Madman’s Army Read online

  Referring to the maps and charts they and their predecessors had drawn over the recent years, they had decided in advance just how many of their ships each place could comfortably hold, assigned certain vessels to each of the ones farthest south, then worked out methods of staying in good contact, that none might be left behind when the time came to sail.

  Of a day, a half-dozen of the long, low, lean raiders, lashed one to the other at port and stern boards, their masts all unstepped, were rocking gently in a sheltered cove well hidden behind treacherous shoals and a spit of swampy, much overgrown land, more than a fathom of brackish water beneath their keels and a steady Seabreeze sweeping most of the noxious insects inland, as well as helping to dispel the muggy heat.

  Aboard the flagship, some seamen-raiders performed necessary cleaning and maintenance tasks—one detail being hard at work roving fresh ropes into the small but powerful catapult mounted just behind the fore-peak of the vessel, another using a small boat to ferry garbage and sewage ashore to be dumped for the delectation of the huge crocodilians and other, lesser scavengers, lest dumping it in the waters of the cove attract the unwelcome company of sharks. With a deafening din of metal on metal, a muscular smith worked at a small forge on deck, straightening blades of swords, cutlasses, boarding pikes and the like, re­storing proper curve to the hooks of grapnels and boathooks and speedily fashioning odds and ends of needed hardware from bits of scrap metal.

  Nearby to the smith, using the heat of his forge-fire to keep fluid a pot of reeking fishglue, a fletcher with a sack of feathers, a number of small and very sharp knives and a stack of dowels went about his task of feathering new shafts for arrow and hand-dart, ignor­ing the bright, hot sparks that often flew around him from the blows of the smith's hammers. Within easy reach of the fishglue pot, a pointer fitted carefully chosen and smoothed sharks' teeth of a range of sizes to the dart or arrow shafts; with practiced skill, he wrapped the threads of soaked sinew just tightly enough about shafts and glued heads to dry to optimum tight­ness without cracking or warping the wood. Those destined to become fire-arrows he mounted with min­uscule chips of shark tooth sunk into tiny slits in the wood just behind the heads and secured them with droplets of the fishglue.

  Also sharing the heat of the forge-fire was another seaman-specialist who squatted with a long-handled ladle, a set of molds, a small axe and a couple of big ingots of lead; his task was that of melting the soft metal and casting sling-bullets.

  Underlying the clang-clang-clanging of the activities of the smith, a constant soft rasping, were the sounds of edges of steel and bronze blades being whetted. And, in the lee of the steersman's deck, under a scrap of awning that stopped the rays of the torrid sun, two persons sharpened their personal armaments with handstones and light oil.

  One of these was a slender but very wiry man of early middle years, clearly a kath'ahrohs Ehleen of pure or reasonably pure lineage—his skin much dark­ened by sun and weather, seamed with the cicatrices of old wounds. A faded strip of cotton cloth was lapped around his head to keep the salt sweat from out his dark eyes; otherwise—like the most of the ships' crews—he was naked save for his rings, armlets and a blob of amber—encasing a fly—set in ruddy gold that hung from the lobe of his one intact ear. Squatting with his back leaned against the wooden bulkhead behind him, he was using a very fine stone to bring the blade of a heavy dirk to razor keenness.

  Beside him, using a coarser stone to smooth out nicks along the cursive edge of a heavy-bladed two-foot cutlass, lounged a woman bearing an unmistak­able racial resemblance to him, though their two sets of features were dissimilar in numerous other ways. To see her long, lithe, flat-muscled body with its proud, upthrusting breasts, flat belly and unlined face, one unknowing would have taken her to be a young woman of certainly less than twenty-five years; in actuality, Aldora Linsee Treeah-Potohmahs Pahpahs, wife of the Lord of the Sea Isles, was easily old enough to have been her husband's grandmother.

  Of a sudden, she stopped her whetting of the blade, closed her dark eyes and just sat, motionless. Then she opened her lids again, turned to her companion and said, "Lehkos, Milo is farcalling me. This may be our call to action. I'm going back to our cabin and lie down, relax enough to more easily receive his beam­ings fully."

  In far-distant Mehseepolis, relaxed on the bed in his suite, two long-fanged prairiecats flanking him, his hands in contact with their furry heads in order that their powerful telepathic abilities might meld with and strengthen the range of his own, lay Milo Morai, High Lord of the Confederation of Eastern Peoples. He looked to be asleep, but he was actually in silent converse with the High Lady Aldora, who at that moment was lying on a bed aboard her husband's warship, Pard, some four hundred miles distant.

  "Aldora," he beamed, "the present fleet anchorage of what navy the thoheeksee have been able to patch together in the past few years is at the mouth of the river they call Ahrbahkootchee and is capacious enough for all of Alexandras' ships as well as theirs. Tell him that I said to sail through the Florida Straits ... no, he'd call that the Dragon Passage. Tell him to main­tain a tight formation and maximum safe speed and not to let his corsairs go gallivanting off on any side forays. He should keep his eyes peeled for one or more small fleets of low, rakish, felucca-rigged ships, with permanently fixed masts, most of them painted a dull brownish grey with random patterns of dull green.

  "He is not to fight them unless attacked, but if push comes to shove, I'd like to have a few prisoners in relatively sound condition. Stay well clear of the coasts of that long island to the south of the Dragon Passage, the one called Koobah; I've learned that the Witchmen have several stations there with offshore defenses that not even the Ehleen pirates could overcome without losses of more ships and lives than I'd care to see."

  "How much time do we have to get there, Milo?" the woman beamed, her unbelievably powerful telepa­thy never having needed bolstering of any kind for either receiving or sending, no matter how great the distances involved. "The ships are scattered in a num­ber of coves stretching southward along the Atlantic coast, and it will no doubt take a little time to collect them all."

  "Don't worry, my dear," Milo assured her, "there's little rush involved, here. I'm setting out with selected units of their army on the morrow, leaving others to follow after. Those who know the country that lies between here and the western thoheekseeahnee esti­mate that it will require two or, more likely, three weeks for cavalry to get there and as much as six weeks for the slower units to arrive in place."

  "Then why in hell did you call me so soon?" she demanded.

  "Because, Aldora," he patiently beamed, well fa­miliar with her impatience and intemperance, "I want to be certain that our fleet is within quick sailing-time of the Neos Kolpos. The last thing I want to see is the bastards getting out of the little trap I'm setting for them and us having to assault their bases in order to put paid to them, once and for all. Besides, knowing Alexandras and his captains as I do, I am certain that they'll want to sneak in and take soundings in the areas of intended combat well ahead of having to sail their fleet in, so time must be allowed for that, you see."

  "All right, Milo," the woman replied. "I'm sorry, I should have known after all these years that you had it all planned out. We'll set sail as soon as the tide rises enough to allow us deep water over the bar and the shoals. How far is it from the southern coast of Karaleenos to where you want us to be, do you know?"

  "Roughly twelve hundred nautical miles," he an­swered. "Unless you follow the coast, which I'd prefer you not do."

  "Well, Milo, with favorable winds, we should be standing into this fleet-anchorage in six or seven days . . . maybe even less. Will that be good enough to your purposes? And we wouldn't coast-hug, anyway, not as frequently as sand shoals form and disappear along that coast."

  "Fine," was Milo's reply beaming. "In seven days, wherever I am on the march, I'll try to farspeak you, probably in late afternoon or early evening."

  * * *


  At an informal meeting held later that day in the headquarters of the army, Milo told his audience, "I ride at dawn, gentlemen, along with my guards, two hundred Horseclansmen and Captain Bralos' squadron of lancers. Thoheeksee Grahvos, Sitheeros and Vikos have all indicated a desire to ride with me, as well, and they and their guards are more than welcome . . . just so long as they all understand that I make it a usual practice to travel light—no wheeled transport, nothing that a mule's back can't carry easily. Every­thing else will have to follow with the army and baggage-trains.

  "The army will march west in three or four days under command of Strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos. It will consist of the scouts, the remainder of the brigade of cavalry under sub-strahteegos Thoheeks Por­tos, the Keebai pikemen, the light infantry, the foot-bowmen, the dart-men and the slingers, the artificiers and all other specialists that the commander thinks will be of need."

  "How many elephants, my lords?" asked Captain Nathos respectfully.

  "What point in taking along any?" asked Captain Ahzprinos, adding, "After all, we'll be marching into the very Land of Elephants."

  "Quite so," agreed Nathos, "but you still had best have a few of mine on the march for emergencies. Else, how are you going to get a wagonload of grain out of a mudhole without unloading it, eh?"

  Tomos Gonsalos nodded. "There is that, of course; you've a good head, Nathos. How many would you recommend?"

  "For the projected numbers of troops and baggage, my lord Strahteegos," replied the elephant-captain, "a minimum of four, but six would be better, that there always be one available in need and that they none of them be worked too hard or for too long."

  Gonsalos nodded again. "So be it, Nathos. Six ele­phants will go with me and the army. Will you com­mand, or will one of your lieutenants?"

  Captain Nathos grinned. "Turn down a free visit home? Not me. Yes, I'll command the contingent that accompanies your force, my lord."

  "All right, gentlemen," said Milo, "now that that is all settled, we come back down to another reason we are met here this day. Soon, your army will be meld­ing with the Army of the Confederation. Before it can, we must standardize your systems of ranks—which is archaic, clumsy, repetitive and most unwieldy in practice.

  "The lowest and the highest and two median ranks in your current usage will be retained, but others will be added between them. Your lowest rank of officer, ensign, will stay just where it is and keep its present meaning and function. Junior and senior grades of the rank of lieutenant will be eliminated and the one rank of simply lieutenant substituted for them; furthermore, lieutenants will no longer command troops of horse or companies of foot, only platoons or sections. Captain will henceforth be the rank of commanders of troop or company.

  "Above that, there will be no more senior captains, captains-of-squadron, captains-of-battalion, captains-of-regiment, captains-of-brigade and the like. Command­ers of squadrons of horse and battalions of foot will bear the rank of major, and regimental commanders will bear that of colonel. Brigade commanders will be called brigadiers. As I earlier said, the two grades of strahteegos will stay in both name and responsibility.

  "When once a complete blending of the armies has been accomplished, there will never again be any sell­ing of ranks within it. Promotions, thenceforth, will be predicated upon each officer's ability, not upon his individual or family wealth and aspirations, nor even upon his civil rank. Thus, you will not be burdened with the risk of valuable troops to the command of some wellborn, wealthy, titled ninny who looks very good on parade but who lacks the brains that God gave a boar-hog and cannot find his arse with both hands and a pack of dogs.

  "Amongst what you now call the common soldiers, you are going to witness and hear of even more changes, gentlemen. In this army of yours, your rankers are designated only as soldier or trooper, sergeant and a few ambiguous specialist titles. Within the Army of the Confederation, on the other hand, there are no less than some fourteen gradations of soldiers' ranks, running from recruit up to army sergeant-major, each higher one denoting increased responsibilities, increased privileges and higher pay. This is what the future holds for your army, too, like it or not. It has worked well for me, since I reorganized the army of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, half a century ago, and it will work just as well for you.

  "You see, gentlemen, when well and properly led, after being well and thoroughly trained, your so-called common Ehleen soldier is easily the match of any Middle Kingdoms professional soldier extant, as I dis­covered a half-century and more ago in the north. The two main reasons that he has served you and other Ehleen states so poorly in times past have not been his fault in any way. One of these has been a stubborn application of hidebound, pigheaded traditional prac­tices—crowded, inflexible battle formations; officers' reflexive assumption that all common soldiers are thick­headed and childish and respect only raw force; an almost total lack of care for the common soldiers, as illustrated best by failure to provide more than the bare rudiments of protective clothing or armor for them or to provide them and to train them in the use of auxiliary weapons. The other principal reason has been their leadership, their officers, notably on the level of junior officers.

  "Gentlemen, simply because a man happens to be nobly born, trained from boyhood in arms and the hunt, has never meant that he is therefore automati­cally a born leader of fighting men, tactician and strat­egist all rolled into one. Such men have existed, do exist at present, but they are and always have, been exceedingly rare. An army cannot expect to have good units without good officers, and in order to have good officers, candidates must be very carefully selected, well trained in the beginning and subjected to contin­ual training and periodic quality evaluation throughout their active careers with the army.

  "Immediately this current campaign is done, all of these changes will gradually be put into effect in your army. You know, many of the changes I have outlined were also thought of and seriously contemplated by your late Grand Strahteegos Pahvlos, too."

  "Pahvlos the Warlike?" chorused Grahvos, Portos and not a few more.

  Milo nodded. "I've read that old man's journals, you see. Shortly after he took over your army and saw the strengths of Guhsz Hehluh's pikemen, the Confederation-style cavalry of Portos and Pawl Vawn's Horseclansmen, he began to first question, then strin­gently criticize blind Ehleen traditionalism in his own mind, think things through, then set down conclusions and work out solutions to existing problems. Had he gone further along those lines of thought, had that satanic Witchmen's agent Ilios not appeared and be­gun to twist his mind, then you might be very much farther along the way to a truly effective, well-organized, really modern army. It's a pity."

  About The Author

  ROBERT ADAMS lives in Seminole County, Florida. Like the characters in his books, he is partial to fencing and fancy swordplay, hunting and riding, good food and drink. At one time Robert could be found slaving over a hot forge, making a new sword or busily reconstructing a historically accurate military costume, but, unfortunately, he no longer has time for this as he's far too busy writing.