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.It's been under constant bombardment for over a moon quarter.Rylla just got a new shipment of shells in from Beshta so I don't think it will hold out much longer.Prince Araxes must be quaking in his boots!""If he isn't, he soon will be.I'm sure Rylla's picked out an appropriate punishment for him.Thanks Ranthar.I'll be in touch.""Over and out, Chief!""How serious is this, Verkan?""Very.Rylla might have single-handedly changed the course of Kalvan's Time-Line.The one thing Kalvan doesn't need is more enemies.And Rylla's just given him a barrel full."IIKalvan sat on his horse and watched as here-and-now's biggest bonfire, at the bottom of the hills, was torched by screaming clansmen.Tree trunks, limbs and branches tumbled like matchsticks a third of the way up the hills.After four days of sunshine to dry them out—there was going to be quite a barbecue.Already, small clouds of smoke were pouring out of the old abandoned mines and iron pits.It had taken a week of hauling and a small forest of trees to fill every crevice and hole, and all that was accomplished between counter-attacks by the Knights.The counter-attacks had been the futile last gasp of the doomed; after all, what could a few thousand men do against a fifty times their number.It hadn't take the Knights long to figure out the Warlords' diabolical plan, but—even after a short parlay—Knight Commander Drakmos refused categorically to surrender.He's buying time for the Order, thought Kalvan, but at what price!The fire, set by a hundred torches, went racing up the hills.The heat was already so intense that the clansmen were drawing back from the hills.Many of the nomads darted back and forth to the flames, like children, daring them to do their worst.A score of black armored Zarthani Knights and their oath-brothers ran out of a hidden tunnel, searching for a bolt-hole.Moments later smoke came billowing out behind them.The men looked down at the racing fire and then back at the hole, which was now belching smoke like a locomotive.Kalvan aimed his rifle, pushed down the striker and fired.One of the armored men toppled.A lucky one, Kalvan thought.The other riflemen in the King's Lifeguard followed his example and in two breaths, all the Knights were down.Then the fire leaped over their bodies and all that could be seen were flames and swirling smoke.The fire raged up and down the hills all day and through most of the night.In the morning, the hillsides were covered by blackened trunks and tree limbs.Here and there in the mine entrances were blackened armors and an occasional skeleton.Kalvan sent out search teams to find any survivors.It took most of the morning, but none of the tunnels contained anything living, animal or human.The Hostigi soldiers who returned came back with blackened faces and desolate eyes.Captain Simodes, a red-haired cavalryman whose hair was now charcoal-colored, told Kalvan, "It's like Regwarn in those tunnels, Your Majesty! I know the Knights are the enemy and all, but I wouldn't wish a death like that on a clutch of Styphon's House Archpriests! We found one point of sixty Knights all glued to one another.Their armor had melted together and we couldn't separate the bodies.It sickens a man to see brave men die like crayfish in a pot.The smell was so bad we had to soak pieces of our sashes in water and tie them around our noses, and still half the men puked their guts out.I don't think I'll ever eat pork again!"Kalvan dismissed Simodes and called an impromptu council of war."Warlord, you are to be commended for the battle plan."Ranjar Sargos looked sick."I had not imagined the screams and stench that would assault us! I can't imagine a more terrible kind of war."Warchief Vanar Halgoth nodded in agreement."The Raven Hag of War cares not how men die in battle, just that they go to Wind.It was truly bad medicine, but, if we could, I would say let us do it all over again at Tarr-Ceros."The others nodded.Kalvan remembered the mustard gas of World War I and the atomic flames of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wondered, for about the hundredth time, if he was leading these folk—now his people—down the same road."This was bad," Kalvan said."In my land this type of warfare was called 'total war.'"King Nestros drew back away from Kalvan."I don't like the sound of that.""It's neither honorable, nor fair.But it's the future."Ranjar Sargos made a series of complex hand motions that Kalvan assumed were to ward of demons and evil spirits."I pray to the gods you are wrong, King Kalvan.Did the gods speak to you, too?""Yes, in a manner of speaking." Kalvan had seen the future of warfare first hand, first in World War II newsreels, and then in person on the frozen battlefields of Korea fighting the Chinese."I will do my best to see that it doesn't happen here." It sounds like whistling in the wind to me, but maybe one man can make a difference."May the gods give you the strength." The Warlord looked up at the sun."We have almost a full day ahead of us.Let's find our fat rattlesnake before he hides in his den!"III"Toss oars!"The cry floated up from the boat on the muddy Lydistros River, to the low-lying hill where Kalvan stood gazing at Tarr-Ceros.The great fortress of the Holy Order of the Zarthani Knights marched across nearly a mile of hills on the far side of the river.Some of those hills had clearly been flattened; others carved into the fortress's outworks.Kalvan counted three concentric layers of trenches and wooden palisades, each furnished with artillery positions and covered ways to let ammunition and reinforcements come up [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]