him take a look over the bank of the stream, which confirmed it. He also saw about twenty of the right-flankers riding towards a small orchard that ran to within three hundred paces of the Hostigi position. There they just possibly might be able to hit the Hostigi instead of just slightly interfering with their marksmanship.
Another of the Iron Company's mounted men went down as Phidestros watched, then he turned at a shout from one of the men who'd been examining the wrecked bridge.
"Captain, look! The Ormaz-forsaken timbers were sawed through, or pretty damned near."
Someone had indeed sawed three-quarters of the way through each of the main timbers supporting the floor of the bridge so that it would look sound until an unsuspecting passerby put weight on it. Phidestros looked again, then clawed muck out of his beard and grinned.
"We'll burn three candles for Galzar tonight! Whoever sawed the timbers went too far, so the bridge gave way under a horseman's weight. Suppose it had held until we tried to take the eight-pounder-or Galzar forbid-the Fat Duchess across? We'd have had send for Kyblannos and his block-and-tackle to fish her out! "
By the time the forward skirmishers had reached the orchard, they'd lost four more men, and the rest of the Iron Company's right-flankers had lost three. Phidestros saw some movement behind the wall that looked suspiciously like horse handlers bringing forth the riflemen's mounts so they could withdraw. He cursed the Hostigi, but not too loudly, because he had to respect what those eight men had in them to make them willing to stand up to odds of thirty-to-one-even if they did have half-magical weapons.
When the riflemen broke cover, the skirmishers fired a small volley and one of the riflemen's mount was hit. The Hostigi took a bad spill, but one of the other riflemen turned back and helped him onto the back of his horse before Phidestros' skirmishers could reload and shoot.
"Dralm-blast it!" he cursed.
Magical or not, those rifles were going to have to be thought about. A man armed with one of them would be worth three or four ordinary musketeers; a larger force-well, he was glad he didn't have to solve the problem of fighting one today. He hoped that whatever knowledge went into making those rifles was not demonic, or rather would not be called demonic by Styphon's House. He had his own opinions on the existence of demons, whether allied with King Kalvan or anyone else.
One of the skirmishers approached him with a canvas hat. "The Hostigi left this behind, Captain!"
Phidestros took the billed cap in his hand, saying, "Too bad it's not one of those Hostigi rifles."
The man nodded, making a sign of aversion with his index and baby finger.
Phidestros examined the cap and saw a gold insignia-two crossed rifles! These troopers were Kalvan's Mounted Rifles; furthermore, this was largest body of riflemen he'd heard of since the Army of Observation had begun their sniping at the Harphaxi Army. Perhaps Kalvan was close at hand; the Mounted Rifles of Hostigos were the crack troops of his Mobile Force. He'd tasted their lead before in Sask. And Kalvan's Mobile Force, in turn, would not be far from the main body of the Army of Hos-Hostigos-not if Kalvan was half the general he'd proved himself to be at Fyk. Battle was possible today, certainly no later than tomorrow-unless he did have demons at his command and chose a night attack, in which case there'd be nothing to do but keep a sharp lookout, load weapons and pray to Galzar.
Assuming that Kalvan had merely a human captain's resources, however "Yoooo!" Phidestros called up to the mounted men on the bank. "Six of you, ride back to Prince Philesteus. Report that we have found the Mounted Rifles of Hostigos scouting for Kalvan's main body six marches south of Chothros West Gap. We expect the Mobile Force is close enough to us that we will need reinforcements as fast as they can be sent up." That was as much as he could be sure was the truth, and perhaps more than was tactful to say to Philesteus-who was known for his hard head, not his brains. To Regwarn with tact, he had his men to consider!
The mounted men started arguing among themselves as to who should beard Philesteus. Phidestros gripped Snowdrift's saddle with one hand and drew his pocket pistol with the other, then followed his men downstream until the banks were low enough to let everyone climb out. As he moved, he was aware again of the sharp pains in his knee and also of the fresh muck oozing into his boots, not to mention the drying muck on his arms, clothes and skin that was beginning to ripen in the hot morning sun.