Wartorn Obliteration

PRAULTH (5)

These weren't maps of ancient engagements, celebrated by fastidious military scholars and studied with compulsive exactitude by University students. She had been one of those students, one of the most astute and promising, in fact. War studies had consumed the bulk of her intellectual interest. Master Honnis had been her caustic mentor, a man she had judged to be as intent and single-minded as herself. She had been wrong. Honnis had lived a life she knew nothing of, a life that included the active practicing of magic and participation in a vast scouting network that had kept track of this war since its inception.

Not faded brittle papers, these. Not testimonials of warfare that had occurred a hundredwinter and more before her birth, and which absorbed her strictly as an intellectual abstraction, without any true thought ever given to the unruly bloodshed and final human cost of the events.

No. These maps and intelligence reports spread before her were very much alive. They were news of events occurring in the present and still unfolding, and very much requiring her attention.

And like many things that occurred in the here and now, these events were not going as planned.

Praulth was on her feet, staring down at the maps as Merse delivered them, the ink still glistening. The Far Speak magician was apparently receiving field intelligence from a number of different sources, which was serving to give Praulth a clearer picture of what was happening north of this city of Petgrad.

The cluster of minor diplomats inhabiting the auditorium pressed near to get a look, sensing something important transpiring. Praulth's scarf of metallic red kept swaying into her line of sight, and with a grunt of annoyance she unknotted it and tossed it behind her. Now, she realized with clear understanding, wasn't the time to worry about how she was going to look for any future portraits.

An ambassador's assistant from Ebzo jostled her left elbow. "What's going on?" he wanted to know, eyes squinting confusedly at the arrayed maps. "Is the Alliance winning?"

Praulth felt the very uncharacteristic urge to backhand the man across his balding skull. Instead she called, "Xink!"

He was at her side immediately. "General Praulth?"

"Clear any extraneous personnel. I need room to work."

It was a treat for Xink, being ordered to take some positive physical action on her behalf. He wasn't gentle about clearing the curious from the auditorium's dais.

Praulth had remained vigilant here throughout the day and now into the night. She had received the reports of initial visual contact between the Felk and Alliance forces. Cultat had arrayed the aggregate army, which he led according to Praulth's instructions. A "vulnerability" was placed among the front ranks, a company of noticeably weak strength, bait that Dardas was meant to recognize. Apparently he had, for the Alliance scouts had then reported that the Felk were moving small units east and west, presumably having discovered the Alliance's flanking gambits. These, too, were bait, however; and if Dardas had followed through, using (here Praulth adjusted for the magical capabilities of the Felk) Far Movement wizards to transport companies against the Alliance flankers, then the Felk army would have left itself susceptible to an attack that would have cut it in two.

But that wasn't what had happened.

Dardas had evidently abandoned his maneuvers against the Alliance's flanks. New strategies were arising, ones not documented in war studies texts that she knew from memory. Dardas was adapting. Dardas was strategizing in the present. Dardas would have to be engaged by an equal tactician.

"Tell me what's happening."

She looked up abruptly. Merse was standing on the opposite side of the table, plainly addressing her, though his eyes looked past her and weren't quite focused. His hand clutched the familiar-looking bracelet.

"Who's asking?"

"Cultat," Merse said. "I'm speaking to a scout here, and she is relaying the words to you. Praulth, time is crucial. What is happening?"

"The Felk aren't moving to outflank your forces," she said. "The trap has failed." She heard several gasps from the diplomats who had regrouped a safe distance from the dais. Xink, standing off to one side now, turned his head sharply toward her. The words felt like knives in her throat.

Merse gazed blankly and silently, merely a vessel at the moment waiting for more words to be poured into him. Praulth's fists bunched.

"So, there's to be no Battle of Torran Flats."

"No, Premier," Praulth said, struggling to keep her voice from choking. The trap had failed. She had failed. But this wasn't over yet. "We'll have to fight another battle."

In her mind she imagined the fearsome Petgradite premier astride his horse, officers from dozens of disparate states looking to him for victory, troops by the thousands trusting that they were in the capable military hands of the Alliance's leader. She imagined the night winds blowing, the stark moon overhead, the torches flickering and the arms and armored bodies creaking and clanging. An army waiting to act. And Cultat there at its heart.

He wouldn't despair, though. He wouldn't succumb to fear. Cultat was fierce, and he was a visionary. Without him no Alliance would ever have been assembled in the first place. And Praulth would not have the opportunity she now had, to engage Dardas in final decisive combat.

"Praulth..." Merse said; then, tone shifting, added, "General Praulth, I rely on you."

She looked away from Merse, down at the maps. With the speedy and meticulous intelligence she was receiving, she could keep abreast of this battle moment to moment. She could relay tactics to Cultat. She could fight the war from this very room, engage Dardas blow for blow. Her talent as a war scholar and, much more, her ability to apply that trenchant knowledge actively and effectively would determine victory or defeat for the Alliance, for the Isthmus.

Praulth didn't now pause to consider how this would affect her and her lofty future place in history. At the moment nothing seemed less important.

"Premier, mobilize your third and seventh companies. Fortify your weak strength unit in the forward rank. Bring up your cavalry on the eastward line. It's time for the Felk to meet their enemy."

A night battlefield. She knew this, knew the armies would be engaging by torchlight, by star and moonlight. The images came to her, sidling in upon the cold and clear war logic that gripped her mind. She glimpsed the liquid spill of firelight over the armored bodies. She saw the melange of Alliance troops, their varying uniforms, assembled unlike the Felk for a cause of defense. Hold these lands against the sweeping invaders from the north. That was the unifying motive. And it had thrown together peoples who had, until very recently, been traditional antagonists. This Alliance... such a hodgepodge. How could it function?

Cultat was there. Na Niroki Cultat. Premier of Petgrad. He would hold the miscellany together. He would make them work as one. Praulth would be strategizing, yes; Praulth would be deciphering the enemy's movements and concocting the countering maneuvers. But Cultat would execute the reality of this battle, and without him, all her intellectual and tactical talent would be meaningless.

If she ever saw the premier alive again, she would tell this to him. She would say it quite humbly and sincerely.

Merse's hands were busy with a number of different trinkets, items well-handled and thereby impressed by whichever Far Speak operator he was currently linked to. Actually it seemed he was communicating with several at once, a feat that had to require some effort and skill. He remained on the dais with Praulth.

"Lateral move," Merse said. Sweat stood out on his forehead. "East... here. This company, this." He was stabbing at a map with his finger, indicating a specific Felk unit.

Praulth noted it. The maneuver resonated. It had many possible meanings—feint, supporting posture, outright assault. It was idiosyncratic of Dardas. This was how he fought. He put his forces into play and moved them about in unexpected patterns. He worked deep, weaving tactics inside tactics, confusing his opponents.

But Praulth's answering movement was clear to her. A unit of Alliance archers was nearby. They were to take positions. Whatever Dardas meant to do, the Felk company would be covered.

She told this to Merse. He relayed it.

The first actual combative contact between the armies had come. The Felk had made a thrust, a foray with a unit of infantry. It wasn't meant to break the Alliance lines. It was, to Praulth's eyes, the signal that this fight wouldn't wait for the daylight. Dardas was eager. Dardas had recognized the canny trap within the trap that had been laid, and he expressly wanted it known that he could not be fooled.

Such was how Praulth interpreted the gambit. The Felk infantry had been met. The clash was quick, casualties had resulted, and the Felk thrust was withdrawn. Blood was on the ground now. It wasn't going to be the last spilled tonight.

Those deaths weren't remote to her. They weren't as the lives lost in ancient battles that she read about, times so distantly past that whole generations had died off since.

Yet she didn't allow the thought of that newly shed blood to paralyze her. Soldiers would die tonight, members of this hastily amassed Alliance, and they would die in engagements that she had devised. But they had come together to fight off the Felk. They would supply whatever sacrifices needed to be made in this cause. Praulth owed them her best efforts, her keenest wits.

"Movement," Merse said. Xink had brought him a seat, and he had fallen heavily into it. He was presently clutching a small silver medallion looped with a thong of old leather. Praulth couldn't see what it was. "Middle ranks. A company is moving forward, toward the front."

Praulth noted the place on a map. Dardas was moving a unit forward from the rear. Cavalry? Infantry?

Wizards.

Merse's weathered features were tightened across the bones of his face. Abruptly he lurched to his feet, the movement violent. The chair clattered off the dais behind him. His hand opened, and the medallion bounced off the table and rolled out of sight.

His eyes widened and shot through Praulth. "My boy," he said, voice hoarse and slight. "He's gone."

A scout lost. A valuable Far Speak scout. But the pale and sudden loss on Merse's face was something else. This was the loss of one of his children, his son. How incalculable a loss was that?

"How did it happen?" Praulth asked. She reached a hand across the table, took Merse's wrist. She meant it to be forceful, to wrench him back from his shock, to delay it until there was time for it. Instead, her touch was gentle. She held him to comfort him.

Merse's jaw moved, tiny muscles bunching below the ear. Finally he said, "Fire."

"Fire?"

"His last word."

"Wizards," Praulth said.

Merse nodded solemnly.

The Felk fire magic had been used minimally during the war so far. The Felk had until now only been overrunning villages and invading cities. These were places they meant to occupy, and they wanted these sites left relatively undamaged. Surely fire magic had played a part in U'delph's razing, but here, on this battlefield, there was nothing to hold them back from full use of this offensive magic.

"Find out the range," she said, and now her fingers did tighten around Merse's wrist.

He wasn't drifting away entirely into the shock and sorrow that was his due. He straightened up and snatched an article from his pocket, gripping it fiercely, with an air of determination. He gave her a last sharp look before the link was established and said, "I won't fail you."

Praulth knew that he wouldn't.

He relayed the information to her. Apparently the fire producing magicians could only use their talents within a fairly limited range and at a finite intensity. They couldn't, for instance, hurl great clouds of fire across the prairie at the Alliance ranks. They seemed—Praulth assimilated the rapidly incoming reports—to be able to cause combustion only among the Alliance's most advanced units. Among these had been the one that included the Far Speak scout.

Even within that range the Felk wizards were limited, it seemed. That whole unit hadn't suddenly burst into flame. Instead, an individual here and there had suffered the horrible fate, while the person standing alongside went unscathed.

They could only pick out individual targets, then, like archers did.

"Tell Cultat to advance this unit of infantry," Praulth said, pointing to a map. "Draw the wizards forward from the Felk ranks. Give them something to go after. Then send this company of cavalry—it's a strong company—on a northwestward tangent. They'll cut through the wizards before they can retreat. Go. Go." Her hand thumped the table, but Merse was already passing it to the premier.

It was calculated sacrifice. Some of those infantry soldiers were going to die—and die as bait. But they would serve the greater cause.

It was a pure and painfully profound fact.

Praulth blinked and lifted her head. She quickly and unabashedly swiped a hand across her eyes, blinked more until the tears were gone. She caught a glimpse of the diplomats still watching raptly from the auditorium's aisles. They were silent, perhaps finally and truly aware that they were witnessing a moment of genuine history.

She noticed Xink, too, still standing to the side, still attending her. Ready to perform any task she set him to do. He was faithful. She saw that he had retrieved Merse's medallion from where it had fallen. She would need Xink, later, when all this was done. No matter what the outcome, she realized, she would survive this night and the following day. She was intimately involved in this war, but she wasn't bodily at risk. She had already faced her physical hardships, being assaulted and ravaged on Petgrad's streets. She had survived that.

When this momentous battle was through, Praulth would have Xink; and she would take her comfort there, and he would welcome her, because he still loved her... with a greater depth of authentic feeling than she perhaps deserved. But she would deserve it. Eventually, at least. She would right the wrongs between them, and their mutually inflicted wounds would heal.

Still gazing at him, she smiled, a small sweet curl of her lips. Xink smiled back.

Merse told her the infantry unit was drawing out the wizards. The Alliance soldiers were sustaining casualties, being picked off one by one, erupting into awful gouts of murderous flame.

"The cavalry," Praulth said. "Now."

It happened for her on those maps, with every fresh bit of field intelligence that arrived and with every tactic she ordered. But the human cost was never far from her mind. Later, in the deep night, when the extraordinary and inexplicable event occurred, Praulth judged—gravely and sorrowfully—that the cost had been worth paying.