Swords of the Horseclans by Adams Robert

“But this is the dead past. We must look to the future, and there will be no future—for any of us—if we fail to stop King Zastros, which we cannot do if we do not stand as one with Lord Milo. As of this moment, we are allies. Now, have the meal served. After that, we’ll discuss strategy and I’ll give my orders to you and Serbi-kos.”

By noon of the following day, the scanty Karaleenos baggage was trundling north across the bridge. Shortly they were followed by columns of tramping infantry, a smattering of cavalry, and a few mounted officers.

Young King Zenos had taken a hundred lancers and ridden south and west, into the mountains to assure his kinsmen—both his mother and his grandmother had been the daughters of the chieftains of powerful mountain tribes—that he was alive, to alert them to the approaching danger, and prepare them for the hordes of lowland refugees who would shortly seek sanctuary in their domains. He and Milo had agreed that the mountain warriors could be of more military value if they remained in or near their home ground nibbling at Zastros’ western flank, retarding his advance with harassing raids, picking off stragglers and scouts, even ambushing smaller units … anything to buy a little more time.

Greemos and a score of officers had taken detachments of cavalry south and east to warn the inhabitants of cities and towns and villages to take livestock and valuables and flee to the mountains, after burning all standing crops and destroying foodstuffs and supplies they could not take away. If the huge army could not subsist on forage, more strain would be placed- upon Zastros’ lines of supply, which might buy precious time.

Thoheeks Serbikos, his officers, and the bulk of the cavalry had fanned out northward on a far more delicate mission. They were to contact the leaders of the various Karaleenos resistance movements in the territories Milo had conquered, explain the present danger, inform them of their former sovereign’s alliance with the conqueror, and urge them not only to refrain from rebellion upon the withdrawal of Milo’s garrisons, but to form themselves into units, arm, and march to swell the forces now assembling to repel King Zastros’ horde.

Zenos, Milo, and all the senior officers had agreed that their present position was as good a defensive site as they might find. At this point, there was a bare forty miles of plains between the saltfens and the mountains. The River Lumbuh in itself presented a formidable barrier—for almost all of the forty miles of lowland, it ran both wide and deep, with but the one bridge spanning it. Miles upstream were a couple of fords, but they were said to be narrow and treacherous at best and could be easily defended by small forces.

Milo put the most of his forces and those of his new ally to vastly enlarging the camp and to making a true, palisaded castra of it—the artificers laid out and marked the courses of the huge rectangle, and then the troops were set to digging the ditch that would front all four sides. Milo put even the wounded to work, whittling points onto wooden stakes and making caltrops, then dumping their handiwork into old latrines to “season.”

The spoil from the ditch—twenty feet wide, ten feet deep—was mounded inside the enclosure and, held in place by forms made of split logs supported by stakes, tightly packed. And the work went on by day and by night. Other troops spent their days in a forest, half a mile to the north, felling trees and transporting them to . camp, where the artificers topped them and shaped the trunks and larger branches. The tops were denuded of leaves and small twigs by walking-wounded and the tip of-each and every remaining branch was given a sharp point—dumped in embankments or lashed together, these would make quite an effective abatis.

After a week, armed men began to trickle from north, west, and south: some were mounted; most were afoot; a few were disciplined Freefighters; the rest were straggling bands gathered together by one of Zenos’ officers, some noble or a village headman. One and all were immediately attached to one of Milo’s or Zerios’ units and put to work on the fortifications.

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