Owen squirmed.
He didn’t seem able to find a comfortable position in his camp chair, and yet the situation demanded he sit for hours reviewing reports and communiques.
Erik approached, looming up out of the evening darkness against the campfires burning in every direction. He saluted. “We’ve interrogated the captains, and they’re as ignorant as the swordsmen they’ve hired.”
“There’s a pattern here, somewhere,” said Owen. “I’m just too stupid to see it.” He indicated that Erik should sit.
“Not stupid,” said Erik, sitting next to his commander. “Just tired.”
“Not that tired,” said Owen. His old leathery face wrinkled in a smile. “I’ve gotten three good nights’ sleep, truth to tell, since you opened the gates. In fact, it’s been too good.” He leaned forward, looking at the map as if there was something in there to see, if he just stared at it long enough.
Companies of regular soldiers were arriving from the south. The prisoners were being kept in a makeshift compound, fashioned of freshly felled trees. Erik said, “The best I can come up with is Fadawah has some men he wasn’t really happy with, so he thought he’d turn them over to us to feed.”
“Well, if you hadn’t opened that gate, we would have bled a bit getting over that wall,” said Owen, hiking his thumb over his shoulder at the large earthen breastwork behind his command pavilion.
“True, but we would have taken it in a day or two.”
“I’m wondering why Fadawah is going to all the trouble of making us think he’s down here and then letting us discover he isn’t.”
“I’m guessing,” said Erik, “but if he’s taken LaMut, he might be moving south of Ylith now, getting ready for a counterattack.”
“He can’t ignore Yabon,” said Owen. “As long as Duke Carl is up there with his army, Fadawah has to keep a strong face northward. Carl can get men in and out of there if Fadawah doesn’t keep the pressure on. Even so, there are Hadati hillmen still up there who can probably sneak through his lines at will. And I’m sure the dwarves and elves aren’t proving hospitable neighbors if his patrols wander too far from their current position. No, he must take all of Yabon before he turns south.”
“Well, he can’t hope to slow us down with these little sham positions.”
Owen’s face showed concern. “I don’t know if these are shams as much as they’re just. . . irritations, to make us proceed slowly.”
Erik’s eyes narrowed. “Or maybe they’re designed to make us go fast.”
“What do you mean?”
“Say we find one or two more of these lightly defended positions?”
“Okay, so we do.”
Erik pointed to the map. “Let’s say we hit Quester’s View and find another fortification like this. We get all excited and strike out toward Ylith.”
“And run into a meat grinder?”
Erik nodded. He pointed to details on the map. “There’s this line of unforgiving ridges north of the road from Quester’s View to Hawk’s Hollow. He holds both ends of the road, and if he keeps us off the ridge, he can dig in here.” Erik’s finger showed a particularly narrow point in the road about twenty miles south of Ylith. “Let say he sets up a series of fortifications, tunnels, catapults, arrow towers, the entire bag of tricks. We stick a boot into that mess too fast and we may draw back a bloody stump.” His finger traced a line from that point up to the dot on the map representing Ylith. “He’s got thirty-foot-high walls, and a single weak point, an eastern gate by the docks. That he can fortify, and if he sinks ships in the harbor mouth, he can sit inside the city like a turtle in its shell.” The more he spoke, the more Erik was certain of his analysis. “We can’t land on the western shore; that’s Free Cities land, and if we try it, Patrick risks alienating the only neutral party left on the Bitter Sea. Besides, to get there we’d probably run up against whatever warships Queg has in the area.”
Owen sighed. “More to the point, our fleet needs to support the army on its western flank to make sure we’re supplied and to carry the wounded south to Sarth and Krondor.”
Erik scratched at his chin. “I’m willing to bet if we had the eyes of a bird we’d see a very heavy set of fortifications being built along that stretch right now.”
“It all makes sense,” said Owen. “But then I’ve seen too many things in war that make no sense to count too heavily on theory. We’ll have to wait to see what Subai says when he gets word back to us.”
“If he gets word back,” said Erik.
“Let’s cover our bet,” said Owen.
“What?” asked Erik.
“I’m going to send an order to Admiral Reeves to send a fast cutter up the coast from Sarth. I want to see how far north he can get before someone tries to discourage him.”