"And high time too," thought Gel-Ethlin, standing beside his command banner with the falcon emblem, to watch the column go past. "They've marched enough. Half of them are in no sort of condition. The sooner they get back to rain-season quarters the better. If the stagnant water fever hit them now they'd go down in cursing rows."
He looked northward, where the plain met the foothills rising to the steep, precipitous ridges above Gelt. The skyline, dark and threatening, with cloud hiding the summits, appeared to Gel-Ethlin full of promise--the promise of early relief. With luck their business could be decently cut short in Kabin and one forced march, with the rains and the prospect of homecoming to spur them on, would see them safely in Bekla within a couple of days.
The two Beklan armies of patrol--the northern and the southern--customarily remained in the field throughout the summer, when the risk was greatest of rebellion or, conceivably, of attack from a neighboring country. Each army completed, twice, a roughly semicircular march of about two hundred miles along the frontiers. Sometimes detachments saw action against bandits or raiders, and occasionally the force might be ordered to make a punitive raid across a border, to demonstrate that Bekla had teeth and could bite. But for the most part it was routine stuff--training and maneuvers, intelligence work, tax collection, escorting envoys or trade caravans, road and bridge mending, and most important of all, simply letting themselves be seen by those who feared them only less than they feared invasion and anarchy. Upon the onset of the rains, the northern army returned to winter in Bekla, while the southern took up its quarters in Ikat Yeldashay, sixty miles to the south. The following summer the roles of the armies were reversed.
No doubt the southern army was already back in Ikat, thought Gel-Ethlin enviously. The southern army had the easier task of the two; their route of march was less exhausting and the dry season was less trying a hundred miles to the south. Nor was it only a question of work and conditions. Although Bekla was, of course, a city beyond compare, he himself had found, last winter, an excellent reason--in fact, for a soldier, a most time-honored and attractive (if somewhat expensive) reason--for preferring Ikat Yeldashay.
The Tonildan contingent, a particularly sorry-looking lot, were marching past now, and Gel-Ethlin called their captain out to explain why the men looked dirty and their weapons ill cared for. The captain began his explanation--something about having had the command wished on him two days ago in place of an officer ordered to return with Santil-ke-Erketlis--and while he continued, Gel-Ethlin, as was often his way, looked him sternly in the eye while thinking about something completely different.
At least this summer they had not had to go traipsing over the hills of Gelt and into the backwoods. Once several years ago, when he was still a junior commander, he had served on an expedition to the south bank of the Telthearna, and a dismal, uncomfortable business it had been, camping among the gloomy forests, or commandeering flea-ridden quarters from some half-savage tribe of islanders living like frogs in the river mists. Fortunately the practice of sending Beklan troops as far as the Telthearna had almost ceased since their intelligence reports from the island--what the devil was it called? Itilga? Catalga?--had become so regular and reliable. One of the less apelike barons was secretly in the pay of Bekla and apparently the High Baron himself was not averse to a little diplomatic bribery, provided a show was made of respecting his dignity and position, such as they were. During the recent summer marches Santil-ke-Erketlis had received two reports from this place. The first, duly passed on to headquarters at Bekla, had resulted in instructions being returned to the army that once again there was no need to send troops into inhospitable country so far afield. It had, in fact, contained nothing worse than news of an exceptionally widespread forest fire that had laid waste the farther bank of the Telthearna. The second report had included some tale of a new tribal cult which it was feared might boil over into fanaticism, though the High Baron seemed confident of keeping it under control. Bekla's reactions to the second report had not yet found their way back to the northern army, but anyway, thank God, it was now too late in the season to think of sending even a patrol over the hills of Gelt. The rains were coming any day--any hour.
The officer had finished speaking and was now looking at him in silence. Gel-Ethlin frowned, gave a contemptuous snort, suggesting that he had never heard such unconvincing nonsense in his life, and said he would inspect the contingent himself next morning. The officer saluted and went off to rejoin his men.
At this moment a messenger arrived from the governor of Kabin, sixteen miles to the east. The governor sent word that he was worried lest the rains should begin and the army withdraw to Bekla before reaching him. During the past ten or twelve days the level of the Kabin reservoir, from which water was brought by canal sixty miles to Bekla, had sunk until the lower walls had become exposed and a section had cracked in the heat. If a disaster were to be prevented the repair work ought to be carried out at once, before the rains raised the level again; but to complete the job in a matter of a day or two was beyond local resources.
Gel-Ethlin could recognize an emergency when he was faced with one. He sent at once for his most reliable senior officer and also for a certain Captain Han-Glat, a foreigner from Terekenalt, who knew more than anyone in the army about bridges, dams and soil movement. As soon as they appeared he told them what had happened and gave them a free hand to select the fittest troops, up to half the total strength, for a forced march to Kabin that night. As soon as possible after getting there they were to make a start on repairing the reservoir. He himself, with the rest of the men, would join them before evening of the following day.
By late afternoon they were gone, the soldiers grumbling but at least not mutinous. There was a good deal of limping and their pace was slow. Still, that was less worrying than the thought of the probable condition they would be in when they got to Kabin. Presumably, however, Han-Glat would need a few hours to survey the reservoir and decide what needed to be done, and this in itself would give them some rest. At any rate he, Gel-Ethlin, could hardly be criticized by headquarters in Bekla for the way he had gone about the matter. As night fell he went the rounds of the sentries and bivouacs--a shorter task than usual, with his command down to half strength--heard the casualty reports and authorized a handful of genuinely sick men to be sent back to Bekla by oxcart; ate his supper, played three games of wari with his staff captain (at which he lost fifteen meld) and went to bed.
The following morning he was up so early that he had the satisfaction of rousing some of his officers in person. But the low spirits of the men gave him much less satisfaction. The news had got round that they were in for not only a forced march to Kabin, rains or no rains, but also for plenty of work when they got there. Even the best troops are apt to take it hard when ordered to do something arduous after having been led to believe that their work is virtually finished, and Gel-Ethlin had deliberately retained his second-best. Himself a sturdy, energetic man, staunch in adversity, he could hardly contain his annoyance at the stupidity of the soldiers in being unable to realize the serious nature of the news from Kabin. It was only with difficulty that three or four of his senior officers were able to convince him that it was hardly to be expected that they would.
"It's a curious thing, sir," said Kapparah--a leathery fifty-five-year-old who had survived a lifetime's campaigning and prudently turned all the loot that had stuck to his fingers into farmland on the borders of Sarkid--"it's always struck me as a curious thing, that when you're asking men to give a little extra, the amount they're genuinely able to give depends on the reason. If it's defending their homes, for instance, or fighting for what they believe is theirs by right, they'll find themselves able to do almost anything. In fact, if it's a matter of any sort of fighting, they're nearly always able to give a good deal. They can understand that, you see, and no one wants his mates to think he's a coward, or that he dropped out while they went on. Those kinds of thoughts are like keys to a secret armor
y. A man doesn't know what he's got inside until the key opens it. But to repair the reservoir at Kabin--no, they can't grasp the importance of that, so it's a key that doesn't fit the lock. It's not won't, sir, it's can't, you know."
The camp had been struck, the columns were drawn up ready to march and the pickets, who had been fed and inspected at their posts, were being called in last of all, when the guard commander brought in a limping, blood-stained hill man. He was little more than a boy, openmouthed and wide-eyed, staring about him and continually raising one hand to his mouth as he licked the bleeding gash across his knuckles. Two soldiers had him under the armpits or he might well have turned tail.
"Refugee, sir," said the guard commander, saluting Bekla-fashion, with his right forearm across his chest, "from the hills. Talking about some sort of trouble at Gelt, sir, as near as I can make him out."
"Can't stop for that sort of thing now, guard commander," said Gel-Ethlin. "Turn the fellow loose and get your men fallen in."
Released by the soldiers, the hill man at once fell on his knees in front of Kapparah, whom he probably took for the senior officer present. He had babbled a few words in broken Beklan--something about "bad men" and "fire"--when Kapparah stopped him by speaking to him in his own language. There followed a swift dialogue of question and answer so incisive and urgent that Gel-Ethlin thought it better not to interrupt. Finally Kapparah turned to him.
"I think we'd better get the whole story out of this man before we set off for Kabin, sir," he said. "He keeps saying Gelt's been taken and burned by an invading army and he will have it that they're on their way down here."
Gel-Ethlin threw out his hands with a questioning look of mock forbearance and the other officers, who did not particularly like Kapparah, smiled sycophantically.
"You know what we're up against at Kabin, Kapparah. This is hardly the time--" He broke off and began again. "Some terrified peasant lad from the hills who'll say anything--"
"Well, that's just it, sir; he's not a peasant lad. He's the chief's son, run for his life, it seems. Says the chief's been murdered by fanatics in some religious war they've started."
"How do we know he's the chief's son?"
"By the tattooing on his arms, sir. He'd never dare to have that done just to deceive people."
"Where are these invaders supposed to have come from?"
"From Ortelga, sir, he says."
"From Ortelga?" said Gel-Ethlin. "But at that rate we should have heard--"
Kapparah said nothing and Gel-Ethlin thought the problem over quickly. It was an awkward one. In spite of there having been no recent report from Ortelga, it was just possible that some sort of tribal raid really was going to be made on the Beklan plain. If it took place after he had marched away to Kabin, ignoring a tribesman's warning uttered in the hearing of his senior officers--and if lives were lost--He broke off this train of thought and started another. If the great reservoir were breached and ruined in the rains for lack of an adequate labor force, after he had marched away toward Gelt on the strength of a hysterical report made by a native youth in the hearing of his senior officers--He stopped again. They were all looking at him and waiting.
"Bring the boy to that shed over there," said Gel-Ethlin. "Let the men fall out, but see that they stay in their companies."
Half an hour later he had concluded that the story was one that he could not ignore. Washed and fed, the youth had recovered himself and spoken with restraint and dignity of his own loss, and with consistency of the danger that was threatening. It was a curious and yet convincing tale. An enormous bear, he said, had appeared on Ortelga, probably fugitive from the fire beyond the Telthearna. Its appearance was believed by the islanders to herald the fulfillment of a prophecy that Bekla would one day fall to an invincible army from the island and had started a rising, led by a young baron, in which the previous ruler and certain others had been either killed or driven out. Gel-Ethlin perceived that this, if true, would account for the failure of the Beklan army's normal flow of intelligence. Yesterday afternoon, the youth continued, the Ortelgans had suddenly appeared in Gelt, set it on fire and murdered the chief before he could organize any defense of the town. Fanatical and undisciplined, they had swept through the place and apparently subdued the townspeople altogether. Several of the latter, their homes and means of livelihood destroyed, had actually joined the Ortelgans for what they could get. Surely, said the young man, there could never have been men more eager than the Ortelgans to go upon their ruin. They believed that the bear was the incarnation of the Power of God, that it was marching with them, invisibly, night and day, that it could appear and disappear at will and that it would in due course destroy their enemies as fire burns stubble. On the orders of their young leader--who was evidently both brave and able, but appeared to be ill--they had thrown a ring of sentries around Gelt to prevent any news getting out. The youth, however, had climbed down a sheer precipice by night, escaping with no more than a badly gashed hand, and then, knowing the passes well, had come over twenty miles during six hours of darkness and daybreak.
"What a damned nuisance!" said Gel-Ethlin. "Which way does he think they're likely to come, and when?"
The young man apparently thought it certain that they would come by the most direct route and as quickly as they could. Indeed, it was probable that they had already started. Setting aside their eagerness to fight, they had little food with them, for there was virtually none to be commandeered in Gelt. They would have to fight soon or be forced to disperse for supplies.
Gel-Ethlin nodded. This agreed with all his own experience of rebels and peasant irregulars. Either they fought at once or else they fell to pieces.
"They don't sound likely to get far, sir," said Balaklesh, who commanded the Lapan contingent. "Why not simply go on to Kabin and leave them to fall apart in the rains?"
As is often the way, the wrong advice immediately cleared Gel-Ethlin's mind and showed him what had to be done.
"No, that wouldn't do. They'd wander about for months, parties of brigands, murdering and looting. No village would be safe and in the end another army would have to be sent to hunt them down. Do you all believe the boy's telling no more than the truth?"
They nodded.
"Then we must destroy them at once, or the villages will be saying that a Beklan army fell down on its job. And we must reach them before they get down the hill road from Gelt and out on the plain--partly to stop them looting and partly because once they're on the plain they may go anywhere. We might lose track of them altogether and the men are in no state to go marching about in pursuit. There's even less time to be lost now than if we were going to Kabin. Kapparah, hang on to the lad--we'll need him as a guide. You'd all better go and tell your men that we've got to get to the hills by the afternoon. Balaklesh, you take a hundred reliable spearmen and start at once. Find us a good defensive position in the foothills, send back a guide and then push on and try to find out what the Ortelgans are doing."
Within an hour the sky had clouded over from one horizon to the other and the west wind was blowing steadily. The red dust filled the soldiers' eyes, ears and nostrils and mingled grittily, beneath their clothes, with the sweat of their bodies. They marched with cloths or leather bound over mouths and noses, continually screwing up their eyes, unable to see the hills ahead, each company following that in front through the thick helter-skelter of dust which piled itself like snow along the windward sides of rocks, of banks, of the few sparse trees and huts along the way--and of men. It got into the rations and even into the wineskins. Gel-Ethlin marched behind the column on the leeward flank, whence he could check the stragglers and keep them in some sort of order. After two hours he called a halt and reformed the column in echelon, so that when they set out again each company was marching downwind of that immediately behind it. This, however, did little to relieve their discomfort, which was due less to the dust they raised themselves than to the storm blowing over the whole plain. Their pace diminished and
it was not until a good three hours after noon that the leading company reached the edge of the plain and, having reconnoitered half a mile in either direction, found the road to Gelt where it wound up through the myrtle and cypress groves on the lower slopes.
About a thousand feet above the plain the road reached a level green spot where the ghost of a waterfall trickled down into a rock pool, and here, as they came up, the successive companies fell out, drank and lay down in the grass. Looking back, they could see the dust storm on the plain below and their spirits rose to think that at least one misery was left behind. Gel-Ethlin, grudging the delay, urged his officers to get them on their feet again. The afternoon had set in dark and the wind over the plain was dropping. They stumbled on wearily, their footsteps, the clink of their arms and the occasional shouts of orders echoing from the crags about them.
It was not long before they came to a narrow gorge, where two officers of the advance party were awaiting them. Balaklesh, the officers reported, had found an excellent defensive position about a mile farther up the road, beyond the mouth of the gorge, and his scouts had been out ahead of it for more than an hour. Gel-Ethlin went forward to meet him and see the position for himself. It was very much the sort of thing he had had in mind, an upland plateau about half a mile wide, with certain features favorable to disciplined troops able to keep ranks and stand their ground. Ahead, to the north, the road came curving steeply downhill around a wooded shoulder. On the right flank was thick forest and on the left a ravine. Through this bottleneck the advancing enemy must needs come. At the foot of the shoulder the ground became open and rose gently, among scattered crags and bushes, to a crest over which the road passed before entering the gorge. Balaklesh had chosen well. With the crags as natural defensive points and the slope in their favor, troops in position would take a great deal of dislodging and it would be extremely difficult for the enemy to fight their way as far as the crest. Yet unless they did so they could not hope to pursue their march down to the plain.