I Might Not Know Where I Am, But I Ain't Lost by cmsix

Chapter 6

It was nearly eleven AM the next morning when Jorgenson came back into the basement. They'd had to tie their horses in the woods and would need to fetch them back to the pen after dark. Apparently they had no trouble stealing into the larger commander's quarters in Katahalana.

He told me it was easy killing all the officers, finding and looting the tax treasury, making off with the money and every living soul in the building, including the officer's families, their maids, servants, and even the cook.

"Naturally sir, I saved the commander's beautiful young wife for you. Alas, she had no children and only one maid," he said, almost regretfully.

Thank you Jesus, for small miracles is what I thought. I was sure I wouldn't kick either of them out of bed, but dammit, my bed was full already. I wondered if I could explain an empire sized bed to the carpenter and more importantly, to the local mattress maker.

Chungi and I were both in the tower the next morning when a rider came up from the direction of Katahalana and he had clearly ridden his mount nearly to death. Its sides were heaving for breath as it stood spraddle legged after the rider dismounted, and it was covered with sweat.

Some officious looking asshole started dressing him down as he rushed toward King Dasga's large ornate pavilion. I could see men gathered around him and then some agitated milling about. Shortly, an officer left heading toward a group of picketed horses, and apparently yelling orders as he went.

Soon enough fifty men were saddling their mounts and when they finished they were off. They left at a lope but at least not in a dead run. The messenger's horse was down now, obviously foundered, and in a few minutes two men went to it, slit its throat and began skinning it out and then butchering it. They didn't even bother to remove the saddle; they merely cut the girth when it got in the way.

Well, it seemed King Dasga now knew he needed a new command team at Katahalana.

After dark that night my squad slipped out through the tunnel again, re-saddled the horses they'd left tied in the woods and rode them back to the pen. They caught fresh mounts and six more besides, putting the packsaddles we'd lowered onto the six spare horses.

They had to backtrack last night's path and retrieve the twenty-two money chest they'd hidden in the woods. With all the women and children they had in tow, they hadn't been able to carry the chest more than five miles before they'd had to hide them so they could come back for them later. At least they made it back at a decent hour this time.

For the next two days Chungi and I watched as King Dasga's men worked busily cutting and skidding timber and then others worked on the siege tower he had them making. No doubt he was a little put out with me, but I had news for him.

Progress had been steady on the siege tower and as Chungi and I watched the third day of work I decided it was time to liven things up.

The crews set their mortars back up, making their best guess at aiming. I was going to let them try for the nearly finished tower; one shot at a time, in order, until one of them got it. I assumed it would be tricky since the tower was no more than three hundred and fifty yards from Quancho's gate.

The first crew spoiled all the fun by hitting it dead center with their initial round. I guess I can't say they spoiled all the fun though. There was quite a lot of excitement for the next hour while King Dasga threw a fit, trying to send other men out to help the wounded and collect the dead. There was also some minor comedy while a horseman tried to catch the draft horse that had just been released from his latest burden of two large logs only seconds before the mortar round's impact and explosion.

The next bit of fun, for us, was when the burial party for the twelve dead tower builders started a grave in the soft ground of one of our previous mass graves. It didn't take them long at all to find what we'd left for them. Of course it drew attention when they left screaming about their discovery.

Possibly half an hour later, different men had been drafted to continue the digging. No doubt it was more of an investigation by now. I'm sure said investigation yielded more evidence than they were expecting. Suddenly it seemed to dawn on someone that there just might be more bodies in the other odd patches of soft ground, some of which were currently covered by tents and campfires.

Lo and behold, more digging yielded even more evidence. After checking and confirming in one more place, I assume they decided that all those odd patches of soft ground were mass graves, for suddenly there was a determined scramble to vacate the areas. Of course this led to mass confusion, especially after someone noticed that King Dasga's Royal Pavilion had been erected over top of one. The race was on.

I was sorely tempted to have the mortar crews drop a few more shots into the melee but I stifled myself. They had their horses picketed in too much of a prime position for stampeding right through camp with a round or two and if we let them know we could reach from here, they'd no doubt move the whole thing further away. They might have anyway if they'd thought more closely about what we'd done to the tower they'd been building. The great grave discovery had taken it completely off their minds though. Better give them a night to sleep on it.

Bright and early the next morning they started on a new tower, taking only the precaution of moving back another hundred yards. I couldn't follow their thinking on this. They had no idea what weapon we'd used to do the damage. Did they really think that another hundred yards would make all the difference? We'd show them the error of their way tomorrow night.

I finally decided they just didn't know what they were doing. Maybe it wasn't King Dasga's fault, or maybe he was interfering with his general's plans, or maybe nobody knew much about war here and now. It was finally apparent that they didn't move the tower building site further back because of the extra difficulty in moving it after it was done. They couldn't fathom that it would never be finished.

It was easy for me to say they were stupid; I had the benefit of centuries of military history. Even more important, I had weapons that were centuries more advanced. Still, their ridiculous attempts were beginning to bother me. I made myself watch them for most of the day; perhaps we could make them decide to quit bothering us tonight.

By ten PM the mortar crews were practically salivating over their upcoming fun. If you fire a mortar, what could be better than thousands of men on open ground and no prospect of counter battery fire?

It went off without a hitch. First they put a round each on the other side of the picketed horses, and then they switched to the back of the encampment and walked their fire toward the front, the old standby they called it. Four shots into the mission and King Dasga's army was routed, panicked, and dying.

The King's Pavilion went down under frightened horses almost right away. Even with a full moon and the night vision equipment I was using, I couldn't tell whether anyone escaped it or not, but I could tell there was no group of elite bodyguards forming up around their leader. It was every idiot for himself.

I made them stop after only thirty rounds each. There was no point in killing any more of them tonight and with any luck, they'd give it up as a bad job, and just go home. I hoped they'd take the time to bury their dead before they left.

No such luck, they were still chasing after horses the next morning, and there was a lot of anguished milling around, but apparently, King Dasga was pissed.

With the sixty power spotting scope and in broad daylight, he was easy to spot, right there on the man portable chaise lounge arrangement, being toted by six men, brave and true, or at least scared shitless.

In fact, unless I missed my guess, he was coming to inspect the next incarnation of his siege engine. I was out of the tower and poking around in the basement for my Barrett in minutes. I could only hope that it was still reasonably close to on.

I had to take five to catch my breath after I was back up in the tower. Climbing like that with a Barrett and fifteen pounds worth of sandbags does not leave your heart rate in shape for taking critical shots.

Another problem was the lack of an adequate bench and steady seat. I had to put the bags on top of the wall and shoot standing, and even the wall wasn't a good height. I couldn't pass up this chance though.

My first try took out the guy holding up the rear on the king's right side. In a stroke of luck, his sudden demise caught the others unprepared and they spilled the king, with his pallet ending up on top of him.

When they removed his chair I had a good picture of him laying mostly on his front and I tried for a heart shot from the back. He tried to lurch to his feet before the bullet arrived and it looked like I got a kidney instead. It was probably fatal anyway. I was still feeling mean so I nicked a few others as they tried to tend to him.

I didn't doubt that he was badly damaged, and after thirty minutes the tone of the camp seemed to reflect it. Most of the men were standing around in small groups, talking among themselves and the construction on the tower had ground to a halt.

After I sent Chungi down to roust out the mortar crews, they toed the mark, waiting for instructions. I told the spotter, who was now up in the tower with me, to keep an eye on the big wagon they were hitching and sure enough, it started toward where the king was lying.

After the wagon was stuffed with pillows and blankets, the king was carefully loaded into the back. Then, it sat there waiting for a suitable cavalry escort to get mounted. I gave the spotter the go ahead just as about thirty or so mounted men had gathered round the wagon, and before anyone had mounted the seat to drive its team.

None of the mortars got a direct hit this time, but all three rounds landed within fifteen yards. The horses all panicked and the team took off in a dead run, straight ahead. They were up to full speed within ten seconds and as they ran over and trampled dozens of men, the left side wheels bounced like hell on a couple of bodies.

The king was summarily ejected and I could tell from the way he hit that he'd probably laid his last concubine. I told the spotter to go ahead and finish fifty rounds each for the mortars, and this time they walked from the far let of camp to the near right, diagonally across it.

I might have been a little too enthusiastic with the mortar fire. There had been several burial parties working but that was all over. Most of the parties I saw now were running like hell, as fast and far as you can parties.

The squad and our mounted archers were saddling up, ready to go out and add to the confusion. I held them after the mortars finished and within fifteen minutes a little order was returning to the men that hadn't already hauled ass.

That vanished when I had the gates opened and turned the dogs loose. They boiled out of the gate at a gallop, screaming at the top of their lungs.

I don't see that middle age armies were all that tough. A little mortar fire and they went to pieces. Even the Cavalry was a chicken shit outfit, and most of them left without their horses, or anything else for that matter.

We had a lot more surrenders this time, probably a little over a thousand. After Jorgenson made sure they were all disarmed, we set them to work finding the wounded and carting off the dead to bury later.

Then I asked for volunteers in town to go out and help. Probably twenty-five hundred or so answered the call. Of course the departing army hadn't had time to hitch up their supply wagons before they left and we had nearly a hundred of them parked around.

The former cavalrymen we had captured were sent out to round up horses, especially draft horses. I warned them that escapees would be killed, but the first guy must not have believed me.

Two hundred yards is probably a good lead off base when you expect to be thrown out with an arrow. It isn't shit for an M4 though, and Big'un showed the guy, without even scratching the horse. All of our prisoners were very well behaved after that little demonstration.

Three days later the wounded had been tended to and moved inside the walls, all the abandoned supplies and gear had been retrieved, and the bodies had been buried. We had a lot more patches of strangely soft ground now. We were also running out of room. What the hell, Katahalana was a larger city, much larger, and I'd heard the climate was better there.

I gave it some time for things to settle down, but I did send Frankston out with four of the squad so they could check and see if our back door had been plugged. We'd taken considerable pains last time to make it look like we had entered in a more normal fashion.

We'd broken down a rear entrance door and made everyone walk in and out of it a dozen or so times, making sure they walked to the back of another building down a dirt alley that would at least show it'd had traffic lately.

I'd also had Big'un rig some tripwires with small charges in the tunnel behind them, as they left. It wouldn't be hard to tell if anyone had checked it out since then.

Since no one was watching now, Frankston and company left two hours before sunset, and they were back before sunrise. No one had bothered anything in the tunnel and the door at the headquarters end still wasn't even locked. It takes some of the fun out of things when the guy you're playing against is just stupid. It's a little like playing Starcraft online against a kid that doesn't even know how to build Battlecruisers. But life's tough sometimes.

We could have slipped in and taken over right now, I guess, but I thought it would be better to give them some time to get a little organization together. How could they make an orderly surrender if they didn't even know the man next to them? I did think it was time to do a little recon during the daylight though.

The next morning I gave Big'un and Chungi their marching orders. Under Chungi's direction, he and Big'un dressed like locals, loaded two pack mules with a few trade goods and took off up the road.

I'd sent them off with one of our field radios. My squad didn't use the army's normal idiot helmet that let commanders keep track of how long it took a man to take a shit.

We had special radio headsets that fit in one ear and had a throat mike and could be used with or without a helmet. To go along with them we had portable base units with a nominal range out to twenty-five miles. I was confident that the normal personal units could reach from Katahalana to Quancho, since there wouldn't be any other RFI, but those wouldn't be of any benefit anyway. People were bound to notice them if they were worn in public. So I had them take the larger unit. They could use it inside wherever they found lodging.

They reported at ten AM on the second day after they'd left. The news sounded good.

The garrison troops were still practically clueless, none of them had accompanied the king to battle, and they had also been greatly reduced by the returning officers. With the small fraction of men returning, additional troops would be needed in the capital.

The new commander of Katahalana was not pleased, but he hadn't made many waves. He'd been assured that Quancho was neutralized after the king's army's overwhelming victory and most of the garrison's troops seemed to believe that. The important fact was that Katahalana's garrison was down to little more than two hundred troops, with only about fifty dedicated archers.

Things were not so cut and dried among the civilians. Of course they'd been given the official line, but there were now a few soldiers that had mysteriously lost their uniforms after the great victory. In fact they had no intention of finding any new uniforms, and their descriptions of the great victory didn't fit well with the official version.

Big'un's best estimate was that Katahalana was at least four or five times as large as Quancho. It had only one main gate, like Quancho, but it did have a smaller rear entrance for military use only. He said that the normal open area near the city's rear was easily as large as the whole of Quancho.