59 - Everything converges into a knowing

On the crash and ring of the gong, we ran to the ships whooping, heaved them and rowed out into the lake, rowers and warriors singing the paian as one. Spume blew into our faces, icy in the fall breeze. The sunlight was brighter, as it always is on water, brighter still, seeming to catch the side of every wave, when I’d climbed up onto the crow’s nest.

My orders were to engage at the same time on land and water; I heard Vehara bellow the commands slow to half-speed just as I was about to, and heard it relayed outwards from ship to ship; he was watching as carefully as I, or more so, and seeing the ships were closing much faster than the lines on land. The ship seemed to ease and relax beneath my feet, its rocking softer.

Because it had not rained for a while, on land the armies were raising dust, which I cursed, until I thought for a bit. We should be able to tell by the yelling whether they were engaged or not, even though it would not be like true war. If the landing force must charge blind, the lake edge would lead us to Nyereha’s Kadril; all the better, in fact, as they wouldn’t see us coming. Dust always favours the side with the surprise move, so unless she had one up her sleeve also, it was to my advantage.

I doubted she did. I had the feeling her plan was simply to win on the Lake by better naval commanding, and, since I’d been foolish enough to come out onto the Lake, kill me out. (I had the Blue game-general’s plumed helmet, of course—ironic that she’d drawn Green and I Blue—and wore my game-sword on my shoulder too, so I was easy to spot.)

As my captains got my ships ordered into two lines, with my ship furthest to the sword-side—and thus closest to the shore—the Greens spread out beautifully into one long one, prows cutting and flinging up white water out of the brilliant blue as she came at full speed. She’d outflank us both ways, she was thinking, perhaps even that we were making it easy.

Now the two lines on land were about seventy paces apart. One thing we’d learned in these Games; two blocks of game-Kadril have to be careful, charging each other, as the weight of the pikes and of the unit itself, arm-linked, can make blows impossible to pull. A good twenty or thirty people were out with broken ribs, injuries to their organs, and the like; there was even one man whose life the Haians feared for, though he’d got it in a quarter-final and yet had pulled through so far. Setting the butts of the pikes into the ground had been forbidden from the start, as had full-speed horse charges at Kadril; now two new rules were penned. Kadril could close only at a walk, and the points must be padded.

Both land commanders were pacing the whole line by this, keeping it to a walk, though suddenly both blocks of horse thundered out entire to engage each other on the boundary-side wings, roiling up the dust to the east. “Three-quarter speed!” Vehara barked and captains relayed.

Timing… it’s all timing, I thought. We didn’t want to be ramming at three quarter when they were ramming at full; we also didn’t want to be engaged so long before the land-armies were that the break-out line got caught in an engagement. “Rear line slow to half!” I ordered, and heard captain relay to captain. Let Nyereha think I meant to keep half of mine out of her flanking, to flank the flankers. Or that I was getting nerves.

No one would decide when, but me. Full-speed is yea fast… with the sails, a little faster… that much distance to the shore… On water, distances can deceive; luckily, if there was any lake in the world I knew, it was this one. Kadril fifty paces apart now… The wind was blowing off the dust fairly fast. They have to be so close no one looks over their shoulder, at least in good enough time. “Ready to unfurl sails,” I shouted down. I’d had each captain choose five of the warriors who were from port-towns to do this, since every rower’s hands were full. They positioned themselves and gripped the ropes.

“Full speed, row, row, ROW!” I heard Vehara bellow, more faintly now as water opened up between his sterns and my bows. “Captains, sharp now, ram the oars first, sharp for our anaraseye!” I had told him not to leave that up to me; some officers might anyway, so I promised myself again to commend him. “Ready to board!” the warrior-commanders were yelling.

For me the right time is something I feel rather than count or measure, sense rather than deduce. Everything I am seeing converges into a knowing, a whispering in my bones, ‘Now.’ The signal, that all the captains were looking for, would be when I climbed down the mast. Now. “Sword-side hard, GO!” I scrambled down.

Twelve rudders were thrown over and twelve ships turned as one; like white flowers opening downward the sails fell, and the wind caught them, pushing them into perfect curves and making all the rigging creak with strain. I felt the pull forward under my feet as the wind added its strength to the rowers’, as if the ship itself surged in eagerness. “Everything you’ve got! For our anaraseye, everything you’ve got!” the coxswains were shouting. No matter if they were spent to falling once we hit shore; their work was over then.

The warriors all whooped and laughed, smacking me on the back as if we’d already won. When they are part of what they feel will be a winning tactic, I’ve learned, warriors’s hearts fill with joy, and it makes it all the stronger.

I dashed back to the tiller; I’d come on deck, of course, to point out to the captain exactly where on the shore I wanted us to beach, far enough back from the battle that we could form up, close enough to get into it fast once we did. The twelve other ships would beach to our shield-side. Once I knew my captain was certain of the place, I ran up to the bow and stood bouncing on my toes at the rail, like a child eager to be that much closer to a place he is going.

On land the Kadril were fully closed, line on line, no one clearly winning. The dust, alas, was not much, obscuring my own side from me much more than the Greens. I looked back out to the Lake. Nyereha decided both to give chase and send a force behind my lines, but it took much longer since she had not planned it from the start; we were grinding prow-first into the beach and leaping off into the shallows before all of her ships were turned. As well, she was not willing to leave herself outnumbered on water, so she assigned six ships each. It was a panic move, and they are often half-action.

In a fight, large or small, you always want to be the one who leads with your tactics, making the other follow; you want to use your plans to force the other to abandon theirs, so that you and your warriors fight in the spirit of confidence and resolve, while they fight in doubt and self-recrimination and worry. That way it is you who writes the story, as it were, and the more you write the story, the more you write how it ends. I had seized authorship now, and I didn’t intend to relinquish it until the story was well and truly ended.

I ran along the shore, before my ships. “On shore, fast as you can then form up, move, move, MOVE!” We were within arrow-range of Nyereha’s shield-side archers, standing idle now the battle was joined. “Chevenga shield up!” several people yelled, sure enough. A rain of game-arrows was suddenly falling around me, more than one hitting my shield; if one hit me in a vital spot, it was all over. At least it made my warriors move faster.

“We charge, but quietly first,” I ordered as I did the last run down the lines, back to my own position. “No war-cries until you throw your spear, five paces out… Charge!”

I was going to do what I had never done before; fight heavy foot on Kadril, once Nyereha’s archers made scarce. When entrants aren’t themselves fighting they are watching each others’ games; we’d all been talking about nothing but strategy and tactics for the better part of a half-moon, and much of it on Kadril. They were, it was emerging, like a long-armed warrior, who will keep you at his striking-range, which is, of course, outside of yours. If you can get inside, you’ll win, because he can’t fight so well there.

So I’d decided to try having my heavy foot throw spear and draw—shortswords rather than long—before they closed. This would not be the best test of this tactic, since the poor Kadril we were attacking were already fighting by my Kadril on the other side, but it would be interesting.

The Green Kadril were set in ten ranks as usual. Seeing us coming the rear commanders ordered about-face and lower points; each had to decide how many in his file he was giving the order to, depending on how many were down or had their hands full already. The row of padded pikeheads we faced was thin and ragged.

The trick is to get between, and it is indeed much easier with a shortsword than with a spear or even a longsword; I suspected it would be even easier without a shield, but that was an advantage I wanted to keep against the pike-bearers, who had none. Once you’re past the first points, then you have to get past the second, third, fourth and fifth, but their wielders being behind and often blind, they have a harder time lining you up. Once you are past all five, you’re on the first warrior, who has to drop his pike and draw his sword, and then you have sword and shield against sword.

They stopped me, as I thought they might; about twenty pikeheads all converged on me, so I brought myself up short out of their reach, yelling to my warriors beside me, “You’re wide open, go in, go in!” They did, and soon my way was clear enough.

Beset on both sides, Nyereha’s Kadril were soon done; as a game-warrior you are on your honour, and so if you think it is certain you would flee or surrender if this were real war, you do. “Mercy! Quarter! I’ll buy you a drink!” the Greens cried, in hallowed Games tradition, as they flung down arms. My ship-borne heavy foot were well-placed to flank hers now, working inland; we were one force, now, formed as jaws around the enemy.

It was time for me to reconnoiter; I pulled back out of the lines, taking ten people from the rear rank to run orders, and got onto a small rise by lake’s-edge. I had ordered my shield-side-wing archers to move back and shoreward once the land-battle was engaged, so that they and the sword-side could loose a crossfire on any force that landed behind my lines, expecting it as I was. They did to good effect. My back rank of Kadril, five two-hundred-strong units, suddenly had nothing to do, so I split them up against the Green landing-forces, pinning them where they were, which was all that was necessary.

Out in the Lake, the ship-battle was raging proper. As far as I could tell, Nyereha was getting the edge, having still managed to flank Vehara; but it didn’t matter. Once it was very clear even from far how the main battle was going—solid blocks of Blue leaving a thick litter of sprawled Green as they closed the jaws—I sent runners to Nyereha’s two landing forces with the message that if they surrendered I’d spare all their lives. In a Game, of course, that would be read as, “It’s not even noon, and we can party the whole rest of the day.”

They took me up on it; soon after that the last of Nyereha’s main land-force either surrendered or “fled” across the game-boundary. Seeing a thickening line of blue-helmed and bannered warriors on the shore all whooping, raising their arms in victory and hailing her, Nyereha called a halt, as did Vehara. She brought just her one ship ashore, and came onto the beach unarmed and with the ivy branch. We clasped hands and hugged, and she gave me the traditional words, “I wish you the best in your studies.”