He even, to her amazement, seemed able to think of the future in the midst of the chaos.
“How would you have done it, lad?”
Adrian smiled. “I wouldn’t have attacked at all. The thing about a laager, Jessep, is that while it’s incredibly strong it’s also inflexible. More so, even, than the Emerald phalanxes. And how did you Vanberts beat the phalanxes, eh? Not by trying to match them at their own game.”
“Gods, no. Can’t break an Emerald phalanx head on. ‘Twas never done once, that I ever heard tell, except by another phalanx.” He was back to beard-scratching. “Use their rigidity against them. Force them onto broken ground, tear at ’em, pry ’em apart. Once you’ve done that, those great pikes of theirs weren’t nothin’ but a hazard to their own lives. Can’t fight a man with an assegai—much less two or three of ’em at once—with an eighteen-foot long sticker. Not when you’re up close, and on your own.”
Adrian nodded. “Apply the same methods here, then. How would you ‘pry apart’ a laager?” He didn’t wait for Jessep to fumble at the answer before providing it. “It’s called ‘field artillery,’ Jessep. Not too different from those ballistas which Tomsien didn’t even bother to use—not that he brought many to begin with, since he wasn’t figuring on a siege—except they fire three- or four-inch iron balls instead of big spears. And you mass them up. ‘Batteries,’ those are called. Dozens of big guns—not too different from the bombards you’ve seen Trae fire—pounding away at a laager just outside the range of the laager’s own guns.”
Jessep grimaced. “Three and four inches in diameter? Gods, they’d punch right through those wooden walls.”
“Do worse than that. Every ball will send wood splinters flying through the inside of the wagons—with nowhere much to go other than a human body.”
Yunkers glanced up at the watchtower. The figure of Prelotta was plainly visible. The Reedbottom chief was accoutered in his best armor, waving a flail and exhorting his soldiers. Not that many of them could see or hear him, of course, buried as they were inside wagons resounding with gunfire. But they knew he’d be there, doing what a chief rightly does in a defensive battle. Just stand there, looking and acting fearless and resolute.
There was no sarcasm in the glance, just assessment. Prelotta did look fearless and resolute.
“And what if he figures out you’re planning to betray him?” There was no admiration in his tone of voice. Rather the opposite.
Helga watched as any trace of Adrian vanished from Adrian’s own face. His features looked like those of a statue, and when his voice came it might as well have come from a marble block.
This was Center’s voice now, not even Whitehall’s.
“Do not presume to judge me, Jessep Yunkers. Thousands of men will die horribly today, on this field of battle. The greatest battle in history, perhaps; certainly the greatest in a century. Most of them will be Vanberts. Many thousands more—most of them barbarians—will die on another, soon enough. And so what? Every day, every month, every year—year after year after year—as many die in every province of your precious empire, from disease and hunger and deprivation. Most of them children. Am I supposed to weep for the warriors, and not for the children? Beat my breast in anguish because I caused the death of men bearing arms? The same men whose commanders grow fat on the agony of babes?”
Yes, Center’s voice—even if the words were shaped by a man grown sensitive beyond his years. A man who could put into rhetoric what a computer could only calculate.
Helga swallowed. Jessep Yunkers looked away. For a moment, he seemed to be examining the ongoing carnage. But his eyes seemed a bit glazed over, as if he was really looking at something from his own memory.
“Oh, aye,” he said softly, “and haven’t I seen it myself? My province is littered with the little urns. Pathetic looking, they are, perched—so many of ’em—on the hearthstones of the cottages.”
When he turned back, his face seemed calm, and less blocky than usual. ” ‘Tis nothing, Adrian Gellert. Special Attendant, as you said. The gods know if there’s any man can end it, it’s Verice Demansk.”