Crusade - James Lowder [124]
Alusair didn't watch him go, however. As soon as the bard had been assigned his task, the princess moved on to other matters. "What's the army's status, Farl?"
After leading the way to a pair of rickety canvas-and-wood camp chairs set up around a nearby fire, the infantry commander gave his report. The Tuigan attack had cut the Alliance's number by half. With only a handful of exceptions, the cavalry had been wiped out, and a third of the wizards had been killed or wounded in the fighting. "I've got the men gathering the dead," Farl reported, "but I'm afraid it's a monumental task."
A quick scan of the battlefield revealed hundreds of torches flickering in the darkness outside the Alliance's lines. These torches illuminated the field for the details sent to retrieve western corpses and search for the wounded. So far, no body found outside the lines proved to be alive; the Tuigan had trampled most of the corpses in their retreat. A low moan continually hovered over the western camp as the injured and the grieving vented their sorrow together.
A sick feeling settled in the princess's stomach as she considered the situation. She rested her elbows on her knees and bowed her head in thought. "Pull three-quarters of the troops off corpse detail," she ordered at last. "I want them breaking down what remains of the Alliance's camp. We should be ready to move if the need arises."
Farl frowned. "But the corpses of our soldiers-"
"-will be of no use to us now," the princess sighed. She noted the shocked look on the general's face and added, "The gods will certainly understand if the heroes who died fighting here are not given the proper burial rites."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"When that's done, organize the remainder of the troops into three shifts. I want the men rested up in case the Tuigan come back," Alusair ordered calmly. "One shift of the three should remain alert, waiting for the horsewarriors, while the others sleep."
Nodding, Farl looked around at the Alliance's lines. "I've already started on that, Your Highness. If the men weren't so frightened, they might be easier to command." He paused and looked into the fire. "I-I share their concern, Princess. I don't think we have the strength to make another stand here."
A pressure had begun to weigh upon Alusair the moment she'd discovered her father was injured, the moment she'd been forced to take command of the army. The princess felt that pressure increase now. Her shoulders tight and her stomach in knots, she placed her hand on the general's arm.
"Then we'd best be ready to move by midnight," she said softly. "Perhaps we can find a more defensible place to the west."
Farl didn't reply at first. Eventually he stood and bowed. "I'll see that your orders are carried out." He paused, then added, "I'm glad you're here, Princess. I don't know how the men would have reacted to your father's injury if you hadn't taken command."
Alusair appreciated Farl's compliment, but the notion that she was one of the only things holding the Alliance together frightened her. She realized then that it was this responsibility that weighed so heavily upon her. Running a hand through her knotted blond hair, Alusair wondered if this pressure was what her father felt every day.
To take her mind off that and other thoughts, she established a makeshift command headquarters in the midst of the western lines. Despite this effort, the princess found that, once she'd set the army to its various tasks, there was little for her to do but wait and think and watch the bright bonfires that had sprung up around the battlefield. Those fires, which might have been the center for a rustic celebration in Cormyr, were the resting place for the western dead. One by one, corpses were hefted onto the blazing pyres, their souls sent to the afterlife unceremoniously on clouds of foul-smelling smoke.
The funeral pyres brought more unwelcome contemplation, and she was attempting to force her mind away from various morbid topics when she heard a spent arrow snap beneath someone's foot.