One of the Reedbottom chieftains interjected: “Tomsien broke Norrys himself two days ago, in a battle somewhere to the north. The Chief of Chiefs survived, from what we heard, but he’s badly wounded.”
Helga was struck by the excellence of the man’s diction in the Emerald tongue, even if his accent was so thick you could cut it with a knife. That was another thing Prelotta had insisted on—and forced down the throats of his underlings. He and his top subordinates continued to use their own language whenever they were discussing immediate tactics, especially under pressure. But whenever they were in Adrian’s presence, Prelotta had mandated Emerald as the language of choice.
That wasn’t because Adrian didn’t understand their own. He was quite fluent in it, as a matter of fact. That was the doing of his “spirits” again—just as they had been the ones who explained Prelotta’s thinking.
“Trappings of civilization,” indeed.
Prelotta was ambitious. And perhaps—it remained to be seen—had the intelligence to pull it off. He certainly had the willpower. One thing was certain: the chief of the Reedbottoms was determined to transform the balance of power within the Southrons themselves. Within a generation, no more, he intended to displace the Grayhills from their long period of predominance.
Doing so, however, required giving his own tribe a new basis for wielding power. That much of Adrian’s transmission of his spirits’ thinking Helga had no difficulty at all in understanding. So long as the Reedbottoms remained simply populous—their numbers were at least as great as the Grayhills—they would never become anything more than the “nephews of Assan.” No other tribe tried to challenge the Reedbottoms seriously on their own terrain, true enough. But past attempts by the Reedbottoms to muscle their way out of the lowlands had been repulsed just as decisively.
The hardscrabble pig farmers of Vanbert had levered their way to power by using one of the tools of civilization: disciplined organization—government. That was beyond the still half-savage Reedbottoms. But a powerful military based on Adrian’s new gunpowder weapons wasn’t. Helga had understood another of Adrian’s “historical dictums” quite well, from her experience with her brother’s use of firearms: Guns spell the doom of nomad military strength. Always have; always will. Because barbarians can use guns, but they can’t make them.
Somewhere far back in the great column of the Reedbottom army were the wagons of the blacksmiths. Those wagons were not the least of the reasons the column moved so slowly. They were almost manufactories-on-wheels. “Wagons” so big they reminded Helga of rolling houses—which couldn’t possibly have been hauled by any animals smaller than the tuskbeasts of the Reedbottoms.
“How wide is the valley?” Adrian asked.
“Maybe ten miles, north to south; a bit less, east to west.” For a moment, Prelotta’s face twisted into a grimace. Half a grimace, rather; the kind of face a man makes when he’s having second thoughts. “Are you sure you don’t want the high ground? There’s a very nice set of hills—”
“No,” said Adrian firmly. “What’s the point of high ground? Tomsien doesn’t have any long-range artillery, and you’re not going to be doing any cavalry charges. And if you did, you’d be using tuskbeasts anyway—which can’t handle a downhill charge any better than your first mother-in-law.”
That brought a little laugh from Prelotta and all his chieftains. The mother of his senior wife—who was no lightweight herself—was so obese she could barely move.
“A broad valley is what we want,” Adrian continued. He turned slightly in his saddle and pointing back toward the column. “The laager should be a mile and a half around—almost half a mile across. Any smaller than that and you’re wasting wagons—not to mention that you’re probably going to need the room to fit all of the Jotties looking for succor and comfort.”
Another laugh, and a bigger one. Whatever Prelotta’s chieftains thought of his other ambitions, his determination to make the Reedbottoms preeminent among the tribes had their full approval. And nothing would advance that project further and better than defeating a major Vanbert army for the first time in history—with Grayhills and other routed Jotties huddling for shelter under Reedbottom protection.