Kingmaker (39 page)

"You aren't counting our volunteers,” Ellie said. “We've got more than five hundred ex-farmers in our army. We can—"

"Just more for them to kill,” Dafed observed. “Untrained soldiers are worse than nothing because they start panics."

"Right,” Mark said. “But they know how to use axes."

Ellie had been fighting despair herself but she thought she saw where Mark was going. “More ninja tactics,” she guessed.

"You got it. The Rissel are sailing up the river. Let's say the current is four knots and their ships are sailing at six knots. That makes an impact speed of ten knots."

"Sharpened logs would go right through the ships’ wooden hulls,” Ellie said. “But we'd need to get to the river."

"That's where your ninja come in. They'll have to defend the woodcutters. I think the major danger tonight is from Sullivan. Sergius's army retreated across the river and dug in there. He didn't want to get them stuck with their backs to the river."

Ellie nodded grimly. “My ninja, those still alive, owe Sullivan."

"The logs won't stop the Rissel although they may thin them out and slow them down. We're going to have to attack Sergius in the morning. Which means you won't get any sleep."

Ellie laughed, hearing the bitterness in her voice. “I wasn't going to get much sleep anyway. All this death has been getting to me."

They brought the woodsmen downstream from Sergius's army.

Sullivan's knights investigated the sound of axes felling logs in the night. They tried a probe—but heavy cavalry doesn't do well in the woods. Caltrops, aimed rifle fire, and guerilla-style ambushes kept them from posing too serious a threat to the lightly armed and unskilled farmers. As Mark had suggested, the farmers might not know how to fight, but they knew plenty about cutting down trees.

Ellie kept them at it, encouraging them, reminding them that this was their chance to become heroes. It was funny to think that, after all of the fighting and training she'd done, the battle might be won or lost by a few hundred farmers whose qualification for the job was the stump-clearing they'd done back on their farms. But it was the reality.

Each sharpened log they launched down the river was one more strike against the Rissel navy, one more hope for their small force.

When the sun finally peeked its way over the horizon, she rubbed her eyes, wished for coffee, and got ready to fight again.

The numbers hadn't gotten any better during the night. Sergius's army looked rested and ready. Sullivan's heavy cavalry gathered at the top of a small rise behind them and watched for an opening.

The Free Lubica Army broke camp and Mark advanced his riflemen in skirmish formation, firing as soon as they came in range.

Sergius's musketeers formed the solid four-column lines that Mark had devised for them—and collapsed when accurate aimed rifle fire simply chewed them up.

After an hour of taking casualties, Sergius pulled his musketeers back from the river and started pounding the riflemen with cannon fire.

Shooting individual soldiers with solid shot is a bit like hunting flies with a katana. It's massive overkill, but it can work. And Sergius's dug-in cannon presented relatively poor targets for counterfire.

By noon, Ellie guessed that Sergius had lost five hundred men while Arnold might have lost a couple of dozen. But they were still losing. If they couldn't get past the river, they would starve. And Sergius could afford the losses. Especially with the Rissel army on the way.

Mark rotated his riflemen at noon, sending in fresh fighters while the soldiers who'd been fighting all morning came back to camp, ate, and learned of their next assignment.

Ellie watched them with some concern but their faces showed nothing but confidence and satisfaction in a job well done. Sergius might have moved his musketeers out of range but not before the riflemen had proven that they could tear holes in his infantry with scarcely any loss.

Mark joined her at a water barrel. His face was dark with gunpowder and Ellie shook her head. She should have known that Mark wouldn't listen to his own advice, that he'd take the same risks he gave his men. It might be bad generalship, but it made for a good man.

"You've got a plan? Right?” she demanded.

Against the darkness of his gunpowder-smeared face, his grin looked bright and almost frightening. “I've always got a plan, Ellie."

"Let me guess. You're going to take out the Duke of Sullivan."

He shook his head in frustration. “You've learned a lot over the past few months. I'm sorry I ever insulted your tactical judgment. If you weren't too busy being the returned princess, you'd be one heck of a general."

"Where do you want me?"

Despite what Mark had said about her being a general, she mostly listened as he outlined his plan.

Then she ordered what little remained of her ninja to get an hour's nap and be ready to move out. It was payback time.

Sullivan's army had closed to less than a mile away from their camp—on their side of the river. Most of his men had dismounted, but they held their horses close at hand. Sullivan was waiting for every cavalryman's dream—the cutting attack at a disorganized enemy.

Mark gave it to him.

With what Ellie recognized as a California take on the rebel yell, Mark's riflemen dispersed into five-man firing teams and headed toward Sullivan.

The Duke wasn't an idiot. He'd experienced the impact of aimed rifle fire when he'd raided their wagon train. Still, his entire life's training centered on a fundamental military truth—only a well-organized infantry can stand against heavy cavalry.

Squad-oriented tactics didn't even compute in this world's military framework. Sullivan would have had to be a genius or a coward to turn down Mark's gift.

He was neither genius nor coward. When Mark's army was within a half-mile, Sullivan's bugles sounded and his knights began mounting.

And dying.

Mark's rifle teams took what cover the land gave them and kept firing.

The five-man teams worked together, keeping the most expert marksman firing while the other soldiers loaded.

Five hundred riflemen meant one hundred Minnie balls were in the air at any time.

At half a mile range, muskets would have been ineffective. The rifles cut holes in Sullivan's lines.

The knights still managed a charge.

Ellie hadn't thought they would. The shock of continuous aimed gunfire had to frighten them. But Sullivan was a leader whom men would follow.

The knights rode down a dozen of the five soldier teams. But the teams were tougher than they looked.

As the knights closed to within fifty feet, all five riflemen would rise, fire their rifles together, and fix bayonets.

Meanwhile, the other riflemen kept firing, smashing knights wherever they bunched up.

Half of Sullivan's knights had fallen before the Duke finally convinced himself that he'd walked into another trap.

But Sullivan's worldview held another truth. Cavalry can only be destroyed by cavalry. Because horsemen can outrun men on foot.

He signaled a retreat.

It was time for him to learn another lesson.

As Sullivan's cavalry trotted out of range of the advancing rifle teams, they started to run into trip-wires, concealed deadfalls, and the ubiquitous caltrops.

Ellie wished she still had her bow, but she contented herself with watching Sullivan's horsemen fall as they rode past concealed ninja and ninja traps. They were dying from an army they couldn't see because it lay hidden beneath pools of water, bushes, or tilled fields until it was time to rise up, strike, then fade away again.

Mark didn't have enough rifles to equip the ninja, but they had plenty of muskets. And the ninja didn't need the range of a rifle. They waited in hiding until the cavalrymen were a few feet away and blasted.

Ellie kept her eye on Sullivan.

He spotted one of her ninja, spurred his horse toward the man, and then collapsed when the ninja calmly fired his musket, killing his horse.

Sullivan rolled, skewered her ninja almost without thinking, and continued on foot.

She'd let him go once. She wasn't going to do so again. She moved to intercept him as the sound of dying cavalry gradually faded.

The riflemen had done much of the damage, but her ninja had been the final blow, slaughtering knights who thought they could escape.

"You!” Sullivan sounded almost pleased when she stepped from behind a tree and confronted him.

"If you yield and offer fealty to King Arnold, you can still live.” Ellie knew he would refuse, but she had to make the offer.

For an instant, she thought she'd misjudged him. Then he shook his head and laughed. “The pretender Arnold doesn't stand a chance."

"Sergius let you retain much of your power because you had an army. As a pauper, do you think you'll do better with him than Arnold?"

"At least I'll be alive.” He advanced on her, then swished his saber in a sardonic salute.

"No, Duke. You won't be."

He was impossibly good but Ellie had learned from him, knew his moves. And she had her katana where before she'd faced him with a shortsword.

While ninja killed around her, she gave Sullivan a clinic on ken jitsu—the art of the sword in battle.

She secured first blood, scoring a deep cut to his abdomen through the heavy armor he wore.

She again offered to accept his surrender. In this world, unlike her own Earth, mages had a decent chance of staving off the infections that inevitably follow that kind of injury.

Sullivan shook his head. “I'll take you with me."

He charged, then, forgetting his art and relying on his strength to bull her over like the weak woman he thought her to be.

But Ellie knew how to use weakness. She met strength with subtlety, sidestepping his charge and hamstringing him as he roared by.

Sullivan collapsed to one knee. Moving painfully, slowly, he leaned on his sword to regain his feet. His face was the pure picture of surprise and shock.

"It isn't too late to surrender.” She was almost pleading now. In many ways he was an evil man—thoughtless of the suffering of those whom he considered lower than himself. But he was a warrior who battled for what he considered right. He was also one of the few men in this world who had accepted her as a fighter rather than a woman.

"No son of Ranolf will seize the throne while I remain alive,” he growled.

He swung at her, almost hopping to keep the weight off his lamed leg.

She avoided his strike easily, not even parrying.

He looked at her in disappointment. “Give me the death thrust, princess. The church calls it wrong to fall on your sword the way the ancient ones did. Let me die in battle like my ancestors. Give my sword to my son."

He hopped toward her again, using his sword like a cane, then raised it for a blow.

She didn't want to kill him. But she didn't want to go on like this, either.

He swung hard. Despite his injuries, he was a powerful man. He seemed almost indifferent to whether he killed her or she him. A man who has given up fear is at his most dangerous.

This time, she parried, and then riposted hard.

Her katana rang as it met the steel of Sullivan's blade, then flashed as it took him high, the razor-sharp point penetrating his throat and up into his skull.

Sullivan drove forward, trying to kill her as he died, but the sword in his brain ended all of his plans, forever.

Sullivan's face relaxed. He wasn't a young man, but suddenly his expression took on an innocence he'd lost decades earlier.

She thought he'd smiled when he felt the blade slide in.

She closed his eyes with her hands. “Good night, sweet prince,” she murmured, hoping she'd accurately remembered her
Hamlet
. He'd been evil, but he'd fought her honorably and died for what he believed.

With no cavalry threatening them from behind, Mark dispersed their soldiers broadly along the riverbank, Sergius having retreated his musketeers across the river for protection.

"A rifleman controls a wider frontage than a musketeer. We can outflank them even though we're outnumbered,” Mark explained. “We'll pop away at them, thin them out and make them back away from the river, then we'll cross in the night. Ellie's axemen can throw together a lumber pontoon bridge. Sergius will probably think the noise is just throwing more logs in the river to sink his Rissel allies. Once we're across the river, it's a whole new battle."

"With Sullivan gone, we can march back. We might even be able to take Sullivan City. And many of the knights who flocked to him will see me as the logical replacement,” Arnold suggested.

Mark shook his head. “
This
is the decisive battle. If the Rissel join Sergius, he'll be able to hunt us down before we have a chance at actually holding territory."

"The ninja will lead the attack across the river,” Ellie announced before Arnold could argue further. “We'll clear the landing and hold it so the bridge can be built and until the riflemen can safely cross."

"You've done enough, Ellie,” Mark insisted. “Too many of your ninja have died already."

"Too many of everyone has died. This is the best way to minimize casualties."

"You're risking yourself too much,” Arnold said. “And don't give me any nonsense about being a martyr. What do you think will happen to your Constitution if you're not here to explain it?"

Killing Sullivan had taken something out of her, drained Ellie of any residual desire for revenge. She wanted peace now, for battle to be over. She wanted to teach children the martial arts as her father had taught them—lessons to develop character rather than methods of killing and mutilation. She didn't want to be a martyr, and she didn't want any more killing. But she was prepared to accept whichever came her way.

"The Constitution can take care of itself. And Mark understands it better than I do, anyway. I have to do this, Arnold."

She ordered her ninja to get what sleep they could in preparation for another night battle, then went out with one of the rifle teams.