Off to war (1)
Part 1 of 2, or Athal’s fans will have to wait too long for me to find out some facts I’m not clear about.
Seeing the clerks in Beguyan’s headquarters, Athal asked for paper and a pen and wrote a note to Raisse: Off to war now. I love you. This travelled on the same ship as Aidan’s latest letter to Cora, so Raisse may get it soon after she reaches Valdis.
Finally, I’m about to fulfil my promise to Beguyan. We’re outside the walls of Solay, preparing to strike.
Either I’m becoming a better sailor at last —which I doubt— or Aidan is very good at whatever he did to me —which seems likely— because though I was as shaky when I arrived as the previous few times, I was in good shape again in hours. I don’t recall much of the voyage, but Aidan tells me that he let me into his inner space and led me out when I was almost falling asleep so I could sleep in my own bunk, mind and body together. It must have worked, because I was weak but not knackered.
We couldn’t sail into the harbour, because not only was our ship too large for the makeshift quay, but there was also a still larger ship half on the shore and half in the water, its mast broken and jutting into the town square. Raith was standing almost in the water, tanned to an almost Iss-Peranian brown, looking leaner and harder than I remembered. Beguyan was close on her heels: we embraced like brothers. Mehili was there, and most of my generals, and many people I didn’t know; also Attima who had landed not long before. They gave me and Attima the former bakery next to the former fish shop that Raith was using as quarters: me on the ground floor, him on the first floor and the three wives he had with him —the two from Jomhur and his latest, the Síthi one from Essle— in the attic, with a side-room for Dushtan. There was warm water, and clothes that smelt of camphor instead of salt, and surprisingly good wine, and Raith sitting on an upturned bucket telling me the latest news and gossip.
There was nobody left of the original inhabitants of the town. First the Khas had taken it, then Valdyans had taken it back from them, before Beguyan and the land-army arrived. It was a very small fishing town really, much smaller than even Selday, only some houses and shops on the square and a few streets leading away from it, and it was now completely swamped by the army. Even with a camp to serve a soldier’s every need away from the main camp. A makeshift harbour had been built in a hurry, too small already to take all of our ships.
Raith had a woman with her who looked for all the world like a dandar, except that there was something strange about her— or perhaps something familiar instead. “My apprentice,” Raith said, “Bebakshi.” She spoke quite passable Ilaini, telling me that she was learning weather from Raith, but would be going to Rychie Tal-Serth after the war. “Don’t they have excellent weather in Ryshas already?” I asked. But it wasn’t for the weather that she was going, but to marry a smith, it turned out. How it had come about that Raith had taken a dandar as an apprentice I didn’t learn, because she went on to tell me how she had been trapped and escaped twice, and how Khas mages fed their power by killing people: not only gifted children, but also captives and possibly slaves. And they’d been sucking the land dry of all anea somehow; even the elephants, according to Raith, had suffered from it. If I get the time and opportunity after all the fighting, I’ll definitely look into that.
Then there was a strategy meeting. Beguyan had appropriated the local magistrate’s house across the square from our bakery. First we ate soldiers’ food, barley mash with fish and something that might have been a vegetable. Some meat, too, probably in honour of me as a king, because many people were surprised. Aidan had been invited, but he told me he thought it better not to come because otherwise Dhamir would think he was entitled to come too. Wise of him— he’ll really make a general yet.
The table was cleared and maps spread out— I’d brought mine too, and some of those were more accurate than Beguyan’s though they were perhaps somewhat out of date.
The city is built as a square or a rectangle (the maps don’t agree on that), twice the size of Essle, surrounded by a wall at least six man-heights high and very hard to breach. It has been breached, though, on the north-west corner, and some civilians have fled and are in refugee camps in the swamp. There are already about sixty thousand Iss-Peranian troops surrounding the city, as well as Rhyn’s advance force, and more are being brought over all the time.
Beguyan thinks that the Khas must be concentrated in the forts along the wall, especially the two huge forts in the west on either side of the great water-gate. The water-gate is also a sluice, which can be closed to flood the swamp, but that would mean that the city won’t have drinking water so it’s not likely that the Khas would do that except in the last resort. Someone asked me if I could cause an undersea earthquake and have the city flooded by the wave, but that would not only kill the civilians as well as the occupying force, but also be likely to come back and flood Kushesh. That, too, is only a last resort.
Taking the citadel, sticking out from the coast and the only really firm bit of land around (the rest is either as swampy as Essle, or built on the same kind of worm-shell ground as that island we were shipwrecked on), would be the best option if the Khas weren’t likely to expect us to try exactly that. Create a diversion, Attima said: one division to attack at the breach in the wall and fight its way towards the citadel, while others took the citadel from the sea. I oughtn’t to be with the first detail ashore, he thought, but probably with the second. If I could stand on the citadel —chalk on granite— I’d be able to shake it a little and create panic among the unsuspecting Khas. Also, that was where their most powerful mages and generals were likely to be.
The Khas weren’t united, Beguyan said: each fort was probably occupied by a clan or tribe who might be rivals. That made me suddenly think of the folk-tale of the tailor who killed two giants by throwing a stone at the head of the nearest one, making him think the other did it. If we could pit the two big forts against each other, that would be a diversion as well as getting a lot of Khas out of our way. I thought I could perhaps undermine one, or both, but according to Mehili they were two thousand years old and built on the bedrock.
There were Valdyan semti on all sides around the city, so coordinating the attack wouldn’t be a problem. The first problem at hand was to spare as many civilians as possible while doing away with as many Khas as possible— if only we could evacuate the city first! But supposing that all the civilians could leave, our troops wouldn’t be able to deal with them. It looked as if we’d really have to take the city first. The trade quays looked open to the sea but were probably the best defended; the land north or south of the city was safer. In the north, the Khas were defending the broken wall, so we’d better attack from the south: the first or second fort inland seemed most promising.
Finally it looked as if we had a plan: attack the breached wall and one of the southern forts at the same time, and when the Khas were acting on that, invade the citadel. We drank to that, telling each other war-stories, and I called Aidan to invite him after all, bringing Dhamir if he liked. They arrived soon after, Dhamir a bit upset because Aidan had dragged him from a whore’s bed —he’s forbidden his soldiers to go to the whores, but he couldn’t very well forbid the prince. (Also, he told me later that he’s swapped the women in his unit for someone else’s men, because some were lusting after him and the others after Dhamir. So much for discipline! But I’m glad he has it in hand.)
