From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Fri 14 Apr 2000 - 19:00:59 EEST
Graham J Robinson:
> There are two reasons why a mounted raid is more dangerous than one on
> foot. Firstly, mounted warriors have an advantage over those on foot - so
> if a raid does make contact with its target, the raidees are at less of a
> disadvantage against those on foot. Secondly, and to my mind more
> significantly, the distance at which you have to notice mounted raiders to
> be able to escape effectively is greater than for raiders on foot. Both of
> these are covered by Oliver's final sentence.
>
> Hence, I would reckon that those clans who can't handle unmounted raids,
> are at an even greater risk from mounted raids. But yes, warning would be
> all important - hence my belief that the most likely result of a raider
> coming near the camp would be a lookout raising the alarm.
You make very accurate points, but it'd be wrong to conclude, I think,
that a Rathori raid on a Char Un camp would be 'strictly worse' (for
the raider...) than a Char Un raid on other Char Un. A patrol designed
to look out for mounted raid may well miss a bunch of sneaky hsunchen
in the dead of night, and a bunch of 'furry boys' suddenly in the midst
of your camp gutting your horses and smacking around your non-combatents
presents a very different danger to the 'done thing' pattern on intra-
nomad raiding. ("We're here to raid you." "Ah yes, you're a little
early this year: would you mind awfully taking a seat, while we finish
sacrificing some of our enemies horribly?") Especially, as I've
hypothesised, Char-Un start to encroach on the more 'marginal' land
between steppe-proper and forest-proper. And the less common such
raids are (or were, for that clan historically, say), the less prepared
they'll be to take the best possible countermeasures. Posting more
'outer perimeter' guards may not be a great response, for example,
as very likely when the more common circumstance of yet another raid
from other nomads occurs, these guys become effectively 'stragglers to
be picked off', and a weakening of the body of the clan's force.
Cheers,
Alex.
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