Chapter Eleven – Deception
All warfare is based on deception.
― Sun tzu, The Art of War, 6th Century, BCE.
The Midis finally found or built enough carts for their supply needs and an army of some thousands with siege equipment marched towards the structure, singing as they went. It was now mid-Autumn but the days were still fine, even in the uplands of the plateau, albeit with a chill in the night air that made the Midi warriors appreciate their camp fires. For them it was a pleasant hike with a promise of victory at the end. For such a large army would surely sweep away the few humans that dared to defy them, even if they had sticks that thundered and rocks that banged. At night, as they passed the hard liquor around the camp fires, the Midis amused themselves by devising inventive ways putting the humans they expected to capture to death.
Human slaves brought along as servants and porters now understood enough of the Midi language to catch the drift of what was being said and quailed for their fellows by the structure. They had heard of other fights around the bridge but had dismissed them as the work of enthusiasts. BD was with them again as an interpreter, having been bought for that purpose by the Midi general, leaving her son behind in Haven City in the care of others as assurance of her good behaviour. She gave her fellow slaves a reasonably accurate account of the fight, including a correct estimate of about fifty or so on the human side. When the slaves heard that number they shook their heads. With any luck the young humans would vanish into the forests close to the structure rather than stand up to the Midi host.
But there were disquieting signs, for those who cared to read them, that the humans at the bridge would not fold easily. The marching warriors would see humans, always at a distance on ridge lines or at tree lines, sitting on top of one of the four legged creatures that they bred. The Midi warriors distained to ride the creatures as not in keeping with the traditions and military virtues of the ‘right people’ as they thought of themselves, but they had to admit the human-horse combination made a daunting sight.
However, the horse-humans refused to stand and fight, simply watching the marching columns for a time before vanishing into the trees and behind hills before any Midi scouts could get near them. That must mean, the Midis told each other. That the horse-humans were cowards who would never pose any threat to their column. It did not occur to them that the cavalry scouts were simply following orders to occasionally show themselves to the Midis but not to engage, as part of a plan by the human leader, Colonel Swift. They did not guess that the colonel wanted to draw the column in to camp by the gorge within spitting distance of the structure still confident but beginning to wonder what these strange humans were up to.
One night, Midi sentries saw another camp fire in the distance that could only be human. A group of skilled trackers were dispatched to capture the humans around it and, they hoped, drag them back for questioning and perhaps some sport. The trackers never returned. Midi sentries thought they heard cries in the distance, but in the morning patrols discovered only splashes of what might be blood spilled by their brothers and a single dropped spear, in a disturbed patch of forest. Tracks of the four-legged creatures that the humans used led off East, towards the structure. They were not to know that the human cavalry commander, Captain Geoffrey Parker, earned himself a rebuke from Colonel Swift for the night ambush, which went against orders.
“Still too risky for your guys,” Gideon snapped at Parker. “How many used their phones for directions at night?”
“Not the guys I picked, man,” said Parker.
“You do not man me, you sir me,” said Gideon, sharply. “None of them had been in a fight before and suddenly they’re killing Midis at night? You could have lost them all.”
“My guys needed blooding, sir, and we were real careful. If they hadn’t come by the route we expected then we would have pulled out. At the ambush site there were three humans for every Midi.”
“Still I expect my officers to obey orders, not organise ambushes that don’t make any difference one way or another. I want them at the bridge confident that all they have in front of them is a bunch of cowardly humans. Gottit?”
“Yes, sir.”
Privately Gideon thought that Captain Parker showed promise, if ever he could be persuaded to obey orders.
Training picked up. This included another session with officers about the greatest battle plans.
“Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862,” said one candidate. “It wasn’t a battle plan as such, but Jackson kept three Union armies outnumbering his command more than two to one on the go and won several victories by unpredictable forced marches on interior lines. The campaign is still studied worldwide.”
“Cannae,” suggested someone. “Hannibal enticed a whole Roman army into attacking his centre, then closed in his wings and killed them all. Or maybe Teutoburg Forest in the first century. Arminius set the whole thing up, even altering the terrain so the Romans would go where he wanted them and building a wall where the ambush was going to be. He snuffed three legions plus auxiliaries, guys. That was a proper disaster. The Romans never tried to conquer East of the Rhine after that.”
“What about von Manstein in Russia after Stalingrad,” said another, “when the Soviets thought they had the Germans on the ropes. He lured the Soviet forces into a trap, even evacuating some places to make them come on, then encircled them. A masterpiece.”
“No, no, no, guys,” said another, “the all-time classic masterpiece has got to be the Austerlitz campaign. Napoleon set everything up so that the Allied powers would do what he wanted them to do when he wanted it and they obliged him by performing on schedule. They hit what they thought was the weak French right wing, only for Napoleon to use forces they didn’t think he had to smash their weakened centre on the Pratzen Heights then come down and trap a big part of their extended army. He knocked the shit out of the combined armies, and got to redraw the European map. No wonder the French built the Arc de Triomphe.”
Over at the Midi camp, the commander, General Kang, had identified a simple explanation for the first two minor human victories at the structure and for the disappearance of his scouts, one that did not rely on battle plans and technology.
“Humans must be using sorcerers,” he informed BD, after the woman was required to kneel before him. “Sorcerers could make thunder sticks and rocks that bang?”
“There are no sorcerers with the humans, Lord,” she replied. “They are flesh like you. The thunder sticks are things from earth they have made, Lord.” Like all other Havenites, BD’s military experience was very limited, but she suspected that the camp fire had been a lure and the missing group had been ambushed. However, as a slave, human and female – BD was not sure which category counted the most against her - she had also learned to only answer the questions asked of her and stick to the facts. She also wondered if she would see Gideon again as anything other than a corpse and decided to put the matter from her mind. Her new owner had made it clear that she had been purchased to translate pleas for mercy, not to negotiate. The initial negotiations of the preceding Midi force had been a mistake which had contributed to the defeat, the general declared. BD knew that wasn’t right but held her tongue. As the Midi army was many times the size of the previous force and had brought big siege engines to bombard the humans into submission, she thought that perhaps the general had some reason for his confidence.
Then, as they neared the bridge, BD heard what had once been a familiar buzzing noise and looked up. She could just make out what she characterised as a toy helicopter, but with four rotors rather than one, hovering well above the column. She wondered over the sight for a few moments before she realised it must be one of the drones from the Summer Camp, and that it was watching them. No one asked her about it, and the Midi warriors dismissed it as a new type of bird. But BD remembered Gideon at the bridge blowing out the captain’s brains, the musketeers howling and the disappearance of the scouts and thought that maybe the Midis would have a battle on their hands.
When they arrived at the bridge after days of travel, BD thought that the sandbag fortifications and stone barriers across the bridge itself looked the same as when she had last been there in the summer but with even fewer visible humans. There were two on top of the sand-bag citadel who looked bored and another on top of the structure, who was little more than a dot in the distance.
A small patrol sent to the bridge reached one end without challenge, but when the first Midi set foot on the bridge’s decking a thunder stick spoke from across the gorge and a bullet pinged off the bridge support just above the intruder’s head. A deliberate miss by Skull on Gideon’s orders. The patrol withdrew and the Midis set up camp at what they imagined to be a safe distance from the bridge, and those strange human weapons. This meant there was a large clear area in front of the bridge, then a hastily erected mess of tents, lean-tos and ramshackle huts, mostly housing the quality. The bulk of the common Black Band warriors slept in the open, further back, covering themselves with whatever they could find. When night fell the area blazed with campfires. Tomorrow they would start construction of the big siege engines. That night the soldiers would rest. On the other side of the gorge another fire blazed and, to BD’s astonishment, she heard music.
Three six nine
The goose drank wine
The monkey chewed tobacco
On the street car line
The line broke
The monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven
In a little row boat
Clap clap..
In the light of the bonfire she could see people moving.
“What are the humans doing?” asked Kang, puzzled.
“They’re dancing, lord,” said BD bewildered.
“Dancing? Is that human dancing?” Kang was used to orderly court dancing. This dancing seemed chaotic to him. “What does the music mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything, Lord. It’s a silly song.”
“Humph!” said Kang. “It is right the human dance on their last night of life.” He moved away.
For her part, BD had a sneaking suspicion that the dance party had been put on for the benefit of the Midis and that a deeper game was being played. She also thought that she would have liked to go dancing.
Across the gorge, Gideon was being pestered by Kat.
“We’re still trying to finalise the list of suitable partners for you,” she said, as they both sat with their back against the structure, watching the dancing. Earlier Gideon had condescended to dance with Honey and then with Kat, more to show that the commander was one of the guys, than with any real interest in the party which, as BD had guessed, was about distracting the Midis. Then the sound system played a song bound to get everyone on their feet, even youths born decades after the song was written on another planet, the Hollies Long Cool Women in a Black Dress.
Even if the Midi sentries had not been distracted by the dancing in front of them, they would have had trouble seeing the party of humans deep in shadow at the bottom of the gorge and downstream of the bridge, faces blackened. They moved across rocks that turned the river into rapids at that point, hanging onto ropes that had been put in place as the Midi force marched.
“Hollies – we’re on schedule,” whispered the leader to his female second in command, looking at his watch. “What’s the next checkpoint.”
“Twenty minutes,” she whispered back. “We should be half-way up when they play Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”
“Wham!” said the leader in disgust, who had joined as a punk. “I can’t believe I agreed to Wham!” The choice of songs to keep the assault party on schedule had caused far more trouble than the plan for the assault.
“Let’s just get to the top and stay alive,” said the second in command.
Back at the party Gideon was questioning Kat about the list of romantic partners that had been drawn up for him. He had long given up trying to stop the junior musketeer, as she now was, from pestering him, but thought the pestering should stop short of his romantic life.
“Don’t I get a say in this matter?” he asked.
Kat pretended to think about this for a moment then shook her head. “Nah, you’re a guy; you’d mess it up. You do get a right of veto though. Not much we can do about that.”
“Do the girls also get a veto?”
“Oh yes. It’s a shame, but there it is,” said Kat, cheerfully. “People will make their own choices in life.”
Both were then dragged away to dance by others – Gideon by the senior medic Fredericka who had already worn out her boyfriend dancing – and were still on their feet when Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go was played, the assault team leader, Evan Grey, still grumbling under his breath about the choice of song. By that time the Midi sentries were too busy laughing at the antics of the humans on the other side of the gorge to notice, if they had been able to see anything, as the human assault party climbed over the lip of the gorge on the Midi side and hid themselves in a dense patch of forest well away from the camp site. They remained there, watching the sentries change and checking in on their phones, as the party wound down to a few slow dancing couples. Then Elton John’s Your Song told them it was time to move.
They snuck out from their hiding places to creep up on the bored, half-asleep Midi sentries. The Midi Red Band in charge of the sentries had checked on them for that shift then gone back to his tent, while the rest of the army snored comfortably in whatever billets they had been able to arrange, dreaming of what they would do to humans. Wind stirred the grass. the Midi sentry fire had long been allowed to burn out. One Midi, thinking of women, beer and home, and unaware that a human was creeping up on him, gazed across the river at the few couples still dancing.
“Is that human sex?” he said to a fellow sentry, a tent brother, although they did not actually have a tent.
“Maybe we could grab a human female tomorrow and see how they fuck?” said the tent brother.
The first Midi chortled then went on a few paces and lent on his spear, one cheek resting on the wood. A slight sound made him turn back to his tent brother who, it seemed, had vanished. The sentry blinked, shook his head and then a human hand slapped over his mouth and a knife was thrust into his back, under his ribcage angling up to reach the heart. It missed. The sentry gurgled and tried to scream, clawing at the hand across his mouth. His human assailant thrust again, then again and the Red Band’s body flopped to the earth. Lucas, who had lost a sister to the Midis while being told that negotiations would work, knifed the body again and again, trembling, until Jennifer, his second, pulled him off.
“He’s dead Lucas,” she said. “Trust me, he’s dead.”
Even stood up, still trembling from his first kill, shook himself, then wiped the bloodied knife on the creature’s clothing.
“All others down?”
“Yep – no sound.”
Lucas was aware of a faint light in the Eastern sky. When the sun rose, it would almost be shining in the eyes of the human musketeers who were about to pour across the bridge. That could not be helped.
A ready reaction force of perhaps twenty Midis had been left, fully clothed and equipped but sleeping close to the bridge, to be woken by the sentries in what the commander considered the unlikely event of the humans forestalling their doom. These Midis found themselves rudely awoken by humans, tape applied to their mouths, hands bound and led across the bridge. Just as they reached the barriers on the human side they could see those barriers were being dismantled and humans with fire sticks were pouring across. Just beyond that they saw more humans seated on the four legged animals which they favoured, apparently waiting for their chance to get across the bridge. The leader of this group looked at the Midi Red Band in charge of the captured detachment in a way that Midi thought was disrespectful.
The creature consoled himself with the thought that the humans seemed pitifully few compared with the vast host – a full legion – that had been sent against them. Two large tubes on wheels rolled passed him without the Red Band realising what they were or shaking his conviction that his side would win in the battle that would soon be fought. Then the many slights against the honour of the Right People would be repaid.