A moon-quarter after the meeting at the Royal Foundry, word reached Hostigos Town that the Holy Host was on the march again. Kalvan's General Staff held its Council of War at Prince Sarrask's temporary residence, an inn called the Silver Stag. The improvised council chamber, if not regal, at least had enough benches, as well as a table that if not exactly groaning was at least muttering darkly to itself under the weight of food and drink piled upon it. Sarrask, it appeared, was determined to be a gracious host to the end, if this was the end-and Verkan Vall was unpleasantly aware that it might be.
Not just for the Hostigi and Kalvan, either. This was the kind of situation that had killed many a Paratimer-a fast-moving battle that could go either way on very short notice. The only sure way to be safe was to leave so soon you'd obviously be deserting your friends. If they won, you'd lose all chance of working with them again, apart from the risk of being executed for treason or desertion. If they lost, you still might not be able to deal with the victors-and you'd have to live with yourself whether you could or not.
All this was true even if you hadn't developed any deep loyalties to your outtime comrades. That happened more often than the Paratime Commission like to admit; in fact, it most often happened to the best outtime operatives-one reason why Verkan Vall had been Tortha Karf's third choice to succeed him. It was small consolation to Verkan that at least he'd never assumed he was immune to Outtime Identification Syndrome (as the Bureau of Psychological Hygiene's jargon called it) so he hadn't been surprised when he realized that his body might very well be one of those picked up after Kalvan's Last Stand.
Prince Sarrask was the only member of the Council present when Verkan arrived. He was seated at the far end, munching his way through a large plate heaped with sausages; it appeared he was well on his way to gaining back most of the weight he'd lost on the road back from Tenabra.
Sarrask waved Verkan to a chair, finished a sausage, then grinned. "I saw one of your new girls at the Foundry giving me the eye the other day," Sarrask said. "You know, the tall redhead with the big nose and the big-" His hands out outlined in the air two of Danar Sirna's most prominent features.
Verkan tried hard not to laugh. "I have to warn you, Your Grace, that Sirna is the daughter of a blood-brother of my father. So she must be considered under my protection."
Sarrask chuckled. "Under your-protection? Whatever would your wife Dalla say about you protecting Sirna?"
"She'd say Sarrask of Sask talks too much," Kalvan said, sticking his head into the room.
Sarrask grunted like a boar stuck in a bog, then shrugged. "She'd probably be right, too. Dralm-blast it! I apologize, Colonel Verkan."
"Accepted," Verkan said with a bow. Sarrask wouldn't be a problem after Kalvan's public reprimand, but it struck him that as the University Teams' strength increased, the Prince might not be the only man with an eye for their unattached females. Suggest to Kalvan that the Foundry be formally declared part of the Royal Household? That would solve the legal requirements, at least, and Rylla could probably help. In the long run, it would also set useful precedents for when-call it "international trade"-really began again in Kalvan's Time-Line after half a millennium of strangulation by Styphon's House.
That was as far as Verkan's thoughts took him before the rest of the Council started arriving. By the time everyone had arrived, it was the largest and most rank-heavy Council of War Verkan had ever attended in Kalvan's Time-Line, and was in the running for the prize in all the time-lines where he'd attended Councils of War.
There was Kalvan himself, four Princes (Ptosphes, Sarrask, Armanes and Balthames), six Generals (Chartiphon, Harmakros, Phrames, Klestreus, Hestophes and Alkides the artilleryman), the Ulthori Count Euphrades and at least a dozen noble and mercenary captains whom Verkan knew only by sight and name; First Level recall didn't help with information you didn't have!
It occurred to Verkan that if the Silver Stag collapsed, the rest of the Holy Host's campaign would probably be recorded as "mopping-up operations."
It also struck him that the Council was much too large to do more than give everyone a chance to be heard, whether they had anything to say or not beyond praise for Kalvan's victory and sympathy for Ptosphes' bad luck. Kalvan had almost certainly arranged for a smaller meeting to do the real business, either before or after this huge, unwieldy Council of War.
The Council ran on until all the food was gone and everybody had said his piece-or sometimes several of them. It also managed to hammer out a surprisingly complete strategy, and Verkan realized that perhaps he'd underestimated the hold Kalvan had over these people, particularly after his victory at Chothros Heights. That, it appeared, had been such a victory as no Great Kingdom had won over another in two centuries-since about the time Styphon's House really started clamping down on wars that threatened to create large and dangerous independent political units.
It also helped that the military situation was so simple that a nine-year-old child could probably have planned the campaign. Hostigos Town was something the Holy Host had to take and the Hostigi had to defend.
The Holy Host could not even stay where it had been camped much longer without sending larger and larger foraging parties farther a field. Long before Hostigos was eaten bare, the Hostigi could march on the weakened main body and force it to fight against odds, then cut off the foraging parties at their leisure.
After a while it became clear to Verkan that there weren't going to be any disagreements where his voice had to be heard, or even suggestions he needed to make about the best use of the Mounted Rifles. So he studied his fellow commanders.
Ptosphes: a man who looked as if he were being eaten alive by the shame of defeat. Sarrask: loud and lewd, but who seemed to be finding something in himself that hadn't been there before he had a leader worth following. The men Verkan had begun to call (after one of Dalla's favorite Fourth Level, Europo-American novels) "The Three Musketeers"-Harmakros, Phrames and Hestophes. Chartiphon: big and bluff, and not quite up to the demands of the new kind of war that would be fought in Kalvan's Time-Line from now on, but useful within his limits and probably wise enough to know what they were.
Balthames of Sashta, looking daggers at his father-in-law Sarrask every time he thought he was unobserved-a prime candidate for a dose of hypno-truth drug. Alkides, who looked almost as grim as Ptosphes, after being ordered to blow up much of the captured Harphaxi artillery train at Chothros Heights-which to an artilleryman must have been like losing an adopted child. Verkan decided to keep a particularly close eye on Alkides, since he could be the key to victory in a battle where Kalvan's artillery superiority might mean everything.
Count Euphrades of Ulthor, thin and remote, with obvious plans of his own he was telling no one-another prime candidate for hypno-truth drugs. And three or four others who might prove as interesting as Euphrades once Verkan knew something about them.
A good company, not quite a "band of brothers" yet (and they were much rarer in fact than in fiction or hagiographical history, Verkan knew), but formidable enemies and fine friends.
Too fine to abandon, if it came to that. Verkan knew he wasn't going to deliberately put himself in a position where he had to go down with Kalvan. On the other hand, if he found himself in that position with no way out that let him keep a clear conscience-well, this time he was glad that Dalla was back on First Level. She wasn't Rylla, who would try not to outlive Kalvan by more than five minutes if she could help it, but she would have some hard decisions to make that he was just as glad she didn't have to face now.